In the middle of a world given over to extravagance, desire and consumption I don't think the Christian response is to just try to learn to live a little more simply, give a little more charitably, or demonstrate a little more integrity.
In a world maintained by structures of evil and death I don't think the Christian response is to just try a little harder to do good.
Christianity is not about about improvement, it is about conversion.* That means Christians should have little interest in improving structures that are inherently flawed. That also reveals how most Christian discussion about “moral issues” completely misses the point. Generally such moral discussions miss how involved (and committed) all parties are to operating within the broader narrative(s) of the nation-state. By seeking to be less offensive Christians have discarded the language of conversion in favour of the language of moral improvement — and as a result they have given themselves over to a story that is not their own.
The first thing Christians must do is learn how to live within their story, speak their own language, and create their own space. This does not mean creating some sort of Christian state (as if such a thing could exist) but it does mean beginning to imagine time and space differently.** That, after all, is what is entailed in conversion. It means moving out of one story into another. Which also means that all of us, despite the language of tolerance that dominates public religious debate, are in the business of converting others. Because our foundational narratives govern our actions, we are all actors in one story or another and — depending on how we play our roles — we will either attract or repel others from our story.
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*I am indebted to Willimon et al. for highlighting this distinction; cf. Good News in Exile.
**This is what Cavanaugh attempts to do in his book Theopolitical Imagination where he confronts three myths: the myth of the state as saviour; the myth of civil society as free space; and the myth of globalisation as catholicity. The nation-state of the USA tells a particular story that imagines space and time in a particular way. Cavanaugh argues for a Christian story that imagines space and time in a subversive manner.

For a long time I was put off by any theological talk around the notion of mystery. The suggestion that there are mysteries involved with faith, or with God, reeked too much of a church hierarchy that maintained a strangle-hold on the average person. In my mind mystery was too closely linked with the abuse of authority. Couple that with a cultural aversion to anything that cannot be explicated logically based on things that are “obvious” and it seems only natural that the notion of mystery is one that would make a lot of us uncomfortable.
Only recently have I begun to change my mind. I am indebted to Jon Sobrino for his talk about mystery in Where is God?, for that is what finally broke through my old way of thinking and enabled me to see mystery as something beautiful. Suddenly I discovered a mystery that was lovely and even desirable.
At the time I was reading Sobrino I was also also beginning to realise how incommunicable certain experiences are. I have no way of conveying what it is like to encounter God or what it is like to know Jesus as my Lord. Intimacy with God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — is the great mystery of the Christian faith. This is so because such intimacy is completely foreign (and incomprehensible) to those who live outside of that relationship.

Willimon, Copenhaver, and Robinson argue that worship is an activity that a community engages in, in order to centre itself within the narrative that it seeks to proclaim. Worship is a way for a community to gather and remind itself of its identity, what it believes, and what it hopes for. Thus a church that is bombarded over the week by the narratives told by liberal democracies, free-market capitalism, and “military consumerism,” can gather once a week and be reminded of the uniquely Christian story — and remember what it means to live within that story.**
However, when this element of worship is understood, it becomes easier to understand how worship can be an activity that Christians (and others) engage in, in every thing that they do. All communities are telling stories. Corporations tell a particular story, about a particular kind of world to their employees and costumers, nation-states also tell another kind of story to citizens who live within, and outside of, their borders. The challenge is therefore to live in a counter-cultural and subversive manner, to engage with those communities but not participate in the stories that they tell. Living the Christian story in the midst of nations that tell stories premised on fear, consumption, force, and hopelessness, will be a subversive activity, and will also be an act of worship.
This also means that the extent to which Christians participate in the stories told by other communities — whether that be Wal-Mart's story, America's story, or whatever — is the extent to which Christians engage in the worship of other gods.
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*This thought it not unique to these three pastors; they draw heavily from the writings of Hauerwas, Brueggemann, and Lindbeck; cf. Good News in Exile.
**The term “military consumerism” belongs to Brueggemann who argues that, contrary to the West's claim to exist within a genuinely peaceful, diversive, and pluralitistic culture, certain metanarratives still exist and drive society. Military Consumerism is the term that Brueggemann gives to the(?) metanarrative that drives America; cf. Theology of the Old Testament.

The early church coined the phrase lex orandi, lex credendi, which is translated roughly as “the rule of faith is the rule of prayer” or “prayer reveals the prayers' true theology.”
So my question is this: if our prayers are dominated by requests for finances, physical security, and good health, to what extent are we just praying to the same gods that are glorified in Western culture?
Granted there is a place for such things in conversations with the divine. Jesus, when teaching the disciples to pray does say, “Give us this day our daily bread,” suggesting that one should appeal to God to provide one's basic physical needs. However, that is only one line in a prayer that says a whole lot more — a prayer that is itself part of an address that emphasises that one should not spend much time worrying about such things. So when such things monopolise prayer (as they so frequently do — especially corporate prayer) I can't help but wonder if we are not simply worshiping idols.
It seems to me that one moves beyond idol worship when one prays for such things but does not devote one's life to attaining (and maintaining) such things. And when one lives in such a way then I suspect that one's prayers will gradually look more and more different.

