Life Thought: Each Day Is What You Make It

I was on the phone a couple days ago with a wise old friend. We were talking about the kind of crazy year 2020 has been when he said to me, “Do you know what I have learned during this time, Todd? Your day is what you make it.” That is worth thinking about a bit.

With that thought, I offer you this quote from Michael Ramsey, the esteemed Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the Church of England, from 1961 to 1974.

“When men do what is right in the particular circumstance, in the task at hand, in the details of what lies immediately before them, they may be building greater than they can ever know. It is not given to most men to see great visions, or to construct grand concepts. But it is given to every man and woman to make decisions about matters immediately at hand, putting what is right before what is capricious, putting divine law before human wilfulness.

When that happens, God in his good providence gathers up our little actions of the moment, and uses them in his design down the ages. Did not Christ say that he who is faithful in little shall have great riches? The riches may be incalculable results in later times.”

Jewish sage Jesus ben Sira wrote, around 200BC, “Conduct your affairs in humility…. what is committed to you, attend to…. work at your tasks in due season – and in his own time God will give you your reward” (3:17,22;  51:30). The first three phrases are wisdom in and of themselves. The last part about God’s reward is icing on the cake.

Trendy approaches to Social Transformation

There are frequent moments when I find myself thinking about some social media rant of this or that friend, “You and I have the same goals. But I think we have different thoughts on what needs to be done to reach those goals. So what is needed is the wisdom and knowledge/experience to know which approaches will actually create a net gain in shalom for the people we are concerned about, and which approaches may seem promising [and popular] but will turn out to be at best less effective, and at worst, counterproductive and actually harmful to the people we are trying to help.”

The UN has run up against this reality time and again, trying to help and then realizing this or that approach has created unforeseen results counter to the goal, harmful in fact. There are many popular “fixes” being advocated today,  popular as in, it is trendy and hip to advocate those approaches, and young people -and perhaps even your leaders- will consider you enlightened and with-it if you advocate those ideas, but which, in reality, do not solve the problem, will not create a net gain in shalom, will harm those we are concerned about, and are “empty clouds that produce no rain”.

None of that is to say that nothing should change, nor that we should just do what we’ve always done.  No one who, in their mid-40s, spent the time and money on an expensive degree in International Development would ever suggest such a thing.  What I do suggest is that jumping on the bandwagon of our favorite political party and advocating,  without studying an issue carefully over time,  whatever trendy fix is in the news at the moment, is not “the work of mature wisdom”. What I do suggest is that at this present moment, many people in our society, and in my own denomination, are advocating trendy fixes which a bit of mature wisdom, experience, and understanding of economics and community development  should indicate are hollow approaches which will do more harm than good for the very people we love and want to bless.

3000 years ago a Jewish sage wrote “Zeal without knowledge is not good, and the one who acts hastily sins.”

There’s a lot of truth there.

Are our answers just Democrat or Republican instead of Christian?

This morning I was going to write some things about what is going on in country in these days, and how, to my sorrow and frustration, whenever I hear my Christian friends prescribe solutions, I am not hearing Christian solutions bubbling up out of the Gospel, I merely hear Democrat or Republican party solutions, dressed up with a few Bible verses for proof texts, if the person is feeling especially spiritual at the moment. This lack of Christian response, speaking a better Word than the world can offer, a Christian response that Christians are agreed upon (political party affiliation, right now, is a MUCH better predictor of what you will say about riots, racism, policing, Covid, or wildfires, than being Christian is) – the lack of this is alarming in the extreme. What a far cry from Paul’s admonition that “there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose” (1 Corinthians 1:10 NAB).

I was going to write my own thoughts about this, but instead, I will go with some comments from N.T. Wright from my morning reading, which I think will cover some ground vital, directive, and potentially life-giving. This is from his comments on 1 Corinthians 1’s opening. He begins by describing a phone call in which a friend of his went on and on about a young man she was falling for. It was obvious, he said, by what she talked about, what her passion was. “It doesn’t take long in someone’s company,” Wright says, “or even in a phone call, before you discover what’s really exciting them, what is at the centre of their waking thoughts.

Paul’s central concern, here and throughout his life and work, was quite simply Jesus. The name occurs eight times in these nine verses. Paul couldn’t stop talking about Jesus, because without Jesus nothing else he said or did made any sense. And what he wants the Corinthians to get hold of most of all is what it means to have Jesus at the middle of your story, your life, your thoughts, your imagination. If they can do that, all the other issues that rush to and fro through the letter will sort themselves out.

….he wants them to have Jesus at the centre of their understanding of the world and of history.

