Helpful ministry resource: Organic Community

This past weekend I read Organic Community by Joseph Myers. The book was released in 2007, so I’m probably a bit late to the party, but after breezing through this compelling book I have to say better late than never. 

Myers’ book is separated by chapters that describe eight different characteristics of an environment in which community develops organically — patterns (descriptive, not prescriptive), participation (individual, not representative), measurement (story, not bottom-line), growth (sustainable, not bankrupt), power (revolving, not positional), coordination (collaboration, not cooperation), partners (edit-ability, not accountability), and language (verb-centric, not noun-centric).

While Myers stresses that he’s not writing a “how-to” book, his book is filled with examples that are practical enough to be used by most anyone, never slipping into ideas that are either too vague or too specific to transcend context.

One of my biggest disappointments with a lot of the church planting or church model books that circulate is the theological views from which they’ve been written. Myers’ book, however, is rooted in sound theology. His central point is to move away from a “master plan” approach to ministry, toward responsible and flexible preparation that  partners with God to engage possibilities and develop the future.

Overall, the book was quite a helpful challenge to me — reminding me that people are to be held with an open hand. They may or may not fit cleanly into ministry models and strategies, and in those cases it’s the models that need to budge.

The combination of practical suggestion and thoughtful theology in Organic Community was refreshing enough that I’m adding the book to my recommended “curriculum” for people with whom I’m ministering (along with Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point and Tim Keel’s Intuitive Leadership).

Reviewing Wright’s Justification: Chapter Two

In the second chapter of Justification, “Rules of Engagement,” Wright sets out by saying that if we allow books like Ephesians and Colossians equal place to Romans and Galatians – letting each of these canonical texts inform the others on a basis of full mutuality – we arrive at “nothing short of a (very Jewish) cosmic soteriology.” Within Christ the world finds its summation, and now one family of Jews and Gentiles becomes “Christ’s body for the world.” (pgs 43-44)

Wright isn’t calling readers to prioritize Ephesians and Colossians over Romans and Galatians, but rather to hear Romans and Galatians outside of the old perspective by which our interpretation has been conditioned. Because Ephesians and Colossians have never fit nearly into the old perspective (Wright notes the Lutheran suspicion toward Ephesians, in particular), if we use them as a starting point we find that Romans and Galatians don’t actually fit into the old perspective either.

Immediately following that point regarding canonical conversation, Wright begins this top-notch tangent:

Supposing that had been the vision that gripped the imagination of the Reformers in the sixteenth century; supposing they had had, engraved on their hearts, that close and intimate combination of (a) saving grace accomplishing redemption in the once-and-for-all death of the Messiah and putting it into operation through faith, without works and (b) the proleptic unity of all humankind in Christ as the sign of God’s coming reign over the whole world; and supposing they had then, and only then, gone back to Romans and Galatians – the entire history of the Western church, and with it the world, might have been different. No split between Romans 3:28 and Romans 3:29. No marginalization of Romans 9-11. No scrunching of the subtle and important arguments about Jew-plus-Gentile unity in Galatians 3 onto the Procrustean bed of an abstract antithesis between faith and works. No insisting, in either letter, that ‘the law’ was just a ’system’ that applied to everyone, and that ‘works of the law’ were the moral requirements that encouraged people to earn their own salvation by moral effort. In short, the new perspective might have begun [at the Reformation]. Or perhaps we should say the new perspective did begin – when Ephesians was written. No wonder Lutheran scholars have been so suspicious of it. But why should that apply to conservative readers for whom it is every bit as much Holy Writ as Romans or Galatians?

“In particular, what Scripture actually says must be brought into creative dialogue with tradition. This is standard fare in beginner-level doctrine courses, and ‘conservative’ churches within the Protestant tradition have always insisted that they are ‘biblical,’ whereas other churches down the road are in thrall to human traditions of this or that kind. But here is the problem, which I hinted at in the opening chapter. Again and again, when faced with both new perspective and some of the other features of more recent Pauline scholarship, ‘conservative’ churches have reached not for Scripture but for tradition, as with Piper’s complaint that I am sweeping away fifteen hundred years of the church’s understanding. Of course, Piper himself wants to sweep away most of the same fifteen hundred years, especially anything from medieval Catholicism, and to rely instead on the narrow strand which comes through Calvin and the Westminster Confession. But whichever way you look at it, the objection is odd.” (pgs 44-45)

