William Stringfellow on the Church

This is one of those quotes that haunts and challenges me. What would this look like if our churches believed this? What would if look like if we as Christian’s believed this?  If after reading you have a strong reaction to this quote, or just a thought I would love to hear it, so feel free to comment below.

“One who is a participant in the Church, one who is incorporated into this Body, one who is baptised into this company has not only the personal freedom to expend his own life without guile or calculation or fear of death – or any more minor prudence – but also, characteristically, he is indifferent to whether or not the churches maintain an amiable reputation in society, or whether or not the churches have much wealth and a sound investment program, or whether or not the churches, or the ecclesiastical authorities, have much political influence. On the contrary, the Christian is suspicious of respectability and moderation and success and popularity. And this is so because the genius of the Christian life, both for a person and for the company of Christians, is the freedom constantly to be engaged in giving up its own life in order to give the world new life. All the questions of status and power and reputation, and all defensive, conservative and self-serving questions about preserving the institutional existence of the churches are matters of some indifference except insofar as they impede the ministry of the Body of Christ, entice men into false religion and a wrong understanding of what the Christian society is, and lure them into misleading notions of what the Christian life is all about.”
-William Stringfellow, A Public and Private Faith, pg. 78

Reflecting the Image of God

What does it mean to believe something?  There are many things that I say I believe that have very little influence on how I live.  I am horrified when I realize that the beliefs that do govern how I live are often totally contrary to what I would vocalize about what I believe.  How were the beliefs that do govern how I live so ingrained in my life?  Some I remember being taught, those that were verbally explained to me and then shown in practice.  Then there are those that I don’t ever remember being told, or explained, but still in some way, at some time were impressed on me.  I feel that one such belief is the way in which I relate to the rest of creation.

Growing up in a conservative evangelical church, I remember my ministers being weary of anything that reeked of environmentalism, because it may lead to pantheism.  Beyond that, I never remember being taught my role in the created order.  That being said, reflecting on how I lived, and sadly how in many ways I continue to live, I definitely had a set belief in regards to this relationship.

I believed that God’s ultimate goal was to create people, and that in order for that to happen, God had to create some place to put them.  The earth then is just an accessory created for people to use as they see fit.  You could compare it to Barbie dolls.  Barbie’s are what you collect, the homes and cars and other such things are just accessories created for Barbie.  This isn’t to say that I was totally oblivious to “the environment”.  Mine was one of the first generations to be taught extensively about the three R’s in school.  This being said, the rest of the world was definitely secondary to the needs of humans.

Where this came from I am not sure of, but I thinking it was rooted in my understanding of Genesis 1:26-28, where God refers to people as being created in the image of God.  Does this not mean that we were the point of creation?  Were we not the final goal of God’s art project?  Growing up in the church this was reinforced over and over again.  My first glimpse that it was possible to understand the doctrine of the image of God differently was when I was reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Creation and the Fall”.  I can’t remember exactly what he said, but I remember being fascinated by his explanation of what it means to be created in the image of God.

Later on, while studying sociology, I remember hearing about Charles Cooley and his “Looking Glass Theory”.  The theory states that we discover our identity by observing how others react to us.  For example, I know that I am funny if others laugh at me,  I know that I am either smart or stupid by how other people treat me, I know that I am worthy or worthless by how others interact with me.

This fascinated me and I began to look at the image of God through this lens.  What if we were to think of bearing the image of God as each of us being a mirror?  We are reflectors of God to the rest of the world.  If we are the image of God then when others look at us they should see God.  This obviously does not mean that we are God, but rather when others look to us to discover their identity, they will see themselves as God sees them; worthy of love and grace.  They will see themselves as the good creations they were created to be.  This was a huge change in how I understood my call to be created in the image of God, but it still did not challenge my assumptions around the created order.

Eventually I had to do a paper for a course on the book of Romans, and chose Romans 8:18-25 as my text.  While studying for that paper I began to realize that when we regain our status as reflectors of God it does not just benefit other people, but that creation will be freed as well.  This meant that our being made in the image of God was intricately linked to our call to “subdue and have dominion” over creation.  It also meant that the understanding of the word “dominion” was not the type of “domination” we had been enacting on the earth.  Jesus had dominion over the powers and principalities, and over all of creation, and he revealed that by dying on the cross to redeem them.  If this is the case then our call to have dominion over creation is vastly different then what we have been living out.  It would seem that the rest of creation wasn’t created for us, but rather that we were created for the rest of creation.

