I wrote a small psalm to share with the main mother in my life and she thought I should share it with you. I have been admiring the film-makers who are the prophets of the unbelieving world, these days. They are no more heeded than God’s own spokespeople. But the call remains.
Lord, save us from the liars And from our own lies.
The ice cap is still melting, But we did kill Osama bin Laden. There were no WMDs in Iraq, But we do know that Obama is Hawaiian. The perps of the money melt down still reign, But we are now friends with Duchess Kate.
Forgive us as we calculate How much it costs to tell the truth. Each keystroke hurts; Each small look a threat Of crass resistance.
The iciness is growing, So we kill our terror with quiet. New enemies rummage around in us, So we deftly adapt reality. The audacious win the power, So we turn our minds to drivel.
Forgive us as we obfuscate How much it costs To live in truth — Each threat of conflict, Each painful question A reason to live a lie.
You have caused yourself endless trouble Being and telling truth. You have caused us endless trouble Following and discerning. We lack your courage. Speak it into us.
I have been meaning to tell this little story about Kristen for a few weeks. The Monday after resurrection Sunday seems like a good time to tell it. Our good feeling of new life is going to meet up with our schedules. The resolve we honed with our Lent disciplines is going to meet up with opposition. The week after Easter can be such a let-down because we get tested and we don’t meet the test as well as we would like. So I thought I would offer you a story about how Kristen got tested and met the test. I think of her up on her soap box quite often, making herself heard among the big loud men speaking for the empire. I appreciate her example, because I also need the courage to open my mouth and speak my heart. Like her, I am also confronted with a world that desperately needs what has been lavished on me in Jesus.
She was doing a summer internship last summer at a farm in Massachusetts. It was some, wonderful organic farm that invites the kids up to do some work, get themselves dirty and get reconverted to humanity. One of the farm’s outlets for their produce was the farmer’s market in a village nearby. Kristen went along to help sell the kale and whatnot.
It happened that the village had a good Massachusetts tradition of having a “speaker’s corner.” When there was a farmer’s market, they set up a place where people could exercise their right of free speech. Since it was near the Fourth of July, speakers were feeling especially patriotic and quite a few people were getting up to say something. The rhetoric was tending to lean Tea Partyish.
One man got up and read a familiar paragraph: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. — That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it…”
He thought that the government was doing a relatively admirable job of securing our rights with its various wars. He exhorted the crowd to support the troops. Kristin was not having it. She had been reading Wendell Berry. She was about ready to join Shalom House for a couple of years (at least). So she decided to get up on the soapbox and speak back with poetry. She whipped out the sword of Wendell Berry and said:
The year begins with war. Our bombs fall day and night, Hour after hour, by death Abroad appeasing wrath, Folly, and greed at home. Upon our giddy tower We’d oversway the world. Our hate comes down to kill Those whom we do not see, For we have given up Our sight to those in power And to machines, and now Are blind to all the world. This is a nation where No lovely thing can last. We trample, gouge, and blast; The people leave the land; The land flows to the sea. Fine men and women die, The fine old houses fall, The fine old trees come down: Highway and shopping mall Still guarantee the right And liberty to be A peaceful murderer, A murderous worshipper, A slender glutton, Forgiving No enemy, forgiven By none, we live the death Of liberty, become What we have feared to be. — 1991 – I
Her new friends at the farm were a bit concerned. Not only were her listeners the prospective buyers of farm-fresh organic tomatoes, they later told her that they were not entirely convinced that the villagers would not do her harm if she kept reading her poetry. But sometimes when Kristen gets going she needs to complete her thoughts. So she kept going and closed with this:
Now you know the worst we humans have to know about ourselves, and I am sorry,
for I know you will be afraid. To those of our bodies given without pity to be burned, I know
there is no answer but loving one another even our enemies, and this is hard.
But remember: when a man of war becomes a man of peace, he gives a light, divine
though it is also human. When a man of peace is killed by a man of war, he gives a light.
You do not have to walk in darkness. If you have the courage for love, you may walk in light. It will be
the light of those who have suffered for peace. It will be your light.
1995 – VTo my granddaughters who visited the Holocaust Museum on the day of the burial of Yitzak Rabin, November 6th 1995.
