God and Country: The Dangers of American Patriotism in the Church

Our church here in Calais, Maine, has traditionally been a very “patriotic” church. There are a large number of veterans among our members, and the congregation often makes its nationalistic pride felt through such means as our special Memorial Day service and a wall in the fellowship hall honoring our veterans. I’ve blogged here before about some of the hyper-patriotic attitudes that rub me the wrong way, but in this piece I want to focus on some basic pastoral concerns I have about congregations who hold American patriotism and Christian faith a little too tightly bound together.

First, a few clarifications at the outset. This isn’t a critique of our church as such—it’s entirely understandable, even laudable in some sense, to honor veterans and to love our country. If there’s a fault here, it’s not a major fault. It’s rather the simple difficulty that arises from conflating two loves which probably ought to be held separately. This is a matter I haven’t been swift to address, mostly because it’s largely innocuous in comparison to many of the other problems our American churches are dealing with right now. But our church is in the process of thinking through these issues of faith and patriotism at the moment, so for the sake of clarifying my position I thought I’d spell my concerns out here. (I don’t think anyone in my congregation actually reads this blog, but the content isn’t anything different than what I’ve expressed in conversations to various church members over the past few weeks.) The second clarification is simply to note that much of my reflection on this subject has been shaped (but not fully determined) by Anabaptist influences. Truth be told, real Anabaptists would be shocked and dismayed by the patriotism of our church—having Sunday School kids recite the Pledge of Allegiance, considering putting an American flag up outside the church, etc.—and while I am not quite as shocked at the potential syncretism, I do find it troubling.

To put the matter in theological terms, we Christians are the citizens of two very different kingdoms—the Kingdom of God, and our earthly societies. And I believe our allegiance to the Kingdom of God should be held quite free and separate of our political allegiances. Christ instructed us to give both kingdoms their due (“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s”), but I don’t think he had in mind festooning church sanctuaries with Roman banners and emblems. Now, when I say that our allegiances should be held separately, I mostly mean that our political allegiances should not be allowed to invade our Christian faith. Our faith, however, should inform and influence and shape our political allegiances. Why? Because our citizenship in the Kingdom of God is the higher of the two loyalties. My identity as a Christian is eternal; my identity as an American is a passing affair. Some day my Americanism will simply be part of the beautiful diversity of the “melting pot” of heaven. I don’t expect that the USA will exist in the new heavens and the new earth for us to treasure and extol. But the church will persist. Christ’s kingdom will persist. So that’s where my highest loyalty lies. Thus my faith—my deepest identity—invades and determines my political allegiances, not the other way around. Our Christian identity is fundamental; our American identity is secondary.

And because the Kingdom of God is our highest loyalty, I consider it to be inappropriate to pledge allegiance to anything other than God himself in our churches. While the Pledge of Allegiance is fine and proper in other contexts, the church is an assembly of the Kingdom of God, and it is inappropriate for us to pledge allegiance to the US here in our churches. It is just as inappropriate as it would be for the whole US Senate to swear oaths to a Masonic order or their local Rotary clubs from the floor of the Senate chamber. The two things simply ought not to be put together, regardless of how appropriate or meritorious they may be elsewhere. My congregation loves and treasures the Boston Red Sox, but that doesn’t mean we should pin up Red Sox pennants around our sanctuary.

Thus I take my position against the saying of the Pledge of Allegiance in church, regardless of the circumstances, and against having an American flag flying outside on church property. (There is an American flag inside the sanctuary, but that’s such an old tradition that I’m not sure it’s worth the bother of dislodging it, and it’s happily tucked away into a corner sufficiently far away from the pulpit and altar.) The honoring of veterans in church is not quite as troubling. From my theological perspective, we must guard against such a practice being an extension of the cult of Americanism into the church, but as a celebration of community members who have made heroic sacrifices for the common good, I find it perfectly acceptable. (Although, to be fair, we ought to be doing the same thing for all those who make heroic sacrifices for the common good—policemen, firemen, teachers, social workers, etc.)

It’s worth remembering that Christ himself absolutely eschewed any taint of politicism or patriotism in his ministry. And his ministry, his example, is the foundation of the church. We should note that Christ could have easily encouraged patriotism in his church—his home country, after all, was Judea, populated by the chosen people of God. And everyone expected the Messiah to be a highly political, patriotic figure. Even one of his disciples was a Zealot, a Judean patriot. But although Jesus certainly focused his ministry on the Jews, there was no trace of patriotic nationalism whatsoever in what he did. In fact, he told Pilate quite plainly, “My kingdom is not of this world.” If Jesus himself, the Messiah, declined the patriotism that everyone thought would be proper and laudable for the Messiah, shouldn’t we be wary of conflating patriotism with faith in our own lives?

