lifeasmission
exploring the mystery of life and mission as one and the same
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Archive of "salvation" Category
Evangelism as the Sharing of Ache and Hope
I love it when objects of two different worlds come colliding together. Think “Say Anything,” “Bringing Down the House,” or “The Toy.”
In each instance people who have virtually nothing in common are thrust into one another’s lives creating the opportunity for, to borrow a phrase from my friend Geoff, “generative tension.”
This happened in my life recently.
To the list of ‘socially awkward misfit meets valedictorian,’ ‘lawyer meets convict,’ and ‘poor black adult meets rich white kid,’ I can now add, Dan Allender meets Eminem.
A few days ago I began listening to a series of talks offered by Dan Allender, a Christian counselor, author, speaker, and the President of Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle, WA.
In one of his talks, he offered this little nugget,
Evangelism is essentially sharing our stories long enough to discover a common ache and a common hope.
Now, as my friend Annie pointed out in a conversation about this sentiment, it doesn’t capture the full scope of what might qualify as evangelism (and I don’t think that was Dan’s intention anyway). However, I do think it pushes us to a place of realization that, inasmuch as Jesus was God’s way of entering into the story of humanity’s deep aches and fulfilling its greatest hopes, we are called to do the same for others.
Somewhere in the course of listening to these talks, I came across a new music video by Eminem featuring Rihanna entitled, “Love the Way You Lie.” (ht: Jonathan Brink)
I’ll embed it below, but let me offer 2 things first, a disclaimer and a reflection.
Disclaimer: The video contains language and imagery that some might find objectionable. If you can’t get past that, please do us both a favor and skip it. I’ll say this though, the language and imagery is far from gratuitous. I think it is used appropriately and poignantly to convey the weight of the issue.
Reflection: The song and video tell the story of a couple who quite transparently have deep aches and deep hopes. The tragic irony of the situation is that they are trying to come to terms with both through a violent and endless cycle of love and hate, truth and lies.
I think the reason that I like this quote from Allender so much is that it asks us to be come alongside people as guides as opposed to stand at a distance and offer directions. There is this great tendency we have to get so focused on telling people that they need to arrive at a particular destination that we completely neglect the more important matter of identifying the “You are here” spot at which they stand. Directions, after all, are of little use unless you know where you’re starting from.
The last observation I’ll make as a result of the generative tension between Allender’s quote and Eminem’s video is that without the right direction, we create our own personal hells – something that is visually captured at the end of this clip. As people of ache and hope, when we try to alleviate our aches and fulfill our hopes in ways that God never intended, we suffer. All the more reason for those of us who have been met by God at the point of our ache and who place our hope in God’s salvific work in the world through Christ to listen to the stories of others as we share ours and allow God to do that same work all over again.
San Francisco, Strangers, and Stories: Part 2
I ended my previous post about Amy’s and my trip to San Francisco by saying that one of the highlights for me was seeing Wicked for the first time on account of its similarity to my favorite recent TV series, LOST.
The connection I want to make is well articulated in the quote,
Strangers and enemies are merely people whose stories we haven’t heard yet.
We saw this at play in LOST inasmuch as our assumptions and assessments about the nature of the main characters were subverted over the course of getting to know their history and background. Let’s face it, it’s just way harder to be so critical of Sawyer once you learn that someone was responsible for conning his mother out of money resulting in his father killing her and then himself right in front of him.
Similarly, in Wicked, we are given a story behind the relationship between the “good” witch and the “bad” witch from the Wizard of Oz. We learn that the “good” witch was actually a fairly empty-headed, spoiled brat who always got her way and was extremely judgmental. At the same time, we learn that the “bad” witch was a product of years of scorn and ridicule from her father and peers. Not only did she blame herself for her mother’s death, but she was extremely mindful and caring toward her invalid sister.
Let’s be honest, life is easier when we pretend that we can engage it in black and white. Truth be told, our need to control life in this way is probably directly related to our own fears and inadequacies.
It is when we lack contentment in who we are in Christ, that we default to judging others so that we can feel better about who we are.
… I am more valuable than him because I work hard and he’s a lazy bum.
… I am nicer than her because I saw how rude she was to the bank teller.
… We are a more devoted family than them because they are constantly missing church services.
Little do we know that…
… he was born addicted to crack and never had the sort of love and support it takes to help someone to recover from that sort of disability.
… she just found out that her 2 year old son was diagnosed with Lukemia and their family is uninsured.
… as a family, they are trying to spend time with their neighbors who think Jesus is a joke.
Stories change everything.
Identifying with others by entering into their stories is risky because we almost always discover that we have more in common with the people that we would just assume distance ourselves from as strangers and enemies that we’d like to admit.
So here’s the challenge before you you and I today (and for the rest of our lives!) – to risk entering into the pain and uncertainly of the stories of the people we consider strangers and enemies that we might identify with them as Christ entered into the story of humanity and identified with it – such is the nature and meaning of incarnational ministry and witness.
I will never be able to watch The Wizard of Oz with as much innocence as I once did. And regardless of what you and I thought about the conclusion of LOST as a television series, there is something profound about this notion of our salvation being bound up with our willingness to truly know and be known by others, especially those we are most unlike us.
Stories change everything.
An Interview with N.T. Wright
The guys over at Homebrewed Christianity recently posted an interview they did with N.T. Wright. The interview was full of some really great sound bytes that I went ahead and divvied up to make your life easier
You can listen to or download the interview in its entirety here.
On being a bishop.
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On the unfortunate split between church and academy.
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On returning to fulltime academic work.
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On Bart Ehrman.
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On Marcus Borg & John Dominic Crossan.
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On Jurgen Moltmann.
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On E.P. Sanders.
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On Karl Barth.
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On Stanley Hauerwas.
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On his most recent book, After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters and why he chose to write about eschatology before ethics.
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On the difference between Aristotelian virtue and Christian virtue.
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On the role of character and virtue in other religions.
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On cultural virtue.
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On the renewing of our minds when they have become largely detached from the rest of who we are.
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On Christianity Post-Postmodernity.
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On the after-after life.
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What NT Wright is reading, thinking, and planning for his “big book on Paul” as the next in his Christian Origins series.
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What we can expect from NT Wright in his new role.
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Mr. Deity and the Skeptic
If you haven’t come across Mr. Deity yet, you ought to check it out and subscribe via iTunes. If nothing else, it’s a fascinating window into the social standing of the Christian faith.
Thought it was interesting that shortly after posting previously, I made it around to watching the most recent episode. Anxious for your thoughts.
On Salvation
A long while ago I had some thoughts on understanding salvation as a sort of cosmic dance. This past weekend, as our missional church community gathered, we proclaimed this truth…
God’s Salvation is cosmic and we receive it only by participating in it.
This is vastly different than the more common evangelical take on salvation as something we receive by virtue of a decision we make, illustrated thusly…
Anyone care to offer any thoughts on the subject? I’m particularly interested in what others might thing is the central implication for the life of a church community if this difference is to be reckoned with.
Advent Conspiracy
I am really proud to be part of a church that is participating in Advent Conspiracy this holiday season. We have been talking and praying as a community about rethinking gift giving, generosity, and remembering the poor. Here’s a short promo video for the movement.
And here’s something a few folks from Living Hope put together for our community.
Especially in light of tragedies like this, I think scaling back our spending and consumption and asking God to help us remember the poor and oppressed is perhaps the best possible way us to celebrate the advent of the Savior of the world.
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