Location vs. Identity: The Church, The Margins and the Status Quo

Maybe Tim Tebow has a point--I need/want to live with John 3:16 posted so closely to my eyes that it forces me to reimagine the world. I am not a fan of the one-verse trumps the whole Bible method of reading, interpreting and living Scripture, but that verse is certainly not a bad one. When I try to super-spiritualize (and even legalize) who the Church is, it is good for me to go back to this verse and note that God loved (not just me) but the whole world and that "whosoever believes in Him will have everlasting life"--emphasis on whosoever.

This verse forces us to ask the question of "who is the Church?" And, "where is the Church?" This question becomes increasingly difficult when they are applied to Christian ethics. For instance, I understand that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." But what does this mean when only 1% of the world has a college education--a fact that immediately makes those of us with a degree automatically be considered part of the world's wealthy. What does this mean for Christian ministries who are committed to working with college students? Does this mean that these folks are really "not Christian?" I don't think so.

Another argument that has been posed to me is: "Every Christian should go to seminary to become a better Christian"--as if there is a connection with education and morality. Please don't think that I am dumping on seminary or education (you must remember that you are talking to an education guru), but the problem with that statement is that it assumes that the poor and the illiterate cannot operate well in the world to bring their discipleship to fruition. It assumes that we can only have good theology, good ethics or good interpretations of Scripture if we have become education--read become rich.

The implication of this might even be that if we as the "educated Christians" call for an ethic of marginality and downward mobility as a universal ethic, that this will have bizarre implications for the poor. Does this mean if I am poor that the only way to become more like Jesus or the become more Christian is to become "poor-er?" Or the other scholarly implication I have heard is that "the Church isn't about me and Jesus or me and my Bible, but it is about living in community." What does this mean for my brothers in Christ I met earlier this week who are incarcerated and not allowed to live in community? Are they not real Christians then?

These two paradigms seemed to clash in our class, the Nation-State and Theology of Africa. Our Professor eagerly tried to get us to see how locating or relocating the Church on the margins was a method for allowing our Christian identity to interrupt the way of the world as a means of creating communities and practices of resistance against the status quo. I noticed that the groups that were all-white tended to want to stick to the belief that our Gospel incarnation model shows us that we must be "centrally" located and not "marginally" located. I could almost hear our evangelical stories telling us: "You must put Jesus at the center of your life," "you must use and steward your gifts in a way that put you in the realms of power," "true humility is letting others take the credit for our hard efforts because Christ credits us righteousness."

I realized that our group was speaking of bastions of power and central locations, "development" and "partnership" in ways that our Professor was trying to get us to move away from, but it didn't really hit me until I saw one of the black students start to laugh while our group shared. It hit me. We were a group of all white people. We could not imagine a way for Christianity to interrupt the world in powerful ways that was not located from a central place of authority. We as white Americans (especially in the context of Africa) have always operated from a central location seeking change rather than trying to influence from the margins. We may think we are on the margins if we relocate ourselves to the middle of Africa, depriving ourselves of real luxuries and means of power that we have available to us in the U.S., but we can only imagine true change coming from the center and we forget that our very identity as Westerners automatically labels us not as "one on the margins who is replaceable or disposable." If the Church is meant to be at the margins, can we really become marginal by relocating?

What I think this means is that there must be something deeper than just seeing our Christian ethical lives by living through an idea of central location or marginality. I think what I am pushing toward is what does it mean to simply "become Christian?" I think it also means that we must be careful in how we speak "universally" about what Christianity should look like. We also must be aware of our context. But more importantly, we must become Christian, whatever that might be or mean.

Jen in the City

It's official, I have spent my first summer and semester living the city life. It has been quite a comical journey as I try to navigate what that means having grown up in the country my whole life. So here is a list of "firsts" and weird encounters:

1. Recycling! My first true chance to recycle was back when I was in Governor's School and there was a recycling bin at the lobby of our dorm room at Salem College. But for the first time ever, I have my own recycling bin!! And to top it off, the city of Durham has upgraded from blue recycling bin to a blue recycling trash can with wheels!! Double thanks to my neighbors who politely moved my bin to the correct side of the road.

2. Trash pick up. Apparently you have sign up for these things. Living in the city, you must put out your cans in specific places, if you don't then it won't get picked up. So long days of the trash man taking your trash to the street for you and returning it to its proper place. I found this out after desperate attempt to explain to Durham Waste Management that I'm a country girl and needed help to understand the process!

3. Street Sweepers??!! Seriously?! I have never in my life heard of a street sweeper! It used to terrify me when it came by at about midnight along my alley and streets. It sounds like a vaccum meets a power plant! I'm still confused as to why we need this.

4. Seeing traffic and racing emergency vehicles was a relatively new experience. I no longer run to the window to find out what frightening thing might have happened.

