Objectivity can mean a selfless openness to the needs of others, one which lies very close to love… To try to see the other's situation as it really is is an essential condition of caring for them… The point, anyway, is that genuinely caring for someone is not what gets in the way of seeing their situation for what it is, but what makes it possible. Contrary to the adage that love is blind, it is because love involves a radical acceptance that it allows us to see others for what they are.
~Terry Eagleton, After Theory, 131.
I am often told that I am “biased” or “blinded” by love relationships that I have with people who are experiencing poverty and oppression. I like the way in which Eagleton's argument, quoted here and developed in more detail in After Theory, reverses the charge. According to Eagleton (and I am inclined to agree), those who do no love people who are experiencing poverty, cannot judge the situation of the poor with any sense of objectivity.
Of course, “loving” the poor, means actually caring for the poor, as Eagleton says later on:
Love for the Judaeo-Christian tradition means acting in certain material ways, not feeling a warm glow in your heart. It means, say, caring for the sick and imprisoned, not feeling Romantic about them (146).
Furthermore, Eagleton argues that this means that objectivity means taking sides. He writes:
Objectivity and partisanship are allies, not rivals… True judiciousness means taking sides (136f).
From this we can conclude that only those who take the side of the poor, concretely loving the poor in various ways, are in a situation where they can hope to speak objectively about the poor.

Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again… If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same? If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return… Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
~ Lk 6.30, 32-35a, 36.
[C]apitalism is an impeccably inclusive creed: it really doesn't care who it exploits. It is admirably egalitarian in its readiness to do down just about anyone. It is prepared to rub shoulders with any old victim, however unappetizing.
~ Terry Eagleton, After Theory, 19.
I know that I had stated that I was going to move on in this series to exploring “dependence/nonsensical vulnerability” as a key element of a Christian political economics that offers a genuine alternative to capitalism, but I could not resist one final comment on sharing as nonsensical charity.
Of all the biblical passages about sharing, few verses have shaped my understanding as much as the passage I quoted from Lk 6 (see also Mt 5.38-48). Within this passage, I believe that Jesus is describing precisely the form of nonsensical charity for which I have been advocating in my last few entries. Furthermore, I believe that the form of giving Jesus describes here is consistent with the call to giving that runs throughout the rest of the biblical texts. Hence, Lk 6 serves as an appropriate summation and manifesto regarding the form of giving that is to define the community of those who follow Jesus. Christians are called to give to everyone who begs from us, and lend expecting nothing in return. Full stop.
Unfortunately, it is exactly this form of giving that strikes us as nonsensical within the structures of capitalism. Capitalism teaches us to be much more pragmatic about how we give. Thus, for example, we only give to charities that provide us with tax breaks (who among us would even consider giving to a charity that is unregistered and could not give us a tax receipt?). Furthermore, if there is one type of person we are consistently told not to give to, it is those who beg from us on the street corner (I have heard innumerable arguments from social workers, and Christians, as to why giving our change to beggars is a bad thing — but what all these arguments come down to, one way or another, is that giving to beggars is probably an absolutely wasted investment). Capitalism teaches (1) not to give to everyone who begs from us; and (2) to only give after considering what is to be gained from our giving — i.e. to give expecting something in return.
However, I find that I cannot shake the words of Jesus in Lk 6, and so I find myself participating in nonsensical (not only non-pragmatic but even anti-pragmatic!) forms of charity. Jesus makes it clear that we are not to have any motive for giving other than the act of giving itself, and the desire to be like God our Father, whose giving is shockingly and (wastefully!) merciful. That the form of charity for which I have been advocating is generally not the form of charity embodied with the Christian community, suggests to me that we rarely take Jesus' words seriously.
Thus, continuing with the examples provided above, I would encourage Christians to give to all beggars, and I would encourage Christians who donate to charities to refuse the offer of tax receipts. And, ultimately, if we can't entirely shake the pragmatic outlook of our culture, and we are disturbed by the (seeming) fact that our giving does not seem to be doing any good, then I would suggest that the solution is not to stop giving, but to give more.
Two final point: first, at the beginning of this post, I juxtaposed Jesus' words in Lk 6 with a quote from Terry Eagleton about the inclusivity of capitalism. I created this juxtaposition in order to suggest that, just as capitalism doesn't care who it exploits, so also Christians should not care to whom they give. Only this radically inclusive form of giving will provide us with a genuine Christian alternative to the radically inclusive form of exploitation of capitalism.
