Spiritual Consumerism... nothing new

Maybe you already know the story of Rehoboam, Solomon's son, and Jeroboam, Rehoboam's adversary. The whole story, found in I Kings 12, has to do with who will be heir to the throne. The bottom line is that Rehoboam is given the southern kingdom, and Jeroboam the north, thus beginning the era of a divided Israel. This is arguably the birth of denominationalism, competition among God's people for territory, and the era of the personality cult.

Though J has the bulk of the land, R has the temple, and since worship in the temple is mandated, J is worried that all the people of his territory will inevitably switch loyalties as they travel south to worship in Jerusalem. So Jeroboam has a novel idead: He..."made two golden calves and he said to (his people): 'it is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem; behold your gods, O Israel, that brought you up from the land of Egypt.' He set these idols up in the northern country, thus creating the first move towards consumerizing worship. "Make it convenient and they will come."

Don't we do the same thing today? "Make it entertaining, relevant, kid-friendly, reinforcing of our already adhered to politics/theology, technologically savvy with the best web-presence... and they will come." We try to capture the 'market share' by being better, in the same way that Starbucks tries to beat Diva and Ladro. Thus do the hottest musicians, hippest preachers, and most user friendly worship formats gain market share while thus stuck in old ways shrivel and die.

There's so much to say about this that if I go into too much depth, I'll miss my snowshoeing window (it is, after all, Friday). But let me make some simple observations and then invite comment:

1. Jeroboam was truly motivated by a fear of losing market share. Any action taken that grows out from that fear, that motive, is destined to create weak saints and divide the church.

2. Fear of losing market share can also become an agressive attempt to 'take' market share, as invariably occurs in the subsequent territorial skirmishes between northern and southern kingdom. In the church business this is called, 'church splits' and 'sheep stealing'. It doesn't get any uglier.

3. On the other hand, the crux of the problem for Jeroboam seems to me to be his heart and motivation. I'm wondering, if the church I pastor were to start a satellite in order to help some people from our congregation become more missional in their own neighborhoods, and save the resources consumed by the commute, would we be consumerist or good stewards?

4. And what about our commitment to technology, or our desire to provide clean space for kids, or convenient worship times in a warm inviting space? Again, it seems that the issue is motivation. I can be motivated to build a name for myself, or motivated by a desire for people to encounter the living Christ through the testimony of His people and the power of His Word. It's possible, in fact, to be motivated by a little bit of both.

5. But surely, the goal must be that we have relinquished our addiction to praise, power, position, pay, and any other destructive p's you'd care to add to the list. I'm reminded of the scene where Ben Kenobee (sp?) of Star Wars fames, stops fighting.

When we who are the church, and we who are it's leaders stop fighting? I don't just mean that we need to stop fighting each other. I mean that we need to stop fighting for our self-preservation, believing that 'he who seeks to save his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake, will find it." This, it seems to me, is MISSION CRITICAL ("all caps" = me speaking loudly). And yet it eludes us, primarily because we have allowed ourselves to be uncritically captured by the consumerist mindset.

No Country for an Oscar...

After sitting through the Coen brother's big hit, I sat and stared for a moment at the empty screen before turning off the TV. I wanted to write a letter to the Academy saying, "You don't have to do this...", the now famous line from this Best Picture winner.

I'm looking for a shred of redemption, and found instead, nothing but greed, psychopathic and random violence, and a sense of despair and surrender on the part of the older generation of law enforcement, as they ponder the new wave of drug money and all the corollary crimes that go with it.

Acting? The script didn't ask for much of it. Music? None. Story? Forgive my bias, but it was neither hard to predict nor compelling. And so I'm left pondering the great appeal, left feeling as if some elitist cadre of experts sees something I failed to see. But if I were guessing....

I surmise that the reason for this film's appeal is precisely its lack of redemption, its random violence, its absence of justice. This is where post-modernity, in its purest forms, descends. Further, according the perceptions of many, the weight of history is pulling us inexorably downward into this pit of despair.

