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Fact: Most Political Violence Comes from the Right. It Must Be Confronted

In April 2009 the Department of Homeland Security issued a 9 page report entitled Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.

The report summarized a number of government intelligence assessments and warned that a growing movement of “right wing extremist movements” posed the greatest threat of political violence and domestic terrorism in the United States.

As soon as the report was made public (which was not its original purpose), Republican Congressional leaders, together with a litany of conservative commentators, raised a hue and cry condemning the report, lambasting the DHS, and screaming for the heads of anyone — especially “liberals” or Democrats — who tried to engage in a serious discussion of the report’s findings.

Congressman John Boehner said the report was “offensive and unaccceptable.”  Fox News insisted that the DHS owed the entire country an apology.

Sadly,  none of  this was the least bit surprising coming from the conservative-Republican establishment which remains anti-science, anti-evidence, anti-logic, and anti-anything-that-calls-for critical self-assessment.

Of course, the DHS report was  immediately suppressed.  You probably have never heard of it.  As a result, the nation never had an open public conversation about the rising terrorist threat in this country, and why it was emanating from the right-wing.

It is impossible to have a productive conversation when one side can’t stop denying the facts, as Sarah Huckabee-Sanders continues to do almost every day.

Then in 2017 the Anti-Defamation League published another study, bulging with copious evidence and citations, stating similar conclusions.  A Dark & Constant Rage: 25 Years of Right-Wing Terrorism in the United States  opens by stating:

“Right-wing extremists have been one of the largest and most consistent sources of domestic terror incidents in the United States for many years, a fact that has not gotten the attention it deserves.”

Facts cannot be ignored.  They will eventually have their own way, whether we like it or not.

The rank cowardice displayed by the mainstream and the right-wing media guarantees that the public remains steeped in ignorance on this issue.  Daily we hear the mindless, false equivalencies and bogus comparisons.  Pundits insist that both sides are to blame; everyone needs to compromise; the right and the  left must meet somewhere in the middle.

The Republican party moves in a more and more extremist direction, yet anyone who points this out is accused of polarizing the debate.

What absolute rubbish!  It simply is not true.

The right-wing is to blame.  It is a fact, plain and simple.  No one benefits from a lie.

There is something about conservatism and its social, political rhetoric that, especially when taken to an extreme, becomes fertile soil for unstable people prone to violence.

We all — but especially God’s people — must be more concerned with the truth than we are with partisan defensiveness.  This means being open to correction.  Being willing to learn.  To admit when we have been wrong.

And most of all, we must be willing to change.

Tragically, evangelical Christianity persists in unapologetically identifying itself with a right-wing political movement that has blood on its hands.

Yes, that’s right.

Congressman Boehner, Fox News, and every other conservative spokesperson who helped to muzzled the DHS warning in 2009, who plugged their ears to the ADL report in 2017, who still refuses to admit the self-evident connection between Trump’s violent rhetoric — which has repeatedly embraced and advocated more violence — and the racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant terrorism dragging itself mercilessly across our country, all have blood on their hands.

God’s people cannot be a party to any of this.

What is Christian Worship? Part 4

Thus far we have made several important, and unexpected, discoveries as we studied New Testament worship vocabulary.

First, we discovered that the New Testament never describes Christian gatherings as “worship services.”  New Testament believers didn’t “worship” when they gathered together.  Rather, they created group opportunities for edification and upbuilding of the Body of Christ.  Disciples use their spiritual gifts, confess their sins, sing new songs, praise and glorify God, encourage each other and meet one another’s physical and spiritual needs.

And, believe it or not, the New Testament does not call that “worship.”

Second, we found that the New Testament insists that Christian worship is the stuff believers do in their day-to-day lives as they obediently follow Jesus.  We worship God when we do the things Jesus has called us to do as members of his upside-down, counter-intuitive kingdom.
Worship is a lifestyle not because we sing praise songs and lift our hands while driving, but because we make the radically hard choices of actually being like Jesus and obeying his not-of-this-world teaching in our daily lives with others.

This is the point where I frequently hear an objection: If worship is an everyday affair, aren’t I minimizing the idea of worship as a “sacred/special” activity? 

To put the question more negatively, people sometimes object, “If everything is worship, then nothing is worship.”  (One of my former colleagues used to say this regularly).

