Thoughts on Conversion

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In reading Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison recently, I came across the following passage that really captured my attention –

“This being caught up into the messianic sufferings of God in Jesus Christ takes a variety of forms in the New Testament. It appears in the call to discipleship, in Jesus’ table-fellowship with sinners… in the healing of the sick, in Jesus’ acceptance of children. The shepherds, like the wise men from the East, stand at the crib, not as ‘converted sinners’, but simply because they are drawn to the crib by the star just as they are… The only thing that is common to all these is their sharing in the suffering of God in Christ. That is their ‘faith.’ There is nothing of religious method here. The religious act’ is always something partial; ‘faith’ is something whole, involving the whole of one’s life. Jesus calls men, not to a new religion, but to life.

I found the passage so intriguing because it challenges the Christian assumption that encountering Jesus is an end in itself. For many in the church, “finding Jesus” is the point of conversion and salvation. This encounter is presumed to result in the involvement in religious activities such as attending church (which does not necessarily imply being part of the community of church), acts of personal piety, and the elimination of certain sins like sexual immorality. This encounter is what guarantees one a place in heaven and is often assumed to also grant one financial and social success in this life as well. In a dualistic sense, one’s souls’ eternal destiny is changed by this encounter, while physical life continues mostly as before (just in perhaps a better way). There is the encounter that in theory changes everything and in practice changes very little. For unless one’s whole life gets caught up in that suffering of Jesus, the encounter just affects the partial religious acts.

While some might say that ensuring one’s entrance into heaven is to have one’s life caught up into Jesus, it is still a partial event since it ignore the pre-converted life and often the entirety of physical life as well. As the God who suffered Jesus was already present though in the lives of all – the sick, the children, the shepherds, the wise men. He didn’t encounter them and change them so they could now be part of his story; his story became their story as they moved as they were towards him. To find Jesus in a moment is to assume that one was without God and then suddenly has God. Discipleship though is a journey where as people created in God’s image we move ever towards the people we were created to be.

The journey is our conversion as it was for the wise men drawn by the star. That shaping and forming of our selves into Christ-likeness is not a momentary wave of the magic Jesus wand, but the ongoing process of coming to reflect the image of the one in which we live and move and have our being. It is an entirely new life, like Bonhoeffer states, not simply a religious act we join into when it is convenient to us. And it by necessity involves being caught up in suffering. The suffering of Jesus frees us to reject the systems of the world that leave no room for the suffering (or are the cause of that very suffering). Instead of concentrating on our momentary encounters with Jesus, we are free instead to journey towards that shalom of all. The discipline of participating in Christ, the suffering of Christ, leads us not toward more acts of religion but toward standing in solidarity with the suffering. That is simply part of our conversion as we participate in ever fuller ways in our creator.

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Truth and Reconciliation in the United States

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On Tuesday of this week a new sex abuse lawsuit was filed against the Roman Catholic Church in Montana. While sadly the need for such lawsuits is nothing new, this one is different for being one of the first involving abuse by nuns toward Native American children. Some 45 Native Americans are accusing the nuns (and priests as well) of raping and molesting them during their time in residential schools from the 1940s-70s. Although the time limit to pursue criminal charges has long since passes, their attorney commented that the Native American plaintiffs “want accountability. The perpetrators have never been criminally prosecuted; they’ve never been punished,” but that, “It’s unfortunate that the only accountability that remains for the victims is through the civil system.”

These are the Native American children who had no choice but to attend these schools and are just now finding their voice to start healing from their experiences there. For those unfamiliar with the Residential or Boarding school system required of Native Americans (because it is definitely not something taught in most history classes), these were government-funded, generally church-run schools that “were set up to eliminate parental involvement in the intellectual, cultural, and spiritual development of Aboriginal children.” If you’ve seen the film Rabbit Proof Fence you might have some clue about what these schools were like, but they existed in the US and Canada as well (and some are still functioning in the US). Native American children would be placed in these schools – often by force against their parent’s wishes – to have their culture “civilized” out of them as a means of assimilating them to white culture. Often parents would not know where their children were taken, and frequently never saw their children again. Children in these schools were forbidden to speak their own language or practice their own culture. Many of the schools used the children as forced labor for government projects. As stories of these schools have emerged, tales of molestation, rape, abuse, disappearances, murders, and medical experimentation and sterilization are common themes.

The horror of these schools is a reality as are the racist assumptions that lead to their formation. The children who were forced into these schools now have emotional scars that need serious healing. As in any case of abuse, to find that healing and to properly mourn what they lost through what was inflicted upon them, the victims need to tell the truth of their experiences. And in the US, the only legal way to do so is to bring a lawsuit against those that harmed them. Sadly though that opens up the victims to further abuses and pain. Those bringing this particular lawsuit are being vilified for their audacity to accuse elderly nuns of abuse. They are being accused of being greedy for money and that they are only doing this out of a hatred for the Catholic Church. As a numbers of responses have said, how dare the Native Americans mar the good name of these nuns and the Church without proof (as if the testimony of 45 Native Americans doesn’t count as proof). If this is even allowed to come to trial (which is doubtful since the allegations are so old), they will face further struggles as their story is suppressed by the loopholes of the legal system.