To make my case clearer, allow me to point out a few of the potential dangers of allying our American loyalties too closely with the practice of our faith:

First, and perhaps most troubling to me, it leads to a loss of the deep connection we should have with our brothers and sisters in Christ all around the world. We are more intimately connected (in a spiritual sense) with Christians in Swaziland than with our American neighbors, and our family loyalties should lie more strongly with the global church than with the USA. But in practice, this is seldom seen in American churches. During the Iraq war, all one heard about was the Americanist/political news. How many Christians showed any concern for the effects of the war on the native Iraqi Christian population? (In brief, the war was devastating for them, and several native church groups which stretched back more than a millennium and a half and constituted a decent minority of the Iraqi population a few years ago are now all but gone, forced to emigrate out because the war has raised Muslim/Christian tensions and made their ancient homeland unlivable.)

Second, it forces us to lose some of our prophetic voice against the abuses of the American system. Part of the mission of the church is to stand against injustice, but that can be hard to do if we conflate American patriotism and the faith. We too often shy away from denunciations of the ill effects of our materialism on other countries or from apologies for past American atrocities (against the Native Americans, for example), because such things make us sound “unpatriotic.” And so we mute the voice of the church.

Third, we tend to associate the enemies of America with the enemies of the church, and we lose the ability to love and pray for our enemies. Christ himself commanded us to love our enemies. But how many American Christians do you know who pray for the salvation of Osama bin Laden and the men of Al-Qaeda? According to Jesus, that’s what we should be doing, but our Americanism has blinded us to that calling. Far too many American Christians seem to believe that Muslims are our enemies, rather than the objects of our missional love and compassion.

Fourth, it leads to a tendency to associate American causes (especially wars) with righteous motives, whether or not that is the actual case. Fifth, it perpetuates the conflation of Americanism and Christianity in the eyes of other countries (much to the detriment of Christianity). When I was serving in missions in North Africa, I found it a fairly common assumption that Christianity was characterized by Hollywood, pornography, materialistic greed, and so on, mostly because Muslim countries associate the USA with Christianity, and we Americans (unfortunately) have only reinforced that assumption with our “God and country” syncretism. Sixth, it creates an unwelcoming environment in our churches for non-American Christians in our midst, especially those who might harbor justified resentment against America.

Seventh, it leads us to believe that certain American customs and morals are actually Christian, when in fact they are merely “optional” cultural add-ons to the Gospel or actually run against it (individualism, nuclear family systems, capitalism, “the American dream,” ways of dressing and eating, etc.), thus setting extra barriers in the way of experiencing the full force of the Gospel in our own lives and leading to an attitude of judgmentalism against those who practice the faith in a different cultural context. We are fostering the darkest kind of ethnocentrism—that which is fueled by ignorant religious opinion. And eighth, we run the risk of raising a generation who will be too subservient to American patriotism (the lesser of the two loyalties) when American interests run against the interests of the Kingdom of God.

These are just a few potential dangers, and I think they’re real enough to give us pause when we consider adding blatant shows of American patriotism to our churches.

Reflections on an Autumn Walk

Cascades of fire surround me, 
Emblazoned on the trees. 
As summer turns to winter, 
All God’s verdure holds its breath 
And then, brilliant as the setting sun, 
Cries “Holy is the Lord!” 
The emerald bounties of the woods 
Turn softly, and turning thus, 
Reflect the radiance of his throne.

Our God, our God, our God is a consuming fire, 
And the whole earth is full of his glory.

I walk in sunlit fields of grace, 
Down paths where peace has showered down, 
In golden leaves, from Abba’s treetops. 
The gulls splash in quiet shallows, 
And on the age-old lumber of the docks 
A cormorant dries its wings. 
The robins—young and full of life, 
Fly down to a string of pearled puddles, 
And shake their feathers there. 
Along the river the eagle watches, 
Full fierce and proud in majesty, 
While the cold northern waters 
Sluice out through river-stones 
And meet the bitter sea.

Our God, our God, our God is a consuming fire, 
And the whole earth is full of his glory. 

Amid these wild wonders walk I: 
I the Image, 
I the crown, 
I the master of creation. 
And I am humbled here. 
Humbled to have seen the glory of our God 
In tree and bird and stream, 
And to know that he loves me. 
He paints the world in breathless tones 
Of wild and violent beauty, 
And in this dance of peace and splendor, 
He invites me in.

