The Christian Imagination

I was just thinking about an area of my life and faith. I recall that I am told to ‘have faith.’ Good words, because God is sovereign, and I don’t want to give myself credit that should be given to God. Yet, ‘have faith’ sounds so passive, and maybe that’s what frustrates me. The idea of waiting for something to happen for me, to me. I can think of examples in my life where that has been the case. At the moment, though, I like the idea of ‘by faith’ which to me involves active participation. Hebrews 11 talks about what many people did by faith. They weren’t just sitting around waiting for God to do something, waiting for life to happen. They lived by faith.

It’s hard to have faith if there’s nothing I can do. It’s easier if I have a part to play. Perhaps, though, there really isn’t such a thing as passive faith. For prayer is an action as much as loving my neighbor. Even then, I feel I’m missing the point. Because really, it’s about relationship. If there’s a relationship, suddenly that whole trust thing becomes a whole lot easier.

Thoughts?

I just started reading Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture, by Makoto Fujimura.

The book is a collection of essays from his blog, also titled Refractions.
The layout is visually appealing, with paintings shown along with the text, but the heart of the book is the essays. They have a depth to them, and read like one who it going on a journey while sharing what he’s seeing and learning. There are some multicultural themes, as he draws from his Japanese heritage and life in New York City. And of course, he sees the world as one who is both a creative artist and a follower of Christ.

From the introduction:

In my studio, I use ground minerals such as malachite and azurite, layering them to create prismatic refractions, or “visual jazz.” Via my art I hope to create a mediated reality of beauty, hope, and reconciled relationships and cultures. As a founding elder of the Village Church, I have found that mediation of any kind is never black-and-white but prismatic and complex too. In order to find hope, even in the midst of the broken and torn fragments of relationships, in order to begin to journey into the heart of the divide, we must first wrest with the deeper issues of faith. We must be willing to be broken ourselves into prismatic shards by the Master Artist, so that Christ’s light can be refracted in us.

The video above is Seth’s talk at a recent TED conference. His recent book is Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us. You can download an audio version of the book for free here.

A tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea. For millions of years, humans have been seeking out tribes, be they religious, ethnic, economic, political, or even musical (think of the Deadheads). It’s our nature.

Now the Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost, and time. All those blogs and social networking sites are helping existing tribes get bigger. But more important, they’re enabling countless new tribes to be born - groups of ten or ten thousand or ten million who care about their iPhones, or a political campaign, or a new way to fight global warming.

And so the key question: Who is going to lead us?

The Web can do amazing things, but it can’t provide leadership. That still has to come from individuals - people just like you who have a passion about something. The explosion in tribes means that anyone who wants to make a difference now has the tools at her fingertips.

He makes a very important point here. It’s not about the technology. It’s about what the technology enables. One person now has the ability to be seen and heard by thousands, perhaps millions, without the filter of corporate mass media channels. As The Cluetrain Manifesto made the point previously, we can now be connected to each other, rather than just be absorbing one way communication. Yes, our technological society has also disconnected us in many ways, but it has also empowered.

Godin makes the point that a king has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Change is a danger to those in power. Something similar was said by Walter Brueggemann in The Prophetic Imagination. Brueggemann talks about how prophets are a threat to the royal consciousness, as they criticize and energize the people.

Godin’s focus is on leadership. Managers, in his view, are not necessarily leaders, nor are leaders necessarily in positions of leadership, though they do develop followings. I think that people want to be a part of something that matters, that they can put their heart into. More than that, I think people want to feel like they are part of a community. We have a lot of ways to be connected, but don’t always have community…a tribe…a common bond. Is that what we really want? Looking around, we could question whether that is so. I believe human beings do desire connection, but community takes work and commitment. And sometimes, we don’t know where to find it. Sometimes we fall in line with the status quo, which is easier. Leading takes courage, and fear sometimes gets the best of us.

Personally, I like being a change agent, but fear has stopped me plenty of times. It’s hard to stand up, not sure if anyone is going to follow, and perhaps even wondering if I am even standing up for the ‘right’ thing. While I like the idea of starting of movement, it’s not about the movement, it’s about putting our hearts out there for what matters to us, even in the face of fear. And as Christians who are to live by faith, that’s what I believe we need to do. But, much easier to say. If it isn’t questioning the idea, it may be questioning myself, but that’s another reminder, that I need to stop thinking about myself, and care more about the world around me, and lead.

When I didn’t know of pressure it was easy to forgive
You didn’t have to be perfect
Not in my neighborhood
I don’t know what year things became so unclear but I’m still here.
But I’m caught somewhere between Faith and Doubt
And I feel like I’m never going to find my way back outta here.

The words above were penned by Aaron Espe, who plays at our coffee house now and then. I’ll have to ask him about the song sometime.

I’ve been thinking about Faith and Doubt of late. Mostly doubt. It’s been quite the journey, this Christian walk. Moments of clarity, and sometimes, confusion. Even despair. Is there reason for doubt and despair? I was going to say NO. In truth, there isn’t, because there is always hope, there is always Christ. Instead, though, I’m going to say YES. Because when you get in the trenches of life, you don’t always see clearly, you don’t always connect with the person next to year, and when the battle rages, you feel, and you wonder, and you process. In short, you are human, and I am human.

