-Ryan Fasani & Eric Paul
In the last five installments, we have affirmed that “the mission of the church in the world is to continue the redemptive work of Christ in the power of the Spirit” (Manual, Article 11). Jesus’ ministry—his redemptive work on earth—was the proclamation of the year of the Lord’s favor, the Jubilee, the Kingdom of God, the Good News to the poor (Luke 4). Good News to the poor, we think, is to not be poor, and the Jubilee was largely an economic leveling between community members. Christ’s redemption is preoccupied with poverty. Consequently, the church as the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12), continuing the redemption of the world, is also preoccupied with poverty—proclaiming the Good News to those that suffer from poverty, the poor.
We understand, however, that we have unfairly left unexplained what it is we mean by poverty. To assert that God is a God of the poor without making some strides toward at least a working definition of poverty weakens our project. Perhaps the following assessment of poverty should have been the first piece. In part because it informs our reference of poverty throughout the series, but more importantly, because in the church’s diagnosis of poverty lies the biggest potential for missing the God of the poor. If God’s redemptive work in the world truly liberates people from that which enslaves, then the church must ask whether we have placed ourselves physically as a body working toward human freedom or “distanced” ourselves from God’s work. While this last section in the series explores further how we miss God by misunderstanding poverty, it leads us into the next step in our journey: a definitional series exploring the nature, causes, and interconnectedness of poverty as well as the church’s habit of largely misperceiving it.
Should the church have a chance at being Christ’s body in the world, should we have a chance at being God’s agents of redemption, then it is without option that we know from what people need to be “bought back” (redimere, the Latin root for redemption). Namely, the church must understand poverty, as poverty holds ransom the poor from living life fully in God (Matt. 20:28; John 10:10). To understand poverty is to recognize and comprehend it (diagnosis) and respond effectively (prescription).
An untrained eye sees poverty as deficit, a lack of things. In this view, income is the largest determinate of poverty—one is poor if one has a deficiency in buying power. A broader definition might include non-material deficiencies like education and political knowledge. Christians have sensitivity to the immediate limitations of these definitions and will add to them a spiritual deficit. All these definitions, though different, assume that if the poor receive what they do not have, for instance, money, water, education, and a working knowledge of the bible, then they will cease to be poor. If the diagnosis of poverty is the absence of things, the prescription is to acquire those things. It comes as no surprise, then, that many Christian ministries to the poor are “gift drops.” When one lacks, Christians should give.
Economic development professionals have discovered that poverty is far more complex than the simple experience of deficiencies. A glance at three— Jayakumar Christian, John Friedman, and Bryant Myers—will not enable us to develop an alternative definition of poverty, as that would require a more lengthy assessment of their work. Instead, all three development professionals will lend a hand in us suggesting that poverty is and therefore the church’s response must be far more complex and nuanced.
Christian, in his PhD thesis, Powerless of the Poor: Toward an Alternative Kingdom of God Based Paradigm of Response, explains that poverty is the experience of living in power-stealing systems. These systems that disempower individuals are social and personal. For instance, personal systems that steal power from the individual are physical (weakened body and mind), personal (inaccurate identity), and religious (deceiving spiritualities). Social systems that can disempower include one’s culture (ideology) and social place (relationships to others, especially the non-poor). These systems complexly interact and influence each other, further reinforcing the experience of powerlessness—poverty. Poverty is essentially being caught in disempowering systems.
John Friedman, in Empowerment: The Politics of Alternative Development, contests that if poverty is the experience of deficit, then the deficit is a lack of power in rather stationary and overlapping domains. This creates a layered and nuanced experience of power or its lack—a layered experience of poverty. Different types of power arise from these overlapping domains (e.g. power arises through party affiliation in the overlap of the political domain and the economic domain). The poor have a particularly difficult time engaging these domains—economy, civil society, politics, and state—precisely because of the pressures on them as ones impoverished. The poor do not have the organizational resource, political influence, or judicial access to realize a different future. Poverty is essentially disconnection from the power found in social organization and political representation.
Bryant Myers, in his Walking with the Poor: Principles and Practices of Transformational Development, attempts to build on Christian and Friedman’s analysis by explicitly utilizing the biblical story as guidance. Myers largely agrees with the aforementioned analyses but diagnoses a more fundamental commonality between all that are poor: poverty is the result of broken and unhealthy relationships to self, God, others, the environment, and one’s community. Poverty is at its core a spiritual brokenness, but not in a way that deems other components subordinate. Instead, Myers uses a theological understanding of sin to assess the spiritual nature of individual (relationship to oneself) and systemic (relationship to other individuals, the community at large, and natural resources) causes of poverty.
As Christian, Friedman, and Myers suggest, poverty is a complex experience, and it’s simply inaccurate to diagnosis it as the experience of basic deficit. If the disease is complex, the diagnosis, then, must be complex and sophisticated. And if the diagnosis is complex—and the church is to be faithful to its call to redeem the impoverished—the prescription (ministry to the poor) must be at the very least complexly appropriate to the need. What might this suggest about our clothing collections, food drives, and hygiene kits? What about our clothing closets, our free hot meals, or our Christmas toy collections?
