Faith in Context

Will Selfishness Sink Us?

One of the basic purpose of Christian faith is to encourage people to be less self-centered, despite the fact that this is often degraded or deformed. That appears to be especially needed right now as America attempts to work its way out of the financial hole it has slid into. Much of the negative reaction to plans to bail out the banks, the auto industry, people having their mortgages foreclosed, etc., revolves around the fundamental notion, "Why should they get some of my tax money?"

This is a selfish motivation and under the circumstances it could destroy us all. All of the references to "your tax money" and "my tax money" are fundamentally dishonest. Tax money (no matter if it is too high or too low) belongs to the country, not to me or you. If you live here, you have an obligation to help pay for the legitimate cost of being a nation or community. Americans actually pay lower taxes than almost all industrialized nations. We consume far more than our fair share of every resource on the planet, even when the comparison is based on share of wealth instead of population or other bases.

Greed and selfishness has got America into the predicament it is in and if selfish continues to guide our attempts to work our way out of it, we will fail! Unless preachers, devotional authors, religious teachers,theologians and other religious leaders focus in on this reality right now and push their people away from selfish attitudes, they contribute to this potential failure. In the 1930s many preachers pointed out that the Depression was a kind of "punishment" for the excesses and vices of the 1920s. It is time for the same kind of prophetic voice to be raised for the good of America.

Do Evangelical pastors have the spiritual grounding and prophetic vision to raise the needed prophetic voice? Or, have they been bought off by the system? Have they given in to the self-centered values that motivate both conservatives and liberals in America today? Is God allowing America to suffer because His people have so completely drunk of the wine of greed and narcissism that they are no longer able to discern truly Christian ethics?

Thanks Be to God

Most of the world would agree that Americans have much to celebrate on Thanksgiving Day. It is a uniquely American holiday that we share only with Canada, where it is celebrated in September.  Yet, various surveys show that most Americans feel down this year. Although we are the richest nation on the globe, most Americans are going to hold back on Christmas gifts because we have contrived a situation where only a few share so fully in the wealth that they feel they can ignore the manipulative and dishonest practices in home mortgages, the decline in cheap gasoline, the inefficient and unnecessarily profitable health insurance industry, and the widespread irresponsibility of employers. We are bogged down in wars we cannot win in Iraq, on our border with Mexico and on drug abuse. We are caught in destructive, polarizing politics where leaders are more interested in manipulating their opponents so they can "win" than in negotiating wise policies for the future of our country.

Americans are not happy this holiday because of the deep sense of loss they feel deep down inside; the loss of a time in which compassion was more widely practiced, there were at least a few leaders with integrity who managed to keep the herd of politicians in hand, most businesses could be trusted to provide decent products and services, and people had more faith in both God and one another. Today most Americans feel they are simply fodder for the manipulation mill of the government and prey for the large corporations with no morals, no patriotism and a deadly robotic focus on immediate profits.

What is there to celebrate? Unlike Darfur, it is not likely that a crowd of men will come this evening and kill us. Unlike Baghdad, it not likely that a bomb will go off in the crowded stores tomorrow. Unlike Burma, the police will not intervene when large numbers assemble to worship God this coming weekend. Unlike Argentina, there are plenty of jobs available. Unlike France, the transportation industry is not on strike, just the people who write the trash they offer up on most television channels (perhaps itself a cause for giving thanks). Americans are a lot better off than they feel, but they are haunted by how is once was.

In the end the real reason for gratefulness is not about economics or politics, it is about a God who gave His life that we might have hope and His promise to remake the world in His image. "It's all about you, Jesus." The God who still loves us no matter how down it gets, no matter who much politicians lie to us and manipulate us, no matter how much gasoline costs, no matter how many employers cancel the health benefits they promised, no matter if we have a parent in the hospital dying of cancer or a son in Iraq laying his life on the line, no matter what, God is with us and will bring us through. That is the real reason to raise the Thanksgiving hymn and feast in the name of our God!

Sabbath & Jubilee Theme: New Books

There continues to be a surprising number of new books on the Sabbath from Christian writers. Four caught my eye recently:

Sabbath: The Gift of Rest by Lynne Baab is one of the LifeGuide small group Bible study guides from InterVarsity Press. Includes materials for eight sessions, focusing on the Genesis, Exodus and Isaiah 58 texts in the Old Testament and threads of gift, value of humanity, social justice and grace from the New Testament. Quotes virtually everyone who has written about the qualitative elements of the Sabbath, including Celeste Perrino Walker, Making Sabbath Special (Pacific Press).

