But to Correct a Flood, One Does Not Want a Drought

Amy and I are reading Thomas Howard’s Evangelical is Not Enough.  What began as a post directed toward the book’s main thrust–the worship of God in liturgy and sacrament–has found its way to what has always been an intriguing topic to me:  the division between “sacred” and “secular”.  I am planning to compose something closer to the center of Howard’s fascinating book later, but until then…

Evangelicalism has rightly pointed that the locus of true spirituality lies in the heart.  In an effort to protect piety, a distinction has been made between the sacred, that which is spiritual, and the secular, that which is non-spiritual (and merely physical).  In the former, Sunday worship, Bible study, and prayer matter more than what takes place Monday through Saturday in the latter, washing the dishes, cooking, work, ect.  Within this rubric, prayer is a more spiritual labor than cooking a meal as it only deals with the physical aspects of our humanity.  Ministry deals with “souls” and thus matters most.  Conversely, the worth of a secular marketplace job springs from its use as a channel for evangelism, or when part of one’s salary can be tithed.  It is against this that Thomas grimly asserts:

“False religions perpetuate the great divide between flesh and spirit, rather than between good and evil where Christianity says it lies.”

Howard observes that many Christians embrace this false dichotomy between flesh and spirit when they read St. Paul.  For St. Paul, the spiritual is not the “disembodied”, nonphysical; there is no distinction between the spiritual life and regular, ordinary living.  To understand what St. Paul meant, we must briefly revisit the garden of Eden.

In the beginning, the universe was a single tapestry woven harmoniously together.  All things were interwoven, overlapping in proper relationship with one another.  Creation was whole, blazoned with God’s Glory; it seamlessly and continually lauded its Creator.  As Howard points out, “The distance lay not between the “physical” and the “spiritual” so much as between the created and the Uncreated”  (30).  But humanity’s grab for the apple tore the tapestry of creation saying, “this much of it will be mine.”  We wrecked it all in our commodious swipe and, “The poor remnant we clutched in our fists was secular, in the most tragic sense of the word:  that which is not acknowledged as God’s.  It is a noncategory of course, since nothing that exists belongs to anyone but God” (30).

The vast splintering of creation alienated us humans from the Creator, from one another, from the rest of creation, and it even divided our self from its true identity.  We are not yet through reaching.  We grab at what does not belong to us in every relationship, whether it be a romantic interest, pleasure, resources, money, a job, fame,  a church–and even at God!  Because we struggle to relate properly to God, we are prone to worship the created, or claim it as our own.  As a result, we see too dimly to rightly acknowledge what is God’s, and worse, we wrongly adjudicate what are his good creations as culprits of evil.

So what about St. Paul?  Thomas delineates:

“To be spiritual for Saint Paul was to have brought everything back to God where it belongs and where it was in Eden.  It is to have had one’s life knit back together so that it is no longer secular and divided, but whole… ‘The flesh,’ as Saint Paul used the term, refers, ironically, not to our bodies but to fallen human nature.  The ‘carnal’ spirit is the one that devours things for itself and refuses to make them an oblations to God.  The carnal spirit is cruel, egocentric, avaricious, gluttonous, and lecherous, and as such is fevered, restless, and divided… The difference between the carnal man and the spiritual man is not physical.  They may look alike and weigh the same.  The difference lies, rather, between one’s being divided, snatching and grabbing at things, even nonphysical things like fame and power, or being whole and receiving all things as Adam was meant to receive them, in order to offer them as an oblation to the giver.

It is the demand for things that Christ sets us free from, not things themselves… Once again we may stand in our proper relation to things, as lords over them and not as their slaves.”

The challenge is to learn, or rather, relearn how to relate properly to all things.  Although creation is good, we have the witnessed incalculable corruption of it.  The abuse of  authority, food, sex, and humor show us that it is a dangerous thing to handle and touch what God has made.  We must be very careful, for we are easily mastered.

There is something in us that would rather not engage in the reweaving of a world reordered in subordination to Jesus’ rescue of God’s creation.   Instead of correction, we often choose prohibition.  It is easier to hide from the task to relate properly.  “But to correct a flood, one does not want a drought”, cautions Howard.   This dictum parallels the stern warning St. Paul issued to the Colossian church:

“Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belong to it, submit to its rules:  ‘Do not handle!  Do not taste!  Do not touch!’?  These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings.  Such regulations indeed have the appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence” (2:20-22).

