In his Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein stresses the claim that application is a criterion for understanding (cf. 1.143ff). It is through repeated attempts at application that one comes to grasp the meaning of a particular task. Apart from application there is no genuine understanding of any given task. We may think that we have things figured out, but until we actually attempt to apply that knowledge we will never know if we are correct or incorrect in our assumptions. Indeed, Wittgenstein argues that until we apply our knowledge, our knowledge is mistaken in some way. Practice seems to confirm this suspicion. How many examples do we have from our own lives where we thought we had things figured out only to discover that things are either far different or far more complicated when the rubber actually meets the road? A few hypothetical examples: I thought I trusted God… until I ran out of money and panicked. I thought I had a clear grasp on the homosexuality discussion… until I was befriended by a homosexual couple who are dedicated to following Jesus together. You get the picture. Hell, I thought I wasn't addicted to smoking… until I tried to quit (three months clean, by the way!).
What is interesting is the way in which Wittgenstein's claims overlap with the claims Jim Wallis makes in his book The Call to Conversion (IMHO this book, and not God's Politics is Wallis' best work). Wallis claims that we cannot love the poor, unless we are in active and intimate relationships with those who are poor. Indeed, bringing Wittgenstein and Wallis together, it could be said that we do not even know what it means to love the poor until we are in a dynamic relationship with them.
I suspect that this is part of the reason why mainstream Christianity does not want to listen to voices from those who journey alongside of those who are in exile. Those who do not engage in active relationships with the crucified people of today have a fundamentally different understanding of love. In essence, to continue the thoughts of Wittgenstein, the language-game played by Christians on the margins is fundamentally different than the language-game played by mainstream Christianity.
Which is why, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter all that much if people agree or disagree with me on this blog. Only, if you will not give me a voice, please do this: journey into deeper intimacy with those who are in exile — with the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed, the isolated, the sick, and the abandoned. It is there, and not here on the internet, that you will learn what it means to love as God loves.
Let us all go forth in peace.

[Note: I have revised my model somewhat. I was always intending to include a fifth stage in my conclusion, but I decided to rename the fourth stage and make mention of the fifth stage now.]
2. God’s Story: The Missio Dei
On Finding a Useful Model: why Creation-Fall-Recreation is not enough
Reflecting upon the story of God from a missiological perspective does not do violence to the nature of the biblical narrative. That is to say, reading the bible missiologically is not imposing a external lens upon the text. The story of God is fundamentally missiological, and reading it as such is simply to recognize that there is a telos to the story. This is not simply a story that is told for the sake of being told. This is a purposeful story, told purposefully. Furthermore, the purpose inherent to the story is not one that is simply fabricated by human authors. The story of God is purposeful because God is purposeful. The story of God is a story of God’s missional intentions and activities. As such, the biblical story of God is the story of the missio Dei.
In order to understand the mission of God, it is necessary to examine the story in its entirety. To do this within the limited scope of this paper, it is necessary to impose a schema upon the text. Instead of examining every passage, and every episode, we will examine the story through the lens of a series of movements. Of course, the most simple and most prominent schema used to do this is that of creation-fall-recreation. However, there are a few reasons to reject this model. To begin with, this model makes history appear as a cyclical movement. It seems to suggest that the entire goal of history is to get back a state of original perfection. Put even more simply, this model suggests we were created good, we became bad, but we will be made good again. Such an approach to the biblical meaning generates a significant crisis of meaning. If this is the trajectory of history, why is it taking so long to come to completion? Furthermore, if creation is just traveling “back to the garden” then we did God permit the fall in the first place? Granted, this model proposes a way in which evil is overcome but it does suggest that everything between creation and recreation is essentially meaningless. This model cannot account for God’s purpose for the fall; it cannot explain how the fall is a part of God’s activity. Within this model the fall is primarily a necessary result of human activity. Consequently, within this view of the fall, God is designated a fundamentally passive, responsive role, not an initiating, active role. This paper wants to suggest that such a view of the event of the fall is fundamentally flawed. Therefore, although a simple three-stage schema is appealing, we must reject this model as overly simplistic and even misleading.
