Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Social pressures and following Jesus

How is it that I am who I am, where I am, doing what I am? Why am I following Jesus rather than the American dream? How did I get here? How did you get where you are, and how did the dude next door get where he is? How did I come to make the good decisions I made? What about the bad ones? Where is God's pursuit of me evident in my story? Where are my autonomous choices?

... and how much of it all really just comes from social realities?

Here's the thing. I've been seeing a smattering of good things and bad things happening in the lives of people around me lately. Nothing new to that. But as I get to know their stories, I can't help but feel that the different social pressures each of us face end up shaping more than I might care to admit.

This isn't unexpected, I suppose. And it's not that God, the devil, and personal autonomy are ever removed from the situation. Everybody's present all up in there together. I guess it just feels like the social side is a tad overwhelming in the lives of people around me these days, to the extent that the other factors can seem like puppets in the social game.

My reflections here are motivated by some new tension I'm experiencing. For a while now, I've thought there were three main schools of thought in the church for instructing Christians on who we should be socially:
(1) No school of thought. People just live their lives and run into whomever and do whatever and that's it. It's sad, but lots of people live unexamined lives like that.
(2) Avoid corrupting influences, because they will drag you down. Hang out with other good Christians, and you'll sharpen one another. This one is particularly popular among parents of teenagers, and it has some biblical support (1 Cor. 15:33; Prov. 27:17).
(3) Become a person of contagious holiness. Under the OT law, ritual uncleanness was seen as contagious, such that the pure and the impure had to be segregated until the impure could be cleansed, such as through ritual washing and animal sacrifice. Socially, Jesus modeled the reverse for us - he hung out with society's down-and-outs, and he had a positive influence on many of them, such that his goodness became contagious in their lives, affecting who those people would choose to be in the future. The idea is not to avoid corrupting influences, but rather to remain faithful in love and friendship to the messed-up people in our lives. With God's strength and grace, we lead them up out of sin rather than following them into sin.

Ever since my understanding of these three options took shape, the third has stood out as the best paradigm. But lately, it seems to be falling flat.
--What if you've never been exposed to righteousness in a certain area of life? Say you're a Christ-follower, and all your friends smoke pot whenever they hang out. You've heard some people say pot-smoking is bad, but you've never heard anyone make an actual case for why it's a bad idea to be a regular toker. You see the fun social atmosphere it seems to create, and it never even crosses your mind not to participate. Why wouldn't you?
--What if you don't have any other social options? Let's tweak the previous scenario - still a Christ-follower, friends are still potheads. Now let's say you know it's wrong to get high, but you live in podunk Bartlett, Nebraska. These are the people who have been your friends since kindergarten. If you don't smoke when they're smoking, they treat you like an outcast. If you don't hang out with them, you don't hang out with anybody. If you suggest any alternative activity within a reasonable traveling distance, like bowling (about as good as it gets in the area), they say a bowl goes well with bowling. What do love and wisdom look like in that situation?
--What about mutual influence? Let's take another Christ-follower, a single guy. You've given Christ total control over your anger issues. You become friends with a non-Christian gal at work or school who has serious anger problems. She has seen you change a lot in the past year, and you start to become a mentor figure for her in dealing with her anger. Christ is definitely a part of the conversation, and she seems to be cautiously open to the God-stuff you're sharing with her about anger. She also has a casual view of sex, you find her quite attractive, and she has come on to you a few times. She likes what you're saying about God and anger, but she disagrees with your conservative sexual mores. Even when you hang out in public places, you find your mind wandering to places you wish it wouldn't. You're seriously worried that you're going to end up sleeping with her one of these days. How do you choose between continuing to exercise the unique influence you have in her life and avoiding situations of intense temptation?

Contagious holiness doesn't fit any of these scenarios very neatly. Neither does avoiding corrupting influences. What is the response of love in these situations? Who am I to judge the actions of a brother or sister in Christ in these situations who "gives into sin" or who "abandons their friends"?

