(Ir)religiosity

Here are some of my brief Earth Day reflections. I plan to liveblog the Pennsylvania primary later on tonight. Until then here you go. Oh, and I guess I’ll throw in a bonus: a sermon I gave last Sunday on Earth Day and climate change. It’s kinda long. And I don’t normally use a manuscript, so I or may not have actually said what is written. Bear with me.

Today is April 22. Today is Earth Day.

Today is the day we celebrate and appreciate our environment. We raise awareness about ecological sustainability and perhaps participate in eco-activism and acts of eco-justice.

As a Christian I reflect on my divine responsibility and my divine mandate to care for God’s good creation, not because there is an impending problem (though that fact is undoubtedly compelling!), but because God saw that creation was very good before human beings were even on the scene. And as beings created in the image of God we are given the wonderful responsibility of ensuring that creation remains good. That is our divine responsibility. That is our divine mandate. That is our original stewardship.

If anything I sincerely hope that we will all examine our lifestyles and our actions today, and everyday, realizing that they do indeed matter and they have deep implications not only for our collective future, but for our belief in and about God. We live what we believe. Are we participating as co-creators with God as creator, or are we participating as co-destroyers with God as destroyer? Our actions have already answered that question. Indeed, they have been answering the question for some time.

Further, I hope that we gain a new understanding of what it means to “Go Green,” realizing that we don’t have to go out any buy a new trendy t-shirt made of organic material to show that we care. The answer to solving the climate crisis and living more ecologically sustainable lifestyles lies not in consuming more, but in consuming lives and become better, more responsible stewards of what we already have. Until we are liberated from the arrogant assumption that we can simply buy ourselves out of our problems we cannot even being to addresses the real problem. The real problem is our hyper-consumptive nature that drives our politics, economics, religion, and so on. We must humbly face that demon, and remove that plank from our eye, before we can even begin to address other issues.

1.) Two interesting and thought provoking conversations. Tony Jones takes issue the “Hauerwasian Mafia” and Eugene Cho questions Rob Bell’s white privilege. If you’ve got time read some of the comments on these threads as well. There’s some really good (and bad) dialogue going on.

2.) Speaking of Rob Bell, the dude is staying pretty busy. He’s got a new book coming out in October. Interesting…one month before the election. I bet I know where that is going. I do love the description:

“There is a church not too far from us that recently added a $25 million addition to their building. Our local newspaper ran a front-page story not too long ago about a study revealing that one in five people in our city lives in poverty. This is a book about those two numbers. It’s a book about faith and fear, wealth and war, poverty, power, safety, terror, Bibles, bombs, and homeland insecurity. It’s about empty empires and the truth that everybody’s a priest, it’s about oppression, occupation, and what happens when Christians support, animate and participate in the very things Jesus came to set people free from. It’s about what it means to be a part of the church of Jesus in a world where some people fly planes into buildings while others pick up groceries in Hummers.”

3.) A lot has been going around lately about tap water and bottled water and the problems with sanitation and whatnot. Forbes magazine has an interesting article on “The 10 Best Cities for Clean Drinking Water,” based on a 2006 study conducted by the University of Cincinnati. I was really surprised to see that Tulsa, OK (I’m an Okie) squeaked in at number 10.

4.) My wife is telling me all the time that I blog too much and spend too much time online. I probably do. If you’re like me you might find this ProBlogger piece, “On Being a Healthy Blogger” worth a read. Three words: Lack. Of. Sleep.

5.) And the depressing political stuff. We now know that not only did President Bush authorize the torturing of various detainees, but that secret, high-level meeting were held in the White House (with Cheney, Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, Tenet, and Ashcroft) in which specific techniques and individuals were discussed in detail. Seriously?! And the worst part is that the media is largely ignoring the story and characteristically avoiding telling the truth. Hmm. Maybe it’s because we’re more concerned with Barack Obama’s missing lapel pin (again!) or Hillary Clinton’s markswomanship (?). Because those are the important issues, right? Right?!

6.) Since Earth Day is next Tuesday, and since I’m preaching a sermon about it on Sunday, I can’t resist. I never, ever, thought I would see a commercial with Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson together. Yes, you read that right, it’s now a typo. I appreciate the gesture and I agree wholeheartedly, but it still seems so…weird.

7). Lastly, if you’re like me, you “grab” YouTube videos all the time because you never know when they’ll be taken down. But I bet you didn’t know that some videos can be viewed in high quality. That not only ups the viewing quality, but also the “grabbed quality.”

