Enchanted Community

BLOG 9/23/17. PROGRESS REPORT TO MY SUBSCRIBERS

In July, I reported to you that I was going to, of necessity, take a leave of absence from these Blogs because I was in the throes of writing a book and so needed to keep a singular focus on that writing project. This is to report that I have completed that project and have submitted my manuscript to my publisher (who has indicated serious willingness to publish it) along with the required accompanying documents. The book is entitled Homebrew Churches: Re-conceiving the Church for Tomorrow’s Children. The process is that if my publisher (who has published all of my recent books) finds all of this in order, we will then sign a contract and it will go into the process of copy-editing, cover design, and the details of publication.

I do appreciate their willingness to publish it since it has a lot of controversial point that will not be easily received by ecclesiastical traditionalist. But behind this have been the recurring articles in several journals, and in the press, of the reality that the emerging generation, the iGens (those who have come to maturity after the event of the iPhone in 2011) are not at all attracted to institutional churches. That leads to the emergence of a culture that is formed by in internet era and has produced all kinds of dynamics that have been totally unknown by former generations.

On my part, it was a good reason to step back, take a deep breath, and then a fresh look at what and how the New Testament portrays that new phenomenon of the church, and then to contrast it with what was the dominant ecclesiastical order of the last millennium and a half of the Christendom era. Fun! It was something of an exercise in the Jeremiah 1:10 mandate to “root up, pull down, overthrow and destroy, then to build and to plant.” Or, maybe an exercise in that venerable motto held by those of us in the Reformed tradition: “The church reformed and ever being reformed according to the word of God.”

My conclusion was that the first-century churches had, of necessity, to be small, and those relationships in which God could display the communal expression of his New Creation / Kingdom of God. What we observe is that they were primarily communities of faith that met in homes, and where the participants all knew each other and had a sense of responsibility to one another and accountability to one another. They could not have fulfilled all of the one another mandates which honeycomb the New Testament documents if they were larger assemblies in which one could be anonymous. . ..  That’s the drift of the book.

I hijacked the title from the phenomenon of six early wizards who were captivated by the potential of the new phenomenon of the microprocessor back in 1975, and began meeting in a garage every couple of weeks in Menlo Park, California to share finds and to interact with each other. It was known as the homebrew computer club, and out of it came several of the present internet giants. But they and their successors in the industry still hold to the principle that really productive working groups must not be more than twelve. Does that sound like Jesus, or what?

So, stand by. If all goes well, by the grace of God, the book should be a fact by the end of the year (hopefully). Your prayers for its usefulness will certainly be appreciated. Peace.

BLOG 9/8/17. THE CHURCH AS TROUBLEMAKER?

The church as a trouble-maker? … but, you may protest: Isn’t the church supposed to be a peace-maker? How about both? Given our current cultural climate in this nation, especially obvious since the Charlottesville incident, one wonders where Christ’s people should be in all of this. Christ’s Sermon on the Mount might be a good place to start. Right up front it says that the peacemakers are blessed, but then it tells us that those who are persecuted and reviled and spoken evil of for righteousness’ sake (for being righteous troublemakers) are, likewise blessed.

Or, maybe Paul’s contrast of the Christian’s life, before and after his/her embrace of Christ (Romans 6:12 ff.), which is that they were formerly servants of unrighteousness but now are to be instruments of righteousness. What’s that all about? It means that as God’s people, we are always in what might be called a missionary confrontation with the world. We are aliens, and instruments of light, in a culture of unrighteousness and spiritual darkness. Troublemakers.

I learned this through the backdoor of my experience. When I was in my ecclesiastical-pastoral puberty-stage in the city of Durham, North Carolina decades ago, Durham was still a grimy textile-tobacco town and seething with racism, all of which was new to me. Not much that I had learned in theological school equipped me for anything I was beginning to experience. Two influences that had equipped me were, first of all, that I had been taught that Christ’s Great Commission was that we were to make disciples, and that involved in teaching disciples to obey all that Christ had taught. So, I made disciple-making a basic principle in whatever pastoral ministry was to be. Then another mentor had been most persuasive in insisting that the consecutive exposition of the Biblical scriptures was the purpose and focus of our preaching in our reformed-Presbyterian heritage.

