Author: Paul Louis Metzger

To those of you who are American Evangelical Christians, what do you feel when you read these words “The Buddhists are coming! The Buddhists are coming!”? Consternation? Fear? Joy?

This summer, I was invited to share a few words at a groundbreaking event for a Zen Buddhist temple where my dear friends, Kyogen and Gyokuko Carlson, serve as abbots. I have worked with them and their community for several years now in Portland, Oregon, on matters pertaining to spirituality and the common good. When my students (who were also invited to join me) and I arrived, one Buddhist  practitioner exclaimed with a smile on her face, “The Christians are coming! The Christians are coming!” Later, when I shared during the ceremony, I recounted the incident and those gathered for the event laughed. Then I went on to say, “The Buddhists are coming! The Buddhists are coming! And I am glad they are here.”

Many Buddhists as well as Evangelicals may be surprised that an Evangelical like myself would be glad the Buddhists are here. The history between our movements in the States has been fraught with difficulties in that we are often on opposite ends of the culture war spectrum (Kyogen alluded to these tensions when he introduced me). Then there is the traditional Evangelical claim that “Jesus is the only way,” a view I hold. So, why would I say I am glad the Buddhists are here?

Many traditional Evangelicals may think that the only reason I could and should be glad that Buddhists are here is so that I can share the good news of Jesus Christ with them. While that is one of the reasons for my being glad the Buddhists are here, it is certainly not the only reason; nor does it overshadow all the others. Other reasons include the following: the Zen Buddhists whom I know and with whom I work are making a great impact in the community. Among other things, they are revitalizing an urban space, partnering with the neighborhood, a local high school and civic leaders, removing invasive species, and building community gardens. Moreover, their presence allows us Evangelicals the opportunity to address Christian wrongs committed against other religious traditions by being hospitable and neighborly, correcting misperceptions and misdeeds. Whether or not we Christians convert anyone to Christ, we need to demonstrate that we have been converted to Christ by being hospitable to our “religious other” neighbors. Last but certainly not least, it gives us the opportunity as diverse religious neighbors and friends to work together to cultivate the common good for years to come. In other words, we have the opportunity to revitalize our urban community together.

I am grateful to my Buddhist neighbors that they did not find me to be an invasive species at their gathering. Hopefully, those of us who are Evangelical Christians don’t see these Buddhists as invasive either. We need to trust in God’s providence rather than become paranoid about the fast-changing religious landscape in the U.S. 1 Peter 3:15 instructs Christians to be prepared in every occasion to give the reason for the hope that is within us with gentleness and respect. I don’t need to be paranoid about America becoming increasingly a multi-faith society like Peter’s setting in the first century, but rather trust in God’s providence and that God will help you and me become more thoughtful and gracious witnesses in word and deed in the twenty-first century. That way, hopefully when our Buddhists neighbors see us coming, they won’t be alarmed, but rather welcome us as friends.

This piece is cross-posted at Patheos and The Christian Post. Comments made here are not monitored. To join the conversation, please comment on this post at Patheos.

Perhaps you have heard stories of authority figures such as parents or teachers or police officers and judges saying of certain youth that they will not amount to anything and that they are bad to the bone. Sometimes, their projections become self-fulfilling prophecies.

I am glad that Paul does not view the Corinthian Christians that way, though one might think he had reason to do so. After all, they were a very carnal church–given to factions centering on alignment with various Christian celebrity figures (1 Corinthians 1:10-17), celebration of licentious freedom (1 Corinthians 5), and fixation with spiritual fruits cut off from their spiritual roots (1 Corinthians 12-14). If Paul does not view the Corinthian Christians that way, then there is hope for you and me.

Paul refers to the Corinthian Christians as sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be saints (1 Corinthians 1:2). From my vantage point, the Christian call to holy living based on Paul’s teaching is to be who we are, not what we once were.

