The Parable of the Good Princess

There once was a beautiful Princess. All over the Kingdom the people proclaimed that never before had there ever been a sweeter child. Her smile warmed even the coldest hearts and her laughter had an infectious quality. Every day her mother and father, the king and queen, would instruct her on what the qualities of a good princess were. Soon she knew these qualities by heart. Good Princesses are kind – they always extend grace to the hurting. Good Princesses are strong –they lead the Kingdom into times of peace and plenty. Good Princesses are fair – directing their people with justice. And Good Princesses are courageous – they do not fear making the hard choices to protect the Kingdom.

And so our young princess grew up hearing these qualities repeated to her day after day and she dreamed of the day when she would live up to these hopes and dreams of her parents. She wanted nothing more than to become a good princess and would talk with whoever would listen about what she would do as a good princess. Her parents were proud of her ambition, and everyone commented that yes, she would be the best princess there ever was.

As the years went on, her desire to be a good princess stayed strong. Princes from neighboring Kingdoms would come to ask her hand in marriage, but she would politely turn them down, saying she was still preparing to be the best princess she could be. "Someday my prince will come," she would laugh, "but first I must become a good princess." They would smile and ride away, planning to return in a years time.

As she grew even older, the townspeople who she had charmed with her smiles and laughter remembered her commitment to be a kind and fair princess. They would travel from far away to bring their troubles to her, knowing that a good princess could help them. But as they told her of their plights, she would look at them sadly and apologize, saying, "I’m sorry, I would love to help you, but first I must become a good Princess since those are the sorts of things good Princesses do.” And the townspeople would walk away sad and a bit confused. Soon they stopped coming at all.

As her parents, the King and Queen grew old and infirm, more and more of the official decisions of the Kingdom were presented to the Princess to consider. What treaty to sign with a neighboring kingdom? Where to dig new wells or put in new dams? What merchants were permitted to sell their wares within the walls of the city? But with each decision, the Princess deferred her answer saying, "I wish I knew how to help you, I’m sure I will once I’m a good Princess, but for right now I can’t do anything for you." And she would walk away repeating to herself the qualities of a good Princess – "good princesses are kind, they are strong, they are fair, they are courageous. Someday, I will be a good Princess."

With the death of her parents, many expected her to live up to her lifelong training of being a good princess and bless the kingdom not just with her beauty and laughter, but with her leadership. But on the day of her coronation as Queen, she handed back the crown, saying only a good Princess can become a Queen, and she hoped that one day she would be honored and ready to be able to accept such a role.

Inevitably, the Kingdom started to unravel. Petty disputes became bloody conflicts. Crops dried up and food was scarce
because of lack of available water. Merchants took their goods into other Kingdoms. Raiding parties disregarded long ignored treaties as they encroached upon her borders. The poor starved without a kind hand extending them care. And what was once a Kingdom filled with joy, peace, and prosperity became a home of the desperate trying to simply make it through the day. But the Princess barely noticed so intent was she on becoming a good princess. Nor did she notice when the suitors stopped coming, or the treaties stopped being offered. She didn’t notice that her smile no longer warmed the hearts of her people or her laugh spread joy. She just wanted to be a good Princess.

It was as an old woman on her deathbed, that she finally looked at the small group of castle staff gathered around her that she broke down in tears. “All I wanted my whole life was just to be a good Princess,” she cried, “I knew I could be the best Princess there ever was, but now it’s too late, I will never be a good princess.” No one knew what to say to her, and just let her cry and then breathe her last breath. Upon her death, they all just sighed and quietly left the room wishing that she had actually been a good princess.

I’ve long been interested in archaeology, particularly biblical archaeology. So it caught my eye when the Jerusalem Post reported this morning that the oldest known example of written Hebrew was discovered about eighteen months ago and recently deciphered. Written on a piece of pottery shard, it was dated to the 10th century BCE, the time of King David.

