culture making

Andy Crouch is out with his long-anticipated book on Christians and culture. It has apparently already temporarily sold out on Amazon, but the PDF of the Intro through chapter 2 and chapters 3-5 are available on the book website.

I just read chapter 5, so let me summarize the argument. In the past century, Western Christians have typically adopted one of the following postures toward culture:

• Condemning
• Critiquing
• Copying
• Consuming

While these may be appropriate cultural gestures from time to time, our postures ought rather to involve Creating and Cultivating. We are to adopt the creative posture of artists and gardeners if we really want to fulfill the vocation God gave to humanity in the early chapters of Genesis.

And a quote:

Do you want to make culture? Find a community, a small group who can lovingly fuel your dreams and puncture your illusions. Find friends and form a family who are willing to see grace at work in one another’s lives, who can discern together which gifts and which crosses each has been called to bear. Find people who have a holy respect for power and a holy willingness to spend their power alongside the powerless. Find some partners in the wild and wonderful world beyond church doors.

-Bryant

letting the enemy go free?

I read most of the book Kingdom Ethics while home in Michigan for my sister Lindsay’s wedding.  Stassen and Gushee take Jesus’ own teaching, and in particular his Sermon on the Mount, as foundational for their Christian ethics.  They see in the Sermon a series of triadic sayings, each of which break down as follows:

1)  traditional teaching
2)  identification of a vicious cycle of sin
3)  prescription of transforming initiatives designed to break the vicious cycle

It’s a helpful book, emphasizing the transforming initiatives rather than rules.  For example, they don’t try to answer the question of just war theory vs. pacifism (whether war is ever permissible as a last resort), but they highlight the strengths of each view before turning to an emphasis on just peacemaking theory (how to defuse situations before they get to a state of “last resort”).

With “just peacemaking” in the back of my mind, I was fascinated when I came across the article “A Smarter Way to Fight” in Newsweek and a mention of 2 Kings 6 on Greg Boyd’s blog.  Could it be that in the bloody world of the Old Testament and in the bloody world of today, the most powerful action in ending cycles of violence is actually to let the enemy go free?  Excerpts below.

“Not to Exterminate the FARC”

Strange things are happening in the jungles of Colombia. After years of fighting a fierce, conventional war against the leftist guerrilla group known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country’s military accomplished a major feat earlier this month without firing a shot. The Colombians used a complex ruse to free 15 hostages, including three Americans and former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, eliciting international acclaim and comparisons to the Israeli hostage rescue at Entebbe. But what happened afterward—which hasn’t been widely reported—was almost as remarkable, according to Colombian Vice Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzón. The Colombian Army cornered the hostages’ captors, the FARC’s notorious 1st Front—the latest success stemming from Bogotá’s tactic of dropping its special forces into the jungle and keeping the weakened guerrillas on the run. “But we took the decision not to attack,” Pinzón told NEWSWEEK, because the government wanted to convey it had a new “strategic concept.” “We want to send a message to the FARC and to the world: not to exterminate the FARC but to welcome back anyone who wants to come into the system.” Last week, to drive that point home, the Colombian military equipped helicopters with loudspeakers that began booming Betancourt’s recorded voice over the jungle, saying “Hey, guerrillas … demobilize now … You’ll recover your family, your honor, your liberty.”

The Aramean Attack Is Thwarted

8 Once when the king of Aram was at war with Israel, he took counsel with his officers. He said, ‘At such and such a place shall be my camp.’ ⁹But the man of God sent word to the king of Israel, ‘Take care not to pass this place, because the Arameans are going down there.’ ¹⁰The king of Israel sent word to the place of which the man of God spoke. More than once or twice he warned such a place^* so that it was on the alert.

11 The mind of the king of Aram was greatly perturbed because of this; he called his officers and said to them, ‘Now tell me who among us sides with the king of Israel?’ ¹²Then one of his officers said, ‘No one, my lord king. It is Elisha, the prophet in Israel, who tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bedchamber.’ ¹³He said, ‘Go and find where he is; I will send and seize him.’ He was told, ‘He is in Dothan.’ ¹⁴So he sent horses and chariots there and a great army; they came by night, and surrounded the city.

