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Trustworthy Rivals: On an Alternative Path to Multi-Faith Discourse

130801 The One and the Many

Interfaith or multi-faith discourse can easily fall prey to agreeing to agree on everything, even where there are significant differences. Such agreement and affirmation may come across as disingenuous at worst, naïve and exaggerated at best. As I have had to tell various people of non-Christian faith communities over the years when engaged in such discourse, we are not saying the same thing.

A more straightforward and plausible approach is that taken by the Foundation for Religious Diplomacy with which I am associated (including the Evangelical Chapter). Our movement calls for approaching adherents of the respective faith traditions as “trustworthy rivals” rather than as perfect, homogeneous matches made in heaven.

“Trustworthy rivals” also win out over mean-spirited religious enemies. While the various faith traditions set forth competing truth claims at key points, such competing claims do not lead adherents of the diverse traditions necessarily to discount and demean one another. In fact, I have found that sometimes those closest to one’s tradition in the family faith line often come across as the harshest critics (not those from afar), as with many nuclear family scenarios involving siblings.

Which would you rather be toward those of other faiths? A trustworthy rival, a mean-spirited and scheming enemy (like a former spouse), or a platonic and possibly even unscrupulous bedfellow? Can you think of other options?

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

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Reconciliation Is More Than a Hugathon, Part 2

RunnersOne of the questions I asked at the end of the post “Reconciliation Is More than a Hugathon” was, “What does racial repentance entail economically for individuals who have oppressed people of diverse ethnicities?” Answer: the same thing they should do toward those they have oppressed of their own ethnicity.

For example, Zacchaeus made amends for the wrongs he had committed toward individuals of his own people group—and with interest (See Luke 19:1-10). In Luke 3, John the Baptist tells his listeners that they must produce fruit worthy of repentance (Luke 3:8). In this context, all signs (fruit) of authentic repentance were economic in nature. Let’s put the point in context (Luke 3:7-14 ESV):

He [John the Baptist] said therefore to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

And the crowds asked him, “What then shall we do?” And he answered them, “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.” Tax collectors also came to be baptized and said to him, “Teacher, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what shall we do?” And he said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.”

Whether or not the tax collectors and soldiers in question had committed acts of economic injustice toward others in the past, John tells them not to do so now. John would not have told tax collectors and soldiers to refrain from economic injustices if their groups had not been known to oppress people and benefit financially from them. While the passage does not say that they must make amends for past sins of exploitation, we do know from the Zacchaeus account in Luke 19 that Jesus commends him for his voluntary and necessary act of making amends to those he has exploited: his action is a sign of his repentance which is bound up with Zacchaeus’ being reconciled to God; it is fruit that is the result of his repentance.

In Luke 3, we find that John the Baptist tells his listeners (likely of different people groups) that they must produce fruit that is worthy of repentance. Following John the Baptist, we should not exploit others; following Zacchaeus’ commendable example, we should pay back with interest those we have exploited. Here it is worth drawing attention to what the Lord Jesus says, as recorded in Luke 12:57-59: “And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right? As you go with your accuser before the magistrate, make an effort to settle with him on the way, lest he drag you to the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer put you in prison.I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the very last penny.”

Now some might claim that Matthew 18:21-35 counters this passage. I beg to differ. Matthew 18:21-35 speaks of those who won’t forgive loans they have received, though they have been freed from paying larger loans. The text is not talking about being relieved from having to pay back someone he or she has exploited, but someone who owes him or her money (perhaps based on exploitation of the person in debt).

Righteousness and justice are the foundation of God’s throne (Psalm 89:14). They are not separate from one another. They involve one another.  In God, they are one. While paying back debts does not bring about payment for the penalty of our sins before God, and while we cannot earn our salvation, those who have been reconciled with God based on repentance of sins committed against God and bound up with faith in God and Christ’s finished work will be freed to make things right with those they have offended. Making right with others follows from being made right with God (While Paul speaks often (though not exclusively) of God’s righteousness in a declarative or legal sense bound up with our faith {see for example Romans 4}, the Synoptic Gospels speak often (though not exclusively) of social righteousness as required of God’s people who believe). God’s free grace frees us to open our hands and make economic amends with those of whatever ethnicity whom we have wronged. How free are we?