5. There is a mysterious brown trash can that is used for clearing brush in an urban area. And the other super weird thing about it is that everything that goes in the trashcan must be put into landscaping bags!! I started to wonder about this as I was trimming things in my garden, curious as to what to do with it. My gut instinct was to throw it in the woods behind my neighbors house (sorry Tyler, Parker, Tommy, George and Emma!) Where I come from, we compost out in the woods!

6. I never had to think of this question until now...how in the world does the city get rid of everyone's Christmas trees?!

7. At any hour of the day, city workers can show up outside your home to check how various things are functioning. And I'm still getting used to the fact that they can come and cut down trees in your yard. I always wanted to watch how you get rid of a stump. Apparently the city wants new "prettier" trees to line the streets. When I was a kid, we used to pull out the water hose and water guns on civil workers who we thought were infringing on our land lol!!

8. City buses are quite a sight! And even cooler, there is a new hybrid bus!

9. I thoroughly like watching parents and children walking to school. I also enjoy watching the kids play on the playground at one of the elementary schools on my own walk to campus.

Loss of the Instinct

Post-Urbana I'm finding that the call of the missionary is the call to loss one's instinct. Being removed from one's home context means losing the sense of "the gut feeling" that comes with being raised in a particular culture. There are two major implications of this.

The first is that the instinct is something we often take for granted and it must be used as a tool. The instinct about our home culture can give us vital information and help in a sticky situation. It helps us to read cultural interactions clearly. Sometimes it helps us to take smart risks, but keeps us from taking "dumb" risks.

In the loss of the instinct when one leaves one's home culture for a different one, one must become fully reliant on God and the new surroundings to develop a sense of risk and way of life. In many ways, the Christian life is not just about smart risks, but "dumb," senseless risks like pouring an expensive jar of alabastar on someone.

The mere thought of this potential loss makes me realize just how much I rely on my gut instead of God. I'm not going to argue that this is essentially wrong, but that moving out of one's culture and comfort zone costs us this comfort but will force us to strengthen our listening ears and trust muscles toward God.

The Matching Jar

Money is a huge issue for me. I struggle, wrestle really, with how to spend my money well. It wasn't so much a problem when I had a stable job, no debt and more than enough money to both pay the bills and give away. I no longer budget because I never have enough money to budget period. It is a pray, wait and see sort of thing. To make matters worse is that I struggle over issues of tithing and giving money away when I'm technically not bringing in any money.

After my the ideas from the Advent article and an email from a friend with a similar idea, I have decided to make a matching jar. In the eyes of many folks, I live on a fairly minimal budget. I am a penny pincher. But the issue of money is still eating me up inside. I have discovered that the idea of the matching jar not only helps me to commit to giving money away, but it also helps me to see just how much I'm still able to rationalize for myself even when I have such a small amount of money to live on.

The idea is this, when I buy something for myself, go out to eat, buy a gift on a friend, spend money because I didn't plan well (ie. pay to park at school vs. walk or take the bus) then I match the dollar amount to give away. Rather than become a huge black hole of guilt, I feel much freer to confess my idolatries toward stuff. Already I am blown away at how much money I spend frivolously.

All in the Family: Divine Right of Kings

I'm currently reading Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert Massie, a biography of the the last Romanov monarchs. I have always had a deep fascination for all things royal, but this book is striking a different chord in me. The idea of "royal family" is blowing my mind.

The beginning stages of the book gives a humanized picture of the Tsar and Tsarina. Nicholas is nice, polite, somewhat humble, well-educated, God-fearing and loyal to preserving a more folksy Russian culture than a modern, European way of life. His wife Alix is devout, devoted to her family, and sacrifices much of her own culture to marry someone she truly loves.

Perhaps it is our American patriotic and egalitarian values that causes us to look down on those who inhereited the lineage and birthright of kingship, but such a humanized account as Massie presents helps me to see how prejudiced such a worldview can be. When I look at Nicholas and Alexandra, I'm heartbroken over their plight. They did not deserve to be brutally murdered. They were good people who raised a beautiful family. They were subject to prejudice all around, Alix in particular, as the Russian people never liked that she was German. The irony in that is that the royal families across the globe were actually all family at the time. They constantly married into one another's family. The movie Marie Antoinette by Sofia Coppola shows the sacrifice that royal women in particular had when it came time to marry another royal of a different culture. There is this beautiful and shocking scene at the beginning where Marie is stripped of her German garb all the way down to her little dog and is given all French wear and accessories. The cultural transformation is so immediate and even tragic, yet in the person of Alexandra, we see a woman who truly comes to love her new home and new people.

Another point that seems to me so ironic and such a lost opportunity is that the royal families all deeply feel called by God to rule their countries and feel burdened to rule well. Yet, war is still inevitable. How bizarre that WWI would plunge nations against one another when the royals who approved of war were often blood relatives or immediate relatives by marriage to a royal in another country. Marriage and blood did not prevent sovereigns from becoming enemies in war. How easily they could have said, "we are family, let's make peace." It seems that this model had such potential for peace, if only the kings would work together. It is so frustrating to see this missed opportunity. How do those who seem to be so God-fearing seem to miss such a gospel-inspired opportunity??