a tomato

It’s finals this week, and it has been a very very hard finals for me. The papers and exams aren’t really more difficult, I’m just lacking the motivation and energy to get through them well. Everything in me just wants to rest. To have some fun. To step away from the laptop screen and spend time with my husband, neighbors, friends, and church community. There is something so twisted about the imbalance and stress of finals as part of preparation for ministry. I get the need to spend time studying to learn, and I embrace it. Finals just seems like a time to pursue all that is wrong with the world. Competing with others in performance. Being successful and smart by the standards of the world. Severing ties with family, friends, and community for an individualistic goal. That may be an overstatement, but every finals week those thoughts gnaw on me.

But today I came home from a long hard exam. And there was one red tomato. I don’t know when it turned red. It wasn’t there a few days ago. But there it was. The first little red tomato.

The neighbors in my building got together and we planted tomatoes, herbs, and other good things a few weeks ago. And today our first tomato was red.

Water, sun, some dirt, and the plan of a tiny seed… a few weeks later there is a tomato.

There is rebirth. There is new life. There is the awe and wonder and miraculous.

There is a tomato. There is hope.

consumerism (2)

We are a nation of over-consumers. We are caught up in the story of the American Dream, the story advertisers tell us about happiness found at the other end of a purchase… where a good job, a nice house, a new car, and the ability to buy what we want will give us fulfillment.

Our primary American identity is found in our consumption. We are consumers, first and foremost. Our economy depends on people constantly wanting and buying more. We have to keep things growing or we are in recession, and the world comes crashing down around us. So people have to get on board with our national plan of economic growth. We need people to go shopping. Anything else is just unpatriotic.

Heck, what was the first thing President Bush told us to do after 9/11?

Go shopping.

“Get down to Disney World in Florida”

Advertising helps create the desire for more stuff, shaping us into habitual consumers, into addicts, to keep the economy growing. Aaron Freeman said on NPR, “Consumer culture makes us constantly aware of what we do not have.” We confuse what we want with what we need, believing we cannot manage without a certain product that should rightfully be called a luxury. We have become a nation built on consumerism, and our own identity has become shaped by it.

The church has another story to tell, and another identity to claim. It is a story of Jesus and the coming kingdom of God, where fulfillment is not found in our stuff, and where we live as faithful stewards of God’s creation. The church is called to live out this new story, conscious yet critical of the saturating consumerism we live in, acting as a prophetic witness of another way of living in the world.

consumerism (1)

I haven’t blogged in a long time. A really long time. It seems that since this quarter got started I’ve always been two steps behind, and whatever time I have had, I decided to spend with my husband, neighbors, and community. So the blog got put on the back-burner. Plus, when you find yourself writing papers all day, writing a blog in your down time isn’t as appealing. For something I wrote recently, you can check out a post I wrote yesterday on the “good news” over at JR Woodwards blog (that’s my pastor).

But for now I’m working on a paper and presentation for a class on Christianity and consumerism. And I thought I’d share a few odds and ends with you as I come across them the next few days. I haven’t written my paper yet, so these are just things I’m exploring, and maybe worth your consideration.

For some reason we have a hard time as Christians in America coming up with an ethic of consuming. It shouldn’t be a surprise, though. We aren’t very good about talking about money. The money sermons scare people off (some of them rightfully so), we don’t like talking about how much we make, how much we have, and most of all we probably don’t like talking about how much we spend. I’m guessing the reason we don’t talk about money at church is because (1) we all have our own ethic for how we make, spend, and save our money, and we are afraid of saying something about money that may offend our neighbor, and (2) we all feel a little guilty about money and don’t want to bring it up because we know we might be convicted to do something about it.

Because we don’t discuss consumerism, we fail to come up with a communal ethic of how to live as Christ followers in our overly consumeristic world. We are all left to figure things out on our own, leading many of us to simply adopt the consumeristic practices of our culture. There is no voice telling us another way is possible. There is no discussion of how Jesus may show a new way to live in our world. There is no community working together to actually live in a countercultural way.

Now, this is a sweeping negative judgment on the church. I know for a fact that there are pockets throughout the American church that are discussing money and consumerism and seeking radical new ways of living. There are churches and small groups and networks and blogs and communities of friends all wrestling with this stuff. I’ve been blessed enough to be part of some of them. But I feel like for all the time Jesus spent talking about money in the gospels, and all the advertisements we are bombarded with every day, this topic just doesn’t get talked about enough.