We’re afraid to say it, but we must: our churches do not understand poverty—certainly not its complexities. We know our poor neighbors need Jesus, but we are unaware, for instance, that they may be trapped in a system of disempowerment largely bequeathed to them by generations of broken social relationships, reinforced by marred personal identity and cultural stereotypes, and augmented by untreated physical disease. Being Christ’s body in the presence of such experience—being near to God in the poor (Matt. 25) and being God to the poor (Luke 4)—necessitates far more than warm clothes in the winter or extra toys at Christmas. By missing the diagnosis of poverty, the church is missing its role in redemption. By missing poverty have we missed God altogether?
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Keeping God at a Distance: Why Sanctified Believers should listen to Hip-Hop
(This was written a while ago and I somehow forgot to post it).
Ryan Fasani and Eric Paul-
[Entire Sanctification] is wrought by the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and comprehends in one experience the cleansing of the heart from sin and the abiding, indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, empowering the believer for life and service. - Article of Faith, Entire Sanctification as found in the Nazarene Manual
I (Ryan) am particularly interested in the “power” sanctified believers receive from the Holy Spirit. I recently read about the obliteration of mountaintops in the South East for the extraction of coal. That’s power! From the dynamite, to the massive trucks, to sheer mass of earth that is relocated—it’s all the result of power. But power is used for good or for ill; it is wielded by an agent to an end—to detonate, to destroy, to heal, or to build. The sanctified believer is empowered by the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But this empowerment personifies the love and grace of the Spirit of Christ, rather than the power of domination, oppression, and violence. The power imbued from the Spirit through sanctification works through human agents as participants in the coming Kingdom of God, which stands against the principalities and powers of this world. Thus, the power given by the Spirit is situated toward an end. Stated in a question: “To what end is a sanctified believer sanctified?”
We think that sanctification ought to teach us how to give up certain vestiges of power in order to put on the full righteousness (a word synonymous with justice in the Hebrew Scriptures) of God’s power. To better understand this process, we will critique the traditional process and progression of sanctification through the lens of Hip-Hop. Hip-Hop music has traditionally given expression and voice to the black experience of growing up in a racially charged, poverty-stricken society. We believe these voices are necessary to inform the merger between our material lives and spirituality, so that the two are indistinguishable.
Entire sanctification “comprehends in one experience the cleansing of the heart from sin and the abiding, indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, empowering the believer for life and service.” Sanctification is for (to the end of) life and service. The “holiness chronology” of a believer begins with regeneration then sanctification then glorification; these are distinct works of grace by the Holy Spirit.
Sanctification is “wrought by the baptism of the Holy Spirit,” but its purpose “to [empower] believers for life and service” is undeniably material. We’re sanctified at an altar, during worship, which are spiritual activities; we live life in our homes, at school, when we eat, which are material, bodily activities. Between the experience of entire sanctification and the experience of its practical import—“for life and service”—lays a wide chasm, one quite difficult to traverse.
Our (Nazarenes) concept of sanctification presupposes a widely accepted dichotomy: a wide chasm between the spiritual (experience of sanctification) and the material (result of being sanctified). From this dichotomy, pragmatic (and theological) tension emerges. Ministerial practitioners labor to find new and creative ways to encourage disciples to move from the altar to the world, from the sanctuary to culture, from sanctification to service. Service projects, mission trips, random acts of kindness, church grill-outs, shut-in visits: these are a few pragmatic catalysts to encourage the power inherent in sanctification to, well, do something!
There is a problem before us, though. Service is not the end (completion) of sanctification; rather, it’s the ends by which the means of the ever-renewing power of the Holy Spirit manifest itself in the ongoing life of the believer. In other words, the altar isn’t the only place the Spirit works to sanctify, nor is the act of serving the material conclusion of the Spirit’s work. There is a tension that emerges from our understanding of sanctification because no chasm should exist between the sanctifying baptism of the Spirit and service. Service is not the result, as if to finish it, but it’s a constitutive part of the perfected love of a disciple. This is why sanctification is “for life and service” (italics added), because life is where the “spirituality” of sanctification and the “materiality” of service meet. But also, life is not static. Sanctification is not a static state of power (as though such a thing exists), but it is daily moving toward the end of service in context—where and when a believer is. Entire sanctification is the bodily bent of believers toward serving others as fully devoted followers of Christ (Matt. 5:1-7:29).
For some, we are flirting with heresy; for others, this understanding of sanctification is affirming and perhaps refreshing. But to all of us who are privileged (likely everyone reading this article), we run the risk of never experiencing this sanctification. With our understanding of sanctification as an “act of God” separate from our material lives, our historical lives become of secondary importance. What happened before sanctification is a backdrop to the importance of our spiritual sanctity, and only then, the life and service that is to follow receives attention.
But isolating a spiritual experience like that of sanctification is a discipline of the privileged, which from a position of security and power posit a “holiness chronology.” In other words, those not fearing actual death isolate sanctification from lived experience. Because (historical, material) life is where sanctification and service meet, it is a necessary component of both. As Jon Sobrino states, “The intuition that has gradually forced itself upon our perceptions is that without historical, real life there can be no such thing as spiritual life” (Spirituality and Liberation, 4).