Our God, our God, our God is a consuming fire, 
And the whole earth is full of his glory

Becoming Missional (and, apparently, very worried)

This weekend I attended the annual convention of the American Baptist Churches of Maine (ABCOM). It was my first convention as a pastor within our covenant-community of churches, and it was good to meet some of my fellow-workers in the Lord. There was the usual mix of worship and business and socializing, and the main theme of the weekend centered around encouraging our churches toward becoming more missional. And the thought here is not simply to do more door-to-door evangelism, but to do community development programs that meet our neighbors at their point of need. A wonderful thing to aim for, certainly. It was inspiring and powerful, and a lot of good ideas and resources were offered for the equipping of the churches toward that end.

I give that positive introduction to mitigate what I’m about to say. I’m a “critical thinker” by nature, and I have a few critiques I wanted to address; but overall it was a very good convention. I should also explain at the outset, for those readers who live in other corners of the country or world, that Maine (and New England as a whole), is rapidly abandoning its traditional Christian faith and becoming widely and aggressively secular. Among my own generation (people in their twenties), I would estimate that 95% in the Calais area choose to have nothing to do with church.

So that’s the situation. But let’s get to my critique of the convention’s presentation of the missional church. The main thing that bothered me was the tone of it all. Making our churches more missional is all well and good. The church should indeed be reaching out beyond its own walls. Missions—including home missions—is in my blood. Nothing excites me more than the thought of the expansion of God’s kingdom, of revival and new believers. However, one of the characteristic downfalls of those who urge us on toward missional activity is that they sometimes tend to downplay the normal life of the church. And I heard some of that this weekend. I heard things like, “We need to stop trying to maintain what we have inside our walls, and reach out to those outside our walls.” One got the feeling that a few of the commentators wanted us to define church life in terms of its missionality. I wanted to say, “Hey, hold on here! Mission is important, but it’s not the only thing. Our worship to God is important. Our church meetings are important. The preaching of the Word of God is an act of wonder, a holy mystery. The nurture of the Body is important. The celebration of the sacraments and ordinances is important. What we do inside our church walls, week in and week out, is inherently valuable and worthwhile, no matter how many people are in the pews. Let’s be missional, yes! But let’s not talk trash about the beauties of congregational life and worship in doing it!” The truth is, mission is a vital part of being a church. But being a church is not reducible to mission alone. Churches should not be forced to feel themselves failures if their outreach goes unnoticed and their pews go empty. The worship of God and the mere metaphysical fact of being the church is extraordinary and inherently valuable.

Another characteristic downfall is that, in their attempts to motivate us toward action, missional speakers tend to become preachers of doom-and-gloom spiritual futurescapes. A large chunk of what I heard this weekend revolved around a sense of mourning for the rapidly-degenerating state of American culture and spirituality, especially among our young people. There was a palpable sense of desperation, as if we were the embattled few fighting for the last defense of the world. While it’s true that a lot depends on us and on our efforts, and that our culture is moving in a truly mournful direction of spiritual malaise, the tone of these meetings lacked something of the powerful, optimistic trust in the sovereignty of God that probably should be there.

We serve a God who is infinitely able to accomplish his will. He is in control, and we already know that the end of the story is an end of ultimate triumph and of the global celebration of the kingdom of God. Even if Maine of the 21^st century becomes a heathen wasteland, it’s not the end of the world. It’s not the end of God’s church. It’s happened before, in other places; it’s happening right now in Europe and Canada; and for all we know, in three hundred years the pendulum might well swing all the way back to another Great Awakening.

Here’s how I see it: I work and pray for revival, here and now, in Calais and in Maine as a whole. But unless God sovereignly begins to move through our efforts in a new and surprising way, it’s not going to happen. What will happen is this: the old, faithful generations will die off. My generation will continue their slide into churchlessness. Many small churches will have to close their doors. Popular culture will become even more suspicious and hostile to Christianity. (I don’t anticipate actual governmental persecution of Christians on anything close to the scale of the historical persecutions of the faith, partly because I respect the stability and fairness of the American system of government; but I suppose it is a distant possibility). Our culture will become more amoral and hedonistic than it already is, leading to a degeneration of public life. Vices like drugs and pornography will continue to abound; moral relativism will take hold. Public life will be largely ruled by popular media—TV, Internet, etc.

Into this rather bleak vision of New England’s future, the vast breakthrough of the Gospel in Latin America, Africa, China, and, God willing, India and the Middle East, will trickle back into the post-Christian West. The US and Europe will continue to become mission fields for the African and Chinese churches, and their vitality might just prove strong enough to swing the pendulum back in our spiritually-starved society. That’s what I think will happen. Faith may be waning in Maine right now, and it will probably wane further. But it’s waxing brilliant and strong elsewhere. God is still in control.

