True Minimalism

  • October 27, 2015
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  • Park Forum
1 Timothy 5.6

She who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives.

“Materialism is the other person’s disease,” quips sociologist Juliet Schor. Over 80% of Americans believe people are too materialistic. Yet Schor’s research shows that drastically fewer people believe this is a problem for themselves, their own family, or friends.

Recent research has revealed the words of 1 Timothy 5 — dying while living — to be an apt metaphor for the effects of materialism. A longitudinal study published in the Journal of Consumer Research found a bi-directional relationship with materialism and loneliness; “Materialism fosters social isolation which in turn reinforces materialism.” The Guardian reported on a similar study:
“People in a controlled experiment who were repeatedly exposed to images of luxury goods, to messages that cast them as consumers rather than citizens and to words associated with materialism (such as buy, status, asset and expensive), experienced immediate but temporary increases in material aspirations, anxiety and depression. They also became more competitive and more selfish, had a reduced sense of social responsibility and were less inclined to join in demanding social activities.”

Research and Scripture agree on the problem, but diverge on what will adequately solve it. The words in 1 Timothy are given less as critique than exhortation. Though originally responding to a specific group of widows, we find pictured a thriving life of faith: “She who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day.”

Contrast this with a recent article that admitted, “if you have more stuff than you do space to easily store it, your life will be spent a slave to your possessions.” The author’s proposed solution was this: “Deliberately choose a life with less.”
Cleaning out, consuming less, and resisting the myth that a larger home solves storage problems are all helpful (and necessary) steps in this process. But it is possible to do all this and still be materialistic — living under what researchers define as “a value system that is preoccupied with possessions and the social image they project”

The challenge in 1 Timothy 5 is to have such preoccupation with Christ that everything else becomes secondary. Possessions and wealth become tools for Christian service by removing their power over us as their bottom line transfers from our identity to Christ’s glory.

Today’s Reading
2 Kings 8 (Listen – 5:18)
1 Timothy 5 (Listen – 3:22)

Precision in Praise

  • October 26, 2015
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  • Park Forum

1 Timothy 4.13
Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.

It’s easy to be far more specific in criticism than in praise. We tend to get by with generic sentiments of affirmation — “good job,” or “nice work.” But for negative feedback we choose our words carefully, providing examples and details.

This same dynamic extends into Christian circles in regards to theology. Responses to theological disagreements — or even ambiguous language around theology — are extensive. Conversations delve into the minute, response posts are written, even books get published to ameliorate theological angst. In contrast, orthodoxy and clarity often yield nods of approval with the occasional, “she got it right on that one.”
Devoting ourselves to reading Scripture and taking in Christian teaching is far easier in an insight-hungry culture than living a life of gospel-centered exhortation.

The word “exhortation” in 1 Timothy comes from a powerhouse of a Greek word — paraklesis. Though paraklesis is used to talk about appeal and earnestness (twice each), the other 26 times that it occurs in the New Testament it means comfort, encouragement, even consolation.

The desire of the early church was to command a strong knowledge of Scripture to comfort, encourage, and console people in a broken world. In other words, the most crystallized presentations of Scripture and theology weren’t used for tearing down, but for building up.

Nowhere do we see this more clearly than when Paul walks into Athens. Though profoundly disturbed by their idolatry, he reasoned, empathized, and even praised their spirituality (all of which was directed toward paganism!).
For Peter, as for Paul, Christian servanthood means being at the disposal of others, as Christ was for us, in order to win others to him for the long view, rather than demanding one’s rights for individual fulfillment and personal adornment in the short view. — Royce Gordon Gruenler

Paul encouraged the Athenians toward the gospel. His only rebuke, which came after he established relational credibility through commitment and investment, was that generic spirituality fell short of the glory of God.

Relational depth and Scriptural precision in exhortation laid the foundation the Athenians needed in order to be confronted by the implications of the gospel — namely, that they too were broken, prideful, and in need of a savior.

