Obsolete Christianity and Revitalized Faith: Sanctorum Communio, the Communion of Saints

The ardent Capitalists or devote relativist might view the decline in North American church attendance as signaling the death of Christian religious fever. The capitalist who measures success in numbers and the relativist who sees authority would suggest that we are witnessing the secularization of America, similar to trends in Western Europe. Even the Christian faithful would agree with this. However, history has been here before, and perhaps the North American (NA) religious and secular should ask themselves if their assessment is correct.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian executed by the Nazi regime for his role in a plot to kill Hitler, was particularly disturbed by the decline in German church attendance after WWI. As the social gap widen between the poor and the social elite in the Weimar during reparation payments, he saw a society ripped apart. He observed that the Protestant church had become bourgeois, a place for the artisan and merchant class, but lacking common people. For the elite, faith was private, church attendance casual, and the working class no longer attended, so the question Bonhoeffer asks is, has Christ been divided? Since WW2, Europe’s religious narrative identity has moved towards secularization and the decline in church attendance validates this observation, and that of Bonhoeffer’s, especially in the Western academy. For those opposed to religious fever, the trend is the right one. For the faithful, it’s disturbing and problematic. What went wrong? Perhaps the answer and elucidation lies in Bonhoeffer’s study, Sanctorum Communio or the communion of saints.

What was Bonhoeffer’s observation? It was in his PhD thesis, Sanctorum Communio, written at the age of twenty one, a paper that the theologian, Karl Bart called a theological miracle. Karl Bart’s own examination was that WWI was a disaster for the Church in Europe with each of the warring nations claiming the Christian God to be on their side. Christianity had become a tribal God. When Germany fell, so did its faith in the Church. Bohofeffer’s analysis was that the Protestant church had become bourgeois and lost touch with the poor. The German church had traded its relationship with the deprived for the merchant class and lost the masses. He argues, from the New Testament, that for Christ to be present in the church, it cannot be divided and must maintain a real connection and relationship to all people regardless of race, class or belief.

During the Nazi oppression of the Jews, Bonhoeffer realized the practical implication of such commitment to community. When the right of the church to preach the gospel was challenged by the Nazi’s, Bonhoeffer rethinks the position of the church. The real issue of the church is to stand with the victims of oppression, regardless of their beliefs, race, or economic circumstances. This is the gospel. Not only was church attendance down, but the very meaning of the gospel was at risk, and Bonhoeffer could clearly see how it had been compromised. In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer states that the Protestant gospel proclaimed a “cheap grace.” Cheap grace let Christians believe they are forgiven and accepted by God even if they did not battle injustice in a world around them. Grace is costly for the believer and God. For Bonhoeffer, grace in the bible was a “costly grace.”

Peter Berger, Resurgent Religion

The conundrum today is that in spite of declining church attendance in NA and Europe, the world is not becoming less religious, but more! Peter Berger, one of the original contributors to the secularization thesis that modernity leads to secularization has with his colleagues rejected this thesis after 40 years. Instead, Berger maintains that modernity leads to pluralism (The Desecularization of the World, Resurgent Religion and World Politics, edited by Peter Berger). Not exactly the expected outcome of the enlightenment and technology, the tools that would lessen our dependence on religious belief. So what’s all this noise about declining church attendance?

As Berger notes, religious fever and its growing numbers in the Protestant church is coming from among the poor and uneducated. Church attendance is down in the both western Protestant and Catholic churches, but significantly up outside the western world. For those of us in the NA church, it begs hard hitting questions. Why are they growing and not the traditional homelands of the Protestant and Catholic faith? When growth can be seen as blessing and decline as God displeasure, this is particularly disturbing.