Instead of a three stage creation-fall-recreation model, this paper proposes a five-stage model of (1) creation and covenant; (2) exile (3) out-of-exile; (4) overlap; (5) new creation of all things. This model is much stronger for several reasons. To begin with, it overcomes the cyclical perspective that the first model seems to impose on history. The end result of God’s work is not recreation – it is not restoring broken icons to their original perfection – rather, it is new creation – it is the transformation of God’s good creation, which became broken, into something even greater than it originally was. Thus, God’s act of new creation is just as much of a novum as God’s original act of creatio ex nihilo. The language of “recreation” does not sufficiently grasp this point. Furthermore, by employing “exile” language in place of “fall” language, this model presents a God that is intimately active and involved in all movements of the story. Humanity did not simply fall from grace, humanity was also cast out of the garden and sent into exile by God. As much as the current state of affairs is the result of human sinfulness it is also the result of godforsakenness. Finally, by incorporating the motifs of covenant and new covenant, this model stresses that humanity is not only God’s partner in the event of exile. Human does not simply play an active role in the fall. Humanity is God’s partner in all of God’s missional activity, and in the entire movement of the biblical story. God’s mission becomes humanity’s mission, and this is why the Church that tells God’s story, seeks to also live within that story.
Therefore, this section will present God’s story through the lens of five basic movements (that sometimes blur together and repeat on different levels): the movement of creation and covenant, the movement into exile, the movement out of exile, the movement of the overlap of the ages; and the movement of new creation. Creation and covenant will be explored as the mission of the Father, exile will be explored as the withdrawal of the missional activity of the Father, Son, and Spirit, the end of exile will be explored as the mission of the Son, the overlap will be explored as the mission of the Spirit, and the new creation of all things (which we will not address until the conclusion) will be explored as the mission of the trinity. Therefore, this missional movement can be diagrammed as follows:
[Creation & Covenant]-[Exile]-[Out-of-Exile]-[Overlap]-[New Creation of all]
[ ——– Father ——- ]-[ -?– ]-[ —-Son—– ]-[ -Spirit- ]-[ —–trinity—– ]
Particularly important to this model is the significance of exile and the resulting question of godforsakenness within the broader story of God’s missional activity. Indeed, the transformation of godforsakenness is one of the most wondrous elements of both God’s mission and the Christian mission, but we are, once again, skipping ahead in our argument. Therefore, let us start our exploration of this model, where the biblical story starts – “in the beginning.”

Introduction (cont.)
Doctrine, Story, and the Question of Missiological Foundations
When engaging in any theological activity, the place in which one starts tends to have a surprisingly decisive impact upon what follows. Therefore, any theological exercise, like sketching a missiology, must begin by pausing to search for the proper starting place. When one does pause to do this, one is struck by the variety of doctrinal foundations that have been employed in missional documents. Although it is currently popular to root missiologies within trinitarian theology, a significant number of missiologies are still rooted elsewhere: in a theology of creation, in christology, in pneumatology, in soteriology, in ecclesiology, or in eschatology. Initially it may seem like an impossible task to choose to elevate one of these doctrines over the other. Indeed, this is part of the current appeal of the trinitarian perspective, it seems to cover the most ground. However, the trinitarian approach is also somewhat problematic as creational, christological, or pneumatological biases are regularly present. Therefore, in order to resolve this issue, I believe that one must not root missiology within any one particular doctrine. Rather, missiology must be understood as rooted in an event. It is the historical event of the resurrection of Jesus that is the true foundation of the Christian mission.