Privilege provides us power in a way that isolates spiritual experience, but the poor and oppressed remind us that life itself—and not just sanctification—is a powerful act of God. We exert our power over our poor neighbors, in its most benign shape, as a form of isolation. Rather than being empowered by the Spirit to love we tend to further entrench ourselves from the poor, and hence from the God that stands with and for the poor of the earth. This is why Jon Sobrino contends that some histories need to be opposed, namely the ones that serve their own power: “Christian holiness is nothing more nor less than likeness to Jesus, [which can be] in opposition to historical realities, in opposition to objective sin” (Spirituality and Liberation, 128-9). The impoverished majority have historical realities of oppression—powerlessness. Is our sanctification in jeopardy as we exert our power as distance between ourselves and the immanence of God with the poor?
We (the privileged) need the poor, not to receive our service, which ostensibly validates our sanctification; rather we need the poor because the poor teach us that a sanctified life requires a) access to actual life, and b) that we oppose oppressive histories. “Poverty is something more than material. Life is at stake—the life of my neighbor… the feeble, debilitated bodies of the poor [give] us access to the material world from within a spiritual perspective” (Spirituality and Liberation, 55). We need the poor because in the struggle for life, the poor collapse the chasm between the “spiritual” and “material,” which indicts our privilege (distance from them) and demands our power to be used to the end of opposing oppression (service).
My (Ryan) experience is that Hip-Hop music is a forum well suited to teach us this. Artists in this genre both expose the culprits of oppression and acknowledge that life is at once historical (material) and spiritual. Let us consider two songs, one that I recently heard playing on the radio and the other a faint memory from the 90’s. I will provide a sampling of the lyrics and then a brief comment on their importance to sanctified believers. (Disclaimer: we do not necessarily hold the same opinions as these artists, nor do we condone the use of profane and derogatory language that the following artists use. As we engage in the world in which we live, however, such songs as these express the culture, environment and setting in which the Gospel of Jesus Christ is lived out. The mission of the Center is to step into the brokenness of our world, which is brought to life through the following lyrics, to bring healing, justice and reconciliation from a loving and merciful God.)
“Soul Survivor,” by Young Jeezy (Featuring Akon)
Chorus:
If you lookin’ for me I’ll be on the block
With my thang cocked possibly sittin’ on a drop, now
‘Cause, I’m a rida, yeah
Yea I’ma soul survivor, yeah
‘Cause everybody know the game don’t stop
Tryin’ to make it to the top for you’re a*** get popped now
If you a rida, yeah
Yea I’ma soul survivor, yeah
Verse:
We let the doves do it for us
We don’t cry tears, that’s right
Real ****** don’t budge
When mail man got his time
He shot birds at the judge, yeah
I’m knee deep in the game
So when it’s time to re-up
I’m knee deep in the cane, ****
Real talk, look, I’m tellin’ you Mayne
If you get jammed up don’t mention my name, no
Forgive me Lord, I know I ain’t livin’ right
Gotta feed the block
****** starvin’, they got appetites, ayy
And this is everyday, it never gets old
Thought I was a juvenile stuck to the G-code
This ain’t a rap song, ***** this is my life
And if the hood was a battlefield then I earned stripes, yeah
Young Jeezy and Akon, in this song, assert what many have claimed before them: Hip-Hop is the lyrical outlet for a suffering generation of black Americans. The young, black, urban American experience is like war. Not unlike the lives of many young Americans, these men experience the spectrum of human emotions: anger, sadness, angst, pride. But for these men, the “hood” is where one fears for their life, where “cocked” guns are the norm, where survival is a complex milieu of hunger (“gotta feed the block”), violence (“with my thang cocked”), incarceration (“when mail man got his time”), macho-ism (“real ***** don’t budge), and drug dealing (“when it’s time to re-up”).
Strikingly, Young Jeezy and Akon don’t understand themselves as only surviving, as if surviving is the perpetuity of physical life. Instead, they are soul survivors; their struggle to stay alive is quite literally a “physio-spiritual” challenge. The conflation of “soul” and “survivor,” as self-identity (“I’m a soul survivor”) and as survival strategy (“letting the doves do it for us”), is a profound theological statement: the suffering of God’s children is at once a material and spiritual reality (Exodus 3:7). Consider the next song.
“Still I Rise” by 2Pac.
Dear Lord
As we down here, struggle for as long as we know
In search of a paradise to touch (my ***** Johnny J)
Dreams are dreams, and reality seems to be the only place to go
The only place for us
I know, try to make the best of bad situations
Seems to be my life’s story
Ain’t no glory in pain, a soldier’s story in vain
And can’t nobody live this life for me
It’s a ride y’all, a long hard ride
….
