All posts by Rod White

Take an Advent pilgrimage: Five suggestions from the main players in the story

A life in the Spirit, , , , , , , ,

smart car in germanyLast June Gwen and I were about to drive into Switzerland for the first time. Siri told me to turn a bit late. I slowed way down and a young man in his company’s Smart Car clipped the back of our Auris as he tried to zip by. He pushed us into the oncoming traffic lane. Happily, there were no cars coming or I might not be here to write this. We were shaken up – and then the German police arrived! The polizist was nice – but he spoke German!

We had one thing going for us, however. We decided a long time ago to take all our trips as pilgrimages. Our definition of a pilgrimage includes welcoming the unexpected or even the unwanted as part of our journey with Jesus. A pilgrimage allows us to see God at work in all sorts of new situations that test our capacity to trust him. We get to prove to ourselves again and again that beyond our ordinary awareness God is present and leading. So we don’t take vacations anymore; we’d rather inhabit what’s happening than vacate.

Make an Advent pilgrimage

This is a good day to start a pilgrimage. It is the second day of Advent, the season that begins the Christian year. An “advent” is the coming of something expected. God is coming in the person of Jesus to be God with us. God’s coming as a baby invites us to begin again, ourselves, and go through our own process of maturation until we move though death into resurrection life with Him.

Pilgrim-Hat-e1383838921591Last week many Americans (especially if they were in elementary school) remembered the persecuted separatists from the English Church, called THE Pilgrims, who created a place for themselves in Massachusetts. A pilgrim is a person who goes on a long journey, often with a religious or moral purpose, and especially a journey to a foreign land. The Pilgrims who had the famous thanksgiving feast thought of themselves as those kind of pilgrims. Here’s evidence: After the Mayflower arrived, the first baby born to the Pilgrims who sailed on it was a boy. His parents (William and Susannah White!) named him Peregrine – a word which applies to a person travelling from far away and also means “pilgrim.” When Governor William Bradford wrote about the group’s departure for America he said: “They knew they were pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, but lifted up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest country; and quieted their spirits.”

Everybody in the story of Christ’s coming is something of a pilgrim. The wise men probably come all the way from Persia looking for what their studies revealed. John the Baptist goes into the wilderness and then out to the Jordan River where people journey to meet him and repent. Joseph and Mary go to Bethlehem and then to Egypt and back. The shepherds go to Bethlehem to see the Savior and then go all over the countryside to tell everyone about him. Where are you going? God has come from heaven and Jesus is taking first steps as a human and leading through death into life. Are you a similar pilgrim?

Advent is a season for beginning the journey. Some people reading are just getting to know Jesus and every step is fresh and maybe unnerving. More people reading are challenged to begin again, to not stay put, to not let the notables in the well-known “Christmas” story just pass them by.

Five suggestions

How do we get started? We have a few weeks to figure that out. I think each of the main players in the story offers a very good example of what to do:

1) Go somewhere. The whole season will be filled with places to go that are not really spiritual places at all — take Best Buy, for instance — perhaps your office “winter holiday” party. Plan at least one event in your season that is like being a wise man searching for the Savior. Take half a day off and call it “searching for the Savior time.” Follow the star like the wise men.

2) Experience wilderness. The whole season is exquisitely designed, these days, to be absolutely fake. We even disguise trees and put them in our living rooms. But you don’t really need to travel very far from Philly before you can see actual stars. Or just sit down in the park and experience the weather. Listen to God in creation like John.

3) Fulfill an obligation. It is a common joke that the season is already so full of obligation that the cool people are all huddled in a bar avoiding it. But submitting to work as someone who must be saved rather than resenting work as someone who is too good for it is good for us. Feeling like you must care for someone else out of your own sense of honor is good. Go do what you have to do like Joseph. Go to your “Bethlehem” and you might unwittingly fulfill a prophecy!

dancing with stars ornament4) Escape. There is no doubt that this season has become a real baby killer (note ornament). It is filled with escapism that needs to be escaped. Maybe you should deliberately skip doing something that you would not do unless expected you to — like making those cookies or going to that thing in New York. Run for your life like Mary taking the baby to Egypt.

5) Go tell your story. Maybe you have no freedom to make a lot of choices or have little money to spend on interesting ways to be a pilgrim. Don’t fret. You can be on a “speaking tour” as you move through your day. Your latest experience with Jesus is worth telling. Move around your own countryside telling about the Savior that is born to everyone, Christ the Lord, just like the shepherds did.

But let’s keep moving. Advent is a pilgrimage. Your inward journey will be greatly benefited if you have outward movement that helps it. If you can manage to not get pushed around by the wacky holiday thing the world does or manage to not just resist that wacky thing, maybe you can experience what the people in the true story are experiencing.

More? Hit “Advent” in my tags for other posts

Related articles

Relationship pain for the Jesus-follower — new birth through conflict

Building community, Leadership, , , ,

Since the 1980’s there has been even more fighting in the church than ever! As postmodern thinking takes over the philosophical playing field and becomes more and more codified into law, conflict about the old, modern way of doing things happens all the time. The other day I was in a dialogue about what Circle of Hope is all about and someone kind of accosted me because they assumed I would be a proponent of some old-school church idea. A woman who was listening in to this impending conflict said, “Rod’s pretty much postmodern, if anyone is. I don’t think you’ll have to worry.” I did not think it showed.

The truth is (and you’ll have to decide, I’m afraid, what that means) is that I am not postmodern or modern. I am a Jesus follower.

  • I could easily be postmodern, since my life is “made” every day in relationship with the resurrected Jesus; grace is new every morning to experience and I experience it in a community based on that common experience.
  • But I could easily be modern too, since the source of my life is transhistorical and my call to live it is built right into my essence as a human being; before I was, Jesus is.
I am not going to let oppressive, totalitarian, anti-Christian forces in this country diminish and denigrate the holiday and the celebration. I am not going to let it happen. I'm gonna use all the power that I have on radio and television to bring horror into the world of people who are trying to do that. -- Bill O'Reilly
I am not going to let oppressive, totalitarian, anti-Christian forces in this country diminish and denigrate the holiday and the celebration. I am not going to let it happen. I’m gonna use all the power that I have on radio and television to bring horror into the world of people who are trying to do that. — Bill O’Reilly

Saying things like that about the truth can get one into a conflict almost every day. That is, you can have a fight if you hang out with people who have not just shut down in the face of the barrage of input beaming at them and attempting to reform them according to the latest new-improved paradigm. For instance, I included the term “postmodern” in my speech at Broad and Dauphin a few weeks ago and was schooled in both meetings about what I meant. I did not shut down; but I did think “Boy! If you are a leader you are asking for trouble.” Since Christians generally hate conflict — it feels so unloving and probably unholy, they certainly would not want to get into trouble! Our cell leaders face the pain of real or prospective conflict all the time and wonder how they ever got into the mess they are in!