There are several more miles to travel on this marathon race that is more than a hugathon. Other questions I still intend to answer in future posts are as follows: How far can one take the Zacchaeus story to talk about corporate repentance involving economic reparations? How does the Zacchaeus story apply to people who might not directly “tax” and cheat individuals like Zacchaeus did, but who benefit economically in one way or another from such economic oppression? Future posts will address these questions.

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

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When Does a Child Grow Up?

iStock_000013199192XSmallWhen does a boy become a man? What is the measure of his manhood? What about a girl?

Muddy Waters sang of being a “manish boy.” On the opposite side, Mark Driscoll has spoken of a host of males who want to remain adolescents: they are really only boys who can shave. Who is a real woman? Marilyn Monroe, Condoleezza Rice, or June Cleaver of Leave It to Beaver fame? Are our conceptions of manhood, womanhood and childhood bound up with the essence of reality or are they social constructs?

I reflected upon these questions in view of a recent lecture I heard. My colleague Dr. Greg Burch (Director of the Master of Arts in Global Development and Justice at Multnomah University) recently presented a paper on street children in The Institute for the Theology of Culture: New Wine, New Wineskins’ research seminar titled “Bimodal Mission: Advancement in Ministry with Street-living and Working Children” (taken from Missiology: An International Review, 41/3 (2013): 257-272). The terminology “Street Children” was coined to signify that children on the streets do not fit normalcy. What fits normalcy? Further to what was stated above, is “childhood” an essential reality, or is it a social construct? Is it a matter of both/and?

My colleague spoke of how he and his ministry in Latin America over the years approached “street children” as those who needed to be protected, even though they had lived prior to that time in very dangerous situations and survived. They had been participants/actors who were eventually treated paternalistically, when they were brought into the community and nurtured by the ministry. Greg has since learned to approach them missionally as those who have the capacity to shape life in significant and beautiful ways.

How we approach children raises important questions. Should we approach children from the vantage point of protection/paternalism or participation/partnership? Do children need to be protected as passive entities from exploitation or approached as significant actors who can effect constructive change? My colleague’s conclusion in the paper is both/and given the local context. In some cases, children will need to be protected, but in others they should be given space to lead and bring change.

I asked myself other questions as a result of the presentation. One question concerns social construction: if everything is social construction, can anything really be exploitation? Surely, there are situations where children need to be protected from abuse/exploitation, for children are more than social constructs. They can change their contexts and challenge constructs as social actors who shape reality; we must take not only their social contexts but also them seriously.

We must take children seriously for various reasons, including their inquisitive spirits and willingness to risk. Inquisitiveness and willingness to risk often mark childhood. Now since that is the case, and since street children are social actors who step out and contribute to society, are they not truly children? What does that entail for children not on the street? If they are not social actors, but merely passive recipients who are entrenched in paternalistic nurturing environments, are we allowing them to be children fully?

What about the rest of us? If we lose our inquisitiveness and humility, but rather think we have arrived, what does that make us? If becoming adults entails the loss of inquisitiveness and humility, do we die when we reach adulthood? If we don’t become like little children, what are we? Remember that the Lord Jesus instructed us that we must become like little children to enter the kingdom of God (Matthew 18:1-5). If this is so, shouldn’t we be thinking, “When I grow up, I want to become a child?” An answer in the affirmative is not any old social construct; it is a kingdom construct of the first order.

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

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Reforming Our Understanding of Romans 13 on Immigration Reform

This piece was originally published at the Evangelical Immigration Table.

121119 P I Can't Wait for Christian America to DieA student from Arizona once remarked in a class discussion on justice and immigration that it was against Arizona law to give a cup of water to an undocumented person. As a result of his understanding (or misunderstanding) of the Arizona law, he said he would not provide relief to someone he knew was undocumented. He was surprised when I asked, “What would Jesus do?” if our Lord faced the same situation. After all, Jesus often disobeyed the Sabbath laws of his day, for example, by healing people on the Sabbath (e.g., Mark 3:1-6). Regardless of the intricacies of the Arizona law and accuracy of the student’s claim, the discussion raised an important issue for Christians to discuss. Is civil disobedience ever warranted of Christians?

