Awhile ago, Roger Mugs started a ‘Big Sin Meme‘, asking bloggers: ‘If you were to be taken out by one sin (or a couple, whatever) what would it be?’
Not surprisingly, the big three (money, sex, power) showed up frequently in the responses of various bloggers. However, as I’ve thought about this question on-and-off for the last few weeks, I think those answers are a bit of a cop-out.
I mean, sure, most anybody has the potential to be taken out by any combination of these three things, but I’m more interested in asking what sin is there in my life that is already acting as an obstacle and has the potential to do future damage? Thus, rather than positing some hypothetical scenario that may or may not occur in the future, I’m more interested in asking myself, ‘What is the big sin in my life that is already ‘taking me out’?’
The answer? I am convinced that my desire for recognition from others is the ‘big sin’ in my life that does take me out, and has the potential to totally do me in, in the future. That is to say, it is the search for (increased) status that I think could be very devastating in my own life.
Now, I don’t think that I’m alone in my struggle with this sin. In fact, in a world dominated by capitalism, in what Guy Debord refers to the ‘Society of the Spectacle’, the ubiquity and force of brands, and the process of branding, tends to reduce us to self-disciplining, self-branding individuals. Hence, each one of us is driven to advance our own personal brand status. There are many seemingly contradictory ways of pursuing this — increasing my own brand status as a competent businessperson, increasingly my own brand status as a committed clergy member, increasingly my own brand status as a radical Christian — but the contradictions between these paths are often more apparent than actual. In one way or another, we become enmeshed in the pursuit of status and the marketing of Me™.
Now, there are a few things that make this search for status especially insidious. First of all, is the observation that branding is primarily about image. We advance our own brands not by being a certain way, or by doing certain things but, first and foremost, by appearing in certain ways. Hence, I affirm Debord’s observation that in the Society of the Spectacle — wherein social relationships between people are mediated by images — social being has devolved from being (pre-capitalism), through having (early capitalism), to appearing (contemporary or ‘late’ capitalism). This means that we are all inclined to desire to appear to be a certain way, and are not accustomed to thinking about whether or not who we actually are aligns with this appearance — or, rather, we are used to thinking that we are who we appear to be, when this is usually not the case. (This, by the way, is why Žižek can refer to ‘culture’ as ‘the name for all those things we practice without really believing in them, without “taking them seriously.”‘  This then, Žižek argues, is why we treat fundamentalists as a barbaric threat to our culture — ‘they dare to take their beliefs seriously’.)
Thus, I can’t help but ask myself: am I truly living as a person committed to the Way of Jesus Christ, or am I simply manifesting a simulacrum thereof (NB: the notion of simulacra is how Jean Baudrillard develops Debord’s reflections on the Spectacle)? The simulacrum part comes fairly easily — it’s low-cost and carries a high pay-off. Let me give a few examples:

1. I work with street-involved youth and have spent quite a bit of time with sex workers. This gains me a lot of ‘Christian radical’ respect dollars. But, really, it’s a job, and I get paid to do it. It’s a far cry from solidarity with the marginalised or that sort of thing.
2. I spent a couple of years living in the poorest urban neighbourhood in Canada (Oooo! Ahhh!) in an ‘intentional community’. However, I found it very easy to live in that neighbourhood but not really engage the community or become known by our neighbours. Again, I gain a lot of ‘Christian radical’ respect dollars, but the cost, for me, is quite low — a far cry from the costly discipleship we are called to in Christ.
3. I have a blog (with a picture of one of the alleys in Vancouver’s downtown eastside!) which I use to talk about issues of justice, solidarity, cruciformity and so on. This also gains me ‘Christian radical’ respect dollars, but it costs me pretty much nothing. I can talk until I’m blue in the face about things like solidarity, but that talk is a far cry from actually practising solidarity.

So, I don’t know if the search for (brand) status will take me out in the future, but it’s already doing a number on me now!
Secondly, this search for status is insidious because it necessarily produces hypocrisy. Here it is important to precisely define what the bible means when it speaks of ‘hypocrisy’. In particular, the bible doesn’t usually mean what we think it means — people who just play a role and ‘fake’ being good or whatever. Rather, according the the bible, ‘hypocrisy’ describes ‘a person whose conduct is not determined by God and is thus ‘godless.” (I’m indebted to Joel B. Green’s commentary on Luke for this understanding). Hence, hypocrites are not ‘play-actors’ but those who are ‘misdirected in their fundamental understanding of God’s purpose and, therefore, incapable of discerning the authentic meaning of Scripture and, therefore, unable to present anything other than the impression of piety’ (Green again).
Therefore, when we act out of the desire to advance our own brand status, we are acting as hypocrites because our focus is on ourselves, not upon God’s purposes (even if we talk a lot about those). We are acting as godless people and all of our (highly praised!) actions are simply impressions of piety — simulacra of piety.
Again, applying this to myself and to the whole notion of ‘Christian radicals’, I can’t help but wonder if Jesus’ criticisms of the Pharisees are more directly aimed at me, and others in this bracket, and not at the figureheads of the type of Christianity that dominated modernity (I reckon Jesus’ words to the Sadducees are more convicting for that lot!).
Thirdly, this search for status is insidious because it is self-destructive. This is true across the board but is, perhaps, most easily observed in the search for respect one finds in street-culture. ‘Respect’ (i.e. status) is one of the dominant themes in street-culture. Thus, for example, people are willing to beat, torture, and kill others, if they feel disrespected — even in very small ways (say you look at a person wrong, you make the wrong joke at the wrong time, etc.). Yet this desire for respect then develops into a downward spiral, as Philippe Bourgois notes in In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio: ‘although street culture emerges from a personal search for dignity and a rejection of racism and subjugation, it ultimately becomes an active agent in personal degradation and community ruin’. The same is true of other more acceptable or middle-class efforts to attain respect and status.
Thus, to once again apply this to myself, by simply posing as a person who loves others in ‘radical’ ways, I am in fact doing no good and thereby contribute to the ongoing oppression of the poor and the maintenance of the status quo wherein all of us are dehumanised.
In conclusion, I find it particularly interesting that the New Testament voices, especially the voices of Jesus and Paul, are united in an unrelenting campaign against social ways of being that are driven by the notion of status. It is interesting how, in the world of contemporary capitalism (wherein social relationships are mediated by the process of branding) we find ourselves in a situation that has some amazing parallels to the Graeco-Roman world in the first-century CE. Both of these cultures were and are dominated by the desire for status, and both of these cultures were and are confronted with a Gospel that overthrows this desire and replaces it with a call to show unconditional hospitality, serve all people, and (tangibly) love even our enemies. Rather than being motivated by notions of status, we are called to disregard such issues and humiliate ourselves in the service of others.