Pistol in my hand, this cruel world can do without me
How can I survive? Got me askin white Jesus
will a ***** live or die, cause the Lord can’t see us
in the deep dark clouds of the projects, ain’t no sunshine
No sunny days and we only playED sometimes
When everybody’s sleepin
I open my window jump to the streets and get to creepin
I can live or die, hope I get some money ‘fore I’m gone
I’m only 19, I’m tryin to hustle on my own
on the spot where everybody and they pops tryin to slang rocks
I’d rather go to college, but this is where the game stops
Don’t get it wrong cause it’s always on, from dusk to dawn
You can buy rocks glocks or a HEROINBONG
You can ask my man Ishmael Reed
Keep my nine heateR all the time this is how we grind
Meet up at the cemetary then get smoked out, pass the weed *****
That Hennessey’ll keep me keyed *****
Everywhere I go ****** holla at me, “Keep it real G”
And my reply tilL they kill me
Act up if you feel me, I was born not to make it but I did
The tribulations of a ghetto kid, still I rise
Here, again, we read (hear) many of the same cathartic language. 2Pac is in a war of survival, violently fending off enemies, wielding lethal weapons, and trying to meet his basic physical needs. This song more so emphasizes the role of illegal substances in the plight of young black men’s lives. The imagery suggests that the drugs and violence create such “deep dark clouds of the projects” that one has no vision of a different future, hopeless. The “ghetto” context is so oppressive and dark that the eyes of God are even without focus (“Lord can’t see us”), nor can the luminous power of sun penetrate the cloud of death (“ain’t no sunshine/no sunny days”).
But even in this hell-on-earth experience, where death is a better option than living (“this cruel world could do without me”) and he’s destined to fail (“I was born not to make it”), 2Pac’s material reality is shot through with the presence of God. 2Pac is isolated and likely depressed (“can’t nobody live this life for me”) but it’s the immanence of the divine that enables 2Pac to succeed (“still I rise”). This is most explicitly affirmed in the opening prayer. The struggle for life (“try to make the best of a bad situation / …a long hard ride”) begins by acknowledging that resistance of oppressive realities is beyond the material and finite work of human hands; God is necessary and therefore invoked (“Dear Lord / As we down here, struggle for as long as we know”). In 2Pac’s suffering the spiritual is physical and vice versa (“I search of a paradise to touch”).
It has become clear from these songs the struggle for life is a sanctified struggle because the power of the Holy Spirit is manifest in concrete historical realities—the manifest realities of daily bread and daily safety. There is no chasm between the spiritual and the physical. The “physical” is “spiritual” and yet it’s not promised; all power that is wielded is given by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, survival in the face of death is an act of God.
Hip-Hop and by extension the historical realities of the poor in urban America teach us that “it is impossible to live with spirit, unless that spirit becomes flesh” (Spirituality and Liberation, 4). Sanctification cannot be a spiritual “act of God” that ramifies in our subsequent material lives, as this denies that life and service are not “follow-ups” to sanctification but are constitutive parts of a life perfected in (the very acts of) love. Sanctification is “perfect love,” which is to say, the power of the Spirit in flesh—incarnational.
We need the message of our Hip-Hop brothers and sisters because they help us know to what end the sanctified believer is empowered. We’re empowered to be participants in the work of a new creation in which poverty and oppression do not exist. Therefore, we’re empowered now to live on behalf of the poor in the belief and hope of the resurrection—“Still I Rise.” To serve and live for the poor is to experience the power of the Spirit in sanctification. Serving the poor and therefore affirming the struggle for survival is non-negotiable, lest we not experience sanctification—God’s fullness of blessing (Romans 15:29).
Ryan Fasani and Eric Paul-
[Entire Sanctification] is wrought by the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and comprehends in one experience the cleansing of the heart from sin and the abiding, indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, empowering the believer for life and service. - Article of Faith, Entire Sanctification as found in the Nazarene Manual
I (Ryan) am particularly interested in the “power” sanctified believers receive from the Holy Spirit. I recently read about the obliteration of mountaintops in the South East for the extraction of coal. That’s power! From the dynamite, to the massive trucks, to sheer mass of earth that is relocated—it’s all the result of power. But power is used for good or for ill; it is wielded by an agent to an end—to detonate, to destroy, to heal, or to build. The sanctified believer is empowered by the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But this empowerment personifies the love and grace of the Spirit of Christ, rather than the power of domination, oppression, and violence. The power imbued from the Spirit through sanctification works through human agents as participants in the coming Kingdom of God, which stands against the principalities and powers of this world. Thus, the power given by the Spirit is situated toward an end. Stated in a question: “To what end is a sanctified believer sanctified?”
We think that sanctification ought to teach us how to give up certain vestiges of power in order to put on the full righteousness (a word synonymous with justice in the Hebrew Scriptures) of God’s power. To better understand this process, we will critique the traditional process and progression of sanctification through the lens of Hip-Hop. Hip-Hop music has traditionally given expression and voice to the black experience of growing up in a racially charged, poverty-stricken society. We believe these voices are necessary to inform the merger between our material lives and spirituality, so that the two are indistinguishable.
Entire sanctification “comprehends in one experience the cleansing of the heart from sin and the abiding, indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, empowering the believer for life and service.” Sanctification is for (to the end of) life and service. The “holiness chronology” of a believer begins with regeneration then sanctification then glorification; these are distinct works of grace by the Holy Spirit.