It’s an old story—it happened in all the areas which are now the Muslim heartlands, and which were previously the greatest bastions of Christian faith—Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor—their Christian communities saw the societies around them torn away from the Gospel and the true faith, and they had to adjust to life as a small, faithful remnant community in the midst of their non-Christian and anti-Christian neighbors. It might have seemed like a desperate situation, as if the survival of the Christian faith itself was in question. But, in an unforeseen development, the Gospel had penetrated and won the barbarian, pagan hinterlands of northern Europe and Russia, and now, after a millennium and a half, the Gospel is finally beginning a powerful return to its old home in the Middle East.

It reminds me of an old quote I’ve always liked. I can’t find the reference, but it draws on the image of a long battle-front wreathed in mist, and goes something like this: “The enemy is all around you, on every side. But do not despair. It may be that you lie entrenched in the last remaining pocket of enemy resistance, and beyond the mist and smoke, your fellows and your friends have already won the field.” And (since we’re in a quote-quoting mode), it comes down to this: “Have plenty of courage. God is stronger than the devil. We are on the winning side” (John Chapman).

It’s the mood of hand-wringing from our churches that gets me. Obviously we need to be working in mission and evangelism. But much of what I heard this weekend feels to me like the reaction of a church that had been triumphant in its culture for a long while, and had grown to assume that that situation was the status quo. Unfortunately, they didn’t realize what an abnormal situation it truly was. And when the regular course of history returned—that is to say, when the church began to become again a despised, marginalized group of spiritual sojourners with little influence on the popular culture—they didn’t know how to deal with it. Spiritually speaking, we’re returning toward the sort of society that Jesus apparently expected us to live in—hostile to spiritual truth, in which the church would be a faithful remnant, a witnessing, prophetic community. God may bring great revivals, but let us not despair if he does not. We are not in an unusual situation if we find that people don’t want to hear about Jesus. Rather, we are in a biblical situation—the very situation that Jesus and the apostles expected. All we can do is be faithful, proclaim the Word, build up our brothers, celebrate the grace of God in the ordinances, live transparently in the love of Christ, and let him do the mysterious, wonderful work of bringing the harvest-fields to the point of readiness again. Christ is victorious; he has already won. Let us be faithful and obedient, trust and rejoice in him, and take what comes.

This seems to me to be the biblical attitude. Paul and the other apostles exemplified a life of outward ministry. But—interestingly enough—virtually nowhere in all their written instructions to the churches (the epistles) do they ever implore us to be active in evangelism. And to a modern evangelical, that ought to seem like a strange omission, given the way we harp on it. But perhaps Paul and the apostles knew that it was really God’s work, far more than it is ours. We, the church, will do what we can do, and we leave the rest to him. He will win the day. But it may not come here and now, in our towns and in our lifetimes. Paul certainly did not live to see Rome and Corinth and Ephesus come to the point of the majority converting to faith in Christ. It did happen, but it was some four or five hundred years later. Paul simply did the work of evangelism, encouraged the church to live lovingly and gracefully, and entrusted the rest to God. And he knew God’s plan would prevail in the end. The truth is, we may actually be living in the days of the greatest harvest of all, given the way Christianity is exploding around the world. We just happen to be in a distant little corner of the world (yes, it’s true, America isn’t actually the center of everything) where our faith is receding at the moment.

It will be interesting to see the adjustments that our churches make in the coming years. I was the youngest pastor at the convention. I might have been the only person younger than thirty there (and it wasn’t just pastors; laypeople had been invited as delegates too). There were only two or three in their thirties; a handful in their forties. I would estimate that 95% of the attendees were over the age of fifty, and the majority sixty and older. As those generations pass over into their blessed rest in the coming decades, smaller churches will probably have to close their buildings and consolidate together. And we will have to adjust to life as a faithful witness rather than the life as a leading voice in the public sphere which we have up till now enjoyed in the US. I hope it doesn’t go that way. I hope our efforts at home missions here and now will be wildly successful, sparking revivals on every side. But I suspect it will continue on its current trend for awhile yet. It’s not a heartening thought, but such is the history of the church. And God is still in control.

Is the USA the best country in the world?

There are usually two responses that come to this question from Americans (most non-Americans would probably add a strong negative as a third possibility): "Of course it is," and, the answer I would like to defend, "What a ridiculously unanswerable question!" To those who, like me, lean toward the latter of these responses, it might seem bizarre to devote a blog-column to the topic. But, strangely enough, there are a lot of Americans--perhaps the majority--who would actually, quite blithely, give the first answer.