In reading about this recent lawsuit all I could think is that this is exactly why we need a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the United States. Desmond Tutu’s book No Future Without Forgiveness, describes how it was precisely for this reason of allowing the truth to be told with the least amount of pain for the victims that South Africa set up their commission as they did. They knew that to bring all the acts of injustice to trial would not only bankrupt the nation, but that it would hide the truth as perpetrators did everything in their power to not be found guilty and punished. It would not bring healing to their nation to have the victims constantly be told that they were lying about their pain and abuse. So the Truth and Reconciliation Commission choose to promise amnesty in exchange for confessions of truth. Only by telling the truth – all of the murders, abuses, and sins – could a person be exempt from being possibly punished by the government for their crimes. While this system angered those hungry for revenge, it served the purpose of telling the truth necessary for healing. (And it’s not like perpetrators were never punished – confessing to such crimes often led to ostracism from friends, broken marriages, and even suicides as they came face to face with their depravity). But as the name states – the purpose is reconciliation not revenge.

Canada has created a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for precisely the purpose of telling the truth about the Native American residential schools. The Commission believes they have a mandate to find out the truth of what happened in those schools so as to help with the reconciliation process of all involved. The system is far from perfect, but it is a step towards allowing true healing to be possible for the survivors. Instead of making the victims out to be the bad guys as they search for healing in a system that often refuses to acknowledge their continued mistreatment, a Commission like this in the US would at least start a dialogue that is long overdue. This most recent lawsuit and the responses it has provoked serve as poignant reminders that there is a lot of truth our nation still needs to face. Pretending such things don’t exist by writing them out of our textbooks or washing our hands of any responsibility only leads to more pain – for everyone. The truth will set us free, but only if we are courageous enough to let go of our defensiveness and let it be heard.

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Putting Theology in its Place

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Anyone vaguely familiar with my writing will know that I am not (to put it mildly) a fan of the divided life or most either/or extremes. I cringe at divisions of the physical and the spiritual and I resist cultural systems that push me to separate my public identity from my private as if my work in the world has nothing to do with who I am as a wife and mother. So I have felt similarly in regard to the extreme perspectives on theology I have encountered recently.

I am equally uneasy with the tendencies in the church today to either shy away from theology altogether as the over-intellectualized inapplicable pursuit of the elite or to alternately make a claim to pure theology for theology’s sake. I hear the first all the time in the church. People proudly claim that what they write or speak about isn’t theology but simply what it practically means to serve God. They decry theology as getting in the way of following Jesus or of our ability to really worship. I even overheard a fellow seminary student recently complaining about having to study theology and philosophy in seminary. As he protested, he came to seminary so he could serve in the church not be bothered with all this intellectual stuff. But then at the opposite extreme there are also those who announce that what really matters is pure theology, untainted by the trivial mundanities of the world. Often assuming strict divisions of the human and the divine, they are quick to dismiss any attempts at practical Christianity as too profane to matter and the people who do such theology as misguided. This quote by Karl Barth sums this stance up nicely,

“Those who urge us to shake ourselves free from theology and to think – and more particularly to speak and write – only what is immediately intelligible to the general public seem to me to be suffering from a kind of hysteria and to be entirely without discernment. Is it not preferable that those who venture to speak in public, or to write for the public, should first seek a better understanding of the theme they wish to propound? … I do not want readers of this book to be under any illusions. They must not expect nothing but theology.” (4)

Obviously both sides are reacting to the extremes of the other. I agree with Barth that theology does matter – we do need better understanding of the God we claim to follow. To assume that theology can be abandoned just because some find it boring or elitist or difficult to understand does a disservice to those striving to be faithful. How we talk about God matters, but precisely for the everyday practical reasons some are so quick to reject. Theology is elitist if it exists for its own sake, or for the sake of a very few. If all theology does is attempt to prevent God from speaking into the lives of people today, then it has set itself up in place of God. If understanding God doesn’t transform our lives, bringing the hope of God to earth as it is in heaven, then theology is just an artifact or a clanging gong, useless for the communion of the church.