This was an important step for me to make.  To begin to see myself as being created to serve creation, but I still needed to go further.  I needed to challenge my deeply held belief that being created in the image of God somehow made me something other then a creature, that I am in someway disconnected from creation.  This is something that both Ellen Davis’ (Scripture, Culture and Agriculture) and Norman Wirzba’s (The Paradise of God ) books have argued against.  This is also a point that is shown as false when the creation story is read in more detail.  God creates people from the dust of the ground.  The same dust of the ground that God makes every tree and plant grow out of (Gen. 2:7-9).  We were not created separately and then placed on the earth, but rather we are a part of creation, created from the same dirt.  Not only that, we are totally and utterly dependent on the rest of creation for survival.  Though we hold a special place in creation, we are still a creature, and are therefore linked to the rest of creation in a very intimate way.  St. Francis’ referral to “brother sun, sister moon” shows that he understood that rather then being totally other then creation, we are rather intimately related to the rest of creation and therefore it’s struggles, pains and strife are ours as well.  We were created as a part of the whole, rather then the whole being created for us.

This sounds like a simple correction but the evidence that we believe the exact opposite is all around.  I remember talking with another youth leader to a youth about why Christian’s can eat meat, and the other leader, who is a very thoughtful woman, said to the youth that God created animals for our use.  I remember this sitting badly with me, but realizing that this is probably, if people were to voice their beliefs, the belief of many, if not most Christians.

Where does this belief come from?  Is it possible that this is the same issue that Adam and Eve struggled with at the beginning of scripture?  Is it that we are not content with our place as creature and instead want to claim a higher place for ourselves?  Adam and Eve ate the fruit because they wanted to be like God rather then to reflect God.  We are uncomfortable accepting our place in the created order as interdependent beings intricately linked with the rest of creation, because to do so would be to admit that we are not God, we are not creator, that we do no have absolute autonomy and control, that we are not rulers of our own lives.  This goes against everything that our culture is built upon.

Freeing ourselves from the bonds of this self idolatry will not be easy.  To use Christ’s way of living out dominion as a model for how we live out dominion over creation means a total revamping of our lives.  For me personally it means taking a long look at my everyday practices, those that I think are benign, and looking at them through a mindset of servanthood.  Is this action an act of a servant of creation or a tyrant over creation?  Am I reflecting a God who has created this planet as something good, or am I acting as one who sees this planet as something to be used and pushed aside?  And then I need to ask myself, am I willing to think of myself as being a part of creation?  Will I admit my reliance on the land?  Will I realize that the only reason I am alive is because of the grace shown to me by both God and the land?  Am I willing to acknowledge creation as a gift, and treasure it as such, realizing that therefore my very life is just such a gift?

My answer to these questions will reveal what I truly believe.  I can write out a description of what I believe intellectually about how I am to relate to the rest of creation, and about what it means to bear the image of God, but unless it is reflected in the way in which I live, it is meaningless.  I pray that I would begin to take the steps in my life to transform my intellectual musings into deep seeded beliefs.

Isaiah and the Perfect World

“A perfect world would be so boring!!” said the young woman in the middle of a youth discussion on Advent, “Our mistakes, our challenges, they are what make the world interesting.”

I was a little taken off guard. It had only been about a year since I had discovered that maybe the Christian hope did not end up with bodiless souls floating in an other worldly Heaven, but rather that it was the redemption of creation. When I discovered this I was transformed, my faith became infused with hope and passion. I was telling everyone, and I thought everyone would react like me. Advent took on a whole other meaning. We were waiting for the redemption and re-creation of the whole world, the coming of Heaven to Earth!!

How could anyone react to this news with “it sounds boring”? Why was she not overcome with excitement? Maybe it was the fact that the word “perfect” is loaded with such baggage that it does not adequately describe the redemptive vision. Maybe “perfect” depicts a world with no more mystery or discovery. Maybe “perfect” limits creativity.