Second, by subtitling this post “a final appeal,” I am noting that this series is itself a part of the begging that I think is to define the Christian community. What else can we do but beg our brothers and sisters in Christ to reread the Scriptures, to reexamine the contemporary situation, and to rethink what it means to be a member of the body of Christ?

Is this not the fast which I choose:
To loosen the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free and break every yoke? Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into the house; when you see the naked, to cover him; and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
Then your light will break out like the dawn, and your recovery will speedily spring forth; and your righteousness will go before you; the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry, and He will say, “Here I am” if you remove the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness. And if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness and your gloom will become like midday.
~ Is. 58.6-10.
Extra pauperes nulla salus.
~ Jon Sobrino [“Outside the poor, there is no salvation.”]
I concluded Part VIII by asserting that Christians, following the “preferential option” exercised by God, and the life-trajectory established by Jesus, must learn to share life together with the poor. In order to grasp just how much this differs from the charity that is affirmed by capitalism, we must come to recognise the ways in which the Christian community has, by and large, outsourced the practice of charity to “professionals” and “social workers.”
Unfortunately, just as the outsourcing of blue-collar jobs devastated life in many North American inner-cities, so the outsourcing of charity work has had a similarly devastating impact upon the life of the Church. Generally what we find are Christians who provide others with the material resources that those others need in order to engage in charitable actions. So, for example, instead of feeding the hungry, they make a financial donation to a soup kitchen; instead of clothing the naked, they give some used clothes to the Salvation Army; instead of inviting the homeless poor into their homes, they donate some money to a homeless shelter. Consequently in these (and other) ways, charity is outsourced. Christians have learned how to share material resources with the poor, while also ensuring that their actual lives are well separated from the poor. Therefore, if we are to learn to share our lives together with the poor, we must move beyond this approach to charity.
In particular, we must begin to explore the ways in which our faith communities can began to enact the form of sharing that is described in the passage that I quoted from Is 58. Is 58 — along with the rest of the prophetic tradition, including Jesus — does not call us to pay others to feed the hungry, it calls us to feed the hungry, just as it calls us to clothe the poor, us to loosen the bonds of wickedness and oppression, and us invite the homeless into our homes — and this call is addressed to all of the members of the people of God — it is not simply directed at social work professionals.
Consequently, we realise that, in order to do these things, we must actually personally encounter the hungry, the naked, the poor, the oppressed, and the homeless. And this is why it is so important for the Church to be rooted in the marginal places of our world, the “groaning places,” the places where the darkness of exile is still most strongly felt. When we pursue the life-trajectory encouraged by capitalism we end up in self-enclosed work places, churches, and neigbourhoods which leaves us scratching our heads thinking:
Clothe the naked? I've never run into any naked person…. hmmm, that must mean that I should understand this to refer more to my attitude than to my concrete actions… in fact, maybe all the commands — about eating, or taking in the homeless, or fighting oppression, or whatever — aren't actually literal commands, maybe they're actually trying to point to a more “spiritual” reality.
However, when we are situated in the groaning places of this world we discover that the prophetic call of Isaiah, and the other prophets, requires us to engage in a very literal response to that call (staying with the example of “clothing the naked,” I have had at least half a dozen opportunities to literally do this in the last seven months). Therefore, the first step to sharing life together with the poor is to choose to live where the poor live. The life-trajectory of “downward mobility” leads us to move to “dirtier,” “more dangerous,” and less comfortable neighbourhoods, not because we want to be “more radical” but because, if we are called to love the poor, and love our neighbours, then it is vital that the poor become our neighbours.
Consequently, I would like to envision a network of Christian community-homes that are rooted in such marginal places (see here for more details on this approach: Personal Calling and the Calling of the Church). In this way, we can learn how to journey alongside of the poor, treating them as friends and neighbours, rather than as clients, projects, or targets. Furthermore, by rooting ourselves among the poor we quickly learn that, in our professional approaches (through social service agencies, or through churches), we often try to share things with the poor that are completely useless (and perhaps even detrimental) to the poor. Our proximity to the poor provides us with the insight to engage in more appropriate and meaningful form of sharing.
