Category Archives: Doing Theology

It is OK NOT to be WEIRD — the Bible’s many “rights”

Doing Theology, Leadership, , , ,

While I was waiting for baby Hannah to arrive the other day I read a book. (The labor took much longer than I expected! )  It was such a good book that I can’t resist applying a few of its more applicable thoughts to what we are going through right now.

Your Christianity may be weird

We live in a weird culture and it has influenced us so much that our Christianity is weird. But our circle of hope in Christ  is the brave antidote to that, unless we make it weird.

westerners are weird
Pesky sociologists deconstructing again.

Jonathan Haidt,  a UPenn alum, wrote a well-received book called The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion. It is not a Christian book, even though he gets a lot more sympathetic to Christians by the time he is finished with his huge study on why people react the ways they do when it comes to politics.

Haidt realized that his blue-state sensibilities were actually rather WEIRD. By that he means: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic. As far as assessing how humans work, in general, WEIRD people are statistical outliers in the world today and certainly are out of the mainstream of history. USonians are even WEIRDer than Europeans.  Haidt says that “several peculiarities of WEIRD culture can be captured in this simple generalization: The WEIRDer you are, the more you see a world full of separate objects, rather than relationships. It has long been reported that Westerners have a more independent and autonomous concept of self than do East Asians. For example, when asked to write twenty statements beginning with the word ‘I am…,’ Americans are likely to list their own internal psychological characteristics (happy, outgoing, interested in jazz), whereas East Asians are more likely to list their roles and relationships (a son, a husband, an employee of Fujitsu).“

Your morality may be WEIRD

If you see a world full of individuals, like WEIRD people do, then you’ll want a morality that protects those individuals and their individual rights. Concerns about harm and fairness will be emphasized. If you live in a non-WEIRD society, as most people do and as most have lived througout history, then you will see a world full of relationships, contexts, groups and institutions. So you won’t be so focused on protecting individuals, you’ll place the needs of the groups and institutions first, often ahead of the needs of individuals. Morality based on harm and fairness won’t be enough. You’ll have additional concerns and a whole set of virtues to go with them.

People often wonder when our church is going to get on the bandwagon and become as WEIRD as (the obviously exceptional) westernized culture around us. We resist being WEIRD and resist conforming to their outlier morality. For one thing, we don’t think the rest of the world and the previous history of humankind is stupid. But the main reason we don’t conform is because God has revealed a much larger playing field on which truth and morality is worked out. You can see that in our far-reaching and diverse scriptures.

Haidt apparently teaches undergrads, because he can boil down his ideas into bumper stickers (which I admire). He follows his own journey out of being WEIRD as he discovers that there are six foundations for morality, not just the one that Americans are using right now to make all their new laws about protecting rights. I was not surprised to see that all six of his “foundations” are elements of the Bible’s teaching about how to live a righteous life [check them out!]. I love it when social science “discovers” the Bible! I think I will save the other five for next time. But since we just welcomed another child into our clan, I’ll leave you with the foundation that dominates our society right now, what Haidt calls the “care foundation.”

The small basis for all those laws

babies are weird but nobody caresThe care foundation for morality is all about protecting people from harm. It is what triggers that “aahh” when we see picture of babies and puppies, preferably together. And it is also the trigger that makes us angry when we see baby seals being clubbed or chickens crammed in a cage. It is also why we can be obsessed about everyone’s rights and why our leaders hasten to tell us they are protecting whole countries and the rights of humanity when they bomb them. All our ethics codes begin with the basic premise that we are supposed to “do no harm.” That’s essentially how we sum up how to act. If the married couples I know are any indication, we all apply this with vigor. They are often very concerned not to do anything wrong that will harm the other, thus protecting fairness but paralyzing intimacy. At the same time they are always doing harm because their rights are violated every day and they can’t help being mad about it.

The “care foundation” is also a main motivation for how we act as Jesus followers. We love how Jesus described God as being like a father filled with compassion for his child: “So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.” (Luke 15:20). God is all about loving individuals; the worse off they are the more Jesus seems to love them.

The Bible teaches us to be like God in how we live: “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:32). Love, we are taught  “always protects” (1 Corinthians 13:7). Individuals and their well-being count and they are supposed to matter to us, just as they are.

There is more to morality than harm and fairness, however. USonians boil it down to that and then start analyzing everything to see if it meets up to their rather tiny idea of what is good. But they are off to a good start, at least — as long as they don’t try to make the rest of us, and the rest of the world, conform to their small idea of what is right, based on their WEIRDness.

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We’re Getting Schooled to Relate without Jesus

Doing Theology, Music, , ,

We’re getting schooled — but nicely and in the name of being nice, protecting the rights of others and being inclusive. But are people actually being nice to me? protecting my so-called rights? including me? More important, are they being nice to Jesus? protecting his rights? including the Lord?

I ran across this statement during my research the other day and I feel a bit obsessed with it. It revealed that the discomfort I have been feeling with the way people talk to me about various subjects has a philosophical underpinning. We are being taught to relate in a certain way that may be right in line with Jesus in some ways, but may sell the farm completely in other ways. I think we need to talk back to our teachers.  Check it out:

Only if “you respond to me” in a way sensitive to the “relations” between your and my actions, can “we” act together as a “collective we”; and if I sense you as not being sensitive in that way, then I feel immediately offended, ethically offended. – Shotter & Katz (1999, p.152).

Let’s not run the whole intellectual nine yards with this. Let’s skip right to the popular application.

If you run me over I will be offended.
If you run me over I will be offended.

First of all, there is a relational rule that begins with: “Only if.”

For some reason, it just dawned on me that any number of people begin their relationship with me with an “only if.” They have this rule that kicks in when they meet me: I will relate to this person only if they agree with my assumed standards for relating. I have a way of life that must be accepted at any cost — if they don’t “get” that, no relationship. For instance, a young man recently reported he would not be back to our public meeting because we seemed to assume he was a Christian, since the meeting was all about being a Christian. He did not feel accepted for who he was so he was immediately offended (at least in a philosophical way — everyone can still exchange pleasantries). We did not pass the “only if” assessment.

DM_I_Feel_YouSecond, there is a definition of what relating means.

Basically, the rule for relating begins with: We need to feel each other out. (Isn’t that why it became popular in the 90’s to say “I feel you?”). I need to sense you being sensitive. In the new school there are no individuals who have innate meaning or value. Any “meaning” is all about how our actions intersect, all about how we are feeling things out. The only meaning we share is what happens in our “collective we.” So sensitivity to how we talk and act is crucial.

