Kruse Kronicle

ReFrame: Following Christ in the Modern Era

What does it mean to follow Christ in our era? That is the central question for Christians in any era, but it is particularly challenging today. Some suggest that our postmodern and post-Christendom context is creating a level of disruption in the Church not seen since the Reformation. I think that is likely true. So how do we follow Christ today?

A new curriculum called ReFrame attempts a response. It is “A powerful 10-week film-based exploration of what it means to follow Christ in the modern era,” produced by Regent College (Vancouver, British Columbia) in cooperation with The Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation & Culture. It is a truly exceptional series.

The curriculum features ten videos, each about thirty-nine minutes long. The first episode speaks of the increasing complexity and fragmentation of modern life. Our tendency is either to assimilate with our cultural context or to withdraw. We do not have a clear vision of how God might work in our midst. We do not know how to follow. The series uses the Emmaus Road story as a metaphor for being unable to see Christ among us until our vision is “reframed.” The second episode delves a little deeper into the specific challenges we face.

Beginning in the third episode, the series takes a narrative approach, moving from creation and fall to Israel, to Jesus the King, to new creation, to the Church and the Spirit, and so on, helping us see how our daily work and life is connected with God’s “story” at work in the world. The series concludes with guidance on how we might more authentically be disciples in light of our context and light of God’s unfolding narrative.

The format of each episode is built around the TED Talk concept. Half of the video is a speaker making an engaging presentation. There is a setup segment at the beginning and a wrap-up segment at the end. Interspersed throughout the video are commentary, testimony from biblical scholars and theologians, and vignettes by people from business, law, education, and science. People like Scot McKnight, Andy Crouch, Amy Sherman, and Eugene Peterson are among the contributors. Each episode is very well produced, moving along at an engaging pace.

I cannot emphasize enough how refreshing this curriculum is. I have served in various leadership capacities within the Presbyterian Church, USA, and various faith-based entities for most of my adult life. At some point in the late 1990s, I discerned that many Christians have difficulty seeing how their discipleship connects with daily life in meaningful ways. Church has become ancillary to “real life.” The Church is where to receive therapeutic care, get moral instruction for children, or join programs that offer opportunities for charity and the pursuit of justice outside of real life. The Church is not a place where we are formed for mission at the workplace and in the mundane affairs of the world. I am convinced that renewal in the Church will begin only when God’s mission and the whole of life are reintegrated.

Key to reintegration is reframing, yet I find precious few people in ecclesiastical structures and academic institutions who see the urgency and centrality of this need. When attempts are made, they usually proceed from a purely theological bent, without dialog with other disciplines like sociology, economics, science, education, and business. They lack winsome authenticity. ReFrame is a refreshing exception.

ReFrame acknowledges its Evangelical milieu, but I am convinced the curriculum would be well received across a wide range of denominational and theological communities. I am working out the details of doing multiple small groups with the series at Pine Ridge Presbyterian, starting at Lent. The idea is to buy a digital license and “flip the classroom.” Participants will watch each episode online at a password-protected site and then meet weekly to discuss and apply what was learned. The curriculum is a turnkey product complete with guides and promotional materials.

I have been following Regent College for at least fifteen years and am impressed with its innovation and quality of services. I know of few other institutions like Regent. The College offers classes and degrees that focus on the reintegration of life, and I am sure one purpose of the curriculum is to raise the profile of the academic and practical resources they provide. More power to them! I hope they are so successful that seminaries around the country will feel compelled to follow their lead. Maybe even the Presbyterians one day. ;-)

You definitely need to check out ReFrame. If you go to their site, you will find a two-minute promotional video. Episodes 1 and 5 are free to get a flavor of the experience. Thanks to the ReFrame folks for an exceptional product. I cannot wait to put it to use.

Church is not Worship, Community, or Mission. It's All Three

Rachel Young has a thoughtful article at the The Presbyterian Outlook's Outpost blog titled, Consumers, missionaries, or worshipers? She writes:

... We use the language of buying and selling, of efficiency, of getting the best product for the best price, even as we think about our relationships, our work, our leisure, our church. We are consumers.

I don't have space in this post to offer evidence for these big claims. Check out Hugh Halter and Matt Smay's book And: The Gathered and Scattered Church for an evaluation of how this metaphor seeps into churches. The consumer metaphor invites us to seek church experiences that fit our interests and time. We go to church to get our spiritual needs met. If I were to modify the answer to the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism (see below for the actual answer), the consumer might say, "Man's chief end is to connect with God by listening to a great message and hearing great music." ...

So maybe, as some suggest, a better metaphor is missionary. She writes:

... So, we might modify the Westminster Shorter Catechism to say, "Man's chief end is to partner with God to redeem and restore our hurting world."

The missionary metaphor compels me. But, what I find lacking in both of these metaphors is the primacy of worship. Is the gathering of a church only functional? To give people a feel good experience or to shape them as missionaries? Or, are the people of God called first to worship God and then be sent? The first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism actually reads, "Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever."

I hear her concerns, and I know they are widely shared. I hear similar concerns expressed across the church. But I think pitting these various metaphors against each other, or prioritizing one over the other, IS the problem. I commented in response:

I like how Stan Ott talks about church as three-dimensional: doxological, koinonial, and missional. Or more simply: worship, community, and mission. The three are inseparable. I think classifying desire for a meaningful worship experience as consumerist is overly harsh. It is pursuit of that experience above all else that is destructive. I would also say that pursuit of worship as prior, or over and above the other two, is problematic.

Genuine worship draws us into community and inspires us to mission. Genuine community is worshipful and it is in community that we discern and do mission. Mission is a worshipful response to God and deepens us in community as we do it together. All three aspects must be held together.

There is an ongoing debate in the church about a (false) dichotomy of community (and personal nourishment) versus mission. I sense some want to lift "worship" up as the "third way" out of this conflict. Instead, I suggest that the answer is to embrace all three boldly.

Rise of the "Nones" is Greater for Older Americans

Black, White, and Gray: Trends in the Religious Unaffiliated, the "Nones," by Age - Brad Wright

A lot has been written recently about the rise of the "Nones," people expressing no religious affiliation. Sociologist Brad Wright offers a fascinating insight by looking at the percentage of people at various stages of life who report affiliation. Young adults are not surprisingly the group with the highest percentage, but Wright offers this chart.

Wright makes this observation:

Once again, the percentage of being unaffiliated increased in each group, but relatively speaking, it's increased most among the middle-aged and the elderly. In both the percentage of the unaffiliated more than tripled, compared to the 2.5x increase in the young. There is some lagged effect, as the elderly are catching up the middle-aged in the past decade, but overall, the rise of the religious nones is something that spans all age groups. Thus it's a societal-wide change more than just an age or generational change.

This data doesn't explain the rise, but I have a theory: Church offers little for discerning significance in life.

A few random thoughts (mostly intuitive perceptions.) There is disillusionment with church life for many older adults who grew up in the Church. Young adults interested in the Church are starting up independent congregations narrowly targeted to their particular age demographic. Older Christians feel rejected. As a traditional congregation tries to become more appealing to the younger demographic, long-time congregants experience a loss of meaningful rhythms and routines for them. With those gone, worship no longer seems meaningful. Some look for other congregations, but I sense many see integrating into a new community faith community as too much work. As the number of congregations with familiar patterns dwindles and close, they slip out the door into the ether.

Dr. Eileen Lindner, Deputy General Secretary for Research and Planning of the National Council of Churches USA, gave a presentation two years ago. She points out that fifty years ago, congregations and denominations were engaged in a whole range of work that ministered to the world. Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, para-church organizations emerged to do what congregations once did ... like Young Life and Habitat for Humanity. Many of the things churches once did have been replaced by nonprofit organizations that may not have an explicit connection to faith. In one sense, the Church is a victim of its own success, having encultured values of service into the broader culture. But the downside is that it frequently feels like we are all left with squabbles about internal politics. Congregations and denominations are struggling for an identity and purpose in relating to the world.

As I've written several times, conservative congregations typically respond by offering programming directed toward therapeutic healing, personal piety, or political action to stop the "barbarians at the gates." Liberal congregations also offer therapeutic healing and personal piety but frequently include political action they discern is directed toward "social justice." Much of it appears to be a "me too" response to broader movements in the culture, hoping to leach off the meaning people find in these movements rather than the Church itself generating the meaning for congregants. Religion (right and left) becomes so captive to the categories and contours of cultural politics that theological understanding is lost. And if you want to do political action, there are far more dynamic venues than the Church.

And that brings me back to my overarching theory: Church offers little for discerning significance in life. Too much of the Church is about narrow personal piety (a niche market) while trying to make ourselves relevant to the culture with "me too" strategies from the periphery of culture. Until people see how daily life connects with God's unending mission, I think the Nones tribe will continue to grow and prosper.

Want to be Missional? Equip Those in the Workplace

The High Calling: Want to be Missional? Equip Those in the Workplace

I was recently invited to teach a session of a seminary class called “Pastoral Functions” at an extension of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. In this class, the pastors-in-training had been discussing such topics as Worship, Disciplemaking, Evangelism, Visitation, Funerals, Weddings, Pastoral Counseling, Children’s Ministry, etc.—topics we’d expect in a class like this.

But I was invited to talk about something significantly different and paradigm-shifting. Pastors need to recalibrate their ministry philosophy so that the members of their congregations are affirmed, encouraged, and equipped to serve God through their various vocations. I challenged the students to help the people of God participate in God’s mission on earth through their vocations. Thankfully, seminaries are beginning to understand that they will need to transition their curriculum beyond the traditional topics if they want to train pastors to lead missional churches. ...

An excellent piece by Bob Robinson. Spot on! Read the whole thing.

Scot McKnight on Political Eschatology

Looking through articles commenting on the election this morning, I found this one by Scot McKnight.

Jesus Creed: Politics and Eschatology

Somewhere overnight or this morning the eschatology of American Christians may become clear. If a Republican wins and the Christian becomes delirious or confident that the Golden Days are about to arrive, that Christian has an eschatology of politics. Or, alternatively, if a Democrat wins and the Christian becomes delirious or confident that the Golden Days are about to arrive, that Christian too has an eschatology of politics. Or, we could turn each around, if a more Democrat oriented Christian becomes depressed and hopeless because a Repub wins, or if a Republican oriented Christian becomes depressed or hopeless because a Dem wins, those Christians are caught in an empire-shaped eschatology of politics.

I can’t imagine 1st Century Roman Christians caught up in some kind of hope whether it would be Nero or Britannicus who would succeed Claudius.

Where is our hope? ...

... Now before I take another step, it must be emphasized that I participate in the election; and I think it makes a difference which candidate wins; and I think from my own limited perspective one candidate is better than the other.

But before I take the next step I’ll say this: if our candidates lose won’t make one bit of a difference for our obligation to follow Jesus today. Not one bit.

Participation in our election dare not be seen as the lever that turns the eschatological designs God has for this world. Where is our hope? November 6 may tell us. ...

... Our hope is in the gospel of God that creates a kind of people that extends God’s gospel to the world. Chris Wright’s big book, The Mission of God, reminds us that election is missional: God creates the people of God not so the people of God can compare themselves to those who are not God’s people, but so that God’s people will become a priesthood in this world to mediate the mission of God, so that all hear the good news that God’s grace is the way forward.

Our hope is in God’s mission in this world, and that mission transcends what happens November 6th.

As I watched this election, my mind had gone back just a few years ago to when left-leaning Christians were preaching about America and Empire. As I follow social media, I see how curious it is to see many of those same Christians who embraced that critique in delirious joy over the inauguration of the latest "Emperor." It confirms much of what I suspected all along. The critique was partisan, not prophetic.

Be sure to read all of McKnight's post. I consider The Mission of God to be one of the top five most important books I've ever read. I strongly resonate with McKnight's post.

What are your thoughts about the election?

Denominations are in Flux

Clarkcowden's Weblog: Denominations are in Flux

"... Currently, denominations are in a state of flux. The organizational structures that were created, and that devolved into regulatory agencies, are no longer affordable or sufficient for the twenty-first-century church mission. Some are pessimistic about the future of denominations and have proclaimed their imminent death, while others are optimistic and have witnessed pockets of vitality and innovation. While opinions vary on the future status of denominations, one thing everyone agrees on is that denominations are in a state of transition. Transition is not something new for denominations; but, in order to move through this transition effectively, they have to address some key questions: “What is the mission of the church in the twenty-first century?” And “What is the role of denominations in the future?”

Flying into our Future with the Wright Brothers

Jesus Creed (Scot McKnight): Flying into our Future with the Wright Brothers

...Question: If you had to name one or two authors or themes that will be at the forefront of the future of theology, what would you choose?

No, not those Wright Brothers, but another set of Wrights (who aren’t even brothers, except in Christ): Tom and Chris. Even if they don’t map where all of theology is headed, these two scholars and devoted churchmen, both Anglican, do set before us two words that have become increasingly fruitful and I think will be the subject of serious theological reflection in the future. The two words are “earth” and “mission.” Each scholar discusses both, but I will focus in this post on Tom Wright’s focus on “earth” and Chris Wright’s focus on “mission.”

Increasingly we are seeing more and more Christians own up to the earthly focus of biblical revelation—the claim God makes upon this earth through his Eikons (humans made in his image). We are seeing a deeper reflection on what it means to participate in the historical flow, in government and politics and society and culture, and we are seeing a renewed interest in vocation and work. One of the more striking elements of this new surge is that theologians who are deeply anchored in the Bible also see our eternal destiny having an earthly shape.

And not only are we seeing the increasing presence of “earthly,” but we are seeing a reshaping of theology itself so that God’s mission in this world becomes central. Everyone knows that the latest buzz word is missional but not enough are thinking carefully about what mission means in the Bible and what it means to speak about “God’s mission” (missio Dei). But there is a surge of thinking now about this topic and it will continue to spark interest both for pastors and professional theologians. ...

Prosperity: "Your Kingdom Come..."

"Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

Christians across the continents and the ages have continually prayed these words Jesus taught his disciples. They are central to the life and mission of the Church. But there are two important implications of this prayer.

