Waiting For Sunday

Move over, Philip Yancey and Donald Miller. I’ve found a new book to mention ad nauseam, and it’s The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. As I mentioned a few days ago, Claiborne is a 31-year-old Christian who founded The Simple Way, a faith community in Philadelphia that practices a truly different (and intriguing) way for people to live together.

The Irresistible Revolution is 358 pages of easy reading covering Claiborne’s ideas on community, poverty, war, social justice, wealth, the consumer culture, nationalism and the Christian faith. What’s new here? Nothing. And everything.

Nothing, in the sense that Claiborne’s thoughts and habits come from a long stream flowing back through Rich Mullins, Tony Campolo, Martin Luther King, the Catholic Worker Movement, Anabaptist traditions, monasticism, all the way back to Jesus of Nazareth. Everything, in that Claiborne lives in today’s world and confronts the problems we should be facing (though in general, we’re not) - including the Iraq war. Claiborne went to Baghdad early in 2003 to minister to and with the local Christians, and was there during “shock and awe”.

In a book loaded with great content, two things about Claiborne make him impressive to me:

First, he doesn’t just protest, he gives positive alternatives (and lives them). He writes: “Whether in church or in circles of social dissent, there are plenty of people who define themselves by what they are not, whose identity revolves around what they are against rather than what they are for…Most people are aware that something is wrong. The real question is, What are the alternatives?” (p. 309) The Irresistible Revolution is filled with alternatives - some are nutty, many are quite compelling.

Second, although Claiborne offers a strong critique of the megachurch movement, he also shows deep and love and respect for the ultimate megachurch, Willow Creek Community Church, and its pastor Bill Hybels. When Willow kicked off a multi-million dollar building campaign several years ago, Claiborne expressed grief that so much money would be spent on buildings when millions live in terrible poverty. Claiborne and Hybels wrote back and forth over this, but (according to Claiborne) without defensiveness and with “deep respect and gentleness”. Willow went ahead with the project, for which Claiborne expresses sadness “that we had settled for another building when God might have had so much else in mind”. But then he adds a paragraph praising Willow for its “remarkable strides toward justice and reconciliation”, its substantial financial gifts toward relief for people around the world, and its continuing emphasis that “90 percent discipleship is 10 percent short”. Claiborne completely won me over with that single paragraph. (All quotes from p. 328)

The biggest takeaway from The Irresistible Revolution and from Claiborne’s life is that it is the layers of separation - between rich and poor, white and black, Christians and non-Christians, and Americans and the rest of the world - that perpetuate injustice and poverty. Claiborne shows with his life that he has the guts to tear down those walls. As did Jesus.

As shall we.

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I just finished reading Illusions of innocence: Protestant Primitivism in America, 1630-1875 by Richard T. Hughes and C. Leonard Allen (1988, University of Chicago Press). This is an excellent book that most of you won’t want to read (unless you’re really into history) because it is so technical. But it is valuable especially to those of us in the independent Christian churches who approach our faith with a “restorationist” mindset - meaning that our goal is to restore the pure faith and practices of New Testament times.

Here are some of the major points of the book:

1. Our vision of restoring primitive and purer times is by no means unique. On the contrary, few things were more common in the years following the American Revolution. The desire to reconnect with primordial purity drove the New England Puritans, primitive Baptists, and Mormons as well as Alexander Campbell and our Christian churches (which Hughes and Allen insist on calling “Christians”, using the quotation marks not to question our sincerity but to distinguish us from other Christian movements). In fact, this mindset drove Thomas Jefferson and the founders of our republic, so the intellectual soil of the early 1800s was fertile for producing primitive religious movements.
2. Restorationist movements tend to follow a predictable path from liberty to exclusivism to coercion. Most movements begin with an emphasis on free thought because they are formed in reaction to older movements which restrict freedom. Campbell, for example, began his movement in opposition to the “human creeds” of the established Presbyterian church of his youth, creeds which he found restrictive. It doesn’t take long, however, for such movements to arrive at the conclusion that they have reestablished the true way and that all others are in error - hence exclusivism. Then, when the movement gains strength in numbers, it usually resorts to coercion to enforce the “right thinking” it has rediscovered. Our Christian churches in many regions are certainly known for this attitude of “we’re the only true Christians”, though Campbell himself didn’t take this journey with his movement. In a real sense, our branch of the Christian churches was stolen out from under Campbell by others. Hughes and Allen show that this trajectory of thought can be seen in our nation’s foreign policy. Our birthright of freedom of conscience has often been translated into a doctrine of enforcing “freedom” on other nations by military power. More often than not, America’s stated desire to spread freedom serves as a cloak for other national interests.
3. The key to breaking free from our failures (if there is such a key) lies in being aware of our “illusions of innocence”. The last paragraph of the book begins with these words: “Awareness of our own failures and appreciation of the traditions of others will not likely occur, however, so long as the luxuriant growth of pretentions to innocence remains unpruned.”

