Standing Up for Justice

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Should you not walk in the fear of our God?

This is the question Nehemiah addresses to the people of Judah when he sees the way they are treating the poor in the land. The families of the educated, aristocratic, and wealthy Jews had been exiled during the Babylonian occupation while the peasants had been allowed to stay in the land. When the Persians allowed these upper-classes to return to Judah, they immediately started oppressing the people who had remained in the land. Times were tough, but the rich continued to take advantage of the poor of the land sending them into debt slavery and taking their lands from them. So the oppressed people came to Nehemiah and said “Now our flesh is the same as that of our kindred; our children are the same as their children; and yet we are forcing our sons and daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have been ravished; we are powerless, and our fields and vineyards now belong to others.” (Neh 5:5)

Theirs is a story told over and over again in our world today. Families in India find themselves in a position where they must borrow money to pay for a doctor and the lender takes advantage of them by imposing high interest rates. To attempt to pay off the debt their children must work rolling cigarettes or shaping bricks. But of course the debt never gets paid off and the children become debt slaves. Or to earn enough money to feed the family, a father in China arranges for his daughter to work a job in a big city factory, only when she arrives she discovers that she is actually captive in a brothel where she is repeatedly drugged and raped. These stories happen every day as economics and greed instead of love guide our actions. Or a wealthy country sends an occupying army into another land (for their “protection”), claiming the best strips of land and resources for themselves. They leave the country ravished and then offer high interest loans to help the country get back on their feet. The rich then continue to be sent payments from the poorest countries in the world.

Our flesh is the same as their flesh. Our children are the same as their children. But our children go to school, eat three meals a day, have toys to play with, are vaccinated against disease, and enjoy the luxury of the innocence of childhood which their children can only dream of. Their daughters are ravished, their lands have been stolen by corporations, their children trafficked or tricked into slavery under the economic system that helps us remain rich and in power.

When Nehemiah heard the plight of the people he burned with anger. After much thought, he brought charges against the nobles and the officials telling them, “The thing that you are doing is not good. Should you not walk in the fear of our God?” And the scripture says that the people were silent and could not find anything to say. They didn’t call him a socialist or complain that he suffered from white guilt. They heard the messenger of the Lord and were humbled by their sins. They pledged to stop taking advantage of the people who worked the land, promising to return whatever they had unjustly taken from them. And it wasn’t just a pledge to cover their rears or get them re-elected. It was an oath before the Lord, with the understanding that whoever failed to abide by their pledge would be ruined and cast away from God.

This weekend marks the Stand Up, Take Action event – an annual worldwide mobilization where citizens around the globe spread the message and take action against poverty and toward reaching the Millennium Development Goals to reduce poverty by 2015. Part of the call is to tell the world leaders who have pledged to stop injustice and oppression and reduce poverty that “we will no longer stay seated or silent in the face of poverty and the broken promises to end it!” It is celebrated in conjunction with Jubilee Sunday, a day dedicated to praying for global economic justice, deepening our understanding of the global debt issue, and for taking concrete action for debt cancellation for all impoverished countries.

This weekend is a reminder to listen to the words of Nehemiah and examine if we do truly walk in the fear of the Lord. To ask in what ways are we contributing to oppression and injustices worldwide and to pledge to put an end to such actions. We are God’s people, committed to following his ways. To take advantage of our brothers and sisters for our own material gain is in direct defiance of the way of life God calls us to. We must instead make good on our pledge to follow Christ. To take a stand against poverty and oppression and commit to ending such injustices worldwide. And like the people who heard the charge from Nehemiah respond not with grumbling or excuses or entitled justifications, but by saying “Amen,” praising the Lord, and doing as they had promised.

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Finding Our Home

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The themes of exile and home have permeated my life in recent weeks. From my experiences in the classroom and church, to encounters in song and film, this idea that we all are seeking to find where we truly belong has been a common theme. Like the Israelites who hung their harps by the rivers of Babylon and wept for their loss of home, humanity is generally assumed to be in exile in our fallen world. There is the sense that we have lost something or that we are not as we were meant to be. The desire to be released from this exile saturates our expressions of cultural longing. But there is a wide range of ideas regarding what it means to put an end to exile and find our true home. For many finding that home requires looking to either the past or the future, but I have to wonder if the solution might be closer than we think.

On one hand the desire to escape exile produces romantic notions that promote a sense of nostalgia. The idea is that we are trying to get back to something – trying to return to our true home so to speak. Like the Israelites in Babylon, we define ourselves by what we have lost and seek constantly to regain it. Like Wordsworth some assert that heaven lies about humanity in our infancy, but that “our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting” taking us away “from God, who is our home.” This is a longing for the garden, for the innocence that defined humanity once upon a time. There is a sense that if we could just get back to where we began all would be right with the world. All the knowledge, and civilization, and development of humankind is but a distraction pulling us further and further away from where some feel we are meant to be. Our true home is in a fixed place and it is to that place that we must return. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, some conclude that “If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with!” All the adventures we undertake and the learning we acquire serve simply as reminders of what has been lost that we are to long to return to.

But returning to the innocence of infancy, to our childhood home, never truly satisfies for the simply reason that that home no longer exists – we can never fully return. We have been changed with knowledge – exile has altered our very being. So for some the answer to our altered condition is to shift that longing from the fixed place we came from to a fixed place where we are going. Call it Heaven or the New Jerusalem or even the sweet by and by, it is a longing for a future time when all will be right in the world and we will finally be where we belong. As some sing, “some glad morning when this life is o’er, I’ll fly away; To a home on God’s celestial shore.” It is a hope to escape our exile with a future reward of home and belonging. Our life now will pass away; all its trials and tribulations vanish once we fly away to where we are supposed to be (which obviously isn’t where we are now).

