Thus far, we’ve talked about...
1) how those of use with privilege and resources elevate the forgiveness-granting, existential aspect of Christ’s “good news to the poor” to the only aspect of the good news that matters. We also saw that when our identity is in the old kingdom of the world, the other aspects of the Good News are not just uninteresting to us, but threatening to who we understand ourselves to be.
2) how charity can get out of the way for Charity/Caritas/Agape through the exercise of hospitality towards our brothers and sisters in poverty. Moreover, how we need to get beside those brothers and sisters in order to get beside Jesus.
3) but we wondered if maybe our vision for poverty wasn't a little dull, causing us to only see the big, obvious kinds of impoverishment in big, obvious places like the city and the country. We wondered about poverty in suburbia. And we found that poverty is the thing linking these places and the people who dwell in them. A poverty some can hide with privilege and resources and some cannot.
So, I’m a philosophy student. Er, student of philosophy? Either way, I end up reading books by really, really smart dead guys. One of those soul-crushingly smart dead guys is the Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan. A big part of Lonergan’s philosophy is that human beings learn stuff by inquiring about things with the use of “heuristics.” Heuristic is just a fancy word for “anticipation.” We anticipate that there is something to be understood, so we ask about it. In algebra, we demonstrate this anticipation with letters like “X” and “N.”
“Let X equal…”
Well, I want to play a similar game with this problem of how we preach the Good News, in all its rich, pulpy fullness to the “poor” in Suburbia. Except, instead of “X” or “N,” we’re going to use the words “Mission to Suburbia.”
“Let a Mission to Suburbia equal…”
Then, like in algebra, we’ll list some “terms” or characteristics and their relationship to one another. The “equation” will then be kind of like what Lonergan called an “heuristic structure.” Whatever other concrete details there might be, a mission to suburbia would consist of and in those characteristics in relation. This way, if we stumble onto or into one, we’ll know it when we see it.
So, the first figure in the equation would have to be the rediscovery of poverty, in two senses:
- First, we need to rediscover the proximity that material poverty of resources and social poverty of privilege has to our suburban setting. We tend to tuck it away, in neighboring communities or out of the way neighborhoods. In Walnut Creek, CA, the town I’ll be headed to in a few months to start out an experiment in Suburban Mission, the low-income housing is quite literally invisible from the main thoroughfares, obscured by shopping centers and municipal landscaping. Poverty can remain the story of people and places that are far away and other to us only through selective ignorance. We acculturate ourselves not to see the poverty of resources and privilege right under our noses.
(As a complete aside, allow me to allude to a contentious political issue: Egypt was built on the backs of immigrants who fled a famine in their home-land for the opportunities and security afforded by the wealth of an empire, only to end up indentured laborers under increasingly exploitative conditions. Egypt’s unwillingness to be compassionate towards their foreign neighbors ultimately resulted in destruction, death and suffering [to say nothing of political unrest!] for their citizens.)
- Second, we privileged and resourced suburban Christians, need to rediscover and embrace our personal, fundamental poverty. Resources and privilege cover up that poverty, but do not solve it, because the only thing that can solve it is the grace and redemption of a God that overcomes our moral impotence. We’re not up to the task demanded by a moral universe and we suffer over and over and over again the effects of our sin upon ourselves, on others and on creation. We need each other and we need God. Continuing to live in stubborn ignorance of that need will mean that we will continue to mete out destruction on creation and ourselves. Every advance and development will ultimately be purchased with a payday loan that we are guaranteed to default on.
So, the equation looks like this so far: “a Mission to Suburbia requires a rediscovery of poverty…”
Now, it’s easy for that rediscovery to be mis-understood as an unmasking of the self-deception of other wealthy suburbanites. Let me be clear that, though I think there is a place for clever, prophetic proclamation in societies that need a little self-examination, I’m really talking about those of us who feel called to preach the good news to the suburban poor. We need to make this rediscovery for, of and in ourselves.
But then we should share with other resource and privilege rich suburbanites what it is we’ve found in ourselves.
In fact, that’s the next part of the equation:
Reveal (or “confess,” if you like) to one another and the community the poverty we discover in ourselves. And that doesn’t just mean passing nods to our sense of inadequacy or vague statements that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Rather, when one reveals poverty to others, and they really feel that poverty as poverty, there’s an implicit “Help ME!” included. The authentic revelation of poverty to your brothers and sisters is an invitation to an act of service, an act of care. It’s an invitation into a community of Caritas in the richest theological sense.
But if no one has any liabilities that need tending or, having them, if none are willing to uncover them, then no invitations can be received and accepted. Or rejected, of course. Which is the grand danger, is it not? That having revealed our true dependence, we come to confirm the sense that we are alone in this. That the world demands we be self-sufficient. That poverty and suffering and lost-ness is just all there is, lurking beneath all the distractions. So, its best to stay distracted. To stay self-enclosed.
And we’re on to the next, slightly paradoxical part of the equation: the requirement that we have courage, faith and hope.
So, wait, let’s review:
“Suburban Mission requires that we rediscover our poverty, revealing it amongst ourselves and others with courage, faith and hope…”
Why courage, faith and hope?
Courage because the reality is that if you reveal your poverty and let escape the slightest whimper of “Help Me?”, it’s likely that you will be failed. You might be ignored. You might be scolded. You might be helped once and then abandoned. You might be blamed for your situation. A million horrible things could happen in your vulnerable state and it will be necessary to be brave in the face of those possibilities.
And, indeed, it will also require faith. Faith that if you do take this risk, that in some impossible way, it will be met half-way. Or more than half-way. Faith that there are people out there as willing and able to help as you are in need of their care and support. Faith that God will transform the hearts and intentions and actions of all the other, hurting, scared people out there for whom your mess threatens to unmask their mess. People for whom your vulnerability shines light on their vulnerability.
And most of all, you will need hope, because shit will go wrong, and probably not just once. You’ll need the hope that, even though everything has gone wrong so far, by some impossible chance or grace, everything works together for the good. Hope that there’s no mess so messy that God’s redemption can swirl it into a grand, vast column of support for some serious next level shit.
So, here it is, the equation that I think helps us anticipate the structure of our mission to suburbia:
Suburban Mission requires we a) rediscover our poverty, b) revealing it amongst ourselves and others c)with courage, faith and hope d) so that our weakness might be made into strength.
And that last part is the whole point. And the whole paradox.
In a place where independence, strength, and wealth are white-washed over tombs of broken, lost, empty lives, to reach deep down and show everyone your dependence, your weakness and your poverty requires immense courage and strength. You have to be incredibly together in order to survive the exposure of how un-together you really are. You have to be very grown up to show the faith of a child.
And so, the mission to suburbia implies a call for a new standard of success, of grown-up-ness. Our Heuristic Structure of a Mission to Suburbia needs people who are strong enough to step out into weakness, showing others it can be done.
That’s the prophetic hope of all of this: That others will look at us and say, “They’re nothing special. Shit, they’re kind of a mess. And yet they’re doing something extraordinary…”
“…Maybe I can too.”
So, in abbreviated form, here's our equation. Our anticipation.
Suburban Mission = (Rediscovered Poverty + Confession of Poverty) X (Courage + Faith + Hope) = Weakness = Strength
Friday, July 2, 2010
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
(An Interruption) Dr. West re: The Cross
As we creep up on July 4th, something for us American Christians to remember about empire, the Cross and the socio-political context of Jesus' sacrificial act.
What I hope will be the final part of the Poverty series I'm aiming to have up before the weekend.
Also, if you aren't familiar with the beautiful woman sitting across from Dr. West, that's Toni Morrison. You'll want to Google her.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Poverty (Pt. 3)
In my last entry, a couple of weeks ago, I ended with some questions about how we should traverse an uncertain path. If we are unwilling to slink back into the old kingdom, the old empire and yet don’t feel a calling to the specifically urban or rural concentrations of the poor, how do we go forward? Certainly those urban and rural communities are under-served and I’m so grateful for those Christians (and others!) who follow a calling into the city or the country to dwell with and learn from those in poverty. That is a genuine kind of moral heroism. And yet, the starkness of that poverty, I’m convinced, can become a kind of catch-all for our felt-sense of responsibility to the least of these. And maybe that’s not so bad for the forgotten corners of the empire. Maybe that status draws those of us with more compassion in our hearts than intricate theories and clearly discerned vocations in our heads.
But what about those places, so far from being forgotten by the empire, which are occupied most fiercely by the old kingdom. In our culture, in our country, I think that means “Suburbia.”
And here I’ll stop being so abstract for a moment and tell you a little about my own sense of “calling.” I grew up in suburbia. Californian, automobile-centric suburbia with row after row of ranch-style homes (or, increasingly, McMansions) packed onto quarter and eighth acre lots. I went to a suburban church, nestled into a suburban neighborhood, populated by blue-collar suburban folks and white-collar suburban folks and ultra-super-white-collar gated-community suburban folks. When I say I think that my family probably landed somewhere near the middle of middle class, I hope that isn’t just oblivious self-centeredness talking. You know, the way people with obvious political biases usually call themselves “centrists” or “moderates”? In any case, we were far from the richest and far from the poorest. It never felt like we were in need and it never felt like we had much extra.
I grew up with two parents with disabilities, but for all of their bodily unhealthy, we were a fairly emotionally healthy family. We fought sometimes, but we also apologized often. We laughed and argued and played together. Dad worked weird hours and Mom worked three days a week. There was a kind and supportive baby sitter. There was a church that supported us in times of crisis and nurtured us in between crises. We were a family that couldn’t hide its needs and those needs were almost always met. Meals showed up on our doorstep. We got rides from neighborhood friends. There was always an ear to hear our frustrations or confusions or struggles. But we were stable enough to appreciate that help and give back to our community family in times and places.
As I got older, I began to realize that other families had as hard a time as us. Some of those families were rich and other families were not so rich. As I began to say in high school, “Everyone gets their own special brand of ‘fucked up.’” And “fucked up” didn’t seem to have any particular correlation to a family’s tax bracket. Death and suffering and divorce and eating disorders and suicide refused to respect the accomplishments, earning potentials or best laid plans of anyone. Nothing, it seems, holds those things at bay for any of us. At best, money could keep ‘set backs’ from becoming ‘death spirals’ and virtue and good friends could help you survive the messes and carry on with some lessons learned or enriched relationships.
But that’s best-case scenario.
And all the resources and privilege have this awkward side effect: they don’t keep us from experiencing the fundamental poverty of human life, but they do let us hide that poverty from others. Sometimes, even from ourselves.
“I made $100,000 this year. I can’t be a junky.”
“My kid got into an Ivy League university. They must be doing fine.”
“Our refrigerator is full of food and our mortgage is getting paid every month. What could I be anxious or depressed about?”
In hiding our poverty from ourselves, when we suffer that poverty, there is little hope of relief. The whole experience seems even more mysterious than suffering in general is already.
In hiding our poverty from one another, we of course preclude ourselves from their help that might bring some relief or comfort. Furthermore, we also deprive others of the opportunity to be of service in offering that relief and comfort. As Christians, I think we believe being of service is a blessing. A chance to be like Jesus.
I’ll say that again: When we hide our poverty behind resources and privilege, we deprive others of a chance to be of service and that deprives them of a blessing.
In other words, we have a responsibility to our communities to be honest about our impoverishment. Covering it up with resources and privilege hurts everybody.
So, wait… What exactly am I saying about Suburban Christians and Suburban poverty?
I believe that privileged, suburban Christians don’t need to leave the privilege of suburbia to find poverty. We have our own personal poverty to discover through confession and humility. We have our socio-economic poverty to discover by bringing it out from behind the scenes of suburban life. Which is not to say that privileged, suburban Christians shouldn’t get a well rounded-education in poverty. No, it’s imperative that we come to know all kinds of poverty, both that which is closest (if not most transparent) to us, and the more foreign, unsettling kinds; urban, rural, and international poverty. But let’s not pretend that “the poor” are other than ourselves. Let’s not pretend that there is “us” and then there are “the poor.” Let’s not pretend that we’ve corralled poverty in Cabrini Green or the Reservations of the Dakotas.
Poverty is what we all share in common. Just some of us are blessed because we can’t delude ourselves about our poverty.
(Next time: The Heuristic Structure of Good News to Suburban Poor)
But what about those places, so far from being forgotten by the empire, which are occupied most fiercely by the old kingdom. In our culture, in our country, I think that means “Suburbia.”
And here I’ll stop being so abstract for a moment and tell you a little about my own sense of “calling.” I grew up in suburbia. Californian, automobile-centric suburbia with row after row of ranch-style homes (or, increasingly, McMansions) packed onto quarter and eighth acre lots. I went to a suburban church, nestled into a suburban neighborhood, populated by blue-collar suburban folks and white-collar suburban folks and ultra-super-white-collar gated-community suburban folks. When I say I think that my family probably landed somewhere near the middle of middle class, I hope that isn’t just oblivious self-centeredness talking. You know, the way people with obvious political biases usually call themselves “centrists” or “moderates”? In any case, we were far from the richest and far from the poorest. It never felt like we were in need and it never felt like we had much extra.
I grew up with two parents with disabilities, but for all of their bodily unhealthy, we were a fairly emotionally healthy family. We fought sometimes, but we also apologized often. We laughed and argued and played together. Dad worked weird hours and Mom worked three days a week. There was a kind and supportive baby sitter. There was a church that supported us in times of crisis and nurtured us in between crises. We were a family that couldn’t hide its needs and those needs were almost always met. Meals showed up on our doorstep. We got rides from neighborhood friends. There was always an ear to hear our frustrations or confusions or struggles. But we were stable enough to appreciate that help and give back to our community family in times and places.
As I got older, I began to realize that other families had as hard a time as us. Some of those families were rich and other families were not so rich. As I began to say in high school, “Everyone gets their own special brand of ‘fucked up.’” And “fucked up” didn’t seem to have any particular correlation to a family’s tax bracket. Death and suffering and divorce and eating disorders and suicide refused to respect the accomplishments, earning potentials or best laid plans of anyone. Nothing, it seems, holds those things at bay for any of us. At best, money could keep ‘set backs’ from becoming ‘death spirals’ and virtue and good friends could help you survive the messes and carry on with some lessons learned or enriched relationships.
But that’s best-case scenario.
