Worship on Your Face

I was browsing at the used bookstore recently and came across a book that looked pretty interesting.  The first thing I noticed was the author.  I am familiar with Lauren Winner, but have not had the privilege to read any of her work yet.  So I pick up this book entitled, Real Sex: The naked truth about chastity. The book is written for single people, seeking to live out a very traditional, conservative, biblical view of sexuality in the world today.

Now, as a husband and father of two boys, I knew this book probably wasn’t for me personally, but going into my first pastorate, surely these conversations are going to come up so why not be prepared, right?  Well, very quickly it became apparent that this book is for much more than just single Christians trying to “just say no” until marriage.  The book is about embodying our sexuality as a spiritual practice, whether single, married, or otherwise.

I found myself really challenged about the false lies that the church often teaches in regards tp sexuality and how we have the tendency to drift toward a Gnostic view of the world (earthly flesh is bad, heavenly spirit is good).  Likewise, there just seem to be some topics in the church that are off limits, creating barriers to our ability to create any authentic kind of community with one another.

Take this following excerpt as an example.  Leading into this, Winner describes a couple of instances where fellow Christians simply lack the resources and vocabulary to discuss/confront one another with sexual sin.  Even in a culture where sex is flaunted on television, movies, and magazines (not to mention in the clothing that is so pervasive today), Winner states that sex “may be public, but it is not communal.”  We feel like we are intruding into someone’s private life if we confront them about what they do behind closed doors.

But the Bible tells us to intrude – or rather, the Bible tells us that talking to one another about what is really going on in our lives is in fact not an intrusion at all, because what is going on in my life is already your concern; by dint of the baptism that made me your sister, my joys are your joys and my crises are your crises.  We are called to speak to one another lovingly, to be sure, and with edifying, rather than gossipy or hurtful goals.  Of course, premarital sexual behavior is just one of many instances of this larger point.  Christians also need to speak courageously and transparently, for example, about the seemingly private matters of Christian marriage – there would be, I suspect, a lot fewer divorces in the church if married Christians exposed their domestic lives, their fights and tensions and squabbles, to loving wisdom, advice, and sometimes rebuke from their community.  Christians might claim less credit-card debt if small-group members share their bank account statements with one another.  I suspect that if my best friend had permission to scrutinize my Day-timer, I would inhabit time better.  Speaking to one another about our sexual selves is just one (admittedly risky) instance of a larger piece of Christian discipleship: being community with each other.

(Lauren Winner in Real Sex: The naked truth about chastity, p.53)

While there is a part of me that wants to cheer Winner’s suggestion, I do so hesitantly.  I’m not a fan of church police roaming the streets, looking for sinners to confront.  I’m not a huge fan of shari’a law, as some of our Muslim neighbors may advocate.  Just tonight, there was a segment on Dateline about the now infamous Westboro Baptist Church and the way that they propagate a message of God’s hate for those that break their ultra-strict literal interpretation of the Bible.  The sheer hatred in their message is enough to make me want to run.

At the same time, however, I don’t want a faith community that is all veneer either.  I don’t want to spit-polish my life and show up on Sundays to parade around a pretend to be something I’m not, nor do I want anyone else to do that either.  So how do we create and walk that third option?  How do we begin to create a community that is honest and open about its life without becoming the “Bible Police” for its members?  This is the kind of community my heart longs for, though I have to admit that it makes me a little nervous to think about being that transparent.  As it has been said by a friend in the recovery community, we have to “pursue truth at all costs.”  Maybe that is the beginning mantra for this new community of Christ-followers.

(As a side note, Lauren winner is going to be one the keynote speakers and presenters at the CBF General Assembly in Charlotte June 23-26.  Click here for more information.)

Posted in book review

As I’ve been thinking about the Christian life as an “embodied ethic” (more on that later), I came across this little article in a commentary by Mark Biddle on the book of Deuteronomy that I thought I would share.  As we read the Bible, we are likely to miss the intended meaning of the Hebrew writers (especially in the “Old Testament”) in light of our own influences from Greek philosophy.  It’s a little dense, but good.  One note: references to the “Shema” refer to the Hebrew prayer that Jesus quoted as the greatest commandment: “Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.  And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”

The Concept of the “Soul” in Hebrew Thought

The typical modern reader of the Shema will understand the term “soul (nefesh)” to mean that interior, intangible, invisible essence of the person that exists to a degree independently of the body. Such a viewpoint owes much more to ancient Greek philosophy, however, than it does to the Hebrew Bible. In the Greek view, human beings consist of three independent parts: the body (sarx), which is inferior, corruptible, and perishable; the soul (psyche), something like the essence of the personality, pure and immortal; and the spirit (pneuma), something like the animal force.