Most people don’t get to this step of relating and it is even harder to get through it. There is a lot of wariness and circling around one another, seeing if one can connect. For instance, a man was talking last night about how difficult it was for him to make any relationships within a church whose meetings he had been sporadically attending for years. But he sensed he might fit into Circle of Hope because we dress more like he dresses and talk like he talks. He felt enough shared meaning to let himself connect. Someone else probably sniffed around last night and said, “My kind are not present. I’m out of here.”

Third, there is a consequence for violating the rules and not agreeing on the definitions.

People are surprisingly judgmental these days, in spite of saying they hate people who are judgmental! They are surprisingly legalistic for saying they are so accepting! They have seemingly nice conversations that come with a hidden barb, something like:  If you don’t accept my rule and act according to my standards, I have a right to be ethically offended, and I will be so immediately. I was talking to one of the cell leaders yesterday and she was having a problem deciding what to do with certain people who were kind of gumming up the works with their bad behavior. The leader was so sensitive to the possibility that she might “get a time out” for offending the person in question that she was making all sorts of excuses for their bad behavior — pre-excusing before she was asked for grace! She was essentially taking care of the “we” for both sides of the relationship. She was predicting how she would be offensive, even before a person accused her of anything, and adjusting her behavior to keep things smooth, even though she felt personally hurt and frustrated. She was quite afraid she would be judged according to the new standards and get thrown out of the “we.”

We are all getting schooled and most of us did not even go to the class yet. The school turns out people who say (at least this is my application of the quote above): If you don’t respond to me in a way that makes me comfortable I am out of here. Or worse, I have a right to be me no matter how bad that is for you; deal with it or I will make sure you know how condemnable you are. We’re afraid to be sent to the “office” if we don’t get the rules right. It is ironic that in the name of inclusion people have set up a power struggle among all of us for the right to decide who is worthy of inclusion!  I am glad the person who would act in such a way is not God (we’re not, even when we act in god-like ways!). If they were actually God, I would be in outer darkness quickly. I would never really have gotten into light at all! I would not have passed the first “only if” rule!

Like I said, I am clueing in to all this might mean philosophically. And I am lamenting that the society is quickly being reorganized around the core ideas that are rendered in the quote. But I am trying to skip to the application.

We will run into someone this week who is doing their best to fit in and be nice. They have been taught this new school basis for relating. They bump into a Christian and it can be jarring. They meet up with a person who believes they have innate meaning as an individual and are also part of a “we” — not based solely on the meaning created by becoming a “we” but because God has made them a “we.” We’re still creating meaningfully by our process of dialogue, but it is inspired. And we are not assessing one another according to how inoffensively we do that, since we assume we will need to love others who can’t seem to stop sinning, just like God loves us. It has become an odd way to look at things.

I think we should keep being odd and not get schooled. Some of the new narrative is wise. But I don’t think the new nice is all that nice. I really don’t think it protects my rights to follow Jesus very well at all, instead it offers a new narrative that eradicates the possibility of Jesus. Everyone gets included except for Jesus, since his “only-ness” violates the “only if” of the new regime. I don’t want to go there, even if the new conformity police judge me harshly.

It is not enough to just ignore the new schoolmasters. They are making a difference. We’ve all been divided up into mutually offended identities — “being a Christian” is just one more of them. And most Christians seem to believe that about themselves — their faith is another one of the many identities competing for market share among discriminating consumers. Let’s keep telling the truth about Jesus — in love, as ourselves in Christ, in community, even if we get a time out.

Reference

Shottner, J. & Katz, A. (1999). Creating relational realities: Responsible responding to poetic “movements” and “moments.” In S. Mcnamee & K. Gergen (Eds.) Relational responsibility: Resources for sustainable dialogue (pp. 151-160). London: Sage.

No endorsements, just curiosity:

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Have the Faith You Have, Not the Faith You Don’t

Doing Theology,

 

Here’s another Bible problem for you. What’s with faith-as-small-as-a-mustard-seed moving mountains?

We sing:

Si tuvieras fe como grano de mostaza
Eso lo dice el Senor
Tu le dirias a la montana
Muevete, muevete 
Esa montana se movera, se movera, se movera

Shouldn’t that little song come with a little warning label? Shouldn’t it say something like: “We don’t really think this is true!” Or “No mountains were injured in the performance of this song!”?

Why does Jesus say,

“I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you” (Matt. 17:20)

if He doesn’t really mean it?

That’s a good question. It is an especially good question if you were taught all your life that the Bible was feeding you the kind of “truth” that the philosophy of our day considers Truth. I’m talking about some observable occurrence you can test and see repeated when you try it again — that kind of true. Apply that to the Bible and the “formula” Jesus posits says, “Faith moves mountains.” Then a logical conclusion follows: if your faith doesn’t result in miracle, either you don’t have enough faith or faith is not what it claims to be — if you have faith, you tell the mountain to move, and the mountain doesn’t move, then the Bible is not true. Sometimes that is called working with “literal” truth — if the words say it, that’s what it is, as if words just describe verifiable data, as if they just report scientific findings, as if we are talking about those kinds of words. Many Christians treat the Bible like it is a scientific text and call that conservative, when it is really the most worldly thing they could be doing.

Truth is deeper than data

I think Jesus speaks a deeper truth than the surface truth almost anyone can observe. He is revealing eternity to us. Do you really  think that the Lord was announcing his findings about the world’s smallest seed is, or that he was suggesting that mountains should be moved around? I don’t. But in a world full of “literal” truth, people get tripped up by anything immaterial to their materiality.

Matthew 17 is very confusing for literalists! I feel their pain. Just look at what happens there. First, Jesus is up on the Mount of Transfiguration revealing to his inner circle that there is just a thin veil between His Father’s dimension and our own — but that the dimensions are very different. Then he announces his impending resurrection. Then they come down the mountain and he completes an exorcism that his other disciples could not accomplish. And why can’t they do it? They don’t have enough faith. It is a wild chapter for people who can only know what they test in their personal labs.

Maybe we should live in Matthew 17 until we understand it and stop basing our ideas of faith on things we already understand. Maybe we should stay there until we can do what is described and stop basing our doubts on what we can’t yet do. Maybe we should stop being discouraged with Jesus because he can’t just leave faith as “being nice,” or as “applying moral principles” or as “acting out a stripped-down methodology that passes for being forgiven of our sins instead of having a life of active trust” (I digress…with hope in my heart).

Many people come away from what Jesus says about not having enough faith looking for a formula for getting enough faith. But I think the whole point of his statement is not about what we lack, it is about what we don’t lack. He is ultimately being very positive — realistic about us, but full of hope. Yes, Jesus is as frustrated as we are that we have less spiritual capability than we ought to. But even if we rely on Him just a little, his work of death and resurrection allows even the little faith we have to do things that were previously unimaginable. Have the faith you have, not the faith you don’t.

