There is another way in which our practice needs to be better buttressed by our reading. For example, we often claim that our practice of nonviolent direct action is grounded in the symbolic action of the Hebrew prophets and Jesus, but rarely does our biblical study demonstrate how exactly this is the case.
~Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus, 12.
Myers, I think, points out one of the greatest weaknesses of Christian involvement in subversive socio-political and economic action. Simply put, Christians who desire to live counter-culturally too often uncritically adopt already present models of subversion, or protest, without thinking through those actions in light of what it means to live within the trajectory of the biblical narrative. Myers challenges us to think about how exactly the biblical narrative leads us to adopt counter-cultural action.
The catch is that most of the available models of subversion, protest, and transformation from the margins to the centres of power, are only a little more meaningful (if that) than most of the available models of trickle down productivity and reform from the centres of power to the margins. Myers wrote his book in 1988, but in 2007 we can see the ways in which the “counter-culture” has, in fact, become “popular culture.” Moreover, we can see how much of the counter-cultural movement has, at its core, not really been counter-cultural at all.
Therefore, Myers' wish for us to examine how the biblical narrative under-girds our action becomes all the more urgent. We cannot simply use Jesus and the prophets as proof-texts for already present models of “nonviolent direct action” (which, by the way, seems to be the mistake that Jim Wallis has fallen into lately). Rather we must allow our study of the biblical narrative to tell us what exactly constitutes counter-cultural activity.
When we engage in this form of bible study, then I suspect that we will discover that celebrating the Eucharist regularly is far more subversive than writing letters to members of parliament, that living in community with one another is a far more meaningful protest than rallying outside the American embassy, that reading the liturgy is far more counter-cultural than reading Adbusters, that suffering alongside of the homeless is more powerful than donating to a soup kitchen, and so on and so forth.
Perspective…
I don’t know what it means to “maintain perspective” anymore. Indeed, when I think about the perspective that I used to have on things like evil, suffering, and risk-taking, then it could quite easily be argued that I have “lost perspective.” But which perspective have I lost, and which have I gained? After all, it is not as if I have no perspective now; it’s just that my perspective has, over the last half dozen years of journeying alongside of those on the margins of society, shifted quite radically (and I suspect that it will continue to do so).
How is one to know if one has become enlightened or if one has become blind? And, since the chances are that both enlightenment and blindness have occurred in various ways, how is one to discern where and how each has occurred?
I would be very interested in hearing how others answer these questions as they examine their own lives. Any takers?
February Books
Well, I’m hoping to write one or two more entries before I take off for my wedding/honeymoon. Apart from this book update, I’m hoping to write a post on the topic of “losing perspective” and might post a copy of a sermon I preached on Lk 24.1-12 last weekend (if I find the time). Then I’ll be heading away to Toronto and then Fiji and Australia for the next month, so don’t expect too many more entries before the end of March (when I get back to Vancouver). Anyway, here are February’s books:
1. Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of Exile: Restoration Eschatology and the Origin of the Atonement by Brant Pitre.
This is easily one of the most exciting books I have read in some time. Within this book, Pitre argues that Jesus spoke and acted on the basis of Jewish expectation regarding the (two-stage) eschatological tribulation and the (inextricably) connected expectation of the end of exile and the restoration of all twelve tribes of Israel (thus, Pitre follows Wright in exploring the motif of the “end of exile,” but he thinks Wright is wrong to argue that the Babylonian exile is still ongoing at the time of Jesus; rather, it is the Assyrian exile that is still ongoing, as the ten northern tribes have still not returned and Israel as a whole as not been restored). Pitre summarizes his conclusions in this way:
In short, Jesus taught that the tribulation had in some way begun with the death of John the Baptist as “Elijah” and that it was Jesus’ own mission to set in motion the “Great Tribulation” that would precede the coming of the Messiah and the restoration of Israel. In fact, he even taught that he would die in this tribulation, and that his death would function as an act of atonement that would bring about the End of the Exile, the return of the dispersed tribes from among the nations, and the coming of the kingdom of God.
There is a whole lot that could be said about this book — and I actually intend to write a series about this book in conjunction with another blogger — so for now I’ll just say that this book is highly recommended reading for all those who are interested in the historical Jesus.
