To that end, I did want to post a link to a really great interview in Christianity Today from last year. Its with the author of the book I’m currently reading – To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. Its not the easiest read, but its been highly recommended to me, and definitely worthwhile so far.

The author’s big idea is that the typical Christian attempts to “change the world” don’t work, and don’t really (in his estimation) have any chance of working, because they misunderstand how cultures actually work and how they change. He offers a critique of these attempts, along with his own proposal for how Christians should interact with the world around them – and whether “world changing” should even be our goal.

If you have any interest in how Christians interact with the world, the so-called “culture wars”, Christians and politics, and so on, its worth your time and effort to at least read the interview, which presents many of the author’s ideas in brief. I’m not yet ready to say he’s right (I’m only 60 pages into the 300 page book), but he definitely has a perspective we should be hearing and considering. Here’s a few quotes (from the interview) to whet your appetite:

“When Christians turn to law, public policy, and politics as the last resort, they have essentially given up on a desire to persuade their opponents. They want the patronage of the state and its coercive power to rule the day.”

“By focusing too much on political power, we overlook how social power plays out in everyday relationships and institutions. There are four characteristics to the social power that Jesus exercised. First, his power was derivative—originating from intimacy and submission to his Father. Second, his power was humble—rejecting the privileges of status and reputation, suffering indignities with joy. Third, his power was compassionate—serving the good of all and not just the good of the community of faith. And fourth, his power was noncoercive—blessing rather than cursing “the other,” as we can see from his encounters with Samaritans and Romans.”

“Christians need to abandon talk about “redeeming the culture,” “advancing the kingdom,” and “changing the world.” Such talk carries too much weight, implying conquest and domination. If there is a possibility for human flourishing in our world, it does not begin when we win the culture wars but when God’s word of love becomes flesh in us, reaching every sphere of social life. When faithful presence existed in church history, it manifested itself in the creation of hospitals and the flourishing of art, the best scholarship, the most profound and world-changing kind of service and care—again, not only for the household of faith but for everyone. Faithful presence isn’t new; it’s just something we need to recover.”

ht: Jeffrey Overstreet (via Facebook)

The same day I read about an initiative from Focus on the Family called “True Tolerance.” It is a resource for parents concerned about gay activists promoting an agenda in schools – and it specifically targets anti-bullying efforts in schools, saying that they are instead a way for activists to promote homosexuality.

I was a little stunned. Honestly, I was a lot stunned. I find it hard to believe that efforts aimed at teaching students that GLBT kids have just as much value as others, and that they don’t deserve to be singled out for ridicule and discrimination, are something Christians should be singling out and opposing. Especially when there are numerous instances of kids killing themselves over this very issue.

To be fair, Focus on the Family does believe bullying is wrong – including bullying of GLBT students. But in their rush to ensure that no agenda is being pushed in schools, they claim that it is not necessary to name the specific reasons for bullying. Instead, anti-bullying efforts should focus only on the bullying behavior, and not on the reason behind the behavior. But this seems to me to be a flawed approach, driven primarily by their fear of a gay agenda – if prejudice is driving bullying, the prejudice needs to be dealt with, not just the behavior that occurs as a result of the prejudice. To do otherwise is merely to block the behavior, rather than to deal with the actual cause of the behavior.

And if you think it is ok to taunt and ridicule and intimidate someone because they are gay, that is prejudice. There’s no other word for it. It doesn’t matter what you believe the Bible says about homosexual behavior – prejudice and bullying are always wrong. Always.

I suppose what really bothers me about this issue is this: that from what I have seen, Christians have been largely silent about it.* Celebrities and other professionals – often from within the gay community, but not always – have been vocal about the need to deal with the issue, and have tried to encourage kids experiencing this kind of bullying that it gets better: that they will not experience such bullying for their entire lives. But the Christian community – which should be leading the way against all kinds of prejudice and bullying, even (and maybe especially?) against a group of people whose behavior we may disagree with. Because we all sin. We all fall short of God’s standard. And yet we are all created in God’s image and loved deeply by God.

I hope Christians can agree on that at least.

* I would love to be proven wrong here. If you know of examples of Christians confronting the bullying of GLBT students, please post them in the comments section.

Not to put too fine a point on it, we wish to claim here that the prevailing version of American Christian Zionism—that is, your belief system—underwrites theft of Palestinian land and oppression of Palestinian people, helps create the conditions for an explosion of violence, and pushes US policy in a destructive direction that violates our nation’s commitment to universal human rights. In all of these, American Christian Zionism as it currently stands is sinful and produces sin. We write as evangelical Christians committed lifelong to Israel’s security, and we are seriously worried about your support for policies that violate biblical warnings about injustice and may lead to the outcome you most fear—serious harm to or even destruction of Israel.

