I once attended a Good Friday service where the pastor encouraged us to look at Good Friday positively, to see the crucifixion through “Easter eyes.” I could only shake my head at this massive misunderstanding and missed opportunity.
His intentions were good… He didn’t want anyone to feel bad. He wanted to protect us from feeling defeated as we meditated on the death of Christ. It’s completely understandable. But in doing so, he robbed us of exactly the feeling and experience that Good Friday is meant to give us.
Those of us who inhabit the sphere of “American Christianity” live in a world that doesn’t know when, how or even why to grieve. For us, Christianity is about victory, it’s about feeling better about ourselves. It’s upbeat, inspiring, short and peppy. I even know one pastor of a large church who has asked his worship leaders not to do any songs written in a minor key. Too much of a downer.
Like all of us, I was hit hard by the events of Fall, 2001. I was up early on the morning of the 11th for a meeting, and was actually watching TV when the second plane smashed it’s way through the tower. I walked around the rest of the day numb and in shock. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t.
I went to services that weekend, hoping someone could help me with my grief, hoping that with the people of God I could feel what I needed to feel, process my questions and my grief and in doing so come to some place of resolution. But instead of mourning… instead of an honest admission that we have no idea why things like this happen… I was greeted by a multitude of draped American flags. I was asked to salute the flag and sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic. I got a pep rally, when what I really needed was a church service. We needed to grieve. Instead we were told to feel better. We needed silence and respite. We needed to mourn, but were not allowed.
And we wonder why so many of us struggle with a persistent, low-level depression. Maybe… just maybe, it’s because when we should, we refuse to grieve. We hold in the tears, when they should come out… and find that the emotion we should give vent to in appropriate ways tends to leak out in other ways, at other times- some not nearly so appropriate or healthy.
I’m absolutely amazed when I see television coverage of third-world countries, particularly the coverage of disasters. When I see the keening, wailing women, the men tearing their clothes from their bodies and even the hair from their heads in anguish, I realize how emotionally impoverished we stoics in America are. I realize that the grief and mourning which the Bible actually speaks highly of, is completely missing from our vocabulary. We’ve lost the ability to grieve.
And with it, I think we’ve lost the ability to be truly joyful. Have you ever wondered how those who live in other cultures, even those who live lives of impoverishment can smile so broadly and celebrate so joyfully in the midst of their impoverishment? We watch our news in amazement as year after year at times of victory or celebration they fill the streets, dancing in joy, eyes bright. The closest to that we ever come is when our team wins the Series, or the Superbowl. And even that is a pale mockery of the joy that we know we should feel at times, but never seem to find. We wish we could dance the way that they dance, or feel the joy and excitement they seem to feel.
Take Easter, for example. Every year the pastor stands and does his best to project the words “Christ is risen!” And we half-heartedly answer, “He is risen indeed.” Usually we have to try it a couple of times to work up any enthusiasm at all.
And the reason we don’t feel the joy at Easter that we know deep down inside we should, is because we don’t feel the grief at Good Friday that we could. We enter our well-lit sanctuaries on Good Friday, sing some songs, hear a nice message about the crucifixion, and go out for dessert afterwards with our friends. We enter with smiles on our faces and leave the same way. If only we knew how to grieve…
Good Friday ruined the first disciples’ weekend. Maybe we should allow it to ruin ours as well. For them, it felt like the end of the world. Maybe we could pretend, even for a day, that’s it’s the end of ours as well- that while in an eternal-perspective-kind-of way, what Jesus went through is something to be celebrated, it’s also something to be mourned, to be anguished about, to actually grieve.
This Good Friday, focus on the suffering of Christ. See the movie if you haven’t already or go again. Go alone so you won’t worry about what anyone else thinks of your reaction. Attend a Good Friday service.
Allow the grief to seep deep down into your bones, into your bowels. Meditate on the wounds, the suffering and the deep, deep love of Christ. Allow the tears to well up from the pit of your being, to escape your eyes and roll down your face. Let the sobs rock your body. Leave the Good Friday service in silence. Extend your mourning through the night and into Saturday. Leave the TV off. Wear black. Refuse to medicate, distract or otherwise soothe yourself. Mourn. Grieve.
If you do this, as the sun rises on Sunday, you will finally know what Easter is all about.
Bob Hyatt is lead pastor of an (emerging community) in Portland, OR. Just as importantly (perhaps more so) he is husband to Amy and the father of Jack.
We'll try not to forget, Bob.
Both of my sons are United States Marines. The oldest, an infantryman, was in Australia on 11 September 2001 on a routine deployment. A brief email telling us he would be OK and to pray for him and his fellows was the only communication from him until he returned from Afghanistan and called us from Australia in March of 2002. He has since been to Iraq. His younger brother has the honor to do ceremonial funerals for Marines buried in Arlington Cemetery. I am convinced that American stoicism is only skin deep where these two young men serve. The grief that one has shown over the loss of his best friend (whose Dad is a Christian, single parent and a firefighter)and the grief the other has observed at Arlington gravesides (where he ironically is under orders to remain impassive)is deep, sincere and real.
My wife works with professional first-responders, many of whom worked the Murrah Federal Building or the Twin Towers, and I am confident that their grief is, to this day, raw and deep. Shock and silence are common early manifestations among these professionals which later transform into inexplicable illnesses, depression and sometimes, suicide. Far be it from me to pass judgment on their expressions of grief. I am equally loathe to cast any pall over any joy, however pale, they may take from the Yankees beating the Red Sox or their team winning the Superbowl.
