I'm done with living like a Christian

by Kurt Willems

via Red Letter Christians

Something happened last week.  I went on a retreat with an amazing spiritual director / teacher named Jan Johnson.  By the end of our time together I realized that I’m done with living like a Christian.

• I’m done serving the poor.
• I’m done going the extra mile.
• I’m done being a husband who strives to love his wife as Christ loves the church.
• I’m done visiting the sick.
• I’m done opening up my life to Christian community.
• I’m done loving my neighbor.
  
• I’m done living with integrity.
• I’m done loving my enemies.
• I’m done giving finances to global causes.
• I’m done opposing violence.
• I’m done speaking out against hatred.
• I’m done standing up for the marginalized.
• I’m D-O-N-E done…

This past week made me realize that doing all these things won’t change the world.  That’s because the world can’t be changed unless God changes me.

For the past several years, ups and downs defined my spiritual life.  Moments in the journey were some of the most intimate encounters with Jesus that I’ve known.  Real (nearly tangible) experiences, that can’t be explained by anything but the power of the Holy Spirit, took place. Other moments, when I showed love to a neighbor, prayed for an enemy, served the poor… these were times when Jesus was right there with me.

Then there were the times when I got stuck trying to live like Jesus.  In the Christian world we call these “good works” or “ethics.”  I made my aim “doing” rather than “being.”By “doing” I believed that my “being” would be consumed by an experience of the life of God.  Unfortunately, the God encounters often fade when all my time is spent “doing” or theorizing about such “doing.”

For me, it’s time to stop doing.  It’s time to simply be done.  Done “doing” because the Holy Spirit invites us to stop and to “be.”

• To be the kind of person who serves the poor.
• Be the kind of person who goes the extra mile.
• Be the kind of person who is an awesome self-giving husband.
• Be the kind of person who visits the sick.
• Be the kind of person who opens my life up to Christian community.
• Be the kind of person who loves my neighbor.
• Be the kind of person who chooses integrity.
• Be the kind of person who loves enemies.
• Be the kind of person who gives generously to global causes.
• Be the kind of person who responds to evil with creative nonviolence.
• Be the kind of person who not only speaks out against hatred, but who suffers for the sake of the hated.
• Be the kind of person who stands in the margins with those who’ve been placed there by society (and even the church).
• I want to BE, and in the process, become a different kind of follower of Jesus.

Why the distinction?  It’s easy to follow the Sermon on the Mount and other ethical teachings of Jesus and to miss the Christ who taught such things. Dallas Willard puts it this way:

Jesus never expected us simply to turn the other cheek, go the second mile, bless those who persecute us, give unto them that ask, and so forth.  These responses, generally and rightly understood to be characteristic of Chrsitlikeness, were put forth by him as illustrative of what might be expected of a new kind of person – one who intelligently and steadfastly seeks, above all else, to live within the rule of God and be possessed by the kind of righteousness that God himself has, as Matthew 6:33 portrays.  Instead, Jesus did invite people to follow him into that sort of life from which behavior such as loving one’s enemies will seem like the only sensible and happy thing to do.  For a person living that life, the hard thing to do would be to hate the enemy, to turn the supplicant away, or to curse the curser…  True Christlikeness, true companionship with Christ, comes at the point where it is hard not to respond as he would.[1]

So, yes, I’m done with living like a Christian.  I’m trading that in for living in a deeper relationship with Christ.  I want to know Jesus.  I want to hear Jesus.  I want to be empowered by Jesus.  Not simply in theory as I do the good things that he calls us to do, but as the natural outflow of intimacy with God.  The former way “gets the job done.”  The latter way changes the world.

For me, this means a new-found intentionality of placing myself in a position to hear from the Spirit.  Spiritual practices like – solitude, Sabbath, lectio divina, silence, confession, prayer, and practicing the presence of God – these neglected areas of my life have led to a Christianity defined by “doing” rather than “being.”

My prayer for us is that our intimate relationships with Christ would make it impossible to not respond with the ethics marked out by the Kingdom of God.  Not out of effort to do good things, but out of our efforts to know Jesus Christ through an awareness of the presence of God’s Spirit.  When this becomes normative, we won’t be able to help it… we will just start looking like Jesus.

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[1] Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives,7-8.

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Kurt Willems is an Anabaptist writer and pastor who is preparing for church planting next year by finishing work towards a Master of Divinity degree at Fresno Pacific Biblical Seminary.  He writes at: the Pangea Blog and is also on Twitter and Facebook.

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A Desperate Need for Imagination

by Shane Claiborne
via Red Letter Christians

Shane Claiborne is a prominent author, speaker, activist, and founding member of the Simple Way. He is one of the compilers of Common Prayer, a new resource to unite people in prayer and action. Shane is also helping develop a network called Friends Without Borders which creates opportunities for folks to come together and work together for justice from around the world.

The world is desperately in need of imagination.

I will never forget the words of an Iraqi doctor I met while I was in Baghdad as a peacemaker in 2003, protesting the “shock and awe” campaign. As the bombs fell on the city, the doctor held a young girl with missile fragments in her body. He raised his head to the sky and said, with tears rolling down his cheeks, “This violence is for a world that has lost its imagination.”