Part I

So what is this book about? Basically this: we can’t differentiate between what is Christian and what is American anymore. And frankly, when a lot of people say “Christian” they actually mean “American.” The church has been married to the state for quite sometime and as a result, the lust for power has diluted, domesticated, and corrupted the message of Jesus and his politics. So, now patriotism trumps things like the fruit of the spirit, or even worse, they been mashed together and are one and the same. Yuck.

In their own words, Claiborne and Haw state their purpose(s):

“We hope this book will broaden the definition of political. As you’ll find in the following pages, political doesn’t refer merely to legislation, parties, and governments. So while we will insist that the Christian faith be political, we also want to redefine what political means or looks like. We hope to redefine it simply as how we relate to the world…We begin in the Hebrew scripture, since this is where Jesus story begins. While we may be tempted to jump to the good news and just write about Jesus, we must hear the Story from which he came and anchor his language, politics, and actions in that world. Just as America’s narrative did not begin with American and will not end with America, Jesus’ story did not begin in Matthew, nor does it end in Revelation.”

The emphasis there is mine and it is imperative to keep in mind when reading the book. I probably should have referred back to it more often. Let’s be honest, most of as American Christians in that order. That is to say we are Americans first and Christians second. And we like it that way. Because of that, most of us when we think of “politics” or “political” we actually mean politicized or partisan. I’ve talked about this before. Not so in this book. When reading it, I imagine most person will feel quite uncomfortable at times, and rightly so. This is because we are deeply embedded in the narrative of American politics, so much so that for some of us, it may simple be inescapable.

Section one of the book is pretty straightforward, actually the whole first half is. As stated in the quote above, Claiborne and Haw basically unpack the biblical narrative and examine with what I guess you could call post-imperial hermeneutics, that is the bible is the unfolding story of God’s gracious relationship with God’s people, rescuing them from the messes they make and still inviting them (and us) to participate in this creative process, this grand divine project of restoration. The entire biblical story, according to Claiborne and Haw, is a critique of the abuse of power and an indictment of the imperial, systemic structures that are constructed. God apparently has something else in mind.

The first section of the book is called “Before there were Kings and Presidents.” Once upon a time God was king, no one else. But we know that didn’t last for long. Adam and Eve are estranged from God. Cain abuses power and murders his brother. Dominance and oppression from the get go.

Then there’s Noah and the flood. The earth was infected with violence and must be purged. I’ve always struggled with the flood narrative (among other violent passages in Hebrew scriptures), with God basically sanctioning the destruction of the entire world and most of humanity. But Claiborne and Haw treat it as protection from further corruption, “divine chemotherapy” as they say. Interesting. I’m still chewing on that and I find it somewhat curious. I don’t know what to make of it.

Then the tower of babel. People pursing power beyond their means. “It seems God has an aversion for limitless power.” Wow, might we apply the to the US? So, God jumbles the language of the human family. Again, Claiborne and Haw come at from and interesting angle, “This tale is less a tragedy of divine punishment and more an act of divine liberation of humankind from an imperial project that would lead to death.” Again, interesting. But does God really work that way? Isn’t that imperial itself?

Then God makes a sacred covenant with Abraham. God calls the community out and sets them apart to live into imperial redemption and liberation. They are given a divine mandate to be a blessing to the world. Remember this is not just their story, it is our story; it is Jesus’ story and it is the history we must own. So, juxtapose that charge with our American slogan of “ridding the world of evil,” and, well, I think I’ll leave it at that.

The story of the Exodus is timeless. Here God’s people are under enslaved by empire and God choses the most unlikely person, murderer saved from the Nile who as a speech impediment and obviously a fiery temper. God uses Moses to lead God’s people out of the empire and towards the promised land. But of course the people complained, wanting an emperor of their own. God rejected their request so they did the next best thing: they made golden calves and worshiped them. We humans have a very short memory. Eventually God grants their request and gives them a king.

And of course, things were peachy for a while, but the honeymoon period didn’t last for long. Kings began to abuse their power and became emperors. And if you’ve read the Hebrew narrative you know the turmoil that follows. Kings and prophets. Conquest and domination. Apostasy and repentance. The people turning away, demanding more power. Kings and leaders abusing power. And all the while God graciously welcoming God’s people back into restorative participation. A beautiful yet sobering story.

