Doing What Jesus Did

"The time is ripe for men and women to create a new type of community for which there is, as yet, no single name.  To get a notion of what I mean, add together this family of words: hearth (a nuclear area, a vital or creative center), hospitality (the cordial and generous reception and entertainment of guests or strangers), charity (the kindly and sympathetic disposition to aid the needy or suffering), celebration (to honor by engaging in religious, commemorative or other ceremonies or by refraining from ordinary business), community (a body of individuals organized into a unit with awareness of some unifying trait)."
~Sam Keen, Fire In The Belly


This is what Jesus created.  Lately--with the intimate involvement of the believers I'm connected to--we've been discussing, praying over, and attempting to live out a set of values that we think are central and vital to the ministry of Jesus.  We have defined them as follows:

• Intimately obedient to the Father
• Inclusive to outsiders
• At work for Justice and Peace
• Intentional discipleship

I like what we came up with (with the help of some really smart people who are much more intelligent and more experienced than we are!).  But then there's Sam Keen.  I was reading Fire In The Belly this afternoon. Keen's vision of a world where men and women are reconciled, with the vitality of the family unit as the top priority--and an eye towards development of a new model of healthy and sustainable manhood and womanhood--struck me as elegant and profound.  I think it captures the essence of the life of Jesus Christ, as well as the Church in Acts.

To me, the hearth is a symbol for the dwelling place of God; like the tabernacle or the sanctuary, it is a sacred space where we find rest, peace and new life.  What the dinner table is to a family or the mountaintop is to a guru, the hearth is to a group of believers.  It is sitting at the feet of Jesus.  It is worshipping God in a sacred and familiar space, amidst peace and rejuvenation.  

The next three, hospitality, charity and celebration, are trademarks of Jesus' life on Earth, and perhaps the most misjudged and misunderstood aspects of His ministry by the accepted religious establishment of His time.  He spent time with those who had nothing to offer society, who were criminals, sinners, unclean, social outcasts, and oppressors.  He ate with them, he gave himself to them, he served them, and he partied with them.  Does the modern church do this?

Community is a framework that undergirds all of the above.  Our inter-dependent relationships with like-minded believers are what allow us (with the power and presence of the Holy Spirit) to remove the barriers in our lives that prevent us from approaching God, from receiving His gifts, and from giving ourselves generously to the poor and needy people all around us.

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

A few days ago, the Supreme Court ruled on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as 'ObamaCare.' As far as I can tell, the 5-4 vote ruled in favor of most parts of the law, including the most shocking part (to me), which would force uninsured Americans to buy health insurance. However, their reason for upholding that part of the law was unexpected. Their decision stated that, in fact, the federal government can't force people to buy things they don't want under the 'interstate commerce' clause, which is what many liberals and Democrats were planning on. Instead the Court approved it as a part of the federal government's power to tax American citizens. The NY Times puts it this way: "the federal government is not permitted to force individuals not engaged in commercial activities to buy services they do not want. That was a stunning victory for a theory pressed by a small band of conservative and libertarian lawyers."

I'm a fan of that small band of conservative and libertarian lawyers. But I don't like the fact that the Supreme Court found some other reason to let the federal government tell me what to spend my money on. I don't think they should be able to force me to pay for insurance premiums if I don't want to. How is that a tax? A tax is "a compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on workers' income and business profits." Taxes are meant to allow the federal government to do the following things, according to the U.S. Constitution: print money, declare war, establish an army and navy, enter into treaties with foreign governments, regulate commerce between states and international trade, establish post offices and issue postage, and make laws necessary to enforce the Constitution. It's actually ludicrous and rather comical to argue that the federal government needs to levy a 'tax' in the form of mandatory health insurance for everyone based on the problems with overspending that have been created by the current Medicaid system combined with a lack of affordable health care. I would argue that the federal government has already stepped far over the boundaries prescribed to it in the Constitution by attempting to mandate, orchestrate and subsidize ANY nationwide healthcare system.

Unfortunately in the big picture this ruling was a significant decision in favor of federalism. It reduces the power of individual states to custom fit their policies to their own populations, and I think it undermines the representative and independent nature of American government. The reason why Bill Clinton's Welfare Reform act was so successful and so widely accepted in the 90's was because it returned the power of policy-making and representation (and therefore true democracy) to the state level. Welfare is one of those public goods created by the federal government that can easily become bloated, inefficient, and abused. Allowing individual states to control the size and shape of their own welfare programs is bound to reduce unnecessary spending and keep the program focused.

The bottom line for me is that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is largely unconstitutional. It allows the federal government to infringe on the rights and liberties of individual states AND individual citizens, it contributes to unnecessarily large federal government, and it continues the vicious cycle of excessive government spending which will eventually destroy the U.S. economy.

Thoughts on Western Education

I watched this video today and it helped me create some categories for the massive sense of dissatisfaction and anxiety over urban American education that I have been developing in the past year.  Take a look.