Wright then has at it with Piper’s selective ignorance of first-century Judaism. Piper claims that study of the first century context can “distort and silence what the New Testament writers intended to say,” an alarming claim he tries to support by saying that first-century extra-biblical literature has not been studied to the same extent as the New Testament, and so we lack the contextual awareness we bring to the Scriptures. (pg 48)

I can feel my mind going numb thinking about that. So the reason we can’t understand the extra-biblical literature is because we haven’t studied it enough – and that’s why we are wasting our time to study and emphasize it? Seriously? Meanwhile we do have a contextual awareness of the Bible – we just can’t muddy that by studying… its context. Piper goes as far to say that, in terms of word studies, we cannot know “how words were used in that world” outside of their biblical use. Wright responds by noting that Piper’s mindset, “seems to me dramatically to overstate the case.” (pg 49)

Conversely, Wright’s response might be an exercise in dramatic understatement. Even someone who disagrees with Piper about some or many things should be able to acknowledge that he’s likely above-average in terms of intelligence (it’s difficult to lead – directly and indirectly – as many people as Piper does without being a sharp person). Still, Piper’s attitude regarding the Bible’s first-century context is intellectually insulting, and comes across as hiding the facts for the sake of posturing an argument. It demonstrates a desperation that one would expect from a person who is trying to defend ground in a losing battle. Which then begs the question: is Piper really ready to die on the hill of his own Calvinism, or is his life and ministry about something bigger and better, the very topic of Paul’s obsession. (A witty person might ask Piper to not waste his life…) To hide or diminish the facts we can glean from first-century context to defend a philosophy of sixteenth-century origin is not the marker of a truth-seeker. If Piper is in the business of truth-seeking, he had better re-examine his mentality and motives toward the contextual setting of Scripture.

Wright devotes several pages of his second full chapter bemoaning Piper’s shirking off of first-century context in favor of a Protestant-originated interpretation of Paul, and Piper’s attitude that his is the “ordinary” interpretation, held by his oft-cited “ordinary folk.” The Bishop demonstrates his concern:

“It is worrying to find Piper encouraging readers to go back, not to the first century, but to ‘the Christian renewal movements of sixteenth-century Europe.’ To describe that period as offering the ‘historic roots’ of evangelicalism is profoundly disturbing. Proper evangelicals are rooted in Scripture, and above all in Jesus Christ to whom Scripture witnesses, and nowhere else.” (pg 51)

Reviewing Wright’s Justification: Introduction and Chapter One

Justification, N.T. Wright’s latest book, is the Bishop’s seemingly irritated response to John Piper, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minn., and a figurehead of the “neo-Reformed” sect of Christianity. Wright clarifies that, already balancing a full schedule of pastoral and academic assignments, writing a rebuttal to Piper (who himself wrote The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright after Wright’s Paul: In Fresh Perspective) is necessary because of the subject matter and its implications. 

This isn’t back-and-forth for the sake of getting petty or something about which Christians should “agree to disagree.” To Wright, there’s simply too much riding on justification.

“. . . the question is about the nature and scope of salvation. Many Christians in the Western world, for many centuries now, have seen ’salvation’ as meaning ‘going to heaven when you die.’. . . In the Bible, salvation is not God’s rescue of people from the world but the rescue of the world itself. . .  Some Christians have used terms like justification and salvation as though they were almost interchangeable, but this is clearly untrue to Scripture itself.” (pgs 10-11)

Wright cites Piper’s theology of justification ignoring Paul is four main areas: the work of Jesus as Israel’s Messiah, its covenant nature (bringing about the end of exile), the lawcourt metaphor (in which God finds Himself “in favor” of those who follow Jesus; not merely allowing Jesus to transpose his moral achievement to his followers), and eschatology (a full narrative understanding of what God is doing in the entire world). (pgs 11-12)

“What’s All This About, and Why Does it Matter?” is the first full chapter of Justification, Wright comes out of the gate with frustration that Piper and similar theologians demonstrate a concern for “God’s glory” while espousing an eisogeted theology of justification that is centered on individuals finding their ticket of escape from the world. Wright does not discount the value of personal salvation but scoffs at a concocted theology that places mankind at the center of the universe (with no regard for a more universal eschatological plan). (pg 23) 

“. . . the real point is, I believe, that the salvation of human beings, though of course extremely important for those human beings, is part of a larger purpose. God is rescuing us from the shipwreck of the world, not so that we can sit back and put our feet up in his company, but so that we can be part of his plan to remake the world.” (pg 24)

This is no petty argument or nit-picking theological tangent. The nature and scope of salvation have been misstated, leading people to a Westernized individualistic construction in which the “sinner’s prayer” is an end-all-be-all ticket to otherworldliness, with little or no place give to participation in God’s great exilic work in the universe. Of the overall aim for Justification, Wright says, “I hope that the next generation, without preexisting reputations to lose and positions to maintain, will get the message.”

