Barbara Ehrenreich has recently written an interesting editorial entitled “Pathologies of Hope” (cf. Harper's, Feb '07). It begins in this way:
I hate hope. It was hammered into me constantly a few years ago when I was being treated for breast cancer: Think positively! Don't lose hope! … Hope? What about a cure? At antiwar and labor rallies over the years I have dutifully joined Jesse Jackson in chanting “Keep hope alive!”—all the while crossing my fingers and thinking, “Fuck hope. Keep us alive.”
Ehrenreich then devotes the rest of the article to describing, and thoroughly rejecting, the popular American “Cult of Positivity” which is rooted in the marketing of “the power of positive thinking,” “optimisim,” and “positive psychology.” The major problem with this Cult is, according to Ehrenreich, the way in which Positivity requires faith. She writes:
It's not enough to manifest positivity through a visibly positive attitude; you must establish it as one of the very structures of your mind, whether or not it is justified by the actual circumstances.
This then results in the irrationality of “positive illusions,” for this sort of faith is rooted in a denial of that which is actual. Furthermore, Ehrenreich argues that this has ethical consequences because “the ubiquitous moral injunction to think positively may place an additional burden on the already sick or otherwise aggrieved.” This results in “victim-blaming at its cruelest” and produces a culture that is “less and less tolerant of people having a bad day or a bad year” (this is a quote that Ehrenreich takes from Barbara Held).
Therefore, following in the footsteps of Camus, Ehrenreich argues that we must be realistic, but not passive or unhappy. Rather, she concludes:
To be hope-free is to acknowledge the lion in the tall grass, the tumor in the CAT scan, and to plan one's moves accordingly.
Like Ehrenreich, I have been inspired by Camus' writings. It is the compassionate atheism of Camus, and not the vitriolic atheism of Richard Dawkins, that I find both coherent and inspiring. Therefore, as I reflect upon this article, let me begin by saying that I whole-heartedly agree with Ehrenreich's critique of the “Cult of Positivity” that exists in America. This “Cult” is premised upon a denial of reality that is, indeed, pathological, and this pathology does genuinely result in “victim-blaming” and what Ehrenreich calls an “empathy deficit.” Thus, Ehrenreich's desire to continue to be active while also acknowledging “the lion in the tall grass” is quite commendable.
However, IMHO, the fundamental flaw in Ehrenreich's article is the way in which she equates “hope” with “positivity.” It is interesting to note that the language of “hope” is rarely employed in the body of this article, and, of the ten references to “hope,” all but two appear in the first and last paragraphs. Ehrenreich simply equates “hope” with “positivity” (the language of “positivity” and “negativity” is employed fifty-five times in the article). Yet Christians can never equate hope with the sort of positivity that is founded upon the denial of very real, and often very terrible, circumstances. Rather, as both Jurgen Moltmann (cf. Theology of Hope) and Jacques Ellul (cf. Hope in Time of Abandonment) have shown, hope can only be genuine when it is rooted honestly and unflinchingly in the darkest places of our world. Indeed, I suspect that Ehrenreich would have a very different perspective on “hope” if she began to read the writings of those like Moltmann and Ellul who stand within long-lasting traditions of suffering and hope, rather than simply allowing hope to be defined by “positive psychologists,” motivational speakers, and self-help gurus. The “Cult of Positivity” is a perversion of hope — and its pathological consequences have nothing at all to do with hope.
Here it is helpful to pick up on the connection Ehrenreich makes with Camus and the notion of living honestly. As we (in the company of Camus) try to honestly examine the situation that we are in, it is helpful to re-examining the theological motif of “hell.” Many theologians have argued that “hell” is not a place of eternal torture; rather hell is the experience of godforsakenness — hell is where God is not. Thus, Camus' “refusal to hope,” is an appropriate expression of his view of the world as godless. Following in the footsteps of Dante, Camus urges us to abandon hope if we are to truly enter into our world. Consequently, the problem with the Cult of Positivity, is that it tries to deny the godlessness of our world — it wants us to call our hells, “heavens.” But our hells are not heavens and so, if we are honest, we are bound to pick Camus over the positive psychologists.