I would hold up the images of 911 to anyone and offer them as an apt comparison to the profound grief evident in similar images of third-world catastrophes.
We Americans seem to be able to, and want to submerge our grief and make it something personal and private. If you have seen some of these first responders interviewed about their experiences or, military veterans similarly interviewed it is not unusual for them to tear up and, in many instances, be unable to continue the interview because after months and even after sixty years their grief is real and fresh.
In speaking for “those of us who inhabit the sphere of American Christianity”, I think Bob has been a tad bit hard.
Nevertheless, I think Bob is raising an important issue with his observations. His examples of no minor chords in worship music, the patriotic pep talks and especially noting that we Americans seem to be unable to come to grips with experiencing profound grief with respect to the crucifixion are telling symptoms of a problem.
I would suggest (as my earlier comments imply) that:
1. Americans’ ability to grieve is not absent.
2. Americans wish (need?) to submerge and privatize grief needs exploring.
3. Why specifically the crucifixion (surely the torture and execution of an innocent is a horror) is notably absent from the American lexicon of grief is a matter for exploration and discussion.
Number three is within the scope of our discussions and one which I am willing to venture a guess and an opinion.
I suggest the Church, emerging or otherwise, has (forgotten?) failed to show why anyone should grieve over the crucifixion.
With all due respect to Bob, his insightful comments do not give any reasons for grieving over the crucifixion (with one major exception noted later) other than we should feel grief, should let it ruin our Easter weekend and that we should overtly manifest these feelings of grief because third-world citizens are more demonstrative in public with their grief and joys.
In charity, I would say that third-world emotionalism might not be a compelling example to shake stoic Americans (Christians or otherwise) out of their emotional doldrums. Feelings are often fickle things and as such are sometimes easily manipulated by the unscrupulous to achieve unsavory ends.
I recall in recent memory third-world citizens dancing in streets, waving flags, “eyes bright” with evident sincere joy at the destruction of the Twin Towers (sort of like their Superbowl, I guess) and, on another occasion, displaying real elation while dragging the mutilated body of an American soldier through the streets of a third-world city (their team winning the pennant?). Many of these people show sincere grief at the death of family members and sometimes find in their grief motivation to strap bombs on themselves to seek revenge by more killing which gives plenty of opportunity for more “real” joy and more “real” grief for everyone all around.
This is not meant as a political comment but rather a spiritual one. And that point is that emotionalism is at best a poor tool and often a very dangerous one. Surely we can imagine a bunch of Christian Knights whooping it up over killing infidels for Christ or Europeans whipped into a pogrom by a passion play and the misdirected emotions and misapplied faith leading to these atrocities. As to why 911 happened (Bob seems to wonder about this), it seems that some third-world emotionally enriched persons (some use the less than charitable term “Islamic-fascists”)were mainpulated into focusing their emotions into actions and murdered thousands. As I recall, death was no respecter of nationality or religion and the grief was as real at the Presbyterian or Roman Catholic service on Queens as it was at the Mosque and Temple on Long Island.
It seemed to me that Bob was arguing for an appeal based on emotion alone without intending to do so. I hope his essential point to be that the crucifixion has qualities inherent which cry out to us to grieve, mourn, wail and rend our garments and sit one with another in the dung heap. It is a point I agree with entirely and yet don’t see clearly stated why it should be so (with the exception of Bob’s phrase “the deep, deep love of Christ” which quite frankly, I wish he had discussed in greater detail-especially how that message can be shared with a post-modern).
What are these inherent qualities that merit, even compel grief?
My wife and another couple went to see “The Passion of the Christ”. The fellow I sat next to is rather large (I am a pretty big guy so to say he is large has meaning in my world) and after we all (the entire audience) had sat silently for a moment, the big fellow was racked by deep sobs followed by prodigious tears. He said he remembered that Mel Gibson had said in an interview that Gibson had used his own hand in the film to hold a spike hammered into Jesus’s hand. Gibson said he did this to show he was first on the list for personal culpability and responsibility for Jesus’s torture and execution and to show that we all were likewise culpable and responsible. This is what moved my friend so deeply. It moves me deeply as well.
In this I see a hint as to what must be effectively communicated to Christians and others with respect to the crucifixion. I am not clear how this message can be brought to a post-modern. Mel Gibson has taken a pretty good swing at the pitch, but, after “Passion”, what?
“…but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.” Maybe this is a hint as to what is at the heart of this American (though not unique to Americans) inability to grieve meaningfully over the crucifixion. I know far too many Christians (Americans and others) who act a bit like Jesus really did not have to go to all that trouble on their behalf. Too many little indiscretions, foibles, ommissions and commissions are sloughed off as minor, inconsequential-everyone else does it kinds of things. Like children, we compare our conduct with someone else, a Hitler or a Pol Pot, and come off looking not so bad rather than looking to the crucified and risen Jesus as our pattern.
I think if one can come to an awarness as to just how far one falls short of God, then one can begin to scratch the surface as to what grief and joys the Cross of Christ offers to the Christian as well as the seeker. Perhaps our task is to demonstrate in our own lives first this awarness of the vast gulf between us and a holy God and our sincere grief for our sins which caused God to bridge that gulf with the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. It is in this act of God we see Bob’s “deep, deep love of Christ” expressed.
good and thorough reply!
good and thorough reply!