With those two operational principles theoretically in place I launched my role as a disciple-making pastor and teacher in a small industrial church with a very insecure history. I was to be begin trying to figure out my new role. Two factors became obvious very soon. There were those in its membership who were hungry to be taught from scriptures, and responsive to my Biblical preaching, . . . but certainly not all of them. There were also those who only agreed with scriptures when scriptures were in agreement with their view.

Then the light began to dawn on me as to our Christian calling to be troublemakers. That was the period just after the U. S. Supreme Court had required the de-segregation of public schools, which deliverance did not go down well in such a city as ours. And it was in my innocence that I was seeking to be faithful in teaching scripture, and was preaching my way through the Epistle to the Romans. It was in that teaching that I got to Romans 12, and its teaching that we were not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds so as to prove what was the will of God. Ka-ching! The lights went on. There was a world that was not in conformity with the will of God, and we were to be so equipped in our thinking that we were not dominated by it.

It happened to be the Sunday in which we celebrated the Eucharist/Lord’s Supper, and I innocently made the application of the scripture that it applied to racial justice, and that I was not there talking about the Durham city schools, but to that particular Christian community, and that at the Lord’s table before them there was no place for racial exclusion. It was to be open to all. For those who had ears to hear it only made sense.

But for those captive to the darkness I was an unwanted voice and a trouble-maker. It was there also that I learned that I had to be exegeting the culture, and so equipping God’s people to operate in that culture with transformed minds and lives, to demonstrate what the will of God looks like in real flesh and blood disciples, as both peacemakers and troublemakers. Stay tuned.

BLOG: 9/5/17. Ecclesiastical Rip Van Winkles

Hello subscribers! After taking leave from posting these Blogs over these past couple of months in order to finish writing a book, and with that task essentially accomplished, I am looking forward to getting back into this communication with you. For your information, I am co-authoring this book with a cherished and very gifted colleague. The two of us have been aware that there has been much confusion on the purpose and form of the church for a long time, but the issue has surfaced with a vengeance as a much younger generation is emerging that has, not only little awareness of the church, but is essentially not interested in institutional religion. To that end, we have been writing on the theme of: re-conceiving the church for tomorrow’s children. If all goes well, it should be published toward the end of the year.

Unless you are an inhabitant of the Hudson Valley, or an aficionado of American literature, you might not have an appreciation for Washington Irving’s writings. Irving is one of this country’s very prominent and colorful writers from the Revolutionary War period. He had a lot of humor, and took great sport in poking fun at the foibles of the Dutch inhabitants so prominent in the Hudson valley. One of his most prominent stories is that of a Dutchman who, through a series of events, slept through the American Revolution. He dozed off under British government and only woke up after the revolution with the new American government.

The church has nearly always had a difficulty coping with changing cultures. It has tried to transport the forms and traditions of one fruitful time and place into some other totally different time and place. For its first four centuries of existence, the dynamic apostolic church moved in power and was inventing and re-inventing its forms and communication to the huge variety of cultures into which it moved. But somewhere along into the 5^th century it was lured into religious institutionalism, and ecclesiastic hierarchical-ism, and so became much more rigid and impervious to change for the most part. Yet you get, along the way, those figures such as Martin Luther, who put his life on the line by publicly challenging the dominant Church of Rome by saying, in essence: this is not the way it’s supposed to be.

Now, here we are, in a whole new cultural setting that is inescapably post-Christian, dominated by something akin to a secular and self-satisfied humanism, and ignorant of, and indifferent to the Christendom culture of the past millennium and a half. The emerging generation is formed by the internet culture, by social media, by artificial intelligence, and a plethora of totally new phenomena. This is the generation that emerges after 1995, and is obviously so captive to their iPhones that it has been dubbed: the iPhone generation. It cultural context has little knowledge or interest is so much that was essential to previous generations.

