The Temptation of Democracy

This post originally appeared at Misfits Theology Club.

Democracy muddles the Christian ethics of power. In a world where most people have no say in or control over the selection of governmental leaders, it’s relatively easy to determine how God’s people should respond: give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. Follow the laws so long as they don’t violate the gospel and be willing to suffer the consequences gracefully when you must disobey.

Democracy changes the equation, though. It gives each voter a position of power. Christian ethics move from a discussion of our relationship to power to a discussion of how we use the power we’ve been given. Whether we hold elective office or not, by voting, we become part of the power structure.

There’s an argument that this is a positive development. By receiving a place within the power structure, God’s people have some ability to shape it, perhaps in ways that reflect the Kingdom of God. The question I’ve been pondering, though, is whether or not the Kingdom of God can ever be served by the use of coercive power.

The power of God, as demonstrated in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is entirely non-coercive. God loves us and forgives us and bears with us in radical patience as we continually refuse to be shaped by that love. God is relentless in love, returning over and over again with a divine faith in the power of love to outlast all opposition.

By that I don’t mean God’s love will eventually wear us down in the end – that would be coercive – simply that our power to reject God’s love and refuse the transformation it offers can never outlast God’s ability to keep loving. Christians believe in a world that never ends, because God’s non-coercive love can never be exhausted.

What does that have to do with democracy and power? Well, even the most benevolent governments are coercive. The very nature of worldly power is its ability to force reluctant participation. There will always be some part of us (both individually and collectively) that spurns coercion, even for the common good.

The most good for the most people is still coercion, because it doesn’t allow real freedom for the minority who are negatively affected. It might be the best any human authority can muster, but it falls short of the gospel ideal and of the Kingdom of God.

So, when we vote, aren’t we just contributing to the coercive authority of whoever happens to be in charge of government? Yes, one could argue one candidate is better than the other for the majority of people, but that’s still a short sighted goal achieved through coercion. The Kingdom of God promises a world in which all people live together in peace and love; there is no human system that can promise or produce this eventuality by way of coercion.

I wonder if the opportunity to vote is not the same temptation faced by Jesus when he was shown all the kingdoms of the world and offered authority to rule them all. Certainly the reign of Christ would be preferential to whatever human leaders would emerge in those kingdoms. There would be less suffering and more freedom is Jesus were on the literal throne.

Jesus refused that option, because to take it would be to endorse coercion, even perfect, holy, divine coercion. This was, evidently, unacceptable to the mission of Jesus Christ.

When we vote in elections, we’re expressing a preference. We believe the government of one candidate or party would be better than the government of another. That is almost certainly true (even if we make the “wrong” selection). But neither government could ever advance the Kingdom of God, because coercion is anathema to God’s eternal future.

What if one government would alleviate the suffering of one or more oppressed groups? Shouldn’t we be able to choose the best available human government for the thriving of the most people AND also work for the coming of God’s eternal now and future Kingdom?

You’d think so. I’d hope so. And yet we’re left with the decision Jesus made on that mountain. He forsook the immediate help he could offer to the suffering and oppressed in all the kingdoms of the world to embrace a non-coercive mission of love that led to his own torture and execution.

Couldn’t Jesus have chosen to rule the kingdoms of the world and usher in the Kingdom of God? One would think so and yet he didn’t. The fact that Jesus did not choose both immediate and eternal good leads me to the conclusion that perhaps both are not possible – at least on the level of governmental authority.

I can surely feed the hungry and clothe the naked and work for the freedom of the oppressed in my own individual ability, but to employ the means of coercion to that end on a grander scale just isn’t morally responsible given Jesus’ example.

I don’t like it, but that’s the only conclusion at which I’ve been able to arrive. Voting is an endorsement of coercion and even if that coercion is in line with the principles of God’s Kingdom, it violates the principle of non-coercion and thus can’t be the means through which the Kingdom is fulfilled.

I wonder if, like with issues of violence, there are moments where voting for (or against) a particular candidate or party might be preferable to abstaining. I don’t think, though, in those moments, we can justify our actions as “right” or “moral” or “correct.”

It just seems impossible to believe voting is a particularly Christian or moral duty when Christ himself had the ability to be elected King and refused. He rejected coercion and I think, no matter how reluctantly, we should reject it, too.

**Edited for clarification: 1) This applies largely to Presidential elections (and to a lesser extent, Governors and Mayors) – the notion of singular executive authority is one that pretends (even unintentionally) to compete with God.  Politics, in general, is just how we get along with each other.  At the neighborhood level, we talk to each other and work things out.  As we get into larger societies, we have to elect representatives – there’s a different power dynamic there, although I see elective office as more important, the lower the level.

2)This shouldn’t be seen as abdicating the importance of political action.  Christians should continue to march, protest, advocate, and evangelize on behalf of food for the hungry, equity for the foreigner, and release for the prisoner.  We should do so, though, not with an aim at changing laws, but with an aim at inviting people into the Kingdom of God.  As our collective heart is changed, our laws will follow; they just shouldn’t be driving the ship.

Advent as the Antidote

Originally posted at Misfits Theology Club.

I quit Lent this year. I didn’t really, but in retrospect, I should’ve. When the COVID lockdown started, it was unsettling. Everything was different. People were dying. The world seemed lost. I didn’t figure it out until Easter, but, in the time of global pandemic, Lent doesn’t make sense.

The liturgical year is a re-enactment of Jesus’ life, a way to tell time that corresponds with the cycles of hope and despair, suffering and salvation, which mark human existence. We observe these seasons as a reminder. In a world that is easily distracted by wealth or privilege or competing attempts to ascribe meaning to self-indulgence, we’re prone to forget reality, if not ultimate reality.

In normal times, at least for us in the wealthy West, Lent is a welcome and necessary focus on the suffering our culture spends so much time helping us avoid. As we walk through the pains of human existence, through the eyes of Jesus, who chooses willingly to identify with the poor and oppressed, we can better understand our responsibilities to each other. We recognize and remember that salvation costs something.