Prof. Gershon Galil of the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa, who deciphered the text and determined it was an ancient form of Hebrew, explained that “This text is a social statement, relating to slaves, widows and orphans.” While not definitively determined as a biblical text, the inscription certainly could be. Prof. Galil’s reconstructed translation reads:

1′ you shall not do [it], but worship the [Lord].
2′ Judge the sla[ve] and the wid[ow] / Judge the orph[an]3′ [and] the stranger. [Pl]ead for the infant / plead for the po[or and]
4′ the widow. Rehabilitate [the poor] at the hands of the king.
5′ Protect the po[or and] the slave / [supp]ort the stranger.

I’m not surprised to learn that this three-millennia-old inscription links worshiping the Lord to pleading for the poor. From the earliest days of humanity writing down God’s instructions, worship and justice were linked. It was true then, and it is still true today.

Duane Shank is the senior policy advisor for Sojourners.

In my introductory statements on how I see mission and worship as being one and the same, I brought up what the Bible says about justice and worship.  In Isaiah 1 God says he hates our worship gatherings – finds them meaningless and detestable – if we are participating in injustices and not seeking justice for the oppressed.  And in Isaiah 58 we are told that the sort of worship practices God desires are those that "loose the chains of injustice, and untie the cords of the yoke, set the oppressed free, and break every yoke. To share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood."  Worship has to be about serving God by serving others.  Worship is mission which is seeking justice for the oppressed.  The Bible is very clear about that and I think we have strayed far too far in the modern church from this biblical conception of worship.  While most Christians might admit (hopefully) that worship isn't just the singing of songs, I think very few realize that feeding the hungery is an act of worship and devotion to God.  It is something the church must reclaim.

So I made my assertion that a missional church will be seeking justice as an act of worship and I got an interesting response from the audience in return.  One man said that these days he sees certain students caring so much about serving others that they neglect the acts of piety like doing devotions and praying so we need to be careful about encouraging things like seeking justice.  I actually didn't get a chance to respond to the statement as one of the other panel members jumped in and claimed that practices of piety should always be at the center of our worshiping practices.  My first thought though was, "did this guy miss the part in the Bible where God says he DESPISES our acts of piety if we are not seeking justice at the same time???"  But my next response was to feel heartbroken at how in the American church we have so equated worship with cultural habits that we fail to see how biblical worship is even worship at all.

I know I probably don't score very well on the typical evangelical worship meter.  I don't do the singing endless praise choruses thing.  I don't put "Praise the Lord!" in my Facebook status update at least once a day.  I don't do fill-in-the-blank "bible studies."  I don't read spiritual devotiony sort of books expecting a paragraph or two of religious sounding words to fill me up each morning.  I don't meet for marathon prayer sessions where I have to pray for someone's neighbor's cat or something.  I know all those things work for some people to help them celebrate God, and they used to work for me too, but I've realized that I cannot limit worship (and God) by insisting that those cultural habits are the only or best ways to worship God.  Sure, I dig deep into scripture, I pray, and I celebrate God, it's just that my acts of piety don't fit the 20th Century American Evangelical Contemporary Christian Subculture box.  And because of that I've been accused at times of not being a Christian.  Or at least reminded of what my faith and worship habits should be looking like.

So when I hear a pastor warn against following scripture in order to encourage these cultural habits, I get uneasy.  Worship cannot be confined to a box – be that the box of evangelical devotions or praise music or reformed liturgy or Catholic Mass.  And following the biblical mandate to worship God through seeking justice isn't in opposition to, but is instead part of personal piety and devotion to God. We are loving God, celebrating God's greatness, and reflecting God's glory by participating in the acts of service we are instructed to do.   It isn't that I seek justice some days and worship on others – it is all worship.   How I meditate on God's word and how I seek justice for the oppressed will of course look different than how others do it – but we are all still worshiping.

Worship is much bigger than ourselves, and I think to truly be a missional church we need to get over ourselves and our allegiances to cultural habits and start integrating what God said he wants from our worship into what we do.

