Hey Nathan,
Thanks for the email (regarding the conversation that was happening on your blog — http://www.nathancolquhoun.com/blog/index.php/2007/08/19/drawing_someone_else_s_line#comments). I hope you don't mind me taking the time to write all this out here, truth be told, I'm curious to hear what others might have to say about all this.
Like you, I was raised in a family and a church that pushed the notion of “leadership” — and pushed it onto me, specifically. I've been encouraged to situate myself in places of “leadership” since way back, and my situation in those places took my through highschool and my undergrad (with, I will admit, a great deal of pride). I imagine that our stories are fairly similar in this regard (although maybe you weren't as arrogant as I was).
However, a number of factors have caused me to rethink and question all this in the last four or five years, as I have pursued alternate models of Christian living (after all, questioning, and rethinking, don't mean much apart from a new form of embodiment or praxis).
In particular, much of the Christian discourse about leadership seems to be flawed, and fatally so, in two regards: (1) in its focus on the individual; and (2) in its understanding of power. This, I think, is largely due to churches looking to outside models when it comes down to issues of polity and structure. By and large, a business paradigm has come to dominate the church (and, I might add, the social services — think of the pervasiveness of the role of the “manager” as that is described in MacIntyre's After Virtue). Consequently, leaders, Christian or otherwise, are understood as powerful and influential individuals who can “get results.” A successful Christian leader is the sort who has a full church, heck, a growing church, and, perhaps most importantly, a tithing church… blah, blah, blah (in social work, a successful Christian leader is the sort who can produce glowing stats and has the connections and voice necessary to bring in abundant donations).
It is interesting to compare this focus on (1) power, (2) influence, and (3) success with Jesus and the prophets. Jesus and the prophets were mostly powerless, mostly insignificant, and mostly failures when judged by the criteria established by the business paradigm.
However, I'm drifting off topic. I should get back to the issues of individualism and power.
Over against, the radical individualism of our culture — that finds particularly strong expression in the discourse on leadership — Christians are called to prioritise the corporate aspect of their identity as members of the people of God. Example: I am not, first and foremost, Dan, the individual; rather, I am, first and foremost, Dan, a member of the body of Christ.
Some time ago on my blog, I asked people to summarise, in one sentence, how they defined themselves (cf. http://poserorprophet.livejournal.com/59156.html) and I then responded by arguing that I (and all of us) should be defined in this way: “I am a Spirit-filled member of the body of Christ and a beloved child of God” (cf. http://poserorprophet.livejournal.com/59792.html). Some of my commentators responded that such a way of defining myself was far too vague (it could be applied to anybody!), but that was precisely my point: let's get beyond defining ourselves over and against everybody else, and let's begin by defining ourselves alongside of everybody else.
Consequently, when we bring this corporate understanding of self to the issue of “leadership” the question shifts from “How am I to lead?” to “How are we, as God's people, to live missionally within God's world?” Note that another shift has also taken place: I have moved from the language of leadership to the language of mission. This, I think, is a crucial shift. After all, as Christians, our goal is, ultimately, not to wield power and influence in order to create the results that we desire; rather, as Christians our goal is to live as a part of a community that is an agent of God's new creation within a world that is groaning under the sway of powers that refuse to acknowledge that they have been defeated (that, after all, is the point of Rev 12: the devil, the dragon, has been defeated and thrown down from heaven. Therefore, the especial violence, and the violence against the saints, that we see now is not because the dragon is so powerful but because the dragon is doomed). Therefore, our model for living missionally is not the model that is found within the business paradigm, it is the model that we find in Jesus.
This, then, leads quite naturally to the issue of power. It is the way in which the discourse on “leadership” is intrinsically linked to a form of power that, more than anything else, leads me to pursue alternate models. As far as I can tell, leadership is inextricably linked to notions of influence and power that are defined by the ability to forcefully impact the bodies, minds, and lives of others. Essentially, the leader is at the peak of a particular hierarchy and power flows from the top down Of course, those who have spoken of “servant leadership” have tried to reverse this flow but, IMHO, they have failed to the extent that they have retained the language of “leadership.” Time after time, I have observed the language of “servant leadership” employed as a mask over fiercely hierarchical, top-down, flows of power.
