The Empire Has No Clothes – raw truth precedes real hope – Part One

April 26, 2012 By Richard Dahlstrom 3 Comments

Pick your emperor: It's the same empire

The losses and damages characteristic of our present economy cannot be stopped, let alone restored, by “liberal” or “conservative” tweakings of corporate industrialism, against which the ancient imperatives of good care, homemaking, and frugality can have no standing. – Wendell Berry

Now that Mitt Romney has effectively vanquished all other contenders, the real election posturing can begin, and we all know it won’t be pretty.  More importantly though, we also know it won’t be true, or at the least very little of it will be true.  We’ll be promised a brighter tomorrow if we stay on the present path of growing government in order to offer systemic help to the downtrodden.  We’ll also be told that the way forward requires shrinking the government and deepening the pockets of wealthy industrialists so that they, stripped of environmental, finance, and other forms of regulations will be free to “grow the economy”.  Promises?  Lies actually.

Unspoken is the reality that the developed world has enthroned ‘economic growth’ as its deity, and both parties are equally guilty.  We will, for the next few months, be engaged in a dialogue about which party or leader can best serve this false god, but in either case, the goal is enable us to consume more, travel more, work more.  We’re trying to right the ship of the global economy, rather than asking where the ship’s going, or if, perhaps, there’s a more systemic reason for it’s sinking than merely Greek debt, or global terror.  Still enthroned in the minds of most (and surely both political parties), is the notion that the best future is more robust consumerist version of the present.

Two readings yesterday reminded otherwise:

Psalm 122 reminds me that we’re made for “shalom”.  We translate the word as “peace” in English, but that’s sorely inadequate because our notions of peace have been reduced, largely, to absence of conflict, in the same way that health has been redefined as absence of disease.  I can find mere ‘peace’, at least for the moment, by building big fences, gated communities, and having the biggest military budget on the planet as a means of protecting my stuff.  But let’s not confuse that with ‘shalom’, which envisions a robust wellness, rooted in justice, hospitality, and an ecological interdependency between the earth and all its creatures.  Shalom requires sharing with the poor.  Shalom requires caring for immigrant.  Shalom requires generosity, and recognizing the limits of growth, one of which is embodied in the call to sabbath and jubilee.  When this works properly, everyone has a calling/vocation that contributes to the common good.  People’s lives aren’t enslaved to mind numbing or body destroying work which fills the pockets of the few while the many remain trapped, through debt and poverty.

If I take shalom seriously, I need to take the well being of everyone seriously, and seen through that lens, I realize that both parties, well funded by multi-national corporations, are painting a future that remains fundamentally unchanged, where consumerism is king, and we are all recruited to define the good life as accumulating consumers primarily, and as worker bees to keep the fuels of consuming stoked, secondarily.  The cost of this vision for the planet and all it’s inhabitants should make us shudder.

This, no matter who wins, is so far from God’s vision of shalom for both land and people as to be unrecognizable.

Wendell Berry’s Speech – Berry, the poet/farmer, gave the distinguished “Jefferson Lecturer” speech this year, the full transcript of which can be read here.  He opens the speech by talking about his grandfather’s excitement, in 1907, the night before he was to take his tobacco crop to auction.  Regarding the day after the auction, Berry writes:

He came home that evening, as my father later would put it, “without a dime.” After the crop had paid its transportation to market and the commission on its sale, there was nothing left. Thus began my father’s lifelong advocacy, later my brother’s and my own, and now my daughter’s and my son’s, for small farmers and for land-conserving economies.

The problem was the rise of industrial farming, and the American Tobacco Company, owned by James B. Duke (of Duke University fame), which systematically worked to absorb small farms.  The demise, though, of “small” meant the demise of the quality care which nurtures the land.  The “big company” thinks of immediate profit and efficiency as both opportunity and necessity, but at what cost?

Berry: It may seem plausible to suppose that the head of the American Tobacco Company would have imagined at least that a dependable supply of raw material to his industry would depend upon a stable, reasonably thriving population of farmers and upon the continuing fertility of their farms. But he imagined no such thing. In this he was like apparently all agribusiness executives. They don’t imagine farms or farmers. They imagine perhaps nothing at all, their minds being filled to capacity by numbers leading to the bottom line. Though the corporations, by law, are counted as persons, they do not have personal minds, if they can be said to have minds. It is a great oddity that a corporation, which properly speaking has no self, is by definition selfish, responsible only to itself. This is an impersonal, abstract selfishness, limitlessly acquisitive, but unable to look so far ahead as to preserve its own sources and supplies. The selfishness of the fossil fuel industries by nature is self-annihilating; but so, always, has been the selfishness of the agribusiness corporations.

