Jesus Manifesto - Latest Comments in Cheating on the Church

Re: Cheating on the Church

marshamarshamarsha — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:18:19 -0000

This makes sense - however I wonder how you put this together when you consider how much damage the "church" has done to so many people. And if you have considered the wide and various ways we may engage in "marriage" and join a "church." Many of us have had more than one husband, wife. The majority of us have had membership (and participation) in wide varieties of religious communities. The twenty first century shapes these institutions in ways far different than the models you describe, and our population of post-modern Americans consumes these things as it does any other product. If Paul were alive today and interested in communicating, he would blog the media networks - and not the faith-based communities. Today, as always, if the "church" is to prevail and meet mission, it will have to jump start a new vision for itself and the world. Frankly, I don't see that happening.

Re: Cheating on the Church

paul munn — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:01:38 -0000

I wondered when you would chime in, Ted. I've begun to count on you to to keep me honest.

"Submission to the needs of the other" makes more sense to me. Though, again, I think that needs to be explained, since that is not the common usage of that word, and "submission" has been used so very often (by Christians!) to suppress and abuse the individual, those in the minority, and the weak (slaves, women, the illiterate, etc). Also, it still leaves the question: How are these "needs" determined? By the one receiving help, by what they ask of us? (As I pointed out before, Peter resisted Jesus' footwashing, but Jesus insisted he needed it.) By the community? The leaders? I would say that it is God who knows and decides what is best for us, and it is in submission to God that we best respond to the real needs of those around us.

You raise a good point about my sensitivity about group dynamics and the evils of institutions (if anyone's interested, I tried to explain my reasons for it in the article "Are we the people?"). But I don't think I automatically spout "Woe!" every time the church is mentioned. Only when it seems that submission or commitment to some human group is being pushed as a demand of Christian discipleship, which seems to be in fashion again in certain circles. Not at all Jesus' message, and nothing like his life (which was seen as dangerously rebellious to the religious leaders and community of his day). It's as bad as individualism, in my opinion, if not worse. And I think the history of institutional churches (and intentional Christian communities) with their suppression and abuses committed against rebels in "the community," bears out my concerns.

I agree with your observation that Paul called people to be the church, to live up to "who they are." But then he was preaching to people who had no concept of the church, who were just learning what it was. We, on the other hand, do have a concept of church, based on our experience of the multitude of churches on every street corner (often two or three on a street corner). And our concept is usually wrong, severely distorted (perverted?) by the institutional "incarnations" of the church that are often not the Body at all. So I think our preaching has to be different now, at least breaking down false views first, by contrasting them with the truth about the Body of Christ.

And don't we see some of that in later writings about the church? For example, in Revelation, this passage that I think fits a lot of our American churches quite well:

"I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth.

"For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing; not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, that you may be rich, and white garments to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, that you may see.

"Those whom I love, I reprove and chasten; so be zealous and repent." (Rev 3.15-19)

And then there's Jesus' words in John's gospel (which also appeared later than Paul's writings):

"I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

"If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned." (Jn 15.5-6)

Which emphasizes that the crucial part is being connected with Jesus, since he is the source of fruit and life. He is the vine; we can be part of that, but we never determine the nature or fruit of the vine. If we move away from him then we are cut off, no longer part of the vine (though we are welcome to return). We can't drag the vine down with us; the vine is Christ. But we can separate ourselves.

Isn't that what Jesus is warning us about when he says, "Apart from me you can do nothing"?

By the way, I just noticed (maybe I'm slow): Both Jesus and Paul use the imagery of marriage when talking about our relationship... to Jesus. We are committed in a marriage-like relationship to Jesus. We are not married to the church. We as the church are married to Jesus, made one flesh with Jesus, but again the commitment and faithfulness is to Jesus. Not to the church. Isn't that a significant difference?