But Jesus is not afraid to cause conflict. To read the scripture it would appear that his main mission was a conflict. Likewise, the Apostle Paul exemplifies how a Jesus-follower inevitably fights. He teaches about it so much that I could hardly summarize it in a blog post. But I do want to reflect on four of his teachings for the sake of people who have not shut down, but are still speaking the truth in love. There are new things being born in this era; there is no sense trying to keep the baby from being born, even if it hurts. Here are four paraphrases of significant examples of Paul having conflict and the basic things he hangs on to when he is in a fight.

Trust God to be at work

Philippians 3:14-16 – Let’s walk by the same rule and mind the same thing: our call to follow Jesus with our all into His all. If you have another mindset, God will be revealing that to you.

We get all ramped up when we don’t agree. We are tempted to cut people off as a result, or to flee to like-minded people and create a faction. Paul is confident that God is at work. People pursuing maturity in Christ will figure things out with God’s help. Our anxiety (and judgment) about how immature they are or how right they aren’t won’t help. Hang on to trust.

Accept one another

Romans 15:1-7 – We should be like-minded toward one another with the mindset of Christ. He has received us in love through great suffering in all our weakness. With one mind and mouth, let’s praise God.

Even if I think my loved one or acquaintance is flat-out wrong, or even being wicked, my discernment about how to respond is based on my ultimate goal that we should be one in Christ. I don’t write them off, even if they seem unholy or dangerous. I don’t write them off by relativizing them, either. “Freedom” for postmoderns is being left alone to get what I deserve according to what I can achieve. “Acceptance” has become keeping an appropriate distance, not spiritual intimacy or even agreement. I don’t let me or mine get reduced to that. Hang on to longsuffering.

Resist oppression

Galatians 5:7-15 – There are always law-keepers and law-givers who tempt us to re-enslave ourselves. They don’t walk in the Spirit and their goal is not love like Christ’s, demonstrated on the cross. It is our liberty in Christ that allows us to serve. We don’t demonstrate our love by following rules that don’t come from Jesus.

Paul is so frustrated by interlopers who are trying to make the Galatians follow Jewish laws, especially circumcision, that he wishes they would emasculate themselves in the same way they are trying to cut people off from the Spirit. The aggressive new laws associated with social construction philosophy, such as campus “hate speech” codes, find their way into the church and cause conflict similar to Paul’s these days. Any number of people will think they are not accepted and loved (like Christians are supposed to do!) if their “laws” are not followed. I think the “laws” have some good intentions behind them (as did the Judaizers in Galatia!), but they need to come from God to be in everyone’s best interests – somewhere from which postmodern laws consciously have not come. Hang on to the Holy Spirit.

Humbly receive

1 Corinthians 4:1-7 – We have what we have received. If we don’t think this, our comparisons make us judges when only God is the judge. Any light we bring was generated by God. Any hidden thing revealed will find its final meaning in Christ.

The conviction that “we only have what God gives us” makes Jesus-followers prone to conflicted situations, which makes a lot of them want to stay hidden. The new regime marching under the colors of postmodern thought says things like: “Irrespective of what one might assume, in the sciences, problems do not arise by themselves. It is, precisely, because all problems are posed that they embody the scientific spirit. If there were no question, there would be no scientific knowledge. Nothing proceeds from itself. Nothing is given. All is constructed.” — Gaston Blanchard. There is truth in what he says if God is not with us, but he’s basically opposed to what Christians know.

Our faith leads us to know that goodness can be experienced; grace is imminent. Our questions do not call reality into being; and our lack of questions do not protect us from our built-in yearning to connect with our Creator. The fact that humans still make meaning of life still implies that there is meaning. Jesus is the truth of God. The Holy Spirit keeps affirming that. We’re going to have conflict. Hang on to your receptivity.

girlsgateConflict is not intrinsically bad. But it is likely to be painful – just like Jesus experienced. The world keeps trying to make laws against the violence being engendered by requiring people to endlessly compete for their rights in the social landscape. The most marginalized are supposedly protected enough to fight as hard as the dominators who protect them. Jesus-followers have another way.

But we will be in a fight too, just like Paul demonstrates. Some of us will opt out and just try to be as inconspicuous as possible. Some of us will not control our tongues too well and be conspicuous in a bad way. But let’s try to stay with Jesus and one another and meet the new era with joy, not just with dread about the next conflict. God is at work. We have been accepted by Jesus. No one can enslave us anymore. We have received wonderful things. There is a mystery that is unfolding to each person about their relationship with God.

A doula told me the other day that no matter how many mothers she accompanies, each birth she attends is like a brand-new miracle. Each rebirth is similarly amazing. If, as in the birth of a baby, there is suffering, why should we not attend the birth of faith in Jesus with the same understanding? People are fighting for their lives. Hang on to your amazement.

Other thoughts on conflict:

The intrinsic affront built into believing
https://www.rodwhite.net/why-people-might-not-care-to-be-radical-christians-part-2/

Conflict with the world: Disentangling from addiction
https://www.rodwhite.net/disentagling-from-addiction/

Why is being part of Circle of Hope so demanding?
https://www.rodwhite.net/why-is-being-part-of-circle-of-hope-so-demanding/

Cut off and screwed over — learning reconciliation and communication

Building community, Music, , , , , , , , , , , ,

I’m kind of enjoying the geekiness (no offence) of Pentatonix these days. So let’s start out with them. They do a cover of Gotye’s big song of 2012: Somebody That I Used to Know:

Apart from telling a good story, Gotye and Kimbra summarize in song what so many people experience every day: being cut off and screwed over. Those are common ways NOT to relate. But a lot of people have experienced so much abuse and have had so little opportunity to recover, that they don’t know how to relate another way. They’d like to love, but they are always getting cut off and screwed over. Let’s talk about that.

In the song, Gotye’s character sings about how she “cut him off.” That’s a common experience in relationships that is worth noting. We could talk about how someone refused sex or did some emasculating thing (another time, maybe). But I want to talk about how people try to disappear their intimates to manage their fears. [More here]

When Kimbra’s character comes into the song, she’s talking about something just as relevant: how she feels screwed over. She is so glad she got free of his unprocessed manipulation! And she doesn’t mind telling him so. Maybe you’ve been there.

The song demonstrates two relationship traits common to people when they are not safe in Jesus and are not aware of the frailties they need to have healed. These two common traits are sinful ways we kill love.

Getting cut off happens. 

It feels terrible. Gotye paints a vivid picture of it.

  • Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
  • But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
  • Have your friends collect your records and then change your number

That last line hints that he may have caused the cut-off himself, since who sends their friends to get their stuff or who changes their number unless there is some kind of weirdness going on? Were there constant texts? I heard about that a few times lately. Friends did have to send their buddies to retrieve their stuff because the ex might go off.

This movie actually exists

I have a friend who has perfected the cut-off. She says it – you do me wrong I cut you off, you’re dead to me. Most of us would not say that; we’d just do it [even legally with restraining orders]. When we are threatened, we disappear people. We make them nothing. So a lot of us feel cut off. You might feel like a relationship is bleeding right now and you are emotionally wounded.

I am not going to do a big Bible study to respond to all this. I think it is enough to say that our preoccupation with Matthew 18 around our church is important because people have been cut-off and have cut people off. Cutting someone off is the common sinful way to deal with “problem” people and with our own troubled feelings. We cut the feelings and the people off. In an abusive and abused, violent society the laws are all about protecting victims (who are numerous). So the society even teaches us to cut-off.

