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A Wasted Quote from Lord of the Rings: It's like the great stories, the ones that really mattered

1/22/2018

Sometimes I am caught up in how hard and messy things are–not just globally seen through the lens and posts of social media, but in real lives and in the actual neighborhood where I am ministering. I remember the constant calls to go . . . go . . . go in my Bible College days. Youth. Youthfulness. Excitement. Passion. I remember. Every altar call. Every deeper-life conference. Every mission conference. Chapel after chapel. Go! Go! I am wondering why there isn't a line of young people, college aged, passion-filled Christians lining up to minister where I am ministering–one of the poorest, most under-resourced neighborhoods in New England? Where's the line?

I love this neighborhood. I love the people in the Hill. But sometimes I feel so overwhelmed; it even got to me during service yesterday. Almost didn't get through the benediction after singing Kirk Franklin's "My World Needs You." Strangely, my mind as we closed drifted off to a scene in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings: Two Towers where Sam Gamgee says "It's all wrong . . . we shouldn't be here."

I am overwhelmed at the task. But the love of Christ compels me to go . . . well, to stay and to bring the gospel where I now have been planted. God so loves the community here, the Hill, that he would build his church in its midst and call many to know Jesus and the forgiveness of sins.

Sam's words are for those called to the humble but selfless mission to save others no matter the cost to themselves; to church planters planting churches in uncool and messy places on this globe and in places like the Hill.

“It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t be here. But, we are . . . It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end . . . because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing . . . this shadow. Even darkness must pass.”

~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

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Wasted Quote on MLK 2018: few are disturbed by the church's presence

1/15/2018

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"The contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are."

~Martin Luther King, Jr, from his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (April 16, 1963).

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A justice thought on 2018 MLK Day: A problem with the word "patient"

1/15/2018

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It is a wholly different thing to tell a person of means, of privilege, who has a measure of economic security and stability to "be patient, God is good" and telling someone who lives with food insecurity, unstable shelter, and a lack of economic opportunity to "be patient, God is good."

Do you see how this works?

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“Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was ‘well timed’ in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’ We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied’” (MLK, Jr., Letter).

“But in general, when ancient Latin writers used the term patientia, they didn’t have heroes in mind; they were thinking of subordinates and victims. Patience seemed an appropriate attitude for people of no account who were on the receiving end of actions or experiences. For these people—powerless, poverty stricken, and often female--patientia was ignominious. Patience was the response of people who didn’t have the freedom to define their own goals or make choices. Notably patience was a response of slaves, for whom it was an inevitability, not a virtue” (Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire).

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Idolatry: a defective social construction of reality for the Christian (part 3)

1/10/2018

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Conclusion: Social Action as Christian Apologetic

Simply, affluent suburbanites, despite a claim to a higher work ethic or a more developed sense of responsibility, didn’t do it on their own; they had help along the way. (I know, many do not like to hear this, but no less truthful.) On the one hand, the non-poor’s social construction of reality, which they now experience as everyday life, allows them to benefit, not just from the market, but also from past actions of government that laid much of the groundwork for continued prosperity. On the other hand, the concentration of poverty in central-cities is not simply about laziness, slothfulness, or even personal sin. (I assume the non-poor who benefit from the current structure and mediating institutions are just as much “sinners” as those living in geographic areas of concentrated poverty.) Indeed, much of what is in place and experienced now as normal arose from various forms of racism and redlining practices, as well as “the concentration of subsidized housing projects” that, as Duany, Plater-Zyberk, and Speck observed in their Suburban Nation, “destabilized and isolated the poor, while federal home-loan programs, targeting new construction exclusively, encouraged the deterioration and abandonment of urban housing.”

The fact of poverty and the reality of those affected by it in the central-cities could not have happened any more effectively if it were actually planned and implemented with malice. Without the aid of government policies and subsidies, as well as municipally empowered zoning laws and discriminatory business policies, the foundation for exurban wealth in America might not have happened. Rather than lamenting this inequitable state of affairs, participants, including many non-poor Christians, have been encouraged to rejoice in the “prudence” of such strategies and the institutions, capitalism and the “mythical” market, that sustain them. The modern, non-poor suburban dweller is the heir of such socially constructed forces.

The present model for socio-economic progress and prosperity objectifies the non-poor Christian’s reality (i.e., her or his “home world”) through habits and experiences of everyday life that are incorporated into his or her belief system—seemingly validating the plausibility of personal faith. The problem for the non-poor Christian living in such a history and current social-location is that it provides only a partial reality, through its defective social construction. The Bible warns of God’s judgment upon those who create or maintain economic structures that benefit some and exclude others, that pave the way to prosperity for some and prolonged, generational poverty for others (Exod 22–23; Lev 19, 24; Deut 15, 24; Jer 4–8, 16–17; 22; Ezek 17–18, 22; Amos 4:1–2; Mic 2:1–2; Zech 7; Isa 5:7–12). Unaware or in denial of their socially constructed world, the non-poor believer often can accept a world that is duplicitous, limiting the historic and current benefits of a socio-economic system to those the “market blessed.”

