values: what are we even here for?

So what is it that we believe in? What are our values, our very reason for being? I think the better way to frame this question is to ask what is at the bottom of things, where is that point where we can no longer ask why?

• it used to be freedom, democracy, justice (loosely defined), liberty.
• then it became freedom, peace, justice (as opposed to injustice), and civil liberties.
• then it became God. and the church--and nothing else.

but now i'm no longer so opposed to the idea of God being revealed in those first two groups of words. i'm not against the idea that God is God amongst and with God's people, in the messiness of the church, in the joyful hope of the incarnation, even an incarnation that led to the cross. if you like theology, keep reading. if not, skip to the next paragraph. I've been reading David Hartman for my Judaism class and he is responding in large part to Soloveitchik and Leibowitz who, for the sake of this blog, represent a rough parallel between Lodahlian humanism/ pluaralism and Wrightian radical orthodoxy (if you're not from Loma, i apologize for the inside reference). At the same time, I'm reading Hauerwas and trying to understand the possibility of a life that is completely devoted to God and the church as the bottom of things--as the final "because"--but that isn't willing to throw out human agency and ability to legitimately affect the world and even God! I just can't accept a God who created people to live like automatons on this planet, going through the motions of religion without the power to act upon their surroundings in a meaningful way. maybe that's reductionist and modernist of me, but there has to be a third way that finds something like human free will--but not based out of abstract Enlightenment notions of "freedom," "liberty," and "rational beings," but rather out of the creative and redemptive theologies of the creation narratives and, more importantly, the passion narrative (complete with the resurrection as more than a postscript). why would God redeem robots? i can't imagine that that would ever be worthwhile for God. if God is God and there is no particular worth to humanity choosing the good, God did not need to create humanity at all, but rather could have just remained God in God-land, happy for all time. But if God really did create from an outpouring of the internal love of God, then there is something to us. And I want to learn to affirm that properly, without throwing out the church, but rather recognizing the church as the primary mediator between God and the world, and therefore the locality from which we, as individuals, go to gain true life in God and God's Son, Jesus the Christ.

i'm being trained in social work which, for one called to ministry, is quite interesting. with whom does my allegiance lie? the suppressed 8th grader in me wants to say, "F the man!" and claim that i have no responsibilities to the state, but only to the church. but basing my decision on that sort of undealt-with anger is probably not a very mature way to choose one's life position (i think i just made up that term). as a minister of the gospel, i have a responsibility to people, and people live in liberal nation-states and those states define much of their reality. So, though i may owe Uncle Sam no official allegiance, though i may not feel the need to hum "America the Beautiful" in my spare time or say the pledge to the flag, at the same time people live here, in the world where taxes and traffic lights and evictions and immigration injustices, not to mention capitalism, commercial warfare and voting are all very real things.

so where does my allegiance lie? clearly, it lies with God as revealed in Jesus Christ above and beyond all else. But Jesus lived under Roman oppression. I shall live under American oppression. I shall recognize that although the American system is false, it may be the best way to go about living the gospel with people. until Jesus returns to set up his Kingdom, i am stuck here in this idolatrous kingdom and i can find the good in it and use the good with the knowledge that i do not use that good for the sake of the state or the betterment of American society, but rather for the sake of Jesus who calls me to minister to real live people. So, when i help people to sign up for Section 8 housing, i'm not selling them out before God. When i ask a person who comes to me (client) what her goals and dreams are, there is a sense in which i am facilitating a futile desire. but, i pray, at the realization of this desire, she will see that there is more to life than, say, housing vouchers. she will see that Jesus is the way to real life. not self-actualization.

my goal as a social worker is to enable people, not towards self-actualization (whatever that means) but rather toward a recognition that our spirituality permeates and defines much of our total reality, though is clearly not the basis for all reality, e.g. the borderline-homeless mother who would rather work on Sunday mornings than go to church so that she can have her "reality" defined for her through the Eucharist (notice that those who write about our absolutely spiritual identity do so from the comfort of their homes or offices, provided by the system they hate). My goal as a pastor is not so different and i actually see the two as mingling together. it is to offer people concrete hope in the example of compassion lived out by Jesus Christ, of which my and their life is (should be) a parable.

this got real long and, i fear, convoluted. i apologize. i guess that's what happens when your emotions throw up on a keyboard.

shalom to you all. May Jesus shine from within you as he works to transform you.