Piper, as well as some early reviews of this book, have accused Wright of constructing a “confusing gospel.” Wright responds to such a mentality toward him and the New Perspective:

“Sometimes, faced with a jigsaw puzzle, one is tempted to make it apparently easier by ignoring half the pieces. Put them back into the box! I can’t cope with that many! The result is of course that the puzzle is made harder, not easier. However, one can imagine someone, having made this initial disastrous move, trying to remedy the situation by brute force, joining together pieces that don’t quite fit in order to create some sort of picture anyway.” (pg 31)

The old perspective on Paul tossed out critical “pieces” of Paul’s theology: “Abraham and the promises God made to him, incorporation into Christ, resurrection and new creation, resurrection and new creation, the coming together of Jews and Gentiles, eschatology in the sense of God’s purpose-driven plan through history, and, not least, the Holy Spirit and the formation of Christian character.” (pgs 31-32)

Wright calls out Piper for completely sidelining passage such as Romans 2.25-29 and Romans 10.6-9 in his treatment of Paul and for picking out Paul’s Genesis 15 reference without consideration for the meaning of the full text toward which Paul was directing his readers. “When Paul quotes Scripture, he regularly intends to refer, not simply to the actual words quoted, but to the whole passage.” (pgs 32-33)

Of the impact of a narrative, covenantal approach to Scripture, the Bishop says:

“God had a single plan all along through which he intended to rescue the world and the human race, and that this single plan was centered upon the call of Israel, a call which Paul saw coming to fruition in Israel’s representative, the Messiah. Read Paul like this, and you can keep all the jigsaw pieces on the table.” (pg 35, italics his)

Batterson sends us after the Goose

I bought and read Mark Batterson’s Wild Goose Chase this past weekend, to read for my own pleasure and to determine how well it would serve as a book study for a small group setting. After reading, I’m convinced that a small group setting is actually the best climate for this book to impact readers.

In Wild Goose Chase, Batterson, the pastor of Washington D.C.’s National Community Church, explains to Christians that Jesus did not direct us into a life of safe spiritual disciplines within the confines of the church, but a radical and unpredictable journey of constant wonderment and redirection. In a day when messages of “centering” and “balance” are the buzz within Christian circles and greater culture (and there is an appropriate context for those messages), Batterson takes a much different angle – calling Christians to exchange comfort and stability for the “responsible irresponsibility” involved with following the leading of God’s Spirit. 

(And let me just say that, for a book about the “adventure” of the faith, Batterson avoids the primitive gender-specific language that plagues most books of similar focus. While Batterson sees faith as a high-octane thrill, he puts it in a way that people of both genders and all personalities can appreciate.)

Batterson’s book is filled with examples from his own life – from relinquishing a big-time college scholarship to a failed church-planting venture to the challenges that face his multi-site church which meets in movie theaters across the nation’s capitol. His church attracts many twentysomethings and single young adults who are facing the “quarter-life crisis,” and that same demographic is the optimum audience for Wild Goose Chase. 

There are points in this book – especially in the epilogue – when the writing moves into too many pithy motivational sound-bytes (think Leonard Sweet in his over-the-top moments), but those instances are not so frequent as to render Batterson insincere. The language of the book is such that it can engage people with graduate degrees or those with only a high school education, making it a versatile book for churches to use (especially in a small group format).

Wild Goose Chase isn’t a seminary textbook, or a distinctly theological book. It’s a faith-building challenge to those who are in the fold of Christian faith. At the same time, Batterson is saying things that all Christians need to hear—that our call as Christians is to follow the Spirit of God into the dangerous places, tasks, and relationships of our day.