2. Religion and Empire: People, Power, and the Life of the Spirit by Richard A. Horsley.
This short book is vintage Horsley (although I will say that that subtitle is a little deceptive, since Horsley doesn’t spend a lot of time talking about “life in the Spirit”). It is an exploration of the (often suppressed or ignored) relationship between religion and imperial power. Horsley explores three patterns of relations by examining a contemporary and ancient example of each pattern: (1) cultural elites who construct subject people’s religion for their own purposes (i.e. modern and postmodern approaches to “classical” and “Tibetan” Buddhism, and Rome’s approach to the Isis cult); (2) people subjected to foreign imperial rule mount serious resistance by renewing their own traditional way of life (i.e. the revival of Islam in the Iranian revolution, and Jewish and Christian resistance movements in ancient Judea); and (3) those situated at the apex of imperial power relations develop an imperial religion that expresses and eventually constitutes those imperial power relations (i.e. Christmas and the festival of Consumer Capitalism, and the Roman Emperor Cult). I found the essays on Buddhism and Christmas to be particularly interesting and provocative. Recommended (and quite easy!) reading.
3. Matthew by Stanley Hauerwas (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible).
This book doesn’t read much like a traditional commentary. Rather, Hauerwas sort of rambles his way through Matthew and highlight themes and narrative trajectories along the way, in order to springboard into pastoral and theological implications for Christian discipleship today. In fact, this commentary is a “commentary” in the same way that Colossians Remixed (by Walsh and Keesmaat) is a “commentary.” Those who enjoyed Colossians Remixed will probably enjoy this work as well. It is, for me, very exciting to see the boundaries between “theology” and “biblical studies” blurring more and more these days. This theological commentary series could very well spark some much needed discussion.
4. From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas L. Friedman.
This book was pretty disappointing. A friend of mine told me that this was, in his/her opinion, the best book s/he had read on the topic of politics in the Middle East, and so I came to it with high expectations. Unfortunately, the author is, well, quite biased, as he himself admits:
when people ask me, “So, Friedman, where do you come out on Israel after this journey from Beirut to Jerusalem?” my answer is that I have learned to identify with and feel affection toward an imperfect Jerusalem. Mine is the story of a young man who fell in love with the Jewish state back in the post-1967 era, experienced a period of disillusionment in Lebanon, and finally came back out of Jerusalem saying, “Well, she ain’t perfect. I’ll always want her to be the country I imagined in my youth. But what the hell, she’s mine, and for a forty-year-old, she ain’t too shabby.”
I suppose the fact that Friedman wrote for the New York Times should have tipped me off to the fact that this would hardly be an objective piece. Of course, it’s not all bad — the section written in/on Beirut is quite good. It’s just that the section written in/on Israel/Palestine is biased at best, and condescending and/or obnoxious at worst.
5. Watchmen by Alan Moore (illustrated by Dave Gibbons).
At the suggestion of Eric Lee, I thought I would try to take another stab at the whole “illustrated novel” genre. And I wasn’t disappointed. Watchmen is a great multi-layered story that is hard to describe in my oh-so-inadequate “reviews.” This book, by the way, is the only illustrated novel to be listed in Time Magazine as one of the 100 best English novels written in the last 100 years, and it has garnered many other awards — including an Hugo Award. Essentially, Moore reworks the whole idea of “superheroes,” and the genre hasn’t been the same since. Within the novel Moore explores key themes like engaging in violence to assure peace, social authority, what happens to a person who does evil in the pursuit of good, determinism, nostalgia, and so on and so forth. I’ll be reading this one again sometime soon.
An Eschatological Criticism — of the Church?
Jesus' critique of the Temple is not strictly economic, legal, or even political — it is eschatological. Economic or political failings would call for reform, legal failings for purification (compare the Maccabean rededication) — they would not necessarily call forth a prophetic sign of judgment and destruction. Jesus' problem with the Temple was rather one of eschatology: the cult as it stood had failed to effect the eschatological event that its sacrifices — in particular, the Passover sacrifice — were supposed to bring about: the forgiveness of Israel's sins and the Return from Exile…
the Temple, which was supposed to be the site where the “forgiveness of Israel's sins” took place, had failed to bring about the eschatological event for which it had been designed: i.e., it had failed to bring about the ingathering of the exiles… As a result with the coming of the Son of Man, it would be destroyed, and the Messianic king would succeed where the Temple had failed.