However, what I find inspiring about Moltmann and Ellul is that they, like Camus, do not deny the very real hells of our world. Based upon their faith — in a lord who died as one forsaken by God — they argue that, even in the midst of hell, God is to be found in solidarity with the godforsaken. This then becomes the foundation of a hope that does not flee from reality, but acknowledges “the lion in the tall grass.” Perhaps there is more than the lion hidden there. This hope is not a placebo that removes suffering; rather it is that which sustains us in the midst of suffering.
Thus, it is the affirmation of this sort of hope that has lead me into deeper and deeper levels of empathy with those whose sufferings are ignored by others. While the Cult of Positivity does indeed result in an “empathy deficit,” genuine hope leads us into ever deeper solidarity with those who live in the hells of our world. In response to the Cult of Positivity, hope says “Fuck Positivity. Keep us alive.”
In my journey with homeless youth, drug addicts, and sexually exploited people, I have often encountered the lion — but I have also encountered something that is greater than the lion. The discovery of god in the heart of godless places puts a whole different face on hope.

I'm continuing to work my way through Matthew and I was struck by something in Mt 9.18-26.
Basically, in the last few chapters (8-9), Jesus has been performing healings and pronouncing blessings upon unexpected people (the leper, the centurion's servant, the demoniacs who live amongst the tombs, etc.) while simultaneously arguing that those who expected blessing might well be shut out (“the sons of the kingdom will be cast out…”) and challenging a lot of the structures of first-century Jewish society (“let the dead bury the dead…”). Then, right after Jesus finishes saying that you can't put “new wine in old wineskins,” we get a “synagogue official” coming to Jesus saying that his daughter has died, so can Jesus please come and make her live again (Mt seems to want us to read about this event in light of Jesus announcement re: the wineskins). So, Jesus goes to the officials house and sees all the signs of mourning but then pronounces, “the girl has not died but is asleep” at which point everybody starts laughing at him. However, after the crowds are sent out, Jesus takes the the girl by the hand and the girl got up.
Now then, the (admittedly, very few) commentaries I have looked at tend to see this in two ways. (1) Reading Mark back into Matthew, some commentators argue that Jesus actually did raise the girl from the dead (cf. Mk 5). (2) Others take the language of “sleeping” more seriously and think that the girl was not dead but had fallen into a coma. In both (1) and (2) Jesus performs a genuine healing miracle.
However, I have been wondering if a third alternative is possible (especially since I'm a little cautious about reading Mt totally through the lenses of Mk). Could it be that Matthew presents this episode as a time when the rulers tried to trick Jesus? Were the synagogue official and his friends trying to pull one over on Jesus? The language of healing never actually occurs in these chapters. The girl is sleeping and Jesus takes her by the hand, and she gets up. So what is the news that spreads throughout the land (Mt 9.26)? Perhaps it is that Jesus is not so easily fooled.
This reading would seem to fit with the dramatic reversals that are occurring in these chapters — and would also then fit well with the Pharisees (subsequent) accusation that Jesus casts out demons by the power of the ruler of the demons (Mt 9.34). They've realized that they might not be able to trick Jesus, and so they decide to slander him. Thus, the synagogue official and his friends become the old wineskins who are incapable of receiving the new wine — and they are so blind that they even try to make a mockery of the one who brings that new wine.
Any thoughts on this reading of the text?

“I follow Jesus, Clarence, up to a point.”
“Could that point by any chance be—the cross?”
“That's right. I follow him to the cross, but not on the cross. I'm not getting myself crucified.”
“Then I don't believe you're a disciple. You're an admirer of Jesus, but not a disciple of his. I think you ought to go back to the church you belong to, and tell them you're an admirer not a disciple.”
“Well now, if everyone who felt like I do did that, we wouldn't have a church, would we?”
“The question,” Clarence said, “is, 'Do you have a church?'”
~ From a dialogue in Biography as Theology by James McClendon.
Stanley Hauerwas quotes this bit of dialogue in his “theological commentary” on Matthew in order to further emphasize the difference between Jesus' disciples and the crowds who also gathered around Jesus. The disciples, Hauerwas argues, are those who follow Jesus and who end up suffering with him; the crowds, Hauerwas goes on to say, are those who admire Jesus but, at the end of the day, also call for Jesus' crucifixion.