 

 

Reviewing JWSC by Rob Bell and Don Golden: Chapter Two

The second chapter of JWSC, “Get Down Your Harps,” begins where Chapter One left off, in Babylon. Bell and Golden utilize the language of Psalms 137.1-4, where on the rivers of Babylon the Israelites hung their harps and wept. Bell and Golden circle the Israelites’ weeping as a time of communicating with their God, who “always hears the cry of the oppressed.” (pgs. 52-53)

It seems that exile is a wonderful place to consider exodus – for yourself and for others.

Exodus has been exchanged for exile, and there are consequences. But in the middle of the tears, the Israelites “begin to dream again.” With the kingdom of comfort relinquished, the prophets rose up with language of a new – a second – exodus. The authors explain Isaiah’s prophecy as a call to end all exile – not just of one people, not just from Egypt – that will address the exile from Eden. Things are moving “from the particular to the universal.” (pgs. 56-57, 59)

The language of exodus reappears, the authors say. Isaiah talks about those in the “wilderness” preparing “the way” in the desert – clearly exodus language. The context of Sinai is obvious as Hosea describes the rescue of an unfaithful spouse: this is geared toward the infidelity of the marriage at Sinai. According to the authors, it is on the rivers of Babylon that the prophets receive a vision, a “re-imagination,” of grace. (pgs. 58-62)

While a return to Jerusalem is their hope, the prophets understand that it’s completely possible for favor to be squandered all over again. As Bell as Golden say:

“That’s always the danger, isn’t it?

That we’ll be broken,

our empires will collapse,

we’ll cry out for help,

and when that help comes,

when we get back on our feet,

when there’s money in the account again,

and things are back to how they were,

the danger is that once we get it back -

whatever ‘it’ is -

we’ll just forget what happened.” (pg. 63)

It is good to be familiar with the whole of Bell’s work and the well of academia from which he draws when reading Chapter Two. When he and Golden write about this move from the particular to the universal, it’s a matter of theological life-and-death to understand the role of the particular in the universal.

I wish the authors would have been more clear about the ways in which the Abrahamic Covenant plays out in this expansion of exodus. It is through the particular that the specific happens; through a New Testament lens we know that salvation is from the Jews, and the whole world may be grafted into the olive tree. One of my critiques of JWSC is that the Abrahamic Covenant could have been better incorporated into the flow of the story, if only to squelch misinterpretation of what Bell and Golden are proposing theologically.

Chapter Two finishes with the call for Israelites to “pick up [their] harps.” The prophets dream of another son of David, one who will make right the things Solomon abandoned. A prophet like Moses (a prophet of exodus), one who will establish the house of David forever. The suspended promises will be fulfilled. (pgs. 68-72)

One more quick note from Chapter One of JWSC

I found this in the endnotes, and thought it was worth adding to what I’ve already posted about Chapter One:

“People are reluctant to ascribe human characteristics to God, such as suffering or searching, because it implies that God changes or is incomplete. But a God who suffers over the human condition and searches for a body to relieve that suffering is a critical aspect of Jewish theology. Abraham Joshua Heschel titles the whole of his philosophy of Judaism, “God in Search of Man,” claiming that “not only does man need God, God is also in need of man. It is such knowledge that makes the soul of Israel immune to despair” (Heschel, God in Search of Man, 196).”

(Bell and Golden, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, 194)

Reviewing JWSC by Rob Bell and Don Golden: Chapter One and a long aside

In their first full chapter, “The Cry of the Oppressed,” Bell and Golden try to establish with their readers the importance of Exodus – the book and the concept – as a continuous motif throughout the entirely of both Testaments of Scripture. It’s noted that the Old Testament refers to the God “who brought you out of Egypt” thirty-two times, while only referring to God as “Creator” six times. The book of Exodus depicts a God who hears the cries of enslaved Israelites. It’s clear that God is participating in a suffering humanity even before Sinai or Calvary, even if humanity’s “east of Eden” state is not as things should be. (pgs. 22-24, 187)

Chapter One establishes Egypt as the result of systemic sin, beginning with the Fall and immediately progressing to the murder of Abel, to Lamech’s lamentation that descendants of Cain deeply feel the impact of his violence (Gen. 4.24), and finally to an entire nation operating out of violence and greed – those “east of Eden” impulses. To Bell and Golden, Egypt (used as an image as well as that place in that time) is an “anti-kingdom,” “what happens when sin builds up a head of steam.” Egypt is an example of how “human nature bends toward using power to preserve privilege at the expense of the weak.” (pgs. 25-27)

JWSC flows with the biblical narrative as God sends Moses to challenge Pharaoh and lead the Israelites to exodus, out of Egypt and straight toward Sinai. The role – the importance and effectiveness – of Sinai cannot be underestimated here. To quote Bell and Golden:

“It’s here at Sinai, that God speaks.