Re: Cheating on the Church

Ted Troxell — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 05:33:10 -0000

Chris' use of "submission" made perfect sense to me, as did his invocation of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. The servant posture is one of submission, not to the will of the other, which is the world's definition of submission, but to the needs of the other. If the way in which we submit to one another out of reverence for Christ is not exactly the same as the way in which we submit to the governing authorities (though even here Paul does not mean slavish, uncritical obedience), the semantic slipperiness is not something for which Chris should be held responsible. I think his contextual usage was clear.

I don't think Chris is the only person to use "submission" in this way, just as I don't think I'm the only one who uses "community" without the institutional baggage you want to attach to it. I think your anti-institutional bias is so strong that you are reading dark undertones into these words (and words like "responsibility" -- if you need to link to your own blog for us to understand your reaction to a given word, I submit that the linguistic peculiarity is yours) that are unintended. It's as though we can barely bring up the church without a stark warning from our resident prophet about the dangers of group dynamics, or a rejoinder that the local church is not the One Body.

Although it makes a certain amount of sense to recognize that a group of people who profess belief are not necessarily the body of Christ, or that a given group can fail to be or even cease to be the body of Christ, Paul does not argue in this manner. He tells the believers to whom he writes that they are the body of Christ, and he adjures them to comport themselves in a particular way on the basis of that identity and calling, and not from possibility that they might cease to be the body. Even when the issue is prostitution, Paul does not say "If you do this, you won't be the body anymore," but "Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never!" Paul argues from the Church's identity as the body -- even at Corinth.

Re: Cheating on the Church

paul munn — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:22:30 -0000

Yes, until you reply, I'm able to edit my comment. Which I often do, sometimes because I've had second thoughts...

If you think I've mis-characterized your words, Chris, feel free to correct me. If it's not clear to me what you mean, I usually say something like "it sounds like you're saying...," as I did above. And I have to say that your language is pretty vague and you seem comfortable using words in ways other than the common usage, without explanation. So that may contribute to my misunderstanding you. For example, you have not been clear about what you mean by "submission," a word that has been commonly used to mean "obedience" (as in "submit to our authority"), even in Christian communal circles. The example of Jesus washing feet still doesn't make it very clear; do you mean "humble" or "service"...? He was actually doing something that they didn't want, with Peter strongly resisting. So how do you see this as submission?

As I understand it from Paul's descriptions of the Body, if the church is not faithful, then it is not being the Body (for example, the Body is not divided but always one, because Christ cannot be divided against himself—yet churches are often divided). This is not nitpicking. We should be committed and faithful to the Body, but faithfulness to church institutions (particularly when they are not being the Body) is not asked of us. We may even be called, in faithfulness to the Body, to reject or attack the institutional church at times when it claims to be what it is not. Soren Kierkegaard's "Attack on Christendom" comes to mind, but there are countless other examples.

This, I think, directly applies to the point of Bryn's article, doesn't it?

Re: Cheating on the Church

paul munn — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:16:02 -0000

Maybe that also begins to offer a response to Elizabeth's concern above. If our "marriage" and faithfulness is to Christ, then we can remain completely faithful and still be free to respond to a call to another congregation. No need for feelings of failure or betrayal, but only gratitude that we never need leave his one Body.

And perhaps such experiences help us see the difference between faithfulness to "the bridegroom" Jesus and our limited commitments to places or church organizations.

Re: Cheating on the Church

Chris — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:30:54 -0000

Interesting; the response sent to my personal email is different from the response posted on this site. In any case, it's difficult to have a conversation when one changes the words or adds to the words of another, which is what you are doing with my posts, Paul.

First of all, there is nothing inherently Christian or Jewish (or Muslim or Buddhist or whatever, for that matter) about marriage. The Church uses a social construct to illustrate restored humanity, which only serves to bless the institution and hold it to an exemplary standard.

Nowhere did I say we must submit to the "will" of others, but if Jesus' washing of the disciples feet is not submission, I don't know what is, yet the Servant King is the model of freedom.