Evangelism stalls when we do not thoroughly apply the words of comfort, encouragement, and consolation God has entrusted to his Church through the Scriptures. It is wisdom which makes the most of every opportunity with those outside the church by filling each conversation with grace.

Today’s Reading
2 Kings 7 (Listen – 3:55)
1 Timothy 4 (Listen – 2:05)

Weaponized Shame :: The Weekend Reading List

  • October 23, 2015
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  • Park Forum
Social media is so perfectly designed to manipulate our desire for approval. — Jon Ronson

The full removal of evil in our world is one of the breathless longings of Christianity. We hopefully await a time where death, cancer, genocide, abuse, and countless other atrocities are vanquished. And though we count on this, it can be difficult to picture life without the petty evils that accost us daily.

We don’t even think of things like stress and life’s regular anxieties and discouragements as stemming from evil — perhaps because we try to individualize evil and these are systemic forces that plague us all. Though we have sinned, we are also all victims of a broken world.

Shame and bullying, which in the past were among the ongoing pains of our world, have taken on a force of their own through the internet. Far too many people — some who have done legitimate wrong others who were simply imprudent or taken out of context — have had their lives destroyed by a maelstrom of anonymous digital hate. In extreme cases people have lost jobs, struggled with depression and PTSD, and had to leave their home after their addresses were posted online and linked to death threats.

We once glorified Twitter as a great global town square, a shining agora where everyone could come together to converse. But I’ve never been to a town square where people can shove, push, taunt, bully, shout, harass, threaten, stalk, creep, and mob you.

Twitter could have been a town square. But now it’s more like a drunken, heaving mosh pit. — Umair Haque
Though this disproportionately affects children and students, the modern digital age has made it something nearly all of us can suffer from as victims — or participate in as perpetrators.
A marketplace has emerged where public humiliation is a commodity and shame is an industry. How is the money made? Clicks. The more shame, the more clicks. The more clicks, the more advertising dollars. We’re in a dangerous cycle. The more we click on this kind of gossip, the more numb we get to the human lives behind it, and the more numb we get, the more we click. All the while, someone is making money off of the back of someone else’s suffering. With every click, we make a choice. — Monica Lewinsky

In her TED talk, “The Price of Shame,” Monika Lewinsky opens up about the profound toll public shaming can take on a person, “In 1998, I lost my reputation and my dignity. I lost almost everything, and I almost lost my life… The public humiliation was excruciating. Life was almost unbearable.”

Lewinsky’s talk focuses outside the guilt of her actions on the weight of public shaming — our active roll in disintegrating another human being through quips and clicks. “It was easy to forget that ‘that woman’ was dimensional, had a soul, and was once unbroken.”

In a Medium post this month Umair Haque, who writes on economics and technology for the Harvard Business Review, chronicles the way technology has weaponized our ability to harm one another:
The social web became a nasty, brutish place… What really happens on Twitter these days? People have self-sorted into cliques, little in-groups, tribes. The purpose of tribes is to defend their beliefs, their ways, their customs, their culture — their ways of seeing the world… and if you dare not to bow down before it…or worse still to challenge it…well, then the faithful will do what they must to defend their gods. They will declare a crusade against you.

We are at the beginning of a large cultural conversation about shame, guilt, bullying, and behavior in the public square. Christians have the opportunity live as salt and light in a bland, rotting, and dark digital world. What we click, how we respond — if we we respond at all — shares a testimony to the world.

Nietzsche warned, “Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.” Though the gospel takes it one step further: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” In this‚ in what we post, and click, and share — we join Christ in bringing heaven to earth now.

Today’s Reading
2 Kings 4 (Listen – 6:17)
1 Timothy 1 (Listen – 2:59)

This Weekend’s Readings
2 Kings 5 (Listen – 5:13) 1 Timothy 2 (Listen – 1:38)
2 Kings 6 (Listen – 5:05) 1 Timothy 3 (Listen – 2:10)

The Weekend Reading List

Vocation as Spiritual Practice :: Throwback Thursday

  • October 22, 2015
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  • Park Forum
2 Thessalonians 3.11
For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work.