I guess just a couple of things:
I have no doubt that many people deeply grieved the events of 2001, particularly those who came into personal contact with the tragedy… My point was that one place where I failed to find grief and mourning was in church. While the reaction of grief was appropriate in so many venues, the one place where it didn’t seem to be allowed was in church. That may not have been the case in all places, particularly those churches who lost members, but I think that by and large the American church took a pass on grief, questions and anguish and instead attempted to make people “feel better.” My point is simply that we would have been better served to explore the grief in the context of Christian community.
I have no doubt that much of the emotion displayed in other parts of the world is innapproriate in it’s cause… my point was simply that wherever I have travelled (and I have been to a good number of places) my experience has been that people in other countries are less emotionally constipated than are Americans… and maybe that has something to do with allowing themselves a fuller range of emotional expression.
As to why we should grieve the death of Christ… I can only say that if we can meditate on it and not be moved to grief, we need to examine our hearts. Good Friday, the crucifixion, is in and of itself (or should be) deeply disturbing and cause us grief. The reason we have the church calendar is so that we can walk through various stages of the life and ministry of Christ.
We should experience wonder at Christmas- as did the shepherds and magi- that God would send the messiah to us, that He would come as He did…
We should experience amazement and joy at Easter (as did the disciples)- that God did not allow death to have the final word- that Jesus rose from the death.
And we should feel grief at the crucifixion, at what Christ suffered for our sake… not for the sake of feeling emotion, but because it truly is worthy of being grieved… and because by doing so, we may more fully experience what comes next.
My point was that by examining our emotional constipation, recognizing it for what it is, and allowing ourselves to feel some of the grief that Peter, James, John and the others felt at losing their friend, their teacher, their messiah… maybe we too could feel some of the joy they felt that first Easter.
bob hyatt lead pastor: the evergreen community www.evergreenlife.org
Crucifixion Redux
Thanks for clearing up any misconceptions I had about your comments regarding grieving over the crucifixion.
I do agree that there were a lot of flag waving pep talks which seemed inappropriate in the context of the tragedy. The whole idea of making people feel good and the cult of up-tempoism is a little much to take at times. When one is hurting and someone asks how you are doing, do they really want you to unload on them, tell them that you feel rotten and are besieged by temptation and sin, or that you are so aggravated with your boss that you could punch him in his nose? Unfortunately, in far too many faith communities, the answer is no. This “don’t worry, be happy-look away from the bad things” mentality is as prevalent in faith communities with respect to sin as it is to relationships. Not many pastors are willing to take an adulturer in the congragation to task, refuse him communion and kick him out for persisting in the sin. So I guess it’s little wonder that the Church is often about feel good opposed to do right. Going back to 911 (after my hydra-headed screed),I can only guess that many Church leaders were numb and, to some degree, in shock, as you and I were, over the 911 events. Because of this it seems possible that these leaders did almost anything to avoid opening up the floodgates of sorrow and grief.
Likewise, I agree with your assement of the church calendar’s value as well as the range of emotions the seasons of faith ought to inspire. I very well remember my first Christmas after having become a believer a few months earlier. I was in a department store the week before Christmas in a mall near my home and a version “Oh Holy Night” sung by, of all people, Glen Campbell, came over the store’s background music system. For some reason, as I stood in the middle of cosmetics and fragrances, the overwhelming sense of God’s great gift became so real I could hardly breathe and my eyes filled with tears. This happened despite being in the middle of a temple of the great mid-winter retail festival.
I often wonder how can these great truths inspire the post-modern to seek the Kingdom of God (and enter in) if we in the household of faith are unmoved by them and are, as you so aptly phrased it, “emotionally constipated”?
For some reason I am reminded by the lyrics of a very short song by the late Kieth Green.
My eyes are dry, my faith is old, My heart is hard, my prayers are cold, And I know how I ought to be, Alive to you, and dead to me.
Oh what can be done, for an old heart like mine? Soften it up, with oil and wine. The oil is You, Your Spirit of Love, Please wash me anew, in the wine of Your blood.
So my question still stands (with modifications). How does the Church live out its faith and communicate to the post-modern precisely the magnitude of the price paid by Jesus and demonstrated in His crucifixion? How do we take devalued and misappropriated terms like atonement and propitiation and explain, in the context of a blood sacrifice, their merits as they apply to a post-modern? Presumably, they apply exactly now as they did for a Centurion or one of the Praetorians a good while back. My question is how do we make these truths current and impart a sense of urgency in the post-modern to listen and act upon God’s invitation?
The crucifixion and postmoderns
This has been a profound conversation, gentlemen, and timely. Thanks. I would like to respond briefly to the question posed by Alario:
I agree that our own emotional and spiritual poverty is a major factor in the church’s failure to communicate the sort of truth that we find in the crucifixion. Behind that failure, however, lies the ‘modern’ preoccupation with doctrinal correctness and rationalist apologetics. We have wrapped up the story in thick layers of dogma and interpretation – is it any surprise, then, that people find themselves unmoved by it? Even terms like ‘propitiation’ and ‘atonement’ are interpretive and are always likely to distance us from the reality.