And all the resources and privilege have this awkward side effect: they don’t keep us from experiencing the fundamental poverty of human life, but they do let us hide that poverty from others. Sometimes, even from ourselves.
“I made $100,000 this year. I can’t be a junky.”
“My kid got into an Ivy League university. They must be doing fine.”
“Our refrigerator is full of food and our mortgage is getting paid every month. What could I be anxious or depressed about?”
In hiding our poverty from ourselves, when we suffer that poverty, there is little hope of relief. The whole experience seems even more mysterious than suffering in general is already.
In hiding our poverty from one another, we of course preclude ourselves from their help that might bring some relief or comfort. Furthermore, we also deprive others of the opportunity to be of service in offering that relief and comfort. As Christians, I think we believe being of service is a blessing. A chance to be like Jesus.
I’ll say that again: When we hide our poverty behind resources and privilege, we deprive others of a chance to be of service and that deprives them of a blessing.
In other words, we have a responsibility to our communities to be honest about our impoverishment. Covering it up with resources and privilege hurts everybody.
So, wait… What exactly am I saying about Suburban Christians and Suburban poverty?
I believe that privileged, suburban Christians don’t need to leave the privilege of suburbia to find poverty. We have our own personal poverty to discover through confession and humility. We have our socio-economic poverty to discover by bringing it out from behind the scenes of suburban life. Which is not to say that privileged, suburban Christians shouldn’t get a well rounded-education in poverty. No, it’s imperative that we come to know all kinds of poverty, both that which is closest (if not most transparent) to us, and the more foreign, unsettling kinds; urban, rural, and international poverty. But let’s not pretend that “the poor” are other than ourselves. Let’s not pretend that there is “us” and then there are “the poor.” Let’s not pretend that we’ve corralled poverty in Cabrini Green or the Reservations of the Dakotas.
Poverty is what we all share in common. Just some of us are blessed because we can’t delude ourselves about our poverty.
(Next time: The Heuristic Structure of Good News to Suburban Poor)
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Poverty (Pt. 2)
In the previous post, I tried to tease out the way in which, if Jesus’ work culminates in preaching good news to the poor, those of us who aren’t poor (or to put it more broadly are privileged) may have a hard time hearing the news of the Kingdom of God as good news. More than that, those of us rich folks who DO hear the Good News as good news have a tendency to pick the part of the Kingdom that touches our forgiveness-poverty and declare it the only part that counts.
Now, there are some Christians I respect a lot who’ve taken this conundrum and said, “Welp, I grew up only hearing a part of the Kingdom as good news. If I’m going to learn how to hear all of the Good News as good news, I’m gonna have to get to know some poor people and let them teach me how to hear this thing correctly. To hear it fully.” So, they moved to be with poor people and took a student’s posture. A disciple’s posture. Because if Jesus was called “teacher” and identified himself with the “least of these” (Matthew 25), then we are called to be disciples of the poor. Jesus doesn’t call us to rescue the poor. He doesn’t call us to fix the poor. He doesn’t call us to ‘eradicate poverty’. He calls us to encounter himself by sharing time and meals and resources with the poor. Invite the outcasts in. Visit the exiled and imprisoned. Go be with the poor, so that we may be with Jesus.
Giving them something to eat and to drink and to wear isn’t about “charity,” it’s about hospitality. If you’re hanging out with someone and they’re thirsty or hungry or naked, it’s not just awkward and rude to neglect (or even to refuse) to share your food or water or clothes. It’s downright WRONG.
However, if you don’t actually spend any time with poor folks, then dropping off canned goods or old sweaters isn’t about hospitality anymore.
Then it’s just plain old charity.
Which is good. Sharing your extras, even with strangers, is good.
But it’s harder to think of it as essential. Making sure your companions have water and food and clothes is essential. Dropping off your extras is… well, extra. If things are tight and there’s not much extra, you can cut it out or just forget all together. I mean, we know we shouldn’t but it’s sure a lot easier.
But if your brother or sister is right there next to you saying, “shit dude, I’m hungry!,” well, then it’s a little harder for it to slip your mind.
This is, of course, very different from how other privileged Christians (who I ALSO respect a lot… partly because I’m one of them) have addressed the conundrum of trying to hear the Good News as good news without having much poverty in their(/our) lives. We grab that forgiveness part and then we carry as much of it as we can into the old kingdom, all mustard-seed grainy and slipping through our hands. And then, when we get lots of extras because of our privilege, we do our darnedest to remember to share the excess with the poor. We call this “charity.”
Charity, you might know, is the English version of the word “Caritas” in Latin. Which is itself a Latin version of “Agape” in Greek, which if you’ve heard a sermon in the last 10 years, you may have heard invoked. Agape, to vastly over simplify, is an intense, divine, personal sort of love.
Charity, the way we tend to think of it, usually conjures none of the same adjectives as Agape. At best, it’s a generous sharing of our abundance with people we’ve likely not met and in support of folks who’ve committed their lives to the kind of work we don’t really have time for. We support organizations that support and aid the un- and under-privileged. At worst, it becomes a vehicle for paternalism and a way of making our responsibility to the “least of these” as unobtrusive as possible. Also, very often the extras that we share through charity are unintentionally the product of economies that create the poverty we’re trying to help. We clean out our storage space and give clothes made in sweatshops to the Salvation Army. We donate 10% of our income earned at a company which pays its CEO more than 40x what they pay their lowest paid employee.
One step forward, two steps back.
Doesn’t that seem like a pretty thin, pale version of Agape? Of Caritas? Isn’t our “charity” not all that much like Charity?
Again, I’m not saying stop giving to charities. More, I’m saying maybe don’t be so satisfied that giving to charities is the same thing as Charity. And more than that, I think we might need to reevaluate the assumption that “charity” is the “good news to the poor” that Jesus was talking about.
See Also: This Shane Claiborne Essay
But what do we do if we aren’t feeling that mysterious, deep down call to the usual kind of poor people? What if we don’t feel like God is calling us to the urban, food-desert, minimum wage poor? Nor the rural, farm-subsidies, drought stricken poor?
What if you feel some weird kind of call to the poor who don’t know they’re poor?
And what exactly are you supposed to tell them?
And how are they going to hear it?
Now, there are some Christians I respect a lot who’ve taken this conundrum and said, “Welp, I grew up only hearing a part of the Kingdom as good news. If I’m going to learn how to hear all of the Good News as good news, I’m gonna have to get to know some poor people and let them teach me how to hear this thing correctly. To hear it fully.” So, they moved to be with poor people and took a student’s posture. A disciple’s posture. Because if Jesus was called “teacher” and identified himself with the “least of these” (Matthew 25), then we are called to be disciples of the poor. Jesus doesn’t call us to rescue the poor. He doesn’t call us to fix the poor. He doesn’t call us to ‘eradicate poverty’. He calls us to encounter himself by sharing time and meals and resources with the poor. Invite the outcasts in. Visit the exiled and imprisoned. Go be with the poor, so that we may be with Jesus.
Giving them something to eat and to drink and to wear isn’t about “charity,” it’s about hospitality. If you’re hanging out with someone and they’re thirsty or hungry or naked, it’s not just awkward and rude to neglect (or even to refuse) to share your food or water or clothes. It’s downright WRONG.
However, if you don’t actually spend any time with poor folks, then dropping off canned goods or old sweaters isn’t about hospitality anymore.
Then it’s just plain old charity.
Which is good. Sharing your extras, even with strangers, is good.
But it’s harder to think of it as essential. Making sure your companions have water and food and clothes is essential. Dropping off your extras is… well, extra. If things are tight and there’s not much extra, you can cut it out or just forget all together. I mean, we know we shouldn’t but it’s sure a lot easier.
But if your brother or sister is right there next to you saying, “shit dude, I’m hungry!,” well, then it’s a little harder for it to slip your mind.
This is, of course, very different from how other privileged Christians (who I ALSO respect a lot… partly because I’m one of them) have addressed the conundrum of trying to hear the Good News as good news without having much poverty in their(/our) lives. We grab that forgiveness part and then we carry as much of it as we can into the old kingdom, all mustard-seed grainy and slipping through our hands. And then, when we get lots of extras because of our privilege, we do our darnedest to remember to share the excess with the poor. We call this “charity.”
Charity, you might know, is the English version of the word “Caritas” in Latin. Which is itself a Latin version of “Agape” in Greek, which if you’ve heard a sermon in the last 10 years, you may have heard invoked. Agape, to vastly over simplify, is an intense, divine, personal sort of love.
Charity, the way we tend to think of it, usually conjures none of the same adjectives as Agape. At best, it’s a generous sharing of our abundance with people we’ve likely not met and in support of folks who’ve committed their lives to the kind of work we don’t really have time for. We support organizations that support and aid the un- and under-privileged. At worst, it becomes a vehicle for paternalism and a way of making our responsibility to the “least of these” as unobtrusive as possible. Also, very often the extras that we share through charity are unintentionally the product of economies that create the poverty we’re trying to help. We clean out our storage space and give clothes made in sweatshops to the Salvation Army. We donate 10% of our income earned at a company which pays its CEO more than 40x what they pay their lowest paid employee.
One step forward, two steps back.
Doesn’t that seem like a pretty thin, pale version of Agape? Of Caritas? Isn’t our “charity” not all that much like Charity?
Again, I’m not saying stop giving to charities. More, I’m saying maybe don’t be so satisfied that giving to charities is the same thing as Charity. And more than that, I think we might need to reevaluate the assumption that “charity” is the “good news to the poor” that Jesus was talking about.
See Also: This Shane Claiborne Essay
But what do we do if we aren’t feeling that mysterious, deep down call to the usual kind of poor people? What if we don’t feel like God is calling us to the urban, food-desert, minimum wage poor? Nor the rural, farm-subsidies, drought stricken poor?
What if you feel some weird kind of call to the poor who don’t know they’re poor?
And what exactly are you supposed to tell them?
And how are they going to hear it?
Monday, June 14, 2010
Poverty (Pt. 1)
A word about poverty (or “pigs don’t wear necklaces”).
Jesus says in Luke 4 and again in Luke 7 that his work culminates in “preaching the good news to the poor.” “The Spirit of the Lord” anointed him for it. Like his ancestor David, Jesus is called up out of this Judean backwater Bethlehem and anointed. Out of a blue-collar rural family from a blue-collar rural town, Jesus (like David) is going to be hailed King. Called “Lord.” And all of his buddies, these guys who start getting called “disciples” once Jesus starts getting called “teacher,” are blue-collar guys. Fishermen. Disgruntled workers-turned-radicals called “zealots.” Half-criminal government shills that collected taxes. All the characters that populate a society, an economy oppressed and depressed by Imperial occupation. All of the rough, unlovely types by whom civilized people are made uncomfortable. The sorts of lower-middle class folks that politicians condescend to and pander to.
Jesus comes up from this neighborhood and doesn’t go make nice with the arbiters of power and culture and religion. He doesn’t seek their approval. He doesn’t apply for their certification programs. He doesn’t wait for their permission. There’s some Kingdom shit to do. And once it’s underway, news of it will get to the people for whom it will matter. Poor people. People for whom it will be a blessing. For those who have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
On the other hand, if you inaugurate a new Kingdom, people with a job in the old kingdom start to get worried they’ll be S.O.L.
People with no job to speak of couldn’t be happier.
For people who are poor, the Kingdom of God is good news. Jesus tells his students not to cast their pearls before swine, because what use do pigs have for pearls? Don’t bring the Kindgom to people who don’t have any use for a new Kingdom. It might be news to them, but it won’t be Good News.
For poor people, it'll be good news. That other kind of people? well, maybe not so much.
Our Evangelical emphasis on the transcendent meaning of the crucifixion (atonement theories, etc) often obscures the very immanent reasons the official defenders of religion and government had for killing this Jesus guy. They had a good racket and this new Kingdom, in which the poor get preference, was going to fuck the whole thing up. See: JD’s entry on “loss aversion.”
For those of us who are rich and still think that the Kingdom of God sounds like pretty good news, this puts us in a bit of an awkward spot. We don’t have the kind of lack, the kind of poverty that makes a new Kingdom with freedom and provision and healing and work to be done seem like living water to quench our thirst. We’ve got freedom through victory. We’ve got provision through labor. We’ve got healing through technology. We’ve got work to do, because there’s an empire to build.
But we do have guilt.
Sometimes we aren’t even sure what it is we feel guilty about, except for the sneaking suspicion that, even if we worked for our wealth, for our position, for our privilege, our comfort, we still don’t deserve it. Or maybe we know exactly what it is we feel guilty about and no matter how much we accomplish or how much we acquire, its never enough to make us “O.K.” again. Nothing ever seems to fix what we've done. Or maybe we find guilt, not with ourselves, but everywhere and in everyone else.
So, we have a poverty of forgiveness. A poverty of grace for ourselves and/or others.
And this is serious business. That’s a kind of poverty you can die from. (See also: Alcoholism; Depression; Gluttony; Eating Disorders; Promiscuity; Domestic, Civic, National Violence.)
So, for the sinner with a poverty of forgiveness, the forgiveness part of the Kingdom is pretty good news.
But once that poverty is addressed through faith in the blood of a lamb that washes away the sin of the world and delivers us from death…
What now? What else do we need, after we’ve plucked this particular bit of goodness from the news Jesus was anointed to preach to the poor? Can we just return to our unending wars to defend peace? Return to our stock portfolios? To our health care legislation? To our role in a society, an economy that soaked us in sin to begin with?
Now that we’ve been washed clean, can we jump back in the sewer and try really hard to avoid taking on the stink of shit ourselves?
When you read that story about the rich young ruler that Jesus asks to give up his wealth and position, how fast do you move to wave away the chance that challenge might apply to you?
More than that, when the poor start proclaiming to each other the other good stuff about this Kingdom news, do we start to defend the old kingdom in which we have freedom and provision and health and work to do? When the political, the economic, the somatic and the social aspects of the Kingdom News start to get preached from the poor to the poor, how quick are we to declare the existential part, the part that matters to us, the only part that is essential?
Isn’t it funny that the only part the privileged need is the only part that really counts?
