Mr. President

Mr. President,

I heard you say that you refuse to accept second place for America. This has often been the attitude of our nation. It is a basic impulse, the drum-major instinct.

But I would say that if you want to be first, then be first in love. I hope that what unsettles you is not America’s lowering in the global rankings for technological innovation. I hope that what unsettles you is America’s low stature in the history of mankind as having accumulated more resources, technology and wealth than any other empire in human history and instead of bringing about peace and justice we have – to our everlasting shame – become arms dealers, the greatest military spenders in history, the largest producers of waste of all time. We have people dying of obesity while our neighbors die of starvation. This land that we call home was acquired at the expense of a mass genocide through a sense of Anglo-Saxon entitlement manifested in the wide-spread invasion and displacement of our Native American brothers and sisters. The wealth today that we have enjoyed was built upon the backs of whipped, beaten and dehumanized African slaves. Our laws are being created my men and women who cannot remain faithful to their families nor themselves, much more their nation. We have chosen to ensure access to oil resources in the Middle East by constructing military bases on some of the most holy sites in the world to a very large population of this world.

Mr. President, do not grow too arrogant, America is not entitled to global sovereignty. Of course, I do not mean to say that America is entirely depraved, for we have done much good too; I only want to emphasize why so many of us in this world recoil in a disgusted anxiety over your sentiments about needing to be #1. America has been #1, and we have done very little to bring peace into this world with the power we’ve enjoyed. We’ve done very little to empower the rest of the world, being a blessing machine for those around us. We, as the world’s leaders, have done very little to serve those with dirty feet.

I do not need America to be #1 when it comes to imperial dominance over the world, I need America to be #1 in bringing about justice and righteousness in this world. I need America to be #1 in forgiveness of debts and construction of schools and water wells in dry lands. I need America to be number one in combating human trafficking and in the educating of our youth with more than mere retainment of information but a deep seated love of wisdom and inspiration unto living for something larger than themselves. I need America to be the first to apologize and repent when it has transgressed against the nations of this world. I need America to be number one in responding to evil with goodness, hate with love. I need America to remember those words etched in stone at the foundations of Liberty that stand at the edge of our mighty shore,

“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

May we not be as all the other nations but as a nation set apart by a character of repentance and love. May we not be as those that seek power in wealth, might and domination, but let us seek power in generosity, humility and servitude.

If you are to lead a great nation, Mr. President, you must lead us into the pursuit of a lifestyle of love and not of luxury, of servitude and not of title, of compassion and not of apathy. Let our national anthem resound with a song of philanthropy towards our enemies, let our lips not stop at a prayer that “God would bless America” but that we would continue the thought that likewise, “America would bless this world.” Let our allegiance never be to stars and stripes, but to an underlying principle of love that when our country forgets this principle, our allegiance demands a rebellion against it, that our fidelity to this nation would demand a prophetic betrayal.

If you are to bring change, change the American attitude. And yes, I recognize I am asking a lot of this empire, but I do not expect you to lack the sufficient audacity necessary to hope.

Grace and Peace,

Austin

Faith does not exist in a vacuum

We are not saved by works, but we are saved by the kind of faith that necessitates works. We are not saved by the quality of what is done but by the quality of the doing, namely, the working out of faith. Faith does not ever exist in a vacuum but is always, insomuch as it is real in the lives of human beings, incarnated amidst social structures; and so, having faith is not independent of rugged human engagement within those social structures. There is no such thing as passive faith, except as for those occasions of hypocrisy that poison all of Christendom. Our faith, inasmuch as it is authentic, is always active.

We are saved by Grace through faith, yes, AND that faith is not quiet, it is seen and heard. We are saved by Grace, through faith, for good works.

Did the Hebrew slaves, in walking out from Egypt achieve their salvation? No! Certainly not, their salvation was won for them by the Grace of a God that hears the cry of His people; however, they did have to journey out from Egypt, through the desert and into the promised land. They did have to fight many wars and work very hard for the realization of their salvation; though, was it not God who sent to Pharaoh Moses and the many plagues? Was it not God who erected pillars of fire to keep the Egyptians far from the Hebrews? Was it not God who parted the Red Sea? Was it not God who provided manna in the wilderness for his hungry people? Was it not God who led His people as a pillar of fire by night and a cloud by day? Was it not God who gave his people the Torah? Was it not God who directed them who to fight and was it not God who empowered His people to win those wars? Was it not God who delivered the enemies of Israel to them?

