Ways of Resistance

This last weekend I attended a Christian Charismatic conference. The guest preacher was a young, dynamic, and passionate man from New Jersey. His voice, expressions, and body language held our complete attention and paved the way for the delivery of a brilliant message.

Without telling you more background stories about him, I’ll give you an example of what I mean (though this is one of those stories where I can already tell “you had to be there!” will likely make sense). The dramatic tension began fairly quickly–and with the power of a well-versed provocateur. Perhaps the heat of his sermon was expected. The people, as far as I could tell, wanted an experience with Passion that night. Then, more or less suddenly, the man stopped his teaching in the middle of his notes and, with a single-minded focus, directed those who had “backslidden” to stand where they were as a way to admit their sin before God (and, obviously, before the congregation!). Then he made the call even more specific and called folks who were looking at pornography and having sex outside of marriage to stand. As people began to stand, his pleas became more visceral. His words and exhortations shot into the air like a canon and then rang across the room until the next time he fired convictions out from his spirit. He refrained, for the most part, from shouting but the intensity of convictions was palpable and unwavering. To be quite honest, whenever he looked in my direction, I felt his eyes as though they could see inside my head: all my anxiety and shame. He explained that his call wasn’t like the old school holiness call (mired with legalism and external restraints but no intimacy), but was a call from his heart (and God’s inspiration), leading unto loving relationship with Jesus.

Now, as a note about the context, this invitation to stand and then come forward for prayer was preceded by a “rant”–the best word I can think of–which derided “young people” because they “voted for death” (i.e., electing Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, who has vocally supported legal forms of abortion). He was also tough on today’s Christian seminaries for compromising into liberalism, a move which he described as a “poison” to our faith.

My only problem with what he said and did that night was that he (perhaps unwittingly) simply regurgitated the popular conservative agenda on personal morality and religion. I asked my friend Quinton during the “you voted for death” comment whether the preacher meant that McCain or Obama was “death” (even though I knew perfectly well he meant Obama). Both candidates, after all, had vowed to support killing: one through war and one through abortion. And actually, both candidates had resolved to kill our enemies–rationalizing the killing of civilians, not to mention Christians, with words like “democracy,” “freedom,” and “peace.”

I also wondered why the preacher did not publicly name a more comprehensive list of the sins which have plagued our culture (Christians or and non-Christians alike). For example, why not ask everyone who has purchased new items of clothing from child labor/sweatshop operations (e.g., Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy) to bravely stand up and admit their sin. I think Wendell Berry gets it right when he says:

“Conservative individualism strongly supports “family values” and abominates lust. But it does not dissociate itself from the profits accruing from the exercise of lust (and, in fact, of the other six deadly sins), which it encourages in its advertisements. The ‘conservatives’ of our day understand pride, lust, envy, anger, covetousness, gluttony, and sloth as virtues when they lead to profit or to political power. Only as unprofitable or unauthorized personal indulgences do they rank as sins, imperiling salvation of the soul, family values, and national security.”

(The Way of Ignorance: And Other Essays)

Before I went to the charismatic event, I had come across this video produced by the Pentecostal & Charismatic Peace Fellowship. It has really stuck with me, especially given the season of consumerism we’re entering, and has proven more relevant still after having listened to the preacher’s message. Please watch it and then, like our traditions tell us, stand with me and repent. Stand up with me and publicly confess our complicity in this world’s sin.

I guess I’m basically staging my own altar call/invitation. So, listen up (said with a smile on my face). Please do not dismiss sin, whatever the sin may be. It’s all deceitful and destructive. It can’t be divided up into personal and social categories. Not only are we compromised by it, but it makes us look sneaky and bad. I believe “hypocrite” was the word Jesus used.

So, my question is: Should Christians ever name names when talking about sin? If so, which ones should make the list?

I recently met up with the Jesus Center director, Bill Such, for a cup of joe and to chat about some of my favorite subjects. This is the second coffee conversation he and I have had since we were connected via our mutual friend Ryann earlier this year. After only a few conversations, I must confess, I like Bill very much–in no small part because of his ability to inspire some holy un-rest among Chico, California’s sedated middle-class.

