Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship

by Gregory Boyle

When we are disappointed in each other, we least resemble God. We have a God who wonders what all the measuring is about, a God who is perplexed by our raising the bar and then raising it even higher. We would do well to ask ourselves, How does God handle dismay and disappointment? Surely God must be disappointed that hunger exists in the world when we have the means to feed everyone. God has to be saddened by the number of guns in the United States and people’s willingness to use them on each other. God undoubtedly is dismayed that the Catholic Church continues to exclude women from ordained ministry and limit gays and the divorced and remarried Catholic from the fullest of welcomes. One can only imagine God’s response to the Church’s global child abuse scandal. But in all this, and in many other things, disappointment is not the foot God puts forward. There is instead only a redoubling of God’s loving us into kinship with each other. If we truly allow that tenderness to reach us, then peace, justice, and equality will be its by-product.