I've run into this thought a few times in the past couple weeks. One was in the course of an ordinary conversation with a friend, who asserted, quite out of the blue, that the US was the best country in the world, as if that were an undisputed fact. My second encounter was the more interesting one--a Gospel music singer was performing at our church, and stated how proud he was to live in "the best country on earth," and then proceeded to have us all stand and sing "I'm Proud to Be an American." This is perhaps not all that surprising, considering the all-too-common syncretism between Christianity and American patriotism these days. But the interesting thing is that we, as a church in a border-town, actually attract a fair number of Canadians to our concerts. I would estimate that at least half of the audience that night was Canadian, and I suspect they might not have all agreed quite so quickly that the US was the best country on earth.

Now before we begin looking a little more deeply into this question, I should pause and reaffirm my own patriotism. Having been influenced by Anabaptist theology and practice, I am, perhaps, a bit more cautious than most American Christians about brash displays of patriotic fervor, especially in connection with the church, but that doesn't mean that I don't love my country. I do. The USA is extraordinary--in its history, its system of government, its natural wonders, and its people. I am proud to be an American, proud to be a citizen of what might very well be the noblest political experiment ever carried out on a national level. But that doesn't mean that I can't be honest about my country, that I can't mourn its failings, that I can't, indeed, even be ashamed of it sometimes. Loving my country doesn't mean that I need to somehow convince myself that it is superior to all other nations.

While I am proud of the US for many reasons, there have been seasons of shame in my relationship with my country. I was working in northern Sudan when the news about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal broke. And in the face of confusion and anger from the Arabs around me, I was ashamed of what my countrymen had done. Now, clearly, that was an isolated incident that did not reflect the true character of the majority of our armed forces. But there are other things I'm ashamed of as an American. I'm ashamed of our legacy of slavery and racial discrimination. I'm ashamed of what we did to the Native Americans. I'm sometimes ashamed of the often unreflective and anti-intellectual character of the American public. I'm ashamed of the reckless plunge my generation is taking into blind hedonism. And I'm also ashamed to see too much arrogance in our patriotism. It is one thing to love our country--deeply, passionately, as we should; to applaud her merits and seek to pass on her distinctive virtues. But it is quite another thing to claim in the face of the world that we are the best.

Well, what do people mean when they call this the best country in the world? Some, perhaps, merely throw out the phrase unreflectively, as an expression of their loyalty and personal preference for the US. In most cases, it is merely a statement of personal opinion. But sometimes one gets the sense that the people who say this mean it in a metaphysical sense--that truly, in the grand scheme of things, no other country can measure up to the USA.

It's worth asking what that assertion even means. What qualifications go into determining the best country on earth? There are thousands upon thousands of variables you could take into consideration. Most of the studies which try to answer that question in an unbiased way, usually going off of standard-of-living statistics and polls on personal happiness, end up pointing towards one of the Scandinavian countries as the best (Finland was #1 in the most recent survey I've seen; the US #11). Honestly, though, I suspect that most of the people who make the assertion that the US is the best have never been in more than one or two other countries for any extended period of time. None of them, certainly, have lived for awhile in every single country, which is presumably what you would need to do to make such an assertion fairly. And even so, the list of possible qualifications is endless. Is the US a wealthy nation? Others are wealthier. Is the US a happy and contented nation? Other nations are happier and more contented. Do Americans show moral courage? So do citizens of other countries. Is America founded on noble principles? Yes, but there are other countries out there with constitutions just as lofty as our own.

There are, of course, some areas where Americans have dominated the playing field. We often top the charts in military strength, economics, and charitable giving (though the last of these is possibly offset, in a moral sense, by the overall materialism of our culture--people of other countries don't always give as much money as we do, but they may well be more generous and hospitable than we are; this is particularly true of the citizens of Middle Eastern countries, for whom hospitality is one of the highest rules of life). But we also come close to topping the charts in some rather less-than-noble categories: abortions, teenage pregnancies, suicides, and pornography production are a few examples. All this to say, it would be very challenging to come up with a set of distinctive American qualities that would wipe out all the competition for the "best country on earth" title.