At this point, I would like to pick up on one particular aspect of the passage in Is 58. I have continually been struck by these words: “bring the homeless poor into [your] house.” It is interesting to begin here by noting that Jesus and his disciples, as well as Paul and those who traveled with him, assumed that people would take this passage literally. Therefore, in order to build on the model of Christian community-homes that I described in Part VII, I would like to argue that each community home should have at least one (or more, depending on the size of the community-home) guest room set aside for guests like “the homeless poor” and those who are oppressed. Thus, a network of community-homes, each with a particular missional interest becomes quite important — one home could focus on bringing in sex workers, another home could focus on women with children leaving abusive relationships, another could focus on men with addictions, and so on and so forth (the reason why a network is important is that it is often a good idea to keep members of these various different groups apart — for example, mixing sex workers and battered single moms together isn't the best idea because the single moms often end up getting recruited into sex work because they are so desperate for money).
Finally, although “success” is not my motive for pursuing this vision (my motive is a desire to be faithful — the motive that I believe should be at the root of all Christian action), I also suspect that, if we begin to share our lives together with the poor in this way, then we will begin to see the transformation for which we long. Why do I believe this? For two reasons: first of all, because I have personally invited the poor into my home on a number of occasions — and I have seen wonderful transformation result from that action — the sort of transformation that almost never seems to come through social service agencies and Church outreach; the kind of transformation that is best described as new life (and not just harm reduction). Secondly, I believe this because Is 58 tells us that this is the case. When we share our food, our clothes, and even our homes, with the poor, then God promises to hear our prayers and be present among us; conversely, when we don't do these things then God promises to ignore us and depart from us. This is why Sobrino is correct to assert that extra pauperes nulla salus. Such assertions are bound to make us uncomfortable, but discomfort is no basis for discarding or ignoring Sobrino's assertion.
Now, it doesn't take a lot of thought to realise that this sort of charity seems utterly nonsensical to those whose lives are dominated by capitalism. Our priorities and life-trajectory are bad enough — but the idea of inviting the homeless into our homes (homeless people that are strangers to us!) would be (and has been) described as crazy (“fucking insane” is how one of my friend's put it). However, given the content of scripture, I can only conclude that Christians are called to make their home among the poor, while inviting the poor to make their home within the Christian community.
I realise that the idea of embodying this form of charity is scary to a lot of people and so, in my next few entries, I hope to finally address what I see as the second key component of a a Christian political economics: radical dependence/nonsensical vulnerability.

Neil Elliott, in his excellent study of Paul (Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle), continually addresses the ways in which many traditional and contemporary readings of Paul neglect the socio-political issues that confronted Paul. Consequently, the result has often been a presentation of Paul as a “theologian,” or “genius” or “mystic,” and this theologian/genius/mystic Paul is consequently not so concerned with politics or ethics. Elliott wants to collapse the false dichotomy between “theology” and “politics” or between “thought” and “action” in order to to arrive at a new understanding of Paul.
Thus, in his chapter on “Paul and the Violence of the Cross,” Elliott argues that many traditional and contemporary readings of Paul “de-politicize” the political nature and significance of Jesus' death. Thus, Elliott writes the following:
Rather than God triumphing over the powers through Jesus' nonviolent self-sacrifice on the cross, the Powers disappear from the discussion, and God is involved in a transaction wholly within God's own self.
However, this has drastic consequences, as Elliott goes on to write:
The cross could thus become the focal symbol for a sadomasochistic piety cultivated by the Domination System itself: a piety that inculcates submissiveness and resignation in the oppressed and teaches the oppressor the divine necessity of “good” violence.
At this point, Elliott is engaging in dialogue with Walter Wink (Naming the Powers, Unmasking the Powers, Engaging the Powers. It was Wink who first popularised an understanding of the New Testament language about “the Powers” as language about socio-political powers, and it was Wink who named the structure of those powers “the Domination System.”
However, Elliott also goes on to disagree with Wink on one key point. Wink argues that the praxis of nonviolence that Jesus embodies on the cross is that which overcomes the Powers; for Wink, the cross is thus a revelation of the defeat of the powers. Elliott, however, argues that the only thing the cross reveals is the violence of the powers, it reveals that the powers are “intractably opposed” to God, but, in the cross, they are not yet overcome. For Elliott, it is the resurrection that reveals the imminent defeat of the Powers in the final triumph of God.
