Disciplines of Resistance

I was a charismatic for part of my life. At least, I tried to be - I was on staff at a charismatic church and, as such, I sort of felt obligated to be part of the proceedings. I never really liked much of the theology. It seemed sort of thin, so to speak, like canned condensed soup when one wants a good hearty stew. On the other hand, the services were rarely dull. At least I was not often bored.

I mention this because one thing that was heavily emphasized in our setting was spiritual warfare. Everything took on spiritual significance - resisting the evils of Pokemon was an act of spiritual warfare akin to David's struggle with Goliath. It was really quite odd, and to be honest, has left me with a bad taste in my mouth on the subject to this day. However, as I ponder this topic of holy imagination and the kingdom of God, I wonder if in some sense daring to imagine is truly an act of spiritual warfare. Paul, in some sense, it seems is talking of this very thing in 2 Cor 10:5, where he speaks of demolishing ways of thinking that stand in opposition to the kingdom of God.

It feels odd for me to think like this. And yet, it also rings true. I find that the more I try to think in the ways of the kingdom, the more I am pulled in the opposite direction, so that it becomes more difficult to practice resistance instead of less. Of late, this has resulted in an increasing pressure to put in more hours at my job, leaving me with little enough energy for my family, let alone time for imagination and creativity and kingdom-oriented activity. What is to be done? How can we cultivate practices of resistance that serve to free our imagination from the shackles of that-which-is? What practices would these be?

It seems to me that, while not exhaustive by any means, I find meaning in practices such as:

• Sabbath keeping
• Generosity
• Simplicity
• Silence
• Fasting

These practices push against our inherited cultural values and force us, if only for a moment, to enter into the perspective of the kingdom. Such moments of perspective cannot help but to alter our ways of thinking and open the possibility for imagination.

What would it mean to understand disciplines such as these less as practices of personal formation and more as practices of resistance against oppressive ideologies? How much more formative would they become as a result?

The Oppression of the Ordinary

Jordon Cooper posted this recently highlighting the struggles of pastors and the negative impact that ministry has had on their personal lives. To be honest, I have several reactions to the statistics he's citing, all of which fit the context of my recent thoughts on imagination and hope. For now, I'm going with my initial reaction to the post, which was that this illustrates exactly our collective inability in western Christianity to imagine an alternative way of being. (However, I reserve the right to return to this from the perspective of how suffering informs and, in some sense, enables hope to grow.)

Here is the context for my thoughts on this: for the past week, I have never felt more the cog in the wheel. Perhaps it's the realization that my recent promotion at work could cost more of me than I was prepared to give, or recent conversations that have reinforced that businesses by and large are concerned with the welfare of their employees in the same sense that they want the network to remain up or that they want the grounds to be properly maintained. Think about the irony inherent in the term "human resources" (where, by the way, I am currently employed): these are the assets of the company that are in the form of humans. "Human" is merely the adjective that describes the noun "resources" - there is no doubt which is subordinate to the other. The likelihood that we are all familiar with the term and think of it mostly without blinking serves to reinforce the oppression that society places on us with ordinary, everyday, unspoken assumptions, in this case namely that persons are commodities whose worth is determined by a combination of buying and producing power.

These thoughts connect squarely with the sense that, even in churches, there is a sense of minister as professional that dehumanizes the minister, turning him or her into a commodity that has worth in connection with output. In fairness, I have no doubt that a portion of those surveyed bring their own baggage that contributes to workaholism or other similar issues. However, doesn't the fact that the system as a whole is structured in such a way to permit, enable, and even baptize such behavior point only to its brokenness? We find ourselves unable to imagine greater than the economy of people, and so are mute in the face of the relentless assault that such an economy wages on personhood.

This is the crisis that we now face, one that largely goes unnoticed as the everyday tyranny of the-way-things-are does its destructive work on our collective imagination. And where is the hope that we offer? What meaning do we have to present that can stand in the face of such oppression? Without hope, we are mute. Without imagination, we have no hope.