Peter Berger affirms that like Islam, the Evangelical upsurge is breathtaking in scope. He comments:

“Geographically that scope is even wider. It has gained huge numbers of converts in East Asia – in all the Chinese communities (including, despite severe persecution, mainland china) and in south Korea, the Philippines, across the south Pacific, throughout sub-Saharan Africa (where it is often synthesized with elements of traditional African religion), apparently in parts of ex-Communist Europe. But the most remarkable success has occurred in Latin America, there are now thought to be between forty and fifty million Evangelical Protestants south of the U.S. border, the great majority of them first-generation Protestants. The most numerous component within the Evangelical upsurge is Pentecostalism, which combines biblical orthodoxy and a rigorous morality with an ecstatic form of worship and an emphasis on spiritual healing. Especially in Latin America, conversion to Protestantism brings about cultural transformation – new attitudes towards work and consumption, a new educational ethos, and a violent rejection of the traditional machismo (women play a key role in the Evangelical churches).”

Sanctorum Communio, The Communion of Saints

Perhaps, in light of the worldwide growth, we , the NA religious should ask, “What is it that Evangelicals in other countries have that we don’t?” Certainly the Protestant and Catholic religious in NA and European would acknowledge that service to the poor is a priority and engage in a variety of tactics to reduce poverty. But the wider church has something that its NA and European breather don’t — a relationship with the poor. We know of the poor, but lack a direct relationship with the poor. Our growing breather have this unique relationship, bound by a common vision of man, the Imago Dei (Image of God), and in this relationship Christ is found, Sanctorum Communio, the communion of saints. Here, Christ is not divided along between people of means and those without. For example, you’ll find in Africa, small church communities helping 20 or 30 or more victims of AIDs with far less resources than any of their counterparts in North America. With less means, on a church to church comparison, the African church’s do more. What does this say about we who are religious in NA?

Bonhoeffer’s assessment, diagnosis and remedy for the post WW1 church decline echo’s the Biblical prescription for a much purer form of Christianity. Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners Magazine, makes this exacting point when he as a young seminarian cut out every passage in the Bible about poor people, wealth and poverty, and oppression. He found several thousand verses. It was the second most prominent theme in the Old Testament. And in the New Testament, the Synoptic Gospels, the first three, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, one of every 16 verses dealt with the issue. In Luke, it was one of every seven verses. When he was done, his Bible was in shreds. It was full of holes, falling apart. When he would take it out to preach, he would say, “Brothers and sisters, this is the American Bible. It’s just full of holes.”

Whatever our churches become, it has foremost to be a gospel in relationship to and for the poor. This is the communion of Saints. So I ask myself, who are the poor in my neighborhood? I, like most NA Christians, find them hard to see, but here is a partial list:

• Woman suffrage and unwanted pregnancy. It may be established that the legality or illegality of an abortion does not affect the rates of abortion. However, we have to ask why do so many women seek such a traumatic remedy and risk so much. In China, abortion has probably more to do with a single child family standard and the desire that the child be a boy. The abandonment rate of female babies would support such a cultural norm. But at home, in NA, abortion has probably less to do with a women’s right to her body as with economics, like health care or the lack of affordable or universal care and the costs of raising children given a single mother financial dilemma. A pregnant mother who knows she will be taken care of is less likely to abandon her child. This plight of the helpless, the unborn child, and financial or social anxiety of the mother is very solvable at the level of the local community or church. Statistically, given the millions of children aborted annually, it may be the largest target for the development of communion of saints around us. Would our church look differently if the mark of the NA religious is their unconditional and long term assistance for mothers of unwanted pregnancies, no matter the cause or social situation? Our intent may be good, but our time, sense of priorities, and what we are willing to risk are challenged to meet the need.
• The Elderly or so call retired. Many come to our churches, but many more fall thought the cracks of any relationship of being wanted, cared for, and the objects of the financial help, as modernity has broken the bonds of the extended family and cast them into the consumerism of care. How different our alter calls might be if the call to accept Christ was tied to a responsibility to help the elderly?
• Additional victims of financial bankruptcy due to a health crisis, those children who long for a big brother or sister, or family’s wounded from predatory lending who’s homes are at risk of foreclosure, or the forgotten casualties of hurricane Katrina. How do we liberate them? What energies do we bring to our confession?

