Join the Revolution

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As we ended our nearly two year study on the book of Luke this morning in church, we took a look at how Jesus open the eyes of his disciples to see how the whole of scripture points to him. While on one level it would have been nice if Luke had included that sermon in his Gospel, one can also interpret the entire book of Luke as being that sermon. The whole book echoes the themes of the Old Testament fulfilled in Jesus Christ and his teachings.

Part of the discussion included looking at the categories N.T. Wright presents in Simply Christian. In summing up the main themes of scripture, that represent as well the deepest longings of human existence, Wright creates four categories. These include – The Torah which defines our relationships, The Temple which represents our spiritually, The Kingdom which demonstrates justice, and New Creation which demonstrates our longing for beauty. These themes show up over and over again in the Old Testament and in the teaching of Jesus. He is calling us to live lives that tap into those longings and can be fulfilled through them. By developing right relationships, discovering true spirituality, seeking justice, and pursuing beauty we live in the ways we were meant to live.

But those are often the very things that are ridiculed by the world and discarded in favor of power and success. It is often the countercultural revolutionaries who uphold those biblical values while the mainstream promotes contrary values. I found it amusing last night that I saw that cultural struggle represented in one of my favorite movies. Moulin Rouge tells the story of the fin de siècle Bohemian revolutionaries in Paris who are seeking a new way of living out their values of Freedom, Beauty, Truth, and Love. They are of course despised and condemned as silly and impractical and told to cure themselves of “this ridiculous obsession with love.” I find the movie brilliant on many levels, but it was a good reminder that pursuing the values of the Kingdom is strange and challenges the dominant paradigm of culture.

To promote right relationships and to seek justice is to love others. To discover true spirituality and beauty is to love God and his creation. To actually live out these great commandments as it were goes against the messages of selfish ambition, greed, isolation, and power that the world promotes as primary. To follow Jesus one has to be revolutionary. Being ridiculously obsessed with love is impractical but it’s the way we are supposed to live. If it takes changing the way we approach everything in order to live the life we were meant to live, are we willing to do it? Is our faith real enough for us to leave everything and follow Jesus? To stop caring about ourselves and start caring for others? To join the revolution?

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Token Gestures and True Justice

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As a follow up to my post a couple of days ago regarding toys made in sweatshops, I want to point out other recent news regarding children being held in slave-like conditions to produce clothing for The Gap. An article Sunday in the London Observer revealed that children as young as ten years old have been subjected to work long hours without pay and regular threats and beatings in an Indian textile factory subcontracted to produce clothing for Gap Kids. This clothing was destined for American and European markets this Christmas. Children were being held in slavery to we could buy a $30 sequined t-shirt.

Gap of course did what it could to save its own butt and severed ties with the factory and is withholding the clothing. That makes them look good as a company, but does nothing to help the children. What is the Gap doing to assure that these kids won’t be harmed because now their slaver isn’t getting income? What is Gap doing to stop illegal indentured servitude that they found themselves a part of? Just severing ties saves face, but it doesn’t solve the problem

This isn’t the first time Gap has faced negative press because of its usage of sweatshops. Just last year reports came in of Gap clothing being made in sweatshops in Jordon where young teenage girls were trafficked in, stripped of their passports, held in slavery, beaten and raped by the factory owners. Over the last few years, Gap has attempted to overcome those damaging reports (as if the public cares anyway) by participating in token acts of charity and justice. Gap featured prominently in the Red Campaign by selling $50 t-shirts of which a portion would be donated to AIDS relief work. My favorite token gesture is the one Charles Kernaghan, Executive Director of the National Labor Committee, mentioned in his recent interview with Democracy Now!. Gap apparently created a Code of Conduct for their factories – voluntary compliance of course. It was printed on treeless paper using non-toxic soy based ink, all perfectly environmentally friendly and sustainable. The problem was that it was just a PR job, it had never actually been translated into a language besides English. The document about caring for people that itself cared for the earth never made it to the people it was meant to protect. The document was only to calm the fears of English speakers wanting to know that their clothing was ethically produced.