My issue with both the longing for a lost or a future home is that they deny our process of becoming. When we escape the mundane confines of the world of our exile, these theories have us leaving behind the process that shaped us into who we are. Our journey of becoming who God created us to be is erased in one magical moment of arriving at our final permanent destination. But in truth, just as we can never truly go back, we can also never fully arrive. In searching for this place called home – in ending an imposed exile – there seems to be a need for constant movement. As we serve our purpose of reflecting the image of God, that reflection will always expand and change but never merge. We won’t ever become God, but instead constantly journey towards God. It’s like how C.S. Lewis presents the afterlife in both The Great Divorce and The Last Battle – we must always be moving further in and further up, unceasingly discovering that each moment is “only the beginning of the true story, which goes on forever, and in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

Even in exile we are on this journey, which begs the question if we are actually truly in exile. But there is no denying our broken world; we all have an innate knowledge that there is some other place of belonging to be longed for. What makes all the difference is that even in a world fallen away from God, God is still present. There is no need to return to God or to await God, but to find God and discover in God where we belong. If God is with us and we are journeying to God, it implies that we are constantly both dwelling in and moving towards our true home. We are already part of that continuing story that goes on forever. As the poet R.S. Thomas writes, “Life is not hurrying on to a receding future, nor hankering after an imagined past. It is the turning aside like Moses to the miracle of the lit bush, to a brightness that seemed as transitory as your youth once, but is the eternity that awaits you.” We find our home in the moment even as we seek to become something more than who we are in that moment. This places our home in the present, but assures that it is never static. To claim such a static home would be to pitch our tent in Babylon and embrace exile apart from the transforming work of God. The Kingdom is here and now, but it is never just here and now. We must always be seeking God as we make our home in God.

This idea of finding our true home in our present incarnation as image-bearers who continuously seek after God is, I think, why the Tolkien quote, “Not all those who wander are lost” resonates with so many of us (as did the ending of Lost). We know that we can never deny who we are to return to some past home, nor does it make sense to long for some happily-ever-after where the adventure abruptly ends. There is always more to ahead, more to discover, more to become. Not all those who wander are in exile, we have found our true home in the very act of seeking that home, or (to paraphrase U2) we can’t say where we’re going but we know we’re going home.

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Self-Inventory on Biblical Hermeneutics

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Okay, so I’m going to go all geeky here and post my seminary homework assignment – not even the work I’m doing but the straight up assignment itself. Why? Because it is so freaking awesome. (when was the last time you said that about homework?). Basically, for my History and Hermeneutics class I have to answer these questions to help me understand all the “stuff” I bring with me to the biblical text. I’ve thought about some of this before, but am grateful for the chance to look more in depth at the lenses I use for interpreting the Bible. I wanted to share it here because I think everyone should engage in this sort of exercise. Pastors should require it of their congregation just to help us all know ourselves. Admitting that biblical interpretation is always influenced by our cultural setting is difficult for some people, realizing the extent of that truth is something few people ever take the time to consider. Hence, how awesome this assessment is as a tool for helping reveal such things.

And for the curious, “this self-inventory was first developed in an ongoing working group on the politics of biblical hermeneutics sponsored by New York Theological Seminary. The working group’s membership included faculty from New York Theological Seminary, General Theological Seminary, and Union Theological Seminary, as well as pastors and denominational staff members.” It can be found in N.K. Gottwald’s “Framing Biblical Interpretation at New York Theological Seminary: A Student Self-Inventory on Biblical Hermeneutics” in Reading from This Place, Vol. 1: Social Location and Biblical Interpretation in the United States (Fortress, 1995).

1. CHURCH HISTORY/TRADITION

What is my denominational history and tradition regarding interpretation of the Bible?

2. AUTHORITATIVE CRITERIA

What are the norms or standards beyond the Bible recognized in my tradition to indicate how and in what particulars the Bible is the word of God? This may include a founder of the denomination, a church body, a confession, a creed, a set of customs, a type of personal experience, a social commitment, as well as other possibilities.

3. WORKING THEOLOGY

What is my actual working theology regarding interpretation of the Bible? To what extent is this the same or different from the official position of my denomination or the ‘average’ viewpoint among my church associates? Is my working theology more or less the same as my formal theology, such as I might state in an application to a seminary or before a church body?

4. ETHNICITY

How does my ethnic history, culture, and consciousness influence my interpretation of the Bible? This may be somewhat easier for Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians to answer, but it is also a necessary question for Anglos to ponder.

5. GENDER

How does my gender history, culture, and consciousness influence my interpretation of the Bible? With the rise of feminist consciousness, this may be an easier question for women to confront, but it is also an important question for men.

6. SOCIAL CLASS

How does my social-class history, culture, and consciousness influence my interpretation of the Bible? Since the dominant ideology in our society tends to deny that social classes exist among us, or to belittle the significance of class, it may take considerable effort on your part to identify your class location. For starters, you can ask about work experience, inherited wealth, income, education, types of reading, news sources consulted, social and career aspirations, and so on, and you can ask these questions about yourself, your parents, your grandparents, your associates, your neighborhood, your church.

7. EDUCATION

How does my level and type of education influence my interpretation of the Bible? If I have had technical or professional training in nonreligious fields, how does this impact my way of reading the Bible? How does my age and ‘generation’ affect my experience of Biblical interpretation?

8. COMMUNITY PRIORITIES

Does my congregation have a vision of the common good of the community in which it is located? Does it have any explicit commitments to the attainment of the common good? How does my congregation’s view of its relationship to the larger community influence my interpretation of the Bible?