And the church? Alas! the church too often prone to sleep through the ecclesiastical revolution as surely as did Rip Van Winkle political revolution in the mid-18^th century. That being so, I’ll be working on that in future blogs.

[And remember: if these blogs are meaningful to you, recommend them to your friends Thanks.]

BLOG 7/11/17. A WORD OF EXPLANATION TO MY SUBSCRIBERS

To the readers and the subscribers of these Blogs, you need to know that I will be taking something of a leave of absence for these next several months. For these past several years I have attempted to post a couple of blogs a week because that is what I was advised to do when we launched this Blog. For the next two or three months, however, I will post them only spasmodically.

Here’s the reason. A dear friend and colleague of mine, and I, are in the process of writing a book together, and I find that it takes my full and undivided concentration to do such creative writing (particularly at my age). He and I are aware that the research agencies (Pew and others) are indicating that the emerging generation, Generation Z, is really not into institutions, and that includes church institutions. They are more into friendships and relationships. They are also the iPhone generation.  This is all so different from the Christendom culture with its venerable institutions, hierarchies, clergy, and other ecclesiastical accoutrements that have prevailed for these past generations.

What we’re attempting to do is to take a step back, look with fresh eyes at what it is that God intends for the church to be, and what form it takes, and to do some creative re-conceiving of the church with a focus on that emerging adult generation. We’re collaborating on this because even though I have written a number of books on the church and its mission, I am also now at least sixty-plus years away from that emerging generation and its culture. My colleague, however, is a very gifted young educator, who is engaged with this emerging culture as a high school teacher in a very creative high school, and who also has two very precocious daughters to keep him honest. We make a good team and we inter-animate each other.

This re-conceiving the church for this emerging culture, while also appreciating the treasures of our heritage, is probably an audacious project, but we’re really into it, and it is all-consuming to be looking at scripture with this focusin mind. At the same time, when a writer gets ‘on a roll’ to be interrupted and have to stop and engage in another creative writing project (this Blog) hinders that ‘roll’. Because of that I am putting the Blog on the back-burner for a while, until we get this book in some draft form to submit to our publisher, hopefully by early fall.

We would also be grateful for your prayers so that this work of our will be hugely helpful to those who choose to read it. Thank you.

Bob Henderson

BLOG 7/8/17. COMING TO GRIPS WITH DIVERSE CULTURES

What with all of the news of government’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, and the even more distressing news of some groups identifying themselves as Christian who also express their prejudice against those of other cultures, … all requires that this be confronted and dealt with by those who have been reconciled to God by Jesus Christ, and then called to be ministers of reconciliation. Yesterday at the coffee shop in a nearby community I was in line with two young ladies in their hijabs, and wondered what it must feel like to have immigration officials looking for those in this country, perhaps illegally. The coffee shop is in a neighborhood with a major university that has declared itself a sanctuary campus, but even so, it must be un-nerving to have a sense of not being wanted, or being criminalized and deported. And, to get to that coffee shop from my home I must drive through Clarkston, Georgia, which is reputedly the most international city in North America.

Prejudice is not a new invention. It is as old as humankind. In my own life, I have had to encounter it in different chapters of my different ways. I grew up in a conservative Christian context in which our Southern racism was accepted as normal. We were also anti-Jewish, and anti-Roman Catholic, and on an us-and-them relationship with those neighbors from Cuba and the islands.

I can look back now, and almost laugh at how God made me confront these prejudices. I was ordained as a campus pastor in 1954, just after the supreme court’s Brown-vs-the Board of Education ruling, and the early days of the civil rights movement. I had never had an adult conversation with an adult African-American until that period, and being involved with university ministry and university students, I had to engage the issue and to put it together with my Christian identity as one who was to “love justice, do mercy, and walk humbly with my God.”  The more I had to be a faithful teacher in the church, the more clearly I was delivered from all of the errors of racial prejudice, and to become an advocate of racial equality (which lost me a lot of ostensibly ‘Christian’ friends).  That was deliverance #1.