So while all token gestures are not just complete BS like Gap’s Code of Conduct, they still remain mere token gestures. When coffee companies can pay their farmers below living wage and put production demands on them that force the farmers to use unsustainable practices, but by building one school near one of their coffee farms they can appear caring and just to their customers, why bother with anything more than token gestures? When a church group can volunteer once a year at a soup kitchen or fill up a couple of shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child and feel like they have helped the poor, token gestures are really all we see. Acting justly has become for many a one time event and not a day to day lifestyle. We have settled for token gestures instead of holistic approaches in our lives, and so let companies get away with token gestures instead of true reform. No wonder things have gotten so out of hand.

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Safe and Ethical Toys?

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t’s that time of year again. Halloween is so over and the store shelves are being cleared for Christmas. Time to start your Christmas shopping. Unfortunately recent news has highlighted that the “Santa’s little helpers” making the toys for our children are actually young Chinese women forced to work 90 hour work weeks for pennies an hour and trafficked children held in slavery forced to work in factories. Wow doesn’t that just make you feel all warm and fuzzy with holiday cheer?

In a report released this past week by the National Labor Committee in Support of Human and Worker Rights, the atrocities committed by companies like Gap and Mattel were revealed. Mattel has been in the news a lot these past few months because of revelations of excessive amounts of toxic lead paint in their toys. I find it very interesting that after the lead paint scandal hit the news, my inbox was flooded with emails from other concerned moms spreading the news that our children could be exposed to hazardous conditions. So far no public service emails from moms concerned that people were abused and kept in slavery to make our children’s toys. Guess it’s the old, “if it doesn’t affect me and mine, then I don’t give a shit.”

You can read the full report here and a good interview transcript summarizing the report at Democracy Now!. The horrific conditions at these factories are detailed in these reports. Basically young women making Barbie Mattel toys for Walmart are paid just 53 cents an hour and $21.34 a week. “Forced to work excessive overtime, the toy workers are routinely at the factory 82 to 87 hours a week, while toiling 66 to 70 hours. The standard shift is 14 ½ hours a day, from 7:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., six days a week. Mandatory overtime at the Xin Yi Factory exceeds China’s legal limit by 260 percent! Workers are routinely cheated on nearly 20 percent of the wages legally due them – resulting in the loss of two days wages each week. After deductions for primitive dorms (12 workers share each room sleeping on double-level bunk beds) and company food that the workers call “awful,” the workers’ take-home wage is just 46 cents an hour. Managers routinely yell and curse at the workers, and it is common – nearly every day – to see young women workers crying. Workers who are insulted have but two options – to bow their heads and remain silent or to quit and leave without the back wages due to them. Workers can be fired for having an “inattentive attitude” or for “speaking during working hours.” Workers falling behind in their mandatory product goal will be punished with the loss of five hours wages. Workers are prohibited from standing up and must remain seated on their benches at all times during working hours. Workers report that the factory is overcrowded and extremely hot, and that everyone is dripping in their own sweat.Workers in the spray paint department who cannot tolerate the strong acrid stench of the oil paint are immediately fired. Failure to properly clean the shared bathroom in the dorm will result in the loss of one and a half day’s wages.”

What I find most interesting in this whole thing is Mattel’s behavior. This is the Mattel that recently apologized to China for the “excessive” recall of so many lead tainted toys. So if they are apologizing for attempting to make toys safe, then I don’t have much confidence in their treatment of workers. This is also the company that sues someone on average once a month for Barbie copyright infringement. Apparently Barbie has more rights than the 14 year old girl who made her in a sweatshop. This is the Mattel that “sought and won special “waivers” from the government of China to pay below the legal minimum wage in its factories. Mattel also received waivers to unilaterally extend allowable working hours to seventy-two hours per week, which exceeds China’s legal limit on overtime by 295 percent.” Oh and this is also the Mattel whose CEO paid himself $7,278,178 last year in wages and other compensation—which is 6,533 times what he pays his toy workers in China.

So who wants to go Christmas shopping?