 …. (formerly pagans, they didn’t realize that) history, the story of the world, was going anywhere, or that their own lives might be part of that forward movement.

…they have been caught up into a great movement of the love and power of the one true God, the God of Israel…. from God’s point of view; it means that he has set people aside for special purposes; and the people in question are expected to co-operate with this.

they discover that they are part of a large and growing worldwide family, brothers and sisters of everyone who ‘calls on the name of our Lord King Jesus’. In fact, ‘calling on’ this name is the one and only sign of membership in this family, though people in Paul’s day and ever since have tried to introduce other signs of membership as well.

Wright, N.T.. Paul for Everyone: 1 Corinthians (The New Testament for Everyone) (p. 3). Westminster John Knox Press. Kindle Edition.

Perhaps, as we prescribe solutions for the problems in our world, though we think deeply, informedly, and recognizing the complex nature of complex societal problems, Christians ought to revolve our thoughts and prescriptions around Jesus, rather than Republican or Democratic talking points.  I’m certain Paul, who lived in a complex, metropolitan society awhirl in races, political theories, philosophical perspectives, and movements, would tell us so.

Dwelling in a land securely

Situations afflicting people living in the inner cities do not exist in anything like isolation, they are a knotted up twine ball of separate, though inter-related and self-reinforcing issues, that bear upon one another in a tightening manner, and make pulling them apart extremely difficult, if even possible. We often think of affordable, assessable housing, medical care, education and food, plus job availability and public safety as some of the anchor points of a liveable community. But the breakdown of any one of these ‘securities’ creates the downward spiral/domino effect of the breakdown of them all.  Systems theory, as it is utilized in social work, is critically important here. [19^th century attempts of the Dutch ‘knickerbocker’ families (well to do residents of East Coast cities such as Theodore Roosevelt’s father) to combat urban poverty and improve the living, working and social conditions of the city’s residents are one example of the realization that addressing one or two of these issues in isolation would not ‘fix’ the city.] Situations like incarcerated fathers, gang membership, drug trafficking, lack of economic opportunity, absence of affordable medical care, unsafe streets, terrible educational performance, and the accompanying despair (‘urban decay’ it has been called for around 200 years) are all direct results/fallout of each other, and self-reinforce.

All of this might seem completely obvious to virtually anyone, however the fact is we often attempt to mitigate suffering in urban centers by only addressing one of these issues at a time, and in isolation. So that, we say ‘we’ve got to do something about…’ (youth delinquency, drug addiction, gang culture, lack of economic opportunity, racial disparity, etc etc) when actually, these issues are so convolutedly intertwined that to attempt to address one without addressing all is a long slow drudge with continual set-backs, and an overall disappointing rate of success. Of course it is, gang culture is directly connected to incarceration of young men’s fathers, lack of job availability, crime rates pushing businesses to safer parts of the city, again, etc etc!

One of the difficulties herein is geographical place. Once an urban center has become a geographically large area of ‘decay’/extreme poverty/abandoned space, people become trapped in a spiderweb of issues due to the fact that they live there. There are actually plenty of jobs in other places, safe streets, social services, grocery stores (!!!), friendly neighbors – the kinds of places people walk home at night in the dark with no fear of crime or attack. There have been many occasions I have worked with this or that family in the midst of their difficulty, and thought to myself ‘if only I could get them to move to (fill in the blank).  Some of the HUD housing attempts I have lived next to in rural towns, trying to provide urban families with an escape, have unwittingly re-created the dangers of the big cities the families left, by grouping them together, and their children have re-created the cultures they were familiar with from where they grew up, even though the scarcities those gang-cultures grew out of were no longer in effect in the new place. Much better, I decided after conversations with families who succeeded in escaping blighted urban neighborhoods, would be to help individual families relocate to a better place, and not place them in an apartment complex that ended up merely being a microcosm of what they just left.

But there’s the problem, or one of them. Blighted urban neighborhoods may be blighted, but they are still places with cousins, aunts, uncles, grandchildren, grown brothers and sisters, three to five still-living generations deep. Who wants to move away from everyone they know and love? It may not be ideal, but it’s their place.

So the choice becomes to attempt to rehabilitate urban areas suffering crime, disparity, poverty and absence of basic things like grocery stores. And there are some winsome, delightful stories of success. But they are relatively few of those successes, or we wouldn’t be talking about urban poverty. And the reason successes are so few is that the interrelated nature of all of these issues creates a situation that while you are working on one or two of them, three other issues are undermining all your work, with very little net gain at the end of the funding cycle.