Mudhouse Sabbath: An Invitation to a Life of Spiritual Discipline by Lauren Winner (Paraclete Press) is actually out this year in paperback. Somehow I missed the original hard cover edition in 2003. The author grew up Jewish and began a Christian as a young adult and the purpose of this book is to recover as much as possible of the Jewish roots of Christian faith into contemporary practice. It starts with Sabbath as the cornerstone and builds a whole life pattern. I highly recommend this project and the book!

Sabbath Presence by Kathleen Casey is from a Catholic publisher (Ave Maria Press) and the author begins with her Catholic faith, but focuses on how the Sabbath is a spiritual discipline that orders all of our days, our entire life, toward our relationship with God. The 13 chapters include scripture, meditative questions and activities that can be used in a group setting or individually.

Sabbath and Jubilee by Richard Lowery (Chalice Press) has been out since 2000, but I found it only recently. This is more theological and less focused on spirituality like the others. The author attempts to make a strong connection between the Sabbath, the "Jubilee system" also laid out in the Old Testament and 21st century social problems. Unfortunately, he allows modern, critical Bible scholarship to so dismantle the key texts that he actually weakens his case. (He cites Bacchiochi as one of the four most important scholarly books on the Sabbath.)

What is interesting to me is that all of these books entirely ignore the issue of which day of the week actually is the Sabbath. Abraham Heschel, the great Jewish theologian that they all quote, would, of course argue that a "pick any day that is convenient to you" approach undercuts the entire concept and makes the exercise meaningless; a "temple in time" is about time, not just practices. A number of Christian theologians would agree. But the publishers are to be commended for these excellent volumes despite the fact that they wish to avoid this fundamental controversy.

If you are interested, all of these can be found at www.powells.com as well as other online booksellers.

Mother Teresa's Spiritual Life

It's the cover article in Time magazine this week; "The Secret Life of Mother Teresa."  It may be simply a marketing ploy for a new book which publishes some of her letters, but it plays on the enormous ignorance that so many otherwise educated, bright Americans have about spirituality. Of course, Mother Teresa had doubts and felt that God was silent; of course she struggled with her spiritual life, that's true for all people with mature faith. The extremes of feeling that God is always tangibly present in your life or that He does not exist at all are the binary world of those with an immature faith. When a person works through the "black and white" world of disbelief and intense belief, as well as the cynicism that eventually results from intense belief, he or she comes to the more mysterious stage in which God's presence and His purposes are certain, yet co-exist with questions that cannot be answered, failed prophets, flawed saints, the immense sense of the evil in the universe, the suffering of God and His divine patience.

It is stunning, amazing that so many people are so unaware of this reality. I have for some time (based on various research, some of my own and some by colleagues) felt that a major problem facing the Christian Church is the very small numbers of people with real spiritual maturity. The growing number of people with no particular faith or spiritual training has added to this, of course. That this story would be news is certainly additional proof.

Read the papers of all the great spiritual figures of history, the Apostle Paul, Augustine, Martin Luther, John Wesley, Ellen White, Gandhi, M. L. King, and they all have deep feelings of doubt, feelings that God is far off and they are all alone with terrible burdens. Anyone who has read the real literature of spirituality (as opposed to the BS sold as "spirituality" at Barnes & Noble, Borders, etc.) has long ago discovered this "secret."

One dimension of this is the inevitable result of the greatly enhanced empathy toward the poor and oppressed that is often characteristic of towering spiritual giants like Mother Teresa. If you spend a lifetime living with the suffering and downtrodden instead of the scrubbed and comfortable, you begin to finally sense the vast, vast evil in our universe and just how terrible, sad and broken it is, as well as the reality of God's suffering from this evil. Conventional spirituality pictures God as above it all, untouched by the evil in the world, able to end it at any moment and simply biding His time. What Jesus was trying to say in Matthew 25 when He said, "I was hungry ... I was poor ... I was sick ... I was a prisoner ... I was an alien," is that evil really hurts God. Sin is not sin just as a matter of divine logic or will or law, but it is real pain, authentic torture for God Himself! The cosmological war between Evil and God pushes God to the edge, to His very limits. It requires of Him the last ounce of His divinity. Without the spiritual maturity that comes from a lifetime of serving the poor and struggling against Evil, as Mother Teresa lived it, a person simply cannot sense the profound silence, the deep hurt in God's heart. He is silent because He has nothing to say, because He is preoccupied with weeping!

A New Consensus about Faith?