The great obstacle is simply this: the conviction that we cannot change because we are dependent upon what is wrong. But that is the addict’s excuse, and we know that it will not do. -Wendell Berry

I love this Wendell Berry quote. We cannot avoid talking about money and consumerism because we are dependent upon consuming in America. Some in the church need to be a prophetic voice on this topic, so that the church can be a prophetic witness within our culture that another way is possible.

part of something bigger

It’s always a weird experience for me when someone “pegs” you as something and they happen to be dead-on. Now I hate being labeled (go figure) but sometimes you just find your self in the middle of a movement. And I think Mark Sayers got me right-on:

Neo-Anabaptists: Some have called this movement the new monastics, which is quite a helpful term, but I think that a more accurate description would be Neo-Anabaptists, as this group is shaped by the ethos of the Anabaptist movement. This movement tends to be pacifist, favours incarnational living amongst the urban poor, and has a strong distrust of power, sees contemporary Western Culture and Society as being controlled by “Empire” and thus favours an approach of prophetic action by small grassroots Christian communities.I would also place in this group the growing Christian-Anarchist movement in Australia and New Zealand. This group tends also to be strongly influenced by the Catholic Worker Movement started by Dorothy Day. A key leader in this movement would be Shane Claibourne.

change or be changed

But we must begin b giving up any idea that we can bring about these healings without fundamental changes in the way we think and live. We face a choice that is starkly simple: we must change or be changed. If we fail to change for the better, then we will be changed for the worse. -”Sex, Economy, Freedom, & Community” by Wendell Berry

broken hearted

Kids are going without any water to drink in Kenya.

And I’m worried about finals.

unembraced.blogspot.com

unembraced.org

Everyday Heresies

Over at Scot McKnight’s blog, this question was posted:

Scot, what are the “everyday heresies” the church embraces and/or espouses? Any insight? Wondering if complacency, consumerism, and the outsourcing of parental responsibility are more harmful than doctrinal irregularities or inconsistencies.

There were a lot of comments on the post attempting to answer the question. Since so many of them are worth pondering, I wanted to list some of my favorite responses:

• the idolatry of busyness, the choice to let our schedules, our lives, and our finances to get out of control so we can stay on the treadmill of keeping up
• he idea that it is possible to be an effective Christian outside of intentional involvement in and commitment to the ecclesial community of the body of Christ (the church)
• our disconnect between orthodoxy (right beliefs) and orthopraxy (right practice)
• It’s the paid staff’s job to do all the work. We pay your salary, we receive your services
• the sacred/secular split and the idea that our daily work is purely instrumental to other ends
• the dangerous assumption that if others do not understand the complexities of Christian doctrine as we do, then they are not fully Christian
• he’s our pastor, so anyone who criticizes or questions him is being used by Satan to divide us
• unquestioning allegiance to “the American dream”
• people thinking that what really matter is the “spiritual” over and above the “physical”
• the ideas that salvation is a matter of “accepting Jesus Christ as my personal Savior,” that it hinges on a discrete moment in time, and that salvation is synonymous with “going to heaven when I die”
• the idea that the Bible is like a Magic 8-Ball with facile prooftext answers for every question
• nationalism “baptized” with Christianity

These are all probably worth thinking about. The worst thing is that I am probably carrying around many ‘everyday heresies’ without even knowing it. Perhaps that is why a faith community is so important- a community of people that trust each other enough to call out these heresies while searching for truth together.

I would add my own ‘everyday heresies’: not questioning our addiction to consumerism, keeping our spending of money in the private realm and not discussing it communally much less seeing our resources communally, and letting Capitalism seep into every facet of the church

Please see the blog post for the sources of all the above responses

ash wednesday

Growing up my family would go to our Catholic Church on Ash Wednesdays. Like Christmas and Good Friday, Ash Wednesday was a non-Sunday church day that we always attended, no questions asked. It also marked the beginning of the season when I gave up chocolate or sweets, and tried to remember not to eat meat on Fridays.

I don’t think I ever got Ash Wednesday. For me it meant Palm Sunday was coming up soon (and we got our own palms at church that Sunday, which as a kid, was pretty cool). It also meant I got ashes on my forehead, which I spent the rest of the day wanting to wash off but thinking that for some reason they were sacred and I probably shouldn’t just wipe them away with some soapy bubbles.

I have realized some things since those days, and Ash Wednesday has taken on new meaning. Today marks the beginning of the Lenten season when we join in the story of Christ as he journey’s towards the cross. We fast because we join in Jesus’ forty days of fasting. We reflect upon Jesus’ last days in Scripture during this season, preparing for holy week and Easter. We may even participate in more low-key worship services to reflect the somber journey towards death.

Often Lent can turn into a time for “new years resolutions”. The time to start new habits or give up old vices and “turn things around”. I have found so often that I try to make change in my own life by trying really really hard. But that rarely works. I get frustrated, I let myself down, and change doesn’t really happen.