It’s often said that white congregations focus on Good Friday and minorities emphasize Sunday morning. This alludes to the divergent experiences of privilege and oppression. Those Christians who don’t look like me don’t need to be reminded of the cost of salvation, or the very real place of suffering in the human condition.

In normal times, I need Lent. Yes, it’s the epitome of privilege that I can choose a specific season to focus on and attempt to understand the depths of suffering in the world, but it is also reality. Without those intentional periods, despite my everyday attempts to avoid the seclusion and separation to which modern society gravitates, if I don’t make space for suffering and sacrifice, my culture will do its level best to ensure I never see it.

Ideally, we’d be able to focus on all aspects of God’s Kingdom and Christian living at all times. We’d be able to balance the positive and the negative, the suffering, sacrifice, and celebration all together in a messy, but helpful mix. I’ve tried and I’m just not that good at it. I need the rhythms of the Church Year to keep me honest.

Not this year, though. Lent just didn’t make sense. I did not need to be reminded that people are suffering, that the world is not as perfect as I’m led to believe, that peace and justice and equity and salvation don’t just happen. I was reminded of those things every day. More of it on Sunday wasn’t helping.

But its for that same reason I’m really looking forward to Advent. In the same way Lent was the exact wrong season for us to be in a global pandemic, Advent is the perfect time to experience an overwhelming problem that is beyond our control.

Advent is my favorite season – largely because I’m a control freak and I constantly guilt myself into believing I’m not doing enough. I love Advent, because I’m given permission to pass the buck, to admit I can’t solve all the problems in the world – that no one can – and to put all the weight of responsibility back on God.

Advent is the season to shake your fist at the heavens and exclaim, “Why the heck are you letting this happen?”

Now, I don’t believe God pulls strings in everyday life. I don’t think God controls the weather and I don’t think God can keep my car from running out of gas until I get to the next exit. I don’t have a conception of God that lends itself to the unexplained.

I’m also not one to abdicate human responsibility. I don’t think we, collectively are incapable of living and being the people God created us to be. While I don’t think humans naturally possess the ability to bring about our own salvation, I do whole-heartedly support the idea that, as part of God’s salvation of the world, we’re invited and included (and perhaps necessary) for that future to become reality.

We can do what God has called us to do. We have a part to play in the fulfillment of all things. We just can do it by sheer force of will. Like most gospel-related issues, this is one of control. We attempt to tackle, solve, and overcome our problems with power and force. If we give more, work more, try harder, accomplish, then we can bring about the solution to all life’s problems.

Advent is the season where we admit that’s just not true. You cannot conquer your enemies by cunning or guile or brute force. We can only “win,” by persistence. Advent is the season where we remind ourselves to keep our heads down and keep at it. War, poverty, hatred. Racism, inequality, violence. These are the insidious enemies of the gospel and they remain so because we continue to attack them on their own terms.

COVID has shown us we can’t win through bluster. We can’t wish or will it away; stubborn refusal to acknowledge the power of this particular enemy has not effect (or maybe the opposite effect). That does not mean it can’t be defeated. God has promised and given us the power to overcome. It’s just not done the way the world tells us it should be.

We are powerless to defeat real evil, if we expect the victory to come tomorrow or the next day, or even in our lifetime. That doesn’t mean we stop trying, but it does mean we take a different approach. Advent is the season where we let go of our allusions of grandeur and say, “God, your way better work, because ours sure isn’t.”

That’s the desperate hope I need during this pandemic Advent season. I pray it’s hope you find for yourselves during this time as well.

Christ has come. Christ is coming again. Come, Lord Jesus. Come.

Anti-Abortion, Pro-Roe v Wade

 

Abortion is always tragic.

It’s a loss of life. We can get into biological and theological arguments about when exactly cells become an individual life, but those cells – all cells – have always been a part of the collective reality we call “life.” Our modern, individualistic world focuses on individual life as if that’s the only life that exists. I’d argue individuals are only bit players in the grand reality of existence.

When we say Christians value life, we’re not (or at least we shouldn’t be) speaking only of individual life. Individual lives are indeed important, but only insomuch as they point us to a larger understanding of life. We want to be life-giving people, but that doesn’t mean our primary aim is procreation. It means we are contributing to the health and well-being of all life – usually through interactions with one or more individual lives, but with a higher purpose.

This is evidenced in the traditional evangelical approach to abortion: ban it. We want laws changed to criminalize the practice, not necessarily to put women in jail, but to fearfully discourage abortion as an option. We’re willing to lie to pregnant women about science, laws, health outcomes, and whatever else it takes to influence their choice away from abortion.

If the purpose of our efforts was to limit the number of individual abortions, this might be justifiable on a purely numeric scale (although these tactics remain morally suspect). The Christian aim, though, when it comes to abortion is not to limit the practice, but to eliminate it. Even one is too many!

Laws, fear, and coercion will never eliminate abortion. Making it difficult, scary, or unpopular will indeed stop some women from following through. Desperate women, though, will revert to back alleys, homemade poisons, coat hangers, and “falling” down the stairs – all common abortion practices in times and places where traditional evangelical approaches to abortion dominate.

Legal limits can never stop abortion, because they do not address the desire to have an abortion.

The only means to remove the desire for an abortion is to provide social conditions that preclude the desire. If women and children and families (and men, who are an integral factor in, and often root cause of, every unwanted pregnancy) were supported in true, loving community, there would not be a need for abortion. That’s the goal: elimination, not moderation.

That doesn’t mean Christians can’t or shouldn’t address individual life. Coming alongside vulnerable women, supporting them during pregnancy, and demonstrating your commitment to the value of their life and the value of the life of their future child is important. Adoption, especially adoption out of foster care, adoption of older children, and adoption of those with special needs, are important.

These things are not important, though, because they might limit abortions. These individual actions are important because we have a Christian duty to provide such loving care for all people at all times. There are hundreds of millions of vulnerable women around the world who’ve chosen to have their babies and still live unsupported and unloved. Abortion is irrelevant to the call for us to care for the vulnerable.

