Author: Luke

A couple weekends ago, I watched “Eyes on the Prize,” a documentary over the civil rights era. The documentary presented a lot of footage I had never seen before and I’d highly recommend checking it out. One scene in particular stuck with me. While the narrator was talking about the Little Rock Nine, they showed footage of a black reporter covering the story being assaulted by the mob waiting outside the school. Without any police protection, the reporter was in grave danger as the crowd became unruly. The footage showed him trying to walk away from the scene, followed by a group of men throwing rocks and running up to strike him from behind before retreating back into the anonymity of the crowd.

Each time he was struck, his hat would naturally fall off his head. Each time his hat fell, the reporter would bend over, pick it up, put it back on his head, and continue walking.

I imagine he was afraid. I imagine he knew how situations like this usually ended in the South. I imagine he knew attempting to run away or fight back would not help and would compromise the reason he was there in the first place. I imagine he realized the only thing in his control was his own response, and he decided to not let the hatred of the mob change him. He walked at a normal pace. He stopped to pick up his hat.

In a sense, I believe those few seconds of footage sum up the Civil Rights Movement. African Americans decided to stop waiting and to live as equals, patiently enduring the consequences as the rest of their brothers and sisters caught up to them. I believe God has called the church to live with such patient endurance as well, to be people who can sense the hatred in the world around us, but not let it change us even when it threatens our well-being. I believe we are called to be people who can, even with a mob breathing down our necks, walk with quiet dignity, stopping to pick up our hats along the way.

The following is a perfect example of engaging culture through the arts.  This is what New Wine is about. Redemptive engagement…

To prepare for Easter, I have been reading from Jean Vanier’s “Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John.”  I felt the following passage was worth sharing:

These wounds become his glory
From the wound in his side flowed the waters that vivify
and heal us.
Through his wounds we are healed.

Jesus invites each one of us, though Thomas,
to touch not only his wounds,
but those wounds in others and in ourselves,
wounds that can make us hate others and ourselves
and can be a sign of separation and division.
These wounds will be transformed into a sign of forgiveness
through the love of Jesus
and will bring people together in love.
These wounds reveal that we need each other.
These wounds become the place of mutual compassion,
of indwelling
and of thanksgiving.

We, too, will show our wounds
when we are with him in the kingdom,
revealing our brokenness
and the healing power of Jesus.

In recent weeks, Glenn Beck has stirred up controversy by instructing his hearers to leave their churches if they hear or see the words “social justice,” as he believes the words are “code” for nazism and communism and a perversion of the gospel.  The words led to a blogging spree, as one would expect, and a series of rather comical exchanges between Jim Wallis of Sojourners and Beck in which Beck has promised a smear campaign in which he will “hammer” Wallis “all through the night, and over and over” as Wallis has turned the other cheek and asked for a civil dialogue on the matter.

My interest here isn’t to join the fray.  Though it troubles me the lack of discernment shown by some Christians with this, it’s become clear Beck is wading into unfamiliar waters and making a fool of himself in the process.  Even leaders of Beck’s Mormon church have called Wallis to apologize for Beck’s uninformed statements.  My interest is instead to explore what I believe is really at issue here, but to my knowledge overlooked by commentators: the political nature of the church.

It’s become a truism that the church is not political and moreover should not be political.  When the church and state are not kept separate, the logic goes, both the church and state suffer.  The problem, I believe, is not that the church has become too political, but rather that the church in America is suffering because it has not been political enough.  The church is itself a political body with its own brand of politics, and this politics has been largely forgotten and replaced by the world’s politics.

One key part of the church’s politics is the church’s unity.  The church is to be one, in complete unity.  This unity goes deeper than any loyalty to blood relations, any patriotic sentiment, or any political ideology, and it shows the world that the Son and the Father are one (Jn 17).  I’m convinced that one of the best ways to spot idols in the church is to see what divides us.  If we are divided by anything but the essential truths of the Christian faith, we are in effect placing whatever divides us over our loyalty to Christ and so each other.  We may not do this intentionally, and we may even have the best of intentions for doing so, but by dividing ourselves we are implying that what divides us is more important to us than the unity of Christ’s body.

This is, in my estimation, the danger of what Beck has called for.  Not so much that he denies social justice as being a part of the gospel (although I’d strongly disagree with him there), but that his statements imply that political views are more important than church unity.  The world is divided by languages, religions, race, politics, and, our most recent invention, the nation-state.  But Christ has shattered each of these dividing walls of hostility through His death and resurrection (Eph 2).  In a constantly warring world, Christ is our peace.  The peace Christ has created shows the world that division is not apart of God’s plan, and that something is more important than the world’s political games: that the Father and the Son are one.

Scot McKnight on the biblical family. Or, more accurately, Scot McKnight on Stephen Holmes on the biblical family.