Sanctification is “wrought by the baptism of the Holy Spirit,” but its purpose “to [empower] believers for life and service” is undeniably material. We’re sanctified at an altar, during worship, which are spiritual activities; we live life in our homes, at school, when we eat, which are material, bodily activities. Between the experience of entire sanctification and the experience of its practical import—“for life and service”—lays a wide chasm, one quite difficult to traverse.
Our (Nazarenes) concept of sanctification presupposes a widely accepted dichotomy: a wide chasm between the spiritual (experience of sanctification) and the material (result of being sanctified). From this dichotomy, pragmatic (and theological) tension emerges. Ministerial practitioners labor to find new and creative ways to encourage disciples to move from the altar to the world, from the sanctuary to culture, from sanctification to service. Service projects, mission trips, random acts of kindness, church grill-outs, shut-in visits: these are a few pragmatic catalysts to encourage the power inherent in sanctification to, well, do something!
There is a problem before us, though. Service is not the end (completion) of sanctification; rather, it’s the ends by which the means of the ever-renewing power of the Holy Spirit manifest itself in the ongoing life of the believer. In other words, the altar isn’t the only place the Spirit works to sanctify, nor is the act of serving the material conclusion of the Spirit’s work. There is a tension that emerges from our understanding of sanctification because no chasm should exist between the sanctifying baptism of the Spirit and service. Service is not the result, as if to finish it, but it’s a constitutive part of the perfected love of a disciple. This is why sanctification is “for life and service” (italics added), because life is where the “spirituality” of sanctification and the “materiality” of service meet. But also, life is not static. Sanctification is not a static state of power (as though such a thing exists), but it is daily moving toward the end of service in context—where and when a believer is. Entire sanctification is the bodily bent of believers toward serving others as fully devoted followers of Christ (Matt. 5:1-7:29).
For some, we are flirting with heresy; for others, this understanding of sanctification is affirming and perhaps refreshing. But to all of us who are privileged (likely everyone reading this article), we run the risk of never experiencing this sanctification. With our understanding of sanctification as an “act of God” separate from our material lives, our historical lives become of secondary importance. What happened before sanctification is a backdrop to the importance of our spiritual sanctity, and only then, the life and service that is to follow receives attention.
But isolating a spiritual experience like that of sanctification is a discipline of the privileged, which from a position of security and power posit a “holiness chronology.” In other words, those not fearing actual death isolate sanctification from lived experience. Because (historical, material) life is where sanctification and service meet, it is a necessary component of both. As Jon Sobrino states, “The intuition that has gradually forced itself upon our perceptions is that without historical, real life there can be no such thing as spiritual life” (Spirituality and Liberation, 4).
Privilege provides us power in a way that isolates spiritual experience, but the poor and oppressed remind us that life itself—and not just sanctification—is a powerful act of God. We exert our power over our poor neighbors, in its most benign shape, as a form of isolation. Rather than being empowered by the Spirit to love we tend to further entrench ourselves from the poor, and hence from the God that stands with and for the poor of the earth. This is why Jon Sobrino contends that some histories need to be opposed, namely the ones that serve their own power: “Christian holiness is nothing more nor less than likeness to Jesus, [which can be] in opposition to historical realities, in opposition to objective sin” (Spirituality and Liberation, 128-9). The impoverished majority have historical realities of oppression—powerlessness. Is our sanctification in jeopardy as we exert our power as distance between ourselves and the immanence of God with the poor?
We (the privileged) need the poor, not to receive our service, which ostensibly validates our sanctification; rather we need the poor because the poor teach us that a sanctified life requires a) access to actual life, and b) that we oppose oppressive histories. “Poverty is something more than material. Life is at stake—the life of my neighbor… the feeble, debilitated bodies of the poor [give] us access to the material world from within a spiritual perspective” (Spirituality and Liberation, 55). We need the poor because in the struggle for life, the poor collapse the chasm between the “spiritual” and “material,” which indicts our privilege (distance from them) and demands our power to be used to the end of opposing oppression (service).
My (Ryan) experience is that Hip-Hop music is a forum well suited to teach us this. Artists in this genre both expose the culprits of oppression and acknowledge that life is at once historical (material) and spiritual. Let us consider two songs, one that I recently heard playing on the radio and the other a faint memory from the 90’s. I will provide a sampling of the lyrics and then a brief comment on their importance to sanctified believers. (Disclaimer: we do not necessarily hold the same opinions as these artists, nor do we condone the use of profane and derogatory language that the following artists use. As we engage in the world in which we live, however, such songs as these express the culture, environment and setting in which the Gospel of Jesus Christ is lived out. The mission of the Center is to step into the brokenness of our world, which is brought to life through the following lyrics, to bring healing, justice and reconciliation from a loving and merciful God.)