The Confessing Church

Maybe a return to the movement of Bonhoeffer’s “confessing church” along with “costly grace” is the prescription for church growth in America. The “confessing church” was to oppose the Nazi-sponsored German Christian Church of the 1930’s. Major church leaders of the time acquiesced as the German Protestant church was made subservient to the Nazi state. This included Nazi reinterpretation of basic teachings of the church — for example, stressing “the Jews” as the enemies of Jesus and all Christians. In May 1934, the Confessing Church set up an administration and proclaimed itself the true Protestant Church in Germany. The church was forced underground after the arrest of many of its ministers.

Like Bonhoeffer’s “costly grace,” Charles Finney, the 18th century evangelist of the great awakening in Britain, pioneered the alter call and tied it social justice. The reason he did so was he wanted to sign up his converts for the antislavery campaign. So faith and church growth in the 18th century got directed immediately to justice for the poor.

The poor as the center of the church, the focus of the gospel itself is where Christ is found. Protestant and Catholic church growth outside the west would validates this claim. Conceivably, this is our trouble in the NA churches. It has become bourgeois to varying degrees and Christ is not as easily found and in many ways not appealing to the secular side of the house. Learning to risk our own stereotypes of faith, and ask what our freedom means to “be” as opposed to “having.”

In an address delivered by Bonhoeffer in Fanö, he challenges us take the path of peace, of the Jewish sense of Shalom, well being with my neighbor.

“There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture, and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to mistrust, and this mistrust in turn brings forth war. To look for guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won when the way leads to the cross.”

How Do Buddhists Do the Problem of Evil?

The simple answer is that they don’t. For Buddhism, it’s the problem of desire. Christianity has the problem, not Buddhism. Why is this? Buddhism starts with the problem of evil, suffering or “dukkha,” as its first statement of faith in the four noble truths. However, it is not the problem we think. Buddhism concedes that suffering or evil is what life is made of. It does not begin with an all powerful and good God, and the ensuing moral and logical entailments. In fact, in Buddhism, the question of God’s existence is not raise. Buddhism begins from a different starting point, suffering, not God’s existence.

So how is suffering, inflicted by both man and nature, understood by a Buddhist?

It starts by what cannot be said. The Buddha, the one who is awake and attained Nirvana, the extinguishing of desires, had an experience that does not fit the categories of language. So even the Buddha’s own attempts, and especially mine, to describe the unexplainable will come short of the real thing. That said, language can lead us to an understanding of Buddhism, however imperfect.

Understanding Buddhism begins with its historical context. Buddhism developed as a response to the social evils of Buddha’s day against the prevailing corruptions of Hinduism, a kind of protestant reformation in response to 16th century Catholicism. For Buddha, it was the corruption and abuse of the Brahmins hold on religious teachings, and a challenge to the individual to think clearly about his own religious values. Buddha‘s enlightenment and message was aimed in part at the power structures of his day. He argues logically for a belief without authority, ritual, speculation, and tradition as a response to the religious and social cast. Instead, he preaches a religion of self effort, lacking grace which calls the individual to action. As self effort, Buddhism is a religion of discipline that diminishes personal ego. This leads to an awakening, a state of Nirvana or the extinguishing of desire, and shapes the Buddha preaching to transform the social evils of his time.

So, how does one extinguishing desire?

It begins with the four noble truths. These truths are Buddha’s insights aimed at life’s most troubling problem, suffering. The first truth is that life is suffering, or “dukkha.” This is not philosophical skepticism by the Buddha, but a simple observation or assessment of life. For most us who have lived long enough, it’s intuitive, as we’ve seen too much in our own lives and the plight of others to know that life is a struggle of varying degrees. The Buddha describes suffering as dislocation and outlines six points of common dislocation (suffering or evil) that all men and women share:
1. The pain at birth
2. The pathology of sickness
3. The morbidity of decay
4. The fear of death
5. Being bond to what one dislikes (ie disease or defects)
6. Being separated from what one loves