It seems to me that one of the strengths of The Passion of the Christ is that, to some extent at least, it resists accommodation to complacent evangelical theologizing – through the opacity of language, through its realism, through the violence of the portrayal, even through the odd Catholic embellishments. It makes the story powerful again. We lose some of our control over it – we become instead shocked again. Perhaps, then, in order to communicate the truth of Good Friday and Easter to postmoderns we need to let the story speak for itself, on its own terms, uninterpreted, unexegeted, unexpounded, unpreached. Maybe the best thing we can do is to let go of it.
exactly! "How to communicate
exactly! “How to communicate this to postmoderns” is really what I was saying between the lines of this article. My thought as I sat in that service was simply how impoverished it was and how, though it communicated truth, that truth went uninternalized by so many sitting around us (as evidenced by the cheery conversations I heard on the way out).
Previous to that, I had been involved in a Tenebre’ service- (tenebre’ is latin for silence). We focused on what Christ must have felt on the cross, through readings centering on his last 7 statements, through media designed to juxtapose christological statements in the Pasalms (which Gibson picks up on incredibly well) with medieval art of the scourging and crucufuxion… We kept the lights low and asked people to leave in silence. Over the next few weeks we heard from many in that it had been the best service they ever attended at that church.
I think the key to communicating these things in our context is to first help people experience it and then to explain it. We often do it the opposite way. This short-circuits the process… we “understand” it, and so feel disconnected, objective, “over it.” Better to sit under the experience, to feel it, perhaps without understanding all the nuances and implications and then be driven by the joy (or sorrow) of the experience to gain a better intellectual understanding…
I hope that makes sense. We just had a baby last week and I’m not sure my sleep deprived brain is firing on all four cylinders :)
bob hyatt lead pastor: the evergreen community www.evergreenlife.org
The "crux" of the matter...so to speak.
Andrew’s remarks begin to go the heart of many of my questions regarding emerging chuch, emerging theology and just what the Church is to be about.
In particular the idea of letting Mel Gibson’s movie speak for itself on its own terms without our fidgeting over the viewer’s shoulder to make sure they “get it right” is a sound idea and a thoughtful observation. In this sense we can get out from standing in between the post-modern viewer and allow the Holy Ghost (my dogmatic Authorized Version preferences) to do His good office.
However, it is possible, that we fishers of men, will actually have a live one on our line. I can envision a post-modern with whom I am having a cold beer while looking at a baseball game on the television in my favorite watering hole mention that he has seen the movie, looked up some of the applicable scriptures (maybe Isaiah 53, Romans 3:25 or 1 John 2:2) and has questions which he would never take to his pastor, because he does not have one, and maybe not even to his best friend, because, though close friends, he realizes his friend is only slightly less alienated or confused than he in matters “religious”.
“What the hell does the writer here mean by the word propitiation?”, my new friend asks me. I’m just as likely to confuse him by lamenting and or lambasting modern rational apolegetics and doctrinal dogma as I am with trying to answer his question, am I not?
I’ve got to be honest here, depending on how good my friend and I are getting along and maybe if I have had three beers instead of two, I might tell my friend that it meant simply that God was really pissed off (angry), rightfully so, and between me and you sitting here and talking, pal, God’s anger over this sin thing is big enough to swamp your boat. Oh, and by the way, that whole flogging and crucifixion Gibson’s movie so graphically portrays, that was meant for you. So take my advice and get on God’s good side ASAP. This less than subtle explanation would likely raise more questions than it answered, but, that would be a good thing, I think. Having said that, at some point, maybe years later, though there may be many more questions, my friend has to make a decision of faith, hot or cold, fish or cut bait, the Kingdom of God or the kingdom of darkness. Does he not?
Is this explanation too dogmatic and theologically stilted? This area is where I find myself grasping for some kind of purchase or foothold to make sense of these concepts with images and words meaningful to a post-modern. I sense I have a responsibility to present the Gospel in a manner and in terms a post-modern can relate to. I do not sense a responsibility to make the Gospel something to easily step over and ignore. There are rich scriptural concepts that are quite chilling to believer and non-believer alike. The whole scandalon-rock of stumbling idea that Jesus in one over Whom many will stumble and Who will crush others indicates that there are elements of our “Story” which makes some wish to turn and go quickly in another direction. If I am honest with myself, some of it has that result with me. So-these are the kind of questions I am thinking about and sharing here. I do appreciate the opportunity to do so and, so to speak, your ears.
Also, responding to Bob’s “exactly…” posting, in the liturgical denomination where God has planted me to grow and bloom, we also celebrate a Tenebre service and as you note, the silence is profound and moving. We set up a Prie Dieu and ask that from Friday through Easter morning someone take an hour of prayer time, either there, or at their home or office so that no hour goes by without prayer and meditation on Jesus’s sufferings and that we, as believers and as a community, comprehend in some measure the meaning of those sufferings.
I believe you are exactly on target-help people experience the love of Jesus and then explain, not the other way around which does often “short circuit” God’s plans. I am just a little unclear how we can explain without some dogma and doctrine. Surely not all who have gone before us in the walk of faith have been wrong. Maybe if we do well on the first part, little or no explaining will be necessary. Congratulations on your new baby, Bob.
Thanks! He's a cool kid... ju
Thanks! He’s a cool kid… just hope i don’t mess him up:)
This is really the reason why in the late 80’s and 90’s there were so many evangelicals moving toward the orthodox church and why now much of the emerging church is trying to rediscover those structured, liturgical, experiential elements.