What will your seed of faith cause next?

When I sing, “Muevete!” I am expressing my hope in Jesus, not taking on the ultimate challenge to prove Jesus worthy of worship by my miraculous excavating — as if, “If the mountain moves, then Jesus can be my Savior until we reach the next mountain!”

 

Obviously, Jesus is not rearranging the planet for his convenience, either, so he must not mean for us to look for faith that is mustard-seed size somewhere in our inner being and prove his validity as a Savior and our value as followers by moving Mt. Everest to Beijing (like in the map above). Some people give up on the Bible because such things aren’t happening like they think the Bible literally says they should. They grumble, “The Book just plain contradicts itself!” But I wish they’d soak in it long enough to see what’s really happening.

When there is a surface meaning that isn’t working for us, we do need to argue it out until we can receive its deeper content. Ignoring or reducing things we can’t understand keeps us infantile. And being content to endlessly argue keeps us adolescent. But working with the risen Lord to experience something of what his inner circle did on the Mt. of Transfiguration is more adult. Rather than focusing on how mountains are not literally moved, or on “how much faith is enough to cast out a demon,” I think we should rejoice in what the-little-faith-we-have has done in us and through us that would have been unimaginable without it.

For instance,

  • that we should believe any parts of Matthew 17 as true must be an act of God-with-us
  • that we want to ponder and even argue about who Jesus is and what he did surely could only be the Spirit of God drawing us
  • that we know we are forgiven and destined for an eternity of connection with our Creator is a big change.
  • that we care whether we have enough faith to make a difference is a conviction only a Spirit-changed heart would have.
  • that people continue to be comforted, saved from self-destruction, and energized to foment justice and hope by their faith in Jesus is just what Jesus was predicting, wouldn’t you say?

Still not satisfied short of Everest taking a step towards China? I am not sure you are respecting the faith that causes your discontent, but who knows what that seed might cause next?

Screen-delivered consumerism saps resistance

Doing Theology, Film/TV, , , , , , , ,

emperors-new-clothesIt is a rare talent to be able to sell nothing. I have always admired the weavers in the Hans Christian Andersen tale The Emperor’s New Clothes because they had the talent. Selling nothing might be the most-valued talent in U.S. society today. Our industries for manufacturing tangible goods may have all moved to Mexico or China, but we are still #1 in making things that don’t really exist. I know this for sure because I was just in Orlando. The Disney Corporation (#66 in the Forbes 500) must be the best at selling things that don’t and probably shouldn’t exist. If Disney decided to sell us new clothes that were invisible, we could get them with mouse ears and see them parading on their umteen TV channels; we would be invited to parade them ourselves in their five theme parks.

Our taste for nothingness is fed by the powers who seek to control us. The Bible is frank about this fact:

Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 6:12).

We know that these powers are “nothings.” But, like the emperor, we have a taste for nothing. We tend to believe that if we eat enough of it, we will get something. The powers use that faith to lobotomize our resistance.

Screen time pacifies

We were in a bungalow at one of the resorts surrounding Disneyworld (and they mean “world!”). On our TV I think the first ten channels were Disney channels, the next seven belonged to their daughter company ESPN. Priorities. TV is one of the ways the corporatocracy eases us into compliance and herds us down their vision of main street USA.

Disney symbolism
Disney symbolism

There is not an agreement on how much media children are consuming, but the NIH and Nielsen seem to agree that young children watch up to 4 hours of TV a day. When you add on other screen time, they are spending 5-7 hours locked into the machine. My grandchildren just got turned on to old Donald Duck cartoons on the Disney bus from the airport; they are probably watching them on YouTube right now. Teenagers spend close to 45 hours a week in front of the screen. The fact that the content they consume is controlled by an elite group of corporations is horrifying enough. But the mere act of watching TV—regardless of the programming—is the primary pacifying agent that teaches the next generation to comply. They don’t even think about whether to resist; they are zoned out on the screen. As evidence, note that private-enterprise prisons have recognized that providing inmates with cable television can be a more economical method to keep them quiet and subdued than it would be to hire more guards.

Screen time is a dream come true for an authoritarian society. For one thing, those with the most money own most of what people see. But more, fear-based television programming makes people more afraid and distrustful of one another, which is good for the ruling elite who depend on a “divide and conquer” strategy; and TV isolates people so they are not joining together to create resistance to authorities. Maybe most of all, regardless of the programming, TV viewers’ brainwaves slow down, moving them closer to a hypnotic state that makes it difficult to think critically. While playing a video game is not as zombifying as passively viewing TV, such games have become for many boys and young men their only experience of potency, and this “virtual potency” is certainly no threat to the ruling elite.

We need to keep an ear open to the call of the scripture, which demands that we not cave in to the relentless pressure of the world to conform to what is passing away, to its illusions of reality. When we resist,

We will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ (Ephesians 4:14-16).

The screens deliver the invisible goods.

The fundamentalist religion Marx named the “opium of the people” was long ago superseded by fundamentalist consumerism. Fundamentalist consumerism pacifies young Americans in a variety of ways. George Bush was famously accused of telling the country to “go shopping” after 9/11. Maybe he did not exactly say that, but he did tell us to go to Disneyworld: He said, “Get on board. Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America’s great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.” Getting back to normal means consuming and doing more of it.

A belief in consumerism destroys self-reliance, creating people who feel completely dependent on others and who are thus more likely to turn over decision-making power to authorities, the precise mind-set that the ruling elite loves to see. A consumer culture legitimizes advertising, propaganda, and all kinds of manipulation, including lies; and when a society gives legitimacy to lies and manipulation, it destroys the capacity of people to trust one another and form alternatives. Belief in consumerism also promotes self-absorption, which makes it difficult to ever get a taste for solidarity.

The TV delivers the messages that create the consumer society, along with, forWall-E instance, an epidemic of childhood obesity, depression, and passivity. It helps create the prisoners of tomorrow — the few who get out of line (after watching Wall-E, no doubt), who will be eagerly received by the prison-industrial complex. Can we stop the process represented by the Pennsylvania judges who took $2.6 million from private-industry prisons to ensure that juveniles were incarcerated?

My hope is that our message, and even more compelling, our demonstration of the message being lived out, will give the Holy Spirit many opportunities to expose how powers of the world are naked. There are seeds of resistance everywhere. They need to be watered. Without Jesus, many small acts of wisdom may do quite a bit to procure freedom and dignity. With their proper connection to eternity, they can offer transformation. Our mindset needs to match what Paul reveals:

What I am saying is that as long as an heir is underage, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. The heir is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. So also, when we were underage, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world. But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir (Galatians 4:1-7).