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So What’s Your Excuse?

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Yesterday in church I led the conversation on the Great Commission. We have been making our way through the book of Luke for the last couple of years and have finally arrived at the end, which of course just means we are diving straight into Acts next. For many of us who grew up in the evangelical church, the Great Commission involves nothing more than convincing other people to believe in Jesus. Preaching forgiveness and making disciples simply meant getting people to intellectually assent to a certain set of ideas. We’ve left out the whole part about training people in everything Jesus taught.

So yesterday we looked at the mission Jesus sent his followers on (with the help of the Spirit) in light of how Jesus himself described his own mission in Luke 4 (to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners,recovery of sight for the blind, and to release the oppressed). The Spirit of the Lord was on Jesus to fulfill his mission and Jesus promised the Spirit so that the disciples could fulfill theirs as well (which included training others in the way Jesus trained them to follow). But sometimes doing that mission – spreading the message of forgiveness and freedom through our words and deeds – is hard. We obviously have failed at the whole setting the oppressed free and bringing good news to the poor (since there is still oppression and poverty), so there is a lot more work that needs to be done to fulfill the Great Commission. That’s where the Spirit comes in to kick out butts.

I love the example Sarah Dylan Breuer gives as she compares what the Spirit does to a washing machine –

Washing machines don’t work if the load is stagnant; without motion, there’s no transformation. So the washing machines that I grew up with had something at their center that bounced around to push what’s at the center out to the margins and bring what’s at the margins in to the center such that the whole load could be transformed.

We call that thing at the center of the washing machine an ‘agitator,’ and I can think of no better word for what the Spirit does for us. The call of God’s Spirit pushes those of us at the center of our world’s all-too-concentrated power and wealth out to the margins to welcome the marginalized to the center. If we stay where we are and let the rest of the world stay as it is, we’re not fully experiencing the presence and work of the Spirit, and we won’t benefit as fully from the transformation that the Spirit is bringing.

We need that agitation, that kick in the butt, to actually be out there engaging in the mission Christ called us to. Our discussion yesterday concluded with a time of brainstorming of everyday practical things we each could do to engage in that mission followed by us having to list the excuses we give for why we don’t actually engage. Here’s a sampling of some of the stuff we came up with.

Ways we can engage in Mission

    • – Be a volunteer

 

    • – Get to know our neighbors

 

    • – Live more frugally and simply

 

    • – Take the time to be educated on justice issues

 

    • – Learn Spanish

 

    • – Buy Fairly Traded items

 

    • – Do chores for your elderly neighbor

 

    • – Go to student’s soccer games

 

    • – Write actual letters to lawmakers

 

  • – Visit the “unseen” in our culture

Our Excuses for Not Doing Anything

    • – I’m too shy

 

    • – I won’t make a big difference anyway

 

    • – It’s too expensive

 

    • – I don’t know where to begin

 

  • – There is always something better I could be doing to help others, so I end up doing nothing at all

What would you add to either of these lists?

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Book Review – It’s A Dance

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I recently had the opportunity to read a review copy of It’s A Dance written by Patrick Oden. When I first heard about this book I was intrigued – a theology book about the Holy Spirit written in story form. I am aware that the role of the Holy Spirit is not mentioned often in emerging church discussions. Perhaps the fundamentalist/evangelical roots of many of us in this conversation who grew up being told that the salvation of Pentecostals and Charismatics wasn’t for sure and that the Holy Spirit no longer works in our current dispensation may have something to do with that. But whatever the case, I haven’t heard much talk about the holy Spirit recently and so wanted to explore It’s a Dance.

The book is set up focusing on a writing assignment of a southern Californian journalist, Luke. His assignment leads him to visit and review churches in the area in search of something new and different to capture the readers attention. While the assignment is part of his job, the search echoes Luke’s own spiritual quest to arrive at some sort of understanding and expression of faith he can accept. This quest leads him to a very different sort of church that meets in a pub. Luke then discovers the hows and why of this church’s differences as he sits down for long discussions with the pastor and church attendees. Through these discussions we hear the stories of what brought people to this different church (often stories of pain) and are exposed to the basic theology driving the church. All the while the presence of the Holy Spirit makes itself known as the conversation returns again and again to how the Spirit is at the center of what drives the church.