I’m enough of a product of America and our Restoration Movement to find a lot of value in the truths which both rediscovered. But I have long been troubled about the exclusivism and coercion I have seen in both. Illusions of Innocence is valuable in that it gives a name to and a comprehensive description of these failings.

PS - I got my copy of Illusions used and at a good price from Amazon, but now I see that it lists for almost $45! I wish I hadn’t marked mine up!

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Shane Claiborne has an interesting article (part 1 of 3) today at Out of Ur, the blog for Christianity Today’s Leadership magazine. I’m currently reading Claiborne’s book The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. I like the book because, aside from a few sophomoric references, Claiborne defines “radical” in the correct sense of “getting back to the roots”. Hence the subtitle reference to being “an ordinary radical”; radical Christians aren’t defined by tattoos or body-piercing, but by living like Jesus, returning to the roots of Christian practice. Every Christian should be a radical in this sense, though most of us are not. Claiborne lives what he speaks. For years, he has lived in a different sort of Christian community in inner-city Philadelphia.

As for the article, the only weakness (I think) is that it seems to minimize hell as an eternal reality (though Claiborne doesn’t dismiss hell altogether), which is unnecessary to make his larger and vastly more important point: That millions of people are living in a hell on earth right now. Jesus did speak of an eternal hell, but there is no doubt that his life and ministry give us a powerful example of living among those in hell-on-earth and releasing God’s Spirit among them to set them free.

Claiborne (who is originally from Maryville, TN) is doing a great service for the church, and his book has really got me thinking about alternative ways of living in community WITH our community.

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I still maintain my innocence regarding interest in O. J. Simpson’s salacious book deal, but if I were to write about it, I would want my post to resemble this Newsweek article based on an exclusive look at the chapter from Simpson’s book about the night of the murders.  You shouldn’t read the Newsweek article, but if you’ll do you’ll find it fascinating, and you’ll come away with pretty much the same opinions you had before.

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Each day the Internet Movie Database posts the names and photos of four celebrities who were “born today”. I don’t know when I started doing this, but I always click through that list hoping that today all the stars listed will be older than me. There aren’t many such days anymore. Yesterday it almost happened. Only Teri Hatcher from Desperate Housewives was younger than me. (We were born in the same year. Too bad she isn’t holding up as well as I am).

Today, though, everyone IS older than me, thanks to Judi Dench (72), Kirk Douglas (90), John Malkovich (53) and Felicity Huffman (also a Desperate Housewife, 44).

Why do I care? I can’t say for sure. I guess I find comfort in knowing that there are people well ahead of me in the age race who are valued by society. The IMDb list gives balance to an interview I heard last night with two guys in their early-20s who just sold their internet start-up company, presumably for millions.

This particular neurosis hit me early. I remember, when I was 21, writing a letter to a girl I liked about how strange it felt that Dwight Gooden (then 20) was making a big splash pitching for the Mets. I think I was basically trying to sound deep to impress the girl, but Gooden’s early success did make me think about how quickly life passes. Doc Gooden’s recent life also makes me think - about how the full story of a life takes years to write. Gooden spent most of this year in prison.

In Searching For God Knows What, Donald Miller writes at length about this need we have to validate ourselves in contrast to others. He says that an alien visiting our world would see clearly that it drives nearly everything we do. Age makes a handy comparison. So does weight, looks, athletic ability, success and the accumulation of possessions. Miller traces this back to The Fall when Adam and Eve sinned and cut us off from the One who tells us that we are valuable.