Fortunately, we do have hope, although we may not easily recognize it as such. More to come...

Of Myth and Meaning

Is something going on in the blogosphere and I missed the memo? Lots of talk about story out there - Jimmy over at liquidthinking posted some good thoughts here and here on the topic of myth. Jimmy writes,

We all live by myths...both cultural and personal. Unfortunately, in Christian culture we have all but forsaken the idea of myth. As a matter of fact, it has become synonymous with nothing more than a fictional story. In a large section of American Christianity, one had better not dare to call the Christian story a mythical story for fear of being a herectic who says the whole thing is bunk. But a myth isn't just a true story, it's a truth story...it goes deeper than events to the meaning that we crave.

I need to dig a bit deeper on the topic of hope. It's something that I've played around with over the years, a forgotten theme I think in western Christianity that has left us impoverished. But I'm suspecting that our emphasis on reason and systematics has prohibited our development of a healthy, vibrant, truly Christian hope. Meaning and hope are inextricably connected - another topic perhaps that needs further exploration. For now, I'll simply add to what Jimmy has said that perhaps one of the reasons for the inability of western Christianity to excite and inspire even its own members is that we are unable to articulate a hope-filled story that goes beyond simply Get-Out-of-Jail-Free and instead redeems the stuff of life...

Mark 6:1-13

Read It

I'm not intentionally slacking off this week - I'm truly pondering this passage, wondering what it means and if, as I currently think, the two scenes are related. I'm resisting the impulse to post for the sake of posting - if the stew isn't ready, I'd rather let it cook than serve it raw, so to speak. There is a lot here for us to ponder, so I want to ask for input on how you read these two accounts and implications for us. Any thoughts are most welcome; I'll post conclusions later this week if we generate some helpful dialogue.

A Crisis of Imagination

Will recently posted something here and Chris posted here and here that tie into my recent thoughts about theology, story, imagination, and why we are the way we are. If I had to point to what I thought was the greatest crisis that we who situate ourselves in western Christianity face, I would have no difficulty naming what seems to me the death of imagination in our practice of faith. By this I am not referring to creative Bible lessons or interactive prayer stations or multimedia services - to the contrary, sometimes these very things serve as placebos, poor substitutes for the wildness of holy imagining, of reorienting our minds to the subtle twists and turns of the plot of the story of God that even now He still tells, if only we have ears to hear.

Imagination is the language of hope. It is the rebellion of the mind against the shackles of what-is-and-will-always-be. As such, it is vital, absolutely vital, to the practice of a vibrant faith. How can we hope for what already is? And if what we hope for currently is-not, then how can we speak of it unless we dare to imagine? And if we truly have nothing for which to hope, then we are truly the most pitiable of beings, mere shells of persons who masquerade as people of faith. Faith and hope are intertwined, as the author of Hebrews so aptly communicates, faith being the stuff that gives reality to our hopes. Without hope, then, we have no faith, and without imagination, we have no hope.

What this means for story should be quite obvious. Story is the soil in which imagination grows. Story is dangerous and subversive, catching us by surprise to excite, thrill, scare, embarass, or move us deeply. It should come as no surprise, then, that God chooses so often to speak to us through story. We are the people of a Story. We belong to it as much as it belongs to us.

In JRR Tolkien's The Two Towers, Sam reminisces to Frodo of the tale of Beren and Luthien, who stole one of the priceless Silmarils from the crown of the dark lord Morgoth in his own halls. "But that's a long tale, of course, and goes on past happiness and into grief and beyond it - and the Silmaril went on and came to Earendil. And why, sir, I never thought of that before! We've got - you've got some of the light of it in that star-glass that the Lady gave you! Why, to think of it, we're in the same tale still! It's going on." And so it is for us.

This should at least cause us to pause and consider our approach to theology. Theology is not the point. Theology serves the Story. Theology is the grammar that we use to discuss the Story - important, to be sure, but not to be confused with the Real Thing. Theology serves the Story, and we would do well to remember which has the priority.