Halloween: Yes or No?
One person argues that the Puritanical fear of the occult and the general evangelical hatred towards the Roman Catholic Church is what originally created the fear of Halloween. Perhaps, he argues, we have come to believe our own propaganda?
A Theology of the Land
tallskinnykiwi talks about and quotes Christian farmers who are doing what they can to bring justice and equality to what Paul called “the whole created order.”
In later clarifying the second mistake (don’t do announcements at the beginning), Easum says:
…announcements at the beginning of a worship service so deadly- because they violate every media tenet as well slap as our culture in the face. Most younger people today do whatever they can to avoid watching a commercial on TV. Imagine what a media savvy twenty-something feels when subjected to five or ten minutes of commercials up front before they have the chance to decide if they like what’s happening in your worship.
And if you say, “That’s tough. We don’t bow to the culture,” you’re missing the point. The way to be counter-cultural is not by intentionally turning people away with your methodology. The way to be counter-cultural is to make the worship so appealing that the Holy Spirit has time to speak into their lives and transform their hearts into followers of Christ. You can’t do that if you run them off at the beginning of the service.
I don’t know Easum personally. He seems to have reasonably valid credentials for talking about church growth and church marketing, but I wonder if we have lost something in this message of making the Holy Spirit “appealing.”
There is nothing all that “appealing” to me about Jesus. He didn’t hold nice services and invite lots of people to hear him. In fact, he tried very often to turn people away or keep what he did a secret. What do we do with this Jesus in light of modern church marketing?
I’m not sure I have the answers, but I would appreciate any thoughts on the matter.
[The following is a parable; for those who don't know the definition of parable is a fictional story designed to impart some deeper truth beyond the story. Comment on the story after reading explaining how the story makes you feel.]
Not long ago, I heard a story of a Vietnamese leader of a city. His son was getting married and he wanted to throw a huge party for him. He owned a huge brewery, and gave his hired hands the day off to hand out invitations to all his friends and family.
The servants passed out over a thousand invitations, but the majority of them called and said they couldn’t make it. One of his servants was even mistreated by the people he invited. They began to beat him with a baseball bat.
The leader was so angry at the shame brought on his family that he called up one of the ruling military junta. He showed the junta the list of guests he had invited to the party and said he would provide $100 for each head brought to him dead. The city was in an uproar as the junta descended upon the city.
All of the thousand people on the list were found and brought out to the public square. Their families were forced to watch with their eyes open as the military shot them through the head and burned down their houses. All of them were found and the military junta made $100,000 in fees from the rich leader.
“I will show them how it feels to be rejected and truly shamed,” the leader replied after he had given the junta their pay. “I will bring in the disgraced and the downtrodden. They will come to my son’s wedding and then all those who should have come, but didn’t, will be left outside in the cold.”
And it was so.
The servants brought the homeless, the destitute, and the sick to his son’s wedding. One woman was angered to see that the leader of the city had brought a convicted rapist into the party and a convicted drug dealer. He opened up the jails and let the worst criminals, the ones who had raped and sexually abused children, sit in the front row. This was the way of the leader of the city. They had all been given the best clothes to wear, no matter what they had done.
Suddenly, however, he noticed that one man was still dressed in filthy clothes.
“What are you doing here?” the leader of the city asked.
The man said nothing.
“You dare to come into my son’s wedding without proper attire? Get OUT!”
And at that the servants grabbed him and through him out into the cold.
Usually I like to put comics in my links, but today I felt it would be inappropriate. The links in this installment are not going to be fun interesting links. I hope that they disturbe you into action.
1. Human Trafficking: It’s real and we are complicit if we just let it happen on our watch in this global world.
I have just finished reading The Call to Discipleship by Karl Barth (you can see my review of the book here). It is a succint read into the thoughts of Barth on the question of what it means to be a disciple of Christ.