First, these words are an invocation. They are a plea to God to complete the work he has promised. They are a plea for Earth's discordant reality to become Heaven's shalom-filled reality. These words anticipate the consummation of the new creation, and they acknowledge that this will come about through God's will.

Second, these words are also a declaration. We attest that we are united with this vision when we say them. We commit ourselves to seeing God's will done in the here and now, even as we anticipate the consummation of the new creation. It is a commitment to align ourselves with the mission of God in the world.

In my previous installment, I wrote:

The mission of God in the world is to establish and sustain a shalom-filled world that is overflowing in relationship with him. It is a world where his image is reflected through his eikons to the rest of the created order, to each other, and back to God. It is a world where his eikons exercise co-creative dominion over the created order and bring all things to their fullest state of existence.

The story of the New Testament is of the life, death, resurrection, and ministry of Jesus Christ. It is an authoritative witness to how Jesus' first-century disciples sought to be faithful to Christ in their context. The New Testament is not an instruction manual for how to work for the arrival of the new creation.

The New Testament stresses that God's transforming work is done through communities of Christians. These communities are organically linked to other communities of Christians, and together they make up the body of Christ in the world. However, some claim that there is clear teaching about the nature of leadership and structure in the Church. I would simply point out that this "clear teaching" has generated everything from Baptists to Roman Catholics. :-)

When it comes to cultural engagement, the New Testament church seemed okay with tolerating the institution of slavery, opposing Emperor worship, and keeping optional the question of eating meat sacrificed to idols. In other words, while certain ultimate and penultimate ethical standards were unchanging, some things that might have been less than the perfect shalom God wills were tolerated while others were not. Strategic issues related to the advancement of the Kingdom of God figure prominently in the instruction of the New Testament letters.

Scripture gives us a vision of the coming Kingdom of shalom. It gives instruction about many of the ultimate and penultimate ethical issues. It gives authoritative witness to how the first-century Church sought to apply Jesus' teaching in the nitty-gritty of life. But it doesn't give a once-and-for-all-time manual on how to be the Church in every cultural context.

It is important to interject here that neither does the New Testament give a once-and-for-all-time posture that the Church should take toward the culture. The Church of the New Testament lived during a time of totalitarian oppression. Would Jesus, Paul, and other New Testament leaders have counseled differently if they were speaking into our context of considerable personal freedom with the ability of the public to influence societal structures peacefully? Those today calling for a "Christ vs. Empire" posture seem to think they would have. I'm skeptical to the point of believing that this is akin to the error of treating every biblical instruction as culturally transcendent. It is the error of making a contextual political posture transcendent.

This is not to minimize the challenge that the Church has to be a prophetic voice and to avoid "going native" (unwittingly becoming captive) to the culture. But the other potentially dangerous error is for the Church not to offer constructive leadership and winsome influence to move the culture toward shalom. By Church here, I'm not so much referring to ecclesial institutions as I am "the Church" in the sense of its constituent members interfacing with the world in daily living.

So we are praying for the Kingdom of God to come. We are seeking the shalom-filled world that God has intended from the start. We are committing ourselves to its fulfillment, all the time knowing that it will not be fully realized until the consummation of the new creation. We know that central to this vision of God's Kingdom is the repentance and transformation of individual human beings made possible by the atoning work of Jesus Christ. But we know that "at-one-ment" is not just the reconciliation and restoration of individuals with God. It is also the commissioning of eikons who are sent into the world to be God's stewards of creation and reflect God's image. Embracing atonement is synonymous with being immersed in God's mission of reconciliation and restoration of humanity to God, of people to each other, of humanity to creation (including human contributions like art, government, and commerce), and of ourselves to ourselves.

Therefore, we are left with a considerable challenge. What we have been given is a general vision of a shalom-filled world. From Genesis to Revelation, we've been given an authoritative narrative of God's work in the world. We've been given witnesses to Jesus' instructions. We've been given witness to the application of Jesus' teaching in the first-century Roman Empire. And most importantly, we've been promised that the Spirit will always be with us. We've not been given a constitution for government or an economics textbook to explain how we should arrange our economic affairs. How are we to proceed in seeking shalom in these vital areas?

Ancient religions were cyclically oriented in terms of time. Religious practice was an exercise in conforming to the endless cycles of existence. Christianity broke the mold. With Christianity, we encounter a linear progression of time and life moving toward some culminating end. As Rodney Stark points out in The Victory of Reason, Judaism and Islam look backward to comply with the writings of their central figures (Moses and Mohammad.) Jesus wrote nothing down. Rather we have witnesses to his life and teaching. There is no Torah law or Koran to implement. Instead, Christianity has as its occupying focus compliance with a coming kingdom. It is about bringing that future Kingdom into the present so others may see and be drawn to it. The way God has revealed God's self in Christ and chosen to reveal God's self to us in Scripture compels us to use reason and become active co-creative participants with God in his unfolding Kingdom.

Therefore, with the Scripture and its vision of the new creation, the Holy Spirit infilling us, and the historical witness of the Church preceding us, we're called to examine our context and discern how we can best contribute to the greatest shalom. We must reason and learn our way to greater shalom. As the Church seeks greater shalom it gives witness to the Kingdom of God (and it will not always be welcomed.) In our day, that would undoubtedly include the highly systematized reasoning methods of science where theories are tested in real-world experiments, but it would include other branches of learning like history and philosophy as well. All this is part of our prayer for God's will to be done.

As I noted at the beginning of this series, I intend to focus mostly on shalom's material/physical aspects. Not because they are the most important but because I believe they are among the most misunderstood. I've already mentioned my earlier series on World Social Indicators showing the astounding improvement in the human condition over the past two or three centuries. I want to explore what lessons we might learn from the past about improving, expanding, and sustaining this move toward prosperity.

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Prosperity: The Mission of God

The mission of God is not to get people saved. Now that I likely have your attention, let me also acknowledge that getting people saved is an essential piece of God's present work in the world. However, we must view God's mission from God's vantage point rather than ours. Failure to do so inevitably results in making it all about us.

The mission of God in the world is to establish and sustain a shalom-filled world overflowing in relationship with him. It is a world where his image is reflected through his eikons to the rest of the created order, to each other, and back to God. It is a world where his eikons exercise co-creative dominion over the created order and bring all things to their fullest existence.

As we look at humanity in this mission, we can see that we were created for relationship with God. But we must ask a critical question of the biblical narrative: Why did God create material beings for such a relationship? God could have created non-material beings for relationships. Indeed, the widely held belief across much of Christianity today is that when we die, we will enter into an eternal non-material existence.

I believe the answers are there in the first two chapters of Genesis. God creates, and it is good! But it is also incomplete. First, God creates the first human couple and makes them co-regents with him over the earth. Then he instructs them to "fill the earth." Why? So that the whole earth may be filled with his image; so that the ongoing work of creation and bringing the world to its fullness may be pursued.

Here we need to make a critical observation about human action. Darrell Cosden stresses that for humanity, the created order is both our home and the object of our work. We are material beings made for a material world. We are organically intertwined in the biological and material realities of the created order, but we also have a mandate to "work" the created order into a higher vision. Understood this way, our "working" of the created order includes human culture and governance because we are part of the created order. We are "other" from creation. Thus, romantic naturalism violates God's creation mandate, but so is trashing the environs we were given as our home.

We are to convert matter, energy, and information from less useful forms to more useful forms … from lesser configurations to higher configurations …, where "useful" and "higher" is thoroughly shaped by shalom. Converting matter, energy, and information … and then distribution of the product of these conversions … is essentially economics.

The very word "economics" has strong linkage to the biblical context. The word originates in the Greek oikonomos, meaning "household manager." The oikonomos was the most trusted servant within the Greco-Roman household of Jesus' day. The household was every bit as much a business as a dwelling. The archetype master of the household was seen to be above daily affairs and frequently absent from the household. The oikonomos was responsible for seeing that the household was both protected and productive. Jesus uses oikonomos as a metaphor for our labors on his behalf, and it serves as a striking metaphor for the human commission given in the first two chapters of Genesis.

Chapter three of Genesis and succeeding chapters relate the consequences of human rebellion against God's shalom. Economic questions are central to the consequences. Those consequences include the refusal of the ground to yield its produce and the corruption of human relationships into greed, dishonesty, oppression, and murder. Efforts at human dominion were deeply corrupted.

The ninth chapter of Genesis records God's reiteration to Noah of the command he gave Adam and Eve to "fill the earth." Chapter eleven records God's scattering of the people at Babel across the earth in response to their explicit refusal to be scattered. Chapter twelve begins the saga of a people through whom all nations will be blessed, and the curse reversed. The Old Testament records God's efforts to use Israel as light to all nations, drawing all people to himself. The New Testament tells us of Jesus' instruction to take his redeeming message and power to "the ends of the earth" so that one day every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. The new creation will be consummated into a shalom-filled created order wherein God's eikons are redeemed and restored to their co-regent status as they "fill the earth" with his image.

It is my conviction that new creation is exactly that … a creation … not an ethereal non-material existence. That is not to say that the present creation is utterly continuous with what is to come, but neither is it utterly discontinuous. The imagery of 1 Thessalonians 4 is of Christ (figuratively) coming to the clouds above the earth, the dead rising to meet him, followed by the living, and then the great throng ushering him into his kingdom on the earth. The image of Revelation is of the New Jerusalem descending from heaven to the earth. In some sense, what we are doing in this world carries over into the new creation, but it is perilous to be too dogmatically specific about what this entails. If the new creation is not in some sense material and some sense a continuation of the present creation, then the language of "redeemed creation" is nonsensical. God doesn't prevail in his stated mission to have shalom in a world filled with his eikons. Furthermore, human ontology (i.e., material beings created for dominion of a material world) becomes an aberrant experiment that must be radically discarded for some alternate state of existence, which is to say that no redemption has genuinely occurred.

Finally, we must be clear about a frequently perpetuated inaccuracy concerning the biblical narrative. The biblical narrative begins with shalom in a garden. Contrary to frequent misrepresentations, the biblical narrative does not end with shalom in a garden. It ends with shalom in a city! Cities were not only places of worship but also symbols of human culture, art, and governance. Thus, the biblical narrative ends with the redemption of … not the obliteration of … the human contribution to the created order. Economic labors are not transitory acts absent of intrinsic value. They contribute to God's ultimate and eternal mission, as presented in the second paragraph of this post. Jesus' ministry is about the total redemption of humanity and the created order, including the redemption of human labor.

So if we see the mission of God from this vantage point, what does it mean for our Christian witness in the world?

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Living Simply in Abundance (24)

I've suggested that we need to get in touch with the forces within us that distort our sense of need and be intentional in our financial management. Beyond this, I want to suggest that we must also become disillusioned.

Isn't it interesting that the word "disillusion" has a negative connotation? After all, if we are living an illusion, wouldn't coming to the truth be a good thing? Most Americans are trapped in an illusion that our existence is normal. We are cognitively aware that we have it pretty good, and that billions of people do not share our abundance, but it does not penetrate our consciousness. We are easily seduced into the illusion that our experience of the world is the norm. In reality, famine, disease, war, illiteracy, pestilence, and oppression have been the norm for humanity throughout the ages. It is our experience of abundance that is novel. We must be disillusioned by the idea that our existence is the norm. We need to lose our sense of entitlement and have our eyes opened to the gracious abundance in which we live.

When our illusions are dispelled, two things happen. First, we become deeply grateful for the abundance we have. The "need" monster is cut to size. Things that once consumed us lose much of their allure. There is often a great sense of freedom. Second, when we become aware of how little others have, we become aware of our ability to contribute to the betterment of others. Generosity springs forth from within our abundance. So what is the key instrument in our disillusionment? I think it is connection with people who are poor.

There is an old joke where a guy says, "I'm not a racist. I don't even know any black people." The fact is that many of us aren't indifferent to the poor because we don't even know any poor people. We need to be confronted with the lives of the poor. Ideally, I think every American Christian should be exposed to poverty in developing nations firsthand. There is nothing like seeing the conditions of the people who live off the garbage dump in Kingston, Jamaica, the squatter villages surrounding Monterrey, Mexico, or the Spartan existence of the poor in China. The sights, the sounds, the smells, and the voices make a permanent imprint on our psyche.

Four years ago, a Church I worked with had several poor urban youths from Kansas City, MO. One of the women at the Church, with a heart for Jamaica, organized a Christmas break mission trip for these kids. They spent more than a week working and getting to know the poor in a Jamaican village. Nearly all these kids, several of whom had never been outside the Kansas City metro area, returned transformed. They came back with a new appreciation for the opportunities they had available to them compared to the poverty of the Jamaicans they encountered. They were both more motivated to take advantage of the opportunities they had before them and developed a sense of the abundance they could share with others.

Years ago, Melissa and I located in an urban neighborhood that is by no means a slum, but it is squarely in the mix of urban life where we can't help but come into contact with people of differing economic status. We are involved with a couple of groups serving our area's poor. That brings us into contact with the people who wrestle with poverty issues.

Each of us has a different set of circumstances, but there are ways that every one of us can reduce our isolation from poor people, and we need to be intentional about doing so. We must be intentional about introducing our children to the lives of those without the material abundance we experience. More than most, this discipline has the power to break the hold materialism has on us.

With that said, we must not move from indifference toward poor people to romanticizing them. Poor people are human beings created in the image of God and intended for stewardship. Where injustice impacts their lives, we need to be partners in seeking justice. Where economic acumen is missing, we need to be about skills transfer and bringing poor people into a position of being stewards who participate with us reciprocally in the economy. We need to be open to what they may have to teach us.

We need to avoid romanticizing poverty itself. Over a decade ago, I heard Tom Skinner, an influential Black minister from Harlem, speak at the Christian Community Development Association meetings. He railed against Christians who came into his community and wanted to live in poverty in solidarity with poor people. His message was that if you have a problem with words like "profit" and "business," stay out of his neighborhood! The poor have been excluded from knowing how the economic game works. They need people they can learn the game from, not people who perpetuate ignorance out of some romantic notion of solidarity. Poor people do not want us to become like them. They want to share in our abundance.

