"There is a church in our area that recently added an addition to their building which cost more than $20 Million. Our local newspaper ran a front-page story not too long ago revealing that one in five people in our city lives in poverty."
"This is a book about those two numbers."
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Hey all! I found my book! I have already read through the book but I am going to re-read it so we can all have great discussion... so much in it to dig deeper with, for sure!
ReplyDeleteThanks Matt for opening this up - I know I need to start sharing what I am reading and hear what others have to say :-)
I am really excited to read this one, it sounds very intriguing!! Maybe I'll get some good info for the screenplay that I told you about (Matt). I loved the "Everything is Spiritual" movie/lecture, so I look forward to reading more of Rob Bell's work.
ReplyDeleteWell, here we are. Let the commenting begin. From yesterday through the rest of the month, it is our time to finish reading (or begin reading for some) and comment on the pioneering book of our book club (“Jesus Wants to Save Christians”). I expect that most of the commenting will be done in the latter part of each month, but seeing as how it is the first official comment, I thought I’d get it started early.
ReplyDeleteSo to the first thing that I wanted to blog about (this is a momentous occasion ☺):
Chapter 5 is incredible. Throughout the book, the authors contrast the Christian movement in biblical times with the Roman Empire, and then compare the Roman Empire with the American Empire. They then appropriately question why Christians today aren't as fundamentally opposed. An empire builds, accumulates, expands, conquers, has an economy, is build on competition, military power, and its central task is in preserving and strengthening that empire. As opposed to the life of Jesus, taking the role of a servant, affirming peace, self-denying, etc., etc.
The authors talk about the tragedy when Christians read the book of Revelation as if it is something that is only going to happen in the future and isn't happening now, nor during the Roman Empire. In doing so, they miss the current struggle they should be having with the empire of today (p. 131). They get wrapped up (some more than others) in the values of America, wealth, individuality, image, borders, etc., and miss the values that Jesus taught. This is huge for me. That distinction. Not that I necessarily do I good job of living in that distinction, but I’d like to, and I try to.
How can I flee from perpetuating self-absorbed values, or refuse to buy into a system that seeks to bolster the rich and ignore the poor? After being raised and surrounded in such an American consumeristic culture, how can I choose to live differently (or can I even choose, Magoo?), in a way that shows my allegiance to something more than Starbucks and Wal-Mart, in a way that affirms the richness and depth of all human lives, and not merely reduce them to a product that I can consume, or a means to some self-satisfying end? It's hard enough to choose to do so when I am aware of it, but how I do choose to do so when I am not?
As I warned in the introduction to the blog, there are going to be many questions and not nearly as many answers. If anyone would like to take a shot at any of them I would love it, but for now, I am just living in the midst of those questions, struggling through them the best I can.
Now to the second thing:
The end of chapter 5 is brilliant, and is of particular salience to me working in a youth group at a church (pp. 135-138).
I thought long and hard about how best to approach this topic, but I have decided to simply leave you with the questions the authors leave us, and to invite everyone into the dialogue. Jared (and the rest of the youth staff), this is something we are going to have to talk a lot more about:
“How do children of the empire understand the Savior who was killed by an empire?”
“How does a twelve-year-old who has never had hunger pangs that lasted more than an hour understand a story about a twelve-year-old providing fish and bread for thousands of chronically hungry people?
“How do kids who are surrounded by more abundance than in any other generation in the history of humanity take seriously a Messiah who said, ‘I have been anointed to preach good news to the poor’?”
“How do they fathom that half of the world is too poor to feed its kids when their church just pent two years raising money to build an addition to their building?”
To be honest I struggled with this book. Don't get me wrong, I came away with deeper insight into the correlation and interrelation between events surrounding the first exodus, King Solomon's reign, the events surrounding the life of Jesus, and our present day circumstance. Still I couldn't help but feel that there were holes, gaping at times, that the authors refused to or neglected to patch up.