~ Brant Pitre, Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of Exile: Restoration Eschatology and the Origin of the Atonement, 288, 375-76.
Those who understand Jesus and Paul to be engaging in subversive (and even revolutionary) activity have often pointed out the socio-political and economic implications of Jesus' prophetic actions within (and sayings about) the Jerusalem Temple. Consequently, those Christians today who seek to live subversively, and who have challenged culturally-conditioned forms of Christianity, have used Jesus' criticism of the Temple as a springboard to criticise the socio-political and economic abuses propagated by “mainstream” Western churches.
However, what has been missing in much of this contemporary criticism is that which Pitre argues is at the core of Jesus' critique of the Temple — the eschatological element. Certainly the socio-political and economic elements of Jesus' critique of the Temple should not be dismissed, but they need to be understood in context, and in context these elements must be seen as consequences of the more basic (and fatal) problem: the Temple had not brought about the forgiveness of sins and the end of exile. Because it had not accomplished these things, the Temple actually achieved the opposite goal: it perpetuated exilic conditions by shunning the sick, by oppressing the power, and by supporting death-dealing power structures.
Therefore, those of us today who wish to criticise “mainstream” Western churches cannot simply focus upon the ways in which the “mainstream” Western churches perpetuate exilic conditions by shunning the sick, by oppressing the poor, and by supporting death-dealing power structures. Rather, if we are to get to the core of the problem, we must examine the way in which much of the contemporary Church fails to proclaim the forgiveness of sins and bring about the end of exile. It is this failure that is the fatal flaw of much of the Church — and it is this failure that makes me wonder about the way our churches will be judged when the Son of Man returns.
If we are to truly be God's out-of-exile-people, if we are truly those who possess the eschatological Spirit, if we are to succeed where the Temple failed, and if we hope for vindication when the Son of Man returns, then we must communally embody the proclamation of the forgiveness of sins, and live in such a way that reveals, to both churches and society, that exile is over/ending. Living in this way requires us to rethink much of what we take for granted, indeed, it requires us to rethink all areas of our lives.
What Reversal? (Confronting Myths of "Equality")
Having recently worked my way through the Gospel according to Matthew, I've been spending some time thinking about the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Mt 20.1-16).
In this parable, Jesus tells the story of a landowner who hires day-labourers to work in his vineyard. The owner hires some workers very early in the day, then he hires some more at the third hour, some more at the sixth hour, some more at the ninth hour, and some more at the eleventh hour. Then, when the time came for the labourers to be paid, the owner pays the labourers in the reverse order — those hired last are paid first, and those hired first are paid last. What is shocking is that the owner pays all the labourers the same wage — a full day's pay. Although this is the wage that was promised to the first labourers hired, they are shocked that they do not receive more, since they worked many hours more than the labourers who were hired later in the day. However, the owner is adamant that he is not being unfair to those hired first; rather, he says, they should not be envious of the generosity that he has the right to show unto others. Jesus then concludes the parable with these words:
So the last shall be first, and the first shall be last.
Now, as I have turned this around in my mind, I have wondered about the way we seem to take this statement. Hearing that the “last shall be first, and the first shall be last” makes us think of a reverse ordering. Thus, for example, let's say we have a race where Steve came in first, Mike came in second, Dave came in third, and Adam came in fourth. If the last are going to be first, and the first are going to be last, then we would expect Adam to come in first, Dave to come in second, Mike to come in third, and Steve to come in fourth.
But this is not at all what Jesus is saying. In the context of this parable, when Jesus says that “the last shall be first, and the first shall be last,” he means that all will receive an equal share. It's not that the order is reversed, it's that everybody ends up coming in first.
In Jesus' parable, the labourers, who were hired earlier in the day, are offended by the sort of generosity that rewards all people equally. Having spent some years journeying alongside of those on the margins of society, I know that members of our society (both Christians and those of other faiths as well) are, in general, just as repulsed by this approach to equality.
Indeed, our society perpetuates an Equality Myth, in order to sustain inequalities in our day to day life. Now what exactly is this “Equality Myth” that I am talking about? The equality myth that drives our society is the myth that all members of our society are provided with an equal opportunity to “succeed” and live comfortably. If a person fails to attain these ends it must because that person lacks a serious work ethic or because that person lacks integrity (or is simply an evil person). Thus, precisely because we are all equal, I don't have to treat the homeless or the poor as my equals. After all, they are to blame for their poverty, their illnesses, their vices, and their early deaths.
