Church Voices

You can disagree with me, but I think its fair to say that the production of quality Christian art especially in the area of fiction has been pretty much non-existent for awhile now. Sure, you’ve got occasional bright spots like CS Lewis or Tolkien, but for the most part Christian fiction has been boringly derivative, see Peretti, Frank and LaHaye, Tim as prime examples.

The problem with these kinds of works, isn’t just one of quality (though that argument has been made). It has to do with imagination. These are largely just theological aphorisms crudely dressed up as story. Not all that different than the Veggie Tales movie about Jonah. Nothing particularly wrong with that so long as your goal is to do nothing more than entertain the average Family Christian Bookstore shopper. Naturally, the biggest problem with that sort of entertainment is that its preaching to the choir. Its red meat for red meat eaters, and the chances of a vegetarian even being aware of their existence is… well, you know the old saying about hell and snowballs.

Recently, I was listening to the podcast in which two ideas were being toyed with. The first was the idea of elitism. The opinion offered was that elitism largely means “you don’t like the things I like” with the example being a studier of western literature being unaware of what sports team is in town. The only downside the podcasters could find was the example of a professor who hired a plumber and realized he couldn’t even begin to make conversation because literature professors are from Jupiter and plumbers are from Mercury.

But here’s something the podcasters missed amidst their talk of manual labor and Don Quixote, the reason why great works of western civilization are great works of western civilization is because they communicate great truths of the human existence in ways that plumbers and preachers, or at least plumbers anyway can understand intuitively. In other words, subjects that interest elitists only became subjects that interest elitists by first conquering the hearts and minds of the blue collar everyman. There is, after all, a reason that Albert Camus and Friedrich Nietzsche wrote largely in fiction, while the most highly praised philosophers of today generally don’t.

Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, the relatively recent strains of western Christianity has managed to largely stamp out these types of potent communication. Although, like the first wisps of weeds appearing at Chernobyl there are some signs of life starting to appear. It began with reflective personal narratives written by people like Donald Miller. Obviously, these aren’t the purely fictional accounts we’ve been discussing, but they do contain seeds of that larger truth reflected through the account of the author. And these types of books have proliferated over the last decade or so.

And then, relatively recently, there has been a sighting of a species long since believed to be extinct. An honest-to-God work of fiction that reveals some of the more mind bending properties of God in an engaging, emotional, and well written way. Its like a woolly mammoth lumbered into Manhattan on a busy Monday afternoon. The only question that remains is whether or not we’ll see more of these types of work. Obviously, everything written can’t be Homer’s Iliad, but just like a natural eco-system, you’ve got to have zebras out there for a sabre toothed tiger to survive.

A sermon sighting? Why yes it is.

As I do some strategic planning for a sermon series at the first of the year about the people of God (creatively entitled the People of God) I am reminded of a few bits of theology that are extremely helpful in interpreting the scriptures, especially the Old Testament when it comes to the application of the scriptures.

1. In the Old Testament the people of God is the nation of Israel. It is defined by the covenant initiated by God to Abraham and is primarily made up of the blood descendants of Abraham, and takes the traditional form of a nation-state.

2. In the New Testament (and today) the people of God is the church. It is defined by the covenant initiated by God through Christ’s ministry, death, and resurrection and no longer is primarily defined by a bloodline, or confined to the form of, or the citizens of a nation-state (Galatians 6.14-16, Hebrews 4.8-11)

3. When applying commands, or promises found in the Old Testament, or drawing from Old Testament narratives always remember that the application is for the Church, and not a particular nation.

If you’re living in a country that has a strong Judeo-Christian history it can be easy to forget these three principles and apply the Old Testament covenant of God to a nation, due to the nationalistic terms in which it is often couched. However, if you happened to live under a Roman Caesar who brought the full might of Rome against the church, it was probably a little easier.

Also, if I may re-phrase scripture a bit: nations whither and countries fade, but the covenant of our God stands forever. At one time the church was split into two fairly equal parts: the east (Orthodox) and the west (Roman Catholicism), today those two denominations are far from equal. Roman Catholicism clocks in with 968 million adherents and the Orthodox church claims only 217 million.

So what happened to create such a difference? In a word: communism. Eastern Europe, where the Orthodox church traditionally flourished saw the individual countries in that area turn from a traditionally religious government and population to a hardline atheistic government that did its best to destroy the church. The result: a much smaller Orthodox church.

And this is the principle I’m driving at. If all currently existing nations were to disappear beneath the tide of history tomorrow it wouldn’t affect in the least the people of God in the slightest. Our citizenship and loyalty doesn’t belong to any country, it belongs to the Kingdom of God. Lets make sure the application of our theology always reflects that fact.

Ever notice how much of the Torah is devoted to commanding the people of God to treat aliens and strangers well? For example:

The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.
Leviticus 19.34

That’s just one among many. Go ahead and check out all the commands concerning aliens, and strangers living among the people of God.

I rarely comment on political issues, but the issue of immigration is one in which the current people of God need to be faithful to the Biblical admonition concerning aliens. While I don’t think there is a direct 1:1 correlation (as the United States is not God’s country in the way that Israel was) I do think these commands relate directly to how the church should be viewing the current immigration situation in the United States. And, while I don’t think these Biblical commands force a Christian to vote for entirely open borders, I do think that much of what is said (both how it is said and what is being said) about immigrants , legal or otherwise, is shameful and shouldn’t be endorsed by, or given the support of the people of God.

In the midst of an email exchange between Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell came this thought about the failure of underdogs and terrible sports franchises to innovate and take chances came this line:

I think, for example, that the idea of ranking draft picks in reverse order of finish — as much as it sounds “fair” — does untold damage to the game. You simply cannot have a system that rewards anyone, ever, for losing. Economists worry about this all the time, when they talk about “moral hazard.” Moral hazard is the idea that if you insure someone against risk, you will make risky behavior more likely. So if you always bail out the banks when they take absurd risks and do stupid things, they are going to keep on taking absurd risks and doing stupid things. Bailouts create moral hazard. Moral hazard is also why your health insurance has a co-pay. If your insurer paid for everything, the theory goes, it would encourage you to go to the doctor when you really don’t need to. No economist in his right mind would ever endorse the football and basketball drafts the way they are structured now. They are a moral hazard in spades. If you give me a lottery pick for being an atrocious GM, where’s my incentive not to be an atrocious GM?

Apply accordingly to churches, elders, ministers, Sunday school teachers, and all other workers of God’s kingdom.