That’s the problem Gotye’s character has in this song. What he did not do is presume that he was in a relationship in which all the parties are sinners, including himself, and that reconciliation was going to be a constant necessity. He actually says in the song that they discovered that they did not make sense, as if that’s how relationships work – like they are supposed to magically make sense, or the interaction is supposed to be so effortless that they never don’t make sense.  That’s very unlikely.

Christians relate with reconciliation in mind. They know they need to be listening for God to make sense of things. They know that their loved one needs to be loved, not to make sense according to some tiny idea we have of what makes sense. I know so many people, including myself, who have spent entire evenings arguing about how their interpretation of what happened an hour ago makes more sense than their mate’s interpretation! Reconciliation is more important than everything making sense.

Getting screwed over also happens.

It is a terrible feeling and Kimbra paints a vivid picture of it.

  • You “had me believing it was always something that I’d done.”
  • You did not talk, so I was “Reading into every word you say.”
  • When we broke up “You said that you could let it go”

That last line has a lot packed into it (which is one of the things that makes this a good song, isn’t it?). Between the lines she is saying, “Now we are broken up and you are still obsessed and angry. That points out how you had been simmering with anger the whole time we were together. I was trying to make that work for you. So I basically screwed myself in your honor. And that makes me angry!”

screw in chipotleSorry to keep using the word “screwed.” But this song is basically about sex. They don’t really get to intimacy. Being used for sex is part of the woman’s pain, I think. “Having sex” in our language right now is not necessarily a term of endearment. “Fuck” is one of the meanest things people say. We “get screwed over” a lot. Sex is often a violation and we are mad about it. A lot of people talk about sex as if they need their rights protected, like they are so shallow that intimacy can be regulated by state law or something – or maybe they feel so hurt they think there ought to be a law.

Kimbra could have helped herself if she had just had one small rule of communication: “Don’t read between the lines.” Clear communication includes the recognition that the other person hasn’t actually said something until they have said it. If you think their body language means something, ask them if it means what you think it means. Don’t react as if you know what they have not articulated. Conversely, communication happens when a person has responded to what you say in such a way that they confirm they heard what you said. Just providing a lot of information and expecting people to find it is not enough. We’re tempted to treat each other like we are websites – “I already laid out all the info, search it.  I don’t need to talk to you because I posted it on my timeline. It’s on my blog.”

There is actually a little incident in John 14 where Jesus has to negotiate this process of communication with one of his intimates. Philip says, “Just show me the father. “ And Jesus is a little exasperated. He says, “Haven’t you heard the words of the father in me? Haven’t you seen the miracles?” I suppose Jesus could have cut Philip off at that point. Or he could have remembered Philip’s cluelessness as an example of all the ways his disciples had screwed him over. Instead, Jesus humbly communicates it again, as clearly as he can. Philip is not required to “read between the lines:” “It is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.” The Lord humbly, clearly communicates.

Christians know that truth and love are hard to communicate because they know how hard it is for them to receive the truth and love of God, who is the source of truth and love! So we are patient with our intimates, and with everyone else. We know we are hard to understand; we know the other person is hard to understand — they don’t even understand themselves! Why get all hacked off when they behave as confused and as detached as they are! Help them! Listen to them! Speak clearly and in love!

There is hope

kimbra unpaintedMy favorite part of the video is at the end, when Kimbra stands apart and loses the paint of this unloving relationship. She kind of returns to the state of being naked and unashamed like Adam and Eve were before sin messed them up and they got separated from God and each other. She gets out of the damaging matrix. Now that they aren’t locked in some sinful way to relate, maybe something better can happen. Hopefully, they both learn to practice reconciliation, not just self-defense. Hopefully, they learn to communicate, not just react in some pre-verbal way.

I don’t think Gotye intended for me to get any hope at all out of his sad song. But I am way Christian. I really wanted that woman’s unpainted self to get out of that messy video, so I took it that way.  Why not? Jesus is doing the best God can do to call us out of the condemned and condemning ways we relate and into real love. If we let him be present and don’t suck up some bogus narrative, if we don’t cut him off, if we let him communicate, we have a good chance of being restored to love ourselves and even having great intimacy — and great sex.

Related articles

Gotye and Kimbra tell a new Adam and Eve story

Doing Theology, Music, , , , , , , ,

You’ve all seen this video, right?

It has been viewed over 440 million times on YouTube. Which kind of made me wonder why I had never heard of it until it was already old news. It was the top song on the Billboard 100 in 2012.

I’m not sure what is better, this addictive little song called Somebody That I Used to Know or the parodies of it. As soon as I got to listening to: “now you’re just somebody that I used to know.” I also heard

People are creative — and this song apparently strikes a chord with them. When Gotye sang it at the University of Michigan, people loudly sang along with him. In an interview he said all that singing was about “Releasing pent up relationship angst,” which he thought was also kind of sad. We could also sing along at Broad and Dauphin.

To hear Wally De Backer talk about the song, it seems like it just kind of happened. He had a story to tell about how a guy is processing a break up. It was such a short song he decided he was missing the other part of the story – how the girl was reacting, so he put her in. He almost gave up on it at different times and then it ended up being his first big hit that made him famous.

The “new and improved” Adam and Eve story

I think it is famous because we are all right there in the video, at least a little bit, as the present generation rushes to “socially construct” their new, improved Adam and Eve story.  I seriously doubt Gotye intended to do this, but his song is channeling the prevailing philosophy that is making relationships what they are today.  The song is like an Adam and Eve story, only this narrative does not have God, Adam or Eve. It has Gotye as the story-telling god, then Gotye and Kimbra in a new narrative that amounts to a revised version of Adam and Eve. In this version there is only Gotye’s “red state” reverie and Kimbra’s “blue state deconstruction” coming to a mysterious, inconclusive conclusion, showing a typically distant ending to a relationship. It is the story of a new normal.

I think we should keep looking at how new narratives are affecting how we think about relationships.

adam-and-eve-rae-chichilnitskyWhat makes this an Adam and Eve song in my mind probably has to do with the fact that I am way Christian. I was at the Sleep-Eze store not long ago laying on beds to try them out and I befriended a rather odd woman who was laying on the bed next to mine. She ended up kind of trailing us as we were making a deal on a mattress. She finally asked, “You must be Christians, right?”  Gwen and I said, “Oh yes, we are way Christians.” I even see bed-buying as a Christian activity. So listening to Gotye is a similar experience for me.

That being said, I think Gotye’s song is an Adam and Eve story, right down to the title lyric. Somebody that I used to know could be titled Somebody that I used to have sex with using “know” the way Genesis uses it when talking about Adam and Eve. Genesis 4:1 says: Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. The second story of creation in Genesis 2-4 is essentially an explanation of how men and women relate the way they do. It is about sex and marriage, love and children, family and mutual care.