Let Justice Roll Down: Evangelicals & Civil Rights

Retro cover. Forever sassy.

John Perkins’ autobiography is a glimpse into the black struggle for equality, opportunity and justice against the formidable social structures of oppression.  Set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, it’s also the story of a black Christian caught between two churches polarized by color, and his devotion to the whole Gospel revolutionizing both.  Moreover, it is an account of the Gospel disarming the powers and authorities, making a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross (Col. 2:15).

——————-

Soon after his conversion, the rumblings of conviction surfaced.  Perkins knew that his own plans for a “good” Christian life were not God’s good plan for his Christian life.  His life was no longer his own and God quickly issued a decree: Return to Mississippi with the whole Gospel for your people, those you know are “zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge” (Rom. 10:1-2).

So, John Perkins moved his family back to a very familiar place of segregation, hollowed out by injustice and blighted by oppression.  His goal was to use the Bible to teach to a church devoid of knowledge of God that same truth that captured his heart.  First, Perkins founded Bible classes at several local black high schools and a junior college, none of which had ever been exposed to the Scriptures.  In conjunction with this, he traveled around the county using a tent as a meeting place where the Bible could be expounded.  Throughout all of these endeavors, Perkins ministered to the problems of those who sat under his teaching.  After all, he and his family shared their same economic and political woes.

Perkins also knew that in order for the Gospel to take root in this community, it would have to become a visible truth.  The collection of believers with Bible knowledge would need to become a church, the body of Christ; a witness of Jesus Lordship fleshed out in social action.  This led to the organization of Voice of Calvary Bible Institute (VOC) and the creation of community development initiatives, such as: food and housing co-ops, voter registration, free healthcare, fair lending, and an effort to boost the quality of education.

Procuring the funds from both white and black churches in California to finance these projects proved to be a laborious effort.  Perkins laments the absence of the evangelicals during the civil rights movement:

“How sad that so few individuals equally committed to Jesus Christ ever became a part of [the civil rights] movement.  For what all that political activity needed–and lacked– was spiritual input.  Even now, I do not understand why so many evangelicals find a sense of commitment to civil rights and Jesus Christ an “either-or” proposition.

One of the greatest tragedies of the civil rights movement is that evangelicals surrendered their leadership in the movement by default to those with either a bankrupt theology or no theology at all, simply because the vast majority of Bible-believing Christians ignored a great and crucial opportunity in history for a genuine ethical action.  The evangelical church–whose basic theology is the same as mine–had not gone on to preach the whole gospel.”

This was the evangelical response to what was perceived to be a liberal movement.  Perkins’ interaction with black evangelicals reluctant to join the civil rights movement lays bear the true reason for evangelical precaution:  this was just a pretext to avoid personal involvement, to escape responsibility.  Christians invented this perception as an excuse for our inaction, to escape the gospel’s call to answer the question: What should the Church do?  What should I do? The stark reality of evil necessitated that Christians do more than sigh, sympathize, vote, or give money.  What was needed then–and is still needed today–is a life oriented around the self-donation of the cross.

Evangelicals continue to employ this tactic to elude the Lordship of Jesus Christ, to keep their lives rather than loose it for the sake of the gospel (Mark 8:35).  Are there things today that you and I, in a surreptitious attempt to maintain security and control, label as “liberal” to evade the truth that Jesus is Savior and Lord?  For me, it is an ongoing battle to surrender entitlement, no longer hiding behind theological quandary, to follow Jesus into the radical ordinariness of nitty-gritty, everyday living of loving my neighbor.

And to do this, maybe we must emulate God’s love  for us , who as Eugene Peterson puts it,  “became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood” (John 1:14).

At the very least I cannot shirk John Perkins’ pointed inquisition:

“Well, what are you doing to correct these bad things with your ‘good’ theology?”

Let Justice Roll Down: The Conversion of John Perkins

"Maybe evangelical Christians, black and white, were confusing theology with the status quo."

John Perkins’ autobiography is a glimpse into the black struggle for equality, opportunity and justice against the formidable social structures of oppression.  Set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, it’s also the story of a black Christian caught between two churches polarized by color, and his devotion to the whole Gospel revolutionizing both.  Moreover, it is an account of the Gospel disarming the powers and authorities, making a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross (Col. 2:15).