At the tail-end of our conversation (which took place on election day, no less), I asked him why we (the established churches in Chico) don’t support more, both financially and with our lives, the kinds of programs he has started and will continue to bring to fruition. I mean, how can we spend so much energy and time and money on elections, for example, and then have nothing left to give when it comes to poverty and homelessness in Chico? He rightly told me that individual Christians actually do form a large base of the donations they receive, but that business folks and secular organizations/individuals also pick up a significant share. (Aside: one of the youth I used to work with really loved going to serve with me at the Jesus Center. He saved up his money for weeks and then gave more than what was required for him to participate. The fact that he was not a Christian (at all!) did not matter much for his motivation. His reasoning was much more concrete than that: after having been homeless, he wanted to give back to the community!) Perhaps the “secular” community actually keeps alive the work they do at the Jesus Center more than we think.

Bill made the point that the Jesus Center isn’t simply a place for folks who are hungry to eat food, but also a place where the community is engaged and, ultimately, is imagined differently. Rather than offering a specialized definition of what it is they do, Bill has attempted to assert a more holistic and radically-shaped mission: hospitality in the name of Jesus. The whole of the community, to make it plain, is involved in that, not simply the homeless. As Shane Claiborne has said, the way of Jesus offers liberation from the ghettos of wealth as well as the ghettos of poverty. It takes place through friendship and community, and, most obviously, through service to one another.

One of the most exciting new ideas Bill mentioned during our conversation had to do with employment and housing partnerships among community members. He dreamed that one day the folks who need a hand (but don’t have all the necessary paperwork or history or addresses) will be able to get connected with local apartment owners and employers/apprenticeships (all vouched for and subsidized through Jesus Center staff). I was literally stunned when he said that. For starters, what a completely revolutionary and subversive idea. How unlike the ordinary political and, dare I say, governmental approaches. I know there are similar programs available for, at the very least, our area’s youth (funded through our county governments) and those folks do a great job. An awesome job! But in order for that to happen, an enormous amount of red tape and rigmarole must take place. With Bill’s plan the local community funds the endeavor and, even better, gets to participate.

Sadly, however, it did occur to me that, given the fiscal budget of each Christian community in Chico, we could have easily funded this project already. This is the Big Elephant shitting on the carpet, my friends. I found myself asking, Why hasn’t this happened yet? Why haven’t we even thought of supporting this kind of economy (versus our blind allegiance to the consumer economy)? I think it has to do with imagination. Right now, our imaginations are captivated by youtube, NBC, and national voting. Never before in history has there been a culture so defined by mass media and the cult of imperial consumerism. If we weren’t given the options (on our voting day’s ballot) we apparently wouldn’t know how to embody the peculiar politics of Jesus. Kind of sad, don’t you think?

The more I think about it, Bill’s approach represents a completely different way to do church. Moreover, like I imply above, it’s a different way to go about politics. It is a body politic so to speak and it centers itself on the enemy-loving, self-sacrificing way of Jesus. This won’t go over well with folks who want America–”the Christian nation”–to be great. But the world and every kind of household within it seems to be urgently waiting for a response from Christians who seek the Gospel of the Kingdom–the true gospel of “hope,” “change,” “reform,” and “security”!

Like was already said, as a nation, we just got through spending an obscene amount of time, money, and energy both loving and hating national politics and its politicians. Frankly, it’s disgusting how little of those efforts will find their way into our local communities, not to mention into our debts or toward loving our enemies. And how shameful is it that our distinctive Christian imagination has lost its radical nature in the allure of totalizing politics, economics, and faith? I suspect the only way to get back our captivated imaginations is to re-member the peculiar Way of Jesus as local members in communities and places of faith. Perhaps then we won’t look for a savior on Capital Hill, but instead will look, with the folks at the Jesus Center, to the least among us. Perhaps, instead of wanting to elect a candidate, we’ll have an encounter with the difficult-to-elect God of grace, becoming rooted and secured and at home with our Commander-In-Chief and His peaceful Way.

Update: This post was republished over at Jesus Manifesto.

Here’s a timely and difficult excerpt from a book of poetry by Wendell Berry:

When I hear the stock market has fallen,

I say, “Long live gravity! Long live

stupidity, error, and greed in the palaces

of fantasy capitalism!” I think

an economy should be based on thrift,

on taking care of things, not on theft,

usury, seduction, waste, and ruin.

I guess I’m a bit of a prude (or dogmatic) when it comes to economy and sin. Why do we put up with evil when it’s attached to our paychecks?

As if I could just let go of a topic! Well, Grace has recently posted an entry titled Walking Away and, for those of you who are trying to keep up with my writing, this is one of the themes I made mention of in the letter I shared along with my last post. She quotes Jonathon Brink and another author in order to ask the question: “Walking away, to where?”

