#19 Something about a Christian Ethic

Right now, I am unemployed.  I used to work in a church as a youth pastor, but I didn't play the church game well, and I was unwilling to play it.  So now, I'm without a job in a new city trying to figure out what to do with my life.  I've come to the realization that I really like to study and talk about faith, but when it comes to managing in a church context it all became too much for me.  I nearly walked away from my faith, now I realize that I probably just shouldn't be employed by the church.  I'm in the midst of trying to figure out what is next...

While that is all going on, I have taken the time to read a couple of books.  There are three book in particular that have made an impact on me.  The first is Red Letter Revolution.  This book is basically a conversation by two people who are trying to take what Jesus said seriously, Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne.   These two tend to make the news, in certain circles, for living differently from most Evangelicals.  Claiborne is part of a kind of protestant monastic community in Philadelphia.  Campolo is sociology professor at Eastern University who is know for saying things that upset our supposed Christian sense of Ethics.  To me there was nothing new in this book.  They talked about critically applying Jesus' expressed Ethics as we see especially in "The Sermon on the Mount" in Matthew 5-7. You know the Beatitudes and  turn the other cheek and such. The impact this book on me was that it helped me realize how sparingly we actually try to apply Jesus' Ethics.

The second book that had an impact on me was called Peace by Walter Brueggemann.  Brueggemann is a Hebrew Bible scholar who usually has some pretty fantastic things to say, so he is always worth the read.  Again nothing Earth shattering or new in this book.  He spent a lot of time talking about Shalom, which has a deeper definition of peace then our English word.  This is peace is about community and justice.  Not retributive justice with an eye for an eye but a restorative justice where everyone is treated as a child of God with respect and love.  It is about sharing power and really is an imagine of the Kingdom of God which we mistakenly make into a concept of where we go when we die.  That kingdom was the expectation of Israel and is what Jesus was talking about all the time.  The Kingdom of God is near, which is a kingdom of peace of shalom.  Again it made me think about how we don't really want to apply Jesus' Ethics on our own lives today.  We make it about a coming Kingdom forgetting that the kingdom is being realized today.  We are supposed to live Shalom now, like that kingdom (or empire if you'd like, it is the same word in Greek) is already fully realized.

The third book is called, Peace in a Post-Christian Era by Thomas Merton.  Merton was a Trappist Monk who was also a profound writer in the 1960s.  As a monk in this time period everything that he wrote to be published had to approved by the church.  This book was never approved during his lifetime because it was considered inappropriate for a monk to write about these things.  Merton apparently had hard time with this but tried to be obedient to the church.  You can be obedient and unhappy at the same time.  What was inappropriate for Merton to write about was the Cold War arms race.  Some say that having lots of nuclear weapons kept the Soviets from using nukes on us because they were afraid of the retaliation.  Merton was pointing out the serious danger in this thinking and trying to build a good moral argument again nuclear proliferation using Jesus' Ethics.  So basically the church didn't want to hear how Jesus' thoughts say on turning the other cheek can be applied to the arms race.  Merton's ideas didn't go along with conventional thinking at the time, so it wasn't published in his lifetime.

As we all know we managed not to blow up the world during the cold war, so good use of restraint on both sides of that staring contest.  There was a missile crisis or something with Cuba and the USSR, but happily no nuclear fallout.  Still the striking thing in this book was that here was someone trying to apply Jesus' Ethics to our lives and he got censored by the church of all things for it.  It was a political issue that church didn't want a monk weighing in on, but still can it be bad to try to apply the teachings of Jesus to our lives?

All of these people draw from other sources in the Bible, too.  For instance, Merton like Peter's words, of "Do not repay evil with evil" (1 Peter 3:9).  But mostly all of these people were drawing from the Sermon on the Mount and other ethical teachings from Jesus.  Do you really know what Jesus taught?  Do you really think that we are supposed to apply these things to our lives?  It seems that our Ethics are not really based on Jesus' teachings but on other things, like consumption and politics.

To wrap this rambling mess up, I would like to just put some Ethical statements out there for you. Ready?

Love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:39/Leviticus 19:18)

Do not repay evil with evil or abuse with abuse; but, on the contrary, repay with a blessing (1 Peter 3:9)

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. (Luke 6:27-28)

Turn the other cheek (Luke 6:29; Matthew 5:39)

Do to other what you would have them do to you (Luke 6:31)

We are both Sinner and Saint--this one is Martin Luther, but keeping this in mind makes you more gracious especially with yourself.

How can you live these things out?  It seems counter-cultural to our current set of norms, yet so familiar and cliched.  Isn't this a frame for what a Christian Ethics should look like?  At least the start of one?

#18 Something about Nouns and Verbs.

I have been thinking quite a bit lately about the interaction between belief and action.  I often say that in order to change a way you do something you need to change your beliefs.  So if you change the way you think about something it will change the way you act.  For instance, if you believe that all of creation is precious to God then maybe you would treat that creation differently based on that belief or assumption.  But if you hold the belief that God created the rest of the world for us, and in the end it is all going to be burned up or something, then you might treat the environment as something to consume.

But I have been wondering how do people actually change their beliefs.  Sometimes it takes a really persuasive argument, but in all actuality that is rare.  Most people don't change their beliefs because someone made a really valid and interesting point, but because of the relationship and integrity of the person who made that point.  It is in the doing of the relationship that beliefs are changed.  So maybe changing belief requires that you do something that is out of the norm.