“Soul Survivor,” by Young Jeezy (Featuring Akon)
Chorus:
If you lookin’ for me I’ll be on the block
With my thang cocked possibly sittin’ on a drop, now
‘Cause, I’m a rida, yeah
Yea I’ma soul survivor, yeah
‘Cause everybody know the game don’t stop
Tryin’ to make it to the top for you’re a*** get popped now
If you a rida, yeah
Yea I’ma soul survivor, yeah
Verse:
We let the doves do it for us
We don’t cry tears, that’s right
Real ****** don’t budge
When mail man got his time
He shot birds at the judge, yeah
I’m knee deep in the game
So when it’s time to re-up
I’m knee deep in the cane, ****
Real talk, look, I’m tellin’ you Mayne
If you get jammed up don’t mention my name, no
Forgive me Lord, I know I ain’t livin’ right
Gotta feed the block
****** starvin’, they got appetites, ayy
And this is everyday, it never gets old
Thought I was a juvenile stuck to the G-code
This ain’t a rap song, ***** this is my life
And if the hood was a battlefield then I earned stripes, yeah
Young Jeezy and Akon, in this song, assert what many have claimed before them: Hip-Hop is the lyrical outlet for a suffering generation of black Americans. The young, black, urban American experience is like war. Not unlike the lives of many young Americans, these men experience the spectrum of human emotions: anger, sadness, angst, pride. But for these men, the “hood” is where one fears for their life, where “cocked” guns are the norm, where survival is a complex milieu of hunger (“gotta feed the block”), violence (“with my thang cocked”), incarceration (“when mail man got his time”), macho-ism (“real ***** don’t budge), and drug dealing (“when it’s time to re-up”).
Strikingly, Young Jeezy and Akon don’t understand themselves as only surviving, as if surviving is the perpetuity of physical life. Instead, they are soul survivors; their struggle to stay alive is quite literally a “physio-spiritual” challenge. The conflation of “soul” and “survivor,” as self-identity (“I’m a soul survivor”) and as survival strategy (“letting the doves do it for us”), is a profound theological statement: the suffering of God’s children is at once a material and spiritual reality (Exodus 3:7). Consider the next song.
“Still I Rise” by 2Pac.
Dear Lord
As we down here, struggle for as long as we know
In search of a paradise to touch (my ***** Johnny J)
Dreams are dreams, and reality seems to be the only place to go
The only place for us
I know, try to make the best of bad situations
Seems to be my life’s story
Ain’t no glory in pain, a soldier’s story in vain
And can’t nobody live this life for me
It’s a ride y’all, a long hard ride
….
Pistol in my hand, this cruel world can do without me
How can I survive? Got me askin white Jesus
will a ***** live or die, cause the Lord can’t see us
in the deep dark clouds of the projects, ain’t no sunshine
No sunny days and we only playED sometimes
When everybody’s sleepin
I open my window jump to the streets and get to creepin
I can live or die, hope I get some money ‘fore I’m gone
I’m only 19, I’m tryin to hustle on my own
on the spot where everybody and they pops tryin to slang rocks
I’d rather go to college, but this is where the game stops
Don’t get it wrong cause it’s always on, from dusk to dawn
You can buy rocks glocks or a HEROINBONG
You can ask my man Ishmael Reed
Keep my nine heateR all the time this is how we grind
Meet up at the cemetary then get smoked out, pass the weed *****
That Hennessey’ll keep me keyed *****
Everywhere I go ****** holla at me, “Keep it real G”
And my reply tilL they kill me
Act up if you feel me, I was born not to make it but I did
The tribulations of a ghetto kid, still I rise
Here, again, we read (hear) many of the same cathartic language. 2Pac is in a war of survival, violently fending off enemies, wielding lethal weapons, and trying to meet his basic physical needs. This song more so emphasizes the role of illegal substances in the plight of young black men’s lives. The imagery suggests that the drugs and violence create such “deep dark clouds of the projects” that one has no vision of a different future, hopeless. The “ghetto” context is so oppressive and dark that the eyes of God are even without focus (“Lord can’t see us”), nor can the luminous power of sun penetrate the cloud of death (“ain’t no sunshine/no sunny days”).
But even in this hell-on-earth experience, where death is a better option than living (“this cruel world could do without me”) and he’s destined to fail (“I was born not to make it”), 2Pac’s material reality is shot through with the presence of God. 2Pac is isolated and likely depressed (“can’t nobody live this life for me”) but it’s the immanence of the divine that enables 2Pac to succeed (“still I rise”). This is most explicitly affirmed in the opening prayer. The struggle for life (“try to make the best of a bad situation / …a long hard ride”) begins by acknowledging that resistance of oppressive realities is beyond the material and finite work of human hands; God is necessary and therefore invoked (“Dear Lord / As we down here, struggle for as long as we know”). In 2Pac’s suffering the spiritual is physical and vice versa (“I search of a paradise to touch”).
It has become clear from these songs the struggle for life is a sanctified struggle because the power of the Holy Spirit is manifest in concrete historical realities—the manifest realities of daily bread and daily safety. There is no chasm between the spiritual and the physical. The “physical” is “spiritual” and yet it’s not promised; all power that is wielded is given by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, survival in the face of death is an act of God.
Hip-Hop and by extension the historical realities of the poor in urban America teach us that “it is impossible to live with spirit, unless that spirit becomes flesh” (Spirituality and Liberation, 4). Sanctification cannot be a spiritual “act of God” that ramifies in our subsequent material lives, as this denies that life and service are not “follow-ups” to sanctification but are constitutive parts of a life perfected in (the very acts of) love. Sanctification is “perfect love,” which is to say, the power of the Spirit in flesh—incarnational.