But for one who believes that God's law is written on the hearts of all people, and that there will forever be the possibility of redemption, reconciliation, and recovery, this film leaves me feeling hollow. Throw in the mediocre acting, predictable cinematography, and I return to my comment to the academy: "You don't have to do this..." So can you please help me understand why they did?

born again, and again, and again, and...

No, this isn't a posting about eternal security, or camp conversions that are renewed every summer in the embers of the Thursday night fire, accompanied by singing. This is a response to the conversation in the previous post, "dude, where's my stuff?" I'm intrigued by how much chatter is created around ethical topics, and how little is created around topics related to heart care (see previous post on Bible reading).

I'm increasingly convinced that we modern Christ followers have a hard time seeing either the relationship or sequencing of interior and exterior matters related to transformation. Let me explain what I mean:

Relationship of interior and exterior: Sometimes it appears that there's a giant wall between sacred and secular, between spiritual disciplines and ethics, between heart formation and the way we live, between root and blossom. Some of us are intent on living out the faith and helping (or in our uglier moments, mandating) others in their ethical choices and priorities. Thus do we talk about materialism, earth stewardship, caring for the poor, justice issues, and sexual ethics. Others have priorities that are more centered on developing a rich interior life through the nurture of silence, solitude, prayer. But too often, these interior and exterior elements are seen as unrelated, and so it becomes possible to have a 'rich devotional life' but remain outwardly unchanged. Or the reverse can be true: deep commitment to ethics, while the soul grows barren.

It's vital that we see the symbiotic relationship of these two matters, because the truth is that each needs to the other if there's to be life. Devotional life, Bible reading, silence, and all the rest of our interior matters become nothing more than self indulgence if they don't lead to a change in the way we actually live. And any attempts to change the exterior without the needed interior fortification will result in glaring, gaping holes in our lives.

As a pastor committed to soul care, both for myself and others, I'm looking for an ecology of the heart that sees the interior and exterior as an ecosystem; symbiotic, interdependent. Like any ecosystem, life is unsustainable unless the parts are feeding each other to create the whole.

How about you? Are you more likely to focus on ethics, or soul care? Exterior or Interior? I'm trying to name my own tendencies so that, this spring, I can bring things back into balance, after a very busy winter. Hopefully the balance will lead to nutritious soil, the planting of the word, and the blossoming and bearing of fruit in my home, neighborhood, church, and beyond.

New Bible reading

I don't know how you do it. I don't even know if you do it. But if you do it, you need to discern whether, for you, routine is a friend or an enemy, or a little bit of both. I'm talking, of course, about Bible reading.

Bible reading has fallen on hard times in America, and in American churches. Awash though we are in Bibles, and claim though we do to be Christians (at least on overwhelming majority of us), we are ignorant of the Bible.

It's time for we who know Christ to recover, or begin, the habit of encountering God through the scriptures, because it's by absorbing God's glory and responding to God's revelation that we're transformed, and thus able to increasingly fulfill the purpose for which we were created. Our purpose, of course, is to make the invisible God visible, by manifesting increasing doses of mercy, truth telling, humility, forgiveness, courage, justice, beauty and more in our world. God will express these things uniquely through each of us, but the means by which He will shape us is the same. We're shaped in response to revelation. Thus, if I'm ignoring God's revelation, I'm cutting myself off from the means of transformation. What's more, I'm choosing instead to be shaped by other forces, since the reality is that none of us are autonomous agents shaping ourselves.

For me, I need both routine in variety. I need routine in setting a time of day to receive from God through the Bible. For me this is morning, before the day is swallowed by activity. I can manage to squeeze other things into my life in the margins - exercise, eating, reading, even blogging. But if I miss the appointed time for reading, it's rare that I catch it later in the day. So I try to make it an appointment.