I personally enjoyed reading the theological exploration in conversational format. Many of the conversations in the book reminded me of ones I have participated in from time to time. There were points where the writing slipped out of conversational mode into sermon mode, but then again when you are writing through the voice of a pastor, it is hard not to sermonize every once in awhile. Although the book does not use footnotes (they would have broken up the flow of the conversation), Oden lists his sources at the end of the book and one can tell that centuries of theological traditions and reflections informed the dialogue in the book. As I read I encountered ideas common in emerging church circles as well as explorations of the Holy Spirit that were new to my understanding of faith. It was a fun intellectual journey to take.

In the presentation of the “different” church Luke encounters, it is easy to recognize many of the trendy trappings of relevant churches. They met in a pub connected to a coffee shop/bookstore, they don’t do programs, they offer a prayer room for contemplative prayer, they eschew the typical patterns of modern American churches and so forth. Nothing wrong of course with any of those things, they just fit the common stereotypes of what emerging churches look like. I appreciated that Oden went beyond describing the stylistic structure of the church and told the stories of the people who identify with that church. Reading their stories and discovering how they came to find a church home there fleshed out the theology presented in the book. Their lives represented theology lived out and were a great reminder of the real life implications of all that we believe. Through them one could see the Holy Spirit moving in the never-ending dance to draw us into faith and worship.

I think this book is a needed addition to the growing library of books on how we do church in an emerging culture. It is an accessible read and will be helpful to those who understand theology more relationally than didactically.

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More Harry Potter

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I just stumbled across this article/interview with J.K. Rowling in which she discusses the religious imagery in Harry Potter 7. In it she confirms that the tombstone quotes epitomize the entire series (confirming my theories) and that Harry was a Christ figure overcoming death (sorry Dr. Jacobs).

I thought it was an interesting read and I liked her concluding quote – “I go to church myself,” she declared. “I don’t take any responsibility for the lunatic fringes of my own religion.”

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Overhearing a Crisis of Faith

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So I had another interesting lunch yesterday. No, it didn’t involve crazy people being offended that I exist, but it did involve overhearing a rather interesting conversation. I don’t mean to eavesdrop, really, but it was impossible not to hear this conversation. And plus once I heard some of it, it was hard to tune out.

Emma and I once again had a day of appointments and errands and stopped for lunch. At the booth right behind us were two older women, they had to be at least in their late 60’s and looked the epitome of “grandma.” They were just finishing their food when we arrived, but right as I sat down I heard one of them bring up a conversation in a way that implied this conversation was the main thing she had been wanting to talk about all along. She basically told her friend that she thinks she had lost her faith. She describes going through the motions of church, still doing all the churchy stuff, but feeling like there is nothing there. She described it as being like she had been eating at a certain table her whole life but now the table just disappeared and she doesn’t know what to do. She clarified that this had nothing to do with anything bad that happened, or anything a person did, it just happened.

I missed what they discussed next, but then I heard her friend suggest she attend an evening service at another church where they do things “differently.” The lady replied that she wouldn’t be welcome there because she was too old. She then started talking about her relatives who are agnostic but who are deeply committed to a women for peace and justice group. She said this group has been around for over 100 years passionately caring about these things. She said she felt so inadequate just now discovering that she should be caring as well. Her friend just said, I kid you not, “but that’s just the social gospel”.

That’s all I overheard. You can see why I eavesdropped. I found it fascinating to listen to a much older person who has been integrally involved in the traditional church model her whole life having the same crises of faith and awakening to justice issues that many of us in the emerging church are having. Not that I think its weird, just more rare. I felt for her for not feeling welcome at what was most likely an emerging style worship service because of her age. I recall a similar issue at the last Midwest Emerging Women gathering. An older woman showed up to that event and told me that it was the first emerging event she felt welcomed at because of her age. In the promo material I had included a line about how women of all ages are welcome to attend, and it took finally seeing that in print for her to feel like she could participate. I hope this other lady from the restaurant finds a place to connect where her questions are heard and she can pursue Christ’s call to justice. I so wanted to jump in on the conversation, but I’m the type person who would never actually do that. I am just grateful for the reminder that these questions are pertinent no matter what age a person is.

