believe me good will come

Experiencing pain is part of being human. It also seems that causing pain is part of being human. I try to live a good life but I end up hurting myself and others. I inflict pain as the wrong motivations – pride, insecurity, selfishness, laziness, self-doubt, etc. – shape my words and actions. As the confession I used to say at church states: “We have sinned in ignorance, we have sinned in weakness, and we have sinned through our own deliberate fault”.

We may try to shift the blame for our actions away from our individual selves (to society, or “evildoers”, etc.) but, in reality, it falls on each of us. I’d argue that “sinning in ignorance” is often the case, as we are unaware of the harm caused by the structures and institutions in which we participate (e.g. not knowing, or not taking the time to discover, that that the products we buy are produced through the exploitation of others).

The Christian approach teaches that we cause pain because our human nature is corrupted (whereas Islam teaches that humans do wrong because of pride, forgetting ourselves before God; Buddhism teaches that suffering is the result of our attachment to transient things and our ignorance of this; I have no idea about Hinduism…). The notion of a corrupt human nature fits fairly well with the reality that human beings have been around for tens of thousands of years and yet the human condition essentially remains the same. Ultimately, many of the world’s problems can be traced back to the unfortunate reality of human nature.

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhlemed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.”
- quotes from The Gulag Archipelago (1973) by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

I was reading this post on Sam Harvey’s blog where he linked to a post on another blog which had this comment:

In fact study after study shows that there is no discernible difference between the life of those who follow Jesus and those who do not. That is a scandal. We live at a time when there is a failure of courage in the lives of Jesus-followers. They prefer to blend rather than stand apart. We have lost sight of what being counter-cultural looks like.

From my perspective this is the bigger, more challenging issue raised in your post. However, the ways of ’standing apart’ or ‘being counter-cultural’ that come to mind for me are more about our broader consumption and life choices.

You talk about alcohol facilitating the “worst evils in our society” whereas I would argue that greed and selfishness take pride of place there; a sphere which often fails to register with portions of the church. The lifestyles that we have are, to a significant degree, built on the poverty of the 2/3 world. I would say our broader consumption choices are a more important area, in terms of being counter-cultural. Do I care about where my clothes, coffee, cosmetics come from? In what ways are my consumption choices affecting the environment I live in? What about my country’s foreign policy decisions? Should I care?

Another facet that strikes me is major life direction decisions. Most of the church seems to be on autopilot to follow our societal norms of:

Go to school, maybe uni or the like –> Get a “good” job –> Buy a house –> Get married & have a family — and be involved in church alongside these things.

I don’t think that these bad aspirations, but I do think that we should challenge them. Maybe we would think about putting less money into our homes, less time into paid work and more into family, friends, or voluntary projects. Maybe some people would put more time into their paid work?! Maybe there would be more people single by choice? I don’t know. The point is, to engage with God in the process of finding out rather than just assuming that “this” (the above) is the way the world works and just blindly follow along.

To me, this is counter-cultural thinking and I have been trying to process these thoughts somewhat in my own life and church community. It is easy for the church to get ‘all het up’ about things like drinking or smoking but steer clear of these other, more complicated issues. Not that alcohol or smoking etc shouldn’t be discussed, but as examples of counter-cultural living I think they pale in significance.

Cheers,
Jacob.

It’s always interesting to find other people who seem to see things similarly to how I do. I can’t shake the feeling that the vast majority of modern Christianity is completely missing the point. But so are the vast majority of people in general (myself included). It’s easier to tread the path of societal norms: born–school–university–job–spouse–house–family–retire–die…

I know that my Lord is different from the God that is preached in the churches. – Shusaku Endo, Silence

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. – Mahatma Gandhi

I often ask myself why a Christian instinct frequently draws me more to the religionless than to the religious, by which I mean not with the intention of evangelising them, but rather, I might almost say, in “brotherhood.” While I often shrink with religious people from speaking of God by name – because that Name somehow seems to me here not to ring true, and I strike myself as rather dishonest (it is especially bad when others start talking in religious jargon: then I dry up almost completely and feel somehow oppressed and ill at ease) – with people who have no religion I am able on occasion to speak of God quite openly and as it were naturally. – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 30 April 1944.