Human salvation has always been at the mercy of a mighty God, yet it has always been necessarily conjoined with a determined and enduring response by God’s people. Never has God saved his people independent of their activity – his salvation is always invitational and conditional. This means that God has set the stage for us, but we must walk in it.

The Locked Golden Door

The thinker in me glues me to my room,

As I lie down and think about Hume,

Questioning everything I’ve come to know,

Wondering if I’m shriveling or about to grow.

The soldier in me sets me to the streets,

Missio Dei I engage despite defeats

My mind digs into the city like cleats

And my heart stops for second…then beats.

I’ve lost all sense of where I’m going,

A Boeing slowing down, not even knowing

That I’m falling out the clouds, you see it’s snowing,

But it’s colder than the snow of a Minnesota morning.

Because I’m losing my passion, told to calm down,

Chained and bound, beat-up and drowned,

By the potency of Adam Smith’s breed,

A once small seed grown to greed,

The good crop lost in the strangling weeds

That succeed to mislead

The confused and abused

Among us, who then trust

Those driven by anger and lust

For just self-preservation, and elimination

Of all other nations who think different than us.

The United States, our savior and king,

For Her we will pledge, we will work, we will sing,

In Her we will trust and will hope for the day,

When the poorest of fools will abide by Her Way.

In Her we hope all may gather their wealth,

For She will insure our joy and our health.

Good news we have for the tired and poor,

To the huddled masses yearning for more.

As we spend trillions, playing the whore

Conveniently confused what we’re fighting for

Lying to ourselves: “Send the homeless to our golden door.”

Competition – a few pros and cons

Of course competitive attitudes have been assumed in very corrupt ways, the will to humiliate others and glorify one’s ego is the epitome of a perverted spirit; however, there is another posture towards competition void of ego which is best understood in the ancient Hebraic proverb: “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” (Proverbs 27:17). Human beings were created for community and so our mental structures do not excel or flourish alone, we flourish with others. For those who have played sports at high levels of competition know that it is at this level that you seem to, at times, step out from yourself and push your humanity to its fullest capacity. It pushes you beyond what you thought you were capable of sometimes and causes an internal burning which pushes you to working hard. This is one of the main reasons Capitalism has flourished with innovation and technological progress as much as it has, because it is rooted in competition and the private ownership (stewardship) of the means of production – people are pushed to imagine, innovate and produce at a much higher level than a non-competitive environment.

Of course, while iron sharpens iron, iron does not sharpen wool. Those who are strong ought not seek to dominate the weak (this is when monopolies begin to form) but support the weak. To dream of excellence is flourishing, to dream of self-glorification is corrupting. To be the best is good, to be dominant and overbearing is not. Jesus never says to not seek being great, he says “He among you who seeks to be great will be your servant.” Let us strive to achieve greatness (not necessarily wealth and position, though not necessarily avoiding it either) to serve and empty ourselves of that greatness unto the weak and oppressed, seeking above all things, justice and righteousness.

Senior Year Musings: problems (un)solved

I have been in my room for nearly all of break. My skin is pale, my eyes are bloodshot, my hair is long, my room is a mess, and my muscles are atrophied. I have been contemplating with absolute intensity the justification of assuming an occupation and that of political structure in America as it corresponds to full-fledged allegiance to the Kingdom of God.

The first thing I would like to say is that my desire to find the answers to these questions should not be confused with genuine integrity. In fact, oftentimes I laugh at the apparent absurdity of being willing to die homeless for “JUSTICE” while being unwilling to control my anger or lust in the smallest and easiest of safe circumstances. I admit no avoidance of hypocricy, indeed, I often fear that I am the most hypocritical person I know.

Nonetheless, for whatever reason, I do find it painfully important, and at times paralyzingly so, to identify a consistent world-view with that of Christ – whatever the cost.

I had a breakthrough unlike any other thought I’ve had this break and so for those of you who are interested (and I can’t imagine there are too many of you), here is my conclusion as of today: We are to compete at the highest level of society and support the lowest rung. We are to fight with those who have had the same opportunity and especially with those who have had more opportunity than we’ve had; yet, we are to be charitable and supportive of those who have had less opportunity than we. We are to seek developing the most disciplined and joyful attitude of all, while teaching others how to be disciplined and joyful (oftentimes this will naturally occur by genuinely having those attitudes) We are to love all of humanity in context. And our strategies of competition and support may seem foolish to many, they may seem paradoxical, this is fine. But at the heart of it all is a compassion towards the brokenhearted and a competition with those in power.

