The Christian Imagination

I’ve referenced Richard Foster and Celebration of Discpline before, and may talk about the Spiritual Discplines at some point. I was introduced to Foster at my Anabaptist college (who are very different from any variation of Baptist), so perhaps I didn’t realize just how many people really don’t agree with him.

I came across a very Baptistic website who counters all things emergent and contemplative at http://apprising.org/. It seems to come from a perspective that God only speaks through Scripture and there are no modern charasmatic gifts and such. Uses the word heresy a lot. His logic isn’t as good as he thinks it is, but he does raise some good questions. So, before discussing Celebration of Discipline, I thought I’d reference the opposing viewpoint.

There are a lot of people in the Christian tradition over the last 2000 years who have practiced what Foster calls The Spiritual Disciplines. Some would say that some of these have weak Biblical support, or none directly. The inward disciplines are meditation, prayer, fasting, and study; the outward disciplines are simplicity, solitude, submission, and service; and the community disciplines are confession, worship, guidance, and celebration.

Now, whether Foster’s explanation of some of these is Biblical is one discussion, especially as to the importance of these means of grace, as they are called. On the surface though, it seems to me there’s sufficient mention of meditation, prayer, fasting, and study in the Bible for their practice to be Biblical in some fashion. Confessing to another person is Biblical, as is worship. The outward disciplines are not mentioned as commanded acts, though there is mention or modeling of each to a degree. So, if I continue this post series, I’ll refer to the Bible as the primary source.

It’s good to look at the Bible and ask how Biblical things are. We should question things. What confuses me is that a given conversative Christian may be quick to condemn a more liberal Christian for being unbiblical, but it less willing to be open to being called unbiblical themselves, as if the status quo of a given denomination must be defended at all costs, because everything else is heresy. Honestly, that kind of logic scares me.

Now, with over 200 varieties of Baptist, it’s hard to use that term to generalize, plus I know some awesome Baptists! But if we’re going to talk about extra-biblical practices, I’ve seen plenty in Baptist churches I’ve been too. Is wearing a suit or your Sunday best Biblical? Does the Bible say we can’t drink alcohol? Is Sunday School a Biblical command? Are we commanded to sing hymns? Is the pulpit commanded? Are pews commanded? Some would say that even some of the elements of modern church services have pagan foundations. Yet, what a pastor wears from a pulpit is a big deal to guys like John Macarthur. And in fairness, some people are too ready to condemn the so-called traditional church for things like these. And so it goes.

So, from the introducation to Celebration of Discipline, I find these encouraging words:

“The moment we feel we can succeed and attain victory over sin by the strength of our will alone is the moment we are worshipping the will. Isn’t it ironic that Paul looks at our most strenuous efforts in the spiritual walk and call them idolatry, will worship? Willpower will never succeed in dealing with the deeply ingrained habits of sin.”

I wrote the following on my personal blog after reading that: It dawned on me, recently, in simplicity, that if I don’t have a close relationship with God, born of time spent with Him in honesty and humility and joy, that I won’t serve Him very well, that I won’t be as holy as I could be, that I won’t be as loving as I could be. And so I’m intent on doing that, spending time with God for like an hour a day, for the purpose of, spending time with God, and letting Him do what He does, cause my efforts just don’t seem to amount to much, even my efforts to be good and be better. I’ve had times where I’ve felt close to God. Recently, I really haven’t, except for a few moments. And it’s all seemed more like work than joy. Maybe we have too much of an end in our religion. Maybe the means is all that matters. We throw the words “relationship with God” around, though our prayer lives show how much we mean those words. But prayer too, is too often focused on the end rather than the means.

Makoto Fujimura gave a talk on March 1st, 2008, and posted Empathic Creativity: Generative Transformation on his blog back in March. I finally got to read it this weekend. At first, I scanned it quickly, as I often do with blog posts. And when I got to the end, I realized I needed to read it more closely, so I did, a few times. It is the kind of post that needs to be absorbed.

I read To Kill a Mockingbird several months ago, and one scene seemed profound in its simplicity, the story of Scout walking into an angry mob. And the little girl, she begins to speak to Mr. Cunningham about things that matter to him, she empathizes.

Mr. Cunningham brought hickory nuts to Atticus in thanks for work Atticus performed in the Cunningham family in the beginning of the story. Now Scout reminds Mr. Cunningham about entailment, or a swap of one work for another, a sort of a code to unlock Mr. Cunningham’s humanity. The code worked to not only help Mr. Cunningham remember, but she taps into a greater conscience of how a human being should treat each other, with dignity and respect. And she defuses the situation, in her determined innocence.

If we are faced with an angry mob, ready to do the unthinkable horror of our days, what would be our response? To fight back with fire against fire, respond in hatred against hatred? I suggest we follow Scout’s lead in calling people to remember. Scout did not confront the bigotry by arguing for justice. What she accomplished in her naiveté was to step into the mob, to remind people that they were her neighbors. Within a culture that is full of cynicism, apathy and anger, we must remind one another to remember. Our task as artists is to remind people that they are our neighbors. Our arts should lead others to recall who they are. And by doing so, we may remind them, and ourselves, who we are. Our responsibility is to re-humanize the divide, to speak a “third language” of generative creativity that defuses the cultural war language.

Scout defused the situation by being fully human, fully a child.