The second noble truth identifies the cause of suffering or dislocation, desire or “tanha.” This is best described as egotistical desires, because not all desire is bad, like the desire for happiness or liberation of others. Desire as the personal fulfillment for the ego is a kind of bondage that we live in. The Buddha’s teaching is very foreign to the Western mind. It is at the opposite spectrum of our more current popular Darwinian values, nor is exactly the kind of philosophical thinking that would produce the US Declaration of Independence. But, it is a very powerful insight into the human condition. “Tanha” is more than just desire, it is also a force that ruptures our desires and helps us pull back from our egotistical pursuits. For those philosophers in the audience, Tanha may have been the Buddha’s response to Descartes problem of the ego. Even the Book of Geneses links the problem of ego in the garden to sin and evil in this world.

For Buddha, suffering describes a failure to link ourselves to the destiny of the whole. When we look at a group picture, who do we see first? Ourselves, of course! Herein lies the problem, individualism, or the simple inclination to focus on ourselves imprisons us to a life of suffering. We don’t think about the whole group first, but me first. So, the third noble truth follows from the second, the cure, the overcoming of life as desire. The forth noble prescribes the path to overcoming, the Eightfold path, a series of disciplines or working out of one’s awakening or salvation from desire to Nirvana.

To bring our thoughts full circle, the problem for Buddhism is not evil, but desire. The Buddha concedes evil or suffering as an observation of the world. Buddha’s next logical step describes the cause or source of the problem. Suffering exists and has its roots in desire or dislocation. Life’s pains are tied to our own egotistical perceptions of ourselves. This may sound simplest, but not so in Buddhism.

So how does a Buddhist engage in the suffering or evils of this world?

 How does he see a holocaust or a Hitler? What about The Peoples Revolution and Chairman Mau, or even natural disasters? Simply put, he sees suffering as the corruption of desires. Not an easy thing to say to a holocaust victim. The method to extinguish desire is the Eightfold Path. It’s a mindset change, and allot of personal and physical discipline to get there. The Eightfold path is how a Buddhist monk works outs his path to Nirvana and has bread a variety of worldwide monastic movements from Zen to the Dalai Lama. For these reasons, a Buddhist lives a simple life, which is not really the prescription or the fuel of capitalism that Adam Smith could depend on to build a free market economy (ego is good in Capitalism). Part of the attraction of Buddhism in the West is its confrontation of materialism as a root problem for suffering or empty lives.

So how does one evaluate Buddhism from the Western world?

From a secularist point of view, you can’t. The Secularist version of tolerance, generally speaking, says that you can adjudicate or judge between religious faiths. This not only uninteresting, but very problematic, as it presupposes no criteria for evil, so societies like Hitler’s Fascist state, Stalin’s Communism, or Mao’s People’s Revolution, or any other societies that violate our Western perceptions of human rights cannot be judged apart from the value that “might is right.” That’s another story. For the Western Christian mind, there are elements in Buddhism to learn from, respected, and discern in our application of faith.

In many respects, Christians and Buddhists share the common diagnosis for evil, ego. Ego made its day beau in the Garden of Eden, and in the first crime of man against man, Cain and Able. And, in its history, Christianity has recognized the Buddhist solution, the overcoming of desire. Christianity own rich traditions in Monastic and lay movements have sought the betterment of societies through reflection and values as well as education and health. Much can be learnt from the Buddhist insight into ego, the Eightfold Path, against our own narcissistic western cultural behaviors of consumption. Unfortunately, the western Christian has lost is dialogue with its own monasticism, its understanding of vice and virtue as root causes for evil as found in the Sermon on the Mount. And perhaps, in the Buddhist tradition, Western Christianity has become tainted with evil (our egotistical inclinations), although I believe they would be too polite to say so. The height of our narcissism is heard in the 9/11 tragedy. We confront suffering and evil with shopping. I don’t recall shopping in either the Eightfold Path or the Sermon on the Mount!