Barth begins by saying about the man who said to Jesus he would follow him wherever he went (Luke 9:57-58). Barth says:
He is obviously one who has presumed to do this on his own initiative. And his [Jesus'] answer is the terrible saying about the foxes that have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, ‘but the son of man–whom he is going to follow–hath not where to lay his head.’ He does not realize that it is that he thinks he can choose. He does not know how terrible is the venture in which he commits himself in the execution of this choice.
No one of themselves can or will imagine that this is their way, or take this way. What Jesus wills with his ‘Follow me” can be chosen only in obedience to his call: ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water’ (Matt 14:28). Without being bidden by Christ, he could not do this. It has also been noted that there can be no conditions. The man mentioned [above]… lacked true discipleship, not merely because he offered it to Jesus as a matter of his own choice, but because he also made a condition: “Let me first say farewall to those at my home.”
I have never been a fan of Calvinism (and that is not necessarily what Barth is arguing for here), but I think that the idea of choice goes to show how well off we are. A famous phrase in America is that we want to change the world. As with almost all phrases which have been repeated over and over again in an American mantra, they mean almost nothing. How do these people want to change the world? Perhaps some would say they want to change the world ‘for the better,” but to what better end do they wish to change the world and why do they think they have the answer as to why their world is best? Choice and change are all a result of comsumeristic tendencies that have killed many disciples in America. At this time of Christmas, we need to consider how we might obey without putting conditions on our obedience.
1. I read something really interesting from one from one of the directors of CPT who used to work out in Middle East about peace. He says something quite interesting in regard to how we make peace in our world (you can find the full article here):
In real listening we don’t necessarily learn so much that is new. Actually we simply recognize much of what we already know. The catch is that we all have highly-developed systems of sorting, judging and eliminating information that either doesn’t fit or makes us uncomfortable. We train ourselves to do that. By listening more deeply to outbursts, to body language and the choice of words we get hints that can move peacemaking along because we know where to get started with warnings, activism and interpretation. In real listening my impatience, prejudice, and need to analyse is overcome. I let the messenger’s total communication affect me.
2. Over at Vox Nova there is a discussion about increased gun sales in California. Donald commented over there saying that it probably because NRAites probably think Obama is going to pass a ban on assault weapons. This is apparently driving up the cost of guns.
4. Good quotes from McCabe on forgiveness on Alan Creech’s Blog.
5. Peter Rollins talks about ironic faith. Here is a brief quote:
“Revelation became this idea of almost God saying something to you, whispering in your ear, and you could hear the message of the Gospel without heeding it. You could know the truth of the faith without it actually transforming your radical subjectivity. … I’m trying to de-center the idea that we can somehow have the answers without it transforming us radically.”
We join in with Shane Claiborne and Nathaniel in praying this. We ask for a divine liturgy to guide our lives and our rituals throughout the day to be filled with meaning because they are centered around you. Give us your spirit this day to guide us, give us our daily bread to sustain us, and give us our daily Word to invoke the fear of God in all things and in all places, for you make all things holy. We join in prayer with Mustard Seed Associates that we would not follow the comsumeristic paths set before us, but would choose an alternative lifestyle that gives way to truth and justice in our world.
James once said “religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself form being polluted by the world” (James 1:27). This doesn’t seem like such a radical point of view until one considers the way that the Romans viewed religion. Borrowing from Richard Horsley’s Jesus and Empire, we can see just as much Romans viewed religion as an extension of the state:
“The most divine Caesar…we should consider equal to the Beginning of all things…; for when everything was falling [into disorder] and tending toward dissolution, he restored it once more and gave it to the whole world a new aura; Caesar…the common good fortune of all…the beginning of life and vitality…All the cities unanimously adopt the birthday of the divine Caesar as the beginning of the year…who was being sent to us and our descendants as Savior, has put an end to war and has set all things in order; and [whereas] having becoming [god] manifest, Caesar has fulfilled all hopes of earlier times…the birthday of the God [Augustus] has been for the whole world the beginning of good news (gr: evangelion) concerning him [therefore let a new era beginning from his birth).” –OGIS 2.#458
When James says the word “religion” and does not include the word “Caesar,” he is subverting empire and committing a crime against the crown. Not only that, but it is a commentary on the whole power structure of Rome. How did Rome perpetuate the infamous Pax Romana? The ‘peace of Rome’ was sustained by taking money from conquered people’s in the form of tribute to the capital and Rome redistributing that money to Roman legions who would, in turn, protect the crown. While Rome takes from others to protect themselves, the church, as a vital and life-sustaining force for the world, gives to others who cannot protect themselves.