We need the message of our Hip-Hop brothers and sisters because they help us know to what end the sanctified believer is empowered. We’re empowered to be participants in the work of a new creation in which poverty and oppression do not exist. Therefore, we’re empowered now to live on behalf of the poor in the belief and hope of the resurrection—“Still I Rise.” To serve and live for the poor is to experience the power of the Spirit in sanctification. Serving the poor and therefore affirming the struggle for survival is non-negotiable, lest we not experience sanctification—God’s fullness of blessing (Romans 15:29).
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Keeping God at a Distance: Poverty and Grace
“Inscribed on the very heart of God’s grace is the rule that we can be its recipients only if we do not resist being made into its agents; what happens to us must be done by us.”
-Miroslav Volf
Every year at Christmas, my (Eric) Mom and Dad would pick up gifts for children through the Angel Tree Program at our church. I remember pouring over the lists of possible gifts we could buy, and I was always thankful that I was a part of a family that was giving beyond our familial boundaries. I assume that for many of us Christmas is a time that we give more; we recognize our abundance and want to share it with others, even if only for a short season.
After all, Christmas is the season of giving. As Christians, we recognize God’s gift of Christ for the world, “who did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Phil. 2:6-7). In this same passage, Paul admonishes us to then have the same attitude of Christ. As Christ is in the world, so ought we be in the world—servants. And so, gift giving has become a ritual that recognizes God’s gift of God’s self on behalf of the world’s brokenness. Christ is the gift of grace for us.
Over the past few weeks, I (Eric) listened to some friends talk about their recent experience with giving through the Salvation Army. Each year, the Salvation Army compiles a list of families who cannot afford giving gifts to their children and distributes this list to churches and organizations willing to help. These friends “adopted” one of the families and picked up everything off the list. A few days after the gifts were distributed, they received a phone call from the Salvation Army coordinator inquiring about the gifts that were given. Apparently, the family who had received the gifts called to complain that there were not enough presents, didn’t like the ones given, and was left unsatisfied.
The news hit pretty hard. They wondered whether they left something out, whether it was their fault. Then incredulity hit. How could this family have the nerve to call and say that the gifts were inadequate? How ungrateful! How rude! How self-entitled! Then one of my friends said, “The worst part is that this family just stripped me from the joy of giving. I no longer have that good feeling.”
I think we can sympathize with this position. Anyone who has worked for any amount of time with a social organization trying to combat poverty has come face to face with an array of responses, from sincere gratitude to outright rejection. Sometimes grace is received and sometimes it is even rejected.
Yet, how do we respond to grace rejected? What happens when the gifts of time, money, and friendship are trampled underfoot? Is our response to no longer offer our love and grace? Sometimes we think that if they cannot accept what we have to offer then it is better not to offer it. We would rather give to those who are willing to accept it, we reason with ourselves. In this scheme, though, our level of “charity” is in direct proportion to their level of “work.” Do they deserve these gifts? In this way, grace is no longer grace.
We ought to have the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus.
John, in opening his gospel narrative, explains the incarnation in terms of giving and receiving. “He came to that which was his own and his own did not receive him” (John 1:11). It feels like an echo directly from the Prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures in which The Lord tells Samuel that God alone has been rejected by the people (1 Samuel 8). This rejection of God’s gift culminates in the ultimate rejection: death on a cross. Miroslav Volf writes of this moment, “When God sets out to embrace the enemy, the result is the cross. On the cross the dancing circle of self-giving and mutually in-dwelling divine persons opens up for the enemy…We, the others—we the enemies—are embraced by the divine persons who love us with the same love with which” the divine persons love one another in communion (Exclusion and Embrace, 129).
The story of scripture is the story of a rejected Deity who refuses to be rejected. Grace is given despite the receiver’s response; God’s very nature is to continue showing grace and forgiveness. Like the Father of the Prodigal Son, God anticipates the return of the lost son, keeping a watchful eye on the distant horizon. Likewise, grace can be the only truly Christian response to the rejection of grace, just as Christ-the-Servant gave all the way to the cross.
There is a temptation here: that we would believe we have a “thing”—food, clothing, shelter, but namely, grace—like a present, which we must continue to give, even in the face of rejection. But that “thing” is not a thing at all, as if we have what the poor need, a commodity for giving. Christ was full (John 1:14), not because he was in possession of a “thing” called grace and therefore different than those in need, but that he could also be emptied (Phil. 2:7) and enveloped with humanity in the movement of God’s love. “Inscribed on the very heart of God’s grace is the rule that we can be its recipients only if we do not resist being made into its agents” (Exclusion and Embrace, 129). We are not only the recipients of grace alongside the poor but we must continue being the extension of God’s first act of love. We are not the handlers of a gift but agents within a Divine drama of love in the face of rejection. In this way, agents who find themselves within the body of Christ give of themselves in such a way that creates space for receiving all into the life of love.