Because of the deep and widespread influence of Greek philosophy on early Christianity, and because of the historical accident that early Christians, including the authors of the New Testament, spoke and wrote Greek, the terms used by philosophers such as Socrates and Plato found their way into use in the early church, often as translations of terms in the Hebrew Bible such as nefesh. A survey of the use of nefesh in the Hebrew Bible, however, reveals first that it has a very wide range of meaning, and second that it does not represent the Greek notion of the immortal, ineffable “soul” at all. Instead, the ancient Hebrew understood the nature of human existence in a much more concrete and holistic fashion.

The Hebrew noun nefesh has cognates in virtually all Semitic languages in the meanings “throat,” “appetite,” “breath,” and “self.” All these senses appear in the Hebrew Bible. The common underlying notion seems to involve the throat (Num 21:5; 1 Sam 2:33; Pss 69:2; 107:9; Prov 3:22; 6:30; Eccl 6:7; Isa 58:11; Jer 4:10; Jonah 2:6; etc.) as the part of the body that experiences hunger (real or metaphorical; Exod 15:9; 16:22; Deut 23:25) and through which one breathes (1 Kgs 17:21-22); hunger and breath represent life itself. This close association with life and vitality results in the coupling of the nefesh with the blood (Lev 17:14; cf. Gen 9:4). Rather than depicting an abstract feature of human existence distinct from bodily existence the Hebrew term nefesh describes aspects of that bodily existence.

The Hebrew understanding of human nature emphasizes a holistic viewpoint. God breathes into Adam the breath of life and Adam becomes a living being, a nefesh haya (Gen 2:7), just as God commanded the sea and the earth to bring forth living beings (Gen 1:20, 24). Humans do not have souls, in the Hebrew understanding, any more than sea and land animals do. Instead, human beings are “nefeshes.” The emphasis lies upon the whole of bodily life. In fact, the Hebrew apparently could not conceive of life outside a body (“nefeshes” die: see Lev 19:28; 21:1; 22:4; Num 5:2; 6:11; etc.). Incidentally, this understanding of human nature underlies the fundamental distinction between the Greek notion of the immortality of the soul and the Judeo-Christian concept of resurrection.

The Shema calls for concrete, specific, real-world obedience to God with one’s whole nefesh, one’s whole self. It does not call for an abstract devotion with one’s interior, ineffable, intangible “soul.”

Posted in theology

OK, so I’ve been processing through Jonathan’s book a little more over the past couple of weeks.  As I’ve done so, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about how we live as Jesus-followers vs. what we say about our faith.  I passed by a church this week that had a sign that read “Eternal Life Insurance Free!”  While I’ve heard many people talk about the way we describe salvation in these terms (or as “eternal fire insurance”), this is the first time I’ve ever seen a church explicitly state it.  A little while back and less than a quarter mile up the road, there is another church sign that did read, “Jesus is my Prozac.”  While I do not want to accuse either of these churches of the attitude described in the following excerpt, it got me to thinking about this passage from The Wisdom of Stability:

The faith we affirm each Sunday morning is more than a set of beliefs about who God is and what Jesus did for for us on the cross two thousand years ago.  It is that, for sure, but it is more.  The faith we sing is a radical trust that the God who raised Jesus from the dead can save us now from the demons that have us by the neck . . . Apart from stability in the life of community, the songs of Zion quickly begin to sound like wishful thinking.  How dare we sing about the sweet by and by while our kids don’t have health care and our teenagers are leaving the neighborhood in police cars and body bags?  If our longing for home is just personal nostalgia, it is no better than the booze and dope that promise some short-term respite from the harsh reality around us.  Fragile people in a broken neighborhood, we are susceptible to “crack religion” that sells Jesus as cheap comfort for whatever ails us.

What relation does Sunday morning have to Monday morning, Tuesday Afternoon, Wednesday at break, dropping the kids off at school on Thursday, or going out Friday night?  Is one’s “spiritual life” merely one more component to add to their physical, emotional, love , relational, mental, etc.?  Do we really believe in a disembodied spirituality – where soul is good and otherworldly, while flesh is bad and confined to this world?

The church is called to live the resurrection of Jesus Christ – to be a community of resurrection.  When our faith gets divorced from the everyday cares and concerns of our life, it becomes useless.  The discipleship that Jesus calls us to embody is that of laying down our lives and following the Master.  We are to “take up [our] cross daily and follow [him]” (Luke 9:23).  The church has the distinctive opportunity to model a different way of existing than the culture that surrounds us.  We have the opportunity to model a community of radical hospitality defined by our acceptance and love – where we don’t relate to one another based on externals, but on the presence of “image of God” in each human being.  We have the chance to model radical forgiveness to those who have wronged us.  We have the chance to speak out on behalf of those whom Jesus championed – the poor, the outcast, the helpless, the sick, the oppressed, the losers, and the lost.  We have the chance to become a community whose very life echoes the words of the prophet Micah, “He has told you, O man what is good and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8).