(Up next: Charity vs. Caritas)
Jesus says in Luke 4 and again in Luke 7 that his work culminates in “preaching the good news to the poor.” “The Spirit of the Lord” anointed him for it. Like his ancestor David, Jesus is called up out of this Judean backwater Bethlehem and anointed. Out of a blue-collar rural family from a blue-collar rural town, Jesus (like David) is going to be hailed King. Called “Lord.” And all of his buddies, these guys who start getting called “disciples” once Jesus starts getting called “teacher,” are blue-collar guys. Fishermen. Disgruntled workers-turned-radicals called “zealots.” Half-criminal government shills that collected taxes. All the characters that populate a society, an economy oppressed and depressed by Imperial occupation. All of the rough, unlovely types by whom civilized people are made uncomfortable. The sorts of lower-middle class folks that politicians condescend to and pander to.
Jesus comes up from this neighborhood and doesn’t go make nice with the arbiters of power and culture and religion. He doesn’t seek their approval. He doesn’t apply for their certification programs. He doesn’t wait for their permission. There’s some Kingdom shit to do. And once it’s underway, news of it will get to the people for whom it will matter. Poor people. People for whom it will be a blessing. For those who have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
On the other hand, if you inaugurate a new Kingdom, people with a job in the old kingdom start to get worried they’ll be S.O.L.
People with no job to speak of couldn’t be happier.
For people who are poor, the Kingdom of God is good news. Jesus tells his students not to cast their pearls before swine, because what use do pigs have for pearls? Don’t bring the Kindgom to people who don’t have any use for a new Kingdom. It might be news to them, but it won’t be Good News.
For poor people, it'll be good news. That other kind of people? well, maybe not so much.
Our Evangelical emphasis on the transcendent meaning of the crucifixion (atonement theories, etc) often obscures the very immanent reasons the official defenders of religion and government had for killing this Jesus guy. They had a good racket and this new Kingdom, in which the poor get preference, was going to fuck the whole thing up. See: JD’s entry on “loss aversion.”
For those of us who are rich and still think that the Kingdom of God sounds like pretty good news, this puts us in a bit of an awkward spot. We don’t have the kind of lack, the kind of poverty that makes a new Kingdom with freedom and provision and healing and work to be done seem like living water to quench our thirst. We’ve got freedom through victory. We’ve got provision through labor. We’ve got healing through technology. We’ve got work to do, because there’s an empire to build.
But we do have guilt.
Sometimes we aren’t even sure what it is we feel guilty about, except for the sneaking suspicion that, even if we worked for our wealth, for our position, for our privilege, our comfort, we still don’t deserve it. Or maybe we know exactly what it is we feel guilty about and no matter how much we accomplish or how much we acquire, its never enough to make us “O.K.” again. Nothing ever seems to fix what we've done. Or maybe we find guilt, not with ourselves, but everywhere and in everyone else.
So, we have a poverty of forgiveness. A poverty of grace for ourselves and/or others.
And this is serious business. That’s a kind of poverty you can die from. (See also: Alcoholism; Depression; Gluttony; Eating Disorders; Promiscuity; Domestic, Civic, National Violence.)
So, for the sinner with a poverty of forgiveness, the forgiveness part of the Kingdom is pretty good news.
But once that poverty is addressed through faith in the blood of a lamb that washes away the sin of the world and delivers us from death…
What now? What else do we need, after we’ve plucked this particular bit of goodness from the news Jesus was anointed to preach to the poor? Can we just return to our unending wars to defend peace? Return to our stock portfolios? To our health care legislation? To our role in a society, an economy that soaked us in sin to begin with?
Now that we’ve been washed clean, can we jump back in the sewer and try really hard to avoid taking on the stink of shit ourselves?
When you read that story about the rich young ruler that Jesus asks to give up his wealth and position, how fast do you move to wave away the chance that challenge might apply to you?
More than that, when the poor start proclaiming to each other the other good stuff about this Kingdom news, do we start to defend the old kingdom in which we have freedom and provision and health and work to do? When the political, the economic, the somatic and the social aspects of the Kingdom News start to get preached from the poor to the poor, how quick are we to declare the existential part, the part that matters to us, the only part that is essential?
Isn’t it funny that the only part the privileged need is the only part that really counts?
(Up next: Charity vs. Caritas)
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Sources of Inspiration
Tiny House Blog is one of the places I've been getting inspiration about how to live differently than my education trained me. Check it out if you get a chance. If nothing else, the weekly "tiny house in a landscape" photo posts are worth the space in your Google Reader. Tho, this article on frugality is doing it for me right now.
Monday, May 24, 2010
A Personal Note on Conversion
I'm in the middle of preparing for the final, oral comprehensive examination for my MA in Philosophy at Boston College. I took a little break to try to get out what I've been thinking about as I close up this academic chapter of my life and put on hold what, by the original plan, should have been the next. Here are those (somewhat rambling) thoughts. This is a little more of a personal note and I hope that's alright.
In August, I move back to California from Boston. In Boston, I live alone in an apartment that costs just an incredible amount every month. I work part time for good money and I’ll be finishing an MA in Philosophy in a few days. I’ve been accepted to the PHD program at SIU Carbondale (a ways outside St. Louis) in Philosophy, though I wasn’t immediately offered any funding. My employment in Boston ends in mid-August and (as of writing this) I don’t have a job lined up in the Bay Area.
The plan was to get into a PHD program and become a philosophy professor at the sort of small, Christians liberal arts university we affectionately call “East Jesus NoWhere College.” That plan, for the moment, is on hold.
Why put that plan on hold? It’s not the most secure plan in the world. Philosophy, like the arts and so many of the humanities, is sidelined in many universities and jobs aren’t so easy to come by. And a PHD is like a union card for the academy.
Well, because I have a kind of religious devotion to the way things are done around here. I tithe to a religion with elaborate temples in Washington, DC. The priests and clerics of that religion want me perpetually taking on debt (education loans, home loans, car loans) and then I’ll be forced into labor in order to pay those debts and a portion of those earnings will go to the temple’s coffers. To make that labor (so peculiarly chosen and coerced at once…) tolerable, I’m offered distractions and spectacles for a small portion of the funds left over once my bills are paid. If I have children, I’ll work as hard as I can so that they can get into the religious schools and be taught the piety I learned as a boy. I’ll work hard and take on even more debt so that my child can earn the right and ability to take on even more debt than I was able. After all, I could take on more than my parents and them more than their parents.
This is the eschatology of my civic religion. That every generation will be able to borrow more than the last. Wealth is measured in how much you can afford to borrow. Security is being able to pay your debts.
Now, of course, that’s not the way I’d told the story to myself all these years. I had become like a Christian who takes the sacraments and attends masses without understanding why, but knowing only that if they do, somehow they are in God’s good graces. In other respects, I went about what were the more explicit desires of my heart: to pursue questions of meaning and value, so that I could help shape young people to be formed better than I had the chance to be. I want to be an educator.
And yet, I’ve come to realize that, if I’m ruthless with myself, I must recognize that my religious devotion is to the American Dream and not to the Kingdom of God. Certainly, I explicitly claim Christianity as my religion. And intellectually, I take what I think are probably ecclesiological (church inspired) positions on moral and political issues. Dig a little deeper, and you find the pagan-ness of my heart. I’ve got such selfishness and lust of all kinds lurking down there. But even then, I think one can dig deeper.
Deeper into how habitual action reveals what we REALLY value and what we really believe will bring us happiness, what will bring us Abundant Life. For me, like I’ve said before, its my fancy-ass cell phone. It’s also fancy coffee and my single-speed bike. My expensive haircut and my tattoos. My quirky-fashionable clothes.
How do I know this? Because when I’m bored, I whip out my cell phone. Because when I meet someone new, I hope they ask about my shoes or t-shirt. Because I spend most of my disposable income at the local café. Because those are the things I talk about. Because those are the things I’d be miserable if I was deprived of them. Because I plot what kind of car I should buy to complete my image and lifestyle.
Because those are the things on which I spend my precious, finite, gifted time on this beautiful planet.
So, I need to put my “way things are done around” here plans on hold for a while and change religions all the way down. Not just change my mind, or even my heart, but change my habits, my way. Otherwise, all I’ll have to offer my students is the surface play of words and ideas that are easily dismissed when push comes to shove.
After all, as Brother Milch put it, “as much as he’s her misery, the pimp's a whore’s familiar; and the sudden strange or violent draws her to him.”
Why now? Why, when my future is so much on the line at this perilous age? Why not get secure and then “better myself?”
Because “I’m no longer the boy I once was and I’m not yet the man I’ll be.”
Because, like Aristotle says, wealth and security are only the necessary external goods on which possible happiness rests. After all, those who suffer under tyrants will tell you that when you’re starving, you can’t think about bettering your circumstances. You think about food. About how hungry you are. And yet, if we say of wealth and security, “that is all I need and I’ll be happy,” we will wonder why we’re never brought to our fullest selves. To the men and women that we’ll be. We’ll suffer and never understand.
Or worse, we’ll never suffer and still not understand. After all, Brother Kierkegaard reminds us that the soul in despair that knows it is in despair is better off than the soul that is ignorant of its own despair.
Because the despairing soul that knows its state can seek salvation. The other doesn’t know it doesn’t know.
(As a side note, perhaps we should be careful calling good fortune by the name of God’s Blessing.)
The deal is, we’re dying.
And everyday I’m dying to this world, either into a grave from which there is no return, or, with Christ, into a grave from which we return more than we were. I can either be dragged to the former, all the while vainly hoping that my some magic I’ll be spared the universal fate of humans. And yet our very name, “Human,” means burial. Who can escape the return to dust? Who can wave Time away forever?
Or I can stop obsessing about empty stuff and take up my cross to march towards a death that opens unto life.
And yet, between here and there, is suffering.
I really, really hate suffering. I might tolerate some small suffering for some small reward. I am, after all, rather heavily tattooed. But raise the stakes and make more strange the suffering and more strange the reward, and I’ll pretend I never even heard of the option. The dull ache of a life unfulfilled or the sharp pain of suffering for an Abundant Kingdom?
I’ll take dull ache, thank you.
I know that’s my choice, because it’s the choice I’ve made everyday for as long as I can remember.
In mid-august, I start to choose differently and it scares the merciless shit out of me.
Now, let’s get things straight: this is no heroic shift.
No, these are going to be toddler’s steps. And there’s one thing we know for sure: toddlers stumble.
Often.
In August, I move back to California from Boston. In Boston, I live alone in an apartment that costs just an incredible amount every month. I work part time for good money and I’ll be finishing an MA in Philosophy in a few days. I’ve been accepted to the PHD program at SIU Carbondale (a ways outside St. Louis) in Philosophy, though I wasn’t immediately offered any funding. My employment in Boston ends in mid-August and (as of writing this) I don’t have a job lined up in the Bay Area.
The plan was to get into a PHD program and become a philosophy professor at the sort of small, Christians liberal arts university we affectionately call “East Jesus NoWhere College.” That plan, for the moment, is on hold.
Why put that plan on hold? It’s not the most secure plan in the world. Philosophy, like the arts and so many of the humanities, is sidelined in many universities and jobs aren’t so easy to come by. And a PHD is like a union card for the academy.
Well, because I have a kind of religious devotion to the way things are done around here. I tithe to a religion with elaborate temples in Washington, DC. The priests and clerics of that religion want me perpetually taking on debt (education loans, home loans, car loans) and then I’ll be forced into labor in order to pay those debts and a portion of those earnings will go to the temple’s coffers. To make that labor (so peculiarly chosen and coerced at once…) tolerable, I’m offered distractions and spectacles for a small portion of the funds left over once my bills are paid. If I have children, I’ll work as hard as I can so that they can get into the religious schools and be taught the piety I learned as a boy. I’ll work hard and take on even more debt so that my child can earn the right and ability to take on even more debt than I was able. After all, I could take on more than my parents and them more than their parents.
This is the eschatology of my civic religion. That every generation will be able to borrow more than the last. Wealth is measured in how much you can afford to borrow. Security is being able to pay your debts.
Now, of course, that’s not the way I’d told the story to myself all these years. I had become like a Christian who takes the sacraments and attends masses without understanding why, but knowing only that if they do, somehow they are in God’s good graces. In other respects, I went about what were the more explicit desires of my heart: to pursue questions of meaning and value, so that I could help shape young people to be formed better than I had the chance to be. I want to be an educator.
And yet, I’ve come to realize that, if I’m ruthless with myself, I must recognize that my religious devotion is to the American Dream and not to the Kingdom of God. Certainly, I explicitly claim Christianity as my religion. And intellectually, I take what I think are probably ecclesiological (church inspired) positions on moral and political issues. Dig a little deeper, and you find the pagan-ness of my heart. I’ve got such selfishness and lust of all kinds lurking down there. But even then, I think one can dig deeper.
Deeper into how habitual action reveals what we REALLY value and what we really believe will bring us happiness, what will bring us Abundant Life. For me, like I’ve said before, its my fancy-ass cell phone. It’s also fancy coffee and my single-speed bike. My expensive haircut and my tattoos. My quirky-fashionable clothes.
How do I know this? Because when I’m bored, I whip out my cell phone. Because when I meet someone new, I hope they ask about my shoes or t-shirt. Because I spend most of my disposable income at the local café. Because those are the things I talk about. Because those are the things I’d be miserable if I was deprived of them. Because I plot what kind of car I should buy to complete my image and lifestyle.
Because those are the things on which I spend my precious, finite, gifted time on this beautiful planet.
So, I need to put my “way things are done around” here plans on hold for a while and change religions all the way down. Not just change my mind, or even my heart, but change my habits, my way. Otherwise, all I’ll have to offer my students is the surface play of words and ideas that are easily dismissed when push comes to shove.
After all, as Brother Milch put it, “as much as he’s her misery, the pimp's a whore’s familiar; and the sudden strange or violent draws her to him.”
Why now? Why, when my future is so much on the line at this perilous age? Why not get secure and then “better myself?”
Because “I’m no longer the boy I once was and I’m not yet the man I’ll be.”
Because, like Aristotle says, wealth and security are only the necessary external goods on which possible happiness rests. After all, those who suffer under tyrants will tell you that when you’re starving, you can’t think about bettering your circumstances. You think about food. About how hungry you are. And yet, if we say of wealth and security, “that is all I need and I’ll be happy,” we will wonder why we’re never brought to our fullest selves. To the men and women that we’ll be. We’ll suffer and never understand.