It is worth noting that, under current law—at least in most of the United States, most churches are not currently faced with this question of civil disobedience: nothing in federal law prohibits churches from ministering to undocumented immigrants in need, and there is no requirement that a church or an individual report someone whom they suspect of lacking legal status. Neither ministering to undocumented immigrants nor advocating for reforms to our immigration legal system puts a church or individual followers of Christ outside of submission to the governmental authorities. However, the political climate the past several years could put pressure on certain elements of a church’s ministry to the undocumented, making it appear unlawful, in view of ambiguously-worded immigration bills at both the state and federal levels. In this climate, the question of whether civil disobedience is ever warranted (or even required) of Christians in view of biblical texts on care for the stranger is worth considering (See for example Exodus 22:21, Leviticus 19:34, Matthew 25:43, and Luke 10:36-37).

The question of civil disobedience becomes more complicated when one considers such biblical texts as Romans 13. For many Christians like the student in my class, Romans 13 preclude the possibility of ever disobeying a government’s law in good conscience. Romans 13:1-7 reads,

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed (ESV).

From a surface reading of the text, it might appear that Christians are to offer blind obedience to the governing authorities. Such is not the case. We are to subject ourselves to the governing authorities as they do good, not evil, for God has authorized them to nurture and protect the good of all, not to do harm (Romans 13:4). Ultimately, Christians are to subject themselves to Christ in the sphere of the state. From the vantage point of Christ’s lordship over all spheres, the church and state are subject to Christ’s kingdom.[1] Thus, Christians and the church are to approach the subject of obedience to the state in view of their ultimate allegiance to Christ and his call on his people to care for the stranger and neighbor in need.

In this context, it is also worth noting that the text that immediately follows in Romans 13 (verses 8-10) focuses on what is essential to fulfilling God’s law as revealed in the Old Testament—love your neighbor as yourself:

Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

The church is to dedicate itself to fulfilling God’s law, which centers on love of neighbor, as well as the love of God (cf. Mark 12:30-31), even if that puts it at odds with the state from time to time.  Jesus redefines for us who our neighbor is. He is not the person like us or who likes us or whom we like. It is the person who stands or lies before us, including the person in need, as in the story of the Samaritan of exceptional mercy in Luke 10:25-37. It could very well be the case that the Jewish religious leaders who passed the beaten and robbed man lying on the road did so because they feared he was dead and to have touched him would have made them ceremonially unclean. Jesus calls them and us to a higher law—love of neighbor. Only the Samaritan cared for their neighbor that day. Only he proved to be a neighbor to the person in need. And, as Pastor Rick Warren says, “A good Samaritan doesn’t stop and ask the injured person, ‘Are you legal or illegal?’”

Martin Luther King, Jr. demonstrates for us how to apply Romans 13 in our current democratic context. The Apostle Paul had no way of influencing legislation of laws in his day, but Christians, just like King, do so in our society. Providentially for us, King did not offer blind obedience to the state. If he had, we might still be experiencing forms of Jim Crow legislation today. Or else, the overturning of these laws might have come through violent forms of disobedience, not civil disobedience as with the movement inspired by King and the African American church.

From his Birmingham Jail cell, King responded to the white clergy who were troubled by his civil disobedience:

One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

King understood the consequences for disobeying governing authorities—jail or worse. But King also understood the consequences of not obeying one’s own conscience and God himself, who calls us to promote just laws that favor the love of neighbor as ourselves regardless of the cost. King had the King of Kings as his exemplar: it is lawful to do good, not harm, to save life, not to kill, even if one gets killed in the end by the authorities for doing so, as happened with Jesus (See Mark 3:1-6).

The Evangelical Immigration Table offers a balanced approach to the subject of immigration reform in a democratic system. Rather than having to pursue blind obedience to unjust laws or dismissing the rightful rule of law, its principles include the following: respecting the God-given dignity of each and every person, whether documented or not, respecting the rule of law, and establishing a path toward legal status and/or citizenship for those who qualify and who wish to become permanent residents. Our current immigration laws are out-of-synch with the needs of our labor market and thus have been only selectively enforced for decades, sending mixed messages to immigrants desperate for work; a biblically-appropriate respect for the rule of law should guide us to reform a system that is not currently functioning well, restoring the rule of law while also respecting the human dignity of each person made in God’s image.

In the end, Christians have a responsibility in our democratic society to promote and live by laws that promote God’s law of love of neighbor—documented or not, as disclosed in Scripture and embodied in Jesus Christ.