There is no shalom in the sort of short term consolidation and then rape, of either land or small businesses, that are only doing what capitalism does: maximize efficiency and profit at all costs, including long term costs to both sustainable ecological systems, and the well being of families.

Until I’m willing to see both the idolatry and insufficiency of the present “McWorld” system, I’ll also fail to see the radically hopeful nature of the gospel, which provides an exit strategy from these false hopes as it invites us into so much more than a ticket to heaven.  Until I see the present systems for the oppressors they are, though, I’ll continue to hope that a tweaking, a party change, a debt reduction, the demise or solidification of a new health system, will solve the problem.

No.  The solution is smaller and grander, more radical or more hopeful, than we’ve perhaps ever thought.  And it begins with us turning away from the false promises of the empire, and living into our calling as disciples.

Tomorrow… Living into the “Yes” of God’s better story

I welcome your thoughts…

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Women in the Church – Snapshot of censorship and call for repentance

March 23, 2012 By Richard Dahlstrom 21 Comments

Eldon Epp is the author of a little book entitled Junia:  The First Woman Apostle.  It’s a book about a single verse in the bible, Romans 16:7 which reads wildly differently, depending on your translation, because it’s fraught (unnecessarily) with controversy.  Since this is a blog post and not a book, I’ll summarize Epps conclusions, also offered in Scott McKnights marvelous e-book, Junia is not Alone (about the censure of females voices in Christendom).

First the verse, translated without equivocation or footnote in the CEB version of the Bible as: Say hello to Andronicus and Junia, my relatives and my fellow prisoners.  They are prominent among the apostles, and they were in Christ before me.

You go to McKnight’s e-book to see the massive alterations to this seemingly inn0cuous verse, but here’s what Epp and McKnight both offer:

1. Junia was a woman.  That’s the name in literally all the best ancient manuscripts.

2. There is no evidence that any man had the name Junias

3. Junia is not, as some have argued, a contracted name of Junianus

4. “Among the apostles” means Junia herself was an apostle not simply that she was well liked by the apostles.

The office or title of apostle, though, carries a certain weight with it, implying spiritual authority, church planting initiative, and of course, preaching and teaching.

To quote McKnight further, “Junia was a woman in the Old Latin, the Vulgate, Sahidic and Bohairic Coptic and Syriac (as well as in) English to the last quarter of the 19th century.

However, history is also peppered with incidents where the Junia name is retranslated as Junias, which would have the affect of producing an immediate sex change.  Luther did it.  And, significantly, the prominent creators of the New Testament Greek Bibles that we pastors like to have on our shelves changed Junia to Junias for the first time in 1927, when Junias became the name of the apostle and Junia became a footnote.  Junia remained a footnote until 1979, when she disappeared from the footnotes completely.

Why is this?  I assure you it has nothing to do with scholarship and everything to do with patriarchal bias.  As one author writes, “Because a woman could not have been an apostle, the woman who is here called an apostle could not have been a woman”… ergo, lexical sex change, ergo, problem solved.

By 1998 things had changed (yes, not a typo – 1998) and Junia reappeared, with the non-existent Junias dead and buried, as he should have been all along.

Again, quoting McKnight, There was no evidence in ancient manuscripts that anyone understood Junia as a male, no evidence in translations she was a male, and there was no ancient evidence that Junias was a man’s name.  But, still, the church got into a rut and rode it out until some courageous folks said, ‘o yes, Junia was a woman and she was an apostle, and we’ve been wrong, and we’re going to do something about it.

McKnight tells the stories of three women in his book, Marie Dentiere, Phoebe Palmer, and Mary McLeod Bethume, to remind us that the silencing of women’s voices has a long and tragic history in the church.  That this history has happened is reality.  At stake is whether we’ll have the humility to learn from it as we move forward.  What is there to learn?

1. Cultural biases are embedded in faith movements. The patriarchy of Rome was carried by Luther into the reformation as something left unreformed, even to the extent of altering the overwhelmingly clear reading of a certain text in order to accommodate his bias.  If you think we don’t all still to do this, wittingly and unwittingly, you’re living in a self-righteous fantasy land.

2. We don’t like disruption.  This extends well beyond the common notion that the only acceptable women in the Bible lives in Proverbs 31, even though warriors, and judges, and beauty queens, and wealthy patrons, and yes, even apostles, were all making their mark.  They didn’t make the cut when it came to Sunday school curriculum, at least not as role models, other than to speak of Deborah in terms like, “do you see what happens boys and girls, when men don’t step up to lead?  God is forced to use a woman!”

