Sometimes there is no WHY.

From the last blog post: “[God] is not going to give me peace about the suffering that comes from starvation, slavery, or a friend’s suffering next door. God is not going to take the edge off of that which will drive us to reach out and love. He will not comfort us in such a way that we feel content to sustain that status quo.”

“Ok, well what kind of peace IS given? Isn’t there some sort of peace to be experienced?”

Is there peace to be felt? Certainly, but that peace comes from Jesus, not from feeling better about what is happening around us. For myself it usually comes as a bittersweet peace that provides comfort and deep breaths of relief. I say bittersweet, because there is always a gap in the peace, it is not complete. To be sure, it is everything that I need, but the gap comes from knowing that my personal experience alone is not everything that everyone (including myself) needs.

And in that sense, it ISN’T everything that I need. I have my peace, but a person suffering next door or on the other side of the world does not. As a member of the kingdom, I find it hard to feel real satisfaction in my personal, one on one, experience with God, when it is separated from the rest of the world.  Is the peace I feel from God life giving? Yes. Is it refreshing? Absolutely. Does it feel me with hope? Often. But if that peace is just for me it seems severely lopsided.

When God responded to Jesus with new life, that life was not just for him. That life was for all. When God responds to me with new life, that life is not just for me.

So, to return to the fact that God will not help us to sustain or support the status quo, God certainly does give us peace, but is not a peace that allows us to carry on as usual. It is a strange sort of peace that creates space for change. And that change begins in small places. Sometimes these places are so small that they are not even visible; such as the internal discomfort of thoughts, opinions, and values shifting. What we love begins to shift. Don’t discount the internal discomfort. It takes courage to allow hard questions to dislodge deeply rooted ideas and feelings. But when we open ourselves up to experience change, we also open ourselves up to dream again, and that is a beautiful experience to have. This part alone is a pretty grand adventure, and remains with us indefinitely (as far as I’ve gone so far… which who knows how far I’ve actually gone). For myself, the liberation, freedom, and adventure that questions bring has become a kind of internal companion. Though, this again, is not the point.

If the changes that this peace creates are allowed to roam freely, eventually they MUST burst out through the moving of arms and legs and hearts and mouths. Sometimes it only takes a few moments for this to happen, sometimes it takes quite a long time (years even). And that’s ok. Everyone is different. Grace abounds, and I think for God immense joy and pleasure is experienced with every different journey that he walks people through. But no matter how long it takes, I am convinced that eventually it has to come out, though I am also convinced that it looks different in every person (sometimes even unrecognizable to others who have traveled a similar path). This outburst (even though it may be very small much of the time) begins in the healing of relationships (both with ourselves and others), or at least the attempt from our side. It brings with it the beauty of reconciliation, and the healing of anxiety in learning to trust both God and others. From there, the possibilities are endless for those who want to wrap their lives in healing the world so that it may have new life, whether that means committing oneself to honesty and integrity in the practice of fair business, working with diligent dignity on the systems that we usually take for granted (plumbing, construction, custodian, etc), cutting back on luxuries to instead help those who have none, or living on almost nothing to do life with those who suffer the most in our world (homeless, slaves, sexworkers, children). And it may be that for many of us our lives consist of some or all of these things blurred together, but the point is that all of these and more are irreplaceable. All of them are necessary. All of them are beautiful.

So, God will not give us a peace that allows us to stay the same. Instead he gives  us a peace that is much more fulfilling that compels us to love others. That means, and this is key, that the loving and sacrificing for others, is not born out of guilt or pity. I will end with a couple of quotes from Jurgen Moltmann:

“If the poor, the sick, and the rejected are called “blessed,” then they are not the objects of Christian charity, generosity, and love. They are rather first of all fellow members of the Kingdom (Matt 5:3) and “brothers” of the Son of man (Matt 25:31). They must be respected for their dignity, honor, and worth; therefore they are subjects in the kingdom of God, not objects of our sympathy. Every act of help is preceded by our fellowship in common, and ever act of caring has its origins in Christian fellowship. Before you can be for others you must learn to live with others.” (Moltmann, Hope for the Church, 25)

(Not a quote, but my paraphrase of someone else) Those who want to stand up for the oppressed must stop participating in oppression on all accounts. Usually the game is to feel bad about what has happened, then give a little money. Moltmann says that this is unacceptable, that all this accomplishes is to sustain the oppression (by taking the edge off of the need for true change) and appease the conscience. The decision to begin to liberate the oppressed by ceasing to be an oppressor has nothing to do with feeling guilty, but has everything to do with “striking out a new direction towards the future of one’s own humanity (in which there is an overflowing amount of grace and patience that is part of the package when one starts this process).” (Moltmann, Experiences in Theology , 188)

God didn’t answer him. He instead responded with resurrection, new life, a new reality (so Jurgen Moltmann).