Or worse, we’ll never suffer and still not understand. After all, Brother Kierkegaard reminds us that the soul in despair that knows it is in despair is better off than the soul that is ignorant of its own despair.
Because the despairing soul that knows its state can seek salvation. The other doesn’t know it doesn’t know.
(As a side note, perhaps we should be careful calling good fortune by the name of God’s Blessing.)
The deal is, we’re dying.
And everyday I’m dying to this world, either into a grave from which there is no return, or, with Christ, into a grave from which we return more than we were. I can either be dragged to the former, all the while vainly hoping that my some magic I’ll be spared the universal fate of humans. And yet our very name, “Human,” means burial. Who can escape the return to dust? Who can wave Time away forever?
Or I can stop obsessing about empty stuff and take up my cross to march towards a death that opens unto life.
And yet, between here and there, is suffering.
I really, really hate suffering. I might tolerate some small suffering for some small reward. I am, after all, rather heavily tattooed. But raise the stakes and make more strange the suffering and more strange the reward, and I’ll pretend I never even heard of the option. The dull ache of a life unfulfilled or the sharp pain of suffering for an Abundant Kingdom?
I’ll take dull ache, thank you.
I know that’s my choice, because it’s the choice I’ve made everyday for as long as I can remember.
In mid-august, I start to choose differently and it scares the merciless shit out of me.
Now, let’s get things straight: this is no heroic shift.
No, these are going to be toddler’s steps. And there’s one thing we know for sure: toddlers stumble.
Often.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Quality LEADS to Quantity?
Well, if by quantity you mean longevity, this really smart guy seems to think so.
I'm in the middle of papers and preparing for comprehensives, so I'll have to just leave this un-commented on, but I really could say so much about the empirical insights to be had here.
I'm in the middle of papers and preparing for comprehensives, so I'll have to just leave this un-commented on, but I really could say so much about the empirical insights to be had here.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Are You Scared Yet?
(some thoughts written from my fancy cell phone) When the angel of the Lord appears to God's servants in Bible stories, it seems to invariably scare the living crap out of them. And fair enough, I think. So, we get that most frustrating of Biblical commands; "Do not be afraid."
You're kidding, right? What's not to be afraid of? We are fragile creatures in the face of nature as it is. Now even that order is getting the snow-globe treatment and you're telling me to not be afraid?
Yep. That's what they said.
Then, like some cosmic infomercial, the angel of the Lord says, "but that's not all!"
Go find a little baby-God laying in a manger.
You're gonna give birth to a little baby-God from a mysterious, virgin womb.
Just absolutely crazy shit.
Crazy shit that turns out to be an invitation to participate in the Greatest Story Ever Told. But first, you gotta not be so scared all the time. And especially not right now.
I feel so deeply that God is calling me into the unforeseen crazy shit of the emerging Kingdom and I'm so very scared. Scared no one will understand. Scared I'm not up to the challenge. Scared I'm dreaming this all up or just woefully idealistic. Scared I'm going to miss out chasing some crazy shit.
But if the angel of the Lord is here pointing you to the Incarnate God, and he says,"do not be afraid," I guess it's time to take a deep breath and listen for the wild story they're about to tell.
You're kidding, right? What's not to be afraid of? We are fragile creatures in the face of nature as it is. Now even that order is getting the snow-globe treatment and you're telling me to not be afraid?
Yep. That's what they said.
Then, like some cosmic infomercial, the angel of the Lord says, "but that's not all!"
Go find a little baby-God laying in a manger.
You're gonna give birth to a little baby-God from a mysterious, virgin womb.
Just absolutely crazy shit.
Crazy shit that turns out to be an invitation to participate in the Greatest Story Ever Told. But first, you gotta not be so scared all the time. And especially not right now.
I feel so deeply that God is calling me into the unforeseen crazy shit of the emerging Kingdom and I'm so very scared. Scared no one will understand. Scared I'm not up to the challenge. Scared I'm dreaming this all up or just woefully idealistic. Scared I'm going to miss out chasing some crazy shit.
But if the angel of the Lord is here pointing you to the Incarnate God, and he says,"do not be afraid," I guess it's time to take a deep breath and listen for the wild story they're about to tell.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Starting to Anticipate Togetherness
“Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant.2You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. 3Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, "Jesus be cursed," and no one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit.
4There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. 6There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.
7Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. 8To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, 9to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, 10to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues,[a] and to still another the interpretation of tongues.[b]11All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.
12The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 13For we were all baptized by[c] one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
14Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. 15If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 16And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
21The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" 22On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty,24while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
27Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 28And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. 29Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues[d]? Do all interpret? 31But eagerly desire[e] the greater gifts.” St. Paul, 1st Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 12
I’ll only be brief, because Paul really unveils the nature of our togetherness so beautifully. All I can do is gesture to the salient features of the passage.
We have a culture where uniqueness and difference is only thought to emerge from individualism. Whatever benefits or security community may offer, the price must always be one’s special, particular identity. The group, the crowd (we assume) just swallows that up. Paul teaches us here that this way of thinking about togetherness and uni que-ness is, in short, total bullshit.
Rather, our uniqueness finds its fertile soil in the community indwelling with the Spirit. The individual identities of organs and appendages in the body have their identity by their relationship with each other in the whole complex system of the body. So it is for us as Christians. Our identities shrivel and die like severed limbs when we are cut off from the working of the whole body. Fleeing from our communities seems like the way to ensure our individual self, but in fact achieves the opposite effect. The grand mystery of human social life is that the deeper we dive into authentic community, the more our uniqueness finds articulation, finds its value.
So, what does this mean for our little experiment in Christian life? I think we can indicate a handful of anticipations along these lines as well.
For one, it means showing up bravely in the belief that togetherness is ultimately good for us. I’m sure that sounds, on the face of it like a step that could be assumed or left out. It is, instead, perhaps the hardest. To really be present, to really donate yourself in all the invisible ways to the community of others, to not hold out some private room at the back of your heart… well, it requires a super-natural courage. It requires the support of the Spirit.
After all, people are scary. And dangerous.
Secondly, I think it involves a further kind of self-confidence that has two sides. On one side, there is the self-confidence that allows me to be a hand or a foot or an eye or a nose with out worrying that, because I am not some other thing, I am therefore separate from the body. This is a confidence and a courage to be that weird, unique thing that God has made and promises to use for the good of all things. On the other hand, there is the self-confidence that allows OTHERS to be the appendage of the body that they are. We have to let folks have their convictions, their purposes, their gifts without demanding that their nose-ness become like our eye-ness. For, if all were the seeing, where would the smelling be? Rather, we ought to rejoice that God has given those passions, those gifts, those callings that are not our own, so that we may rest in the confidence that, together, the work of the Kingdom is being done in cooperation with our God
This “self-confidence,” of course is a confidence in the self that the Spirit offers to me, as opposed to some sort of epiphenomenal isolated self defined by consumerism or empty accomplishment, or alternately, the self of self-loathing and self-centered fear and obsession. As JD and I have said we often identify as the “piece of shit at the center of the universe.”
Rather, in academic speak, we can say that as Christians we have an authentic pluralism grounded in a shared identity that is not an individually determining identity. We can share an identity and not just tolerate, but rely upon and celebrate internal difference.
Now, forget all the stuff I just told you and go back and re-read Corinthians 12. Let the truth of it wash all that individualism/collectivism dichotomy-think out of your mind.
4There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. 6There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.
7Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. 8To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, 9to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, 10to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues,[a] and to still another the interpretation of tongues.[b]11All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.
12The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 13For we were all baptized by[c] one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
14Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. 15If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 16And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
21The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" 22On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty,24while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
27Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 28And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. 29Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues[d]? Do all interpret? 31But eagerly desire[e] the greater gifts.” St. Paul, 1st Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 12
I’ll only be brief, because Paul really unveils the nature of our togetherness so beautifully. All I can do is gesture to the salient features of the passage.
We have a culture where uniqueness and difference is only thought to emerge from individualism. Whatever benefits or security community may offer, the price must always be one’s special, particular identity. The group, the crowd (we assume) just swallows that up. Paul teaches us here that this way of thinking about togetherness and uni que-ness is, in short, total bullshit.
Rather, our uniqueness finds its fertile soil in the community indwelling with the Spirit. The individual identities of organs and appendages in the body have their identity by their relationship with each other in the whole complex system of the body. So it is for us as Christians. Our identities shrivel and die like severed limbs when we are cut off from the working of the whole body. Fleeing from our communities seems like the way to ensure our individual self, but in fact achieves the opposite effect. The grand mystery of human social life is that the deeper we dive into authentic community, the more our uniqueness finds articulation, finds its value.
So, what does this mean for our little experiment in Christian life? I think we can indicate a handful of anticipations along these lines as well.
For one, it means showing up bravely in the belief that togetherness is ultimately good for us. I’m sure that sounds, on the face of it like a step that could be assumed or left out. It is, instead, perhaps the hardest. To really be present, to really donate yourself in all the invisible ways to the community of others, to not hold out some private room at the back of your heart… well, it requires a super-natural courage. It requires the support of the Spirit.
After all, people are scary. And dangerous.
Secondly, I think it involves a further kind of self-confidence that has two sides. On one side, there is the self-confidence that allows me to be a hand or a foot or an eye or a nose with out worrying that, because I am not some other thing, I am therefore separate from the body. This is a confidence and a courage to be that weird, unique thing that God has made and promises to use for the good of all things. On the other hand, there is the self-confidence that allows OTHERS to be the appendage of the body that they are. We have to let folks have their convictions, their purposes, their gifts without demanding that their nose-ness become like our eye-ness. For, if all were the seeing, where would the smelling be? Rather, we ought to rejoice that God has given those passions, those gifts, those callings that are not our own, so that we may rest in the confidence that, together, the work of the Kingdom is being done in cooperation with our God
This “self-confidence,” of course is a confidence in the self that the Spirit offers to me, as opposed to some sort of epiphenomenal isolated self defined by consumerism or empty accomplishment, or alternately, the self of self-loathing and self-centered fear and obsession. As JD and I have said we often identify as the “piece of shit at the center of the universe.”
Rather, in academic speak, we can say that as Christians we have an authentic pluralism grounded in a shared identity that is not an individually determining identity. We can share an identity and not just tolerate, but rely upon and celebrate internal difference.
Now, forget all the stuff I just told you and go back and re-read Corinthians 12. Let the truth of it wash all that individualism/collectivism dichotomy-think out of your mind.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Getting Started
So, I read Blue Like Jazz along with everyone else and I just wasn't that impressed. The story about the Reed College confessional booths was pretty cool, but otherwise the "Wait, Christians can be Democrats!?" vibe turned me off. And he seemed like an anti-intellectual, which threatened me as a toddler-like intellectual. JD reads his blog and suggested I do the same. You might have noticed, I'm a big JD-fan, so I sucked up my prejudice and went for it. I still don't quite see what everyone gets so excited about, except that Don seems like a genuine, honest dude just trying to figure out what it means to live in Jesus' world on Jesus' terms. His blog post today about exercise does a WAY better job than I could ever do of illustrating our general anticipation of how to go about embracing radical Christian, abundant, Kingdom living.
It starts by relaxing into the grace into the fact that we're still just beginners, and God's grace means that, in a certain sense, as long as we show up everyday listening, everything else is extra.
But I'll let Don tell you what he means:
Dave (my personal trainer friend) explained to me, though, that if I showed up at the gym and got my heart rate up for twenty minutes, I’d worked out. He said I needed to do that every day, and if I did, I had nothing to feel guilty about. He then told me to come back the next day, and we’d do the same workout, only increase it a little bit. The next day we rode for twenty minutes and he congratulated me on working out two days in a row. Then he asked if I wanted to do anything extra. I did, of course, so we ended up doing a mildly difficult workout with weights. Within a month, Dave was working me out so hard I once had to stop him and ask if I could go out in the alley behind the gym to throw up. And no kidding, he moved the rest of the workout into the alley so I wouldn’t throw up on his floor. But he kept working me out, always reminding me that what we were doing was extra, that I’d already finished my workout.
Go check out Don Miller's blog here
It starts by relaxing into the grace into the fact that we're still just beginners, and God's grace means that, in a certain sense, as long as we show up everyday listening, everything else is extra.
But I'll let Don tell you what he means:
Dave (my personal trainer friend) explained to me, though, that if I showed up at the gym and got my heart rate up for twenty minutes, I’d worked out. He said I needed to do that every day, and if I did, I had nothing to feel guilty about. He then told me to come back the next day, and we’d do the same workout, only increase it a little bit. The next day we rode for twenty minutes and he congratulated me on working out two days in a row. Then he asked if I wanted to do anything extra. I did, of course, so we ended up doing a mildly difficult workout with weights. Within a month, Dave was working me out so hard I once had to stop him and ask if I could go out in the alley behind the gym to throw up. And no kidding, he moved the rest of the workout into the alley so I wouldn’t throw up on his floor. But he kept working me out, always reminding me that what we were doing was extra, that I’d already finished my workout.
Go check out Don Miller's blog here
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Quantitively Less; Qualitatively More
This whole discussion has been about a conversion from one way of (imperial) life to another way of (kingdom) life. Though we have a story that gives us images of what that kingdom life has looked like in the past, the version specific to our moment in history doesn’t exist yet.
It has to be anticipated
Then, it has to be imagined.
And then enacted.
And then, after a little while, it has to be re-evaluated and re-imagined and re-enacted. It really is going to be a way of life. A full-time job, if you will.
Our First Anticipation?
Well it starts with an evaluation of the state of things: in certain ways, we are afflicted with affluence.
Accosted by our clutter.
Our freedom of choice has made it for us such that every desire is just as valuable as every other. This is nihilism. Everything has equal value, so nothing has any value. This is as true of our material possessions as it is of our responsibilities and commitments. We’ve got lots of stuff and we’ve got lots of stuff going on. The more we get, the less meaningful any particular thing is. We’ve got an abundance in quantity, but a poverty in quality.
So, we anticipate a way of life that has quantitatively less, but qualitatively more.
We’re pretty sure that in order to make it in the Wilderness and live this Kingdom lifestyle, we’ve got to do so with less. Less money. Fewer obligations. Less stuff. Fewer distractions. With what’s left, we’ll hope to give (and get) more. More time. More attention. More effort. More love. We want a simpler, but richer, life.
