Thoughts and Ruminations

If you know me (really really know me), you’d know I tend towards cynicism with the church in general, because so often we have lost our way and done (and continue to do) some really twisted things that makes criticism and charges of hypocrisy completely legitimate. But I harbor small strands of hope that find examples of a compelling and different lifestyle from time to time, and it helps to share them.

This specific example comes from a fellow well known in Church of the Brethren circles named John Kline. This man was a powerful example of Christian discipleship whose life was lived amidst the struggles of moral ambiguity in slavery and the Civil War. Kline maintained that slavery was wholly immoral and gave his life equally for slaves and the white folk who owned them, while also rejecting the enormous pressure exerted by both the Unionists and Confederates during the Civil War to join ranks with either side. He lived in Broadway and was shaped profoundly by Linville Creek Church there to live a life of radical love and discipleship; when you consider the lives of folks who emerged as leaders from there (M.R. Zigler and others), the place was a seedbed in the 19th and early 20th centuries for revolutionary commitment to Christ.

The quote I’m about to write becomes even more deeply meaningful when the reality that John Kline was murdered by a Confederate hit squad becomes apparent. I found this quote in a history book;

It may be that the sin of holding three millions of human beings under the galling yoke of involuntary servitude has, like the bondage of Israel in Egypt, sent a cry to heaven for Vengeance, a cry that has now reached the ear of God. I bow my head in prayer…secession means war, and war means tears and ashes and blood. It means bonds and imprisonments and perhaps even death to many in our Brotherhood (Brethren church), who I have the confidence to believe will die rather than disobey God by taking arms.
– John Kline 1861

It’s encouraging to me to find lives like Kline’s. He knew slavery was a moral outrage, but that violent means to resolve that outrage was not consistent with a lifestyle of following Jesus. He was a product of a community in the Old German Baptist Brethren that drafted a statement in 1797 that “It was considered good, and also concluded unanimously, that no brother or sister should have negroes as slaves; and in case a brother or sister had such, he or she was to set them free.” Not only that, but the full proclamation was made in 1835 that African-Americans should be fully included in church membership if they so desired; as equals!

These sorts of actions were wildly unpopular and caused these folks to be boycotted and harassed by their fellow citizens, but they stood their ground and exemplified in word and deed a lifestyle radically different than those around them; including other Christians who justified holding other human beings as property. Examples like this should help us understand people like Stanley Hauerwas, who said,

“Christianity is not beliefs about God plus behavior. We are Christians not because of what we believe, but because we have been called to be disciples of Jesus. To become a disciple is not a matter of a new or changed self-understanding, but rather to become part of a different community with a different set of practices.“

That quote, from a superb, convicting article called “Discipleship as Craft, Church as Disciplined Community,” illustrates that the communities we are a part of have the power to deeply shape our lifestyles, and if we are to claim to be Christians, we have two levels of submission to go through before we assert our individuality; the first, to Christ as Lord (which fundamentally dethrones any other who would claim to be Lord), and the second, to the church as the community Jesus set up. After that, and only after that, can we recognize our individual contribution as members living in submission. And even in that, we submit to those who have walked the path of discipleship longer than we, committing to sit, listen, and learn from them before we dare to even open our mouths and suggest we know a thing. This is unpopular, and it gets tricky when and if one’s primary community loses its foundation as a disciplined community of followers of Jesus, but we should err on the side of community rather than individuality.

For others seeking to go deeper and more consistent in their commitment to Christ, I’ve been sitting on a great resource for over a year now and I thought I’d mention it. It’s called the Daily Lectionary, and just systematically provides the reader with a Morning Psalm, an Old Testament passage, a gospel passage, a “letter” passage, and an Evening Psalm. I’ve especially found a heck of a lot of truth and beauty and rawness and room for all ranges of emotions in the Psalms as I’ve seen them each day.

If you’re like me, frustrated at my lack of Biblical knowledge and knowing that I am responsible to take care of that problem through my own commitment and discipline, feel free to use this resource. Again, it’s the Daily Lectionary.

“I am certain that many frustrations pastors feel come from a lack of discipline. Not only can regular devotional life and serious Bible study easily go by the wayside, but days can be frittered away fiddling on the insignificant and the little nothings. Without a pattern and discipline of meditation and prayer, study, sermon preparation, visitation, and relaxation the minister will accomplish little and become shallow and sluggish.”
- John Drescher.

Maybe this quote means little to you after reading it, sort of light and airy, fluffy and meaningless like a vast majority of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s flaky quote-writing (Hitch your wagon to a star…). But this quote carries meaning for me because this simple, humble man came to my seminary last year and through a simple, humble message tore me from limb to limb inside. I promise I’m not exaggerating this. His 45 minutes in my life was the most hard 45 minutes I’ve ever experienced.