There is a discerning point that differentiates Christianity from Buddhism in the on the ground engagement with evil and suffering. Buddhism is essentially a monastic movement whose call, with sectarian variety, is based on the Eightfold Path. And although it softens the ego in man, and makes for some extremely nice people (Larry Ellison of Oracle excluded), it does not return them back into society with same aggressive social reforms that Christianity has done. Not that Buddhist aren’t people of social reform, as recently seen in Nepal, but their primary occupation is with the Eightfold Path, attainment of Nivarna, and other factors like Karma. Part of the extinguishing of desire can be to engage in acts of compassion and care for the other. But it does not return its devotees back into the world with the same force as a Christian to address the immediate needs of the individual. This is generalization, which means there are exceptions, but it is a true one.

Now, it could be argued the Christians occupation is with heaven, and that its global missionary movement and good works could be reduced to hegemony and imperialism. These popular, but statistically untrue statements are the superficial understandings and conjecture of Secularism in the Western academy as debunked by such scholars as the Yale historian, Sanneh Lamin . Although in Christianity, heaven is a goal, it is not the primary goal. Heaven is the destination, but not the journey. For the Hebrew God, Yahweh, the primary concern has always been for the under belly of society. All men, who share the imago dei, the image of God in man, have inalienable human rights anchored in this common identity, that within us, God exist and we affront Him with social and economic injustices. The encounter with God returns the Christian back into this world with a passion for human rights and the forgiveness he or she has been given by God (i.e. John Newton, Amazing Grace and the abolition of the slave trade). The climax of this encounter is God becoming man, in this world, in Jesus Christ demonstrating the supremacy of all human life. However, such an event does raises the questions of evil and God’s goodness and power. Better to have this problem than not (can you say Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals).

Christians can learn much about the Buddha’s insight into ego and suffering. Unfortunately, the Christian record has its virtues linked to its vices (i.e. humility that is political pretense) whereas Buddhism history is not so checker by vice, its value as a monastic movement. Perhaps there is a middle ground between the two. Where the Buddhist can learn from social engagement and the liberating power of Christ in society, and, the Christian, from Buddhism about insight into egos, motives and manners.

Here are some closing thoughts on evil and world views:

For the Buddhist, it’s the problem of desire.
For the Secularist, it’s not a problem (especially a Darwinian Secularist).
For the Muslim, it is the will of God.
For the Hindu, it’s an illusion.
For the Jew/Christian, it’s their problem.

Critiquing Christians: A Founders Warning

The Lord’s Prayer is one of the most recited and well known prayers worldwide. Yet, it is probably the least understood. We speak it so freely and frequently in Western society implying that we understand its message and caution. As a child, the prayer carried me into my adult life, but not until college did I ask for its significance. What is the kingdom and this hallowed business all about? In fact, in college, I questioned what the gospels are really about. Is it just the simple forgiveness of the soul by God and a numbers game as to who gets to heaven or not? This was hardly a satisfactory answer. Was there more to it?

The gospel teaching is found in the Sermon on the Mount. The Lord’s Prayer represents a summary of it in the most personable forms, a prayer. Its movement from the sanctification of God’s name, the kingdom come, daily bread, forgiveness of debt, temptation, and its final doxology is a well developed prescription for the evil in man and society. It represents on one the most focused institutionalized mission statements governing those who want to claim His name. But what do these elements mean and where is the critique and caution?

Jesus takes us down a check list, like the one you start saying yes to until you get to the part that you want to say, “Hey, wait a minute.” First he calls for God’s name to be sanctified. Most of us who are theistic would easily concede this point. Give all that has been done in God’s name, sanctifying His name, or setting it apart from all the injustice, evil, or even just bad religion is a starting point for the renewal of good faith in society. No problem here. Second, Jesus’ comment about God’s will be done here, as it is in heaven, is something every believer would agree to as well. As most Christians and Jews believe that God is good, it’s a general enough statement that gets the positive approval. We can easily link together these two points, clearing His name and hoping for the goodness of God in this world.