The basis for our confidence is not to be rooted in ourselves, but in God in Christ, for we stand based on God’s grace given to us in Christ Jesus (1 Corinthians 1:4). It is he who has enriched us in every way (1 Corinthians 1:5). He who has given us every spiritual gift (1 Corinthians 1:7) will keep us firm until the end, for he is faithful ( 1 Corinthians 1:8-9). One should by no means take such grace as an opportunity to coast or to take for granted God’s commitment to us. There is no room for cheap grace, for it has cost God dearly, as well as his servant Paul who gives himself sacrificially on the Corinthians’ behalf. The more we take to heart God’s grace the more we will give ourselves to pleasing him out of an overwhelming sense of gratitude. Gratitude, not cheap grace or guilt trips, frames and forms authentic Christian living. Where are we today–somewhere between cheap grace and guilt trips, or are we on another plane–that of gratitude?

Paul hoped and prayed and believed and loved the Corinthians to be who they were called to be. Even the immoral brother (1 Corinthians 5) returned to the faith in a pure manner (2 Corinthians 2:5-11). How do we who claim Christ approach one another–in hope and prayer and faith and love that we would live into the fullness of Christ, or do we approach one another as if we are bad to the bone?

This piece is cross-posted at Patheos and The Christian Post. Comments made here are not monitored. To join the conversation, please comment on this post at Patheos.

In my first post on Ayn Rand, I concluded by saying that

In my estimation, her ethical model of objectivism depends upon the ability and imperative of reasoning apart from emotional or experiential stimuli that otherwise impact rationality and upon a view of the self as autonomous. Can one reason in this pristine manner, and should one? And should one view the self as autonomous? If one answers in the affirmative, one would likely tend to affirm Rand’s objectivism as sufficiently rational and self-affirming. I don’t answer in the affirmative to either of these claims, and will discuss these matters further in future entries on the subject.

I will offer my rationale for why I don’t find Ayn Rand’s views rational and self-affirming enough while incorporating thoughts from a few individuals who left comments on the previous post. Their responses as well as others in the comment section help further the conversation. One person who commented said,

Author’s estimate that the Objectivist ethics depend on reasoning apart from emotional or experiential stimuli is incorrect. Reason is based on the material provided by man’s senses (experiential stimuli), integrated in the form of concepts according to measurable relationships among observed concretes. The concepts are used in accordance with logic, i.e., non-contradictory. Emotion does not enter into the formulation of the Objectivist abstract ethical principles, however application of these principles to real life questions can and should involve emotional input…

Based on this comment, let me clarify a few items. I did not intend to convey that Rand’s view precludes or discounts consideration of emotional input, but rather that Rand maintains that emotion and experience do not constructively shape or drive properly functioning rationality. To go further, on my view, reason is an instrument of the affections, not the other way round. Rand would reject this view. For Rand, reason evaluates emotional stimuli and experiences, but when rationality is operating correctly it is not subject to or controlled by such stimuli. In her estimation, properly functioning reason always programs or controls the affections (not vice versa), and to constructive ends (See for example The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 72; the essay in question is written by Rand’s colleague at the time, Nathaniel Branden). In contrast, on my view, all people, whether well-reasoned or not, are controlled by the objects of their affection. We are not in control of the objects of our affection as autonomous subjects, but rather responders. Rigorous thinkers often have very different value systems and do not share the same views concerning what is deemed virtuous. Their competing affections shape their reasoning and value systems (See again The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 72).

Those who think that they are autonomous and objective thinkers who keep their experiences and emotional stimuli from shaping and driving their thinking processes, but instead control such stimuli, do not think rigorously enough. Such objectivity is not sufficiently objective. Here I call to mind a selection from a chapter I wrote for Trinitarian Soundings in Systematic Theology (T. & T. Clark International, 2005), p. 24, within which I quote Søren Kierkegaard:

Objectification in the form of detached speculation is not ultimately objectivity, but disguised subjectivity. Søren Kierkegaard contends against radical objectification and detached speculation. As he sees it, the human knower is fully involved in the knowing process, and so, detached speculation is inhuman:

The law for the development of the self with respect to knowing, insofar as it is the case that the self becomes itself, is that the increase of knowledge corresponds to the increase of self-knowledge, that the more the self knows, the more it knows itself. If this does not happen, the more knowledge increases, the more it becomes a kind of inhuman knowledge, in the obtaining of which a person’s self is squandered, much the way men were squandered on building pyramids, or the way men in Russian brass bands are squandered on playing just one note, no more, no less (Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, ed. and tr. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong {Princeton University Press, 1980}, p. 31).