Instead, make Lent a season of surrender. It’s a season to give up. To stop struggling. And to surrender to God. Christ surrendered himself upon the cross, and in this season, we can also surrender ourselves to God and to others. This is when change really happens. When new insight comes. When it seems we draw near to God. When we give ourselves up to God in surrender of our own will. As Jesus prayed in Gethsemane:

And going a littler farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want” -Matthew 26:39

One helpful resource may be this guide from Mustard Seed Associates.

getting picky

I wonder as you get older if it gets harder to make friends. Not just buddies or people you hang out with, but really close friends. Growing up my parents were never “friends” people. They had old family friends, friends from college, friends that stood up in their wedding, and they would get together every once in a while, but this seemed few and far between. (Sorry if you ever read this, mom and dad!) As an adolescent, this mortified me. I spent as much time as possible out of the house hanging out with my group of friends, and when I was home, I was probably on the phone or chatting on then-novel AIM. Were my parents losers or was it inevitable that you just spent less time with friends as you got older? Do you just lose the ambition to make friends and settle into life with your significant other? Or was it just my parents?

I’ve since met plenty of people my parents age and older with busy social lives, and have come to understand some people are just not naturally as social. They enjoy friends, but they also enjoy a quiet night at home. But I do think I may have been on to something.

It seems as you get older you start making your mind up about more things. Political beliefs, religious beliefs, living standards, principles, values…. And as good as it is to become an individuated and educated adult with a formed perspective on the world, these things can divide. It’s always easiest to become friends with people who are very similar to who you are, but the older you get, the more specific “you” are. And therefore the harder it may be to be friends with everyone.

This quarter I’ve been studying American Church History. This topic is almost entirely new to me, and as someone without strong denominational affiliations, things can seem foreign. But, like friendship, it seems like the church inevitably becomes more and more picky over time. They make up more decisions about what the church should look like and what theology is correct. Church polity, theology, and practice all become divisive. Things I couldn’t care less about have caused rifts in denominations. Old School verses New School. Congregational polity verses Episcopal polity. Calvinism verses Arminianism. Infant verses believers baptism. The list goes on and on. And there seems to be some sort of push to decide. Like picking a side on all these dividing debates somehow makes you more theologically mature. I may not have an opinion on which one is right, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t learned my theology… it just means I don’t think that making that decision really makes any difference. (Hopefully none of my professors will ever read this either.)

So, I have made a decision to try to be more generous, both in my theology and in my friendships. I will inevitably continue to make decisions about what I think is the right way to live and the right theology, but hopefully my relationships will broaden instead of narrow. Hopefully I can pursue friendships with those radically different than me, and not let different values or ideas get in the way of making a very real connection. And hopefully as I continue my theological education, I can come to a deep appreciation of many traditions and viewpoints, even as a more fully form my own.

telling stories

Our canvas (church small-group) has picked up a discipline that it practiced for a while before I joined… telling stories. The past few weeks we have devoted our group time to letting new(er) members of the community (including myself) share their stories. Each time we gathered we shared a meal and then circled all 18 of us around in the living room to hear someone share their life’s story for an hour. followed by some questions, of course. Although already a tight community, this practice seems to have brought us closer.

Although tellings stories have probably been part of every culture, we seem to be going through a shift from propositional statements to stories being the bearer of truth. “Where are you from? What do you do? Where’d you go to school? Where do you live?” These questions can only give a glimpse at a person’s true self, and can often be deceiving. But to sit down and ask someone to tell you their story means so much more. It’s authentic, real, intimate. It tells of a journey and shows a life trajectory. It captures shaping moments and the greatest trials. It’s not only who someone is but who someone has been. It’s the difference between examining a bowl and watching it be made from clay and glaze. The process of forming ourselves matters. It makes us who we are. And in telling our stories, the full picture comes into view. Listeners can place themselves in the story of the other. They can understand where they fit in their lives.

Telling our story in community somehow breaks down barriers between people. It fosters honesty. It plants friendships. And most importantly, it weaves the individual’s story into the story of the greater community. So now, when I am in community with you, and you have told your story, your story becomes part of my greater story. They begin to weave together into some greater tale.

And hopefully, the end goal is to weave the communal story, with all the individual’s stories, together with the greater story of what God has done, is doing, and is going to do. Our communal stories join the over-arching story of the Bible and become part of something even bigger.

“Just as scientific theories are partially judged by the fruitfulness of the activities they generate, so narratives can and should be judged by the richness of the moral character and activity they generate.” – Stanley Hauerwas