The point of life itself is to be a life-giving presence to all people in all circumstances, especially those most vulnerable to the insidious tentacles of trauma, pain, and death. Being present is not a means to an end, but an end in itself. THE end itself.

Guilt, shame, fear, and coercion cannot get us to the Kingdom of God – which is what Jesus called those optimal social conditions that prevent the desire for abortions. This Kingdom is also the future we have been promised. At the core of Christian faith is a belief that the Kingdom is not just a possibility, but a reality. Jesus announced and makes possible the world we seek; we must live into it as it comes into being around us.

The “end” Christians seek, the Kingdom of God, cannot be realized through guilt or shame or fear or coercion. We cannot achieve our goals through those means. The means by which we seek the Kingdom is the goal. We must do all things in love, because love is the only law in the Kingdom of God.

If you are calling guilt, coercion, shame, or fear “love,” because you have good intentions, you have missed the point. That is transactional morality; it is not what Jesus taught.

These conclusions can be infinitely expanded upon, but they are a good start for those who wish to end abortion:

The mandate to love means working for systems that fully support mothers and children.
The mandate to love means ensuring safety and equality for all women.
The mandate to love means holding accountable all people who abuse and manipulate women.
The mandate to love means working to change systems that oppress and disadvantage women.
The mandate to love means naming and addressing racial inequities that disadvantage women of color.
The mandate to love means naming and addressing economic inequities that disadvantage poor women.
The mandate to love means providing community and support to all women in all walks of life.
The mandate to love means organizing society in which every child is treated as if they were yours.

I was raised in a very conservative household. I picketed an abortion clinic when I was barely old enough to remember it. My parents remain, to this day, largely one issue (anti-Roe v Wade) voters. Many of the members of my denomination would largely be appalled if they knew our own Manual of Christian life and practice allows for abortion after much prayer and counsel with a pastor.

My creativity on this issue was sparked by reading John Irving’s novel, The Cider House Rules, which powerfully illustrates not the value of abortion, but the tragic realities out of which women seek abortions. I began to see the problem not as the intellectual moral debate over abortion itself, but the deficiencies of a society that immorally withholds life-giving options from desperate pregnant women.

I began to study the scriptures more directly and think about how to apply Jesus’ words on the Kingdom to this particular issue. All you’ve read above is the summary of that process – a process that’s boiled down to one troubling conclusion:

The Christian mandate to love means ensuring safe access to abortions for those who desire them.

I believe this not because I’ve become persuaded that abortions are acceptable or justified or moral, but because I don’t believe it’s Christ-like for the most vulnerable in our society to pay the price for our collective sin and indifference.

The woman caught in adultery was not justified in her actions. Jesus did not excuse her behavior, but he refused to allow her to be the scapegoat for a society’s sinful indifference.

An abortion is not the “fault” of the woman who seeks it or the doctor who performs it. It is not the “fault” of the child’s father or the laws that allow it. Every abortion is a condemnation of our collective failure to provide the healthcare, emotional support, education, housing, validation, purpose, and physical protection every member of our society is entitled to as a beloved child of God.

We ALL bear collective AND individual responsibility. We don’t ignore individuals in need, but we can’t limit our scope to fixing individual problems. Christian faith calls us to a higher purpose: to embody a people, God’s people, who exist to be an example to the world of God’s Kingdom – a place where, among other things, abortions don’t exist, not because they’re illegal, but because they’re unnecessary.

If you think this perspective on the world is fantastical or unrealistic or impossible, please, let me introduce you to Jesus Christ and the wonderful message of the gospels: the Kingdom of God is at hand. If we fail to see it, it is only because we fail to live into it.

Commitment and the Search for Meaning

Originally posted at Misfits Theology Club

"The injunction of the gospel is... to lose one's life in the service of others, not to keep one's options open."

This is John Meacham’s interpretation of John Lewis’ practical theology in the Pulitzer Prize winner’s recent biography of the late Congressperson and Civil Rights icon.  It struck me as an acutely apt prophetic challenge for today’s commitment-averse society.

If you talk to contemporary pastors, one of the real stressors in ministry is the unwillingness of people to commit to the congregation.  In previous generations, it seems people organized their lives around membership in the body of Christ, as expressed by their local congregation.

“Regular” worship attendance used to mean 50 weeks a year; people might miss worship for vacation or an illness, but rarely anything else.  Those were your core members.  These days, the definition of “regular” is a lot more like 25 weeks a year.  Pastors never really know if even their most dedicated members will show up from week to week.

I don’t think our congregations are without fault in this trend.  We’ve largely avoided engaging in the issues that affect daily life for most people.  We’ve refused to challenge societal norms with the counter-cultural message of the gospel.  We haven’t given people a purpose they find essential to their lives.  Much has been written about moral therapeutic deism and you can read up on it elsewhere.

The typical pastoral complaints of youth sports, beach houses, and the pure enjoyment of just sleeping in aren’t entirely wrong either, though.  There are certainly more and more options competing with what was traditionally a Sunday monopoly for Christian congregations, but I suspect it’s this notion of “keeping our options open” that proves more dangerous to healthy lives.

We may be over-committed today, but not in the same way we would’ve defined commitment in the past.  We’re involved in more things, but much more loosely than we would’ve been twenty years ago.  You’re a member of a gym, a book club, and a congregation, but you keep all of those commitments at arm’s length.  There’s a “don’t ask, don’t tell” element whereby they won’t demand rigid attendance and we’re always available to do something more interesting.

It’s a by-product of consumer society.  We’re always open to trading up.  My kid gets recruited for a higher level travel team?  Let’s jump ship, teammates be damned.  My friends want to spontaneously go out for drinks tonight?  There will be another bible study next week.

I don’t want to be a Pollyanna, decrying the lost commitments of the past.  We’ve largely abandoned the shame tactics that made people feel guilty for an absence (“we missed you last week” might be a genuine expression of concern, but more often it sounds like passive-aggressive scolding), but we’ve not yet mastered a loving communication of importance.

