A New Book

I am currently reading a book entitled Mere Discipleship. The author, Lee Camp, was a student under John Howard Yoder at Notre Dame. The book developed out of a sense of need for a “Yoderian ‘Mere Christianity.’” Basically, it is a popularized Politics of Jesus. I read Politics over Christmas and have been reading similar books and articles since. It is interesting to see an insurgency of theology based upon the Kingdom of God in relation to the social systems of culture. While I agree with most of these authors, Yoder, Camp, Hauerwas, and Rodney Clapp, I am starting to think about how this theology is actually practiced in a church. Maybe it’s because I have attended churches that have a conversion based theology (which presents itself more readily acceptable to certain Gnostic tendencies), but I have not experienced the Church that Camp and Yoder have explained. I believe it exists, but so far, with few exceptions, it seems to only exist in the mind of its adherents.

I feel as if I am being too vague. “This” is referring to a broader all encompassing purpose of God where church and even religion are not God’s goal or intended end. The church is merely a means to bringing about God’s Kingdom: the embodiment of God’s will. In actuality, the church is supposed to be the incarnation of such a will. A divine will made known by an accepting, loving, and reconciling God who breaks us of our addictions, binds us together in fellowship, and not only atones (pardons our evil) but frees us from it as well. The Kingdom is a coming and present reality of love, peace, justice, and communion. Camp explains it this way, “Church is, in other words, simply a community of disciples, gathered together to order their lives according to the will of their Lord who lives still in their midst.” The Church is God’s primary venue of bringing about his Kingdom, and if his Kingdom truly embodies peace and justice, should not the Church also proclaim peace and justice?

To think about the Kingdom as an actual social entity may be strange for some. But when we think about the way in which Jesus taught, the words he used, and the life he lived, the Kingdom cannot be taken any other way. When Jesus prayed “Your Kingdom come” he prayed for the Kingdom to become “on earth” what God intended it to be all along, what it is “in heaven.” If you think about church, we already are forming a separate society, though perverted, still unique. We have formed our own lingo (sin, atonement, Born Again, converted, saved), our own practices (Eucharist, tithing, baptism), and ultimately our own culture (though many times polarizing ourselves from everyone else). One of the problems with the modern interpretation of the gospel revolves around the individualism that pervades our culture and ultimately our churches. Consumer driven capitalism has made it easy to get what I want, when I want, and how I want it. I want to be rich, buy a big house in the suburbs, take care of my family, and live my life. And yet this pervasive narcissistic culture has had more influence on the church than the church has had on the world. I want my sins taken care of so I can go to heaven and ultimately I can be happy. Christianity has been at best a nice treatment of psychotherapy. Forget that the way of Jesus is the way of a cross. I happen to like the Americanized Jesus better: a morale booster and money promoter.

We then read the actual gospel account about a man who told the rich to sell all they have, give to the poor, and follow me on the road to the cross. Perhaps when Jesus said ‘I am the Way’ he meant that in order to be reconciled to the Father, you must follow my way of life and not just arbitrarily accept his death as permission to live how you want. In other words, Jesus’ healing of the sick, compassion for the poor, forgiveness for the adulterer, and love for our enemies is a way of life, the way of the Kingdom. A military chaplain once said that “chaplains are not on military bases to bear witness to theological convictions, but to serve the military establishment: what was desired [of military chaplains] was a morale officer.” The Kingdom of God is a social entity that beckons us to order or even change our allegiances.

What happens when the allegiance of our nation-state clashes with our Allegiance to God and his Kingdom? Sadly, we Americans have accepted the powers of this world (money, prestige, and even war) as if we were promoting the powers of God. How can we bring about God’s Kingdom by using the weapons of hell? The end becomes the only factor of our morality. Who cares how we do it, as long as peace wins in the end. A United States Senator once wrote that “God almighty in his infinite wisdom [has] dropped the atomic bomb in our lap….[W]ith vision and guts and plenty of atomic bombs,…[we] can compel mankind to adopt a policy of lasting peace…or be burned to a crisp.” Does anyone see the irony of this statement? Now we’re stuck with thousands of nuclear weapons while we try to keep other nations from developing any. It is no wonder the world hates us.