My reference to accomplishment was to your statement that the Body is the source of real love greater than any accomplishment of ours. I agree, but the Body is US. We are the Body of Christ! I do not mean to imply that the Body has realized itself entirely faithfully as the institution of the Church, but it remains the Church. Labor can still be sweet and disappointment, enlightening, for His yoke is easy and His burden light and James' letter seems to argue for the faithfulness of labor (don't dare assume I mean any kind of nonsense Protestant work ethic).

Poor Bryn must be pulling his hair out by now, if he's still reading these responses to his original thoughts. Let me add, finally, that dreaming about eternal life (which I do not suggest Ms. Day frittered away doing) and longing for some pie-in-the-sky Christiology (which I do not mean to suggest you do, Paul) denies the Word of God active and militant in the world now and in it's state of chaos. If God is not Emmanuel, what is the Gospel? Day was a devout Catholic, to my knowledge, and very rooted in society and community and I don't think her movement is called "Worker" for nothing.

Re: Cheating on the Church

paul munn — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 07:53:57 -0000

I still disagree about marriage, and don't see how the word "phenomena" or "symptom" makes any difference. God's making male and female "one flesh" is part of the creation, part of Eden. But maybe this is getting off the subject...

I can agree about the importance of accountability. But "In accountability we loose some of our imagined freedom, or selfishness, and in submission to each other in fact grow to a higher freedom"? I don't think so. Maybe this is a difference in our understanding of what "submission" means precisely (which has been discussed elsewhere here), but when you put "accountability" and "submission" together with "to each other" and "in community" it sure sounds like you're saying that we should give up our freedom and submit our will to the will of other human beings. And I don't think Jesus ever taught that.

We gain freedom through submitting our will to the will of God, which should never be confused with the "will" of any human group. Our accountability is always to God. Submitting our will to the will of the community, represented by leaders or vote or consensus, is only one more instance of "submitting again to the yoke of slavery." God never suppresses the individual but gives each of us greater freedom, while our humanly-instituted groups again and again suppress the individual for "the good of the community."

Also, I don't quite see how you make sense of this: "I'm not saying this is anything we accomplish, but you bet your bottom dollar it's labor intensive." What is this labor for, if it's not work to accomplish something? Again, the unity and love of the one Body is not our work, or a burden laid on us, depending on our efforts, but a complete, miraculous gift from God. Building our humanly defined and humanly organized "bodies," on the other hand, demands relentless work and is a burden, a heavy weight meant to press us into submission.

Re: Cheating on the Church

Chris — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 22:33:08 -0000

Yes, transcended, or transfigured, is a much better way of putting our eschatological state. And I agree with you 100%, Paul, that neither the Church nor marriage are the result of fallen humanity. But what I wrote was that they are phenomena of fallen humanity, not the result. Nothing is the result of fallen humanity. Even death is merely a symptom. And in our fallen state we have still come to attempt some ways of ensuring for each others' provision. That Jesus blesses marriage and establishes the Church is a sign that God's desire for humanity's restoration to himself can be witnessed in these two institutions.

As such, they are hardly personal expressions of romance or praise. Rather they are fixed within a context of community. In marriage, the community has a very real benefit to the success of the union in the provision and upbringing of offspring and a more stable society. In the Church, again the community has a very real benefit to the success of the union. We all seem to agree that stability can be misleading. Perhaps accountability is the word we should use to describe the necessity of devoted communal relationships. In accountability we loose some of our imagined freedom, or selfishness, and in submission to each other in fact grow to a higher freedom. I'm not saying this is anything we accomplish, but you bet your bottom dollar it's labor intensive. And because we are in this present darkness, we will be disappointed, just, hopefully, not to the point of despair. That's when another good word might come into play: endurance; not self-suffering drudgery, but sharing each others' burdens.

There is nothing diminutive about foretaste or illustration. Jesus gave a foretaste at Cana and used illustrations all the time in his parables. They point to the Kingdom though they, themselves, are not the Kingdom. Likewise the Body points to the Kingdom and marriage illustrates restoration, but both exist in the context of this era of the fall. The Kingdom is, indeed, among us, but the chaos of our present state keeps us looking through a mirror dimly. Disappointment results from our own idealistic images. Labor may be intensive, but, speaking as an organic gardener, in the endeavor of devotion, is not without reward.