I think, though, that another factor comes into play for people who assert that this is the best country in the world. They often seem to tie the claim to a religious/historical argument--something along the lines of God providentially choosing and shaping our nation. It's often stated by these same folks that America was founded on Christian principles; and the feeling is that the US has always stood up for what is good and right and true and just. (It should be noted at this point that many other countries would certainly dissent and could easily enumerate some of the more ignoble moments in American history.) While there is some truth to these ideas (the Founding Fathers were, certainly, deeply influenced by Christian ideals and moral values, and we have, overall, been a much more religious country than others in the industrial West), it's a hard case to make conclusively. While God is certainly not impassive towards the USA and its legacy, I don't think our somewhat-checkered history bears out the claim that we are a chosen nation, specially blessed, or a "city on a hill." It seems to me from Scripture that God loves all nations (yes, even the "bad" ones) and longs for them all to come into loving relationship with him. And one could rattle off a handful of nations that might just as easily be considered to have a special place in God's heart--Israel and Palestine (yes, both), El Salvador (hard to say no to a country that's named after you), the Vatican, and China (with probably more Christians living there than the entire population of the US), just to name a few. That's a bit tongue-in-cheek of course; but at the heart of the matter I think we would all agree that God is more concerned with the people who make up a nation than with the outward political form of the nation itself.

My main question to those who assert the primacy of the US would be, Why are we even bothering to make this claim? Who cares (except our own fervent patriots)? What does it matter if we live in the best or the second best or the hundredth-best nation? Let's do what we can to make our country even better than it is, regardless of what other countries do or where they sit on the scale of things. We have a fine, wonderful country. We have a lot to be proud of. But it is possible to love our country without putting other countries down. It is possible to love ourselves and love our neighbors, too. God bless the USA; yes, amen! But God bless Canada, too; God bless Russia; God bless China; God bless Iraq; God bless Zimbabwe. We are only the best if we love the best; if we love our neighbors as God loves them. Let's strive to that end.

"Here we are, you and I..."

I've begun reading Aelred of Rievaulx's classic work, Spiritual Friendship, written in the Middle Ages as a Christian remix of Cicero's On Friendship (which I read earlier this year). Perhaps the profoundest line I've found so far is the simple beginning of the dialogue, where Aelred says to his interlocutor: "Here we are, you and I, and I hope a third, Christ, is in our midst."

It is the nature of Christian friendship that the union of two people should lead them into the presence of God. Reflecting back on my own life, I can say that there has seldom been anything so spiritually formative for me as my seasons of deep, rich Christian friendship. Bible study, prayer, silence and solitude, service--these are all essentials, of course. But nothing has quite made them come alive like the intimate presence of others. When living in close community and friendship with other believers, my prayer, study, and service takes on greater power. Friendship lends a practical impetus to my spiritual formation--I tend to care more about what sort of person I am becoming when I am living in close communion with others--and it also lends a direction and purpose to that formation: the deepening of our fellowship and the active outworking of my faith in practical, relational ways. Christian friendship becomes both a source of fuel for spiritual formation and one of the goals of spiritual formation.

In the past few weeks I've been making more of a concerted effort to spend intentional time with Rachel. Instead of turning on the TV to watch the Red Sox in the evening, we've taken up the habit of reading out loud together. Right now we're reading through a collection of Dorothy Sayers' short stories about her detective hero, Lord Peter Wimsey. It has been a wonderful time to slow down together after putting Josiah to bed, to share a quiet journey into a world of imagination. It is interactive and creative (far more so than watching TV), and has drawn us significantly into a deeper experience of closeness these past few weeks. The time we spend in good, simple conversation--about life, relationships, God, etc.--has expanded since we started intentionally taking time to be together in the evenings. And, along the way, I've found my desire for God and for a life of holiness has expanded in corresponding measure.

There's something about friendship which, at its best, should draw us ever deeper into the presence of God. Our relationships with others and our relationship with God are inextricably linked. Our relationality is a reflection of the Trinitarian relationality of God, etched into our nature as an image of His fundamental nature. And when we pursue that relationality in godly ways, the promise of Jesus becomes manifest: "Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I am also." We believe that Christ is spiritually present among all gatherings of his people, and I can testify that his presence is almost tangible in the quiet spaces of a deep and abiding friendship.

As a pastor, I interact with all kinds of people. One group that I'm particularly fond of is the sort of people who are "fixers" and "visionaries"--who are constantly seeing the problems with the way the church is now, and how we could be making it better. How can we bring in more people? How can we reach out more effectively to the community? Aren't there more programs we can be running? We need people who ask these questions--they keep us from a slothful acceptance of mediocrity. But we also need people like Aelred, who tell us to slow down and examine the nature of our church fellowship. Aelred points us away from seeing merely the problems and potentials of the church--he tells us that the church is extraordinary, here and now, because it is the union of the children of God and Christ is in its midst. No matter what problems might be present, when Christians gather together in the name of Jesus, that is a momentous and fundamentally important event, and it is endued and saturated with the presence of Christ himself. We must not forget that the mandate of the church points both outward and inward, and that it is a part of our mission to develop rich relationships of fellowship, mentoring, and friendship. For where Christians love each other, there is an active image to the watching world of the love and nature of Christ.