The next statement, “give us our daily bread,” begins to get more specific, but in an appealing way. Yes, we want to eat, so bread, as a representation of the most basic of the food groups especially in that time, is that substance of lunch that we like so much. But, implicit in the lunch is commerce and money, and like the saying goes, there is no free lunch. Food is a good thing, and a daily struggle of the time which we can’t imagine in our modern 1st world countries. It’s the link between eating and commerce which take us to his next line and the core of the matter, “sanctifying” God’s name and His Kingdom on earth.

Here’s the punch line. “Forgive us our debts as we forgive those are indebted to us.” Yes, the word is debt, monetary debt in the original Greek and not the generic word “sin” as we so commonly learned for those of us that attended Sunday school as kids. The logic Jesus develops between bread and debt may be a bit disturbing. Debt is something that his Jewish audience were very familiar with, similar to the subprime crises of today, but much more widespread. Debt was the instrument of subjugation by the Romans (i.e. taxes), a common form of enslavement in business dealings (i.e. entire families who fall victim to it judicial precedence) and a necessary means to eat and prosper for whole communities. However, it had a terrible underbelly. Penalties were swift and harsh, no chapter 11 or 7 laws here. The reality of bread, health and prosperity, unfortunately, was tied to debt and abusive bondage unless you were a Roman or part of the Jewish priestly class. These modes of operating or economic abuse from the high levels of society rippled into the day to day dealing of the common man of his time. As such, His prayer strikes with precision at the aliments of society and for some, this prayer was not for the weak of wallet. Can you say Jubilee? Is there a banker reading this?

Of course, history later began to interpret this prayer as just sin and not debt, watering down it precise intent, but if we roll back the clock to the moment, the meaning is socially penetrating. Ok, so we’re starting to get the picture of what it means to say “hallow be your name.” and “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Are there debts in heaven? Maybe that’s the point.

Ok, now I get it. The kingdom has to do with the forgiveness of debt, and particularly those forms of debt that are socially destructive (not all debt is bad). This is what it means to be Christian and to pray as a Christian. God forgives me, I forgive others. Well, maybe. But what if no one owes me anything? This is too narrow a question. The better question in the spirit of the prayer is, can I by my means set another free? What and where are the monetary structures of abuse and bondage where the forgiveness of debt can set another free? And, can I do something about it? Are we slothful or vigilant in this matter? Is the hand that is able to set free cut off from the arm and unable to act?

Perhaps a social commentary from none other than the late Pope John Paul II may enlighten us. Pope John Paul II resonating voice includes a critique of western values and capitalism, what he calls the culture of death and consumerism. We won’t touch on the culture of death, but the excess of capitalism are consumerism and individualism, culture that is obsessed with “having” and not “being.” In other words, the owning and collecting of possession with no understanding on what it means to have so much. Being, the habit of one’s heart and mind in community, trump the pursuit of the goods. The Pope’s struggle and justified pessimism is, will our individualism leave room for the common good? Individualism, unfortunately, is not a call to set the captives of free. No Jubilee here. God and His kingdom exist when community and its forces of liberation trump the neurotic excess of individual priorities, when we become more concerned about our neighbor then our own skin. Can you say, “God help me!”

Dietrich Bonheoffer, the German theologian who was executed for his role to assonate Hitler in WWII, understood this kingdom principle with painful clarity. In his paper on “Sanctorum Communio,” the communion of saints, he sees the absence of Christ in the church because of a lack of community, or what he calls the divided Christ between class societies. No Kingdom come here. It is only within true community, an undivided Christ, that the gospel and Christ are revealed, where the bonds of oppression can be identified and address. Bonheoffer’s initial solution, in Nazi Germany, was to start the Confessing Church, a body of Christian pastors opposed Hitler’s treatment of the Jews. Ironically, in what was one of Hitler’s first act against the Jews, he took away there ability to eat, bread, not directly, but with the breaking of glass, he shuts down their ability to engage in commerce. The Jews became a people in debt and bondage.