I do believe we need doctrine and teaching… our problem in the evangelical wing of things is that we seem to think that comes first. When someone becomes a Christian- we put them in a class, have them read a book. We fill their heads and then hope that when we do get around to providing something experiential, they’ll dig in.
Maybe the first thing we should do is fill their hearts… send them to the urban poor, put them through a spiritual journey of disciplines, a fast followed by baptism… anything but a class and lecture. Maybe the class will mean more after they have some context in which to put that doctrine, some experiences and formative beliefs to process up against the church fathers…
Maybe instead of a new believers class that’s required, we do an old believers class you need to qualify for… interestingly enough, I’ll bet that would make people much more interested. :)
I don’t know- just thinking out loud.
b
bob hyatt lead pastor: the evergreen community www.evergreenlife.org
Old Christians' Class
My conversion in the mid 70’s took place at a major urban university where I took my degree. I guess because God thought I needed something flashy to get my attention, He saw to it over the period of several summer months that He not only got my attention but also captured my heart. I was undeniably different in many, many ways, behavior not the least of them. There were many professors and friends and even some family anxious and zealous to either pound the faith out of me, or at least see that I didn’t “get carried away” with it.
In fairness to all of those, I was overzealous, ignorant of any theology, lacked any apologetical sophistication or rhetorical skills. If you picture a Great Dane puppy with feet and body too large in comparison to the puppy’s enthusiasms and its abilities to control them and itself-you get a picture of me then. Lovable possibly. Cute, maybe-but a real pain in the neck in the parlor with the good furniture and the antiques. I took a pretty good beating but despite all of that I held on to the fact that I was somehow, because of my conversion, quite a different person than I had been.
Unfortunately, I took the path to reading and study to arm myself and, I convinced myself, to defend the gospel. In reality I wanted to defend myself because I was simply tired of getting beaten up. As you can imagine, the “new” man whose motivations had once been to take Jesus at His words and love my neighbors and do what ever I could to please my new Master was slowly subordinated to someone much more like the “old” man who would rather know what C.S. Lewis or Hooker said about such and such than to know Jesus better and serve Him more faithfully. Learning what a particular concept really meant took a backseat to disciplined piety and works of faith encouraged in James’s epistle.
This is not an appeal to a flabby, anti-intellectual faith, only a recognition that Jesus desires to make new converts whole from stem to stern and above and below decks. It is an appeal to a possible way of integrating all aspects of a person’s life by letting the rivers of living water flow into and out from that person to touch all aspects of their life.
It would have been very helpful If I had have been involved in the kinds of supervised-take it to the streets kind of experiences-you mention. I would also have benefited from some spiritual mentoring from a more mature Christian. With those things I believe I also needed a sound foundational catechism to give some structure and substance to my faith just as the kind of experiential exercises you mention would have given God given impulses towards acts of charity a similar structure and context.
You mentioned an idea of an “old” Christians class. That concept of having some prerequisites is interesting. As I think about it, I see afresh the merits in the system whereby the new convert is, after baptism, immersed in a life of worship, service and instruction in the new faith until confirmed in that faith at which time the new convert may enter into full fellowship with their new family and share in the Lord’s body and His blood and all the mysteries that encompasses. We do a pale immitation of this (pale is my assesment, not official opinion)and we do not hold back participation in communion until after confirmation.
Something like this could be more easily done in the liturgical tradition I am part of now than it could be in other congregations. Something like it however, done consistently and faithfully, would create a tremendous sense of expectation and even mystery in the sacrements, especially surrounding communion, as well as developing a body of tradition for all members.
More opinions from me. As I said before, I am trying to find some ways to negotiate these shoals and get a grip on dealing with the culture as we find it.
(PS: RE: Kid ruining. It’s unlikely you’ll mess him up. As there is no substitute for speed (or heart and guts)on the football field-there is likewise no substitute for prayer(or heart and guts) in raising children. I realize this is showing a firm grasp of the obvious, nevertheless-“The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”.)
incoming gnosticism?
I really like your call, Bob, to fully identify with what those following Jesus’ life on earth would have felt this upcoming Holy Week. That’s a real challenge to me today, here as a stiff upper lipped tea-drinking Brit. Thanks.
But Alario’s response that the people who celebrate across the world are those who do so only at the expense of US Army servicemen, and your response, Bob that much of the joy they feel and the mourning the rest of the world goes through is hate crime against your people is plain rubbish.
I can understand that there might be a perception that your country and its actions in the world cause all the suffering for which you might be guilty (some rightly so — one of my friends responded to Bush’s most recent international words on terrorism after the bombings in Madrid earlier this month by denying that the terrorist wants to destroy the western way of life but that he wants the western way of life to stop destroying his — others not), but there is a lot of joy and pain across the world that has nothing to do with your fifty stars and thirteen stripes.
Returning to the topic in hand, it might be claimed that the ‘old believer’s course’ has echoes of gnostic religion: having survived the initiation in the social action work, the meditation course in the deep countryside, and the period of abstinence from something dear, you may learn the secrets of the faith…
That criticism aside, I think it’s a good idea, because I rate orthopraxy (acting out Christ’s love and kindness — not just behaving in some proper way for church) over othodoxy (the theology somehow being right and agreed upon). This, surely, is the greatest need the church has today, to show more Jesus and less division, and the old believer’s course involves people doing before believing they’re obligated to do, which then avoids them feeling guilty when they fail to do.