There were two religions of God in segregated Mississippi.  There was the white man’s God who approved of the evils of racism and reinforced a violent system that pinned the blacks in grinding poverty.  And there was the black man’s God, who in Perkin’s mind, was no God at all.  The black church was empty of God; it was nothing more than writhing emotionalism.  Perkins easily rejected both as “just another form of exploitation” (pg. 65).  He had no use for religion that would not acknowledge the reality of southern brutality.

Many years later, after Perkins fled Mississippi and the memories of his murdered brother, he was befriended in California by a few black Christians.  Their God was one of whom he had never heard.  His curiosity pulled him into a serious study of the Bible which slowly put words to his whole experience.  But there was one verse, Romans 6:23, which confronted him with powerful resonance : “For the wages of sin are death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Wage language was John Perkin’s vernacular; wages dictated all of his existence.  He had suffered unfair wages all of his life.  That was exploitation.  Those were the “wages of sin”.  Paul’s vocabulary, albeit familiar, called Perkins’ attention to a strange wage unknown to him.  Perkins writes:

“But was there other sin? My sin?  Back and forth from life to Scripture my mind went that morning…For the first time I understood that my sin was not necessarily and altogether against myself or against my neighbor.  My sin was against a holy God who loved me, who had already paid for my sins.  I was sinning in the face of His love.

I didn’t want to sin anymore.  I wanted to give my life to Christ, so He could take care of my sin.  I sensed the beginning of a whole new life, a new structure of life, a life that could fill that emptiness I had even on payday.

God for a black man? Yes, God for a black man! This black man!  Me!

That morning I said yes to Jesus Christ” (pgs. 71-72).

Death for Life

Dionysius!

The doctrine of substitutionary atonement can often be an abstraction.  But the idea that Jesus intentionally and willingly took the sinner’s place of judgment on the cross is profound and quite practical.  Its not merely theoretical figment, but a theological reflection on the significance of a historical event.  In Jesus on the cross, we see the supreme act of God’s love to reconcile to himself those who are alienated enemies.  In Jesus’ self-donation, we are compelled to love God in return; we have the intellectual and the spiritual resources necessary to trust that God is good.  Furthermore, Jesus’ sacrifice is also the impetus for our loving action toward our neighbor.

The early church took to heart the conviction that Jesus’ suffered death in the sinner’s place so that he might live.  It was the very soil of out which grew the Christians response to the great epidemic that decimated Rome (251-270 A.D).  Dionysius, the bishop of Alexandria wrote this of the pagans (those who observed Roman polytheism):

“At the first onset of the disease, they pushed the sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing them into the roads before they were dead and treated uburied corpses as dirty, hoping thereby to avert the spread and contagion of the fatal disease.”

In contrast, Dionysius’ Easter letter is a tribute to the heroic nursing efforts of the local Christians, many of whom lost their lives while caring for others:

“Most of our Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another.  Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains. Many, in nursing and curing others, transferred their death to themselves and died in their stead.“

Christ, in curing us, transferred our death to himself and died in our stead so that we might live.  That reality of God’s gracious love embedded itself so deeply in the hearts of Christians that they were willing to die for strangers–just as Christ died for them.  The cross is the vista by which God’s love confronts us, slowly reconfiguring the very structure of our hearts and minds, our worship and action.

[Quotes from "The Rise of Christianity" by Rodney Stark]

A Reflection on the Empty Tomb: Jesus and his Disciples

To say that Jesus suffered is an understatement.  He crumpled on the cross under the weight of cosmic affliction: the apocalypse of divine judgment and the loss of his most intimate love, God.  Yet on Resurrection Sunday, I was struck by the hardship Jesus endured before he was pinned up on Calvary.  Betrayal bereaved Jesus of his disciples and the friendship of those with whom he shared life.

We find a robust picture of Jesus’ lonesome journey to the cross even in Mark’s economical account of the Gospel story.  In Gethsemane, Jesus’ tribulation is inaugurated:

“he began to be deeply distressed and troubled.  ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death!’”

The foretaste of Golgotha wrenched Jesus’ soul, but his closest companions lay asleep while he suffered in solitude.  Three times his dreaming disciples failed to engage with his agony.  Immediately, Jesus was double-crossed for a paltry sum of money by another in his trusted inner circle, Judas, who sealed his arrest with a kiss.