So, rather than attempting to be servant leaders, I would like to suggest that it is better for us to simply define ourselves as servants. This is, after all, one of the primary ways in which Paul defines the people of God: slaves of Christ (Douloi Christou), and slaves of one another. In this way, we begin to realise the truly “radical” nature of our call to follow Jesus on the road of the cross. Rather than exerting force on others, we are those who are willing to have force exerted upon us. We do this with the hope that, as on the cross, so also in our lives, that force will be exhausted and shattered even as it overwhelms us.
Think, in this regard, of how Paul describes the apostles in 1 Cor 4.8-13:
Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! You have become kings — and that without us! How I wish that you really had become kings so that we might be kings with you! For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men. We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored! To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.
This, I think, is an appropriate Christian response to the contemporary discourse on “leadership.” Mostly the contemporary models of Christian leadership are akin to the model established by the “Super-Apostles” in Corinth (the Super-Apostles who, by the way, were leading the church astray). Like Paul, I think we need to be adamant that our focus should be upon a missional crucifomity and it should not be upon leading with power.
At the end of the day, I think it is best that we focus less on being “teachers” and “lords,” and focus more on washing one another's feet (cf. Jn 13.1-14; notice how, when washing the disciples' feet, Jesus claims the titles “Teacher” and “Lord” and does not suggest that his disciples will also become “teachers” and “lords” [i.e. “servant leaders”] if they go on to wash each other's feet. Rather, he simply tells them that they should follow his example. The disciples remain only “servants”; Jesus alone is the “master”).

It's been an odd sort of week, full of death and resurrection; tears of sorrow, tears of joy.
After a suicide attempt, a good friend relapsed on crack cocaine. He had one and a half years of clean time and appeared to being doing well — no one foresaw the suicide attempt or the relapse. Now he's lost his housing, and we've lost all contact with him. I've been walking the alleyways and the neighbourhood where I know he goes to buy, but I can't find him. I don't know how he will be able to stay alive, if he is alive.
Another friend, a young girl, had also gotten a good amount of clean time under her belt. She had gotten off the street, out of sexual exploitation, and into a relationship with a decent guy who had no history of street-involvement. Yesterday I learned that she relapsed, is back on the street, and is working the trade again. Turns out she was recently grabbed, forced into a car, and gang-raped. Such an experience is not uncommon among the girls who work my neighbourhood.
One of my former professors, who continues to be a guide and friend to me (one of the three “'radical' academics” I mentioned in my last post) was just diagnosed with colon cancer and goes in for emergency surgery tomorrow.
So Death continues to work among us.
But resurrection was also at work this week (a rare event, but truly marvelous when it occurs). A few years ago I got to know an incredible young man (one of the most truly beautiful people I have ever known) who was addicted to crack and was suffering from a form of mental illness that caused him to hear voices that were constantly telling him to hurt himself, or kill himself, or whatever. He had gone through some horrible experiences that had shattered him before he had any real chance to develop into wholeness and so, over the time that I knew him, he drifted lower and lower into the belly of the beast. Finally, we lost all contact with him and, although we scoured the streets and agencies looking for him for ages, we never found him. A year went by and then, out of the blue, we got a phone call from him just the other day. Turns out he went to an “hard-core” treatment centre, got out of town, moved back in with his family, and has almost one year of clean time under his belt. He's working a good job, his mental state is under control, and he even volunteers once a week at a drop-in for street-entrenched youth in his town (I always told him that he would be able to do that sort of work far better than I can or could). What joy! This is the sort of miracle, the sort of good news, that gives me the strength to persevere and the ability to hope against all the odds. Behold, “this brother of [ours] was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found” (cf. Lk 15.11-31). Yes, he was dead; yes, he is alive again. Lord, have mercy on those who are still dead and dying.
It is weeks like this one that capture so well the reason why my blog is subtitled “This, therefore, is the life abundant.” I think we commonly misconstrue Jesus' promise of abundant living for his followers. We tend to put a sort of “health and wealth” spin on it, as though we just need to follow Jesus and “all our problems will be solved.” However, I believe that Jesus' promise of abundance is a promise that we will both suffer more and laugh more. It is a promise that we will experience greater sorrow and greater joy, abundant anguish and abundant peace. A promise that we will become intimate with both death and new life.