ReplyDelete"Like what?" you may be asking. They choose to focus on an all-loving, compassionate, merciful, gracious God of the Bible (which is all good and true) but then, I feel, they fundamentally oppose it to violence and coersion, as if God were incapable of these things. I would like to think that God is all sweet and no sour but that would be a skewed perspective of God. Maybe I'm wrong so let me know. But God, according to the Old Testament (who is the same God of the New Testament) had his holy people slaughter entire ethnicities. He was actually angry at King Saul when he spared some livestock and people. The New Testament describes us as once being objects of God's wrath. After God saved the Israelites from Egypt he essentially said, "I saved your butts, now this is what I want you to do." I'm not saying God is all violent or bad, but I am contending that he is capable of using methods other than what we call love, compassion, mercy, etc. to accomplish his will and for someone to oppose the two can be misleading, confusing for those not a part of the church, and can be seen as ignorant or divisive.
That said, the authors provoked a lot of tough questions, some that matt already posed, that I am wrestling with but I will save those (and other comments) for later.
This book club thing is great. Thanks to Matt for putting it together and getting things started. I enjoyed the book. I always appreciate Bell’s understanding and insight to the Hebrew language and culture. The main premise of the book, it seems, is to reiterate what theologians and historians have been saying for some time now. America is the new Rome, Persia, the new Egypt, and American Christians do not understand Jesus because our history is not one of the oppressed but of the oppressor. Hauerwas, Cavanaugh, Yoder, and McLaren all deal with this idea of empire in different works and how it interacts with Christendom, and if you liked this book and want to learn more on this subject you should check out these other authors.
ReplyDeleteNo matter who is making the observation it has become clear that we have allowed ourselves to be embedded into the fabric of the expanding American Empire. Bell explains that salvation is an exodus from the oppressive local power, and just as the Israelite nation was delivered from Egypt we also nee to be delivered from our current political, economic and national circumstance. Part of the problem isn’t that we are trapped in this situation, but part of it is that we perpetuate the situation with our consumerism, patriotism, and apathy. It’s true we are a blessed nation, but our prosperity can also be a curse when the church takes a back seat to economic expansion. So what do we do? I really am not sure. I could stop paying my taxes, quit my job, sell my stuff and give it away. I could do the into the wild thing, burn my ss card and isolate myself from the world, or I could look at my resources differently. I could use them for what they are and to as a means of gaining a return. I think sometimes I’d rather do the isolation things and check out for a while. It seems like that would be easier than having to choose the right thing every time every day.
I’ve also struggled with the areas of the novel that Brandon questioned in his post. Salvation came to the Israelites, but it was at the expense of the Egyptians, Amalekites, Canaanites and other misfortunate people groups of the old testament that were killed in the exodus or in the taking of the promise land. To be quite honest I still have no idea what to do with these passages. Personally I take comfort in the example of Christ. As Christians we are to be His body and life to the world, not the life of the ancient Hebrews. Maybe that’s too simple an explanation and an easy way out of the question, but it’s the only sense I can make of it.
nick
Well, I was planning on waiting to respond to Tate’s post until after other people have had a chance to, but as the flood of comments keep coming in, I’m afraid if I don’t post now, I might not get a chance... (Please note my sarcasm. Step up people. Even if you don’t have much to say, just say something so people don’t think they they are the only ones who are reading the books. I know there are a lot of you out there, let’s hear from you. If you need to, reread the blog rules. They require “at least one comment” per month.)
ReplyDeleteSo, in response to Tate’s post: I agree that there are some “holes” in his argument that could’ve been better explained; such is the inevitability of a book that tries to deal with the complexities of God and God’s people in the amount of pages that could be read in just a few hours. However, to his credit, that is what Rob Bell has made his name doing, taking complex topics and ideas (ones that have often already been explained by someone else) and narrating them in a way that is entertaining and easily understood. If you are looking for a more complete systematic approach to any of those ideas, I would suggest finding another author. I cannot attempt to provide commentary on the attributes of God, but if I may, let me at least provide some thoughts on how the people of God might more faithfully live.