Thank God for people with the courage to share their heart for peace! Jesus died on the cross for reconciliation with God and others. Jesus pointedly did not raise an army to achieve his ends. Jesus rose again and continues to rise in people who have the courage to be the light. The light comes from being at peace with God. But peace with God that does not make peace on earth doesn’t really have much to get up on the box and say, does it? Let’s meet our tests this week with audacity and hope.
I heard about a memorial service the other day for an old friend’s sister. She was a home healthcare nurse without medical insurance. She knew she had something wrong with her, but she kept putting off going to the doctor because she was afraid – afraid of what might be wrong with her and afraid she couldn’t pay for any treatment. When she finally couldn’t stand the pain and uncertainty, she went to the doctor. But it was too late, the cancerous tumor had burst and she died within weeks.
I think this woman had other choices than the ones she made. And I am sure there were personal reasons for her behavior which I do not understand. But the fact that someone could not afford health care and died as a result makes me want to speak to the powers in the small way I have at hand today – this blog post.
I am feeling the prophet Isaiah on the subject:
Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar? To whom will you run for help? Where will you leave your riches? (Isaiah 10:1-3)
The legislators in congress, who, for the most part, equal “the rich,” have made choices and are on the verge of making more radical choices that have an impact on us all, especially the poor.
It is reported that Congressman Paul Ryan makes every member of his staff read philosopher Ayn Rand, the shameless promoter of the gospel of aggressive self-interest. His new budget proposal reflects this.
Jim Wallis says, “Congressman Ryan’s budget isn’t really about deficit reduction. It’s about choices — choices that will determine what kind of a country we become. And Paul Ryan has made the choice to hurt people who don’t have the political clout to defend themselves. Two-thirds of the long-term budget cuts that Ryan proposed are directed at modest and low-income people, as well as the poorest of the poor at home and abroad. At the same time, he proposed tax cuts up to 30 percent for some of our country’s wealthiest corporations.”
While cutting into our country’s modest attempt at providing a social safety net, people who call themselves “deficit hawks” completely ignore the most consistently wasteful, and morally compromised area of the whole federal budget — our endless and unaccountable military spending.
Isaiah says:
“Doom to you who legislate evil, who make laws that make victims — laws that make misery for the poor, that rob my destitute people of dignity, exploiting defenseless widows, taking advantage of homeless children. What will you have to say on Judgment Day, when Doomsday arrives out of the blue? Who will you get to help you? What good will your money do you?” (Isaiah 10:1-3, The Message)
Ryan’s budget is a bonanza for the rich and devastation for the poor. That’s a fact. It is frightening that the main rationale for the cuts is about the so-called immorality of deficit spending, instead of about the choices the officials are making about what kind of country we are becoming. Further impoverishing the poor in order to add more wealth to the wealthy is not an acceptable political or moral strategy.
When President Obama offered his budget he said, “In the last decade, the average income of the bottom 90 percent of all working Americans actually declined. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent saw their income rise by an average of more than a quarter of a million dollars each. That’s who needs to pay less taxes? They want to give people like me a $200,000 tax cut that’s paid for by asking 33 seniors each to pay $6,000 more in health costs. That’s not right. And it’s not going to happen as long as I’m president.”
But what Obama failed to say was that we are currently wasting lives and billions of dollars in Afghanistan on a strategy that fails to make us any safer, which is its stated justification. And he should mention the billions being spent on Iraq, Libya and untold expenditures in trying to police the world. For instance, the U.S. has 3,500 troops in Djibouti, 53,000 in Germany, and 8,000 in Qatar.
Last night we had a congressman in our meeting (a first, I think). He seemed like a nice man. I managed to open up the Israeli-Palestinian mess as part of our closing prayer. He started talking to me about it as soon as I shook his hand. He immediately embroiled us the intricacies of visionless statecraft. The whole congress seems to be tied up with Randian, self-interested competition, which results in a predictable, endless conflict over protecting wealth and getting more. Where are the wise people? I told him I needed to leave the government to him while I tried to serve Jesus. Mostly, I mean that. But when someone dies because they can’t afford healthcare, because they have been made afraid to go to the hospital, I think we all need to put on some Isaiah.
[On a related note: join us this Friday for the Good Friday vigil outside of Delia’s gun shop, 4pm]
I’m energized by the Men’s Retreat. Just getting over 90 men in one place at one time, focused as best they can focus on the Lord — either it will wear you out or get you going! It got me going. I came away with many good memories and an encouragement from God : “Let’s go ahead and change, Rod.” There are changes to be made.