And again, to Alario, there’s more than one way to skin that cat. Your friend asks you about the bible passages he’s been reading after his experience of Mel’s film. One might feel the need to talk about atonement theory, but there’s quite a few varied understandings of it developed throughout history (let’s not get too worried about arguing them, please), including the penal substitution that you mentioned. I’d say that the detail that one would want to share at this point (as I keep finding myself saying too much) might not be necessary. You could examine these other explanations of what the cross achieved in order to explain to people who may not have the same expectations of an angry God needing to be pacified that you do.
The mind-blowing notion that Jesus makes it Okay between us and God does me just fine.
Take care. love Ken.
Good thoughts there...
Good thoughts there… and good connection/warning about gnosticism :)
Let me clarify two things. First, the least important. I went back and looked at my comment regarding the joy other people felt and what I said in response to another comment was “I have no doubt that much of the emotion displayed in other parts of the world is innapproriate in it’s cause… ” I’ll stand by that- but I never implied “hate crime.” I just wanted to balance my original essay comment that people around the world seem to both mourn and celebrate in more emotionally exuberant and free ways than many in 1st world, western culture with the observation/admission that sometimes, what they are celebrating is not so nice (be it the assasination of a rival party leader, the burning of a Christian church in a muslim area or vice versa…)
On the old believer’s class- here’s a core value I am drilling into our brand-new curch plant right now: We want to be a place for people to belong before they believe. Traditional church has used Christian Community as a reward for those who assess a set of doctrines, assent to those bullet-points and sign on the line.
I want to flip that on it’s head. I want to use Christian Community, and a full experience of it, as a way of seeing people get to know Jesus, and learning about the faith. So, if a non-Christian comes into our midst, we welcome them and to the extent that they allow us, we share our lives with them and participate in their lives. At some point, after they have built floors with us for families living in trash piles in mexico, after they have played bass on the worship team, after we have prayed for (and maybe even with) them, they say “You know, all this Jesus stuff you’ve talked about over the past few months/years… I think I believe it.” At that point, they are already more discipled than 90% of “Christians”… so we begin the process of filling in the blank areas for them- including doctrine.
So much different than “Oh, you’re new? There’s a class for you over there.”
So really, we’re not so much talking about a graduated initiation into Christianity… we’re just talking about doing it in a process-oriented way that allows people to experience faith/life in Jesus and come to an understanding of the deep things of the faith through an experience of them, not expecting it to be the other way around.
I fear baby-induced tiredness again keeps me from being as clear as I might be… dang :)
bob hyatt lead pastor: the evergreen community www.evergreenlife.org
Orthopraxy.
Ken, if you read my comments carefully you should understand that the point was that emotionalism is a tool sometimes used by manipulators to conjure up feelings which can be and have been used to achieve particular goals. Two examples, 911 and Mogadishu, Somalia, given to support that assertion were recent and I think you are accurate in calling them a “hate crime against your (my) people…”, though I never used the term hate crime. [As an aside to Mogadishu, I recognize that an American soldier killed in combat actions is to the Somali, an enemy soldier. My sensibilities were offended at seeing him mutilated and his remains, recognizable to his loved ones, dragged through the streets with glee.] I also referred to two less recent examples-Passion Play inflamed pogroms and the Crusades (specifically referred to in the Madrid bombings). There’s plenty of guilt to go around in the former and respecting the latter, the “fify stars and thirteen stripes” did not make that show.
I am not clear on the point your friend is making. Are U-2, Madonna and Brittney making inroads too deep into his culture? Are American corporations bringing their corporate cultures into the mainstream of his culture? What are we talking about here? If he has a beef with some of the debased and, lets be frank here, defiled stuff pouring out of the sewers of western culture, he can join the club. It is an important issue and a legitimate criticism.
There are problems however, not the least of which seems to be an implied justification in your friend’s remarks of killing innocents to hold back the overwhelming tide of western culture. As it sweeps over what? Spain? Does Saladin now want it back?
I want to restate clearly, as I did in earlier comments, these remarks are not political but are intimately related to the emerging theology at hand. If western culture is destroying another culture by means of exporting, among other things, entertainment, which is offensive to the religious sensibilities of that culture, why does the Church then, not only take a pass on those issues, but seems unable or unwilling to take a stand, define and enforce some kind of moral purity in everything from business ethics to appropriate expressions of sexuality among those who call themselves the Church. Certainly these inconsistent elements of western Christianity are as offensive, if not more so, to your friend’s sensibilities than too many MacDonalds in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. [Please pardon me if I have assumed too much in thinking that we have been talking about Islamic sensibilities here. I think the problem is still much the same with respect to any culture’s clash with western culture.]
Finally, I did not say or suggest at all or at any point the only emotions shown in the third-world were those expressed at the expense of American military personnel. Given your inaccurate restatement of my (and Bob’s) comments and your response, I can conclude you either misunderstood the comments, had an agenda or that your orthopraxy was selective. In charity, I will assume you misunderstood the comments.
Now to the important topics. With respect to Mel’s film, my friend’s bible reading and his questions, do I conclude from reading you that my answer was one of many valid ways to skin that particular cat? Or are you saying it would behove me to learn something of the other explanaions of what the crucifixion accomplished (explanations more congenial to you? to them?)and share one of those instead? Or are you suggesting I shrug my shoulders and say, “Who knows!”? I guess there is a fourth alternative and that would be to have a playbook ready and depending on how I read the seeker’s preferences, I could pull a particular spin on the crucifixion out of a hat and see how he liked it. If that one didn’t float his boat, I could go to option two.