15 When an attendant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, an army with horses and chariots was all around the city. His servant said, ‘Alas, master! What shall we do?’ ¹⁶He replied, ‘Do not be afraid, for there are more with us than there are with them.’ ¹⁷Then Elisha prayed: ‘O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.’ So the Lord opened the eyes of the servant, and he saw; the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. ¹⁸When the Arameans^* came down against him, Elisha prayed to the Lord, and said, ‘Strike this people, please, with blindness.’ So he struck them with blindness as Elisha had asked. ¹⁹Elisha said to them, ‘This is not the way, and this is not the city; follow me, and I will bring you to the man whom you seek.’ And he led them to Samaria.

20 As soon as they entered Samaria, Elisha said, ‘O Lord, open the eyes of these men so that they may see.’ The Lord opened their eyes, and they saw that they were inside Samaria. ²¹When the king of Israel saw them he said to Elisha, ‘Father, shall I kill them? Shall I kill them?’ ²²He answered, ‘No! Did you capture with your sword and your bow those whom you want to kill? Set food and water before them so that they may eat and drink; and let them go to their master.’ ²³So he prepared for them a great feast; after they ate and drank, he sent them on their way, and they went to their master. And the Arameans no longer came raiding into the land of Israel.

-Bryant

margaret has written! (her first post)

I think I may have had my first experience walking in the shoes of one who lives in poverty and it’s pretty demoralizing.

I’m helping our friend “Joy”, a single mom who lives in a transitional housing facility, find a place to live with her newly acquired Section 8 housing voucher. She’s actually always lived a pretty plush lifestyle but recently ran into a string of bad luck and is now officially classified as “homeless”, despite her clearly defying stereotype. We’ve been trying to find a place here in the Westside since she’s decided to go back to school here but it’s been nearly impossible finding a manager that will allow Section 8 residents. And by “Westside”, I don’t mean Beverly Hills, but more of the working-class yet slowly gentrifying areas of Palms, Mar Vista, and Culver City. Where we live.

I am no stranger to searching for Westside apartments and have helped a number of friends find a place to live. However, I have called over 60 managers and have only been treated with complete coldness, arrogance, and bigotry by most of them. Several of them have even laughed at me when I asked them if they accepted Section 8. I’ve been hung-up on many times, several of whom did it while I was mid-sentence.

We had 1 promising lead, a woman who had rented one of her units to one of Joy’s friends who also used Section 8. We went to go check out the unit, which was actually the manager’s place, and it was spilling over with Christian paraphernalia; we actually share many of the same books. But this chick was the rudest of them all. She exuded pure condescension and she talked to us as if we were children. But since it was the only opportunity we had, my friend made an appointment with her to submit an application. Later that afternoon as I was making my rounds calling listings on Craigslist, I ended up calling her (unknowingly) for the same unit that was $50 less than what she quoted us. She, of course, was much more pleasant with me until I realized that it was the same lady. She hung up on me when I asked her why she was charging us more. And when my friend went to her appointment the following day (taking inconvenient public transportation with her baby), the chick stood her up! When Joy called, she said, “I told your friend yesterday that the appointment was cancelled because you didn’t have a job”. None of which is true. My friend thinks it’s due to racism since she is black and her friend who has a unit there is white. I quickly discarded the thought…there’s no way that could be true, could it? Omigosh…is it?

Even though I’m just helping someone, it’s hard not to internalize all this rejection. What is it like to be constantly subjected to these types of unremitting micro-aggressions when you’re just trying to get back on your two feet? And to receive the harshest treatment by a fellow believer was pretty appalling. We fail to understand how critical it is to live out Jesus’ teaching in even our seemingly mundane tasks.

“Why do the poor stay poor and how can they get out of it?”- this thought pretty much dominates my mind on a daily basis. There are myriad theories out there that try to explain it, but my hunch is that it is deeply connected to how people can internalize the powerlessness and helplessness that is communicated by present systemic and structural injustices, which is then misunderstood as “laziness” (though there are lazy people out there, rich and poor). It’s probably a lot easier for me than my friend to navigate the “system” because my own sense of resilience hasn’t been battered, even though my very brief brush with it has kind of profoundly discouraged me in a way I haven’t experienced.

This is my first blog post and I think I may write from a more praxis-oriented perspective. It’s important for me to carve out the space and time to articulate my otherwise jumbled up thoughts and experiences.

-Margaret

shane claiborne on cnn

Shane Claiborne and his used-vegetable-oil-powered “Jesus for President” bus tour are the headline article on CNN right now!  Check it out.  I sat next to this dude on the grass a couple weeks ago.