The problem with this Equality Myth is that it is fictional. In our society, we do not all have an equal opportunity. I know many people who possess a strong work ethic, and who have a great deal of integrity — who also happen to be street-involved. I know all sorts of kids who never had a chance or anything close to a chance. Our society is sustained by a great deal of inequalities, a great deal of injustices, but the Equality Myth allows us to ignore such things, and pretend that we don't have to do anything to alter unjust circumstances.
Thus, Jesus' parable of the workers in the vineyard, confronts our Equality Myth and points us to the type of generosity that genuinely does treat all people as equals. Understanding that “the last shall be first, and the first shall be last” requires me to treat all people — including the poor and the homeless (or should I say, especially the poor and the homeless) — as my equals. As my equals, I do not treat them as people who are lazy, nor do I treat them as people who lack integrity; rather, I recognize that they are, more often than not, just as hard working, and just as righteous, as I am (and often they are more righteous and more hard-working than I am).
This is the sort of paradigm shift that is needed for Christians to meaningfully journey alongside of those on the margins of society. When the Church becomes a community of radical sharing and shocking generosity, then it will expose the violence created by society's Equality Myth, and reveal the true road to equality.
January Books (a bit late)
So, it looks like I’ll be getting very little cover-to-cover reading done for at least the next three months. I was traveling a bit in January, and I am getting married at the start of March. Plus, I’ve got a couple of speaking engagements coming up, and my thesis is looming on the immediate horizon, so those things always cut into my reading time. Anyway, here are January’s books:
1. Joyful Exiles: Life in Christ on the Dangerous Edge of Things by James M. Houston.
Well, with a title like Joyful Exiles, I figured I sort of had to read this book. Plus, Dr. Houston is the founder of the graduate school where I am studying and he is a prime example of a person who has spent his lifetime pursuing downward mobility (as evidenced most recently by the way in which he as been pushed/allowed himself to be pushed to the margins of the Regent community — as Regent continues to pursue more “secular” standards of success). This book — inspired by the request of one of his sons, who asked him to write out the basic convictions that he has sought to live out over the last eight decades — is written for:
“the ‘exiles,’ those who need the moral courage to move away from the familiar and the conventional and into the dangerously exposed places, to prophetically critique our cultural norms and institutional attitudes… to live ‘dangerously on the edge’ of our culture.”
Sounds good right? Right. And it is good. Houston laments the professionalisation of Christian ministry, the way in which technique has overwhelmed the Church, and the status-seeking of Christian institutes of education, while entering into dialogue with people like Kierkegaard, Dante, Dostoyevski, Herbert, and many more. So I don’t know why this book didn’t resonate more with me than it did. At times it felt a bit scattered, at other times it was too meandering, and when Houston did get to places that excited me (like the subsection entitled “The Obligation to Live in Prison or Exile”) I felt like he either said too little, or what he said had already been said (and said better?) by another author. Still, for those who are unfamiliar with these themes, and for the laity in particular, this book may well be worth reading.
2. An Introduction to Metaphysics by Martin Heidegger
I didn’t mean to read this whole book. I meant to just read the first essay (“The Fundamental Question of Metaphysics” — which I had heard was one of keys to understanding all of Heidegger’s work) but the first essay was so damn promising that I ended up getting drawn into the rest of the book. The entire book, is based upon one fundamental question, which Heidegger believes is the fundamental question. Thus, in his opening line Heidegger asks:
“Why are there things-that-are rather than nothing?” (“things-that-are” is my translation of Heidegger’s rather obscure word [Seiend] which is translated with the word “essents” in the edition that I own)
This fundamental question then prompts a preliminary question:
“How does it stand with being? (“being” = Sein)
The rest of the book is devoted to asking these two questions. Note that Heidegger is not necessarily completely answering these questions, for he believes that the pursuit of the question is more important than the desire to systematically answer all questions. Furthermore, as he asks this question, Heidegger argues that, since the early Greeks, the entire history of Western philosophy has completely botched the realm of metaphysics (well, actually, I think we’re talking about ontology, but let’s not split hairs). Thus, he goes back to the early Greeks and, through a study of linguistics and poetry, delimits “being” from four interrelated spheres: thinking (being is the underlying, the already-there), appearance (being is the enduring prototype), becoming (being is permanence), and “the ought” (being is the datum). Furthermore, Heidegger argues that these spheres are not arbitrarily chosen but belong together through an “inner necessity.”