Quantitatively less, but qualitatively more.
In practice, this will be hard for people to understand. We will get less done. We’ll reach fewer people. We’ll make less ‘progress.’ You just can’t achieve very much this way.
However, we’ve been discovering, as we grow up more, that doing things well, doing things right, requires time and attention, patience and perseverance. I’ve learned this concretely in my stay-sane-in-graduate-school hobby of baking. If you rush, you’ll screw up your measurements. If you don’t set out enough time, you’re bread won’t rise correctly. If you skimp on the quality of your ingredients, things won’t taste right. If you don’t make the same recipe again and again, lovingly examining your results each time and being honest about the product, you’ll never get that really transcendent muffin. That remarkable chocolate chip cookie.
The Empire doesn’t reward this. It’s inefficient. The American Empire, after all, is the civilization that brought us the Twinky. Cheap. Mass produced. High volume. Flavorless. And really, really bad for you.
No, we don’t want fast, cheap, plentiful and busy. We want intentional, rich, selective and deliberate.
We want to do and have less, more richly.
In order to make “doing and having less, more richly” work, we’re going to have to do it together. In fact, if we have one beef with how John the Baptist did his thing, its that he went out there alone. Maybe he was just a more robust guy than the two of us, but we know that if we went out there alone, we wouldn’t last a second. We’d be slinking back through the gates of the city, a little embarrassed and with a couple of good stories, but we’d have left Abundant life out there in the woods. It’s just too much to do alone, especially when the Empire’s store rooms are full of sugary Twinkies and Tempur-pedic mattresses and cool cell phones.
This has practical concerns. We can divide costs. Those who are thriving can support those who are struggling. We can fill some of the gaps created by our retreat from a frantic complexity into a richer simplicity. There are spiritual concerns as well. God, for us weird-o Christians is a community: the unity of three persons. If we want to come to be more like God, it means we have to come together into loving communities. Paul understands this when he talks about the church as the Body of Christ, which shares the Spirit but is diverse in its gifts.
So, just to review: we’re seeking to live with less, more richly, together.
A note: What we’re talking about is not just asceticism. We’re not looking to sacrifice for sacrifice’s sake. Sure, some things will have to be sacrificed, but for an ulterior purpose, whether to make space for richer things or because they are incongruent with the story we’re trying to live. Yes, Jesus told the rich young ruler who was obedient in other respects to sell all he owned, give it to the poor and follow him. But that same Jesus praised the woman who “wasted” a bunch of really, incredibly expensive luxury perfume on his filthy, desert-walking feet. The same Jesus made really, really good wine for a bunch of wedding-party-ers already so drunk that they probably didn’t even notice.
When Jesus promises abundant life in the kingdom, he warns about its cost, but he also offers an easy yoke, a light burden and probably more than a couple really excellent all night dance parties.
Okay, I don’t know where he promises dance parties, but if they happen to break out after we eat some godly, eucharistic, sharing, communal meal, I think Jesus would be down.
Do us a favor? In the comments, day dream with us a little about what, if you tried to live with quantitatively less, but qualitatively more, what sort of stuff you’d sacrifice? And then, more importantly, what sort of thing(s) would you focus on, deliberately and abundantly?
Godspeed.
Next Time: What’s the structure of our “togetherness?”
It has to be anticipated
Then, it has to be imagined.
And then enacted.
And then, after a little while, it has to be re-evaluated and re-imagined and re-enacted. It really is going to be a way of life. A full-time job, if you will.
Our First Anticipation?
Well it starts with an evaluation of the state of things: in certain ways, we are afflicted with affluence.
Accosted by our clutter.
Our freedom of choice has made it for us such that every desire is just as valuable as every other. This is nihilism. Everything has equal value, so nothing has any value. This is as true of our material possessions as it is of our responsibilities and commitments. We’ve got lots of stuff and we’ve got lots of stuff going on. The more we get, the less meaningful any particular thing is. We’ve got an abundance in quantity, but a poverty in quality.
So, we anticipate a way of life that has quantitatively less, but qualitatively more.
We’re pretty sure that in order to make it in the Wilderness and live this Kingdom lifestyle, we’ve got to do so with less. Less money. Fewer obligations. Less stuff. Fewer distractions. With what’s left, we’ll hope to give (and get) more. More time. More attention. More effort. More love. We want a simpler, but richer, life.
Quantitatively less, but qualitatively more.
In practice, this will be hard for people to understand. We will get less done. We’ll reach fewer people. We’ll make less ‘progress.’ You just can’t achieve very much this way.
However, we’ve been discovering, as we grow up more, that doing things well, doing things right, requires time and attention, patience and perseverance. I’ve learned this concretely in my stay-sane-in-graduate-school hobby of baking. If you rush, you’ll screw up your measurements. If you don’t set out enough time, you’re bread won’t rise correctly. If you skimp on the quality of your ingredients, things won’t taste right. If you don’t make the same recipe again and again, lovingly examining your results each time and being honest about the product, you’ll never get that really transcendent muffin. That remarkable chocolate chip cookie.
The Empire doesn’t reward this. It’s inefficient. The American Empire, after all, is the civilization that brought us the Twinky. Cheap. Mass produced. High volume. Flavorless. And really, really bad for you.
No, we don’t want fast, cheap, plentiful and busy. We want intentional, rich, selective and deliberate.
We want to do and have less, more richly.
In order to make “doing and having less, more richly” work, we’re going to have to do it together. In fact, if we have one beef with how John the Baptist did his thing, its that he went out there alone. Maybe he was just a more robust guy than the two of us, but we know that if we went out there alone, we wouldn’t last a second. We’d be slinking back through the gates of the city, a little embarrassed and with a couple of good stories, but we’d have left Abundant life out there in the woods. It’s just too much to do alone, especially when the Empire’s store rooms are full of sugary Twinkies and Tempur-pedic mattresses and cool cell phones.
This has practical concerns. We can divide costs. Those who are thriving can support those who are struggling. We can fill some of the gaps created by our retreat from a frantic complexity into a richer simplicity. There are spiritual concerns as well. God, for us weird-o Christians is a community: the unity of three persons. If we want to come to be more like God, it means we have to come together into loving communities. Paul understands this when he talks about the church as the Body of Christ, which shares the Spirit but is diverse in its gifts.
So, just to review: we’re seeking to live with less, more richly, together.
A note: What we’re talking about is not just asceticism. We’re not looking to sacrifice for sacrifice’s sake. Sure, some things will have to be sacrificed, but for an ulterior purpose, whether to make space for richer things or because they are incongruent with the story we’re trying to live. Yes, Jesus told the rich young ruler who was obedient in other respects to sell all he owned, give it to the poor and follow him. But that same Jesus praised the woman who “wasted” a bunch of really, incredibly expensive luxury perfume on his filthy, desert-walking feet. The same Jesus made really, really good wine for a bunch of wedding-party-ers already so drunk that they probably didn’t even notice.
When Jesus promises abundant life in the kingdom, he warns about its cost, but he also offers an easy yoke, a light burden and probably more than a couple really excellent all night dance parties.
Okay, I don’t know where he promises dance parties, but if they happen to break out after we eat some godly, eucharistic, sharing, communal meal, I think Jesus would be down.
Do us a favor? In the comments, day dream with us a little about what, if you tried to live with quantitatively less, but qualitatively more, what sort of stuff you’d sacrifice? And then, more importantly, what sort of thing(s) would you focus on, deliberately and abundantly?
Godspeed.
Next Time: What’s the structure of our “togetherness?”
Thursday, April 8, 2010
A Church Seduced
Baboons don’t have empires.
Baboons don’t have empires because they can’t meet one of the fundamental requirements of empire-making; They can’t organize in groups larger than 44.
44 baboons just isn’t an empire. Though one wouldn’t want to meet 44 baboons in an alley, it’s not an organization of any note whatsoever.
Humans, on the other hand, have had many, many, many empires. Several at a time, in every generation, for all of human history. We are just terribly prone to empires in a way that baboons will never be.
Partly because we’re capable of symbolizing. Baboons don’t get into groups larger than 44, because bigger than that, Underling-Baboon can’t see Leader-Baboon and so can’t be included in group tasks. Incas sent messages by runners over their vast and complex web of high mountain roads. Rome put the face of their leaders on their currency and then distributed it all over their conquered lands. So does the U.S.
But beyond just being capable of empire building’s foundational activity (symbolic communication), we’ve also clearly developed, as a species, a real yen for empire building. We just keep doing it, over and over.
Why?
Because, in service of our personal and communal aspirations, Empire WORKS. Now. Powerfully.
Empire just gets phenomenal results. Pyramids. Coliseums. Cathedrals. Manhattan.
Empires can get this incredible momentum and unleash an unbelievable amount of power very quickly. We live short lives and we feel rather impotent for much of them. If we can hitch our wagon to a movement that gets monumental results relatively quickly, we think, “well, sign us up!” That power is often constructive (as in the above), sometimes destructive (Pogroms, the Holocaust) but usually both (slave trades, environmental disaster, atomic energy/bombs). The Empire is a sublime thing that humans can do. It is immense and awe-inspiring. Many people more intelligent, thoughtful than any of us have attached themselves to empire unquestioningly, starry-eyed at the magnitude of its possibility.
So, you’re a Christian and you have this really magnificently lovely thing that is the Christian story. You’d really like to see this magnificent, lovely thing do quite well for itself. You think it’d be good for people, for the nations. And after all, Jesus told us to make disciples of all nations. And Paul tells Israel this is for everybody, not just their community, their ethnic group. So, lets get this show on the road. Let’s hitch this wagon to some horse-power.
Let’s let the good gift of Christian life be carried on the back of the trusty steed of Empire.
And Empire is often cool with this, because empire is about power-through-force. It’s direct like that. That’s part of how empire is so effective. It doesn’t have qualms about petty things like individual dignity or transcendent beauty or rigorous theory. And yet people like to believe in dignity and beauty and truth. And religion lets the brutish empires wear elegant clothes replete with beauty and meaning and truth and honor.
And then these two horrible things happen:
All the beautiful, meaningful, true, and honorable things that are contained in our religious life are put to the service of justifying and/or obscuring the brutish, violent, selfish work of empires doing what empires do. War is justice. Greed is charity. Pride is piety.
And while parts of our religious life are being put to the service of empire, other parts are being sidelined and forgotten because, if we keep talking like that, we’re going to be undermining the fundamental work of empire. If we start saying that peace is justice and love is charity and humility is piety… well, then we are at odds with the way things are done around here.
So. the instrument of imperial violence becomes a gold necklace. The body and the blood become symbols of an abstract idea, not the material of martyrdom. An empty bottle of luxury perfume next to dirty feet becomes irresponsibility. Inefficiency.
And once our allegiance is to the Empire in the Church’s clothing, we spend our days gather straw to build bricks to expand the dominion of Empire and we feel despair. We feel wrong. We feel like nothing we’ve been promised every turns out to be what we thought it was going to be. All this stuff was supposed to be abundance. Instead, it’s turning out to be clutter, to be more shit to stash in a storage container.
And if this goes on long enough, we forget WHY we feel the way we feel.
We sing songs about a Kingdom we don’t remember, so we just try to make them about ourselves.
We recount stories of actions that, six 7ths of the week, we have no time or space or energy to re-enact. So we try to shrink them into our lives.
Well, fuck that.
I’m over that.
It’s killing me.
But you see, the problem is that I don’t know any other life. It shaped me and my desires and my hopes and my imagination. Luckily, I encountered this story of God’s work in history, culminating in Jesus and His Church. It gives me a counter-story. An upside-down Kingdom, like my dad is always calling it.
But we’ve got to figure out what it means now, in the face of THIS empire. And I don’t know exactly what that is yet.
But we’ve got some inklings. We’ve got a few anticipatory ideas that we think are a) true to The Story and b) a decent place to start.
But we’ll get to those next time.
Baboons don’t have empires because they can’t meet one of the fundamental requirements of empire-making; They can’t organize in groups larger than 44.
44 baboons just isn’t an empire. Though one wouldn’t want to meet 44 baboons in an alley, it’s not an organization of any note whatsoever.
Humans, on the other hand, have had many, many, many empires. Several at a time, in every generation, for all of human history. We are just terribly prone to empires in a way that baboons will never be.
Partly because we’re capable of symbolizing. Baboons don’t get into groups larger than 44, because bigger than that, Underling-Baboon can’t see Leader-Baboon and so can’t be included in group tasks. Incas sent messages by runners over their vast and complex web of high mountain roads. Rome put the face of their leaders on their currency and then distributed it all over their conquered lands. So does the U.S.
But beyond just being capable of empire building’s foundational activity (symbolic communication), we’ve also clearly developed, as a species, a real yen for empire building. We just keep doing it, over and over.
Why?
Because, in service of our personal and communal aspirations, Empire WORKS. Now. Powerfully.
Empire just gets phenomenal results. Pyramids. Coliseums. Cathedrals. Manhattan.
Empires can get this incredible momentum and unleash an unbelievable amount of power very quickly. We live short lives and we feel rather impotent for much of them. If we can hitch our wagon to a movement that gets monumental results relatively quickly, we think, “well, sign us up!” That power is often constructive (as in the above), sometimes destructive (Pogroms, the Holocaust) but usually both (slave trades, environmental disaster, atomic energy/bombs). The Empire is a sublime thing that humans can do. It is immense and awe-inspiring. Many people more intelligent, thoughtful than any of us have attached themselves to empire unquestioningly, starry-eyed at the magnitude of its possibility.
So, you’re a Christian and you have this really magnificently lovely thing that is the Christian story. You’d really like to see this magnificent, lovely thing do quite well for itself. You think it’d be good for people, for the nations. And after all, Jesus told us to make disciples of all nations. And Paul tells Israel this is for everybody, not just their community, their ethnic group. So, lets get this show on the road. Let’s hitch this wagon to some horse-power.
Let’s let the good gift of Christian life be carried on the back of the trusty steed of Empire.
And Empire is often cool with this, because empire is about power-through-force. It’s direct like that. That’s part of how empire is so effective. It doesn’t have qualms about petty things like individual dignity or transcendent beauty or rigorous theory. And yet people like to believe in dignity and beauty and truth. And religion lets the brutish empires wear elegant clothes replete with beauty and meaning and truth and honor.
