Building the Kingdon with Non-Christians
This is long but well-worth reading if you have the time…I tried to condense it but it proved nearly impossible. I’m in de-frag mode right now. More on other seminars and workshops I attended in separate posts.
I went to a talk with this title at the CCDA conference because of the speaker, and the speaker alone. I have been told that I am considered post-modern. I have no idea what that means, and no matter how many different people try to explain it to me, the concept or distinction makes little sense. But I know one thing about me is that I don’t see any difficulty in working with non-Christians, and find that I can learn much about life, work, and even about the character of Jesus from them (one of the people whom I’ve learned the most about how to carry the character of God in my personality from is a “married” lesbian and atheist). There is not much that is revolutionary in the idea of working amicably and productively alongside non-Christians, but it had been drawn to my attention, more than once, that there are some Christians who are uncomfortable with doing so; probably for a host of mixed-together reasons which I won’t address here. Anyways, all of that to say that if it had depended on the title and topic of the seminar alone, I would not have attended. I figured I was already fine with working with non-CHristians and honestly, what more was there to do in that department except have my opinions confirmed (something which most of us, arrogant as we already are, do not need to hear). And to some extent that turned out to be true. But I knew that sometimes you wind up getting more out of a seminar with a very good speaker on a topic that is not a bulls-eye in the relevancy category, than you do out of a seminar that is 100% relevant but has a not-so-good speaker. So, on my friend Jamie’s recommendation, I went to this seminar, given by Shane Claiborne and another guy, whom I met only briefly and therefore can’t remember the name of :-/ (I later got to meet Shane and pick his brain over lunch; so he sticks out in my mind quite a bit more. More on that later.)
It was incredible. These guys have such a heart for peace, the poor, and reconciliation. Here are notes from the seminar.
-The Magi came from the East to worship the baby Jesus. [In another session, that I’ll post about separately, a speaker said this: In the book of Daniel, we find a guy who was living in Babylon– that is, in what is present-day Iraq– and who learns their strology and astronomy so well that he is able to add to their academic records of it. In one of his papers, he slips in a footnote that says, “Hey, someday, you’re gonna see this star, and it’ll mean that a king has been born in the land where I came from. Follow it, and check it out. I promise it’ll be worth the trip.”] All this to say that outsiders can be involved in God’s plan.
- St. Gregory asked the question, why did the shephards get a a bunch of Angels singing, while the Magi got a star? Well, The Magi wouldn’t have records of the Israeli traditions and prophecies. “Messiah” wouldn’t have meant anything to them. They had their own prophesies, which God had specifically planted in their culture, because they were important to him. God was speaking their language. He was being relevant to them. [My note: Which, by the way, is something we see repearted by Paul throughout the New Testament.]
-Herod, of course, was familiar with the Israeli sacred legends. But he couldn’t remember them precisely. He new “messiah” alright; but he had to go send his scholars to look up preisely where it was that this supplanter was supposed to be born. So the outsiders actually made him re-examine his own scriptures. And the outsiders were doing the right thing; they understood, however screwed up their own gods may have been, that when you see a God, it’s a good idea to worship him. What “outsiders” are there in the world today, non-Christians, who are doing the right thing, that compassionate, loving thing, that Christians, as a whole, are not doing? People of other religions (or, let’s face it, other denominations; because Christians are so divided right now that they often wind up discounting whole churches because of differnces in location or methods of delivering the sacraments or predestination or stupid stuff like that) who are so radical in their desire to do the right thing that they shake us up, and should make us re-examine what God actually has to say about how we live our lives? Some people who come to mind are Gandhi, Bono, Mother Teresa, or Jember Taferra (often called the “Mother Teresa of Africa,” she works in Ethiopia and is the author of The Prisoner’s Lantern.) [Side note: I got to meet her this week-end! She took my hand and asked me what I had thought of something a speaker had said…omg it was so surreal.] You see, if we don’t speak, the rocks will cry out…or in our generation, maybe it’s the rock stars. Like Bono, right? See the thing is, that I don’t want them to have to cry out; but since they are, I want to harmonize with what the rock stars are saying if what they are saying is good and right.
-Too often we coerce people into following God by threatening them with fire. Without sounding arrogant, I still have to say that I’m not sure that is what God wants: a bunch of people who follow him simply out of fear. Ehll as a stick and heaven as a carrot. Why would he try to bribe us to do what he wants? That is contrary to what I see as his desire in Genesis– that of freely-given love and companionship with the race of mankind. The question we must ask ourselves, as Tony Campolo said in Speaking My Mind, is: “If there were no heaven or hell, would I still follow Jesus?” We’ve promised the world that there is life after death, but what the world is desperate to know is, is there life before death? They are craving that and the answer is yes.
-And we can’t be too careful not to get all arrogant about that. Rich Mullins said once, “God spoke to Balaam through his ass, and he’s been speaking through asses ever since. So if God chooses to speak through you don’t think too highly of yourself, and if you meet someone who’s a total ass, don’t think God can’t use them.” God can use anyone he wants to in his plan, Christian, non-Christian, whoever. [My note: and even when he uses Christians it is usually in spite of themselves.]
-We must live in such a way as to usher in the Kingdom of God on earth. And the reason that we must be so careful because we could easily create our own hell on earth. After all, just as the Kingdom of Heaven can come on earth, so can the kingdom of hell. C.S. Lewis said, “The gate of Hell is locked from the inside, and we hold the key ourselves.”
-So this is why we must care for the poor; why poverty is so important. God is very explicit about how we should treat the poor, the widowed, the fatherless, and the strangers in our land. In all of Jesus’ parables, the only person to whom he gives a name is Lazarus. It is in the parable of the rich man, who is famous in life, and whose name many, many people probably knew; and the poor man, who was a nameless, faceless beggar covered in sores who sat at the entrance to the high-rise where Lazarus lived in the penthouse; the sort of street person who people walked right past, on the streets in New York or Chicago, and avoided looking in the eye or even looking at at all, if they could help it. The parable tells what happens to them in the after-life. The rich man is in a place of fire, and the poor man sits beside Abraham. And the rich man begs Abraham, father of us all, to send Lazarus across to give him water, but Abraham saiys now, you got your creature comforts in the last life, and were too busy and selfish to share them. Lazarus is only now getting his reward, and none will take his comfort away from him. Gods values the impoverished; that is why it is so important to comfort and assist the poor and restore their dignity to them. To provide them with the necessities of life, to give them every opportunity to better themselves and their situation, to restore justice and erase inequity. [My note: There’s a man who lives on the streets in Clifton Heights, and frankly I think he may have been in Vietnam because he is about the right age; at any rate, he is certainly not all there. His name is Daniel. And every time I meet Daniel– which is often because he comes into the cafe and we’ve lived in the same neighborhood for about four or five years now) I try to treat him with respect and to call him by name a few times. If Jesus called Lazarus by name then it is vital that I call Daniel by name. Besides, it reminds me of his humanity– and who knows, maybe it reminds him of it, too. At the very least, it is treating him with the dignity every human soul deserves.]
Wow. All I can say is, wow. Maybe someday, I’ll learn how to actually love; I hope so.
Any thoughts? Please post your comments.