This is the rub.  How do we reinforce the reality that no group is at its best without all its members and also not require those members to bear a larger burden or responsibility than they feel capable of shouldering?

First, the focus of our efforts should be on love.  The root of the gospel is not behavior modification, moral policing, or getting people to heaven.  The Kingdom of God is where everyone feels valued.  Whatever else we do in life, it’s all in a search for meaning.  As Christians, we believe you find that meaning in the eyes and in the lives of other people.  (Peter Rollins will tell you there’s no meaning to find, which may be true, but he still ends up at the importance of engaging in inextricable relationship with other people.)

We all need some place where we can unload the baggage of the week, express our inconvenient frustrations, and be encouraged to act and react out of the core of our being rather than the messiness of our emotions.

Binge-watching trashy reality shows over a gallon of ice cream allows us to do the first.  Laughing and crying with friends over drinks, board games, or ax throwing gives us access to the second.  The third, however, requires the Church.

I try to be very precise with my language.  A congregation is an organized local body of like-minded people.  The Church is the whole of those people, throughout time and space, committed to embodying the gospel.  Which means, your board game club might just be the Church, if it helps you better live out what’s really important.

There are real, foundational truths in the world.  There are a few things genuinely right and good and true regardless of context.  Some things are bigger than us and our emotions and they demand we commit our lives to them if we have any hope of peace in this world.

For Christians, those things are love.  That’s it, just love: reckless, extravagant, selfless love for even the worst human being you see each day.  We might not be called to end our lives in service of that love – as Jesus did – but we’re absolutely called to give our lives to that love.

Love is the gospel.  Whatever and whoever helps us align our lives with that truth is the Church.

Moving forward, Church can’t only bring to mind one very specific image that’s largely defined the word for the last millennium or so.  That’s not to say pews and hymns and sanctuaries are out of date or unimportant, just that they are only as necessary as their ability to foster the gospel of love in those who attend.

The important element, as Meacham says, is that we’ve got people around us who help us commit – not to obligations or guilt or pleasure or fun, but to something real and true and deep and bigger than ourselves.

We like to keep our options open to avoid stress and with an eye towards the false promise that easy satisfaction is right around the corner.  Whatever we’re looking for: meaning or validation or belonging or peace is not found “out there.”  We can only be truly human by going deeper – deeper in love, deeper in relationship, deeper in commitment to one another.

There is no other option, so stop looking.

True Christian Worship

 

When Jesus and Paul write, in scripture, about Christians avoiding lawsuits, they’re not condemning the practice entirely. Lawsuits in New Testament times weren’t about justice, but money (sound familiar); the side with the most cash or political clout won. Biblical prohibitions on lawsuits are about both public perception and fairness.

Christians should be able to work out differences with each other or, at the very least, within the congregation. Far more important, though, is the avoidance of a system that prioritizes the powerful over the weak. Throughout scripture, almost more times than you can count (although, because its the Bible, someone always does), our holy text aligns Christian duty with the poor, the foreigner, widows, and orphans – the forgotten, vulnerable, and marginalized.

We are, above all, to be on the side of the weakest in society.

Modern US Christians know all about the context of lawsuit provisions, that they’re more about fairness than the value of lawsuits, because we sue people all the time. We sue for the rights to do just about whatever we want, whenever we want, if we can even remotely justify it through proof texting.

This is just the modern form of New Testament justice. We’re using the first amendment to the US Constitution as a cudgel, to beat those around us over the head. These suits are not defenses of anything, but offensive maneuvers meant to gain and maintain the powerful position Christians occupy in this society.

I know you’ll hear lots of preachers decry “religious persecution” these days, because Christians don’t have full reign and freedom to act in any manner they see fit, but they clearly don’t understand either the word “christian” or the word “persecution.”

Christians are using lawsuits to ensure “religious freedom,” but the real effect is to establish our beliefs and practices above and beyond vulnerable or marginalized groups in this country. We’re selling it to our people by claiming vulnerable and threatened status ourselves, but that’s not something we’ve got any right to do, since we believe our side has already won (that’s what the whole cross and empty tomb business was about).

Now we’ve got congregations violating COVID orders to meet in person, claiming it’s a religious right.   

Listen, I’ll be the first person to advocate for Christians to break the law on principle. I believe whole-heartedly that God’s laws are higher and more important than human laws – in fact, I don’t think human laws are worth anything at all and I don’t think Christians should ever feel obligated to follow any of them ever.

Now a lot of human laws align with Christian principles – like caring for those left out and vulnerable – in fact the US legal principle of protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority seems entirely compatible with Christian thought and practice. As Paul says, our freedom does not give us license to do anything, but empowers us to care for those around us. Christian freedom is not unfettered.

When this whole pandemic thing started, I was dead set on living without fear. As a general rule, I try not to care too much about death. I’m not a reckless person (I’m pretty risk averse, honestly), but if some moral action will make me less safe, I try not to worry about safety. In March, I was firmly in the camp of going about regular life, COVID be damned. No disease would make me live in fear.

Then I was educated. I found out that not everyone is at the same risk of infection and that symptoms vary wildly among different groups of people. The issue was not about whether I would be infected or not, but whether I would infect others who would have a much tougher time of it than me.

That’s a different story. It’s not about being willing to risk my life or my family’s, but being willing to risk the health and safety of everyone else. This is where the Christian mandate to care for others, to sacrifice our own freedoms and rights for vulnerable people comes into play.

I am willing to risk the lives of others for principle. I won’t kill to save a life. It’s wrong; I won’t do it. That’s a hard and fast Christian principle. Nowhere in scripture, though, does failing to gather for corporate worship rise to such a level. In fact, the earliest Christian worship, the corporate worship practiced by the people closest to Jesus himself, was done in small groups, in homes!

During a public health crisis, worship is not curtailed – since every single thing every single person does at any moment in their life is worship (whether its worship of God or something else) – worship can’t be curtailed. I know not meeting in person is difficult, but it’s not a religious principle worth people’s lives.

