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.

We've been looking at the beatitudes in Stone Soup and using Dallas Willard's The Great Omission to lean on through it. Along with this I'm re-reading Power & Passion by Samuel Wells. All these strands seemed to have converged this week onto the topic of agendas. When is OK to push your agenda and where do you get this authority to know what the right agenda is? Why is my perspective better than someone else's?

In terms of passive resistance then, why is calling someone to die for a cause better than telling someone to kill for a cause? I know that harm to the other person is involved here but isn't that the same as inciting someone to give up their lives? How am I not involved in killing when I ask someone to matry in passive resistance? Isn't that just pushing and promoting a different cause?

What Willard and Wells both hint at is surrender of power and plan. In other words if, through seeking Christ what you do is try to live in a Christlike way, you try to be disciple to the extent which you then stop trying to manipulate outcomes. You are faithful to a way of being so much so that you are prepared to be the loser ( I am taking what they say and running with it a bit here).

This does make Jesus being abandoned on the cross really important. If Jesus really felt alone, abandoned and without help then everything he did could have been pointless, meaningless and all for nothing. In the face of this though, he still hung there. He had surrendered his agenda, in fact any agenda really. He was a fairly spectacular loser. And those he had asked to follow and live like him? Those he invited to live kingdom lives, us now who chose to either stick with him or not bother? There can be little doubt that if we want this kind of God then it involves us being perpetual losers to. Our agendas will rarely make it into the daylight. We will lack credibility.

On the plus side though, it also means absolute freedom. To live in Christ means I can't be owned by state or media, materialism or ambition. If I really have no agenda other than being faithful to God then I have no vested interest in the outcome of situations only in the process of conduct. I think this is more exciting than it sounds. I know I'm not going to actually get to the state that I'm so in with JC that holiness emanates from me and I have no selfish desires or agendas. I'm not totally deluded.

I can start to think though that I don't understand God's agenda therefore it's not my job to push it. It's just my job to be faithful.

The glaring question that then comes up for me is, where does this leave evangelism?