Category: Marginal People

Jacques Ellul: Violence: Reflections from a Christian Perspective, and a biblically-poor response to our complicity

10/19/2019

A good friend posted on Facebook a partial quote of Jacques Ellul from his Violence: Reflections from a Christian Perspective. It aligned with what I have been thinking about in these past days concerning the scenes of violent protest around the globe. What was un expected was the way in which Ellul turned his eyes toward Christians as complicate in this violence. I didn't disagree with him.

“If violence is unleashed anywhere at all, Christians are always to blame. This is the criterion, as it were, for our confession of sin. Always it is because Christians have not been concerned for the poor, have not defended the cause of the poor before the powerful, have not unswervingly fought the fight for justice, that violence breaks out.”

I have often thought this. And, I was not put off by his warning concerning the Christian’s complicity.

Christians don’t typically self-reflect in this direction when we see such violence, revolt, or protest. We typically point to and offer our (mostly political in the guise of Bible) critique of the cultural culprits and, of course, the political culprits (usually from the party we dislike)—all which are indeed culpable for sure, especially those that leverage and use such violence for political gain (all the while never truly ameliorating the causes of violence, for such would work against their political status and power–but that for another blog). What we rarely recognize, however, is our role as Christians, really as church, in the resulting violence from the oppressed, marginalized, and poor.

Ellul’s critique is spot on and needed.

While this is an important point of repentance, it was the sentences left unposted that grabbed my attention:

“Once violence is there, it is too late. And then Christians cannot try to redeem themselves and soothe their conscience by participating in violence.”

Here is where I level some critique at the privileged Christian “woke” crowd. Rather than truly being a part of a local body of Christians, a local church, the very place and space God has created for an alternative, reconciling body, the option for expressing ones discovered wokeness (the repented posture to “soothe their conscience” as Ellul puts it) is to stoke the attitudes of violence and aggression against the people and systems of oppression. This isn't in the Gospels, nor any teaching whatsoever I can see in the New Testament. I am reminded of what I heard Miroslav Volf once point out, namely that when Christians side with a political vision (progressives with the democrats or socialism; the conservatives with republicans) they will inevitably be participants in the violence that results from protest and survival and, thus, bring harm to innocent people.

I am amazed (and saddened) at the stream of social media tweets and posts and blogs from Christians (woke privileged Christians especially) to take up arms, meet oppression with violence, to take on aggressive systems of injustice with aggression. (I have read exactly these calls of action.) While this resulting attitude and action is, given the human desire for survival (and power, I might add), inventible, such is not Gospel, nor the activity of the church (based on what is in the New Testament). We don't see such a call for violence and aggression from Jesus, nor do we see such in the church of Acts, nor taught by the New Testament–or seen in the early church of the first 350+ years.

The proper repentance is not to participate in the violence or call for such, but in occupying a humble space among the poor and marginalized as church.

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Wasted Quote: "God uncredentialed in the empire, unknown in the courts, unwelcome in the temple"

7/22/2017

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“In the imperial world of Pharaoh and Solomon, the prophetic alternative is a bad joke either to be squelched by force or ignored in satiation. But we are a haunted people because we believe the bad joke is rooted in the character of God himself, a God who is not the reflection of Pharaoh or of Solomon. He is a God with a name of his own, which cannot be uttered by anyone but him. He is not the reflection of any, for he has his own person and retains that all to himself. He is a God uncredentialed in the empire, unknown in the courts, unwelcome in the temple. And his history begins in his attentiveness to the cries to the marginal ones. He, unlike his royal regents, is one whose person is presented as passion and pathos, the power to care, the capacity to weep, the energy to grieve and then to rejoice. The prophets after Moses know that his caring, weeping, grieving, and rejoicing will not be outflanked by royal hardware or royal immunity because this one is indeed God. And kings must face that.”

~Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

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Ways (and privileged ways) of thinking about the poor and marginal among us

1/24/2017

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There are those in our country whose heritage is linked to ancestry who voluntarily came to American and whose lives reflect that line of heritage; there are those whose heritage is marked by ancestry who did not voluntarily come to America and whose lives, now, reflect that line of heritage [a CMA paraphrase, quote from “13th” (2016) a Documentary on the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution and mass incarceration].

“‘Andrew Davey, in his book Urban Christianity and Global Order, insists that a church concerned about “its own sustainability must have strategies other than the growth paradigm’ (p. 112). Contemporary church growth models are multimillion-dollar business ventures with huge marketing campaigns and an elite celebrity leadership of its own that promote costly expectations for a local church. There should be consideration whether such growth expectations divert resources and human capital away from a church’s responsibilities regarding the poor. While a church’s sustainability should be directed outward and toward the future, it should also have positive, redemptive consequences for the community, with special consideration for its vulnerable populations” (Wasted Blog Post, “Our ways of doing church are not neutral,” 8/13/15 ).

“We often fall into the trap of thinking that the solution to injustice is to gain power, hoping that once the roles of power have been reversed, the coercion will stop. But every bloody revolution in the history of the world shows that this does not work. David inevitably becomes Goliath. The oppressed persons who seize control simply become the oppressors” (Craig Greenfield, Subversive Jesus).

“. . . affluence that’s not balanced and informed by daily, meaningful interaction with people on the margins is poisonous to the Christian faith” (Judy Wu Dominick, “Why the affluent need the poor”).

“You might properly say in your own case, ‘To beg I am ashamed’; but never be ashamed to beg for the poor; yea, in this case, be an importunate beggar; do not easily take a denial. Use all the address, all the understanding, all the influence you have; at the same time trusting in Him that has the hearts of all men in his hands” (John Wesley, Sermon 98 “On Visiting the Sick”).

*This is the fourth instalment of quotes from my presentation on "Church (local), the poor and their neighborhood," which are somewhat random, but still focused on the church and the poor. For all the posted "Church (local) quotes >>

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Jacques Ellul: Violence: Reflections from a Christian Perspective, and a biblically-poor response to our complicity

Wasted Quote: "God uncredentialed in the empire, unknown in the courts, unwelcome in the temple"

Ways (and privileged ways) of thinking about the poor and marginal among us

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