Fighting Injustice with Injustice

It seems we're prone to this. Whether it's filibustering a Supreme Court nominee to protest the filibustering of a Supreme Court nominee or punching someone who just punched you, "an eye for an eye" is alive and well in the world. We might talk about "being the bigger person" when we're speaking hypothetically, but its often another story when we're in the thick of reality. The problem, though, with "being the bigger person" is that we necessarily have to label the other as "less than," which it turn makes it easier to harm them. A vicious circle.

I'm really disturbed today. Yesterday, inmates at the James T Vaughn Correctional Center, a prison about 20 miles from my home, housing minimum, medium, and maximum security inmates, took several employees hostage and after the building was secured, one hostage was found dead.

I know several people who work in that facility. I don't think any of them were involved in this incident, but it certainly brings things home. I do not condone violence or kidnapping, threats or anything involved in this action. At the same time, it's not so simple as bad people doing bad things. It is part of this vicious circle. People in our society act out; we put them in jail - a system and process designed specifically to dehumanize them; they react, sometimes violently; they are responded to with violence. What I see here is: injustice; injustice; injustice; injustice. No one is right and everyone is wrong.

Prisons, like police, or the military play into a national (and probably human) narrative of good vs bad. The good guys need to beat the bad guys so order can be restored. Now most of the people I know who actually operate within those systems understand the real and structural problems that create this scenario - and if they can't see avenues for change, I don't want to presume to know something from the outside.

I do know it shouldn't be this way. I don't believe people change because they're punished; they change because they're loved. Consequences are a real part of life, society, relationships; I don't mean removing those, but we, as a human race, need to do a better job of addressing the real consequences of bad actions in redemptive ways.

I'm troubled by this because I abhor violence. I'm troubled because these inmates lacked the creativity to deal with their very real concerns in healthy ways. I'm troubled because our society, us, we lack the creativity to deal with anti-social behavior in healthy ways. It's a travesty, but a travesty all around.

I'm most troubled, however, by just how easily I'm willing to ignore the situation. When we first moved to Delaware, I worked to put in place what practices I could to shape and form my life in the image of Christ. Being of the Wesleyan tradition, I tried to use John Wesley's admonitions as a guide. He spoke often of spending time with the poor - for a time, I volunteered in a local organization, working with and for the poor; I need to do better there. He spoke of the importance of education. I've been involved with the local school district in a number of capacities: mentoring, tutoring, serving on committees, even substitute teaching. John Wesley all but demanded his followers go once a week to the prisons, as a way of loving and caring for those locked inside.

I'll admit I tried. I contacted the chaplain, twice, with no response and gave up. I looked for other volunteer opportunities, but the information was difficult to parse and I gave up. I called to see if I could visit inmates, but they don't allow even clergy access to prisoners without some prior relationship. I gave up.

If anything, this experience has shown not only how inadequate our human systems are at dealing with hurting people, but at just how inadequate I am at living the life I claim to live. I'd like to say I will change - that I will find a way to connect with the prison population and be invested, because there is no way to be a part of a change without being present - at the same time, I don't have a lot of confidence I will follow through all the way. I'll try, I'm sure, but will I fight for it? I don't know.

This is one of those times when spirituality makes total sense to me. When human systems and human beings lack the power and ability to do something right, our only hope is something greater than ourselves. I am inadequate. We are inadequate. I believe strongly, though, that the creator and sustainer of the universe longs to do impossible things through us, inadequate or not.

Lord, help my unbelief.

Prescriptive Faith

Using faith in this context is probably narrowing the discussion too much. I hope there aren't readers out there who just generally skip over my religious or theological stuff and miss this one. Perhaps the title would be better as "Prescriptive Life," but what I'm trying to get at is the idea we often have that "this worked for me, it should work for anyone." Maybe in our enlightened state we make it "...work for anyone in the same situation."

Because of our inherent tendency to generalize, we look to categorize everything into an already accepted paradigm. We find a box we know (ie redheaded people or solutions to an unhappy marriage) and put whatever is in front of us into the most appropriate box. It's how life works if we let it.

I've often argued that we need to take things individually, never assuming one person, group, or situation is like any other. That's not to say we can't learn from other people or the experience of others (or, similarly, that we have nothing to provide someone in what appears to be a familiar situation), but we must work hard to make sure that similarity serve the larger purpose rather than becomes the larger purpose. We get great security knowing that out decisions hold up outside the context in which we made them. I'm no psychologist, so I can't begin to explain it, but I've often found great comfort in confirmation - if it works for someone else, maybe I did handle things the right way.