Thus, we come to know the life abundant when we begin to “rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn” (Ro 12). Ironically, in our pursuit of other forms of “abundance” (for example, the accumulation of capital, and the pursuit of status or power) we close ourselves off from the truly abundant life that is found in places like my neighbourhood. If you wish to find true abundance then go to places where the Spirit of life is moving among the crucified, places of mourning and laughter (tears of sorrow, tears of joy), places of death and resurrection.

In commenting on “happiness,” Slavoj Zizek has the following things to say:
In the strict Lacanian sense of the term, one should thus posit that “happiness” relies on the subject's inability or unreadiness fully to confront the consequences of its desire: the price of happiness is that the subject remains stuck in the inconsistency of desire. In our daily lives we (pretend to) desire things that we do not really desire, so that, ultimately, the worst thing that can happen is for us to get what we “officially” desire. Happiness is thus inherently hypocritical: it is the happiness of dreaming about things we do not really want.
Now this is, indeed, an intriguing understanding of happiness and desire, and one that, I believe, fits well with the role that happiness and desire play in a consumer society that is driven to consume ever more.
However, things get even more intriguing when Zizek goes on to illustrate his point by talking about “radical” academics. This is what he says:
When, for example, “radical” academics demand full rights for immigrants and the opening of borders to them, are they aware that the direct implementation of this demand would, for obvious reasons, inundate the developed Western countries with millions of newcomers, thus provoking a violent racist working-class backlash that would then endanger the privileged position of these very academics? Of course they are, but they count on the fact that their demand will not be met—in this way, they can hypocritically retain their clear radical conscience while continuing to enjoy their privileged position…
“Let's be realistic: we, the academic Left, want to appear critical, while fully enjoying the privileges the system offers us. So let's bombard the system with impossible demands: we all know that such demands won't be met, so we can be sure that nothing will actually change, and we'll maintain our privileged status quo!” (all quotations are from The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity, 43-44.)
Not only the “academic Left” needs to heed these words. All those who would consider themselves “counter-cultural,” and especially those within the “social justice” oriented streams of Christianity, need to pay attention to Zizek at this point. Take, for example, the popularity of the “MakePovertyHistory” campaign, or, for that matter, the smaller, and seemingly more challenging, “Make Affluence History” campaign. It seems to me that most of those who support these campaigns are simply raising “impossible demands” and thereby actually maintaining their “privileged positions” both in our national and our global contexts. Why do I think this? Because, by and large, those who support these campaigns are living lives that look no different than the lives of those around them. As far as I can tell, the only way that one can only honestly (i.e. without hypocrisy) participate in these campaigns is by doing what Jesus advised: “If you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor… and come, follow me” (Mt 19.21).
The more recent “Red” campaign is, perhaps, an even more obvious example, supported as it as by the likes of Bono and Oprah. Here we have two extremely affluent people, who have both been noted for their superfluous consumption at various times, acting as moral guides and telling us that the way to respond to the lack that defines the lives of others, is by consuming more ourselves! I find it baffling that so few people seem to find this ironic (and ironic in more ways than one!).
This is why, time and time again, the issue is not what campaigns we are supporting, what charities we are funding, or what declarations we are making. Ultimately, these issues are confronted, exposed, and perhaps resolved, in our daily lives. For example, regarding “radical” academics, I know three professors who have walked away from tenure, comfort and privilege within prestigious Academic circles. One to live and work amongst the marginalised in Vancouver's downtown eastside, another to live and work with migrant farm labourers and inmates in Washington state, and the third to live and work in an intentional community in the slums of Manila. All three have remained in some contact with the Academy but they remain on the margins there, and their situation there is one that has caused all of them a great deal of pain. These are the “radical” academics who have earned a voice into the issues raised by Zizek. That so few Christian academics are living in this way — that so few of those who teach us about things like suffering love, the way of the cross, and our mission as agents of God's new creation are living in ways like these — suggests to me that something has gone wrong within the realm of the Christian Academy.