Then moving to New Orleans, which is a city dominated by the Roman Catholic Church, and discovering that the liveliest Christian witness in that colorful and morally loose city … was the Catholic Charismatic Movement, which was engaging thousands of nominal Catholics with an encounter with scriptures and with new life in Christ. And, to add to God’s sense of humor, when I was facing a crisis with some fairly-destructive ‘charismatic’ members in my own congregation, my counselor and encourager turned out to be the Jesuit priest who led the Catholic movement, and then later I even became a resource to the archbishop. Deliverance #2.

In my later move to Hendersonville, North Carolina, and my seeking to understand the dynamics of that formerly remote mountain town, by then turning into a major retirement community, I came across a wonderful Jewish gentleman and local merchant, who was the president of the local synagogue and the de-facto rabbi since the synagogue was too small to afford a full-time rabbi. But Morris was also the object of a cruel anti-Semitism, even though he was a first citizen of the town. He and I became very good friends, and supportive of each other. He bore no bitterness and found ways to be a fruitful citizen that was most exemplary. I loved him. Deliverance #3.

God so loved the world—all of it: Gentiles, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, pagans of all stripes, all of it. And he has commanded us to engage all of it with love and good works, and to walk as the children of the Light, and to be vigorous proponent of justice—to be a blessing to the nations, and to be witnesses of the love of God in Christ.

BLOG 7/4/17. WHEN THE CULTURE CHANGES AND THE CHURCH DOESN’T

On a Fourth of July when a troubled nation seeks to remember its more noble roots (and maybe forget its more ignoble history of racism, prejudice, anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-immigrants from many places, etc.), … let me shift gears and look at the Christian church’s response, or lack of response, to the rapidly changing culture, in which it is an alien, or unknown, factor, and how the emerging generation is able to totally ignore it.

The Pew Research Center has revealed (and I’m quoting from How to Escape the Apocalypse by Wilkinson and Joustra) that the emerging generation is “more un-moored and distrustful of institutions than their parents … they don’t like political parties (though they tend to vote liberal) and tend not to identify with religious institutions, but they think the social future is relatively bright” (p. 164). One can add to that appraisal the realities of a nomadic culture in which persons and families are more nomadic, moving frequently, changing jobs, living overseas, and which one’s residence may be temporary, and in which one seldom knows one’s neighbors because they are ‘cocooners’ who come home, pull down the garage door and disappear. Or there is the iPhone culture where folk don’t engage in fruitful conversation eyeball to eyeball easily, and are confined to the world they find on their devices. Then there is the absence of any traditional and formative cultural framework of thinking, and whatever it may be, it is more likely to be some form of self-satisfied humanism than anything like the accepted Judeo-Christian thought patterns of former generations.

The culture has drastically changed. In many ways, the cultural traditions of our parents’ generation are like a rug that has been pulled out from under us, along with its institutions. But has the church as church, … the church as the community of God’s New Creation people ceased to exist? Or has it just failed to notice that it no longer that things are not as they once were, and all the cultural landscape has shifted under our feet. I often think of our Christian family in nations where the church has been declared illegal by radical governments, and its venerable sanctuaries destroyed. Does that mean that the church ceases to exist in those places, or only that it has had a rude awakening to its true calling? Maybe gone underground?

Oliver Goldsmith wrote his poem about The Deserted Village in the 18^th century. It is about the cultural transition that took place when the industrial revolution moved the textile industry from being a cottage industry in small villages, to the massive industries in the large cities, so that the villages sat nearly empty, and one of the victims was the churches which had been a significant part of the life of the village, and where the pastor was a key human encourager. Now that was all changed, and the church hardly knew how to incarnate itself in the large, impersonal, poverty-stricken culture. The culture changed but the church didn’t know how to respond.