Why? He loved God. He knew God. His presence that day was not unlike Gandalf in the beginning of the Fellowship of the Ring, when he had to use that shadow trick with the booming voice to get Bilbo to give up the ring…but much less scary. There are very few people I’ve had the benefit of being exposed to in my life who have carried the presence Drescher carried. A presence cultivated through simple, pure (as pure as possible) commitment to Jesus. Not complex at all, but most folks don’t have the stones to discipline their lives to structure them around the pursuit of God consistently. I’d put myself in that category at this point. Time will tell if I emerge to embrace and pursue this discipline.

Time will tell.

I’ve been flipping through a book by a guy named Erwin Raphael McManus here recently…either considering it for the youth gathering in my church community, or something that could be used for small groups in the future, and I’ve been struck by the passion with which McManus talks about life in Christ. As I’ve considered some of Erwin’s points of emphasis, I had a conversation with a great guy for an hour at seminary today, and over the course of our discussion, we talked about the goals most churches set for our lives, and how they live up to the dreams God has for our lives.

To sum up the conversation, we agreed the goals we’ve received from our church communities are woefully inadequate. Tell me if I’m painting with too broad of a brush here, but here are a few of the goals churches seem to set up more than most:

1) Don’t drink
2) Don’t smoke
3) Have a good solid moral foundation
4) Give your money to worthy causes

First, those goals aren’t even Biblical, and second, I am convinced that the church is dying on the vine in America today because we have defined the goals of our existence in this passive, empty, institutionalized, fashion. God is essentially a means to an end; if he “blesses” me with a consistent middle-class lifestyle that allows me to drive an SUV, have a good job, a wife, and a couple kids, I’ll “follow” Him. If I struggle, God doesn’t answer my every whim, and life actually throws a couple curveballs, I’m packing it in; screw God and the church. One of my friends calls this god (small case because it’s a false god) the MTD god (obvious parallel in negative connotation to STDs).

M=moralistic (all that hubbub over the Ten Commandments in Alabama and/or schools across the nation)
T= therapeutic (welcome to Joel Osteen’s world)
D= deistic (God wound up the universe like a toy and stepped away from it till the very end)

This is the god of America. Newsflash: it’s not the God of history.

My thoughts:
1. We need to recover the reality that committing ourselves to following Christ is a starting point, not the finish line. This decision is the beginning of a whole new world to be explored, a race to be run.
2. Being a Christian is not a matter of “God being in my life,” or “Jesus is my personal Lord and Savior.” Those are modern phrases, not Biblical truths. We choose to fundamentally submit our lives to the plans and desires of God because of gratitude for what God has delivered us from: ultimate death. It’s not a case of God coming to us because we deserve it; God initiates the love relationship purely out of His goodness…it’s us getting the reality that we are desperately in need of truth and life into our tough-to-crack heads and pride. We choose to follow God because this pursuit is the fundamental longing of our hearts. And in this turning in of the old way for the sake of the new, better way, there will be pain.
3. God is not a means to an end. God is the end. Worship should be God-centered; the witness of our words and lives should be God-centered.
4. As followers of Christ, we need to commit ourselves to local communities and ride out the storms of disagreement and conflict that are natural to our humanity for the sake of true community, true accountability, and growth. We cannot truly challenge each other if we aren’t truly committed to helping one another grow.
5. God doesn’t expect faithfulness from us based on the bottom line as defined by our society. It seems to me society has two driving, defining motivations. The first is self-preservation. Everything’s cool as long as everything’s good in my life; if your quality of life gets in the way of mine, however, you’re up a creek without a paddle. Especially if my weaponry outranks yours. Many a conflict or war has been started with bluff and bluster from friction experienced from competing desires and miffed individuals. The second is financial security. If you feel like God is asking you to step out in faithfulness in your life in a way that will potentially badly harm your portfolio and/or cause you to drive a smaller car or get a smaller house, it’s clearly not God talking. Call me crazy, but Jesus addresses both of those driving motivations head-on. Neither should be close enough to even sniff at our willingness to surrender all for God and life in God’s kingdom. Now THAT’S big love and big commitment.
6. Following Christ is about passion…here’s a quote from McManus that struck a chord in me.

“When I was fifteen, I was a coward. In my heart, I longed to do great things. I was a tragedy of dreams not only unfulfilled, but unattempted. I was living proof that without courage you will never live the life you dream of. I realize now I was running from the shadows. Like a child afraid of the dark, I was afraid of what I could not see…dream great dreams and have the courage to live them. If your dreams don’t terrify you, trash them and begin again…it is only here that you will turn to (and depend on ) God who creates us to dream and ask Him for the courage required.”
from Uprising

We see neat little pithy quotes all over the place in life like, “Hitch your wagon to a star,” “The only way to have a friend is to be one,” or “Finish each day and be done with it; you have done only what you could,” and they leave us nice and fuzzy but never take us anywhere; never spur us towards transformation because there’s no drive. But as McManus suggests, God has dreams and desires for our lives that can take place when you and I make the decision not only to desire transformation and dream dreams in the Way of Christ, but to have the courage and the will to carry out this calling. I’m praying and endeavoring to see my life speak in such a manner; that others would see me as one never satisfied with where I’m at; one whose life is offered in complete service to Christ.