I’ve noticed that more and more manifestos are being published these days.  We have an ‘evangelical manifesto‘, an ‘emergent manifesto‘, a ‘new Christian manifesto‘ and I’m sure I could multiply examples (heck, one of the blogs I link to is called ‘Jesus Manifesto‘).
Now, by definition, a ‘manifesto’ is ‘a public declaration of principles, policies, or intentions, especially of a political nature’ but I think our recent love of manifestos goes beyond the dictionary definition of the word.  Indeed, in contemporary discourse, I believe that this term carries ‘radical’ or ‘counter-cultural’ connotations, largely because of the work we must commonly associate with the notion of manifestos — The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels.
Thus, by publishing this range of manifestos, I believe that the various authors are might be appealing to these connotations, in order to brand themselves as radicals, or counter-cultural, or cutting-edge, or whatever.  This, of course, is just another way of pro/claiming an higher status than others.  To be radical is, primarily, to be more radical than others.  To be counter-cultural is, primarily, to be more cool than others.  To be cutting-edge is, primarily, to be more advanced than others.  It’s a move made in comparison to others — it’s a power-play.
Furthermore, this use of language is often both a symptom and a cause of the drift from living genuinely different lives, to claiming ‘radical’ language while continuing to live lives that are little different than others.  Hence, the use of ‘radical’ language becomes of means of claiming higher status, while not actually changing one’s own life.
It’s a sweet deal, no?
Unfortunately, even those who are genuinely attempting to integrate what they say with how they live, still often fall into this brand-status trap, by continuing to use language that has been so thoroughly co-opted.  It is not necessary to call ourselves ‘radicals’, it is not necessary to call our publications ‘manifestos’ and yet we continue to use this language and by doing so — whether we intend to our not — we engage in an act of self-branding that carries repercussions related to our own status and, particularly, how others perceive our status.
It’s a sticky situation, eh?

One Gypsy Punk band playing live + several drinks + good friends + dancing = one seriously broken ankle + one major surgery + several prescription painkillers. Damn.

Not that I know anything about this stuff, but I reckon that, if the global markets were to crash and we were to be heading for some sort of Great Depression at some point in the future then… well… then it makes sense for the Spirit to begin stirring now-ish in order to create communities of Christians who are learning how to share the basic elements of life, who are economically dependent upon one another, who are making connections across national boundaries, and who are trying to bridge the gap between the West and the Rest of the world.

The deeper we root Jesus’ actions, and his embrace of powerlessness and suffering, at the heart of God’s character, the harder it becomes to posit a Jesus who returns triumphantly to judge the world and make all things new.
That is to say, if Jesus reveals to us a cruciform God, and if Jesus’ act on the cross are an act of “family resemblance” to a God defined by suffering, humble love (as Michael Gorman argues), then returning to impose the kingdom of God upon the world (rather than inviting others to participate in the kingdom, like Jesus did the first time around) seems somewhat problematical.
After all, it seems to me that this notion of God’s humility and cruciformity has been one of the foundations for our acceptance of this whole terribly messy history of the world.  If God is humble, suffering, and ever inviting — if God is like Jesus — then it makes sense that God hasn’t simply put an end to all of this already.  If God is revealed as a suffering servant, then it makes sense that God hasn’t rushed in to knock some heads together and sort things out.  However, the question then becomes this: if God hasn’t sorted things out by now, if God is committed to inviting us, and working with us, then what is the foundation for God to return to us in order to finally make all things new?  Doesn’t the return of Jesus seem like exactly the type of forceful act that Jesus refused to practice in the first place?
So, I would be curious to hear how others might resolve this apparent contradiction.  How does a triumphant and forceful return fit with a cruciform God?
I mean, maybe this explains the so-called ‘delay of the Parousia’ — maybe Jesus left thinking, ‘I’ll be back soon!’ and then, once he had time to think about things, he realised that returning with force would be to contradict his own character and commitments.  Maybe he’s been sitting in heaven the last two thousand years thinking, ‘hot damn, how do I get out of this one?!’