God hasn’t talked to a group of people since Eden. Things have been quiet, an eerie sort of silence. There have been exchanges with individuals – such as Abraham and Noah – but not with the masses.

So when Moses tells the people to ‘prepare yourselves’ and then leads them out of the camp ‘to meet with God,’ this is about way more than a group of wilderness wanderers gathering for a message from the heavens. This is about humanity estranged from its maker. This is about the primal distance that exists between the divine and the human, the gap deep in the soul of humanity. Sinai is an answer to God’s question to Adam, ‘Where are you?’ This moment at Sinai is about the reversal of the consequences of Eden.” (pgs. 28-29)

The coverage and explanation of Sinai is one of the gems in JWSC. Sinai is viewed not as just some type of covenantal pacifier, but as a very Edenic occurrence in a very “east of Eden” world.

JWSC explains Sinai as an invitation to marriage as well as an invitation to be priests and a holy nation. Bell and Golden explain this as “an invitation to show the world who this God is and this God is like.” The need for this priestly, holy nation is connected to justice and human suffering. To quote, “God needs [this flesh-and-blood body of people] so that Pharaoh will know just who this God is he’s dealing with and how this God acts in the world.” (pgs. 30-32)

The authors succeed in explaining the Ten Commandments as right, positive, “pro-” instruction rather than the restrictive prohibition generally portrayed when the Ten Commandments are preached today.

The Commandments are an answer to Egypt, the authors say. It’s for this reason that the Commandments are given by “The LORD your God, who brought you ought of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (Gen. 20.2). There is a context of relationship for this instruction; God is making Israel everything a nation should be, everything that Egypt was not. God is instructing the Israelites, who were dehumanized in Egypt, how to be human in the right way. (pgs. 32-33)

Bell and Golden explain that the first commandment, to “have no other gods” (Gen. 20.3), is about remembering their own story of being liberated by this God. It’s through the context of God in relationship that they (and we today) learn and remember who God is and who we are. To infer on Bell and Golden’s words: by remembering that their God is the sort of God who liberates the oppressed, they will not only understand more about God and themselves (as formerly oppressed), but how they should represent this God to the oppressed and the oppressors around them. This ties directly into the second commandment that they mustn’t create idols. Why avoid the idol-making? Because they themselves are God’s images, His eikons, in the world. (pgs. 33-34)

The third commandment is a continuation of this stream of instruction, noting that the Israelites should not misuse God’s name. The authors note that the Hebrew word translated “misuse” may also be translated “carry.” They are to carry God’s name – His reputation and personality – to the world rightly.

Bell and Golden’s explanation for the Commandments as anti-Egypt really peaks with their description of the fourth commandment:

“The fourth commandment is to take a Sabbath, a day each week, and not do any work. In Egypt, they worked every day without a break, being treated as objects to be exploited, not people. The Sabbath is the command to take a day a week to remind themselves that they aren’t in Egypt anymore, that their value doesn’t come from how many bricks they produce. Their significance comes from the God who rescued them, the God who loves them.” (pg. 34)

Their value is not in how many bricks they produce. Their labor does not define them. They have value that has been deposited to them as human beings, and that inherent worth (that God loves them) is completely independent of their accomplishments and exploits.

JWSC leaves the fourth commandment talk there, but I wish the authors would have done more with it later in the book, especially when explaining how the contemporary Church is in exile. (***See the long aside at the end of this post.)

In all, Bell and Golden do a fantastic job of explaining just how life-giving and shalom-outlining the Commandments were for those at Sinai. The Commandments are laced with “echoes of Egypt”; they are about faith identity just as much as they’re about conduct and behavior. As the authors write, “It’s as if God is saying, ‘The thing that has happened to you – go make it happen for others.’” (pg. 35)

Chapter One progresses from Sinai to Egypt and then, generations later, to Jerusalem, where Bell and Golden explain what went wrong in Solomon’s reign. Solomon inherits the kingdom of the promised land, and comes into a great amount of wealth and power. What did Solomon do with his power? He became like Pharaoh.