Christ means to bridge this gap back to God, to reconnect us with the Source of our identity. The more I abide in Him, the less I need to compare.

And the less need I have to point out that Brad Pitt is older than me.

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When I was young, adults I cared about lied to me. These adults weren’t my enemies. They were friends, teachers, church folks, relatives, people who cared.

The lie they told me: “You can be anything you want to be.”

It wasn’t true. I wanted to play shortstop for the Cleveland Indians, or quarterback for the Browns. I couldn’t do it, and no amount of positive thinking or even practice could have made it so (although with the Browns’ record, what difference would it make?)

The fact is, I was made for certain things and not for others. So were you. Your natural abilities, your temperament, and the spiritual gifts God gives you make you unique - different than me, different than your sister, different than your Dad’s expectations of you, different maybe than your own dreams and desires.

This point was driven home to me recently by Parker Palmer’s book, Let Your Life Speak. Palmer, an educator and a teacher of teachers, reminds me to “listen to my life” to hear God’s calling on me. He says: “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you.” (p. 3)

And: “Engineering involves more than telling materials what they must do. If the engineer does not honor the nature of the steel or the wood or the stone, his failure will go beyond aesthetics: the bridge or the building will collapse and put human life at peril…The human self also has a nature, limits as well as potentials. If you seek vocation without understanding the materials you are working with, what you build with your life will be ungainly and may well put lives in peril, your own and some of those around you.” (p. 16)

This may sound like advice suited best for young people who are choosing a trade or a college major. But Palmer speaks and writes to teaching professionals who have been at their life’s work for some time, whether they entered it for good reasons or poor. He helps them learn to teach in ways that grow out of who they are. That’s encouraging to me, because at this stage in my life, I’m probably not going to head off into nuclear physics, diesel mechanics or stand-up comedy no matter what my life tries to tell me (well maybe stand-up comedy). What I CAN learn is how to live, minister, preach, write, visit and care about people in ways that are true to how God has made me.

One of the themes we’re stressing at church this month is discovering how God equipped you to serve. “We have different gifts, according to the grace given us”, Romans 12:6 says. And in Christ’s Body, the church, “God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be” (1 Corinthians 12:18).

So let your life speak. Or, more accurately, let God speak through your life. Maybe it won’t change what you do for a living. But it could change the life that flows out of you.

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Ever read anything by Flannery O’ Connor, a “southern-gothic” fiction writer who died of lupus when she was 39 and I was two months old? Philip Yancey refers to her a lot, so I have always meant to get to her books. Recently I have.

Flannery O’ Connor was a devout Catholic from Georgia (huh?) who became one of the best writers America has ever produced. In her brief career, she wrote two short novels Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away and a sizable collection of short stories. O’ Connor’s characters, especially in the two novels, are often described as “Christ-haunted”. That is, you get the idea that they’d rather Christ didn’t exist, but he does, and there’s no point fleeing to Tarshish to escape Him.

That may not sound very uplifting, but the fun of Flannery O’ Conner is in the reading. In interviews she admitted to making her “heroes” grotesque and even crazy in their religious affections in order to shock us into seeing how radical this whole Christ-idea is. She’s good at it too.

I got my O’ Connor books at the used book store (and I’ll loan them out) but they probably have them at the library too. Well, maybe.

Her BEST story: Judgement Day (her spelling). The best one to start with: Revelation. Her best novel: The Violent Bear It Away.

One of my friends recently commented that not all good “Christian” literature is sold at Lifeway. Flannery O’ Connor is exhibit A.

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ChristianityToday.com recently published a list of the Top 50 Books That Have Shaped Evangelicals. The idea is that these 50 books have been extremely influential whether we like it or not. I’m currently reading #46 (which I’ll write about sometime) and if this were a list of the 50 BEST books, it would be in the top five. I would never have heard of #1 were it not for one of our secretaries who said it was a favorite of hers many years ago, but if CT’s summary is correct, it has been very influential. There’s a lot of quality in this list and a few embarrassments. I won’t say which is which.

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“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.” T. S. EliotI just finished reading a book my brother loaned me called Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All Night Runner by Dean Karnazes. What an incredible life this guy is living!

