The Meaning of Advent (to me)

I have only become aware of the concept of Advent in the most recent years in my Christian walk. As of late, the Advent has become increasingly meaningful to me.

I have for a long time held in my mind the image of John the Baptist (or John the witness) who is ever pointing to the Christ. John the Baptist is the ideal vanguard of the Kingdom of God. He sees the coming glory of God on earth and compels others to react, repent, and prepare themselves for the coming of the Christ who will begin the restoration of order upon the creation that has turned to chaos in the hands of humanity.

The Advent season reminds me of my responsibility to also be a messenger of the good news: “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” This imminent shift of the ages from chaos to God’s order and justice is brought to visibility through Jesus who is the Christ—the Messiah, the Savior, the Son of God. Jesus comes not to overthrow the political and economic systems that have damned and oppressed the people; he is not a political leader nor an economic theorist, he is the inaugurator of the Kingdom. The presence of the Christ demands love and justice for all of humanity; this love and justice causes a break in the structure of the political and economic powers. They cannot stand on a foundation of evil. The right order of God brushes away evil and injustice through the suffering service of one person to another. Jesus lives and dies as the ultimate display of the ethic and lifestyle of the citizen of God’s Kingdom. Jesus has made the kingdom real; it is not a physical kingdom because it is the servanthood of all of humanity to one another as children of God. The siblings of salvation now are to act as representatives and harbingers of the Kingdom of God, which receives its validity and hope in overcoming evil by the power of God in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Being raised from death is a display of God’s power to overcome even the greatest of evils experienced by every person in all classes and cultures. The resurrection gives sight to the ability to overcome the impossible for “with God, nothing is impossible” (cf. gospel of Luke) and the hope to overcome even the greatest of injustices.

Advent means preparing for the coming kingdom; it means pointing ever to the Christ as the tangible sign of God’s presence and power in the world we live in. Advent means living a life the disallows injustices and strives for love and mercy, forgiveness and just action—not for the sake of ourselves but for the glory of God in the restoration of all of creation and humanity into the order that God had created and intended for all.

Brotherhood

Like it is for many children, when I was small Christmas was the most exciting day of the year. My parents did the Santa Claus thing with my brothers and me. I know every family does this differently, but they simply set the gifts out a few hours before we thought about getting out of bed. No wrapping paper, just organized into a clump for each of us. It was the entry into the room that was the process of unwrapping for us I suppose. When we moved out of my Grandmother's house into our own house, Ben and I shared a room. It was here that we had one of our deepest bonds of brotherhood. Christmas eve night would fall on us, and we would lay in bed unable to fall asleep from excitement. It was here we would talk about all of the things we hoped we were getting and what we were going to play with first, but it was also a place where we started to scheme. I hope that anyone with siblings can relate to the relationship that comes out of mischief. Ben and I certainly could. We would get in our minds that every little noise we heard was Santa coming down the chimney to leave our gifts, and we youthfully thought we could catch him in the act. Every Christmas eve we made a score of attempts to catch him in the living room leaving gifts without waking our parents. These plans began to become fairly involved over the years and started to revolve around cookie baited traps. It was something Ben and I did together. When I moved into my own room across the hall it only increased. A new objective was added to Operation Catch Santa. We first had to get to each other, and then we had to work together on some devious plan. These are some of my fondest memories. A lot has come between Ben and me since, and the memories have certainly become fonder. My heart beats faster to look back on the days when all we had was Brotherhood.

The Will to Believe

Please refer to my post from October for the back story to this post.

The magic is gone. It took the world falling apart for me to realize that life really is every bit as terrible as people keep telling me it is. I look out my window and hate what I see all around me. There are people living on the streets and in houses that barely deserve that title. There are hungry people. There are people who don't have families. If my separation from my family, my meager housing (which is a castle by comparison), and my penny-pinching at the grocery store have taught me anything, it is to sympathize ever so slightly with these people. If I have a longing for home and security, imagine their emotions of a similar kind! I hate that these people have little choice about their situation.

The season of Advent is supposed to make us want Christ's coming all the more. It has certainly fulfilled that goal in my life. This Advent, I have been faced with a picture of the sick monster that is at the core of the world. It breaks apart relationships both human and divine. It creates greed and hostilities. It forges bitterness and despair. Call it what you will, but do not consider that the world is a safe place. There is of course goodness, virtue, and right relationship in the world, but do not neglect the existence of its dark alternative as I did.