Of course, all of this leads me back to examining my own life, and the hypocrisy that is present therein (as, I hope, it leads all of us back to examine ourselves). I would be lying to suggest that my daily living has attained to the level of expectation that I impose in my rhetoric. However, I find hope in the fact that my life is increasingly resembling those expectations. That is to say, I hope that I am pursuing a trajectory that leads me to a place of speaking and living honestly in relationship to these things. Am I there yet? No. Have I begun to travel there? Yes. What saddens me is that few Christians are intent on following that trajectory to the end. Instead, what we like to do is take a few steps down that road (perhaps a few more steps than those around us) and then we settle down and pat ourselves on the back and call one another “radicals.” Let's be honest: giving to charity is not radical, opening a drop-in in our churches is not radical, moving into poor neighbourhoods is not radical — all of these things are baby-steps on a journey that takes a lifetime to complete. (Indeed, I suspect that the only time we will be certain of our “radical-ness” will be when we find ourselves nailed to crosses — and at that point it won't matter anyway, and will likely be the furthest thing from our minds.)

No object is proposed to the consumer as a single variety… what our industrial society always offer us 'a priori', as a kind of collective grace and as a mark of a formal freedom, is choice. This availability of the object is the foundation of 'personalization': only if the buyer is offered a whole range of choices can he transcend the strict necessity of his purchase and commit himself personally to something beyond it. Indeed, we no longer even have the option of not choosing… Our freedom to choose causes us to participate in a cultural system willy-nilly. It follows that the choice in question is a specious one: to experience it as freedom is simply to be less sensible of the fact that it is imposed upon us as such, and that through it society as a whole is likewise imposed upon us… Clearly 'personalization', far from being a mere advertising ploy, is actually a basic ideological concept of a society which 'personalizes' objects and beliefs in order to integrate persons more effectively.
~ Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects, 151-52.
There is much that I find worthwhile in this quotation from Baudrillard but, given some of the ongoing discussion about Christian universalism, I was especially struck by what Baudrillard had to say about choice. Let me explain the connection.
D. W. Congdon has continually contributed to the discussion of Christian universalism on his blog and Ann Chapin, a commentator on a recent post (cf. http://fireandrose.blogspot.com/2007/07/paul-among-evangelicals-1-problem.html), asked what I (and others, apparently) believe to be a central question to this discussion. This was her question:
“Is part of the problem equating the experience of choice with real freedom?”
This question is, of course, raised in light of the general Christian view that our salvation is somehow connected to our own choices. Thus, those who hold to this view accuse Christian universalists of negating human freedom. In this way “real freedom” is equated with the “experience of choice.”
This, then, is where a cross-reference to the above quotation from Baudrillard begins to make things much more interesting. Essentially, what Baudrillard suggests is this: if we equate freedom with choice, then we lose our ability to recognise that which actually enslaves us, and our choice-making both confirms and deepens our bondage, regardless of what we choose.
This perspective on freedom and choice also sheds light on another traditional Christian assertion — the assertion that true freedom is found in obedience to God. However, before we assert this too hastily, we must ask ourselves the following question: if freedom is not to be equated with choice, how can it be equated with obedience? After all, many who are forced to obey, would understand that obedience as slavery — as just another form of bondage. And they would usually be correct in that understanding. After all, the notion of “freedom in obedience” has been continually applied by dictators, and totalitarian powers (remember, “arbeit macht frei” hung over the gates of a number of Nazi concentration camps).
We are thus confronted with the following question: if freedom is not found in choice, when, or how, is freedom found in obedience?
The key to answering this question is recognising that freedom comes to us as a gift given in two movements. As far as I can tell, the bible presents a picture of a world, and a people, who are in bondage. Although people can choose this, that, or the other thing (and they do choose pretty much all of the above during the course of the biblical narrative), it is clear that humanity is not free — it is enslaved to sin and death, and to all the spiritual and material forces that are in the service of these two great powers. However, there is good news: the hold of these powers is forever shattered by the Christ-event and the dawning of the new age. In the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the bondage of humanity — and of creation — is shattered, and, in the out-pouring of the eschatological Spirit, freedom is given as God's free gift to humanity. As Paul says, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Gal 5), and again, “The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you” (Ro 8). This is the first movement in God's giving of the gift of freedom and it is the movement in which we now live. Here we see that freedom is understood as liberation, not choice.
