One of the characteristics of modernity, according to Anthony Giddens (The Consequence of Modernity, p. 27), is the rise of “expert systems” of “technical accomplishments or professional expertise that organize large areas of material and social environments in which we live today.” These systems and experts allow the layperson to trust in the system and the expertise of the professional and thus stand apart from or live without intimate knowledge of huge areas of life. So, whether the professional is a lawyer, doctor, or counselor, we trust the expert knowledge of that professional without question. (more…)
Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category
Finding their Voice
Tuesday, August 31st, 2010Hope in the Rubble
Monday, February 1st, 2010Growing up I learned via various mediums (church, movies, books) that good and evil existed in separate realms and were color-coded. The good guys had white hats and said certain words and phrases, and the bad guys wore black hats and said the exact opposite of the good guys. And yet, I have since discovered that the world is not so clear and simple. (more…)
No Partiality!
Monday, September 21st, 2009A culture of abuse and slander swirls around us and seeks to poison our view of the world. Via the internet, television, printed materials – from politicians, talk show hosts, good ole boys, and even well-meaning people – we are told that Muslims, Democrats, homosexuals, illegal aliens, and others are less than human, represent the dregs of society, and are not worthy to live. In shrill tones, these voices shout – Fear! Protect! Attack!
As disciples of Jesus Christ, we must resist these voices and hold fast to an alternative vision. Instead, the voice of Jesus must order our words and actions – “whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also” … “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Mt 5:40, 44). Jesus did more than speak these words, he lived them by touching lepers, speaking to women, embracing Samaritans, loving those on the margins, and suffering death on the cross.
The Jesus way confronted Peter. A lifetime of religious instruction and cultural reinforcement had taught him to hate, despise, and dismiss the Romans. And yet, God revealed to Peter another way – love and inclusion. Peter is confronted with a choice – either abandon his prejudice or deny God’s acceptance of Cornelius (Acts 10). In the end, Peter declares, “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality!”
I can disagree with another and even be on the opposite side of an issue, but the gospel does not allow me to slander, curse, strike or kill another human being. If I slander or demonize another person, be they Republican or Democrat, Jew or Muslims, black or white, poor or immigrant (legal or illegal), homosexual or disabled, then I deny the gospel. For the gospel of Jesus Christ …
* is powerful enough to transform anyone – “it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” (Rom 1:16)
* is for the whole world – “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” (Jn 3:16)
* unifies people – “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28)
* creates a new humanity – “a multitude which no one could count, from every nation, all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, … and they cry out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Salvation to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb” (Rev. 7:9, 10)
The gospel destroys the walls that separate the people. As the people of God, we are called to join him in the ministry of wall-demolition. For you see, while we were enemies of God, Christ showed no partiality toward us; rather he died for our sins and made a way for us to know him, his love and grace. We serve his mission not through venom, hate, exclusion, slander, curses or self-preservation but by laying down our lives for the other. This is the gospel – may we have courage to speak and live it in the midst of a polarized and uncivil society!
Heart and Mind
Monday, August 31st, 2009Zeal is well and good, as long as it is tempered with knowledge. We who teach and preach must be careful not to call people to heart-felt commitment and excitement without explaining the need to go on to maturity via careful and adequate instruction. In fact, to challenge people to zeal and not provide the means to grow in their understanding is less than responsible. Too many people begin like a flame only to burn out with the passing of time or when things become difficult. Zeal and knowledge must walk hand-in-hand.
Part of the problem is a common opinion in the church that knowledge destroys or undermines faith. I have heard people say …
“If you study theology, you will loose your passion for God.”
“God looks on the heart more than the mind.”
“Doctrine only confuses a person.”
“Simple faith is the best faith.”
“Knowledge puffs up.
And while many of us would deny such a lopsided opinion, our emphasis on a commitment response in contrast to our lack of attention to and opportunity for discipleship and formation indicates what we really think.
And yet, Jesus clearly makes the point that we are to love God with more than the heart (Luke 10:27). His definition of love of God includes the mind (as well as soul and strength). I believe he did this for several reasons.
- We are more than one-dimensional beings, and thus, truly loving God requires more than an emotional response. Loving God requires more than a partial-person commitment. It demands our whole being.