North American politics, still bearing certain vestiges of Christendom, has maintained an ongoing love affair with the notion of justice (and, alas, quite often that love affair never moves beyond a notion into concrete practice… but I digress). The West has generally found it convenient to maintain the definition of justice that Christendom provided. Such a definition may well be worth re-examining. Once again I go back to a favourite subject of mine — just because Christians value “justice,” and contemporary culture values “justice,” it doesn't mean both parties are valuing the same thing. In fact I think Christian talk about justice is fundamentally different than the way in which Western culture, particularly North American culture, talks about justice (in this discussion I am especially indebted to Brueggemann; surprise, surprise, I told you that book was good; cf. Theology of the Old Testament, 735-42).
It seems that the prevalent understanding of justice is retributive. Justice is understood as giving a person their just deserts on the basis of performance — a system of reward and punishment based on an individual's behaviour.
However, the biblical understanding of justice is distributive. The intention of biblical justice is to redistribute social goods and social power, and reorder they way in which those are arranged. This is what the liberation theologians are talking about when they argue that God shows a preferential option for the poor. Distributive justice recognises that all members of a community are intimately linked with all other members. It seems to me that restorative justice picks up on this to a certain degree — it does well to emphasise the communal nature of human existence, but perhaps it does not emphasise the concrete physical ramifications of this as much as it should. Distributive justice makes it clear that practising justice is inextricably linked to things like the distribution of goods.
Now a case can certainly be made for both retributive and distributive justice within the biblical texts (the bible, after all, reflects various traditions that are often in tension with one another), but the bible is quite unambiguous about the fact that distributive justice — which destabilises the status quo — trumps retributive justice — which is often used to maintain “order,” specifically the way things are presently ordered. That is to say, those who have a vested interest in the status quo will be eager to maintain a retributive definition of justice. Unfortunately such justice, that is so triumphant in a society that perpetuates (and is premised upon?) social inequalities, has very little to do with any sort of Christian justice.

The deeper I have gone into biblical studies the more I have questioned conventional and popular interpretations of… well… pretty much everything related to Jesus, the bible, and Christianity. I am increasingly convinced that the mainstream forms of Western Christianity have seriously misinterpreted and perverted all three of those things.
When I engage in dialogues around right interpretation (exegesis, not eisegesis!) I hear one objection repeated in many different forms:
“No, the bible can't be that complex, it must be accessible to everybody at all times.”
“If the bible is as complex as you say, then it shouldn't be accessible to everybody. That way it won't be so used and abused.”
There have been several times when I've even wondered about the efficacy of allowing universal access to the biblical texts.
However, I am convinced that such universal access is necessary — but it must also be treated with special caution. The bible is a complex combination of a wide variety of genres, written, edited, and compiled in a wide variety of socio-political contexts. We must approach such a complex document with caution.
Perhaps an illustration (or two) will help. Let's compare the bible with a volume of national law. Now, I'm no lawyer but if I carefully read through the laws I will get a general feeling for the legal system. I will begin to see how some laws are related to others and I will start to understand the values, ethic, and world-view of my nation. However, there is much that I won't understand. There will be a lot of technical jargon that doesn't make sense to me — and there will be a lot that I think I understand but I don't. I may be unaware of other mitigating factors, I may be unaware about the ways in which lawyers can turn a phrase to make it mean something that I do not expect. So, as a person who is no expert in law I need to study law with some humility — and allow the experts to provide the definitive interpretation of the relevant texts.
Similarly, I am no student of architecture. However, I can look at a blue-print of a house and grasp the big picture. I can get where the rooms are, grasp an understanding how their size in relation to each other, even begin to understand where the major support beams are — but there will be a lot about the blue-print that means nothing at all to me. Yet when an architect examines the blue-print she will be able to tell me how such supposedly irrelevant things are actually crucial and have a determining influence on the whole house. I will be able to appreciate some things but at the end of the day I'm going to allow the architect to build the house.
Now here's the point I want to make — a point that many Christian raised in our exceedingly self-absorbed and individualistic culture don't like to hear — Christians must allow the professionals to provide the definitive interpretation and application of the biblical texts. Certainly all of us can examine the documents and gather a sense for the big picture. We can all pull out major points about the character of the Christian god and what it means to live Christianly — but, at the end of the day, if our interpretation (and praxis) differs from the interpretation (and praxis) of the experts, we need to be willing to humble ourselves and submit to those who know the documents in a way that we do not.
Humility must replace any individualistic, positivistic, or triumphalistic reading of the texts.
Walter Brueggemann emphatically asserts that (within the realm of the Old Testament — and I think this point still rings true, although the pouring out of the eschatological spirit must be considered here) God ordains certain people and structures to be the agents through which his presence is mediated to the world (Torah, king, prophet, cult, and wisdom — cf. Theology of the Old Testament). In the Old Testament there is no suggestion that right understanding, or even any form of transformative encounter with God(!), is universally available to the people of God. Instead, there are those who God has met in genuinely transformative ways so that they can mediate God's presence and purposes to the broader community. Those of us who have been raised in triumphalistic, comfortable (and surely blessed) churches would do well to consider these words. We need to carefully consider the arrogance of our presumption that we all have universal and equal access to God. And as we consider these things we must be willing to humble ourselves and submit to those who have genuinely encountered God.