Elliott believes that he and Wink differ because Wink focuses more on Colossians and Ephesians (letters that Elliot believes to be pseudo-Pauline forgeries), while Elliott himself chooses to focus on 1 Corinthians (a genuine Pauline letter). 1 Corinthians, Elliott argues, is a letter that takes the Powers completely seriously whereas Colossians and Ephesians “have underestimated the magnitude of the Powers' imperviousness to nonviolence.”
Now then, I was on the bus thinking about Elliott's reflections on the “Powers' imperviousness to nonviolence” and the ways in which nonviolence can easily become one of the expressions of the “sadomasochistic piety” that is encouraged by the “Domination System,” when the person sitting in front of me suddenly decided to turn around and start talking to me (why does this sort of thing happen to me so often?).
It turns out that this person was a transsexual woman, who was in the midst of transitioning (in this case from “male” to “female”). She began to talk about her experiences transitioning, about the oppression and marginalisation of the trans community, and about her own experiences of systemic discrimination at the hands of doctors, counselors, and other professionals. Needless to say, I was intrigued and, given that we were both riding the bus to the end of the line, we had quite a bit of time to chat back and forth. The conversation moved quite naturally into a discussion of solidarity, resistance, liberation, and the relation of violence to these things. While I was advocating for nonviolent resistance, my conversation partner was adament that the time had come for the oppressed to take up arms. Nonviolence, she argued, just doesn't bring about any sort of significant transformation. We've done it enough, and we've seen how all our non-violent means of protest and resistance have been co-opted or neutralised by the oppressors. Violence, she continued, is the only thing that will truly create change. For example, she said, doctors will continue to discriminate against, belittle, and further marginalise members of the trans community, unless the trans community takes up arms and begins to shoot doctors that behaved in that way. (It seems that my conversation partner had not underestimated “the Powers' imperviousness to nonviolence”!)
Having seen firsthand the ways in which oppressive structures, break, scar, and destroy so many people, I can understand the appeal of violent resistance. Further, when I think about the ways in which those structures actually encourage nonviolence (“sadomasochistic piety”), and even nonviolent resistance (like the “designated protest zones” that are now created at G8 or WTO meetings) the temptation to resort to violence becomes even stronger. However, I also believe that this was a temptation that Jesus experienced, that appealed to Jesus, but that Jesus ultimately rejected. Consequently, based upon his witness (and the witness of the early Christians), I believe that violence is not an option for Christian action today.
Consequently, I have a few questions:
(1) For those who disagree with me and believe that violence is a viable option for Christians, when is violence a viable option? For example, the violence espoused by people like Bonhoeffer and the French, Dutch, or Italian resistance movements during WWII is often considered virtuous, admirable, and even heroic; why then do those who admire these movements seem to totally oppose the very idea of violent resistance within North America? In my mind, there is not much difference between the damage and death being inflicted by political and corrupt powers in North America today, and the damage and death that was inflicted by Nazi Germany in the 30s and 40s.
(2) For those, like myself, who believe that violence is never an option for Christians, how do we practice nonviolence in such a way that it cannot be co-opted by the Powers to met their ends?

Aware of the war waged, in our time and for our sake, against the poor, we must yield to [the] appeal for solidarity with the oppressed. We must answer [the] call for resistance to the sacred routines legitimating the course of empire.
~ Neil Elliott, Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle, 230.
Up until this point, I have concentrated on exploring some expressions of sharing that I believe should define those who are “in Christ.” In this regard, I have been thinking especially (but not exclusively) of the Johannine literature which reminds us that Christians should have a striking public (i.e. political) presence, precisely because of the ways in which they love one another. Of course, what we tend to do is romanticise or spiritualise John's talk of “love” instead of beginning to truly explore how we can move concretely into ever deeper levels of intimacy with God and one another. Therefore, having explored some of the ways in which intra-Christian sharing should be praticed, I would like to spend some time in this post exploring the question of how we can engage in extra-Christian sharing — and, once again, I would like to advocate for a form of charity that capitalism would label as “nonsensical.”
At this point, it is important to recall that the Church exists in the world, in order to participate in God's mission to and for the world. Christians are transformed by God so that they can move into the groaning-places of the world, as agents of God's new creation (as Tom Wright has reminded us time after time). Therefore, by beginning to envision a form of Christianity that can offer a genuine alternative to capitalism, I am not only exploring some of the ways in which the Church can be “holy” (i.e. set apart and uncompromised by corrupting influences, like capitalism) in a sectarian way. Rather, Christians are to be holy so that they can be effective witnesses within the world. Indeed, it is only when the Church is holy, and true to her identity, that transformation can occur within the world (as Hauerwas reminds us). Consequently, it is worth exploring some of the ways in which sharing with those who are not yet explicitly “in Christ” is a part of the mission of God and of the people of God.