-Bryant

“hoping for a surprise”

Well, Wright was on Colbert, sure enough, talking about his book Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. Not the easiest format for talking about these things, but he did alright.

A friend told me that Stephen (a Catholic) teaches Sunday school.

I, for one, really appreciate his show and how it exposes the absurdity of those in power. I think he and Stewart convey more real truth in one hour than you’ll get on most news programs during the rest of the day.

-Bryant

wright + colbert = ???

I found out at the N.T. Wright page that he will be on the Colbert Report tomorrow night (Thursday) !

My worlds are colliding.

-Bryant

kingdom come

After my post yesterday on Shane Claiborne and the responses to him at the Envision conference, I thought I’d go ahead and reflect on this new article by N.T. Wright in The Christian Century called “Kingdom come: the public meaning of the gospels“.

N.T. Wright

It’s a classic summary of Wright’s views, and I think it provides some resonance with and some balance to Claiborne’s book. Wright laments that the church has not known what to do with the four Gospels:

The Gospels have thus been seen either as a social project with an unfortunate, accidental and meaningless conclusion, or as passion narratives with extended introductions. Thus the Gospels, in both popular and scholarly readings, have been regarded either as grounding a social gospel whose naive optimism has no place for the radical fact of the cross, still less the resurrection—the kind of naïveté that Reinhold Niebuhr regularly attacked—or as merely providing the raw historical background for the developed, and salvific, Pauline gospel of the death of Jesus.

Rather, Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection together “launched God’s saving sovereignty on earth as it is in heaven.” The kingdom of God, that is, the reign of God, is at hand. God has returned at last in the person of Jesus to take charge of his broken and rebellious creation. Jesus has proceeded to the centers of Jewish and Roman power (just as Paul would in the following years) to claim that he is the true Messiah of Israel, the true Lord of the world. In doing so, however, he refused to take up the sword and to bring about the kingdom by violence. He achieved a strange victory over evil, absorbing its worst and finding new life out the other side, eventually ascending to rule at the right hand of God.

Jesus didn’t shy away from power, but he did refuse to idolize the kind of power that is offered by the kingdoms of this world (starting with his temptation in the desert). He embraced the sort of power that can only be bestowed by God in response to self-sacrificial love in the face of evil. Jesus ministered on the margins, on “the fringes of empire,” but from there he also confronted the forces of evil at the center of empire and caused them to reveal their true colors. These were not two separate missions, but rather two integral parts of a single vocation. The ministry on the margins gave meaning to the final confrontation in Jerusalem, while his death at the hands of Herod and Caesar brought his work to its climax and opened the way for his healing love to be unleashed to the corners of the earth.

We have a challenge in bringing these insights forth into our present day, because now we have more options for how to relate to power. In Jesus’ day, either you collaborated with the empire, you revolted, or you embraced Jesus’ mysterious third way. In our day, we have the ability (the responsibility?) to influence (or even to become!) our ruling authorities through democratic means. Wright (with the support of scripture) encourages us to see government as a God-given institution, intended to keep order, to keep the strong and the wealthy from squashing the weak and the poor. But we are to bear prophetic witness that our transient rulers are serving on borrowed time, and that they serve at the mercy of the one who even now is the true Lord of the world, Jesus.

Could this include attempting to become one of the rulers of the world? Certainly, but not if doing so involves becoming owned by and bound up with and compromised by the many different interests scratching and clawing for more and more power. I would love to see many followers of Jesus running for political office, campaigning on principles reflecting the generous, restorative, peace-loving heart of God and remaining fully uncompromised by the messy political process–even if this meant that they all lost! What a powerful witness it would be to have vast numbers of Christians living, with Shane, at the margins of empire, with the suffering and the forgotten . . . to mount uncompromised political campaigns at every level, with candidates concerned more about the love of God than their own victory . . . to mostly suffer defeat, but in so doing to force the political system into showing its own true, worst colors. That would be preaching the gospel like Jesus did.

-Bryant

on the fringes of empire

Vice President Cheney’s Christmas card from 2003 contained the following quote from Benjamin Franklin:

“And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?”

Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw have a lot to say about the American empire of our day in their book Jesus for President.