Instead of arguing about the nouns of our faith we should be doing the verbs and let the nouns have meaning in light of the verbs (check out this HBX for more on that).  Indoctrination is the specialty of most religious movements.  But maybe we go about it all wrong.  I used to teach Confirmation at a pretty large affluent church.  This was always a really great experience because I love talking about our faith and laying out the various beliefs of the church.  I tend to take an approach of laying some various beliefs in front of the students and allowing them to wrestle with them.  Because I think you come to faith through wrestling with meaning not through being told what is the right way to believe.  I think I was doing it wrong though.  We spent almost the entire time talking and discussing the beliefs of the church and we spent almost no time actually doing these things.  We did a mission project, but we should be continual mission projects.  We should be always doing the verbs of the faith.  Go, preach, baptize, love, pray, give, clothe, visit, eat, etc.  These are the things that show what you actually believe.  These are the things that change what you actually believe.  These are the things that bring meaning to the nouns of the faith like Christology, Eucharist, Eschaton, etc.

Belief and action are wound together so tightly that they inform each other.  Belief doesn't always dictate our actions and actions don't always change beliefs.  But intentionally revising both based on the other seems like a great way to form your faith.  It is kind of an action reflection model, only with the awareness the sometimes it is a reflection action model.  Verbs and nouns inform each other.  They create meaning for each other.  They make more sense when placed together.  Also, don't forget about the power of the prepositional phrase and punctuation...

#17 Praying for peace doesn't mean praying for inaction.

In response to my last post, a friend of mine called me.  He is a pastor of a church and his community was going to do a prayer vigil for peace in the Syrian conflict.  This pastor, one of my few readers, is a very practical person.  He wondered to me, "Is praying for peace really just praying for no bombing?"

I think that is a fantastic question and one everyone should be asking.  Is praying for peace really just praying that no further violence is perpetrated by our country on another?  Is prayer for peace really just asking to blindly turn the other cheek?  My response to him was obviously, "No! Not at all!"  But something rings true about what he said.  In a practical sense, "turn the other cheek" seems like a poor way to solve conflict.

Praying for peace is about solving conflict, not just praying for no more violence or war.  Praying for peace is praying that people can figure out creative and non-violent ways to resolve conflict.  Walter Wink, an amazingly smart scholar, talks about how there is a third way to react to conflict, violence and injustice.  The first way is to respond with violence.  This tends to grow and grow until someone decides that nuking the entire planet because we don't agree is ridiculous.  The second way is the way too many people talk about turning the other cheek, which is to do nothing.  The third way is to turn the other cheek in a way that exposes the inhuman, violent actions without using violence yourself.  It might seem shameful to you at the time, but in the end it will show the sinful injustice of the other person(s).

It reminds me of those theatrical protests that happened in the sixties.  And by reminds me of, I mean reminds me of pictures I've seen and stories I've read/heard because I was born during the Reagan administration.  I think of the people who in an over the top fashion would stick a flower in the riot police officers' gun barrels.  It was if they were saying you should trade your weapon for something a little bit friendlier!  It's brilliant, and I think it is Abbie Hoffman's work.  I'm not sure.

Praying for peace isn't praying that people turn the other cheek or don't try to do something about the use of chemical weapons in Syria.  It is asking for conflict resolution in a non-violent way, without any threat of bombing to stop bombing. Instead negotiating and exposing injustice through thought provoking and  nonviolent action. When we pray for peace, we should also pray that we can be courageous enough to be instruments of creating the peace.

If you want to read some Walter Wink, I would advise, The Powers that Be.  It is an accessible writing about his thoughts on the powers of the world.  Also, it seems you could read, Jesus and the Nonviolence: A Third Way.  I've not read it, yet, but seems completely to the point.

#16 Something about Syria

I haven't really followed anything political in a long time, but for some reason I have been reading more and more about the possible American involvement in the Syrian Civil War.  Here are some of the things that I have found interesting (Please note that I am not a journalist, nor am I a politician, just an onlooker):

1. British PM David Cameron decided to take this to Parliament before calling for a military strike.  And they voted it down. There seems to be something telling about that.
2. France seems to be with President Obama.  What?  Can we call them french fries again?
3. Russia is against the action.  Not a surprise we have a new/old feud with them, which is also interesting to watch. We seem to be getting colder...
4. The UN is still doing their work deciding what to do with the breaking of international ban on chemical weapons.  You know investigating and deciding who is to blame, and how to proceed as an international community.
5. President Obama has cooled down on it a little and called for Congress to vote on it.  This is the first time in like 30 years that a President hasn't just pulled the trigger without Congressional approval, even though that's seems to be the way it is supposed to be.
6. I have heard that folks in Congress have a slight worry about casting a vote either way because it could be used against them in the next election.  Because pandering is the most important thing, not you know figuring out if we need to get involved to try to protect innocent life in a bloody war.
7. There doesn't seem to be a very clear objective in this.  No regime change just to send a message.  My question is: How does killing more people actually send a message? It appears that Bashar al-Assad is okay with killing his own people, especially if his regime is to blame.

Somehow I think this vote in Congress and how we proceed from here is going to significantly influence how we do foreign policy in the future.  I'm hoping that somehow we can come up with ways of creating peace that doesn't involve violence because peace through war doesn't seem logical, yet it is the prevailing wisdom of our age.

So here's to hope for a more peaceful form of conflict resolution.  Here's to hope for a way of doing foreign policy that spends less time bombing and more time trying to figure out what the underlying cause of the conflict is.

I know that I am coming off idealistic and it seems we don't have much chance of that, but I have to believe that a more peaceful world is possible.  Less eye for an eye; more turn the other cheek.