“There must be something unique or ‘special’ about worshiping God,” they insist.  “Otherwise giving God our focused attention simply melts away into the repetitious fabric of mundane existence, and it will never really happen at all!”

This worry arises from a legitimate concern, but I believe that its impulses are misguided.  My response to this objection has two parts.   Here I will offer part one.  Part two must wait for the next post.

 First, the New Testament has dramatically eliminated the Old Testament distinction between the sacred & the profane within the Christian life.

In the Old Testament, the “sacred” was conceived of in terms of proximity to God.  God’s presence appeared at certain shrines, in the Tabernacle or in the Temple.  These places involved sacred locations (like altars), sacred personnel (priests), sacred objects (vestments, incense burners) and sacred acts (sacrifices, offerings).

The profane, on the other hand, was excluded from the sacred.  Profane things involved the mundane, day-to-day, worldly affairs of normal life, normal places and normal people.

Old Testament saints lived within two different sets of distinctions:

One was the sacred/profane distinction described above.

The second was the covenantal distinction between Israel’s membership in the Abrahamic & Sinai covenants, compared with everyone else in the world who lived outside of God’s covenants.  Israel and Israel alone were the Lord’s covenant people.

These two dimensions of (a) sacred/profane and (b) inside the covenant/outside the covenant intersected Israel’s existence in significant ways.

All those living inside the covenant were God’s chosen people.  As God’s covenant people, Israel was commanded to maintain the distinction between the sacred – i.e. they went to the Temple, offered sacrifices and understood God’s presence to be centered in the Holy of Holies – and the profane – i.e. they believed that God always saw them and heard their prayers, but they never entered into God’s presence at home as they did when they entered into the Temple.

All of Israel’s life was lived within the covenant, but covenant life was not identical with the sacred way of life.  Even Israel’s priests – who were always members of the covenant – moved  back and forth between the sacred and profane, depending on their times of temple service.

With the coming of Christ, however, God instituted a radical change of affairs.  The Lord Jesus inaugurated the NEW Covenant, or the New Testament.

With the coming of God’s New Covenant, what had previously been two different distinctions (sacred/profane and in covenant/out of covenant) are now fused into one.  In other words, every member of the New Covenant is always living a sacred existence in sacred space. Those outside the New Covenant, because they do not know Jesus, live a profane life in profane space.

Anyone participating in the resurrection life of Jesus Christ can know that the previously profane has been transformed into the perpetually sacred.  The covenantal distinction is now identical with the sacred/profane distinction.  All disciples of Jesus are holy people.  Every Christian is a priest.  Every act of obedience is a sacred act, an offering of praise, a sacrifice acceptable to God.

I am convinced that this New Testament “universalizing” of the sacred, scattering sacredness throughout all of the Christian life, is a sign of Christ’s intention to restore the universe to God’s original design.

When Adam and Eve walked through the Garden of Eden, all of life was sacred.  The entire cosmos was sacred.  Sacred space was everywhere.  There was no place that was not a sacred place.  The Creator walked and talked with the first man and woman as they strolled through the aspen groves and smelled wild roses in the overgrown thickets along the bubbling stream.

Sacred space was all there was.

So now, since the coming of Jesus, the apostle Paul can describe his lifestyle of obedient discipleship as “his priestly service” (note the language of a sacred person offering a sacred activity – i.e. worship) given up to Jesus Christ from the dirty streets and dark alleyways of every Greco-Roman city where the apostle sets the light of the Good News ablaze.

Worship becomes a lifestyle of faithful kingdom citizenship, first and foremost, because of who we are.

Jesus makes us saints and priests whose every breath drawn in thanksgiving, every thought of God’s glory, every word spoken in the light of Christ’s presence, every decision made in accordance with God’s intention, becomes a moment of worship offered up by a sacred individual inhabiting God’s new world.

Now, is that amazing, or what?

Praise be to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ for His indescribable gifts to us all!

Hear Hagai El-Ad’s Address to the U.N. Security Council

The B’tselem website has posted a video (with a transcript) of Hagai El-Ad’s recent speech to the United Nations’ Security C0uncil.  You may recall from an earlier post that Mr. El-Ad is the current president of B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.

This speech offers a clearer description of the systematic racism embedded at the heart of Israeli society than anything you will ever hear or read from a typical American news source.

Mr. El-Ad should know.  He is an Israeli, an Israeli with a conscience who understands that all people, including Palestinians, are created in the Image of God.