We are not slaves to the spiritual forces of the world. In Christ, we are children of God who should act accordingly. In Paul’s language, we are all as good as adopted sons in a Roman household, men or women, slave or free, Jew or Gentile. We should exercise our dignity.

My negative view of society was echoed by Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1844 when he observed: “All our things are right and wrong together. The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike.” That was why he was a reformer. I hope to be more than that kind of realist. My hope is in the spiritual reality made incarnate in Jesus Christ. The fact that the powers that rule us are fallen and need redemption is a basic reason why I am a Jesus follower. The society, coming at us through all screens that have nothing more to promote than the economy, gives us Disney and its “magical” embrace, gives us Harry Potter escapism, gives our children these “entry drugs” for the vacuous Game of Thrones. But God has come in the Son, born under those very forces that seek to subjugate us, that we might receive our true selves in relationship with God and no longer be slaves, but the heirs of reality.

One final thanks to Bruce E. Levine published in alternet.org

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They’ll Pathologize and Medicate the Noncompliance They Surveil

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What might happen to you if you resist?

What if you said, “Taking on a load of debt in order to participate in normal economic life is foolish! I won’t do it and neither should anyone else!”? What if you said, “Creating an artificial disaster in inner city schools and then blaming it on the unions or the parents instead of the leaders who made the value judgments is wrong! I won’t stand for it, neither should anyone else!”? What might happen?

A lot might happen, and you are probably well-trained to fear it, by now. Here are two more techniques the powers-that-be are using to erode our desire and capacity to resist. You might want to note them.

For one thing, they might outlaw, pychopathologize or medicate your noncompliance. 

Ronald Reagan believed that under the Constitution the President has the inherent authority, as the commander in chief, to direct a military intelligence agency (such as the NSA) to intercept enemy communications during wartime or when necessary to protect the national security. The authoritarian snowball got rolling and got even larger when it proceeded into the snowdrift of Bush’s perpetual war on terror and Obama’s threat of a

Ever-growing psych bible
Ever-growing psych bible

drone to follow the surveillance trail.

At the same time Americans elected the increasingly authoritarian Reagan, an increasingly authoritarian American Psychiatric Association added to their diagnostic bible (then the DSM-III) some newly-described mental disorders for children and teenagers. The “disorders” focused on disorder, such as the increasingly popular “oppositional defiant disorder” (ODD). The official symptoms of ODD include “often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules,” “often argues with adults,” and “often deliberately does things to annoy other people.”

Had he lived in our era, Jesus probably would be medicated in a secret prison rather than publicly crucified. As one of His followers, you should consider what it means that our Bible says things like:

“Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.  And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:2-4).

Talk about oppositional and defiant! It is at least annoying to denounce the “god of this age” and it is probably against some homeland security regulation to suggest that a citizen should “renounce secret and shameful ways!”

The general population believes in the DSM, even though they’ve never seen one. Science is god and Big Pharma builds suburban temples like Merck just north of Philly to develop devotees to their vision of wholeness. Drug company revenues climbed more than $200 billion between 1995 and 2010. For every dollar spent on research $19 goes toward promotion and marketing. Heavily tranquilizing antipsychotic drugs (e.g. Zyprexa and Risperdal) are now the highest grossing class of medication in the United States ($16 billion in 2010). A major reason for this explosion in sales, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2010, is that many children receiving antipsychotic drugs have nonpsychotic diagnoses such as ODD or some other “disruptive disorder” (this especially true of Medicaid-covered pediatric patients).

The government has created an omnipresence that must be obeyed. The medical establishment has backed it up with diagnoses and a vision of normality. Pharmaceutical companies produce the meds to make children compliant. Christians might like to specialize, like Paul, in saying things that begin with, “On the contrary…”

For another thing, they might drown you in the surveillance of your noncompliance

Everyone thinks surveillance is normal now. We can even spell it. The neighbors along Broad St. are talking about how the police want them to coordinate the cameras on their businesses so no one will be out of sight for very long, if ever. Here’s Mayor Nutter trying to appear “on top of” the matter (see what he says about cameras at about the 3-minute mark).

The fear of being surveilled makes a population easier to control. The National Security Agency (NSA) has received publicity for monitoring American citizen’s email and phone conversations, but we’re over that. Employer surveillance has become increasingly common in the United States and people accept it. It is small wonder that young

Click for more amazement
Click for more amazement

Americans have become increasingly acquiescent to corporatocracy surveillance because, beginning at a young age, surveillance is routine in their lives. Parents routinely check websites for their kid’s latest test grades and completed assignments, and just like employers, they monitor their children’s computers and Facebook pages. Some parents use GPS to track the kids’ whereabouts, and other parents have video cameras in their homes. These days it is not unusual to find that young people lack the confidence to pull off a party when their parents are out of town! How much confidence could they have to pull off a resistance movement below the radar of the authorities?

The Christians are in the same condition. You’d think they were still waiting for Jesus to rise from the dead. Before they met him alive after his crucifixion, the first disciples were locked in a room for fear the authorities would find them:

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”  (John 20:19).

I think many of the Christians I know are afraid of being psychopathologized just like the rest of the population and are definitely afraid of what the powers that be know about them. They are locked up for fear of the leaders, or just afraid of the unseen forces they sense all around them that are determined to keep them quiet and compliant. But the risen Jesus can still get in the room, despite the authorities and the fear they engender:

Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”  And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit (John 20:21).

From what we know of the first disciples, they received the Spirit even though they were afraid and doubtful. Will the young disciples of today do the same? I keep wondering if the next generation, in general, is already lost to their subjugation. Is resistance dead? I hope that is not true of the Christians, at least. If someone calls us crazy or criminal for following Jesus, that is a good thing. Let them see all they need to see. May we be found by every camera doing what Jesus would do.

Further voices and my previous posts:

Again, thanks to Bruce E. Levine published in alternet.org

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Education Is the Bane of Resistance among Jesus-followers, Too.