Now, hold on, I can already hear many of you hesitate to support this idea because the Kingdom of God seems to be directly opposite at first glance to competition. But did Jesus “compete” with Rome? Absolutely. He loved and taught others to follow a different Caesar. His ministry was funded by Rome itself (ironic) as the wives of Roman officials seemed to support him ( Luke 8 ) and others housed him and fed him (so he wasn’t without money and resources in his ministry). He performed miracles and signs which was something even Caesar couldn’t do and doing so with the poor and brokenhearted, which were a people-group that Caesar couldn’t have cared less about. Jesus taught persuasively, though at times many disagreed with him and walked away while others (such as the Pharasiees who also competed with him for the minds and allegiance of the people) persecuted him, he continued on his ministry until the end where his greatest move was yet to be found through crucifixion. It was like a cosmic jujitsu against all of God’s competitors. Go ahead, kill me, spit on me, give me your best shot. And with all of the strength and might of his enemies, he strategically took on death with love and thereby resurrected and so became a rather persuasive figure; persuasive enough for the early Christians to hold allegiance to Christ above Rome even unto their own death.

Now for Jesus, his competition wasn’t only with Rome and the Pharisees but it was with all structures everywhere that failed to glorify the Father. We must be careful not to be so foolish as to try and overcome evil with evil. If we try to fight America with bombs…America will win. This is the power of love – it can’t be overcome. Let us use money, position, power, privilege, etc. but never to rely only on those things, for if we do, it will perpetuate unjust structures. Jesus could have fought that way, and he would have won even if he did, but he chose not to because to fight evil with evil only perpetuates evil. Hate against hate only perpetuates hatred. But love redeems hatred. Goodness transforms injustice into justice. Jesus was given money, but would you say that he overcame Rome through that money? Not really, but he did use it. In the same way, as we work and gather resources and wealth, it’s not that we think that we can change the world through money, but we can use it, in fact, depending upon the culture, sometimes we OUGHT to gather it and use it.

Now it should be noted too that structures never exist independent of people. So when Paul writes that we war not against flesh and blood but against powers and principalities, this is true, in that, if individuals who we might associate with an unjust structure were to leave it – our fight would no longer be with them; however, if nobody made up the structure, it would not exist. So we do compete with people, but we do so with compassion, not hating the people that we compete with, but the system they represent. In a basketball game, teams oppose each other. The competition for Player A is and is not against the players on the other team. It is, in so much as those other players represent the other team and make it up, but it’s not in so much as those other players could potentially come and play for the other team or just walk away and they would no longer be competition. In this way, competition can be seen as the most loving posture towards opposition. The rugby team at Westmont has a tradition. After we bash heads for 80 min. with the other team, while we are bloody and bruised and beaten down we go have some beers at the local pub with the other team. We laugh, shoot the boot and have a good time. Competition (even seemingly violent competition) can be done with love, absent of hate towards the individuals. It’s the game we play, to win and the people with whom we play, we love.

War, when it involves civilians, is brutal and inconsistent with competition, it is sheer murder. But warfare between competing nations becomes merely a kind of game. A sad, tragic, game. It is unnecessary. Necessary to protect and defend certain people, yes…but still, not necessary for good to survive and the fact remains even in defensive war, that there will be death. Can’t we think of a more creative way to respond to violence? Can’t we think of a more creative way to defend ourselves than killing others?

I don’t understand what makes us think that if someone shoots my friend, I am justified in shooting them. Perhaps I’ve won, perhaps I’ve succeeded in protecting my other friends from getting shot – which would seem like a noble goal at first. But based off of that same principle, now that guy’s friends/family will be justified in killing me. But when you consider the imperative to love your enemies and the pursuit in the Kingdom of God for all of humanity to be in a psalm of brotherhood, it becomes difficult to reconcile violent competition that kills people or removes legs and arms. It’s just so destructive, so uncreative. I wonder if we could think of a better way to do this. And I think it’s important for us to remember that even if the agressor seeks to kill us, if we remain faithful to love…love wins. Love survives death. The universe is bent towards justice. In the end, the most strategic move is that of love. So as we compete, we compete using Christian methods.

As we come to identify this game of life (Christ vs. the powers and principalities of this world) it is important to note that there is something more important than merely getting food to the hungry and clothes to those who don’t have any. These are very important, but life is more than food and the body more than clothes. This is the case for ourselves and for others. By this, we recognize that it is possible to for people to have food and clothes and be terribly bitter and corrupt and it is possible for people to be hungry and wearing raggedy clothes and be full of joy and love. Because these are possibilities, our priorities in this world ought to be to augment joy and love, not merely clothing and food. However, that being said, oftentimes hunger and coldness can be obstacles in achieving joy and love (just as having too much can also be an obstacle). So we are to practice, teach and promote moderation in material things, that we would never have too little or too much material wealth that they would serve as obstacles to our love, openness and joy. Better still, we ought to practice, teach and promote an attitude which is content in all things as Paul preaches in his letters.