Re: Cheating on the Church

paul munn — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:10:13 -0000

I think you go a little overboard there, Chris, with your first comment about marriage and the church. Jesus spoke of marriage by referring to Genesis 2 ("Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh"), which is the creation story before the "fall." Jesus' comment about there being no marriage in heaven doesn't say marriage is a result of "fallen humanity" but only that in heaven its limitations will be transcended, so we will all be "like the angels." I interpret that as meaning the deep unity of two people in marriage will extend to everyone in heaven. Jesus honored marriage highly.

Also the church (the Body, the kingdom of God) was presented by Jesus, not as a result of fallen humanity, but as the life of eternity made available to us now (as Dorothy Day used to say, "Eternal life begins now"). It was the life Jesus himself lived. Of course our "churches" are disappointing, as you say. But that's not because the church is merely a provisional "foretaste," but because our churches are not the one church, the Body. Where the Body exists, it is neither labor intensive nor even a little bit disappointing.

You make good points about the temptations of divorce and the hesitancy to commit. And obviously "skipping around from church to church" is not right, not what we are called to do. But there are many reasons for changing churches that are not "skipping around." It is a great good, part of the miracle of the Body of Christ, that we can move from one gathering of Christians to another (if called to do so by God) and find the same spirit, the one Body, there as well. Jesus' itinerancy shows the amazing breadth and flexibility of the kingdom of God, which no institution (church or otherwise) can come close to matching.

As I wrote earlier in this discussion, stability is not the point (and it can be quite a distraction if we are seeking that primarily). Our focus should be on staying connected to the one Body (which is Christ himself). This is both the source of real love of real people, and provides a stability that transcends anything we can accomplish by committing to some place or communal organization.

Actually it is not something we can accomplish at all (in that sense, it is not "intentional" community). We can only accept the invitation of Jesus and be welcomed into his Body, as a gift to us.

Re: Cheating on the Church

Chris — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:20:27 -0000

Both Church and marriage are phenomena, even if consecrated by God, of fallen humanity. In the resurrection, both are dismissed. The Church is not the Kingdom, but a foretaste. Likewise, marriage is not restored humanity, but an illustration. Both are highly labor intensive and often disappointing, but also wonderful and compelling.

Stability for stability sake, just as change for the sake of change, is pointless and self-serving. However to claim faithfulness to the Church while skipping around from church to church is like claiming faithfulness to marriage while going from spouse to spouse. Stanley Hauerwas wrote something to the effect, and I'm afraid I can't cite a reference, that divorce is so tempting because after a trial run one thinks one then knows what to expect and can get it right the next time. I also heard on NPR or 60 minutes or something a little while back the reason so many single 30-somethings remain uncommitted is because they believe, even if in a relationship, they can always find someone better.

Paul, the Apostle, may not have been a member of any specific congregation, though he did stay put while learning the Gospel. Jesus moved around so much because he had a mission to spread the Good News; the disciples were commissioned to do the same. But the people of the Church at Corinth or the Church at Ephesus, or Thesolenika, or Galatia, with some exceptions, I'm sure, were pretty stable as a community. Of course there were no other denominations to choose from and it wouldn't have been so easy just to leave the Church at Corinth to join the Church in Rome. We know those early Christians had to become terribly faithful and committed to each other, otherwise they might end up in the local arena with some hungry lions. We might not have to worry about lions today, but my fear is that transient congregants smack too sharply of the Churches at Laodicea or even Sardis. Jesus, though on the move, did retain a committed and stable group with him (even with their foibles, perhaps more committed than any of us).

Let me do say that any commitment of church membership IS done within the context of serving Christ. I know there are churches who's membership is very committed to one another, but are more like social clubs than witnesses to the Word of God. There have certainly been marriages of convenience rather than honest dedication. And there are times when both may be dissolved, but with great caution and discernment and as much publicity as their beginnings.

It's a messy business, human relationships and, honestly, being sanctified by God doesn't make them any easier.