Therefore, Heidegger concludes that “being” is the basic happening which first makes possible historical being-there (Dasein) amid the disclosure of the “essents” as a whole. Thus, the question of how it stands with being, is the question of how it stands with our being-there in history — and this being-there is only a true standing in history (as opposed to a staggering through history) if it is rooted in the pursuit of the question of being and nothingness. Thus, this key element of being-there (Dasein) is that which leads Heidegger to explore the question through the perspective of being and time — it is time, and not thinking, that is the perspective that discloses the unfolding of being.
So, I hope this doesn’t sound too nonsensical to those who haven’t read this book. Heidegger is a bit of frustrating read because he has this nasty habit of taking words that we think we know, and giving them new meanings. Now, that wouldn’t be so bad but then he goes on to give that new meaning a new meaning, and then gives that new meaning another new meaning. After he’s done doing that, he goes back to using the original word and you’ve got to constantly remember the layers of meaning that he has built of around the word — which can be difficult when you’re reading the book sporadically on night shifts.
All in all, I found this book to be quite stimulating and promising in the first half, but I felt that the second half was a bit of a let-down.
3. Sloth by Gilbert Hernandez
I have come close to giving up on finding another illustrated novel that is comparable to Craig Thompson’s Blankets or Art Spiegelman’s Maus — those are both magnificent pieces that take full advantage of their genre. I read Sloth because it was highly recommended to me by a friend that reads a lot more illustrated novels (and comics) than I do.
The book was okay, I guess. The story was so-so (teens growing up in a small town, it looks like something interesting might happen… but it doesn’t), the art was so-so, and although there is one major (unexplained) plot twist, I’m not convinced it really worked. I don’t know, I’m getting close to abandoning this genre, so if anybody knows any great illustrated novels (because when they’re great, they can be really great), please let me know.
4. The Secret Lives of Men and Women compiled by Frank Warren.
This is another compilation put together from Warren’s postsecret project (cf. www.postsecret.blogspot.com). There are some really great pieces in this book, but it’s the sort of book that you could sit down and read for an hour in the bookstore. If you’re going to buy a postsecret book, buy the first one — they make for fascinating conversation when you leave them on the coffee table.
Prophetic Insecurity
In commenting on Jesus' reference to the scribes and Pharisees as “blind guides” (cf. Mt 23), Stanley Hauerwas makes the following point:
They [the scribes and Pharisees] think their task is to make the life of those they lead secure. Yet a people who depend on prophets can never lead lives of security.
Risk-taking, then, becomes the mark of churches that follow the prophetic tradition, which climaxes in the life and death of Jesus. Churches that abandon their security out of their love for God and God's world are those that are faithfully traveling the road of discipleship. Churches that seek to create a space free of suffering, of challenge, or of risk-taking, are churches that are following blind guides.
I remember when I first began to change my thinking about these things. A few years ago, two of my close friends got married and decided that they wanted to begin to enter into a life that was rooted in the margins of society. So, they began to look for a house in the inner-city of Hamilton — i.e. a neighbourhood known for drug use, prostitution, violence, and poverty. As my friends explored this option, they were surprised to discover that Real Estate agents tried to talk them out of moving into the neighbourhood. One agent told them that the bridge just up the road from the house they were looking at was a place known for sexual assaults. Another agent told them that if they wanted to live in this neighbourhood with some sort of sense of security then they should go out and buy some guns.
This was my friends first step into this sort of lifestyle, and it was a big one. Needless to say, they were a little shaken-up by what they were being told. I remember one of them calling me and asking me for advice. A lot of thoughts flew through my mind as we spoke together. Should I advise the husband of a young, beautiful woman to move into a violent neighbourhood that had a reputation for being a place where sexual assaults occurred? Should I tell him that Christians can't own guns? I mean the risks here are real — I have seen, over and over, the devastation that assault can bring into a person's life. Still, even with these things in mind, I encouraged my friends to make the move into the neighbourhood. Love, I had begun to realize, doesn't always mean removing the crosses from the shoulders of my loved ones. Rather, love is helping to sustain them as they carry that cross. Love means carrying crosses together, not walking away from the cross.