We are, however, still awaiting the second movement. Because we live in the “now-and-not-yet” of the kingdom of God, because we embrace an inaugurated but not yet consummated eschatology, the freedom that we experience now is only a partial freedom. Although we have been liberated from bondage to sin and death, we still suffer at their hands (and at the hands of their spiritual and material associates). Thus, Paul also says “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved” (Ro 8, again). The first movement is only the “firstfruits”; the second movement is the consummation. The second movement is the final act of liberation that will be accomplished when Christ returns and puts a final and total end to sin, death, and their lackeys; and it is the coming of God to heal all wounds, to dry all tears, to make all things new, and to become “all in all” (1 Cor 15).
Consequently, we can now see that Christian universalism does not negate human freedom; rather, it recognises that all freedom is a gift from God; it recognises human freedom as liberation from bondage to sin and death, and believes that God will one day finalise this liberation by completely destroying the powers of sin and of death, thereby setting us all free.
In this way, we also come to see how freedom is found in obedience. Obedience is simply living as those who have been so liberated. Obedience is remembering the first movement in God's giving of the gift of freedom and proleptically anticipating the second movement. Obedience is standing firm and refusing to “be burdened again by a yoke of slavery”( Gal 5, again). This is why the martyrs — those who are chained, tortured, and killed — are the greatest signs of freedom in the world; wholly deprived of choice, they become holy witnesses to the gift of liberation found in Christ.
In conclusion, it is worth remembering Baudrillard's argument one more time. If a focus on choice simply masks that which keeps us in bondage, one cannot help but wonder if there is some sort of bondage at work in the argument of those Christians who wish to equate freedom with choice. I suspect that there is. By linking freedom to choice, freedom moves from the theological to the anthropological — freedom, from this perspective, is simply part of who we already are, and who we always were, as humans. Such a way of thinking inevitably makes us the agents of our own salvation. However, because we cannot save ourselves, such a way of thinking ends up leading us back into bondage. Thankfully the God who has saved us and who will save us, liberates us from all forms of bondage, even forms currently imposed by poor theology!

Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. “But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in doing so you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
~ Ro 12.19-21
For awhile now, I have suspected that God claims a monopoly on vengeance because the divine implementation of vengeance might look very different than we imagine it to be.
You see, we have tended to imagine vengeance as punitive, as retributive, and, usually, as some form of violence — “an eye for an eye,” and the sort of thing prescribed in the Lex Taliones. Such an understanding of vengeance declares that the punishment must be “equal in magnitude” to the crime. Hence, the more violent the crime, the more violent the punishment. Yet what is the result of this? An ever-expanding spiral of violence.
However, Ro 12 makes it clear that Christians are not to engage in any form of vengeance. Rather than “repaying” those who wrong them, Christians are to respond with acts of mercy. Instead of ensuring a form of punishment that is equal in magnitude to the crimes committed against them, Christians are to respond with a form of grace that matches the violence of the wrongdoing. Hence, the more violent the crime, the more gracious the response of the Christian community. And what is the result of this? Evil is overcome with good.
Indeed, where this begins to become intriguing is that this is precisely the way in which Jesus overcame evil. On the cross, God declared his judgment on sinners and, behold, it was a judgment of grace and of forgiveness. On the cross, Jesus suffered at the hands of violent men, crying out, “Father, forgive them!” and evil was overcome with good.
Hence, we come to see why God claims sole ownership over vengeance. We are too inclined to see grace and vengeance as opposites. On the cross, God reveals his vengeance as grace. We tend to think that vengeance means inflicting violence on others. On the cross, God shows us that vengeance means taking violence onto ourselves. We tend to think of wrath as a destructive force. On the cross, God's wrath is revealed as God's wounded, but life-giving, love.
Which leads me back to one of my favourite biblical passages, Is 35.3-4, which goes as follows:
Strengthen the feeble hands,
steady the knees that give way;
say to those with fearful hearts,
“Be strong, do not fear;
your God will come,
he will come with vengeance;
with divine retribution
he will come to save you.”
The vengeance of God is our salvation. It is salvation for “the oppressed” and it is salvation for “the oppressor.” This, I think, is good news.
Maranatha, come quickly and save us, Lord Jesus. Amen.