It is beyond the scope of this series to say all that needs to be said here, but intentional identification with poor people is important to living simply in abundance. It both reshapes our distorted notions of reality and connects the lives of those with great material abundance with those without. We are finite beings with limited resources, but we can attach ourselves to one finite set of circumstances and start there. Which circumstances we attach ourselves to will be related to our context, our proclivities, and our passions, but we must find practical ways to invest a portion of our time and money in others.

Even better is when we live as communities among poor people or at least engage with them as part of a missional community. Needs are always well beyond the response of any individual, and the diversity of gifts within a community of Jesus' disciples makes it more likely that a range of resources will be brought to bear. The example of a community where others look after each other and then invite others into that community should be the norm for the Church. We have strayed far from this reality. We need to recover it.

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Living Simply in Abundance (20)

We have reviewed the concept of subsidiarity and the importance of the family. But what about single folks? What about nuclear families who are isolated from family support systems? There are needs for relationships beyond the family.

Voluntary associations are one way we connect. Educational associations, youth sports leagues, hobby groups, service groups, and political activities are just some of the ways we form connections with others. These associations serve an important function. Yet these groups tend to be purely task-oriented with limited levels of commitment in depth and duration.

The core of community life used to be neighborhoods. Neighborhoods were places where people living nearby participated in each other's lives, welcomed each other into homes, and watched out for each other's children. These relationships were more organic, of indefinite duration, and were less goal focused than voluntary associations. It was about sharing life. As we've seen in books like Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, neighborhood relationships have been on the wane for decades. With neighborhoods' demise, we have also seen a concurrent propensity to shape our identities according to material standards. Like the rich fool in Luke 12, we find ourselves talking to ourselves in isolation, contemplating building "bigger barns" to hold all the stuff we have used to secure our identity.

From a Christian perspective, another form of association trumps these forms of association: The Church. The most common metaphor for Church relationships in the New Testament is family. Paul, in particular, used fictive family metaphors to persuade Christians to embrace each other across ethnic and social barriers. The archetypical family of the era was also a business. This comported well with the idea of people engaged in mission. Yet the idea was one of communities in mission. Mission led to community, and community led to mission. These communities provided a context where not only nuclear families had a place to belong, but orphans, widows, and single people were full-fledged members of the missional community as well.

In our examination of New Testament passages concerning wealth, we found Paul taking up an offering for the Church in Jerusalem. There were many poor people in Corinth, yet Paul did not have the Church taking up an offering to aid them. Instead, he took up an offering to help another church. John cautioned against being someone who will not help a brother in need. Fictive family descriptors usually signaled "other Christians." In short, much of the giving we see in the New Testament (not all) appears to be oriented toward taking care of other Christians.

Historical accounts show that the expansion of the Church in the early centuries happened because people were drawn to the mutual care and support Christians had for each other, even in the face of great persecution. Rodney Stark points to the joyful self-sacrificing behavior of Christians during plagues in the second and third centuries as major transformational moments in the expansion of the early Church.

I suspect that part of our problem in addressing poverty today is that we view the lack of material sustenance in isolation from holistic human anthropology. We dissect various aspects of human existence into "issues" to be addressed and lose the integrated whole. The early Christians saw material matters as integrally and inseparably related to other matters of being in community. I suspect that helping someone economically divorced from other aspects of being in community would have seemed foreign to them. Therefore, the idea of sending offerings to alleviate poverty for nameless people as we do today may not have occurred to them.

Regrettably, far too much of the Church today sees itself as a little more than a voluntary association peddling religiosity products (i.e., worship services, youth programs, education.) The idea of an organic mission-oriented community into which others can be integrated and uplifted describes very little of American Christendom. The culture is hungry for genuine community, but unlike Christians in the early Roman era, little would compel outsiders to join or fellowships.

This isn't to say we are without expressions of the Church wrestling with these issues. Various movements are working to create intentional communities and struggling to discern how our contemporary church life might be transformed. But we are currently without the kind of witness the early Church had. The Church effectively demonstrating and inviting the culture into organic caring communities has, among other things, the potential to lessen individualism, strengthen families, provide a community of identity for single or isolated people, provide for material needs, and lessen the need for intrusion by the government into the lives of families and individuals.

I've written that simple living is singularity of focus. We are to be focused first and foremost on God's narrative for what is unfolding in the world and conforming ourselves to that narrative. At the economic level, that means sound stewardship as we pursue communal abundance. Sound stewardship begins by being responsible for ourselves so we can both serve others and not be an unnecessary burden to others. Next, it requires that we be responsible for kin to the best of our ability. But beyond this, our call is to be part of the witnessing community, not lone rangers. We draw other people into our community with us partly by the care we show for each other. I believe this is the biblical intention, but it is poorly executed in our culture.

Exploring the role of government and macro-institutions is beyond the scope of this series. Just as the Mosaic Law had nationwide provisions about gleaning and offerings to aid the poor, there is a role for larger institutions to play in softening the difficulties people encounter, particularly concerning catastrophic events. A "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" model is not sufficient (although personal initiative is important), and government intervention often has perverse unintended consequences because of its indiscriminate methods of assistance (although government assistance is important too.)

A wealth of relationships is at the core of an abundant society where family is the leading player. From a Christian perspective, families and individuals in covenant communities bring transformation to society. Other institutions should exist to supplement and protect the families and localized associations, not replace or dissolve them.

I've acknowledged that our macro-institutions have a role to play in assisting others in need, but what is our role as individuals and families in addressing the needs of others beyond our family, Church, and local community?

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Living Simply in Abundance (16)

So far in this series, we've explored the relationship between consumption, saving, and giving; we've talked about the dynamics of generating economic abundance; we've looked at the economic differences between our world and the ancient world; we've done a quick survey of the biblical narrative concerning wealth and abundance; we've reflected on the impact Modernism, both good and bad; and we've deconstructed neo-Malthusian visions of "living simply" to halt resource depletion and to stop climate change. How can we apply all this to our lives as we seek to live simply in abundance? I have some preliminary thoughts. I'll begin with two points in this post. The first will probably not be controversial to most Christians. The second may be controversial.

First, to live simply (with a singularity of focus on God) requires we begin with God and God's narrative. God owns all that is. We are co-creative stewards meant for community with God and with each other. Nature is both our habitat and the object of our work. We are here neither to preserve nor destroy nature but to bring creation to fullness. We live as sinful beings in a time when God's vision for creation has been corrupted. Some forces at work pressure us to find our identity in anything other than God. Only when the New Creation is finally consummated will complete shalom be restored, but as God's people, we're called to give evidence of the coming shalom in the here and now. Part of shalom is communal prosperity and abundance.

As we engage God's narrative, we must do so in community with others. We need each other to give full witness to the coming Kingdom. We need to be in a community where we reflect God's truth back and forth to each other. We do not wait until we feel spiritual or inspired before we act. Jesus said, "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matthew 6:21) Our heart will go to whatever we invest ourselves in. Investing in God's narrative, practicing spiritual disciplines, and being in community with fellow travelers will shape what we come to love. It will shape our very identity. God's narrative must be the central theme in all we do.

My second observation is that our relationship to our wealth begins with self-interested stewardship. I suspect that for many that this is a controversial claim. Let me elaborate on what I mean.

"Self-interest" and "selfish" are not synonymous terms. One can't be selfish without being self-interested, but it is possible to be self-interested without being selfish. When raising children, we teach them to look both ways when crossing the street. We teach them to eat vegetables so they will be healthy. We teach them to be responsible with their belongings. We are teaching them to be "self-interested." We want them to grow up as adults who can "take care of themselves." Taking care of ourselves can't be done without being self-interested. Our person is the most valuable "resource" God has given us for stewardship. Barring serious mental or moral deficiencies, we are usually in the best position to assess what we need. Failure to act as good stewards of ourselves both deprives the world of the contributions we could make and draws resources from others toward us that could be put to other uses.

Jesus repeatedly appeals to our self-interest as the justification for many of his teachings. When James and John ask to sit on Jesus' right and left hand when Jesus comes into power, Jesus does not discourage them from seeking those positions. Rather he explains how they might achieve this status:

"You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." Mark 10:42b-45 (NIV)

Jesus explains that by becoming the best servant of others, we achieve the highest status. In this one brief teaching, Jesus upends the disciple's notion of what is in their self-interest and teaches them to accomplish what actually is in their self-interest.

In Matthew 7, Jesus said:

“Do not Judge …” Why? “… so that you may not be judged.  For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.”

It is not in our self-interest to judge others. In Matthew 16:25-26, Jesus teaches:

"For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?"

Jesus places this teaching in the form of an economic equation. He tells us to invest wisely.

To catalog all the instances of appeals to self-interest used by Jesus and New Testament writers is beyond our scope. What is pervasive in these teachings is that our understanding of our self-interest is completely shaped by what narrative we believe we are living in. A narrative that defines us as stewards of God, living in community with him and others as we seek to advance what God values, will lead us to one definition of self-interest. A narrative that defines us purely as material beings that receive our identity from our work or the number of goods we can possess or consume leads us to another definition. It leads us away from genuine self-interest into selfish delusion.

When a community consists of people who responsibly manage their own person, minimal resources are required to keep order. Economic efficiency emerges as people responsibly invest their energies in what they can most productively contribute to society. Then they openly trade with others who've done likewise. As we saw earlier, this trading game leads to enormous expansions of wealth even with zero innovation in production. This same advantage also evidences itself in relational and spiritual facets of human existence. Paul captures this with his "one body, many parts" analogy. The body can't be healthy without the individual parts being healthy, but the parts can't be healthy without being in relationship to the body. But I'm getting ahead of myself a little here.

From an eschatological perspective, God's narrative creates two important freedoms for us as we consider our self-interest and abundance. First, we are free from wealth. Wealth can't define us. Wealth has zero claim on our identity, and wealth can have no more control over us than we surrender to it. Second, precisely because wealth can't define us, we are free to wealth. We can consume it, or we can save it. We can hold it, or we can let it go. Our identity is not based on our choices. Wealth is something entrusted to us that we manage for the one who is the source of our identity. And this points us back to my first observation. What narrative are we in? Do we know who we are and whose we are? Without singleness of focus on these realities (i.e., simplicity), all other attempts to reflect on wealth and abundance are pointless.

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Living Simply in Abundance (13)

The Bible's recurring economic theme is that God owns all that exists. We were created to be stewards (corporately and individually) of God's resources, and God intends for stewards to live in community-wide abundance. Human rebellion entered the equation, and that intention has been terribly marred. Part of the Good News of the coming shalom of the Kingdom of God is the realization of community-wide abundance. It seems reasonable to conclude that foreshadowing the coming Kingdom in this age would also include improved material abundance. 

Yet the Scripture is very clear about the perils of wealth and abundance. There is the ever-present danger of finding our identity in our wealth and placing our trust in our abundance instead being in a relationship with God. Our simplicity of focus is lost, and our priorities drift out of alignment. We begin to distort justice in favor of preserving our abundance, and we become callous to the needs of the poor when we should seek justice and look for ways to expand abundant living to others.

Exactly how this temptation to idolize wealth evidences itself has varied across time and culture. Throughout most of history, only a small minority of human people could expect to amass much wealth. The events of the last 300 years have led to an unprecedented expansion in both the quantity and distribution of wealth in the world. I noted in an earlier post the worldwide real per capita annual income doubled between 12,000 BCE and 1750 CE, from $90 to $180. Since then, it has risen to more than $6,600. The percentage of people living on $1 a day has shrunk from about 84% in 1820 to about 15% today and is still falling. This expansion in material abundance is good, but how it has come about has caused some problems. A brief history review.

Some will argue that technological innovation (particularly the harnessing of steam, petroleum, and electrical power) was key to the rise of Western capitalism. There can be little doubt that such innovations were essential, but they were not sufficient in themselves. In retrospect, two profound cultural changes were necessary for modern capitalism to emerge from Medieval Europe: The flattening of hierarchies and the movement away from notions of fate and providence.

Medieval European society had a highly stratified and rigidly maintained hierarchy. God was at the top of the hierarchy, with everything neatly arranged in a status pyramid down to the peasant. It was very similar to the highly stratified Greco-Roman world. Everyone cared for those under him in the pyramid; total allegiance was expected of those above him. This arrangement effectively dampened the development of horizontally oriented relationships like voluntary associations and economic trade.

The notion of fate and providence also presented a barrier. The modern idea of risk and risk management did not emerge until around the fifteenth century. Until then, good or bad "fortune" encountered on a trade journey would simply be attributed to fate, the will of the gods, the work of sorcerers, or providence. In one sense of the word "risk," you could say that risk has always been around because people have always known that travel involves uncertainties. This is not what I'm referring to.

By risk, I'm referring to making studious evaluations of trade journeys that have been taken. We learn that merchants traveling route A often far exceed what merchants on routes B and C earn, but merchants traveling route A are more frequently robbed. We learn merchants with certain types of character and track records perform better than others. We learn that traveling at certain times of the year has greater trade advantages but a higher likelihood of weather-related problems. We consider all of these considerations (and more) and assign a statistical probability of success for any given trade adventure. Then we set about finding ways to allocate our resources to maximize return while minimizing losses.

As long as events are in the hands of fate and providence, our experience is one of the things happening to us that we cannot control. What emerged in the Middle Ages was the idea of a rational God who created an orderly universe. We could effectively manage future outcomes by discerning the order God had created. This simple concept that is so ubiquitous to us today is really only a few centuries old. It has its roots in the Judeo-Christian heritage.

I maintain that this leveling of hierarchies into more horizontally based orientations and abandoning excessive ideas of fate and providence in favor of reasoned risk assessment were good and needed developments. The rigid status hierarchies of the Greco-Roman world and Medieval Europe contradicted the fictive-family notion of being brothers and sisters in Christ. The growing realization about the orderliness of the universe, and the attempts to learn about God and the world through applications of reason and observation, seem to me to be wonderful expressions of the image of God at work in humanity. However, the emerging forces that brought about these changes, from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment and Modernist eras, ushered in a new set of problems concerning economic life.