It is worth emphasising that God's mission, and the mission to which God calls God's people, is one that is especially attentive to the plight of the poor, the vulnerable, the sick, the oppressed, and the forsaken. An honest study of the bible (from the Torah, to the prophets, to the Gospels, to the epistles) can only lead us to conclude that the liberation theologians are correct to argue that God demonstrates a “preferential option” for the poor. Indeed, God's especial attention to the poor is so strong that, when the Word of God becomes incarnate in the world, the Word takes on the form of one who is poor, homeless, and vulnerable. In fact, Jesus, the incarnate Word, becomes so vulnerable that he dies, helpless and abandoned, upon a cross. Therefore, the Church must both (a) demonstrate an equal “preferential option” for the poor; and (b) emulate the life-trajectory established by Jesus (a model that Paul develops in Phil 2). Thus, we see that the Church as a “community of beggars” may end up looking a lot more like actual beggars than we first imagined.
Yet both of these aspects — the priorities and the life-trajectory — of the Christian mission are at odds with the priorities and the life-trajectory that capitalism seeks to impose upon us. Thus, on the first point, capitalism teaches us to value the wealthy more than the poor, and those who “contribute” to the economy (through consumption, investment, and “responsible” debt-accumulation) more than those who do not — like the poor and homeless, who are often described as “parasites” “leeching” off of the system. Further, on the second point, capitalism teaches us a life-trajectory of “upward mobility.” It urges us to (continually) move on to a higher paying job, a more expensive house, a cleaner more respectable neighbourhood, a flashier car (or just another car), and so on and so forth.
Consequently, we can begin to see why sharing in a way that prioritises the poor while concomitantly emulating the life-trajectory of “downward mobility” established by Jesus appears to be so utterly nonsensical within the structures of capitalism. Within capitalism, sharing with the poor is, by and large, a wasted investment — but it can still be glorified as a “noble,” “humanistic,” “altruistic,” “romantic,” or “heroic” endeavour (note how the language used by capitalism to praise charity also simultaneously relieves most of us from the demands of charity — after all, we're just ordinary people, not noble or romantic heroes!). And this is precisely why the way in which Christians are called to share with the poor is attached to a life-trajectory; we are never to just share our resources with the poor — we are called to share our lives together with the poor. In my next post I will explore some of the concrete ways in which the Christian community can engage in this form of sharing.

Far more than political agitation, class warfare, or zeal for national liberation, [Paul] had come to believe that a focused concentration on sacrifice and sharing—monetary sharing as well as spiritual selflessness—was the most potent and effective weapon that God's elect could possibly use against the forces of darkness.
~ Richard A. Horsley & Neil Asher Silberman, The Message and the Kingdom: How Jesus and Paul Ignited a Revolution and Transformed the Ancient World, 182.
So long as we eat our bread together we shall have sufficient even with the least.
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 59.
In Part V of this series, I began to explore some of the practical ways in which Christians can exercise “nonsensical charity” by practicing the sharing that prevents debt, and the sharing of debt. Then, in Part VI, I briefly stepped back from from the discussion of practical forms of sharing in order to speak about the “Reformation of Desire.” Therefore, in this post, I would like to return to the theme of sharing, by exploring what might happen when we begin to think about sharing “life together.”
Of course, the expression “life together” is an allusion to Bonhoeffer's classic work on community (a work that served as something of a manifesto for the Christian community that Bonhoeffer lived in for awhile during WWII). It is worth recalling this text as we explore the practicalities of sharing within the Christian community. After all, Bonhoeffer reminds us that we must be practical when it comes to community, lest we cling too much to our “visions” of community and are thus overcome by the disillusionment that occurs when the reality of community hits us, as it inevitably will. Thus, Bonhoeffer argues that:
Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God's sight… The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both. A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community.