There is much is our culture that dehumanizes, and sadly, we, as Christians, are sometimes guilty of it. We dehumanize sinners. We dehumanize our personal enemies and our national enemies. My friend Matt quoted Nouwen on his blog: “I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant (i.e. die to oneself, or give up on the idea of being ‘cool and popular’) and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self.” Vulnerability, accessibility, authenticity, humanity.

I love what Fujimura has to say about our first love too. I think I’ll read it a few more times…

It really started after I left college, and tried to live out my dream of starting a ministry in Erie, PA. It was an ambitious multi-year plan. After 4 months, I still didn’t have the job I needed to support myself and I missed my friends from college terribly. I ventured a trip to see my college friends, and it was too much. I decided to move back. I lined up a tentative place to live, and had no job. My parents didn’t think it wise and didn’t want me to go. I went. The place I expected to live fell through.

I was without a home, but this is where I wanted to be, and I believed myself better off. It was hard. It was disappointing. I learned a lot about hospitality, and lack of, over the 2 months I bounced around, finally landing for a month with the family that ran Issachar’s Loft. I worked a few temp jobs, and finally ended up with one that payed the bills well enough. I soon moved to downtown York with a former roommate, and we lived in the inner city for 5 months. He got married. I decided to go back to Erie to give it another go. And failed.

I moved to Colorado after that. It wasn’t a wise move, in terms of preparation. I had $200. No job in Colorado, but did line up a place to live, with a fam who’d help me get settled. Again, not everyone thought I should go. I went. There were difficulties, but the risk paid off. I ended up with better jobs than I would ever had had in Erie and found a church that was good for that season.

I never planned to stay in Colorado, and decided to move back East, to explore living somewhere in Pennsylvania, most likely Pittsburgh or Harrisburg, or possibly go overseas for the first time. I looked at Americorps, applied to some jobs, and really nothing opened up. I lived with my parents for 5 months, and moved to the other side of the earth, otherwise known as New Zealand…by myself.

With a working holiday visa in hand, I arrived in Auckland, and made my way over the course of a week to Wellington. I attended The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King World Premiere with 100,000 other people. I stayed in the hostel there, meeting a number of people, stayed with some new friends for a few days, and went hunting for a job and a flat. That was quite the experience.

Now, let me tell you about how I move and travel. I don’t plan all the details. But I do my research. I prepare. I have maps, an idea where to head, what to look for. Before I went over, I created a website to store copies of documents, and read lots of travel websites. It’s that kind of preparation that enabled me to plan on the fly, as needed. I found a flat with some great flatmates very different than myself in many ways, none of whom shared my faith, which was a first for me, and a good experience. When my money was about to run out, I got a job, a 10 minute walk from my flat, and it carried me for 5 months, at which time I turned down a permanent job offer (which some people think me crazy for doing).

My final month I traveled the South Island solo, taking my time, absorbing all the incredible scenery, meeting interesting people. It got lonely though. There were people to hang out with, but it wasn’t the same as having a companion with me. Again, I was prepared, but flexible. I prefer it that way, leaves room for serendipity. Such as I found at Fox Glacier, as I walked to Lake Matheson on a cloudy day. The mirror lake is a famous photo spot. The clouds parted just as I arrived, and it was one of those moments when I was in awe of God and felt His love. Even on the other side of the world, God is able to sustain.

I returned to Colorado after, where I have been the past 4 years. I’m very different from Chris McCandless, but there’s plenty I can relate to in his journey. I don’t always understand this thing called life. It’s much more untamed than people think it to be, and at the end of the day, that’s the way my heart likes it.

As you may have already heard, we had a few tornadoes in Northern Colorado. We don’t have tornados, and really aren’t used to dealing with them. One of the areas hit the most hard was a residential area in Windsor, Colorado, about 6 miles south of where I live.

On Thursday, I was home, and heard the wind blowing hard. Soon after, it started raining, then hailing. But that was it up here. I didn’t even realize there was a tornado till my boss emailed me about it. And even then, it didn’t effect me right away. Till I realized my pastor’s house was hit, and then, I didn’t know what to think.

I’ve been through a tornado before, in Albion, Pennsylvania, many years ago, one that destroyed the downtown area. It was equally unexpected. Today, some of us from church went to help clean up our pastor’s house, and some of the surrounding area. Tornado’s are wierd, in that, a few miles away, all is fine, but in the epicenter, there is devastation. I heard about the recent devastation in Myanmar, in China, but that’s far away, distant. This is here. This suffering is here, in an area with lots of good people where it’s too easy to be complacent. Not today, not for me.

Our pastor preached today about pain, suffering, hurting, need, and how people rise up to respond to big disasters. They do. The photo at the top is of free wood given to help people bolster their houses and rebuild. Some give away water and Gaterade. Some come from cities 30-60 miles away to lend a hand. And neighbors, neighbors before only somewhat known, they help each other. This isn’t new, of course, we do help each other in situations like this, and it’s touching, as the local newspaper says, Volunteer spirit overwhelms Windsor.

But as our pastor said this morning, we respond to big things, but people suffer everyday, often unknown, sometimes not, and the outpouring of love, it doesn’t always happen. We need reminders, and sadly, it sometimes takes tragedy to remind us how fragile life is, and how much we need others.

I’ve been talking and thinking a lot about serving the poor and broken lately. My heart was affected as I served this afternoon, for I too am broken, and am not always sure what I have to offer. Today, I was there, and in the days that follow, I hope to be there again.