So, there are still issues to be raised regarding where these “evil” or “unjust” structures are in America and how they work and how they can be addressed. But this is a helpful step for me at least to identify this criteria for determining what do to do with our time, how to join God in his mission in this cultural context.

It can be summed up in this way: Strategically compete with with the strong and support the weak. Love all in context.

Anti-attractionist model

So many churches work so hard to get so many people to come to them. Did Jesus? When the crowds get larger, his words get harder. If you get people to do something because their afraid or because they like the pizza or the colors or the voice of the singer or the style of music or the personality of the preacher or…well you get the point, anytime people do something for these reasons they are not doing it for the sake of goodness itself. Just as a man attracted to a woman for her eyes or legs or nice voice or even her political views or whatever, this is not loving her for the sake of her being her. If we have reasons for love aside from the choosing to love that being, it is not sufficient. If I love someone because they please me, what if someone pleases me more? If I love someone because they are intelligent, beautiful, love God, treats me well, etc., what if someone I meet is more intelligent, more beautiful, loves God more, treat’s me better, etc.? No, love, that is truly love, does not have reasons. It loves because it chooses to love. It has no conditions upon whether or not it will love, it is unconditional love. And the people who gather together because they like the attractions, they are not encountering the authenticity of their own soul, nor the soul of God.

It is one thing to speak Greek, it’s another thing to flatter people in the greek language. It’s one thing to dress appropriately to one’s culture, it’s another thing to dress as a wealthy and powerful person. It’s one thing to contextualize, it’s another thing to sell a product.

Imagine a church body that’s hot, sweaty, no seats, 13 hour long sermons, crowded, illegal, most people don’t have bibles…this is when the church has been at it’s best.

Imagine a church body that’s comfortable, seated, 1-hour long sermons, multiple “services” per day, legal, everyone who wants a bible is given one…this is when the church has been at it’s worst.

I don’t think that many of us have been told what do to with wealth. We are like a bunch of young princes, 12 years old, our Fathers – the king – died and left us with a very large inheritance and we haven’t known what to do with all our wealth and have indulged ourselves with food and play, but have been left spoiled, fattened, bored, self-centered and…well…we’ve pissed off a lot of nations around us. It’s time for some healing and maturity to handle our wealth well. We don’t need to be comfortable, we need to be healthy. We don’t need to be adorned with American Eagle or JCrew, but we need to clothe those who have no warm clothes during winter.

It’s not a problem to have large temples…we don’t have large enough temples. Speakers and television screens and sound systems aren’t big enough to do all that God wants us to do. It is not that our desires are too large, but too small. We are, as C.S. Lewis put it, “half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

Why has the church become playgrounds in the slum? Shouldn’t we be inspiring others to join us for a holiday at the sea? We are capable of peace. Another world is possible.

I’ve got a request

I think one of the greatest injustices to date is the lack of education. There are so many people with so much ability to bring life into our society yet are disillusioned and confused and demotivated – paralyzed by ignorance. (I have currently been one of those people). We need to be coached, honed and given vision. Isn’t this the great commission? To go, make disciples of all kinds of people and to teach them all that he’s commanded us to do? So let’s teach each other this Way.

I think our religion has become dry because our conception of his commands have become dry. They are held superficially and allowed to remain static in that superficiality. “Love your neighbor as yourself” “Forgive as you have been forgiven” “Sell all your possessions, come and follow me” “You cannot serve both God and mammon” “The first shall be last in the Kingdom of God” “Let him who wishes to be great become your servant” “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains”

I think that for many of us, we hear these things and sometimes just grow very confused because, we don’t know what they mean in life. For example, “Love your neighbor yourself?” a) who is my “neighbor”? b) what does it mean to “love” them? Do I need to like them? Do I need to smile when I see them? Can I never yell or be angry?

Or how about “Forgive as you have been forgiven” a) how many times do I forgive someone for wronging me? What if my brother annoys me, and he knows that it annoys me, and I forgive him twice for it and he keeps doing it? Okay 5 times? Okay 7 times?! b) Do I forgive my uncle who raped me when I was four years old? c) what does it mean to forgive?