At the same time pretending that one’s faith isn’t shaped by a theology – by a conversation of the faithful with the scriptures as well as the philosophies of the world about our understanding of God – is to allow the theologies of the loudest voice to dictate what one believes and how one lives. It is easy to turn the life of faith into, say, a mirror of a particular political and economic system if those in the pews are conditioned to believe they shouldn’t bother thinking about what teachings are shaping what they believe. Insidious theologies take hold when the people are taught to believe that theology doesn’t matter. It’s like that great scene in The Devil Wears Prada where Meryl Streep’s character explains to Anne Hathaway’s character about how high fashion affects her bargain basement shopping decisions whether she is aware of it or not. Meryl Streep says, “It is sort of comical that you think you have made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when in fact you’re wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room.” If we think we can exempt ourselves from being shaped by theology, all we are doing is mindlessly allowing others to determine how we think about God and our faith for us without bothering to hold those ideas accountable to anything.

I appreciate James Cone’s perspective on the significance of what we believe – “The resurrection conveys hope in God. Nor is this the ‘hope’ that promises a reward in heaven in order to ease the pain of injustice on earth. Rather it is hope which focuses on the future in order to make us refuse to tolerate present inequities.” Theology speaks to that hope of God, a hope that is not limited to this world or confined to divine realms. For theology to convey that hope has to be deeply reflective and properly intelligent while at the same time have feet so to speak. Theology cannot be dismissed or exist in a vacuum apart from the very embodied body of Christ it exists to guide. So when I hear preaching against the need for theology or hear embodied theologies dismissed as profane, I can’t help but cringe. God has blessed us with the gift of coming to know Godself, why would we either throw away that opportunity or alternately claim that the gift is meaningless for human existence?

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Remembering September 11th

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I woke up on the morning of September 11, 2001 both nervous and excited. I had spent the last two months slowly proceeding through the application and interview process for an entry-level editorial position at Christianity Today to work with their Christian History and Christian Reader magazines. I’d had multiple interviews and had to write a few research heavy articles along the way. For someone with degrees in English and History and a graduate degree in Missions, it seemed like the perfect job. My final evaluation involved joining the staff at an all day off-campus retreat where they would be evaluating potential articles for magazines. I was a bit nervous, but an insider in the company had told me the job was mine so the excitement of finally landing my first real job after school prevailed.

So on the morning of September 11, I arrived at the country club where the retreat was being held and situated myself at the conference table in a room with a panoramic view of the far west Chicago suburbs. We dove right into discussing the submitted articles, but about an hour later when the waitress came in with more coffee and Danishes she mentioned that a plane had just flown into the World Trade Center. We all assumed it was another personal plane incident like the one that had flown into the Empire State Building a few years before and continued working. When we broke for lunch the head editors called the office and then quickly left. The rest of us stayed on and even watched a Bibleman episode for possible review, fairly oblivious to the events of the day.

It wasn’t until I left the country club in the late afternoon and turned on the car radio that I began to have an inkling of the magnitude of the day. I rushed home to my tiny basement apartment which had no TV reception and tried futilely to get online but the dial-up lines were all busy for hours. I recall going out to get the special evening edition of the newspaper and crashing the Wheaton College student lounge (with their TV and cable hookup) just to get some idea of what was happening. The next day I was scheduled to host my church’s table at the Wheaton College ministry fair, which meant I spent the day surrounded by not only college students but also representatives of every church and parachurch ministry in the Wheaton area. It was a surreal day as people attempted to process the shock and openly shared the subsequent anger and hatred that had started to develop. That evening my church held a prayer meeting, and I recall praying that this act of terror would not lead to people lashing out against the innocent as a form of revenge. I was informed afterwards that my prayer was inappropriate. Three weeks later I heard back from Christianity Today informing me that they had a hiring freeze and the position I was applying for was eliminated in favor of restructuring the department.

It’s strange to reflect back on the day the world changed. And a bit eerie to recall that I spent the afternoon of September 11 watching the Bibleman episode about how good Christian students need to stop hanging out with their non-Christian peers because they can be a bad influence on their faith and then spent the next day listening to Evangelical leaders responding to their enemy in hate. I couldn’t have know it at the time, but within those first two days after the attack I caught a glimpse of how the events of Sept. 11th would shape the church over the next ten years. The world has irrevocably changed – despite the ongoing attempts to pretend that that the false security and pride of American exceptionalism is still a viable option in a globalized world. Over this past decade this new world has forced me to abandon a naïve faith that cared only for the state of my own soul, and embrace the fact that I am connected to others as a child of God. Who I am is as much dependent on how I honor the image of God in them as it is on any acts of ritual or piety I engage in.

Perhaps it took 9/11 and the response of fear and hatred I found in the church to push me to finally realize that my faith had to be more about God than myself. I don’t know if I will ever know for sure, but it has assuredly been a decade of change from which there is no going back. And sadly, constantly living in a culture of fear has prevented many in the church from wondering what sort of people we are being changed into. But the questions need to be asked. Are we more Christ-like now? Is God’s Kingdom more visible ten years later? Maybe simply asking those questions this Sept. 11th can help us turn a day that could easily kindle new waves of hatred into one that pushes us outside of our all-consuming selves and back to the sort of people Jesus calls us to be.

