• Archive for November, 2008

    Dear Commenters,

    November 11, 2008 // No Comments »

    I am in the process of upgrading my blog to include the IntenseDebate plugin.  I think this will be a helpful tool for commenting in the future (or maybe not, in which case, we’ll go old school).  But, while it is doing its thing, it seems that existing comments are unavailable and perhaps new ones won’t show up right away.  All should be back to normal in a few hours.

    Posted in blogging, random

    Identification with the Poor

    November 10, 2008 // 3 Comments »

    Great stuff from Richard Foster by way Ariah.

    Our children need to join us in this ministry of identification (with the poor). We do them no favor by hiding them from suffering and need. If we imprison them in ghettos of affluence, how can they learn compassion for the broken of the world? So, let us walk hand in hand with our children into pockets of misery and suffering.

    -Richard Foster in Freedom of Simplicity

    Posted in quotes

    The “Greatness” of the United States

    November 7, 2008 // 3 Comments »

    I was reminded on Wednesday night in the midst of a discussion with some friends about the wrath of God about something else Soong-Chan Rah said at CCDA during his talk.  I may not get this verbatim, but it’s close enough.

    We often talk about the “greatness” of the United States.  Afterall, when you consider that we are a nation built on free land (which we robbed from the Native America people by killing and displacing them) and free labor (which we secured by enslaving Africans), it is little wonder we have managed to become so “great.”  But one wonders what happens when those sins return to visit us?  Perhaps an economic crisis?!

    This quote returned to me as we were thinking through the idea of God punishing families to the third and fourth generation.  It’s the idea that just because you don’t directly reap the consequences of your actions, that doesn’t mean someone, perhaps those who mean the most to you, your family, won’t.

    Biblically, it would seem that the wrath of God is precisely what we experience when we turn away from God and God’s ways.  It’s not so much God doing stuff to get even or settle the score.  It’s more like what we are left with when we choose against living in harmony with God’s design for the world.  Afterall, what could be more awful that the gradual (and for some, the eternal) distancing from the Spirit of God who constitutes the image of God in humanity?

    … the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

    Posted in CCDA, conference, God

    Makes My Soul Smile

    November 6, 2008 // 5 Comments »

    I may not have voted, but that doesn’t detract in the least from my enthusiasm over this.

    Posted in justice, politics

    This is Why I Love Stanley Hauerwas

    November 5, 2008 // 4 Comments »

    Here’s a few gems from Stanley Hauerwas’ interview on his new book, “Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Nonviolence.

    I have argued that Christians’ first political responsibility is to be the church, and by being the church they should understand that their first political loyalty is to God, and the God we worship as Christians, in a manner that understands that we are not first and foremost about making democracy work, but about the truthful worship of the true God.

    This is a deep misunderstanding about how Christianity works. Of course we believe that God is God and we are not and that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit but that this is not a set of propositions — but is rather embedded in a community of practices that make those beliefs themselves work and give us a community by which we are shaped. Religious belief is not just some kind of primitive metaphysics, but in fact it is a performance just like you’d perform Lear. What people think Christianity is, is that it’s like the text of Lear, rather than the actual production of Lear. It has to be performed for you to understand what Lear is — a drama. You can read it, but unfortunately Christians so often want to make Christianity a text rather than a performance.

    HAUERWAS: The difficulty about becoming a public official in America is that the training necessary for being a politician makes you the kind of person that can’t distinguish a lie from the truth anymore.

    HOMILETICS: So politicians should not go to law school, they should go through seminary.

    HAUERWAS: That would be a really good idea — a way of formation. But then, you see, one of the things that bothers me deeply about the situation we’re in is how seldom preachers tell their congregations the truth! That’s where you’ve got to start in a genuine politics.

    Explanations are attempts to domesticate the wildness of God’s Spirit in a cause-and-effect model. You can’t explain God. If you think an explanation is possible, then you think that there’s some principle that is more determinative than God to explain God. One way to put it: People say, “Well how do I know that Jesus was raised from the dead?” I say, “If you need a theory of truth to explain that Jesus was raised from the dead, worship that theory, don’t worship Jesus!”