If you tell me Christian commitment is a kind of thing that has happened to you once and for all like some kind of spiritual plastic surgery, I say go to, go to, you’re either pulling the wool over your own eyes or trying to pull it over mine. Every morning you should wake up in your beds and ask yourself: ‘Can I believe it all again today?’ No, better still, don’t ask it till after you’ve read The New York Times, till after you’ve studied that daily record of the world’s brokenness and corruption, which should always stand side by side with your Bible. Then ask yourself if you can believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ again for that particular day. If your answer’s always Yes, then you probably don’t know what believing means. At least five times out of ten the answer should be No because the No is as important as the Yes, maybe more so. The No is what proves you’re human in case you should ever doubt it. And then if some morning the answer happens to be really Yes, it should be a Yes that’s choked with confession and tears and…great laughter.
–Frederick Buechner, The Return of Ansel Gibbs

To be very honest I’m angry. Angry that so many young people are missing out on the honest conversations about following Jesus; the conversations around faithfulness, around serving others, especially the poor, about the hard times, and the many moments of failure. I’m angry because I’m having so many conversations with kids disillusioned and munted because they couldn’t keep the “happy christian” facade going any longer. - Sam Harvey

When I ask people what they want out of life, the most common answer is “To be happy”. People feel that they deserve to be happy – that it is their right (“…that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”). This is equally true in Christian circles. Yet the more I read of real Christians who’ve lived real lives in the real world, the more irrelevant happiness seems:

It is not some religious act that makes a Christian what he is, but participation in the suffering of God in the life of the world. – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, (July 18th 1944).

One must abandon every attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, a converted sinner, a churchman (the priestly type, so-called!), a righteous man or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one. This is what I mean by worldliness – talking life in one’s stride, with all its duties and problems, its successes and failures, its experiences and helplessnesses. It is in such a life that we throw ourselves utterly into the arms of God and participate in his sufferings in the world and watch with Christ in Gethsemane. That is faith, that is metanoia, and that is what makes a man a Christian. – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, (July 21st 1944).

[W]e are gravely mistaken to think that Christianity protects us from the pain and agony of mortal existence. Christianity has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear. To be a Christian, one must take up his cross, with all of its difficulties and agonizing and tragedy-packed content, and carry it until that very cross leaves its mark upon us and redeems us to that more excellent way which comes only through suffering. - Martin Luther King, Jr., ’Transformed Noncomformist’, III, Strength to Love.

The quotes above emphasise suffering, not happiness. Jesus said that his followers would suffer, and that this was a blessing (you could say this is real happiness). The letters of the New Testament talk of sharing in Christ’s suffering:

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. – Mt 5:11

Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. – Mt 10:39

If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. – Jn 15:20

[E]veryone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted – 2 Ti 3:12

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and fellowship of his sufferings – Php 3:10

For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our own lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. – 2 Co 1:5

[R]ejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. – 1 Pe 4:13

We are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. – Ro 8:17

Martin Luther King writes about the idea of redemptive suffering:

[U]nearned suffering is redemptive. Suffering, the nonviolent resister realizes, has tremendous educational and transforming possibilities. “Things of fundamental importance to people are not secured by reason alone, but have to be purchased with their suffering,” said Gandhi. He continues: “Suffering is infinitely more powerful than the law of the jungle for converting the opponent and opening his ears which are otherwise shut to the voice of reason.” Martin Luther King, Jr., ’Pilgrimage to Nonviolence’, Stride Towards Freedom.

My personal trials have also taught me the value of unmerited suffering. As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation – either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course. Recognizing the necessity for suffering, I tried to make of it a virtue. If only to save myself from bitterness, I have attempted to see my personal ordeals as an opportunity to transfigure myself and heal the people involved in the tragic situation which now obtains. I have lived these last few years with the conviction that unearned suffering is redemptive. There are some who still find the Cross a stumbling block, others consider it foolishness, but I am more convinced than ever before that it is the power of God unto social and individual salvation. [Martin Luther King, Jr., ‘Pilgrimage to Nonviolence’, III, Strength to Love.