[1] Karl Barth writes of Romans 13 that “the last thing this instruction implies is that the Christian community and the Christian should offer the blindest possible obedience to the civil community and its officials.” Karl Barth, “The Christian Community and the Civil Community,” in Against the Stream: Shorter Post-War Writings, 1946-1952, ed. R. G. Smith, trans. E.M. Delecour and S. Godman (London: SCM Press, Ltd., 1954), p. 24. According to Barth, the church is to submit to Christ in the sphere of the state (See p. 29). The church’s ultimate allegiance to Christ puts a check on its submission to the dictates of the state. The church and state are subject to Christ, who is Lord over all spheres.

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

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Reconciliation Is More Than a Hugathon

RunnersReconciliation apart from justice is not reconciliation. So, too, biblical justice entails reconciliation. To adapt Immanuel Kant’s famous claim from his critical epistemology and apply it to a critical and constructive model of race reconciliation, it would read: reconciliation without justice is empty; justice without reconciliation is blind. What does each side of this claim look like? We’ll take up each one of these items in successive posts. First, reconciliation without justice is empty. We find an instance of this in Luke’s Gospel. In Luke 19, the account of Zacchaeus reads:

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. 3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

7 All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Zaccaeus was not simply a tax collector, but a chief tax collector. His wealth was made, at least in part, from cheating people. Jesus’ determination to dine with Zacchaeus at his home did not sit well with the people since Zacchaeus was a sinner: in this case, someone who assisted and benefited from the unwelcome Roman regime by taxing and cheating Rome’s Jewish “subjects.”

We will return to the Zacchaeus story in a successive post to discuss how justice without reconciliation is blind. For now, however, we are focusing simply on how reconciliation apart from justice is empty.

Here we find that Zacchaeus is overwhelmed by Jesus’ presence and mercy. As a result, Zacchaeus responds to God’s reconciling love and repents of his sin. When Jesus hears Zacchaeus’ confession that he will give half of his possessions to the poor, and if he has cheated anyone he will pay back four times the amount, the Lord proclaims that salvation has come to Zacchaeus’ house; he, too, has the faith of Abraham. Abraham’s saving faith was active. He believed God and followed where God led. So, too, with Zacchaeus. In his case, reconciliation with God leads him to go and be reconciled to his fellows whom he has swindled economically; he is moved to pay them back—and with interest. It’s not that Zacchaeus’ actions saved him, but saving faith always entails repentance, as our hearts are transformed by God’s mercy and grace to make things right with those we have wronged.

What would this discussion on Zacchaeus entail for such matters as race reconciliation? To the extent one has cheated someone else—anybody else, but specifically for the purposes of this post, someone of another ethnicity, to that extent one should pay back—and with interest. To the extent one has benefited from an economic system in the United States that has oppressed Native Americans, African Americans, and other people groups over the generations, to that extent repentance economically is also required. Reconciliation that begins and ends with a hugathon is not a marathon race for justice; it is not biblical reconciliation. So, we need to peel off our spiritual bumper stickers that reduce race reconciliation to “Have you hugged a black or native person lately?” My late friend, Lakota Sioux Christian leader Richard Twiss, once said at a conference I attended that white Christians have washed his feet as an act of love and reconciliation; but in the end, all he comes away with as a First Nations Christian is clean feet. Nothing has really changed.

This point also came home to me through the story often attributed to Dr. John M. Perkins who speaks of redistribution as key to Christian community development. The story goes that two teams have been playing baseball for seven innings, one white and the other black. Around the seventh inning, the black team realizes the white team has been cheating the entire game. As a result, the score is 20-0 in the white team’s favor. The white team is confronted and “repents” by saying that they will play fair the rest of the game. The only problem with their repentance is that the score is still 20-0.

In view of the Zacchaeus story, it would be accurate to argue that there is no transformative repentance if nothing is done to rectify the situation: at the very least, the white team needs to award 20 points to the black team, or go back to 0-0.

While it is true that people of various ethnic backgrounds oppress one another and even their own, and while the white majority has also been oppressed in different ways at times, the dominant white culture(s) has been guilty of a far greater share of oppression, including economic oppression.

Here are some questions to address: what does racial repentance entail economically for individuals who have oppressed people of diverse ethnicities? How far can one take the Zacchaeus story to talk about corporate repentance involving economic reparations? How does the Zacchaeus story apply to people who might not directly “tax” and cheat individuals like Zacchaeus did, but who benefit economically in one way or another from such economic oppression? Future posts will address these questions.

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