The resurrection of Jesus is the true foundation of a Christian missiology because it is the resurrection of Jesus that is the true foundation of Christianity. Recognizing this unity in his climactic chapter on the resurrection in 1 Corinthians, St. Paul writes, “if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” Paul realizes that, apart from the resurrection of Jesus, there is no point in engaging in Christian proclamation, for there is no point in maintaining the Christian faith. Paul is followed quite closely in this regard by significant representatives of both Protestant and Roman Catholic theology. Thus, Jurgen Moltmann argues that “Christianity stands or falls with the reality of the raising of Jesus from the dead by God” and that “in the New Testament there is no faith that does not start a priori with the resurrection of Jesus.” Similarly, Hans Urs von Balthasar writes that “[w]e are Christians because the Lord is risen; else would our faith by empty and meaningless.” The notion of grounding a Christian missiology in the event of Jesus’ resurrection is further strengthened once one realizes that, in addition to Christianity’s total dependence upon the resurrection, all the Christian doctrines listed above – doctrines of the trinity, of creation, of christology, of pneumatology, of ecclesiology, and of eschatology – are themselves entirely dependent upon the resurrection.
Beginning with the doctrine of the Trinity, reflection leads one to the conclusion that, apart from the resurrection of Jesus, no such doctrine is imaginable. Knowledge of the trinity is not something that precedes the Easter-event; rather, the resurrection of Jesus becomes the decisive revelation of the trinity. In the raising of the Son by the Father through the power of the Spirit, the trinitarian nature of God as Father, Son, and Spirit is revealed. It is because of the resurrection that Christians to speak of one God in three persons.
Secondly, this event is also the key to understanding each of the individual persons of the trinity within the Christian doctrine of God. Consequently, it becomes the foundation for understanding creation theology, christology, and pneumatology. First of all, the resurrection voices the most emphatic No! to any forms of deism, which only know God as a distant creator. The resurrection reveals that the one God is known not simply as Creator but as Father. Thus, in the climax of the resurrection account recorded in John’s Gospel, Jesus, who always spoke of God as my Father, meets Mary in the Garden and says to her, “I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Furthermore, the resurrection is the climactic event of the Father’s creation activity. Therefore, any creational theology or missiology is fundamentally deficient if it is not rooted here. Secondly, all of christology is absolutely dependent upon the resurrection. If Jesus was not raised then he was not vindicated by God. If Jesus was not raised, he could not have been the Christ, he would have only been another failed messianic pretender. It is only in light of Jesus’ resurrection that any wondrous significance can be attached to the crucifixion, death, and burial of Jesus. Jesus could not be Lord, and he certainly could not be divine, apart from this event. It is here that Jesus is revealed as God’s Son. Indeed, the resurrection is the climax of Jesus’ life, and it is the climax of his proclamation of the in-breaking kingdom of God and the end of exile. Therefore, it is the resurrection that reveals Jesus’ “three offices” – that of king, priest and prophet. Because he is raised, Jesus is Lord; because he is raised, Jesus accomplishes the priestly task of forgiving sins; and because he is raised, Jesus’ prophetic witness becomes the hermeneutical key to reading all the prophets. Lastly, the Christian approach to pneumatology begins with the resurrection because it is the resurrection that precipitates the general outpouring of the Spirit of God. The resurrection is the necessary (and sufficient) condition for the Spirit’s inbreaking.
Thirdly, the resurrection is also the root of Christian soteriology and of the universality of the gospel proclamation. Salvation, although won by Jesus on the cross, is confirmed by the resurrection. Without the resurrection there would be nothing salvific or victorious about the cross. Furthermore, because the resurrection reveals Jesus is the source of the world’s salvation, the gospel is proclaimed to all. The witnesses to the resurrection become witnesses to the ends of the earth. As Tom Wright argues, it is the affirmation of Jesus as the resurrected Lord that prevents Christianity from turning into an internal, private, or individualistic cult; the resurrected Jesus lays claim to and affirms the entire cosmos and all areas of life. It is also the resurrection that confirms the subversive nature of the Christian gospel, for the resurrection is not only the triumph of Jesus over Satan, sin, death, and godforsakenness, it is also the triumph of Jesus over Rome and all the structural socio-political and economic powers of might and violence.