When we ask, “why?” often it is the wrong question. Much of the time there is no “why” that would satisfy us. The question comes from a desire to be at peace with what is wrong, or unjust. It comes from a desire to be at peace with suffering, in ourselves and in the world.

Why would we want to be at peace with the suffering in the world? When I ask the big questions about suffering in the world, perhaps I long to rid myself of the bad inner feeling.

But… the reality is that God will not give us an answer that will satisfy us when it comes to this question. God does not want us to be at peace with the suffering in the world. Instead he wants us to be a part of what heals the world (so “A Community Called Atonement” by McKnight). He is not going to give me peace about the suffering that comes from starvation, slavery, or a friend’s suffering next door. God is not going to take the edge off of that which will drive us to reach out and love. He will not comfort us in such a way that we feel content to sustain that status quo. 

The process of putting down thoughts, ideas, and plans into text that must be orderly and make some sort of logical sense really helps me to work through things. If this reading the product of this process is either helpful OR entertaining, great! Also feel free to throw out suggestions too, I like to learn.

The key thing to keep in mind for what goes on here: most of it will probably be ideas that are in process, not final (and I assume that some will never reach a final form).

What happens next? Well, Anna and I still really want to end up in Thailand, at least for a period of life, but we are not sure what the path to getting there actually looks like, since there are so many really cool directions we oculd go (which I’m not going to get into right now… unfortuantely). It is something that we are hoping to have somewhat worked out in the next couple of months.

What I can say is what we have in process right now. Our goal at the moment is to get rid of most of our “stuff.” By August we would like to fit most everything we own into four 60lb suitcases. For international flying the standard limit is two 60lb suitcases per person, plus carry on baggage. In the weeks leading up to the end of the semester we were able to either get rid of, or mark for give away between 800 and 1000 objects. This included, but was not limited to:

-many bags of clothing for salvation army
-several bags of completely worn out clothing for tossing
-at least a couple of hundred books
-nearly all of my accumulated paperwork (articles, papers, notes, things I wanted to remember and reference back to someday) from the last 15 years. It was quite a lot.
-sold my laptop (which is unfortunate on some levels, because I feel like it is a machine that will be functional for quite a long time)
-pinewood derby trophies from when I was a kid
-collections of random things (like key chain collection)
-I got rid of my sword
-tons of random computer cables of all kinds (want some? Let me know!)
-video games that I was still holding onto (I actually still have to deliver those… these include most of the Final Fantasy games from 7 on)
-hundreds of random stuff that doesn’t fit in any category – the kind of stuff that once you start parting with stuff you wonder why in the world you’ve moved in boxes from home to home to home *4head2palm*

That said, we still have WAY too much stuff. There is a long way to go, but getting rid of perfectly fine (or even great) stuff that there is not much need for feels GREAT! It also feels very liberating. The completion of school is one step to “liberation” from being stuck local, and getting rid of all of our stuff is another.

As you probably guessed, the next step is to leave the country for very long periods of time. If I have it my way, we will only be back here (USA) from time to time. Yes, America is great, but after living in Thailand for 6 1/2 months in 2005 the rest of the world is just too cool to miss out on.

First, because I like it, a quote from “The Music of Silence: Entering the Sacred Space of Monastic Experience”

"T.S. Eliot observes, ‘humankind cannot stand very much reality.’ Why is it that we afraid to live in the now? We are afraid of becoming real, just like the toys in the children’s book The Velveteen Rabbit. They all want to become real — that is the great dream of toys. But they are afraid, so they ask of the more experienced toys, "Does it hurt to be real?" That is the same fear we have. Does it hurt to encounter reality? As the old toy wisely answers, ‘When you are real, you don’t mind that it hurts.’

When we are in love, singing our lover’s praises is not work. Neither is chant. Gregorian chant it heartfelt praise. While at times it can be cry for anguish, an expression of our need, it always retains the overtones and the undertones of praise."

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These quotes are from “Contemplative Youth Ministry: Practicing the Presence of Jesus.” They are in no particular order. They are simply pulled out of the book.

"Youth are not blank slates, and Christianity is not words. That may seem obvious until you seek to share the Christian faith with young people. Then you may notice your first impulses involve words. ‘What will I say? What books should I read? What answers will I give? What discussion should I evoke? What blanks with young people need filling?" In sharing the faith with youth, most of us think about the words and empty spaces. if we go too seminary or step inside a Sunday morning worship service, we’re immersed in words. A newcomer to these settings might easily assume Christianity is words. It’s reading, preaching, memorizing, lecturing, preaching, and writing. It’s books, newsletters, worship bulletins… words, words, words.