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The Complexity of Identity

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Over the last few weeks I have finally had the chance to introduce my kids to the Star Wars movies. It took them awhile to get interested, and since Star Wars was one of the defining narratives that shaped my childhood, I had to force myself to wait to show it to them until they were ready (and yes, like any good parent of my generation, we started with Episode IV). But as we watched it and the array of characters appeared on the screen my daughter would repeatedly ask, “so is that a good guy or a bad guy?” When she asked that about the Ewoks I had to laugh (seriously, how could wonder if a teddy bear was a bad guy?), but most of the time I found myself having to give qualified answers. She is used to disneyfied depictions of the world where there are obvious good and bad characters. But Star Wars, like reality, is nuanced. The good guys can be self-seeking and greedy, and cute little Anakin becomes the evil Darth Vader who still has enough good in him to be redeemed in the end. Identity is fluid and people are complex. My six year old (along with many adults) would rather have the world be easily divided into clear cut categories of good and evil, but that’s just not the way it works. Heck, even the Ewoks tried to roast Han and Luke alive.

While our nature as children of God created in God’s image defines us at our core (and makes the ultimate redemption of all possible), who we are in relation to each other is constantly being shaped and changed as we proceed through life. We, at various points, can be both good and evil – as well as simply greedy, self-centered, and apathetic even as we try to follow the way of Jesus. We are the good guys and we are the bad guys. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously wrote –

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

Not only are we unwilling to destroy that part of ourselves, we often can’t even admit to the complexity of our identity. If we see ourselves as decent citizens and committed Christians, we have a hard time admitting that within that framework we might be participating in evil. I hear this all the time when I speak on justice issues. It’s the “I’m a good person, how dare you suggest I am hurting others when I buy clothing made in sweatshops or treat the environment however I wish.” We prefer our binary categories that help us label and judge the world. I’m good, others are bad. I’m normative, others are abnormal. It’s not reality, but it’s how people cope.

Getting at that reality is part of why I’ve recently become obsessed with the show Torchwood (a Dr. Who spin-off). Described as a postmodern, postcolonial, pansexual narrative, episode after episode it serves to deconstruct binary assumptions about our world and our identity. Captain Jack Harkness, the 51st century time-traveling, omnisexual, and morally ambiguous main character who is constantly re-negotiating the identity of the alpha-male lead role, dismisses our tendency to be comforted with the binary with “you people and your cute little categories.” There is no one purely good or evil in the show, simply people trying to survive as best they can. Friends who would otherwise die for each other turn on each other when it could save those they love the most. Middle men just doing their job contribute to systems of evil and yet are not powerful enough to stop them. In one poignant scene one sees that it is the poor gang members who have nothing left to lose who are the only ones willing to stand up against an act of extreme injustice the government tries to commit. The show pushes the boundaries of sexual identity, but also tears to shreds the stereotypical colonial narrative of the alien invasion story. In one storyline an alien race was threatening the destruction of earth unless we gave them 10% of our children to use as drugs. As the story unfolded we saw that the humans weren’t merely victims, but as capable of sacrificing the weak for their own comfort as the aliens. Even Captain Jack’s solution to the invasion revealed him to be just as much monster as hero. Assumed categories of right and wrong broke down in light of the messiness of reality.

I love the show because it is so real. As absurd as it sounds to describe a science-fiction show as real, it is the honest depiction of the fluidity and complexity of our identity that resonates so well. Most episodes leave me deeply frustrated and unsettled, but also commenting to my husband that this is the way evil works in the real world – not as some absolute tyranny out to destroy the world, but in the accumulation of everyone’s small decisions to shape the world for their own personal benefit. It takes these sorts of postcolonial stories that deconstruct hidden power structures and allow for the exploration (as opposed to imposition) of identity for us to become aware of the complexity of our own selves. The rigid definitions of who we claim to be break down when seen light of our relations to others. We are the victim and the oppressor, we are the hero and the villain, we are friend and we are the enemy – all at the same time. South Africa discovered this after Apartheid. They knew that to even function as a postcolonial nation the community had to let go of binary labels like victim and oppressor, confess their corporate complicity in evil, and embrace the messiness of living in relation with complex people.

Good relationships evolve because they allow for people to be in process. To understand where that line of good and evil exists in their hearts and to hold their cute little identity categories loosely. People change, we grow, we constantly fail, and yet we must remain in community. Unless we start to understand the fluidity and multiplicity of our identity in relation to others it is impossible to build healthy relationships that revolve around our core nature of being created in the image of God. And ultimately it is those relationships with God and others that matter the most.

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Working for the Kingdom of God – A Defense

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Deep down I don’t believe in the separation of church and state. Oh, I am against the idea of a state church or giving political preference to one religious sect or another, but it’s the idea that somehow people can divorce their religious identity from their political identity that I just can’t accept. That either our religion or our politics mean so little to us that we could restrict them to compartmentalized spheres in our lives seems absurd to me. I know people attempt to do it all the time, believing in the modern myth that an individual can assume an objective stance in this world, but reality is a lot more complex than that.