I think changing may be the art of retreat. We need to go, get out, and be away in order to stay, go forward, and be present. Making an intentional change of pace for a weekend often breeds unexpected development. I think I am having that experience right now.
Group art
A view of our forest-found-object art
Our small group, motley crew that it was, symbolized the art of retreat with some retreat art. Obviously, when you look at the picture, you have to think, “I guess you had to be there.” True.
Our master’s-piece mostly derived from the camp’s giant compost pile. Our initial idea was to raise up some fallen, decaying nature in praise to the Lord (or something like that). But men like to build things; so our art piece sort of took on a life of it’s own. It kept changing until it provided enough interior space for something that ended up looking like an altar in the heart of it.
Someone spontaneously dared us to circle that little altar under it’s roof of debris without destroying the structure — which we each accomplished as exactly who we are. It was trail of bowed-down men on a journey through the heart of fallen creation raised up in worship. I’m not kidding — at least that is what I was doing.
My symbolic journey has turned out to be a surprisingly abiding memory. (And I can’t forget Brian Dwyer lithely moving through it at comparatively breakneck speed, either). The memory is a good motivation for change. The whole weekend was a means to get moving.
I had to get to the retreat place.
I had to get into the smaller group.
Then I had to fall down a couple of times extracting limbs.
I had to negotiate the vision of our art with my brothers.
I had to shamelessly move around the altar like Samuel raising his Ebenezer.
Wonderful.
Today I am circling the altar in my heart and in my day. I have some more wilderness alive in me through which Jesus is travelling with me.
Last night the room was dark and smoky. Candace took a journey around the room with a censer and spoke out laments and promises based on the prophet Micah. The wall had grown with another floor-to-ceiling abstract painting. Looking at it all a day later, I have to wonder, “How weird is that?”
It seemed like people were into it. But given the typical attention-span of most of us, it will probably take an uninitiated person about five years to understand what is going on during the season of Lent. I hope they stick around that long. A lot is going on. Right now we are getting to the home stretch, moving toward April 24 and the resurrection.
Lent will not soon be popular
Lent goes against about everything that’s going down these days, which is the main reason I like it. But it is not going to get popular any time soon.
Although — Lent is, apparently, getting more popular with evangelicals. Many of the people of Circle of Hope are from that fold. I never really drank the evangelical kool-aid, so sometimes I don’t understand how big a leap some people are taking to use the discipline of Lent. They suspect anything that is Catholic and feel obligated to argue about orthodoxy. (Someone came through the door last night, smelled smoke, and asked, “Are we having a BBQ? I thought we were Protestants.”)
But uncomfortable Christians from the subculture don’t make me nearly as concerned as teen-agers from the culture at large, when it comes to Lent. Increasingly, Christians are even more uncool than ever, and the notion of discipline, in general, and ancient things, in particular, are not likely to be the next fad. I don’t want Lent to be a fad. But I don’t want people to miss it.
Tina Wells has me thinking about teens and Lent, which is probably why I’m thinking, “How weird is that?” She knows all about what teens think is cool and uncool. So she hates “Gossip Girl” because it is all about the market perpetuating stereotypes without even asking their audience. People call her the “teen whisperer” because she can speak a fifteen-year-old’s language even though she is older now. She’s been a marketing guru since she was a teen herself. Now she’s working on becoming Camden County’s Oprah. She doesn’t really like MTV’s controversial “Skins” (another rip-off from British TV) but she relates to it. On Joy Behar she said, “I was haunted by the decisions they were making, but it’s realistic…I think it’s the reality that’s making people so scared of the show.”
I am not scared of “Skins” (I have about ten episodes on my DVR right now and nothing is malfunctioning!). But I think it might point out how weird Christians are becoming. If a teen’s church is doing Lent, she might be uncomfortable that it is weird Christianity. But her secret discomfort might really be that she is more like “Skins” than Christian. That reality unnerves Tina Wells, and it unnerves me. But I want to be more like Tina and wade in to keep learning the language of the culture emerging around me. If you are speaking it better than I am, I want to get to know you.