Solomon used slaves to construct buildings. He begins to build an empire of wealth that is so big that his priority turns to building the many military bases necessary for preserving his empire of wealth. He goes back into Egypt to gather more horses and chariots, which Moses explicitly said not to do (Deut. 17.16-17). Not only that, but Solomon is importing and exporting chariots to other nations – as Bell and Golden put it, Solomon turns into an arms dealer. (pgs. 39-41)

“In just a few generations, the oppressed have become the oppressors… Solomon has created an empire of indifference. He has forgotten the story of his ancestors… Solomon isn’t maintaining justice; he’s now perpetuating the very injustice his people once needed redemption from and, in the process, building a kingdom of comfort.” (pg. 39)

Solomon isn’t doing things the Sinai way, Bell and Golden explain. In their words, “Jerusalem is the new Egypt, Solomon is the new Pharaoh, and Sinai has been forgotten.” (pg. 46)

Enter exile.

One of the highlights of Bell and Golden’s book is their robust explanation for exile. JWSC explains it as follows:

“There’s a word for this. A word for what happens when you still have the power and the wealth and the influence, and yet in some profound way you’ve blown it because you’ve forgotten why you were given it in the first place.

The word is exile.

Exile is when you forget your story.

Exile isn’t just about location; exile is about the state of your soul.

Exile is when you fail to convert your blessings into blessings for others.

Exile is when you find yourself a stranger to the purposes of God.” (pgs. 44-45)

Through the exile, the Israelites find themselves as slaves in a foreign land all over again. Exodus and Sinai have been squandered, and they’re crying out for God’s deliverance all over again. (Which will lead straight into Chapter Two…)
———————————
(***From asterisks above.) Let me draw from Bell and Golden’s words a bit in order to make a point that is probably unpopular, but a truth I find beneficial nonetheless.

When you are in exile, “east of Eden,” it is easy for you to adopt the mentalities of a society that propels systemic sin, especially when you yourself suffer from its systemic oppression. Bell and Golden talk in Chapter One about the Israelites suffering as slaves in Egypt. One component of injustice in Egypt centers around the view of humanity’s role and purpose as it relates with labor and production.

Israelites were forced to make and lay bricks in order to build Pharaoh’s empire. Every single day the Israelites built Pharaoh’s kingdom. So when the exodus came and God established Israel as the anti-Egypt and taught them a thing or two about right living at Sinai, He explained that they should take the seventh day and make it a Sabbath. Whereas people in Egypt were assessed and valued on the basis of their brick-building, God wanted people to grasp wholeness by pointing their entire week toward a day when no bricks are laid, when people are just people.

And this wasn’t just for them, either. The things that happened at Sinai established some guidelines for how Israel could live out the Abrahamic Covenant. Bell and Golden make the point that this event – Sinai – happened in the wilderness so that it could not be attached to one nation or city; it was for all the world. At Sinai, the Israelites are called to be a priesthood. In other words they are mediating God to the world, showing everyone who God is – what He cares about, what He values. One of the ways in which they did this was to live out Sabbath, God’s recommended rhythm to help humanity understand their value. (pg. 30)

I imagine that, once the Israelites were in their promised land, that most people appreciated living in God’s recommended (and now commanded) rhythm. This is conjecture, but I’ll bet that there was a small minority (but possibly a powerful and influential minority) who were benefitting from the labor and industry in Jerusalem, and would’ve much rather done away with Sabbath and gone back to the brick-after-brick, day-after-day ways of Egypt. Because when industry happened, this small minority were the foremost beneficiaries. Whether or not they succumbed to it, I believe a temptation was there for those in power to do away with Sabbath, God’s recommended rhythm for life.

Fast-forward to the councils and decisions of the early Church fathers in the second, third and fourth centuries CE. As leaders like Justin Martyr, Ignatius, and Marcion looked to create a post-Judaism rendition of Christianity – one that would be more agreeable with the Greco-Roman society and political power of their day – the nail in the coffin, in terms of forcing Jewish Christians out of the church and ending what had been a steady stream of Jews adopting the Messiah, was the removal of the Jewish Sabbath from the spiritual rhythm of the church. For a Christian (Jewish or Gentile) to honor the weekly spiritual rhythm (six days of work that point toward a day of content resting) supplied to them by God at Sinai was to “sabbatize” and “Judaize.” This decision to abandon the Exodus version of Sabbath (finalized at Laodicea, I believe), is the foremost image of an early Church trading their Exodus identity for the convenience of cozy public relations with the local anti-kingdom.