We are creatures shaped by our world. Our culture, our community, our environment, our faith all have contributed to hewing out our present form. We can always grow and learn, interrogating our culture as we expand and diversify the influences in our lives, but we can never undo the fact that we have been shaped. Whether or not we accept or reject a God, or gods, or spiritual force that choice becomes a part of us. To pretend otherwise for the sake of maintaining a functional albeit shallow pluralism is to live in denial of who we are as people. Religion (in both its broad and specific senses) cannot be separated from politics because it is people, whole people not fragmented forcefully compartmentalized people, who are the ones doing politics.

So in not believing in the separation of church and state, I mean that I think the very idea is impossible. Church and state are not abstract entities, but are functioning communities of people who cannot help but bring their whole selves into those particular relational spheres.

That said, there are of course drastically different ways of how this gets lives out. On the extremes are those that choose to reject either religion or politics. There are the religious people who while admitting to our identity as religious people, feel that religion is too offensive to ever force upon others even in the form of dialogue and so they advocate for remaining silent on anything having to do with religion. I understand the desire to care for the sensibilities of others, but if I didn’t believe in my faith enough to think that it should make a difference in the world then why bother with believing at all? At the opposite extreme are the religious folks who think culture and politics are too corrupt for religious people to participate in and so they advocate for complete withdraw from such things. They desire all people to be religious like they are religious, but cannot be bothered to work for the transformation of the world because then they might become tainted with the ways of this world. Like Jonah they just want to condemn the world never expecting that there is any real chance that the world can ever change.

But I’m not a fan of the extremes. I think God is at work in the world at all levels in all places. I cannot hide behind or withdraw into my localized tribe if I truly believe that God loves the world enough to reconcile all things to Godself. My beliefs shape my identity and therefore how I exist in the world – including how I am involved in culture and politics. But in doing such things the big question becomes whether I am letting my faith shape me and my actions or if I am using my faith to advance my selfish ends. When I involve myself wholly in politics and culture is my goal to let God use me to transform the world or to fight to control the things I personally care about. In other words, am I imposing my faith on others to gain power and prestige for myself at the expense of others, or am I accepting my place in the body of Christ and humbly loving and respecting the other members in the body.

To me that is the major difference between Dominionism and the Kingdom of God. Advocates of Dominionism are pushing their religious views for the sake of working for the supremacy of a very small group of people – often at the expense of all others. Although ostensibly Christian, it rejects the notion of love of neighbor and the call to in humility consider others better than ourselves in exchange for the opportunity to have one’s own philosophy be the one in control. It is this sort of self-serving imposition of religion that has sparked the need for people to attempt to separate church and state. When one religious view strives to dominate and silence all others, making it dangerous for outsiders to be their true selves, we are no longer functioning as one body with many parts. It is not God that is given dominion, but the name of God that is invoked as justification of individuals graspings of power.

Despite the presence of such manipulative uses of religion, I still think God is at work in the world and that I am called to serve God’s Kingdom. Doing so means letting my faith guide my interactions with culture and in politics as I believe that God cares about and can be served through all manifestations of human community. I believe in God’s Kingdom coming on earth as in heaven, just as I have to believe that all of humanity is created in God’s image and therefore to be treated with dignity and love. That core of my faith has to guide my every action in the world – from how I treat my kids to how I shop to how I involve myself in politics – if I am to say that it is truly my faith and not my selfish ambitions that is directing me. So even as I follow the way of Jesus and affirm that God reigns over all, to be working for the Kingdom of God means that I cannot exclude, oppress, or marginalize those who appear different than me. I am connected to them and am commissioned to work for their good – not because I have rejected religion but because I embrace my holistic identity as a religious person.

As the nation starts to cringe at a resurgence of the imposing of self-seeking religion upon others, it can be tempting to retreat into a renewed call for the separation of church and state. But to do so not only denies our identities as religious beings, asking us to attempt to suppress central aspects of who we are, but it fails to examine the motivating factors behind religious interactions with the Other. While I fully understand the fear religion elicits in some, as a religious person I also cannot trivialize my beliefs by restricting them to just the isolated private sphere of my life. I will not mock my faith in that way. But even as I live a public faith, I will try to let my life serve as a reminder that the Christian scriptures do not call us to destroy the identity of those who are different than us but to love them as we work for a better world, God’s Kingdom come, for all.

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Reflecting the Image of God

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In reading some of the responses to my last post Embodied Theology, I was reminded of an essay I wrote for a class last semester, so I’ve rewritten part of it as a blog post to help clarify my position.