9. EXPLICIT POLITICAL POSITION

How does my avowed political position influence my biblical interpretation? Politics is about as narrowly conceived in this country as is class. The term ‘political position’ in this question refers to more than political party affiliation or location on a left-right political spectrum. It also takes into account how much impact one feels from society and government on one’s own life and how much responsibility one takes for society and government, and in what concrete ways. Also involved is how one’s immediate community/church is oriented toward sociopolitical awareness.

10. IMPLICIT POLITICAL STANCE

Even if I am not very political in the usual sense, or consider myself neutral toward or ‘above’ politics, how does this ‘nonpolitical’ attitude and stance influence my biblical interpretation? What is the implicit political stance of my church and of other religious people with whom I associate?

11. ATTITUDE TOWARD JUDAISM

What is my view of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity? To what extent is my view informed by direct experience of Jews or Jewish communities? How does my view affect my understanding of the relationship between the Old and New Testaments and my understanding of the religious identity of Jesus, Paul, and other central figures in the New Testament.

12. CUSTOMARY EXPOSURES TO THE BIBLE

How does the mix of uses of the Bible to which I have been or am currently exposed influence my biblical interpretation? Such uses may include worship, preaching, church-school instruction, private study, Bible school training, ethical and theological resourcing, solitary or group devotions or spiritual exercises, and so on.

13. BIBLE TRANSLATION

How do the Bible translations and study Bibles I use influence my interpretation of the Bible? What translation(s) do I regularly or frequently use, and why? If I use a particular study Bible with explanatory essays and notes, what line of interpretation is expressed in it? Do I accept the study Bible interpretations without question or do I consult other resources of information to compare with them?

14. PUBLISHED RESOURCES

How do the published resources I regularly or sometimes consult influence my biblical interpretation? Among these resources may be one’s private library, a church or seminary library, periodicals, church-school educational materials, sermon helps, and so on.

15. INTENT AND EFFECT OF BIBLICAL PREACHING

How do my church and pastor (or myself as pastor) understand the role of the Bible in preaching as an aspect of the mission of the church, and how does that understanding influence my own pattern of biblical interpretation?

16. ORIENTATION TO BIBLICAL SCHOLARS

Are the categories and terminology of biblical scholarship completely new to me, or do I have some familiarity with them? How does my attitude toward and use or nonuse of biblical scholarship influence my biblical interpretation? Am I inclined automatically to accept or to reject whatever a biblical scholar claims? Does the biblical scholarship I am familiar with increase or decrease my sense of competence and satisfaction in Bible study?

17. FAMILY INFLUENCE

What was the characteristic view of the Bible in my childhood home? Have I stayed in continuity with that view? Do I now see the Bible rather differently than my parents did (or do)? If there have been major changes in my view of the Bible, how did these come about? How do I feel about differences in biblical understanding within my current family setting?

18. LIFE CRISES

Have I experienced crises in my life in which the bible was a resource or in which I came to a deeper or different understanding of the Bible than I had held before? If so, what has been the lasting effect of the crisis on my biblical interpretation?

19. SPIRITUALITY OR DIVINE GUIDANCE

What has been my experience of the role of the Bible in spiritual awareness or guidance from God? What biblical language and images play a part in my spiritual awareness and practice? How do I relate this ‘spiritual’ use of the Bible to other ways of reading and interpreting the Bible? Do these different approaches to the Bible combine comfortably for me or are they in tension or even open conflict?

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If My People…

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America’s propensity to see ourselves as God new chosen nation has often led us to claim scripture directed at Israel (or Judah) as promises for ourselves. While such thinking generally makes me squirm, I can re-apply such interpretations to see how they apply to the modern world. Granted, such direct application is woefully historically inaccurate and the nationalistic (and narcissistic) assumption that the good ole US of A has magically replaced Israel as God’s chosen people seemingly ignores the sacrificial act of Jesus on behalf of all nations – but I can still see how it works. I trust in the words of the prophets, and can believe that the principle of their commandments transcends culture even as they were original situated in particular cultures themselves. So while I have trouble reading passages that talk about requirements of or blessings for God-s people as applying to the citizens of the USA, I have no problem applying such commands to the church as the new representations of God-s people.

That said, I do find it curious which passages those who see the USA as God-s new chosen nation see fit to claim as applying directly to us. For many years the theme verse for the National Day of Prayer was 2 Chronicles 7:14 “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” In context, the passage refers to God helping heal the land from drought and swarms of locusts, but it more often these days is a request for God to rid our land of abortion and liberals. But whatever the context, I find it most intriguing that this verse suggests only personal piety (prayer and repentance) as the required acts that God will reward. This promise of “If we pray, God will heal” fits nicely into the modern Evangelical culture that stresses piety as the necessary work of the people. Many churches shy away from acts of charity or justice due to the fear that they might become acts of “works righteousness” or distract us from personal habits like prayer and worship (as if such things are an either/or).

Choosing such passages of promise involves direct acts of selection and interpretation. The Bible is full of other such promises to Israel – telling them what is required of them in order for God to bless them – but those aren’t often selected. For instance, take Jeremiah 7:3-7 –

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.” For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever.

If we do justice and take care of the immigrant and the poor and the homeless, and if we refrain from violence, and if we refrain from seeking after the idols of our age then God will be with us in our land. Why don’t we hear church leaders applying those words to America? Why don’t we have Evangelical churches mobilizing for National Days of Justice or Peacemaking or Welcoming and Caring for Immigrants? If we claim other words of worship requirement and blessing that were directed at Israel as mandates for ourselves in the modern church, then why aren’t we claiming these words as well?

Our acts of worship and sacrifice – of taking our lives and making them holy by giving them to God – define our relationship with God. There should be nothing divisive or political about the decision to worship with acts of prayer or with acts of justice. God seemingly requires both of us. But we have allowed our politics to guide our interpretation of scripture – even to the point of which passages we claim as our own. We, like those Jeremiah calls out, seem to trust in the deceptive words “The Temple of the Lord.” Instead of listening to all of God’s words about worship and acting rightly, we assume that our group’s interpretation is correct and holy. We hide behind the name of “biblical Christian”, or “compassionate Christian”, or “progressive Christian” or whatever other deceptive mantra we choose to repeat as a way to drown out the voice of God.