This is the country, world and global neighborhood in which we live.

Where the average North American consumes the same amount as more than 400 Africans.

Where we have enough weapons in the U.S. alone to create more than 100,000 Hiroshimas.

Where 25,000 people die a day from poverty. Nearly 16,000 of those are children, which means every five seconds a child dies of a preventable disease like malaria.
Suffice to say, much of the death and suffering of our world is fundamentally caused by a lack of imagination.

It’s time to take the words of Romans 12 seriously, with the admonition: “Do not conform to the patterns of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Historically, the prophetic imagination has shown us that God’s people are holy troublemakers, rabble-rousers and mischief-makers. We are folks who refuse to accept the world as it is and insist on moving it closer to what it should be.

It’s time for fresh imagination. It’s time to reimagine the world.

Thankfully, God is good at dealing with a world in crisis—He has had a lot of practice.

And the human imagination flourishes when times get tough, because we are forced to innovate.

This is how I’ve seen it in my little world—the concrete jungle of Philadelphia.

Just this past year in Philadelphia, there was a congregation that was doing what Christians do—hospitality. As many congregations do around the world, they had begun opening their church building to the homeless so they could have a warm, safe place to sleep overnight. The city government got wind of it and began to crack down.

The pastor was told they were not allowed to run a shelter as they did not have proper permits, nor would they be granted them because the city did not want a shelter there. So the congregation prayed, and the Spirit moved. They announced that they would not be running a shelter, but they would have a revival from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. every night. The city did not dare stop a revival. It was brilliant. I attended the revival one night. It began with great singing, worship and sharing, and transitioned around 10 p.m. to a 10-hour period of “silent prayer.”

We see this imagination in friends in Atlanta who were met with anti-homeless laws that made it illegal to urinate in public. (In fact, some homeless folks have been arrested and charged with public indecency and exposure, which makes them registered sex offenders.) So our friends launched a “Pee for Free with Dignity” campaign, which insisted people could not be arrested for public urination if there were no public restrooms. They marched to City Hall carrying toilets and laid them at the mayor’s door. Soon Atlanta had some public restrooms.

This imagination is seen in the growing movement of urban farming. Vertical gardens tier food production with full-sun plants on top, working the way down to the bottom where there are fish cleaning the water that is then pumped back to the top to trickle down. One of these urban farms in Wisconsin boasts of being able to produce food for more than 2,000 families on two acres of vertical urban farming—and much of it is done by the people in the neighborhood.

I saw this imagination on a college campus that had created a “green dorm” where they recycled the water from their showers and used this “greywater” to flush their toilets, and where they had laundry machines powered by stationary bikes. Not only was it good for the creation, but it was good for their cardiovascular. After all, if you wanted clean undies, you had to work for it.

In Jesus, we see an invitation to join a movement that preaches the Gospel with our lives as well as with our mouths. For too long the Church has promised the world life after death, while a dying world has been asking, “But is there life before death?” I am convinced the Kingdom of God is not just about going up when we die, but about bringing God’s dream down to earth. It is time to reimagine the world. As Indian activist Arundhati Roy has said: “Another world is possible. Another world is necessary. Another world is already here … on a quiet day I can hear her breathing.”

The world is waiting, groaning, aching for another world—for the Kingdom of God to come on earth.

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An Imaginary Law: the SBC Approach to Undocumented Immigrants

by Tony Campolo
via Red Letter Christians

"The Southern Baptist Convention held its annual meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, and pretended to develop a guide for law and/or legislation concerning undocumented immigrants. As one political commentator pointed out, the resolution they developed was “vague, confusing, and perhaps inherently contradictory,” and that it wouldn’t help those in Congress to pick through the complexities associated with addressing the plight of the undocumented.

While making sure that they wanted the undocumented men and women in this country to hear the Gospel story and be “saved,” they deliberately avoided any attempt to suggest amnesty for such immigrants, nor did they offer any hopeful suggestions as to what should be done to help those whom they referred to as “illegal immigrants” a way to find a place among us here in the United States.

They wanted a solution to the problem that was both just and compassionate. While these are wonderful words, their resolution gave neither meaning nor idea as to what meaning they attached to those words so far as social policy is concerned." [...]

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Colbert: "you roll the bones and go...Muslim"

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Mmm....No, it's not "all good."

by Jamie Wright 
via Jamie the Very Worst Missionary

[...]  "My point is that it's not unreasonable to set standards, to ask questions, and to come to conclusions about what we're doing. In fact, we do that all the time.

We expect our doctors to “First, do no harm.”

We expect our police to “Protect and Serve.”

We expect our Church to.... um.... “Do at least some good, hopefully, but really, who can say....”

Mmmkay???

So, if you're a doctor and you do harm, we'll take away your license. And if you're a cop who fails to protect, we will riot in the streets against your actions. But, apparently, if you're a Christian with “good intentions”, you can do whatever you want because, if just one good thing comes from it, it's all good. Seriously?!

We have given ourselves a free pass to do whatever we want, however we want, whenever and wherever we want with absolutely zero accountability, because we're Christian. I mean, ultimately, who are we to judge whether or not “some good” has actually taken place? So why bother evaluating ourselves at all... *shrugs*" [...]

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