One can think of many examples today of bondage, from the economic slavery in India and Asia, of children sold to settle debts usually for health issues into the sex slave trade, and of how the slave trade, human trafficking, is at its peak in human history. There is bondage in the lack of capital preventing families or communities from accessing working funds to pay for simple machinery or farm animals that could sustain them. Small capital injections by our standards can bring enormous freedom in a 3rd world. There are too many modern day examples that can be written here. You can fill in the blank. No one owes you money? We’re not off the hook. They kingdom come means the pursuit to set captive free. However, the question remains, will consumerism and individualism save the day? Or, are the values of “Sanctorum Communio” the communion of saints, a more effect means to the breaking of bondage?

Our prayer is not done. “And deliver us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” What is the axis of evil here? Perhaps it is the combination of consumerism, individualism and those structures, companies and institutions that perpetuate bondage and violence the through free markets. “Fair Trade,” in the coffee business, although not perfect, highlights our temptation to evil. Yes, Adam Smith is right when he say that the markets, or the invisible hand, make the most efficient economies. We need this, profit is a good thing. It is the target of enterprise, but is it tempered by other values? Who said it was the end game? Is Donald Trump reading this?

One last final thought. The Lord’s Prayer is not a critique of Capitalism or America. It critiques Christians, how WE should pray, those who claim Christ’s name, in whatever society or time we find ourselves. Perhaps, in the spirit of the prayer, it is a contract with God about our own actions in the world of commerce. Bertrand Russell, the French Philosopher, commented that the values of Sermon on the Mount were great ideals, but of little use as Christians in general do not practice them. A penetrating observation on his part. It’s not easy to claim His name.

A Case for Religious Possibilities: Jonah, a Whale of a Story

For some, the book of Jonah in the Hebrew Old Testament is reminiscent of a grand fishing story. Not only did the fish get away, but the tale seems larger than life. It makes a great children’s story, but is of little use in our modern lives. Even the theologians have reduced it to a metaphor of Jesus Christ death on the cross. However, Jonah, the city of Nineveh and the Hebrew God, Yahweh, have more to teach us then just a cute Sunday school story or a theologian’s confirmation of the Christ centric understanding of the Old Testament.

Like so many of the ancient Hebrew prophetic writings, the book of Jonah is meant to school us in faith and its relationship to culture, those habits of our heart and mind. And, in the case of Nineveh, a particularly nasty culture. The lessons are not easily fit into a box of convenient religious categories. The book ends with a question from God. It directs us to questions of religious judgments. How do we see and respond to people who seek God under the umbrella of their own religion and culture? In “Christian” North America, how do we see the plight of the Palestinian people, Islamic cultures or even the gay and lesbian communities? What about Buddhist, Hindu or secularist cultures? Can they know the Christian God and His mercy?

Nineveh is the other, a people who are outside of our traditional values and at worst a society of habits that have more in common with the brutal regimes of the past century, from Stalin to Pot Pol, from Hitler to Sadman Husain, not to mention the Assyrians brutality to the Jews of Jonah’s time. Jonah, the representative of Jewish orthodoxy, is a prophet, but a flawed prophet. He represents that close link between both vice and virtue, between what is both good but corrupted by ego and denies the religious possibilities of God himself. Not even the call of God himself can bring Jonah, a religious man, to commit to the service of a people he considers offensive.

Jonah is two faced. God calls, he accepts and then immediately proceeds to get as far away from both Nineveh and God. Ironically, he finds his escape on a ships passage among men who are anything but Jewish, sailors. In the heart of the sea’s storm, it is these men, while practicing their own faith, discovery the possibility of the God Yahweh. Not exactly the ideal conversion. What happened to theology and confession? More to the point, where’s the Jewish orthodoxy? What about the Nicine Creed?  The writer is noticeably silent on these points.

Jonah’s miraculous rescue on the sea continues to move him further away from God, but this time in the belly of the fish, a second irony. Yet, here, deep in the ocean, Jonah accepts God’s appeal. His acquiescence is tainted by his desire to finish the task and witness the rightful destruction of his enemies, as his later behavior betrays the intentions of his noble prayer. He can hardly be characterized as siding with God on moral grounds.