Our enemies are brutal, but they are no match for the United States of America. And they are no match for the men and women of the United States of America.
~ George W. Bush, from his address at Fort Bragg
I'm sorry George, I can't help but notice a double entendre in your words. How exactly are your enemies no match for your nation and your people? Is it that their strength is no match? Or is it that their brutality is no match for the brutality of your nation? I know that's probably not what you meant but it seems to be what your words imply. And for once I'm inclined to agree with you. The insurgents* may be brutal but their brutality is pathetic — dare I say pitiable? — in comparison to the brutality committed by your regime.
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*Notice the way in which the American Empire has co-opted the language of revolution. George W. Bush is labeled the “American Revolutionary” while the freedom fighters in Iraq are called “insurgents” (see my post on Time Magazine's special issue in December 2004).

Hulk,
I'm a lucky son-of-a-bitch to have a friend like you. Your email in response to my last post brought tears to my eyes. I wanted to write something just as meaningful in response, I wanted to write a post that would let everybody know what a fucking amazing friend you are. I wanted to tell everybody about your wisdom, your passion, and your empathy. I wanted you to know how deeply I admire you… but all I've got are these few lines that read like a Hallmark card (well, except for the swearing).
I love you brother. And thanks.
(By the way, I talked to Bushey today — he was trying to convince me to go planting up by Fort Nelson. That got me thinking about the season we planted together… I realised that a lot of my good memories from that summer are related to watching you freak out. Thanks for that, too.)

The metaphor of the judge does not have its locus in a theory of law. It lives, rather, in a world of desperate, practical appeal to those who have no other ground of appeal or hope and in a world of righteous rage among those who are appalled at exploitative brutality that must be called to accountability.
~ Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament.
As Christianity was infiltrated by Greek philosophies and other modes of thought from the Greco-Roman world, the idea of judgment became increasingly related to a law of moral purity, and personal piety. That is to say, judgment became associated with sin that had more to do with personal holiness and less to do with social justice. Of course this is only natural once Christianity becomes the official religion of the Constantine's empire (and any other subsequent Christian empires), for the religion of empire is a religion which cannot show much regard for the social injustices that result from the excercise of power. If anything such a religion provides a the empire with a justification for such inequalities.
However, a Christianity that only thinks of judgment in this context is essentially unbiblical. As Brueggemann emphasises, the notion of God as the judge, the notion of God excercising his judgment, is intimately tied to socio-economic issues.* God as judge is understood as the God who will not tolerate social injustices. God as judge is the God who sides with the oppressed over against the oppressor. God as judge is the God who brings liberation to captives and food to the hungry.
Of course Christian discourse about judgment is mostly dominated by questions relating to the final destination of one's eternal soul (which is itself a Greek, and not a Hebraic, concept). However, Krister Stendahl, a New Testament scholar who is partially responsible for launching the school of thought known as 'the new perspective on Paul,' does an excellent job of bringing a genuinely biblical understanding of judgment back into the discussion. He argues that God's judgment cannot be divorced from the realm of the social and the political. The notion of God's judgment cannot help but give us pause about our current socio-economic status. In the conclusion to his stirring essay “Judgment and Mercy” (found in Paul Among Jews and Gentiles), he writes,
Judgment and mercy. We must resist all homogenizing, neutralizing, dialecticizing and balancing acts with these terms.** There is little mercy except the chance of repentance for those of us who sit in judgment; but when judgment comes upon us, there is much mercy for the oppressed… So let us weep! And let them rejoice when the judgment that comes upon us provides their liberation!
Christians would do well to worry less about the state of their own souls and worry more about the state of their neighbours' bodies.
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* I say “his” because the title of “judge” when applied to YHWH is generally associated with YHWH's masculinity. There are other titles that emphasise YHWH's femininity — of course, as Brueggemann also highlights, we need to understand all nouns as “noun-metaphors” when they are applied to YHWH in the Old Testament. They are not Israel's primary way of referring to YHWH and only gain their meaning from their association with the broader narrative and from the ways in which YHWH acts in the story of Israel.
** This thought also fits well with Brueggemann's insistence that one should refuse to resolve tensions that are inherent to the biblical texts. Brueggemann argues that such tensions must be maintained because they are essentially a part of the character of YHWH as it is revealed to us.