Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
petey crowder
This is a space for me to leave pictures I find inspiring, thoughts I find provoking, links I find creative, and my personal prose theology that hopefully springs from continual prayer, reflection and learning.links
Andy Sikora
Brad Taylor
Back On My Feet
Brian Manley
ISO50
Jason Clark
Jesus Manifesto
Jon Wasson
Kimberly Klein
Lars Rood
Rhett Smith
Scot McKnight
Seth Jones
Steve Lewis
What does it mean that Jesus flipped the power switch? Or, more radically, he went headlong into the human concept of power and rearranged it. Flipped it. Disoriented everyone so that he coud reorient them to a proper use of power.
Ephesians 6:12 reads,
“For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.”
Think about Jesus and his creative re-framing of power assertions like “turn the other cheek” and “walk an extra mile,” using the situational “power” to expose absurd person-on-person abuse and incorrect uses of power.
Take “walk an extra mile,” a common expression because Romans were allowed to ask civilians in occupied territories to carry their brutally heavy military packs for up to one mile. Jesus creatively says, “go ahead an walk another mile.” Expose their cruelty and oppression. Go even further than their law suggests, showing that their “power” is not the final word. Some have even suggested that the Romans could get in trouble if the civilians were made to go further than a mile, so then the act of going the second mile would make the Roman soldier literally beg for the civilian to stop, lest he find himself in trouble.
How do we creatively use whatever power, influence, and privilege we get (earned or otherwise) to expose the incorrect uses of power?
Take Jesus again and his struggle in the desert with Satan’s temptations, and the reminder of Israel and their struggles in the wilderness wanderings…
struggles with power,
the temptation of using power like every other nation,
hoarding like every other nation,
being about nationality over God like every other nation.
You know, things we can learn a little bit about here in America, in 2009.
How can you expose abuses of power? It’s revolutionary but it doesn’t have to be grand. It probably will require hope and creativity.
In a lot of ways, Jesus did it by saying and showing that “there’s a better way.”
That’s the beauty of the Cross,
that the evil power did not, does not, and never will have the last word.
I’m always intrigued when people reference the second chapter of the book of Acts for a qualitative definition of Community. I agree, it’s a good description of Community/a Community.
In fact, it’s a good description of life and faith in general.
But it’s a little romantic to speak as if that’s what our Community must resemble or it’s not “real community.”
Because we don’t live in the 1st or 2nd centuries.
We don’t live in nor fully understand the social and communal context and climate that the first century church lived in (in particular the Jerusalem-centered context that the famous ending to Acts 2 was referencing).
Even our word for “community” does not ring the same bell for us that it rang for them. For us to talk about community and 1st century Middle-Easterns to talk about community are two completely different exercises.
Pretending like they are the same is an adventure in missing the point.
We need to stop idolizing their relational expression of living out the Gospel in the first century.
We need a recovery of the Gospel as a relationally healing agent that makes us more loving, just, humble, peaceful, gracious, and merciful. It is the enabling of our salvation. The empowering of transformation.
The 1st century Christians didn’t share everything because it was the prescription for Community. They did it because, in their environment, it was the appropriate expression of the Gospel in the midst of broken-but-hopeful people.
People who were learning to trust God even though it hurt.
Even though it was scandalous.
What’s our prescription for that scandalous, painful, loving grace’s invasion?
I’m reading an article in the latest Relevant Mag, “Just a Phone,” written by Chris Haw on the downside of technology and the iPhone in particular.
Chris draws heavily on the influences of Wendell Berry, who Haw sums up his position as “He wants to remain centered in his soul by asking the basic questions: what are the problems with the world (or myself) and what are the ways those will be solved…for Berry, the problems with the world are the following: peace, economic justice, ecological health, political honesty, family and community stability, and good work. Computers, for the most part, have not aided our solving these problems.”
Before I speak to that, let me confound it with another thought Chris uses from Catholic theologian Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. She said that it’s not clear to define “what luxuries and technological developments are worthy of Christian participation…but the Christian should often be a late or slow adopter.” This is a most interesting statement to me, because 1,000,001 Christian bloggers and young, techy church leaders are all about how the church is lame and culturally ineffective because they’re “late adopters.” There are countless young Christian leaders that pour as much energy into being technologically relevant and saavy as they do being theologically thoughtful. Nice contrast there. And, nice critique coming from a dude blogging, huh? But I digress…
How has technology already solved some of these problems that Berry is concerned with?
Political Honesty: Anyone see what Twitter was doing the last couple of weeks?
Family and Community Stability: When I can work from my computer after my family goes to bed but take off work earlier and spend time with them in the early evening, I think that’s adding stability to my family & community life.
Economic Justice & Ecological Health: There are countless non-profit orgs that are revolutionizing Third World Countries through harnessing technology, like Blood:Water Mission and Micro-financing companies.
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not technology’s biggest advocate. And, admittedly, there are downsides to all of the technological upsides I just mentioned. Pits to fall in everywhere. Indeed, I’ve fallen in some of those pits. There are also countless scenarios that technology could aggravate that we haven’t even grasped yet.
Here’s my only original thought in this whole thing… what would it look like for us to increase the amount of energy and time we spend becoming theologically reflective and spiritually contemplative? If we’re truly finding our souls doing well, maybe we’ll be prepared to guard against the downsides of technology. The iPhone can do a lot of things for us, but it won’t rest our souls.
The article does resign with an interesting question, “is an iPhone the shape of the distance between the current me and that better me?”
In light of things I’ve been experiencing, conversations I’ve been having, music I’ve been jamming to, and stuff I’ve been reading, I’ve been wondering that question a lot lately… what should we expect from God?
Should we expect happiness?
Gloom?
Smiles?
Suffering?
A healthy family?
Health at all?
Socks and Shoes?
Should we expect success?
Riches?
A roof?
Sunshine?
A job?
Faith?
Fulfillment?
Children?
Should we expect failure?
Grace?
Love?
Mercy?
Justice?
Truth?
Maybe all we can expect from God is the opportunity to participate.
The opportunity to participate in life.
In His Life.
In His Glory.
In Suffering.
In Joy.
In Creating.
In Mourning.
In Losing.
In Eternity.
We’re born. We live. We die.
And somewhere in between we experience the gammit of what it means to be alive. What should we expect from God? Simply the opportunity to take it all in.
God gives us the opportunity to participate in something bigger than us.
Will you truly participate? Or will you merely distract yourself with something smaller, selfish, personal, and ultimately petty?