In such a drama—hopefully one that comes into focus during the Christmas season of giving—the lines of social and economic division dissipate and friendship and communion can be restored. But when the drama is reduced to the exchange of gifts, division re-emerges; when God’s grace is owned and its recipients are not transformed into agents, communion is severed (“This family just stripped me from the joy of giving”). And when the rejection of grace is reciprocated with resentment; God’s drama of servant-love found in Christ Jesus is distant. Alternatively, when grace upon grace is given despite circumstance, the community of believers begin to understand that when needs are met we are all blessed together.
-Miroslav Volf
Every year at Christmas, my (Eric) Mom and Dad would pick up gifts for children through the Angel Tree Program at our church. I remember pouring over the lists of possible gifts we could buy, and I was always thankful that I was a part of a family that was giving beyond our familial boundaries. I assume that for many of us Christmas is a time that we give more; we recognize our abundance and want to share it with others, even if only for a short season.
After all, Christmas is the season of giving. As Christians, we recognize God’s gift of Christ for the world, “who did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Phil. 2:6-7). In this same passage, Paul admonishes us to then have the same attitude of Christ. As Christ is in the world, so ought we be in the world—servants. And so, gift giving has become a ritual that recognizes God’s gift of God’s self on behalf of the world’s brokenness. Christ is the gift of grace for us.
Over the past few weeks, I (Eric) listened to some friends talk about their recent experience with giving through the Salvation Army. Each year, the Salvation Army compiles a list of families who cannot afford giving gifts to their children and distributes this list to churches and organizations willing to help. These friends “adopted” one of the families and picked up everything off the list. A few days after the gifts were distributed, they received a phone call from the Salvation Army coordinator inquiring about the gifts that were given. Apparently, the family who had received the gifts called to complain that there were not enough presents, didn’t like the ones given, and was left unsatisfied.
The news hit pretty hard. They wondered whether they left something out, whether it was their fault. Then incredulity hit. How could this family have the nerve to call and say that the gifts were inadequate? How ungrateful! How rude! How self-entitled! Then one of my friends said, “The worst part is that this family just stripped me from the joy of giving. I no longer have that good feeling.”
I think we can sympathize with this position. Anyone who has worked for any amount of time with a social organization trying to combat poverty has come face to face with an array of responses, from sincere gratitude to outright rejection. Sometimes grace is received and sometimes it is even rejected.
Yet, how do we respond to grace rejected? What happens when the gifts of time, money, and friendship are trampled underfoot? Is our response to no longer offer our love and grace? Sometimes we think that if they cannot accept what we have to offer then it is better not to offer it. We would rather give to those who are willing to accept it, we reason with ourselves. In this scheme, though, our level of “charity” is in direct proportion to their level of “work.” Do they deserve these gifts? In this way, grace is no longer grace.
We ought to have the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus.
John, in opening his gospel narrative, explains the incarnation in terms of giving and receiving. “He came to that which was his own and his own did not receive him” (John 1:11). It feels like an echo directly from the Prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures in which The Lord tells Samuel that God alone has been rejected by the people (1 Samuel 8). This rejection of God’s gift culminates in the ultimate rejection: death on a cross. Miroslav Volf writes of this moment, “When God sets out to embrace the enemy, the result is the cross. On the cross the dancing circle of self-giving and mutually in-dwelling divine persons opens up for the enemy…We, the others—we the enemies—are embraced by the divine persons who love us with the same love with which” the divine persons love one another in communion (Exclusion and Embrace, 129).
The story of scripture is the story of a rejected Deity who refuses to be rejected. Grace is given despite the receiver’s response; God’s very nature is to continue showing grace and forgiveness. Like the Father of the Prodigal Son, God anticipates the return of the lost son, keeping a watchful eye on the distant horizon. Likewise, grace can be the only truly Christian response to the rejection of grace, just as Christ-the-Servant gave all the way to the cross.
There is a temptation here: that we would believe we have a “thing”—food, clothing, shelter, but namely, grace—like a present, which we must continue to give, even in the face of rejection. But that “thing” is not a thing at all, as if we have what the poor need, a commodity for giving. Christ was full (John 1:14), not because he was in possession of a “thing” called grace and therefore different than those in need, but that he could also be emptied (Phil. 2:7) and enveloped with humanity in the movement of God’s love. “Inscribed on the very heart of God’s grace is the rule that we can be its recipients only if we do not resist being made into its agents” (Exclusion and Embrace, 129). We are not only the recipients of grace alongside the poor but we must continue being the extension of God’s first act of love. We are not the handlers of a gift but agents within a Divine drama of love in the face of rejection. In this way, agents who find themselves within the body of Christ give of themselves in such a way that creates space for receiving all into the life of love.
In such a drama—hopefully one that comes into focus during the Christmas season of giving—the lines of social and economic division dissipate and friendship and communion can be restored. But when the drama is reduced to the exchange of gifts, division re-emerges; when God’s grace is owned and its recipients are not transformed into agents, communion is severed (“This family just stripped me from the joy of giving”). And when the rejection of grace is reciprocated with resentment; God’s drama of servant-love found in Christ Jesus is distant. Alternatively, when grace upon grace is given despite circumstance, the community of believers begin to understand that when needs are met we are all blessed together.
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