It is an impersonal, sub-human form of knowing that seeks after autonomy. A truly human approach to the matter, on the other hand, involves participation, or what Colin Gunton refers to as ‘mutual indwelling’. Gunton draws attention to John’s Gospel’s distinctive emphasis on such ‘mutual indwelling’. According to Gunton, ‘The knowledge of which he speaks is first of all the knowledge by acquaintance that is a function of the interrelatedness of persons’ (Colin E. Gunton, A Brief Theology of Revelation: The 1993 Warfield Lectures {T. & T. Clark, 1995}, p. 118), a point John drives home in chapter 17 of his Gospel.

This brings me to my second point. Another commenter claimed: “Disagreement with autonomy is self refuting. Free will is axiomatic, you cannot refute your own autonomy without exorcising it. end of discussion.” I appreciate the concise and straightforward presentation of this claim. Still, I beg to differ. What is clear and axiomatic to some is not to others based on how the affections shape our thinking. Not every rigorous thinker has viewed free will and autonomy as axiomatic. I don’t find the celebration of the autonomous self to be self-affirming enough. On my view, the autonomous self is no self at all, for we are who we are only in relation to God and others. So, if I am to affirm self in the most advanced form, I will be impassioned to affirm the self in relation to others. Autonomy, uncircumscribed freedom, is no freedom at all for those who take issue with Rene Descartes’ classic claim: “I think; therefore I am.” Meaning and purpose are derived not by how well we think in some autonomous manner, but by what we love and how we are loved. In place of the Stoic mindset of “I think. Therefore, I am” or the Epicurean version of “I shop at Walmart and consume gobs of food. Therefore, I am,” I propose that we ponder carefully the following statement as the basis for ethics: “We are loved by God. Therefore, we are.” This divine love to which we respond rigorously with our minds and wills, not as autonomous individuals but as a community, is what shapes our personal identity and makes us truly human. In the biblical world, sin is bound up with reasoning not as an obedient response to God’s love, but as autonomous individuals who long to be in control. The end result is not simply the denial of God but also the denial of ourselves as we reason wrongly, enslaved to godless affections.

This piece is cross-posted at Patheos and The Christian Post. Comments made here are not monitored. To join the conversation, please comment on this post at Patheos.

At our intentionally multi-ethnic church, a discussion has arisen from our examinations of Paul’s epistle to the Galatians. We have been interacting about the characteristics of our particular gospel-centered community, trying to describe what it is like and what defines its culture. We’ve been considering what it looks like to give the gospel precedence in our hearts and minds over our cultural customs so that there is no cultural monopoly.

The late, great Lakota Sioux Christian leader Richard Twiss’s words on cultural hegemony are relevant here: “Because we are all so prone to be culturally egocentric, the temptation is to consider our worldview the biblical and correct one, shunning all others as unbiblical and wrong. Worse yet is our habit of judging cultural ways—songs, dances, rituals, etc.—to be sinful when there is no clear violation of Scripture” (Richard Twiss, One Church, Many Tribes: Following Jesus the Way God Made You, Regal, p. 113).