Thus, Mr. El-Ad has the courage to call out the racism and the apartheid system that make Israel what it is today — one of the most extensive abusers of human rights in the world.

The paragraph below is an excerpt from El-Ad’s speech.  I encourage you to check out the entire speech when you can.

“Consider these historical analogies: Voter suppression was a cornerstone of the American South under Jim Crow laws, but we [Israel] have gone and done one better, delivering no less than voter obliteration. As the occupied Palestinians remain non-citizens, not only can they not vote, but they have absolutely no representation in the Israeli institutions that govern their lives. Or take a look at the discriminatory planning mechanisms and the separate legal systems in the occupied territories. They are reminiscent of South Africa’s grand apartheid. Granted, neither analogy is a perfect fit, but history does not offer precision: rather it offers a moral compass. And that compass points towards rejecting Israel’s oppression of Palestinians with the same unwavering conviction with which humanity’s conscience rejected these other grand injustices.”

Has Seeker-Friendly Worship Become Seeker-Unfriendly?

Recently, a gentleman by the name of David Murrow offered a blog post at Patheos entitled “Why Seeker-Friendly Churches are Losing Seekers.” He explains why he believes many so-called “seeker-friendly” churches are seeing a decline in the attendance of unbelievers.

Since I have long thought about, but never followed through on, writing an article about the Willow Creek seeker-targeted church strategy, and the vastly more popular compro mise dubbed seeker-friendly services, I decided to chime in on the subject here rather than procrastinate further.

Unfortunately, Mr. Murrow does not offer any evidence or citation substantiating his claim.  But, for the moment, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and accept his claim.  He does offer some good observations and sound advice.  I recommend the article to anyone involved in a “seeker” ministry.

Mr. Murrow’s puts his finger, perhaps unintentionally, on the fundamental flaws found at the core of so-called seeker-sensitive church services, flaws which have given rise to serious misunderstandings about what it means to be a seeker-driven church.

I attended numerous leadership conferences at Willow Creek in the 1990s.  I always took a team of church leaders with me so we could strategize together about the best ways to transform our church community back home into a church that grew by evangelism.  We wanted to see people come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and then grow as committed disciples within our church community.

I was raised in a fundamentalist tradition that prized its annual week of Revival Meetings.  Year after year the church brought in a visiting evangelist who spoke every evening for a week as the center piece for our revival meetings.  Church members were strongly encouraged to bring their “lost” friends so that they could hear the Good News and “be saved.”

As I learned about the origins and goals of Willow’s seeker-targeted church strategies, I soon recognized that by following in the long, innovative tradition of Youth for Christ, Young Life and similar evangelical organizations from the 1940s and 50s, Willow Creek had simply devised a new way to conduct old-fashioned revival meetings.  Except these evangelistic meetings happened weekly instead of annually.  The evangelist was the teaching pastor.  Instead of a tent with a sawdust trail, the gathering site was in the church building.

Here is the key:  In a true seeker ministry the Sunday morning seeker-service (or seeker-targeted service) is an evangelistic meeting.

Its primary purpose is to create a place where Christians can bring their non-Christian friends to learn about Jesus Christ and his church.  A seeker-service is not designed for believers.  Let me say that again.  A seeker-service is not designed for believers except as they become evangelists themselves, bringing their friends to hear the pastor/evangelist talk about the real-world relevance of the gospel.

Whenever I wrote seeker-targeted messages I told myself that I was going to talk about life with respect to the Bible.   My seeker messages were typically topical.

Christians who were church shopping often disapproved of our seeker services, saying they weren’t “worshipful” enough.  But, frankly, since the service wasn’t designed with them in mind, I never let those criticisms bother me.

Eventually, seeker-targeted churches must develop a second schedule of services for worship/praise/body-life activities that will meet the spiritual needs of disciples.  Christians need regularly to praise Jesus, glorify their heavenly Father, confess their sins, thank the Lord for answered prayer, and a million-and-one other things besides.

We typically call this a “worship service.”  Seekers can’t worship Jesus Christ because they don’t know him yet.  So, nothing in our worship services was designed specifically for “seekers.”  When I wrote a message for our worship services I told myself that I was going to talk about the Bible with respect to life.   My “worship” messages were typically expository.