This is an interesting point to keep in mind, especially considering the observation that most everybody these days seems to profess admiration for Jesus. Yes, we say that Jesus was a good man… but we live lives that are sustained by crucifixions. And the question is, “Do we have a church?” Are we followers or admirers?

1. Christianity is necessarily communal.
There is no such thing as an individual Christian. Certainly there are times when a Christian can be alone, but to be a Christian is to be incorporated into the body of Christ. In the words of N. T. Wright: “It is as impossible, unnecessary, and undesirable to be a Christian all by yourself as it is to be a newborn baby all by yourself.”
Furthermore, because being a Christian means participating in the mission of God, and because God's mission is rooted in a love that actively pursues reconciliation and shalom, one cannot be faithful to one's Christian identity apart from community.
In this regard it is helpful to look to the ministries of both Jesus and Paul.
In relation to Jesus it is worth asking, “Why did Jesus engage in a three year ministry?” After all, if Jesus simply came to “die for the sins of the world” (or something like that) then why bother wandering around for a few years? Why not just get it over with? We need to realize that Jesus did not just come to die, he came to live — and in that living he intended to found an alternate community — a newly constituted “Israel.” Jesus wants to make sure that there will be a community of faith to continue his work after he is gone.
In relation to Paul it is worth noting that Paul's letters are all written to faith communities, and not to individual Christians. Paul is not so concerned with seeing people develop “personal relationships” with Jesus (although such language should not be dismissed altogether), as he is with developing communities of faith that live subversively in the midst of the Empire. As Michael Gorman says: “the ekklesia, then, is not for Paul an optional supplement to a private spirituality of dying and rising with Christ. Rather, the ekklesia is what God is up to in the world: re-creating a people, whose corporate life tells the world what the death and resurrection of Jesus is all about. This people, the 'Church,' lives the story, embodies the story, tells the story. It is the living exegesis of God's master story of faith, love, power, and hope.”
Indeed, the entire biblical narrative, is the story of a people. Our focus on particular persons — beginning with our Sunday school lessons that focus on individuals — like King David or the Prophet Elijah, or whomever, often causes us to forget that a King is only defined by his role within a nation of people, and that even the prophets lived as communities of prophets within the community of Israel, and so on and so forth. There is no way to live alone within this narrative.
Finally, it is also worth noting that, given the fact that the Christian God exists as a community (Father, Son, Spirit), it is not surprising that humans, who are created to reflect God's image into the world, must exist as a community as well.
2. Therefore, as Christians, we pursue community because we wish to be faithful.
Community is “hot” for a lot of reasons right now. As our culture reacts to the hyper-individualism of modernity, a new “postmodern” tribalism has developed. More and more, intentional relationships, small communities, are seen as the solution to our failures, our loneliness, our fractured lives, and our sufferings. In this regard, the pursuit of community is simply an extension of the cultural pragmatism that continues to be a driving force in the West.
However, Christians do not pursue community because that seems to be the pragmatic thing to do. We pursue community because we want to be faithful to God's calling. It is only being rooted and grounded in this faithfulness that will sustain us when the current fad for community passes. It is only faithfulness that will cause us to remain in communities that fail to solve all our problems (and all communities will fail in this regard). Faithfulness leads us beyond idealism and sustains us in the midst of a reality that is often a lot more hard work, and a lot more miserable (or just plain annoying) that we first thought. Read Nouwen, read Vanier, read the monastics, or any others who have lived and worked within an intentional community and you quickly learn that community is not the be-all-end-all utopian state that we imagine it to be. Faithfulness, and not idealistic fictions, causes us to remain.
3. Christian community is sick unto death if the confessing members of Christ's body are separated from the crucified members of Christ's body.
Mt 18.20 is often seen as one of the central verses upon which the sacramental nature of the Church is founded. Jesus is present wherever two or more are gathered together in his name. Or, stated another way, those who gather together confessing Christ, are members of the body of Christ.
However, although it is generally ignored in this regard, Mt 25.31-46 is just as important to our understanding of the nature of the body of Christ and Jesus' sacramental presence in the world. Within this passage Jesus tells us that whatever we do (or do not do) for the “least of these,” we do (or do not do) for him. This means that Jesus is also sacramentally present within this group of people. Liberation theologians are correct to remind as that the poor are the tangible crucified body of Christ in history. Thus, those who are crucified by the powers of today are also members of the body of Christ.