I have spent this week participating in the annual meeting of the Cooperative Congregational Studies Partnership (CCSP) and attending the yearly Leaders Summit at Willow Creek Community Church, both in Chicago. CCSP is the interfaith organization of researchers who focus on congregations and local communities and it is quite ecumenical, including Jews, Muslims, Baha'i and others, along with mainstream Protestants, conservative Protestants and Catholics. Willow Creek is a leading evangelical church with a conservative view of the Bible, doctrines, etc., although deeply influenced by contemporary culture. The contrast of the two groups is like going from one of those quirky little, independent bookstore coffeehouses in a university neighborhood to a big box Barnes & Nobles in a booming suburban area.

The amazing thing to me was the parallel streams of thought at the two meetings. At the CCSP meeting we heard a presentation on research that identifies spiritual disciplines and community service as the two most important aspects of vital, thriving congregations. At the Willow Creek event the same themes were presented; the need to encourage serious spiritual growth among members and the need to make a real impact on the suffering in the world in order for Christian faith to be substantive and significant.

In a world where deep, mature faith, fully integrated into the whole lives of adults, is a more and more scarce commodity, this consensus emerges because it is the only path for the survival of real faith. Thoughtful people with vastly different approaches to religion are recognizing this reality in the face of increasing secularism and militant fundamentalisms. This is congruent with my own research on church growth. If you want your congregation to thrive, focus on two things: strong spirituality and serving the community outside the congregation.

For those who follow these things closely, CCSP released one new FACT report this week, Insights on Congregational Conflict (and I will let you know as soon as the freebie PDF is posted on the FACT web site) and will release the full report on the FACT 2005 survey in the near future; we reviewed the page proofs. I will be done with my version of the FACT 2005 report soon thereafter. Stay tuned.

Practicing Christ-centered Faith

If the goal of following Jesus is to learn to move away from self-centered religion, then an essential spiritual formation practice is involvement in social justice causes that run counter to one's own self-interests in terms of socioeconomic status, etc. Often those of us who teach that the Bible describes expectations that God has related to social justice are accused of being left-wing revolutionaries and lectured about how the expectations of the poor are essentially selfish. Actions by left-wing politicians (such as currently in Venezuela) confiscating private property (usually of large corporations, not individuals) are held up as examples of how "socialism is essentially selfish."

There is some truth to this. In fact, secular left-wing politics are often as self-centered as right-wing politics. But this is all beside the point. The real question is, do I have enough spiritual maturity to take the side of the weaker brother even when it is against my own economic self-interest? Unless I am willing to enter into such unselfish practice, I am not serious about following Jesus. Remember, He's the one who repeatedly told me to "sell all you own, give it to the poor and come and follow me." He was not really promoting a vow of poverty as much as making a point about what it takes to become a spiritually mature person in the way of Christ.

How do we enter upon such practices? How do we teach them to others? How to we relate to the vast numbers of people who want to think that they are serious followers of Jesus, yet do not want to touch the reality of self-denial in terms of social justice?

The Core of Authentic Christian Faith

Last night I was profoundly reminded again of the core of authentic Christian faith. I was in dialog with a group of congregational leaders about the future and purpose of their church, and how they are plagued by a growing number of long-term (presumably spiritually mature) members who approach church life with the assumption that "it's all about me."

It's not about me! It is not about my salvation. It is about the other; it is about the salvation of the lost. It is not about the Pharisee, it is about the Samaritan, the Gentile. It is not about the devout, it is about the unbelieving. That is the point of the last parable in Matthew 25! The follow Jesus is to give up concern with myself and replace it with compassion for the other. If you don't get that, you don't get Christian faith. That's what kneeling and washing feet is all about.

Why is this so central? Because it is God's compassion for the sinner, the fallen, the rebellious that is the source of all salvation history. There is no Scripture; there is no God (as we know the divine) without this compassion. It is the source in the heart of God for all of faith.

Assurance of Salvation

Feeling a sense of certainty about being in Christ, "saved," instead of constantly feeling that one must worker harder at being a good Jesus-follower, has been an issue for many conservative Protestants over the years, especially fundamentalists, including Adventists. My surveys have shown that over the past three decades, attitudes have changes significantly until virtually all respondents in every congregation report a high level of certainty about their personal salvation. Of course, as a researcher there is always the vague concern that perhaps we have just taught people to give the right answer instead of tracking a real change in feelings. Yet, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence in the denomination and throughout the conservative Protestant world that Baby Boomers and subsequent generations feel much more sure of their standing Christ than did previous generations.