By the time of the Enlightenment, the agenda had become one of creating human autonomy over the created order by applying reason. Progress via reason would render God useless, and material abundance (among other things) would be the reward for shaking off past religious superstitions. An equality of humanity as God's image bearers, lovingly seeking to understand the world in faithful response to our mission as household managers over the earth, was supplanted by a vision that casts God out of the picture and elevated humanity as masters of their own destiny. Reason and science (of which the modern academic field of economics is just one expression) would save us.

The Enlightenment and Modernism, with much of the Judeo-Christian heritage employed by them, have successfully achieved material abundance. But in doing so, they have made materialism and consumerism idols. With God effectively (even if not formally) removed from the equation, Westerners have been taught to define themselves by their material progress, to find their very identity in their material quality of life. We have exchanged falsely finding our identity within a rigid hierarchy of Medieval social order with falsely finding it our material status.

Unfortunately, many who correctly sense the idolatry at work here, have mistakenly turned against the economic freedom that creates the abundance at precisely the time when billions worldwide could most benefit from experiencing economic freedom and exchange for themselves. The challenge is not to halt the production of abundance. The challenge is to involve everyone possible in the abundance while reorienting the values we feed into the economic system by simplifying our focus to be totally upon God.

But what about the environmental impact of pursuing abundance?

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Living Simply in Abundance (2)

As we leap into this discussion, I think we must ask what wealth is. What is the role of wealth and abundance in the biblical narrative?

I tend to think of wealth as both abundance beyond what is needed for basic subsistence and as anything we possess that can be used for economic exchange. (Do you agree? How else might we describe it?) Community-wide wealth and abundance is the normal condition of the created order, but human rebellion has corrupted it.

According to the biblical narrative, God places the first couple in the garden and gives them a mission. Fill the earth with his eikons and have dominion over the earth as co-creative stewards with God, bringing creation to its fullness. Human rebellion has frustrated that mission. God seeks restoration of shalom through at-one-ment in Christ. We are restored in relationship to God, each other, within ourselves, and nature. That restoration will be completed only at the last day.

The narrative gives us important insights into wealth and abundance. The biblical story begins in a garden and ends in an opulent garden city. Cities were the ancient world's symbol for human community, commerce, government, and art. In the end, God redeems human beings and their contributions to the world. Abraham was given great wealth as a sign of God's covenant. The Pentateuch repeatedly refers to entering "a land flowing with milk and honey." Passages like Deut. 8:6-10 speak of the abundance Israel will have if they keep God's covenant. There will be such abundance that the entire nation can rest from toil every seven years to celebrate Sabbath with God. Isaiah 25 features the great lavish eschatological banquet, which becomes a key theme of Jesus' teaching about the end of time. The description of the New Jerusalem is one of opulence.

Jesus also uses the idea of his people as the oikonomos, the household manager, the one who manages the estate in the householder's absence. It is the word from which we get "economics." God owns all that is, but we are the household managers working the estate and bringing it to fruition according to God's purposes. God brings about wealth, but we are participants with God in the process.

Human beings were not made for bare subsistence. God did not create us as cattle needing only food, water, and shelter. We are creative image-bearers of God. We were meant for stewardship of resources. Certainly, our employment is one way to exhibit these qualities but resources beyond subsistence make it possible for us to create, recreate, and celebrate in other ways. These resources may be put toward learning for learning's sake, for the development of recreational skills, for traveling and experiencing new places, for offering hospitality, or for the enjoyment of creating and maintaining a well-appointed home, to name just a few. God takes great delight in seeing the unique package of proclivities and passions God has developed in us evidenced. It gives glory to God. Abundance allows that to happen.

Having said all this, I feel compelled to make an explicit distinction. What I have just described is not a "name-it-and-claim-it" wealth and prosperity gospel where we manipulate God into providing us with goodies. The prosperity in the Bible is a broadly shared communal wealth that comes from a social ecosystem of covenantal relationships. It is part of the biblical vision of shalom. I just want to be clear here.

Now I've made my case that mere subsistence is not the biblical vision; we are still left with the dilemma that some people live in abundance while many do not. We will come to that issue, but first, I want to ask from where does wealth come?

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Reflection on Trolley vs Hospital

Last Friday, I presented the two following scenarios from David Schmidtz's Elements of Justice.

Two Scenarios

Trolley

A trolley is rolling down the track on its way to killing five people. If you switch the trolley to another track on which there is only one person, you will say five and kill one.

Hospital

Five patients are dying due to lack of suitable organ donors. A UPS driver person walks into the hospital. You know she is a suitable donor for all five patients. If you kidnap her and harvest her organs, you save five and kill one.

Then I asked, "What would you do in each scenario and why?" Thanks to those of you who chimed in. I think you were in the same ballpark as Schmidtz.

Schmidtz says there are several views in the literature on the distinction between the two scenarios. Most people quickly detect that both scenarios seem to be a numbers game. "Unconstrained maximizers," who focus solely on the optimal outcome (most lives saved), might be inclined to view it just this way. But Schmidtz writes:

Hospital tells us that sometimes what matters is being able to trust others to respect us as separate persons. Hospitals cannot exist, and more generally we cannot live well together, unless we can trust each other to acknowledge that we will all have lives of our own. Hospital shows that sometimes we get the best result – a community of people living well together – not by aiming at a result so much as by being trustworthy, so that people can plan to deal with us in mutually beneficial ways.

To a cartoon utilitarian thinking about Trolley, all that matters is numbers. But in a more realistic institutional context like Hospital, we intuitively grasp a more fundamental point. Namely, if we don’t take seriously rights and separate personhood, we won’t get justice; in fact, we won’t even get good numbers. (171)

More generally, we are dealing with a matter of "the ends justifies the means." Schmidtz notes that while most philosophical thought experiments are more like Trolley, real life is more like Hospital. Some utilitarians may be mystified as to why moral constraints should be allowed to interfere with optimal outcomes, but they fail to see that it is precisely by observing moral constraints that optimal outcomes may be achieved. "If people can count on us not to murder them, new possibilities open up – opportunities people would not otherwise have." (172)

Schmidtz goes on to say:

…moral institutions get the best result not so much by aiming at the best result as by imposing constraints on individual pursuits so as to bring individual pursuits into better harmony with each other. Institutions (hospitals, for example) serve the common good by leaving well enough alone – creating opportunities for mutual benefit, then trusting individuals to take advantage of them. That is how (even from a utilitarian perspective) institutions have a moral mandate for moral agents to maximize utility. In effect, there are two sides to the sense in which institutional utility is based on trust. First, people have to able to trust their society to treat them as rights-bearers. Second, society must in turn trust people to use the opportunities they have as rights-bearers within society. (174)

...and…

[People] do not need to be surrounded by unconstrained maximizers. They do not need perfect justice either. They do need to be able to get on with their lives in peace. They need to know what to expect from each other. (175)

I particularly liked the last two paragraphs of this essay:

Wherever I go, whether my audience consists of local students, congressional staffers, or post-Soviet professors, when I present the Trolley case and ask them whether they would switch tracks, most will say, “There has to be another way!” A philosophy professor’s first reaction to this is to say, “Please, stay on topic. I’m trying to illustrate a point here! To see the point, you need to decide what to do when there is no other way.” When I said this to my class of post-Soviet professors, though, they spoke briefly among themselves, then two of them quietly said (as others nodded in agreement), “Yes, we understand. We have heard this before. All our lives we were told the few must be sacrificed for the sake of the many. We were told there is no other way. But what we were told was a lie. There was always another way.”

The more I ponder this reaction, the more I realize how right it is. The real world does not stipulate that there is no other way. (Have you, or anyone you know, ever been in a situation as tragic as Trolley? Why not? Have you been unusually lucky?) In any case, I now see more wisdom in the untutored insight that there has to be another way than in what Trolley originally was meant to illustrate. As Rawls and Nozick (in different ways) say, justice is about respecting the separateness of persons. If we find ourselves seemingly called upon to sacrifice the few for the sake of the many, justice is about finding another way. (175-176)

Going back to the days of my youth, I've had an ongoing interest in justice issues. Eliminating poverty has been one of them. My interaction with Scripture eventually brought me to a hermeneutic of "rebellion and atonement "(at-one-ment); atonement means the reconciliation of human beings to God, each other, and the created order, and restored wholeness within one's self. Initially, I was drawn to a somewhat politically leftward bent on addressing justice issues, but as the years rolled by, there was an emerging discomfort with the agenda. It took some time, but I eventually narrowed my uneasiness to what I saw as a hermeneutic of "oppression and liberation" combined with utilitarian optimization thinking. Optimizing liberation (however that might be defined) trumped all other considerations, including (especially so) the rights of anyone deemed an oppressor.

I think the biblical narrative is one of God granting rebellious humanity considerable freedom, respecting us as free moral agents with the right to choose or reject God. God does not use his power to optimize his outcomes regarding our choices. God providentially sets boundaries that make our life possible, but God seeks our transformation through unmerited suffering and grace so that we will choose God and atonement.

I think this also applies to how the Church should see its mission in the world and the social environments it seeks to create. When I write about economic issues, I frequently write about the importance of economic freedom infused with virtue. The separateness of individuals, and therefore their freedom and rights, are to be respected, but Godly virtue is nurtured and instilled to the point that people choose the good as they live out their freedom. (see the last three sentences for page 174 above.)

True justice always exists as a constellation of rights and obligations. No freedom is absolute and economic freedom is no exception. However, what troubles me is the willingness of many Christians who genuinely care about the poor or the environment to default to a utilitarian optimizing mode. "The rights of a few rich people are outweighed by the needs of the many" or "the needs of the environment outweigh the need to respect human freedom." "There is no other way!" Rather than doing the difficult work of nurturing transformation in the lives of individuals and communities so they will act with greater virtue, they ironically make allegiance with the utilitarian optimization inclination of "the Empire" to overcome what they perceive to be the injustices wrought by "the Empire." From the standpoint of the biblical narrative, I think freedom infused with virtue, and all the hard work that entails, is a more optimal approach.

Household: Review of the Role of the Fictive Family Metaphor

We are finished with our review of fictive family and the Household of God. In these concluding posts, I want to reflect on the significance of fictive family and the Household of God for us today. Let's refresh our memories concerning the interpretative role that fictive family and the Household of God played in the life of God's people.

Concerning God's mission in the world, I wrote:

Upon completion of creation, there is perfect shalom between the triune God, humanity, and creation. Humankind rebels. Shalom is deeply marred. Human beings are separated from God and each other. They find themselves in a life-and-death struggle with nature. Human beings are alienated from themselves.

The early chapters of Genesis present us with a picture of humanity where power and domination have become the modus operandi. Through religion, myth, custom, and political power, humanity forms cultures that create their own versions of the "eternal present" (ala Brueggemann) where "what is" is cast as that which always has been and always will be. Competing cultures battle it out on the pages of human history to make their eternal present prevail and to keep back the chaos that threatens to destroy their systems of meaning and survival.

God's mission is to reunite humanity and all creation in God's self. God's strategy is atonement, or as some would have it, "at-one-ment;" nothing less than the restoration of shalom. The strategy begins when God sets apart a people for God's self, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Through this people, God will redeem the world. Christopher Wright captures this simply but powerfully in a diagram.

(Source: Christopher Wright, “Mission of God,” IVP. 2006. 395.)

The small triangle represents Israel and the Promised Land. It is within the broader context of all humanity and of all the earth. The mission of God is to expand the smaller triangle until "Israel" expands to encompass "humanity" and "the land" becomes equivalent to "the earth." (Household: Reviewing the Big Picture (Part 1)

Then I went on to identify five themes I found in how the fictive family metaphor was employed.

Identity – The family was the source of identity for the Greco-Roman and the Near East worlds. Honor was due to parents and ancestors. Protecting the family honor was paramount. By extension, this allegiance went out to tribe and race. The way a son most honored his father was to sire sons to perpetuate the family. A woman's worth was tied up with the sons she bore for her husband.

Jesus demanded we make stark choices between earthly family and the fictive family of the new creation. It was not a call to abandon earthly families but rather to place family in its proper context about the new creation that God was ushering in. Jesus demanded that we find our identity in God. Similarly, Paul gives instructions in 1 Corinthians 7 suggesting that singleness may be a preferred option for some in service of God's work. Just as family members of an earthly household would find their identity in the paterfamilias, we are instructed to give our allegiance to God as our paterfamilias, and not be preoccupied with perpetuating earthly family identity.

Unity – Siblings were the most intimate of human relationships within Greco-Roman and Near Eastern society. They were where patronage and status competition were supposed to be absent. Siblings were equal in status and bound by love for each other. It is significant that the first murder in the Bible is between two brothers (Cain and Able), and the myth of Rome's founding involves a struggle between two brothers (Romulus and Remus). Brothers at odds was disturbing imagery.

Jesus' parable of the Compassionate Father in Luke 15, which became known by the Church as "the gospel within the gospel," features a father reconciling a law-breaking son and a law-keeping son to himself through acts of costly grace. But the story is also about an attempt by the father to reconcile the two brothers to each other and to unite a household. As we saw in Romans 4 and Galatians 3, Paul casts Jew and Gentile as children of Abraham, uniting them as siblings of one family. In Galatians 3:25-4:7, Paul declares that "Jew or Greek …. slave or free …. male and female" are no longer relevant categories for determining our identity and status, as we've all been made children of God. Writing to the fractious Church at Corinth, Paul employs the "concord" genre to bring unity. The Roman concord discourse implored people to honor the social order and the respective strata within it for the sake of the Republic or Empire. Yet Paul writes:

Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose. (1 Cor. 1:10)

The unity is based on the affection of siblings harmoniously working together, having the same heart and mind as they engage in the business of the paterfamilias. It is not a submission to hierarchies and status structures for the good of society. Paul also writes in Ephesians 2 of the demolition of the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile, the two being united in the "household of God."

Fictive family is a key basis for unity, and it metaphorically teaches the type of respect, care, and love that disciples are to have for one another: brotherly and sisterly love.

Mission – One of the issues we visited early in this series is that the archetypal households referred to in Greco-Roman oratories were also businesses, usually large plantations. The children and members of the household were united in a common mission, the economic enterprise of the household. We do not see this concept explicitly articulated in connection with household metaphors often, but it is never far from the surface. An explicit connection is not needed. Sons and daughters are in the business of the paterfamilias and go about the household business imitating the very heart and mind of the paterfamilias. While there certainly is companionship and caring, the household is a missional entity. Koinonia emerges as brothers and sisters work alongside each other in mission.