I am certainly struggling with this question right now. In fact, a good friend of mine (also the assistant pastor at the church I attend) wanted advice or some support around leading our community, especially in light of day-to-day pastoral busy-ness and the shape we give to mission. Unfortunately, my advice sounded a bit like get-rid-of-the-system, which may not have been all that helpful to him. Nevertheless, I am more and more convinced that the life of my community will not take place among those who (must?) see church as the event-on-Sunday-morning. I guess I am slowly walking away–if not literally, than emotionally and imaginatively. A few of my favorite quotes (from Wendell Berry’s character Jayber Crow–barber/grave digger/church janitor) expresses this sentiment well:

One day when I went up [to the church] to work, sleepiness overcame me and I lay down on the floor behind the back pew to take a nap. Waking or sleeping (I couldn’t tell which), I saw all the people gathered there who had ever been there. I saw them as I had seen them (from the back pew) on the Sunday before. I saw them in all the times past and to come, all somehow there in their own time and in all time and in no time: the cheerfully working and singing women, the men quiet or reluctant or shy, the weary, the troubled in spirit, the sick, the lame, the desperate, the dying, the little children tucked into the pews beside their elders, the young married couples full of visions, the old men with their dreams, the parents proud of their children, the grandparents with tears in their eyes, the pairs of young lovers attentive only to each other on the edge of the world, the grieving widows and widowers, the mothers and fathers of children newly dead, the proud, the humble, the attentive, the distracted–I saw them all. I saw the creases crisscrossed on the backs of the men’s necks, their work-thickened hands, the Sunday dresses faded with washing. They were just there. They said nothing, and I said nothing. I seemed to love them all with a love that was mine merely because it included me.

When I came to myself again, my face was wet with tears (p. 164-165).

This vision came to him as a revelation and yet the trajectory or course he would take ended up surprising even the best intentions or guesses he had of where it would lead. It would finally deposit him, along with a vision of the ‘gathered community,’ into the membership of a place. Along the way he describes what I will call his ‘hermeneutic of surprise.’ Listen as he tells it:

Often what has looked like a straight line to me has been a circle or a doubling back. I have been in the Dark of Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but not always in that order. The names of many snares and dangers have been made known to me, but I have seen them only in looking back. Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I have deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led–make of that what you will (p. 133).

He issues a wise acknowledgment of our inherent human ignorance as well as of the grace we all receive without knowing. This ‘hermeneutic of surprise’ will eventually lead him to revise, or rather, to reimagine the vision he had in the church. He would need this expanded vision in order to accept the invitation of membership as an integral (and eternal) part of his community. He writes:

My vision of the gathered church that had come to me after I became the janitor had been replaced by a vision of the gathered community. What I saw now was the community imperfect and irresolute but held together by the frayed and always fraying, incomplete and yet ever-holding bonds of the various sorts of affection. There had maybe never been anybody who had not been loved by somebody, who had been loved by somebody else, and so on and on. If you could go back into the story of Uncle Ive and Verna Shoals, you would find, certainly before and maybe after, somebody who loved them both. It was a community always disappointed in itself, disappointing its members, always trying to contain its divisions and gentle its meanness, always failing and yet always preserving a sort of will toward goodwill. I knew that, in the midst of all the ignorance and error, this was a membership; it was the membership of Port William and of no other place on earth. My vision gathered the community as it never has been and never will be gathered in this world of time, for the community must always be marred by members who are indifferent to it or against it, who are nonetheless its members and maybe nonetheless essential to it. And yet I saw them all as somehow perfected, beyond time, by one another’s love, compassion, and forgiveness, as it is said we may be perfected by grace.

And so there we all were on a little wave of time lifting up to eternity, and none of us ever in time would know what to make of it. How could we? It is a mystery, for we are eternal beings living in time. Did I ever think that anybody would understand it? Yes. Once. I thought once that I would finally understand it.

What I had come to know (by feeling only) was that the place’s true being, its presence you might say, was a sort of current, like an underground flow of water, except that the flowing was in all directions and yet did not flow away. When it rose into your heart and throat, you felt joy and sorrow at the same time, and the joining of times and lives. To come into the presence of the place was to know life and death, and to be near in all your thoughts to laughter and to tears. This would come over you and then pass away, as fragile as a moment of light (p. 2o5-206).