Gotye’s song is about sex and what it is like when the couple is no longer having it, how they don’t get to love and mutual care. They had sex; they got painted into a common picture, in this case, his common picture. Like Adam and Eve were both naked and felt no shame, Gotye and Kimbra are shamelessly naked in their video (which is probably how it got viewed 440 million times). But then the woman wakes up to the fact that he isn’t willing or capable of actually forming something that is mutual, so she gets out, gets unpainted.

The new normal of postmodern relationships

What makes this story so interestingly postmodern is this:

  1. It goes without saying that God is banished from the picture.
  2. People have sex first, then they try to form intimacy. That’s elemental to the relational landscape to which many of us have conformed.
  3. But mainly, the two people in the story are struggling over having a shared sense of what the reality they have created together means. And they don’t agree. They “don’t make sense.” They can’t even talk civilly about it.

Gotye’s audience really relates.

One of the public’s favorite lines of the song is: “You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness. Like resignation to the end, always the end” — that mysterious inconclusive conclusion that marks this generation’s lives. In some sense, it is relieving when you expect something to happen, even if it is bad, and then it actually happens.  It at least comes to some kind of end. He calls his feeling a “certain kind” of sadness, since he won’t admit to anything really being anything. But this despair is so compelling that he can’t resist an extra lament, “resignation to the end, always the end.” The narcissistic emptiness of this makes me want to cry — which is something the people avoid in this sad little song, even though it is sad. It’s all in his head.

When Kimbra adds her side of the story it is equally compelling. The lack of centeredness, of substance, of commitment is making her crazy. His ambivalence made her feel like “it was always something that I’d done.” Doesn’t the whole society make you feel that way these days? I am always shocked when I call customer service for a problem and they regularly tell me I have caused the problem. When I demonstrate it was really them, they don’t apologize. I’m responsible for everything, but no one thanks me for taking care of things — another way we are like gods. People are enraged by the futility of their relationships in this context. Having sex should imply that we want to know one another but the knowing does not happen. So Kimbra moves over toward Gotye in the  video and yells: “I don’t wanna live that way, reading into every word you say. You said that you could let it go, and I wouldn’t catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know!”

Then they just start screaming at each other musically. She lets him have it. He winces and withdraws, and keeps sticking to his story. She finally moves away, gets unpainted, and they sadly end up whispering “somebody that I used to know.” They apparently think, “It’s really sad that the relationship happened to me that way.”

It is an unsatisfying narrative

The postmodern narrative about how things work is all there. It teaches us that reality is inevitably made up of what we create together. That’s it. “I was lonely in your company but that was love and it’s an ache I still remember.” That’s it.  But people are angry about that. They want more and expected more.  But everyone is locked in their singularity — defensive, enraged, unsatisfied, intimate without intimacy. That’s happening to people. They think it is sadly normal. Gotye told the story and people bought it — again. And they sang it with him until they knew all the words.

The ongoing Biblical creation story continues to say that it is not good for us to be alone without God and each other. That’s the true normal we were singing about last night at our Sunday meeting. We know we need to get together, but we also need to know that we really need to get with God to get together with one another. God makes reality. We co-create with Him, but we are not lonely gods, ourselves, failing at creating love on our own — at least we are not meant to live like that. If God doesn’t create, if Jesus doesn’t get us back with God, life is just one damned thing after another. A lot of us are really enraged that we end up with people who are resigned to their godless end: cut-off and screwed over. Let’s  talk about that more next time. Until then, let’s be aware of the new narratives that are lying to us about the relational landscape.

More:

Similar idea here [link]

Subscribe to Development! Hit the “follow” button after you type in your email. Thanks for reading!

Six foundations for being good: let’s stand on all of them

Doing Theology, Leadership, , ,

Christians often conform to the prevailing norms of society and find something in the Bible to justify their morality. Nevertheless the Bible survives. It continues to offer a broad sense of what is good and teaches tried-and-true ways to live as a good person. Last week I was telling you about Jonathan Haidt and his book The Righteous Mind.  In it he follows his own journey out of being WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) and discovers that there are six foundations for morality, not just the one that Americans are mainly using right now to make all their new laws about protecting rights. I was happy to see a social scientist “discovering” truths that were in the Bible all along. I think the Bible has always been as broad as Haidt wishes we are all were.

One reason Jesus-followers need to keep talking about how all this arguing about morality is going to work out is that pretty soon some new morality minion is likely to denounce one of us in the street for our lack of conformity to the narrow sense of being good that is being legislated — we’ll be sent to some Maoist-like camp for re-education! Yes, that sounds hysterical, but I heard a TED talk the other day in which the speaker told us how he is using his career to create peer group pressure to conform to things “not just because they are legal, but because they are right.” He was teaching guys to correct the nonconforming speech of their bar pals and to police their behavior while sharing a beer. I agreed with his ends, actually. But the means scare me – especially when they are not monitored by God.  (God is strictly left out of the new morality).

1. The care/harm foundation

foundations on the moral spectrumThe main morality Haidt thinks is dominating the landscape these days is what he calls the care/harm foundation. We are supposed to care. We are not supposed to harm. Like I said last week, this is basic to Christianity: Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law (Romans 13:10). Feel a lot of compassion here.

The problem is that there are more foundational ways people see what is good and act on it. The care/harm foundation is the basis for protecting “human rights” and it is fundamental to our ethics codes, but that is not all that people, and God, care about. So as I briefly move through Haidt’s six foundations that he “discovered” on his journey away from the WEIRD focus on one foundation, let’s be as broad as the Bible.

2) The fairness/cheating foundation.

We should be fair and be treated fairly. We should not cheat or be cheated.  Honestly, feel a lot of anger here. It is a righteous anger that goes for justice and a rage about how untrustworthy people are. Watch Cheaters. People care about fidelity. We hate machines that don’t work and that steal our money.  The Occupy movement was mainly a fight about fairness.

In Isaiah 59 the prophet calls for a return to this foundation: Your lips have spoken falsely,/ and your tongue mutters wicked things./ No one calls for justice;/ no one pleads a case with integrity./ They rely on empty arguments, they utter lies;/ they conceive trouble and give birth to evil.

3) The loyalty/betrayal foundation.

We should commit and stick with our commitments. Our loyalty should be rewarded, not betrayed.  Feel group pride here and rage against traitors. This is the foundation of patriotism and painting yourself green for an Eagles games. This motivates bosses who have bought into the company to try to get employees to buy in (and then we really feel it when they fire us after we have given our loyalty). For this morality, soldiers sacrifice their lives and gang members take absurd risks.

The early church was forming a new “tribe” around the risen Jesus. This foundation may have been more relevant to them than others.  That changed a good bit when it became less dangerous to be a Christian. Jesus says it plainly in Luke 12:  “I tell you, whoever publicly acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man will also acknowledge before the angels of God. But whoever disowns me before others will be disowned before the angels of God.”

4) The authority/subversion foundation.

We should respect those in charge. We should not subvert the process. Feel respect here, deference; give honor. Adversely, feel fear. This is the foundation for talking in a manner around the boss that is different than when you’re with your friend.  In the U.S., the empire has been so strong for a while that it gives a lot of room for insubordination; but experience a 9/11 and a decade of almost universally-approved war can ensue. The church of the 19th and 20th centuries proliferated leaders who demanded obedience to God and to themselves from the pulpit based on this foundation.