One of the reasons I like the spiritual discipline of Lent so much, is because it is so Christian. It is unabashedly speaking the language of reconciliation with God. A person who is a nonbeliever often gets Lent better than the Christians who suspect it is too weird. The unbeliever doesn’t know any “better,” so they can either do it or not. So many believers are modestly doing Lent while pondering whether they want to do “Skins” or not. Either way, Lent gets the subject out of one’s head, however distantly it might be there, and into a smoky, weird room, in which they’ll be invited to share the body and blood, and be invited into the possibilities of knowing God and their true selves.
I don’t get out of the city limits much, unless I am on a plane. So I enjoyed my stimulating car ride to Lancaster Co. the other day. I went to a morning-long meeting that came equipped with hugs, affirmation and encouragement from good-hearted people trying to do good things. The added benefit was that I had nine hours to meditate and cogitate. I want to share some results.
The results are promises. They are in reaction to what I experienced, but not in opposition. I’m not even going to mention what meeting I was at, because what I say might sound personally critical — I have no general aspersions to cast, so don’t go there. But the general impact of my day away was to be warned of three temptations we are facing. I am feeling the Ephesians 6 battle today. The meeting caused me to remember my first love. So I am constrained to do with God and you what I did when I first faced the need to practice fidelity to my wife: I made a promise. I think we have new promises to make to one another before the Lord these days.
If we are going to “do everything and stand,” I think these are among the things we need to say to the Lord, to ourselves, to each other and to the powers.
I will stay as human as humanly possible.
We will not bend the knee to what we have created to amplify our capacity.
The temptation: I have been to a few worship times, now, in which the worship leader is a small person made huge on a screen. The screen is the mediator of the worship in words and pictures. This past weekend I had the bizarre experience of a speaker playing a video of himself and turning to watch himself give a speech instead of just talking to the 3-400 people who were in the room! Christians need to rage against the machine, at least we should use them consciously and not just conform to the technology available just because it is available. And leaders (like me) need to be careful not to create an atmosphere for people who give us charge of their souls in which those unsuspecting people are lured into further complicity with the godless technology powers.
If I want to know the truth about you, I will ask you.
We will not bend our knee to data.
The temptation: I was listening to a presentation about a group in which I am deeply involved. The speaker was talking about our financial health and presenting different charts and conclusions about our downward-trending patterns. I was tracking with the presentation until he got to the point where he said, ‘We don’t know why the contributions are less.” The data was inconclusive. I thought to myself, “Wait a minute!!” If all the staff picked up the phone and made about twelve phone calls a week, they could ask all the local leaders about the giving, personally, and have a conclusion about the downtrend in a month! Data makes our love lazy; as Facebook amply demonstrates, data can make our community illusional. I think the powers want Jesus himself to be seen as just another collection of data and want his people to mediate their relationships with sociological analysis.
I will make history with you.
We will not bend the knee to precedent.
The temptation: I am connected to two organizations which had interesting opportunities to be inclusive in their meetings last weekend and almost made it. But they were thwarted by their own history. Each has a strong, Central Pennsylvania sense of being “us.” When they talk about their somewhat new, multicultural, multiethnic nature, they talk about how “we” are becoming diverse. I usually feel like I am one of the people who has added the diversity to “us”, since I am an Auslander from Philadelphia (still the cradle of democracy) and I have all the elements of otherness: bits of Native American ancestry, sprinklings of radical politics, and, the main thing, no family history in Central PA. Of all the people in the world, we Christians, who have been born again into a new family in Jesus, should be very adaptable when it comes to being respectful of but unattached to our history. The people who made us who we are would be proud if we made who’s coming next who they are. I know Jesus is sending forth His Spirit to meet the unbelievers of the megalopolis pushing their way into Lititz. Our past may enrich how we love them, but our relationships are going to make a new memory in Christ.
As you think and pray with me, what comes to mind as the temptations the powers are throwing in your way? Are they some of the same things? Thinking bigger, what do the powers throw in our way, as a people? As we incarnate Jesus, speak the truth in love and keep our eyes on giving the best we have to offer to our era, we have great opportunity to live out of our true selves in Jesus and make a difference. I am encouraged all over again, just thinking about the possibilities that could be realized by keeping our promises.