The problem with that stance is that it makes it really hard to love one's neighbor.  And I mean really love them – not some silly "tough love" line about loving them too much to allow them to continue in sin.  But loving them even amidst the mess.  So in this mindset, when it was brought up that we should care for the poor who lost their homes in Katrina we were told that some of them are poor because of their sin.  Or when its suggested that illegal immigrants should be treated with dignity and respect, some horrendous anecdote about a criminal act committed by an immigrant is mentioned.  Or when its suggested that the homeless get fed, they are written off as undeserving addicts and alcoholics.  The idea seems to be that if some sort of sin can be pinned on a person that gets us off the hook for having to love them.

But it can be dangerous to fall out of the habit to love.  When we chose not to "in humility consider others better than ourselves" but instead dwell wholly on their faults we end up resorting to doing most things out of "selfish ambition and vain conceit."  Our needs reign supreme when we readily find excuses not to love others.  Loving our neighbor then becomes a foreign concept.

Perhaps I've been too long in the emerging church world where loving others is just a given.  Or perhaps spending the holidays with my family who thinks I'm an idealistic freak was a wake-up call.  But it still shocks me when I encounter people who are genuinely confused as to why caring for the needs of others would be a motivating factor for doing anything.  I want to believe love wins, but then I encounter so many people who can't even fathom the concept.  It's just difficult when even the basic aspects of the faith can't even be agreed upon.

Skye suggests that we need to shift how we think about mission and the institution of the church in light of these issues. While I like his ideas about helping people see that their everyday lives (jobs, commitments, errands) are actually mission and that the church is about people living out incarnation and not institutionalized programs, I am not fully on board with all of his suggestions. He proposes equipping the believer to be in communion with Christ in her everyday life and then come to church to celebrate not to do mission. He believes this would eliminate the focus on church programs, buildings, and staff and turn the focus to ordinary lives.

Unfortunately this alternative focus of church still requires much of the same programs and structures to survive as before, just with fewer people. To hold a celebration service that "feeds" the masses one still needs buildings, staff, and programming for the celebration. It's church as we know it just without commitments. In addition, rubberstamping what people are already doing leaves out some rather important aspects of what it means to be the church and do mission. Letting one's co-workers know that Jesus loves them is all good, but what about caring for the poor and being in community with other believers? I'm all for slashing programs – committees, choir, and multiple Beth Moore bible studies can, yes, just be a waste of time. And I'm all for affirming that being a 24/7 mom who can't leave the house to do anything because she doesn't have childcare is a way of serving Christ.

But to take a foundering institution and try to keep it afloat by redefining a few things doesn't go far enough in my opinion. The mission of the church doesn't just need to be switched from programs to everyday living (although that is a good step), it needs to become the driving force of church. Telling members to do mission in their day to day lives isn't a "get out of jail free" card for a church. Abandoning programming but retaining the structure of a come and see celebration service moves us farther away from mission and truly being the church. If church was not about the event in a building, but really about who we are as followers of Christ then there wouldn't have to be this huge distinction between real life and church. Church isn't a place you volunteer at or go to to be fed, it is simple the life you lead and the community you indwell. The church does life together – eats together, raises kids together, serves together… We shouldn't be individuals serving God that come together to be encouraged in that endeavour once a week, but a group of people on the same journey, sharing its joys and sorrows.

So while I like the intent of Skye's article, I think a more radical redefining of church and mission than what he is proposing is needed. Not just to save the structure of the church in hard times, but to help us reorient ourselves in relation to each other. We are the church, we all do mission – as individuals and as a group. As a 24/7 mom I don't just want to be told that I'm doing mission already even if I can't make it to some church meeting. I want to be with the church while I am being a mom – relating to others, serving with others, and being one with them. This isn't about me being fed and then living my life (even if its for God), its about being in committed messy communion with believers as the church.

at least that's the way I'd like it to be…

So the whole missional vs. attractional church debate has risen to the bloggy surface yet once again sparked by Dan Kimball's recent post on the Out of Ur blog. In the piece he questions the fruit of so-called missional churches because a few that he knows of anecdotally haven't grown while attractional churches are making converts in droves. Since they aren't making converts, they therefore are ineffectual. Being missional means squat apparently unless you are growing in numbers and the sins of attractional models are incidentally absolved since they are making converts. Others have questioned the reality of such conversions, and I especially liked Dave Fitch's response on that account. But to the specific accusation that missional churches are ineffectual, I have to ask – at what?

