“Most of the things that count about Christianity cannot be counted, like the warmth or coolness of prayer, the resonance or hollowness of scriptural words, the songs or silences of the saints in heaven, the presences or absences in the sacrament.”
“Leigh F. Schmidt, “Mixed Blessings: Christianization and Secularization,” Reviews in.American History 26 (Dec. 1998): 640.
Found in Mark Noll’s The New Shape of World Christianity p. 88
Powered by Twitter Tools.
This was also part of that conversation on enjoyment of the fruits of exploition mentioned in the previous post.
This has been a wonderful thread to follow. It seems yet another confirmation of the notion of total depravity. Try to posit any morally pure achievement or accomplishment. Is the petroleum you use morally tainted by the destruction of Alberta’s water supply? Has your electricity been purchased at the expense of salmon runs? Is that shirt you’re wearing been made affordable by “free zone” sweatshop infrastructure? Was the free zone powered by a dirty coal burning plant?
For my council meetings I often use a Tim Keller sermon for “council development” and this month I used a sermon he did on “cultural renewal” where he borrowed heavily from Richard Mouw’s ideas on Isaiah 60 (outline of the sermon: http://bit.ly/CPxdg) In the consummation God will claim and redeem all the good product of human culture making from all of history. That is a breathtakingly hopeful thought.
I don’t know how many languages are lost and forgotten each year. I don’t know how many cultures: cooking, art, customs, ways of relating, perspectives, ideas, are lost each year. When you imagine all of this loss (on top of biological loss due to ecological devastation) it staggers the mind and can weight down the spirit.
Add to this vision of the redemption of human history the additional notion that we will spend eternity doing culture.
I think we can get a sense of this from how time seems to morally wash away the stain of human achievement from the experience of the sufferer’s children’s children. The descendants of the tyrants and forced laborers alike revel in the accomplishment of the great wall of China.
This was a response to a listserve discussion on the moral elements of enjoying the fruits of exploitation. Ought non-profits to accept donations from sources that have enriched themselves through questionable business dealings? Ought we to celebrate the Great Wall of China when it was constructed with such brutal means? You don’t have to think too far to have these questions multiply. This is part of one of my replies that I wanted to save.
There are always issues. The points raised about influence I thought were all good. I think it is also important to recognize the distinction between contributing to some violation of shalom (giving them an investment to encourage or collaborate in the hopes of benefiting from that violation of shalom) and receiving after the fact from the fruit of their violation.
Part of what strikes me from our current cultural perspective is the self-righteous aspiration to a supposed status of purity. California recently voted (we vote on such things here) to insure that our chickens are “free range” rather than caged. I don’t really have a problem with that. I’m not sure the voters of the state of California were in a position to judge whether chickens prefer to be in their own pen where they’re not subject to the domineering environment of the pecking order or if they prefer to spread their wings. I’m told they lay better in a cage. Perhaps stronger birds prefer to oppress the weaker ones and a more politically correct solution would have been to offer the birds a choice as to whether they want solitary or to be let out in the general poultry population. Maybe the question just gives us a change to anthropomorphize the gospel bird.
What strikes me about our human choices in these matters is the way our choices play in our own hearts. If you dine in certain parts of Sacramento (or the Bay area as well) menus regularly crow the fact that their birds are free range or their cows were better treated or the veggies were locally grown, I suppose to spare them the discomfort of a trip up from Mexico or the indignities of a border crossing. There is usually a “feel good” tax associated with these victuals. The red-state restaurants also have their “feel good” fare. Those restaurants don’t seem to care how their birds were kept but they have little Bible citations on corn sweetened beverages to add a bit of religious zip to the caffeine.
A marvelous syncretistic twist on our culture-religion of choice is that redemption is only a product (or donation) selection (or rejection) away.
What’s funny is that these choices that seem so vital today 100 years ago would be completely different, and 100 years from now will likely change again. Perhaps 100 years from now they won’t care whether we got our oil from Texas or Saudi Arabia or the tar sands of Alberta but will be angry that we foolishly spent this resource to winter away from cold weather. Maybe they’ll wonder why we didn’t convert the invasive feral horse population in the west to food to feed the hungry. Maybe they’ll condemn us for not putting more recyclable things into landfills where they could be cheaply discovered and mined for use in their day. Who knows? What we do know is that when we feel superior to our neighbor because we chose paper rather than plastic we enjoy it.
Powered by Twitter Tools.
Powered by Twitter Tools.
Powered by Twitter Tools.
This sermon was given in October of 2005 as part of Redeemer’s Vision series. The recordings were free on the web for a long time but now only some of them are available free. The remainder can be purchased at the Redeemer Sermon store. It is a great series, well worth listening too. Here are my notes from the sermon in outline form.
Powered by Twitter Tools.
Mormonism and American Evangelicalism
Zondervan academic is plugging a new book about the book of Mormon and I’ve been reading the daily released blog outlays. They’ve been fascinating. I’m also reading Mark Noll’s excellent book on the relationship between the development of 19th century American evangelicalism and the formation of world Christianity. It’s interesting reading these two things together because the similarities of epistomology, faith, revelation, patterns and assumptions of religious conversion, acceptance and maintenance are amazing, and humbling. It’s important to remember he’s not only the God of renewal but also the God of history and of creation.