Dear friends, please go see Of Gods and Men. If you are in Philadelphia, it will be at the Ritz Five for about five more seconds, I imagine. It is the most Christian movie I have ever seen. It is as slow as life in a Cistercian monastery, so don’t go sleepy. It is in French with subtitles, so don’t go irritable. It is about being a real Christian, so go discouraged, or questioning, or ignorant. Go to meditate on what it means to live by faith in a tumultuous, violent world.
Here’s the trailer: A monastery perched in the mountains of North Africa in the 1990s. Eight French Christian monks live in harmony with their Muslim brothers. When a crew of foreign workers is massacred by an Islamic fundamentalist group, fear sweeps though the region. The army offers them protection, but the monks refuse. Should they leave? Despite the growing menace in their midst, they slowly realize that they have no choice but to stay… come what may. This film is loosely based on the life of the Cistercian monks of Tibhirine in Algeria, from 1993 until their kidnapping in 1996.
Gwen and I both felt, after we left the theater, “I have been WAY over-concerned with my problems.” It is easy to forget how wrapped up we get in small things and make them big, because they are the only things we’ve got. The movie was about big things and how to find the faith to face them. Watching it made me understand that I could also be faithful in relation to my small sufferings.
I have been praying ever since, “Thank you, Lord, that there are still people who do something as radical as plant their Cistercian monastery in the Atlas Mountains to pray for Algeria and love its people!” The story of these monks opened my eyes to realize that I am living among such a people, who are inspired enough to be a circle of hope and plant themselves in the middle of the megalopolis with a very similar intention and practice. We aren’t Cistercians, but we are strange enough when we aren’t too afraid to be so. Plus, we have Compassion Teams and intentional households that keep us on the edge. “Thank you, Lord!”
Circle of Hope has a strange connection with the monks, you know. They were kidnapped on the exact weekend we had our first public meeting. It was Palm Sunday. Jesus says, “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”
We had a couple of perennial questions arise at our cell last week. We were reading Exodus 15, which is a great paean to victory. God intervenes on behalf of the escaping Israelites and drowns Pharaoh’s army in the sea — the women dance and sing.
When certain Old Testament tales are considered, three questions regularly arise:
1) You are always talking about love. The God of the Old Testament hardly looks universally loving. What’s with that?
2) A big change seems to have taken place between the Old and New Testaments, what am I to think about God and the Bible?
3) I’ve been taught that God never changes. If God has actually developed a new kind of love, isn’t that wrong?
Lately, it seems like I have become audacious enough to attempt answers to giant questions in a blog post. This is another of those attempts. I won’t get too far, but I want to stay in the dialogue.
Let’s talk about God’s love
What people call love these days is often social tolerance (“Love me, love Slovenia”) or consumer preference (“I love Cheetos. I am part of the Frito Lay community”). People think God loves like they do and then get mad at him for being out of line. Given the way a lot of people think about “love” these days, when God intervenes in anyone’s life with any kind of judgment or strategy that seems WAY out of line. So Exodus causes problems.
Intervention looks like intolerance. People might ask: “Why would God be on Israel’s side? If the Pharaoh’s soldiers were just doing their jobs, why would God kill them for it?” Their questions are based on a “democratic” idea that love is protecting someone’s right to be themselves.
Intervention looks like a denial of choice. People might ask, “Why would God get in the middle of people making their choices and be so domineering?” Their questions are asked assuming everyone is a consumer following the invisible hand of the marketplace, not the personal hand of God.
We’re all about expertise and politcs, these days, but God’s passion for the redemption and health of creation is more complex than social and economic theories. His love is not subject to such theories. But that doesn’t mean we can’t understand him; God’s purposes are hardly secret. God is well known and her plans for humanity have even been written down for about 3000 years. His invitation to love has been consistent. Should she violate the most recent philosophy that has arisen to oppose him or debunk her, that would not be unusual.
If your issue is, specifically, how God’s love and Old Testament violence goes together, a nice piece on what God is doing in relation to all the violence in the Bible can be found here.
God in the Old and New Testament
Merely comparing and contrasting pieces of the Bible, is not listening very carefully to the Holy Spirit; it is more like Sesame St. characters trying to teach us that “one of these things is not like the other.” I think it is much better to think of the scripture in more relational terms. We should think of God as a parent, like Jesus does, not as an abstraction, like modern science might (or like Greek philosophy, for that matter). Then it is easier to understand how the scripture relates to us.