Frankly, I had it easy as a teenager. I didn't get into drinking or drugs, but it wasn't because I was "above" that stuff. I was just involved in lots of activities that took up my time, and I happened to hang out with the last teenaged non-religious crowd in the entire U.S. of A. that didn't drink. I did once walk away from one of my cliques of friends, but it was in a rather mean way, and it was not for any moral reasons - I just didn't know how to relate to the other people anymore, and it was an hour's drive to go see them, and I wanted to hang out with my girlfriend. She was from an evangelical church, so I started thinking about Jesus more seriously and personally than I had before; when I went to college, I started hanging out with the Christian kids, and the rest is history. How much of where I am today has to do with responding to peer pressure in the direction of God?

Is there a resolution to this post? I have some thoughts in that direction, but they're not very systematic yet. I'm seeing that contagious holiness w/o iron-sharpening-iron is a recipe for disaster (and even a little avoidance of bad influences can be necessary). I'm seeing that God can use peer pressure, and so can Satan, and it's not always clear how deeply each is present in a given social situation.

I'm also reminded that our God is the God who creates good things out of nothing and miraculously redeems the ugly into the beautiful. I pray for God to create new positive social realities where they do not yet exist, and I pray for God's redemption to be poured out in our messed-up social spheres all over the place.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Accessible Eschatology: for further reading

Thanks to those of you who have been reading along throughout this series! Clearly it became drawn out a little longer than I had originally intended. I guess life has its own timeline.

Wanna do some of your own exploring on these issues? Here's a bibliography of books that have helped to shape my thoughts in this arena. Some are amillennial; others are premillennial; others are not primarily eschatological in their focus, but they still have a good deal to contribute to this conversation. Read synopses and reviews on sites like Amazon to find out which might suit your personal reading desires.

--The Bible. (Odd, but, hey, read it & allow it to shape your views more than anything else. Do these other books comport with what the Bible teaches? Do the things I have to say agree with the Bible? Cuz, hey, that's a tad important.)
--The Bible and the Future, by Anthony Hoekema
--A Case for Historic Premillennialism, by Craig Blomberg and Sung Wook Chung
--The Mission of God, by Christopher J. H. Wright
--The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work, by Darrel Cosden
--Work in the Spirit, by Miroslav Volf

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

A Day in the Life: Madison, WI

It's been a while since I (Meggan) have written, so I thought I'd take a few moments to catch people up on our lives here in Madison. We have been living on Whitney Way since July and really do feel settled in our apartment. It has been great to catch up with Madison friends from college and reconnect at Blackhawk Evangelical Free Church, where we were married over five years ago. That's a blast from the past, right? Of course, Blackhawk has since moved to a new location in Madison. My cousin Chris is now a freshman at UW-Madison, and we had fun running into him one Sunday.

Ben and I are both working as we raise support to return to Spain, hopefully by fall 2010. I work at a local dance retail store called Rosy Cheeks in Westgate Mall. Ben works at Victor Allen's Coffee at Odana and Whitney Way. We can both walk to our jobs and are grateful that we didn't have to buy a second car during our time here.

Support-raising is the adventure that it always is. We are finding again that our expectations are usually way off, which is a challenge at times. We keep reminding ourselves that this is God's mission that we are taking part in, not Ben and Meggan's mission that happens to be God-honoring. Thank you so much to those who have already joined our support team! If we haven't been in touch with you yet, don't worry - we will be soon!

The pregnancy is going very well. I didn't have a lick of morning sickness. My stomach is going through a sore stage again, but that just means baby Knox is growing and trying to stretch out in his limited space. I had a recent scare, thinking that I had developed gestational diabetes, but the second test came back with fantastic results, making the first test just an abnormality. Praise God for that since I don't have the greatest family health history.

This Christmas, we are participating in Advent Conspiracy. Check out this video to learn more! We are hand-making a lot of our Christmas gifts, and are deciding to give a lot less in order to give to people in NEED. Blackhawk will be donating 100% of the funds received in a special offering to build wells for communities without clean water in Honduras, Peru, and Kenya, as well as provide wheelchairs for people with limited mobility. Of course you don't have to participate in the literal Advent Conspiracy to follow the "spirit" of this project. I challenge and invite you to approach Christmas differently this year, not because of the economic state of the country, but because of the overabundance that we already enjoy.