If it were just “our” lives, that would really be another matter. Maybe you disagree with me, that meeting, in person, for corporate worship is worth the risk. That’s fine. I’m happy to defend your right to do that, but you’ve got to find a way to do it that doesn’t endanger others. If you want to create some congregational bubble, where people can live and worship together away from the rest of society, by all means, do it. The NBA is doing it. A lot of military installations are doing it. That works.

Break the law, exercise your convictions, but what you’re doing is not Christian worship if it fails to consider the most vulnerable among us (and, by definition, as we covered above, that can’t be us)!

Jesus condemned no one but the religious folks who justified their own self-righteousness. Violating public health orders in places where COVID is running wild is precisely the Pharisaical thing to do. It’s adherence to self-prescribed holy action without regard for the poor and vulnerable.

You may be surprised to know scripture does not talk about AN antichrist – not one single person set up in opposition to Jesus – the term antichrist, in scripture, is reserved for those people who proclaim as gospel some belief or practice that is antithetical to the teachings of Jesus. That is what this is.

Those pastors who lead others in violating public health orders in the midst of a pandemic are antichrists. There’s no way around it. It’s direct violation of Jesus’ teaching and example to love those who are most forgotten, to put others before one’s self.

There’s plenty of room for religious freedom, if you’re willing to do it locked away in an isolated enclave. This is the choice many sects have chosen over the years. From cloistered monks to modern day Amish. They choose to isolate as an example of what a holy community might look like. The sacrifices required to do such a thing are noble and honorable.

Those of us who’ve chosen to practice our faith in the midst of larger society are no less called to be an example, but being an example of Christian life in the midst of the world looks different. Our freedoms are different, our interactions with those around us are different, because the context is different.

We’re called to avoid Court, because the courts only deal in arguments over power. Christians find power in refusing it, in being willing to lay down our lives – not for our own comfort and convenience – but because its what’s required to care for others.

If you want to risk your life for Christian principle, volunteer at a hospital, get a job as a nurse or an orderly, work in a slaughterhouse or deliver for Amazon. If you’re willing to give up your health and life in service of Christ, do it also in service of others. That is true Christian worship.

Us AND Them

This was originally published at Misfits Theology Club.

Think about that proverbial uncle, that older, white man sitting across the table from you at that otherwise innocuous party. He makes a comment about “colored” people and you can see the desperation in his eyes for validation. In my experience, anyway, that guy is not looking for validation for his racist ideas, but simply asking to be treated as a human being.

This is the dilemma of the moment: cancel culture. Do we invalidate people because of their backward, out-dated, of offensive ideas? Do we cut off and remove people from our lives because they act inappropriately?

It’s a positive dilemma, despite its problems. It shows we’ve moved beyond the phase of ignoring the offense. That was our old stand-by response, right? We’d hear the Uncle and see the desperation in his eyes and change the subject, leaving both of us feeling empty and unfulfilled.

Because it’s a two-way dilemma.

It’s not just that we struggle to separate other people from their words and actions, but we have the same struggle when it comes to ourselves, as well. If someone judges our actions inappropriate or ill-advised, our first reaction is to take it personally.

“I love you, Uncle Jim, but that’s a really offensive thing to say,” just doesn’t cut it.

It should, by the way. “I love you, but,” should be enough to validate the person and also address their problematic words and actions. It just so rarely works that way.

A lot of that is because we get defensive. We don’t hear the “I love you,” at all or we hear the “but” as invalidation of that love. We hear that phrase as conditional love, which is often more a burden than a comfort. “I want to love you, but you must change.”

Theologically, Christians affirm that love is the only way to change the world. We won’t get anywhere by forcing people into change, through threats, fear, or shame. We live in a world, though, where all of those things are baked into every system. If there are no consequences to selfishness, people will just be selfish.

This is seen in the theological notion of total depravity. Humans are inclined to selfish, sinful activity and only God can change them.

This isn’t wrong, of course, but how, precisely does God change people? Is it through threats of bodily harm? Do we fear Hell so much, we decide to behave? Is it shame or the withholding of love and affection? Those approaches may actually affect what people do, but none of them changes a person.

God so loved the world that God deigned to become a lowly human, live among us, and be executed for showing us a picture of what we could be. Jesus reserved his condemnation only for those prominent figures who refused to acknowledge their own faults and failures.

Love may not be the cheapest, easiest, or most efficient way to get people to say and do the words and actions we want from them, but it is the only way for any of us to become the kind of people we were created to be.

It’s not enough to tell Uncle Jim that’s he’s valuable, regardless of his offensive words and actions, he has to know it, to feel it, to be loved. Part of the problem may be his past damage – that others have treated his so poorly he no longer knows how to receive love – but more likely than not, the root cause (for him and for us), is our inability to separate the value of people from the things they do and say.

That’s not to say we can’t have boundaries. If Uncle Jim is going to continue saying racist things, he’s not going to get a public forum – as far as I can help it – although I have to be careful to continue those conversations in private so as not to transmit my opposition for his ideas to the man himself (and to show I’m not writing him off with his beliefs).

We also have to protect ourselves in those cases where our foundational, bedrock ideas are in direct contradiction to those of someone else. Someone who believes in non-violence is going to be able to sustain only limited interaction with someone who’s quick to justify a fight. They may be able to dialogue and show love for one another in certain circumstances, but they probably can’t be roommates.

We have to work hard to define our relationships in ways that treat people as people (including ourselves) – even if that’s our main disagreement with them. We are called to love our enemies, but that’s much easier if we’re the ones who’ve labeled them enemies than if they’ve intentionally set themselves up in opposition to us.

I imagine this also requires some measure of relationship to begin with. If the only connection we have to each other is disagreement about a certain idea, we cannot see each other as human beings. The offensive words and actions must be secondary to the humanity of our opponents. I must understand you in order to really understand what you say or do.

That doesn’t mean you let the words or actions go, but you must address them in the context of the person you know. And we have to be fair to their humanity – which, at least if you’re a Christian, is equally valuable to the humanity of everybody else.