Fourthly, the resurrection is also the foundation of the formation of the new covenant people of God and of ecclesiology. It is perhaps stating the obvious to say that, just as there would be no Christianity with the resurrection, there would also be no Christian community without the resurrection. For this reason, von Balthasar decisively rejects the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher, which removes the resurrection from its position of centrality in all things related to Christian living. As von Balthasar says: “Without the living presence of the Lord, initiated by Easter, there is no Church… it is in the Resurrection that all ecclesial theory has its starting-point.” Indeed, although Jesus had begun to form a community of faith around himself, the true Christian community is not really founded until after the resurrection. After all, the community that Jesus had begun to gather fled and scattered when he was crucified. It must also be noted that it is the resurrection that requires the essential missional nature of the Church. The Church exists not for itself but for the world. As Moltmann says, the church “is the Church of God when it is a Church for the world.” This essential link becomes clear once one understands the relationship between Jesus’ resurrection and his ascension. Jesus’ resurrection appearances are intimately connected with his departure, and this makes mission an Easter motif. Therefore, “the appearance of the Risen One always issues in mission.” In the current state of Jesus’ physical absence, the Church exists in order to the physically presence of Jesus for the world. The accomplished work of Jesus needs the Church in order to be manifested within the contemporary situation. Therefore, ecclesiology, because it is premised upon the resurrection, is essentially missional.
Finally, the resurrection is also the foundation of Christian eschatology. Indeed, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and the transformation of Jesus’ body into a new form of physicality, is the eschatological event. With the raising of Jesus from the dead, the new age begins, and the old age begins to end. This is why the Spirit is poured out only after Jesus is raised. The Spirit was to be poured out on all flesh when the end of the old age arrived, and so the arrival of the Spirit confirms that the new age did indeed begin in the resurrection of Jesus. Therefore, the event of the resurrection is the climactic event of history. History ended when Jesus died, and a new time began when Jesus was raised. Apart from the resurrection this Christian conception of time and history would be impossible, and because Christian eschatology is rooted here it should be thoroughly missional. As Moltmann argues, it is only through missional praxis that the Church is faithful to this foundation and to its call to move forward into the future of Jesus’ lordship.
Therefore, it should now be clear that rather then rooting a Christian missiology in any given doctrine, a Christian missiology should be rooted in the event of the resurrection of Jesus. This completely unique event is the foundation of all Christian faith, action, and doctrine. Much is gained by rooting missiology here, and nothing is lost – for rooting a missiology in the resurrection of Jesus means that that missiology will simultaneously be trinitarian, creational, christological, pneumatological, soteriological, ecclesiological, and eschatological.
It is necessary to stress the resurrection early in this paper because much of the later discussion will focus on issues of suffering, cruciformity, and godforsakenness. Too often a theology rooted in the notion of Jesus as the resurrected Lord leads to a triumphalistic, condescending, and even forceful or violent missiology. It is the desire of this paper to show that an emphatic founding of missiology upon the resurrection should lead to exactly the opposite type of missiology. The missional Church is marked by suffering, humility, and godforsakenness, not despite the fact that Jesus is the resurrected Lord, but because Jesus is the resurrected Lord. For, as James Dunn stresses, the resurrection of Jesus is the resurrection of the crucified. Thus, any followers of the resurrected one must be cruciform. However, I am skipping ahead. At this point, there is one more necessary introductory point to be made before we can move into the body of the paper.
A Narrative Missiology
That the resurrection of Jesus is an event and not a proposition, that it is an historical occurrence, and not a doctrine, suggests that a Christian missiology should be more than a collection of propositions, doctrines and ideas. Furthermore, when one speaks of the resurrection of Jesus as an event, one must realize that it is not an isolated event. It is the climactic event of the Jesus story, and of the whole biblical narrative. Therefore, a truly Christian missiology must be a narrative missiology. Consequently, Stanley Hauerwas’ insightful comments on Christian ethics apply mutatis mutandis to reflections on mission. A prolegomena to a Christian missiology should not begin by emphasizing rules or principles, rather it should begin by calling attention to God’s story as it is related in the biblical narrative. There is no more foundational way to talk about God than in a story, and there are no points that can be separated from the story. Indeed, as Tom Wright argues, all of human life is grounded in stories, and stories are the means by which life is explored and transformed. Therefore, it is only through an examination of the Christian story that Christians will learn to rightly envision themselves and the world in which they live – and only then will they know how to act appropriately within the realm of mission (or any other area of life). Therefore, instead of offering a set of missiological principles or rules, this paper will first reflect upon the story of God, and then reflect upon how one is to live within God’s story.