And so. More people should consider, and more government and private funding and initiatives should explore, helping people successfully start over somewhere else, somewhere better. This doesn’t need to be the only alternative, it doesn’t need to be forced on people, it doesn’t need to mean all areas of suffering are depopulated and given up on. But it should, in a reasonable collection of poverty alleviation tools, be something tried and funded far, far more than it is. It is the urban equivalent of something hundreds of millions of people do every year – immigrate to a place with better opportunities and securities. It requires the same resolve that international immigration requires – leaving place and family and trying to give the next generation something better. I have known, and work with daily, many, many immigrant families who came from places experiencing the same suffering going on in our U.S. inner cities, and those families are thriving, flourishing, prospering, and happy. Organizations like World Vision do a great job, through partnerships with churches, helping refugee families get adjusted to a new life in the U.S., individual families adopting them and helping them with all the new  resources they need. Something similar is certainly possible with families relocating out of devastated urban areas. Alongside development and restoration of our inner cities, everything I’ve observed leads me to believe that it’s worth considering.

…remove the chains that bind people.
⁷ Share your food with the hungry,
    and give shelter to the homeless.
Give clothes to those who need them….

Some of you will rebuild the deserted ruins of your cities.
    Then you will be known as a rebuilder of walls
    and a restorer of homes.

Isaiah 58: 7, 12

Why I Still Believe in the Institutional Church

For my entire adult life, the message I have been hearing about the institutional church in North America is that it is dead in the water, out of touch, defunct, a dinosaur doomed to soon disappear. Several remedies or alternatives have been prescribed: house churches, the emergent movement, urban gardens and being a coffee barista. An early adopter, I have been hopeful and a supporter of all of those things, none of which seem to be panning out to be The New Manifestation of The Gospel that I heard they would be.

Meanwhile, week after week, the dreaded and maligned soccer-mom minivans keep pulling into North American churches, and as a result, around the world the hungry are being fed, orphans cared for, schools built and staffed, disasters responded to, communities transformed, and lives re-ordered. In fact, it seems to me, that 99% of the very things Millennial decriers of the institutional church are in fact proud of and in favor of, (caring for the poor, sick, and desperate worldwide) are being done by the institutional church in staggering numbers, and not being done by house churches, gardens, or coffee bars. More, the very things that my Millennial Christian friends share have shaped them into the very passionate people they are today (youth groups, mission trips, Christian retreats and concerts, Christian Universities) were provided by, oh no, yes, the institutional church. And, I repeat, all those things in the Christian faith they are most delighted in (caring for the poor, etc), are being done precisely by the institutional church, and in incredible volume. Missionaries sent, wrecked communities and homes rebuilt, orphanages, AIDS clinics, peace initiatives, ecological endeavors – all paid for and generated by minivan-driving soccer mom families.

On top of that, I have interviewed hundreds of people in a worldwide variety of contexts, concerning the conditions within which they came to life-changing faith in Jesus. And virtually every single one of them came via the ministry, one way or another, of the institutional church.

So, having always had a pragmatic bent, after all these years, I’m still a fan of the institutional church.

Getting the a priori doctrines right

I’ve been thinking for some time about how that, if you don’t have the a priori doctrines straight, all the doctrines that follow get screwed up. By a priori doctrines, I mean Creation (what the world is, what it is for, what God wants for it), the doctrine of man (what humans are, what we were made for, and what our goal is) and the doctrine of God’s will (what God’s intentions are, and His own desire). When these get off-track, everything after them gets way off course.  Soteriology (what ‘salvation’ even is, and what’s its aim is), Eschatalogy (what the end-goal for Christian living is, based on God’s intent), to name just a couple, but really two of the biggest in the overall scheme of a Christian understanding of, well, everything!

 

Even simple categories of things like what the word ‘good’ means, get twisted bizarrely out of shape in Christian theology, when we get the a priori doctrines wrong. I have heard versions of Protestant theology that actually take a Hebrew word like ‘good’ and, by the time they have wrenched a few verses from St. Paul out of shape, end up boldly stating that ‘good’ really means ‘bad’ in the Bible, especially in regards to soteriology! It’s bizarre. And, unfortunately, common.

 

One of the mechanisms through which this happens, is to play the ‘two covenants’ card at every turn. In doing so, the phrase “well, that was the Old Testament” comes up continually, spiritualizing virtually every concept out of its Hebrew shape, and landing us in a much more gnostic religion than the one Jesus grew up singing, praying and worshipping in. I have even read of one of today’s leading Reformed preachers stating that if you want to understand what Paul means about salvation, you have to go back and read the 16^th century Protestant reformers! Lol! How about, if we want to understand Paul, we investigate the worldview he lived in, and what his words meant in the first century and its context, rather than what people 15 centuries and three worldviews later thought!