Just as it didn’t take long after Sinai for things to fall apart, it was shortly after Calvary that Christians in geo-political centers chose false kingdoms, “kingdoms of comfort” as Bell and Golden term them, over-against the God who led the Israelites out of Egypt. It’s no wonder that serious Jews, who had been raised to know the difference between Egypt and Israel and knew which of those the Roman Empire resembled, were wary of exchanging their Law (which they viewed as life-giving instruction for how to be human) for a Caesar-Jesus-Constantine hybrid.

Fast-forward yet again, to the Western (but especially American) empire, the capitalist machine. Human beings are in a new sort of anti-kingdom. Unlike Egypt, they get a share of the prize (so long as they can climb up the rungs of socio-economic divide and push others beneath them). And, like in Egypt, value is attributed to human beings based on accomplishments and exploits. Western humanity is about having the right degrees, the best job title, the highest-paying career, the largest house possible to contain 2.8 family members, and even the newest vehicle by which to travel back and forth between prestige job and prestige home. Westerners are “free” to take hold of all these perks in the kingdom.

(Sometimes we use the word “liberty” to describe the most entangling, debilitating constructs of our society.)

The Western world is an anti-kingdom (very much the warning of Bell and Golden’s book). The Western world is “east of Eden.” Like Egypt, the Western world, through systemic sin, implies that human value is based upon accomplishments and exploits.

How do Christians today respond? Of course the situation calls for a multi-layered response, but it sure seems like one of those layers would be Sabbath observance, yes? Much like the Israelite who doesn’t want to ruffle with the system (afraid of being beaten by his master if he fails to lay his share of bricks), or the members of the early Church who decided that cooperating with the political powers of their day (and adopting the societal rhythm and constructs of that culture) was a lucrative priority, Christians today, when offered a Sabbath, choose the way of the anti-kingdom.

Of all the instructions to not only disobey but generally reject, Christians choose God’s offering of a Sabbath, a day when they should set down their proverbial bricks and gear their whole day toward accepting that God loves them – not for their exploits, but for their personhood.

Why do you think that is? Why do Christians openly reject one of God’s most enjoyable instructions?

It would be extremely difficult to argue that the Sabbath has little practical value in today’s culture. In A.J. Jacobs’ book The Year of Living Biblically, Jacobs, after his Law-keeping experiment, identifies the Sabbath as the single-most beneficial practice to which he adhered (and he adhered to many). I’ve heard of other similar experiments and studies – some by self-proclaimed “secular” people – reaching the same conclusion. (Maybe this hits at Bell and Golden’s point about Solomon and Sheba, that sometimes it’s the “pagans” around us who see God’s realities better than the people who claim to have it all together.) (pgs. 37-38)

I suppose someone could say that Westerners (but again, this is American even more than it is Western) only work 40-50 hours each week, whereas the Israelites pulled much longer shifts in Egypt. I would counter that by saying that yes, while only 40 or 50 hours of the Western week are documented as salary-earning, many more hours (nearly all waking hours) in the Western world are devoted to the quest of obtaining power and accumulating wealth. And as the Sabbath rubbed harshly against the work schedule of Egypt, today it also runs counter to our mentality of ownership and wealth.

In other words, even though the Sabbath commandment is relatively easy and enjoyable, that’s only the case if we aren’t allegiant and in love with our local anti-kingdom.

When people of affluence live in a spiritual rhythm that emphasizes humanity’s worth (loved by God) as independent of labor and production, that is the very moment when their view of less-affluent human beings will change. Sabbath is connected to justice. Sabbath is bigger than social class and economics (exactly what Jesus is showing us in all of those passages we’ve perverted in translation and preaching to indicate that Jesus somehow violates or abolishes the Sabbath, which is the same degree of heretical vomit than if we called Jesus a murderer, a crook, and an adulterer).

Sinai, as Bell and Golden point out, is God speaking to the Israelites, explaining a new way to be human to this group of people who have been dehumanized. These Commandments are God’s wisdom. So where do we come off deciding that because we place our faith in Jesus, the Son of God and Son of Man, the perfect Israelite, that God’s wisdom is somehow rendered obsolete? Jesus embodied the perfection and fulfillment of the Law, put flesh and blood on it and showed us how it’s done. In other words, if you do what Jesus does, you will have perfectly kept the Law. Being forgiven for violating the Law does not imply that the Commandments are no longer life-giving.