I really don’t care about God healing or blessing America – God is far bigger than the petty boundaries of a nation. But I do care about the church following the path God has called us to – a path that listens to all of God’s commands and doesn’t run away from the acts of worship required of us. Which is why I think we should listen to whenever God says “If my people…”

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Too Much Justice?

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Last week, Alan Jacobs posted an article, The Online State of Nature, on the Big Questions Online website. In the article he addressed the question, “Why has Internet discourse devolved into a “war of every man against every man”?”. I generally like most things Dr. Jacobs (who was my favorite college professor after all) has to say, and I feel a bit weird offering a critique of an article that asks why there is too much mean spirited critique online, but I wanted to explore his conception of justice in the modern world.

After describing some of the hostilities he’s encountered on online Anglican boards, Jacobs writes –

I have thought a lot about why people get so hostile online, and I have come to believe it is primarily because we live in a society with a hypertrophied sense of justice and an atrophied sense of humility and charity, to put the matter in terms of the classic virtues.

Late modernity’s sense of itself is built upon achievements in justice. This is especially true of Americans. When we look back over the past century, what do we take pride in? Suffrage for women, the defeat of fascism, Brown vs. Board of Education, civil rights and especially voting rights for African-Americans. If you’re on one side of the political spectrum, you might add the demise of the Soviet empire; if you’re on the other side, you might add the expansion of rights for gays and lesbians. (Or you might add both.) The key point is that all of these are achievements in justice.

I’ll admit to contributing at times to uncharitable discourse online – my desire to be right outweighing common human decency and a respect for truth. The level of discourse in many areas of our society has seemingly plummeted to new lows (or, at least, that discourse is simply more public now). Either way, I share Jacobs’ concern for a return to humility and truth based discourse. I get that. Where I am having a hard time is the blaming of this sort of vicious dialogue on a modern overinflated sense of justice.

My first issue with that is that from a historical perspective there truly is nothing new about such vicious pursuits of so-called justice. Yes, late modernity’s self of sense is based on achievements in justice, but the same could be said of any number of historical periods. The tales we claim as shapers of our cultural identity and heritage are all rooted in the intense pursuit of what was believe to be just and right. To avenge the kidnapping of Helen the Greeks launched a war against Troy that spanned a decade. The much loved tale of Hamlet would be nothing if he chose not to right the wrong of his father’s untimely death. Without the pursuit of liberty, equality, and fraternity the French Revolution would never have occurred. Nor would have the American Revolution without the response to the injustice of taxation without representation. For that matter one merely has to open scripture to see this particular sense of justice manifest. From Samson’s burning the Philistines’ crops after he discovered that his (presumed abandoned) wife had been given to another man, to the Israelites’ slaughter of the Benjaminites in response to the rape and murder of the Levite’s concubine; or from Simeon and Levi’s murder of the recently circumcised Shechemites in retaliation for their sisters Dinah’s rape, to Absalom’s murder of his half-brother Ammon for the rape of his sister Tamar – we can clearly see that violence for the sake of a just cause is nothing new. Such actions have defined cultural identity since the beginning of recorded history.

What bothers me though is that in suggesting that modern justice is disconnected from humility and charity without acknowledging similar historical instances of the same, Jacobs promotes our culture’s incomplete understanding of justice. As the examples above illustrate we all too often simply reduce justice to its retributive aspects – sometimes even using the term when we actually mean revenge. Tales of justice often celebrate its violent manifestations (because, let’s face it, that makes for better stories). There is nothing new about conceptions of justice that are devoid of charity or humility, history is full of such tales. But instead of ascribing our modern cultural problems to this particular sense of justice sans charity, I believe it would have been more helpful to acknowledge that throughout history there have been those who hold to an inaccurate sense of what justice is all about which has often led to a lack of charity. In our culture today (and in ages past) we have lost a biblical sense of justice and have sadly assumed that the pursuit of rightness must involve violence of some sort. But trying to fix a broken world through just acts of revenge and violence has nothing to do with true justice. In this sense fighting amongst ourselves in order to seek what we know to be good and right in this world has less to do with an overinflated sense of justice and more to do with a misunderstood sense of justice.

Justice is not about using force (physical or verbal) to establish righteousness. Justice itself is righteousness – or right living. True justice is rooted in charity and humility – it is the extension of love and mercy to all. As Derrida suggests, justice (which is love) cannot be deconstructed or codified, it simply must be lived in an ever unfolding and changing world. When we codify it and turn it into simply a way to make demands of others through threats of violent retribution, then what we have is not a hypertrophied sense of justice at the expense of charity and humility, but a lack of all three. If we were to care about biblical justice, a justice that places that very charity at its core, then it would be nonsensical to speak of an inflated sense of justice. For how can we ever say that we have too much love or mercy?

Justice that seeks righteousness for the world does so through the very virtues that Jacobs claims have been lost. I agree with his call to reclaim such virtues, but am wary of language that sacrifices another mush needed virtue simply because of the ways it has been misunderstood over the centuries. Our culture has its issues and desperately needs to return to a respect for truth and love, but as I see it, throwing justice under the bus isn’t exactly the best way to achieve those ends.