I was thinking about that today in regards to John Wesley. Wesley was an 18th century English Anglican priest and the founder of the Methodist movement - its largely from his teaching and writing that the theology of the Church of the Nazarene emerged. I've been reading this book - Renovating Holiness - that came out a few years back (and to which I was privileged to contribute). It contains a hundred or so essays about this thing we call "holiness," but provides about as broad a continuum of understanding as one could imagine.

I've been reading a lot of these articles, and it seems really easy for us to slip into a prescriptive kind of faith. That is a "do ________ and __________ will happen" sort of thing. Certainly much of the early leaders who became Nazarene operated in that mode; there was very much an orderly solution to all life's problems, which was pretty consistent with the scientific and mechanical revolution happening all around them. I was interested to see often John Wesley is included in this very prescriptive kind of idea. Certainly much of his methodist practice was prescriptive. He instituted several layers of participation and accountability for his followers, with strict requirements in each level and swift consequences for falling out of line. Sometimes there's a fine line between prescription and discipline.

Modern faith practice seems to operate on a continuum from prescription to description - with one extreme mandating a specific course of action universally, while the other is open to total uniqueness and individuality. I'm thinking of this in the context of faith, but it certainly applies anywhere - from the way in which a person of particular racial, cultural, religious, or sexual orientation should approach the world to what it means to build a business or educate a child. We're all in some sense prescriptive and descriptive - attempting to balance two things that don't tend to get along very well.

Particularly, in the case of Wesley, it seems he evolved greatly over time. Much of that comes from personal experience. He grew up doing faith in the prescribed way - he achieved what he was supposed to achieve, but it left him empty. He found a new and different way of doing things, one that fulfilled him, so he set about instructing other people in that way. Over time he came to realize that the process was less important than the end goal and became far more open to descriptive theology and practice. He still had rules and regulations - "advices" in the vernacular of the time - and Wesley was certainly not shy about giving his opinion on what you should do and how you should do it, but there was also a recognition the prescription was not a solution.

In a sense, this was his second conversion. The first, for Wesley, famously happened in an instant - with his heart "strangely warmed." The second, I'd argue, happened gradually, as he was faced with the diversity of people and experiences that exist in the world. People often ask me where to find a "definitive work of Wesleyan theology," a big, thick book that explains our family of religious thought in a clear, straightforward way. As often as smart, well-meaning people try to write it, Wesleyan theology doesn't work that way, because Wesley didn't. He changed and grew over time - and that willingness to critically engage and reshape theology and practice is really, itself, the hallmark of Wesleyan theology.

That's difficult for a prescriptive person. People who are comfortable with orderly, routine definitions don't tend to enjoy something, especially something as formative as one's perspective on practical truth, that can't be entirely nailed down. At the same time, it's not the realm of individualism either. Being alive necessarily involves relationship - with people, institutions, the world at large. We can't be isolated wherein our decisions affect only ourselves. The whole, "whatever works for you" idea is not exactly the same thing. Absolute relativism only works on paper - or maybe in your head - it can't play out in the real world.

We've got to find some balance in between. We need to be able to see the individual circumstances that make each person and situation unique, respect them, and be willing to give leeway for people to live, believe, and understand in ways that ring true to them. At the same time, we have to hold each other accountable (to themselves if no one else) for ideas, actions, and understanding that actually provides some semblance of good life. In other words, there's just as much danger we'll delude ourselves with idealism as there is in us imprisoning someone else with the same thing.

It's not so much being satisfied with "I'm ok; you're ok," as it is not being satisfied until we are indeed both "ok." That's the balance between prescription and description. What it means to live well in the world can't be static or defined; it's not a puzzle to be solved, but an adventure to be lived - lived together, yes, but with and understanding that life's adventure for each of us is interconnected, but not interchangeable.

A New Explanation

A week or so ago I watched Ragamuffin, a movie about Rich Mullins, a Christian singer-songwriter who died in a car crash in the mid-90's. I am not generally a fan of the Christian music industry, and I knew very little about Mullins going in - other than that he was an outsider. He broke the rules and did things his own way (especially eschewing wealth) not worrying about who he might offend.