 

One of the things commonly occurring in this discussion is people believing that they have a ‘biblical’ view of things, when they actually have a 15^th century, Western European, Latinized, Christianized, Greek philosophical view. To get the a priori doctrines right, we have to go back to the Jewish beliefs of Jesus’ day, and ancient times before that, to the original (and subsequently developed) meanings of the Old Testament. This solid foundation (which ‘will not pass away’, and which Jesus ‘came to fulfill’) will provide us the ability to get a biblical shape to doctrines of salvation and what God wants us humans to do. The New Testament’s meanings are understood when we aren’t confused about the Old Testament’s meanings. We have to get right the a priori doctrines of the purpose of the Creation, humanity, and God’s will.

Wealth and Prosperity

Although in our time, with the extreme disparity between ultra-rich and ultra-poor that we are aware of, wealth and prosperity have become words with a negative association in many peoples’ minds, in the ancient Near Eastern biblical texts, wealth and prosperity are seen as blessings, “every man under his own vine,” a security for the survival and safety of your family, a hedge against famine and weather. It is only, as a West Virginia great-grandmother recently put it, “ill-gotten gain” that is critiqued as a sin against the poor and their Creator. That, and fairly acquired wealth, but without a concern for those in need. As I explored briefly in the last post, the ancient scriptures have quite a few examples of men and women of wealth and property who are held up as examples of uprightness in God’s eyes, as they use their means as a way to help those in dire straits; the orphan, widow, poor, and foreigner. A more recent example of this I came across years ago, is this memorial plaque from England describing a man of means who saw his wealth as a tool given by God for the betterment of the world. It reads as follows:

CHRIST IS ALL

In Memory of Robert Holden Esq.

Of Nuthall Temple, born July 24 1805.

A monument of grace.

A noble example to the rich,

And an unfailing friend to the poor.

He lived in holiness before God

And great usefulness to man

And fell asleep in Jesus November 11 1872.

 

 

Wealth, power, and influence in the ancient Hebrew ideal

One of the themes widely recognized and strongly presented across the pages of the Old Testament is God’s anger at how the poor, widowed, and orphaned have been mis-treated, or not looked-after. Not only in the commands of the Mosaic Law Code (in terms of care for the above mentioned and foreigners living among the Israelite tribes; for example: Leviticus 19: 9-10, 13-15, 33-34 or Deuteronomy 15: 7-11), but also long rants in the books of the Prophets that Judah and Israel are under God’s judgment because they had failed to look out for the unempowered (for example: Isaiah 1: 16-17; 2: 14-15; Micah 2: 1-2, 8-9; Amos 5: 7, 11-12; Zechariah 7: 9-10; or Malachi 3: 5).

The flip side of this, but less often noted, are the descriptions of how a morally upright person uses their power, influence, and wealth. The book of Job contains some representative examples of this. I think, in our current cultural context, where the place of wealth and influence are subjects of heightened interest, these ancient words of Job could serve as loci of discussion and consideration.

‘For I assisted the poor in their need

And the orphans who required help.

I helped those without hope…

I caused the widows’ hearts to sing for joy.

Everything I did was honest… I wore justice like a turban.

I served as eyes for the blind and feet for the lame.

I was a father to the poor and assisted strangers who needed help.

I broke the jaws of godless oppressors and plucked their victims from their teeth.

They drank my words like a refreshing spring…. I comforted those who mourned.

Let God weigh me on the scales of justice, for He knows my integrity.

If I have been unfair to my male or female servants when they brought their complaints to me, how could I face God?

For He created both me and my servants. He created us both in the womb.

Have I refused to help the poor or crushed the hopes of widows?

No, from childhood I have cared for orphans like a father…

whenever I saw the homeless without clothes and the needy with nothing to wear,

did they not praise me for providing wool clothing to keep them warm?’ (Job 29, 31)

It seems to me that in today’s public conversation, power, wealth, or influence, in and of themselves, are often labeled as wrong or bad. But in the Hebrew Scriptures these things are not seen as bad or evil or unjust (neither is strength, nor ancient ideals of courage). Power, wealth, influence, strength, and courage, in the OT scriptures, are seen as good, effective, redemptive tools of fairness and justice that a godly person uses to increase the well-being of the common good, and especially of the weak, suffering, and unempowered. See too the picture of the empowered, well-to-do woman in Proverbs 31, and what she does with her wealth, strength, courage and influence. I have only brushed the surface of the images the Hebrews scriptures provide us on this subject, and I suspect that, in our current time and place in Western civilization, most of these images of personal and civic ideals are no longer commonly known. That leaves us with Hollywood personalities, professional athletes, and a handful of billionaires as societal role models regarding the use of wealth. Perhaps a rediscovery of some ancient biblical images could serve as fruitful templates in our conversation about society, stratification, influence, and lack.