Therefore, if the Church is to be the Church these two groups, the confessing members of Christ's body and the crucified members of Christ's body, must be united with one another. When these two groups are not united the body of Christ is fundamentally fractured.
Indeed, if these two groups are not united, it is likely that the body of Christ is “sick unto death.” What do I mean by this phrase, “sick unto death”? I mean, on the one hand, that the crucified members are bound to die if the confessing members are not united with them. After all, when the poor are abandoned, they are abandoned unto death — death caused by disease, by hunger, by violence, by addictions, by neglect, and so on and so forth. However, I also mean, on the other hand, that the confessing members who just do ignore the poor may also be sick unto death because of this decision. Indeed, this is precisely the point that Paul makes in 1 Cor 11.17-34. The wealthy members of the church in Corinth were gathering together and celebrating the Eucharist in such a way that the poor were ostracised and (at best) treated as second class citizens. What was the result of this, according to Paul? The result was that wealthy members of the congregation were falling ill and dying! Indeed, living in this way reveals that one is not living under Jesus' lordship but is allowing one's life to be dictated by other lords — wealth, honour, social status, etc. — and all of these lords ultimately serve one lord — death. Thus, when the confessing members of Christ's body neglect the poor they serve the kingdom of death, and not the kingdom of God, and they are, accordingly, claimed by their lord. These are hard words indeed!
Thus, the union of the confessing with the crucified in community is an essential element of Christian faithfulness. As Jean Vanier reminds us, we come to the poor “not just to liberate those in need, but also to be liberated by them; not just to heal their wounds, but to be healed by them; not just to evangelise, but to be evangelised by them.”
4. Consequently, the Christian community must be known as a risk-taking community of suffering love.
The proposition that “love is absolutely essential to Christianity” seems so obvious that it barely registers with us. We read that proposition and think, “well, of course it is,” and then move on. However, given the violence, division, and hatred that is embodied within, and proclaimed by, much of contemporary Christianity, we would do well to pause here.
In particular, it must be stressed that, for as long as the world is broken, suffering is an inescapable element of love. Really it is quite simple: if the one I love suffers, my love causes me to suffer with them. It is the suffering of our love that makes our community — our solidarity — genuine. Any community that seeks to flee from suffering will always be superficial. Alas, too often the Christian community has been presented as that which will lead us away from suffering. In reality, the Christian community is the community of those who sustain one another in the midst of suffering until the day when all sufferings are put to an end.
Furthermore, we must realize that love is about the pursuit of a trajectory, and is not about the achievement of a static state. That is to say, love leads us into ever deeper levels of intimacy with God and with one another. Thus, in my life time, I never come to a place where I can say, “I am adequately loving my neighbour and my God.” Indeed, love itself leads me to discard that way of thinking, for love delights in loving ever more. Thus, like Jesus, we pursue a trajectory of love that leads us to be poured out more and more for others.
Yet this is a hard road, for it must be remembered that it was only on the cross that Jesus was able to say, “It is finished.” Only in the moment of being utterly poured out, poured out unto death, can we say that our love has arrived at the static place where movement ceases. And even then, because Christ has triumphed over death, this cessation of movement is but a pause before our resurrection by love into love.
Thus, Christian love is essentially cruciform. It is shaped by the form of discipleship that is defined by cross-carrying.
Furthermore, this Christian openness to suffering (combined with previously mentioned union of the confessing and crucified members of Christ's body) causes the Christian community to be a risk-taking community. This is the folly of love, for love does not know fear — or at least does not allow its actions to be controlled by fear. This risk-taking folly, this irresponsibility, manifests itself in two central ways.
On the one hand, love leads us to journey into dark places so that those who are abandoned there can discover the presence of God among the godforsaken. Thus, love enters into places of violence and of illness and risks suffering there. Love leads us to walk into alleyways at night and talk with prostitutes and drug dealers, just as it leads us to embrace lepers and share the kiss of peace with those who are infected with various diseases. We do this because we believe that love's infection is stronger than violence and disease. Indeed, even if we suffer violence and illness ourselves we remain convinced that, even in these things, we are more than conquerors (as Paul reminds us in Ro 8).