Inheritance – As children of God, and as brothers and sisters of Christ (Romans 8), we are heirs of the new creation to come. In the new order, we have a share of ownership, an investment. We are brothers and sisters but siblings in a royal and priestly household. We exercise royal and priestly duties (1 Peter 2:9), along with our elder brother Christ, in interceding for the world, and one day we will be re-established as co-regents over creation under God in the new creation. Just as a son would expect to gain an inheritance within a household, so are we, as sons and daughters, guaranteed an inheritance in the new creation.

Affection – Paul and New Testament writers frequently used fictive family to express affection and fondness for fellow workers. Fictive family was also used to convey the affection and nearness of God. The Compassionate Father of Jesus' Luke 15 parable certainly communicated this. Jesus repeatedly casts the Father as one who is intimately involved in our lives. Paul twice tells us (Rom. 8:15, Gal. 4:6) that God is one who we can cry out to, saying, "Abba! Father!" Hebrews 12 tells us that God cares so much for us that, like a father, he disciplines us so we may come to maturity. And, of course, the central character of the New Testament is a God who is a father who sacrifices his son to restore relationship with us. (John 3:16, among many other passages.)

(Household: Reviewing the Big Picture (Part 2)

What does all this mean for us today? What obstacles stand in our way of being the Household of God?

Series Index

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Household: Reviewing the Big Picture (Part 1)

We have now taken a whirlwind tour of fictive family and fictive household metaphors found in the Bible. This wide-ranging discussion can get us lost in the proverbial trees to the point we lose sight of the forest. So before we go any further, let us step back with a wide-angle lens and recapture the family metaphor's role in God's mission for the world.

Genesis' creation narratives tell of a world created by God. Humanity is God's crowning achievement. Upon completion of creation, there is perfect shalom between the triune God, humanity, and creation. Humankind rebels. Shalom is deeply marred. Human beings are separated from God and each other. They find themselves in a life-and-death struggle with nature. Human beings are alienated from themselves.

The early chapters of Genesis present us with a picture of humanity where power and domination have become the modus operandi. Through religion, myth, custom, and political power, humanity forms cultures that create their own versions of the "eternal present" (ala Brueggemann) where "what is" is cast as that which always has been and always will be. Competing cultures battle it out on the pages of human history to make their eternal present prevail and to keep back the chaos that threatens to destroy their systems of meaning and survival.

God's mission is to reunite humanity and all creation in God's self. God's strategy is atonement, or as some would have it, "at-one-ment;" nothing less than the restoration of shalom. The strategy begins when God sets apart a people for God's self, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Through this people, God will redeem the world. Christopher Wright captures this simply but powerfully in a diagram.

(Source: Christopher Wright, "Mission of God," IVP. 2006. 395.)

The small triangle represents Israel and the Promised Land. It is within the broader context of all humanity and of all the earth. The mission of God is to expand the smaller triangle until "Israel" expands to encompass "humanity" and "the land" becomes equivalent to "the earth."

Israel was to be a beacon to the Gentiles, drawing them to God, thus expanding the triangle. But Israel rebelled and turned inward, even to the point that by Jesus' day, the Jews had come to understand God's mission to include the destruction of the Gentiles. At this point in history, God took center stage in the person of Jesus Christ, who, through his birth, life, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension, expanded the called community to include Jew and Gentile alike. They were then sent into the world to give witness of the at-one-ment that has been achieved in Christ, imaging (ever so imperfectly) the coming shalom of God and inviting others into community.

The challenge for Jesus and the New Testament writers was to craft images and metaphors that would enable us to capture the essence of our relationship with God and each other. These metaphors had to capture the eschatological relational realities that will exist in the coming age of shalom while also guiding our existence in this time before the fullness of the new creation is realized. I have labored to demonstrate that Christ firmly established the household and family metaphors and became the metaphors of choice for New Testament writers (but far from the only choice), especially Paul. So let us summarize again what meaning these metaphors conveyed.

Series Index

The Chief End

Scot McKnight had an interesting post at Jesus Creed last Thursday called Is the chief end … missional? You are no doubt familiar with the first question of the Westminster Catechism:

Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.

(If you are Presbyterian and didn’t know this, then you may now turn in your membership credentials. *grin*)

McKnight was responding to a letter from a reader who wanted to know if being involved in the mission of God (missional) is the best way to express our chief end. As usual, McKnight made some thought-provoking observations.

He essentially believes that missional can replace the Westminster articulation. He understands God to be the eternal perichoretic Trinity. (Perishoresis meaning “…the mutual indwelling and absolute interpenetration of Father, Son, and Spirit…”) We are called to love God purely. He writes:

For Jesus the end of all ends is loving God and loving others — which means for Jesus we should look to love being the end.

And:

I think the word missional is at the heart of the perichoresis. The Father and the Son and the Spirit are “missional” with respect to One Another and, correspondingly, they are each hospitable to the Other. Which means that “missional” is another way of speaking of the perichoresis. Which means that missional is really about both acting in love and receiving in love.

I’m entirely on board with Scot’s emphasis on perichoresis. However, love is action. What I’m less clear about is what action would constitute loving God.

In Paul’s Idea of Community, Robert Banks examines the use of the word koinonia in the New Testament. We usually interpret the word as “fellowship.” He emphasizes that the word never means community for the sake of community. It’s always about fellowship or community from joint participation in a common mission. (page 57) Love and mission entail action.

Some say our purpose is fulfilling the Great Commission. But what happens when Jesus returns, and the Great Commission is fulfilled? The mission is over. We no longer have a purpose. The Great Commission cannot be our ultimate purpose.

The key lies in reflecting on our being or our ontology. Action flows from being. We were created for relationship, and we were created as corporeal beings living in a material world. Can non-corporeal beings have relationship and community? It would seem so, yet we were made corporeal. Why? Is there something about our ontology that informs us of our purpose? I think there is.

Gen 1:26-28

26 Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth."

27 So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." (NRSV)

We were created to be co-creative partners (though junior ones) with the perichoretic Trinity in ruling over nature and bringing it to fruition. We are to be the corporeal representatives of God in the material order. Sin has entered the world, marring this mission, but we are told that we will one day have new bodies in a new creation. Our mission has not lapsed, and it will not end.

I submit that the “chief end of man” is to be co-creative stewards of creation in other-centered community with the perichoretic Trinity and each other. This combines mission and community while giving content to our action. Our primary love and glorification of God are expressed by participating in the mission for which we were created as a community: Exercising dominion and reflections of God.

This “chief end of man” is different from the mission of the Church. The mission of the Church is penultimate. The mission of the Church is to participate in God’s remedial mission of restoring humanity as co-creative stewards in community with the perichoretic Trinity. We best accomplish the Church’s mission by being images of the coming community in the New Creation and by giving testimony about who God is, what God has done, and what God plans to do.

Therefore, the primary locus of the mission of the Church is not as the gathered community on Sunday morning but as God’s people at work in the world, redeeming the daily routines of life and work, as we act in stewardship of the resources (people, money, possessions, mental faculties, all that is under our influence) entrusted to us. Our daily work is central to glorifying God in the present, and our daily work will be for eternity. The work of the gathered community is to foster solidarity among disciples as it equips them for the mission of taking the New Creation into the world, restoring God’s vision of co-creative stewardship in community with the perichoretic Trinity and with each other.

What do you think?

The Other Six Days: C8 - The Church and Mission

The Other Six Days

Part Three - For the Life of the World: Chapter 8 -  Mission - A People Sent by God

The Church and Mission

Stevens calls the "Human Vocation" the threefold nature: communion, community-building, and co-creativity. Human rebellion corrupted this vocation, but God promises to restore all three aspects. Our Christian vocation is to actively participate in realizing the promise God has given. Here is a chart Stevens uses to summarize this (199):

FULFILLING THE HUMAN VOCATION
The Human Vocation	The Promise	The Christian Vocation
Communion	The presence of God	Belonging to God
Community-building	The people	Being God's people
Co-creativity	The land	Doing God's work

In The Mission of God, Christopher Wright uses a simple diagram involving two triangles of differing sizes. He labels each point of the larger triangle like this:

Top = God
Bottom Left = Humanity
Bottom Right = Earth

The smaller triangle is inside the larger triangle and touches it at the top point labeled "God." It is labeled like this:

Top = God
Bottom Left = Israel
Bottom Right = Land

The idea is that God is expanding the smaller triangle to encompass the larger one. "Israel" comes to include all of humanity. "The land" comes to include all the earth. A central means for accomplishing this is the Church being sent into the world by the triune God. Jesus said, "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." We go into the world and live out the Christian vocation as described above.

Stevens describes the scope of God's mission as:

• First, God's mission includes the individual person calling for the conversion of heart and mind on the basis of the good news announced and embodied in Jesus Christ.
• Second, God's mission is directed to the whole of society, to structures of common life, bringing righteousness, justice, the empowerment of the poor and the liberation of the oppressed.
• Third, God's mission is directed to thought-forms and cultures that shape the way people think and act.
• Fourth, God's mission is concerned with the whole of creation, to conservation, sustainable development and the renewal of the earth. (202)

We noted yesterday that "Mission is what God is doing in the world through the church, and even without the church, to bring his creation to its consummation: unity and fullness [in] Jesus Christ." Here is one of Steven's more radical observations about mission in the world.

The church’s mission then is to find out what God is doing in the world, celebrate it and embrace his mission. The church has the character of an ‘intermezzo’ between God and the world, and is an illustration (in word and deed) of God’s involvement in the world. (205)

God communicates to the Church AND the world. The Church is to be God's image at work in the world, but God is at work in the world apart from the Church. Part of what the Church does is help the world see what God is doing already in the world.

The church’s mission is not to ‘bring in’ the church, or even to extend it. The Church’s mission is to ‘bring in’ the Kingdom. In this way the people of God participates in, embodies and serves what God is accomplishing by creation, salvation, sanctification and consummation. But the church does not circumscribe God’s work. The church is God’s primary agency in fulfilling his sending. But it also recognizes and welcomes the irruption of the Kingdom of God everywhere. (206)

Stevens wraps up this section by observing, "The church does not have a mission; it is mission." He laments that the Church is still largely divided between the clergy (missionary specialist) and laity (supporter of missions). The reality is that the ordinary believer becomes a "missionary" at baptism.

On Monday, we will finish Chapter 8, briefly examining equipping for mission. Before we go there, what do you think about how Stevens has framed mission? I doubt his take will be controversial for many.

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The Other Six Days: Why Discuss this Book?

Why discuss this book? Before jumping into a discussion about this book, I thought I would offer a word of personal testimony about why I value this book so highly.

Most of you know I am Presbyterian. What you may not know is I wasn't raised in that tradition. The first half of my life was grounded in the Wesleyan-Arminian, Pietistic, Holiness, mostly Evangelical world of the Church of the Nazarene. The second half of my life has been grounded in the mainline denominational world Presbyterian Church (USA). However, since shortly after college, I have always had one foot in communities or institutions outside traditional church structures, hence my respect for, and attraction to, the Emerging Church conversation. A common thread for my experiences as I have sojourned with all these communities has been to ask what God's purpose is in the world and where I fit into the picture.

If you grew up in an Evangelical Holiness tradition like I did, during the time I did, then you know there are many people out there who call themselves Christians you are to be suspicious of. The high church "bells and smells" folks were a questionable crowd. Those licentious "once saved, always saved" Baptists and Calvinists were also of concern. But the ones you really had to watch out for were the Social Gospel types.

Someday I will have to write some short posts about the history of the evangelism versus Social Gospel debate. In short, for the 20th Century Evangelical world, evangelism and "saving souls" was everything. The "Social Gospel" was a catch-all to describe the spiritually bankrupt character of mainline types (Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopal, etc.) and their "sellout" to works righteousness that was devoid of God. Evangelism = good. Social gospel = bad.

For reasons I won't recount in detail here, I grew up asking questions about the social order and the nature of justice in the world. As I entered adulthood, I found the questions I was asking weren't even on the radar of the people in the church community I was a part of. I found myself largely disinterested with Church.

Then, while in graduate school, immediately after college, I came into relationships with people from a broad range of Christianity. For the sake of brevity, I won't go into a lot of details here, but I ended up connecting with a Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation, and I have had at least one foot firmly planted in that world ever since. But as I spent more of my time in the PCUSA, I began to discover a strong theme about evangelism existed there as well. In the mainline world, social justice and evangelism were frequently equated as the same thing. Doing the justice work of the Kingdom is the visual telling of the Good News of the New Creation. All good and well, except that for others to make the connection between our actions and the larger narrative of God requires some articulation and conversation, something which I noticed that Presbyterians are highly reticent to do. One of my favorite jokes is, "What do you get when you cross a Jehovah's Witness with a Presbyterian?" The answer is "A knock at the door from someone who has no clue what to say."

Years ago, I read something by Ron Sider where he suggested that rather than seeing evangelism and social justice as antithetical, we should see them as two wings of the same bird. Without either wing, the bird cannot fly. I liked that metaphor. It weds both aspects into an organic picture. To this day, sharing that analogy is meaningful to many people. But there was still something missing.

In retrospect, I realize the question for me has been that if evangelism and social justice are two wings of a bird, then what does the bird's body look like, and where is the bird flying? So much of what has been called evangelism and social justice is defined by a set of actions one does rather than a destination one sojourns toward. Evangelism and social justice both have transformation as essential elements. What is the nature of this transformation, and what are we being transformed into as individuals and as a community?

What Steven's book did for me was to combine a number of disparate pieces into a framework that gave me a better lens through which to view these questions. Wrestling with the issues Stevens addresses in this book and a narrative hermeneutic regarding the Word of God have probably been the two most transforming influences in my life. This book has been essential for me in getting a better grip on the nature of the "bird" and where it is going.

Over the following several weekdays, I will blog through this book chapter by chapter, highlighting pieces for discussion and emphasis. There are nine chapters, and I expect I will have multiple posts on each chapter. We will take it slow and see where it goes.