I do note well and accept your idea of saying less. In this I would envision simply inviting my friend to come and get involved in our faith community and see what it all means. It makes a lot of sense actually. Involvement in ministry and participation in worship and the life of the community should speak far louder than mere words. You are certainly right in saying the world needs to see more Jesus and less of me and you.
I think also that your picking up on the risks of an incipient gnosticism is well said and right on point. I also agree with you that Bob’s ideas are on the right track, despite the risks, and will yield good fruit and mature, discplined Christians probably more quickly than a static lecture, book, inquirer’s class will. At least I think that is what he was talking about in his “old Christians’ class”.
I take something more from the scourging and crucifixion depicted in Mel’s film than a vague sense that Jesus did something for me. Forget conflicting theologicial debates concerning atonement theories-taking scriptures as they point to, detail and elaborate on the sacrifice of “the Lamb of God”, it seems apparent, in my opinion, taking the totality of scripture bearing on the subject into account, that a punishment, a penalty for sins was in the mix with whatever else took place. Whatever expectations I may or may not have of God, His anger towards me is not one of them. Nor is there an expectation of God’s anger towards my friend. That anger in whatever terms or modality it existed was (pick a term) sated, expiated, slaked, satisfied (my personal favorite) when Jesus suffered during His passion.
Jesus makes things OK with God, while true, seems blithe and shallow in this context and a bit like “T shirt theology”. If that comprehension of the crucifixion engenders in you Ken, the kind of emotions associated with Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter that Bob was talking about, then I would not want to tamper with it at all. If it does not, (you started your comments indicating that you were having trouble in this area), you might, among other things, examine the crucifixion and explanations of it which are less than appealing to you on a personal level and which have a more orthodox look and feel to them. I would say none of the old orthodox theologians, many of them your fellow countrymen, were fools and, though not currently in favor, they may yet have a thing or two to say to us on this matter. I actually have a favorite among them, J.C. Ryle, whose books have seemingly had a bit of a revival and are getting fairly easy to find and at reasonable prices.
Your brother and friend, in Christ.
Alario
on globalisation...
To my ears it is a tired subject to talk about the ongoing process of outsourced Western industrial production (I was going to say American, but there is enough of Western European involvement in this that we share the blame) that harms the countries in which the work is being done. It remains a necessary part of the industrialisation process that technology arrives and impact developing countries, yet most of the outsourcing process passes a cut of the cost of production to an intermediate which leaves less money to go to those actually doing the work. Then the ecological impact of the factory harms the people working there and not those who sell or wear the clothes. I’d ask: can’t this be done so that developing countries develop, but without the harm to the people in the situation?
These are the people about whom my friend spoke asking America to stop destroying their lives.
My comments about learning other perpectives on atonement and biblical theology are echoes of my concern that we don’t remain unaware of the history that we stand in (see this thread I started). Equally, though, there is a need to accommodate people whose christianity stands in other theological camps than we do: if we really want people to see more Jesus and less of us, we must find a way to stand with every other christian, or we’ll keep being factional and not inclusive (as I see Jesus being).
I also add apologies for my misunderstanding of your words.
Take care. love Ken.
More questions than answers..
Ken, thank you for your gracious apology. It was, as I assumed, simply a misunderstanding in which, I am quite sure, my tendency to prolixity was no small contributing factor.
I think you are absolutely correct, there should be a way to pay the workers more and harm their enviroment less.
If I am GM and outsource production to a plant I own and operate overseas in an exploitative manner, shame on me. Alcatel, Siemens, whoever, same story, shame on them. If ,as an example, a (insert nationality of your choice here), owns and operates the factory, and contracts with a western corporation, and exploits his workers and rapes his country, shame on him. The core value displayed in both instances seems to be the love of money.
I suppose that a western corporation could look beyond ROI, build a factory, sell it back to locals at cost and stipulate low interest, long term financing contingent on fair wages, safe working conditions and maintaining sound environmental policies (exceeding by many factors the minimums required). The product would cost less than a western produced item and the corporation would have been a good global citizen.
Some possible problems come to mind. The first is that the heart of man, western or non, ( and the corporation’s heart? ) is desperately wicked, or so Scriptures tell us, and does not bend its knee to the King of Kings (yet) nor value His ideas on fair treatment in the employee-employer relationship. Forget about the environmental issues from a Christian point of view for now. (Eleanor on another thread has some really cogent, and important for me-Scriptural-insights on this ignored aspect of our Christian stewardship)
Why (from the selfish sinful perspective) bother to do anything other than maximize shareholders profits and make as many bucks as one can for as long as one can? If, I am the third-world local factory owner, why pay my workers fair wages? Without conviction of sin and repentance, the heart(s) in question will remain hard, and wicked.
Second, though there are, to any right thinking corporate honcho, tangible, long term benefits to model corporate behavior, the honcho might think, based on some previous experiences, that those benefits are fool’s gold.
In some countries, even sectarian aid workers are killed for no other reason than they might create a favorable impression of westerners. From that the western corporaton could deduce that a factory project as described earlier might also create a long term favorable impression of westerners and the factory, local ownership and even the workers themselves might be at risk.