_____________________
Sources (sorry, I'm not putting my footnotes into the lj format):
Hans Urs von Balthasar: Mysterium Paschale and Prayer.
James D. G. Dunn: The Theology of Paul the Apostle.
Stanley Hauerwas: The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics
Jurgen Moltmann: Theology of Hope, The Crucified God, and The Way of Jesus Christ.
N. T. Wright: The New Testament and the People of God, and The Resurrection of the Son of God.

[I have been working on a rather lengthy paper and I will be posting it, as a series, over the next little while. I find the topic intriguing, and hope that others do as well.]
Becoming the Father through a Spirit-Empowered Cruciformity: Prolegomena to a Narrative Spirituality of Mission
Abstract
Premised upon the resurrection of Jesus and the biblical story of the missio Dei (which moves from the Father’s mission of creation and covenant, to the godforsakenness of exile, to the Son’s mission of ending exile and establishing a new covenant, to the Spirit’s mission of new creation, to the trinity’s mission of perichoresis and theosis), the mission of the Church’s members, as parts of the body of Christ possessing the eschatological Spirit, is to become subversive gospel-bearers living cruciform lives directed towards places of godforsakenness, so that they can not only become agents of God’s new creation, revealing the Father, but also, through the community of faith, reveal the trinitarian fullness of God.
1. Introduction
Christian Missiology as Biblical Theology and as Spirituality
Given the ways in which the church in the West has largely capitulated to mainstream cultural influences, and given the fracturing and compartmentalization of life that occurred, and continues to occur, with the rise of modernity’s secularity and postmodernity’s neo-paganism, it should come as little surprise to discover that the various disciplines of Christian study have also become deeply fractured. Today it is rare to discover a systematic theologian, who is also a committed missiologist, or a missiologist, who is a committed biblical scholar, or a biblical scholar who is a systematic theologian, or a person, who rigorously combines all three of those disciplines. Each one of these disciplines –- systematic theology, biblical studies, and missiology –- spirals into an increasingly specific, introspective solitude, and it is increasingly difficult to grasp even the basics of all three of these fields and hold them together in a stimulating and coherent manner. Indeed, within the halls of Christian higher education one can either pursue a degree in systematic theology, or biblical studies, or missiology – and each of these degrees come with their own separate chairs and faculty. Even those who desire to unite these disciplines will encounter a great deal of resistance in their efforts. Theologians, biblical scholars, and missiologists are playing increasingly divergent language games, and, despite their best intentions, they find that they have less and less to say to one another –- in a large part because the language of one is increasingly incomprehensible to the language of another.
However, such a fracturing is not only disastrous for each of these individual disciplines; it is also disastrous for Christianity as a whole. Christianity must reject the fracturing of life, and asserts that life, as a whole, belongs to God, is lived before God, and finds its unity in God. Therefore, any complete missiology, to be truly Christian, must also reflect a sustained engagement with both systematic theology and biblical studies. A Christian missiology will be an exercise in biblical theology. Unfortunately, what follows is not such a complete missiology. Rather, it is an attempt to sketch a missiology that is moving in that direction. By formulating a missiology through engagement with some significant theologians and biblical scholars, whose missional reflections have been largely neglected, this paper hopes to provide a challenging, provocative, and stimulating prolegomena to a complete missiology. In this regard I hope to highlight three scholars in particular: Jurgen Moltmann, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and N. T. (Tom) Wright. Engaging with these biblical and theological voices not only fills out our missiology, it also prevents missiologies from falling into two rather tempting, but erroneous mentalities. I am speaking hear of the hyper-pragmatism, and the closely related grand reductionism that can otherwise so easily overwhelm Christian missional efforts. Biblical and theological voices refuse to allow us to make the gospel too appealing or efficient, and they certainly deny us the right to presume that the gospel can be reduced to four “spiritual laws” or any such thing.