But I need variety in how I digest the Bible. I've been in a period of doing daily readings out of the Celtic Daily Prayer book, a marvelous little work that exposes one to Old and New testaments around a theme each day. But I'm missing the continuity of a larger story, and feeling the need to fortify myself in preparation for some summer teaching, so for the next little while, I'll be reading through I and II Kings, and Romans.

This morning, in I Kings 1, I was struck by the discord among God's children over who would be David's successor to the throne. God's people fighting over positions of power? You've never heard of that, have you? This story reminds me of how easily our own needs for security, or meaning, or power, or intimacy, or ________ (fill in the blank with your own story) can create in us a demanding posture, rather than a submissive one. "I will be king, God's will be dammed!" was the attitude of Adonijah.

Only he wouldn't say it that way, which is too bad, because had he done so it would have been much more honest, and easier to see the deception. Instead he hired priests to offer sacrifices, so as to 'bless and sanctify' his rebellion. It's always this mixture of our lust with God words, worship songs, offerings, and prayers that create the problem. The mixture confuses us. And the reason for this is because we can't really know the heart of Adonijah, at least not on the surface of things. He appears to be following God. So do many cult leaders. He offers 'killer' worship services (with all the sacrfices being offered, this is intended to be a pun). But beneath it all is rebellion born from insecurity.

I'm reminded this morning to open my hands, to quit grasping or clinging to power, authority, position, vocation, geography, or any other thing. It's much simpler to rest and let God run the show. But to do so, I need to trust that God will take care of me, a lesson I learn well by, of all things, reading the Bible regularly.

Dude... where's my stuff?

Sure. You might find some points with which you disagree when you watch this (it takes 20 minutes to watch). But I hope you'll watch it with an open mind and consider the possibility that, in fact, the way we're living is unsustainable, and that as those charged to care for the earth, we who follow Christ should be at the forefront of both generous care for those most effected and marginalized by the the global consumer economy, and at the forefront of addressing the systemic changes that are needed to care for both the earth and one another.

That Bush has set a deadline of 2025 for 'halting the increase' of carbon emissions; that he's offered no specific, mandated way of doing so, and that he's making the entire goal voluntary, are revelatory of our president's failure to adequately address the realities of just how broken the system is. Most newspapers, conservative or liberal, have decried the proposal as lacking.

Watch the film. Let me know what you think. If twenty of you locals leave comments indicating a desire to view this as a community, I'll buy the DVD and we can watch it together. Maybe our wilderness ministry can help me host it. Maybe we can start addressing some of these things not only as individual families, but as churches.

Doubt: the play - Doubt: the reason

My wife and I were privileged to see the current running through Taproot Theater, a local group here in Seattle. The play is Doubt, by John Patrick Shanley, a provocative parable having to do with how we 'know'. Both the script and acting are remarkable, so that the theme of 'doubt' becomes the viewer's experience, as they're transported alternately, between alternating perceptions of reality with respect to a certain situation.

Then, having watched the play, I hope you'll ponder the basis upon which we believe anything, whether it be the guilt of an alleged criminal, the veracity of an airplane's safety, or the remarkable claim that Jesus was God and rose from the dead. It seems that in every case the issue is the same: We believe based on a blend of trustworthy revelation and faith. This, it seems is true for all kinds of believing, and is true for all people. No person believes only on the basis of verifiable revelation, because to do so would lead to too much paralysis. For example, you don't really KNOW, by verifiable revelation, that your brakes won't fail on your car tonight. You've lots of evidence to the contrary, but you don't KNOW. There's an element of faith in it.

At the other end of the spectrum, if someone boldly proclaims that tomorrow's stock market will lose 500 points, the reality is that to believe the claim would require almost pure faith, and no revelation (I know there are exceptions, related to overseas markets, but work with me here). You really need more revelation, otherwise your faith is foolish.