- The heart can lead us astray. We can actually dishonor God through uninformed actions while all the while acting with fervor and passion. The heart is not to be trusted to act alone.
- An intellectual pursuit of God provides the necessary refinement of our misconceptions and development of our capacity to believe.
- When the circumstances of life become difficult and problems sap our emotions, it is knowledge of who God is and how he acts and the truths of the faith that can sustain us. Feelings wane, emotions come and go, and thus, we need more than a ‘heart-tether’ for faith.
Because it is convenient to measure commitment to God by emotion, passion, or fervor in worship, we assume that if people are not ‘excited’, or continually smiling, or animated in their worship that something is personally wrong with them or there is something lacking in their love for God. Emotions, at best, tell only part of the story, and, at worst, they can be deceptive. In the end, the ultimate proof that we belong to and follow hard after Jesus is our steadfastness and faithfulness to him in the best and worst of situations. Such faithfulness requires our whole person – heart, mind, and soul.
So, we must …
-actively and consistently read the Bible, both Old and New Testaments
-embrace life’s questions and not push them under the table
-avail ourselves of opportunities to gather with other believers in study, conversation, and questioning
-read the opinions of others (books, articles, commentaries)
-ask God to catch our mind up with our heart and vice-versa
If I am to faithfully face the challenges of the present day and be active in my witness of Christ to those around me, I must diligently pursue God in both my zeal and understanding.
Service
Sunday, May 31st, 2009 ”The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.”
Mark 10:45
Just as Christ came as a servant, service is the role of the church. And yet, the church is constantly tempted to be a triumphant and victorious community that aligns itself with power, privilege, and place rather than finding itself in the places of service. There is a fine line between the the “victorious Christian life” and the assumption that privilege and rights belong to us irrespective of others. An indicator of when we have crossed that line is when we expect to be served by the powers in society, to be at the head of the table, to be respectable and honored – to be socially advantaged.
History shows that the people of God usually do not voluntarily move toward service. Rather, service is forced on us via humiliation, loss, and exile. Quite possibly the American church is at the brink of such loss. The Christendom arrangement within the American context (particularly in the South) has run its course, and Christianity is being disestablished in school, by government, in polite society, and within the wider popular culture. Many Christian leaders act as though it is still 1950 and that society still cares about what they have to say or is looking for them to determine what is right or wrong. However, the year is 2009 and society is not listening, nor does it care what we think. At best, the wider culture only wants to manipulate and corrupt Christianity for its ends.
The need for the gospel to be at home in its context (contextualization) must be balanced by the necessity of critical self-examination. Christianity becomes un-Christian when its essence is severely diluted by societal forces. Patriotism and gospel, consumerism and gospel, entertainment and gospel, sports and gospel, wealth and gospel are dangerous mixtures that can and will mute the church’s voice and disengage it from mission. Thus, the church constantly needs are reminder; a means to assist it in strking the right balance.
Service is the means through which we remember who Jesus is and are reminded who we are to be. Jesus was in the world, for the world, and serving the world. Our renewal as the people of God will not come through accumulating more power, or recapturing a golden era, or re-inventing ourselves. Rather, renewal comes as we realign our mission to that of the Suffering Servant by taking up a towel, kneeling before the maimed and marginalized-washing feet, dressing wounds, and loving without conditions.
Service is not resignation from or a forfeiting of the church’s role in society. It is the means through which it actually is salt and light, permeating the whole of society. The power of the gospel is made real not in our alliance with the state or in political maneuvers but in our service.
Jesus came to serve; we are called to serve. Either we freely pick up the towel or circumstances may force it on us.
The Corporate Hurdle
Monday, May 18th, 2009Ronald Johnson in a 2004 article entitled, “Mission in the Kingdom Oriented Church” (Review and Expositor, 101, pp.473-95), lists a number of hurdles that prevent local churches from being the church in mission. For him, the “corporate hurdle seems to be the most formidable.”