If the church of the 21^st century is to be the incarnation of God’s New Humanity in Christ, then it must continually be engaged in, and equipping every believer in what can only be described as a ‘cultural exegesis’ and able to recognize the components of that culture, and be creative, mobile, flexible, and versatile in it communal expressions. The emerging generation is still that humanity that God loves with infinite love in Jesus Christ, but they are not into church institutions, but rather are into meaningful relationships. … And that has thrilling prospect if one is willing to live dangerously! Otherwise the church joins in the deserted village syndrome, alas!

http://wipfandstock.com/what-on-earth-is-the-church-14083.html

BLOG 7/1/17. THERE IS NO SAFE CHRISTIAN WORLD!

Yes, there is no safe Christian world—only this broken, enigmatic world populated with all kinds of puzzling personalities, … from the artificially pious to the truly ef-ed up who defy description. Yet there is that set of folks who look for more church activities to attend, who are always looking for the perfect church as some sort of escape from this brokenness. The late John Stott designated such folk as ‘rabbit-hole Christians’ who only jump out of their churchy hole to do necessary chores and hasten back to their hole so that they do not have to deal with real sinners.

No, this very real, often distressing, world full of good people and awful people, respectable neighbors and pathologically wicked people, is the world that God so loved. It is into such a world that Jesus came as the incarnation of the love of God, came to seek and to save such often confused, lost, bewildered, often nasty and arrogant and obscene persons. He also came to those others whose behavior is quite positive, but who are themselves lost in the cosmos (to plagiarize Walker Percy’s description). Yes, there are those “decent godless men” who are also part of this very real world, but whose lives have no framework, who are self-satisfied humanists, and make our daily world to be an exercise in our aliens and exiles calling as God’s people.

Yet it was into this very real world of very real sinners that Jesus calls us to be his disciples. The mission that the Father gave to him is the same mission that he gives to us. Not to seek escape, but, quite the contrary, to move toward the darkness and its victims, and to do it as joyous children of the light. It is possible that the most sinful thing that one could do is to seek for more church activities, or to join one more Bible study. Does that sound heretical? It’s not!

An incestuous church, absorbed only with its own inner-life, ceases to be the church which is the body of Christ, or the glory of God, or the dwelling-place of God by the Holy Spirit. It ceases to be the community of faith in the One who came to seek and to save the lost. The gospel hymn states it well: “Jesus, what a friend for sinners!”

Jesus calls us to be his followers fully engaged in a world that is not safe, i.e., some imaginative world that is safe, explainable, devoid of all the moral and ethical lepers and boring and vacuous personalities. No, rather Jesus calls to be his presence in a very real world with these who are themselves part of that darkness—and when those who designate themselves as: ‘Christian’, seek to escape that calling, that unsafe world, … then it is they themselves who are also part of that darkness.

And too many ostensible church institutions totally miss that message.

Paul’s commission from the Ascended Lord is ours: “I am sending you to open their eyes, to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and place of those who are made whole by faith that is me” (Acts 26:18). He had to engage the unsafe world of destructive political powers, arrogant religionist, pitiful and helpless persons, screwed-up and artificial individuals, and all the rest—and to take the  consequences. He had to move into the real world with all of its unknowns, … not hide-out in church meetings.

And I give high praise for those everywhere in all the world who are doing just that. They are the true salt of the earth and the effective light of the world. I also want to be one of them, and I commend this word to my readers.

http://wipfandstock.com/what-on-earth-is-the-church-14083.html

BLOG 6/27/17. “WOE TO YOU WHO ARE RICH …”

Given the political, cultural, and social climate of these United States, one would wonder why we so assiduously avoid the teachings of Jesus about the perils of wealth. In Luke’s rendition of Jesus’ sermon (designated as his sermon on the plain) Jesus said: “blessed are you who are poor for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. … But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation” (Luke 6: 20 ff).

The interpretive question has often been raised about why Matthew, in his Sermon on the Mount, has Jesus saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs in the kingdom of God” (Matthew 5:3). The most satisfying explanation I have come across has to do with target audiences. Luke, this interpreter says, is writing for those who are actually poor or actually rich. Matthew, on the other hand, writing in the context of his leadership of a church (probably in Syria) that is not poor, and so to them he says something like: “Blessed are those who identify with the poor for such demonstrate kingdom integrity.” I am not enough of an erudite New Testament scholar to know whether this passes the test for good New Testament exegesis, but it has served me well, because I have barely experienced hopeless poverty in my lifetime.