Thoughts from "Acts of Faith"

I recently finished reading Philip Caputo's titanic novel Acts of Faith (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), and it sparked some reflections that are worth setting out here on the blog. The book itself is long--nearly 700 dense pages of intricate, beautiful prose--but it's definitely worth the read. I've been working through it for a couple months. I first picked it up because it deals with one of my areas of deep interest--Sudan, and the ongoing human rights crisis there. Caputo's novel, well-researched and obviously reflecting some personal connections with that corner of the world, is as good an introduction to the local cultures and the overall tone and flavor of northeast Africa as I've ever seen (and to be able to do that in a good novel, rather than, say, an anthropology textbook, is remarkable).

Although I delved into the world of the book mostly because it brought my memories and affections back to Africa, I ended up playing witness to an epic tale. It takes awhile for the plot to really get moving--not until halfway through the book--but the ending of the story is a rich tragedy filled with characters of Shakespearean proportions. It aligns most closely with Joseph Conrad and his Heart of Darkness--the escalating and horrific madness of someone who ought to be a true hero, and the unspeakable magnitude of pain wrought by human evil and stupidity.

But what I really want to do for this blog post is deal with a couple quotes that come near the end of the book, in a series of reflections on the tragic flaws of two leading characters. While I don't know if Caputo is a Christian (I suspect he isn't), I tend to agree with his overall assessment. Take this quote from p.648: "He had broken faith with the best that was in him and with the humanity he professed to serve. A malevolent voice had whispered a summons; he'd answered. Anyone who does not acknowledge the darkness in his nature will succumb to it."

We as Christians, and particularly as American Christians, I think, tend to turn a blind eye sometimes to the truths of our theology--and, in this case, to what is known as "the depravity of man." We still have a difficult time showing anything other than a facade of happiness and peace when we come to church. (And, of course, some of us may be genuinely happy and peaceful most weeks, but the point is that in many churches, we have difficulty showing our pain when our own sin is gutting the joy from our lives.) We are surprised, even shocked, when religious leaders are discovered in the midst of terrible sins. But the truth of the matter is that if we're honest with ourselves, we know that the roots of evil plunge deep into our own hearts. We aren't all tempted toward the same sins, but we all have areas of rebellion and selfish sin in our hearts. The two main tragic characters in Acts of Faith are brought down by errors in judgment that begin as very small things--in one's case, it began with lying and a passion for personal success in his business; in another's, it began with a lack of contentment for the normal course of her life and a deeply selfish need for recognition by others. In both cases, these small failings led to bigger things--murder, embezzlement, conspiracy, illegal gun-running, and willful participation in the slave trade. We would be wise not to assume that we are out of reach of certain temptations. I know that I am capable of deep, shocking evil in certain areas of my life, and so I keep up a constant guard against them. And while I am disappointed at times in the failings of those around me, I am seldom shocked. Humans are capable of unspeakable evil. And Christianity is the only religion that really adequately explains this paradox of human nature--how deeply we yearn for justice and righteous living, and how we never seem to live up to that ideal.

A second quote comes from p.663: "The bulb glows undimmed by the cloak of insects--the katydids have fled the dawn. Like belief, Fitzhugh thinks. Conviction will blind you if it is not shaded by doubt." This one is a bit trickier for Christians, but I think there's wisdom here. I'm not going to start advocating that we begin on a mental foundation of skepticism that calls us to continually question everything we believe in. However, we would do well to abolish the stigma that doubt holds in many Christian circles. Different people are wired in different ways, and for some people, doubt can be a tremendously valuable tool in testing, reworking, and exploring the depths of their faith. Further, I don't think that the popularly-held dichotomoy between faith and doubt is accurate. True faith will wrestle with doubt now and again; mine certainly has; and that doesn't make our faith any less faithful. (The other unfortunate aspect of that popularly-held dichotomy between faith and doubt is that it leads people to assume that faith must be some sort of "blind leap," unsupported by evidence or thoughtful analysis.) In the famous story of "doubting Thomas," where the disciple decides to doubt the truth of the Resurrection until he can see Jesus for himself, we often end up looking down at Thomas for his lack of faith. He has become for us the weakest character in the Resurrection narrative, displaying his failings for all to see. However, it strikes me that in that story, although Jesus does seem to reprimand Thomas a little bit for his doubt, he also meets Thomas in the midst of his doubt and offers the proof he seeks. Thomas isn't cast away; rather, his faith is affirmed by bringing his doubts to the Lord. And sometimes that's what we need--to be honest with ourselves, and to let God meet us where we are.