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Trappings of a World in Which We Do Not Believe

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So this month’s Synchroblog is on Halloween, or more precisely about people sharing their thoughts, their experiences, and their expertise on the subject of “A Christian Response to Halloween” (or at least something remotely connected to that idea.) When I first heard about it I was excited to take the time to do research and pull together my ideas on reclaiming the roots of Halloween for Christians as a continuation of my post last month. But honestly I hit a wall. Nothing inspired me. Nothing grabbed my attention. The only thing I kept coming back to was a scene from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. In this scene Voldemort has arrived in Godric’s Hollow with the intention of murdering Harry. It is Halloween and he passes houses decorated for the evening and children masquerading as pumpkins. Voldemort refers to such things as “all the tawdry Muggle trappings of a world in which they did not believe.”

At Halloween our modern cultural rituals are a dim reflection of the historical practice of connecting with and honoring those who have come before. We lost the true meaning, but keep the trappings in hopes that we can connect in some way to something bigger than ourselves. We bring out the ghosts, jack-o-lanterns, and black cats not understanding what they mean, but longing nonetheless to grasp hold of a fleeting glimpse of the mysterious. We watch horror movies in hopes that fear, as raw and intense of an emotion as it is, will at least make us feel something beyond ourselves. But these things still remain trappings of a world in which we don’t fully believe.

Trappings of a world in which we do not believe. To what extent does that statement reflect the entire edifice of this thing we call Christianity? How much of our faith experience involves decorating our lives with symbols of that which we think might be fun if it were real but which is obviously not real enough to make a difference in our lives? Are all the trappings of church just forgotten symbols of a deeper reality? Do we desperately seek the next worship high in order to convince ourselves that we actually do feel something?

I don’t have the answers, but there are times when I take a look at what we do at church and wonder why the hell are we doing these things. I’m sure those rituals held some real meaning for some people once upon a time, but I just don’t get it now. It seems like the rituals, the trappings of faith, have become the only cultural artifact of faith. Much like plastic pumpkins and ghoulish blow-up lawn ornaments have replaced the historical roots of Halloween which are now only an echo, has this production we call church replaced the life Jesus called us to live? Is what we are doing at church just a hollow cultural echo of what we were meant to be?

Halloween and Christianity are safe because they are no longer connected to their roots. We can play around with them and only occasionally be reminded of the bigger mystery they represent. I do not fear Halloween because I only see a hollow artifice without roots (not that I fear those roots, but that’s another story). But I do fear Christianity when it is a hollow artifice. Trapping of a world in which we do not believe can be dangerous. Ignoring the wild and deep power of God as we engage in rituals of worship doesn’t sit well with me. I think we need to start lifting the veil and start believing again.

If you want to read other more coherent contributions to this Synchroblog (that maybe actually address the topic…) check out –
The Christians and the Pagans Meet for Samhain at Phil Wyman’s Square No More
Our Own Private Zombie: Death and the Spirit of Fear by Lainie Petersen
Julie Clawson at One Hand Clapping
John Morehead at John Morehead’s Musings
Vampire Protection by Sonja Andrews
What’s So Bad About Halloween? at Igneous Quill
H-A-double-L-O-double-U-double-E-N Erin Word
Halloween….why all the madness? by Reba Baskett
Steve Hayes at Notes from the Underground
KW Leslie at The Evening of Kent
Hallmark Halloween by John Smulo
Mike Bursell at Mike’s Musings
Sam Norton at Elizaphanian
Removing Christendom from Halloween at On Earth as in Heaven
Vampires or Leeches: A conversation about making the Day of the Dead
meaningful by David Fisher
Encountering hallow-tide creatively by Sally Coleman
Kay at Chaotic Spirit
Apples and Razorblades at Johnny Beloved
Steve Hayes at Notes from the Underground
Fall Festivals and Scary Masks at The Assembling of the Church
Why Christians don’t like Zombies at Hollow Again
Peering through the negatives of mission Paul Walker
Sea Raven at Gaia Rising
Halloween: My experiences by Lew A
Timothy Victor at Tim Victor’s Musings
Making Space for Halloween by Nic Paton

