Sublimating Christians Into A Secular World

Matthew 6:24: No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Often throughout my life I have lived with others. I find this no great chore and have had many pleasant experiences dwelling with my fellow man. The only obstacle to domestic tranquility that I have ever found occurs when others revolt against the incense I am fond of burning. The pungent odor of cucumber or liquorish curls its way through the house to spots never intended. I find the aromas soothing but many find the incense disruptive if not irritating. So I have become accustomed over the years to mentally calculating how far away from certain places I could likely burn incense without anyone noticing or come to the conclusion that, alas, nothing shall burn despite my desires.

So it is also with my Christian faith. I go through the world sometimes openly professing and celebrating the love in my heart and sometimes hiding it. The odor is welcome in my church, but in most other avenues of my life people seem offended that I would introduce such a stench into their presence, you're lighting your heart on fire here? For them Christianity is a part time endeavor. When you aren't in church you should be just a consumer or just a citizen. But how can you be a Christian only part of the time? Should I forget God's grace when not within 500 feet of God's house? Are we all to be under spiritual house arrest?

Apparently I am not the only one concerned with how modern society views Christianity; seeking to deracinate and sublimate it to social norms and conventions where men and women alternate between their Christian values and their secular values based on temporal circumstance. This conflict was featured as part of a delightful discussion between journalist and theology scholar Elizabeth Stoker and author Nathan Schneider. A must watch.

While Stoker and Schneider occasionally drifted into intellectual heights outside my experience (I barely escaped high school with a diploma) part of their discussion really hit home. Emanating from her study of Radical Orthodoxy Stoker questioned why Christians were expected to also accept an entire additional secular moral framework given they already had one through their faith that could apply in totality. Being a Christian is not always easy, but it is simple when it comes to where morality springs from (hint: God).

For as Matthew notes, no one can serve two masters. And by surrendering their moral system of judgment to alternative systems, even momentarily, Christians would be trying to serve two masters. I don't see this as contradicting in any way Jesus' statement that Christians should "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" (Mark 12:17) because Christians can certainly render taxes and legal obedience to the government without surrendering their conscience and morality.

As hard as it may be to accept in our relativist world, some things can be determined as true and false. If you accept God's truth you must do so with your whole heart and never permit your values to be drained, diced, and dichotomized to fit secular society's expectations. Jesus is your savior or he is not. You are committed to living by his teachers and example or you are not.

In short, there are no part time Christians.

Can There Be Justice Where There Is Such Poverty?

James 4:17: So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

As I work and travel to pay for my daily bread I have noticed there is more heartbreak in the boulevards. An expanding atmosphere of anxiety and painful ambivalence. More of my brothers and sisters breathe desperate breathes and claw in darkness for something to hold onto as a dark planet swirls beneath their feet.

God creates trials for all of us and no one's road is easy, but the collective terror I sense is not that of existential dread but of genuine despair at contemporary circumstance. Despair at the failure of our country and society to deal with our economic problems that leave so many living on the razor's edge and unable to find peace.

The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. said "True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice." Do we have justice in our land?

I would not presume to claim to understand all the ins and outs of an economy as large and complex as America's. I have a limited education and even more limited understanding of the tidal forces that pull and push earthly wealth to its various destinations. But it is clear something has changed in our fair country as the average citizen seems further and further away from the commanding heights of the economy and closer and closer to ruin.

For some this is of no concern, for them the desire to escape economic humiliation is not only a necessary incentive to encourage labor but a vindication of God's promise that life itself shall always be a struggle. For as it is said in Genesis 3:19 "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Struggle in this life, happiness in the next.

And so it has been for me. I have labored and through the strain and sweat I have been fully blessed with always having bread on the table. Truthfully, I could even stand to lose a few pounds. Yet, there is a world outside one's own experiences and my sense of others' heartbreak is only reinforced when I see the evidence.