Doing Theology, , , , , ,

Let’s talk about how the educators or, better, how the “education industry” have created indoctrination camps that have subdued young Americans and broken any spirit of resistance to domination they might normally have. I’m talking about the mandatory sentences handed out to young people from age five to twenty-two. I’m talking about having some dialogue in the spirit of James, who wrote to the people of his time:

Who in your community is understanding and wise? Let his example, which is marked by wisdom and gentleness, blaze a trail for others. If your heart is one that bleeds dark streams of jealousy and selfishness, do not be so proud that you ignore your depraved state. The wisdom of this world should never be mistaken for heavenly wisdom; it originates below in the earthly realms, with the demons. Any place where you find jealousy and selfish ambition, you will discover chaos and evil thriving under its rule. Heavenly wisdom centers on purity, peace, gentleness, deference, mercy, and other good fruits untainted by hypocrisy. The seed that flowers into righteousness will always be planted in peace by those who embrace peace (James 3:13-18 – The Voice).

Somehow, the educators have convinced the young of this era that they can dispense with wisdom and becomes tools of the economy, that they can ignore their best instincts and submit to training that makes them little more than a part of a machine — and that includes a giant war machine to boot, that competition and ambition designed by the invisible hand and the national interest is their true destiny.

Education, as presently dominated, is the bane of resistance. And there is much to resist.

Schools Educate for Compliance.

Upon accepting the New York City Teacher of the Year Award in 1990, John Taylor Gatto upset many in attendance and has been quoted ever since, to no avail: “The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions.” Past generations discussed the problems of compulsory schooling that could make it a vehicle for an authoritarian society. But as the problems have gotten worse, the discussion has become more rare.

The nature of most classrooms, regardless of the subject matter, socializes students to be passive and directed by others, to follow orders, to take seriously the rewards and punishments of authorities, to pretend to care about things they don’t care about, and to believe they are impotent to affect their situation. The essence of school—its demand for compliance—teaches us not to act in a friction-causing manner.

The essence of most Christian teaching is boiled down into the same kind of goal: compliant behavior. This is epitomized by Robert Fulghum’s All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten ( 7 million copies sold and counting) which starts with: Share everything, Play fair, Don’t hit people, Put things back where you found them, Clean up your own mess. That ends up being the extent of most people’s Christianity — nice behavior! Obviously there is some goodness there, but it is a far cry from the Apostle Paul claiming that the disciple’s goal is to “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and…take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:3-5). That’s not too compliant and would probably get Paul kicked out of kindergarten.

One would think Christians would be educated to be anything but compliant — peacemaking, yes, nonresistant in a strategic way, yes, but never merely compliant. But they let the schools dictate what passes for wisdom.

Already authoritarian schools have been legislated into even more tyranny

With “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top” the corporatocracy instituted the fear-inducing standardized-testing-and-perpetual-competition tyranny that torpedoes any free thinking. Fear forces students and teachers to constantly focus on the demands of the test creators that judge the process and the grantors that fund the budget; it crushes curiosity, critical thinking, questioning authority, and certainly challenging and resisting illegitimate authority.

I have been instructed by many well-meaning elementary children to not have my aberrant, irreverent thinking on display because I will “get in trouble.” They are all business. The other day I was telling one of them why I did not fear death because the Lord would raise me up. That somehow sparked a thought in his mind about the boiled-down theory of evolution he had just been learning on the computer. He gave me the party line he’d been taught in response to my irreverent thinking. He will get to the top, but of what?

Meanwhile Paul continues to offer revelation that most Christian parents have totally forgotten, obsessed, as they are, with protecting their children’s capability to make it in the domination system.

For people who are stumbling toward ruin, the message of the cross is nothing but a tall tale for fools by a fool. But for those of us who are already experiencing the reality of being rescued and made right, it is nothing short of God’s power. This is why the Scripture says:
          I will put an end to the wisdom of the so-called wise,
          and I will invalidate the insight of your so-called experts.
So now, where is the philosopher? Where is the scholar? Where is the skilled debater, the best of your time? Step up, if you dare. Hasn’t God made fools out of those who count on the wisdom of this rebellious, broken world?  For in God’s deep wisdom, He made it so that the world could not even begin to comprehend Him through its own style of wisdom; in fact, God took immense pleasure in rescuing people of faith through the foolishness of the message we preach (1 Corinthians 1:18-21 – The Voice).

Any alternative to the education gulag is shamed

In 2006 a survey in the United States found that 40 percent of children between first and third grade read every day, but by fourth grade, that rate declined to 29 percent. Despite the anti-educational impact of standard schools, children and their parents are increasingly propagandized to believe that disliking school means disliking learning. That was not always the case in the United States. Mark Twain famously did not say, “I never let my schooling get in the way of my education.” Toward the end of Twain’s life in 1900, only 6 percent of Americans graduated high school. Today, approximately 85 percent of Americans graduate high school, but that is not good enough for Barack Obama who told us in 2009, “Dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country.”

The more schooling Americans get, however, the more politically ignorant they seem to be of America’s ongoing class war, and the more incapable they are of challenging the ruling class. I know no one is nostalgic for the Populist Movement of the 1880s and 90s. But American farmers with little or no schooling organized America’s largest-scale working people’s cooperative and formed a People’s Party that received 8 percent of the vote in 1892. Regular, uneducated people made a difference. In the 1970’s the Jesus movement upended much of the church. It was a young person’s movement, not a gift from their leaders. Where are those kind of people now, fully indoctrinated?

The high priests of the educational system eerily resemble the religious leaders who threatened the common people for feeling warmed by the new, real teaching of Jesus.

         No one was willing to speak openly about Jesus for fear of the religious leaders.
 In the middle of the festival, Jesus marched directly into the temple and started to teach. Some of the Jews who heard Him were amazed at Jesus’ ability, and people questioned repeatedly:
        Jews: How can this man be so wise about the Hebrew Scriptures? He has never had a formal education.
        Jesus:  I do not claim ownership of My words; they are a gift from the One who sent Me. If anyone is willing to act according to His purposes and is open to hearing truth, he will know the source of My teaching. Does it come from God or from Me? If a man speaks his own words, constantly quoting himself, he is after adulation. But I chase only after glory for the One who sent Me. My intention is authentic and true. You’ll find no wrong motives in Me (John 7:13-18, The Voice).

I think our education has made us afraid to speak lest we offend the new lawgivers who run it (quite poorly, in Philadelphia). It is time the Jesus-followers, at least, follow Jesus in his bold assertion that He has wisdom from God to give as it has been given him. Standing on that foundation could help us resist the domination of children by self-interested powers, and would give those blessed warriors who serve children as teachers the courage to keep up their struggle to give what they have been given in the Spirit and not just as abused lackeys of the system.

Thanks again to Bruce E. Levine and his article republished in alternet.org

Further links not necessarily recommendations, just further voices.

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Debt Has Broken the Spirit of Resistance among Jesus-followers, Too

Doing Theology, , , ,

Let’s talk about how the ruling elite have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken any spirit of resistance to domination they might normally have. I’m talking about having some dialogue in the spirit of James who wrote to the ruling elites of his time:

“Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.  You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you” (James 5:3-5).