And throughout the narrative, God chooses the most unlikely people to lead the masses back to liberation. God chooses to identify with the victim, those on the underside of power and those history seems to conveniently leave out. Claiborne and Haw spend quite a bit of time describing and explaining the role of the prophet, noting of course that both men and women were prophets, critics of the dominant power structures who operate from the fringes and the margins of society.

They also speak of the Jubilee, which the call “a regularly scheduled revolution,” in great detail. This was of course God’s way of leveling out the system, ensuring that the gap between the rich and the poor be kept to a minimum—a systematic way of disrupting the human systems that created poverty and excessive wealth. What would happen if we implemented that today? Hmm.

The section ends with a prelude to the incarnation. God’s people continue to fall short of God’s dreams. The promised land was supposed to be the ultimate vision, but it too got screwed up. So, God dreams a new vision and chooses to come to earth to show God’s people just how they might live in balance, without abusing power. In the words of Claiborne and Haw, it was time for “a new kind of emperor and and new kind of empire.”

That’s where section one ends. There’s really not much to argue with though I take issue a bit with characterizing Jesus as an emperor and the kingdom of God as an empire. And ultimately I think I have a problem with the statement, Jesus for President,” but I’m getting ahead of myself. Perhaps it intentionally overstated here, but that sort of language is used throughout the book. I get the critique of power and the calling out of abusive, systematic structures. Believe me, I’m down with that.

But, I’m a bit uneasy with ordaining God’s dream and God’s reality, and even Jesus with the same sort of “power over” language. It seems that maybe that is what part of our problem has been, we’ve let the church become a new type of empire. And if there’s one thing we know about empires it’s this: they abuse power, the oppress, and they colonize. I just don’t see God’s dream as doing that. And for the record, I know that Shane and Chris don’t either, but I think that kind of language is a little dangerous, in fact I think that kind of language might be part of the very problem they are getting at. It might be subversive to call Jesus an emperor over the empire of God, but I don’t really care to take it any further than that. Maybe that is what they’re trying to do

I have to admit, I’m quite impressed. I got an email on Monday telling me that I had been selected to be an “Ooze Select Blogger,” which basically means about 3-5 times a year, Zondervan and The Ooze will send me new books to review. Pretty cool.

I was told I’d be getting a copy of Pete Gall’s memoir “My Beautiful Idol.” I have books mailed to me all time, so I figure it would be a good two weeks before it came in the mail. Then today, two days after I got the email, I come home from my morning class and what do I find? A package from Zondervan with my name on it. Apparently they don’t mess around. And apparently books come much quicker when sent directly from the publisher. I’ll have to remember that.

So, anyway, hopefully I can get it read over the next week or so and I after I finish my series on “Jesus for President” I can throw up a review.

Tax day hangover. I’m still dealing with my contributing to, if I may borrow Brian McLaren’s language, our “suicide machine,” our military-industrial complex fueled by our hyper-consumptive addiction to global capitalism. We’re junkies and murderers. And really, when you get down to it, there’s not much we can do about it. We’re pawns, rats in a cage, fueling the machine that will eventually destroy us. Sorry to be depressing, but it’s true.

So, here are a couple of videos on war corporatism. First, Barry McNamara on the war, Bush, and the Project for the New American Century:

And, Immortal Technique and Mumia Abu-Jamal on the real face of the war:

As you frantically, mail and e-file those returns, just remember you’re participating in a military-industrial complex that grossly outweighs the rest of the developed world.  And yes, most of our tax dollars are paying for bombs, guns, ammo, and other killing machines.  We’re all murderers.  And most of us are proud of it. [Ht. Dave]

Instead of writing a normal book review, I’ve decided to take each section of Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw’s book Jesus for President, and individually make some comments and reflections. This book deals with my own personal “sweet spot” of theology and politics, an area I am continually wrestling with and struggling to make sense of.

If you haven’t read the book yet, I highly recommend it, especially now given the political climate in the US. To be honest, I’m not completely sure were I stand in relation to some of the things discussed in the book. I’m constantly dialogging with myself and depending on what day you ask me, I might be a grunt for the Hauerwasian Mafia (as Tony Jones affectionately calls it) or a card-carrying member of the new post-evangelical political activists (Jim Wallis, et al). I guess I’m trying to find a healthy way to live with the tension of both.