Worship services and seeker services are two very, very different beasts.  They have different goals.  They are intended for different audiences.  Seekers don’t/can’t worship God, so don’t ask them to.  Believers, on the other hand, need more than a weekly “revival” meeting, so don’t limit their diet to evangelistic milk.

Leaders at Willow Creek regularly warned us visiting pastors about the challenges waiting to ambush anyone hoping to move their church out of its traditionalism into a seeker-targeted method of ministry.

I cannot recall ever hearing a leader at Willow Creek encourage church leaders purposely to develop a compromise called a seeker-sensitive service.  Such services were described as hybrids, a compromise, or a short-term transitional strategy used by churches having difficulty moving fully to a seeker-targeted ministry.  But I cannot recall ever hearing anyone at Willow encourage leaders to develop seeker-sensitive services for Sunday morning as a permanent part of their strategy.

Sadly, for whatever reasons, it appears that the majority of churches, whether they have ever been to Willow Creek or not, have opted for seeker-sensitive worship services today.  Precious few congregations have made the effort or taken the risks to create both worship services for believers and seeker-targeted services for unbelievers.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long before people were promoting this compromise by writing books and offering seminars about the benefits of “worship evangelism.”

What a shame.

Too many church leaders have taken the easy road of becoming all things to all people gathered together in the same place at once.  In my experience, that rarely works, and even when it appears to work, it is not in anyone’s best interests.

 Anyone trying to become all things to all people becomes nothing special to no one in particular.

Remember that in the Old Testament, Yahweh spoke to the prophet Balaam through a dumb ass.  But Balaam did not spend the rest of his life loitering around barn yards, waiting to hear his next word from God.

The Lord can certainly use Christian worship to call sinners to Himself.  The Holy Spirit blows where he wills, as he wills, whenever he wills.  I know a woman who surrendered herself to Jesus while listening to me deliver a message about tithing from the book of Leviticus.  But that didn’t cause me to write books about the wonders of “Levitical-Stewardship Evangelism.”  (No. Please. Don’t go there).

The surprising movement of God’s grace is never a sufficient reason to promote new strategies for dumb ass church services.

I am afraid that the fear and half-hearted commitment found at the origins of so many seeker-sensitive services are significant factors in the gross levels of spiritual childishness crippling large swaths of American evangelicalism.

Too many Sunday messages soft-sell the radical demands of Jesus and his gospel, for fear of offending visitors.  (This should never be an issue, not even in seeker-targeted services).

Just as too many offerings of “praise music” make no attempt whatsoever to lead God’s people into the unnerving, overwhelming presence of the Lord Almighty, to whom the angels sing, “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord who sits on His throne.”

The real problem is not simply that seeker-friendly churches may lose their appeal to seekers, as Mr. Murrow warns.  These services also consistently fail to produce mature disciples who walk faithfully as citizens of God’s radical, upside-down kingdom on earth.

That’s a spiritual double-whammy from which no church can recover until we come to our senses and abandon the conspiracy of half-measures that make “seeker-sensitive worship” the liturgical monstrosity that it is.

B’Tselem Head Speaks to U.N., Condemned by Netanyahu

B’Tselem is the Hebrew work for “in the Image.”  It appears twice in Genesis 1:27, “So God created humanity in his own image, in the image of God he created humanity.”

B’Tselem  is also the name of an important Israel-based human rights organization (its full name is The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territory) that gives special attention to the inhuman treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories (i.e. the West Bank and Gaza).

B’Tselem is staffed by Israeli men and women of conscience who understand that all people are created as the Image of God.  Building upon this Biblical foundation, they also understand the dehumanization and systematic abuse inflicted upon the Palestinian people by Israel’s illegal military occupation.

As their website explains:

“B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories strives to end Israel’s occupation, recognizing that this is the only way to achieve a future that ensures human rights, democracy, liberty and equality to all people, Palestinian and Israeli alike…”

B’Tselem finds creative ways to inform the world about Israel’s egregious, daily crimes against humanity.  If you want to know the truth about Israel/ Palestinian relations, forget about Christian news outlets.  Turn off the corporate news media.  They only repeat the acceptable lies, misrepresentations and puerile mutterings of Israel’s Zionist propaganda.

Instead, as a first step towards learning the truth, read the regular updates available from B’Tselem.  Subscribe to their newsletter.  Order a few of their many publications.  Watch the numerous videos on their Youtube channel.

Discover the truth for yourself.