“The corporate model has caused churches to invest in cooperation as the model for mission and to fund home and overseas missions by sending money to central mission agencies. The passion for mission has been delegated, along with funds, to the work of agencies who send others on mission for the churches. As a result, the passion (sometimes, if any) of local churches for mission has been generally local or community based and has not been inclusive of the world except through the work of the mission sending agencies they sponsor. The average church member is led to feel that giving money to missions is the sum total of mission involvement in the world.” (page 476)
True Freedom
Sunday, May 17th, 2009Czech theologian, J. L. Hromadka, explains why Christians in Hungary and China can have true freedom, even though the state does not afford them simple liberties and rights.
“As theologians we are aware that the Church in the true sense must always be shaped by forces which come from above and which liberate us internally-or are we not aware of this? The crisis of the Church throughout the world consists in Churches not realizing this, in that they constantly seek support where they should not, and do not have the courage of inner freedom which her true substance gives the Church. The question of freedom is a difficult theological problem, for true freedom is not something served up to us on a platter: ‘Help yourself!’ On the contrary, it is something which must always be fought for and won in spiritual courage against our own human self and everything to which we are accustomed. What joy it is when we realize that the Church is actually living by this freedom and that it cannot be taken from her by anyone. What breadth is necessary here, what inner liberation and what love for those who are around us.” Cited in Stephen Neill, The Unfinished Task (1957), 80-81.
Could it be that those of us with the benefit of liberties and rights find it more difficult to win for ourselves true freedom? Is there the need to affirm that freedom in Christ – true freedom – is not dependent upon the type of government under which we live or the whims of a ruler? What we have in Christ cannot taken from us by anyone. What joy!
Humility and Weakness
Sunday, April 5th, 2009The church reflecting its culture and culture defining the church.
Such is the state of affairs after centuries of the Christendom arrangement. The proof of such a statement can be seen in the manner in which church and culture find identity and power in common symbols, ideas, and institutions. The arrangement is both positive and negative. Positively, the church reflecting its culture demonstrates that the gospel has made itself at home and has become part of the context. This points to the translatability and universality of the gospel. Whether the soil is American, Indian, or Russia, the potent seed of the gospel sprouts and makes particular sense in each context. However, this positive can turn into a negative, as culture co-opts the gospel for its purposes and goals, many of which are contrary to the Jesus Way. The church is then unable to speak to the evils, abuses, and powers of its culture. It has been captured by something other than the gospel.
The correcting forces in the balance between reflecting culture and being defined by culture are humility and weakness. By living in humility toward my cultural traits and stengths, I acknowledge that the gospel way must always trumph the cultural way. I should never join the chorus of those who brag about culture – my country right or wrong. Even if my culture is (were) the most technologically advanced or the most wealth-producing of modern times, I am to readily admit that these traits have at the same time produced tremendous social and moral problems.
Weakness guards me against an unhealthy mix of gospel and power. Most of the world does not have the options I have, and thus cannot choose power or privilege. I can choose. So, I choose to live solely in the power and privilege my culture affords or in solidarity with the diseased, troubled, trafficked, impoverished, and abandoned of the world. In choosing weakness, I demonostrate that the gospel is the kind of power that can transform me into a different kind of person, and changes people and society for the good. When others see us as powerful people who come to lord over or exert our cultural identity and strength, they will hate us even more and continue to hate our gospel.
Culture is not bad. It acts as a force to organize life and give identity. It is necessary and good. However, it can overwhelm our good intentions, seduce us toward evil actions, and eclipse our identify in Christ. If we are to be the people of God, living according to the Jesus Way, then we must live in humility and weakness. For, you see, it was in humility and weakness that Jesus created a new kind hope that allows me and you to reach beyond our national aspirations and find release from our cultural bondage.
Exploding at the Edges
Sunday, March 22nd, 2009Dana Robert’s new book has finally arrived. Christian Mission: How Christianity Became a World Religion (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, 192 pages) recounts the history of Christian missions but not from a strict partisan perspective or as a mono-toned description of western institution and theology. Rather, Robert presents missions as “a central process in the formation of Christianity as a world religion” (p. 2). Missions gives strength and vitality to the faith through its multi-lingual and multi-cultural expressions right from the beginning (p. 17) and expands as it provides “catalyst for identity-formation” (p. 2) for the various peoples, locales, and cultures it encounters. “Cultural fluidity” and translatability, Robert maintains, are the engines for the expansion of the Christianity into a worldwide religion.