Consider:

• The Center For Children In Poverty reports "16 million children in the United States – 22% of all children – live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level – $23,550 a year for a family of four. Research shows that, on average, families need an income of about twice that level to cover basic expenses. Using this standard, 45% of children live in low-income families."
• The Federal Reserve reports that in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and recession "Most families have recovered much less than the average amount." Over 60% of the wealth recovery has been due to higher stock prices 80% of which are owned by the richest 10% of Americans.
• The US Census reports "The nation's official poverty rate in 2012 was 15.0 percent, which represents 46.5 million people living at or below the poverty line."

There is no peace nor absence of tension for those struggling in that poverty. What about their justice? Can there be justice where there is such poverty?

My typical response to seeing desperation and poverty has been to give my time and resources to those heeding Jesus' call to love thy neighbor as thyself by giving direct assistance to the poor and needy. I do not consider this to have been a wasted effort, it was always a joyous experience and I never felt the sting of regret when I realized I was unable to purchase something because I had given those funds to those in need. Quite the opposite, I felt good, probably even better than I would have felt had I purchased the silly trinket I was coveting.

But while charity has immense value, it seems outmatched for our present conditions. There must be something beyond the individual and small groups. It is not getting the job done, likely because charity is not the only answer, the answer is justice. As Augustine said "Charity is no substitute for justice withheld."

So what is to be done? I do not know exactly, but it seems the place to start is to look at what we can do together, as a society, to help ameliorate poverty, to bring peace through the presence of justice.

Discussion of Augustine's "Confessions"

I spent yesterday re-reading Augustine of Hippo's magnificent works and came across this excellent video from Yale Professor Freedman. Professor Freedman is a historian and discusses Confessions in a historical context. If you have some time it's well worth watching in full.

Professor Freedman's take away from the Confessions is Augustine's:

1. Opposition to perfectionism
2. Exaltation of grace
3. Sin is indelible/not solvable

Christian Priorities In Public

Genesis 4:9: And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?

Jesus gave us goals and a vision, but man is fallen and lives in a fallen world. We Christians must try to divine God's will in each new eventuality we face. It is up to us to live up to our duty and try to make the best choices we can while within the limits of the worldly realm.

Part of this duty is our participation in public life. We should always look to the salvation of souls, this is true, but we must also consider ourselves our brother's keeper on all things. That is our covenant, that thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself (Leviticus 19:18). Loving thy neighbor means caring for him beyond just his eternal soul.

Or as Augustine put it:

The earthly city, which does not live by faith, seeks an earthy peace, and the end it proposes, in the well-ordered concord of civic obedience and rule, is the combination of men’s wills to attain the things which are helpful to this life. The heavenly city, or rather the part of it which sojourns on earth and lives by faith, makes use of this peace only because it must, until this mortal condition which necessitates it shall pass away.

The question is then how best to perform our sacred duty while we live here on earth, unfortunately, there is no clear answer. God has left it to us to labor and agonize over such questions. He's like that sometimes, but we love him anyway.

So what should Christian priorities be for public life? I have a few suggestions, feel free to critique.

• Caring for Jesus' beloved poor.
• Healing the sick.
• Teaching all to read, so they can read the word of God.
• Promoting love, tolerance, and the value of human life.

Those being the priorities the next question is how to implement policies that would see those priorities met. But that's another blog post.

Go with God.

Welcome

"Patience is the companion of wisdom."  - Augustine of Hippo

Welcome to my little corner of cyberspace. I created this blog and twitter account in hopes of nurturing my own humble attempts at wisdom and, hopefully, helping others to nurture theirs. Harkening to the call of St. Augustine I will try my best to be patient with myself and others.

I consider myself an open minded Christian and I am much more interested in hearing other people's views than pushing my own. I hope only to provoke useful thoughts and questions about applying the teachings of Jesus to our times and to live as joyously as I can, while I can.

I welcome you to the site and look forward to a fruitful discussion.

- JN