Who could possibly wish to destroy the kind of factory project described? Yet it seems there are such people out there. Which goes back to my question in an earlier comment and that is does the negative impact of global industrial activity justify Madrid or 911?
(The second part of this post, which deals with the question of Christian unity, has been moved here. Apologies to Alario, but it’s an important new theme and worth exploring separately.)
From America-on Passion Sunday,
Your brother in Christ and friend,
Alario
wicked hearts
I must admit to being a hopelessly romantic optimist: I think that expecting little of people doesn’t really offer them the opportunity to surprise you.
When you say that hearts are evil and unbending before their real Lord, I think that there’s another way to look at it. Is it possible that the noblest of thoughts in a man, echoing lost days when the image of God was less marred, might agree with you about the best ways to improve worlwide living habits? Is it possible that an unending grace of man to fellow man might offer the possibility of someone putting aside their selfishness? If this were so, is it possible to see Christ living in their hearts aside from what our traditional evangelical theology tells us?
I can’t see any way that our habits in “investing” in developing nations justify these terrible attacks (simply because I see no way that we can truly ever justify killing another person). I think that George Carey’s recent remarks (panned by the UK media and Muslims for seeming anti-Islamic sentiment) describe some of the history of the struggle as the World Islamic Front see it. This article was eye-opening.
In case this enflames discussion of the media response to the talk, there’s a selection of links and discussion of such here (by an imposter who stole my name ).
Take care. love Ken.
Scriptural realism.
Ken, my brother, don’t labor under the misconception that I am going to let you claim the high ground of “hopeless romantic”. I am a “hoplessly romantic” misanthrope. I am the founder, president and sole member of the Ambrose Bierce fan club. Just kidding.
The problem is not that I expect little of people and am not surprised, it is that I expect a lot from people and am sometimes disappointed.
The wicked heart observation is not mine, nor do I think it can be laid at the door of traditional evangelicalism. There seems to me to be too much Scriptural (and theological) support for the notion that there is a universal tendency of man to sin and seek his way rather than God’s. There are many Scriptural examples contrasting peoples as well as contrasting individuals differentiating between those who served God and those who did not. The circumcision of a believer’s heart and the writing of God’s ways on it seem to me meaningless unless understood in the context that the heart is corrupt in some fashion and needs recreating in God’s image. The same could be said about the concept of a believer being translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light.
Sin is not a congenial topic these days and when it comes up it might likely be a Hollywood celebrity berating someone who drives an SUV instead of the ecofriendly vehicle he has rented to drop him off at the Academy Awards. Never mind the mindless violence or graphic sexuality of the films themselves and the role he had in making them. And if he has several children with one lover and has recently ditched her and taken another who is now also pregnant with his child, so what. Just don’t call it sin. Gasoline consumption to excess is a sin; Being a human alley cat is not. Pardon my gross overstatement to make a point.
How can Jesus love sinners and eat and drink with them if there aren’t any. How does the Church and her members minister to sinners if there are none? How does she take a stand against anything if nothing is sinful?
Having said that, I do see in the kinds of acts you describe of unbelievers a glimpse of God’s image but I don’t see in the acts themselves evidence that Jesus lives in their heart. It is sometimes hard to see that evidence in believers. I realize we can know a tree by its fruit, however, using one example among several, I balance that with St. Paul’s addresing the folks in Athens. He observed they were very religious. (had good fruit on their trees?) He noted they worshiped a god the did not know and he introduced them to the God he knew. Works of charity are wonderful and we should be grateful for them and encourage them wherever we find them. I do not see them as a substitute for knowing and serving Christ.
Your brother, your friend in Christ
Alario
mourning in the present context
I am aware of this criticism. I have made it heard several times since the early 1980s of the protestant tradition and especially of the more evangelical wings. Along with this, almost side by side has been a lot of critism of the drop in physical mourning ceremony in society. The suggestion that death is the last taboo.
Now I have just re-read for an exam an article by Ian Craib pointing out that far from death and mourning being a taboo subjects they have become one of deep discussion amongst professionals who deal with people in distress. That if you look a Foucault and his analysis of what has happened to sex in the late nineteenth century, you will see a very similar pattern happen around Death and mourning today. That is mourning for someone who has died, is becoming to be seen as requiring the intervention of the professionals, in the same way that certain sexual practises did. That is the very natural symptoms with respect to mourning of a person are interpreted more as illness that needs treatment rather than as a healing process a person goes through.
Death has always been an area where the Church has been the ‘professional’, the one who dealt with it, and the movement of other professions into this area is also a present trend. Then again death of someone close to us is less often experienced today so congregations and communities have in many ways lost the old support mechanisms.
Now mourning is not always something people do in public, it has an intensley private side to it and I am one of those who needs almost to be totally alone at times during the process. However the trend today in many ways is apart from for big dignatries (e.g.Princess Dianne), it is unacknowledged that the community will need to mourne.
I think given the above we need to think very carefully about what the situation is actually telling us. The lack of mourning on Good Friday is not an isolated incident, it is one that is taking place against a change in mourning practises in the whole of society. Mourning has moved in the Church (and I think this is all branches to some extent) from the very public setting of worship to the private one of pastoral care. This is reflecting the way society is changing. However I think that the subject of privatisation in this sense needs to be tackled and thought about.
Jengie