Can the Creator God really not stand to be around us?

I got a text the other day from a former apprentice asking about God needing to keep separate from sinful humanity. I won’t try to edit it, here’s the exchange:

Them: I’ve always believed that God needed to be separate from sin. We couldn’t enter His presence because our sin. If that is true, how is it that Jesus, fully God, could enter into this sinful world and hang out with blatant sinners? I get the Atonement. But I’m talking about the time before his death.

Me: Just like old times! In a nutshell, we probably mis-stated the way we said that stuff. The tabernacle/temple had lots of that imagery, but God is hanging out in the world and with humans all through the Old Testament. So He isn’t as sensitive or thin-skinned or hardnosed as some of our lingo has made Him sound. Think of how many times He hangs out visiting people in the Bible! Abram under the oaks of Mamre, fiery furnace with the bros, burning bush, Elijah straight to heaven etc etc. If He were as blindly furious as some theology makes Him sound none of us would stand a chance. He’s a lot kinder than we often act “He knows we are but dust.”

Me: “He knows our need, is no stranger to our weakness”. Don’t you love that?

Them: Indeed I do… So the need for separation in the OT is symbolic.

Me: Well that might take longer to unwind. Richard Rohr would say yes. Read Rob Bell’s “What is the Bible?” Have you?

Them: Between the sober bar, the recovery house, and the church I am horrible at getting books in. Should I add it to the top?

Me: Get it on kindle. Read it next. U will thank me big time. Read it in little pieces at night. U will immediately draw from it.

___________________________________________

So, while I have no doubt the extreme ‘God-is-a-raging-fire better grab hold of Jesus’ approach has helped many people take their sin seriously (and they should), there are some pretty serious problems aligning the first line of my friend’s text to the Father Who is the Creator of All Things and notices when a sparrow falls to the earth. If my Fatherhood were modeled on God’s, and He could not bear to be in our presence due to sin (and comparing humanity’s moral failure to the God of the Universe was always a dumb trick theologically anyway – OFCOURSE a human couldn’t match God! stupid!,) I would be a pretty poor father to my kids when they screwed up. That kind of fathering has scarred and damaged many people. We do not need to protect God’s purity by saying He can’t stand to be near us since we aren’t perfect. And, explanations of the Atonement which make it sound like Jesus is our cloaking device diminish any meaningful love God has for us in a weird twist of injustice. Read N.T. Wright’s new book on the Atonement ‘The Day the Revolution Began’ (highlighted here: https://toddrisser.com/2017/06/12/a-fantastic-new-book/ ). Jesus’ incarnation indicates God can indeed stand to be around us, messed up though we be. God wants shalom for us, not just a transaction/punishment to even out the scales of justice.

Another great read: “What is The Bible?” by Rob Bell

With the longest-ever subtitle! “How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything,” Rob turns his considerable writing talents to recommending the Bible to the world to read. This is a fantastic and engaging intro to the Bible for people who have blown it off, and an invigorating wake-up to people who “know” the Bible but have thought they already have it mastered.

Bell does a lot in this book:

Takes on the scientific worldview that says the Bible is outdated and un-believeable.

Takes on questions about the shocking violence.

Takes on questions about the Bible supporting un-enlightened views about humanity, and does a good job of demonstrating that human rights were advanced in radical egalitarian ways throughout the Bible.

Does a great job explaining that the story of the Bible moves on… that some things later in the story supercede and replace ideas earlier in the story.

Takes on the view that the Bible is boring and unrelated to our lives today, demonstrating handily that the themes of the Bible are exactly the issues we struggle with today!

In short, Rob addresses our modern world and says to them – come read the Bible! You’ll be surprised and glad you did – this is amazing! And, will change the way you think and feel about everything! In the process, Rob talks a lot about the God of the Bible and our ability to have a relationship with Him. And what He wants.

Don’t be put-off that the first chapter about Abraham is a teeny bit “racy,” it’s common editorial work to try to hook uninterested readers. The rest of the book proceeds at an un-controversial, yet fast-moving, humorous, engaging, utterly worthwhile read. Do it.