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He with the Loudest Voice Wins

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Forget “come let us reason together.” Forget “love wins.” These days it feels like whoever has the loudest voice wins. I know that sounds really cynical but I’m getting tired of being drowned out by those voice. Let me explain.

We do church differently at our church – call it emerging or postmodern if you like. We don’t (generally) preach at people, but instead attempt to engage people in discussion and reflection. This works really well for people who are used to us or who have an bit of an intellectual bent. But occasionally we get people who show up who after listening to part of the conversation say something like “But Joel Osteen says _____”. That’s the end of the discussion for them. Joel Osteen has a TV show so therefore his voice being the loudest and most prominent is correct. So if we are talking about self-sacrificially serving others based on texts from Luke, but Joel Osteen said that we can have it all if we just have faith, Joel Osteen must be right. There is no interacting with the issue, no trying to determine which message holds the truth, just allegiance with the guy with the loud voice.

Then there are the issues with the radio preachers (as the Out of Ur blog recently discussed). These guys can say whatever they want and because it is Christian radio people believe them as Gospel truth. It doesn’t matter if your church preaches one thing on Sunday, if the people in your church listen to Christian radio they will believe the radio guys’ over you. If they are on the radio they have the loud voice and therefore must be right. So if you are say in the emerging church, but the radio preachers tell their listeners that the emerging church is a cult where they sacrifice children and have sex with Satan (or something similar) they will believe the radio guys and condemn you to hell. No honest intelligent dialogue. No pursuit of truth. Just automatic default to whatever the guys with the loudest voice are saying.

I’ve personally experienced this phenomenon in a women’s Bible study I was in a few years ago (which yes was just as painful as it sounds). Not much deep engagement went on at this thing. Our discussions involved reading whatever answer we filled in the Beth Moore blank with or occasionally reading the study notes from the NIV. Any attempts to push the conversation further were met with confused looks of “that wasn’t in the book.” One week our topic was on Rahab, and I was determined to bring up the alternative view that perhaps she wasn’t a prostitute. Before I could one of the other ladies chose to read from Liz Curtis Higgs’ Bad Girls of the Bible on Rahab. Essentially the passage claimed that Rahab has to be a prostitute because she represents our potential to be saved from the baseness of our sexual nature as women and if you question her role as a prostitute you are unbiblical and challenging the saving work of Christ. Which of course I disagreed with even more. At the risk of being labelled unbiblical (which I eventually was at that church) I tried to speak up and was immediately shut down. Who was I to question Liz Curtis Higgs the others asked? She’s the expert on bad girls of the bible, you can’t question the expert. So faithful exploration and biblical study don’t matter in the face of a loud voice.

The “loud” voices, the ones with clout, are considered more believable because they are prominent and reach a wider audience. As we in the emerging church attempt to rethink patterns of theology we run up against these loud voices. They don’t engage us in dialogue or a willingness to learn. Instead they ridicule, spread rumors and lies, and inoculate themselves against feedback by screening their calls and emails and deleting negative (or just basically insightful) comments on their blogs (if they allowed them in the first place). I guess it’s hard to remain a loud voice if you don’t just shut out all other voices.

So what do we do with this? People are allowed their own opinions, and I can ignore individuals who make fun of what I am a part of, but what about my family and friends who believe lies about me because of a few loud voices? Or who at least write me off for things I truly believe because they have been exposed to a bad representation of those things? Or what about those of us who have lost jobs because of the loud voice of others? How can we encourage church members and friends to actually think for themselves instead of swallowing whatever the loud voices tell them to believe? How can we do this without getting too cynical?

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