So, in a sense, walking away isn’t as simple as forgetting what lies behind. In fact, part of me thinks walking away may actually be a process whereby we re-learn to walk-along-with community or enter into this mystery called membership–and eternal life. It would seem that by ‘walking away’ one must leave it all behind and yet we see in Jayber Crow that love for one another envelopes our most ardent histories and asks our most difficult thoughts, even as our lives are taken in divergent ways. So, “Walking away, to where?”: to community, to membership, to place. Not in order to isolate or lose memory. Instead, as mission and freedom–alive in the world and with the Lord’s grace.

I received a very heartfelt and sincere question/comment on my last post. As I wrote back in the comments section, I started to see that what I wanted to say likely wasn’t going to fit for a “normal” comment. Also, it occurred to me that our exchange could turn into something (as the commenter noted below) useful for another blog post about the subject. So, introductions aside, here is what Another Jason (the commenter) wrote, along with my reply below that:

Hey Jason, This is a very interesting post. I’m especially interested in your own personal experiences:

“this is a subject that I take kind of seriously because of the spiritual abuse/manipulation that I’ve experienced at the hands of power-hungry leaders.”

I’ve experienced what I’d estimate as a fairly heavy dose of spiritual abuse. It’s really hurt my spiritual drive, confidence in leadership (that is, both confidence in myself as a leader and confidence in my leaders), and my involvement — tangibly and emotionally– with my community. I love God deeply, but I feel somewhat crippled in these areas. After nearly 14 years, it’s still hard to move forward and be unhindered by these events.

Maybe this is for another post some time in the future — if you so choose — but I am very interested in your experiences and what you’ve done to cope and/or break free from the shackles of your own experiences relating to spiritual abuse.

Hi Another Jason,

Good to know there’s someone else out there donning our name with grace!

Most of what I meant above about “spiritual abuse” had to do with well-intentioned individuals and leaders (both in a local and national settings) who either implied or outright stated that whatever I was doing as a Christian was not enough–that I did not count until I was powerful and famous. They sometimes suggested I was missing “my blessing” or that I didn’t have enough “faith” or that there was “sin” in my life (those being the most common examples of statements pointing toward a particular deficit the culture was either promoting or fixing). Sometimes, however, I think the positive statements were the more damaging ones to my faith in Jesus. I was told to expect “great things,” “anointing,” “popularity,” “influence,” etc. and never given a framework (except for our USAmerican default, consumerism) to interpret this message. I now think the folks who administered these “gifts” were also building an empire (i.e., ministries) at the expense of naive and gullible people.

One time in particular I remember attempting to reach for “my calling” by getting as close as possible to a Famous Worship Leader (FWL) while attending his worship conference in Tennessee (it wasn’t actually his conference, but he was the headlining act, so same thing, right?). Anyway, without any thought about my own integrity or the consequences, I deceived the conference director about a “difficult situation” that really needed a remedy, hoping it would persuade him to introduce me to the FWL and perhaps convince both of them of my “gifting.” Quite easily, he saw right through my lie (as well as generously offered to help me out by giving me his own money) but wouldn’t allow me to access the superstar. I was completely humiliated and ashamed of my intentions. The hours after that conversation were spent in an empty hotel room by myself, filled with doubt, confusion, and fear. I was ashamed to even be seen.

Years later, I can see why I believed it would be necessary for me to see him and become his friend. I thought my identity would be secured within his “popularity” and “influence.” I thought it was necessary for me to become more than I already was. I didn’t perceive myself as someone deserving of much of anything. The Charismatic System I was a part of, though well-intentioned, created certain “celebrity” expectations for myself and others–which were carried out through celebrity music, books, conferences, personalities, programs, etc.–and were marketed/sold as a consumerist identity to well-behaving Christians seven days a week.

My freedom eventually came in the guise of obscurity and “ordinary” friendship. Given my propensity to hype, I didn’t have the time or energy for more spectacular events, singing, and prophecies. I just wanted to believe again. And this faith finally found me as I crawled my way toward a downwardly mobile and small (what some would call “insignificant”) local community. Every time I got too proud, they reeled me in and graciously offered me something better than fame and popularity: a radical friendship rooted in truth and the way of Jesus.

Anyway, that’s my story. What yours?

For all of us sojourners on the way, how has wisdom and friendship been able to find you in spite of the weariness and shame of “spiritual abuse”?