Some evangelical Christians still assume that America is actually a type of new Israel: that America will be the nation that brings about God’s purposes. I recently watched some religious programming and was quite frustrated when I heard that the first established English colony was being viewed as a divine mandate that established America as a “Christian nation.” I then look at history and see that this colony (Jamestown) was actually a royal charter colony with the sole purpose of bringing in revenue. They expected Mayan gold and were willing to pillage and destroy to get it. To their surprise, mosquito-ridden swamps replaced gold and a large agriculturally based Indian Kingdom thrived. Within 10 years the Indians had either been forced off their land or killed. Now if this is truly a divine mandate I would not want to serve that divine lord. All this to say, it is a dangerous thing to assume that God has taken sides with a certain nation-state. To wage war as the world does, one assumes that God’s way is not good enough. It simply is not a worthy social ethic. If we were to actually love our enemies we would be destroyed, so we must do things the way the world does.

This is a pretty significant rationale. Such thinking makes it very easy to fall into a type of reductionist theology: Christianity and discipleship is reduced to a strictly ‘spiritual’ state of my soul. As long as my soul is right with God that is all that matters. Christianity then would have no bearing on culture, society, or social systems. I’m forgiven and ‘heaven bound.’ The only reason I’m on this earth is to get more people into heaven with me. Forget the holistic redemption that comes with the Kingdom: the sick, homeless, poor, less fortunate, and oppressed.

So now I’m back to thinking what this would look like in an actual church. What would happen if our teaching changed to fewer ‘altar calls’ and more compassion? What if Christians started to pray and support those in war torn nations and worked toward reconciliation through peaceful agendas? What if the first thing a homosexual thought about a Christian was that he was loved? What if church actually became something that was embodied on an every day basis rather than on a Sunday morning? What if tithing was actually practice for giving to others throughout the week? Obviously this not only takes a change heart and mind, but a change in action too. It might actually cost something to be a Christian. But that would only fulfill Jesus’ calling of counting the cost before following Him. Bonhoeffer once wrote that “Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.”

Decisions

So this entire year I have been intending on taking Master classes for the next year. I graduated in the Spring and have already taken 4 credit hours toward a Master of Arts in Religion. I have also intended to pursue a degree in Divinity after this next year. I am living in Bourbonnais because of convenience. It seemed like hell to go a year without taking classes. However, with the expensive tuition of Divinity school in the future and the luxury of not paying rent or food for the next year, Joy and I are in a great position to start saving. The M.A.R really won't do much. I like the idea of holding two master degrees, and I do have a fellowship towards it, but it doesn't cover half of what we would owe. On top of this, I have been waiting to hear back about a possible GA position with the school. I'm praying this weekend to figure out what I should do. It's a harder decision than I would like to admit. I've been in school my whole life and actually spending a year without would be almost as big of a step as getting married (which I'm LOVING). Anyway, decisions, decisions.

God Outside the Church

I wrote this last summer when I was a waiter and working at transfer admissions. I was reading over some stuff that I had written and thought this warranted a second look. So, this is me a year ago:

I am working two jobs. The first one consists of filing, processing data applications, and organizing. It pays 6.75 an hour for 35 hours a week. My second job pays 3.90 an hour and upon leaving the first job I go to the second job to work nights. It’s not overtly exciting. It’s a pizza restaurant. We have our busy days and our off days. They don’t work around my schedule very well, and the owner’s are very rarely positive people. Weekend tips are decent but I find weekdays to almost be a waste of my time in terms of monetary gain. It’s a stressful atmosphere with a lot of tense people working behind a mask of “pleasing the customer.” To be honest, the job sucks up my time and my energy. I went a week without spending any time with my fiancée. But I thank God for this opportunity.

Last week we had a server meeting. It lasted a drudging three hours. I’m not quite sure how I stayed awake, but it probably had something to do with being terminated. (Servers were fired if they didn’t come to this meeting). At this meeting, we discussed such issues as washing your hands, how to dress, how often to shave, and teamwork. Apparently there are times where servers will fight over who gets the table. It’s not what you think. They will fight not to get the table. This brought about the manager saying that the customers are the ones who give us money. They are the ones who tip us and give us our income. We should want to serve them. The whole time I’m thinking, “Well, yeah that makes sense. Tell me something new.” But Jenny, the manager, went as far as to say that we shouldn’t see them as people or customers but should diminish them to little five and ten dollar bills running around the store waiting to be found. I understood her point, and as much as I wanted to scream out against the capitalist notion of people being worth only what they have, I stayed quiet.