Advent is supposed to be about the hope for a brighter future. Having the resurrection in the back of my mind, I realize that there is nothing so dark as to overcome the Son of God. But believing it is sometimes more difficult than knowing it. I confess that I am a cynic by nature; hope is not something that comes easily to me. Hope is a choice that I have to consciously make. Ultimately, I have to decide whether or not I judge Jesus to be worth hoping in. He claimed that he would bless the poor, the meek, the peacemakers, the mourning, those persecuted for righteousness' sake, and those hungering and thirsting for righteousness. I don't see a lot of that when I look out my window. I don't see a lot of that when I look at my life. Perhaps others have clearer lenses than I and can easily point it out. I urge you to do so, for mine are too easily stained with despair. Chances are I am missing something; I certainly hope I am.

I want to believe in the hope Jesus represents. I just don't know that I can. William James offers a picture of the requirements necessary for believing in something without absolute proof. He claims that one requirement is for there to be a live option in the choice. One option is that God is at best capricious and at worst malicious or nonexistent. The other option is that God truly does care about humanity as Christ's life, death, and resurrection represent. Yet it seems to me that if option two is to be viable, there must be some evidence of such today.

This Christmas is unlike any other in my memory. This Christmas, I have doubts about Christianity. This Christmas, I have to make a choice whether to celebrate the coming of a Savior and the hope that he brings or to abandon that hope altogether. It seems illogical, but option two it is.

Prepare to Be Surprised

Narrative theology is at the heart of advent. Advent is a season of preparation. We are trying to put ourselves into the world before the Messiah, and prepare ourselves for his coming. But in another sense, we are also preparing for the Second Coming. This morning in church, we read from James 5:7-8:

Be patient, therefore, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.

Be patient, and prepare. This is a good message for Advent. It was not a selection I had ever seen associated with the Christmas season.

And the sermon was on Matthew 11. From prison John the Baptist sent disciples to ask Jesus if he was the one, or if he should wait for another. His doubts may have stemmed from the fact that Jesus was not the Messiah anyone had expected. That got me to thinking.

The reason we need a narrative theology of Advent is because of this very fact. The devout had been preparing for the coming of the Messiah for centuries. And when he came, they didn't recognize him. Because he came in an unexpected way; he was a king born in a feeding trough, he was God in the barn.

Today, everyone has ideas about what the Second Coming will be like. Some expect him "riding on the clouds, shining like the sun at the trumpet call." I bet many first century Jews expected something like that. Maybe advent could remind us that we worship a Messiah who defies our expectations. So maybe we need to prepare to be surprised.

-Wyatt

December Topic

As we recently celebrated the beginning of Advent, I feel rather compelled to dedicate this space to the celebration thereof. Yet I don't want this blog to turn into a Max Lucado book about Christmas; not that there is anything wrong with Lucado. I merely wish to discuss Christmas from a more earthy prospective rather than waxing theological.

In my imagination, I like to picture some of my distant ancestors sitting around a Medieval fireplace telling stories to each other. I can remember my grandparents talk about family gatherings with music, singing, dancing, and lots of storytelling. Perhaps we have lost something by losing our fireplaces and front porches; I know of few families who get together like this.

At length, I come to the topic. What are the stories of family and friends that impact how you view Christmas? How has your conception of Advent changed over the years, and who played a part in that change? If God is with us as we gather in community as I believe he is, then is there a theology of gathering and storytelling associated with Advent? If so, what is it? How do we treasure that theology in our scattered status?

I give you a lot of facets to latch on to here; do not feel compelled to deal with each. Find one that you like and go with it. Have a great Christmas.

JC

Closer Together and Closer to God

The question at hand is a complex one. Salvation is among the vaguest theological term in use, and one of the most popularly misunderstood, to my mind. This misunderstanding, it seems to me, stems from the fact that folks of different traditions mean very different things by this term "salvation." In my tradition, salvation has typically used to express the idea of justification, which happens by faith alone. In a more catholic vein, salvation expresses the idea of sanctification, which is the process by which a person is made holy. I will not even bring into the discussion the concepts of Glorification and Deification, as they are clearly outside of our reach "on this side of Glory." It seems to me that both of these concepts, justification and sanctification, have bearing on the discussion at hand.