So, I suppose my question is this: What are the risks that you and/or your church are taking? If you are not taking risks, then how do you know you are not following blind guides?
"But should I feel guilty?"
Over the years I have remained friends with the Dean of Students from the college that I attended in Toronto. He was both a friend and a mentor to me during my time in Toronto and so I always try to connect with him when I go back that way. A few weeks ago, I was passing through Toronto, and the Dean, knowing of my plans, invited me to give a guest lecture at a course he teaches on Christian community. I spoke rather anecdotally about rooting Christian community on the margins of society, about journeying into places of exile and suffering there, in order to be God's agents of new creation, and about uniting the confessing members of Christ's body with the crucified members of Christ's body — all familiar themes to anybody who as spent any amount of time reading this blog!
The lecture was fairly conversational, and there was actually quite a good amount of dialogue. However, there was one student who kept pressing me with the same question (he was the first student to ask a question and later, after the lecture ended, he approached me and continued to press the issue). This, in essence, was what he was asking:
“Look,” he said, “every now and again, I hear a speaker, like you, talk about the need for Christians to care for the poor and all that. Then they tell stories, like the stories you've told, and I think to myself, 'I'm not doing anything like that.' So my question is this: Should I feel guilty?”
Take a minute to think about how you might respond to that sort of question.
What I said went something like this:
“Well,” I said, “I don't know you and I don't know the first thing about the way in which you live your life, but let's step back for a minute and take a look at the big picture. The themes I am presenting are themes that I believe need to be at the centre of the identity and mission of the people of God. The people of God, as a corporate body, must be involved in this other-centred movement into dark places so that the victory won by Jesus can be made manifest in the here and now. So, when I tell stories about what my community is doing, I am not suggesting that y'all need to go out and start doing precisely what I'm doing. What I'm saying is that the Church needs to exercise a 'preferential option' for the poor that mirrors the heart of God. Thus, you as an individual within the Church, must discover the darkness that God is leading you into. You might not be lead to journey with sexually exploited people and homeless youth… but maybe you are being lead to journey with seniors, or with people with “disabilities,” or with wealthy children who are completely abandoned and unloved by their parents. Or whatever. There are many places of exile still left in our world and the people of God must be moving into all of those places.”
The student was quite dissatisfied with this response. He really didn't want to hear about priorities within the corporate body of Christ. What he wanted to know was, well, if he should feel guilty. I don't know if he had some sort of Evangelical addiction to guilt, or if he wanted me to let him off the hook. Regardless, he asked me again:
“But should I feel guilty?”
And then I realized why I didn't want to answer his question. So I said this:
“Look, I don't want to say if you should feel guilty or not, and here's why. I don't want guilt to be what motivates you. I don't want you to feel guilty that you don't care for the poor, and then go out and start journeying with the poor out of some sense of guilt or duty. That's not what I want at all. What I want is for you to be so overwhelmed by the wonder of God's love that it overflows out of you and leads you naturally to those who are the most desperate for that love, to those who are, literally, dying without it. If guilt is what motivates you, then the chances are that what you do won't be that meaningful, and it probably won't be something you end up doing for any sustained amount of time. But if love is what motivates you, then I think the world will be transformed and you will be able to remain in hard places because you delight in the company of God's beloved — the 'lost sheep' and the 'least of these.'”
The student still looked sort of unhappy but the lecture and the discussion moved on. After the class had ended, he was the first student to approach me.
“I see what you're trying to do,” he said to me, “but should I feel guilty?”
Living with Exiles
It is a lot easier to pray for the ingathering of the exiles than it is to live with them.
~ an anonymous Israeli, quoted in From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman
I am beginning to believe that it is not the major, one-time sacrifices that make it the most difficult for us to love our neighbours. Rather, I suspect that it is the small scale, ongoing annoyances that really test the depth of our love. The big events can be twisted so easily into either grand epics (if things go well) or romantic tragedies (if things go poorly). The little things, in general, are what they are.
