Inversion continued…

Read on to follow the thoughts of a friend, theologian, family man, and pastor as he wrestles with Jesus’ example and what it might mean to live a just life.

Inversion Part III
So, how do we begin to do anything at all about all of this? We fail into two camps in the church. If on the one hand, we underwhelm people with both (a) theology and (b) information pointing people in the direction of attending to “the least of these,” we will cause a sort of inertia. If, on the other hand, both our theology and our information are rich, we may overwhelm people into that same inertia because we have failed to articulate clear pathways into beginning to move forward in the downward motion that is the call of Jesus.

Popular evangelicalism by and large fell into the former camp. For the most part the supervening narrative of Scripture as articulated in that tradition was one of personal salvation resulting in some kind of private blessedness in this life, and if not in this life, then certainly in the next, as the elect were whisked away a new private blessedness, a disembodied one, in the sweet by and by while God went about destroying the world he had made, reversing his decree in Genesis by saying not, “It is good and I am going to get it back,” but, “It is irremedial.” In many ways it was not the gospel. It was a co-opting of the gospel by the American dream … and because the overarching narrative of Scripture (as it was perceived) was what it was, there simply was not much room for a total ecclesial commitment to lifting the downcast.

And even where there was such a commitment, there was a linguistic-theological disconnect between the radicalness of the deed done and the place it was said to occupy in the overall program of God. We were told that the church of Jesus was to be a place of “compassion”, but it was a bald and in many ways bait-and-switch sort of compassion. One did kind deeds to gain a hearing for the gospel. But if one found places to “witness” elsewhere, so long as they gave their tithe, the status quo, so far as it was perceived, was met. Social justice was not articulated, as I have been suggesting in the previous posts, to a coherent understanding of discipleship. It was merely a set of optional magnanimous acts that may or may not result in new converts.

On the other hand, there has always been and continues to be a reaction to this kind of co-opting of the gospel … a radical impulse within (and often without) evangelicalism to reclaim both a thoroughgoing care for the downcast and a thoroughgoing criticism of the materialism and opulence that have invaded the church. Radicals run with this impulse, while the masses of churchgoers are left still wondering how their critique fits with their lives. Should they sell everything and give to the poor? CAN they sell everything and give to the poor? How should they begin to respond to the glaring needs of humanity? Is it even moral to eat when thousands of children die of starvation in Africa every single day? Is it right to own two automobiles when the great violent struggles of our time are waged over petroleum? Should I shop at retail clothing stores when the clothing is made by children working 12 hour days for pennies in Thailand? If I were to attend to all of these needs and issues, I would be immobilized, people think … and it is true. Because the criticism has been merely strident, it has not and will not connect with those whom God is legitimately calling to have and be a channel for means.

What then should we do? I should not and cannot claim some kind of artificial certainty about how to carry this out. The complexity of life disallows it. But I will offer some suggestions along these lines as I am beginning to perceive a path into this life of following the lowly Jesus … and, of course, I welcome the interaction.

Recently the Arndt family (me and my wife, Mandi, and my son, Ethan) has moved back to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to begin working for a church here. Tulsa is a funny place. The brand of Bible belt Christianity that one finds here is the extreme(ly warped) charismatic variety where there is a DIRECT AND NONNEGOTIABLE CORRELATION between spirituality and upward social mobility. Moreover, Tulsa is fairly racially and certainly socio-economically segregated. South Tulsa typifies the life of comfortable and often extraordinarily opulent living that for many in the church here has become a sign that one has made it. Some of Tulsa’s biggest churches occupy territory right smack in the middle of the opulence, expanding their space by capitalizing on the wealth of those in attendance. This, for them, simply IS Tulsa. There is nothing else.