In wrapping up this first post, I wonder why you are here reading this post and why this book might have caught your attention. If you haven't read it, what about it has an attraction for you? If you have read it, what makes you want to discuss it?

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"The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible's Grand Narrative" Book Review

What is our mission in the World? Christopher J. H. Wright writes in the introduction to The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative:

Fundamentally, our mission (if it is biblically informed and validated) means our committed participation as God’s people, at God’s invitation and command, in God’s own mission within the history of God’s world for the redemption of creation. (22-23)

That observation pushes us to ask a more profound question: What is God’s mission in the World? Wright endeavors to answer that question. After briefly reviewing the relationship between hermeneutics and mission in the past, Wright declares his project for his book:

What we have to offer, I contend, is a missional hermeneutic of the Bible. The Bible got there before postmodernity was dreamed of – the Bible which glories in diversity and celebrates multiple human cultures, the Bible which builds its most elevated theological claims on utterly particular and sometimes very local events, the Bible which sees everything in relational, not abstract, terms, and the Bible which does the bulk of its work through the medium of stories. (47)

Wright is the director of international ministries for the Langham Partnership International. He formerly taught Old Testament and was the principal of All Nations College in Ware, England. His expertise in Old Testament studies makes this such a unique and transforming study of missions.

Most studies of missions begin with New Testament passages like the Great Commission and investigate what it means to take the gospel to all nations. The Old Testament is barely a footnote in these studies. Wright masterfully shows us how the Bible unfolds God’s mission to us from Chapter 1 of Genesis. He helps recover the importance of the biblical narrative in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. For instance, Chapter 11 of Genesis tells us the story of the Tower of Babel:

Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." Genesis 11:4 (NRSV)

The people sought renown. In defiance of God, they refused to fill the earth and united against Him as one. God confused and scattered the people, the tower project ended, and people were scattered across the earth.

But then, at the beginning of Genesis 12 calls out for Himself a people with these words:

1 Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." Genesis 12:1-3 (NRSV)

It is a reversal of Babel. God will establish a great nation, and all the people of the earth will be blessed; they will be “gathered” to God, not scattered.

Throughout the book, Wright goes on to show how God had called out for himself a particular people in a particular place. He called them out to be his instrument for gathering all people to himself. If the land was the stage and the people were the actors, then the nations of the World were the audience to witness God’s relationship with his people. While the Israelites tended to pervert their selection into haughty pride, they soon learned that being God’s people meant experiencing his blessing when they loved and worshiped and God, and the withdrawal of that blessing when they refused. That was part of the witness God gave to the nations.

The New Testament expands how “the people of God” are understood and no longer confined to a place and a temple. They are the living temple. Apostles are sent out to gather the nations and reveal God for who He is.

I am distilling a treasure trove of theological insights from 535 pages into this simple review. Wright’s detailed investigation of passage after passage truly makes the missional narrative come alive. Wright concludes the book by describing the transformative impact a missional hermeneutic has on those who adopt it:

• We ask, “Where does God fit into the story of my life?” when the real question is where does my little life fit into the great story of God’s mission.
• We want to be driven by a purpose that has been tailored just right for our own individual lives (which is of course infinitely preferable to living aimlessly), when we should be seeing the purpose of all life, including our own, wrapped up in the great mission of God for the whole of creation.
• We talk about the problems of “applying the Bible to our life,” which often means modifying the Bible somewhat adjectivally to fit into the assumed “reality” of the life we live “in the real world.” What would it mean to apply our lives to the Bible instead, assuming the Bible to be the reality – the real story – to which we are called to conform ourselves?
• We wrestle with the question of how we can “make the gospel relevant to the world” (again at least that is clearly preferable to treating it as irrelevant). But in this Story, God is about the business of transforming the world to fit the shape of the gospel.
• We wonder whether and how the care of creation, for example, might fit into our concept and practice of mission, when this Story challenges us to ask whether our lives, lived on God’s earth and under God’s gaze, are aligned with, or horrendously misaligned with, God’s mission that stretches from creation to cosmic transformation and the arrival of a new heaven and new earth.
• We argue about what can legitimately be included in the mission God expects from the church, when we should ask what kind of church God expects for his mission in all its comprehensive fullness.
• I may wonder what kind of mission God has for me, when I should ask what kind of me God wants for his mission. (533-534)

The book is a wonderful travelogue through the narrative God has given us in the Bible. It accomplishes its “mission” to give a missional hermeneutic. It is published under the Baker Academic label but is well-written and accessible to a general audience. As noted, it is lengthy, and you cannot just breeze through the subject matter. I found this to be an exceptionally helpful book. This is going on my reference shelf, and I have no question it will be accessed many times in the days ahead. I highly recommend this book!

An Upside-Down World

Christianity Today: An Upside-Down World

The map of global christianity that our grandparents knew has been turned upside down. At the start of the 20th century, only ten percent of the world's Christians lived in the continents of the south and east. Ninety percent lived in North America and Europe, along with Australia and New Zealand. But at the start of the 21st century, at least 70 percent of the world's Christians live in the non-Western world—more appropriately called the majority world.

More Christians worship in Anglican churches in Nigeria each week than in all the Episcopal and Anglican churches of Britain, Europe, and North America combined. There are more Baptists in Congo than in Britain. More people in church every Sunday in communist China than in all of Western Europe. Ten times more Assemblies of God members in Latin America than in the U.S.

The old peripheries are now the center. The old centers are now on the periphery. ...

.......

Most of all, we need to go back to the Cross and relearn its comprehensive glory. For if we persist in a narrow, individualistic view of the Cross as a personal exit strategy to heaven, we fall short of its biblical connection to the mission purpose of God for the whole of creation (Col. 1:20) and thereby lose the Cross-centered core of holistic mission.

You will notice I have Wright's book in my "Currently Reading" pile. I think he just moved to the top of my list.

Theology and Economics: The Church

If families are the primary inculcators of virtue and values, and we live in a fallen world, how do fallen families become cells of virtuous and righteous behavior? How is it that fallen human beings become eikons of God? The answer is the Church.

The purpose of the Church is not "ministries" and worship services. The purpose of the Church is transforming people into citizens of the Kingdom of God, into eikons bearing the creator's image. The Church accomplishes this by being an effective "plausibility structure." Plausibility structures are communities we look to for confirmation of the veracity of our perspectives and behaviors.

From beginning to end, the Scripture teaches that human societies are corrupted with human illusions that lead us away from God and being eikons of God. The work of God in the world is disillusionment. God disillusions us from the deception around us and opens us up to the reality of who God is and what God is doing in the world. God's first and foremost tool in this disillusionment is the Church.

The Church is to be a plausibility structure that points to a reality that is coming but has not yet fully unfolded. The way Christians behave toward one another is an example to the world, imperfect as it is, of what God intends. Through grace and sacrificial love (not power and compulsion), the Church shows the love of God in the world, bending the hearts and wills of people to a relationship with God. The work of the Spirit through the opening of the Word, the practice of the sacraments, and participation in community (i.e., plausibility structure) transform people into restored eikons of God. These restored eikons, dispersed throughout the community, bring their values and righteousness into every crack and crevice of human society. This includes, first and foremost, the family. But it also directly impacts the economic aspects of society, the innate human activity of having dominion over the world. A society populated with people who have internalized virtuous and righteous behavior (and raise their young with those values), who honor subsidiarity, and who put their values to work in a democratic society with free markets has the greatest potential for amplifying individual freedom, healthy community, prosperity, and justice.

Scot McKnight writes the following (emphases are the McKnight's):

The central creed in life for Judaism, which Jesus slightly amended, was this:

Hear of Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.

To which Jesus added:

And the second is this Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.

(author’s translations)

What Jesus is calling for in the Jesus Creed, for us to love God and others, is the purpose of the gospel. God restores us so we will become loving. Loving God with heart, soul, and mind is fairly easy to grasp, but what might it mean for us to love God “with all our strength’? This expression, I am suggesting, opens up the opportunity for us to consider the mission of the gospel.

The word “strength,” moedeka in Hebrew, means more than physical strength and more than just our body. It is not intended to describe weightlifters or the crisp cuts of the young. Instead, “strength” refers to our “externalities,” to our “resources,” to what we do in the physical world that can be seen, touched, smelled, and tasted. When we read “with all your strength,” instead of thinking of fitness shows on TV we should think of everything we see and touch and taste in the world.

In other words, to love God “with all your strength” means that we are to love God with everything we do, everything we say, with everything we touch, with everything we smell, with everything we eat or choose not to eat, with everything we buy and don’t buy, with everything we own, with everything we make, with every cultural establishment, with every social institution and with every global structure …. and on and on.

And, because it concerns how we love the whole created order, the gospel is a holistic work of God. The gospel unleashes a cycle of grace that is extended to the entire created order. If God embraces the entire created order in his plan, then we too are invited to join him. (1)

Imagine what the world would look like if a community of people who loved God with all their "strength" were on display in every aspect of human existence, feeding their values into the dynamic and empowering systems of democracy and free markets, exponentially magnifying the impact of their decisions throughout the world. But also imagine what the world would look like where a community of people driven by selfishness fed their values into the system with the same magnifying power.

That brings us to an important differentiation that needs to be made between two frequently confused terms: Selfish and self-interest.

(1) Scot McKnight, Embracing Grace: A Gospel for the Rest of Us, Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2005. 75-76.

(Note: I stole the word "eikons" from reading Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed blog. However, after having my own "Embracing Grace" copy for about four months, I finally read it. I was stunned at the similarities between what he wrote and significant portions of what I have written in this series. The book is great, and I highly recommend it!)

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Theology and Economics: A Quick Review

The Vision and Mission of God

Visio Dei (Vision of God) - The triune God existing in prefect shalom with all creation, dwelling in perfect community with His animate eikons as they fill the earth and fulfill their call to be stewards of creation.

Missio Dei (Mission of God) - Reclaim and renew all creation by calling into community broken eikons, filling them with His presence and transforming them into imperfect but compelling exhibits of the visio dei, until shalom is fulfilled at Christ’s return.

Two Great Commandments

Without describing it as such, over the last three posts, I have been writing about Jesus' two great commandments, the ethical heart of the body of Christ.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” We are individually and corporately to have the mind and heart of God, thinking His thoughts and feeling His emotions, in all we do. We worship God primarily through the conformity of our being and action with His being and action.

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” By being other centered within the social structures of our particular contexts, we subvert “the powers” and infuse them with God's love.

The Triune Call

Individually and corporately, we are called by God in three interrelated ways. (1) A call emanates from each person of the trinity, yet so integrated are they that each may be seen as emanating from all the trinity.

Call to Creation Stewardship - Father

God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." (Genesis 1:28)

Call to Kingdom Service – Son

And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:18-20)

Call to Exercise Gifts – Holy Spirit

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. (1 Corinthians 12:7-11)

Some  see an explicit expression of this triune call in 1 Corinthians 12:4-6:

There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.  (TNIV)

Spirit – Gifts
Lord – Service
God – Works

Why Economics?

God has given us a narrative of His acts in history, which points us to sound stewardship of His creation. It gives us a vision of the ultimate outcome (the New Jerusalem) even though we know it will not be realized until Christ's return. The bottom line is this: All work done out of reverence for God and in response to his call and purposes in the world, whether at the office or in the home, whether for profit or no pay, is ministry! Creation stewardship is the first ministry God ordained and is the only call that extends into eternity. Evangelism and social justice are indeed essential works of the Church and part of our call to Kingdom service in this age. Kingdom service is only one piece of the triune call.

Interpretive Considerations

Craig Hill writes,

Believers today are employed at the same essential task as the New Testament authors, namely, the attempt to make sense of their world in light of God’s self-disclosure in Jesus. I call this the “But in Christ” project. Like us, the writers of the NT were located at particular moments in time and in specific cultural environments. Like us, they accepted much of their situation as a given; however, at certain points they realized that their situation as a given; however, at certain points they realized that their world was challenged by what they had seen of God in Christ. Those are the “But in Christ” moments. Yes, first-century this and first-century that about women, but in Christ “there is no longer male and female” (Gal. 3:28). I would contend that it is precisely at these junctures that the New Testament is most important and most revelatory.  (Craig C. Hill. In God's Time: The Bible and the Future. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, Co., 2002. 26.)

Hill uses slavery as an example. To conform to the New Testament would require the sanctioning of slavery. The "But in Christ" points us on a trajectory beyond New Testament life's status quo.

Hill introduced the "but in Christ" concept. I want to expand it just a little bit further. There are many "but in Christ" explicit statements in the New Testament. But there are many other implied "but in Christ" cases in the New Testament and "but as God's chosen people" cases in the Old Testament. Often the Israelites or Christians were given instruction counter to the surrounding culture without an explicit contrast being made to those cultures. For instance, when the law was given in the Torah forbidding slavery among the Israelites, all the surrounding cultures practiced slavery. Such directives should be given special attention because they teach us that God was moving in a different direction.

By observing these "but" instances in conjunction with other instances in the Scripture, we can often discern an arrow that points us on a trajectory from the story of the Bible, through our time, and on into the New Jerusalem.

Narrative Implications of Creation, Fall, and Eschaton

Creation Implications

• Ultimate ownership of everything belongs to God.
• Individual human beings were made in God's image, but as community, human beings give the fullest expression of God's image. Any elevation of either individuality or community over the other gives a distorted picture of humanity.
• Human beings, as individuals and communities, were made for stewardship of the earth on behalf of, and in community with, the triune God. There is no choice about being stewards for God. There is only the choice of just or unjust stewardship.
• The created world is important because God made it and values it.
• Human economic work (production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services; activity concerned with the material welfare of humankind) pre-dated the fall and is at the center of humanity's purpose.
• There is linear time and an unfolding purpose for creation.