Hagai el-Ad is the current head of B’Tselem.  He recently spoke to the

Hagai El-Ad, Executive Director of Israeli NGO B’Tselem.
AFP / JACK GUEZ (Photo credit should read JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images)

United Nations about Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people and was instantly condemned by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister.

You can watch Amy Goodman’s two-part interview with Mr. el-Ad here and here.

Mr. al-Ad and his coworkers are a shining ray of light, truth and humanity in an otherwise very dark, oppressive land known as Israel.

The ICEJ Promotes Zionist Propaganda and Shares the Guilt

Today I received a fundraising email from the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem.  The ICEJ is a American based, Christian Zionist organization that spreads Israeli government talking points, whatever they may be.

Here are the letter’s first two paragraphs:

“In the last 3 months, more missiles have been fired at Israel than in the last 3 years combined.  About 600% more! Night after night, families have been awakened by the piercing sound of warning sirens, knowing they have only seconds to scramble for cover, fearing their home will be the next one destroyed…

“Terror kites and incendiary balloons have filled the skies over southern Israel for months, burning over 8,500 acres of crops, trees, and nature reserves and filling homes and communities with choking smoke.”

Let’s put this letter into perspective.

Israel has unilaterally confined nearly 2 million Palestinians within a 141 square miles (approximately 25 miles long, averaging 6 miles wide) area called Gaza.  The people of Gaza are fenced in, trapped, and they are not allowed to leave.  Even those suffering from serious medical conditions are commonly prevented from traveling by ambulance to the nearest Israeli hospitals.  All the Gazan hospitals have been bombed.

The Gaza fence is not Israel’s southern border, as Zionist propaganda claims.  It is a tightly controlled prison fence, guarded by the Israeli military.

Until 2010 it was official Israeli policy to control food imports into Gaza in order to maintain the entire population at the borderline of malnutrition.  The Israeli government calculated that each Palestinian needed only 2,279 calories/day.  Available food stuffs were restricted accordingly.

Fishing is/was a major industry for the Gazan economy.  Since Israel imposed its blockage against the Gazan people in 2007, fishing areas are severely restricted by the Israeli navy.  Israel arbitrarily limits Palestinians fishermen to a 6 mile fishing zone.  But even within that narrow limit Israeli naval vessels regularly attack fishermen and destroy their boats.

Israel arbitrarily declared a 300 meter wide “no man’s zone” extending from the fence encircling Gaza.  It is now a free-fire zone, where anyone — man woman or child — can be shot and killed.  Besides shrinking the size of Gaza dramatically, all of this land is private property, much of it farmland now made inaccessible by Israeli fiat.

Beginning this past March, thousands of Palestinians began making weekly marches at the Gaza fence, protesting their imprisonment.  Israeli soldiers use live ammunition to kill, maim and cripple innocent Palestinian civilians every time they march.

Thus far, Israeli soldiers have killed at least 130 people (including journalists, medics and children).  They have seriously wounded, crippled and maimed at least 20,000 people.  Let that sink in.

But such bloodshed in Gaza is not unusual.

Israel’s last concerted attack on Gaza in 2014, called Operation Protective Edge, inflicted massive civilian casualties.  According to the United Nations Office on Humanitarian Affairs Israeli bombers, missiles and planes killed — do I need to remind my reader that the Palestinians have none of these weapons? — more than 2,250 people.  At least, 1,462 of them were civilians, 551 children, and 299  women.

11,231 Gazans were injured, including 3,436 children and 3,540 women. Over 1,500 children were orphaned.  18,000 housing units were demolished.

From July through August, the Israeli military carried out more than 6,000 airstrikes on Gaza, many of them hitting residential buildings.  The army reported using 5,000 tons of munitions, including 14,500 tank shells and 35,000 artillery shells.  These figures do not include precision-guided missiles or aerial bombing.

So, it is not surprising that the people trapped in Gaza, who are regularly used for target practice and shot like fish in a barrel, protest their captivity.  Wouldn’t you?

Some of them build home-made rockets and fire them into southern Israel.  These are not “guided” missiles.  They are generally very short range, and Israel boasts that the majority of these missiles are intercepted by their “Iron Dome” anti-missile system.

But, of course, they can still be deadly.  Between 2001 and 2014, 44 Israelis (30 civilians and 14 soldiers) were killed by rockets and mortars fired from Gaza.  I don’t know the cumulative figures since then.