In Acts of Faith, however, it's not the conviction that the characters have towards their religion that brings them to their downfall. It's their fervent conviction in their own actions, their own ideas. They, like so many of us, assume that their assessment of the situation is the true one, that the course of action they've decided on is necessary and right. One of the first steps on the road to wisdom is precisely this--not to let your convictions about your own opinions blind you to the possibility that the truth actually lies elsewhere. In a word, remember that you are finite. There are too many people nowadays who are willing to argue aggressively for their own opinions, as if their opinions actually accomplished something or mattered to anyone besides themselves. (That sounds a little harsh, I know, but we've all met people like that--in fact, most of us have been people like that at points in our lives.) This is why I don't often find myself arguing politics with people. Politics, like anything else involving humans, is incredibly complex and unpredictable, and "the right answers" are always elusive. But those who like to argue politics often seem to believe like they've figured it all out. By contrast, I know I haven't figured it all out. I keep my convictions shaded in doubt. I have my opinions and leanings when it comes to political issues, to be sure--I even have things that I passionately believe in. But I also know that on some points I might be wrong, and that even if my leanings are right, I probably don't know the right way to go about pursuing them. So I don't usually make a good sparring partner for political debate. But the point is that we would be wise in many areas of our lives to keep ourselves shaded with doubt. Obviously, though, it's not a good idea to let doubt immobilize you. But when you take those steps that will shape your life, at least entertain the possibility that you may actually be ignorant of the best course of action; that in itself will inject a little bit of grace into everything you do, and hopefully make you a little more diligent in seeking wisdom and understanding from sources outside yourself.

As the old saying goes, "Suffer fools gladly--they may be right." In short, learn humility. I don't know everything. I will never know everything. So I've learned to lean on others. My first instinct is always to look elsewhere for wisdom--to Scripture, to the church fathers, to the proven classics of human art and thought. I know that opinions shaped in ignorance aren't worth much, so I draw from the deep wells of old wisdom before I try to help others on their journey towards living rightly.

This novel reinforced a wonderful (albeit humbling) message, one that we would all do well to think about: Don't underestimate your capacity for evil or for ignorance.

The Beauty of Nature

Over the past couple weeks, during which time we took a little vacation down to Lake Mokoma, PA, I've been enjoying the restive beauty of the natural world. The beginning of summer is such a delightful time of year, especially in the eastern woodlands. Everything is green and rich with life, and merely being in the middle of it lends a feeling of vibrancy to the soul. One of the things I love about living in Maine is the woods. I've always loved them--the deep, silent beauty of trees and trails that stand apart from the works of man, giving us vast retreats into God's creation. Here in Calais, we're blessed to have not only the forests near at hand, but also the coast--the cold northern Atlantic, and the rugged majesty of Maine's headlands. The quote for this week is from a work by an Eastern Orthodox monk/hermit, "On the Mountains of the Caucasus" (I don't think it has been translated into English in its entirety--the excerpt below was quoted in Bishop Alfeyev's The Mystery of Faith). This passage follows after a story about the author looking out over a mountain vista, and it describes the feeling of encountering the ineffable when we look at nature's beauty, and being shaped by that experience for the life to come:

"So it was that we sat in silence, looking in amazement and in holy rapture sustaining our hearts, experiencing those exalted moments of the inner life when one feels the closeness of the invisible world, enters into sweet communion with it and listens to the terrible presence of the Godhead. It is at such moments, replete with sacred feelings, that one forgets all earthly things. The heart is warmed like wax before the fire and becomes receptive to impressions of the celestial world. It burns with the purest of love for God, and one tastes the bliss of inner enrichment; one hears an inner voice whispering that it is not for earthly vanities but for participation in eternity that the short days of our earthly existence are given."

There's a fair philosophical argument to be made that our capacity to see and appreciate beauty is a pointer to our special creation as humans; and that our delight in the beauty of nature leads us into a deeper delight in the beauty of God. And we believe that all this beauty around us, created by the hand of God, will not ultimatly be lost to us, but will be restored and transformed into what it was always meant to be--ever more beautiful, suffused by the radiance of God himself when he dwells in the new heavens and the new earth. In the words of the great Cappadocian Father, Gregory of Nazianzus:

"Why am I faint-hearted in my hopes? Why do I behave like a mere creature of the day? I await the voice of the archangel, the last trumpet, the transformation of the heavens, the transfiguration of the earth, the liberation of the elements, the renovation of the universe."