Re: Cheating on the Church

Ted Troxell — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:43:04 -0000

You're right -- I did find that interesting. And this was telling: "Yet what we call 'community' (clubs, religious organizations, political groupings) are almost always of the institutional sort."

This is true enough, but I stubbornly use "community" to refer to what grows in and around and often in spite of the apparatus the ostensibly defines it. In teaching writing, for instance, I make reference to "discourse communities," in which the unwritten and often unacknowledged conventions of discourse are much more interesting than any specific structures.

I'll be more careful with certain words in the future. :)

Re: Cheating on the Church

paul munn — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:22:18 -0000

Here's some of my thoughts on "organic community". (You might also be interested in the stuff I found about "strong" and "weak" ties between people: click here, and read the three entries from the bottom of the page up)

Re: Cheating on the Church

Ted Troxell — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 03:40:25 -0000

So at about 3:20 this morning it hit me: Paul disclaims that bit about marriage "I, not the Lord..."

In my haste, I had forgotten about it. Please disregard my (now erased) line of inquiry that failed to take that into account.

Re: Cheating on the Church

Jesse Evans — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:27:55 -0000

Ya know, I know what you're saying, with the parallels between marriage and church commitment. Obviously, as a Christian, our first commitment is to God, the Father. And then, our commitment is to each other, the Body/Bride of Christ, aka The Church.

Now, I don't think that hopping between your local congregations means that you are in effect being unfaithful to The Church. However, if you love those folks that you see every Sunday, then you won't take switching churches lightly.

There are plenty of times when we might feel neglected, offended, or just plain hurt by policies of or incidents that occurred at our local church. And these things might continue to occur so that if you weren't offended at first, your emotions will eventually be overcome by these perceived wrong-doings.

Now, if you don't feel love towards these folks who are inflicting wrong or are standing by seemingly complacent and uncaring, switching to a different congregation might seem appealing. It's easy to just walk away and leave the bastards to their own destruction.

But what I got out of this article was that, if you love someone (and that includes the members of your current congregation), you will reach out to them with love. This involves communication, care, sensitivity, and compassion. In my family, when my brothers - or even my parents, for that matter - do something that hurts me, or when they start acting stupid, I let them know. I do my best not to hurt their feelings, or blast them with negative comments, but I stick around long enough to get my point across and talk it out with them.

I am constantly learning, and something that I am slowly realizing is that if you want to change the world, you have to start at home.

Re: Cheating on the Church

Ted Troxell — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:46:46 -0000

Interestingly, I use "community" roughly the same way -- to refer to something organic and not coterminous with organizational or institutional structures. I don't think I see things in quite as stark of terms, and there are certainly some points of disagreement: I'm not sure about your exegesis of Luke 17:20-21 or the conflation of body and kingdom imagery. But when it comes to the relationship of body and community I don't think we're that far apart. I'd suggest that you load the word "community" with different baggage than I do.

Re: Cheating on the Church

paul munn — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:29:16 -0000

That last question is a good one, like "how can we love the God we cannot see if we do not love the person we can see?"

And I agree, as long as our commitment is to love those real people, valuing those real relationships. But so often the commitment (in church membership ceremonies, for instance) is not to those real people but to "the church," the organization, the institution. The actual people involved in the church keep changing, different people move into and out of the pews and the various leadership roles, but we are supposed to keep our same commitment to the institution and relate to the leadership in the same way because the roles (the offices, the titles) are the same, though the actual people have changed.

So is our commitment to love, which can only be in actual relationships with real people, and in obedience to the one God Who is Love, or is our commitment to the abstract institution, with its own definition of membership, its own group identity, and its own dogma, all determined by agreement of the people in that group?