Every Christian must condemn violence, whatever form it takes.   We grieve for every Israeli, especially unarmed civilians, killed or injured by Gazan rockets.  God’s people are called to be instruments of peace in this violent world.

Yet, who grieves for the Palestinians?

Apparently, not the ICEJ.  Nor the millions of other Christian Zionists in the west who never give a second thought — in fact, they never give a third, fourth or fifth thought — to Palestinian suffering.  We are morally incurious, never bothering to learn about the inconvenient millions who  happen to stand in the way of Israel’s plan for a purified ethnic state forever populated by a Jewish majority.

How blind God’s supposed people can be.

It is a profound spiritual blindness that reveals the truth about the hearts of American evangelicals.  Our hearts are hard.  Hard as granite.

We raise our hands in church and shed tears of joy for ourselves whenever the Lord seems to answer our self-centered prayers for excess.  A bigger house.  A better job.  A pretty spouse.  A longer vacation.  You name it.

And all the while we are applauding and helping to finance one of the more horrendous crimes against humanity in the modern world.

The typical evangelical would rather go to Israel as a tourist, walk where Jesus walked, get weak in the knees over a visit to the Western (Wailing) Wall, and never give a thought to the weekly slaughter of innocent human lives occurring only a few miles south of Jerusalem.

Neither do the majority of tourists ever think to worship with their Palestinian brothers and sisters in Christ who weep and suffer every day beneath the massive boots of Zionist thugs.

We are those thugs.

The boots are ours.

Palestinian blood stains the American church indelibly.  The Lord Jesus will not forget our guilt.  He will judge us all when The Day finally arrives, saying:

“Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.  For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,  I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.”  (Matthew 25:41-43)

 

Kierkegaard on Christian Faith — Risking the Improbable and Accepting Failure

Few people understand Christian faith more clearly than Sǿren Kierkegaard.  Here is another section from his book, Judge For Yourself (pages 99-100 in the Hong, Princeton edition).  A few words of explanation may help if you’ve never read Kierkegaard before.

Faith is risking the improbable because (a) it is impossible to prove empirically that you have truly encountered God, and (b) there is no measure of empirical probability that Jesus of Nazareth is God incarnate.

Thus, faith risks the improbable.  A significant challenge for modern folks who insist on evidence.

Some people (Kierkegaard calls them lightweights) claim to venture the risk of faith, but only because they think that anything done “in faith” is guaranteed success; that is, success in earthly terms.  Success as they define success.

Hear the faithful Dane speak to us today (emphasis is mine):

“Here is the infinite difference from the essentially Christian, since Christianly, indeed, even just religiously, the person who never relinquished probability never became involved with God.  All religious, so say nothing of Christian, venturing is on the other side of probability, is by way of relinquishing probability.

 “But then is the essentially Christian utter folly and are the sensible people right – it is intoxication?  No!  Admittedly many a one has thought that he was venturing Christianly when he ventured to relinquish probability, and it was pure and simple folly even according to the view of Christianity.  Christianity has its own characteristic way of restraining…the point to check carefully here is to see whether the venturing actually is in reliance upon God.

 “To connect God’s name with one’s wishes, cravings, and plans is easy, far too easy for the lightweights; but it does not follow that their venturing is in reliance upon God. No, in relinquishing probability in order to venture in reliance upon God, one must admit to oneself the implications of relinquishing probability – that when one then ventures it is just as possible, precisely just as possible, to fail as to succeed…That one ventures in reliance upon God provides no immediate certainty of success; the dubiousness in the lightweights’ venturing in reliance upon God lies precisely in their understanding this to mean that they must be victorious..  But this is not venturing in reliance upon God; this is taking God in vain.”

Entrusting our lives to Jesus Christ ensures a right relationship with our heavenly Father here and now.  It also guarantees an eternity with Him in the world to come.  But neither faith nor Jesus promise to give us whatever we hope and pray for, no matter how “faithful” our intentions or “glorious” we think it might be for God.

So, do we trust in Jesus and follow Him for his own sake?  Or do we have ulterior motives?

When Disobedience is a Virtue, 5 — Principled Individualism Builds Better Community

This final installment of “When Disobedience is a Virtue” is another excerpt from my book, I Pledge Allegiance: A Believer’s Guide to Kingdom Citizenship in 21st Century America (Eerdmans, 2018), page 112.

