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"We find ourselves not independently
of other people and institutions but through them. We
never get to the bottom of our selves on our own. We
discover who we are face to face and side by side with
others in work, love, and learning. All of our activity
goes on in relationships, groups, associations, and
communities ordered by institutional structures and
interpreted by cultural patterns of meaning." |
BEING VIRTUAL (even when *off* the Internet)When the church (following Plato) spoke of the Seven Virtues, it wasn't really talking about living by a set of rules. The Greek root word for 'virtue' has to do not with obedience, but excellence, being as good as one can be. Nowadays, there are bookshelves and even whole stores dedicated to personal and corporate excellence. Christian believers have good cause to celebrate this turn of events, because they've been working on excellence for thousands of years. It is in fact near the core of the Christian way of living a public life. It is a way to love our neighbor. The first four of these virtues are 'secular' or public, that is, you don't have to believe in Christ to do them and do them well. Prudence means not traipsing off after the latest fad nor getting lost in the feelings of the moment, but instead being consistently thoughtful and selective. Fortitude is about the kind of courage which sees the task through till it is done, or which boldly weathers the storm. Temperance is about doing all things in moderation, instead of binging, splurging, and pigging out. Justice has to do with being fair and equitable, and creating situations which can benefit the whole society rather than only one or a few. Justice means we are to be fair in our own doings, and also (as far as we are able) to see to it that our society, laws, economy, media and culture are also geared for all and not the few. |
A key passage on the Spirit from the Old Testament is also a key passage for showing the possibilities of acting with the Spirit in the society as a whole. In Ezekiel 37:1-14, the Spirit revives the dry bones, en masse. This episode in Ezekiel comes right after Ezekiel speaks of Israel's 'new heart' given by the Spirit (Ezekiel 36:22-32). Note that in that passage, the new heart is that of a society, not a person ! The Spirit acts within a community, a public, a nation, a people, as well as a person. Take note, ye spiritual navel-gazers !!
Zechariah 4:6 is about the rebuilding of the Temple during Persian times. It was a task not just of putting up a building, but of rebuilding the Judean society from the rubble of the Babylonian occupation. A new public realm had to be created for the Jewish people. A huge task, and not all that many people to do it with. Yet hear the voice of God, through the prophet: "This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel, saying, 'Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit', says the LORD of hosts." The same spirit of surrender and dependence on God which marks the devotional life is also needed for guiding our actions as we take part in the society around us.
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"When humankind languishes in pain, let
noone say, 'I shall return to my household, eat, drink,
and be at peace'. No! Each one must be willing to suffer
along with one's fellow human beings. Those who share the
affliction of others will merit to behold the comforting
of humanity." |
Sadly, some of those who exercise gifts in the church, especially those of teaching doctrine and of prophecy, have placed themselves at the service of something other than the Holy Spirit. Somehow, I can't think of the Constantinian church leadership or the succession of "bad popes", "owned popes" and "antipopes" in the Middle Ages as being in the Gospel train. They rather openly acted as if serving another god. Or the Crusaders who looted and destroyed so much along their way. The long chain of ministers teaching U.S. slaves how to be more fully enslaved, and the Lutheran teachers and preachers who filled the German public air with ethnic Aryan Nazi images. The "mainstream" Rwandan church leaders who helped urge their people into a hate-filled, murderous rampage. Each left their scars on the public. All of these had great skill and sharp knowledge, but used it purposefully against the Spirit. (Recall that in Scripture, sin against the Spirit is the one kind of sin which will remain unforgiven.)
In 1980s South Africa, for instance, many strange 'prophetic messages' were coming out of the leaders of certain leading Pentecostalist churches. These 'messages' praised the white South African oppressive apartheid government, supported the creation of the fake Bantustans, and announced the furious wrath of God upon the 'heathen communists' of the African National Congress who were the main force working for the people's freedom. These manipulations could be seen through so easily that only a handful of fools believed it. These church leaders were intentionally aiding the continued oppression of the vast majority of the people, including a majority of their own members. They were keeping their society in chains. Similarly, several leading Pentecostalist groups in Central America used church events, evangelistic rallies, and campus cells to give out extreme right-wing propaganda. They provided a key "anti-Communist" network for the support of continued torture and suppression by the ruling land-owners.
When church leaders do this sort of thing, they render the witness of other Pentecostal and non-Pentecostal Christians un-believable, and give full-bore support for the crooks, bigots, and murderers who are in power. I'm not telling you 'propaganda'. That's the way it really was, and sometimes still is. This has left many people with the (false) impression that Christianity is anti-public.
This sort of thing is definitely not 'love', at least not as a follower of Christ or a reader of Scripture would understand
it. The Devil has such a hard time faking justice because he
hates it so much. God stands in solidarity with those who are being oppressed, not with the oppressor. God was with the slaves in Egypt, not with
Pharaoh; Jesus was with the fishermen more than the financiers, and with the poor multitudes not the well-off high priests.
Jesus' place is as the Crucified not the Crucifier. In the
church's most basic ancient creed, Jesus, not Caesar or Fuhrer
or Big Brother or anyone or anything else, is Lord. Lord not just of you, but of all that is. When
Christians help to create excuses for societal-scale injustice,
it's as if they had joined the crowds screaming "Crucify
Him!!", or perhaps were among those who left their cloaks with
Saul to throw rocks at the martyr Stephen. The Christian's witness is that we love the world's people with the love of Christ. If you find yourself supporting or taking part in destruction, killing, and mayhem, Jesus bid you to rethink what you're doing.
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"It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor's glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly temped to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.
There are no ordinary people. You have
never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts,
civilizations -- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as
the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work
with, marry, snub, and exploit -- immortal horrors or
everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be
perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of
that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists
between people who have, from the outset, taken each other
seriously -- no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And
our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling
for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner--no mere
tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy
parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your
neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he
is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way,
for in him also Christ vere latitat -- the
glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly
hidden."
-------- C.S. Lewis, *The Weight of Glory*.
"Nationalism is a form of speech that
shouts, not merely so that it will be heard but so that it will
believe itself. It is almost as if the quotient of crude
historical fiction, violent moral exaggeration, and ludicrous
caricature of the enemy is in direct proportion to the degree
to which the speaker is himself aware that it is all really a
pack of lies."
-------- Michael Ignatieff, as cited in
*Context*, 05 Jan 1996
"I will not permit any man to narrow and degrade my soul by
making me hate him."
-------- Booker T. Washington
"We believe that salvation and social
change cannot be separated from one another. We believe that
God loved the world as a whole when he gave his only begotten
son, Jesus Christ. We believe that the saving act of God is
directed not only at individuals but at the whole creation. If
the sin of Adam is responsible for corruption and evil in the
world, if this original sin is responsible for the chaos in the
world, for the wars and rumours of wars, for injustices and
oppressive systems, for economic exploitation, then the saving
act of Jesus must deal with this whole spectrum of the
consequences of the original sin. It must deal with both the
spiritual and the political socio-economic realities of the
world in which we live."
-------- from "Evangelical Witness In South Africa" (Eerdmans, 1986), p. 36-37
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Two thousand years of failure have not
taught some reformers that you can't stop sin by
declaring it illegal. Two thousand years have not taught
them that you can't save a man's soul by force -- you can
only lose your own in the attempt. Drunkenness and
gambling and secularism and lechery -- various hopeful
churchmen have earnestly tried to outlaw them all; and
what is the result? A drunken nation, a gambling nation,
a secularist nation, an adulterous nation. And, often, a
ruined Church. |
"If your altar is merely a refuge, if it
enables you to put your fingers in your ears to shut out the
cries of the world, if it is a matter of private comfort, then
you had better watch out ! It won't last ! The wind of God will
come along and blow away that refuge. And the fire of God's
love will burn and burn it, until there are not left even the
ashes of regret."
-------- Geoffrey Studdert-Kennedy, cited in
*Anglican Digest*, Pentecost 1995
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
-------- Abraham Lincoln
"There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is." -------- Isaac Bashevis Singer
"The powerful always find it harder and harder to put up
with resistance to their power; they become more and more
capable of crushing all resistance, and so become more and more
powerful. ...This is true not only of individuals and
commercial firms, but also of humanity as a whole, which has
for several centuries been committed, because of its
technological progress, to an escalation of power, spiralling
inexorably upward. Will the whole adventure end in
catastrophe?"
-------- Paul Tournier, in *The Violence Within*,
transl. Edwin Hudson (Harper, 1978), p.155
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