On the other hand, love leads us to confront the powers who continue to oppress the poor and destroy the earth. As Jim Wallis once said (before he got confused and mistook the State for the Church), “prophets speak hard words from broken hearts.” Thus we speak against government officials who favour the rich over the poor; we speak against police officer who beat, rob, and rape, homeless youth; we speak against corporations that steal the resources and children from other nations. We risk confronting those who are more powerful than we are, not simply because we love those who are oppressed, but also because we love the powerful and long to see them set free.
Thus, our love for the poor leads us to a risky solidarity with the poor, just as our love for the powerful leads us to a risky confrontation with the powerful.
Furthermore, in loving in this way, we do not only risk ourselves, but we allow our loved ones to risk themselves, and sometimes we even risk our loved ones. I do not merely take this risk, we take this risk together — and by taking this risk together we are able to sustain one another when things go ill for us. It is essential that we realize this point within our contemporary context because it is the (supposed) desire to protect loved ones from harm that is the single greatest justification for violence in our world. Christians are those who are willing to even expose loved ones to harm until that day when all violence ceases. More hard words!
5. Finally, Christian community is superficial and largely inconsequential unless it is an eschatological community formed through the practice of counter-disciplines.
To be an eschatological community, is to be a storied community. This means allowing the biblical story to define our existence, and this requires us to live with both memory and hope. Over against the popular desire to “live in the now,” Christians are those who proleptically and hopefully embody the future in the present based upon their memory of God's past actions and promises.
It must be noted that this is a deeply subversive way of living, for it is memory and hope that empower us and encourage us to create transformation here and now. Losing these things, losing our story, leaves us at the mercy of the powers that be and gives their story control over our lives.
Thus, if the Christian community is to be genuinely Christian, it must be a community of discipline. This is true in part because our culture — despite popular opinion — is a disciplined culture. From infancy we are disciplined to desire certain things, we are disciplined to consume, and consume more all the time; we are disciplined to be suspicious of all authorities by ourselves and our own desires; we are disciplined to hope in the State; we are disciplined to hope for very little real change; we are disciplined to have our lives follow the same patterns as everybody else; we are disciplined to pursue distraction; and so on and so forth.
Therefore, Christian communities must exercise counter-disciplines if they are to live meaningfully in our context. Thus, we are disciplined to call Jesus “Lord,” and not Caesar, or the President, or whomever. Thus, we celebrate a liturgy that reminds us of our story and shapes our life by a very different pattern, and we follow the Church calendar, recognising that is is seasons like Advent and Lent that define us year to year — and not holidays like Thanksgiving or Veterans Day or whatever. Thus, we are taught to live simply and compassionately and not extravagantly and selfishly. In this way, we become agents of God's new creation and not members of the status quo.

Just thought that my Ontario readers might be interested to know that I have been invited to speak at “The Evolving Church Conference” in Toronto on March 24 (cf. http://www.epconference.net/). The theme of the conference is “Restoring Justice” and the plenary speakers are Ron Sider, Jim Wallis, and Shane Claiborne. Besides these three fellows, there is also a number of very experienced and gifted seminar leaders speaking at the event (and it really makes me wonder how in the world I was invited to speak). For any who might be interested, I'll be speaking on the theme of “Justice in Exile.”

Well, for those who might still pass by this blog, I apologize for my recent silence. I have been traveling for the last week or so and haven't been able to sit down and write (or respond to comments/emails). I hope to return to these dialogues (and write with some regularity) in the next few days.
For now permit me to ask one question. An acquaintance of mine who is a pastor (and who is, therefore, in much closer contact with churchy sort of people than I am) was approached by a fellow who asked him: “How do I know that I am a Christian?” Of course, the fellow was really asking this: “How do I know that I am saved?” but churchy sort of people tend to overlap the two (not entirely unrelated!) concepts.
As my friend related this story, I felt sort of surprised. Thinking: “Oh yeah! I remember I used to ask myself that question. Man, I forgot that Christians actually struggle with that.” So then I began to think about how I would respond to that question. However, before I write a post on the issue, I would like to ask my few readers:
“How do you know that you are saved?”