If you find yourself in disagreement with the author’s central claims, I urge you to still give the letter a read. Consider what they have to say. The majority of the letter is devoted to understanding 2 key ideas: first, God’s promise of the land to Abraham and his descendants, and who it applies to (here’s a hint: the Israelites were not Abraham’s only descendants); and second, the conditional nature of Israel’s possession of the land. They were to treat the people in the land, especially including aliens, the poor, and so on – with justice, or risk losing it altogether (which they did when God sent both kingdoms into exile – only hundreds of years later were they allowed to return and partially reoccupy the land).

In the end, the authors’ goal is peace and justice for the people of Israel and the Palestinians. Given that both groups are created in the image of God and loved by God, that should be the goal of all Christians. That goal should drive our support for Israel’s safety and existence – and our opposition to their actions when they act in ways that oppress and victimize others, and thereby jeopardize their own existence as well.

“[W]e discover what the shape and the inner life of the church ought to be only when we look first at the church’s mission, and … we discover what the church’s mission is only when we look first at God’s purpose for the entire world, as indicated in, for instance, Genesis 1-2, Genesis 12, Isaiah 40-55, Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 15, Ephesians 1, and Revelation 21-22. We read scripture in order to be refreshed in our memory and understanding of the story within which we ourselves are actors, to be reminded where it has come from and where it is going to, and hence what our own part within it ought to be.”  (p 116)

There’s a lot there, and its all good. He says we need to learn to work from the big picture to the small: from God’s purpose for the world, down to the mission of the church, and then to what life within the church (and therefore life as an individual believer) actually looks like. That way God’s overall purposes – and our mission as followers of Jesus – is always the main point.

I have a feeling I’ll be going through that list of passages in my own reading times very soon.

As I read over lunch today, I came across this fabulous observation:

“There is a great gulf fixed between those who want to prove the historicity of everything reported in the Bible in order to demonstrate that the Bible is “true” after all and those who, committed to living under the authority of scripture, remain open to what scripture actually teaches and emphasizes. Which is the bottom line: “proving the Bible to be true” (often with the effect of saying, “So we can go on thinking what we’ve always thought”), or taking it so seriously that we allow it to tell us things we’d never heard before and didn’t particularly want to hear?”

Of course, the two positions are not mutually exclusive. But Wright correctly points out that allowing ourselves to be changed as we read the Bible (and thus encounter the living God behind the Bible) is much more important than arguments about the historicity of this or that event or passage.* Christians have too often been guilty of focusing on historical issues, while not allowing ourselves to be challenged by what we find in the Bible. In doing so, we miss the forest for the trees.

* For the record, Wright is someone who would affirm the historicity of the vast majority of the biblical text. He simply argues that it is a secondary concern.

And I’m also thinking about the times of remembrance in the Bible. Remembrance was a big deal in the Bible – especially in the Old Testament. God knew that people have remarkably short memories, and there were certain moments – like the Exodus, remembered during Passover – that God did not want them to forget. So he gave them feasts and celebrations and piles of stone to commemorate events that he wanted them to remember. We see something similar in the New Testament’s Eucharist – a commemorative event (which some practice weekly or monthly, but is always to be done regularly, whatever the particular interval of time) to remember Jesus’ death on the cross (and by extension, his burial and resurrection as well).

It is important to realize that there was more to these commemorations – these times of remembering – than just thinking about the past. Remembering in the Bible is intimately connected to the past, present, and future – commemoration was intended to bring the three together, at least for a few moments. God wanted them to remember certain events so that they would connect those events to what was happening in their present, and let them guide and inform their future. They were times of personal and national reflection and repentance – times to consider how the people’s lives (both individually and collectively) aligned with God’s will, and to bring their lives more into alignment going forward.

So as I think about 9-11, these thoughts are all swirling around in my head. I remember and mourn the people lost that day, the lives that were changed forever, and the innocence that we lost as a nation. But I also am thinking about what has happened in the past 10 years, from that day to the present. I remember the incredible unity our country experienced immediately after 9-11 – and how quickly that unity disappeared. I mourn the loss of life in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – both military and civilian. I am shamed by our country’s use of torture on detainees. And I am shamed by the way too many in our country – many of them Christians – have unfairly treated all Muslims with mistrust, fear and outright prejudice. And I repent of my own complicity in each of these things.

And I pray for the future. I pray that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan can be ended soon, and that we will do what we can to help these nations rebuild. And I pray that whatever our feelings about those wars, that the citizens of those countries will have a genuinely better future in their aftermath. I pray that our nation will finally, once and for all, reject the use of torture. I pray that we will deal fairly and justly with all people – including detainees and Muslims. And I pray that we will find a way to heal the deep divisions that our country is currently experiencing. Ultimately, I pray that we will live lives that are continually more aligned with God’s hopes and desires for us as individuals and as a nation.

To that end, I found this litany of rememberance for 9-11 helpful. A litany is a responsive reading done in a corporate setting – obviously I didn’t use it that way, but still found it helpful for my personal reflection. Perhaps you will too.

I also realize I haven’t been as consistent posting lately as I’d like. Life does tend to get in the way sometimes. Its been a busy time both at the church and outside the church and I haven’t had as much time to devote to the blog as I would like. I try to post twice a week, but I may go down to once a week (in general – with the occasional exception) for the time being. Hopefully posting a little less will help me to be a bit more consistent. So watch for a new post next week!