So, with this warning in mind, what to I mean when I use the phrase “sharing life together”? Essentially, I am trying to emphasise that it is the totality of our lives that we should learn to share together. According to the model(s) established in the New Testament (NT), Christian community has less to do with Sunday worship services, coupled with a weeknight bible study and monthly volunteer service, and more to do with learning to share all areas of our lives — our living, our eating, our learning, our working, our playing — together. Having said that, I should emphasise that the call to share all areas of our lives together, does not mean we are to share absolutely everything together all the time (thus, for example, the practice of solitude is an important Christian discipline [so not all time is shared], and sex is only to be shared within the bounds of marriage [so not all things are shared]).
Therefore, if we are to properly understand the extent to which we are called to share our lives together, I think it is very important that we understand the way that “family” language is employed by Jesus, Paul, and the other NT authors. What we see in the NT is that one's family is now redefined as the community of faith. Thus, we see Jesus continually redefining one's family in this way (cf. Mk 3.31-35; Mk 10.29-30; Mt 23.8-9). In this way, sibling language comes to dominate references to others who belong to the community of faith. Thus, members of the community founded by Christ most commonly refer to one another as “brothers and sisters” (the use of this language so dominates the NT that the references are too many to cite here).
However, to understand why this shift in the identity of one's family is important for how we engage in sharing, we need to recall the significance of family and kinship within the context in which Jesus and the early Church lived (here, I will be drawing from deSilva's book, Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity).
Within the honor-based Greco-Roman culture, and the similarly honor-based Jewish subculture, relationships with those outside of one's kinship group was marked by competition and distrust. However, relationship within one's extended family was defined by cooperation, solidarity, trust, loyalty, harmony, unity, honor sharing, forgiveness, gentleness, and forbearance. Now, what is particularly interesting, is that the relationship that is to exist between siblings, is held by ancient authors to be the “closest, strongest and most intimate of relationships in the ancient world.” Where this starts to hit home is how this unity among brothers and sisters is to be expressed through their attitude towards their wealth. Thus, deSilva writes: “Since friends were held to 'own all things in common'… the same was all the more to be expected of close kin” (deSilva is quoting Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics in this passage, and he also points to passages from Plutarch and Pseudo-Phocylides that support this position on the way in which siblings are to deal with wealth).
This, then, leads us quite naturally to the example of the early Jerusalem Church that we encounter in Acts. What we see here is neither an early expression of communism, nor is it a radical (but doomed) experiment. Rather, what we see in Acts is a Church that actually takes their new family status seriously. Thus, in Acts 4.32, 34-35, Luke writes the following:
And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul; and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them… For there was not a needy person among them, for all who were owners of land or houses would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales and lay them at the apostles' feet, and they would be distributed to each as any had need.
What is radical about the Church in Acts is not the sharing that existed among its members — after all, this sort of sharing was the way brothers and sisters were supposed to relate to one another (cf. the deSilva quote that I used at the opening of Part V). Rather, what is radical about this Church as that one's brothers and sisters was no longer determined by ethnicity, social status, or any other factor apart from being a follower of Jesus.
Thus, if those of us who are “in Christ” today are to truly relate to one another as “brothers and sisters” (instead of simply ab/using that language as empty rhetoric in order to project a false sense of intimacy) we need to begin to explore ways in which we can share life together in a way comparable to the Church in Acts (which, by the way, was built upon the community of sharing that existed among Jesus and his disciples, and which continued to be the model for Paul's churches… but more on Paul in a minute).
This, then, leads us to contemporary practicalities, and I would like to suggest that one of the most important practical steps in sharing life together (in a way that offers a genuine alternative to the social structures of capitalism) is learning to share our space (i.e. our homes!) with one another. Christians must begin to explore ways of creating and sustaining the household as an intentional community, structured not around one's genetic family, but around the redefined family of those in Christ.
Of course, capitalism teaches us that this approach to sharing space is absolutely nonsensical. Our honor, our respect, is demonstrated by our ability to live independently of others. A sign of my adult status is the fact that I have my own place — if I am single, I buy a condo; if I am married, my wife and I have “arrived,” or at least are well on our way, when we buy our own house (of course, we'll probably begin with a “starter house” before we move on to bigger and better things).