Somehow, the elites have convinced the latest generation that whatever corroded gold they have will be taken away if they don’t conform; their only hope is to hoard whatever little wages they are paid in hope of having a retirement of limited self-indulgence!

money = speechBruce E. Levine writes, in a very telling article, that young Americans “appear to have acquiesced to the idea that the corporatocracy can completely screw them and that they are helpless to do anything about it. A 2010 Gallup poll asked Americans ‘Do you think the Social Security system will be able to pay you a benefit when you retire?’ Among 18- to 34-years-olds, 76 percent of them said no. Yet despite their lack of confidence in the availability of Social Security for them, few have demanded it be shored up by more fairly payroll-taxing the wealthy; most appear resigned to having more money deducted from their paychecks for Social Security, even though they don’t believe it will be around to benefit them” (Bruce E. Levine, republished in alternet.org).

How exactly has American society subdued young Americans – and young American Christians? This might take a few weeks to answer. But let’s talk again about one big reason we have been considering for years now: student-loan debt.

Large debt—and the fear it creates—is a pacifying force. When I went to UC Riverside in the 70’s my tuition went up to $215 a quarter and I was upset. At that time tuition at many U.S. public universities was so affordable that it was easy to get a B.A. and even a graduate degree without accruing any student-loan debt. Those days are gone in the United States, but public universities continue to be free in the Arab world and are either free or with very low fees in many other countries. The millions of young Iranians who risked getting shot to protest their disputed 2009 presidential election, the millions of young Egyptians who risked their lives depose Mubarak in Egypt, and the millions of young Americans who demonstrated against the Vietnam War back in the day all had one thing, at least, in common: the absence of pacifying huge student-loan debt.

obama teacherToday in the United States, two-thirds of graduating seniors at four-year colleges have student-loan debt, including over 62 percent of public university graduates. And, like President Obama says, a high school degree is not enough:

Whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma….We have one of the highest high-school dropout rates of any industrialized nation, and half of the students who begin college never finish…This is a prescription for economic decline, because we know the countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow.

One has to go to college to get a ticket into the economy. And that mandatory ticket will cost you. The median undergraduate debt is close to $25,000. Add on consumer debt and the typical twentysomething debt is close to $45,000 according to a study from last year. Increasingly, it is easy to find college graduates with $100,000 in student-loan debt. During the time in one’s life when it should be easiest to resist authority because one does not yet have family responsibilities, many young people worry about the cost of bucking authority, losing their job, and being unable to pay an ever-increasing debt. In a vicious cycle, student debt has a subduing effect on activism, and political passivity makes it more likely that students will accept such debt as a natural part of life.

The Bible has a lot to say about debt

But most Christians can’t listen to the Bible because their creditors might garnish their bank account if they did what the Bible says. Nevertheless, Romans 13 says:

Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor. Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law (Romans 13:7-8).

If you read this in an individualistic way, then whatever debt a person incurs is their lot. The debt industry would love to have us all feel that morality. It is ironic that the government and the corporations that own it (who are increasingly seen as individuals!), are not held to the same standard of individual responsibility. In fact they have special rights like limited  liability and, the big one, they can live forever.

When Jesus tells Simon a parable about the woman washing his feet with her tears, he at least suggests an outlook other than someone being endlessly responsible for their debt.

 “Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”
Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”
“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said. (see Luke 7:40-49). 

In the Lord’s story, the money lender forgives debts when someone can’t pay. That’s one thing. But the big thing, as in Romans,  is that love is owed. Love is the goal. Forgiveness is the prize. In contrast, the faithlessness of our society is enslaving people. We’re taught that we will ruin someone if we disturb their supposed self-reliance. Being taken care of by society is considered wicked. But the corporations are very well cared for! Even if there was a vestige of Christian morality as part of the conversation, we would be better off.

And let’s not forget what Jesus teaches us to pray in the Lord’s prayer

Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors.

Smack dab in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer, obscured by old translations and otherworldly assumptions, is a radical cry for Jubilee justice. In this most stripped down form of Jesus’ teaching — the bare essentials of what a disciple should bring before God in prayer — is freedom from economic debt for all of God’s children. The prayer is not just about sins like “My mother-in-law said something mean about me, so I should forgive her ‘debt of sin’ against me.” The prayer is about real debtors — people who are enslaved by the rich and their deceptive systems. It is bigger than that, but not less.

How do Christians “fight back?”

Among the Circle of Hope we say, “We are birthing a new generation of the church to resist and restore with those moved by the Holy Spirit.” That means at least four things in relation to the debt that is breaking the spirits of twentysomethings, especially:

1) We prophesy. Even if you think the truth will get you in trouble, you “go James” at the proper time.

2) We do not conform. Even if love is illegal, we practice it.

3) We create the alternative. In our community we are all about forgiveness and sharing.

4) We demonstrate the alternative. We get people out of debt. Our debt annihilation team is an extremely practical example of this. Our compassion fund distributions are usually gifts and always no-interest loans. Our cell members take care of each other. We have thrift stores full of low-cost items. We hold baby-goods exchanges. We support relief and development and advocacy through MCC. And we sure don’t follow every lie the domination system dishes out – instead, we live simply in the freedom of the Spirit. We find a new way through the wilderness of the present age.

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Trayvon and Jesus Lost in the Verbiage Grinder

Doing Theology, Film/TV, , , ,

My friends had a good response to the verdict regarding the man who killed Trayvon Martin so they put it on Facebook: 

jesus abstractWife: Whether Trayvon Martin was a neighbor or enemy of George Zimmerman, Jesus’ instruction would be for George to have loved Trayvon regardless of who he was in George’s eyes. Whether George Zimmerman is a neighbor or enemy, Jesus’ instruction is to love him regardless of who he is in my eyes. 

I believe Jesus doesn’t allow for loop holes like self-defense. There are no exceptions to who we are to love and care for. This is the radical, turn everything upside down, seemingly nonsensical, nonviolent love that we Christians are called to live out. God help us to figure how to do it.                                           

FB friend 1: Easy to say when it isn’t your head being bashed against the sidewalk.
I don’t know what happened none of us do. But if I am assaulted I will defend myself. 

Husband: What would Jesus do FB1? And what would Jesus expect us to do? I think that is the point my wife is making. 

FB friend 1: Jesus would have most likely died that evening. Turning the other cheek is a difficult thing is what I am saying. If Zimmerman was attacked he had every right to defend himself. 