Isaiah 40 paints of beautiful picture of who God is, of his magnificence. And mind you, at the moment, the words are too transcendent to mean anything to me. I’ve often heard the end of 41:31, “They shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint.” This, when we wait on the Lord, and He renews our strength. But that verse doesn’t stand alone. It is paralleled by verses 29 and 30, “He gives power to the weary, and to them that are stricken with disease he increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall helplessly stumble.”

There is something there, in my doubt, that I can embrace, in this God of the weary. It’s God that doesn’t faint, very clearly, and He that empowers and lifts up. But us, we grow weary, and if even youth grow weary, so do we all. But are we allowed to admit it? Does Christian culture allow this? Does American culture allow this? It’s oversimplistic to even ask, as if there is a singular Christian culture or singular American culture. There isn’t. But there is this pervasive notion that it’s not okay to express weakness or doubt. I’m not talking about this as a state of continual being, I’m talking about the times where we just fall apart and are broken, where we get tired of playing the games, when we wonder if we even know how to play.

There are Psalms where the psalmist openly begins by questioning God’s character, in a way that is obviously not true, but it was for him at that moment. And by pouring out his heart and expressing his doubt, he is able to find God in the end. He finds God by doubting. We may be familiar with “As the Deer pants for the water” in Psalm 42, but not so much with the psalmist asking God, “Why have you forgotten me?” Do you ever feel like that? David did. And not just once, for he is also said to have penned Psalm 22. Even better, there’s Psalm 88, an outright complaint to God…with no resolution to his cry. At least, not in that song.

I wrote in my personal journal something more akin to Psalm 88 over a week ago. That day didn’t end with an easy answer, at least not one felt. I think it can be dangerous to not let ourselves feel and express doubt as Christians. Too often it means going through the motions in a mediocre way, just kindof existing. While there is much I love about my upbringing, and things I appreciate about my early church years, it has taken me years, both as a Christian, and as a person, to learn to be emotionally honest. And I’m still learning. And I don’t like just existing. Because life is being alive.

Then there’s faith. Faith isn’t the opposite of doubt anymore than courage is the opposite of fear. I’m not sure you can have one without the other. Faith and courage are ways to respond. They are actions. It’s so much easier though to be caught somewhere between the two. To be inactive. To not really respond, but merely intellectually ascend (and yes, that is an intentional play on words). I find it hard to know, sometimes, what the respond should be, because in Christendom, there isn’t a singular response to many a question. Unless, of course, you listen to the ones who will say, without doubt, that they have the answer. I don’t believe in a Christianity that is robbed of wonder though, that plants a pole in the sand saying we’ve arrived, and there is no more to learn. Life is learning, and the God of Isaiah 40 takes more than a lifetime to begin to comprehend.

And the God of Isaiah 40 doesn’t promise to give us something in those verses. He doesn’t give us a formula. He doesn’t give us a principal. He gives us life from His very being. He gives us Himself. He makes us. He renews us. It’s mystical. It’s not practical. Rather, it’s running till we run out of breath, falling down in the dust, and then remembering that what’s we are, but that we don’t have to run alone. That we can look outside ourselves to be renewed. And this God will breath life into a weary soul. He will strengthen me to rise to the challenge, to run again.

As wonderful as those words sound right now. I’m still not feeling them. Not that faith is feeling. But, honestly, I despise the false dichotomy between emotion and intellect. We’re human, we’re created with both, they are both good, and they are inseparable in any equation. So, again, I’m not feeling those words right now. I wonder if I get confused about the waiting. What I am to wait for? I’ve been told before that God will do everything in His time. That it’s important to wait for God to answer prayer. To be faithful and good things will happen. And in my life, I have had good things happen to me that I didn’t deserve, sometimes that I didn’t pursue, and other things that haven’t come to pass, much to my chagrin. I do believe that God may have timing for things, but I question whether we are applying the notion in a Biblical way.

What is it we’re waiting for, exactly? Waiting for everything to be handed to us? Or waiting for God to make us? He may do both, or He may do neither. I wonder sometimes why certain things haven’t been handed to me. And other times why I haven’t been made. At the moment, I am wondering if I was ‘made’ along time ago but just haven’t realized it. I’m contemplating what it means to be confident, and how it seems different than some of the notions I’ve learned from some Christians. I’m really not sure, but there is no lack of people with opinions.

I don’t always understand this God, or this walk. But I’m thinking back to something Rich Mullins said about ‘being made.’ Just the idea. Why do some things come easy, and others not? Why am I not further along? Yet, I have come so far. There. Here. Now. I am reminded of imagination, of play, of wonder. That life is to be lived. That there will be brokenness and pain, and that to feel love, one must risk feeling.

So, I’ll finish this stream of consciousness post for the evening. When I write like this, I come back to the words of my poetry teacher, “We write to understand.” I better understand David too. And to a world that says not to express weakness, to not let my personal side show, I say, simply, no.