They call it “a project to provoke the Christian political imagination.” It’s about what to do when the empire you live in gets baptized . . . when the lines between faith and patriotism get blurred. It pushes the question, where does our ultimate hope lie . . . in kings and presidents, or in God? When it comes down to it, too whom do we pledge allegiance . . . to our country or to the Jesus we find in the scriptures? Referring to the Constantinian compromise as the “Fall of the Church,” Shane and Chris mount a compelling case that the followers of Jesus will most appropriately locate themselves on the margins and the fringes of empire, modeling a radical alternative lifestyle of allegiance to “another king” named Jesus. They echo the call of John in the book of Revelation to “come out of” the “great whore” of the global market and the kingdom of Caesar (apparently not all Bible passages come with a G rating).

Their emphasis is not on how to vote on November 4, but how to live on November 3 and 5. They want us, as followers of Jesus, to be able to say with a straight face and a clean conscience, “If you want to know what we believe, look at how we live.”

Shane Claiborne

I love this book (how can you not when every page is a visual masterpiece) and the arguments are provocative as advertised. One cannot come away from this book without a renewed passion for following Jesus in radical ways in one’s own local family of faith. But I’m troubled by the lack of balance. (The following comments come with a grain of salt, since I haven’t finished the book yet.) Are the “fringes of empire” the only appropriate places for followers of Jesus to locate themselves? Is there a place for Christians as civil servants or legislators or presidential candidates? Because a government will never fully implement the reign of God this side of Jesus’ return, does that mean we should separate ourselves from it completely? Is it possible to pledge allegiance only to Jesus but to still seek influence in the halls of power?

These questions were floating through my mind going into the Envision conference. I had my ears tuned in to see how they would be addressed, since I knew the participants would have a wide range of views on the matter.

Bart Campolo

Shane talked about this stuff Sunday night, and panel including Shane, Lisa Sharon Harper, Bart Campolo, and Miroslav Volf returned to these issues Monday afternoon. I have some notes, but I seem not to have connected them all with a person who said them. I think it was Shane who at one point conceded that “if we see someone else [in politics] coming alongside the marginalized, we can go along with them.” Someone noted that Daniel, while in captivity in the Babylonian empire, became advisor to the king, while managing not to compromise himself (though he didn’t always have an easy time of it). Harper, while affirming our vocation to form communities embodying an alternative way of life, lamented that without political involvement, the volume of change that can occur (at least in the short term) is so much smaller. Someone added that “No candidate will deliver the kingdom of God, but they can contribute.” Bart Campolo, passionate and opinionated man that he is, insisted “YOU VOTE!” Volf argued that voting and participating in the political process is a way of stewarding that portion of your money that goes to pay taxes, and that even if you have little hope that political leaders will do real good, at least we can hope to prevent them from doing the kind of harm that they have in the past few years! He delineated the proper contributions that Christians can make to the political arena and the broader public square:

1) compelling embodiment
2) vision
3) critique

Also at the conference were others such as Jim Wallis and Ron Sider, who have been passionate advocates for political activism on behalf of the poor and oppressed. Sider didn’t even need to speak in order to make his point–I was told that he had to leave the conference early in order to meet with Barack Obama.

Jim Wallis

Together, the speakers clarified and confirmed my desire for a balanced view of our proper place as followers of Jesus in this American empire. My personal takeaway? Keep trying to live a balanced life of embodiment, vision, and critique, without idolizing political power or putting my ultimate hope in it.

-Bryant

Gregory Boyd and the Canaanite genocide

Gregory Boyd has been doing a fascinating series during the last few months on what some refer to as the Canaanite massacre or genocide in the Old Testament. He considers it to be the most challenging objection to Christian faith.

The latest post on Yahweh’s war against the Nephilim is particularly intriguing.

-Bryant

post-Envision

I’m back from the Envision conference at Princeton. What a packed two and a half days! I made my way through Philly on Sunday afternoon, walking from Penn campus,

through the Odunde African festival,

to South Street for a cheesesteak at Jim’s.

A few trains later, I made it to Princeton. A highlight at the conference was running into my friend Rajeev Nandakumaran (a.k.a. G-VO) who performed his music the first night of the conference. We lived in a squatter community in Manila together three summers ago.

There was a conference bookstore with most everything 50% off!  I stocked up, mostly on IVP books.  I read one on the trip back to L.A. on “what postmodern skeptics taught us about their path to Jesus” which was really excellent!

I ditched one of the sessions to take a “Princeton Orange Key Campus Tour.” It was fun to learn some of the history.

Our last session Tuesday night took place in the beautiful chapel, where John Perkins was honored followed by Jim Wallis giving his characteristic rallying cry.

More soon on the content of the conference.

-Bryant