Next, his sleepy friends forsook with the sword all that Jesus had taught them.  The students had abandoned the teacher’s promise that his kingdom would come by way of the cross.   Then in an act of spontaneous determination, his followers fled.  From the prayer vigil that never was to the vigilante resistance that should have never been, desertion marked Jesus’ last hours with his disciples.

Jesus’ captors subjected him to an unjust trial where he was condemned to death by murderous lies.  Peter faced his own trial, but by his murderous lies, he disowned Jesus and exonerated himself.  Jesus’ sentence brought beatings, whippings and humiliation.  He was mocked, tortured and scorned.  He did all of this alone.  It was a stranger, not a friend, that helped Jesus carry his cross to Golgotha; neither were his disciples involved in the burial process.  Jesus cried out alone, and alone he died.

Yet, nothing deterred Jesus’ love for his disciples; betrayal could not squelch his compassion for his friends.  At the tomb, Jesus left an angel with a message for the women who found the empty tomb:

“But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee.  There you will see him just as he promised.”

Jesus message is concerned with one objective:  to make it crystal clear that his chosen disciples are still his chosen–especially Peter.  Jesus wants to teach his disciples a lesson.  He loves them so much that he cares about their feelings of  insecurity, failure, and shame.  In the angel’s message, we see the way Jesus relates to those who have failed him; we see Jesus intentionally protecting his friends from public scrutiny and taking initiative to quell any doubts that his friends might have about where they stand with him.

On the cross, Jesus forgave his enemies, but he also forgave his friends who treated him like an enemy.  Jesus’ absolution is unlike ours.  We forgive in a polite, legal, and customary fashion as we try mightily to restrain disdain.  Jesus’ pardon is generously heartfelt, bursting with compassion and sympathy.  He gushes joy and friendliness with a promiscuity that is uncomfortable for a betrayer to accept.  Jesus goes out of his way to not only forgive, but to affirm the betrayer’s unique place as God’s beloved.  He loves tragically disloyal followers with perfect fidelity.

If while we were his enemies, Christ died for us to bring us to God, how can we not also love our enemies at the cost of our own lives?  And if while we were still his betrayers, Jesus took special care to make it known that we are really forgiven and loved, then how can we not also reinstate our betrayers with that same earnest care.  After all, if Christ no longer counts their sin against them, how can we?

The Political Dilemma of Faith

Hauerwas asks, "What do I need, or what do we need, to be a community of friends that can not only tell one another the truth, but want to be told the truth?"

This appears to me to be one of the tenets of  “Hauerwasian” thought:

“The call to be part of the gospel is a joyful call to be adopted by an alien people, to join a countercultural phenomenon, a new polis called church…The challenge of Jesus is the political dilemma of how to be faithful to a strange community, which is shaped by a story of how God is with us.” Resident Aliens, Pg. 30

Our living is dictated by the way in which we frame the problem of faith.  What part of me is being confronted by faith?  God and his Gospel is demanding something of me, but what?

The locus of faith does not reside in right belief; it is not an intellectual problem, but a problem of trust.  The compulsion of the Gospel is not to believe a worldview or adopt a series of propositions, but a summon to entrust my whole self to a good God, a merciful Savior.  The challenge is not to believe the right thing, but to trust in the right person.  Let me be clear, it is precisely because faith it is not an issue of “what”, but a matter of “whom”, that it is imperative what we believe.

Hauerwas contends that while Christianity is not a system of belief, unbelief (atheism) is a problem.  He defines the problem not as intellectual unbelief, but socio-political unbelief.  In other words, the Christian faith is a matter of right living not right thinking. Therefore, atheism cannot be defined in the terms of wrong thinking; it must be defined as wrong living. The problem is not intellectual, but political. The Christian must act on the presupposition that he is a part of God’s people and his plan for history.

The Gospel, as a result, is an invitation to entrust my whole life to God.  Consequently, I now also trust that being adopted into his family (the Church) signifies a new allegiance and with it, a new dilemma: to be faithful to the promise that God is with us.  The moment I ask, “What does it look like to live with a trust that God is with his people in a special way?” faith becomes a sociopolitical predicament.   How do I arrange my life in fidelity to a God and his community to reflect who he is and that I believe in him?  Hauerwas, of course, suggests that to do this is to embrace the oddity of being a Christian.