According to Dan, effective churches are those which make (and continue to make) a lot of converts. I'm all for conversions, but what exactly are they being converted to? Is a conversion that professes the name of Christ, but is consumeristic and "me-centered" really the sort of conversions we want? It may be easy to attract people to that sort of faith, but to pull out the old phrase – what you call people with is what you call them to. What's the point of "converting" people to American consumer culture with a Jesus veneer? Even if you desire that they will eventually change, why the bait n' switch? But to write off the people who are attempting to give up all that in favor of self-sacrificial living because not enough people want to jump on that bandwagon simply astounds me. When did Christianity become a popularity contest? I know I'm being extreme and harsh with those questions, and in many ways I am a both/and sort of person in regards to this issue, but I was just really shocked to hear the missional church dismissed in such a way.

And of course I'm saying all this as a "failed" missional church planter. Failed in terms of numbers and money. We couldn't attract enough people willing to give enough money to pay our salary and so the church failed. Yes, that's crass, but that's what happened. And it also totally misses the entire point of what the church actually was. We were a bunch of messy people working our butts off serving each other. We had people attending who really weren't welcome in other churches because they were "too much work" or because they "asked the wrong questions" or because they just weren't cool enough for the attractional churches. Our church became family to each other – opening our homes (literally) and seriously caring for each other and for our community. Throwing parties for the "poor" and the mentally disabled, working to improve the local environment, helping the struggling get back on their feet. No – not one person I know of "converted" because of the church, but a lot of people made decisions to follow Christ because of it. Decisions to not walk away from the faith, decisions to return to the faith, decisions to not just go through the churchy motions any longer, decisions to devote their lives to service. That failed missional church made some serious impact for the Kingdom.

So Dan, I just want to throw my anecdotal evidence right back atcha. Missional churches are effective. It all just depends on how you define effective.

Tags: missional, attractional church, Dan Kimball, Dave Fitch, emerging church

The rage starts the moment the movie begins and you see a group of 5 and 6 year old girls lined up in a brothel explaining what sex acts they offer. And it continues as one sees story after story portrayed of those in slavery – women chained in brothels, an entire family still enslaved for a debt incurred four generations ago, children abducted and trained as marauding soldiers and rapists. Atrocities that exist all around us and support the systems and lifestyles we take for granted.

The theme holding the film together is that of music. Music that is the voice of the people sending out their call. And as in the old spirituals that musical call must be answered with a response. So musicians came together to sound the call and be informative agents for this often unknown plague. Those who hear the call – hear the stories – are now expected to respond.

One line that struck me in the movie was when in an interview Dr. Cornel West spoke of the need to encourage those prone to paralysis to action. When I heard that phrase, the lines from the hymn Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing sprung to mind – "Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love." So often we hear sin and rebellion described simply as this wander away from God. The hymn pleads for God to fetter our hearts to him to prevent such wandering away. But Dr. West's word's reminded me that all too often the worst we can do is to do nothing. We are prone to paralysis. We don't respond to the call. We ignore injustice, or, worse, find some excuse as to why we really shouldn't bother to care. We do nothing.

And that multiplies the rage.

Tags: Call+Response, slavery, sex trafficking, social justice, abolitionist, Cornel West

It's one thing to intellectually acknowledge the need for better health care around the world, I am discovering it is another thing altogether to attempt to imagine oneself in another's position. I knew the need for equity before, but my experiences have helped me to empathize. I know I am lucky and privileged. I don't desire to trivialize or cheapen the plight of others by claiming to truly understand, but I am a firm believer that empathy is necessary if one is to truly care and make a difference. And experience helps with that.