But the central problem in sharing the Christian faith with young people doesn’t concern words; it’s deeper than that. The real crisis facing those of us who seek to share faith with youth is this:

We don’t know how to be with our kinds.
We don’t know how to be with ourselves.
We don’t know how to be with God.”

“Most adults are busy. We have no down time. We move from activity to activity, with few real relationships and little introspection. We’re distracted from our disctractions by our distractions. We live narrow lives. We tend to act as if we’re nothing more than our roles and our jobs. We become what Thomas Merton calls ‘the false self.’  Anthropologist Angeles Arrien relates that in many indigenous cultures, a dis-spirited or dis-connected person is diagnosed by asking four questions:

Where in your life did you stop singing?
Where in your life did you stop dancing?
Where in you life did you stop telling stories?
Where in you life did you stop listening to silence?"

"Anxiety is the inability to be present. It’s a state of agitation in which we lose our larger capacity to empathize , to love, to respond to the needs of others…. We feel life closing in, leaving fewer and fewer choices… we get suspicious, distancing ourselves from others, ourselves, and even God. Our actions become self-protective, reactive, and compulsive."

"I once asked a group of graduating high school students to give me their impressions of adulthood. For the next hour kids shared their observations and experiences with parents, teachers, and various adults in the community… [their conclusion:] Adults have no friends, adults have no passions, and adults are stressed out… [and fear that the teenagers are going to mess up]."

"Noah realized that being a Christian has consequences. That living life of love often results in suffering. That being like Jesus doesn’t mean simply being nice and having good morals — it often means facing the pain and evil in the world."

"[It's easy to understand why] parents, and church members, might want the youth to have Christian values and assurances, but we don’t want them to have the life of Jesus… they may become outcasts. They may develop a costly compassion for others. They may become more vulnerable to the pain and loneliness in the world.

I want them to know Jesus so they will know how to keep their hearts soft. I want them to become Christians because so they’ll know how to give and receive love — so they’ll avoid the burn-out life of materialism that deadens spirits and kills Creativity."

"One thing is clear: We can’t create love. We can’t conjure up God’s love by offering kids sugary smiles and inspirational posters. Even if we seek to serve kids — help them with homework, drive them to and from school — our good acts can seem heavy and oppressive if they don’t come from a spirit of love. We can’t create more love for ourselves or for our kids; because the truth is, love can’t be made, it can only be received. Love is a gift God offers us, a gift that asks only that we let down our resistances and yield."

"If love is a gift, then the first step in living into that love is to surrender. We need to stop trying to make kids love God (or make God love our kids)."

"I have observed too many churches and youth ministries whose methods expose a consistent distrust of God. These ministries embody a sense of urgency that communicates a God who is either a relentless taskmaster or completely incompetent. This is the ‘functional atheism’ of which Parker Palmer writes. In youth ministry it appears as an endless parade of duded-up Christian rock stars, hyperactive activities, word-heavy programs, and teen devotionals covered in exclamation marks!!!! There is a tangible sense that God must be dressed up or hidden behind high-energy music and charismatic speakers. Our churches and ministries seem deathly afraid of any kind of downtime. All silence and stillness is eradicated for fear that youth might find God disappointing, boring, or absent. It’s as if our church and ministry leaders suspect God has left the building, and so they stall with jabbering words and meaningless activities in hopes that crowd won’t become restless.

In contrast, Jesus isn’t afraid of reality. He isn’t afraid of doubts, or downtime, or disappointment, or boredom — in fact, I might even claim that he finds boredom, disappointment, and doubt critical to spiritual growth."

"The Christian life begins by receiving. We don’t know much about receiving in North America. For most of us, life is what you make of it. “What do you do?” – or for youth, “What are you going to do?’ – is often the first question we ask when we meet someone. For too many of us, our response to this questions becomes the basis of our identity. To live, in North America, is to do. The imagined purpose of life, both inside and outside the Christian church, is to become efficient and productive. Life is measured by the success of our individual efforts and ingenuity.

By contrast, a life of love is open-ended. Love isn’t in a hurry to get somewhere; it doesn’t live for the end result. Love takes pleasure in the here and now. Love seeks relationships. Love is not a means to an end. Love is its own reward. Paul writes that live is patient and kind; it bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Cor 13:4-7). If God is love (1 John 4:7-8), then these characteristics are not descriptions of love, but also descriptions of the God who is alive and working within every moment.

Jesus is the best teacher of how to live a life of love. One of the most significant differences between Jesus and other people is that Jesus is a good receiver. He receives food from a cheating tax collector. How allows a prostitute to pour expensive oil on his feet. He is willing to receive from God.”