It’s one thing to stop watching a TV show or not buy concert tickets because the ideas of the actors or musicians are offensive to you – there is no personal relationship there – it’s quite another to say “you can’t work on my car, because you don’t care about the poor,” or “you can’t bag my groceries because you haven’t recognized your white privilege.”

Morality is not a battle to be won. Christians believe love is already victorious, we’re just waiting for the effects of that victory to work their way through the world. Whatever ideas or actions we wish to see eradicated are already dead; we don’t need to kill them again, and we definitely don’t need to kill those people clinging to the corpse.

Racist, sexist, selfish, and offensive words need to be addressed, for sure – ignoring is no longer an option – but we have to remember hate harms both victim and perpetrator, even if in different ways. If we can’t walk beside both parties, with the care and concern appropriate to their specific context, we’re not living out the gospel.

No one gets written off or we’re no better than “them.”

If You Vote, You Can't Complain

This was originally published at Misfits Theology Club.

I decided to stop voting in the run up to the 2008 US Presidential election. I found myself genuinely believing that this Barack Obama guy might be able to solve the problems of the world. I’m not sure I used to word savior, and I wasn’t treating him like a messiah, but I started to feel convicted.

I felt convicted again when I got to the end of Shane Claiborne’s Jesus for President, and he talked about how many people had literally died for the right to vote and that sacrifice had to be considered if anyone was going to willingly stop going to the polls.

That year I ended up voting on behalf of one of my immigrant co-workers (after all, the outcome of the election had far more impact on her than on me), but it started me on a journey of discovery.

A lot of my seminary classes focused on the Kingdom of God – basically THE central theme of the gospels, but not something super emphasized in my evangelical upbringing.  I started to see how God’s Kingdom was an alternative to the kingdoms of the world and how even democratic systems distract Christians from the full practice of their faith.

The real insidious accomplishment of US democracy is its claim to politics. The word politics really just means the way in which people interact publicly. There are so many different ways to do politics, but in the US we’ve come to (falsely) believe that our system of elections and elected office are the only way.  If you want to change the world, change the laws.

Every system of power aspires to universality; it’s a further means of control. Louis XIV of France famously said, “l’etat c’est moi,” “I am the State.” Caesar put his face on money and democracy’s egalitarian, ‘everyone gets a voice’ mantra does the same thing.

Growing up I was taught it was a literal sin not to vote. Maybe not so bad as having sex outside of marriage, but certainly on par with dancing. Civic duty was synonymous with Christian duty, just another example of the grand Constantinian bargain. The legitimacy bestowed by the first “Christian” emperor came at the great price of the Church’s subjugation to the State. Whether Empire, Kingdom, or Democracy, the Church has historically served as an accessory to power.

Despite my provocative title, I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong for Christians to vote; I do think it’s wrong for Christians to vote out of a sense of obligation. Christians should never have to pick between the lesser of two evils, because Christians always have another way: the Way of Jesus.

We’ve long been told that those who don’t vote have no right to complain, but I’d argue the other way: those who vote are participating in a flawed and ultimately fruitless system; you’re voting for democracy as the means to a right and proper future.

Churchill was citing a well worn phrase when he said “Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others that have been tried.” That’s probably true, if we’re speaking of nations, but Christianity itself is an alternative and the one alternative politic (or kingdom or government) that we should feel confident in to produce the eschatological future God promises to us.

Acts 2 outlines the early Church sharing goods and caring for each other in a kind of benevolent anarchy that fully aligns with the Kingdom of God, explained by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.

Of course that only existed for a short time and it would be impossible for a nation to adopt. Christianity requires voluntary association; it can’t be imposed upon people.

Those counter arguments are true and valid, but they are also misleading. The very notion that we must have nations or leaders or voting or governments at all is not a Christian concept. Jesus, and the writers of scripture take the existence of those things as given, but they don’t require them. In fact, much of scripture is an explanation of how God’s people can be a faithful people in the midst of and in spite of the governments and nations around us.

Citizenship, then, becomes the primary Christian concern.  We can’t be Democrats or Republicans (or even Americans), because we already have membership in the Body of Christ.  I am tangentially a citizen of the United States by virtue of my birth, I might vote for a Democrat or a Republican in some specific election, but I can never be those things, because my allegiance lies with Christ.

That’s not to say elections can’t be politics, but they can’t be all of politics.  Christians must rely on the practice of the gospel as evidenced in our communities of faith, for our primary political expression.  Our congregations are called to be examples of the Kingdom of God.  We’re supposed to show, through our lives and relationships, how people can love and care for each other without threat of punishment or exercises of coercive power.

In the end, I do vote. I vote for representatives – the US House and Senate, my State legislators, the town council. A “Christian” means of doing life in community naturally involves people getting together and hashing things out.  We might rue how partisan and politicized our deliberative bodies are these days, but their purpose is still right and true.

I refrain from voting for positions of sole authority, like governor or president. I just don’t believe those kinds of positions are possible for any human to handle without compromising their integrity. Christ is the head of all and we can be nothing but members of the obedient body.

I don’t advocate for my position on elections; I don’t think it’s universally right or wrong. It’s where I’ve found a balance between answering the democratic call to participate in the town, state, and country in which I live, and the Christian call to the alternative politics of the Kingdom of God.

I try not to fault people for their own voting choices (although I will be quick to tell people it’s okay not to vote, if they don’t feel comfortable doing so).  I do hope, though, to be a continual reminder, to myself and others, that the electoral system is not the only way to do politics, that it’s not the primary way, nor the best.

We must put and keep our faith in the politics of Jesus, lived out in communities that bear his name.  We must remind each other that our hope lies not in armies or laws or elections, but in the Kingdom of God, as evidenced in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

If you have complaints about the system, stop participating in it and embrace the power and promise of the politics of God’s people.

The Faulty Evangelical Hermeneutics of All Lives Matter

This was originally published at Misfits Theology Club.

 

You’ve heard it. Probably from a particularly active aunt on Facebook. The out and out opponents of racial justice tend to avoid the phrase in favor of more inflammatory statements that demean the movement as a whole, but lots of well-meaning white folks insult the cause of racial justice and simply don’t understand why “All Lives Matter” is so problematic.