Hold me accountable, if you would. You and I need the opportunity of challenge, the pain of falling short, and the willingness to keep running. We are dependent on God, for whom we have been created to pursue.

I’ve been perusing the blog of the pastor of an emerging community in Portland, OR recently, and I came across this interesting nugget he’s wrestling with…

He writes,
“Practicing the Disciplines is a sign of Spiritual IMmaturity…
Scot McKnight got me thinking… Those who say every follower of Jesus should be practicing the spiritual disciplines (things like fasting, prayer, meditation, giving, etc) as a matter of course are wrong. They are not a requirement. The are not a sign of spiritual maturity. In fact, in a real way, practicing the disciplines is a sign of spiritual immaturity.

The spiritual disciplines are unnecessary if you love God and love your neighbor. The problem is…none of us do that as we should… “

Read the rest here

What do you think?

I must say that I agree with Bob, but I’m not sure what practical purpose this serves for you and I as we hunger for more of God in our lives. Bob, it seems to me, makes sure to keep the goal for the disciplines fundamentally in our submission to Christ and an admission of our spiritual poverty without him, but the question I have for Bob is this: When will we ever love God or our neighbor with perfect love? Clearly the implication in his post is that we won’t…so it comes down to the reality that in practicing the spiritual disciplines we should be rigorous in reminding ourselves of the goal of our actions. Righteousness should be our goal, but lording that “righteousness” over others reduces it to nothing. We have received our reward from presenting the image that we are righteous. Jesus clearly reminded us that when we pray, we should not act like the “hypocrites, who love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men…(instead) go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father…who sees what is done in secret.” (Matt 6:5)

In principle, Bob’s made a pretty good point. But practically speaking, in the context of the greater church that places little to no emphasis on discipleship and growth as essential aspects of the Christian life (at least here in America), he’s lowering the goalposts for what God is calling us to. I suspect (and the first few comments I’ve seen on the blog are starting to confirm this) that many will see this as a good reason not to put themselves through the suffering of the disciplines for the freedom on the other side, but rather toss out the baby with the bathwater. Hence the fellow that mentioned that his “arse” was sore from Dallas Willard.

Are we willing to take the hard steps of discipleship and hold one another to a higher standard in the body of Christ? Or in our thinking do we validate people’s natural inclination to be lackadaisical in their lifestyles because they’re “in”? In Bob’s context, he’s clearly devoted to a lifestyle of discipleship…I just hope as a leader in the church he continues to walk the path of the pursuit of righteousness and hold others to that same (healthy) standard. Not meaning to quibble over details…just some thoughts.

I’m sitting in here in the seminary on a Friday night dealing with several large questions and frustrations looming in my head:
1) I am continually frustrated by my lack of motivation and unwillingness to even make rudimentary steps towards discipline in my life. Why must I struggle so much?
2) (Related to #1) I just spent last night talking with some good friends of mine about a man named Jonathan Edwards, who shared what I consider to be a nasty, convicting truth: those whose faith is weak spend their lives immersed in “woulds.” Por ejemplo, “I would like to,” or “I should,” or “I really do need to,” without doing jack squat practically speaking to get to that point.

I find some disturbing elements of this in my life, and that causes me to be a bit upset about the direction my life could potentially turn. Whereas I recognize the providence and grace God extends to me as his child, I cannot deny that Jesus reminded us that in order to be seen as his disciples, we must “pick up our crosses daily and follow him.” In short, stop the whining and decide to be a disciple! I find it nearly impossible at this point in my life to walk the middle road between cheap grace and rigid legalism, and it makes me sick to my stomach because my walk seems to be more about cheap grace than anything else. I talk about “intimacy with God” when I’m not living it out…I place extraordinary emphasis on the redemptive acts of God throughout all of human history and the beauty of what it means to enter into a relationship with him that is meant to transform us, our priorities, the way we interact with others: and yet I don’t see that transformation happening in my life. Maybe I’m just impatient, and I’m supposed to stop slamming my head against the wall and be still. Or maybe I’m allowing myself to slip into some surface Christianity: some feel-good, say-the-right-things-while-I’m-broken-inside-and-too- afraid-to-let-others-in-on-my-hurt twisted spirituality. I’m just so sick and tired of going through the motions in life like I have been over the past several weeks…well, two months. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God…have mercy on me. When my inner life, my motivations, and my driving ambitions deny you. Have mercy on me. I’m frustrated tonight…stream of consciousness writing works best sometimes.