Category — Change

We make choices and are responsible for how we choose.  And yet, we have a tendency to blame others for bad, irresponsible, unwise, and unguarded choices.  Blame is the game, expressed in a number of ways:

“He made me angry.” 
“I can’t help myself, I am just that way.”
“I can’t get out of debt.”
“I ran out of time, so I could not get my work done.”
“I could do better, if only….” 

And yet, no one makes us angry.  We choose to be angry.  We are not just victims.  In many cases, what has happened to us is a result of our decisions, and decisions can be taken to change our lives.  We can get out of debt, but it will require spending and lifestyle choices.  Quite possibly we ran out of time, because we chose to squander it on the telephone, computer, or television.  The truth is that we make excuses for ourselves, blame others and life circumstances in order to escape responsibility.  On the other hand, responsible living means we embrace the fact that we are accountable for our choices.

I choose what I eat, how fast I drive, what I say, what clothes I buy, what I read, whether I wash the dishes, make the bed, take exercise, do my work, love my neighbor, sleep until noon, buy on credit, love my wife, care for my health, hate my brother, look at a woman with lust, tell the truth, slander another person, etc. etc. etc.  I choose.  I bear the weight of my choices.  For example, fried, fatty, sugary, cholesterol saturated foods do not cause poor health or a heart attack.  I choose poor health, and I give myself a heart attack when I decide to eat such foods.  I cannot blame McDonald’s, mom, the lack of choice, a busy schedule, hunger pains, or ignorance.  I select from the menu, speak the words of choice, pick up the fork and spoon, open my mouth, and swallow.  The decision is mine - the consequences are mine.

Yes, there are factors and circumstances beyond our control, genes passed from our parents, and mean people who do us harm.  But I am afraid we put too much stock in the extent to which these control us, rather than on the choices we have.  And the truth is, we have a choice as to how we will respond to circumstances, genes, and mean people. 

Because I am a choosing individual (rather than a determined one), my actions are real and make a difference for me and those around me.  This makes my choosing important - supremely and eternally important.  This is scary, because left to myself, I dodge responsibility.  Left to my own discernment, I choose self-interest, ease, pleasure, and destruction.  But thankfully I am not left to myself, unless I so choose.  Friends, family, and teachers with much experience and wisdom are around me, if I choose to listen to them and heed their counsel.  The Spirit lives within me and guides my choices through the reading of scripture and theological reflection, if I choose to read and reflect.  As I contemplate choices, I am to seek the counsel of those around me.  As I make choices, I am to seek the Spirit’s wisdom, listen to his promptings, and recall his instruction.

A new year is just a few days away!  I resolve in the year ahead to live by choices that give life to those around me, give witness to God’s transformation in my life, and give glory to God.  I choose to hope that active, purposeful choosing makes the difference.

A young seminarian directed me to these words by Søren Kierkegaard …

Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God.  Yes, it is dreadful to even be alone with the New Testament.

We often talk of the Jesus Way as if it is the ‘best life ever’ or a glorious and happy everafter.  When in fact the call of God is a call to take up a cross and follow him to death and the words of Scriptures are instructions in how to live according to a different kingdom.  The Jesus Way is a dreadful way, because it runs counter to my hopes of success, self-gratification, consumption, and advancement.  And yet, if this dread is only theoretical talk or for the radical fringe, then Christianity is truly just another religious way with teachings and a moral code.  Rather, my expereince is that when I fall into the hands of the living God and seek to live according to his kingdom, I mourn the death of my hopes and my ways, but I also rise to a new hope and new ways.  Dread is prelude to becoming a transformed person with new and true hope. 

By acknowledging this and writing these words, I do not escape the harsh reality of what falling into the hands of the living God will do to my appetites, habits, attitudes, comfortable lifestyle, and pet sins.  The way in which Jesus calls me to walk demands that I do more than understand it or write about it.  I must personally know and walk in its dreadfulness, if I am to live in its hope.

“But [White Liberals] think all the world’s problems can be fixed without any cost to themselves.  We do not believe that. There’s a lot to be said for sacrifice, remorse, even pity.  It’s what separates us from roaches.” 
 -Dr. Paul Farmer, as quoted by Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a man would cure the world (2004), 40.

In preparation for a conference in February, I am reading about World Christianity.  I invite you to think with me via some key quotes. 

Sociologist Paul Freston characterizes Christianity as both declining and expanding.  It is losing ground in its more traditional heartland and yet expanding in non-Western regions. 