I’m here to say that Jesus made his disciple’s heads explode all the time, not just the day they decided to follow him.  He ate with the wrong people, touched the wrong people, got violently mad in church, and conquered the world in a way nobody thought the world could be conquered – by dying.   Now here we are, some two thousand years later, running the risk that his explosive endeavor has become nothing more than our own personal comfort zone.  If we’ll open our eyes and ears though, we’ll see and hear things will make heads explode as well – and its high time they did, because we still get it mighty wrong too much of the time.

3. Scholarship matters. What’s needed, in the end, is a willingness to allow revelation to change our view on things.  Yes, we need discernment.  We can’t allow ourselves to be persuaded by just any old internet article (or blog).  But when overwhelming evidence points us in a certain direction, we need to be willing to go there.  Tampering with evidence is, in many parts of life, a crime.  In the fundamentalist fringes of both left and right however, such tampering is business as usual.  Christ’s followers would do well to see such behavior as the moral quicksand that it is, and stay far, far away.

 

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Loving People, Losing Life – The Gospel made Real

March 6, 2012 By Richard Dahlstrom 9 Comments

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone.  But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Jesus the Christ

Jeremiah Small was a student who attended the Torchbearer Bible Schools, the family of schools where I am privileged to teach on a regular basis.  Jeremiah was teaching in Iraq until last week, when he was killed by one of his students, before turning the gun on himself.  An e-mail I received from one of his friends remembers Jeremiah this way:  He did much more than spread the gospel, he trained individuals to seek truth.  Seeing truth is something that Jeremiah did unlike anyone else. He committed his whole being to knowing God and wrestled to know his character with exemplary  diligence and faith.  In this news video Jeremiah’s dad speaks of his son’s life, of his passion to live life generously, courageously, fully, even if such commitments meant a shorter life.  He was 33.

I was moved by reading the perspective of a Kurdish student in this article from the Kurdistan Tribune, where he wrote:  In the classroom he taught his students a love of Literature and Humanities and encouraged them to always look for truth and seek knowledge; he spent all of his energy and time teaching, mentoring, and giving. Most importantly, he encouraged his students to pursue education as a way of giving back to their community; he was himself a servant leader and wanted to see more servant leadership in our country.

In the community he was a faithful and friendly expatriate. He cared for Kurdistan’s nature, environment, traditions, and way of life. A camera slung on his shoulder, you could spot him walking down of Mawlawi Street in his Jili Kurdi with his colleagues and students during Nawroz. He was no regular teacher; he was a mentor with immense God-given capabilities.

Our world is obsessed with economics, upward mobility, and security.  Here’s a man who cared for none of these things.  Our world is filled with arrogant pontifications, both political and theological, with acidic language becoming so commonplace that my soul’s nearly numb.  Jeremiah, it appears, didn’t care about any of it.  He  just got on with loving the people around him, challenging, serving, blessing.  On the day I read of his death, 60 minutes had yet another stories about hundreds of boys abused by priests, making me nearly throw up.  Jeremiah met people and helped them become whole.  His death comes right in the midst of this Lenten season when I’ve left behind any writings about politics and divisive issues in order to focus on one single question:  What does it mean to identify fully with Christ? Jeremiah’s life and death shed light on the answer:

Following Christ means emptying oneself. This is what sets the gospel apart from everything else I’ve ever seen.  Real faith is not some path to upward mobility, or downward mobility either for that matter.  Real faith means so fully identifying with Christ that we, like him, empty ourselves of self-seeking, self-promotion, self-preservation.  Philanthropy gives off the top, out of the margins.  Philanthropy’s good, but it’s not the Christian life.   Christ gives everything, lavishly pouring out his very life for a broken humanity, and then invites us to follow His example, noting that only those who are pouring their lives out will really find the life for which they were created.  This is paradox.  This is the core of the gospel.  In an age where the core’s gone missing, where the gospel has become “self improvement” instead of self-emptying, Jeremiah’s example shines.

Following Christ means loving. One of his students wrote: For me personally, Jeremiah Small was both a teacher and a friend. After my parents, he contributed the most to my personality and knowledge. He taught me how to turn my vision into reality and challenged me to be diligent, observing, meek, organized, and detailed.

He was also a great friend outside of the classroom; we went on numerous hikes, trips, and other outings. God knows I would not be who I am today if it was not for him and what he presented to me. I am sure hundreds of his other students feel the same way.

Jeremiah’s life and ministry of loving his students deeply, sacrificially, unconditionally, stands in stark contrast to too much of what passes for Christianity these days.  I’m chastened, humbled, challenged, by his example of delighting in his students and serving them tirelessly, for this, in the end, is the essential ingredient to making God’s good reign visible in world.  I see this love in my daughter and her work as a teacher in Germany.  I see it in friends who are caring for spouses and parents during their last days.  Would to God that all of us would grasp that this simple posture of sacrificial love, of delighting to serve the other in Jesus, is the most powerful force on the planet.

