Ways of Resistance

Without me realizing it, friendship has become a central theme within many of my posts here. I’m not sure why that surprises me…maybe because I like to think of myself as someone devoid of sentimentality and therapeutic mush, but that doesn’t exactly explain my surprise or fascination with such a serious and beautiful word. Anyway, for better or worse, I am enjoying the ride so far and the vastness of human/divine friendship. Andy Crouch from Culture Making reminded me of this today:

“All meaningful knowledge is for the sake of action, and all meaningful action is for the sake of friendship.”

—John MacMurray, The Self as Agent (1957)

For whatever it’s worth, I can’t seem to get away from this topic (see here and here). I’m sure it will smell like a dead horse soon, but for now, not surprisingly, I’ve got more of those pesky questions. This one should be short, though. What is one to make of the following quote attributed to a well-known and almost universally admired Christian?

I’ve not lived cautiously. I have friendships with women. I touch them. I’ve been more careful in school than I was in the parish, where everyone knows me. It’s different now because someone can come to my office and we can have a deep talk and the next day I won’t know his or her name. That didn’t happen in a church setting. So I’m more careful now. But I’m not obsessive. These are my friends. Touch is a human thing, not just a sexual thing. It is dehumanizing to deny touch. Is sex a contagious disease? Sex is a danger, but money is a danger too. Do you refuse to take a salary because money is a danger? (HT Dan Brennan; follow the link to see whose being quoted)

Actually, it might be obvious (from the title of my post) that the one quoted is none other than Eugene Peterson. I thought knowing who said it might make a difference for some of us. Somebody of his stature and (albeit) low-profile-popularity gets away with saying “crazy” stuff like that. Not like myself or some other relatively young and inexperienced male.

About Money and Sex

I’ve always thought, referencing Peterson’s last two sentences in the quote above, that sex and money should be considered along side each other in our thinking. Inevitably evangelicals of my tradition tend to highlight and name specific sexual sins and ignore or leave up to the person to decide about particular economic or money-related sins (other than tithing, of course). I remember a sermon that was preached one Sunday using a Pauline text. The preacher employed a very insightful discourse on how sexual immorality (combined with Paul’s list of other “interrelated” sins) were “improper” for God’s holy people. Strangely, though, he discussed all but one sin in Paul’s list. Somehow, whether by intention or not, greed was neither mentioned nor given a culturally specific name. It just got skipped over. And this seems to happen pretty often. I’ve never heard a sermon, for example, decrying the sin of investing (whether with stocks or in blind consumption) in greedy corporations like WalMart or AIG. But I have heard many sermons which seem to nail down sexual sin once and for all–pre-marital sex, homosexuality, abortion, pornography, cross-gender friendships, etc.

If our mission is to be holistic and complete, than Jesus’ message of grace must transform private as well as community interests, including the powerful influence of both money and sex. An interesting and provocative treatment on this very subject is the title essay in Wendell Berry’s Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community. I definitely recommend borrowing it from the library.

How can we say one form of church is better than another? Wendell Berry’s criteria for a community’s adoption of a new technology almost immediately comes to mind. His list, in a general sense, is instructive to us as a people who have been formed by Consumerism and the analogous form of Christianity. As you’ll see below, I try to draw some parallels with his criteria for innovation and the “new” forms of missional church (intentional community and new monasticism) that I find particularly hopeful. (Also, for those of you who would like to read about a successful mega-church pastor who sold his 12 million dollar building, moving the administration of their community to his home basement, read here.)

(more…)

This story is truly tragic: both preventable and unapologetic.

“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since yesterday morning,’ ” Cribbs said. “They kept shopping.” (The Seattle Times)

How many of the seven deadly sins are easily identifiable and working extra hard when we gather every year to make sacrifices on the altar of Consumerism?

Please pray for Mr. Damour’s family.