Obviously, justification is at work in an individual's life, quite apart from the church, when the individual comes to faith in Christ. Of course, the individual has most likely inherited that faith from, or at least was introduced to that faith in the context of a church tradition. Justification, however, happens in the individual as a result of their personal (not private) decision to turn to God. However, this raises a few important questions: What has the individual been saved from? and What has the individual been saved for?

What has the individual been saved from? Well, in short, sin. Sin is what separates a person from God, and so by turning to God in faith, one somehow begins to cross the bridge over the chasm of sin and separation, and return to God. Sin also, I believe, separates us from each other. And this leads us to the question of what we are saved for, in economic -that is to say this-worldly- terms.

One can model this disparity caused by sin by invisioning dots (individuals) arrayed around a center point (God). Sin causes those dots to travel extreme distances away from the center point. And you may notice that as those dots travel outward in straight lines, the dots themselves grow farther apart. And since they are doomed to travel on straight tracks, the only way to get back into contact with each other is for them all to travel back inward to God. Likewise, as they draw closer together, they are naturally drawing closer to God.

This process of drawing closer together and closer to God I will call sanctification. This is what we are created for, this closeness to God and this closeness to each other. And so I think my answer is that in order to most fully realize our salvation in this life, on "this side of Glory", we must live in community. We must have church. We must draw closer together and closer to God.

Bethany poses an interesting question and one I have thought and prayed about myself. I also like the Augustine quote “He that does not have the Church as His mother cannot have God as his father”. But I have a deep seated problem with this kind of mentality. The Church is not our mother and the idea of hierarchy not only scares but terrifies me. To say that it is only within the local church that we can experience the fullness of salvation is dangerous. It seems to me to place the keys of heaven into the hands of flawed persons who for the most part I see damaging this world rather than saving it. Hopefully I can make my points a little more coherent or maybe it will just be rambling but here we go.

First the Church is not the mother to Christians we and the rest of the world are the bride of the Son. Who by the Holy Spirit was made flesh and has paid the dowry of for mankind to be ever joined in union with the Godhead. By calling the Church our mother or giving it the keys to fulfill salvation we lose the humbleness that is supposed to come with being the bride to the beloved. Inevitably we will create standards and view membership of the local congregation as membership in the kingdom. Salvation can be experienced in fullness anywhere because the Kingdom of Heaven is breaking through more and more with each passing moment. To put such an emphasis on the local congregations in formal sense is to cling a dying form of ecclesiology that for the most part is self serving and out dated. I believe that we are on the brink of a massive change in the church where we leave our cloisters of brick buildings and store fronts and return to society. Salvation is to be experienced in the gutters of life in the day to day.

Second this idea disturbs me because salvation is found and comes from naught but the cross on Calvary. It has already happened and is done; no building, gathering, or magical experiences necessary. We have already been saved the fullness of that is found in submission to the reality of that truth. I wish it was more complicated there would be lots of money to be made off of herding people into churches so that they can experience the cross and how it has saved us all. To claim that church or local congregation holds the keys to salvation or in the very least the fullness of salvation creates a power structure that is likely to be riddle with both abuse and monetary gains. We like to think that we would not send out Tetzel to sell indulgences but the truth is people suck and church people a lot of times suck harder. The Church is good because it allows us to meet together and worship our God, I love the church but it is Christ who bore my sin not the church.

November's Prompt

Bethany offered this as our prompt for November. I apologize for not posing it before I had my 6 AM brainstorm, but I hope that I can amend the posting order for ease of access.--- JC

"The fullness of salvation in Christ cannot be experienced apart from a church--not just the Church Universal, across time and space--but a local congregation of other believers. Do you agree with this argument? What role (if any) does a local church, specific denomination, or particular religious tradition have in the life of an individual Christian?"

The Scandal of Exclusivity, the Scandal of Schism

"There is no salvation outside the Church."-- Catholic dogma

Warning: Opinions stated herein are subject to change upon further review and reflect the author's most current ideas concerning pluralism and what defines a church.