“Show me what kind of association you have with those living with the effects of poverty, and I will tell you what kind of god you worship.”

Emil Brunner once remarked, “For every civilization, for every period of history, it is true to say, ‘show me what kind of gods you have, and I will tell you what kind of humanity you possess.’” For the Christian and Christian community it is: Show me what kind of association you have with those living with the effects of poverty, and I will tell you what kind of god you worship. The reality of everyday life is that Suburban life and its enablers—the free market and human acts of power—are often at odds with the gospel, especially a gospel that has been formed by the idolatry-poverty juxtaposition. For the non-poor Christian, this is an idolatrous mode of living and does not offer a biblically defensible apologetic for the God revealed in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
*adapted from chapter 5 of my book, Wasted Evangelism: Social Action and the Church's Task of Evangelism

I am the author of Wasted Evangelism: Social Action and the Church's Task of Evangelism, a deep, exegetical read into the Gospel of Mark. All royalties from this book go to support our church planting ministry in the Hill community of New Haven, CT. The book and its e-formats can be found on Amazon, Barns'n Noble, (and most other online book distributors) or through the publisher, Wipf & Stock directly.

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Idolatry: a defective social construction of reality for the Christian (part 2)

1/9/2018

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A duplicitous, self-righteous double standard in the “burbs

Often, non-poor Christians respond to the poor as those who are living in a socially constructed reality that is mostly alienated from those living with the effects of poverty. The non-poor Christian’s participation in non-urban life causes a need for continuous reaffirmation for a biblical plausibility for their own social-location, one which alienates rather than connects them to the economically vulnerable. Without a sociological imagination, many non-poor Christians are not fully aware of their own socially constructed exurban reality, nor how it has been formed, which can lead to duplicitous, self-righteous double standards toward the poor.

Often arguments rest, not on biblical grounds, but realities constructed by everyday life outside concentrated areas of poverty, namely the ability of the non-poor to have taken the “opportunities” presented in their socio-economic system to develop wealth and prosperity. The poor in the cities only need to do the same. Equal opportunity, not equal distribution of wealth is just, they reason. But this is not a fair picture, for the so-called “opportunity” has had a history and an opportunity that has been largely absent from social-locations with the most concentrated poverty, a consequence that is more akin to the injustice described by the prophets than simply the results of a good Christian work ethic and the invisible hand of the market. The exurban non-poor benefit from histories and institutions that have developed in favor of the suburbs and, for the most part, at the expense of central-cities—for decades. The shift from urban to suburban came with an intentional redistribution of efforts and transactions ranging from Federal subsidies to government policies to perceptions of urban and non-urban life. The ability to enjoy prosperity today, especially in upwardly mobile exurbia, is built on socio-economic transactions that have contributed to the current socially constructed reality of many non-poor (not just a good work ethic).

Since the end of WWII, suburban development has been “celebrated,” while urban decline was often “explained away as inevitable.” The “industrial cities’ obsolescence” and the flourishing of the suburban way of life, for many, has been “a sign of progress” rather than “a national defect,” even necessary for continued economic growth. Young married couples were “confident enough of the future to flee apartments in the cities for homes with mortgages in the suburbs,” while at the same time “the industrial cities were undergoing precipitous decline.” Urban-centers, along with their infrastructures and economies, were failing and residents who could afford to do so left for the suburbs in great numbers. The industry clusters, particularly manufacturing that supported much of the urban population, closed and left for “more favorable locations.” Jobs left the central cities en mass and there was negligible workforce and corresponding educational development supportive of those who could not afford to leave. Urban-municipalities became overly burdened with a dwindling tax-base and an ever-increasing demand for services. The shift toward suburbia was not simply “an inevitable evolution or a historical accident,” but “the direct result of a number of policies that conspired powerfully to encourage urban dispersal,” which would create two almost alien segments of society, with two distinctively estranged realities (i.e., habits of everyday life).

. . . the so-called “opportunity” has had a history and an opportunity that has been largely absent from social-locations with the most concentrated poverty, a consequence that is more akin to the injustice described by the prophets than simply the results of a good Christian work ethic and the invisible hand of the market.

Furthermore, current upwardly mobile non-poor who live outside central-cities are the beneficiaries of a change in how home ownership was made possible. Even before WWII, Federal regulations began to restructure the home buying process to allow for lower down-payments and longer term-mortgages. The principle of amortizing loans made it possible to borrow on longer lengths of time for more affordable, smaller monthly payments. Later, after WWII, other Federal Housing Authority (FHA) policies helped to structure home ownership to be very attractive and easier to obtain, crafting regulatory guidelines for subdivisions on the outskirts of urban centers, the first fruits of what was to become suburbs. In effect, the government, through legislation and acts of congress (the FHA and Veterans Administration in particular), disproportionately encouraged new home ownership in the suburbs rather than fixing or rehabilitating older structures in urban centers.