All these things are true, perfect is a fully inadequate word to describe the age to come, but at the same time, I think there is something more. Maybe she had thought through the ramifications of what I was saying more then I had myself. Maybe she heard at that time a threatening to a system that she had flourished in.
She was like me, white and middle class, and to be those things in our world has its privileges. We benefit from corporate consumption. Though our very being is sucked out of us, for the most part we feel like the way things are is pretty great. We get cheap clothes, cheap gadgets and cheap food. We don’t have to cook, sew or grow things if we don’t want to, it is all at our disposal. Who cares if it is the middle of winter, we just drive down the road and a red juicy strawberry will be waiting for us to enjoy. And the best part is, we never have to know the real cost, we never have to see, hear or even acknowledge the pain that our lifestyle entails because it is all hidden from us, the corporations do the dirty work, and we just reap the benefits.

Isaiah’s description of the New Heavens and New Earth stands in direct opposition to this way of life. It seems that the hope that triumphantly cries out from this passage is one that acknowledges the nameless people who are oppressed by my lifestyle of eating what I want, when I want. It acknowledges the ones who pay the real price for my cheap new clothes which I will dispose of when I am told they are no longer “in style”. And not only are they acknowledged, but they are granted justice. Isaiah says “They will build houses and inhabit them; They will also plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They will not build and another inhabit, They will not plant and another eat”. As I read this I realize that the redemption of the world talked about in Isaiah and in Revelation and in all the scriptures in between are as much a judgement on the life that I lead as it is a freeing of those whom I enslave.

Isaiah is writing to bring hope to those like Estela Ramirez, whose story I came across in Trent University’s Student Newspaper “The Arthur” in an article written by my friend Rosie MacAdam. Rosie met Estela while working in El Salvador with the Maquila Solidarity Network. Estela worked in a factory called “Hermosa” which means “Beautiful” in English, but the conditions were anything but. Typical hours for Estela were 7am to 5pm with a 45 min. lunch break, but extra hours were mandatory so they would often have to work until 9pm.

She told a story of a time when they received a huge order from “Speedo” and for two months they worked 7 days a week 20 hours a day. They worked from 7 am until 5 pm, they had two hours to go home and eat supper, returned and worked from 7 pm until 5 am. They slept for two hours under their machines and woke up to start the day again at 7 am.

This obviously cannot happen without taking a toll on workers health. Exhaustion is compounded with verbal and emotional abuse. As well, because the lines of sewing machines are so tightly packed, the heat from workers machines cause many internal bladder infections and reproductive problems. Many of the workers, including Estela, came out of the factory with uterine cancer. Eventually the factory closed down leaving the workers without jobs and owing $850,000 in back wages.

For Estela, Isaiah is saying, this will not always be, this oppression will end, you will be free. But the message for those of us who wear the clothes that Estela makes is different. We are called to repent, to turn away from our life of mindless consumption. The Kingdom that is coming, and that is already here, is one of relationships. It does not allow me to stay in my self centered world, where I eat what I want, wear what I want, get what I want, and to hell with the consequences. Instead it calls for a connection with the earth from which my food comes. It calls for me to be connected in whatever way I can to the clothes that I where, and to the people who put their life into making them. It seems in this kingdom come, gardening, knitting, sewing, building, and eating, are all spiritual practices.

If I grow the vegetables that I eat I will become more aware of the impact my life has on the world in which I live and will also have a greater recognition of how dependent I am on the grace of the earth. If I raise the animals which I eat, I will have a greater respect for what has been sacrificed for my hamburger. If I make my own clothes, they will mean more to me then just a fashion statement, and will be less disposable.

As I reflect on this, the story of the rich younger ruler comes rushing into my head. It is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle then for a white, middle class guy to join a kingdom movement where we grow food and eat it, build houses and live in them, make clothes and wear them. A Kingdom where I am not an independent individual, but rather a part of world in which I am intricately connected and reliant on creatures, human and non human, for my flourishing and survival.

I can see why our culture is resistant to the idea of judgement, resurrection and cosmic redemption. A gospel that preaches these things is one that threatens all our structures right to their roots. Not just our secular structures, but this gospel threatens the very existence of the modern western church. Our churches are just as self centered and disconnected as we are as individuals. What if we were to preach to our churches that they are to give up all their trust funds and give them to the poor?

Is their hope for us in the end? It is so easy to reflect on how intrenched we are in the current culture of death and become overwhelmed by hopelessness. But it is here that Christ meets us, when we realize that we truly are oppressed by our wealth and power. It is when we call out that God hears us and slowly shows us the way to new life. It is a hard and difficult journey, one that ultimately will cost us our lives, for this Kingdom demands nothing less, but the hope which guides us on the journey will bring us life as it is meant to be. It is a hope that is anything but boring.