For the 2011-2012 school year, I have been working in a charter school in the city of Buffalo, teaching science to 6th and 7th grade students.  After private schools and honors programs skim off the top, many of my students are the brightest middle-schoolers in Buffalo.  They are creative, talented, intelligent, hard-working, overwhelmingly immature, and frighteningly moldable.  What bothers me is how useless this education is for the vast majority of them.  Most are smarter than their peers and could be learning at a pace that far exceeds the average.  Yet the State of New York mandates that we spent the first 7 months of a 9+ month school year teaching them from a 'core curriculum' that sets the standard for math and English at a pitifully low place.  If 75% of the students could be learning at faster pace on their own and the other 25% need some sort of individualized education program, what is the use of having a classroom?  Why have we arbitrarily separated students by 'date of manufacture' when most of them are at different stages of achievement in different subjects?  Why are we trying to 'level' them all out to fit a state-mandated curriculum, when each one has unique skills, areas of interests, home environments or cultural heritages that would enable them to excel in certain areas and require that they have extra help in other areas?  Why do we assume that an educational system designed to fit a white middle class protestant male is now just as functional when generalized to all socioeconomic classes, all races, all religions, and both genders?

My Kingdom for a Compass

The season I have been sitting in for over a year now has a theme word..."navigating."  I noticed just now that "navigate" or "navigation" would not fit exactly right, because the present progressive tense indicates perfectly how I am constantly and necessarily on alert to avoid running into some large obstacles.  My life is like a sailing journey, and like that Italian cruise ship captain who became infamous a few weeks ago, I often fail to consult the most basic maps that could help me steer.

My pride gets in the way.  "I've been through something like this a thousand times!  I know how to do it!  I don't need any help!"

The truth is, God knows what He is doing in my life way better than I do.  He keeps leading me through these obstacle courses that might seem boringly similar, but in fact my life keeps spiraling upward and outward and downward into a greater maturity and understanding of who I am and what my purpose is in Christ.  For example, living in a dorm room at a Christian college for 4 years was a great experience in Christian community.  One might assume that living in a men's discipleship house with 7 other guys would be boringly similar.  Ha.  How wrong that assumption is.  It has shown me how inexperienced I am, where my greatest weaknesses are, and where even my strengths need encouragement and wisdom and boldness to be exercised correctly.  Most of all, it has shown me that the unhealthy relational and emotional patterns that were ingrained in me growing up (either because of who my parents were or the choices I made in the past) will be endlessly repeated and rehashed in my new relationships, until God brings some measure of healing and restoration to my heart.   The hurts and wounds in me that I am constantly trying to cope with, medicate or ignore are still there.  They aren't just going to go away.  In fact, they might just keep growing and creating bigger and bigger problems between me and the people around me unless I turn, address them directly, and ask repeatedly for God to fix them.  It's humbling.  Which is, I think, exactly what God wants.

So I noticed that navigating real life doesn't become easier.  If I am doing well, it increasingly becomes a reminder of how I must rely on the Holy Spirit to guide and empower me.It becomes a reminder of how I must come to God in humility, seeking His path through unfamiliar terrain.  If I am doing poorly, it becomes a stinging redirection as my own intelligence and my own strength fails me again and again when I try to pridefully conquer every obstacle.

What is Worship? Part 2

Here's the second passage that I have been thinking about:

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgements and unfathomable His ways!  For "who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor?" (Isaiah 40:13) Or "who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to Him again?" (Job 35:7)  For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. [...]  I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

Romans 11:33-36, 12:1

The ‘therefore’ in 12:1 is about the reality of God’s identity which Paul has identified: his infinite knowledge, his unsearchable ways, and his unending generosity.  I would attempt to summarize it this way: there are three forms of currency that are universal and ultimately good—knowledge, power and love.  God is the sole possessor of all three of these.  In fact, God IS all three of these.  He is the logos (order/word) of the Universe; He is the dunamis (power/Spirit/life) of the Universe; He is the agape (love) of the Universe.  He has let His creation borrow some of each of these, but they all belong to Him in the end.

God is what He is, therefore we owe him all of ourselves, and this is partly the meaning of worship.  I am giving myself, all I have, all I am (all my knowledge, all my power, all my love), back to the God who has generously given me everything I have.  In addition I think it also means that I must come to God on His terms.  I cannot worship God through some agenda of my own.  I cannot worship God while trying to fit him into the convenient categories of my seemingly self-ordered life.  When I seek to worship God the question cannot be ‘what am I looking for?’ but ‘what is God doing?’

When God breaks through my distraction and begins to show me who He is and what He wants, I don’t think it will always feel good or turn out neatly.  If my life is fundamentally disordered, it will hurt and look messy when God reorders it.  If my life is fundamentally dead, it will smell when God resurrects it (think Lazarus).  If my life is fundamentally selfish, God will have to take everything from me and break everything in me in order to teach me generosity.

As Paul says, worship is a spiritual service to God which involves offering myself as a sacrifice.  God’s gifts to me are freely and graciously given.  I ought to respond to those gifts with an open hand—not trying to grasp tightly to what I have received—by looking for ways to return those gifts to God and to my brothers.