Re: Cheating on the Church

Bryn Harding — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 20:04:08 -0000

thanks for raising this issue.

this was one thing that i was really trying to navagate closely in writing this article. i agree with you that really we are part of One Body, amd our loyalty to this one body comes before our commitment to the congregations we happen to be a part of.

that being said, i still think that radical committment to the congregations we are a part of is of often over looked importance. that's what i think i was really trying to get at. There are ok reasons to leave one congregation for another, but those choices should be made in careful, attentive discernment through the holy spirit. Not comsumeristically or arbitrarily. How can we expect to be committed to the One Body if we don't first know how to be committed to the group of people who make up the Body of Chirst to us on a daily basis?

Re: Cheating on the Church

paul munn — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:58:24 -0000

By the way, I didn't mean to criticize the folks in Chicago, who are good friends and have lots of valuable experience and insights to offer. Their history, I think, just shows the limitations of commitment to place and congregation.

Yes, the references to contracts and rules and identity and membership were not directed at you, Ted. But I think they are always a part of churches, the local "bodies" we form and institutionalize. Marks that distinguish them from the one Body.

People often ask me, "where is this Body"? Usually they ask challengingly, but sometimes honestly, curiously. Maybe the best answer is the one Jesus gave:

"The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, 'Lo, here it is!' or 'There!' for behold, the kingdom of God is among you." (Lk 17.20-21)

I found the Body in that community in Chicago, and here at the farm. Also in hundreds of churches and homes I visited all across the country. In individuals with a common spirit, the one Spirit, but also in gatherings where that spirit was seen in long-term, interwoven relationships. But you can never say "there it is," because the gathering, the membership, the institutional community you can point to always includes much that is not the Body, and excludes many (not just by locality but by identity and creed and membership) that are part of the Body.

Notice I use "the kingdom of God" and "the Body" interchangeably. They exist throughout and mixed in with our organizations and structures, never depending on them (or limited by them), usually in spite of them, like Jesus and his disciples' activity in the midst of the Jewish temple and the Roman empire.

Where the members of the Body are, the Body is there.

Re: Cheating on the Church

Daniel Medina — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:47:42 -0000

Let me also add that I think there is an inherent danger in suggesting that membership in a church always equates membership in the Church. Let me say as well that I'd compare this to the couple that claims that there isn't anything wrong with having a friend of the opposite sex which is a confidant and that there's nothing more to it. Here's the thing, when we begin to drift away from our wife or husband and seek emotional support and "understanding" outside of the marriage bonds - we are committing emotional adultery. We cannot forget our first love. We cannot drift to historical traditions, denominationalism or any other expression of post-denominationalism and consider that to be "the" expression of life together - of the true Church. I know of too many people who feel that they are betraying a spouse by leaving a church, but too much of what was going on was already contrary to the Kingdom and at no time was there any desire or intention for even as much as a conversation to happen in order to foster genuine dialogue and healing to occur. The "daily business of church" was fostering emotional adultery, codependency & guilt - just to name a few dysfunctions to occur and break the sacred bond of marriage between us and the Most High.

Re: Cheating on the Church

Daniel Medina — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:37:17 -0000

Absolutely, Paul. I agree - wholeheartedly. I pray I didn't come across as having suggested we wait around for the "leaders" to lead. By no means. We should challenge, admonish and move ahead - pass them by - if need be, in order to remain authentic and faithful to the marriage between the Bridegroom and the Bride of Christ.

Re: Cheating on the Church

Elizabeth — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:17:11 -0000

Interesting post. I am coming at things from the opposite perspective - I have been a member of the same church for 27 years (since I was two years old ) and my husband and I are in the process of leaving it. It feels like a divorce to me, and has been a most difficult decision. I feel like I am betraying someone, failing someone, etc.

Re: Cheating on the Church

Ted Troxell — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:09:37 -0000

The Chicago story strikes me as an example of an ideal (stability or rootedness) being clung to in spite of a concrete reality that might have pointed them in another direction. But anything, even the best things, can become a totem or fetish or idol. Anyway, I'm not advocating that we take vows of stability -- I can't even live it out myself. I do think the example of Benedictine stability can help us consider alternatives to our contemporary rootlessness.

Where did the bit about social contracts come from (besides Rousseau, whom I did not invoke), or deciding identity, rules and membership? Perhaps these are things you feel automatically come along for the ride that are problematic? I guess I'm not sure why they came up. To me, these things are ancillary to community.