Alternative histories, especially those written from a western and/or denominational orientation, give the impression that the success of Christianity is due to one type of Christianity triumphing over errant forms. In this attempt to frame the success of Christianity as the rise of orthodox faith, other ‘Christianities’ are characterized as heresy and dismissed from the main storyline, or they are not mentioned at all. Such a one-sided interpretation of missions and Christianity is being revised by African, Latin American, and Asian historians, as well as westerners, such as Andrew Walls, Philip Jenkins, and Dana Roberts. The story is truly much broader and more diverse than we’ve been taught.
Christian Mission belongs on your list of books to read. When read along with Philip Jenkin’s The Lost History of Christianity, one cannot help but see the expansion of Christianity as greater than western colonialism or a religion exported from Britain, Germany, and America. Until you get your copy of Robert’s book, here is an enticing excerpt.
But the story of Christianity around the world is not that of a simple, linear progression. To become a world religion, Christianity first had to succeed on the local level. Specific groups of people had to understand and shape its meaning for themselves. What in totality is called a “world” religion is, on closer observation, a mosaic of local beliefs and practices in creative tension with a universal framework shaped by belief in the God of the Bible, as handed down through Jesus and his followers. … growth takes place at the edges or borderlands of Christian areas, even as Christian heartlands experience decline.
Robert’s history reminds me that I as go forth in mission I must do more than replicate my particular denomination and its theological formulations. I am to proclaim Jesus Christ and then trust the Spirit to bring understand and hope from within every language, culture, and locale. Robert and others give me hope that as I witness the demise of Christianity at what has been its center, it is exploding at the edges of the world.
I am what I Eat
Thursday, February 26th, 2009Food is such an integral part of life, and thus, we should do more than just consume food but eat with thought and intention. Because we are more than animals, we should eat sensibly and spiritually. I quickly admit that I am a novice on the subject of food and eating, but I want to know more and I want to become a much more responsible consumer of food. Here are the issues for me …
- I am what I eat. What I eat, how I eat, when I eat, and with whom I eat are life-defining issues. Eating is more than a necessary bodily function; eating determines who I am. I pull up to food and eat at least three times a day – it cannot help but define who I am.
- I am to be an active eater. This does not mean that I eat fast or am a voracious eater. It means that I am not to be passive as I approach food. I am to know where my food comes from and who prepares it. It also means that I am actively thinking of why I eat what I do. An active eater asks: Why am I eating this? Do I really need this? What nutritional value is in this food?
- I am to be a social eater. While eating is certainly for health and nutrition, it is also meant to be enjoyed and taken with others. Rather than being a solo act, eating should connect me to friends, family, strangers, and enemies. Eating is to take place around a table with other people. Conversation is the spice of food and the sweetness of a meal.
- I am to be a conscious eater. Eating must be more than getting what I want, when I want it, and at the cheapest price. Serious thought needs to be given to where food comes from, how much oil has been expended to get it to my mouth, whether pesticides and antibiotics have been used in its production, have those who produced it gotten a fair wage for their product, is it from a corporate farm or locally grown, was it ripe when harvested, has it been genetically modified, has all the nutritional value been processed out of it, etc.
- I am to eat spiritually. On the question of what is permissible to eat, Paul challenges the believers at Corinth that whether they eat or drink this or that, or whatever they do, they are to do it all for the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). I can say with certainty that if I waste food when others are starving, I am not glorifying God. If I consume more food than my body needs and thus do damage to my heart and develop diabetes, then I am not glorifying God with my body. If I am obese and gluttonous, I give witness to the fact that my appetite is out of control and my desires are unchecked and undisciplined. Eating is a spiritual matter.
I am a reformed and reforming ‘mindless-overeater’. I admit that when it comes to sensible and spiritual eating, I am a neophyte. But I am actively being tutored by the women in my family and others. I invite you visit the blog of my mentor in all things food – What Would Jesus Eat? Lucas seeks to identify issues related to food and eating and develop a thoughtful and active theology of food. But be careful … he is a convincing radical who just may change the way you buy, consume – and eat!