A new book by veteran Adventist pastor Phil Dunham documents the spiritual, personal and theological character of this trend better than anything I've seen to date. He is from the Swing generation, a teenager during WWII, too young to be part of the War generation, and spent most of his career in the ministry on the west coast. He documents how the Evangelical movement has impacted Adventism, telling the story of being sent with a group of Adventist pastors from southern California to a seminar by Campus Crusade for Christ "on how to share the gospel and lead people to Jesus Christ." (Page 15) He relates how this changed his spiritual life. He spends the rest of the book documenting how he has tried to preach a Christ-centered, "righteousness by faith" and help people find assurance, including all his analysis of all the objections that have been put forward by more sectarian Adventists.

His faith is entirely mainstream and orthodox in every way, yet he is clearly Evangelical in his perspective and basic Christian beliefs. I have seen few volumes that deal with all of these issues more concisely and clearly. His 26-point summary in the appendix (pages 157-159) are worth the price of the book all by themselves. This is one of those solid, foundational books that every minister needs to have on hand to loan to give to people, as well as to delve into for preaching quotes.

Of course, there are many issues that he does not touch on. It is possible that he is not even aware of them, given his place in the unfolding of history and the context in which he has served. The Achilles heel of Evangelical faith is the way it can reinforce a self-centered, self-satisfied, affluent religion that ignores all the spiritual issues raised by the presence of war, poverty, racism, AIDS, environmental degradation and other "big elephant in the room" realities in our world today. The lack of assurance in classic fundamentalism did not do much better at helping Christians deal with these issues, and sectarian Adventism can be even more self-absorbed than Evangelical faith, but there was a sense in which doing good in the world was something that Jesus wanted His followers to accomplish which seems to have disappeared among the formerly-lacking in assurance.

How can we help people trust Jesus with their own personal destiny and invest their lives in His mission in the world? That kind of creative, productive self-forgetfulness, rooted in a healthy, non-anxious sense of self in God's care, seems to be the golden mean of the saints of all time. Is it not a core element of the way?

Two Kinds of Faith

I find this an intriguing paradigm from Sty Tyner, who sees just two kinds of faith among religious people today. He characterizes these two camps as follows:

1. One group is set free by the everlasting gospel. The other group is enslaved by the Law.
2. One group is clothed with Christ. The other group thinks they are dressed in glittering luxury and doesn’t realize they really are naked.
3. One group is marked with God’s commands. The other group has been bewitched by human effort.
4. One group is ready for the Bridegroom. The other group is merely waiting for the signs of the last days to take place.
5. One group is troubled by their times. The other group is indifferent to the suffering and injustice around us.
6. One group has been tested by the Sabbath and has found its highest meaning for their lives. The other group tries to make Sabbath observance another sign of their own righteousness.
7. One group has been sealed by the Spirit. The other group’s consciences will be seared as with a hot iron.
8. One group constitutes the authentic End-Time People of God. The other, tragically, cannot see that it constitutes only a cheap substitute for the real thing.

What do you think: Is this a fair paradigm? Does it adequately frame the choices? Does it account for enough of the complexities? I know there are many more than two kinds of faith, but I do often feel a sifting, a shifting of tectonic plates among Christians.

Spiritual Impact of 9/11 - Five Years Later

George Barna released this morning a new study showing that nothing of the spiritual impact of 9/11 on the American people remains five years later. He is a little late in coming to this conclusion. I wrote a report one year after 9/11 which showed that the upsurge in religious behavior and spiritual interest which occurred in the immediate aftermath of the tragic event had disappeared from the various indicators in a range of polls and surveys. Barna looked at 19 indicators in nine surveys his team conducted with samples totaling more than 8,000. The studies I consulted four years ago totaled an even larger sampling.

What does this mean? A lot of things were said in passion during the fall and early winter of 2001. "Postmodernism is over ... an American revival is underway ... things have changed forever." That's all nonsense and some of us said so at the time, but Christian leaders didn't want to listen. Western civilization approaches one billion people. Nothing turns around attitudes in such a large pool on a dime. We have to get real about what it takes to influence such a massive organism. That includes at least two things that it seems that Christendom, and American Christians in particular, have a hard time coming up with: (A) A long attention span. (B) A serious investment; at least the majority of our total giving. In fact, most Christian congregations and ministries sustain very few efforts longer than a few years and seem to prefer one weekend. And according to the Ronsvalle's research, Christians spend 98% of what they give on themselves; no more than 2% on impacting the world.

Click here to see the new Barna report. My report from four years ago is available on the Center for Creative Ministry web site. You can see the Ronsvalle's ongoing analysis of giving to and spending by Christian churches and ministries at the Empty Tomb web site.