As an evangelical pastor, though, I understand. In fact, it’s time for me and my compatriots to take responsibility for the “All Lives Matter” blind spot that’s so infected our ranks. A lot of it is a direct result of our carefully curated theology and the way we interpret scripture to avoid the pitfalls of “dangerous” heresy.

Evangelicals have always been leery of “works righteousness,” the notion that something we do could somehow earn our salvation – that salvation could be a transaction instead of a no-strongs-attached gift from God. In trying to avoid this false doctrine, we’ve made Christian faith about nothing more than what we think in our heads and the ideas we affirm as correct.

We cling to Romans 10:9 – “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus Christ is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Intellectual assent – a thoroughly modern, western concept – has become the end-all and be-all of evangelical faith.

We’ve done this without acknowledging that a Greek conception of “belief” inherently involves action. For the language and culture into which scripture was written, you did not “believe” anything unless you acted upon that belief. Intellectual assent is entirely foreign to scripture or the earliest Christian traditions.

We’ve traded one form of works righteousness for another. Instead of something we do providing salvation, we earn our salvation through the power of good intentions. It sounds sacrilegious, but it’s how we operate.

When faced with the failures and shortcomings that clearly expose the gaping chasm between who we are and who we’re supposed to be, we cling to “Jesus Christ is Lord.” We’ve said the right things and believed the right things, which trumps whatever actions we’ve done or failed to do.

“All Lives Matter” is our disembodied affirmation of truth, regardless of the physical reality around us. It is more important to evangelicals than recognizing the reality that black lives clearly don’t mean as much as white ones, because our theology has taught us that intentions trump actions.

Yes, yes, “faith without works is dead,” but we treat those actions more like a bonus – extra credit on the quiz of life. Optional.

How can we get away with that? How could so many be convinced that merely stating an ideal (like “Jesus Christ is Lord” or “All Lives Matter”) could be more appropriate than addressing the very real ways those ideals are not born out in the world around us?

Simple, we’ve also been taught that Jesus came to save us.

While it’s true that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ does provide salvation for you and for me, our salvation was not the point of God becoming human, walking among us, submitting to death, and being raised to new life.

Your individual salvation is not worth all that.

Many evangelicals have been told that even if they were only one who would ever believe, Jesus still would’ve died for them.

I’ll agree that if you were the only thing that existed in the universe, floating around in the vacuum of nothingness, that God would love you enough to die for you alone.

That’s not reality, though. The universe exists, with all its multitudinous and complex creation. You and I don’t exist in a vacuum. We exist as part of a gigantic, infinite reality, which God loves so thoroughly and completely, down to the last quark and atom, that God’s sole purpose is to love that reality into its created purpose.

Your salvation and my salvation are made possible in Jesus Christ, but only as means to an end. We are saved so we may participate in the salvation of everything. We are saved to be part of a world that operates as God intends it to operate.

When we say “Jesus Christ is Lord,” we’re merely asserting a future reality and committing to work so that future reality becomes a present reality.

Jesus tells a story about a rich man who leaves various servants in charge of various sums of money. Two of them go out and use the money to make more; one servant hides the money, saving what he has so nothing will be lost when the rich man returns.

For too long, evangelical theology has condemned us to be that risk-averse servant. We’ve taken the good news of the gospel and we sat on it, afraid to lose it by engaging the messiness of the world and seeking to participate in its transformation into God’s Kingdom. We were welcomed into the front door of heaven and we’ve camped out there, afraid to explore the house, for fear of breaking a lamp or tracking mud on the carpet.

All Lives Matter is a future reality; it is entirely consistent with God’s intentions for the world and Christian faith is confident it will come to be made evident to everyone at some point.

We will never realize that future reality, though, unless we are obedient to the God of our salvation and invest the gospel gift we’ve been given in real, tangible action to combat the lived reality that, today, in our world, our country, our neighborhood, our church, some lives – black and brown lives – do not yet matter as much as other lives, as much as they deserve to matter, as much as they will matter once the investment of this gospel comes to fruition in the promised and certain future.

But for now, saying “All Lives Matter” is like hiding the gift of God away, afraid to invest it for fear of loss. It is a rejection of our scriptural mandate to believe (not just intellectually assent) that Jesus Christ is Lord. That belief must be manifest in action. Our salvation is not our own; it is an investment, on behalf of God, for the redemption of the whole world.

It is time to escape the evangelical hermeneutics that have for so long held us back from this reality!

More than a Protest

This was originally published at Misfits Theology Club. 

Grey haired and visibly nervous, standing alongside a little girl on a porch covered in American flags, this white woman held a sign that said, “I have a voice and you will hear it.” Marching with 1,000 or so high school and college students in my home town, I wasn’t quite sure what message that voice was hoping to deliver. As we passed, ever so slightly, with great trepidation, she joined in, “Black Lives Matter.”

My heart broke, but out of joy and not disappointment.

White people are used to chanting. Despite the odd anti-vaxxer or gun rights advocate, most of us aren’t down with protest, either. The system generally works out pretty well for us, so we’re not used to challenging it. I know how difficult it is to first say, then yell some words that won’t be well received by everyone around you, by people who look like you.

This sacrifice of comfort and security is nothing compared to the sacrifice of reputations, livelihoods, and life so many people of color endure for the cause of freedom and justice, but it’s not nothing. George Floyd’s murder, more than any other moment in my memory, is driving white people to action. Sure, not enough white people and not enough action, but more than previous movements for change have led us to expect.

As Al Sharpton said in his excellent eulogy for Floyd earlier today: there is something in the air right now that tells us it’s a new season, a season of change. The last dozen or more tragic black deaths have led to protest, sure, but also questions of “will things ever change.” This time does feel different.

I don’t think we’ll see the changes we need or even the changes we want, but we will see some things change.

I am proud to march for black lives and against police violence, but I have a hard time calling myself a protester. I’d like to think of myself more as a forecaster. Protesters are saying ‘things needs to change,’ but forecasters are saying ‘things gonna change.’ There is an inevitability to forecasting, a confidence, a belief in the future.