It's not a typical "Christian" movie - which is a very good thing. There were some clunky acting moments, but the guy they got to play Mullins was phenomenal, and he's in every scene, so that helps. It's also a movie that doesn't wrap things up in a nice bow. There's no soft sell for belief, but a real, honest depiction of someone struggling to make sense of faith in the world. Heck, it ends with a car crash and no resolution!

I found it to be honest and ring true, especially the quote that begins the film,

In the 48 years since I was first ambushed by Jesus, in literally thousands of hours of prayers, meditation, silence and solitude over those years, I am now utterly convinced that on Judgment Day the Lord Jesus is going to ask each of us one question and only one question, “Did you believe that I loved you?

It sort of perfectly encapsulated a post I've been working on for most of the summer.

I grew up in the midst of evangelicalism, so it's been a bit of a lifelong pursuit to figure out exactly how to define Christianity, salvation - to discover a way to define the basics of life following Christ in ways that people will understand and will also satisfy my own conscience. I guess it's been a struggle because we so often confuse things, complicate things, overburdening the gospel in ways that make it unattractive and inaccessible.

I think many of us have now easily moved beyond the old tropes of "say a prayer you really mean and you can go to heaven when you die." We're well beyond the dominance of a logical, orderly system of belief that will be content to live there. At the same time, we've not really hit on something else so simple. We can talk about "living like Jesus" all we want, but that's not an easily definable, understandable, or even agreeable notion across the board.

We're never going to find something everyone agrees on (that's why we've got 3,000 separate Christian denominations out there), but I think we can do better. That quote above goes a long way.

Salvation is an important concept for Christians, because it was important to Jesus, to his Hebrew ancestors, and to his Christian followers. Salvation - being saved - was the center of faith practice. We can go through all the permutations of being saved from what, to what, by whom, how, but in the end, I think just leaving the concept sort of vague makes sense. People might not understand or care to parse all the technical language, but most people recognize (even if they won't admit) there's something in their life they wish wasn't there. Most all of us (and I'd argue "all of us," but we'll save that argument for another day) recognize something in our lives bigger and more powerful than us. We need help.

I think the best way to talk about salvation is to say it comes when you internalize the reality that you are really and truly loved, that you're lovable and worthy of love outside any thing you do or say or are. Salvation comes in knowing love.

That's easier said than done, of course. Knowing and knowing are two different things, right? To really feel that sense of love, acceptance, peace inside is sort of like an impossible fantasy. I can't say I can provide the road map or even great advice - I think most of the time I'm just as much on the journey as anyone else. I do believe with my whole heart, though, that salvation is real and it's possible. I know in my head that I am loved, that all of us is loved, even if I'm never quite sure I know it in my heart.

The quote from the movie comes from a preacher and author, Brennan Manning. He's a great writer to read. He talks about this stuff all the time (the same people who did Ragamuffin are doing a movie about his life, too). He gets at this in the longer version of the quote above:

In the 48 years since I was first ambushed by Jesus, in a little chapel in the Allegheny Mountains of Western Pennsylvania, and in literally thousands of hours of prayers, meditation, silence and solitude over those years, I am now utterly convinced that on Judgment Day the Lord Jesus is going to ask each of us one question and only one question,

“Did you believe that I loved you? That I desired you? That I waited for you day after day? That I longed to hear the sound of your voice?”

The real believers there will answer, “Yes, Jesus, I believed in your love and I tried to shape my life as a response to it.”

But many of us who are so faithful in our ministry, in our practice, in our churchgoing, are gonna have to reply, “Well frankly, no, sir. I mean I never really believed it. I mean I heard a lot of wonderful sermons and teachings about it. In fact, I gave quite a few myself. But I always thought that was just a way of speaking, a kindly lie, some Christian’s pious pat on the back to cheer me on.”

And there’s the difference between the real believers and the nominal Christians that are found in our churches across the land.

No one can measure like a believer the depth and the intensity of God’s love, but at the same time no one can measure like a believer the effectiveness of our gloom, pessimism, low self-esteem, self-hatred and despair that block God’s way to us.

Do you see why it is so important to lay hold of this basic truth of our faith? Because you’re only going to be as big as your own concept of God.

Remember the famous line of the French philosopher, Blaise Pascal? “God made man in His own image, and man returned the compliment.” We often make God in our own image and he winds up to be as fussy, rude, narrow-minded, legalistic, judgmental, unforgiving, and unloving as we are.