God is not a static thing, and human understanding of how to relate to God is a growing experience. Creation was designed to grow and change, and God is responding accordingly. The scripture notes all that movement and variation. Talking to different eras of the world, as scripture does, is like talking to different cultures today — Nigeria is not Thailand, but believers are having a fine time with God in both places. What’s more, you are probably reading this paragraph with a different emphasis than someone else. If we wrote down all the different emphases, that wouldn’t mean that I, the writer, were accordingly different. What is consistent, among many things, from the beginning to the end in the Bible, is the theme of being freed from slavery to people, to sin and to death. That goal is fulfilled in Jesus — there is not a difference, but there is a development.
God is love. But God’s goals are not necessarily for everyone to feel loved. The creation is tested by sin and is facing death. The goal is salvation. The need is redemption. We may often be like toddlers who need basic convincing we are safe; I think the Lord is all for that. But we are designed to grow up into our fullness as embodied spirits, which includes seeing history as God sees it and finding our place in it. Seeing the Testaments as a flat study in character development rather than a testament of God’s work over thousands of years of history is too tiny. Testing the material to see whether God can be trusted, rather than seeing how God has shown his passion for us again and again, is too small.
Does God change?
Clark Pinnock wrote a controversial book not long ago that I liked. He debunked the Greekified notion that God is Aristotle’s “unmoved mover.” Instead he posited that God’s covenant with us made him the most-moved mover. Relating to God as if he were an element on the periodic table is strange.
God’s character and goals are consistent. He actively, personally holds the universe together. He can and will create and end time as we know it. She has developed in relationship with us as a species as we have developed. He changed the universe when we were created, which changed his experience, as well. Reducing God to a predictable, changeless definition, rather than a living, generative Spirit, may be comforting in some small way, but it is not true enough.
These thoughts probably don’t go far enough, but I am convinced the Holy Spirit of God will enlighten us if we keep in dialogue with God and his people. In our Men’s meeting last night, we were talking about what wisdom we might have to offer to the next generation. We had a lot to think about. But one thing was for sure — this generation is passionately engaged with principles that are not revealed as God’s way; they are fairly ignorant about God’s cross-bound love. No matter how inadequate we feel to speak back to the onslaught of antichrist thinking, we need to stay in the dialogue, and pray. God will amplify what little wisdom we have. I hope this little bit helps with the development.
Every Cell Leader, if they are engaged with their fellow cell members, is going to run up against opposition. Not necessarily antagonism, but the natural opposition people feel when Jesus calls them to follow, even more when He leads them to form a community centered around Him. It’s supernatural, not the natural to which they are accustomed. They aren’t being “bad,” they are entering the cell deeply influenced by large societal forces and their whole history. They bring assumptions that immediately pressure the cell for conformity. They are not likely to automatically change their minds and habits to conform to our vision of what following Jesus is all about! It is understandable opposition. (Besides, the society might be more “conformed” to Jesus than the church, sometimes!). Stimulating dialogue should ensue.
Good cells do not require chips, but they can help
One of the blessings of my work is the luxury of having stimulating dialogue all the time (often with chips involved!). Sometimes I am in the midst of a fascinating “issue,” but often I am just sorting out the intricate issues of being a Jesus-follower in an ever-changing, ever-falling world. In the past few weeks, I have had some deep conversations that have me thinking about the main issues we face when we try to form cells.
As a result, I have some “proverbs” forming in my mind that speak to the regular issues I discuss with people as they try to make sense of life in Christ as a cell. Here are five assumptions I think cell leaders should have when they are doing their work of nururing a circle of people coming to know Jesus and coming to know how to live as the body of Christ. Here goes:
Knowing things and knowing ourselves is more about being known than processing data.
Wisdom is revealed and received more than extracted from precedent or “the research.” When I say that, I mean that wisdom resides with God and is primarily revealed in Jesus. Nevertheless, a lot of people expect to discover God by endless data processing, since that’s what we do. Processing means progressing to them.
As a result, many people will assume that more knowledge means more progress, and progress is what we are all about. If the cell does not provide data, they may not think they are getting anywhere. If you bring up the Bible, they may be nervous, because the Bible is old data. They think that the present state of science, democracy and probably capitalism, is much smarter than everyone who ever lived before; humankind has progressed. They are also likely to think that the future will be even better; they might feel like they’ll be left behind if they attach to Jesus .
