• Andy Crouch on James Davison Hunters “How Not To Save the World”

Rather, we should embody a sacrificial love for our neighbors, of all faiths and none, expressed in acts of culture-making and institution-building that serve their good and leave the ultimate fate of our culture to the judgment and providence of God. And by this third essay, the strategic concern for élite presence has faded into the background—Hunter envisions Christians practicing that presence at the “periphery,” in the “center,” and everywhere in between.

A more practical question is what evangelicals might have done in the last century instead of retreating to the margins. A subcultural strategy can sometimes be wise—if nothing else, it preserves an identity distinct from the dominant culture. I spent some of my formative years among mainline Protestants for whom “faithful presence” was the very watchword, but in practice that meant nearly complete cultural accommodation. This is perhaps the greatest practical obstacle to enacting Hunter’s vision. Creating a strong alternative community to counter the dominant culture, while still boldly commissioning that community’s members for presence even in places of great cultural power, has proven quite the sticky wicket for two millennia now.

But how to love? Is not the church the place where this love becomes a tangible reality? 

One of the issues we have is the tension between community norms and treatment of individuals who cannot fulfill those norms. The hot battle now is of course sexual minorities. 

The Banner has a piece on the meeting done by the Synodical Committee on SSM. Note the quote here.

“Our hope as followers of Jesus is that our faith will have transformational power on the people who enter our circles. But we must be careful not to equate belongingness with specific kinds of behavior,” commented Shawn Groen, a member of First CRC in Hamilton. “If we can begin to separate belongingness and behaving, we will be more comfortable journeying and suffering with people wrestling with deep questions about love and acceptance.”

I wouldn’t have to work too hard to name some behaving that would pretty quickly remove someone from belonging in nearly any community. Consider for a moment BurningMan that is a shortlived community that attempts to practice radical inclusion. The gathering is famous for art, drugs and sex yet they too have rules. 

People come into our churches wondering many things:

• What are the rules, the REAL rules? in other words, what gets me kicked out?
• Will I be loved? What does love look like?
• Where is the power for transformation? How can I see it? employ it? Be transformed? Transformed into what?

Right now there are battling conferences on church treatment (affirming or no) on same sex marriage and other sexual minorities.

• ERLC2014 SBC increasingly Reformed-Baptisty tribe.
• The Reformation Project: Including James Brownson, Gene Robinson and Matthew Vines
• Gay Christian Network: with Justin Lee

No one will deny that what we want is “love”, but what does love look like? What norms best express love?

Matthew Vines commented on a comment I left on a RHE’s gave me this description of the Reformation Project:

Plus, we will have non-affirming people in attendance at TRP, and we are very happy to have them. After all, it’s not just a powwow of like-minded people to celebrate our like-mindedness. Our goal is to equip people to engage the core concerns of those with differing views with respect, sensitivity, and substance. We don’t want to defeat or marginalize non-affirming Christians; we ultimately hope to persuade them to change their views by meeting them where they’re at, respecting them for why they believe what they do, and addressing their primary concerns in ways that can be constructive and unifying for the church for the long haul.

I’m finishing up a review of Wendy Gritter’s book for CTS Journal so I’ve been pondering this process quite a bit. It strikes me that what we desire goes beyond being “safe”

• Safety asks “will they hurt me by what they say or do?” It might also be the hospitality question “will they welcome me”
• Next we ask “will I have influence in and among them?” “Will they listen to me? Will I feel heard and will my ideas be received and maybe even embraced?”
• We move on to “how will what happens conform to my desires? Will I see my will be done in this place?”

Deep within us I think where this goes is joy as the world becoming “my space”.

Cat Calls in NYC

• See the links of Hollaback’s Youtube
• Pay attention to the “salvation narrative”, how we implicitly imagine the world is to be changed?
• What “change the world” narratives are present in the Dish comments?
• What institutions or norms govern or support those narratives?