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Caring While We Still Can

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Between July 30 and August 3 a reign of terror was released upon villages in the Congo’s Eastern mining districts. Some 200- 400 Rwandan and Congolese rebels raided villages in the North Kivu Province and gang-raped nearly 200 women and children. Women reported being raped in their homes in front of their husbands and children – often repeatedly raped by three to six men. Aid workers have also treated four young boys (ages 1 month, six months, one year, and 18 months) who were also raped. A UN Peacekeeping force of 25 attempted to do what they could, but when they would arrive in a village the rebels would flee into the forest and return as soon as the peacekeepers left. Survivors said the attackers were Congolese Mai-Mai rebels who had joined forces with the Rwandan rebel FDLR group (a group that includes perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide who fled across the border to Congo in 1994).

Terror and rape as acts of control is common in the Congo, especially in the mining towns where the rebels have much to gain from controlling the mines that supply much of the world’s coltan and cassiterite (necessities in our ubiquitous modern electronics like cell phones and laptops). The locals, far from benefiting from supplying such minerals to the world, call the minerals a curse for bringing such terrorism to their homes. And these rebel groups stay in power as they continue to receive funds from all of us willing to pay them to just continue our supply of cheap cell phones no matter the cost to others. A cost that apparently includes the gang rape of one month of babies.

It is so disgusting and twisted that it is hard to put into words the rage it elicits. While America is in a dither about being offended by the presence of Muslims in our midst, this is what is happening in the world right now. We talk about fearing terrorism, but this is terrorism in the flesh. At some point we have to move beyond talk. We have to stop watching films like Hotel Rwanda just so we can seem caring and enlightened at our church “God at the Movies” night, and start working to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Hatred, power, and money are all still fueling atrocities – we have to get over our poor track record of only caring about such things in hindsight. Feeling bad about the Holocaust, or Rwanda, or Bosnia, or Japanese internment camps is trendy years later. What takes guts is standing up and doing something about such things as they happen. That is never popular, and will get you called some nasty names as you encourage society to change and care. But what does it say about the state of our souls if we don’t at least try?

To that end, I see three areas where we can start to take steps forward to deal with the larger issues at play here. And, yes, these are beyond the immediate care that is needed for these women and children and the instability of the moment. These try to get at the heart of the issues in society and culture, which is why they are hard and unpopular.

  1. We need to campaign for conflict-free cell phones (and other electronics). Companies that purchase minerals from these areas need to be held accountable at all levels of the process. Buying from middlemen who buy from the terrorists does not absolve a company of guilt. Putting out a product as cheaply as possible should never be an excuse for supporting terrorist groups that maintain control through mass gang rape. I want the companies I support to be transparent in who they deal with. The world needs to know what their money is actually funding when they buy a cell phone. While it is probably too much to ask that companies educate and inform us of what we are actually buying, they can at least work on abiding by US trade law and not import goods obtained through such acts of terror. Consumers can also demand conflict free items, letting the companies know that we are willing to pay what it costs to guarantee that we are not funding such rebel groups when we purchase a product. The consumer sets the demand, and it is up to us to demand a product that doesn’t support gang rape. But first we have to start caring more about the people being terrorized than we do about our latest model phone.
  2. We need to start treating peacekeepers with the same respect we do the military. Peace is a dirty word in our country, while our troops are sent care packages, given discounts, and revered as heroes. But soldiers trained to otherize everyone have a hard time waging peace. Train a soldier to eliminate empathy for the other so that they can kill enemies and it is hard to then expect them to switch into roles of protector, healer, and peacekeeper. We need more people strictly devoted to caring for and protecting others. 25 UN Peacekeepers to protect thousands from guerrilla fighters isn’t enough. Instead of just sending out troops to destroy (in the name of protection), we need armies of people devoted to caring for others. And for that to be a reality, that job needs to be just as attractive and honored as those trained to eliminate others. Peacekeepers need the free ride to college, they need that half price movie ticket, they need parades in their honor, and days set aside to honor the work they do. To give the world the help it desperately needs, we need to raise up armies of peacekeepers willing to empathize, care, and protect so that the evil powers of this world will terrorize no more. But first we have to stop demonizing the very idea of being a peacekeeper.
  3. Finally, we need to emphasize the full equality of women. Men who are raised to see women as inferior (in whatever way) are more apt to objectify us. When women are inferior objects for a man to use – as a subservient housewife, as a porn image, as a prostitute, or as a rape victim – we become less than human. Men seek to control us physically, sexually, emotionally, and mentally. Controlling something that is inferior or weaker for one’s own pleasure (be that sexual pleasure or the pleasure of power and money) is at the root of much injustice in this world. So often women bear the worst of any injustice because men were taught to see us simply as objects to be used in the power plays of life. All too often those that seek justice brush aside concerns regarding women’s equality as merely a distraction – something to be dealt with once the real justice issues are resolved. But as we see here, how women are viewed and treated is at the heart of the matter. Women are being gang raped as an act of control – their bodies are currency in the international games of commerce and trade. They should never be an afterthought. Caring for their wellbeing – of not just their broken bodies, but of their souls is as important as resolving the conflict over minerals. They should not be brushed aside as unfortunate victims of a larger issue; they deserve to be treated as equals worthy of intervention and advocacy. Men should not permit women to continue to suffer simply because our equality is considered too political, or liberal, or insignificant to bother with. Changing the way the cultures of the world (including our own) view women is at the core of ending these injustices. But first we must care about women enough to be their advocates even when it is unpopular.

This list is a start. It isn’t the solution – there are too many factors at play here for that. These are simply three action steps that we can start with. It is easy to be paralyzed with rage at these atrocities and feel like there is nothing we can do. But we can start pushing for change – even if that means starting with ourselves and how we view consumption, or the role of peacekeepers, or the equality of women. Choosing to care and make a difference while there is still time is difficult. Maybe it would be different if it was our family – our mothers or sisters or babies – who were being raped. We would turn the world upside down for their sakes. Is it too much to ask that we start with a few small changes for the sake of these mothers and sisters and babies?