Christians teach their children to obey their private desires just like most Americans these days, even though their scripture is heavily into the authority/subversion foundation.  Paul teaches in Romans 6: “Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.” Paul even told slaves to obey their masters, knowing that their obedience to God made them a master even when their masters were slaves to sin.

foundations for good

5) The sanctity/degradation foundation.

We should keep certain things sacred and clean. We should not contaminate situations or people. Feel awe, reverence and disgust here. In the era of autonomy, where the only objection we can make is that some behavior does someone harm, people don’t get this ethic. They are losing their sense of disgust and they think that is a good thing. So nothing is sacred and breaking taboos is considered freedom. Artists do all sorts of things to religious symbols that might have gotten them killed in the past. But they rarely desecrate a picture of Nelson Mandela, at least where people are WEIRD. It is ironic of course that people hold autonomy to be sacred.

This is the foundation that really sets Christians apart in the United States. It is also what makes an Ayatollah call the United States the “great Satan” since the U.S. undermines everything that is sacred and uses military might to back its blasphemy. Jesus followers seek what is holy and seek to be holy. Their sense of it is so refined that Paul can teach the Corinthian church that it is sanctified: Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.

6) The liberty/oppression foundation.

We should protect liberty. We should not tyrannize or be tyrannized. In some sense, there is the same anger as the justice foundation, only this is about being part of a group in which some sense of equality is prized, and that is pretty much any group. Feel hatred for oppression here. It is not hard to find someone to feel bad with you about the parking authority or arbitrary (and sometimes brutal) police. People often see the U.S. army like a relief and advocacy group because it is supposedly at work in the world as a good cop, thwarting oppression.

Almost all the foundations are found in James 2, it seems, but he teaches about this sixth one well: “Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the noble name of him to whom you belong? If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers.”

Even while Haidt is, appropriately, undermining the value of Western culture’s sense of reason, he is writing a well-reasoned book based mostly in evolutionary theory, which he thinks explains why people do what they do, in one way or another. Nevertheless, I think he does us all a service by showing how many ways we can think about what is good. I think Jesus followers need to be aware that the Bible also lays out these six foundational ways to be moral lest we choose one that’s ascendant in our territory and start arguing some skewed political position instead of being faithful to the fullness in Jesus.

Related articles

It is OK NOT to be WEIRD — the Bible’s many “rights”

Doing Theology, Leadership, , , ,

While I was waiting for baby Hannah to arrive the other day I read a book. (The labor took much longer than I expected! )  It was such a good book that I can’t resist applying a few of its more applicable thoughts to what we are going through right now.

Your Christianity may be weird

We live in a weird culture and it has influenced us so much that our Christianity is weird. But our circle of hope in Christ  is the brave antidote to that, unless we make it weird.

westerners are weird
Pesky sociologists deconstructing again.

Jonathan Haidt,  a UPenn alum, wrote a well-received book called The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion. It is not a Christian book, even though he gets a lot more sympathetic to Christians by the time he is finished with his huge study on why people react the ways they do when it comes to politics.

Haidt realized that his blue-state sensibilities were actually rather WEIRD. By that he means: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic. As far as assessing how humans work, in general, WEIRD people are statistical outliers in the world today and certainly are out of the mainstream of history. USonians are even WEIRDer than Europeans.  Haidt says that “several peculiarities of WEIRD culture can be captured in this simple generalization: The WEIRDer you are, the more you see a world full of separate objects, rather than relationships. It has long been reported that Westerners have a more independent and autonomous concept of self than do East Asians. For example, when asked to write twenty statements beginning with the word ‘I am…,’ Americans are likely to list their own internal psychological characteristics (happy, outgoing, interested in jazz), whereas East Asians are more likely to list their roles and relationships (a son, a husband, an employee of Fujitsu).“

Your morality may be WEIRD

If you see a world full of individuals, like WEIRD people do, then you’ll want a morality that protects those individuals and their individual rights. Concerns about harm and fairness will be emphasized. If you live in a non-WEIRD society, as most people do and as most have lived througout history, then you will see a world full of relationships, contexts, groups and institutions. So you won’t be so focused on protecting individuals, you’ll place the needs of the groups and institutions first, often ahead of the needs of individuals. Morality based on harm and fairness won’t be enough. You’ll have additional concerns and a whole set of virtues to go with them.

People often wonder when our church is going to get on the bandwagon and become as WEIRD as (the obviously exceptional) westernized culture around us. We resist being WEIRD and resist conforming to their outlier morality. For one thing, we don’t think the rest of the world and the previous history of humankind is stupid. But the main reason we don’t conform is because God has revealed a much larger playing field on which truth and morality is worked out. You can see that in our far-reaching and diverse scriptures.

Haidt apparently teaches undergrads, because he can boil down his ideas into bumper stickers (which I admire). He follows his own journey out of being WEIRD as he discovers that there are six foundations for morality, not just the one that Americans are using right now to make all their new laws about protecting rights. I was not surprised to see that all six of his “foundations” are elements of the Bible’s teaching about how to live a righteous life [check them out!]. I love it when social science “discovers” the Bible! I think I will save the other five for next time. But since we just welcomed another child into our clan, I’ll leave you with the foundation that dominates our society right now, what Haidt calls the “care foundation.”

The small basis for all those laws

babies are weird but nobody caresThe care foundation for morality is all about protecting people from harm. It is what triggers that “aahh” when we see picture of babies and puppies, preferably together. And it is also the trigger that makes us angry when we see baby seals being clubbed or chickens crammed in a cage. It is also why we can be obsessed about everyone’s rights and why our leaders hasten to tell us they are protecting whole countries and the rights of humanity when they bomb them. All our ethics codes begin with the basic premise that we are supposed to “do no harm.” That’s essentially how we sum up how to act. If the married couples I know are any indication, we all apply this with vigor. They are often very concerned not to do anything wrong that will harm the other, thus protecting fairness but paralyzing intimacy. At the same time they are always doing harm because their rights are violated every day and they can’t help being mad about it.

The “care foundation” is also a main motivation for how we act as Jesus followers. We love how Jesus described God as being like a father filled with compassion for his child: “So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.” (Luke 15:20). God is all about loving individuals; the worse off they are the more Jesus seems to love them.

The Bible teaches us to be like God in how we live: “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:32). Love, we are taught  “always protects” (1 Corinthians 13:7). Individuals and their well-being count and they are supposed to matter to us, just as they are.

There is more to morality than harm and fairness, however. USonians boil it down to that and then start analyzing everything to see if it meets up to their rather tiny idea of what is good. But they are off to a good start, at least — as long as they don’t try to make the rest of us, and the rest of the world, conform to their small idea of what is right, based on their WEIRDness.

Related articles

We’re Getting Schooled to Relate without Jesus

Doing Theology, Music, , ,

We’re getting schooled — but nicely and in the name of being nice, protecting the rights of others and being inclusive. But are people actually being nice to me? protecting my so-called rights? including me? More important, are they being nice to Jesus? protecting his rights? including the Lord?