Fall Implications

• Anomie - Human beings live in disoriented lawlessness (what sociologists call "anomie"). Human beings were created to be stewards over creation under God. They have been "cut loose from their mooring" in God through rebellion. They are alienated from God, disoriented from personal meaning, and in conflict with neighbor and nature.
• Settled in the land of wandering - The achievement of autonomy by finite human beings is the height of absurdity. Yet human beings have cut themselves off from God, the only source of meaning. Consequently, as delusional as it may be, human beings are ever engaged in "making a home" (building civilization) for themselves, which by definition, is an illusion. They choose not to honor God and can't live without meaning.
• Autonomous community - At the root of sin and rebellion is the desire to live autonomously and eternally. The perpetuation of the community is what gives the illusion of immortality. Consequently, all alternative challenges to the illusionary "home" a community creates must be suppressed, or meaning will be lost. Conquest and subjugation of all challengers, foreign and domestic, even nature itself, must be conquered.
• Autonomous individuality - The desire for individual autonomy is ever present in human beings and challenges community survival. Individuals often face the dilemma of wanting total autonomy but needing community to have meaning. Thus, there is always a tension in every human society between conformity that perpetuates community and yet placates a desire for personal autonomy.
• Economic Exploitation - Since human beings were created to be stewards over the created world, economics is at the heart of human-made civilization. The inclination is toward autonomous ownership by either individuals or the state.

Eschatological Implications

• The present mission and institution of the Church is temporary, while the call to creation stewardship is intrinsic to what it means to be human from the beginning of the biblical narrative to the end.
• Christians live as dual citizens. We are citizens of the world in this present age, but we are ultimately citizens of the New Jerusalem living proleptically in this age.
• The calls of creation stewardship, kingdom service, and use of spiritual gifts are all equally present and incumbent upon us in this age.
• Utopia, the full restoration of shalom, will only come at the time and in the way of God's own choosing. No one knows the time and manner in which it happens.
• Despairing resignation is unfaithfulness to God and a denial of God's transformative works in this age.
• Futurist activism is unfaithfulness to God and an attempt to usurp God's transformative role in the world.
• Because of the promise of the eschaton from we are free from the temporal order, and we are free to the temporal order. Precisely because our ultimate identity and meaning is not found in this age, we are free from the seductive but unattainable vision of personal or social utopias. Furthermore, because we have nothing of ultimate value to lose in this age, we are free to live in relation to the present world order in a way that honors God, even to the point of surrendering our very lives.

ECONOMIC RIGHTS AND ECONOMIC OBLIGATIONS

Justice

The biblical narrative teaches that human beings are made in the image of God. Because they are in God's image, each human being is entitled to expect dignity and respect. In our day, we refer to this as having certain rights. This cuts two ways for any given individual. First, each person should expect their status as an image bearer to be respected. Second, each person is obligated to respect the image-bearer status of others. There are both rights and obligations. This is also true when we think of the individual versus the community. The community should not disparage the image-bearing character of individuals, and yet individuals must have limits on their actions out of regard for fellow image-bearers.

Justice is the right balance between these competing rights and obligations. For Christians, it is not found in some codified morality. At it is the root, justice is grounded in the shalom vision of the Kingdom of God or the New Jerusalem. There is no God-ordained economic structure in the Bible. We have revelation of the character of God. We have a record of how God dealt with people in various ages. We have a vision of a coming age of shalom. From there, we are instructed to discern what is right and good.

Economic Justice

There are essentially three aspects to economic justice:

1. Distributive Justice – Addresses how capital and goods are distributed throughout society.
2. Commutative Justice – Addresses the truthfulness of parties to an economic exchange.
3. Remedial Justice – Addresses just compensation and punitive action when malicious or careless damage has been done to life, liberty, or property.

Jubilee Code

The Bible touches on all three types of economic justice, but the portion of Scripture that deals most directly with economic justice is found in the Sabbath and Jubilee Codes of the Old Testament. It is also the idea of Jubilee that Jesus draws on to characterize the nature of his ministry in Luke Chapter 4.

The Jubilee is often characterized as a time of debt forgiveness. It was not. The Jubilee had more in common with modern lease agreements. The Jubilee was held every fifty years. Land could be "leased" to another for an amount equal to the number of crops harvested from the time of the "lease" to the time of the next Jubilee. All leases were set to expire at the Jubilee. One's labor could be sold similarly, but slavery was not permitted among Israelites.

Jubilee Implications

The net effect was to ensure that each person and their descendants would never become permanently alienated from land and labor, the economic means of production. They would always have an ownership stake in God's work. The practices of Sabbath and Jubilee would have been powerful reminders of who it was that gave them the land in the first place and from whom all prosperity comes. However, there is no evidence that the Israelites ever practiced Jubilee.

New Testament

Jesus says little about economic systems per se. Jesus' focus seems to have been to orient us to the coming day of shalom and then have us reason back to our circumstances what is just and good.

THE CAUSES OF PROSPERITY

Many ask what causes poverty when poverty is the natural state in which we are born. The real question is what causes prosperity. Economic historians vary in their perspectives on which factors were more important than others, but William J. Bernstein's analysis isolates four factors that most economists would agree are central.

Four Factors

Property Rights – Individuals have to have a reasonable hope that the fruits of their labors will not be arbitrarily taken or destroyed. Otherwise, why invest time and resources into productive efforts. Property rights tie in with the idea of respect for the intrinsic value of each individual and their right to enjoy the fruits of their labor and decisions. It also ensures better and productive use of societal resources than communal ownership does. With private ownership almost all property is the focused attention of someone while communal ownership generally inspires people to take no more responsibility for property than they have to get by. Resources become grossly underdeveloped and employed.

Scientific Rationalism – Precise knowledge of how the world operates generates enormous power to manipulate the world for specific ends. Superstition and tradition, while often giving a sense of order, can also inhibit creative innovation. The idea that God is a rational being operating with a purpose in the world spawned the rise of science.

Capital Markets – Most of human history has been limited to land and labor as the economic means of production. Large enterprises need ways to amass a large a number of resources and mobilize them toward a particular end. Banking systems emerged in Europe along with ideas of corporations and limited liability equity investing. Along with them have emerged institutions that facilitate the movement of capital from one place to another.

Technology and Infrastructure – Reliable infrastructure for transportation, communication and energy are essential for a prosperous society. The application of scientific rationalism and effective capital markets has ushered in an explosion of new technologies that over the past two centuries has made infrastructures faster, safer, and cheaper than anything imagined in the past.

Christian Ethos

Undergirding all the development of these four factors in at least three ways has been the Christian ethos:

• Human Beings in the Image of God – Respect for individuals and their property is deeply rooted in the Christian ethos.
• Linear Time and Progress – All other religions have tended to be oriented toward stories and laws written in the past. Christianity introduced an orientation of the future world and used it as its organizing principle. The idea of progress is a distinctively Christian notion.
• Vision-Driven Discernment – Jesus left us with no instruction manual. What he left us with was a vision. Discernment becomes based on having a vision of a coming age while looking through the eyes of Jesus' followers at how Jesus communicated that vision into a particular context. From there, we must reason as to what is appropriate for our context. This use of reason eventually spilled over into analysis and understanding of the world, giving birth to science as we know it.

The four factors of prosperity were not a cosmic accident. They were direct results of a Christian ethos.

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Theology and Economics: Creation Implications

As we reflect on the creation portion of the biblical narrative, we can make the following observations and see the following implications for economics.

Observations (These are linked to my earlier post on creation near the start of this series.)

God ultimately owns all. The opening words of Genesis are, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,…" "Heaven and earth" is a euphemism for "all that is." God alone is eternal. All that exists ultimately finds its source in God and belongs to God.

Creation is Good. "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good." (Genesis 1:31) Creation has value because God values it.

Eikons on a Mission. God created humanity in God's image. The Greek word for image is eikon, from which we get "icon." The kings of the Ancient Near East placed totems throughout the regions they controlled to symbolize their dominion over those regions. Adam and Eve, and later Noah, were mandated to multiply and "fill the earth." This is almost certainly part of what this Genesis passage alludes to in terms of creating humanity in God's image. Later God charged Israel with the task of being the light of the world to the other nations so they would repent and become God's eikons once again. Jesus' last words were that Christians would be Jesus' witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. The biblical narrative ends with all the peoples of the earth in community with God as his eikons "filling the earth."

The difference between God's eikons and the eikons of earthly kings is that earthly eikons are inanimate. God's eikons are animate and share an essence with God that distinguishes them from the rest of creation. In that human beings were made "from the dust of the earth," they have material essence that connects them with the material world and makes them "other than" God. Yet human beings are moral creatures with self-awareness. They can make moral assessments other creatures cannot. Humans have a capacity for reason and creativity that other creatures do not have. In this sense, they are like God and dislike the rest of creation.

Imago Dei: Individual and Communal. Adam and Eve had no sense of an autonomous self. They were created as individuals, and as individuals, they bore the imago Dei, the image of God. However, Genesis makes clear Adam alone was incomplete. He needed Eve to have community and give full expression to the image of God. "The two becoming one" in Genesis 2 symbolizes the Trinity's mystical community. Just as humanity is birthed out of the mystical community of the trinity, so are children born out of the mystical union of a man and a woman.

The individual is important and valued but is not complete apart from relationship. God created humanity to be in relationship with God, God's self, others, and creation. Individually and corporately, we are the image of God.

Missio Dei: The Call of Creation Stewardship. Humanity was made for the world. Humanity was placed in a position over creation and under God. Humanity was given dominion over the earth and expected to use humanity's distinctive imago Dei attributes, like reason and creativity, to care for and creatively develop creation. It seems certain that as humanity expanded, this would have meant developing government and economic institutions in addition to the institution of the family. Thus, such institutions can be seen as part of God's work in the world through humanity. The critical aspect that must not be forgotten is that it is indeed God's work done in community with and through humanity. The use of creation for other than God's ends is injustice. We have no choice about whether or not to be stewards. We can only choose just or unjust stewardship.

Progress. Most ancient cultures viewed time as cyclical, and religion was an exercise in honoring and reenacting cycles. The creation of the earth, as described in Genesis, is a sequential process by an orderly God. God told humanity to fill the earth and have dominion over it; a progressive undertaking. Genesis effectively introduces the idea of linear time with events moving toward some end.

Implications

• Ultimate ownership of everything belongs to God.
• Individual human beings were made in God's image, but as community, human beings give the fullest expression of God's image. Any elevation of either individuality or community over the other gives a distorted picture of humanity.
• Human beings, both as individuals and communities, were made for stewardship of the earth on behalf of, and in community with, the triune God.
• There is no choice about being stewards for God. There is only the choice of just or unjust stewardship.
• The created world is important because God made it and values it.
• Human economic work (production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services; activity concerned with the material welfare of humankind) pre-dated the fall and is at the center of humanity's purpose.
• There is linear time and an unfolding purpose for creation.

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Theology and Economics: Vision, Mission, Ethic and Call

Based on what I have addressed so far, here is a summary of elements I think are central to a theology of economics.

The Vision and Mission of God

Visio Dei (Vision of God) - The triune God existing in prefect shalom with all creation, dwelling in perfect community with His animate eikons as they fill the earth and fulfill their call to be stewards of creation.

Missio Dei (Mission of God) - Reclaim and renew all creation by calling into community broken eikons, filling them with His presence and transforming them into imperfect but compelling exhibits of the visio dei, until shalom is fulfilled at Christ’s return.

Two Great Commandments

Without describing it as such, over the last three posts, I have been writing about Jesus' two great commandments, the ethical heart of the body of Christ.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” We are individually and corporately to have the mind and heart of God, thinking His thoughts and feeling His emotions, in all we do. We worship God primarily through the conformity of our being and action with His being and action.

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” By being other centered within the social structures of our particular contexts, we subvert “the powers” and infuse them with God's love.

The Triune Call

With all of the above in mind, I am ready to introduce another important element to the mix. Borrowing heavily from R. Paul Stevens, I want to suggest that individually and corporately, we are called by God in three interrelated ways. (1) A call emanates from each person of the trinity, yet so integrated are they that each may be seen as emanating from all the trinity.

Call to Creation Stewardship - Father

God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." (Genesis 1:28)

Call to Kingdom Service – Son

And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:18-20)

Call to Exercise Gifts – Holy Spirit

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. (1 Corinthians 12:7-11)

Some see an explicit expression of this triune call in 1 Corinthians 12:4-6:

There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.  (TNIV)

Spirit – Gifts
Lord – Service
God – Works

Why Economics?

I will flesh out "Why Economics?" more in my next post, but I invite you to consider two things for now. First, of the three calls God has given us, which came first and which will always remain? The community we call the Church will exist eternally, but after Christ's return, will there be evangelism? Healing? Funerals? When "the dwelling of God is with humanity," will our relationship to the Spirit and the gifts given remain the same? Creation stewardship is the only one of the three that existed before the fall of humanity and the only one that continues after Christ's return.

Second, the dictionary definition of economics is "The science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, or the material welfare of humankind." The word economy comes from the Greek oikonomia, which means "household management." Paul uses the Greco-Roman household as a powerful image of the Church. Based on the viso Dei I suggested above and the fact that only the call to creation stewardship preceded the fall, what should we conclude about the importance of economics?

(1) R. Paul Stevens. The Other Six Days: Vocation, Work, and Ministry in Biblcial Perspective. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, and Vancover, BC, Canada: Regent College Publishing, 1999. 118-123.

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Theology and Economics: Remembering the Whole Story

I wrote at the end of my last post,

In short, the story begins with God creating the earth, intending to fill it with his animated eikons living in perfect shalom. The story ends with God recreating the earth, and dwelling among his animated eikons who now fill the earth, living in perfect shalom.

This speaks to the end purposes, or telos, of God. But knowing the end is not enough. We live between the pivotal point of Christ's resurrection and the consummation of God's work in the world. What is asked of us today? Jesus said the greatest commandments were to love God with all your heart, mind, and soul and to love your neighbor as yourself. What does that look like?

In writing about Anglican social ethics, David P. Gushee and Dennis P. Hollinger write,

Love therefore can only be understood within the framework of an evangelical ethic in which the resurrection of Christ vindicates the order of reality from creation, points us toward the fulfillment of that order in the eschaton, and allows us to participate now in the Christ who himself makes love intelligible. (1)

This framework places creation at the beginning and the New Jerusalem at the end and draws us to the life and work of Jesus Christ in between the two. Creation, eschaton, and incarnational revelation must ALL be kept front and center in our minds as we think about how to love others and make ethical decisions.