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Creating Liberated Spaces in a Postcolonial World

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Emergent Village will be hosting its annual Theological Conversation this year in Atlanta, GA from Nov. 1-3 on the topic of “Creating Liberated Spaces in a Postcolonial World.” This year’s conversation will feature a global panel of theologians- Musa Dube of Botswana, Richard Twiss of the Lakota Sioux tribe, and Colin Greene of the UK. This blog post was written as my personal response addressing why it is vital for all Christians to engage in the postcolonial conversation. For more information about this event or to register click here.

From a Western vantage point it can be easy to assume that the way we (I am speaking as a white, privileged American here) approach Christianity is normative or perhaps even correct. We call our theology, well, theology, and give modifiers to other people’s theology as if they were somehow inferior or partial theologies. Asian theology, African theology, feminist theology, liberation theology, postcolonial theology – become electives to be dabbled in or ideas to be scorned as heretical in light of the traditions that place our perspective firmly at the center of perceived truth. But in doing so we deny the voice of the church and the truth of Christ’s message. We end up only hearing theology spoken from the mouths of the privileged and the powerful. But Jesus did not come to only bring good news to those who rule the world.

For instance it is hard to advance a truthful theology of suffering when we are the ones forcing others to suffer. In our country where some Christians say they are being persecuted if a salesperson says “happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” we often lack even the most basic point of reference for understanding how people from different cultural settings who’ve lived through oppression and grief approach their faith.

For example theologian Chung Hyun Kyung comments on the influence on Asian women’s theology of Western colonizers telling them God is love while beating, staving, and raping them. This experience and twisted message affects how they view God and what questions they ask of God. She writes that their challenging of God on his silence during their oppression cannot help but shape their theology. They ask of God, “Where were you when we were hungry? Where were you when we called your name as our bodies were raped, mutilated, and disfigured by our husbands, policemen, and the soldiers of colonizing countries? Have you heard our cries? Have you seen our bodies dragged like dead dogs and abandoned in the trash dumb?” (Struggle to be the Sun Again, p22).

Questions must be asked as theology is done in such postcolonial contexts in attempts to differentiate the message of the colonizers and the message of Jesus. For instance, when oppressed people are told that a good Christian is quiet, subservient, and accepts suffering and poverty by the very colonizers who live in luxury and benefit from the service and poverty of the people, some serious theological reconsideration is in order. A theology that is only ever applied to women or oppressed peoples in order to keep them subservient is highly suspect. Truth and worship are far more important than such self-serving twistings of God’s word. But it takes hearing from these voices from the margins and wrestling with the same questions they wrestle with in order for the church as a whole to move towards a healthy and truthful theology.

But to do so requires humility. It not only requires some of us to give up our positions of power and privilege while admitting that we do not have the corner on Christianity, it may also require repentance and reconciliation. It requires admitting that our privilege came at the expense of others – that the poverty in the world today has its roots in forceful conquest of land, the outright theft of natural resources, and the enslavement of peoples around the world. It requires admitting that the life we now enjoy has its historical roots and present reality in the blood, sweat, and tears of others. It is only after we repent of these sins that we can be open to embracing a fuller theology which we can only learn by listening to the voices of others – often the very others we must ask forgiveness of.

Being open to hearing and believing these truths is difficult. It is far easier to mock th0e theologies of others and call them heretical than to humble ourselves and repent in the name of truth. But it is vital for the health of the community that is the universal body of Christ. The eye cannot say to the hand that I have no need of you – or that I am more important or more connected to God than you. We must embrace our whole body, even the parts we have abused or neglected. To truly be the body of Christ we must listen to the voices of the oppressed and the colonized – for we can never be whole without them.

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It’s (not) all about Jesus

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Why?

Why do we do this whole Christian thing? Why do we go to church and proclaim the faith that we do?

I’m sure that there are a number of readers who will call me an idiot for even asking that question. The expected answer of – “because we love Jesus” (or something like that), is all the answer they desire. In fact, for some, any other answer is inappropriate and evidence of a compromised faith. But honestly, I hardly know what that answer even means for many people these days. “Loving Jesus” is the rote response, but the problem with rote responses is that they are often a poor substitute for real introspection. The pat answer suffices when in reality one hardly knows one’s own soul well enough to even begin to answer the question.

As much as people want to make everything all about Jesus these days, Jesus has unfortunately become a shield to protect us from deep engagement. People start asking questions, a dialogue develops, differences emerge and instead of letting truth be sought with courage someone at that point suggests that we just need to refocus on Jesus and stop all the arguing. Jesus is what it is all about, so thinking anything more complex than just evoking his name gets shut down. But who is that Jesus to them? Without reflection or introspection, how can Jesus even be known apart from being simply an icon that we worship?

Faith is complex. Our motives for belief are complex. No one simply goes to church for the pure unadulterated reason that they love Jesus. We go because something in the environment resonates with us. Be the church hip and relevant (whatever those mean), or soaked in art and beauty, or thick with tradition – our souls find a home that we can be comfortable in. A home where we can best find the paths that lead us to God. Or we go for the community. Be it the stay-at-home moms who find a support system in the two hours of adult contact they get each week at church. Or simply the friends who can connect over a shared discussion of theology, the church offers the communal connections our souls cry out for. We go for the music, the emotional high, the networking opportunities, the dating opportunities, the playground, the coffee, the need to feel right, the intellectual stimulation, the need for encouragement, the reminders of childhood, the desperate need to feel welcomed and included. We go for a million different reasons.