In the past couple three years I’ve preached the Gospel… (all over the world) … and honest to God, the God of so many Christians I meet is a God who is too small for me, because he is not the God of the Word, he is not the God revealed by and in Jesus Christ who this moment comes right to your seat and says,

“I have a word for you.

I know your whole life story. I know every skeleton in your closet. I know every moment of sin, shame, dishonesty and degraded love that has darkened your past. Right now, I know your shallow faith, your feeble prayer life, your inconsistent discipleship.

And my word is this:

I dare you to trust that I love you just as you are and not as you should be, because you’re never gonna be as you should be.”

Now that sits a little hard for people in my holiness tradition, because we do talk about becoming what we're intended to be. The whole point of sanctification is that we're made whole in Christ through the power of God's Holy Spirit. We've gotten in a lot of trouble in the past talking about sanctification as perfection - because John Wesley, the guy who sort of founded this theological movement, called it "Christian perfection," but even that was a misleading name.

He talked about it as perfection of love - not that we get everything right, but that we make everything right. We're going to screw up and make bad choices, but it's how we respond to those choices - do we double down and keep right on stubbornly hurting ourselves and others, or do we come with humility to fix what we've put wrong. It's a complicated concept, too, one that we continue to argue about hundreds of years later (and one that only seems to get more difficult).

But I do believe in transformation - that somehow, the love of God can make us different. I don't know if it fits all the criteria and academic longings of the theologians, but I do know love changes things. That's precisely how I'd like to define it: if salvation means understanding our inherent loveableness, then sanctification means seeing and understanding the same thing in absolutely everyone else.

We've often talked about it as an orderly process, at the very least one that happens simultaneously. Certainly you must be impacted by love to be changed, but I think the relationship may be less tangible and far more amorphous.

We are constantly doubting our worthiness for love, through our actions, the response we get from others, the mess going on inside our heads, and just the mixed up science of brain chemistry. Life in this world is complicated and it's tough to live in a state of confidence, even if that confidence is in the love of God. At the same time, I hope, we're at least occasionally, if not frequently, exposed to moments of genuine love - times and experiences where we get it, we know we're loved unconditionally - whether it comes from someone else, an emotion, or just the benevolent grace of the universe (that some people might call the working of God).

Those moments can breed compassion - they can help us see even the most vile, offensive, hateful other as a human being not unlike ourselves. Those moments, too, may be fleeting. This isn't the dull weight you feel in your stomach when those horrible guilt-inducing starving child commercials come on the TV - you're supposed to feel that way then - but those moments of total understanding when you should be angry. I'm talking about at least patience, grace when you have every right to be upset. It's feeling a love for someone who doesn't deserve it simply because they're alive.

Now those second experiences may be rare, I don't know. What I do know is they come directly from our own experiences of love. We can relate to others because we relate to being wrong, the enemy, the unworthy, the villain. That's the easy part. Recognizing and expressing that such a villain can and should be loved, even doing the loving, is far more difficult. That's the kind of calling, life that we holiness nutsos are determined to pursue.

I've come to realize, though, these states of being where salvation and sanctification make sense - those times when we really internalize our lovableness and, in turn, those moments where we can truly love the unlovable, well, they come and go. We don't always exist in those states. That's semi-blasphemous for a Nazarene minister to say, but it's definitely what I've observed.

I guess what I'm saying in all this is, so what?

Who's told us we have to be perfect? We might have told ourselves this, of course, but no one else did. I get that we should be growing - we should certainly be more like Jesus today than we were two years ago, but we don't actually have to be Jesus. In faith we believe that's down the line somewhere, but not until after some serious divine intervention. Holiness people believe we can be in right relationship with God here and now - we can be the kind of people we'll be in "heaven" (whatever that means to you) here and now - but what if that relationship, that sanctified state of being, is simply someone who's learning? What if it just means we're working to accept and live into our status as beloved and working to treat others the same way. What if this moving back and forth between success and seeming failure is really all success?

Because if we beat ourselves up about not being good enough, not acting out the sanctified life we're supposed to have, we're just going to wind up back at the beginning of Brennan Manning's quote - where we don't really, deep down, believe God loves us. Trying too hard to be sanctified might just keep us from living in the joy of salvation.

So when people ask what it means to be a Christian, I think I'm just gonna say: "learning to believe you're worth loving," and let God take care of the rest.