My faith tells me the future in inevitable, that all people will enjoy the love and peace for which God created this universe. There will be no injustice and people of all nations will live together in the light of God’s goodness.

The chasm between reality and utopia seems uncross-able, and yet we march with a conviction that it is just over the next hill. White Christianity has often forsaken action for a belief that nothing we can do could ever bring about God’s preferred future. “If only God can act, what good are my feeble hands?”

Of course, those feeble hands are the only ones God has. Yes, divine action is required to make the world right, to set the universe into its proper orbit, to fulfill the dream of God’s already/not yet Kingdom, but that divine action is the work of the Holy Spirit in and through us. Our feeble hands.

Our black and brown sisters and brothers have never not known that. We’ve given them no choice in life, but hope and faith. There has never been a reality that “worked okay” for them.

It’s high time we not only recognize a reality that does not "work okay" for everyone doesn’t "work okay" for us either. As simple as it may be, it was an act of courage for my white neighbor to make a sign, to step out onto the porch, to take the hand of her granddaughter, and join in what had to feel like a foreign cheer.

When Paul writes "there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female," he is not negating the diversity of the body of Christ. He is not telling us that we must somehow assume a monolithic Christian culture where everyone looks the same. Paul is telling us that the divisions we make, the lines we draw between otherwise arbitrary differences are null and void.

It is human nature to categorize. We draw lines between “us” and “them,” as a matter of course. According to Paul, our Christian duty, when those lines are drawn, is always to step onto the other side. For Christians, there is no “them” only “us.”

The challenge for white people, the place we always stumble, is our inability to bring “them” over to “us.” We are happy to make “them,” “us,” so long as its done on our terms. We fail to relinquish control of the narrative – a requirement to truly find our identity in Christ.

“Us” must become “them” to find our true purpose together – a whole new “us,” that is not defined by the lines we draw or the distinctions we make. It is a world of – at least at first – discomfort and disconnection, a world of forecasting, not our preferred future, but God’s.

I will never know precisely what possessed that brave, beautiful woman to join the chants today, but I suspect it was a confidence, deep down inside, that the uncertain world of the future was better than the well-known one that was just "working okay" for her.

I don’t know what the future holds, but I’m more and more convinced we need “them” to show “us” what it means to live into it together.

Come, Lord Jesus.

(Photo by Doug Loosarian)

The Power of Why

This is a post I published at Misfits Theology Club.

 

I snapped at her – the small, gracious woman who gave so much of her life to children’s ministry in our congregation – I snapped at her in a way that was most definitely cruel, if instinctual. I was the associate pastor at a very traditional, conservative-leaning congregation.  Seminary trained.  Third generation. Pastor’s kid.  I was supposed to know, to go along, to say the right thing.

We were discussing some lessons we were planning, maybe for VBS. I brought up that one particular passage may be a little complex for younger children to fully understand. She responded that children are used to being told what to do, that sometimes you just need to obey. Kids can be told “God said it, we don’t need to understand.”

“I do.”

Innocuous words, but the tone was unmistakable.  I regret the way they came out, but certainly not saying them.

The very background that was supposed to form me into the guy with all the right responses, the one to toe the party line; the background that was supposed to provide me with an endless supply of Sunday School answers, did just the opposite.  I can’t stand them.

In the years since this particular awkward conversation I’ve learned to be more diplomatic, more “pastoral,” as they say.  I try not to crush the faith and spirit of generous, good-natured servants of God quite so quickly.

But the point remains.

I do need to know why God is asking me to do something.

Maybe it’s a failing. I’m willing to entertain that option.  Perhaps I simply lack the faith I’m supposed to have and rely too much on my own intellect. I’ve definitely been guilty of that before.

I’ve found, though, that when people dismiss the question “why” on matters of faith, it tends to limit the experience.  Those “trust and obey” traditions feel empty and deficient and entirely unsatisfactory.  When the “why” is encouraged, though – or at least tolerated – the expansive nature of God and faith becomes real; the power and potential of the divine in the world seems limitless and worthwhile.

“God said it and that’s good enough for me” is a profound statement of faith… if you’re 100% confident God did, in fact, say it.  AND you’re 100% confident you correctly heard what God said.  AND you’re 100% confident you perfectly understood what God meant.

We create false certainty, because uncertainty is so terrifying, but there are other choices beyond blind obedience and the scary unknown.

I’m more and more convinced that if we’ve searched for the answer, really struggled and prayed and studied and searched to answer why God might be asking us to do something and we still can’t figure it out, maybe we’re missing the point.

Back in Genesis, God accepted Abel’s offering and rejected that of Cain.  Why?  It doesn’t say.

Your pastor or your mother or your Sunday School teacher might’ve come up with an answer, but the truth is they don’t really know any more than you do.  Scripture doesn’t tell us.

That uncertainty can be scary, if we think the point of Genesis 4 is to teach us what offerings are worthy and which ones aren’t.  But maybe that’s not the point?  Maybe Genesis 4 is teaching us that our offerings matter far less than whether or not we are our brother’s keeper, that our responsibility to God and to each other is not dependent on our favor or status or situation?

An unanswered ‘why’ might simply mean we have to dig deeper, look closer, take a different perspective, and get creative.  Too often we’re limited by the either/or boxes our biology tells us everything should be.  Reality is not black and white and there is always another option.

1 Peter instructs us to always be prepared to give an answer for the hope that we have in Jesus Christ.  I don’t think “God said it” will be good enough for any “outsider” who asks, so it’s not good enough for me.

I still believe what I eventually got around to saying in that meeting where I reacted so strongly to the dismissal of the “why:” Our kids deserve the limitless possibilities of this magnificent creation in which we live, and that comes only if the “whys” are encouraged.

This is my first post here at The Misfits Theology Club. I hope everything I write and every conversation I have revolves around the question of what God is calling us to do and why.  That is the core of faith and life.  That is how we become the people God created us to be.