But this is the way that church has always been. We have always been called to give ourselves away and to show God’s grace by helping the helpless. We have always been called to share the gospel to all, even if this means great personal loss for ourselves. We have always been called to carry our cross. We have always been called, even if it is dangerous…
Brittian said something really interesting over at his blog today:
Walter Brueggemann spoke about in The Prophetic Imagination. He said that the Empire of control and competition, is constantly co-opting people’s revolutions. In other words, when was the last time a revolutionary didn’t eventually become Emperor? Think Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler…but maybe even more unfortunate are those true believers like the French revolutionaries whose ideas of liberty and equality eventually turned into a reign of terror. Why? Brueggemann points out that it is because those revolutions and revolutionaries bought into a critical deception. The immediacy of their hope. Anytime, he comments, the hope is too “here and now” it becomes prime real estate for imperial control. The tangible, touchable, manageable realities of linear thought and rational process are Their domain. Finally he councils us not to be Managers of change but rather to be Imaginers… Poets, provocateurs, singers of songs, artists, prophets, painters, sculptors, wordsmiths, etc… Envision a new world, live into that new reality…but don’t necessarily engage in the dangerous assumption that CHANGE is the end all solution.
Brittian specifically is talking about the new ‘green revolution’ that seems to be taking place and how the same big companies are changing their marketing tactics to market to this target audience. Rob Bell and Don Golden say someting similiar about the oppressed becoming the oppressors from Egypt to Jerusalem in their new book Jesus Wants to Save Christians (44-45):
God gives power and blessing so that justice and righteousness will be upheld for those who are denied them…
To forget this, to fail to hear the cry, to preserve prosperity at the expense of the powerless, is to miss what God had in mind…
Exile is when you forget your story
Exile isn’t just about location; exile is about the state of your soul.
Exile is when you fail to convert your blessings into blessings for others.
Exile is when you’re a stranger to the purposes of God
We have to be careful that we do not buy into ‘change’ as an idea simply as a cool ‘alternative.’ Otherwise, when things ‘change’ we will somehow believe we have reached our goal. This new green revolution has become ‘the norm’ and the world has begun capitalizing off the label. Ryan Bolger has a good graphic that I would like to borrow. The image is a table of the difference between the ‘green’ revolution and the way that perhaps we should respond as Christians (labeled as ‘blue’).
He asks the important question, does the church need a color? Over at Jesus Manifesto as well there has been an important discussion going on about language. Who are we leaving out and who are we including based on our language? It is easier than people sometimes think to learn a cultural language or a certain theological bent and to extol that theological bent to your congregation, but the danger is that the theology begins trumping Jesus Christ and the particular plan and revelation of God throughout time and space–the one that transcends cultures. It is actually very easy for big companies to read this “cultural language” and create products which they can capitalize off of to “co-opt” the revolution (as Brittian said earlier).
The questions then are large: How does Christianity stay focused on Christianity and avoid being eaten up into a larger mass culture created by the media and big business? How do we deal with the major environmental movements in a way that is true the particularity of Christ? Which direction is the church going and is it the right direction? Are we following Christ or are we following culture? If we are following culture, to what extent to we dwelve into it? Over at emergent village one person argues that almost nothing is off limits. Do you agree that Christians can go anywhere and do anything in the name of Christ? Are there limits on our freedom as Paul often talked about, for the sake of our brothers?
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