Notice the formula our cultural conversation (both right and left) appeals to

• Outrage
• Denunciation
• Legislation
• Vilifying

Anger and contempt are the twin scourges of the earth. Mingled with greed and sexual lust (to be discussed later), these bitter emotions form the poisonous brew in which human existence stands suspended. Few people ever get free of them in this life, and for most of us even old age does not bring relief.

Once you see those emotions for what they are, the constant stream of human disasters that history and life bring before us can also be seen for what they are: the natural outcome of human choice, of people choosing to be angry and contemptuous. It is a miracle there are not more and greater disasters. We have to remember this when we read what Jesus and other biblical writers say about anger. To cut the root of anger is to wither the tree of human evil. That is why Paul says simply, “Lay aside anger” (Col. 3: 8).

Yet influential people tell us today that we must be angry, that it is necessary to be angry to oppose social evil. The idea goes deep into our thinking. I was once counseling a Christian couple about family matters and suggested that they should not discipline their child in anger. They replied in amazement , “You mean we should just punish him in cold blood?” They had no idea of how their sense of righteousness had become intertwined with anger.

A leading social commentator now teaches that despair and rage are an essential element in the struggle for justice. 12 He and others who teach this are sowing the wind, and they will reap the whirlwind, the tornado. Indeed, we are reaping it now in a nation increasingly sick with rage and resentment of citizen toward citizen. And often the rage and resentment is upheld as justified in the name of God.

But there is nothing that can be done with anger that cannot be done better without it. The sense of self-righteousness that comes with our anger simply provokes more anger and self-righteousness on the other side. Of course, when nothing is done about things that are wrong, anger naturally builds and finally will break into action, whether in a family or a nation. That is inevitable and even necessary outside The Kingdom Among Us.

But the answer is to right the wrong in persistent love, not to harbor anger, and thus to right it without adding further real or imaginary wrongs. To retain anger and to cultivate it is, by contrast, “to give the devil a chance” (Eph. 4: 26– 27). He will take the chance, and there will be hell to pay. The delicious morsel of self-righteousness that anger cultivated always contains comes at a high price in the self-righteous reaction of those we cherish anger toward. And the cycle is endless as long as anger has sway.

Willard, Dallas (2009-02-06). The Divine Conspiracy (p. 151). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

To belong is a vital need based in the spiritual nature of the human being. Contempt spits on this pathetically deep need. And, like anger, contempt does not have to be acted out in special ways to be evil. It is inherently poisonous. Just by being what it is, it is withering to the human soul. But when expressed in the contemptuous phrase— in its thousands of forms— or in the equally powerful gesture or look, it stabs the soul to its core and deflates its powers of life. It can hurt so badly and destroy so deeply that murder would almost be a mercy. Its power is also seen in the intensity of the resentment and rage it always evokes.

Willard, Dallas (2009-02-06). The Divine Conspiracy (p. 153). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

Jesus here gives us a second illustration, then, of how the kingdom heart will respond. He does not tell us what to do, but how to do it. Indeed, go to court or not— as makes sense in the circumstances. But do whatever you do without hostility, bitterness, and the merciless drive to win. Be prepared to sacrifice your interest for that of another if that seems wise. And keep a joyous confidence in God regardless of what happens.

Standing in the kingdom, we make responsible decisions in love, with assurance that how things turn out for us does not really matter that much because, in any case , we are in the kingdom of the heavens. In that kingdom nothing that can happen to us is “the end of the world.”

Through these two illustrations we finally see the kingdom goodness placed side by side with the mere goodness of not killing, which then looks quite empty by contrast. If we made laws of these illustrations and followed them, would that make us right toward our brother or sister? Not at all. We could do these things and yet find many other ways to hate and hurt our neighbor. We would miss the whole point.

Willard, Dallas (2009-02-06). The Divine Conspiracy (p. 158). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

How Norms Help Us

Communal norms are powerful factors in achieving compliance. We’ve seen that these can be helpful or harmful.