Embodied theology is rooted in the doctrine of creation. Why did God create us? As some have proposed, God couldn’t not create or love us – it’s just part of God’s nature. As a relational giver and lover within the Trinity, God couldn’t help but be the same thing in relation with humanity. Who we are comes from God. We are not by nature sinful broken creatures, but creatures shaped in the very image of God.

There is a vital distinction going on here as to what we are at our very core. When we simply see brokenness all around us, it can be easy to assume that brokenness is what defines us and that our only hope is to escape that brokenness someday. But that assumes that there is a struggle in our inner-core between an identity of sin and an identity in God’s image. But God created us, we are fully of God. Even in our bodies here on earth, there is no other way to be.

There is of course brokenness in our world. Our nature in God’s image is distorted and obscured even as that core identity never changes. There is pain and suffering and injustice in this world. We don’t always clearly reflect God’s image. But, we are nevertheless still on the journey of becoming better and better reflections of God’s image that God created us for. Yes, we exist in time and space. We are human. And God deals with us as humans. So that means there is no magic God-wand that sprinkles pixie dust to make everyone instantly perfect like God is perfect. Adam and Eve tried to tap into instant Godlikeness in the garden and disaster ensued. Instead, we have to be embodied and relationally journey toward more fully reflecting the image of God as the finite creatures we are. That’s just the way it works. It’s a process. The journey isn’t something we hope to escape someday or something we can opt out of now, it is the core of our identity – the very thing we were created to do.

The world is hurting and because our very being is to reflect God’s image we are to love the world just as God loves us. Being called to Godlikeness means to participate in who God is. This isn’t just some inner warm-fuzzy that makes us feel close to God – it involves action. If we are moving closer to God then we will act like God and care for that which is made in God’s image – in short God’s creation. Not someday, but now – as the embodied humans we are. Hurting others, destroying the environment, being greedy, achieving at the expense of others – all these things don’t acknowledge our identity as being made in God’s image. Accepting who we are, our vocation as image-bearers, involves a responsibility to live for others and work for their good. God has blessed us abundantly, so by nature we are to bless others.

Rowan Williams has said that “being a creature is in danger of becoming a lost art,” because we can see the results of sin and individualism all around us where instead of living in embodied relation with others we defend ourselves against having to ever even encounter others in relationship. We call ourselves image-bearers but don’t live up to the name as we pine for escape or withdraw from creation. It reminds me of that classic piece of theological reflection that my toddler has insisted we listen to on constant repeat every time we get in the car for the past few months – the Veggie Tales “The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything.” In the song the pirates sing about all the piratey things they don’t do (like bury treasure, own a parrot). They then critique their fellow pirate for singing about the non-piratey things he doesn’t do (kiss chipmunks; throw mashed potatoes against the wall). They say, “we’re supposed to be singing about piratey things, what do mashed potatoes have to do with being a pirate? That’s just nonsense!” But of course the irony is that they too are not living up to what it means to be a pirate since they never do any of the pirate things they talk about.

To be created in God’s image and to be on the journey of becoming more Godlike means that we as bodily humans in the world must act Godlike. As Kathryn Tanner wrote, “Christ forms us but what is so formed is our action.” We live in community in relation with each other. We enact what it means to be Godlike in those settings. We give to each other out of what God has given us, always working to end the ways that sin prevents God’s love and blessing from being received by all. Sometimes it means having a prophetic voice within our communities to reform, rebuke, and purify the community that is not living in embodied creaturely solidarity, but however it looks, it involves action; being made in God’s image affects how we live.

So yes, the world looks broken and it can be hard to see God’s image amidst the brokenness and the pain sometimes. It can be tempting to want to escape it all by denying the world in various ways. But reflecting on what it means for us to be created in God’s image can move us past the negativity of assuming that we are at the core broken creatures into the affirmation that we are by nature reflections of God’s image who are on the journey of becoming ever more Godlike. Assuming brokenness can lead to despair and resignation that the world will never change – leading some to reject it all. Accepting our role as image-bearers leads us instead to loving action in community. We exist not just for ourselves but for all of creation. Living into that calling will make the world a better place for all.

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Embodied Theology

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Earlier this summer I attended a church service where the pastor, a man struggling with what appears to be his final bout with cancer, preached about the hope that Jesus promises to those who trust in him. After describing the returning Jesus brandishing a sword and dripping with the blood of all our vanquished enemies, he invited the audience to share what they saw as the hope that this Jesus promises. The responses ranged from no cancer, to no pain, to no worries about paying the bills, to the promise of an upgraded body – all of course in heaven someday after we die. The congregation was encouraged to find contentment in the present from the possibility of realizing these promises someday. Our souls are what matter; the body just has to endure until our souls reach heaven. No mention of help with how to pay this month’s rent or what it means for a cancer-ridden body to be the temple of the Holy Spirit, just the spiritual promise that someday all will be well.