Between the skepticism of demanding pure revelation, and the naivety of exercising pure faith, the vast majority of people navigate their way with a combination of the two. This combination varies, both from person to person (Thomas wants more revelation than John) and situation to situation. We trust what our spouse says, more than the salesperson, and so require less 'faith' because we consider the evidence to be of high value. We trust the law of aerodynamics, perhaps more than the claims of authorship for Genesis, because the former is testable, repeatable, the latter not. Thus, with respect to the latter, I'll need either more sources of revelation, or more faith.

What the play has me pondering is this: Is my unique process of getting to 'belief' the same for all matters? As I ponder this, I think I realize that I'm always looking for 'enough' revelation to make the leap of faith, but that I'm willing to make a longer leap for some things rather than others. The play seems to posit that perhaps if we want to believe something, we'll be willing to take a huge leap, whereas if we're not attracted to a truth, we'll avoid the leap, even if it's only an inch. Thus, it seems, we might - all of us, be accused of creating our own reality, or to put it another way, of making god in our own image. What's intriguing though, is the discovery that this danger of shape shifting reality to fit my predispositions isn't the sole territory of either left or right, scientist or pastor, skeptic or faith healer. We all bring bias to the table - finding it, naming it, and pushing back against it becomes the tricky part.

That a play would send my mind down this road means I was more than entertained, though that would have been enough. I was challenged to think through my reasons for believing, an exercise that is always a good thing.

I was hungry and you fed me...

This simple word of Jesus may just become the defining challenge of the next decade. Throughout the world, front page news during the past week has been addressing the growing global food shortage. It's a problem that has been created by the perfect storm of erratic climate changes and drought, rising energy prices, and the growing prosperity of the working class in both India and China. This growing middle class is aspiring, of course, to live like Americans. After all, when we harvested cheap labor overseas, we did so with the promise that their increased prosperity would result in increased purchasing power.

This has resulted in nearly two billion people seeking to eat higher up on the food chain, so that lands previously given over to grains for human consumption are now directly or indirectly being used for the raising of animal protein. Add to this a further removal of grain acres, now given over to the raising of ethanol, and you can see that there's just not as much rice as there once was. All this has let to basic agricultural commodities rising in price between 40 and 300 percent over the past year.

Even a small rise in prices has the effect of pushing countless families over the edge, into starvation. According to several sources, the roots the problem go deeper than just the issues articulated above. There are more fundamental systemic issues that need to be addressed:

1. industrial farming, for all it's promises offered at the inauguration of the Green Revolution back in 1975, has failed to deliver on it's promises to end world hunger. Though production has risen temporarily, the rise has been based on an addiction to a petroleum based agricultural economy, unsustainable over the long haul.

2. The Green Revolution consolidated land holdings in the hands of a few farmers or companies, withholding economic aid to small family farmers. This has resulted in a loss of efficiency as single crops now dominate large swaths of the landscape, depleting the soil, and demaning ever increasing chemical assistance to maintain levels of production.

3. Food now travels great distances for consumption as well. This has the effect, in poor countries, of favoring the growth of expensive export crops, creating shortages of basic nutrients in the home country. Countless examples of this are offered in Reclaiming America, by Richard Austin, out of print now I believe, but available if you try hard (and in our church library).

Austin says it well: "Our food donations may keep some starving people alive, but our policies do not help them to provide for themselves. We may show mercy at times of crisis, but we aboid the truth of why people starve."

What is needed is a deep economic policy shift, as spoken of here. Perhaps we need to be honest enough to confess that a purely unrestricted free market economy might fall short of garnering support because the policy changes that are needed will necessarily lead the wealthy of the world to embrace some measures of expense, inconvenience and sacrifice. And yet, the crossroads at which we stand is not economic only. It is moral. And if Jesus has anything to say about it, it is spiritual as well. What's needed:

1) an assessment of our lifestyles...
2) a discussion among Christians about the systemic roots of global hunger
3) commitment to concrete changes - both individual and collective