Let me provide an example from my own life. A few friends and I live in a Christian community house in the heart of what is probably Canada’s most notorious neighbourhood. We have decided that loving those who had been abandoned means living alongside of them. We have come to believe that solidarity is not something that can be practiced very meaningfully from a distance, and we are committed to being friends, and neighbours, and lovers of those around us, instead of being social workers, or volunteers, or outreach workers. Furthermore, because of the especial violence and isolation faced by people who are sexually exploited in our neighbourhood, we have committed ourselves to learning how to journey alongside of this specific group of people.
This is the big step. The step that is easy to romanticise or glorify (actually, I am increasingly wondering how I can even speak to audiences about this without automatically being romanticised our glorified into some sort of fiction that is then safely removed from the lifestyle decisions of my audiences). The surprising thing is that, although it takes some courage to make this decision, it turns out that transitioning into our neighbourhood has been surprisingly easy.
However, it has been the little things that have proven most difficult. Little things like choosing to go out at least one night a week to talk to the people in the alleys and the girls on the corners. Sure, that’s exciting for a little while… but then, you know, other things come up, or I get tired, or I get lazy, or it’s just too cold and rainy out so I put it off. Besides, I’m an introvert and sometimes the thought of going around talking to strangers is just too daunting (or so I tell myself).
And then there’s little things like continuing to develop relationships and invite people into our home that are, well, just plain annoying. People are people and we all naturally connect with different types. Some people annoy us… but the thing about solidarity is that we don’t get to choose to just hang out with people that we really hit it off with (unlike the way in which most of us approach Sunday church). Christian community, Jean Vanier reminds us, is about being a family together. It’s not that we are friends, we are brothers and sisters — and, although we choose our friends, we don’t get to choose our family members.
In my work as a “street youth worker,” I can schedule in the times when I hang around with annoying people and I can reserve large chunks of time to myself (i.e. like when I’m at home and not at work). When I live in a Christian community that is trying to be an open community, I lose a lot of that freedom. Now, I’ve got people hanging out with me when all I want to do is grab a book and veg out in my room.
In a way, I think that this experience is comparable to the way that people describe the first year or so of marriage. In marriage, they say, you learn how selfish you are. You realize how much you just did what you wanted to do when you wanted to do it. In marriage you, more often than before, have to do what you don’t want to do when you want to do something else. Living in a Christian community is something like that (and, by the way, that’s why I think marriage is not the end of our journey away from selfishness but is a good first step to learning how to, as a couple, live other-centred lives in the community of faith — instead of, as a couple, just doing what you want to do when you want to do it).
It is developing the daily discipline in the little things, it is living patiently with small annoyances that is the most difficult aspect of this transition. Yes, it is a lot easier to pray for the ingathering of the exiles than it is to live with them. But that is the only option we have. Our prayers for the ingathering of the exiles are mostly meaningless unless we are participating in that ingathering.
I think that our failures in all of these small ways shows just how shallow our love is for others in comparison with the love that we have for ourselves.
Recovering a Theology of Abundance
Abundance,not scarcity, is the mark of God's kingdom. Bu that abundance must be made manifest through the lives of a people who have discovered that they can trust God and one another.
~ Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew
In general, the language of “abundance” and “blessedness” puts me on edge. I tend to associate such language with either the “prosperity gospel” that teaches us that God wants us to have more than we already have, or with the upper-middle-class form of Christianity that assures us that God just wants us to be comfortable and enjoy the blessings that our culture affords us. Thus, when I stumbled onto Hauerwas' words about “abundance” in his commentary on Mt 6, I was a little taken aback. Yet Hauerwas was clearly offering a different sort of approach to abundance than the norm. Generally those who talk about “abundance” don't talk about the need to trust one another. After all, from their perspective, abundance is akin to some sort of extravagant autonomy. Sure, they would say, I learn to trust in God, but the abundant life means not having to trust in others for acts of charity.
So what is Hauerwas doing when he combines the notion of “abundance” with the notion of trusting in (and even depending upon!) not only the charity of God, but the charity of others?
Well, Hauerwas is recovering a proper theology of abundance. A proper theology of abundance results in simplicity. Our assertion that abundance is the mark of God's kingdom does not lead us to live extravagantly; rather it leads us to live simply — it leads us to give away, today, all that we have because we are certain that both God, and his people, will provide for tomorrow. We become so certain of God's overflowing abundance that, instead of grasping and hording, we end up living lives that are increasingly free of the possessions and securities that are, in fact, the marks of worldly kingdoms.