The Christian Imagination

We get greedy because we do not believe that God truly will provide for all our material needs. We become anxious because we do not trust God for the future. We resort to violence because we think that we ahve to create our own way. We are selfish and possessive because we fear that we will not be able to satisfy our emotional desires. When our devotional and worship lives suffer, we lack the relationship with God that enables us to find harmony with others and with ourselves. Lacking peace with God, we cannot be at peace with anyone else. The root of our failures to share in community, then, lies in unbelief.

Fundamentally, part of what it means to be made in God’s image is that we are all created with an intense longing for God. If we cannot meet that need, we desperately try to fill the gap with all sorts of other gods. (Dawn, 86)

In a very good chapter on community and belonging to one another, Marva Dawn cuts to the core. How many of our issues come down to unbelief, essentially lack of faith in God. Sure, it’s easy enough to believe He exists, and even to say that the Bible is true and that Christianity is the right path. BUT, simply acknowledging those things, even teaching those things, doesn’t mean we truly believe them.

Trust doesn’t mean we cease to act. It could be argued that faith isn’t faith until we act on it. When we step out, though, is it in faith and trust of a supernatural God, or do we act as if God doesn’t exist, and if He does, do we act as if He isn’t worthy of trust?

Community is close to my heart. I want my faith to be real, for it not to be just a word, but alive in action. It’s really convicting to realize all the ways I don’t believe, when I ask myself honestly. Once I see how I don’t believe God, He then has an opportunity to help my unbelief, and that is very encouraging.

Dawn, Marva J. Truly the Community. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1992.

When I was living in New Zealand, it was a time to see my country from a different perspective. By the end of my time there, I realized just how much I missed America, and that I am, an American. It’s a significant part of my identity, and I embrace it. It’s not the most important part, but it’s important.

I’m not proud to be an American. What have I to be proud of? For being born here? Besides, this type of pride is sinful. I am thankful though, to be born in this country, to be part of it. I could say that we are blessed, but that’s a mixed statement. We are fortunate to have so many natural resources so that we are one of the few countries in the world who have the option to be mostly independent. That’s not what we’ve done though, but what happens to be here. With abundance comes the danger of materialism, self-absorbtion, pride, and apathy. To all those things, we are guilty. Not all of us, and not all the time, but we are.

Luke 12:48 says, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” There’s a responsibility that comes with our ‘blessing.’ We don’t always own up to it. Sometimes we act entitled. What gets missed sometimes, is that a lot of Americans are noble too. The US has done a lot of good in the world, and Americans have done a lot of good, given a lot of time and money, given themselves for others. I don’t agree with all that we do, all that our government and military do, but that’s our money and soldiers on the line.

When I get emails that question whether I love America, maybe even if I love God, if I happen to disagree with any of the actions of a Republican government who happen to have a President who has some sort of Christian faith, I get confused though. The prophets in the Bible questioned their government. Even their best king, the one after God’s own heart, David, was questioned. Jesus actually followed a fair amount of cultural practices, but when it was wrong, he confronted it. We like to point to those who founded our nation. We seem to forget that they were rebels to the established order. They questioned abuse of authority.

I’m an American. I care about my country and those in it. And it’s because I care that I will oppose governmental actions that I believe to be wrong based on my convictions as a Christian. Last I checked, Christian leaders are capable of making mistakes and wrong choices. While I may personally support them and pray for them, if they are wrong, they should be confronted.

Our government is not a Christian organization though. While I do not believe every lifestyle choice people make is the way God wants us to live, I believe a government should protect their choices as well as mine, to a point. For instance, while I disagree with practicing homosexuality, people should have that right. However, abortion involves ending the life of another yet to be born, and is wrong, and so I don’t think it should be legal. Nevertheless, it is.

As a Christian, in this country, I can agree or disagree with what the choices made in this society. We’re not as free as we think we are, but we are more free than most (legally-speaking), and for that I’m thankful. But there’s a responsibility that goes along with that freedom to care about more than ourselves.

One of the musicians who plays at Everyday Joe’s and Timberline Church now and then is Kate Hurley. Kate has a few solo CDs and played on Enter the Worship Circle: Third Circle.

As it says on her website: “Kate lives in Boulder, Colorado, where she is hoping to reach out to people with her music and love people with her friendship. Her goal in her music and her life is To paint an accurate picture of God to those who have misunderstood Him.”

She has quite the voice. You have to hear her to understand what I mean. You just don’t know it’s there, until she starts to sing, and then you go: Woah.

Fortunately, she has a free 5 song EP called You Are Not Alone available for download, so you won’t have to wonder:)

In one of my Family Studies classes in college, we used Families at the Crossroads: Beyond Traditional and Modern Options, by Rodney Clapp. Clapp is former associate editor of Christianity Today and was an editor for IVP when he wrote this book.

This book was written in 1993, and the first chapter, which we will deal with another week, is on Postmodernism. This is a full 10 years before McClaren’s A New Kind of Christian. Clapp is considered by many to have a postmodern or postliberal perspective. One reviewer of Clapp’s A Peculiar People takes issue with some of his issues as unbiblical, but also commends him for a lot of his ideas. In Families at the Crossroads, Clapp challenges a number of traditional assumptions about the notion of family. Whether you fully agree with him or not, there is definitely some merit to this book, which most people probably have never heard of.

As we will see, what evangelicals call the “traditional family” is in fact the bourgeois or middle-class family, which rose to dominance in the nineteenth century - not accidently alongside capitalism and, a little later, America the ascendant world power. In this sense the typical evangelical account is accurate in linking family, free enterprise and “traditional” values. (Clapp, 11)

This is a bold statement to make, and probably unsettling for a lot of Christians. Perhaps some will outright condemn him as a postmodern Christian without even looking at how he supports the claim. That itself is one thing that scares me, when we, as Christians, label someone and condemn them as wrong simply because they hold a view that questions the popular or so-called conservative view. In this case, his search for truth is telling him that the popular view is historically wrong and unbiblical, and I happen to agree.

Clapp agrees that there are many negative forces affecting the family right now that we should be concerned about, and that there is value to family unit we refer to as the traditional family. Certainly there are concepts of family we’ve heard that are disturbing. However, is the nuclear, traditional family the Biblical model? Clapp says no.

In important respects, the “traditional family” is fact adopts family values that depart from those of the earlier evangelical heritage. For example, through much of history the family was an economically productive unit. The household was a place where husband, wife and children together farmed, did craftwork or otherwise earned their livelihood. The bourgeois or traditional family, by contrast, hos lost the family’s earlier function as an economically productive unit. Its main function is sentimental. It serves as haven and oasis, emotional stabilizer and battery-charger for its members. It demands that spouses and children love and trust one another, that they intensely enjoy being together. (Clapp, 13)

I think one of the dangers, it appears, of some conservative thinking, is that it is sometimes heavily rooted in a point in history, one often connected with the rise of industry, modernism, the Enlightenment, Reason. For me, I don’t really care whether an idea is conservative or liberal, modern or postmodern (and there are certainly more choices than A or B). I care about what idea is true, based on the Bible and history, even if it conflicts with a commonly held view. I believe truth is absolute, but if it were so obvious to discern, you’d think that Christians, at the very least, would have agreement amongst themselves about more ideas than they do.

Clapp, Rodney. Families at the Crossroads. Downers Grove, IL: IVP. 1993.