I like the Catholic statement taken out of its context. Certainly Rome used the phrase as a means to excommunicate the Protestants and "send" them to hell. Yet stripped of that cultural and historical meaning (which I hardly ever advocate, especially when Scripture is concerned), the statement contains a glimmer of something true, even if only a half-truth. Christ calls us to community, and one will be hard-pressed to find grounds for a solitary faith in the Bible.

Perhaps this is the Baptistness in me, but I would claim that Christ calls us to membership in a church that fosters the spiritually transforming aspects of the Gospel (read: regenerate Church membership). The error of Catholicism (and many other established [read: state supported] churches) is that such membership must be voluntary; the error of Calvanism is that such membership is indeed voluntary rather than an act of God. Any other form of membership in a church prevents it from being truly regenerate as the membership is legislated either by God or by the state. Christ bids all who are weary and heavy-laden to come and receive his rest; he does not compel them through sovereign might. It is for these reasons that I am a Baptist, and I believe that the freedom permitted to the individual is most in harmony with the Gospel.

More substantial than the kind of membership is the nature of the body into which a person is to be a member. Christians have struggled with what defines a church for the vast majority of Christian history, beginning with Paul's conflict with the strict Pharisaical Christians over Gentile converts, to the Reformation, and recently to the Southern Baptist Church chaos that continues to flare up now and again. All conflicts have been over what doctrines are enough to make one a Christian and allow him or her to have fellowship with other Christians (aka be a part of the church).

How many creeds do we have that say, in essence, "This theology, and nothing else."? Does that exclude people who have had an authentic experience with Christ yet do not affirm a specific creed from the salvation present in the Church? Does it not mean that these "heathens" are not competent to answer for their own souls? Our church membership criteria, vary as it does from tradition to tradition, sound the claim of Christ in John 14:6 loud and clear and indeed add much to Jesus' words. He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through him and by acceptance of whatever set of doctrines a denomination has.

Again, a half-truth. The other half of that truth is to be found in John 10. Jesus claims that there are sheep (read: people) who are not "of this flock." Typically when I have read this I read "Jew-Gentile struggle." Yet is this not also a question of pluralism? Can Christianity, which begins as a Jew-only movement, expand to the Gentiles with their Greek understanding of the universe? Tertullian says, "No!" The Pharisaical Christians say, "No!" Paul, Luke, Peter, and John's Jesus say, "Yes!"

Returning to my Baptistness for a moment, I reiterate that I believe that Baptist doctrine allows for the most authentic expression of the Gospel in a Christian setting. It allows for the freedom of the individual while reinforcing the importance of community. The question of universalism versus exclusivity in a Christian setting is a question of denominations. That same question in a pluralistic setting is a question of belief systems. The harmony between universalism and exclusivity in a pluralistic setting must be the same harmony between Baptist freedom/ responsibility and the Gospel. It must respect the individual and his/her encounter with God and yet call him/her into the fellowship of the Church. Any theology or philosophy that seeks to do away with one side of the tension will find itself doing away with one side of the Gospel as well.

Thus we have this contention: doctrines qualifying church membership versus God's universalism. How do they mix together to form something that works for all people at all times? I don't know. My best guess at the moment is that all faith traditions (Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.) contain elements of the Gospel and that there are "invisible" Christians who live Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, etc. lives and find their "church" in a mosque, temple, etc. Yet at the end of the day it is Christ who calls them home, and they respond having heard the Shepherd's voice before. They are not of the Christian or Jewish flock, but Jesus brings them anyway.

What is a church? I will not try to define it. Rather, I will say that I meet Jesus in the faces of the people I fellowship with in that place every Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday. Hopefully that statement is open enough to let us all experience salvation inside the Church while preserving its Christian identity.

October, 2010

wordle created for all of our October Posts.

Topic for October: The Safety of Sovereignty

I realized at the end of the month that having an introduction to the topic at hand (preferably at the beginning of the month) and why it was chosen may be helpful to the reader who may be otherwise unable to discern exactly what it is that is being written about. Bethany did well to bring me to this realization by citing a part of the prompt, but the reader was still uninformed as to the actual question for response. Henceforth, I believe it beneficial to all to publish the prompt before submission. 