Our other weekly activities include going to Childbirth/Parenting classes at Meriter Hospital on Monday nights. Tuesday nights, we attend our lifegroup through Blackhawk. We are so grateful for this group already and have really enjoyed getting to know everyone there. Sunday nights, Ben volunteers with Lief, our college and seminary friend who is the high school youth pastor at Blackhawk.

Ben and I miss our Denver artistic outlets like Ben singing with the Sliders and both of us dancing at Littleton Dance Academy quite a bit. But, this is a season for other foci. We know we'll have those types of opportunities again in the future. And frankly, it's my own fault for not dancing here in Madison while I still could have. Those days are no more until this baby is born! In the meantime, I still feel connected to the dance world by working at Rosy Cheeks.

And that, friends, is a day in the life in Madison, WI.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Accessible Eschatology: the future and the work of our hands

Flipping burgers. Building furniture. Selling insurance. Tech support. Retail dance apparel (Meggan). Making coffee (me). ________ (you).

What does it all have to do with the coming of the kingdom of God?

There are some commonsense answers about how being a follower of Christ affects the way we work - being people of integrity, the "Protestant work ethic," providing for the physical needs of our families and of others, keeping busy rather than being idle, the opportunity to share Christ's love with coworkers... the list could go on. These are all good things, and they can motivate us to work hard and work well. But what about the actual work itself? Is there something redeeming about the very act of making the best darn latte I can make? Can that have anything to do with the kingdom of God?

Many would say, "no - that has to do with the appetites of this world, not the things of God." But what's wrong with this line of thinking?

(I feel like most of you readers could answer that question yourselves. Go ahead, give it a shot, then I'll write what I have to say & you can see if we were on the same page. Feel free to leave a comment about what you were thinking at this point if you like.)

...

...

Here's what I have in mind - our physical appetites are a part of the things of God. There is no great schism between the physical and the spiritual; these two "parts" of our lives are inseparably intertwined. Sure, it is common in our culture to live a life that inappropriately revolves around the physical appetites, and self-control is a virtue to be cultivated, but the pleasure of a delicious, artistic craft of the kitchen is a God-given pleasure.

In agreement with this, there is a physical side to the coming of the kingdom of God. If you've been following the series of posts, you know that the kingdom of God broke into this world with the coming of Jesus; it continues to break into this world through the work of the Holy Spirit (both in the Church and outside it); and it will have its ultimate fulfillment on this earth at the return of Jesus. If the kingdom has a physical dimension, our work can be a part of this.

This is where we need to pick up where the last post left off. Recall, we were talking about signposts, bridgeheads, and foretastes. Our work for the kingdom of God in this age is about establishing the presence of the coming fulfillment of the kingdom - call it a sign or a taste of that kingdom, or a bridge to it, whichever metaphor speaks to your soul. Just as this gives meaning to our ecological efforts, it can also give genuine meaning to our work. When I make the perfect cappuccino, it can be a signpost of the coming perfection of the kingdom of God. When I try my best to make a beautiful latte, but the foam looks nothing like a heart and everything like a man's twig-n-berries (happened, and definitely required correction before giving it to a customer), it can be a reminder that genuine efforts in God's name will no longer fail when the kingdom comes in its fullness. When you build a useful structure or invent a valuable product or play a role in some technological advance, your work could be something that is a part of the renewed earth - or, if not, it could join in the chain of precursors to that final renewal. A little abstract, but definitely awe-inspiring (and even pretty stinkin' cool).

In our work, we are given the opportunity to create something productive and useful where there once was nothing. It might not always be something absolutely groundbreaking - in fact, most times, it won't be - but it is still a creation that is working to build the future. It doesn't matter what it is, from babysitting to bull-riding: work can be an eschatological act.

Let us join in this prayer of Moses: "May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish the work of our hands for us— yes, establish the work of our hands." (Psalm 90:17, emphasis added)

Next post: for further reading (and that will wrap up the series).