The Sermon on the Mount is a call for the church to be faithful to who God is and to believe that he is with his people in a way that means something.  The Christian life should be noticeably odd if a person’s values are prioritized around the those Jesus marked in the beatitudes: “blessed are the poor, those who hunger, those who weep, those who are persecuted”.  Certainly, the command to “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you” and to “turn the other cheek” is a sociopolitical challenge.  Jesus says that the world loves those who love them, and the world worries about what they will eat, drink and wear; but this is not true of those who seek the kingdom first.  To seek the kingdom first requires odd living in the eyes of a society that believes each person has the right to make the most of his life.

I Pledge Allegiance?

Hauerwas' theology makes for an uncomfortable read.

Stanley Hauerwas’ classic work, “Resident Aliens,” explores the implications of the church as polis. That is, those who are called out by God are to embody a social alternative that the world cannot on its own terms know. What does it mean for the Christian to be a stranger, to live in community with other believers as an alien colony amidst society?

Is society fundamentally opposed to the church? In particular, is the American axiom, “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” antithetical to the Cross of Jesus Christ? Democracy is rooted in the belief of unalienable rights. Our society exists to serve the individual’s needs, wants and desires. Our supreme value is freedom: each person as the individual right to choose and to pursue whatever is wanted as long as she does not impede upon that same right in another. Consider the prophetic assessment of Hauerwas:

“The primary entity of democracy is the individual, the individual for whom society exists mainly to assist assertions of individuality. Society is formed to supply our needs, no matter the content of those needs…It has thus become our unquestioned assumption that every person has the “right” to develop his or her own potential to the greatest extent, limited only by the parallel rights of others.”

The primary entity of the Church is Jesus Christ, for whom the Church exists to mirror the very nature of God as revealed through Jesus Christ. The church was formed in and through an all encompassing act of self-donation: the cross.  And on the cross, Jesus forfeited his agenda, his rights, his health, his future, and even his own blood.  If we are a to be a witness, a carrier of our Savior’s costly cross, maybe Jesus’ exhortation to “deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34-38) is more than a privatized “spiritual” allegiance.  Perhaps this pledge constitutes a person’s whole life in such a way that he or she becomes very peculiar in society that values “freedom” above all else.

After all, the followers of Jesus relinquish EVERY personal right, and he calls them “blessed” (Matt. 5:3-10).

What consonance is there, then, between the life of the Christian and the rhythms of a society that presumes to be human is to have unalienable rights?

Authentically Christian Community

Founded in 1791, the initials UVM stand for the Latin words Universitas Viridis Montis, or University of the Green Mountains.

The following is an essay I submitted for entrance to Duke Divinity School:

In Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s delineation of Christian fellowship brought a theological framework to bear on two of my very different experiences in Christian community.  At a conservative Baptist college, I became disenchanted with Christian community.  The contemporary church culture seemed to value entertainment, proper intellectual assent, and growing numbers over and against the simple goal to love one another.  After graduation, I began work with the Navigators Campus Ministry at the University of Vermont (UVM).  There I encountered a different kind of community centered on loving one another; the challenge of fostering an authentically Christian community confronted my own jaded assumptions of faith and spiritual formation in community.

Our goal at UVM was to build healthy and spiritually mature people, not to build a campus ministry.  As our ministry team desired to nurture Christian community, Dietrich Bonhoeffer provided an articulate theology to guide us.  He states that the greatest threat to Christian fellowship is a visionary ideal for community because this “wish dream” demands that members meet its criteria.  This challenged us to rethink our interactions with those in the community whose relentless need and those whose regular disinterest burdened the ministry.  Did an ideal for spiritual formation motivate my decision to admonish a student who showed little change over the semester?  Am I allowing a student to exist as a completely free person, as God made them to be or am I fashioning them in the image that seems good to me?  Admitting that I might not know what is best for a person freed me to better love students.  It enabled me to release students from the pressures of performance and group expectation; it freed students to follow Jesus and develop into the Christian God created him/her to be.

The resulting community valued spiritual formation and in Bonhoeffer’s words worked to:  “meet one another as bringers of the message of salvation.”  In a culture of authenticity and collaboration, intentional relationships replaced gimmicky events and entertaining group meetings.  Instead of creating a movement, we engendered an environment of grace.  We experienced a community of trust where the message of salvation, the reality of Jesus, continually liberated us from self-justification and self-centeredness and spurred us on to love another in the manner of Christ.  In short, I want to be an experience of Christ for others in the same way these loving relationships rendered an experience of Christ for me.