The other day I was talking with Wyatt, and the thought had occurred to me that '...Security and stability are the rejection of Sovereignty and Providence.' Perhaps I read this somewhere and don't remember, or perhaps it is a synthesizing of concepts into one thought. Pertaining to this I am not entirely sure. Regardless, my thought was that in our attempts to stabilize our lives, to be financially settled, or to secure our gains in whatever form you may imagine, we take part in the process of taking power out of the hands of God (I am assuming the freedom to do so) and placing our trust in the idol made of paper. This is not intended to sway you one way or the other, but to provoke reaction, I am happy to have a contradictory viewpoint on any subject, but i think it might be helpful for understanding the question to have a little background on what provoked our asking in the first place.

What does our personal fiscal crisis (that is, our need to gain for stability) or lack thereof portray in regards to our understanding of God's power, sovereignty, and providence. In addition, what do we (Christians) do with money and the necessity to maintain and secure our goods in light of this relation? 

Enjoy!

In Defense of Stability

“Security and stability are the rejection Sovereignty and Providence.” […] in our attempts to stabilize our lives, to be financially settled, or to secure our gains in whatever form you may imagine, we take part in the process of taking power out of the hands of God (I am assuming the freedom to do so) and placing our trust in the idol made of paper.”

These were the words Taylor gave to inspire this round of blog entries.  Actually, I believe “provoke” was the word he used, and rightly so, for I am provoked. I can hardly articulate why, however, because almost immediately after reading those words (I won’t presume to guess how much they express Taylor’s own views), the song “Take My Life” begins playing in my mind’s ear.

If you’ve been in any contemporary worship services over the last decade, you probably know this song. One of the verses goes, “Brokenness, brokennes is what I long for, / Brokenness is what I need. / Brokenness is what You want for me.”

I hate this verse.

I hate this verse for many reasons, but only one is apropos to this discussion.  When I listen to crowds wail this prayer, I hear an implicit repudiation of stability and security--the conditions and the products of wholeness--in favor of the “holiness” allegedly produced by brokenness. 

A prayer for brokenness is a prayer some must pray: that I grant.  Let the stiff-necked, the arrogant, the self-satisfied pray this prayer, if they have the wisdom.  But to suggest (as “Take My Life” does) that “brokenness” is equal to the other virtues requested in the song--faithfulness, righteousness, and holiness--smacks of ingratitude and masochism. 

It is not Taylor’s fault that his prompt roused my indignation over sloppily-written worship choruses, but in a way I am thankful for the connection. Without it, I might not be willing to argue that denying the goodness of stability is just as blasphemous as thinking stability is a worthwhile end of the Christian life. 

Stability is better than instability. Security is better than danger. Call me old-fashioned, but I will stand by those assertions.When teaching his disciples how to pray, Jesus said, “Give us this day our daily bread,” not “Let us go hungry for the sake of being hungry.” 

At the same time, stability and security are merely instrumental goods. They can and must be laid aside for the sake of loving our neighbors, for the sake of justice, for the sake of making our hearts open to God.  

My parents certainly modeled this truth for me. 

I grew up really poor, although I didn’t realize we were poor until I was nearly grown.  As a child, I thought it normal to receive canned goods from family members at every holiday; to rejoice because Daddy hit a turkey with his van and then to eat said turkey; and to have my first new, store-bought dress my freshmen year of high school. (Of course, how I made it through thirteen years of public school thinking all this was normal remains a mystery). 

We had so little money because my parents were (and remain) campus ministers. They placed their vocation before financial stability. This is especially true for my mother: officially, only my father was hired to the ministry position, but my mother, unwavering in her commitment to her calling, has now worked for twenty-seven without an income of her own. 

Growing up in this way had many benefits, not least of which is making a grad student’s salary feel quite luxurious. However, the marvelous paradox of growing up in such financial instability is that I discovered that our family’s wellbeing was grounded on something far more stable than a salary: the love of  God, flowing through God’s people. During my childhood and adolescence, I saw wealthy families give joyfully out of their abundance, providing my family with cars (three altogether), clothes, canned goods, and more. Their wealth manifested God’s providence in our lives.  

Maybe that’s why I defend stability. In the vocabulary of my childhood, “stability” meant not prosperity, but abundance.  Sometimes the abundance came from our resources, but often it was granted, given, shared by others. 