Cultural monopolies are often based on forms of cultural egocentrism. Such cultural egocentrism was present in Galatia, as the false teachers (Judaizers, as they are often called) were imposing on Gentiles regulations (circumcision laws) that were intrusions to the gospel that Paul, Barnabas and the leaders of the Jerusalem church proclaimed (we find unanimity of perspective on the gospel in the decision of the Council of Jerusalem on faith and circumcision in Acts 15). In Galatians 2, however, Paul tells us that when he, Barnabas and Peter/Cephas were in Antioch, Peter was guilty of going over to the Jewish table and abandoning fellowship with the Gentiles (with whom he had eaten in Antioch) when certain Jewish men associated with James came down to Antioch from Jerusalem. Paul called Peter on it. I believe that what had happened here was that these Jewish men embraced a form of cultural egocentrism: Jews were better than Gentiles, and such superiority was based on faith plus adherence to Jewish cultural forms and associations. Their sense of superiority won Peter over so that he sought to gain their approval, thus abandoning table fellowship with the Gentile Christians. Egocentrism has a way of building walls of division concerning who is in and who is out and causing people to seek to win the insiders’ approval. Of course, in the history of the Western world, Gentiles have often played this heinous egocentric card in their interaction with Jewish people to horrific effect. Cultural egocentrism can often lead to cultural genocide, as has been the case concerning Gentile impositions on the Jewish community in Western history and concerning Western and other cultural impositions on indigenous peoples throughout the world. Thus, we see that such cultural hegemony can work in a variety of ways.

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul, a devout Christian of Jewish heritage, challenges the Gentile Christians in Galatia not to succumb to the cultural egocentric pressures imposed on their community from the Judaizers, as had occurred in Antioch with Peter. It is not that circumcision was bad. It was fundamentally important to the preservation of the Jewish community in its history and heritage before God. Still, it was not to be imposed on the Gentile Christians, who according to Paul, were equal to the Jewish Christians through the faithfulness of Christ and faith in Christ (See for example Galatians 3:26-29).

Here are some questions our pastor posed for reflection in bringing Galatians to bear on our multi-ethnic church context followed by my responses:

What does it look like to have the gospel ‘de-mote’ our cultural customs in our minds and hearts and in our multiethnic/multicultural community? While the gospel does not demote the cultural customs of one’s people group, it does guard against those customs being enforced on others. As Richard Twiss reminds us, we must guard against thinking of our cultural forms as the only way in which the gospel can be expressed. By realizing that the Bible does not endorse or condemn a given culture as such, we can move forward with greater freedom while remaining confident that God is faithful to contextualize the good news in our cultural context without the good news being enslaved to that context.

What does this gospel centered community look like? What are its mannerisms? In place of cultural egocentrism, we need to celebrate cultural humility and inquisitiveness. In this context, humility entails not promoting our distinctive cultural forms as absolute and others as relative. In this domain, inquisitiveness entailsseeking to discern how God makes contact with us in and through our own cultural forms as well as seeking to learn of how God works in other cultural contexts in raising up faithful witnesses to the good news of Jesus Christ in various cultural forms.

How do we get there? Getting there requires that we learn to “talk story” with one another of diverse cultural contexts in a given local church and beyond. Of course, this will entail that we move beyond homogeneous church models that focus exclusively on one ethnic group of people to the exclusion of others. We need to learn to celebrate one another’s cultures in a given locale while always shining the light of Scripture on each of our cultural heritages to make sure that there is no clear violation of Scripture, in keeping with the intent of the quotation above from Richard Twiss. Of course, this is often easier said than done. “Talking story,”referred to above, a Hawaiian cultural expression, requires vulnerability and transparency, which requires time and energy and good listening skills, as we share with one another how it is we see the good news of Jesus Christ taking root in our distinctive cultural contexts in unique and particular ways. As with First Nations talking circles, which make space for everyone to share as equals, space must be cultivated for everyone’s voice to be heard as we seek to bring Scripture to bear on our respective cultural heritages in service to the community of faith. Only then will we move beyond monolithic to multiethnic expressions as the one body of Christ.

This piece is cross-posted at Patheos and The Christian Post. Comments made here are not monitored. To join the conversation, please comment on this post at Patheos.