Furthermore, this paper does not only engage with particular scholars, it is also written from a place of missional engagement with the inner-city ghettos of Vancouver and Toronto. Indeed, all missiologies are written from within particular contexts and so a Christian missiology will also be a spirituality –- it will be a map to a particular way of following Jesus within a particular time and place. Therefore, all Christian missiologies will have contextual, experiential and contemplative elements. Indeed, there is no such thing as a purely objective, general missiology or theology. All theological endeavors always contain an element of subjectivity and are always shaped by the time and place in which they are written. For this reason there will always be an ongoing plurality of Christian missiologies rooted in various contexts. However, far from seeing this as a weakness in our theologizing, this must be seen as a part of bringing together the experiential and intellectual elements of life, elements that are wrongfully played against each other.
Yet, one must be quick to add that there are better and worse places to root a Christian missiology. Too often missiologists and theologians have been rooted in places of power, wealth, privilege, influence and compromise, and, in their attempts to formulate general principles of Christian faith and action from those places, they have often ended up condoning and engaging in decidedly unchristian activities (the ways in which Christian missionary efforts aided European colonialism is perhaps the best known, and most widely accepted, example of this). Therefore, although not being in a place completely free from corrupting influences, I believe that being rooted in a spirituality that emerges on the margins of society, actually provides a much better place for the development of a Christian missiology. Missional spiritualities that arise from the margins should be given a place of privilege within the Christian context – after all, Christ himself is rooted on the margins of society, and although God often rejects the prayers of the wealthy, he always remembers the poor. Consequently, I hope to write this prolegomena, first and foremost as a member of Vancouver’s downtown eastside, and only secondarily as a student at a Christian graduate school.

Because I have been carrying a rosary for some time now, and because of the liturgy I have developed to use around the rosary, I find myself praying the Lord's Prayer and praying through the Beatitudes at least once a day. A few thoughts came to my mind today while I was praying.
First of all, I was struck by how a people who pray the Lord's prayer should be incapable of singing any national anthem. This thought struck me while I was meditating upon the phrase, “deliver us from the evil one.” I prefer this translation because it is more concrete. It suggests that evil is not just an abstract force “out there somewhere,” but is something embodied — not that this means that certain people are pure evil, but this suggests that evil always has a concrete expression in actions or structures.
As I was praying I was trying to think about how the Lord's Prayer would sound if prayed by a liberation theologian today. This is an interesting exercise, by the way. Try praying the Lord's prayer in the language of a third-world liberation theologian, then try praying it as someone longing for liberation within your own country. Can't think of much to pray? Then maybe there's a problem.
Anyway, as I was praying in this manner, I was struck by the fact that for so many people in the world “the evil one” refers to Canada, the United States, Germany, Britain, and much of the Western world. Maybe people today are praying that God would free them from our nations. “Odd,” I thought. “How can I — as a person committed to the kingdom of God and as a person who has brothers and sisters defined by their citizenship in that kingdom and not by their citizenship in contemporary nation-states which have been created arbitrarily through violence — pray that God would deliver us (yes, that really means us and not just me) from evil, while simultaneously singing a song that commits me to aligning myself with, and supporting, evil?” Well, simply put, I can't. It really does come down to aligning ourselves with one or the other.
The national anthem is part of a liturgy that is an anti-liturgy to the Christian liturgy. We sing songs of worship to God so that we can be formed into the sort of people who are capable of developing habits that resist structures evil. Over against this form of Christian worship, the nation-state attempts to gather a people who will sing songs that support structures of evil. (Jord, if you happen to read this, I really hope you decided to continue to refuse to fly the flag at the Christian camp where you work. Gathering at a barren flagpole is a highly symbolic act of Christian commitment to the Lordship of Jesus. Gathering at a flagpole that flies the flag of any nation is an act that reveals capitulation to lords who attempt to be what only Jesus is.)