If you know me personally or are a regular reader of this blog, then you know that I am a non-conformist.  Part of this is my personality.  I have always questioned authority and wondered (often out loud) about the real evidence behind public statements of “fact.”

But the greatest influence pushing me further and further into the arms of non-conformity has been my faith in Jesus Christ.  Every true disciple is a non-conformist to the ways of this world.

That includes pushing back against the various ways that this world sets up shop inside the church, selling God’s people worldly rubbish like a rogue sidewalk vender hawking enticing chili dogs without a license.

 “There will never be a sufficient consensus on anything in this life—including biblical interpretation and social activism—to eliminate all of life’s uncertainties. If we act only in the absence of uncertainty, then we will never do anything but wait and invent new excuses for our inactivity. Living a biblically directed life is the only way to deconstruct the false moral universes erected by this world and replace them with the moral universe created by the kingdom of God. Of course, as long as we remain in this world, we are partially blinded and crippled by the misshapen universe we are working to leave behind, so our interpretations and conclusions must be held lightly. But they must be held. Uncertainty never justifies apathy.

 “Second, there comes a time when the individual must act and act alone if necessary, while being prepared to accept the consequences of those actions, whatever they may be. It is no accident that Peter Haas introduces his discussion of Germany’s Christian rescuers by saying: “A common feature of any principled dissent . . . [is] that the rescuers are deviants, people who are misfits in their society. . . . [Their actions] grew out of the rescuer’s experience as social and political outcasts.”  Principled individualism, what the status quo will always condemn as the deviant behavior of misfits and outcasts, is the distinguishing characteristic of Christian faithfulness in this fallen world.

 “Unfortunately, there are many pious voices that want to sedate this brand of individualism by wrapping it up tightly in the maudlin, anesthetic gauze of “community life.” Christian gatherings easily become the most repressive, stultifying crowds that squash the last vestige of creative individualism from its members: Never act alone. Never step out of line. Never speak when others are quiet. Never question authority. Never doubt what everyone else believes. Never question the way it has always been done. Never try to think outside the box. These are the conformist platitudes repeated by the crowd in its self-serving attempts to constrain passionate individuals, preventing them from acting for the sake of conscience.  At times the Christian church has become the most oppressive, do-nothing herd of them all.

 “So we must learn to discern the difference between a fellowship that participates in God’s kingdom and a collective that exists only to replicate carbon copies of the citizens of this world.”

Sandhya Rani Jha on Politics in Church

Sandhya Rani Jha is a minister in the Disciples of Christ denomination and director of the Oakland Peace Center.

If you don’t know the story she refers to about the French village, Le Chambon, I encourage you to read the book by Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed (Harper Row, 1979). It’s an amazing story of true kingdom citizenship lived out in a time of great danger.

The following excerpt is taken from the Christian Century article, “Do politics belong in church?”.  You can read the entire article here.

“My mind has been on the French village of Le Chambon recently. During World

The village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon

War II, the village of maybe 5,000 people saved possibly as many as 5,000 people from the Nazis and the Vichy regime. As President Barack Obama noted on Yom HaShoah/Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2009, ‘Not a single Jew who came [to the area of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon] was turned away, or turned in. But it was not until decades later that the villagers spoke of what they had done—and even then, only reluctantly. “How could you call us ‘good’?” they said. “We were doing what had to be done.”

“In my current itinerating ministry, I have visited a lot of churches that are proud of their commitment to being nonpolitical because it makes them more inclusive. But a nonpolitical church’s politics supports the way things are. That

Jewish children hidden in Le Chambon

doesn’t make it an inclusive church. It makes it a church that is unwelcoming to people who want a different world. To riff off of a popular meme from the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, people of color are saying to the mainline church, ‘The American empire is literally killing us,’ and the mainline church is saying, ‘Yes, but . . . ‘

“The reason Le Chambon keeps showing up in my imagination is this: every Sunday for over a decade before France fell to the Nazis, the pastors of the village preached a message that reinforced their community’s identity and what that identity meant in practice. The message was:

  • We are Huguenots who survived persecution by the Catholic majority. That means we show up for people being persecuted.
  • We are Christians. This means engaging in nonviolent resistance to empires doing harm and protecting the people who are being harmed.