I ran across this statement during my research the other day and I feel a bit obsessed with it. It revealed that the discomfort I have been feeling with the way people talk to me about various subjects has a philosophical underpinning. We are being taught to relate in a certain way that may be right in line with Jesus in some ways, but may sell the farm completely in other ways. I think we need to talk back to our teachers.  Check it out:

Only if “you respond to me” in a way sensitive to the “relations” between your and my actions, can “we” act together as a “collective we”; and if I sense you as not being sensitive in that way, then I feel immediately offended, ethically offended. – Shotter & Katz (1999, p.152).

Let’s not run the whole intellectual nine yards with this. Let’s skip right to the popular application.

If you run me over I will be offended.
If you run me over I will be offended.

First of all, there is a relational rule that begins with: “Only if.”

For some reason, it just dawned on me that any number of people begin their relationship with me with an “only if.” They have this rule that kicks in when they meet me: I will relate to this person only if they agree with my assumed standards for relating. I have a way of life that must be accepted at any cost — if they don’t “get” that, no relationship. For instance, a young man recently reported he would not be back to our public meeting because we seemed to assume he was a Christian, since the meeting was all about being a Christian. He did not feel accepted for who he was so he was immediately offended (at least in a philosophical way — everyone can still exchange pleasantries). We did not pass the “only if” assessment.

DM_I_Feel_YouSecond, there is a definition of what relating means.

Basically, the rule for relating begins with: We need to feel each other out. (Isn’t that why it became popular in the 90’s to say “I feel you?”). I need to sense you being sensitive. In the new school there are no individuals who have innate meaning or value. Any “meaning” is all about how our actions intersect, all about how we are feeling things out. The only meaning we share is what happens in our “collective we.” So sensitivity to how we talk and act is crucial.

Most people don’t get to this step of relating and it is even harder to get through it. There is a lot of wariness and circling around one another, seeing if one can connect. For instance, a man was talking last night about how difficult it was for him to make any relationships within a church whose meetings he had been sporadically attending for years. But he sensed he might fit into Circle of Hope because we dress more like he dresses and talk like he talks. He felt enough shared meaning to let himself connect. Someone else probably sniffed around last night and said, “My kind are not present. I’m out of here.”

Third, there is a consequence for violating the rules and not agreeing on the definitions.

People are surprisingly judgmental these days, in spite of saying they hate people who are judgmental! They are surprisingly legalistic for saying they are so accepting! They have seemingly nice conversations that come with a hidden barb, something like:  If you don’t accept my rule and act according to my standards, I have a right to be ethically offended, and I will be so immediately. I was talking to one of the cell leaders yesterday and she was having a problem deciding what to do with certain people who were kind of gumming up the works with their bad behavior. The leader was so sensitive to the possibility that she might “get a time out” for offending the person in question that she was making all sorts of excuses for their bad behavior — pre-excusing before she was asked for grace! She was essentially taking care of the “we” for both sides of the relationship. She was predicting how she would be offensive, even before a person accused her of anything, and adjusting her behavior to keep things smooth, even though she felt personally hurt and frustrated. She was quite afraid she would be judged according to the new standards and get thrown out of the “we.”

We are all getting schooled and most of us did not even go to the class yet. The school turns out people who say (at least this is my application of the quote above): If you don’t respond to me in a way that makes me comfortable I am out of here. Or worse, I have a right to be me no matter how bad that is for you; deal with it or I will make sure you know how condemnable you are. We’re afraid to be sent to the “office” if we don’t get the rules right. It is ironic that in the name of inclusion people have set up a power struggle among all of us for the right to decide who is worthy of inclusion!  I am glad the person who would act in such a way is not God (we’re not, even when we act in god-like ways!). If they were actually God, I would be in outer darkness quickly. I would never really have gotten into light at all! I would not have passed the first “only if” rule!

Like I said, I am clueing in to all this might mean philosophically. And I am lamenting that the society is quickly being reorganized around the core ideas that are rendered in the quote. But I am trying to skip to the application.

We will run into someone this week who is doing their best to fit in and be nice. They have been taught this new school basis for relating. They bump into a Christian and it can be jarring. They meet up with a person who believes they have innate meaning as an individual and are also part of a “we” — not based solely on the meaning created by becoming a “we” but because God has made them a “we.” We’re still creating meaningfully by our process of dialogue, but it is inspired. And we are not assessing one another according to how inoffensively we do that, since we assume we will need to love others who can’t seem to stop sinning, just like God loves us. It has become an odd way to look at things.

I think we should keep being odd and not get schooled. Some of the new narrative is wise. But I don’t think the new nice is all that nice. I really don’t think it protects my rights to follow Jesus very well at all, instead it offers a new narrative that eradicates the possibility of Jesus. Everyone gets included except for Jesus, since his “only-ness” violates the “only if” of the new regime. I don’t want to go there, even if the new conformity police judge me harshly.

It is not enough to just ignore the new schoolmasters. They are making a difference. We’ve all been divided up into mutually offended identities — “being a Christian” is just one more of them. And most Christians seem to believe that about themselves — their faith is another one of the many identities competing for market share among discriminating consumers. Let’s keep telling the truth about Jesus — in love, as ourselves in Christ, in community, even if we get a time out.

Reference

Shottner, J. & Katz, A. (1999). Creating relational realities: Responsible responding to poetic “movements” and “moments.” In S. Mcnamee & K. Gergen (Eds.) Relational responsibility: Resources for sustainable dialogue (pp. 151-160). London: Sage.

No endorsements, just curiosity:

Related articles

Nanotechnology and the Obligation of Stewardship

The Mission, , , , , ,

I was walking on a beautiful day through a section of Penn I rarely visit and ran headlong into nanotechnology. I rubbed my head and remembered the last time this happened — it was just as startling.


First off, you may have seen the spectacular new Singh Center for Nanotechnology at 32nd and Walnut that is part of Penn’s creep back toward Center City.  This was a giant reminder that nanotechnology is moving right along. It may be about tiny things, but it is not a tiny matter.

Nano Day

Then a little farther down my route home, I went through “science land” near the Rittenhouse Lab and there was a banner over the walkway advertising Nano Day at NANODAY_11_12x3Penn. It is designed to get people into nanotechnology. The high schoolers can make posters and win a prize! I paused and looked at the sign, trying to remember why nanites scare me (thanks Star Trek) and then had to pause a bit longer in awe of the millions of dollars available to spend on a very exciting piece of architecture and the capacity Penn has at hand to round up young people for the latest indoctrination.

In a move that would have made Gutenberg's head explode, Israeli scientists have printed the entire Old Testament onto a silicon chip that is only 1/1000th of an inch square—tinier than a pinhead. Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa

In a move that would have made Gutenberg’s head explode, Israeli scientists have printed the entire Old Testament onto a silicon chip that is only 1/1000th of an inch square—tinier than a pinhead.

Tiny little machines might do all sorts of wonders — like reassemble the molecules of your trash into a T-bone steak, thus eliminating feedyards and dumps. Plus, as you can see, it can already put the Old Testament on the head of a pin. But I will not dwell on the benefits. In a world where ethics are negotiated after the disaster is well under way (cue the melting glaciers), I will skip over the benefits and go right to the scary applications that are almost inevitable.