That sort of denial of the created world in favor of escaping it all someday was difficult to hear, but it wasn’t surprising. As much as a few more moderate evangelicals attempt to deny that such “pie-in-the-sky-when-we-die” theology is still around, it still shapes the faith experience of the typical evangelical church most Sundays. What has surprised me recently is hearing similar dualism preached in churches that would never self-identity as being anywhere near such evangelicals theologically. But despite having disparate views on the Bible, justification, and inclusiveness, the outcome of such dualism in those churches is the same – a disparaging of the body and elevation of the soul. Be the roots a shallow neo-Gnosticism or popular Buddhism or simply a theology that starts with the Fall instead of creation, what get preached is that we are not our bodies.

It’s a way of viewing the world that makes that bumper sticker, “We are spiritual beings having a physical experience,” so popular. What gets valued is not the actions of faith – caring for others, studying the word, serving the poor, tending to creation, feeding the hungry – but finding spiritual contentment deep down in one’s soul. While evangelicals admit that life now is messed-up and so look forward to escaping it all someday, progressive dualists want to escape it now through meditating, unplugging, and letting-go of any obligation to help build a better world.

And therein lies the problem. When faith is all about a dualistic escapism, it sadly allows no room for mercy. Evangelicals often mock calls to work to save the environment or end extreme poverty because this world is not our home and is all going to burn anyway. Progressive dualists similarly mock calls to work for justice as imposing unnecessary shoulds upon them that get in the way of them being present with their souls. Both forms of denying our embodiment in this world provide convenient excuses for ignoring the needs of others as individuals are allowed to focus solely on their own personal spiritual needs. It’s easier to opt out of loving one’s neighbor when one’s theology is built around such a hierarchical view of creation that not only divides our body and souls, but privileges the one over the other. And with such views held by those in power, the bodies of the marginalized (women, the poor, the racially other, the queer, the old, the disabled) continue to be oppressed and ignored by those whose theologies assume they aren’t worth being bothered about.

These are theologies that I can’t reconcile with the way of Christ. With the story of a God who, challenging the dualist religious assumptions of the time, became flesh and dwelled among us. Who broke bread, healed bodies, and suffered on the cross. Who says he despises our religious gatherings if all we do is pray and worship and neglect caring for the bodies of the hungry and the oppressed. I have to affirm creation in its wholeness – undivided body and soul included. My theology is embodied because spirituality encompasses all creation, not just the parts I happen to prefer. I think Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel phased it best as she described what it means to live out this embodied theology –

Disembodiment is lovelessness. Insecurity, coldness, power and weariness are hidden behind abstraction. A theology of embodiment mistrusts all self-made fantasies of the beyond which are engaged in at the expense of the healing of people here and the realization of the kingdom of God on this earth. It is committed to a this-worldly expectation which here already looks for full, complete life, for wide spaces for women and men, and from this work derives the hope that nothing can separate us from the life and love of God.

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Speculative Fiction, the Church, and Hope

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So NPR just released the results of their survey for the Top 100 Science-fiction and Fantasy Books. It’s a great list with some of my all-time favorite books on it (although I disagree with their decision not to include young adult books on the list, but that’s just me). Some 5,000 books were nominated for the list, but the ones that made the top 100 were mostly ones that were more than just entertaining stories; they are the stories that mean something. Stories that through their imaginings of alternative worlds tap into the power of the prophetic to deliver the message that our world too is not absolute, but imagined and therefore capable of change.

Now while I have complained in the past about why imaginative challenges to oppressive orders in our world only seem to happen in speculative fictions, the genre still remains my favorite – often for that very reason. As this recent comparison of women of sci-fi vs. women of prime time shows, there are just so many more substantial ways of being in the world than the status quo generally allows for. Speculative fictions not only present the possibility that the dreams we struggle for now could someday actually be realities, they are also the prophetic voice calling us into that world.

In many ways these fictions take up the task that the church has nearly completely abdicated. Churches don’t use their collective voice and energy to challenge the existence of a world where God’s ways are not allowed to reign. Oh, churches fight for their rights, but rarely are the ones helping build a better world for all. Churches instead help people feel fulfilled, spiritually connected, and generally as comfortable as they can. The church is often nothing more than a support group or vendor of experiences to help us feel like we belong. God is tacked-on to make our experiences feel meaningful, but not to challenge us to subvert the constraints to the sovereignty of the Kingdom of God. So we go to church to feel connected to a tradition, we go to get an “I’m okay, you’re okay” affirmation, we go to hear why we are right and everyone else is wrong, we go to feel safe and secure amidst likeminded people – but rarely do we go to imagine how everything could be different. Dreaming of better world is apparently only for those sci-fi/fantasy geeks.