But alas, the pricetags have been switched, and the Christian machinery of the West has created a “faith” that adds activities, books, radio stations, camps, and the endless words of sermons to our lives, without necessarily calling people to empty themselves, follow Christ, take up their cross, and love deeply.  The results are loud – but not pretty.  Thank God for the Jeremiahs of the world who, without fanfare, are getting on with the work of serving and loving in Jesus’ name.   May the death of Jeremiah cause their tribe to increase.

O God of life;

You call us to pour our lives out as a sacrifice, promising that those who “lose their lives” for your sake will find them.  Thank you that Jeremiah found his life, found his true voice, found deep joy, by emptying his life.  Now, having paid the fullest sacrifice in his service to you, I pray that the example of his life will continue to “preach Christ” for generations to come, and that we who knew him in life, or only just now in death, would follow you fully as a result.  You point us to the cross, and now Jeremiah stands beside you, counted among the millions who’ve gone before to show us the way.  This is our hope and joy.

Amen

 

 

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All Poverty is Relational: What does that mean?

February 7, 2012 By Richard Dahlstrom 7 Comments

I’m riding my bike to work on a frosty morning this winter when I encounter a couple, dressed in poverty, arguing intensely on a street corner.  Their words do violence to each other until he finally storms away, hurt and raging, while she’s left crying, waiting for the light to the change.  Both of them are dressed poorly; tattered sweatshirts (hood up on this cold morning), inadequate shoes, denim.  They have bags, small backpacks.

As we go our different ways, I ponder the reality that my children have places they could go, if needed, in order to find shelter.  They have us, their parents, with extra rooms, heat, and gobs of love.  They have very good friends.  They have access to connections that can be of great value if/when they need to look for work.  They are, in other words, well connected – not with the super rich and powerful, but with people who love them fiercely.

I wondered as I saw the couple; to whom will she turn in the midst of this, another setback, in her life?  Where will he be going as they part?  I was reminded of a phrase I heard for the first time years ago, as the ministry of Agros was gearing up:  All poverty is relational.  Years later, after countless conversations on the subject, wide reading (including the especially helpful, “When Helping Hurts”), and a trip to Rwanda and Uganda, I think I’m starting to understand.

Scratch around the culture of poverty, and you’ll find sea of broken relationships, rooted in all sorts of maladies ranging from prodigal like rebellion to victims of abuse, whether physical, emotional, sexual, or all the above.  Though not the same, it reminds me of those national geographic specials, where a weak member of the herd is driven to isolation by the wolves where, cut off from his/her protective culture, he/she becomes a victim.

World Relief is the group with which our church works in Rwanda, and they are addressing the relational bankruptcy head on as they create church partnerships between the west and developing nations in order to build a foundation of relationship.  This same commitment permeates their in-country work as they create youth groups to address ethical issues, savings clubs for adults (which became a form of insurance, investment, and financial education all rolled into one), and HIV/AIDS groups that build relational support and provide a base for economic empowerment. Everything, it seems, begins with relationship.

In this political year, I fear that a commitment to strong relational networks is the elephant that should be in the room but isn’t.  It’s the conversation we should be having, but aren’t.  As we speak of unemployment, the arguments seem to broadly fall into the categories of continue to print or borrow money for infrastructure projects, or deregulate industries and lower their taxes in hopes that purer capitalism will fix what ails us.  Absent, or sorely lacking, is the discussion about how vital it is that families function well, and how functional families and solid relational networks are endangered species.  A few sociologists have been talking about this problem for over a decade, as far back as the famous, “Bowling Alone” book.  But it’s a fringe conversation in today’s political environment.

I’m increasingly convinced that this subject is overlooked because this is the hardest subject of all.  Sin is, at the core, a severing of relationship.  In a culture where the very notion of sin is dismissed as archaic, fundamentalist hogwash, it’s no surprise that we’re largely ignoring all the isolating forces.  We’ll hear speeches about the economy for the next six months until we’re sick of the subject.

As for me, I’m sensing that the patriotic thing to do might have less to do with shopping, and more to do with nurturing environments where relationships can thrive.  Strengthen marriages.  Cross social barriers to bless and serve.  Teach parents how to love their children.  Show people how sexuality must be tied to strong covenant relationships if its to be the blessing God intends.  This is why I’m preparing to teach a series on relationships this spring.

It’s easy to blame poverty on the system, like the left does.  It’s easy to blame poverty on the laziness of people, like the right does.  It’s harder, much harder, to listen, build relationships, and serve, creating a context of love and safety where transformation can occur.   That takes time.  That’s messy.  And that is a big part of what it means to be church – not the Sunday show – but the building of community.

 

 

 

 

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