In the 1920’s, the city of Greenwood in north Tulsa was known as “The Black Wall Street.” Many blacks had moved to this area of Oklahoma after it was opened as a territory, seeking to be rid of southern oppression. Greenwood prospered as Tulsa grew during the oil boom of the early 1900’s … the district of Greenwood reportedly was a rich district culturally, with a jazz and blues scene comparable to that of any in the country at the time. When in May of 1921 a young black elevator worker was taken into custody for purportedly sexually assaulting a 17 year old white girl, tensions between the white and black communities, which had been latent and growing for decades, came into sharp relief. After an angry mob (many of whom were armed) had swollen outside of the Tulsa County Courthouse, a gunshot rang out, and the Tulsa Race Riot began. A heavily armed white mob present at the courthouse began to make their way into Greenwood, killing and setting fire to homes and businesses as they went. By the time the Oklahoma national guard had arrived, over 300 blacks were dead, nearly 10,000 were left homeless, 35 city blocks making up 1,256 residences were destroyed by fire, and $1.8 million (nearly $17 million after inflation adjustment) in property damage. Greenwood has never recovered.

This wound is buried deep in the soul of Tulsa. It is an inextricable part of the history. And yet there are many who live here who have no idea that it ever happened, and many more for whom Greenwood is not even a part of their vocabulary. Yet there it stands, one of the worst racial riots in U. S. history, an event that shattered the community it occurred in, silently. We have taken it off of our maps. Better to not have to wrestle with such matters… We’d prefer not to have to see the man wounded on the side of the road than to have to see him and pass by … Wouldn’t it just be easier to give money to World Vision once a month?

We do not live in Greenwood, but in our hearts, Mandi and I knew that there must be a socio-economic motion towards the source of the greatest plight in Tulsa. It would not do to pretend it didn’t exist and then send money to Africa to soothe our troubled consciences. At the least, to put it one way, we needed to be close enough to the road to Jericho that we may just travel on it and so see Jesus wounded on the side of the road. So we decided to buy a house on the northern side of the city. We will live here, and shop here, and jog here, and take walks here, and pray here, and worship here, and receive people into our lives here, because somehow, deep in our souls, we feel that Jesus is to be found here.

And our hope is that somehow, the quiet words of our lives would be more to be heeded than the shoutings of rulers among fools… Life is about more than upward mobility, we want our lives to say, in our own quiet prophetic way.

If we want to find Jesus, according to Jesus, we must not look up, but look down; and in looking down we must stoop, and in stooping we must identify, and in identifying we may suffer the loss of status, and in losing status we may gain life.

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. The man who wishes to save his life will lose it, but the man who loses his life for me will keep it.”

Help us follow you, Jesus.
Inversion Part IV - Little black boxes and lepers

“When he came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, ‘Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.’ Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. ‘I am willing,’ he said. ‘Be clean.’ Immediately his leprosy was cleansed.” - Matthew 8:1-3

I remember being particularly jolted by a scene in a movie I saw a couple of years ago, Hotel Rwanda. (For those of you not acquainted with the movie, go google it.) At the point in the movie where the tensions between the Hutus and the Tutsis had flared up to violent crisis, the main character, Paul, a native of Rwanda and a hotel manager who was housing over a thousand refugees, appealed to an American cameraman: “You HAVE to make sure this gets on TV. If America sees this, they will respond.” The cameraman looks at Paul and says, “If I put this on TV, people will watch it on the news as they eat their dinners. Then they will look at each other and say, ‘That’s too bad,’ and will go on eating. Nothing will change.”

What a scathing indictment — one that caused no small bit of soul-searching in me.

I began to wonder, “Gosh, am I really one of those people who is capable of seeing massive human crises on TV without ever responding? What is my problem?!”

The little black box. That is part of my problem.

Little black boxes tease us into thinking that we are participant in a story that is bigger than ourselves. And so we watch the news hearing about political issues and wars and rumors of wars and matters of international diplomacy and terrorism and poverty and famine and injustice and the like, and somehow, just by seeing those things, we think that we have participated on some level.

But then we do more. We talk about these things at work and we post blogs about them and read more on the internet about them and buy books at Barnes and Noble about them…

And still, nothing is undertaken. Justice still is a fairy-tale for us. It has no flesh and bones. Everything is media; we are playing games with thoughts and rewarding ourselves because of it.

Recently John Mayer, one of my favorite musicians, released a new CD with Columbia Records. One of the songs on the CD is called “Belief.” The thrust of the song is that beliefs, whether political or purely ideological or religious, create wars … and wars will not be stopped if, in his words, “belief is what we’re fighting for.”