The sociological pressures resulting from the end of WWII, the “released pent-up demand for starting families and buying consumer goods,” a housing shortage in the central cities, the availability of low-cost mortgages for new homes, the mortgage-interest tax credit, mass production techniques in the housing industry all contributed to a rapid expansion of the suburbs. The shift in regulatory policies for long-term-little-down mortgages, government subsidized development of major highways for access in and out of central-cities, the GI Bill (a government funded education/training program), and other Federal aid to the newer exurban regions made prosperity possible as we know it today. Zoning laws and affluent developers, not just the invisible hand of the market, protected the preferences of those with power. Furthermore, advertisers of home-related products, women’s magazines, the FHA, and bank officials all sought to make, as Robert A. Beauregard explains in When America Became Suburban, “the sharpest possible contrast between the private, comfortable, safe, and protected environment of the suburbs and the open, competitive, dangerous, and seductive world of the central city.”

The invisible hand had and continues to get help—sometimes through Federal, State, and municipal efforts; sometimes through creative marketing; sometimes through celebrity-trend makers; sometimes by politically empowered zoning codes. Growth and decline, expansion and contraction, growth in one area at the expense of another area—all unavoidable within a socio-economic system that prizes “progress,” supported by desire for upward-mobility (and, too often, greed), promote the ultimate goal of “the Suburban Way of Life.” It is an empirical fact, the system and its mediating institutions ignored its central-cities and promoted life in the “burbs” as the ultimate goal of prosperity, all for the gods of growth, progress, and the new.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
*adapted from chapter 5 of my book, Wasted Evangelism: Social Action and the Church's Task of Evangelism

I am the author of Wasted Evangelism: Social Action and the Church's Task of Evangelism, a deep, exegetical read into the Gospel of Mark. All royalties from this book go to support our church planting ministry in the Hill community of New Haven, CT. The book and its e-formats can be found on Amazon, Barns'n Nobel, (and most other online book distributors) or through the publisher, Wipf & Stock directly.

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Idolatry: a defective social construction of reality for the Christian (part 1)

1/8/2018

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I am reading or have read recently a number of books that seek to explain how we arrived at our very distinct demographic and mostly ethnic divisions that exist today—urban, suburban, and now exurban. (I will leave the rural landscape for others who have studied it more adequately.) Amid these books I am also learning how we have developed a functionally dependent class, mostly non-white, that live and try to survive in the most dense urban areas of our country. Much of what I have read affirms my own writing on the subject, which found its way into chapter 5—“Idolatry and Poverty: Social Action as Christian Apologetics”—of my book, Wasted Evangelism: Social Action and the Church’s Task of Evangelism. Below is a three-part adaption of the latter subsections of this chapter.

Idolatry promotes a defective social reality for the non-poor Christian

In his Nature and Destiny of Man, Reinhold Niebuhr observed that idolatry is making the contingent absolute, something relative into “the unconditional principle of meaning.” Luke Timothy Johnson points out that, when we consider something as ultimate, this is worship, not just what our lips or cultus ritual render, but in the exercise of our freedom in service to that which we consider absolute and unconditional, and, thus, derive our significance.

It is, however, not just an image fashioned with gold and silver that provides the danger and potential of idolatry, for the Bible is clear, such man-fashion idols are no-things (Isa 41:21–24; 44:10; Ps 115; 135; Acts 14:15; 1 Cor 8:4; 10:19; Gal 4:8). Johnson reminds us that “important idolatries have always centered on those forces which have enough specious power to be truly counterfeit, and therefore truly be dangerous: sexuality (fertility), riches, and power (or glory).” It is the body of knowledge that accompanies the object and the habits of service in worshipping the objects (i.e., idols) and, then, the social and cultural habits that follow that develop an everyday “world,” with meaning and definitions for relationships (repeated action, mundane habits), that objectifies reality and maintains significance and plausibility (its symbols and corresponding institutions). Our socially constructed world, then, is reality formed by our service of worship and sustained (validated) through the habits and experience of everyday life.

Idolatries are socially constructed and then objectified through routines of daily life, making, as Johnson points out, “the relative absolute, the contingent necessary, and the end-all that which is neither end nor all.” The result is a distorted construction of reality for the Christian, whose whole orientation can be in conflict with the reality of the inaugurated presence and outcomes of the kingdom. As far as biblical revelation is concerned, “Idolatry [is] the Big Lie about reality.” This is equally true of economic realities and social-locations that form everyday habits of non-poor Christians as it is for those who worship multiple gods or idols. This understanding of the function of idolatry is affirmed by Berger and Luckmann, who remind us reality itself is socially constructed.