[Christianity] was 81 percent white (i.e., European and North American) in 1900; but by 2000 that figure was down to 40 [citing Barrett and Johnson, IBMR, 23/1, Jan. 1999, pp. 24-25]. … The result is that Christianity has become a predominantly non-Western religion and indeed probably the leading non-Western religion (only Islam could possibly rival it). …  For the first time since the seventh century, the majority of Christians are not of European origin; Christianity is finally breaking out of the “Western” mold imposed on it by Islam. (”Globalization, Religion, and Evangelical Christianity: A Sociological Meditation from the Third World” in Interpreting Contemporary Christianity: Global Processes and Local Identities, Eerdmans, 2008, pp. 29-30)

The same trend has been chronicled by Andrew Walls (The Missionary Movement in Christian History, Orbis, 1996), Lamin Sanneh (Whose Religion is Christianity? The Gospel beyond the West, Eerdmans, 2003), Dana Robert (”Shifting Southward: Global Christianity Since 1945,” IBMR, 24/2, April 2000), and Philip Jenkins (The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, Oxford, 2002).  The common refrain among these writers is that the strength and vitality of the Christian movement has relocated.  And yet, the shift has been more than an adjustment in numerical strength or geographical locus.  The character and constitution of the faith, that which gives meaning to its forms and expressions, have changed as well.  While Andrew Walls characterizes this as “a seismic shift in Christianity,” Dana Robert nuances the change as “the seismic shift in Christian identity” (Robert, “Shifting Southward,” p. 50).

The gospel has moved beyond accommodated forms, rituals, and customs to penetrate and even renew peoples’ mentality or psyche with Christ-meaning and purpose.  Turning to Jesus, as Lamin Sanneh points out, has become “a refocusing of the mental life and its cultural/social underpinnings and of our feelings, affections, and instincts, in the light of what God has done in Jesus” (Sanneh, Whose Religion, pp. 43-44).  In other words, the faith is no longer a foreign guest in a strange land.  Rather, it is native to the soil, at home in locales throughout the world, and in touch with the deepest needs.  Thus, while Christianity may appear to be the world’s largest religion, it is in fact, as Dana Robert explains, “the ultimate local religion” (Robert, “Shifting Southward, p. 56).

And thus, the faith expands as it takes the form and shape of local societies.  Why?  Because Christianity finds a home in these places.  According to Walls, “The faith of Christ is infinitely translatable; it creates ‘a place to feel at home’” (Missionary Movement, p. 25).

Christianity is unique in its translatability; its ability to be at home in a myriad of languages, forms, mental frameworks (worldviews), histories, personal and national aspirations, etc.  This, of course, assaults the tendencies of some Western missionaries and church leaders to ‘internationalize’ their particular brand of Christianity.  And yet, the Christian faith was never intended to be captured or realized in one particular cultural form.

No primal form is prescribed that is to be introduced worldwide.  Indeed, it can be said that the church is infinitely translatable or adaptable.  The church can be established in every language and culture, taking the form that is appropriate to each particular cultural-linguistic group.  (Wilbert R. Shenk, “New Wineskins for New Wine: Toward a Post-Christendom Ecclesiology,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 29/2, April 2005, p. 74)

Christianity is translatable, and so the church in a particular society, cultural setting, and mentality must be translated as well.  For Christianity to be vibrant and authentic, a church in Ghana must be different than a church in Chicago.  Shenk concludes that

When we turn to examples from history where churches have shown authentic spiritual vitality, we observe that such churches have been marked by a strong sense of their identity as the body of Christ engaged in faithful witness to the world. To carry out this witness has invariably required new structures and forms appropriate to the cultural context. Old wineskins cannot handle new wine. (Ibid., p. 79)

Lamin Sanneh takes the discussion a step further to distinguish how new wineskins exist alongside older, more established ones.

“World Christianity” is the movement of Christianity as it takes form and shape in societies that previously were not Christian, societies that had no bureaucratic tradition with which to domesticate the gospel.  In these societies Christianity was received and expressed through the cultures, customs, and traditions of the people affected.  World Christianity is not one thing, but a variety of indigenous responses through more or less effective idioms, but in any case without necessarily the European Enlightenment frame.  “Global Christianity,” on the other hand, is the faithful replication of Christian forms and patterns developed in Europe. … It is, in fact, religious establishment and the cultural captivity of the faith.  (Sanneh, Whose Religion, p. 22)

Sanneh draws a sharp distinction between Christian faith that springs from the soil and that which is imported from a far.  The language of ‘world’ and ‘global’ distinguishes the two.  World denotes the new and emerging phenomenon, while global is representative of the period of colonial expansion and is now associated with globalization, McDonaldization, internationalism, etc. 