FB friend 2: It seems to me, FB1, that Zimmerman provoked the ensuing contact with Trayvon Martin when he got out of his car in pursuit of Trayvon against the instructions given to him. 

FB friend 1: I don’t agree at all with Zimmerman pursuing the young man. But that doesn’t change that all the forensic evidence says it was Zimmerman who was attacked.

This dialogue went on. I wanted to replay it at this point to observe how people think these days. We Jesus-followers keep trying to make points that support Jesus in a system that has nothing to do with him. FB1 above shows this very clearly. I think we should make the points, but I don’t think we should be surprised if we don’t win the argument.

1) The wife makes a very obvious, irrefutable point about Jesus and prays. She typifies her statement as “radical,” which it has unfortunately become.

2) FB1’s first response is mainly personal, displaying a belief that violence is the solution to violence. His personal view has nothing to do with promoting the common good or with listening to a power beyond himself from whom to receive direction. He is well-trained by almost every movie that came out this summer (again) to believe that a good fight makes right. Even the Man of Steel, who has many other ways to be violent, ends up in a giant fist fight at the end of the movie.

The husband objects to FB1’s response by mildly suggesting that a person should consider what Jesus wants them to do, regardless of the situation.

3) FB1’s second response is mainly practical. If it is too difficult to turn the other cheek, then don’t do it, certainly not if it might result in your death. I can honor this, since without the risen Christ with us and without hope of eternal life, one’s existence would be a logical thing to protect at all costs, including someone else’s death.

What Christians don’t seem to understand, especially when they are arguing with Christians, is that there are many people who do not think following Jesus is practical. They do not trust him to save them and have no real hope apart from their own power to protect themselves. They do not believe they have eternal life.

FB2 wades in and tries to interpret the “evidence” to argue that Zimmerman made the fateful decision about his actions early on. That kind of arguing can go on forever and possibly result in a “stand your ground” law. That kind of arguing is all CNN usually has to offer.

csi4) FB1’s third response is legal and scientific. He says that he doesn’t think Zimmerman should have followed the boy, so he understands that the killer had some kind of moral decision to make. However, moral decisions mean nothing compared to the trump card of the 21st century: what does the law say and what did CSI prove? The younger one is, the more one seems to be subject to the “facts,” especially facts that deliver “evidence” that proves a hypothesis. Every argument, such as the one above, is turning on loop holes in the law, procedures, and factoids. There is a constant societal din of verbiage being ground up into tiny bits and reformed into “scientific” conclusions, which are always supposedly “true.” This grinder rarely turns out justice and often creates strange things out of its own churning (like corporations accruing the rights of persons, and so on).

The tragic thing is, the Christians believe in the verbiage, too, and operate the grinder! They do their theology the very same way and their pastors deliver factoids every week while missing what the wife did to begin with: telling the simple truth. They don’t do what the husband did: clarify that we’re really trying to follow Jesus, not engage in the world’s endless, self-protective and other-destructive, perpetual loop.

Related posts:

Why people might not care to be radical Christians

Why people might not care to be radical Christians: Part 2

Drew Hart: Pain Medicine

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Theorists in casual Friday dress wreck evangelism

Doing Theology, , ,

christian theory for theoristsSome of my cohort were intrigued when I was aroused from my inattention last week during our final  intensive. My professor (who I like very much) was, for some reason, veering into theology. I considered it practicing outside her expertise so I had to say, “I just don’t believe that.” She had already told us that when we consider God we need to start with a theory, “Everything starts with a theory.” That was supposedly from the Bible and not from Enlightenment rationalism. She went on to write a subject on the board, draw a line under it and have us fill in the subtopics, like we were the first scientists labeling the world. Only she was working on the concept “sin is sin,” working on the theory that anything not righteous is sin and blaming her kind of thinking on the Bible writers.

Theorists are theorists

I did not really dispute her conclusions too much, although I was afraid she would soon need to put mass murderers in the same category as fibbers because that is what her theory demanded. What I objected to was ignorantly applying a theory to the Bible and calling it revelation. She pinched the evangelist in me and I said “Ouch” (rather too loudly and strongly, perhaps incoherently, as I recall it now). Several friends rushed over to inspect the theological boo boo on my scraped soul. When the Christian experts, liberal or fundamentalist (like my teacher), keep passing out Christianity in a 17th century wrapper, it is very hard to make an actual, Bible-following, Jesus loving, Spirit-filled convert these days.

Modern Evangelicalism has been seduced into secular rationalism and still doesn’t seem to know it.  Evangelicals surrendered the soul to intellect and began to try to play their religious game on a rationalist field. Their time and energy was spent proving that God fits right in to materialist philosophies, and documenting the factuality of the Bible as applied to every possible discipline, as if the Bible were actually considering all the myriad specialties invented by scientific rationalism. Now they are church planting as the “neo-Reformed,” delivering the “word” while softening the fundamentalist packaging with work shirts and nice production values.

Jesus is better than rationalism

For Jesus, the Kingdom of God is a kingdom not of this rationalistic world (my expansion of John 18:36). The “soul life” or “psyche” Jesus does not want us to lose feeds on the Spirit, and on revelation it does not produce. Freud and other scientists intellectually colonized the territory by proposing that dreams are neurobiological phenomena. But the Bible writers know better. They are not talking theory; they are talking about the experience of God that Jesus brings into human dialogue. We live in a kingdom suffused with the Spirit of God. We swim in a sea of revelation. It is a bit like being a receiver in an atmosphere full of radio waves.

I think people were sick of Christians fighting about their words and theories a long time ago. I know I am. Thus I confronted my teacher with my unbelief and protested the imposition of the teaching as if it were straight from God. When I was in the maelstrom of rationalism in seminary, I wrote one paper that has always stuck with me. What could Paul be talking about when he says,

“What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.  This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words?” (1 Corinthians 1:12-13).

It surely can’t be charting out a simplistic theory of reality on a white board!

In the name of evangelism, Christians theorists have fed back the spirit of the world dressed up like the Bible. It did not make believers understand the words taught by the Spirit. The faith landscape is littered with the lives of former believers who ultimately couldn’t buy the arguments. The whole church is arguing itself to death on the battlefield of 18th century thinking as we speak! I still want to do something else by responding to the great revelation I have received.

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Would God send Gandhi to hell? — redux

Doing Theology, , ,

A couple of years ago about this time, I wrote a blog post that has been one of the most-visited I have ever written. I thought I would dust it off a bit and offer it to you again, from Zurich.

**********

Not long ago I had some surprising theological discussions at a wedding. (Pastors can be like religious flypaper). Two strangers were surprisingly interested in the afterlife! It did not seem like the usual wedding chit chat, at all. But it was stimulating!