Christians certainly believe we are coming to a good end, so we like progress. And we believe individuals and societies can and should get better. But we know God has always known better; knowing God in every era is knowing better, and being known by God as God promotes our discovery of our eternity is best of all.
Blindly applying the latest “best practices” may flip vulnerable people “out of the frying pan and into the fire. “
People often tell me I will be on the wrong side of history if I don’t adapt to what’s coming around. I am trying to be adaptable. Last night I actually suspected I might be TOO adaptable. Students from Ohio came to the meeting and thought they had arrived at a different spiritual planet! One of them said, “I think one of my friends went to a church like this, once,” as if they visited Sea World and saw whales doing tricks. I like to be on the edge of what is next, not “out of this world.” We need to reach into what is coming and reach back into what was.
However, we don’t need to blindly adopt whatever the scientists and pseudo-scientists invented in the last 100-500 years, certainly not the last 50 years, certainly not what the latest movement popularizes as best practices — as if that should be a new normal. As my mom said, “Just because someone is popular does not make them good” — that might have been Jesus, not Mom, not sure. When the bandwagon crashes, the most vulnerable get most hurt.
We must not underestimate just how unwilling most of us are to suffer.
There is a lot of pressure to make being ourselves feel good and to never suffer being disliked, disrespected or disabled. Dis is becoming a forbidden syllable. (And don’t dis me because I said so!) We are not supposed to experience dis-ease, dis-comfort, or dis-appointment. If you are the cell leader that perpetrates any dis there may be instant dis-tance. Don’t be afraid, just keep talking about it.
Some things about us are not going to change this side of the age to come. We can be comforted, happy and stable, but we might not be perfect or perfectly related. Being saved is better than being perfect. Being who one is and letting God accept us and change us is better than demanding that society (or the church) supply a perfect environment for our perfect life.
Expressions of faith change over time to match an era and its needs, but that’s not improving the faith, that’s just being clear.
We Jesus-followers have always adapted to whatever society we are in, most of the time for good, sometimes with spectacularly wrong results. In the US we tend to have rich people arguments, assuming the whole world is like us (or would like to be!). In the Congo, our brothers and sisters are debating something else.
My basic thought about everything is, “What provides for redemption?” Not, “How can I make my religion adaptable to what’s happening now?” I’m not ashamed of Jesus. God does not need updating, as if he were a style. But, at the same time, love speaks the language of the loved one.
Being chosen is the beginning of freedom.
Most people seem to think that choice is the end of freedom. For instance: if Libyans get democracy, everything will be fine (just like it is here!). I don’t think many people consciously think this, but they act like they believe that endless choices, like consumer choices, make them human. Human rights is often a discussion of “choice.”
I agree that having rights is sure better than being dominated! But I hasten to add that the philosophy of choice is also a domination system, and being free from conforming to it is my right in Christ. Having many or few choices does not make me more human and certainly not more spiritually free.
This is a tricky argument to have while munching on a cookie during a cell meeting. But it will undoubtedly come up, because a lot of people think morality is about rights. Since Christians are all for morality, then we must be about rights. It is surprising to people when we go deeper than that and talk about how losing our right to be “free” of God has given us freedom to be our true selves back in relationship with God.
All this over chips?
How many giant issues can one pastor fit on a page? Thanks for getting this far. My life feels like a lot of giant issues squashed into a little brain — my days have been full of stimulating conversations that can’t get finished in a short amount of time. It is also like a cell — full of fascinating people with more issues to consider than there is time in a meeting.
Any help you can give in how to state redemptive truths positively and not just join the flame-throwers on the net, in the Congress and on TV will be appreciated.
I had a spiritual director once who was trained in the “Ignation School” of spirituality. Our relationship was a nice experience for me. He was a chemist, by education, and brought much of the personality and expertise of his field with him into our relationship. Being almost the opposite of a chemist, in training and typical personality type, I benefited greatly.