    Read the whole thing here and be sure to check out the book as well.

    Posted in books, church, politics

    Why I’m Not Voting

    November 3, 2008 // 44 Comments »

    The Short Answer:

    It’s a biblical/theological decision that has to do with conscience (1 Cor. 10:31-33) and not the candidates themselves

    The longer, but hopefully more interesting answer:

    As I did 4 years ago, I have toiled and prayed over this decision for months and have not come to it lightly.  But, for the life of me, when I try to envision Jesus living here and now, I just can’t see him walking into an election booth.  Others have no problem with this vision, many of them even have no problem stating for sure just which box he’d tick, but the Jesus I encounter in the gospels refused to capitulate to the political parties of his day and in trying to follow him, I am simply more interested in charting a different course altogether and inviting others along.

    Tim Kumfer, in his brilliant article, “Between Sojourners and the Simple Way? Rethinking Radical Evangelical Politics in ’08 with John Howard Yoder” says,

    A majority of the church in the United States still assumes that voting is one of the most meaningful ways Christians can engage themselves politically. This assumption is Constantinian; it assumes that politics for Christians is primarily about ensuring that society is headed our way…the problem occurs when we are more concerned with managing this realm than witnessing to a different one.

    This mentality was perfectly embodied just the other day as I listened to a gentleman speak to a large crowd, encouraging them to vote for whichever candidate they thought would most ensure freedom of religious rights for Christians.  I find this sort of thinking to be positively debilitating to the character of the Church.  To think for a moment that the Church would believe that its ability to function had anything whatsoever to do with government protected rights is just the sort of posture that led to the utter decimation of the people of God in the First Testament.  A Church which looks to the government to protect its rights is in grave danger.

    This really worries me.  Not only because I live in a place where the reality of this assumption is thicker than I have ever experienced, but because I am not above falling prey to it.

    As I understand the Bible, I would say that all those who follow Jesus are given freedom to vote if they choose, but nowhere do I sense that this is an obligation. There are typically two common biblical objections to this which I will try to respond to briefly.

    The first is Jesus’ command, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” (Mark 12:17)  I actually think (ala NT Wright) that in classic Jesus fashion, this is an underhanded way of saying, “Caesar actually doesn’t have a right to anything since everything is God’s.  So, if you want to pay taxes (or vote or otherwise participate in government), go right ahead, just don’t forget who you are ultimately accountable to.”

    Others would quote Romans 13:1, “The authorities that exist have been established by God.”  But I am reminded that secular governments, even democratic ones, are a result of people rejecting God (1 Sam. 8:7).  Not rebelling against them is one thing – we made our bed and therefore must lie in it, but assuming they have a claim on our allegiance and participation is quite another.

    Not voting is a way to remind myself (and hopefully others) of these things – that it is the church and the church alone which witnesses to a new world order – which is called to put on display in the here and now what God dreams for the new creation.

    A few influences.  Shane Claiborne wrote a good article entitled, “Advise Everyone… Endorse No One” that helped me to think about these issues.

    As one with Anabaptist leanings, I was influenced, first in 2005, and again this year, by this article from John D. Roth, “Polls Apart.”

    The words of Stanley Hauerwas in this article/audio were helpful.

    As were David Fitch’s musings on, “Not Voting as an Act of Christian Discernment: Calling the Emerging Church Into a Different Kind of Faithfulness.”

    Liked Mark Van Steenwyk’s thoughts here.

    Finally, once again Derek Webb has come through on the bonus track of the re-release of Mockingbird (which you can get for free here), with “How Then Shall We Then Vote?”

    It may very well be that my decision on this matter comes from having a weaker conscience than some others, but as it indeed is my conscience here I stand and can do no other.

    Podcast: Play in new window | Download

    Posted in christendom, church, community, decisions, Jesus, kingdom, politics

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