Lama's log

Mmmm. Thanks Tim. With regard to your comments on passive resistance the key thing for me is when you say, 'Passive resistance was pretty successful in India, but it wasn't sufficient in South Africa.' That would be exactly my point, that we stop looking at what would be the desired outcome but trust that Kingdom living even if it leads to a 'sense' of failure, is what is sought after. That passive resistance is sought because it is felt to be right before God but not because it is necessarily effective. That is not at all how I or most people seem to act. It is though what I see in Christ. Obedience and walking with the Father whatever the outcome. The cross wasn’t sensible or effective or productive but it was Holy. That’s what is redeemed. Resistance to Rome the Jesus way was not effective in any sense except for that God honoured it and in some unknowable way it is salvific. If Christ had thought about the difficult moral choices then maybe he would have aligned himself fully instead of only partially with the Zealots. Christ the agitator would have not also been Christ the peacemaker.

In the end then I think that for all my love of Bonhoeffer his ultimate choice to seek to kill Hitler was wrong. Understandable, applaudable, but a desire to take fate into his own hands rather than stand with Christ I think was mistaken. It also comes from a place which sees death and suffering as the worst possible things. Hitler is causing so much pain and suffering he must go. If we have an eternal viewpoint is this still the case though? And if we follow a passive political agitator who demands a taking up of our cross then where does that leave us?

There is also a slippery subtlety to this. I agree that what this could descend into is some sort of blind rule following and an abdication of responsibility. We construct what following is, do it and ignore real human issues and needs. That’s not where I want to end up. I understand a Kingdom life to be one with a high degree of both individual and communal responsibility, this coupled with an altering of a mind set which says that success or failure looks unlike the picture we’re given in British culture. That we surrender outcomes because we care deeply about wider community not because we abdicate responsibility.

In the end I have limited if not little credibility because of my privilege and the fact that I choose to hang on to it on a daily basis. Bonhoeffer has bags of credibility not only because he was a good theologian but because of his life and circumstance.

As for evangelism, yes Glen ‘bearing faithful witness.’ But really what the hell does that mean in contexts and circumstances of vast privilege? What does that mean when people are often not living out salvation but thinking themselves saved ‘ I believe x,y and z’ so I am part of the in crowd now lets go home to the semi in our big car’. Faithful witness to be and tell will mean not really expecting people to follow because it really does make no earthly sense. So mission then without agenda of outcome would again probably look very different to agendered giving, ‘special events’ and a constant measuring of numbers. Bearing faithful witness scares the life out of me whilst simultaneously allowing a soft option. Andy Jones’ example does chime with me – and so it goes on.