“Rather than treat God as a means to an end, these disciplines and exercises invited one to “be” with God, to move inside and seek the presence of God without expectation. This was new to me, and in direct contrast to a Christian upbringing that, until then, was focused on words, moral principles, and good works, It had never occurred to me to actually seek to be with God, to open myself to God without an end in mind.

-Jurgen Moltmann (Hope for the Church, 1979)

I’ve asked many people what they think about postmodernism, and most don’t know much about it. In addition, most in my world (evangelical Christians) tend to have been given a negative view of it. Some even think that it came and then went around the turn of the millennium. Well, the fact is that postmodernism is not a fad, or just some cultural movement that will pass (or has passed) quickly. I strongly believe it’s something that is good to be familiar with. And because of that, like with many things, I am always on the lookout for easy, but thorough introductions to the subject.

Note: I don’t consider myself and kind of expert on the subject, but I am very fond of it.

Below on mp3s of a Theological Conference from 2007 that you will really enjoy if you have any interest in learning about it. The discussion consists of two current postmodern Christian philosophers discussing topic.

Here is why you want to listen to this:

1. They explain why postmodern does not = relativism.
2. They attempt to avoid as much “academic” language as  possible, because they were speaking to an audience that consisted mostly non-academic types (pastors, “lay-people”, etc – NOT other philosophers).
3. Having a basic understanding of postmodernism will give you great insight into my generation and those that are coming after me (I’m 26).
4. They explain how one of the huge benefits of postmodernism is that faith is becoming accepted in the study of philosophy again for the first time in centuries.
5. This will help in gaining understanding of both the reason and purpose of the emerging church. And way much of it’s criticism is from lack of understanding (not all of it of course)
6. They give a good overview of the entire history of philosophy leading up to postmodernism. Meaning, you don’t need to have any familiarity with the topic.
7. They explain how postmodernism didn’t start in the 1990’s. It has it’s roots in the early 1900’s and before, and has slowly progressed up to where it is now.
8. They are both brilliant, and I think they will give you an appreciation for studies such as theirs, if you don’t have one already.

2007 Theological, Philosophical Conversation (To download for PC – Right Click, and select “save link as” – for Mac – Ctrl+Click)

Session 1, part 1

http://media.libsyn.com/media/emergent/ep-2007-08-18-Caputo-1.mp3

Session 1, part 2

http://media.libsyn.com/media/emergent/ep-2007-08-28-Caputo-2.mp3

Both of these  podcasts are property of Emergent Village. http://www.emergentvillage.com/

So you are still unfamiliar with the emerging church? Don’t want to read a lot of long books to learn about it? Smart enough to realize that a few minutes of nasty one-sided bashing can’t possibly give a fair portrayal of what something… anything is?

You are not alone. There are very few people I have met who have much of any idea what the “emerging church/conversation/movement/non-movement/whatever you want to call it” is.

This all round unfamiliarity with the emerging church, and the fact that the movement gets accused of many bad things, leads me to look for resources that can help to lend understanding.

Below I have just that Seriously. If you were only ever going to give up a couple of hours of your life to learn about the emerging church, what I have linked to below is what you must to give that time to.

This is a recording from AAR (American Association of Religion), a panel of three talking about all things emerging.

Here are the reasons you should put in the time to download it and listen to it on your mp3 player:

1. It is easy to understand, because it was mostly intended for those who were unfamiliar with the subject in the first place.
2. The first long portion of it is each person telling the story of how they each got involved in the creation, or ended up in the emerging conversation. Seriously, good stuff. One person is from the more liberal Christian world, one from moderate, and the other from conservative.
3. There is a decent history of how it came to be, and where they think it is going (keep in mind this panel was in late 2007).
4. There is a very good sampling of the varying opinions and discussions that have been going on in the emerging conversation, plus some good disagreement amongst the speakers about a few things.
5. This will definitely give you a feel for the movement, at least in part.
6. This will give you a good head start amongst most people in understanding the kinds of things that go through my own head.
7. The hearts of the people in it are different and beautiful. And they don’t always agree.

AAR Panel (to download – right click and click “save link as”  –  For Mac users – “Ctrl”+click)

Part 1

http://cdn4.libsyn.com/emergent/ep-2007-12-15-AARPanel-1.mp3

Part 2

http://cdn4.libsyn.com/emergent/ep-2007-12-29-AARPanel-2.mp3

Both of these  podcasts are property of Emergent Village. http://www.emergentvillage.com/

http://theooze.tv/thinkfwd/pete-rollins-resurrection-as-insurrection