Ogbu U. Kalu develops the concept of globalism …

There has been a shift, however, from the global village concept to one of rather bewildering disintegration and flux.  One aspect is the pace and direction of change.  The other is that, at the core, globalism is a power concept, bearing the seeds of asymmetrical power relations.  There is no guarantee of equality or benefit for all.  Globalism is akin to the New Testament concpet of kosmos, the world order, controlled by an inexplicable, compulsive power, dazzling with allurements or kosmetikos. (”Changing Tides: Some Currents in World Christianity at the Opening of the Twenty-first Century,” in Interpreting Contemporary Christianity: Global Processes and Local Identities, Eerdmans, 2008, p. 7)

Thus, Global Christianity is to be viewed negatively as power religion accomplished via homogeneity or sameness.  Whatever the motivation (fear of syncretism, reinforcement of doctrinal orthodoxy, or naive and uncritical cultural imperialism), the result is the same - an “asymmetical power relation.”  And usually it is the one with the money which dominates in the relation. 

Some would argue that globalization has forever changed the world, and thus there are few place that exist in a cultural vacuum.  They contend that technologies and ideas run wild via television, radio, Internet, print mediums, movies, travel, etc., so talk of translation, indigenization, or contextualization is no longer relevant to the reality on the ground.  And yet, others argue that while secularization is taking place and plurality exists, it is “optionless plurality” (Freston, p. 31).  There are real and substantial barriers to conversion to a foreign (American) faith, and thus, if Christianity is to expand and thrive there must be “new structures and forms appropriate to the cultural context.”  Data indicates that the more vigorous expansion of Christianity is not occurring in places where traditional mainline denominations reign but where the faith has successfully delinked or disengaged from European and American influence and money. 

There is much more that could be cited and discussed, but this is enough for now.  The discussion is important for the North American Church as it contemplates its missionary program, its relationship to the surrounding culture, and how it relates to brothers and sisters half a world away.  Is the North American church really in a new position in its relationship to Christianity around the world?  If so, then in what new ways must it relate, participate, and contribute?

When I was a young person, I would have run wild if not for an innate fear of my parents.  As a child, I was afraid of getting caught and then being punished.  Later I feared that I would disappoint them or not meet their expectations.  As an adult, I am still prone and certainly capable of being selfish, running wild, and even destroying the good around me.  Since I no longer fear my parents, what is it that keeps me from running amuck?  

Each day I am deciding what I will do, say, and think.  Will I tell the truth or fudge on facts so that I do not look bad?  Will I give thanks for what I have or covet other people’s stuff, abilities, or position?  Will I keep my vows to my wife or will I seek love and affirmation elsewhere?  Will I slander, hate, steal, lust, have outbursts of anger, or abuse substances?  I am capable of going down any of these paths and in the process destroy my life and those around me.  What causes me to choose that which is right?

Those times that I choose the right path, it is not because I am a naturally good person or have had a proper upbringing and a religious orientation.  I know plenty of good, proper, religious people who are making poor decisions and thus destroying their lives.  No, there is something else at work.  Rather than an external threat of punishment, I am to live by the recalibration of my mind toward God’s ways.

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a modern technological marvel.  By means of a small device that sends microwave signals to satellites, I can know exactly where I am, the speed and direction of my travel, and where my destination lies.  It is constantly locating, positioning, and then in a nano-second, recalculating my location and direction.  Amazing!  I do not have to understand the science behind a GPS device in order to know my physical location and what my direction should be.  I just have to turn it on and - bingo - there I am! 

Even though I do not understand the mystery of the Spirit, I can know my location and what my direction should be.  Sometimes when I have made wrong, destructive decisions, it has been because I forgot where I stand.  I need to remember that I stand as a sinner redeemed by the grace of God and not as an accomplished, self-made man who makes demands or has rights.  If I am not too proud to listen to the Spirit, he will remind me of where I stand and where I should be headed.

Many voices offer me advice, but the surest direction comes from Scripture.  It recalibrates my values and convictions and then points me toward a narrow way that leads to good choices and life.  Destructive choices can be avoided, if I will heed the instructions of Scripture. 

The Apostle Paul exhorts the Romans, and us, to be transformed by the renewing of the mind (12:2).   Choices that lead to life come through remembering who we are and by recalibrating our attitudes and actions.  Left to myself, I will forget who I actually am and misjudge my steps.  So, if I will daily open the Scriptures and promptly respond to the promptings of the Spirit, God will relentlessly and faithfully recalibrate my mind toward that which is the good and perfect way of God.  Amazing!