The second thought that I had while praying today is that the Beatitudes are beginning to make sense in a new way. I mean, if you really stop to think about it, praying the Beatitudes feels really strange (try it sometime, you'll see what I mean). When I pray the Beatitudes I first pray that I would be characterised by the trait described in the first half of the verse (i.e. that I would be poor in spirit, that I would mourn, etc.) and then I pray that I would receive the blessing promised in the second half of the verse (i.e. that I would have the kingdom of heaven, that I would be comforted, etc.). Of course, it should be noted that the Beatitudes should be prayed not only for oneself. One should pray that the Beatitudes become the identity markers of the people of God so that the world can be made new. Thus, my becoming shaped by the Beatitudes must fit into this larger narrative.
Anyway, praying some parts of the Beatitudes felt exceedingly odd. Lord, let me inherit the earth?! Lord, let me be persecuted for the sake of righteousness?! Yikes. Asking for the earth sounds horribly triumphalistic and vain; asking to be persecuted for the sake of righteousness sounds masochistic and, well, insane. However, I've been forcing myself not to leave anything out and it's been interesting how this has begun to impact my life. To begin with I'm realising a thing or two about the blessings God promises his people. There really is a power, a joy, a strength found in following Jesus. Yet I'm also beginning to realise how much ongoing suffering should be a part of the experience of God's people. Suddenly I'm finding myself able to persevere more easily, I'm finding myself not afraid to move into places of hurt, of stress, and of sorrow — going there just makes sense. Somehow through praying the Beatitudes I'm discovering a new-found strength in my daily life. Furthermore, I'm realising how much the two of these things go together. Those with the kingdom of heaven are those who suffer; those who inherit the earth are those who's experiences are like the prophets before us. The embrace of suffering prevents our embrace of God's blessings to turn into triumphalism or hubris, and the embrace of God's blessings prevents our embrace of suffering from turning into masochism or insanity.
What is also intriguing about all this is that it's not as though I've realised this and now I'm going to implement it. This reflection comes after prayer had already begun to change my life in these ways. This seems to add further weight to the thesis proposed by liberation theology that argues that theology is reflection upon ecclesial (and, therefore, prayer-ful) praxis.

I do not want to be “accepted” or “understood.” I want to be part of a community with the habits and practices that will make me do what I would otherwise not choose to do and then to learn to like what I have been forced to do.
~ Stanley Hauerwas, “Whose Church? Which Future? Whither the Anabaptist Vision?”
Not only should the Church be a community that practices the sort of discipline that Hauerwas describes, but this is the sort of discipline that should be present in family relationships, in friendships, and in any relationship involving any real commitment. Not that this is a movement away from loving others or anything like that. Nor is this any sort of act of condescension. Rather, this is simply recognising that it takes a community of discipline to create people who are made in the image of Christ. And sometimes the church functions as that community of discipline. And sometimes family members function that way. Really, if we have any sort of sense of true commitment in our relationships, there should be an element of this in every relationship that we are in.
Of course, it is ultimately the Spirit of God that creates new life and transforms us and so we should not use this quote from Hauerwas to support some sort of dictatorial or hyper-pragmatic regime. All that this quote is saying is that some sort of communal discipline is necessary for the formation of Christian virtues.

Mainstream Protestantism in America is dying. Actually I prefer to put the matter in more positive terms: God is killing Protestantism and perhaps Christianity in America and we deserve it.
~ Stanley Hauerwas, from a sermon preached on August 8, 1993.
Hauerwas definitely has a way of saying things that catch our attention. My question for you, dear readers, is this: Why is it more positive to think that God is killing Christianity than it is to think that Christianity is dying? Isn't the notion of God killing the American church more negative, tragic, and hopeless than the notion that the American church is simply dying? Despite his polemical nature, Hauerwas has chosen his words carefully here. Obviously he doesn't find this notion more negative, tragic, or hopeless. So why is that?
Naturally, I have my own opinions about all of this, but I am curious to hear what others may think about this quotation.