I listen to that and then I think to myself, “John Mayer, I have gobs of respect for you and love your music. But is THIS your contribution to the plight of humanity? A song filled with empty cultural platitudes about the volatility of belief? Are you going to do anything more than that? Are you going to concretize YOUR beliefs in this matter? Or are you going to sing yourself into sterility, into inertia, while your fans participate in your inertia by being deluded by the little black boxes in their lives–TV’s, CD’s, the internet, iPods?”

Again, justice becomes just an ideological thought experiment … we think we’ve done something by participating in the media and by talking about it.

In the church we go a step further. We see the needs and create massive organizations to aid people in the plight. Now, here I issue a caveat to myself. These organizations are good and right. We OUGHT, in the church, to marshall all of our best thinking and resources to extend mercy to the downtrodden, to aleviate suffering where it is found … and so it is good to champion organizations like World Vision that do things like that.

BUT…

If what I have been suggesting is true, giving money to World Vision (I single them out because I MYSELF give to them, not because they are flawed) cannot be enough for us to participate in the downward motion of Christian discipleship. In fact, giving money may just be another little black box for us … a way to think that we have done justice, a way to think that we have extended mercy, when in fact we have avoided it.

Back to the passage at the top.

It is remarkably interesting to note what takes place in the Matthew passage. The leper makes the request of Jesus to heal him. Notice that that is ALL the leper asked, knowing two things: (1) He was, according to the regulations of the temple cult, ceremonially unclean and so “contagious”, to put it one way, and therefore (2) Capable of making Jesus unclean as well. So IT IS PROFOUND that Jesus doesn’t just say the word, as he does a few verses later, to heal the leper…

HE CROSSES A DEFINITE SOCIO-RELIGIOUS BOUNDARY AND TOUCHES HIM.

Moreover, it is interesting that though Jesus was capable of doing it, during the course of his ministry he didn’t use his power to heal every single person in the world who was suffering. Instead, when people crossed his path, he touched them, he healed them, he did justice to them, IN PERSON.

Sometimes I wonder if we don’t delude ourselves a bit with our grandiose organizations. I remember a time not more than a year ago when the Spirit brought this to light for me. I had been wrestling with how I was to respond to the massive needs of humanity, and so, with letters from at least three different Christian relief organizations sitting before me, I heard the Spirit’s nudging:

“What about the hungry and the thirsty in your neighborhood? Why is your first wave of response directed 5,000 miles away, in the form of a sterile check? Why have you not touched the lepers in your community? Is this easier for you? Are you avoiding something?”

I was. If I gave money, I could avoid interacting with the poor and the disenfranchised IN MY WORLD, IN MY LIFE … because my conscience was soothed. I didn’t have to REALLY AND TRULY DESCEND.

At the time, Mandi and I lived in a Chicago suburb where there were lots of hispanic and asian minorities. It was not necessarily a poverty-stricken area, but it was not well-to-do either. One could call it upper-lower class … In any case, it was a hand-to-mouth environment, where folks worked and spent all they made just to stay alive. So we started doing little things there.

We met and got to know our neighbors as much as we could…

We smiled at and would lovingly pat the heads of children who lived in our neighborhood when the circumstances were appropriate.

We took walks and acknowledged every person we met on the block.

We made sure to be extra gracious to the (smelly) people we ran into and interacted with at the little grocery store we shopped at.

We gave extra money to the hispanic man who pushed his tiny ice cream cart through the neighborhood …

Little things.

But not so little.

We were striving in our hearts to reach across social boundaries and touch, literally touch, those whom God had given us … because justice, mercy, and compassion must be ontological … they must be really undertaken and really done. Or else they are fairy-tales.

And somehow, doing that put our engagement with organizations like World Vision in new perspective. We had enjoyed giving, but now we enjoyed it all the more because we had made a habit out of touching humanity … and the needs we saw pressed upon us with a new urgency. We weren’t giving to soothe our troubled consciences; we were giving because we were learning how to embody God’s concern for justice.

To sum, I submit that the first wave of justice for us must be in this downward-motion, social-boundary crossing way of Jesus. We MUST TOUCH lepers.

Not for them.

For God can and will heal them.

But for us.

Because it is good for us to turn off the little black boxes and descend.