Karnazes showed promise as a distance runner in high school, but he quit running after a conflict with his coach. On his thirtieth birthday, Karnazes experienced an “early midlife crisis” partly caused by personal tragedy. He told his wife: “I’m confused. I feel trapped by my routine of twelve-hour workdays. I’m not sure what’s important anymore. My fear is that I’ll wake up thirty years from now and be in the same place, only wrinkled and bald…and really fat. And bitter” (p. 51) Tell me about it, brother!

Later that night, Karnazes walked home from a party, put on some old sneakers, and began running. He ran all night long and wound up 30 miles from home with his feet bleeding but his spirit fully alive. Karnazes has been running since that night (it’s almost no exaggeration to say that). His book recounts in fascinating detail his first 100 mile ultramarathon (not to mention the 50 mile qualifier) and his first attempt at the Badwater Ultra in Death Valley (135 miles in 120-degree heat). He collapsed and passed out halfway through this race and didn’t finish, but has successfully run it many times since, and he won it in 2004. The climax of the book is his account of a 199 mile run at a relay race designed for teams which he ran alone to raise money for a girl who needed a liver transplant.

Today (and I do mean today, Monday, October 9, 2006) the 43-year-old Karnazes ran the Route 66 Marathon in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A 26.2 mile marathon is no big deal for him, except that this was his 23^rd marathon in 23 days, and he is almost halfway through a spree of 50 Marathons in 50 States in 50 Days!

Karnazes doesn’t write from a Christian perspective. Running is his religion (and take note that his book does contain a moderate amount of foul language). But Karnazes offers a challenge from a seemingly decent guy and family man to those of us who get discouraged too often, quit too easily, and make excuses for ourselves. Even if I never run another 5K, I’d like to learn a lot from his example.

Here are some more Dean Karnazes links:
Dean’s blog for the 50 marathons…
Karnazes Completes 350-Mile Run on 10.18.05
Dean’s web site

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“Human beings are explanation generators.”

So says Daniel Taylor in his book The Myth of Certainty (p. 22). He says that we generate explanations about what life means to give us security, and that (and this is the interesting and scary part) all explanations for life are self-verifying. That means that they all seem to be true, that we can find “evidence” to back them up.

Our house is currently under the attack of fruit flies. There used to be a theory that said that fruit spontaneously generated fruit flies. It isn’t true, but if I hadn’t been taught otherwise, I would THINK it was true. It’s an explanation that works. All I have to do is leave an apple out and I’ve got fruit flies.

People used to think that the universe revolved around the earth. It seems to do just that. If you picture the night sky as a black globe enclosing the earth with the stars painted on it, that works as an explanation for most of the universe. Only a few objects mess up that theory by moving against that black globe, including the sun, moon and planets (which is why they’re called “planets” or “wanderers”).

Explanations of all kinds “work” to explain life, and everybody has one - from staunch young-earth creationists to strict Darwinists, from radical Islamic clerics to shouting fundamentalist Christian preachers to left-leaning atheists, from the Amish in Lancaster who stoically mourn the recent school shooting (and put it in God’s hands) to the baffled worldly reporters who sip Starbucks Chai Tea Lattes in front of their farmhouses…we all know how to explain the world and we all have a group of friends around us who will affirm our explanation.

Doesn’t make it true, though.

I see these life-explanations at work in Christians around me:

• Money doesn’t buy happiness. Money and Christ buy happiness.
• Pursuit of pleasure is empty…unless you go to church every other Sunday. Then pursuit of pleasure is quite admirable.
• The greatest commands of the faith? Learn to love yourself so you can love your neighbor and give ten percent of a tithe to God’s work.

Daniel Taylor: “Once in operation, a belief system processes all information, all evidence in its own terms, appropriating that which verifies its outlook and defusing or ignoring anything else” (p.23).

Remember, friends…there are many people who will affirm your version of the truth, for now anyway.

And then there is One who is Truth Himself.

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I finished reading Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl last week. This seems like something that should have been on my high school’s required curriculum, as it is for many schools today. Anne Frank’s diary is so important because it puts a human face on the Holocaust.