And yes we go for Jesus. Sometimes this is a two dimensional Jesus we call upon to shield us from asking the hard questions. Sometimes it is a Jesus we are imperfectly trying to follow. Sometimes it is a Jesus who has transformed our lives. So yes, we go to church for Jesus. But also for all these other reasons. And in truth there is nothing wrong with any of it. We are complex creatures, piecing together meaning in our fractured world in whatever way we can. Faith feeds off culture which feeds off community. Jesus is there, but he is incarnate in all the muck and mire and breathtaking beauty just as much today as when he was born in that stable. There is nothing to be ashamed of or to reject out of hand in admitting this complexity.

Where the problem lies is when we can’t look into ourselves and ask these questions. When we are too afraid to know ourselves well enough to admit these truths. When we slap on Jesus like a shield to protect us from the hard work of knowing, then we’ve stopped actually following Jesus. Following Jesus should never be our excuse to stop pursuing truth or to stop asking the hard questions. Following Jesus shouldn’t force us to pretend that we are above the cultures of this world or are too good to be influenced by basic human needs (like the need to be loved). Maybe a flat image of Jesus we project can form a wall strong enough for us hide behind, but the real Jesus can’t do such a thing because he is deep in the midst of all the realities of life, and culture, and doubt, and longings.

Asking ourselves why we are Christians should never elicit a simple straightforward answer. We are complex people who worship a complex God – we need to allow God to be in even that complexity. Our answers might end up sounding less holy or more self-centered, but at least they will be honest reflections of reality. Hollow answers, although sanitized and religious sounding, do a disservice to the God we claim to follow. I think Jesus desires our whole self – neediness and cultural baggage included – more than some unreflective protestation of devout worship. To make it all about Jesus, we have to admit that it’s never just all about Jesus. And that’s okay.

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Hipsters, Faith, and Truth

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So Brett McCracken has been getting a lot of press recently for his book criticizing and making fun of so-called hipster Christians. And yes, here I go giving him more press by adding my “Seriously? You’ve got to be kidding, right?” thoughts into the fray (which is a typical response I’ve been hearing to his stuff, which Daniel Kirk gave best of here and here). And just to clarify (since I know people will say it), it’s not that I think “hipsters,” or culture or the emerging church (which btw, McCracken, is still very alive and well) or discussions about sex or social networking or whatever are above critique. On the contrary, I think any discerning person will constantly be engaged in a critique of the world around them. We are by nature unceasingly in dialogue with our culture – a culture which is not inherently good or bad, but must be assessed and measured as we swim through its waters. Popular culture is not a construct that we can escape; it is a reflection of our collective conscious (for good or for ill). Outright acceptance or rejection of such culture simply because it is popular demonstrates a severe lack of understanding of how we as social creatures even construct reality (although it may sell books). So this isn’t a defensive response to critique, it is a call for informed dialogue.

For full disclosure, I haven’t fully read Hipster Christianity yet – just extended excerpts (thank you Amazon “look inside”), summaries and reviews and articles and blog posts McCracken has written. I don’t know McCracken, but I do have to say that discovering recently on his blog that he was a fellow Wheaton College grad who lived in Traber dorm (a stereotype that only fellow Wheaties will understand) helped clarify his cultural influences for me as well as explain his obsession with C.S. Lewis (who at Wheaton was referred to as St. Jack or “the fourth member of the Trinity). But I did take his “are you a Christian hipster?” quiz, which of course told me I was a hipster. From what I could tell anyone who isn’t fundamentalist or Amish and has a pulse in the 21st century would be labeled “hipster” according to the quiz – including McCracken himself who seems far cooler than I will ever be. As I’ve mentioned numerous times before, I am the definition of uncool. I have no sense of style, I don’t know how to do my hair, I don’t listen to music, I am not artistic, I’m a freaking stay-at-home (mostly) mom for crying out loud. But apparently (according to McCracken) since I read non-male/white/Western theologians, think the church should discuss something as important as sex, attend a church that meets in a warehouse and uses candles, like Stephen Colbert and Lady Gaga, believe we can learn truth from literature and film (I got the same Wheaton College English degree as McCracken after all), desire to steward God’s creation, and think oppression, human trafficking, and modern day slavery are wrong I am a self-centered hipster and therefore in danger of compromising my faith for the sake of being cool.

And so once again I state, “Seriously? You’ve got to be kidding, right?” The logic there is so horrible I don’t even know where to begin. I’m struggling to tell if he is just another one of those Christians who lashes out at anyone who has a different faith journey than him (and I’m sure he would poke fun of me using the term “faith journey”), or if he is truly ignorant of how deeply rooted in faith much of the stuff he criticizes actually is (or if this is a disguised theological attack that chooses not to use theology). I just don’t know. I don’t deny that the people he describes exist, or that there are people who desperately just try to be cool. But why he feels this obsessive need to label and therefore dismiss entire sections of the church who are simply trying to faithfully follow Jesus is beyond me.

Why is the conversion of the girl who had her perspective changed by the art history prof in college who now creates non-Thomas Kinkade Christian art as part of worship more suspect as being inauthentic or not truly Christian than the drug dealer who read a Chick-tract and now works in a soup kitchen? Is God not working for transformation in her life too? Or why is believing that Kwok Pui-lan, or Musa Dube, or Richard Twiss, or Gustavo Gutierrez might have something to teach us any different than believing we can learn from C.S. Lewis, or Francis Schaeffer, or Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Or why is the guy who wears thrift store or fairly made clothes more in danger of having caring too much about his appearance interfere with his spirituality than the youth pastor who spends hours describing to his group (in great detail) the exact sorts of bathing suits or the exact width of shoulder straps the pretty young high school girls are allowed to wear during summer camp? Or for that matter than the middle-aged women who have self-appointed themselves the modesty police or even Richard Foster who devotes a large section of Celebration of Discipline to the clothes Christians should wear? Why is it okay for their ideas about appearance to be faith-based and biblically-sound, but not the so-called hipster’s? Why are emerging forms of spirituality automatically suspect as being more culturally influenced and therefore harmful to Christianity than those that emerged twenty or thirty years ago?