“In a sermon delivered the day after France surrendered to the Nazis, village

Le Chambon pastor, Andre Trocme

pastor André Trocmé said to his congregation, ‘The responsibility of Christians is to resist the violence that will be brought to bear on their consciences through the weapons of the spirit.’

“In Le Chambon, the church’s message shaped people’s identity and behavior.  That is not an inherently political message, but it is a message that demands people act out of a certain ethic.”  (emphasis mine)
Whenever I hear a pastor boast about his/her “nonpolitical” messages, I always want to ask a few questions, the same questions raised by Sandhya Rani Jha.
First, do the ethics of Jesus have any bearing on the way Christians ought to approach their politics?
How can any thinking pastor say no to that question?
Trocme’s congregation being taught to follow Jesus, conspiring to break the law and to protect the oppressed

 

OK then.  Secondly, if you are not teaching in ways that help your flock understand the the practical significance of Jesus’ radical, upside-down kingdom ethics for engaging the politics of this world, then aren’t you failing in your pastoral responsibilities?

The answer to the second question is a resounding yes.
The principle failure of Christian (at least evangelical) teaching on politics today is the near-complete absence of Jesus and his kingdom ethics.
For many pastors, politics is almost all they talk about, but the life and teaching of Jesus have been erased from their playbook.
But those who refuse to talk politics at all are really no different.  They have simply erased Jesus with a different brand of eraser.

A Faithful Disciple in Rwanda

Brandon Stanton’s Twitter account is called Humans of New York (@humansofny).  Recently, he has been interviewing various people from Africa and telling their stories on his feed.  This is one of them:

This gentleman is a pastor living in Kigali, Rwanda.  When the genocide began in the spring of 1994, many locals fled to this man’s home

A Rwandan Pastor who rescued over 300 lives while risking his own

for protection.  Despite the many threats against himself and his wife, they were prepared to give their lives in protecting others.

They saved over 300 people by hiding them in their church.

Below are a few excerpts from his amazing story:

“That very first evening the militia came to my gate. Some were carrying guns. Others were carrying machetes.  They’d been told that I was hiding people.  They demanded to come inside and search the property. I stood in the doorway and told them they’d have to kill me first.  ‘We’ll be back,’ they said. ‘And thanks for gathering all the cockroaches in one place.’…All of our friends abandoned us. They pretended not to know us.  Only one pastor stood by our side.  He came to me one night and warned me there was a plan to attack the church.  I told the news to my wife and we both agreed we were ready to die.

“The next time the killers came, there were fifty of them. All of them had guns or machetes. They pushed straight past me and entered the pastor’s residence. They began pulling people out of the ceiling. They were kicking us and dragging us along the floor. I knew this was the end…We were put in three lines. We began to say our last prayers. I scanned the mob of killers for recognizable faces. Many of them were Christians. Some were even from my congregation. Every time I recognized a face, I called to him by name. I said, ‘When I die I am going to heaven. Where will you go?’  I then pointed to the next man…and the next…and the next…They began to argue among themselves. Nobody wanted to be the first to kill…And they began to leave, one by one, until all of them had run off.

“…When I look back, I believe the genocide could have been stopped had more pastors taken a stand. We were the ones with influence.  The killers belonged to our congregations. And we could have held them back. But instead we did nothing. And every pastor had a different excuse. Some said they didn’t know things would get so bad. Some said they were too afraid. Some said the government was too powerful to oppose. But when you’re standing aside while people die, every excuse is a lame one.” (emphasis mine)

Naturally, we all love heroic stories.  This man’s actions were truly heroic, though I suspect that he would simply say that he was only doing what Jesus wanted him to do.

I hope that I would be as faithful were I ever to encounter a similar situation.  But I honestly don’t know what I would do.

There were other pastors and priests who tried to hide people inside their

Hundreds were killed while hiding inside this Nyamata church, Rwanda

churches, and they were regularly massacred.  But what about his claim that the genocide could have been stopped if at least a majority of Christian leaders had spoken out in protest, refused to follow tribal orders, disobeyed government demands, and boldly confronted fellow church-goers with Jesus’ radical demands to love everyone and to only  do good to our neighbors?

The majority of church-goers in Rwanda, like the majority of church-goers in Nazi Germany, were a part of the problem, not the solution to Rwandan racism and tribalism.

Given the many despicable things we are witnessing in the United States today, why should anyone imagine that the majority of church-goers in America are any different?