And there is it.  Our faith is not nearly so much about a set of beliefs than it is about a walk.  This is echoed in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, “Walk worthy of [your] calling (4:1). . . walk in love (5:2) . . . walk as children of light (5:8) . . . walk not as fools but as wise (5:15).”  The bottom line is this – we will never be able to reach a hurting world until we are willing to reach out to their pain with a faith robust enough to speak to their needs.  At the same time, the solutions we offer must be more than social services – we must speak/live the power of the resurrection into these situations, opting for an eternal life that doesn’t start in the sweet by and by, but one that starts in the sometimes-painful here and now.  Forming stable “communities of resurrection” seems like a good start to me.

Posted in theology

To say that we live a “hyper-mobile” culture may be a bit of an understatement these days.  Just today, I was eating lunch with my family at the local Japanese restaurant following our church’s worship service and there were three teenagers sitting together in a booth near us.  As I walked by their table, I noticed that the three of them were sharing the same physical space (they were sitting together in the booth), but they were not interacting with one another at all.  Instead, two of them had their cell phones under the table, “texting” someone, while the third had her cell phone up to her ear, talking to yet another person.  With access to their whole network of “friends” at their fingertips, these three teenagers were essentially trading the friends sitting within touching distance for the virtual connection achieved via LCD screen.

In an ever-shrinking world, characterized by instant communication to almost anywhere on the globe, how are we actually doing at building community?  With families constantly on the go, kids that aspire to grow up and move up the social ladder, and a constant barrage of information overloading our senses, are we reverting to a nomadic existence once again?

Likewise, how do we define stability in today’s context?  Often, we refer to people who are “stable” as those with a good education, steady employment, financial abundance, and a traditional family.  Could it be that, in this very definition, we are undermining the possibility of true community by placing such high value in those things which promote self-reliance and independence from those with whom God is calling us to share community and interdependence?

It is questions like these that Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove tackles in his latest book, The Wisdom of Stability: Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture. Many young evangelicals today are finding life-giving wisdom in ancient traditions, passed down throughout centuries of Christian life and practice.  Wilson-Hartgrove is one of these, culling the gifts of the Desert Mothers and Fathers for our contemporary time in this book.  Wilson-Hartgrove is among a growing number of young Evangelicals, living in intentional communities that seek to embody this ancient way of life in new, urban contexts.

Drawing from the vow of stability described in the Rule of St. Benedict (which Wilson-Hartgrove’s own “new monastic” community follows in adapted form), this book challenges the commodification of community seen in 21st Century culture.  “Social networking” has become a phenomenon through websites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc., all seeking to capitalize on the innate human desire to connect with other people.  Cell phone companies capitalize on the desire to constantly be in “contact” with one’s network through phone calls, text messaging, and access to these online communities.  As Wilson-Hartgrove notes,

“The great advantage of a Facebook friendship, of course, is that it is so easy.  I get to choose who I want to “friend” and whose friendship requests I respond to.  We gather around our common interests, share the stuff we want others to know, and log off when we feel like it.  In many ways what we have is connection without obligation.  But intimacy without commitment is what our society has traditionally called ‘infidelity’.”

Though Wilson-Hartgrove doesn’t use this term, the hyper-mobile nature of today’s society has led to an increasingly “pornographic” culture, where people are valued based on their usefulness to another person.  Individuals are turned into objects that can be used as means to an end rather than the embodiment of the image of God.  As humans, we are not free-floating spirits, despite the temptation to view life this way through the lens of cyber-relationships.  This embodiment is the kind of stability that Wilson-Hartgrove is commending in this text.  It is the embodiment of faith, within a community, over time.  It is the slow development of relationships and communal trust as flawed humans rub shoulders with each others over the course of time, transforming and shaping one another “as iron sharpens iron.”

Additionally, Wilson-Hartgrove’s advocation of stability as a virtue further embodies the missional nature of the Church’s calling.  As the body of Christ, the Church is called to incarnate the Gospel – to be the “good news.”  The vow of stability makes this incarnational quality of the Church’s mission truly achievable because it calls to love not just in words, but “in action and in truth.”

I have read most of Wilson-Hartgrove’s works to date and can say that this one has been the most powerful and convicting read yet.  His engagement with the Biblical material is always fresh and insightful, drawing me to a deeper appreciation of the text by looking at it from new perspectives.  The overarching metaphor of life as a house, along with his personal stories, cause the reader to feel as though you are pulling up a rocking chair on the front porch and sharing a glass of sweet tea and conversation.  This is a timely book, a needed book, a book that should be widely read and talked about among those who wish to fight the cultural tendency to “move up and move out.”  This is a book about the difficulties and dangers of community life, as well as the unparalleled joys of plunging deep roots in a specific place, among a specific people, over time.

Posted in book review
Tags: bible, book review, church identity, theology