I know I am not a creature independent of my culture. No one is. Anyone who claims otherwise needs some serious re-education. But to claim that we so-called hipster Christians are the way we are simply because we are self-centered “all about me” folks who are trying to be cool and relevant utterly misses the point. I attend a church of broken misfits who are desperately trying to live faithfully. I don’t attend my church because we are so cool that we meet in a warehouse and sit on couches, I attend it for the community that has formed around each other in that particular environment. Sure the environment influences who we are, but it isn’t the sum of who we are – just like gathering by a river or in the catacombs or sitting in pews or a cathedral influences but doesn’t not ultimately define other churches. I don’t read postcolonial voices because that makes me relevant; I read them because I believe the body of Christ cannot survive without all its parts. I don’t buy fair trade because it’s trendy; I buy it because the Bible tells me to care for the poor and to not cheat a worker of his wages. I don’t fight human trafficking because it makes me feel good, I do it because it is wrong that six year old girls are kidnapped and forced into prostitution where they are repeatedly raped by men who have a sick and twisted view of women and sex (two topics that churches apparently should avoid discussing because they are just trendy shock-gimmicks). (And by the way, when we’ve reached the point in the conversation where people are questioning opposing the enslaving of children as sex toys because it might be too trendy and relevant of a topic then I’m done with that conversation – God is nowhere in it).

I am a cultural creation, I freely admit that. But don’t for one minute project your disapproval of my culture trappings onto me and assume that I have uncritically allowed such things to put the “realness” of my faith in peril. If you want to criticize such things or suggest another type of popular culture that you think is more appropriate for Christians to embrace (cuz, we all embrace something) then do that. Let’s disagree, but for the sake of respectful and truthful dialogue please don’t naively dismiss my lived faith as merely an attempt to be cool when nothing could be further from the truth.

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Justice and Women

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We live in a world full of pain and injustice; there is no getting around that fact. We can hide from the truth or try to protect ourselves from reality, but just because we don’t want to know about it doesn’t mean it doesn’t still exist. Our world does its best to hide its dark side from consumer eyes and our school boards do their best to hide most of history from our children. It takes work to keep our eyes open wide enough to see reality. Thankfully, there are people out there who do try to be informed, who try to end injustice, to heal past wounds, and to make amends. Yet recently, as I was reading Eduardo Galeano’s classic book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of Pillage of a Continent, I came across an almost casually mentioned atrocity that jolted me with the reminder that even for the people who are out there actively seeking to fight injustice, there remains one injustice that many would prefer to continue to ignore – the oppression of women. Across the world it is women who often face the worst injustices and yet are often brushed aside as not important enough to seek justice for.

In writing about how the sugar cane industry has destroyed the land and economies of many Latin American countries and led to numerous human rights abuses, Galeano mentioned that in certain plantations in Brazil (at least as of his writing) it was common practice for the plantation owners to claim jus primae noctis, or, right of the first night with the daughters of their workers. Most commonly known to us from the movie Braveheart this is a medieval custom giving to the Lord of an area the right to the virgin night of all the women he ruled. Although in Medieval times the actual consummation was rarely if ever practiced as many families chose the option of “giving” the Lord the bride’s dowry instead (what the Lord was after anyway), Galeano reports that on the plantations the owners would demand the right to have their way with their workers’ 11-12 year old daughters in exchange for the worker remaining in their employment.

Reading that affected me in a visceral way. In the midst of a litany of oppression, I was reminded that women truly bear the brunt of injustice worldwide. Their bodies are chattel, they aren’t deemed worthy of education, and they are fed leftovers if they get food at all. Because they are women their oppression is magnified. Not only must they endure the poverty and the colonialism, but also the objectification of their bodies and the required subjugation of their wills. When voices for liberation or revolution arise the women are called upon to endure hardships and make sacrifices, but it is never their liberation that is fought for. The few that call out for women’s needs to be addressed and for liberation to come to women are told that in light of the greater injustices and oppression that their cause is just a selfish distraction. I hear it all the time in the church – there are just too many more important things to spend energy on than trying to bring justice to women. We aren’t even worth the effort of those that make it a point to care about injustice and the oppressed.

Feminist postcolonial theologians are quick to point out this imbalance. They ask how can we say that we truly desire liberation if in achieving that liberation women still remain oppressed? They repeatedly insist that equality and respect for women should never be an afterthought to be sought sometime after the real work of combating injustice is done, but an instead should be at the very foundation of what it means to seek liberation itself. Nations and races cannot ever fully work for reconciliation and mutual respect if those nations are built upon oppression from within. But sadly, theirs are not the voices that are commonly heard.

In reading non-Western theologies recently (both postcolonial and evangelical), I have in fact encountered the very opposite. Men, who write on combating injustice and prejudice by calling the church to learn from say Korean or First Nation theologies and church practices, insist upon, as part of that process, an affirmation of gender roles that give men a strong (and sole) leadership role in the home, the community, and the church. They see a firm affirmation of this hierarchy of men over women to be integral to ending race divisions in the church itself. So not only are the needs of women ignored, healing and justice are proposed through the continued oppression and sacrifice of women.

Injustice and oppression make me sick and prompt feelings of rage inside of me. But reading about these young girls being raped as pawns in the never-ending cycle of colonial and commercial oppression left me feeling raw. This isn’t just about greed and economics. It isn’t just about racism and power-plays. It’s rooted in a subjugation of women that denies our worth and turns us into mere objects for men to use as they see fit. Most of the Western world hides behind their ignorance of history and injustice (often willfully sought) as an excuse to uphold the status quo. But when even those who claim to care about justice say that speaking out of behalf of women isn’t worth the effort I can barely respond. How can justice be justice if it is only for men?

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