One man was wondering about Rob Bell, who had just written his book questioning typical interpretations of what happens when we die. In the promo video (everything Bell thinks seems to be accompanied by a video) he asks the question, “Would God send Gandhi into eternal fire?”

Just a few minutes later another guest, Who had not been a part of the previous conversation, said he was impressed with Christianity above all the other world religions. He especially admired the call to love one’s enemies (I felt complimented by making it to the top of the world-religion heap). But he just couldn’t get over the idea that Gandhi might be in hell!

gandhi
Uttaranchal statue of Gandhi

Is the fear that Gandhi might be in hell the reason no one is becoming a Christian these days? Did I miss something? Why do I have only have a slight impression of Rob Bell when random wedding guests are asking pressing theological questions on a subject about which he has already made a video?

I have a lot to learn. One thing I learned, again, at the wedding is this: most people have a rather large commitment to defending themselves from any judgment. They are not putting up with a God who would send Gandhi, or them, to hell just because of Jesus. This is what the logic sounds like to me: Gandhi’s steps toward nonviolent political action — brilliantly adapted and applied by Martin Luther King, made him a secular/Hindu saint. His sainthood has been, predictably, deconstructed in a recent biography, but that doesn’t bother people that much. Everybody knows he was good and good people should not go to hell. This logic is important to people, because when they are defending Gandhi from any judgment that might send him to hell, they are also exercising the first line of defense against any sense that they, personally, might be sinful and liable to judgment. I am always amazed that people keep making this argument, especially after years of hearing how bad everyone feels about themselves! But so often another person will rise to the occasion and claim that we can be good enough to go to heaven – and if God judges us worthy of hell, that’s not a good God.

I think the question needs to be questioned a bit. Would God send Gandhi to hell?

Why do you care?

I think people care about whether Gandhi is in hell because they still think that good people are rewarded for their goodness with a blissful state of repose in heaven, which is “up there” somewhere (and maybe we get to fly like angels, which would be cool). And they take comfort that bad people, like Hitler (it is always Hitler) will burn in hell, as bad people deserve. They think, “While I am not as good as Gandhi, I am sure not as bad a Hitler, and I am about as good as most people I meet, so is God going to send us all to burn forever with Hitler?” I have heard this piece of logic repeatedly, and I heard a version of it as a reason not to have faith at the wedding.

Let me repeat after Jesus, “If you save your life, you will lose it.”  The consequences of thinking you can save your own life are huge. Holding on to the hope that your goodness is enough to save you is going to result in loss — at least the loss of what might be more than one’s earthly life. That’s what Jesus says, but people still think they just need to tip the scales of justice in their favor to get into heaven. So my question about the question is: If you think you are good enough, why do you worry about heaven and hell? If you are good enough, be content with the good enough you are. If you can’t be content with that, then trust God to be good for you, good to you and good in you as Jesus.

Why would Gandhi want to live with God forever?

Gandhi’s was good at being good and saving lives. His whole philosophy was about people from oppression through direct, nonviolent political action. It was so much better than direct, violent political action (which immediately followed the success of his nonviolent action, big time) that he became a saint, or at least he became the image he worked hard to portray.  In an era in which God has been banished from the public sphere, and in which there is hardly a sense of “public” at all, anyway, the endless competition of politics is all there is left. Gandhi succeeded in “saving” people without God through brilliant, moral politics. Why would he care about being in heaven with some Western, imperialistic “god?”

What’s more, Gandhi believed in reincarnation and believed he was already, at least metaphorically, living forever, in some form. He was well acquainted with the Lord’s claims and publicly rejected them: “I regard Jesus as a great teacher of humanity, but I do not regard him as the only begotten son of God. That epithet in its material interpretation is quite unacceptable. Metaphorically we are all sons of God, but for each of us there  may be different sons of God in a special sense. Thus for me Chaitanya may be the only begotten son of God … God cannot be the exclusive Father and I cannot ascribe exclusive divinity to Jesus” (Harijan: 1937).

Although Gandhi did not accept Jesus according to His own introduction of himself, I believe that God will accept Gandhi according to his own sense of himself. God respects us, even if we do not respect him. If we choose to die under our own terms, I think those terms are respected for what they are: death. Though we will undoubtedly realize this choice on the way to our permanent death in some way I do not understand fully (of course!), I don’t think it includes being eternally tormented in fire. The death is permanent; that is punishment enough. So my question about the question is: If one does not care to be with God, so what? Why be concerned about Gandhi`s or one`s own afterlife?

Are you sure about your image of hell?

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells a story about the end of the age when the sheep are separated from the goats. This is the line that bothers people, even if they have just heard about it: “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’” This seems to be a reflection of Enoch 10:13 (which did not make it into the Protestant Bible) in which evil angels are locked forever in a prison at the bottom of the previously mentioned fire, in the “pit of hell.”

I do not think that God, who absorbed the ultimate violence the world could offer on the cross in Jesus Christ, is waiting around to come again in order to send millions of people to unending judgment – to absorb the ultimate violence he can offer! Yet some people do not want to follow Jesus because they believe the Bible contradicts itself by calling on people to love their enemies, while showing plainly that, in the end, God will condemn his enemies to experience ever-burning fire. Maybe quoting Miroslav Volf again will help with this misunderstanding (I think Exclusion and Embrace is a great book, if you can take the dense arguing).

“The evildoers who ‘eat up my people as they eat bread,’ says the Psalmist in God’s name, will be put ‘in great terror’ (Psalm 14:5). Why terror? Why not simply reproach? Even better, why not reasoning together? Why not just display suffering love? Because evildoers ‘are corrupt’ and ‘they do abominable deeds’ (v. 1); they have ‘gone astray,’ they are ‘perverse’ (v. 3). God will judge, not because God gives people what they deserve, but because some people refuse to receive what no one deserves; if evildoers experience God’s terror, it will not be because they have done evil, but because they have resisted to the end the powerful lure of the open arms of the crucified Messiah” (p. 298).

Those who do receive what no one deserves are welcomed into a renewed creation under God’s loving reign. That is the goal. The evildoers are not imprisoned, screaming in agony, in some eternal land of unrenewed creation. I think they get what they desire. They get themselves without God, and that is death.

I am amazed that at one moment I could be singing a spontaneous duet to the bride and groom (oh yes, I did that) and then be talking about Gandhi and eternal torment the next moment. It was a my kind of evening. It also reminded me that eternity is never far away from our minds. We were meant to live with God in love and peace forever. May we not resist what we most desire out of some persistent perversity.

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