The question comes, then: What constitutes true poverty, helpless poverty? And (for most of us) what constitutes being ‘rich’? This is not an idle question. Most of my readers, like myself, are among the richest people in the world. We’ve never experienced homelessness, or life without electricity or clean water or access to medical care. We are accustomed to the daily newspaper filled with special sections on entertainment, delightful places to eat, expensive sporting events, and endless inserts of advertisement from all kinds of merchants and services.

It’s not too much to say that the major religion of our country is probably consumerism, mixed with hedonism, and maybe a dash of narcissism. I am not trying to heap guilt on us, not at all. There is nothing wrong with having an adequate home, and enjoying good entertainment, and good food. But where does out Christian conscience kick-in and remind us of our responsibility for the stewardship of our modest wealth, or the stewardship of our modest influence on the political scene, or as agents of peace and order and justice? What did we do to deserve our privileged status in the world?

It’s interesting that those who seem to be the most compassionate toward the helpless poor are those who are slightly less poor, and who know what it is like to have nothing. Growing up, as I did, in the teeth of the Great Depression, I remember that everybody had taken a huge financial hit, and in their experience of being deprived of so much, became generous sharers with each other.

When we have met our basic needs of a modest home, and paid our necessary bills, then what is our responsibility to support those agencies that are seeking to meet the basic needs of those who suffer the deprivations daily that we take for granted. I have some of the best medical care in the world, but I also have medical coverage so that I am not deprived or bankrupted by the care I receive. But to sit in an emergency room as one so privileged, and see those who wait interminable hours for some basic care which they cannot pay for … gives one pause. Am I an advocate for universal health care even if it raises my taxes? Or what is my responsibility for the humanitarian agencies locally and to those globally who seek to meet those needs in the bleakest segments of the human community?

“Woe to you who are rich.” As the classical prayer of confession states it: “Lord, have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.” Or: “Break our hearts for the things that break the heart of God.” Stay tuned (and feed me your response).

BLOG 6/24/17. WHEN EVERY NATION COMES TO US!

Since the beginning of the modern missionary era in the, what? 18^th century? missionary-minded churches have had a vision of taking the gospel of Jesus Christ to all the nations (ethne, or people-groups) of the world. Missionaries of all kinds, Protestant and Roman Catholic went with the colonial empires engaging in translating the Bible into many languages, doing humanitarian works, engaging in medical ministries, and producing remarkable stories of physical endurance, and also the hostility of the cultures being entered.

The church seemed to have no qualms about evaluating the existing cultures and religions inferior and erroneous to that of the West and of Christianity. There is so much to be applauded for many strides made (along with embarrassing contradictions). It was the first time many languages had been reduced to writing. Schools for youth produced a new generation of educated leadership. Hospitals were a new phenomenon where formerly illness and death were endured, often without any hope.

Many of us grew up singing: “We’ve a story to tell to the nations, that shall turn their hearts to the right, …” and attending missionary conferences where a calling to missionary service was considered to be one of the most significant ways to serve God.

But in recent generations a remarkable change has occurred as the world has become smaller and smaller. Maybe World War II is the first bellwether of this shift. Businesses began to open more and more branches in potential markets in many nations. Travel became more efficient. Colleges and universities encouraged a year of study abroad, and recruited nationals from across the globe. The world also became more dangerous. Tyrannical nations and religious extremists drove many out of their homes and they sought refuge in the West.

Today there are more than sixty-three million refugees in the world from those very nations to whom we sent missionaries in the past. Truth be told, many of those refugees are actually Christians, who have been driven out of their homes by unfriendly regimes. Jesus’ Great Commission was to: “Go and make disciples of every nation/ethne, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” His word was: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14). … But look what has happened: the whole scene has shifted. Now the whole world has come to us. New Yorker Magazine has the lengthy account of a Pakistani community of tens of thousands on Coney Island, replete with mosques and imams. In nearly every city and small town there are colonies of Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Confucionists, and a myriad of other religious groups, along with those with no discernable religious affiliation.