You see, I applied and interviewed for this job with the intent of making money. It was what I needed and still need. However, my mindset has begun to change. In the four weeks of working at Aurelio’s, I have felt more challenged and more stretched in my spiritual walk than I have in a while. I am starting to see that I am truly a “server.” This term goes far beyond serving the customer, though I do pray they see a certain joy in the act of bringing their food and clearing dirty dishes. There is something at Aurelio’s that I have not seen in 3 years: that I have not had in 3 years. I am working with people who do not confess Christ.

Somewhere in between leaving high school and entering a Christian University, I have lost any connection I may have had with those outside “the Church.” It’s weird to think that I am in a program geared towards ministry, and yet I have not contact with those to whom I am to be ministering. How am I to assess culture and the state of living if I do not live and breathe from within that community? Surely Olivet does not reflect the norm of society. I’ve heard and seen people leave and are shell shocked when they don’t have the “protection” from the world that Olivet so willingly gives. But now I find myself once again out in the world, and I find myself accepted. Somehow, and in some way, we students at Olivet are under the impression that those non-Christians don’t want anything to do with us. They think we’re weird, fanatics, too conservative, or just plain not any fun. Is this not what we hear about in our youth groups and see in an underlying tone in chapel? Give me a break! They are people just like us with dreams, ambitions, insecurities, and a longing to be not only “loved” but actually liked. I think there may be a difference between evangelical love: which seems to lean toward “share the good news of Jesus’ death to as many people as possible in the hopes that we can scare them out of hell and into heaven.” It seems to me that that is salvation “from” something rather than salvation “into.” One is exclusive and the other is inclusive. Jesus not only loved, but cared and liked. His love and soteriology (philosophy of salvation) revolved around being inclusive.

The truth of the matter in working at Aurelio’s is that I want those I work with to come to know Christ for who He is. I can not escape Jesus’ mission of making disciples. But I think that when it comes to sharing that good news, we must first start by truly loving, caring, and serving. I am not ostracized as I thought I might be, but instead am accepted by them and they have invited me as a friend. As a result, I have begun to see how God has been working in their lives even outside of the Church. And it has been my prayer that they may also see God through me. That is why I thank God for this opportunity.

Shalom,
Eric

Spears into Pruning hooks

After sharing a blog with some other friends and not posting for a year, I decided that I would once again attempt this internet blog thing. Really, I think I am going to use this more as a personal discipline than anything else. The truth is that I have never been good at writing my thoughts but have always enjoyed the idea of writing them out. So without any further glorification, I present...

Pruning Spears:
The past year has proved to be an exciting time for me. Theologically, I have been formed more than any other time. My conservative Nazarene roots have been challenged in a way that make my parents scratch their heads, my college want to fine me, and my home district reject my application for a District Pastors license. Some say I have no bearing on reality while others say I need to mature. And I am OK with both assesments. I see a different reality than most of the world: one that notices a need of reconciliation while seeing the holistic redemption associated with the God of love. I also see a need to mature. If I were to assume that maturity has ended, I would assume completeness and would have successfully eluded both.

The Name and address of this blog is taken from a passage in Isaiah. It's from the second chapter and looks toward a new way in which God is continually creating. In this particular scripture, Isaiah recognizes the tension between the world and what God is doing in the World. He sees where God is going and points us to work within that goal. Verse 3 connotes God teaching his people to be like himself: follow the Lord "that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths." Verse 4 then gives us a picture not only of God's Kingdom but what it looks like to be a part of it. "He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore."

I feel as if I have moved from an outside observer of Christian Pacifism to one who claims Jesus' way of non-violent resistance. So far it's been pretty easy. I haven't been attacked and I am not personally involved in any wars. No one has threatened my life. Honestly, it's not hard to claim pacifism when the wars are happening elsewhere. It makes me wonder about the "what if's" of raising a family (I was just married this year) or if I would be able to forgive a man on death row who has hurt one close to my heart. The fact that I have not experienced such atrocities (for this I thank God) does not warrant a change in my theological claims. I trust that making the decision now to live within a prayerful Kingdom community will guide me into truth if such things occur. Martin Luther King, Jr. helped subdue racism through non-violent resistance, Tutu helped save a nation from apartheid with limited violence, and Dorothy Day helped revive a Christian spirit within Catholicism.

I have to work at this. I am continually "pruning my spears" to subdue the evil tendencies that arise from my humanness. This blog will hopefully be more than just dissertations on my political positions. I want it to show who I am and who I am becoming. It will be filled with stories of struggle and joy as well as love and heartache. We live with these tensions and hopefully it will be fun to see where they lead.