There are still, after all these years, ten Commandments and not nine. That’s not to say that we keep the other ones very well, either, but we don’t adamantly “theologize” against them like we do with the Sabbath. If an elder of your church committed a drive-by shooting on the way to church and you confronted him or her about the drive-by, would you be dismissed as a legalist? Would the people in your church tell you that, because we now have Jesus, murder is kosher? Or that because Jesus is the Prince of Peace, we have a new symbol, so whether or not we murder is arbitrary?

This isn’t complicated. It’s a matter of obedience and, more so, trust.

Christians today do not want to ruffle the system of the empire. They, like secular culture, want to assess human beings on the basis of accomplishments and exploits. Why? Because they believe they can benefit within the empire. Christians today are no better than those early Church fathers who sold the teaching of Jesus for political and cultural convenience, and no better than Solomon and those Israelites who chose to dismiss Sinai. In each case, it’s an issue of trusting that the promises of the anti-kingdom provide more life than does God’s Law.

The dismissal of Sabbath is powerfully symbolic throughout Judeo-Christian history for the behavior of people who want the anti-kingdom rather than New Jerusalem. We see it after Sinai. We see it after Calvary. We see it still today, here in our Western anti-kingdom.

Reviewing JWSC by Rob Bell and Don Golden: my preface and their introduction

I want to take some time to review, chapter by chapter, Rob Bell and Don Golden’s new book, Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile. Bell and Golden worked together at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan for three years, though Golden is now vice president of church engagement at World Relief in Baltimore, Maryland. Bell of course is known for his Nooma short-film series and his previous books, Velvet Elvis and Sex God. 

JSWC is loaded with endnotes, many of those notes being multiple specific Scripture references to support the authors’ narrative interpretations. This could be the result of a simple desire for academic detail; it might also be a response, in some way, to some of the hyper-conservative American church leaders who have attempted to pin Bell’s theology as apart from “orthodox” Christianity and the meaning of the biblical text. It seems that those type of criticisms of Bell will be even farther-fetched after his and Golden’s careful and deliberate pointing to Scripture’s backing in JWSC.

The book espouses what Bell and Golden term the “New Exodus” perspective. They credit Tom Holland, a professor of Biblical Theology at Wales Evangelical School of Theology, for leading the charge of this New Exodus understanding. 

JWSC is consistent with Bell’s record of narrative approach to Scripture in writing and teaching. The book’s introduction sets forth that JWSC follows the full narrative of Scripture, and so – as is the case with the Bible – skipping to the middle or end of the book will tarnish the power of the writing. (pgs. 8-9)

Bell and Golden’s introduction, “Air Puffers and Rubber Gloves,” establishes Cain’s murder of Abel as concurrent with a societal shift from a nomadic orientation to an agricultural one. Not only is ownership and boundary entering this early society, but there’s the issue of just where this settlement is taking place – east of Eden. (pgs. 12-13) 

Take the geography of this image literally or symbolically – it doesn’t diminish their point either way – and “east of Eden” is clearly representative of distance from shalom. The book of Genesis frequents this image. After the fall, God inquires about Adam’s location; Adam’s reply is, “East.” So in Genesis 4 Cain is building a city east of Eden, setting up camp in exile from Eden. Bell and Golden imply (rightly) that we find ourselves in a similar predicament – living out our residency “east of Eden,” settling for what exists rather than what could be. (pgs. 17-19)

JWSC is consistent in its claims that things could be better but aren’t, and that the blame for our east-of-Eden state should be attributed to our disobedience and not some sort of helpless depravity or fatalistic determinism. Bell and Golden are not having a circular conversation with their readers. JWSC is a call to responsibility and obedience, for an enabled people to fulfill the Abrahamic Covenant by living as a blessing for others.

Damien Jurado’s new listens

I’m posting these just because I so enjoy Damien Jurado’s music, and the new songs are right in line with the good work he’s been doing for some time now.

If you’re someone who has listened to Jurado for awhile, then this first track might bring you back to the days of I Break Chairs. The guitar tone in this one is great – a real warm crunch on the chorus. “Go First” (there’s no video to it, just the album cover):

This other video is of “Last Rights,” and it was taken at a show Jurado played last month in Portland.

Jesus Wants to Save Christians

Check out the new website for Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for a Church in Exile by Rob Bell and Don Golden. The site has some sample chapters and audio, so you can get a feel for the entire project.

From the site you can link to buy the book.