And because of that, this book was very good for me not to mention quite thought provoking and deeply provocative (as the title undoubtedly shows) and that’s why I’m going to spend some time on it. I commend Claiborne & Haw for taking the thinking of Hauerwas, Yoder, etc. and presenting it in an accessible manner for the average reader. As far as I know that has never been done and in that respect nothing they say is particularly original, but it is deeply challenging and rhetorically heavy nonetheless. As it should be.

So, here’s to some engaging conversation. I’ll jump in with both feet on Thursday.

[Over the next few months, as part of a Missional Synchroblog collaboration at Missio Dei, I will be sharing and reflecting on being "missional." This is first post of the series. See the bottom of the post for a participant link list.]

I want to let you in on a little secret. Some of you may not really like it, in fact I’m not sure I do completely. Maybe that is a good thing.

I think that in the next 20-25 years, maybe even sooner, evangelism will be replaced. I think that in the 21st century if Christianity is to be relevant to the world around it evangelism in its current form must die, because when you really get down to it evangelism in its current form is, for many people, nothing more than coercive colonialism and is not really centered on showing people who Jesus is and what Christians are, but on showing people a particular culture and demanding that they conform.

So what will happen? I think many of us, especially those of us in emergent circles, will abandon the word evangelism altogether. We will replace it with a much more vibrant and generative word.

And that word is missional.

Now, part of me doesn’t really like this. Part of me hates it actually. Maybe it’s my uber evangelical upbringing, but deep down inside part of me wants to redeem words like “evangelical” and “evangelism.” And maybe they can be redeemed, but more and more I am led to think that in our post-Christian age, where the Christian narrative is no longer the dominant or most compelling story to most, evangelism and evangelicals will continue to weaken until they are almost no more.

And on a certain level, that’s really unfortunate. Given the original meaning of “evangelism” and “evangelical” I find myself wondering how the words ending up being perverted into what they are today. Shane Claiborne, in his first book, “The Irresistible Revolution,” puts it like this:

“Sometimes folks ask me if I am an evangelical Christian. I want to make sure we have a proper understanding before I answer. I always find it important to note that the Greek word evangelion…is an ancient word that predates Jesus. It is a word Jesus takes from the imperial lexicon and turns it on its head. For instance, in 6 BCE there was a saying inscribed around the Roman Empire: “Augustus has been sent to us as Savior…the birthday of the god Augustus had been for the whole world the beginning of the gospel [evangelion].” The early evangelists announced another gospel, proclaimed an allegiance to another emperor, and conspired to build another kingdom. If by evangelical we mean one who spreads the good news that there is another kingdom or super-power, an economy and a peace other than that of the nations, a savior other than Caesar, then yes, I am an evangelical.”

Wow. Now tell me, how did we go from that to where we are today, where we dominant people and coerce them (most times) into becoming what we think should be someone exactly like us: a good, imperial, capitalist, American, Christian.

It’s beyond me.

So, I think a lot of us are going to start reclaiming that original meaning, but with a different word that doesn’t have as many negative connotations. We will call ourselves missional

Well, what’s the point of this excursus? The point is many people are beginning to opt for the word missional over evangelism and that number is likely to grow. SO—given all that, what does missional living look like?

Many of us will say we know what missional living looks like and we would be able to point to a certain instance and say, “There! That is missional!” But when asked to describe what that actually looks like in finite human language, well, some of us get tripped up. It seems easy to point out, but hard to describe.

So bear with me as I humbly try to articulate.

Simply put, missional living is, to me, participating in God’s work in the world, accepting the invitation of grace and responding to it and being part of God’s story, being part of God’s life. When I see people intentionally and earnestly seeking to discover what God is already doing in the world and when I see people partnering with God as co-creators, participating in divine, redemptive action in the narrative of history, that’s where I see missional living taking place.

But just as important, when I see people living missionally, it is always local, always within a particular context. Missional Christians go to great lengths to understand the context around them and how they might own that context while faithfully and creatively living the gospel message, the good news of redemption and subsequent restoration. In fact, when you think about it, that is the essence of the incarnation. God becoming human, putting skin and bones on, God getting local, pitching a tent among us, and showing us in our context how to live in God’s story and how to participate in the synergetic process of creativity, nurturing an alternative reality of reconciliation a.k.a the kingdom of God. Friends, it doesn’t get much better than that.

I’ve probably gone long enough. Since it’s always easier and more effective to offer an example, and especially since this post is titled “What does Missional Living Look Like” and not “What Is Missional Living,” I will do so.