And then these two horrible things happen:
All the beautiful, meaningful, true, and honorable things that are contained in our religious life are put to the service of justifying and/or obscuring the brutish, violent, selfish work of empires doing what empires do. War is justice. Greed is charity. Pride is piety.
And while parts of our religious life are being put to the service of empire, other parts are being sidelined and forgotten because, if we keep talking like that, we’re going to be undermining the fundamental work of empire. If we start saying that peace is justice and love is charity and humility is piety… well, then we are at odds with the way things are done around here.
So. the instrument of imperial violence becomes a gold necklace. The body and the blood become symbols of an abstract idea, not the material of martyrdom. An empty bottle of luxury perfume next to dirty feet becomes irresponsibility. Inefficiency.
And once our allegiance is to the Empire in the Church’s clothing, we spend our days gather straw to build bricks to expand the dominion of Empire and we feel despair. We feel wrong. We feel like nothing we’ve been promised every turns out to be what we thought it was going to be. All this stuff was supposed to be abundance. Instead, it’s turning out to be clutter, to be more shit to stash in a storage container.
And if this goes on long enough, we forget WHY we feel the way we feel.
We sing songs about a Kingdom we don’t remember, so we just try to make them about ourselves.
We recount stories of actions that, six 7ths of the week, we have no time or space or energy to re-enact. So we try to shrink them into our lives.
Well, fuck that.
I’m over that.
It’s killing me.
But you see, the problem is that I don’t know any other life. It shaped me and my desires and my hopes and my imagination. Luckily, I encountered this story of God’s work in history, culminating in Jesus and His Church. It gives me a counter-story. An upside-down Kingdom, like my dad is always calling it.
But we’ve got to figure out what it means now, in the face of THIS empire. And I don’t know exactly what that is yet.
But we’ve got some inklings. We’ve got a few anticipatory ideas that we think are a) true to The Story and b) a decent place to start.
But we’ll get to those next time.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
The Faux-Abundance of Imperial Life
“The U.S. military budget is over 450 billion (dollars) per year, and it would take the combined budgets of the next 15 countries to equal that of the US.” Shane Claiborne, Jesus for President (2008, p. 178)
“Over 50 percent of the Roman budget went towards the Roman military.” Dominic Crossan, God and Empire
“We must keep shopping.” Former-President George W. Bush
I own a MyTouch 3G phone by HTC. It’s got the Google owned operating system, “Android.” I can check my e-mail, send texts, get maps and directions, and follow twitter and facebook and myspace. I can check the weather report and my bank account balance. Sometimes, I even use it to make phone calls.
I always have my smart-phone with me. I left it in the back of a cab a few weeks ago, but luckily a friend noticed and grabbed it. I didn’t get it back for about 24 hours. I spent those waking hours frustrated, not sure how to go about my daily tasks. Without my fancy-ass cell phone, my life was impoverished. My life was a little less alive.
I believe that my cell-phone offers me abundant life.
I mean, I don’t REALLY think that. Of course I know that it is just a luxury item and, though it has many useful functions, my life would probably go on just fine without it.
And yet, I behave as though my cell phone offers me abundant life.
I have been saying for some time that our normal, everyday Western way of life makes us complicit with all kinds of evil. Having a smart-phone is perfectly normal. It’s also become a kind of idolatry.
The normal and the evil, side by side.
We find many very creative ways of hiding the evil and injustice our lifestyle rests upon. We never see the factory farms where our chicken-nuggets come from. We import our cheap goods from far away places with factory conditions that our department of labor and our investigative journalists are unlikely to ever see. We cover our landfills in green, green grass. We pretend there’s no connection between the demand for more jobs and off-shore oil drilling. We work 60 hours a week and say that we’re doing it to provide for our families.
But our most creative way of hiding the evil and injustice our lifestyle rests upon is by living a story in which that kind of thing is just the normal, everyday way of doing things.
In an oft-noted curiosity of statistics, it seems that the more “developed” and wealthy our culture becomes, the less we perceive ourselves as happy. I’ve witnessed myself the hurt our children carry in their hearts from broken homes, despite parents who have worked so hard to provide so much for them. We’re doing our best in these normal, everyday lives and we’re still having hard a time of it. I’ve begun to worry that it’s not just the obvious vices that are tearing us apart. I’m worried that our “normal, everyday” way of living is making us complicit with all kinds of subtle, systemic sin. Our dissatisfaction perhaps comes from the inherent consequences of our sin, however blind to it we may have become.
What is that system of sin?
Well, we’ve taken to calling it “Imperial Life,” following the cue of some folks we rather respect. (See: Rob Bell’s Jesus Wants To Save Christians; Shane Claiborne’s Jesus for President)
In Imperial Life, we put our faith in the sprawling progress of the empire. The problem is, empires need slaves. Sometimes those slaves are people who live on less than $2 a day who have to work for the factories our companies build in their country because otherwise they starve. Or their children starve. Or worse. Other times, those slaves are people who are so addicted to the pleasures the empire has to offer that they sell their whole lives to keep a steady supply at hand. Slaves the way junkies are slaves.
And the empire feeds on both of these people. Many inexpensive hands are needed to shape inexpensive resources into inexpensive goods that can be purchased to keep us other folks working to create new ideas for new products for the inexpensive hands to make from inexpensive resources.
And so the corridors of Babylon go craning for the skies. So, the sun never sets on the American empire.
And in order for this sort of economy, this economy of quantity over quality, to flourish, there must be stability. There must be peace, no matter how many enemies our naïve greed (and let’s call a spade a spade, shall we?) makes for us around the world. So, there must be, along side the most prosperous, creative, productive, progressive nation the world has ever seen, the most sprawling, inimitable military the world has ever seen.
Our Empire needs the Pax Americana
And, if that military also makes jobs for every day people building jets and guns and predator drones, which makes money for those who own factories and makes careers for those who legislate the defense spending budgets? Well, then all the better.
And yet here we are, just normal, everyday people, trying to get by in the land of the Empire. Working our jobs. Raising our families. Going to church, singing about abundant life and then going to the mall to buy some.
And yet we feel ourselves sinking into a living death.
And every time we go to the Empire to ask for a remedy, they give us more of the same poison. Every time we ask them for bread, they hand us a stone.
And we go home, singing their praises.
And what we do in church makes less and less sense.
What exactly are we doing at church, anyway?
Coming up next: What does a Church capitulated to Empire look like?
“Over 50 percent of the Roman budget went towards the Roman military.” Dominic Crossan, God and Empire
“We must keep shopping.” Former-President George W. Bush
I own a MyTouch 3G phone by HTC. It’s got the Google owned operating system, “Android.” I can check my e-mail, send texts, get maps and directions, and follow twitter and facebook and myspace. I can check the weather report and my bank account balance. Sometimes, I even use it to make phone calls.
I always have my smart-phone with me. I left it in the back of a cab a few weeks ago, but luckily a friend noticed and grabbed it. I didn’t get it back for about 24 hours. I spent those waking hours frustrated, not sure how to go about my daily tasks. Without my fancy-ass cell phone, my life was impoverished. My life was a little less alive.
I believe that my cell-phone offers me abundant life.
I mean, I don’t REALLY think that. Of course I know that it is just a luxury item and, though it has many useful functions, my life would probably go on just fine without it.
And yet, I behave as though my cell phone offers me abundant life.
I have been saying for some time that our normal, everyday Western way of life makes us complicit with all kinds of evil. Having a smart-phone is perfectly normal. It’s also become a kind of idolatry.
The normal and the evil, side by side.
We find many very creative ways of hiding the evil and injustice our lifestyle rests upon. We never see the factory farms where our chicken-nuggets come from. We import our cheap goods from far away places with factory conditions that our department of labor and our investigative journalists are unlikely to ever see. We cover our landfills in green, green grass. We pretend there’s no connection between the demand for more jobs and off-shore oil drilling. We work 60 hours a week and say that we’re doing it to provide for our families.
But our most creative way of hiding the evil and injustice our lifestyle rests upon is by living a story in which that kind of thing is just the normal, everyday way of doing things.
In an oft-noted curiosity of statistics, it seems that the more “developed” and wealthy our culture becomes, the less we perceive ourselves as happy. I’ve witnessed myself the hurt our children carry in their hearts from broken homes, despite parents who have worked so hard to provide so much for them. We’re doing our best in these normal, everyday lives and we’re still having hard a time of it. I’ve begun to worry that it’s not just the obvious vices that are tearing us apart. I’m worried that our “normal, everyday” way of living is making us complicit with all kinds of subtle, systemic sin. Our dissatisfaction perhaps comes from the inherent consequences of our sin, however blind to it we may have become.
What is that system of sin?
Well, we’ve taken to calling it “Imperial Life,” following the cue of some folks we rather respect. (See: Rob Bell’s Jesus Wants To Save Christians; Shane Claiborne’s Jesus for President)
In Imperial Life, we put our faith in the sprawling progress of the empire. The problem is, empires need slaves. Sometimes those slaves are people who live on less than $2 a day who have to work for the factories our companies build in their country because otherwise they starve. Or their children starve. Or worse. Other times, those slaves are people who are so addicted to the pleasures the empire has to offer that they sell their whole lives to keep a steady supply at hand. Slaves the way junkies are slaves.
And the empire feeds on both of these people. Many inexpensive hands are needed to shape inexpensive resources into inexpensive goods that can be purchased to keep us other folks working to create new ideas for new products for the inexpensive hands to make from inexpensive resources.
And so the corridors of Babylon go craning for the skies. So, the sun never sets on the American empire.
And in order for this sort of economy, this economy of quantity over quality, to flourish, there must be stability. There must be peace, no matter how many enemies our naïve greed (and let’s call a spade a spade, shall we?) makes for us around the world. So, there must be, along side the most prosperous, creative, productive, progressive nation the world has ever seen, the most sprawling, inimitable military the world has ever seen.
Our Empire needs the Pax Americana
And, if that military also makes jobs for every day people building jets and guns and predator drones, which makes money for those who own factories and makes careers for those who legislate the defense spending budgets? Well, then all the better.
And yet here we are, just normal, everyday people, trying to get by in the land of the Empire. Working our jobs. Raising our families. Going to church, singing about abundant life and then going to the mall to buy some.
And yet we feel ourselves sinking into a living death.
And every time we go to the Empire to ask for a remedy, they give us more of the same poison. Every time we ask them for bread, they hand us a stone.
And we go home, singing their praises.
And what we do in church makes less and less sense.
What exactly are we doing at church, anyway?
Coming up next: What does a Church capitulated to Empire look like?
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Risa's Beautiful Response
JD: I met Risa when I moved into the apartment buiding where I currently live. Hours after the moving truck pulled away, she and another neighbor were at the door with baked goods and a warm welcome. I came to find out that she was in the last year of a youth ministry job at Walnut Creek Presbyterian Church. Everything I heard about her was that she was exceptional at that job, and everything I got to see confirmed it.
Risa was someone I would talk to about church, and we would share our frustrations and our hope for more abundant life, both for ourselves and for the church. Someone observing our conversations might have assumed that my frantic, sarcastic, angry and cynical outbursts suggested greater passion and an immediacy of action as compared to Risa's thoughtful, honest and hopeful responses.
Risa has been in Uganda since September, living fully into her calling for this season of life and setting an example for folks like Jon and I that we desperately need (which reminds me, you can follow her blog here). I asked her to take a look at our blog and to give us her thoughts, and her response absolutely blew me away. May it bless you as it has me, and may God use stories like Risa's to lead us all more bravely into lives that are about Him and Him alone.
Just finished your blog:
So, I read through all of it with a little girl who I've fallen head over heals for on my right hip. She started to doze, so I came into my bedroom and lay on my bed with her resting on top of me. I read it aloud, as after I read the first one, I thought my friend Kerri might be interested.
This 3-year-old little girl is the one that I took to the doctor this morning. She is malnourished, a total orphan, has malaria, lives in a disgusting home (if you can call it such), and has the cutest smile. Disgustingly enough to admit, I at times do not want to hold sick children for fear that I might become ill. Susan has a horrible cough, and I am risking it all with her- and I feel as if I'm doing the right thing- FINALLY! My lungs are becoming tight and I think I'm catching her ailment. But I genuinely cannot imagine our Savior holding away sick children for His personal health. As I would like to think I can act, in some small way, like Jesus toward these children, I’d better get my act together.
And, as I think of my life and all the children in need, I oftentimes say, “Someday I will adopt orphans.” People ask, “Why not now?” Well, because I’m unemployed (although I have a savings account), I am not married- a kid needs a mom and dad, right? If I ever want to get married I had better not come with baggage- and especially not the baggage of orphan children from another country.
WAIT! WHAT!? A kid with NO parents needs a mom AND a dad???? How about the kid just needing A parent- just needing one person to hold and love them. And, since when does the applause of Man mean more than God??? Since when is Man my god?
So I read your blog, thinking, “Yes. This stuff is right on.” All the while holding an orphan, malnourished little girl who we are going to send back to her dilapidated, disease infested home in a few days because I am unmarried and think that for whatever reason I can’t adopt children.
Am I listening to Satan?
Is Jesus really worth it? Is Jesus worth the risk of people in my church community- the ones who have taught me about Jesus- thinking I am crazy for being financially unstable and single while taking on the task of an orphan when nobody else will care for her?
OR, what about Jesus’ saying that we must sell everything and give to the poor?
YES, JD, you saw the ample CRAP I have all sitting in my friends’ garage in Danville. It took me days to move out of that tiny apartment. Yes, it’s CRAP! So much that will just wither away, and to be honest, 6 months later, I can only list a few things that remain. Why did I not sell and give away those things? Why am I dreaming about how I want to decorate a home for myself next year?
I haven’t bought a single piece of clothing in more than 6 months. I haven’t bought anything more than a few Christmas gifts and some items to support sponsored childrens’ businesses since September (unless I am forgetting something- and I may be). It has been 6 of the most freedom filled months of my life!! Not once have I wished for a new clothing store (although I am sick of wearing the same few outfits OVER and OVER again- but when I see little butts because kids can’t afford pants, I can hardly complain).