But it was the role of the biblical prophet to imagine alternative ways of living in this world that reflected the ways of God. As Walter Brueggemann wrote about the prophetic, it is “an assault on public imagination, aimed at showing that the present presumed world is not absolute, but that a thinkable alternative can be imagined, characterized, and lived in. … Thus, the prophetic is an alternative to a positivism that is incapable of alternative, uneasy with critique, and so inclined to conformity.”
Churches are inclined to comfort and emotional well-being, and so therefore to conformity (read a fantastic article about that here). Prophetic voices are dismissed as too political, too extreme, or just a quirk of personality. Heck, in many churches even science-fiction and fantasy are banned because they are too subversive. Churches don’t bother imagining a better world where God’s ways of compassion and justice reign because we are too comfortable with the world we have now. We don’t want a prophet to challenge our comfort, or force us to look outside ourselves, or (heaven-forbid) start caring about the things God cares about.

The church has shut the door on imagination.

Which is why so many of us are desperate for the hopeful imaginings offered in speculative fictions.

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I’m Not that Kind of Feminist

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Over the past few weeks various news outlets have run stories on the so-called feminism of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. Typical of the media, in order to make that claim, they, of course, had to assume that any woman doing anything in public equals some sort of feminist revolution. It is, however, a rapidly spreading idea. If the concept of successful women must be blamed on feminist action, then successful conservative women must be the result of feminism as well. Granted this new definition of “feminist” is, as Lisa Miller wrote for the Washington Post, “a fiscally conservative, pro-life butt-kicker in public, a cooperative helpmate at home, and a Christian wife and mother, above all.” But apparently it’s still feminism.

While many from the left were outraged by the idea of associating these arch-conservatives, who stand against many of the things historical feminists have supported, with feminism, others supported the idea. Naomi Wolf, who seems to have a love/hate relationship with feminism, wrote that the problem some have with calling those women feminists is that we don’t understand the history of feminism. She argues (rightly in my opinion) that feminism has only become associated with leftist agendas since the 1960’s, but was, in its origins, more balanced and open to conservative values. But then she explains her reasoning why –

The core of feminism is individual choice and freedom, and it is these strains that are being sounded now more by the Tea Party movement than by the left. But, apart from these sound bites, there is a powerful constituency of right-wing women in Britain and Western Europe, as well as in America, who do not see their values reflected in collectivist social-policy prescriptions or gender quotas. They prefer what they see as the rugged individualism of free-market forces, a level capitalist playing field, and a weak state that does not impinge on their personal choices.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that there are many forms of feminism. And I’ll even admit that this rugged individualist strain made up of (as Sarah Palin described it) “gun-toting self-reliant women” is, in its own way, a form a feminism. But I am highly uncomfortable with people who, like Wolf, reduce feminism to simply being about “individual choice and freedom” (and I’m not the only one). This reduction is something I encounter in the church-world all the time. Feminist or liberation theology is labeled as merely being about individual rights, and since Jesus didn’t come talking about rights but about how we can live communally and eucharistically together as the body, such theologies must be dismissed as simply cultural and therefore unbiblical. Granted, such a dismissal usually allows for the powers that be to continue to assert their own individual preferences and ideas over those of everyone else in the guise of being biblical, but the conversation has already been shut down.

It’s like the people who mock or complain about so-called political correctness. They view having to be aware and sensitive to the feelings and situations of other people as infringing upon their rights (like their right to make fun of other people). It’s not about loving and respecting others, but about losing their right to oppress. Complaining about other people doing the very thing they’re already doing ensures that meaningful conversations that might lead to change never occur.

But, contrary to what those who fear their loss of power might assert, individual freedoms and rights has never been what feminism has been about for me. My affinity to feminism (or postcolonialism or liberationist thought) has always been based on that call to live faithfully as the body of Christ. Loving others as Christ loved us means loosing the bonds of oppression and setting captives free. It means treating people, all people, as image-bearers of God. If that means advocating for rights for some, and for the elite to relinquish some of their power in order to put an end to oppression, then so be it. If that means giving up personal comfort and choices so that I can respect, instead of mar, the image of God in others, then so be that as well. Rights for the marginalized are simply a by-product of the privileged finally attempting to live self-sacrificially as part of the body of Christ. Conversations about feminism or postcolonialism help me become aware of who the people are who need love and what ways I can make myself a living sacrifice in order to do so.

Holding so tight to privilege that one rejects discussions about helping others, or disdains collectivist social-policies that mirror the sort of eucharistic life Christ expects of us, is more in line with rugged individualism than the feminism I have known. Associating feminism with that selfish, individualist, and blatantly unchristian way of living that the far right preaches these days, hurts. Just as I often have to say in response of some far-right Christians’ attempts to harm the poor, destroy God’s creation, and keep people captive, that that sort of Christianity has little to do with the message of Jesus I find in the Bible, I guess I now have to start saying to the rugged individualist feminists that I am not that sort of feminist. Palin and Bachmann can have their “it’s all about me and my privilege” feminism, but, as a Christian, that has nothing to do with me.

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