Gabriel Fackre echos this sentiment when he writes that we must not lose the holistic continuity of the entire revealed narrative of God and must avoid the inclination to focus on one revelatory act of God overly. Fackre sees at least the following ten episodes as part of the narrative story that must not be lost from the story:

• Prologue
• Creation
• Fall
• Covenant with Noah
• Covenant with Israel
• Jesus Christ
• Church
• Salvation
• Consummation
• Epilogue (2)

There is a tendency by theologians and movements to champion one element or episode of God's revelatory activity as the definitive lens through which everything must be filtered. For instance, he lists the following examples provided by William Abraham as acts that have been used as organizing principles to the exclusion of other revelatory acts:

• Creation (Preservation)
• Speaking to the prophets and apostles (Inspiration)
• Jesus Christ as bearer of revelation (Action)
• Illumination by the Holy Spirit (Illumination)
• Revelation that comes only at the end of history (Illumination) (3)

Focusing on one to the exclusion of others ultimately distorts our understanding of God's work.

My posts to this point have focused on telos and have given a narrative summary of the biblical story only in so far as it points to what the telos is. This series aims to investigate how economics relates to the telos of the biblical story and what it means to engage culture today. I will turn to economics soon. However, before I go to the specifics of economics, I want to say a little more about "loving God" and "loving neighbor" as the base principles in our lives in this era between Christ's resurrection and the eschaton.

(1) David P. Gushee and Dennis P. Hollinger, Toward an Evangelical Ethical Methodology. Chapter Six in Ronald J. Sider and Diane Knippers, Toward an Evangelical Public Policy: Political Strategies for the Health of the Nation. "Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2004, pp. 135-136.

(2) Gabriel Fackre, The Doctrine of Revelation: A Narrative Interpretation. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997, p. 9.

(3) Ibid, p. 8.

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Theology and Economics: A Summary Narrative

Over the last seven posts, I have outlined my understanding of the biblical narrative. What I write from this point forward assumes the observations made in these posts. Therefore, I thought reviewing and summarizing what I have written might be good. You can find the Introduction to the series here: Introduction.

Creation

I made the following six observations regarding the creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2:

• God created all that is, and all that is belongs to God.
• God created an orderly world.
• God created humanity in God's image.
• God ordained both individuality and community.
• God placed humanity over creation to be stewards of it and to be eikons of God's authority.
• God established the ideas of linear time and progress.

I haven't yet developed why all these observations are important. However, the issue of being in "God's image" is critical from the start. Ancient Near East kings erected graven images (eikon in Greek) of themselves throughout their empires to signify their authority over the region. The Genesis story of creation would have called this practice to mind. Human beings were to be living eikons of God's authority on the earth. We alone share God's capacity for reason, imagination, and creativity. It was God's intention from the beginning that we participate with Him in bringing the earth to its full potential.

Shalom

Shalom is the Hebrew word we often translate as "peace" in English, but it has a much richer meaning than this. It is the single best word to describe the state of affairs after God created Adam and Eve. Here are some of the connotations:

• Absence of War
• Harmonious relationships
• Personal welfare of people and animals
• Prosperity
• Justice
• Peace of mind

What I emphasize for now is that there is an unmistakable economic aspect to shalom. Humanity's mission is to be stewards of creation, and the fact that shalom can only be realized to the degree we fulfill that mission, makes economics a central issue.

Rebel Eikons

Adam and Eve sought to be more than they were and became far less. Their sin brought guilt and shame into the equation and marred every aspect of shalom mentioned above.

Vain Illusions

God had told Adam and Eve to "multiply and fill the earth" with his eikons. Their sin started humanity in a downward spiral to where their son Cain refused to reflect God's character. After leaving God's presence, he tried to settle in the "land of wandering." (The name of the place he settled was "Nod," which means "wandering.”) He built a city and clustered there rather than filling the earth. He lived in a web of delusion and illusion. Humanity degenerated to the point that God started over with Noah.

After the flood, Noah was given the same instructions to fill the earth that Adam and Eve had been given. The next story is about people clustering at Babel, uniting for the expressed purpose of not being scattered. They imagine themselves able to reach up to God and bring him down. God confuses and scatters them, but they still refuse to reflect his character.

This has become the pattern for humanity from that day until now. We build illusions of meaning and purpose that shield us from our own mortality and the true presence of God.

Renewing Shalom

Here I used the metamorphosis of the name "Jerusalem" to illustrate God's intention for humanity. Shalem was both an area in Canaan and the name of the Baal god the inhabitants worshiped. The name referred to Venus, the evening star, symbolizing fulfillment and completion. The city of Urushalem meant "foundation of Shalem." It is believed that the Hebrew word shalom originates from this word shalem.

David annexed the area of Shalem to Israel and set up his throne at Urushalem. He added the first syllable of God's name, "Jehovah" to the front of the word, making it (anglicized) "Jerusalem." The name becomes "God's foundation of fulfillment and peace." Finally, the euphemistic name given to the world when Christ returns, and all is restored is the "New Jerusalem."

Humanity defies God and seeks fulfillment and peace in a city apart from God. God inhabits that city and gives it his name, and transforms it into God's city of fulfillment and peace.

Israel and the Coming Shalom

The nation of Israel began with a covenant that God made with Abraham to bless all the families of the earth through him and his descendants. What exactly God had in mind is not clear at first. We learn that God intended to form a people that would be evidence for, and witnesses of, his love for all humanity and that through Israel, all the peoples of the earth would turn to God. Once again, the image of filling the earth with God's eikons is evidenced. However, Israel disobeyed God, became centered on themselves, and failed to be the "light to the gentiles" God intended. For more than four hundred years after the close of the Old Testament, Israel found itself in varying degrees of bondage and oppression, looking for a messiah who would call them to righteousness, gather the dispersed, bring down their enemies, and restore shalom in the land.

The New (Jeru)shalom

The New Testament begins with Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. He presents himself as the Messiah but is not the Messiah Israel was expecting. Israel was looking through a zoom lens camera and saw only themselves and what God intended for them. Jesus "zoomed out" to give them a wide-angle view so they could see what God intended for all humanity. Israel's story was not lost. It was just cast in terms of a much larger story. The covenant was expanded to include all who repented and embraced the Messiah. These disciples would then be Jesus' witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, to the ends of the earth. In other words, the Church was to fill the world with God's eikons. At some unknown date, Jesus will return, make all things new, and establish his eternal earthly throne. Shalom, in all its many dimensions, will be restored.

The Two Sentence Summary

In short, the story begins with God creating the earth, intending to fill it with his animated eikons living in perfect shalom. The story ends with God recreating the earth and dwelling among his animated eikons who now fill the earth, living in perfect shalom.

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Indentity

I am at an Emergent conference outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico, as I write this post. Since much of the conference is about conversations, and I know very few people here, I am occupied with meeting people and starting relationships.

The conversations always begin the same. "Hi, I'm Mike." Then comes the exchange about where we are from and what church we attend. Having established a frame of reference, we get to the heart of the matter. First, we establish ecclesiological status. "Are you a pastor?" (i.e., clergy or laity) If you are a pastor, the interrogation begins about the size of your church, what denomination, urban/rural/suburban, whether it is liturgical, etc. If you are not a pastor, the big question becomes, "What do you do?"

These questions are critical because you are defined by what you do in our culture. Our identity is grounded in action. (This is almost pathologically true of the male population of our culture.) For the person out of work, the person working at a job below their educational capabilities and experience, or a newly retired person, few questions can strike at the heart more than "What do you do?" If I don't "do," I cease to exist in the eyes of our culture. The foundation of my identity begins to disintegrate. Each asking of the question is one more assault on my self-image.

A few months ago, I studied suicide rates by five-year age categories over the last fifty years (some people golf, some do gardening, and me…well…). There have been considerable changes in patterns over the years. Teenage suicide went way up but had been decreasing significantly for some time. Rates for older folks declined steadily over the time span. But one persistent trend you see over time is the higher rate of suicide for men who are in the 55-65 age range compared to other men in most other age ranges. Facing retirement means the end of "action" and, therefore, identity. Losing that identity is a fate worse than death …literally… as indicated by some people's choices. The number of men who die or suffer debilitating illnesses shortly after retiring also points to the "stresses" of losing identity.

Many women experience similar stresses in their lives. Whether by nature or nurture, women seem to be more relationally oriented. The devastating loss of identity can occur not only with employment but when children leave home and the family structure of twenty or more years dissolves. The bottom line is that, for many, when demand for our role or activity ceases to exist, we also cease to exist. Our identity becomes dis-integrated.

Not every culture defines identity in this way. Ancient Middle Easterners received their identity based on kinship. "Joseph, the son Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham." Later in the Bible, we read about X, the son of Y, of the tribe of Z. What you did was incidental compared to your community affiliation. Community was the integration point for identity.

I have been writing in recent posts about a common theme: What happens to the church when we are oriented to a false vision of who we are? What happens to us as a community is not much different from what happens to individuals. As individuals, we all have a model of who we are. The model may not always be consciously constructed, but it exists nonetheless. When people reflect confirmation of our internal model back to us, the model is reinforced, and we become more assured that we know who we are. The reinforcement of the model establishes our identity. When people reflect back to us that we are less than the model we have of ourselves, depending on the relationship, we experience anger and disdain, or our feelings may be hurt. However, if we do something that violates our model of ourselves or if something happens that exposes falsehood in our model, we experience shame and humiliation. We often go to great lengths to hide the incongruities, even from ourselves.

Sociologist Peter Berger introduced the term "plausibility structures" to the world decades ago. People like Leslie Newbigin and N. T. Wright picked up his language. This concept says we need a constant feedback loop telling us how we are doing. If we are in communities that affirm our models of ourselves, then we will strongly tend to persist in those models. If we are in communities that reflect disapproval of our models, over time, our models will come into conformity with the reality reflected to us by the community. Communities give out social rewards for those that affirm the community's perception of reality and penalize those that do not. So, we are both shaped by our communities and give shape to them by the reflections we give back.

Some theologians have realized that the Church is called to be a counter-cultural plausibility structure for the world. The existence of the Church serves both as a critique of the "eternal present" of this passing age and a window into the existence of the age that is dawning. Since Adam, Eve, and the apple, the human project has been to find a basis to integrate an identity apart from God. (Witness Cain building Enoch or the construction of the temple at Babel.) The presence of the Church dis-integrates human integrations of identity at the corporate and individual levels. It dis-illusions us from illusionary models. By the power of Pentecost, the Church integrates us into a community where we are daughters and sons of a loving God and sisters and brothers to Christ. The integration point for our identities is the triune God living in community with humanity.

John 17:14-23 (Jesus praying)

14 I have given them [disciples] your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 15 I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. 16 They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth. 20 I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (NRSV) (Emphasis mine.)

What business are we in? I believe we are in the identity business. We are about the business of rooting our identity in the triune God and the community God has called into being. We are participants with God in community, in the dis-integration and dis-illusionment of the world (including ourselves) so that all may reintegrate as children of a loving God and as sisters and brothers to Jesus Christ. Exactly what this looks like will change from culture to culture and age to age, but structure and action must always flow from mission. Our identity is always in God, through Christ, empowered by the spirit, but the forms our counter-cultural plausibility structures take will always be contextual.

In every age and place, what will be true is an anticipation of that day when we all truly will be one, and it shall be proclaimed, "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever."

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Mission is the Heart of the Church

Mission is the Heart of the Church

I just got back from a very busy time in Louisville, and I am still catching up. While visiting the Reformed-Angler, I came across this post. He reflects on an article by Marj Carpenter. Good stuff!

The Lord's Prayer Corrected (if Mission is stricken)

I found a post on Dave Hackett's Frontier Blog about correcting the Lord's Prayer for the less mission-minded. Good food for thought.

The Lord's Prayer Corrected (if Mission is stricken)

Cain's Choice

Genesis 4:1-7

1 Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, "I have produced a man with the help of the LORD." 2 Next she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground. 3 In the course of time Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground, 4 and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, 5 but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. 6 The LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it."
NRSV

What was it that made God so displeased with Cain? The most common explanation is that Abel gave his firstlings while Cain brought an offering of fruit and grain, not necessarily first fruits. Therefore, God was displeased with the offering. This is a possibility, although it is not apparent from the text. But there may be another way of seeing this passage.

The only clear distinction we find between Cain and Abel is, "Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground." So why would this have any significance? Shepherds are nomadic, and tillers are settled. What is the one mission God had given to humanity?

God blessed them [Adam and Eve], and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." Gen 1:28 NRSV

Based on their lifestyles, which of these two brothers was more likely to move about the earth and expand the inhabited area? Is it possible that God was displeased with Cain because Cain's offering was symbolic of Cain's refusal to "fill the earth?" Instead, Cain put down roots (literally) and remained planted where he was. "If you do well…" God asks. Do well at what? Following the mission God gave to fill the earth.

Cain created an illusion of control, comfort, and self-reliance. He came to rely upon his own efforts to control his environment and not upon God's provisional care as he lived out God's mission. God disillusioned Cain. Cain was left to confront his delusion of human autonomy and selfishness. Was it Cain's failure to offer legitimate sacrifice, or was it the very nature of Cain's work? Either way, Cain was confronted with a choice. Cain could turn around from his delusion and enter an authentic relationship with God, or Cain could redouble his efforts to manufacture illusions that gave him comfort in his delusion.

But this is not just the stuff of Old Testament stories. It is the very existence of the Church today. Several millennia after Cain and Abel, God stepped into the world in a personal way. He told his followers to go to their hometowns, to Judea, to Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth and fill the earth with his disciples.

Instead, we have decided to set down roots and plant crops that leave us comfortable and in control. We will not make the sacrifice God expects of us. Instead of expanding into our communities and the world, we have become angry and resist anything threatening our comforting illusions. We protect our delusions at all costs.

But God is disillusioning us to see his authenticity. As the institutions that have given our delusions illusionary support crumble around us, like Cain, we have a choice. And if you listen closely, in congregations all across the land, you will hear these words reverberate:

"Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it."

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