Anne received a diary as a gift for her 13^th birthday and she began writing in it almost immediately. For two years, Anne wrote detailed entries on her thoughts, feelings, likes, dislikes, conflicts, sexuality, dreams, plans and faith.¹ During almost all of that two year period (1942-44) she lived with her parents, sister, and four other people in the upstairs sections of an office/warehouse in Amsterdam. These eight were in hiding because, of course, they were Jews in Nazi-occupied territory. For two years they could never leave their hiding place, never go outside and enjoy the fresh air, never see any friends or family they had left behind. They depended entirely upon the kindness of Gentiles who risked their own safety in helping the Franks and others like them.

Anne’s diary is an extraordinary account of a girl emerging into womanhood. She is honest about her dislike of her housemates, problems with her mother, and attraction to the one boy in hiding with them. And then, as the diary continues, she grows to see her own weakness and pride at work in these relationships.

With little else to do, Anne and her sister engage in nearly constant study during the two-year hiding period. They read classic literature and history, learn other languages, and study math. As her mind forms and grows, Anne discovers that she wants to be a great writer, to have an impact on the world. She writes:

“I’ve often been down in the dumps, but never desperate. I look upon our life in hiding as an interesting adventure, full of danger and romance, and every privation as an amusing addition to my diary. I’ve made up my mind to live a life different from other girls…What I’m experiencing here is a good beginning to an interesting life…I’m young and have many hidden qualities; I’m young and strong and living through a big adventure; I’m right in the middle of it and can’t spend all day complaining because it’s impossible to have any fun! I’m blessed with many things: happiness, a cheerful disposition and strength. Every day I feel myself maturing, I feel liberation drawing near, I feel the beauty of nature and the goodness of the people around me. Every day I think what a fascinating and amusing adventure this is! With all that, why should I despair?” (pp. 277-78)

The last entry for Anne’s diary is August 1, 1944. On August 4^th at around 10:30 a.m., the hiding place was discovered (due to an informant who has never been identified) and everyone in it was arrested by Karl Josef Silberbauer who was simply following orders, the great justification for much of the evil that is done in this world.²

All eight occupants of the hiding place were sent to concentration camps, and seven of the eight died in the next eight months. Otto Frank, Anne’s father is the only one who survived. Anne and her sister Margot died sometime in February or March, 1945 at the Bergen-Belsen camp. Starvation and typhus killed them. They were probably buried in a mass grave near the camp.

There are several reasons why Anne Frank’s diary is so important. First, it tells us what was lost, what the Nazis stole from this world during their reign of terror in the 30s and 40s. Second, because this kind of thing is still going on in our world (in Africa, parts of the Middle East, and elsewhere) it should remind us that evil never sleeps and that real people with minds, souls, hearts and dreams are being slaughtered wherever there is murder, genocide, even necessary war. Third, racial and ethnic hatred lives here in America. On our recent whitewater rafting trip, our guide told us about taking a group of young kids down the river not long ago who constantly told very offensive Jewish jokes. I urge you, readers, to have courage and don’t for a second put up with that kind of talk EVER, against any race, religious or ethnic group, etc., but in the name of Jesus expose it for the lie of the enemy it is!

The saddest part of this book for me was actually in the Forward. It says there that Anne’s diary was found in the hiding place strewn across the floor. When you read the diary and realize how much she loved it and leaned upon it, how much of her soul she invested in it…and then you picture her watching as it is dumped across the floor, just before she is led away to eight months of misery and then death without it… well, that’s what EVIL looks like, folks. And yet, it is a common, everyday sort of evil, isn’t it?

Which raises another reason to read this diary: To remember that evil is something very real, and that ordinary people who give in to it can do unspeakable things.

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¹ One final note: If you read the diary years ago, you probably read a much shorter version of it than exists today. I read “the Definitive Edition”, first published in English in 1995, which contains some of Anne’s writings that were deemed inappropriate earlier, such as critical words about people in the hiding place and her thoughts on her own sexuality. I highly recommend this later version as it completes and humanizes Anne Frank, showing even more clearly how much like all of us she was.

² Silberbauer served a mere 14 months in prison for his wartime activities, and was reinstated as a police officer in his native Vienna in 1954. When he was identified in 1963 by Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, Otto Frank was remarkably forgiving of him, saying that the betrayer was the real culprit. Silberbauer’s superior who sent him on the raid committed suicide after the war. Silberbauer lived to the healthy age of 72.