So he enters Nineveh, and gives one of the shortest prophetic messages in the Old Testament, a warning about the city to be overthrown. What’s astounding is the results. A city of over 100,000 people believes in God, Yahweh. For such a dramatic results, we are short on details, particularly religious details. What happen to their existing gods and practices of religion? What about the distinctive practices of Abraham’s chosen people and its law’s that distinguish them? The only insight we are given is by God himself at the end of the book. Nineveh learned the difference between their “right hand and left hand,” or between good and evil. Perhaps the Christian and Jewish call to faith is simpler then we think,  encompassing the possibilities of culture that make room for God, His mercy, and “the other” when emancipate from evil, the violence of man against man.

The book ends with a question to Jonah. “Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?” Jonah’s blind spot, as a man in the mainstream of his own narrative identity, as a people chosen by Yahweh, is his lack of openness to the possibilities of God’s will. Christian missions have a rich history of emancipating cultures from what is evil within the culture. The legacy of schools, hospitals, and social movements and its own internal reforms are its heritage in lifting people up from underneath the structures of power, including secularism.  The critic of Christian missions rightfully points to the role of imperialism and Christian missions, of the sword and the cross, and we are reminded that these are the perversions of faith and not the logical entailments.

Unlike Jonah, Christianity must guard itself from its own arrogance in a pluralistic world, a blind spot of its own virtue. The beauty of Christianity is its openness to the other and of God’s mercy, in spite of our preconceptions of culture. Judaism and Christianity’s own self critique in Jonah calls its own to be open to other races and cultures, rather than its inclinations to judge by internal standards of “self righteousness.” Most importantly, Joahn is a message about caring. Caring enough for the cities and neighborhoods that lack human rights and any sense of practice about the imago dei, the image of God in man.  This is the call of the book, to a distinctively Christain mission.

Evil: The Dark Night of the Soul

The problem of evil has many faces. Unfortunately, none of them are pretty, but all of them very real. Elie Wiesel book, Night, is one of those faces.

The believer’s tragedy is how a good God could allow such suffering and injustice. Is God good? Is God all powerful? Evil can’t be glossed over in theoretical arguments but it pain must be felt. Here is an excerpt from Elie Wiesel’s book Night when as a young teenager of faith, he experiences his first night in Auschwitz:

But I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it.

“Humanity? Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed. Anything is possible, even these crematories…”

His voice was choking.

“Father,” I said, “if that is so, I don’t want to wait here. I’m going to run to the electric wire. That would be better than slow agony in the flames.”

He did not answer. He was weeping. His body was shaken convulsively. Around us, everyone was weeping. Someone began to recite the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. I do not know if it has ever happened before, in the long history of the Jews, that people have ever recited the prayer for the dead themselves.

Yitgadal veyitkadach shmé raba…. May His Name be blessed and magnified….” whispered my father.

For the first time, I felt revolt rise up in me. Why should I bless His name? The Eternal, Lord of the Universe, the All-Powerful and Terrible, was silent. What had I to thank Him for?

We continued our march. We were gradually drawing closer to the ditch, from which an infernal heat was rising. Still twenty steps to go. If I wanted to bring about my own death, this was the moment. Our line had now only fifteen paces to cover. I bit my lips so that my father would not hear my teeth chattering. Ten steps still. Eight. Seven. We marched slowly on, as though following a hearse at our own funeral. Four steps more. Three steps. There it was now, right in front of us, the pit and its flames. I gathered all that was left of my strength, so that I could break from the ranks and throw myself upon the barbed wire. In the depths of my heart, I bade farewell to my father, to the whole universe; and, in spite of myself, the words formed themselves and issued in a whisper from my lips: Yitgadal veyitkadach shmé raba…. May His name be blessed and magnified…. My heart was bursting. The moment had come. I was face to face with the Angel of Death….

No. Two steps from the pit we were ordered to turn to the left and made to go into a barracks.

I pressed my father’s hand. He said:

“Do you remember Madame Schächter, in the train?”

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.

Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.

Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.

For more on Elie Wiesel, see http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/wiesel/index.shtml