I’ve been reading a lot of Stanley Hauerwas lately and I believe some of his thoughts can be beneficial to our understanding on the matter. One of the biggest problems he sees with the way Christians think about their faith is that they have bought into the thinking of modernity. This way of thinking abstracts concepts away from people and reduces them to something that can be grasped by the mind. Something like “beauty” is separated from things that are beautiful into a construct. So, anything that exists can be known because it can be grasped by the mind. This led to the Christian faith being reduced to certain ideas and constructs that can be grasped by the mind. Someone then becomes a Christian by simply believing certain concepts with the mind, successfully isolating that faith to individuals.
What Hauerwas proposes (taking from Alistair McIntyre) instead, is that truth can only be known within narrative contexts. A story about someone who runs up and pushes someone else can be interpreted as mean by some, but if we realize that they were pushing the person out of the way of an incoming car or train or flying golf ball (I’m watching golf) then that narrative context changes the intelligibility of the action. In this way, he argues that to understand Christian faith, it needs to be seen in light of the narrative of the story of God (as seen in the biblical narrative) and in light of the community that embodies that narrative (the church).
So, for those who operate under the conditions of modernity, Jesus’ morality can be abstracted away from his narrative, and people can use it (as well as stories about God’s righteous anger in the Old Testament) to justify acts of violence. However, if Christians place themselves in the narrative context (as opposed to taking pieces of it all to make their personal lives more fulfilling), they do not underplay the truths found in the Old Testament, but appreciate them in the since that their current narrative cannot be as clearly understood without them. They realize, however, that they are not in that time, but exist in the time of the church after the revelation of Christ, who in no way would justify any type of violence. If there were any occasion in which violence would be morally justified to Christians, it would have been when the Son of God was being taken away to be murdered. But even on that occasion, Jesus rebuked the disciple who drew his sword and said, “All who take the sword will perish by the sword.” (Matt. 26: 52). Christians are simply part of a different narrative than one that assumes that power or influence can come from violence.
So, I don’t know what that has to do with what Tate said, but I guess it just means that if anyone has a right to use violence to accomplish their will, it is God and God alone, not us; even though I find it hard to believe that God would do that in light of the revelation in Christ, but what do I know about what God would and wouldn’t do?
Well anyway, that’s all I’ve got for know. I’m excited for the change of pace of this month’s book (Many Lives, Many Masters), and we recently decided that April’s book is going to be The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. In fact, I think I’ll go read March’s book right now…
First off, thank you to Nick for the author recommendations; I want to learn more about the America as empire school of thought.
ReplyDeleteI loved this book. What a vital time for Christian Americans to re-examine what it means to be Christian in today’s society. In the recent years, the far right has tried to take control of the republican party’s social political agenda with issues like gay marriage and abortion (which were more pervasive in the Bush platforms than the most recent election cycle) and Bell brings many subtle reminders of why this type of socio-political control is not what Jesus was trying to propagate. Regardless of what your views are on these issues, the vital point to me is that inclusion of religious ideology in government has historically proven to be disastrous and inhumane. The good news is that we voted in Obama, and at the state level many more progressive laws are being passed. (Go Iowa! Holding up common sense in the region!) And since September 11th, the economic crisis, and global warming, I think American’s are increasingly becoming aware our country’s impact on the planet. Is there a word for responsible, kind empire? Lets try for that.
Politics aside, (I’m not really as politically pushy as this post sounds, the book just brought a lot of things to mind) Bell again increased my adoration for Jesus as one of the most important historical figures.
And Matt, I totally agree with you about the concept of a violent God. I think that the men who wrote the Old Testament decided to include fear for social control. Luckily, we have evolved since then. :)