What will all of this look like when I get home? I know I’ll need some new clothes, but to what extent? I know- or so I have been told, that it is okay for us to live as we do in (our wealthy suburb) Walnut Creek. It is okay for us to spend $4 on a beer, drink 2 or 3 of them in a sitting, and not feel bad, because it’s OUR money, right? It’s our hard day’s work we’re drinking the fruits of, when most the world makes less than $2 per day. And, yes, I like beer. And yes, I have a trip down the coast with my sister planned for when I get back. And I think that’s okay. Wealth can be a gift. But, I think we’re also giving each other a mouth full of shit when we justify our own excessive spending. I make excuses for how things are “ministry.” If I don’t spend $100s on… whatever, (you fill in the blank) then I won’t fit in and have any friends and people who don’t know Jesus will think I am even more strange- thus never coming to Christ- etc. etc. etc. ALL to fill my own pleasure.
I justify sin by misinterpreting Scripture?
So, what if I adopted an orphan, gave up my social life (I wouldn’t fit in with my single friends OR my married friends), and became so poor because I was working extra hard to provide for a kiddo (or 2)? What if my family thought I was insane and my church community thought I was doing something wrong by not providing a little one with two parents? What if nobody ever wanted to date me because not only did I come with a kid, but a kid from a different race?
What if I only pleased God?
Would it be worth it?
If this year is any indication then YES!! Yes, it would be worth it 110%. I wouldn’t trade following the Lord here for ANYTHING!!! The joy of the Lord truly HAS been my strength. It’s felt abundant. Then why do I get so scared every time? Don’t I trust it’ll be worth it??
And no, I do not know if I am to adopt an orphan. But, maybe I need to be open to it. Maybe I need to start answering the “Why not now?” question not with the “I’m single.” excuse, but with the “I’ve prayed about it, and it’s not what God is calling me to right now.” answer. Which would mean that first I’d have to honestly pray about it- and what if God did say to adopt? Am I willing to risk that prayer or will I just stay in my excuse out of fear of REALLY knowing?
How long will I read about Jesus’ love for the poor with a child ensconced in my embrace, while agreeing that the Church should do something about them? Talk about a plank in my eye and a speck in the others’?
I’m no different than the pew-dwellers- and I may be worse- simply because sometimes I think I am different.
Who knows?? (Obviously, I don’t (and none of this has been any help in you and Jon figuring out where God is calling you). I’d love to talk more about this and unpack your thoughts a little more...
Risa
Post Script from Jon: Be on the look out for a couple of short follow up posts that attempt to describe what it is we mean when we say "Imperial," "Abundant" and "Church" life. Also, lurking somewhere in the future is a post about why what we're looking for is NOT asceticism.
Risa was someone I would talk to about church, and we would share our frustrations and our hope for more abundant life, both for ourselves and for the church. Someone observing our conversations might have assumed that my frantic, sarcastic, angry and cynical outbursts suggested greater passion and an immediacy of action as compared to Risa's thoughtful, honest and hopeful responses.
Risa has been in Uganda since September, living fully into her calling for this season of life and setting an example for folks like Jon and I that we desperately need (which reminds me, you can follow her blog here). I asked her to take a look at our blog and to give us her thoughts, and her response absolutely blew me away. May it bless you as it has me, and may God use stories like Risa's to lead us all more bravely into lives that are about Him and Him alone.
So, I read through all of it with a little girl who I've fallen head over heals for on my right hip. She started to doze, so I came into my bedroom and lay on my bed with her resting on top of me. I read it aloud, as after I read the first one, I thought my friend Kerri might be interested.
This 3-year-old little girl is the one that I took to the doctor this morning. She is malnourished, a total orphan, has malaria, lives in a disgusting home (if you can call it such), and has the cutest smile. Disgustingly enough to admit, I at times do not want to hold sick children for fear that I might become ill. Susan has a horrible cough, and I am risking it all with her- and I feel as if I'm doing the right thing- FINALLY! My lungs are becoming tight and I think I'm catching her ailment. But I genuinely cannot imagine our Savior holding away sick children for His personal health. As I would like to think I can act, in some small way, like Jesus toward these children, I’d better get my act together.
And, as I think of my life and all the children in need, I oftentimes say, “Someday I will adopt orphans.” People ask, “Why not now?” Well, because I’m unemployed (although I have a savings account), I am not married- a kid needs a mom and dad, right? If I ever want to get married I had better not come with baggage- and especially not the baggage of orphan children from another country.
WAIT! WHAT!? A kid with NO parents needs a mom AND a dad???? How about the kid just needing A parent- just needing one person to hold and love them. And, since when does the applause of Man mean more than God??? Since when is Man my god?
So I read your blog, thinking, “Yes. This stuff is right on.” All the while holding an orphan, malnourished little girl who we are going to send back to her dilapidated, disease infested home in a few days because I am unmarried and think that for whatever reason I can’t adopt children.
Am I listening to Satan?
Is Jesus really worth it? Is Jesus worth the risk of people in my church community- the ones who have taught me about Jesus- thinking I am crazy for being financially unstable and single while taking on the task of an orphan when nobody else will care for her?
OR, what about Jesus’ saying that we must sell everything and give to the poor?
YES, JD, you saw the ample CRAP I have all sitting in my friends’ garage in Danville. It took me days to move out of that tiny apartment. Yes, it’s CRAP! So much that will just wither away, and to be honest, 6 months later, I can only list a few things that remain. Why did I not sell and give away those things? Why am I dreaming about how I want to decorate a home for myself next year?
I haven’t bought a single piece of clothing in more than 6 months. I haven’t bought anything more than a few Christmas gifts and some items to support sponsored childrens’ businesses since September (unless I am forgetting something- and I may be). It has been 6 of the most freedom filled months of my life!! Not once have I wished for a new clothing store (although I am sick of wearing the same few outfits OVER and OVER again- but when I see little butts because kids can’t afford pants, I can hardly complain).
What will all of this look like when I get home? I know I’ll need some new clothes, but to what extent? I know- or so I have been told, that it is okay for us to live as we do in (our wealthy suburb) Walnut Creek. It is okay for us to spend $4 on a beer, drink 2 or 3 of them in a sitting, and not feel bad, because it’s OUR money, right? It’s our hard day’s work we’re drinking the fruits of, when most the world makes less than $2 per day. And, yes, I like beer. And yes, I have a trip down the coast with my sister planned for when I get back. And I think that’s okay. Wealth can be a gift. But, I think we’re also giving each other a mouth full of shit when we justify our own excessive spending. I make excuses for how things are “ministry.” If I don’t spend $100s on… whatever, (you fill in the blank) then I won’t fit in and have any friends and people who don’t know Jesus will think I am even more strange- thus never coming to Christ- etc. etc. etc. ALL to fill my own pleasure.
I justify sin by misinterpreting Scripture?
So, what if I adopted an orphan, gave up my social life (I wouldn’t fit in with my single friends OR my married friends), and became so poor because I was working extra hard to provide for a kiddo (or 2)? What if my family thought I was insane and my church community thought I was doing something wrong by not providing a little one with two parents? What if nobody ever wanted to date me because not only did I come with a kid, but a kid from a different race?
What if I only pleased God?
Would it be worth it?
If this year is any indication then YES!! Yes, it would be worth it 110%. I wouldn’t trade following the Lord here for ANYTHING!!! The joy of the Lord truly HAS been my strength. It’s felt abundant. Then why do I get so scared every time? Don’t I trust it’ll be worth it??
And no, I do not know if I am to adopt an orphan. But, maybe I need to be open to it. Maybe I need to start answering the “Why not now?” question not with the “I’m single.” excuse, but with the “I’ve prayed about it, and it’s not what God is calling me to right now.” answer. Which would mean that first I’d have to honestly pray about it- and what if God did say to adopt? Am I willing to risk that prayer or will I just stay in my excuse out of fear of REALLY knowing?
How long will I read about Jesus’ love for the poor with a child ensconced in my embrace, while agreeing that the Church should do something about them? Talk about a plank in my eye and a speck in the others’?
I’m no different than the pew-dwellers- and I may be worse- simply because sometimes I think I am different.
Who knows?? (Obviously, I don’t (and none of this has been any help in you and Jon figuring out where God is calling you). I’d love to talk more about this and unpack your thoughts a little more...
Risa
Post Script from Jon: Be on the look out for a couple of short follow up posts that attempt to describe what it is we mean when we say "Imperial," "Abundant" and "Church" life. Also, lurking somewhere in the future is a post about why what we're looking for is NOT asceticism.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
A Desert Within Shouting Distance
Previously, we'd asked that you keep in mind we’re not giving up on Church. We aren’t leaving Church behind. I would guess that, having heard us be so hard on Church life, you’re not sure you really believe us. Let us try to explain:
Our problem with Church life is, put another way, that it has let itself become a subset of Imperial life. Many, including us, live our lives as though Church life is only a feature of something more basic, like the “Church app” for the Imperial iPhone. And, like iPhone apps, the nature of this subset gets pre-approved by Imperial life.
Now, lots of people have this insight and, in response, they abandon Church life. Usually, they abandon Church life for a more generic, “liberal” form of Imperial life.
Sometimes people do this, but they want to still call themselves Christians, so they identify Church life with that liberated/progressive feature of Imperial life.
Now, we understand why they do this and we sympathize. Really. Seriously, we understand that impulse. Still, we also think they aren’t going far enough. We can’t just flee Church for life in the Empire, because we feel that what’s wrong with Church life is Imperial life. We need to keep running until we’re not behind the Empire’s fences anymore. We want to keep running until we find ourselves in the Wilderness.
Not to get away from Church life, but to make room for it.
To find a space, a way of life that can accommodate abundance.
We’re not leaving Church for dead. We’re trying to find room for it to stretch its legs.
We think Church just needs some fresh air and it will be back to its old self in no time.
In other words, in order to change Church for the better, we can’t just change how we “do church.” We can’t just re-imagine what we do on Sunday mornings and the occasional Wednesday night. We have to re-imagine every degree on the clock. Every square inch on the calendar. We have to get out of what our friend Jay-Z calls the “Empire State of Mind.” Get out from under the Empire way of life.
I (Jonathan) love talking about John the Baptist. We have some stuff in common. He dressed weird. I dress weird. He had radical dietary habits (locusts, honey). I have radical dietary habits (Straight Edge). Mostly, I love to picture the 1st Century Jewish mothers getting together and gossiping about John the way I know church ladies have gossiped about me:
“He’s such a nice, devout boy, but (oy) his poor mother! I wish he’d be a little more normal so everyone could see what good kid he is. Join the family business. Buy a proper tunic. Live here in town and be a grown mensch.”
Okay, the Yiddish is an anachronism, but you get the idea.
Aside from all of that, we both embrace John the Baptist for a central reason: He had the faith to step out of everyday life for the work God had for him, but he also had the courage to stay within shouting distance of Imperial city life.
If we’re going to try to prepare the way for the Kingdom to show up, we think this is the way to do it: escape to the Wilderness, yet stay within shouting distance.
We feel that, in order for there to be room for the concrete practice of Kingdom living, we need to step outside the bounds of the normal, every-day structures of Imperial life into a kind of ‘wilderness’. We certainly have trepidation. The wilderness is dangerous and living there is hard work. But we are pretty confident it’s the only place with enough room to accommodate Abundant life.
And yet it’s a wilderness that needs to be within shouting distance from the cities of the Empire. We want those stuck gathering straw and making bricks to look up from their work at the rambunctious sound of Abundant life just beyond the edge of the world they know so well. We hope they might think to themselves, “It seems so different, but it’s also not so far away…”
We want to extricate ourselves from the Imperial way of life, but we want to keep close enough that our alternative lifestyle can be heard if one listens closely.
Furthermore, we understand ourselves as in a long line of folks to engage this tension. Sometimes God’s people are doing really well and sometimes God’s people are just a hot mess. There comes, now and again in our shared story, those who see the mess for what it is and start calling for a big turn around, for repentance. Sometimes they get heard. Sometimes they get ignored. Sometimes they (*gulp*) get dead.
But we believe that the ongoing story of God’s work in the world through His people tells of generations that are able to find a place of, first repentance, and then abundant life.
Please believe us about this one thing: We want to be a part of a generation that, by God’s grace, keeps its covenant.
Our problem with Church life is, put another way, that it has let itself become a subset of Imperial life. Many, including us, live our lives as though Church life is only a feature of something more basic, like the “Church app” for the Imperial iPhone. And, like iPhone apps, the nature of this subset gets pre-approved by Imperial life.
Now, lots of people have this insight and, in response, they abandon Church life. Usually, they abandon Church life for a more generic, “liberal” form of Imperial life.
Sometimes people do this, but they want to still call themselves Christians, so they identify Church life with that liberated/progressive feature of Imperial life.
Now, we understand why they do this and we sympathize. Really. Seriously, we understand that impulse. Still, we also think they aren’t going far enough. We can’t just flee Church for life in the Empire, because we feel that what’s wrong with Church life is Imperial life. We need to keep running until we’re not behind the Empire’s fences anymore. We want to keep running until we find ourselves in the Wilderness.
Not to get away from Church life, but to make room for it.
To find a space, a way of life that can accommodate abundance.
We’re not leaving Church for dead. We’re trying to find room for it to stretch its legs.
We think Church just needs some fresh air and it will be back to its old self in no time.
In other words, in order to change Church for the better, we can’t just change how we “do church.” We can’t just re-imagine what we do on Sunday mornings and the occasional Wednesday night. We have to re-imagine every degree on the clock. Every square inch on the calendar. We have to get out of what our friend Jay-Z calls the “Empire State of Mind.” Get out from under the Empire way of life.
I (Jonathan) love talking about John the Baptist. We have some stuff in common. He dressed weird. I dress weird. He had radical dietary habits (locusts, honey). I have radical dietary habits (Straight Edge). Mostly, I love to picture the 1st Century Jewish mothers getting together and gossiping about John the way I know church ladies have gossiped about me:
“He’s such a nice, devout boy, but (oy) his poor mother! I wish he’d be a little more normal so everyone could see what good kid he is. Join the family business. Buy a proper tunic. Live here in town and be a grown mensch.”
Okay, the Yiddish is an anachronism, but you get the idea.
If we’re going to try to prepare the way for the Kingdom to show up, we think this is the way to do it: escape to the Wilderness, yet stay within shouting distance.