Gray Goo

Weapons are an obvious negative use of nanotechnology. Simply extending today’s weapon capabilities by miniaturizing guns, explosives, and electronic components of missiles would be deadly enough. However, with nanotechnology, armies could also develop “disassemblers” to attack physical structures or even biological organisms at the molecular level.

A similar horror would be if general purpose disassemblers got loose in the environment and started disassembling every molecule they encountered. This is known as “The Gray Goo Scenario.” Furthermore, if nanomachines were created to be self replicating and there were a problem with their limiting mechanism, they would multiply endlessly like viruses. Even without considering the extreme disaster scenarios of nanotechnology, we can find plenty of potentially harmful uses for it. It could be used to erode our freedom and privacy; people could use molecular sized microphones, cameras, and homing beacons to monitor and track others.

The abilities would give us god-like powers, as if we needed more. The government is creating them and has no non-government regulation; there are no generally recognized design guidelines, just a rush to do stuff — I am sure I am not the only one that alarms.

Responses

The United Methodists summed up what a good Christian response to all of these scary facts might be. It is based on a call to stewardship. “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it” (Ps. 24:1) — this means that in every scientific venture, including but not limited to nanotechnology, we are dealing with something that belongs to someone else.  That fact calls for a certain respect, humility – even awe.  As one discovers the mechanisms that drive the created universe, one is walking on sacred ground.

Another important response is to assert that people don’t own discoveries. We are still getting over Columbus claiming ownership of North America when he “discovered’ it. We sure don’t need the flag of some biological research corporation planted on the genes God created to guide our bodies! What’s more, if the government funds the discovery, we all own it, for sure. So we’d better hurry up and decide what part of the industry is obligated to the public good before the corporatocracy privatizes nanotechnology.

We also need to talk about power. Huge investments, government encouragement, super-educated scientists working relative secrecy lead to a lot of power and the corruption that goes with it.  For instance, we need to keep teaching people who apply research that “just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you should.” The “dominion” that God gives us over the earth, implies responsibility, not just power.

What does God want?

Even more, this stewardship of God’s creation has all sorts of conditions based on our ongoing relationship with God. One must ask the question, “What does God want to do with nanotechnology?” As of yet, the government has not even set up the typical regulations that accompany most new technologies; so they haven’t even got to “What does the government (which ought to be “What do the people…”) want to do with this new capability?” much less “What might God have to say about it?” Nanotechnology could be well on its way to becoming another fallen power and principality, another “power  of this dark world”  that consumes the resources of many and benefits only a few. The philosophy that got the United States organized (for the benefit of the few who organized it, by and large) assumes that humans and their commercial enterprises, if left alone, will do the right thing. We are awaiting science to prove that assumption, I guess.

« ...It looks like a single flower bud, but it's actually an entire quick-growth forest with tens of millions of "trees" in the cluster. You can't see them, but each tree is a single-wall carbon nanotube, roughly 3 angstroms across and 2 millimeters tall...» (Paul Marshall)
« …It looks like a single flower bud, but it’s actually an entire quick-growth forest with tens of millions of “trees” in the cluster. You can’t see them, but each tree is a single-wall carbon nanotube, roughly 3 angstroms across and 2 millimeters tall…» (Paul Marshall)

I am amazed again and again at what the scientists can do now. Things develop so quickly that I often run into them after they are fully grown rather than tripping over them when they are small. You may feel the same way about nanotechnology — a surprisingly big thing with a big building in your neighborhood about which you know little. Maybe the nanites are not colonizing my cells right now, but the academic discipline that might unleash them has planted its flag quite  dramatically nearby and the natives are being infected with the new bug even as we speak. Can we get Penn to practice good stewardship? I doubt that they feel like Jesus can even be considered, maybe even legally, during the board’s dialogue! But we can try — and shouldn’t we?

Related articles

Winter is coming. Share your umbrella. — Leaders and led loving one another.

Building community, Leadership, , , , , ,

I like sharing an umbrella with someone. Maybe I need to like it, since I so often forget to carry an umbrella! (It is hard being a native of California). But I consciously like sharing an umbrella because it gives me an excuse to get close to someone in our special safe place and to feel like I am being taken care of. I like that.

I equally don’t like walking in the rain by someone who I don’t think wants to share their umbrella while they are drier than I am. And I don’t much care for sharing a tiny umbrella that deposits run off down my collar. (You can tell I have experience with this).

A leader’s “umbrella”

The other day at the Cell Leader Coordinators review for Jonny Rashid on the occasion of completing his term as our pastor, the topic of who is under a leader’s “umbrella” came up. Someone referenced this post from three years ago. I doubt that too many people read it in the summer of 2010, so here’s an update. It is still an interesting topic for people who care about how the church works and who care about how they work in the church.

We can start with the Apostle John, the master teacher on community in the early church. He might relate to Jon Snow.

Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour.  They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.   But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. (1 John 2:18-20) As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love. (2 John 1:6)

John’s three letters provide a lot of guidance for sorting out the intricacies of relationships in the body of Christ, especially relationships with leaders. The leaders have a limited but crucial function in keeping the church together and moving ahead while it faces all the opposition it always faces. As a leader, John seems to be having a tough time with people who push the boundaries – they say they don’t sin, they leave the fellowship to start communities based on the perverse understandings they call the truth, they don’t walk in love, and more. It looks like things have not changed that much, have they? We are still having trouble dealing with people who brazenly sin. We are never sure what to do with beloved friends who decide to set up shop just outside the boundaries of our church. We are not always sure whether they or us are not walking in love – or even if we like thinking about they or us. We are always sorting things out.

under one umbrellaAn image that helps do some sorting is about being “under the umbrella” of someone. In John’s terms, being under his umbrella, would be under the “anointing from the Holy One,” and showing that one “belonged to us.” He is writing to “dear children” so he undoubtedly thinks of them as under the protection of his authority and love. When you have someone sharing your spiritual umbrella they have a special, intimate place you provide for them. Some of John’s friends used to be under his umbrella as he is under Christ’s umbrella. He is pained that they are now out in the rain. What pains him even more is that they call the rain sunshine. The whole point of his umbrella was to keep people dry and they are all wet.

When under a leader’s umbrella seems too special

One time we had an intense discussion among some leaders about how certain people seemed to function “under the umbrella” of a leader (particularly people who seemed to be buds with a pastor). We were sorting that idea out. Some people seem to get special treatment. When they sin (sometimes repeatedly), the patience shown them looks like it is too patient. It is like they get a “bye,” when other people get opposed. Some people even get elevated into leadership through less-than-typical ways because another leader facilitates that. It can make a person wonder how that happened when others go through a lot of scrutiny and function with a lot more accountability.

It was an important discussion. I had a couple of immediate reactions:

1) When the church is not having a vibrant mission — that means it is not including new people who need to be fed with truth and love, people turn to the niceties of their structure and start wondering about injustices. When the “umbrella” is not expanding, people begin to squabble about getting wet.