This message hit me recently in two ways. In the first I saw how experience and empathy can be betrayed by selfish interest and in the second how the hurting can be betrayed by our lack of experience. In the first instance I watched with incredulous sorrow as John McCain denounced the Supreme Court's decision to offer basic legal rights to prisoners of war. It has pained me to watch this former POW compromise his convictions over the past couple of years as he panders to what he assumes the voters wish to hear. The empathy his experience once gave him for those suffering similar abuses has been traded at the alter of greed and selfish ambition. He abandoned the call to care for the Other with compassion and now looks to secure his own desires. His experience has been betrayed and its lessons squandered.

The second message came to me as I was re-reading one of my favorite fantasy series. In this instance the main character has just managed to rescue a group of women from essentially sex slavery. These women were given money to help establish new lives after the horrors they had faced. Thinking on this, the protagonist mused, "There are many things wealth cannot buy, and most of those are enumerated by philosophers who have never woken wondering if this day would be their last. It pleased me to know that the survivors… would, at the least, not have to worry about buying bread" (Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Avatar, p.463). That idea struck me as it reminded me of the number of times I have heard calls for monetary charity argued away with just such philosophical excuses. Those who have not experienced starvation or the horrors of life often think we are doing others a favor by not making them dependent on outside aid or by offering them spiritual (not physical) help. Our lack of experience prevents us from truly being able to empathize with them or see their true needs. Sure, perhaps money cannot buy happiness, but basic survival needs must be met before happiness can even be considered. In these areas perhaps empathy should always be promoted before sophistry.

I've heard it said that learning to see things from the perspective of the other is the highest and hardest form of development. It takes a lot to put aside the self and beginning to understand things from another's perspective. Yet the irony is that our own experiences are often what help us to learn how to empathize in such ways.

Even still as they reflected on the trip, their reasons made sense. They said, "coming to Haiti, being a missionary — it wasn’t about doing something good in a poor country or helping paint a room even bringing medical supplies to a village in the middle of nowhere. It was about a promise. It was about an obligation. It was about the realization that you have the capacity to give, which means you have the duty to give." The men felt good about (as it was described) fitting into the "traditional Baptist framework of Haiti, [where] it’s understood that those who are blessed to turn those good fortunes into blessings for others. You receive a blessing in order to give them away." (I don't think they've heard that that is a traditional biblical framework…)

This sounded very similar to the Christian groups I've heard report on their experiences. But then the article continued to go on about all the hardships the guys suffered – getting their parents to let them go someplace so dangerous, sleeping in stuffy cabins, having to walk in unlit areas at night, and having the local children get in their way while they tried to help improve their school. But most saw that it was worthwhile to give up a week of vacation so their presence could be "a gift to the Haitians." But even with all the talk about having a duty to give and be a blessing, there was this incident reported -

In our American hometowns, we’re used to streetlights and headlights and constant illumination, but the streets of Pignon, Haiti, where only a few lights shine on a few street corners, most of the village sits in darkness. Dirt roads, winding and confusing in the daylight, became pockmarked mine fields. Low cinder-block walls become tripwires. To make matters worse, we had been told that things at night were not nearly as friendly for Americans as they were during the day. Nothing we encountered helped the general sense of unease that had settled on the group since a breathless messenger five minutes prior had told us we were needed urgently. “Will,” he said, out of breath and speaking to the trip’s leader, “the doctors need you at the hospital. Now.”

This was a problem. Either someone from our group had done something colossally stupid, something that couldn’t wait to be remedied in the morning, or the hospital’s owner had returned early from his trip and needed our help. After carefully making our way through trash and dirt-filled streets — praying that the village’s sole generator didn’t switch off, leaving us in total darkness — we stepped through the hospital’s iron gate, the one that warned us to leave our guns at the door, and looked for friendly faces. We were alone; no one spoke English. The only others around were poor Haitians, looking for healing the way the faithful congregate at a church in times of distress. The scene was looking even more grim until we found a friendly face: The doctor who sent for us.