We feel that, in order for there to be room for the concrete practice of Kingdom living, we need to step outside the bounds of the normal, every-day structures of Imperial life into a kind of ‘wilderness’. We certainly have trepidation. The wilderness is dangerous and living there is hard work. But we are pretty confident it’s the only place with enough room to accommodate Abundant life.
And yet it’s a wilderness that needs to be within shouting distance from the cities of the Empire. We want those stuck gathering straw and making bricks to look up from their work at the rambunctious sound of Abundant life just beyond the edge of the world they know so well. We hope they might think to themselves, “It seems so different, but it’s also not so far away…”
We want to extricate ourselves from the Imperial way of life, but we want to keep close enough that our alternative lifestyle can be heard if one listens closely.
Furthermore, we understand ourselves as in a long line of folks to engage this tension. Sometimes God’s people are doing really well and sometimes God’s people are just a hot mess. There comes, now and again in our shared story, those who see the mess for what it is and start calling for a big turn around, for repentance. Sometimes they get heard. Sometimes they get ignored. Sometimes they (*gulp*) get dead.
But we believe that the ongoing story of God’s work in the world through His people tells of generations that are able to find a place of, first repentance, and then abundant life.
Please believe us about this one thing: We want to be a part of a generation that, by God’s grace, keeps its covenant.
Friday, March 26, 2010
An Interjection
(Below is the first entry by my best friend and co-conspirator, JD. We've been friends since our very early childhood and I think the world of him. This is a conversation that wouldn't be where it is without his support and input. He's been gracious enough to join me as a contributor to this venue. Enjoy his courageously honest account. Godspeed.)
I’d like to begin my interjection by saying that I am so excited to be on this journey. The discussions that I’ve found myself in lately have taken a long-needed turn from cynical to hopeful, due largely to the seriousness with which Jon and I have begun moving past angst and frustration into a process of dreaming with the expectation of acting.
With that sentiment serving to foreshadow the present, I’d like to share about a prolonged season of fear, insecurity, and judgment in my past, often expressed through cynicism, that characterized my engagement with church until recently (and that I still struggle with at times).
Protecting a Status Quo (I didn’t believe in)
I’ve grown up in church, so consequently I’ve sung lots (and lots and lots) of songs about giving my all to God. These are scary songs to take seriously. And I’m realizing as I look back that I have a dirty, twisted subconscious at times. And it has long been working overtime to try and convince my conscious self that I can mean those kinds of words from those kinds of songs without it costing me much.
Put another way, I wanted abundant life that fit perfectly into my world, providing meaning and substance with all the comforts of a self-centered existence.
The most amazing thing about this rationalization is how much it bothered me when I saw it in other Christians. I was somehow able to hate that the church is known for what it’s against rather than what it’s for, all while being against that kind of church and without figuring out what I’m for. I was able to judge Christians for an inwardly focused, self-serving church life without looking for opportunities in my own life to look outward or to serve others. It is amazing what I am able to accomplish when left alone in my mind.
Working to Fix the Mess of Church (as a way of distracting myself from the mess in my heart)
I know faith in Jesus is supposed to cost us everything this world has to offer, and I see now that I have long projected my fear of losing everything onto a church that is sometimes slow to model this way of life. I am coming to understand that much of my anger toward the church was my not wanting to grow up and take ownership for my own faith. I guess I was thinking that if I could just fix church enough, maybe then it could help me lay everything down without it feeling so hard.
Because I don’t want this to be hard for me. I’ve been hoping the church would just do the work for me so I could ride on its coattails.
The Fear of Losing (that which I perceive to be valuable)
The idea of surrendering the things about my life that I know are good (in faith that God has what is best) is still scary to me.
This fear of loss does not make me unique. In fact, it is an incredibly human way to think. As Donald Miller recently wrote in his second blog in a series on commercialism and the church (donmilleris.com)
"Advertisers often play on something psychologists call Loss Aversion. Loss Aversion is an aspect of Prospect Theory, a theory that seeks to determine why people make certain decisions. Loss Aversion suggests people are more motivated to avoid losing something than they are to acquire something new...
...[And] it isn’t only advertisers who play on this psychological phenomenon, it’s politicians and talk-show hosts and nearly anybody trying to convince anybody of anything. How many times have you heard the phrase “take back our country” or, within the church “take a stand for Biblical theology” or this kind of language. The idea is to convince a group of people they are losing ground. This creates a powerful response in whatever demographic feels like they are losing something. Environmentalist motivate us by emphasizing the loss of physical paradise, and the conservative right motivates us by emphasizing a loss of freedom. Regardless of where you stand, we can all agree these are powerful motivating forces."
The Turning Point!
(Or, the place where truth comes in and changes everything.)
(Or, where cynicism turns to hope.)
(Or, where suffering becomes joy.)
As I have looked in the mirror and investigated that which I’ve struggled with for years now, the flaw in my way of thinking about life, about gain, and about loss, is becoming more and more apparent.
Because here is the truth: That which I stand to lose… is nothing.
It is dust. It can be eaten by rust and moths. In a world where God is real and forever, it has a value of 0.
Inversely of course, that which I stand to gain… is everything.
In fact, God has already given it all freely, so the question is really more about how much of it I will choose to accept and experience in this life. Literally everything of any substantive meaning or importance that can ever be given or received has been given to me, and it is mine.
I have nothing to lose.
I’m beginning to believe that my stuff is nothing compared to the field with buried treasure under it. I’m beginning to think that I would gladly give up my status and importance for the one pearl of great value. My safety, my comfort, my health... the whole of them is not worth protecting for one tenth of one percent of that which I have and cannot lose, but could taste more fully in this life if I would just have faith that God is who He says He is.
That is why I am excited. Because I am becoming less of a cynic asking questions out of frustration and hopelessness. Instead, in relationship with Jon and others, I am now asking questions out of a hopeful and expectant anticipation of change.
Whatever is coming, I expect it to come at what the world would call great cost.
And I expect it to be worth it a thousand times over.
I’d like to begin my interjection by saying that I am so excited to be on this journey. The discussions that I’ve found myself in lately have taken a long-needed turn from cynical to hopeful, due largely to the seriousness with which Jon and I have begun moving past angst and frustration into a process of dreaming with the expectation of acting.
With that sentiment serving to foreshadow the present, I’d like to share about a prolonged season of fear, insecurity, and judgment in my past, often expressed through cynicism, that characterized my engagement with church until recently (and that I still struggle with at times).
Protecting a Status Quo (I didn’t believe in)
I’ve grown up in church, so consequently I’ve sung lots (and lots and lots) of songs about giving my all to God. These are scary songs to take seriously. And I’m realizing as I look back that I have a dirty, twisted subconscious at times. And it has long been working overtime to try and convince my conscious self that I can mean those kinds of words from those kinds of songs without it costing me much.
Put another way, I wanted abundant life that fit perfectly into my world, providing meaning and substance with all the comforts of a self-centered existence.
The most amazing thing about this rationalization is how much it bothered me when I saw it in other Christians. I was somehow able to hate that the church is known for what it’s against rather than what it’s for, all while being against that kind of church and without figuring out what I’m for. I was able to judge Christians for an inwardly focused, self-serving church life without looking for opportunities in my own life to look outward or to serve others. It is amazing what I am able to accomplish when left alone in my mind.
Working to Fix the Mess of Church (as a way of distracting myself from the mess in my heart)
I know faith in Jesus is supposed to cost us everything this world has to offer, and I see now that I have long projected my fear of losing everything onto a church that is sometimes slow to model this way of life. I am coming to understand that much of my anger toward the church was my not wanting to grow up and take ownership for my own faith. I guess I was thinking that if I could just fix church enough, maybe then it could help me lay everything down without it feeling so hard.
Because I don’t want this to be hard for me. I’ve been hoping the church would just do the work for me so I could ride on its coattails.
The Fear of Losing (that which I perceive to be valuable)
The idea of surrendering the things about my life that I know are good (in faith that God has what is best) is still scary to me.
"Advertisers often play on something psychologists call Loss Aversion. Loss Aversion is an aspect of Prospect Theory, a theory that seeks to determine why people make certain decisions. Loss Aversion suggests people are more motivated to avoid losing something than they are to acquire something new...
...[And] it isn’t only advertisers who play on this psychological phenomenon, it’s politicians and talk-show hosts and nearly anybody trying to convince anybody of anything. How many times have you heard the phrase “take back our country” or, within the church “take a stand for Biblical theology” or this kind of language. The idea is to convince a group of people they are losing ground. This creates a powerful response in whatever demographic feels like they are losing something. Environmentalist motivate us by emphasizing the loss of physical paradise, and the conservative right motivates us by emphasizing a loss of freedom. Regardless of where you stand, we can all agree these are powerful motivating forces."
The Turning Point!
(Or, the place where truth comes in and changes everything.)
(Or, where cynicism turns to hope.)
(Or, where suffering becomes joy.)
As I have looked in the mirror and investigated that which I’ve struggled with for years now, the flaw in my way of thinking about life, about gain, and about loss, is becoming more and more apparent.
Because here is the truth: That which I stand to lose… is nothing.
It is dust. It can be eaten by rust and moths. In a world where God is real and forever, it has a value of 0.
Inversely of course, that which I stand to gain… is everything.
In fact, God has already given it all freely, so the question is really more about how much of it I will choose to accept and experience in this life. Literally everything of any substantive meaning or importance that can ever be given or received has been given to me, and it is mine.
I have nothing to lose.
I’m beginning to believe that my stuff is nothing compared to the field with buried treasure under it. I’m beginning to think that I would gladly give up my status and importance for the one pearl of great value. My safety, my comfort, my health... the whole of them is not worth protecting for one tenth of one percent of that which I have and cannot lose, but could taste more fully in this life if I would just have faith that God is who He says He is.
Whatever is coming, I expect it to come at what the world would call great cost.
And I expect it to be worth it a thousand times over.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Something’s Wrong
We were raised at Church. We were raised by Church. We love Church the way someone loves their parents. We love it in a way we can’t get away from, not that we’ve tried that hard. We love Church when it comforts us. We love Church when it tells us things we don’t want to hear. We love it when we see the lessons it taught us bubbling up spontaneously in our actions or thoughts. We love it even when we realize, like we realize about our parents, that church is so terribly imperfect. For all the wealth of wisdom and goodness it has imparted to us in our upbringing, we realize that Church can be the victim of weakness, self-deception and pervasive lost-ness. We love Church because we know without it we wouldn’t be ourselves and we’d never become our fullest selves if we left it behind.
That you understand the above is very important.
It’s important so that you know we’re not giving up on Church.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s start again.
Imagine a pastor. She’s smart. He’s compassionate. They take their work at Church seriously. They care about their congregants and care about them enough to tell them that they shouldn’t settle for an hour of church once a week. For a week long mission trip once a decade. Once a year even. This pastor, these pastors invite their congregants to a fuller picture of Christian living and they call it “the Kingdom of God.”
Now, imagine a congregant. A man. A woman. A man and a woman and their children; a Christian family. They sit in their church on Sunday and hear this kind of pastor. They’re moved. They want the abundant life these pastors say the Kingdom has to offer. They want it for their little ones. But when they look at their life spread out on a calendar, there’s so little room in the in-betweens. They have to support their family all on their own. Financially. Relationally. Spiritually. And there’s just no more time to do the above-and-beyond church-type stuff. There’s no extra energy. We’re already stretched too thin. We just can’t add anything else.
No matter how abundant it sounds, it’s just not practical.
Still, both of our imagined Christians, Pastor and Congregant alike, agree that all this Kingdom of God stuff should be happening out there in the world. The Christian kind of families say to their Pastors, “I’ve got this extra money from my job in the World. I’ll set it aside and, here, you take it and you go do that Kingdom stuff. And I believe in you. And I’ll show up when I can. I’ll give you that and, don’t worry, you can still have our Sunday morning and maybe a weeknight and a Saturday here and there.”
And let’s not be quick to judge those Congregant folks. They really are giving everything that’s left. They’ll give until they’re burnt out, because they trust us Pastor types and because their everyday life leaves them so close to burnt out already.
Also, let’s not be quick to judge those passionate Pastor folks. They really love and believe in their Kingdom work. They work many more hours than they’re paid for. They’ll work until they’re burnt out, because they care for us Congregant types.
Here’s our problem: This kind of church life is not abundant life, for pastors or for congregants. And if we know one thing, we know that life in the Kingdom is abundant life.
Instead, we’ve been stock-piling straw.
Stock-piling straw so that we can make bricks.
Making bricks so that there can be “progress.”
And yet, muffled to silence by all the straw and drowned out by the cacophony of brick-making, is a cry coming up from God’s people. A cry for liberation. A cry for the abundance of something weightier than straw.
There are those who have neither straw nor bricks who are also crying out for liberation. Crying out for abundance.
And sadly, they’d be elated just to get some straw.
Funny thing about insulation like straw: it muffles sound in both directions. Muffles cries from beneath the straw. Muffles cries from beyond the straw.
And all this straw-piling and brick-making, it’s a way to make a living, but it isn’t much of a life. St. Augustine called it “this living death.”
So, if Church life these days isn’t abundant life, then we’re worried that Kingdom life and Church life have parted ways.
Not just here and there, but systematically.
And what do we call this systematic parting-of-ways? Which way is church life on these days? Well, we’re going to call it “Imperial life.” As in, “Life in the Empire.”
We think our every-day American life is Imperial life and it’s a kind of living death.
We think the conventional American church, for the most part, has systematically capitulated to Imperial life.
We think that, with some faith, courage, imagination and lots of grace, we can trade Imperial life in the Kingdom of Man back for Abundant life in the Kingdom of God.
In other words, we’re ready for empire rehab and, like addicts, our first step is admitting we’re helpless against Imperial life on our own. We need help.
And, if you’re reading this, we’re asking for your help.
Great, right?
Except, we don’t exactly have any idea what that means.
So, instead of coming to you with a list of what it is we think we need, we’re going to let you in on what’s in our hearts and minds. Then, if the Holy Spirit works like we think the Holy Spirit works, we hope you’ll offer us whatever it is God gives you to share. If it’s as much as, “Thanks for sharing with us!” that’s completely awesome.
Either way, that’s what the comments feature is for. Make liberal use.
Godspeed.
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