I’m interested in the story and the movement particularly because it may have some relevance to the upcoming election, and particularly because religious trends in Christianity are always of interest to me. However, I will say from the outset that I try to be particularly sensitive to “guilt by association” issues. So I’ll say up front that this post should not be construed as an attack on Rick Perry – I have no idea how much of a connection he has to this movement, although it does sound like it may be significant. My primary interest here is in offering a bit of commentary on some of the beliefs this group espouses, and why I see some of those beliefs as problematic.

First, a couple excerpts from the article:

Tabachnick says the movement currently works with a variety of politicians and has a presence in all 50 states. It also has very strong opinions about the direction it wants the country to take. For the past several years, she says, the NAR has run a campaign to reclaim what it calls the “seven mountains of culture” from demonic influence. The “mountains” are arts and entertainment; business; family; government; media; religion; and education.

“They teach quite literally that these ‘mountains’ have fallen under the control of demonic influences in society,” says Tabachnick. “And therefore, they must reclaim them for God in order to bring about the kingdom of God on Earth. … The apostles teach what’s called ‘strategic level spiritual warfare’ [because they believe that the] reason why there is sin and corruption and poverty on the Earth is because the Earth is controlled by a hierarchy of demons under the authority of Satan. So they teach not just evangelizing souls one by one, as we’re accustomed to hearing about. They teach that they will go into a geographic region or a people group and conduct spiritual-warfare activities in order to remove the demons from the entire population. This is what they’re doing that’s quite fundamentally different than other evangelical groups.”

There is quite an emphasis on spiritual warfare here – one that I’m not sure is healthy. Perhaps in a later post I’ll describe some of my past experience with “spiritual warfare”, but for now I’ll leave it at this: I believe wholeheartedly that there is a spiritual realm, and that forces in that realm affect our lives. I also believe that the Bible tells us very little about that realm – and that should tell us something about how concerned God wants us to be about it. It is far too easy for good Christians to get caught up in speculation about the spiritual world, and lose focus on how we’re actually supposed to be living our lives. I see some of that in the description of this movement. A couple thoughts:

• I do believe politics is important. It effects many people’s lives in both positive and negative ways. Having said that, I don’t believe real change comes through politics. It comes through changed lives, and I believe that should be the primary concern of the church. Laws don’t change hearts – love and grace and relationships change hearts. And changed hearts are the only way to change society – no matter the issue. So any Christian movement that makes political change its primary goal has, in my opinion, misplaced priorities.
• This talk about hierarchies of demons concerns me. A great deal of spiritual warfare literature talks about such things, but the Bible doesn’t – at least not in anything but the most veiled terms. There is reference to demons, principalities and powers, and so on – but to divide them up into types of demons (lust, pride, and so on) or various hierarchies of command is to move well beyond what the Bible says about the spiritual world.
• The Kingdom of God on earth is not dependent upon our “reclaiming” anything but people’s lives and hearts. The Kingdom of God is present wherever God’s followers are present, making the choice to live their lives as if God is Lord and king. And it spreads as more people come into relationship with God and make the choice to follow him. Biblically, I don’t see anything that tells me our job is to wrestle control of certain parts of society from demons – we are to go about our lives living as God has called us to live: telling people about him, showing love and compassion and grace to the people around us. We’re supposed to love God and love people – fighting demons, as exciting as it may sound, does not seem to be our primary calling or responsibility.
• Sin is not a result of hierarchies of demons. Sin is a result of fallen human beings who choose not to live as God has called us to live. Demons and other outside forces may influence us towards sin, but their presence does not guarantee that we will sin, nor would their absence mean that sin would be gone. The idea that sin is caused by hierarchies of demons seems to me to be an abdication of our own responsibility for our sin – it seems to be a denial of the reality that the line between good and evil runs through each one of us.

There are other things I could comment on in the article, including how supremely unhelpful it is to claim that gay and lesbian people are possessed by demons. If our goal is to bring the gay community into relationship with God – which should be our goal with any group of people – such accusations will not help that effort.

At any rate, I’ll be watching news about this movement with great interest, and more than a little concern. And I’d welcome anyone else’s thoughts or information about it as well.

“It is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, God’s job to judge, and my job to love.” – Billy Graham, asked why he would attend a rally in support of Bill Clinton after his sex scandal was made public

Wow. How much different would Christians’ engagement with the people around us be if we really lived with this in mind? How much different would my interactions with people be?

Maybe we don’t have to spend so much time trying to convince people of their sin. This idea, it seems to me, releases Christians from the constant fear that associating with people who do things we disagree with means we somehow endorse their behavior. That fear leads us too often to distance ourselves from people who desperately need God’s love – and our love. Maybe we are supposed to leave the convicting to the Holy Spirit. Is it possible that our job is to demonstrate God’s love to people in every tangible way we can? And maybe, just maybe, that demonstration of love will help to open the door for the Holy Spirit’s work in people’s lives – ours included.