• CRC pastors don’t usually make cat calls to girls on the street. they’d lose their jobs.
• The storied suicidal gay youth who because they grow up in a conservative church

The Roman Catholic conversation about Divorce is instructive. Douthat and Sullivan have gone back and forth on this. 

Dreher and others, at the release of the first Vatican document, which was subsequently revised under presser to be less “affirming” wanted to see a difference between doctrine and pastoral care.

In our contemporary conversation in the secular sphere all “goods” that are publicly valued must be within our space-time-material box. Note how this plays out in topics like divorce or same sex marriage.

From Center Church Video Series Missional Community about minute 9

1. No moral authority other or higher than the self. My personal happiness is the highest good.
2. In the end the good of the individual always trumps the good of the community.
3. If God does exist he does for our benefit to make this a good world to live in (MTD)
4. Whatever meaning or happiness there is must be found within this material world

If you were to bring Charles Taylor into the mix you’d probably trigger a conversation about “Reform”

Most traditional societies had religions that operated in 2 gears. The two groups were interrelated. This all changed with the “Reform”

What I’m calling “Reform” here expressed a profound dissatisfaction with the hierarchical equilibrium between lay life and the renunciative vocations. In one way, this was quite understandable. This equilibrium involved accepting that masses of people were not going to live up to the demands of perfection. They were being “carried”, in a sense, by the perfect. And there is something in this which runs against the very spirit of Christian faith.

As we saw above these differences of “speed” can end up being ambiguously accepted, even given some recognition in theories of complementarity between the laity and the clergy, or other religious “virtuosi”, like monks or hermits or wandering saints. People see the relationship in terms of a kind of exchange. For instance, in many Buddhist societies, the laity feed the monks, and thereby gain merit against better future rebirths.

The Latin Christendom which emerged from the “Dark Ages” was of this type. But in this it was not alone. Many “speeds” were also very much in evidence in the Eastern Churches; not to speak of the other major civilizations. What seems peculiar to Latin Christendom is rather the deep and growing dissatisfaction with it. Although the aim at first was not to abolish the difference altogether, serious attempts were made to narrow the gap between the fastest and the slowest. The dissatisfaction grew, and manifested itself in different movements, some among elites, and some among the people-at both levels therefore.

What I’m calling “Reform”, with a capital `R’, is to be distinguished from attempts by more dedicated people to spread their forms of practice and devotion, by preaching, encouragement, example. These reform movements (with a small `r’) may even be organized or sponsored by the official hierarchy, without this amounting to “Reform”. Proselytizing and renewal movements have cropped up periodically in all the higher civilizations. What distinguishes them from Reform is that they do not try to delegitimate less dedicated forms, but only to convert more people from these to the higher “speeds”.

Now there was also lots of reform in late mediaeval Europe. Think only of the preaching of the mendicant friars. But what is peculiar to Latin Christendom is a growing concern with Reform, a drive to make over the whole society to higher standards. I don’t pretend to have the explanation of this “rage for order”, but it seems to me to be a fact about the late-mediaeval and early modern period, and moreover one which has carried over into the modern period in the partly secularized ideal of “civilization”. I want to argue that this “rage” has been crucial to the destruction of the old enchanted cosmos, and to the creation of a viable alternative in exclusive humanism.

Many religions have two “speeds” if you will. One for the saints, and the others for the “regular folk”. The two communities live in relationship with one another. The saints pray, and are regularly supported by the regular folk. The regular folk receive “benefits” from the saints for their support. It is a transaction. The Protestant Reformation was a part of this broader change.

Charles Taylor. A Secular Age (pp. 62-63). Kindle Edition.

One way to understand the tensions we currently have is to understand Taylor’s notion of speeds. Dallas Willard wants to see all of us live up to Jesus’ standard. He also asserts it is possible. “To change the world”. Taylor notes that this is a departure from medieval practice. When did the two speed reality develop?

• How does this impact preaching? Do we believe this level of community sanctity is possible?
• What then are the norms?
• How does this impact preaching and Sacraments?