Lastly, where do I find this one Body? In all our conversations, I've been a bit fuzzy about that.

Re: Cheating on the Church

paul munn — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:50:07 -0000

Yes, I agree we should not excuse them but challenge them, especially when they claim to be representing Jesus. I just also think we shouldn't wait for them.

Re: Cheating on the Church

paul munn — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:33:12 -0000

Yes, I didn't mean to say our communities need to look exactly like Jesus' ministry, but only that his way of life challenges the ideal of stability. His commitment and constancy involved something broader (and more stable, I think) than a vow to stay in one place, or with the same local gathering.

It's probably also worth mentioning what I observed in an urban community near Chicago, which has been located in the same neighborhood for over fifty years. They were very intentional in their commitment to that place and the people there. But something odd happened. Though the intentional community remains, almost all of the people have changed, and even the neighborhood is vastly different. The institution (organization, "corporation") stayed the same, but the vast majority of the people in membership came and left over the years, and the surrounding neighbors also changed, the neighborhood becoming more and more gentrified (due in large part to their nurturing) so that it is no longer a challenging, needy area but a comfortable, suburban one. Weird, huh? A few of them were committed to stability but most everyone (and everything) around them was not, so their work and goals and even structure also had to keep changing.

So who are they (and we) committed to? An organization, whose actual members (the real people) keep changing? A place, that never stays the same even if we try to? You see what I mean? Did Jesus teach this kind of un-stable stability?

I agree about marriage. I think Paul wrote too starkly when he said marriage means being torn between pleasing your spouse and pleasing God. But I think it is a serious temptation. And, yes, I think it's the "commitment" part that is problematic. We promise our spouse one thing, and our boss another, and our church, and our kids, and pretty soon there are all these demands that we don't have enough time to possibly fulfill, and tensions over who has priority, with each demanding we honor our commitment. Each of these certainly can (and does) demand more of us than there is to go around. But God doesn't. He only asks of us what we can do and what is right and loving for us to do to everyone involved, which he determines. And he offers us one focus, "follow me."

I agree that this love (living our commitment to God) happens in real, long-term relationships and communities. And interacting with them helps us learn what love really means. But they never define love, even if we make agreements or commitments (social contracts?) with them; only God defines love. At best, they can help us understand the God Who is Love so we can obey him together.

In the many "bodies," the identity and rules and membership are decided by the agreement of the people involved. But not so in the one Body.

Re: Cheating on the Church

Ted Troxell — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:41:10 -0000

I never liked the dog anyway. :)

I'm not willing to throw the Benedictines under the bus. They're part of our history, and we can learn from them. And I'm inclined to agree with Berry (and Benedict) that a commitment to local communities might, given our cultural condition, be good for us. I'm not sure being able to map this onto the literal details of Jesus' ministry model is as important as you're making it, so I don't see where the idea of conflicting commitments really comes in.

The way the Jerusalem community organized itself in Acts 2 doesn't look to me like a carbon copy of Jesus' ministry. What we know about Ephesus doesn't look like either one of those. And so on. These, too were experiments that we can learn from. In keeping with your point about the primacy of love, when Paul and John critique various local communities, they don't seem to do so on the basis that the believers in those communities failed to follow Jesus' wandering model of ministry, but for failure to model Jesus' example of self-sacrificial love.

While commitment to a local community can get in the way (so, too, can marriage), I don't think it does so inherently. Maybe using the word "commitment" is problematic? I don't think it needs to be. Marriage and church life can both be crucibles for growing in this kind of love, and avenues for expressing this kind of love, which of course should extend beyond the marriage relationship and the local community.

Maybe Bryn meant something more, but when I speak of commitment to such things, I don't mean an uncritical fealty that even God can't trump, but a way of steeling ourselves against too-quickly abandoning such opportunities to work out (sacramentally, perhaps?) what it looks like to love in this way -- what our undivided loyalty to Christ looks like on the ground.