As far as biblical revelation is concerned, “Idolatry [is] the Big Lie about reality.”

However, to understand fully the non-poor’s everyday reality, it is simply “not enough to understand the particular symbols or interaction patterns of individual situations.” It is how the “overall structure or meaning” within “these particular patterns and symbols” are experienced. As we seek to apply the gospel that is embedded with texts regarding idolatry (e.g., the overwhelming number in Mark’s own gospel) and, as well, texts indicative of relationships toward the economically vulnerable, it is important to understand how the social-location experienced by many non-poor Christians was formed and its implications for their (i.e., the non-poor) participation in the outcomes of this social-location.

Religion once offered an integrating principle that helped provide a “life-world” that was “more or less unified.” But, modern life not only provides a less unified everyday life, now religion often aligns itself with the socio-economic forces that help sustain the plausibility of our faith, which can then inoculate the non-poor Christian from the idolatrous forces embedded in their social-location. Over time new symbols and signs (lawns, yards, gated communities, commutes and highways, social status, shopping malls, upward mobility, the market, double-entry accounting, etc.) that permeate the social-location the modern non-poor Christian experiences as everyday life compete with biblical symbols (e.g., the words of God, the cross, redemptive-historical acts of God in history, etc.). Johnson reminds us, “Prior to any action or pattern of actions we might term ‘Christian’ is a whole set of perceptions and attitudes, which themselves emerge from a coherent system of symbols, and an orientation toward the world and other humans, which we call Faith.” In fact, the very habit of experiencing the fragmented, often unintegrated social-locations over and over everyday might feel like freedom bestowed by our socio-economic system, but actually weakens the plausibility of biblical faith to inform our home world.

Non-poor Christians are in danger of idolatry when finding themselves in need of affirming “this worldly” system and its institutions as God-given in order to be at home, plotting their lives on the societal map provided by social institutions rather than biblical discipleship in order to relate—comfortably, plausibly, securely—to the overall web of acceptable meanings in society. As Berger in Homeless Mind points out, because of the plurality of social worlds—work, school, play, third places, highways, commutes, home, shopping, church—in modern society “the structures of each particular world are experienced as relatively unstable and unreliable.” The separated sectors of our social world are rationalized and relativized, forcing the non-poor Christian to justify religiously this worldly system and institutions in order to feel less exposed and vulnerable and more relevant and secure. After decades of political alignment and religious justification, for the most part, the non-poor Christians living in the suburbs now feel at home.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

I am the author of Wasted Evangelism: Social Action and the Church's Task of Evangelism, a deep, exegetical read into the Gospel of Mark. All royalties from this book go to support our church planting ministry in the Hill community of New Haven, CT. The book and its e-formats can be found on Amazon, Barns'n Nobel, (and most other online book distributors) or through the publisher, Wipf & Stock directly.

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Wasted Books on my table for the start of 2018

1/3/2018

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Here are eight books On My Table for early 2018; the first four listed, I have already begun reading:

Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality by Richard Beck

Reading the Bible with the Damned by Bob Ekblad

Kierkegaard: A Single Life by Stephen Backhouse

Reframing Paul: Conversations in Grace & Community by Mark Strom

The Embrace of Buildings: A Second Look at Walkable City Neighborhoods by Lee Hardy

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer (founder and owner of the Shake Shack)

Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology (Cultural Liturgies) by James K. A. Smith

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Wasted Quote (for the New Year): Cowardice only concerns itself with the really important things (Søren Kierkegaard)

1/1/2018

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“Decision lays its demanding hand on us from start to finish. Cowardice, on the other hand, wants only to concern itself with the really important, big things, not in order to carry something out whole-heartedly but to be flattered by doing something that is noble and great. Yet hiding behind the exalted is nothing but an excuse for not conquering all the little things one has omitted, simply because they were little”

~Søren Kierkegaard from “Dare to Decide”

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A Wasted Quote from Lord of the Rings: It's like the great stories, the ones that really mattered

Wasted Quote on MLK 2018: few are disturbed by the church's presence

A justice thought on 2018 MLK Day: A problem with the word "patient"

Idolatry: a defective social construction of reality for the Christian (part 3)

Conclusion: Social Action as Christian Apologetic

Idolatry: a defective social construction of reality for the Christian (part 2)

A duplicitous, self-righteous double standard in the “burbs

Idolatry: a defective social construction of reality for the Christian (part 1)

Idolatry promotes a defective social reality for the non-poor Christian

Wasted Books on my table for the start of 2018

Wasted Quote (for the New Year): Cowardice only concerns itself with the really important things (Søren Kierkegaard)

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