However, this approach not only requires a form of debt-accumulation and wealth-hording that is inexcusable from a Christian perspective (i.e. given the need that exists among our Christian brothers and sisters — let alone the need that exists in all areas of our world! — there is no possible Christian justification for spending this much time and money paying for a house that will be occupied simply by myself, my wife, and our kids), this popular approach also sustains and strengthens a definition of family that is completely at odds with the Christian understanding of family — thus, when Christians choose to live in this way, they continue to support the structures of capitalism, rather than demonstrating a genuine Christian alternative. Unfortunately, this is but one of the ways in which the Christian concern to “Focus on the Family” and restore “Family Values” has completely missed the boat. That movement has adopted a false definition of “family” and, thus, it achieves exactly the opposite of its professed goal (ie. instead of sustaining the structures that can, in turn, sustain holy living within the Christian community, this movement further weakens the ways in which Christianity can genuinely resist outside corrupting influences, by adopting and employing a outside, and corrupt, model of “family”!).
Therefore, I would like to envision community-homes wherein couples, singles, children, seniors, single parents, etc., all share life together as the newly reconstituted family of those in Christ (I actually almost subtitled this post “Sharing Family” but I knew that would trigger memories of cults and “spouse-swapping” and so I thought it best to rework the title). Can we imagine what this approach to life together could do for a single mother who needs to somehow work and raise a child? Can we imagine what this approach could do for seniors who are generally pushed out of the public eye? Can we imagine what this could do singles who are looking for deeper levels of intimacy within the community of faith? The single mother receives free child care, the senior receives value and public space, and the single person receives intimate and fulfilling relationships with his or her brothers and sisters in Christ.
Furthermore, once we start sharing life together by sharing our space and our homes, it becomes possible to engage in other forms of sharing that counter the structures of capitalism. Especially, if community-homes decide to root themselves (missionally and incarnationally) within particular neighbourhoods (of course, the language of “mission” and “incarnation” means that we are simply deciding to try to learn how to love our neighbours). Thus, for example, the community-home of which I am a part, has chosen to root itself within Vancouver's downtown eastside — this means that we all live, work, volunteer, and go to church, within this neighbourhood. Everything is within walking distance — and so we have no need of a car (or a car each — which are often “needed” in houses where both partners work at commuter jobs) and thus we have learned another way to avoid debt and wealth accumulation (and we also learn how to be better stewards of the creation that has been entrusted to us). Of course, vehicles are but one example — there are all sorts of other things that we spend money on, that can be shared in a community-home (or even between a network of community-homes!), all we need is a little imagination to come up with other examples.
At this point is it worth recalling a comment posted previously on my entry about debt. A friend wrote:
I've had these conversations over and over again with people here… and its freakin the shit out of me and them, because we want to and we know, and then we added up the debt of our small little community and its almost a million dollars, and it scares the crap out of me to want to pay that off with them (emphasis added).
Now, my suspicion is that, when we begin to share life together in this way — when we're not all paying off our own mortgages, our own car payments, and so on — then suddenly the amount of debt that confronts us is much smaller and much more manageable.
Finally, it is worth remembering, at this point, that the family of those in Christ is a global family. Therefore, we must learn how to share our lives, and our resources, with our brothers in sisters who are in need in the two-thirds world. We must learn to not only share space, we must share across space. This sharing across space is something Paul never forgot. In fact, it was one of his top priorities. Paul saw one of his most important achievements to be “the collection,” that he gathered from his church-communities for the poor Christian community in Jerusalem.
This, then, leads me to a response to another comment I received on my post about debt, which is worth quoting at length:
I entirely agree if it was only the developed post-industrial world we were talking about here… I, on the other hand, live in Guatemala where this doesn't work so well. What is the responsibility of such 'First-World' intentional communities to the global poor? Also, such communities do not work very well if all their members are extremely poor (i.e., in a developing country). It seems that all alternative communities require a certain degree of cultural capital or privilege not accessible to the worst off among us.
In response to this, I would like to envision intentional community-homes in the West establishing connections with “brother” and “sister” communities in the two-thirds world. In this way, Western communities can provide the “cultural capital” and “privilege” that is “not accessible to the worst off among us.” It is one of my hopes that the community-home of which I am a part will be able to meet, and help sustain, another community-home in the two-thirds world (actually, with a little imagination, all sorts of other exciting possibilities could come from this connection).
Bonhoeffer reminds us that we will have sufficient for all, even the least, as long as we break bread together. What we need to remember is that every time we partake of the Eucharist, we are breaking bread with the global body of Christ, with Christians in the two-thirds world. Thus, after such bread breaking, how can we not also share all things with them?