And yet there are those in influential places, in politics and public, voicing the opposition to and disdain for these very immigrants whom world chaos has brought to us. Christ’s commands us to love everybody,” to engage in good works and humanitarian ministries to the strangers within our gates (even enemies!) includes our ministries of support and hospitality and legal aid for these victims of our world’s turmoil. Christ’s Great Commission has entered a new chapter: the nations have now come to us, and it is to these very persons that anyone who claims to be Christ’s follower, must now consider himself/herself to be Christ’s messenger of his love and good news to these in with our hospitality, and good works. But … that means engaging them, learning their stories, understanding their religions, … and demonstrating to them the grace and love of our Lord Jesus Christ, and praying for them, and becoming the fulfillment of Christ’s Great Commission to them. … and for those who refuse this ministry, there are sobering words in Matthew 25:41-46. We’ve still a story to tell to the nations.

BLOG 6/20/17. SO, YOU ACHIEVE SIGNIFICANCE—WHAT DO YOU DO WITH IT?

Philosopher Charles Taylor and his disciples make a good and helpful case for the fact that the quest for significance and authenticity are un-mistakably present in today’s culture. Pondering their writings, though, I have a further question: So, if one can actually attain to some satisfactory sense of significance, or authenticity, … then, what do you do with it? How does that achievement fit into the larger scheme of the meaning of my mortality, the larger metaphysical perspective of reality? This is not a new question. Some of these writings of Taylor’s disciples (Joustra and Wilkinson) quote T. S. Eliot’s classic poem: “We are the hollow men …’ to underscore this long-time awareness of how easily life devolves into daily survival.

On another, but somewhat parallel tract, I am always fascinated by the insistence by the apostle Paul in his letter to the Christians at Colossae of the larger meaning of Christ in the cosmic scheme of things: He portrays Jesus this way: “… the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known to everyone how great are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” … i.e., ultimate significance and authenticity.

Is that too much of a stretch for you? Let me tell you a true story. One of my great contemporary heroes, and, also, a personal friend, is John Perkins, the civil rights advocate and renowned Christian community developer. John grew up in Mississippi where he suffered all of the horrendous abuse that black folk endured there. He was a share-cropper’s son, and a third-grade dropout. When his older brother, and army veteran, was shot and killed by the local law-enforcement officials for no reason, John escaped to California to begin a new life. There he encountered Christ, was discipled well, and ultimately was moved by the Spirit to go back to his own people in Mississippi as an evangelist and to engage in community development, but was also engaged in civil rights efforts such as voter registration, for which he himself was jailed and beaten. … Long story short: John’s work was ultimately so inescapable and fruitful that the state of Mississippi declared a John M. Perkins Day in his honor. His efforts have multiplied. He has received numerous honorary doctorates; his writings have been widely acclaimed.

I was staying with John, some years back, and noted on the walls of his modest study not only his honorary degrees, but a picture of John in the Oval Office of the White House. Later while having supper together, I asked him: “John, how do you maintain your humility with all of these honors and accolades?” John is very modest, and he pondered that for a few moments, then replied: “Bob, I just have to remember that whether I am chopping cotton in Mississippi, or a guest in the Oval Office, that I am the glory of God.” Wow! Speak of a sense of significance, of one’s identity in the larger scheme of God’s design, …

Jesus didn’t focus on the strong, the wealthy, the nobly-born, the ‘somebodies’—but rather on the ‘nobodies’ and it was their inheritance in the mystery of it all to become the glory of God, … i.e., the radiant display of the divine nature in human lives, to find ultimate significance wherever and in whatever circumstances they might find themselves: “I am the glory of God.”

Charles Taylor is a brilliant philosopher, whom I appreciate, but John Perkins is an encouraging incarnation of true Christian significance.

[You might appreciate reading more in John’s book: Let Justice Roll Down.]

To be continued …