It’s really funny how things work out. Maybe this is coincidence, or maybe it’s providence (though I’m a bit apprehensive about that), but this past week I was trying to gather my thoughts about this missional business and how all my attempts to describe it would ultimately fall short. Then the most beautiful thing happened. My friend Josh (and I hope he doesn’t mind me using him as an example) started doing what he does best, dreaming and co-creating. And he’s come up with an imaginative dream, a dream that embodies what it means to live missionally in the world, to bear the gospel message in a context, and to creatively participate in God’s story and live into God’s life.

So, I’ll shut up now and you can go and see a tangible, vibrant example of what missional living looks like here, here, and especially here.

And, of course, don’t forgot check out the rest of the synchrobloggers too, the links are below in no particular order.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

List of Participants:

Jonathan Brink – “Meeting God Where He’s Already Working”

Ben Wheatley – “Are the Things You are Living For Worth Christ Dying For?”

Alan Knox – “Living the Love of God”

Dave Devries – “What Does Missional Living Look Like to Me?”

Bryan Riley – “What Does Missional Living Look Like to Me?”

Jeromy Johnson – “What is Missional Living to Me?”

Tim Jones – “Living Like the Word Says”

Dave Wierzbicki – “We Are Missioning”

Nathan Gann – “Inevitability”

Well, now I feel dumb for even posting on this yesterday. Rev. Mike Poage, a United Church of Christ minister in Wichita, Kansas, wrote a letter conveying the same feelings I’ve had about the possibility of President Bush boycotting the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. I’m posting it in its entirety here with permission:

“Sometimes a boycott is helpful and important. However, the idea of President Bush considering a boycott of the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics in China, strikes me as ludicrous and hypocritical.

This is a President whose arrogant and oligarchical reign has had lies, violation of human and civil rights, torture, and an illegal war as the foundation of his Presidency. His administration lied to get us into a horribly violent war in which we have practiced the disregard for human and civil rights through various torture techniques at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and other non-U.S locations reached through “extraordinary rendition.”

Within our own borders unwarranted wire-tapping and infiltration of peace groups by informers comes right of out of J. Edgar Hoover’s playbook. In Iraq, between one-half million and one million Iraqi civilians have died since March, 2003, with over 4,000 U.S. military deaths and over 30,000 casualties – many more if you count PTSD.

Where does President Bush find the high moral ground to even consider a boycott of the Olympics’ opening ceremonies? In fact, where would any of us? As a nation what have we done to end the war that here in 2008 70% of us oppose? In humility and with deep conviction I propose a military crimes court to put on trial President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, and Mr. Wolfowitz.

In my opinion, that process could be the beginning of reconciliation, restoration of a democracy, and healing. Also, while we are at it, let’s get out of Iraq, now.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. I’m grateful for those like Rev. Poage who unapologetically exercise their responsibility to by prophetic.

From The Myth of a Christian Nation:

“While those who wielded the Constantinian sword throughout history undoubtedly convinced themselves they were wielding the sword in love–this is a common self-delusion among religious power brokers–lording over, torturing, and killing people does not communicate their unsurpassable worth to them; it is not loving….One wonders why no one in church history as ever been considered a heretic for being unloving. People were anathematized and often tortured and killed for disagreeing on matters of doctrine or on the authority of the church. But no one on record has ever been so much as rebuked for not loving as Christ loved. Yet if love is to be placed above all other considerations, if nothing has any value apart from love, and if the only thing that matters is faith working in love, how is it that possessing Christlike love has never been considered the central test of orthodoxy? How is it that those who tortured and burned heretics were not themselves considered heretics for doing so? Was this not heresy of the worst sort? How is it that those who perpetuated such things were not only deemed heretics but often were (and yet are) held up as heroes of the faith?”
(Emphasis mine)

On a certain level I think this is connected to my post yesterday on President Bush and the Olympics and the subsequent discussion at Josh’s blog. But maybe not.

At any rate, I think it bears reflection. Why in the world have we let Christianity become a religion based primarily on belief and dogma rather than action and ethic? Somewhere along the line we divorced orthodoxy from orthopraxy and they lived as assumed false enemies ever since. But the truth is orthodoxy is orthopraxy at least that’s the way it was before the church sold herself to the state in what might be the most damaging act of institutional prostitution we’ve ever seen. If Constantine officiated the illegitimate wedding of the church and the nation-state then we, the bastard children of that nightmare, need to work towards seeing their divorce and the remarriage of doxis and praxis; then, hopefully, we see the need to distinguish between the two. Who’s with me?