Now, had we prayed to these friends and their bank accounts, instead of to God, then we would be guilty of denying God’s power and trusting the “idol of paper.” But stability isn’t the only thing that can become an idol. Perhaps that is why the prompt provoked me so; it implied that stability is somehow more God-denying than other instrumental goods. It called to mind rhetoric of revolution (which I usually find specious), and myths of redemptive violence, for instability is a form of violence, even if a quotidian, wearying-not-warring kind of turbulence.  

I love stability--I bless stability--for what it can testify: the love of parents who work to make a safe home for their children, the certainty of a friendship, the confidence that one can indeed do the work set before her.  The challenge, as always, is to make stability the ground for hospitality, for love, for service, rather than for self. 

Security is--like family, reputation, freedom, or rights--something beautiful and noble, worth preserving but not worth worshipping. Our security can be an acceptable sacrifice, not because it is sinful, or because brokenness is equal to righteousness, but because it is good, and life-giving, and human.  

“I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God that cost me nothing.” 2 Samuel 24.24

Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!

     A thief broke into a church in Florida and stole the sound equipment. A few days ago I received an rss feed that gave the story of how this particular church had reacted by forgiving the thief who in turn eventually joined the church congregation and the body of Christ. this to me seems to be the ideal picture of redemption that could take place if only we were willing to let go of our need for security and place our trust in the redemptive action of god. 

      To release our security would place us each as individuals and  collectively as the church in a position to have to directly deal with an issue that requires us to be the very people whom we are expected to be by way of forgiveness, the cancellation of debts, mercy, grace, and peace, and love. Principles and ethics recited on every person's lips who has spent any amount of time in a church house, however devoid in practice the principles themselves may be.
     The reason for the shallow nature of Christianity in the US, in my mind, must be its lack of understanding of the practical and ethical persuasions of the person whom its Lordship is under. By maintaining security of our goods and creating stability through monetary gain, we have no way of encountering any existential shift in paradigm on the basis of these proclamations of what God has done through Christ and consequently what we are to also do. We cannot effectively reciprocate the dedication to and love for Christ that Christ has shown for us if we do not understand what love and forgiveness are because we refuse to encounter them in our real day to day lives. We don't know what it means to sing 'MY CHAINS ARE GONE, IVE BEEN SET FREE' if we have never been bound in captivity. If we do not forgive we can not understand forgiveness, or even have it--to say it as Jesus did.
    Security is the wall that we build around ourselves, all that it does is keep us in. It is a lie, and it has cheated humanity of its soul and kept it in the dark, blinding each person to his or her essential nature of being as a child of God for so long we can't even identify our Father when we see Him. We dont recognize providence, because we are too afraid to lose that which we so arduously wasted our time making money for.

     We cannot see that we work and labor for the things that we already have. We have let someone convince us that they actually own some part of the earth and in order to have it, we must give them something. That person, has attempted to make themselves above and greater than any other person (and even God) on the basis of claim of possession of any specific resource by cheating others out of the right of having it, and then making us into working-class slaves in order to obtain it. This person would have no power if we simply refused acknowledgment of their claim to ownership and the slavish system.The inability to function within, or the desire to become the one on the top of this system is what drives thievery, which is really all that proprietorship is in the first place.
     

     The Christian response of course is not a direct taking of what another person claims to be their property (unless a particular circumstance calls for it, such as deprivation of a life-giving need), but a calling of people to recognize the truth of the matter; God is the one who is the true sustainer. God is the God who gives creation freely to humanity. Having recognized this reality we are also to give freely, so to the one who requires money, we give--and not only that, double!

      The release from this chasing after the wind, is not release of responsibility to one another, however, because we are living in a time of Eschatological hope--That is the "already, but not yet" status of the redemption of creation. We have a need to be responsible to one another, equalizing and doing away with economic disparity as much as we possibly can within our Christian communities. To do this causes us to be under the need for our Body of Christ, the Church, to care for us, as we also put our efforts into care for her. The release of stability as we have created results in the truest stability--the love of God from the Church to each of its parts. You can not steal from the one who has everything in common, because that which you have attempted to steal is yours already. There is not any reason for violence towards the one who thinks they are stealing, because it wasn't owned by any one to guard. When this becomes true governments fail and national borders fall away for the reason that everything is regarded as God's continual giving to humanity, and when all is benevolence there is no need to fight or protect. Conversely, without the need for war, there is no need for government. When people realize the freedom that comes from these truths, the hunger and thirst for righteousness sets in and the result is to seek justice peacefully by way of participation in the active rejection of lies and perversions of reality in communion and fellowship with the rest of the citizens of the Kingdom of God.