Redemptive suffering is a fascinating concept; a concept largely absent from Western culture. Our popular culture is more likely to emphasise the idea of redemptive violence (think of movies like Braveheart and Gladiator – a man is wronged and he redeems himself by extracting revenge on those who wronged him). And, unfortunately, redemptive violence is too often the ideology of choice at the political level (e.g. George W Bush sought to ‘free’ Iraq through warfare).

Considering the fact that the redemptive suffering of Jesus is the core of the Christian message, it’s strange that much of mainstream Christian culture ignores the idea of suffering. Jesus’ suffering is emphasised, but our personal suffering much less so. Actually, it’s not that strange – suffering isn’t a popular topic. We all have a natural tendency towards selfishness and laziness; we don’t like hearing about pain and sacrifice.

Romantic fantasy of suffering can only be dispelled by suffering in reality. – from ‘Manifesto of Hunger Strike’, Tiananmen Square, 1989.

Every day thousands of people starve to death. Tens of thousands more die because they don’t have clean water or basic medical care. Millions of people are denied their basic human rights: they are killed or imprisoned for their political or religious convictions.

Yet people will probably be more offended by my use of the word “fucked” in this post’s title than they will by anything else I type here. Somehow, through some remarkable intellectual sleight of hand, we are able to ignore the starving millions and go on living our lives. Birth, school, work, marriage, house, children, retirement, death.

Millions go to bed hungry while I’m surrounded by people who eat too much. Basic products such as sugar, cocoa (and thus chocolate) and coffee are sold to us cheaply because they are bought for a pittance from poor farmers in the developing world – farmers who damage their local ecology and way of life in order to grow these ‘cash’ crops. The clothes I wear were made in Chinese sweatshops, where workers labour for sixteen hours a day. It would take them two weeks to earn what I am paid for an hour’s work.

The whole global economy thrives on exploitation. The powerful and wealthy countries and corporations exploit those that are weak and poor. Trade barriers ensure that the rich stay rich at the poor’s expense. [Some] third world debt is written off with great fanfare, but no measures are put in place to prevent the debt from re-accumulating. “Congratulations, you’re back up to 0. Only a few hundred billion behind us. How about another loan?”.

War is still the preferred means of many for settling differences. There are more conflicts now than ever before. The vast majority of those killed in modern warfare are civilians. Something clearly isn’t working when the five permanent members of the UN Security Council also happen to be the five biggest arms dealers in the world.

But the systems, countries, and corporations that I deride are merely expressing on a global scale what I act out on a personal scale. Despite all my best efforts I still have an innate tendency towards selfishness and laziness. I don’t cycle to work even though I know it would be better for my health, better for the environment, and – given the world’s bloodlust for oil – better for global politics. My purchasing decisions are determined largely by how much the product costs. I have more clothes than I need. Indeed, I have drawers full of clothes I hardly ever wear because they aren’t fashionable.

Superficiality plagues me. I am bombarded by advertisements for products that will give me bigger muscles, whiter teeth, shinier hair, and smoother skin. Equally useless products promise to make me happier, more popular, and more attractive. I know none of this is true and that I have more of everything than I need. But I still desire more.

Of course I want to change things, but I know it will mean a fundamental change in the way I live my life. I’d rather live a comfortable, secure life and do just enough to ease my middle class conscience – sponsor a child, buy fair trade coffee, sign some petitions [whine on my blog] - isn’t that enough?

tell me, tell me the story
the one about eternity
and the way it’s all gonna be

Must one kill to destroy evildoers?
That is making two evildoers in place of one. Overcome evil with good.
– Blaise Pascal, Pensées (XXV:659).

We live according to the philosophy that life is a matter of getting even and of saving face. We bow before the altar of revenge. Samson, eyeless at Gaza, prays fervently for his enemies – but only for their utter destruction. The potential beauty of human life is constantly made ugly by man’s ever-recurring song of retaliation.
– Martin Luther King, Strength to Love (“Love in Action”: I).

The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of revenge. Man has never risen above the injunction of the lex talionis: “Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” In spite of the fact that the law of revenge solves no social problems, men continue to follow its disastrous leading. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path.
– Martin Luther King, Strength to Love (“Love in Action”: II).

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.
– Martin Luther King, Strength to Love (“Loving Your Enemies”: II).

I’ll drown my beliefs
To have you be in peace