By Thomas Cole (1627-1697)

We are called to Christianity by the preaching of the gospel of Christ. We are called to outward worldly calling by God’s special appointment: “Six days shalt you labor and do all your work.” Every man has his work — a full business which must not be neglected — we are called to our particular employment by Providence.

Many of the duties and graces of our Christian calling follow us into our particular callings and into all the works of our hands. Your present duty lies in your present work, in the daily business of your particular callings. If you seek only yourselves — your own profit and pleasure — this is not serving God, but yourselves. You must do what you do in faith, as to the Lord; and then every thing you do will be an act of worship, because it carries in it a religious respect to the will of God.

Herein lies the nature of all practical holiness; whatever you are doing, be sure exercise some grace: there can be no godliness without grace. Grace in the heart guides the hand. These gracious dispositions toward God follow a saint into all his employments, inclining him to holiness in all his ways.

What I am pressing you to is your present duty — what is past cannot be recalled. Your present duty is to repent of past sins, and to walk with God in your callings for the time to come. Be upright in your way; admit nothing into your particular callings that is inconsistent with the principles of your general calling, as you are Christians.

Grace will help you at every turn. If you thrive in your calling, grace will teach you to give God the praise, and to be thankful. If you sink and go backwards, grace will teach you quietly to submit to God; how to bear with cheerfulness all disappointments and losses that you meet with; how to receive evil, as well as good.

If God inclines your hearts every day to consider the spiritual act of your present duty, you will be always found in a holy frame and the blessing of God will be upon you. You will “flourish like the palm-tree, and grow like a cedar in Lebanon; bringing forth fruit in old age.”

 

*Abridged and language updated from Thomas Cole’s sermon, How May The Well-Discharge Of Our Present Duty Give Us Assurance Of Help From God For The Well-Discharge Of All Future Duties?

Today’s Reading
2 Kings 3 (Listen – 4:29)
2 Thessalonians 3 (Listen – 2:16)

Fresh Experiences in Ancient Traditions

  • October 21, 2015
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  • Park Forum
2 Thessalonians 2.15

Stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us.

Acquisition of property was highly regulated under Roman law. Items, land, and even slaves abandoned during conquest could be claimed by Roman citizens under a section of the law entitled res nullius (literally: nobody’s property). Property passed from an existing owner to another fell under a different section called tradtio.
Traditio required two steps: the owner voluntarily placing the property into the care of another, and the recipient accepting ownership.
We derive the english word tradition from this process, in hope we can transfer significant parts of the human experience from one generation to another. In recent history, individualism has proven to be a hostile environment for tradition. Family traditions rarely extend beyond one or two generations. Political traditions are under fire. Religious traditions have been on the decline for decades.
A person who maintains intentional roots in past practices is labeled “traditional” — using the word in the pejorative sense: obsolete and old-fashioned.

When we turn away from tradition, from the past, we are left only with the present. As a result we try to recover what we’ve lost in tradition through flailing moments of intention. Mobile apps offer us help with a few minutes in the morning to control our breathing and turning habit formation into a game.

Hacks to reclaiming the moment aren’t bad — but they don’t lead us beyond ourselves. Surely one of the ways we gather strength from those who went before us, as Hebrews exhorts, is to be formed by what formed them. We experience something great inside ourselves when we join our faith to those who walked before us.
Liturgies are compressed, performed narratives that recruit the imagination through the body. — James K.A. Smith

Paul’s challenge to the Thessalonians to return to the traditions of the faith isn’t a cry to return to a nostalgic past. Quite the opposite, it was an invitation to gather strength from the saints and root their lives in something transcendent. The gospel is an invitation to community.

Yielding to tradition renews our ability to express the grace God first showed to us. Fresh experiences in tradition are a way we can experience ownership of our faith. But settling for a life unhinged from spiritual tradition is a way to deny the world has an owner and stake a claim of lordship over our own lives.

Today’s Reading
2 Kings 2 (Listen – 4:26)
2 Thessalonians 2 (Listen – 2:32)