“Thank you for coming,” he said. “A woman on the operating table needs a blood transfusion. She is very sick.”

We didn’t know what to say, so we looked at him blankly.

“We need one of you to donate blood.”

This wasn’t what we expected. These 11 men, undergraduates from the University of Arkansas, had signed up for a mission trip to build things and make friends, not to serve as donors for a woman in danger of bleeding out from an emergency hysterectomy. The next three minutes were a flurry of discussion. “What’s your blood type?” they asked each other. “What if we’re not a match?” “Is anyone O-positive?” “Is it even safe to give blood?”

Very few things prepare anyone for decisions like these. One week before Christmas, when friends and loved ones 1,600 miles away were making plans to go out on a Saturday night and were finalizing holiday travel plans, we were wondering who was going to save the life of a poor Haitian woman. It soon became apparent that no one was going to volunteer.

Will Smith, our man in charge, made the final decision. We weren’t going to serve as donors. Making difficult decisions is part of being a leader, part of showing the right path. Without warning, Smith faced a choice he didn’t want to face and, using his best judgment, decided he couldn’t put any of his men at risk.

“Thank you for considering helping us,” the doctor said when Smith told him of the group’s decision. “I will do my best to save this woman.” Our walk to the hospital was through the fading twilight, which did little to calm any fears, but the black night sky that greeted us on the walk home was as dark as our thoughts. Haiti needed our help in more ways than we could give.

The article never tells what happened to the woman, although it does later call the hospital the "Mayo clinic of Haiti." To be honest I don't know what I would have done in that situation. But I was shocked at how different their response to the trip and this situation were from the typical Christian response. Maybe it is our "guilt complex," but the sense of obligation Christians have to care for others no matter the cost didn't factor into this story. I have no problem with what these guys are doing – serving others and moving out of one's comfort zone are always good things. But I found the whole thing curious and a bit depressing. How much can we really help and love others when we aren't willing to really be with them and learn from them? A few days ago I blogged about how compassion is part of what Christ called us to. So this example of what service without Christ's call to love looks like grabbed my attention. Honestly, I don't want to disparage these efforts, I'm just pondering what it does take to move people to true compassion.

Christ does not call Christians to ‘make the world more compassionate and a better place’. Christ calls us to proclaim the Gospel message of Christ Crucified for sinners. This message is not compatible with any other religion or spirituality.

The idea was that Christians have no place at an event discussing compassion since that has nothing to do with Jesus. I don't deny that we are called to proclaim the Gospel (although I have a feeling that I might differ with the commenter on what exactly that involves), but to say that Jesus didn't call us to spread compassion? Has this person read the Bible? Ever? Does she ignore the story of the good Samaritan and the subsequent command to "go and do likewise."? Or ignore Jesus' call to give food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, and care for the least of these? Or Jesus' proclamation that he came to set the oppressed free? Or his commands to love, bless, and pray for even our enemies? Or his response when he witnessed the lack of compassion in the Temple?

Often when some of us talk about the full Gospel, or about reclaiming the message of Jesus, we are told "but everyone believes that anyway" (implying we should stop talking about it).  The idea is that just because it isn't talked about, or takes a secondary place to preaching a doctrinal formation doesn't mean that people have forgotten about it. But here I see the full extent of the dichotomy between doctrine and the Bible in action. When some can claim that being a Christian has nothing to do with making the world more compassionate I know petty prejudices have usurped scripture.

Perhaps since such commenters refuse to engage with people of other faiths, they may not have heard how many people see Christianity as utterly irrelevant because of this dichotomy. I've heard numerous people dismiss Christianity because all we care about is converting people to our club and not about meeting their real needs. They have not heard of Christ's call to love, to give aid, and to make disciples who do the same. This truncated Gospel not only distorts scripture, it hurts our message. I would prefer truth to be discussed and demonstrated, but sadly that doesn't always happen.  But even more disturbing – are there really people who think compassion is a bad thing? how has the church let this happen?