At one point, he told me about the three ways I could be tempted, according to Ignatius, and asked me to decide which way I was being tempted in the moment. I have never forgotten the imagery. Here are the thoughts from the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola paraphrased by David Fleming. I thought you might like to examine yourself to see how you are likely to be opposed this week. According to Ignatius three are ThreeWays the Enemy Works:
Like a Bully
The enemy behaves like a bully who is a weakling before strength, but a tyrant before weakness. It would be characteristic of a bully to lose courage and take flight when confronted with someone who is determined and strong of will. However, if a person loses courage and begins to flee, the anger, vindictiveness, and rage of the bully will surge up and know no bounds. In the same way the enemy becomes weak, loses courage, and turns to flight as soon as the one leading a spiritual life faces their temptations boldly. (SE 325)
I have been very encouraged this week by dear friends who have had the courage to face “the bully” in whatever guise he was taking. They make me remember the recurring dream I had for several weeks, long ago now, in which a “monster” was chasing me. Gwen suggested I prepare to turn and face it that night rather than dreading to run away from it in my dreams. I decided to do it, and in my dream I did it. The result was exactly as Ignatius said. I proved it had no power over me.
Like a False Lover
The Enemy’s behavior can also be compared to that of a false lover. One who loves falsely uses another for selfish gains, and so people become objects at one’s disposal or like playthings for entertainment or good times. A false lover usually suggests that the so-called intimacy of relationship be kept secret because of fear that such duplicity will be made known. So does the Enemy often act in ways to keep temptations secret, and our tactics must be to bring our temptations out into the light of day to someone like our director, confessor or some other spiritual companion. (SE 326)
I regularly hear about the literal “false lovers” who lock people up. Porn is the undiscussed false lover for any people. Many people have connected with a person who doesn’t love Jesus and that relationship is a secret love. Some people have many secrets about how they have satisfied their lust and pretended they didn’t to their intimates. Sex it a spiritual matter. Although many people are resolute in pretending otherwise, there are probably no inconsequential couplings or orgasms.
But our loves are not all sexual. We have many lovers who use us and leave us kicked to the curb. We trust our employers or addictions or abusers, even when they don’t love us like Jesus. We trust our false selves in all their delusions and bad heart-habits, even when they have repeatedly been proven self-destructive.
The solution is dialogue. We shouldn’t wait for our expectations of trustworthiness to be fully satisfied before we talk about our lovers. They are much less powerful in the light. Just because they fear the light, and they tell us that being secret is better, and they warn us of the terrible consequences of living in the light, that doesn’t mean they aren’t lying.
Like a Shrewd Army Commander
The Enemy can also work like a shrewd army commander who carefully maps out the tactics of the attack at the weakest point of defense. The military leader knows the weakness is found in two ways: a) the weakness of fragility and unpreparedness, and b) the weakness of complacent strength which is self-sufficient pride.
The Enemy attacks come against us at both points of weakness. The first kind of weakness is less serious in that we more readily acknowledge our need and cry or for help from God. The second kind of weakness is far more serious and more devastating in its effect upon us so that it can be a more favored tactic of the Enemy. (SE 327)
Peter says the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. This is a similarly threatening image. Our enemy is like an army commander scoping out the weak defenses of our walled city. Some places, like the gates we open to the world every day are well-defended because we know about them. But there are weak sections of the wall, perhaps, that defend places we never expect to be attacked, or don’t want to imagine being attacked because we’ve been hurt there before, that are much more dangerous.
Opposition is real
For instance, Circle of Hope is a relational network. We count on people loving one another. We have 50 cell leaders entrusted with nurturing the process of micro-communities. So, naturally, we can get complacent about how everyone supposedly loves one another and can be “sitting ducks” in the gun sites of an enemy shooting conflict at us. We can be so committed to our harmony that we don’t allow healthy conflict, or don’t even allow needed change to occur if it might create conflict – even though we have a proverb that says, “Everyone is recovering from the sin addiction – expect conflict.”
On a more personal level, each of us might be very unaware of our childhood defense mechanisms and just consider them “normal,” or even “my right to be who I am,” or even, nowadays, “my genetic disposition that I can’t change even if I want to.” We could all use a little more Ignatian attention to self-sufficiency. The enemy would love us to be self-sufficient. It is antithetical to serving God.
Ignatian spirituality is not for the weakly committed. It takes a lot of time to ponder all the ways we could be growing stronger in faith and becoming stronger opponents to the enemies of God. I am encouraged to take the time, because much of the time I am not spending becoming aware of my temptations I am spending conforming to them.
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When certain Old Testament tales are considered, three questions regularly arise:
