Getting beyond a foolish argument …
One of the distracting polarizations under which we've been laboring over recent decades is typically framed like this: big government versus big business. There are a thousand ironies in this. Those against big government are generally for big military, which is government working with taxes and weapons instead of taxes and laws. Those against big business generally depend on it for campaign donations.
But there's a deeper irony: what if big usually means unaccountable, and what if big and unaccountable are inherent to our problems?
I think it was Rick Warren who said, "Bigger isn't better and smaller isn't better. Better is better." Here's an article by Dave Pollard (thanks Bob C!) that makes this point beautifully. Prime quote:
So what we have now is a political system (nations, governments, cities, educational institutions, legal regimes) that is too big to work, and too big to be allowed to fail. We have an economic system (corporate oligopolies, industries, health care institutions, banks) that is too big to work, and too big to be allowed to fail. We have not only crop monoculture, we have human monoculture, what Terry Glavin has called "a dark and gathering sameness" all over the world.
These are complicated, mechanistic structures, not the complex resilient ones that nature has evolved. They are fragile and vulnerable, constantly at risk of flying apart.
The latest edition of Orion magazine describes the Transition movement as one that attempts to rediscover community, the natural 'right size' of human relationship and endeavour, between the atomized individual/family and the massive, groaning and ungovernable political and economic institutions and systems we have created that currently hold sway over our lives. We need to reframe the discussion away from big government versus big corporations versus libertarianism versus anarchism. The first two are different flavours of the unsustainably large and hierarchical, and the latter two are different flavours of the unsustainably small, narcissistic and atomized. The only structure of human relationship and human endeavour that has ever sustainably worked was and is community.
As Rob Paterson wrote today, "We have to change the prevailing story from 'its all about me' to 'it's all about us'. The first step is that each of us has to take is to start to live this new story. We cannot lecture. We cannot explain. We have to live it."
One way or another, we need to facilitate the breaking down of the complicated, dysfunctional and unsustainable hierarchies and systems of civilization culture, and the building up from alienated, atomized, narcissistic individuals, into community-based structures, relationships and endeavours. It is naive to believe that we can do just one or the other; we need activists breaking down the too-big and communitarians building up the too-small, until what we have is organizations of the right, natural size. Rob calls these right-size groups 'natural organizations'. I have used the terms 'natural enterprise' and 'natural community'. The right size is, usually, dense clusters of about 5-8, networked into larger communities of about 50. It is the only size that has ever sustainably worked, and it worked for a million years.
In Everything Must Change, I paid a lot of attention to Jesus' references to "the flowers of the field" and "birds of the air" in the Sermon on the Mount. I think Jesus was saying something very similar to Pollard ... that we must turn from the Roman Empire for our models and scales for life and work, and turn to God's creation. Like the old Proverb says, "Learn from the ant ..." The natural world - the sacred, evolving, dynamic, beautiful, and wisdom-packed created world - has much to teach us.
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synchro-blogging on sexuality
I'm adding my voice to over 70 others connected with Bridging the Gap by posting on the issue of homosexuality today ...
I'm in the editing stage of my March 2010 book, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions that are Transforming the Faith. I knew when I began the book that one of the ten questions would be around the subject of sexuality in general, and homosexuality in particular. What would I say about the subject?
For many years, I was like thousands of Christians: uncomfortable with the conventional approach to homosexuality - namely: it's a chosen lifestyle, and it's a sin. (I was also uncomfortable with the "anything goes" approach that was often - and falsely - presented as the only alternative.)
I knew from my many years as a pastor that sexual orientation was not a choice; I can't count the number of people who "came out" to me over the years, and never once did I have a person say, "This is a choice like any other sin issue. I'm just choosing to rebel, and if I repent, I will be different." They all had gone through months or years or decades of intense struggle and shame before coming to the point of saying, "This isn't a choice. It's a fact of my make-up. It's integral to who I am."
So, I was uncomfortable with the conventional approach, but I was unsure how to construct an alternative that was equally faithful to Scripture and faithful to the reality I saw in human beings who came to me as their pastor, friend, and family member. Over many years, that alternative has become more and more clear, and surprisingly (to some), it was a passage of Scripture that opened the way for me to see it.
While people have vigorously and sometimes viciously debated isolated verses in Leviticus, Romans, and 1 Corinthians (versus which, I explain in the book, may have very little or nothing to do with contemporary understandings of sexual orientation) ... Acts 8 was waiting with a story that is more powerful than many have realized.
It's a story about an African man who because of his race can never fit into the Jewish nation, and because of his sexual identity can never fit into the traditional family. As a eunuch, he can never be "healed" to become heterosexual. So now, through no choice of his own, he finds himself an adult who can never be categorized in traditional sexual roles. He has come to Jerusalem to worship God, but has, no doubt, been turned away - first because of his race and second because of his sexual identity: the Hebrew Scriptures explicitly excluded both Gentiles and people in his nontraditional, not-part-of-the-created-order sexual category.
Returning in his chariot to his home in a distant land, he is reading the prophet Isaiah. One passage seizes his attention. It's about a man who was led like a sheep to slaughter or a lamb to the shearers, despised and rejected, a man who would not have physical descendants, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. A disciple of Jesus named Philip runs alongside the chariot and asks the man if he understands what he is reading. The man invites Philip into the chariot and asks if the writer was writing about himself or someone else - a question that suggests this man feels the prophet is talking about him in his sexual otherness: he too will have no descendants; he too has been rejected, misunderstood, despised, shamed ... he too has been brought like a sheep or lamb before people with cutting instruments.
Philip explains that this passage can be read to describe Jesus, and he shares the good news of Jesus and the kingdom of God. As they pass a body of water, the man then asks if there is anything that could hinder him from being baptized. Anything that could hinder him - his race? His sexual identity?
Imagine what Philip might have said: "I need to contact the authorities in Jerusalem to get a policy statement on this issue. Maybe we should wait a few centuries until the church is more established. Baptizing you could cause real controversy in our fragile religious community. In the interests of not offending people back home, I'll have to say no. Or at least not yet."
But Philip doesn't answer with words; he responds with immediate action. They stop the chariot, and Philip leads him into the water and baptizes him.
Neither race nor sexual identity was an obstacle for the apostles in welcoming a new brother into the community of faith. As early as Acts 8 in the story of Jesus and his apostles, the tough issues of race and sexual identity are being addressed head-on. But as we all know, as the years went on, both issues once again became obstacles. It's only in my lifetime that we have truly begun to put racism behind us - although even there, we still have a long way to go. Now, it's time for us to remove the second obstacle. Not in spite of the Bible, but because of it. We've lost a lot of ground since Acts 8. That's why I am among those who dissent from the conventional approach and attitude, appealing back to Philip's even more ancient church tradition.
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Iran … two kinds of Islam, and two kinds of religion in general
Adam sent me this link to Andrew Sullivan's blog ... a powerful i-report from Tehran. Very moving, and well worth your time to watch ... and add your prayers to the Iranians seeking freedom from dictatorship.
There is the Islam of the dictators and their religious allies, used to keep people in their place, used to justify their own power, used to shame and threaten those who question their authority. And there is the Islam of the protestors, calling out to God in hopes of liberation. Whose prayers are heard? Which group has a more true vision of God?
I've been saying for several years that I think there are two kinds of Christianity, along with two kinds of Islam, Judaism, and every other religion and non-religion too: one of social control and one of social transformation ... one to hold people down, one to lift them up ... one an opiate to pacify people into compliance, the other a stimulant to empower people to imagine a better world, a better future, a better life ... giving them the courage to live in peaceful defiance of violent, corrupt, and greedy powers-that-be.
Neither kind is perfect, and both kinds contain good and sincere people. But if those who use God and religion for social control are left to define faith ... the religion they define will be a false one, an ugly one, an idolatrous one. God bless humanity ... and God help us find a way of being faithful that opens the door to a better future.
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