Or how about “Sell all your possessions and give to the poor and come follow me” a) but isn’t that impractical? b) but if the rich man allocated his money, selling 70% of it and held onto 30% couldn’t he use that to generate more money for the poor and needy and so be a “faithful steward” with his money? Was Jesus just stupid when it came to financial practicality? Do I really need to go without money? c) Why was Jesus homeless? Why were his disciples homeless? d) Wouldn’t their parents be frustrated with their children just getting up and leaving? What does Jesus mean by not coming to bring peace but a sword, setting father against son and mother against daughter?

The list goes on, but this is our problem isn’t it? We are half-hearted Christians that don’t really even know the way of Jesus and yet profess that we “believe” in it. Haha! How can we believe in something we don’t even understand?

I don’t have all the answers, but I think that if we worked together and just asked each other to honestly engage these kinds of questions, we’d come up with something much more profound than the whitewashed Jesus pictured in $70 frames in houses in Irvine, depicting images of soft sheep and blue beauty pageant sashes. Perhaps we’d learn what it means to have childlike faith in a world so damn serious all the time about such empty goals and objectives. Maybe we could have some fun and treat this life like a game, maybe we could make it competitive, maybe we could help those of us who are a bit slower, those who are stronger could help out those who are a bit weaker. And please, those of you who have been thinking about this stuff…don’t keep it bottled up, share it with us.

Thanks.

America: A game and the rules of Capitalism

America:
A game whose purpose is to use whatever resources you have to empower the weak, to dignify the ignored, to motivate the paralyzed, to bring vision to the blind, to forgive those who have wronged us and restore relationships, to bring reconciliation to divided peoples and to teach others to do the same. Winning is determined, not by man, but by God alone – in fact, if you seek honor by men, then you have your reward right there, but if you do good in secret, then your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

Game on!

Knowing God – The Laughing Sponge

I think that humanity is very much a kind of cognitive sponge. We soak in sensations and then we process those sensations and then we respond. Human flourishing would seem to be, then, a way of soaking in those sensations, a way of processing them, and a way of responding. We choose how we do each of these things.

The way of soaking in sensations: Faith.
The way of processing them: Reason.
The way of responding: Creativity.

To know something, in the Hebrew sense, is to take something into one’s emotional structure, making it a part of one’s own being. Knowing God, then, becomes the structuring of each of these aspects of our humanity. Faith in God (a resolution unto Beauty) focuses and guides what we look at through anthropomorphic divine compassion and optimism. Reason (a resolution unto Truth) helps us to understand this faith by rejecting contradiction, embracing paradox and seeking distinctions and connections between ideas. Creativity (a resolution unto Goodness) helps us to actively respond to our experience by joining with the creative force of/to the universe by augmenting life everywhere.

This is what it means to be human. Faith in God renders life ultimately a divine comedy. In the words of Claiborne, “So we dance and dance until they kill us. And then we dance some more. That seems to be the way this thing goes.” It directs us towards injustice, attunes our ears to the cry of the oppressed, filling all with the hope that life doesn’t need to be this way and guides our reason unto a noble creativity which seeks to liberate the enslaved, bring sight to the blind and heal the brokenhearted.

It behooves us to reorient our being so as to enjoy what is good, and then, with resolve and good humor, do what we enjoy!

So we soak things in, to wash things clean. Kinda like a sponge that laughs every time the water is squeezed out.

Christianity – the Antichrist?

The point of being a disciple of Christ is to be like him. To do the things that he did.

Jesus said things like, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains.” And when Peter asked Christ to call him out on the water to walk, tradition holds that Peter stepped out for some time, it was when Peter ceased to have faith that he was able that he began to sink and Christ asked him, why he did not have faith? Jesus, told his disciples that after he left they would do greater things than what he had done, he sent his disciples two by two throughout the countryside and they came back with great joy for they had been healing people of their ailments. Surely, the point is not merely to close wounds and open blind eyes, but these are signs of something much more profound. Following Christ leads to a mystical encounter with reality and an empowering authority over things. Following Christianity seems to do something very different for most people. I do not witness, in this country of 80% Christians, much authority at all, nor do I see anything very mystical about our activity. I see the coveting of political power, the closed-minded ignorance of insecure beliefs, the frustration of failed objectives and the hypocrisy of vicious teachers who preach about virtues they don’t know.

We are often so quick to disregard the ways of other people, but if there are others who understand Christ differently than we do and who seem to be mystically encountering reality and exhibiting a kind of spiritual authority through that way, then perhaps we need to open our minds to more than we currently believe.