2) Pastors and other leaders in the church are allowed personal choices and preferences about who shares their limited umbrella space. Intimacy is not unlimited and is usually subjective. It is not necessarily something one can demand. A leader might have a special interest in someone, have a history with them, or have a deeper knowledge of them than they have of others. They should not show favoritism, but certain people might be under their “protection” in a deeper way than others — that’s OK until it’s not. It is a blessing that we all care for one another — and we have many leaders, not just one pastor. So having a special place with the pastor is not the main marker of one’s value.

Umbrellas take some discernment

As I thought about the conversation some more, I felt a lot of sympathy for people who feel “out in the rain” and for leaders with an umbrella strapped to them:

1) I feel for people who innocently enter the church with hope and trepidation and become subject to the whims of inconsistent leaders. Leaders can often be so blind and we can so often be oppressed by their blindness. They forget that what they do usually teaches more than what they say or write. When their friends get special, even undeserved treatment, the rest of the people they oversee don’t feel much like friends. If they don’t even know that they turn a blind eye to an influential friend’s weaknesses, the whole church can feel dangerous.

2) I also feel for leaders who get monitored for any hint of injustice by people who never do the difficult things they are doing. Before one can criticize someone for protecting someone in a perverse way, they should probably have someone under their umbrella themselves! John called people “dear children”  — the people he had nurtured in faith are like family to him, so of course he is concerned for their protection. Such care is a beautiful thing; we wouldn’t want to turn it in to a commodity that should be equally available to all from the “pastor store.” We should all be producing that love ourselves, not just demanding it.

It is no wonder that people have deserted the capital-C-Church in droves in the last ten years. In general, the leadership is likely to be inept, unconscious or experimenting with things John would call antichrist. It is no wonder that people who manage to stay connected often resort to being nice but a bit remote, lest they have to deal with the intricacies of love in a missional community. John knows it takes the anointing of the Holy Spirit to persevere and truly walk in love.

I hope we stick with it. The deep-level discussion among the leaders encouraged me. It’s not like it is typical for regular people to worry about how to help the person needing discipline while attending to the desires of people who need someone to be disciplined. We are so not antichrist. Though our relationships can get so sick, they are also the places God is making us so well. I hope we keep praying, with John, that the Holy Spirit enables us to walk in love and keep sharing our umbrellas.

Related articles

Have the Faith You Have, Not the Faith You Don’t

Doing Theology,

 

Here’s another Bible problem for you. What’s with faith-as-small-as-a-mustard-seed moving mountains?

We sing:

Si tuvieras fe como grano de mostaza
Eso lo dice el Senor
Tu le dirias a la montana
Muevete, muevete 
Esa montana se movera, se movera, se movera

Shouldn’t that little song come with a little warning label? Shouldn’t it say something like: “We don’t really think this is true!” Or “No mountains were injured in the performance of this song!”?

Why does Jesus say,

“I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you” (Matt. 17:20)

if He doesn’t really mean it?

That’s a good question. It is an especially good question if you were taught all your life that the Bible was feeding you the kind of “truth” that the philosophy of our day considers Truth. I’m talking about some observable occurrence you can test and see repeated when you try it again — that kind of true. Apply that to the Bible and the “formula” Jesus posits says, “Faith moves mountains.” Then a logical conclusion follows: if your faith doesn’t result in miracle, either you don’t have enough faith or faith is not what it claims to be — if you have faith, you tell the mountain to move, and the mountain doesn’t move, then the Bible is not true. Sometimes that is called working with “literal” truth — if the words say it, that’s what it is, as if words just describe verifiable data, as if they just report scientific findings, as if we are talking about those kinds of words. Many Christians treat the Bible like it is a scientific text and call that conservative, when it is really the most worldly thing they could be doing.

Truth is deeper than data

I think Jesus speaks a deeper truth than the surface truth almost anyone can observe. He is revealing eternity to us. Do you really  think that the Lord was announcing his findings about the world’s smallest seed is, or that he was suggesting that mountains should be moved around? I don’t. But in a world full of “literal” truth, people get tripped up by anything immaterial to their materiality.

Matthew 17 is very confusing for literalists! I feel their pain. Just look at what happens there. First, Jesus is up on the Mount of Transfiguration revealing to his inner circle that there is just a thin veil between His Father’s dimension and our own — but that the dimensions are very different. Then he announces his impending resurrection. Then they come down the mountain and he completes an exorcism that his other disciples could not accomplish. And why can’t they do it? They don’t have enough faith. It is a wild chapter for people who can only know what they test in their personal labs.

Maybe we should live in Matthew 17 until we understand it and stop basing our ideas of faith on things we already understand. Maybe we should stay there until we can do what is described and stop basing our doubts on what we can’t yet do. Maybe we should stop being discouraged with Jesus because he can’t just leave faith as “being nice,” or as “applying moral principles” or as “acting out a stripped-down methodology that passes for being forgiven of our sins instead of having a life of active trust” (I digress…with hope in my heart).

Many people come away from what Jesus says about not having enough faith looking for a formula for getting enough faith. But I think the whole point of his statement is not about what we lack, it is about what we don’t lack. He is ultimately being very positive — realistic about us, but full of hope. Yes, Jesus is as frustrated as we are that we have less spiritual capability than we ought to. But even if we rely on Him just a little, his work of death and resurrection allows even the little faith we have to do things that were previously unimaginable. Have the faith you have, not the faith you don’t.

What will your seed of faith cause next?

When I sing, “Muevete!” I am expressing my hope in Jesus, not taking on the ultimate challenge to prove Jesus worthy of worship by my miraculous excavating — as if, “If the mountain moves, then Jesus can be my Savior until we reach the next mountain!”

 

Obviously, Jesus is not rearranging the planet for his convenience, either, so he must not mean for us to look for faith that is mustard-seed size somewhere in our inner being and prove his validity as a Savior and our value as followers by moving Mt. Everest to Beijing (like in the map above). Some people give up on the Bible because such things aren’t happening like they think the Bible literally says they should. They grumble, “The Book just plain contradicts itself!” But I wish they’d soak in it long enough to see what’s really happening.

When there is a surface meaning that isn’t working for us, we do need to argue it out until we can receive its deeper content. Ignoring or reducing things we can’t understand keeps us infantile. And being content to endlessly argue keeps us adolescent. But working with the risen Lord to experience something of what his inner circle did on the Mt. of Transfiguration is more adult. Rather than focusing on how mountains are not literally moved, or on “how much faith is enough to cast out a demon,” I think we should rejoice in what the-little-faith-we-have has done in us and through us that would have been unimaginable without it.

For instance,

  • that we should believe any parts of Matthew 17 as true must be an act of God-with-us
  • that we want to ponder and even argue about who Jesus is and what he did surely could only be the Spirit of God drawing us
  • that we know we are forgiven and destined for an eternity of connection with our Creator is a big change.
  • that we care whether we have enough faith to make a difference is a conviction only a Spirit-changed heart would have.
  • that people continue to be comforted, saved from self-destruction, and energized to foment justice and hope by their faith in Jesus is just what Jesus was predicting, wouldn’t you say?

Still not satisfied short of Everest taking a step towards China? I am not sure you are respecting the faith that causes your discontent, but who knows what that seed might cause next?