Success may be the fruit of our commitment, but can never be the basis for our commitment. Instead, commitments are made because we believe that we are called to give ourselves to certain persons, causes, and situations.
~ Charles Ringma, finding naasicaa: letters of hope in an age of anxiety
It is this experience of being “called” that distances the Christian approach to vocation from the secular approach. While secular professionalism is driven by a fundamental pragmatism — that makes success the basis of commitment — Christians are only motivated by success secondarily, it at all. The basic question of Christian living is not: “how can I succeed?” but rather: “how can I be faithful to God's call?” There are two key points in this that I want to draw out in a little more detail.
First of all, the vocation that one fulfills, as a Christian, is not simply a vocation that one chooses for oneself. It is not as if we can simply choose any job that we want to choose. The language of calling reminds us that God calls us to certain specific vocations — and the implication of this is that God does not call us to certain other vocations. Certainly I can be a Christian and work any job under the sun, but working certain jobs contradicts my Christian identity and causes me to live in some sort of fractured schizophrenic realm. For example, I can be a Christian, and I can be a pimp, but the two things are radically opposed to each other. Or, to choose another example, I can be a Christian and work for the Royal Bank of Canada but, once again, the two things are in radical opposition. This is so because, despite our particular and individual vocational callings, there is a general call that God places upon all Christians. We are all called to be Spirit-filled members of the body of Christ (the Church, the Christian faith-community) and, as a part of that body, we are all to be agents of God's new creation amidst the groanings of the world. Because we are agents of God's new creation, we cannot be agents of anything or anybody that stands in opposition to new life. That is why I cannot be a pimp, or work for the Royal Bank of Canada; I cannot be a crack dealer or work for the GAP; I cannot be a member of the Hells Angels or be a soldier for the State. All of these jobs and institutions are death-dealing, not life-giving, and agents of God's new creation should have nothing to do with them.
Secondly, the language of calling reminds us that our approach to life should be governed by faithfulness, not by pragmatism. Unfortunately, Christians have largely adopted a secular approach to life, and so all the activities in which we engage (even charity!) are governed by secular notions of success. This notion of success is foreign to Christian thinking because it has little patience for such things as suffering love, solidarity, and the embrace of weakness. Tragically, Christians have confused this success with faithfulness — and when this occurs we don't even need to hear God's call because we already know what to do.
However, if we do listen to God's call, we discover a very different starting place, because God calls us to truly odd, unexpected, and painful things. Embracing suffering, including sufferings that seem to never end, makes no sense from a pragmatic perspective. Yet, from the perspective of God's call, it is the only thing we can do. And so we do embrace suffering, not in order to succeed, but in order to be faithful.
Of course, in all of this we are motivated by a hope that transcends all other notions of success — the hope that God will bring new life out of death, joy out of sorrow, wholeness out of brokenness, something out of nothingness, and light out of darkness. Consequently, faithfulness is defined by a hope that ventures into the depths of utter hopelessness. Faithfulness chooses to remain in the dark and wait for God's light to come because it believes that we don't know what light is, or what light does, until God brings it. It admits that we are blind and unable to recognise light until we have been granted vision. Faithfulness recognises that, in our pragmatic attempts to bring light, we only end up burning our loved ones and ourselves. Of course, this is not to suggest that faithfulness requires us to do nothing. What it does suggest is that faithfulness requires us to do things that made make sense to nobody else. Like Abraham called away from his homeland, like the Hebrews called into the wilderness, and like Jesus called to take up a cross, our callings will also seem like complete folly to those who are only motivated by success and operate with a pragmatism that knows little of a crucified God, and little of resurrection life.

I do not believe in the salvation of anyone who does not try to save others.
~ St. John Chrysostom
I have spent some time writing various reflections about this quotation but, at the end of the day, I think that it speaks better when left to itself. And so, I will leave the reader to contemplate these words. Coming from a Father like Chrysostom they should be carefully considered and not easily discarded.
I would love to hear what sort of thoughts this quotation brings to the mind of any of the readers of this blog. Don't be shy.