  

      They will persecute you on account of Gospel of Jesus because self preservation is job one. This happens for anyone who seeks security for any possession no matter how rich or poor they may be. The imminent threat of removal of the item that is held on to is going to cause violence and reactionary tactic no matter the item.  When the sense of security of the system of the ones who have built their kingdoms on the backs of the ones they themselves have made poor is threatened, they will come after you. Creating a false God, creating a God who is happy with the protestant work ethic and blesses Americans with wealth is the way of the ones holding the goods to perpetuate the system that benefits them. 

     The kind of prosperity that exists among such disparity of classes (not only in comparison to other Americans but to people across the entirety of the globe), causes me to be suspect to such a theology.  We have not been faithful to a Jesus who came as a bearer of the redemptive message, we have not kept covenant with YHWH. Our redeemer may have the name of Jesus, but it is a false redemption and a false God bearing a false gospel that has nothing to do with maintaining justice and righteousness in order to be a light to all nations that they may know YHWH, the God who will create peace, redeeming and restoring the proper order of the creation as it should and was meant to be. 

(Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said what I think would be a good contextual placement here,) “I call on the young men of America who must make a choice today to take a stand on this issue. Tomorrow may be too late. The book may close. And don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, "You're too arrogant! And if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I'll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God."  "

Repent! Reject security! Follow the Christ, embracing providence! Do not only keep covenant but fulfill it maintaining justice and righteousness, do this by dedication to YHWH and love for all humanity. 

Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!

A People Living in Fear

We are a people living in fear.

There is a financial crisis, and we are trapped in it. Or so we are told. There is violence and we must protect ourselves from it in reasonable, ethical, moral ways. Of this I am certain.

But too often our fears are exaggerated. We live in fear of our neighbor. Because we hear the worst news, we assume (or at least maintain a sneaking suspicion) that the stranger in need is really a predator to our better nature, waiting to con or kill us.

For those of us who have "no extra" money, we see the person in need on the street and think, if only we could give them a little bit of the green stuff, we could help them. Forgetting that what they really need is food... and love, both of which we have.

I recently moved from the country to the city. I suspect every sound at night, at least in the back of my mind, as being someone coming for me. I know this is foolish, but I have never lived so long in so close proximity to so many other people. And so I live in fear.

I also recently became substantially more financially independent. As my roommate (a fellow contributor to this blog) can attest, my fear of bankruptcy translated immediately into a peculiar form of anal-retentiveness about the electricity that took on almost comical proportions when we first moved in. And so I live in fear.

"...Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the LORD will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to keep still." (Exodus 14:13-14)

And the waters parted, and the people crossed, and the waters swallowed Pharoah and his army.

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.... Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not more valuable than they? ... And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these." Matt. 6:25-30

This word flies in the face of our modern sensibilities. Do not worry. And so, when confronted with the question, "Why do you lock your door? Why do you have insurance?" I was slow to answer. I thought,and I thought, and I thought. And then I realized. We are, to an extent, right to be afraid. The words of Dr. Steve Reid in his recent chapel address come to mind: "Don't be dumb." Look at the world around us. We are right to be afraid.

But...

We are not right when we let our fears consume us. Precaution is not sin. It is a recognition of the fallenness of our world. If a lock on my door keeps a would-be murderer out of my house, it also keeps me from retaliating or violently protecting myself or my loved ones against him- for my pacifism is as yet untested. But when we spend our lives paralyzed by fear and worry, when we become preoccupied with financial and domestic security, that is the sin.

Let us not forget how Jesus in Matthew concludes the paragraph excerpted above:

"But strive first for the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." (Matt. 6:33)

The command is strive first! Give God our best effort. Make that priority one. But in the mean time, don't be dumb. Forsaking security is poor stewardship: It opens us up to a world of poverty it was in our hands to prevent, and prevents us from willingly giving of our resources to help those who are in need.