His very life was everything we so carefully guard ourselves from. Yet we want Him to live through us, we want Him to be alive in our Church.

I have heard a lot of talk about missional living, radical generosity, and bold indiscriminate community not only within the church, but as defining the church. I am excited to hear it, because I wholeheartedly agree. But my excitement is always chased by frustration. I am frustrated because I feel it is still all talk. We talk about radical generosity; we talk about living in community and extending Christ's grace through our community to all, even the most downcast and marginalized. And that's good talk, far too many christians don't even talk that talk. But what's the hold up? Why are we still discussing it? Why are we half assing it?

For me, this raises questions regarding the homeless, those on the streets, and the overall destitute. When can such believers be a part of the Christian community outside of the soup kitchen and charitable events? Why is it that the homeless, addicts, and winos are often nothing more than the special projects within the Christian community? Those of us who are "more successful" in life set out to bring hope to the "less successful", and communicate the message that not only does Christ love you as you are, but one of the first things He wants to do is change you! And not just your heart! Homelessness can not possibly be an acceptable state for an individual to serve God. If we save em, we gotta educate them, clean them up, make them all "stable" and "successful" like the rest of us. We send the message that until they get off the streets, they have nothing to offer the Church community... the rest of the Church community only gets to offer their charity to them. After all, the Church is supposed to be full of employed, educated, goal oriented self-sufficient people. If we encounter those outside that box, our job is to either draw them to Christ by way of our box, or draw them to our box once they've found Christ. We've collaborated the American way with the way of Christ, and we find it impossible to separate the two. We limit the work of Christ and God's Spirit to the standards society has set on us. Education, career, home, finances... this world tells us all of those things need to be existent and in proper working order if we are to be able to contribute something worthwhile to society or be worthwhile members of society.

We forget that God's society is freakishly different, and so we impose the same attitudes into our Christian community. Education, career, home, finances... the Church tells us all of those things need to be existent and in proper working order if we are to be worthwhile members of the Christian community.

But read the book of Acts. Read the life of Christ. This is what I walk away with:

It is not the way of Christ to find a stable career, it is not the way of Christ to be self supportive, it is not the way of Christ to be slaves to educational goals, it is not the way of Christ to stand up for our political freedoms. None of those things are bad on their own, but we've convinced ourselves that those are the perimeters within which God and His Spirit leads and moves His Church. In other words, we hold the above societal expectations to be just as vital within the body of Christ.

Self Sufficiency

Our society values very few things, if any, more than self-sufficiency. Even if you don't have much, or you don't make it big in life, all that matters is if at the end of the day you can say you worked hard for what you do have. So when it comes to the homeless and destitute, we find it of utmost urgency to point them to a life of self sufficiency. As a result, rather then sharing radical generosity with those brothers and sisters, we practice a special, carefully strategized version of generosity. Our reasoning, again, is that we want to point the person towards self sufficiency, away from dependency. It’s the American way blended into the gospel message. We make it a value of the Church, we teach that it is God’s desire for us to be self-sufficient. To be adequate followers of Christ, we must pursue higher education, secure a steady income, find suitable living arrangements, and maintain a level of stability.

Christ left very, very different instructions, however...

Christ does not call for a life of self sufficiency at all, in fact... He abhors the very idea. Self sufficiency should be considered one the biggest enemies of our faith! Self sufficiency is not compatible with the life of the true Church.

Christ calls us AWAY from self sufficiency. Christ tells us to be dependant on HIM alone, not ourselves.  Yet we still want to make our exceptions and draw our lines. But Christ made no exceptions, and He calls us to cross those lines. We are to depend on Christ alone.

So how does this look? Many of us are scared of the idea of depending solely on Christ. One reason is because we've painted an odd picture of what it means to depend on Christ. We envision gloomy solitude; standing penniless, barefoot, lonely, and cold, in the middle of a barren wilderness awaiting God to drop a care package from the sky. Unfortunately, we've also made that vision a reality. Although we can be sure reliance on Christ may lead us into such a scenario, this is not the picture He has painted for His Church.

The Church is the Body of Christ. We are Christ in this world. We are Christ's body... we are meant to fully represent and live Christ's person, work and mission. Christ lives in the Church. Christ is made known through His Church.

A key part of depending on Christ, therefore, should be dependence on each other- the BODY of Christ.
There should be no distinction between relying on Christ and relying on His Church.

My point is, if the Church is truly alive in Christ and present in our lives, there should be no one standing alone in the wilderness waiting for magical care packages from heaven. God cares for the Church through you, through me... through His Church. Abandoning self sufficiency shouldn't have to be a loner's endeavor. Although dependence on God does land us solely on the grace and provision of God, we often miss the beauty of His intended arrangement. When you let go of your own sufficiency, it is just you and God, but you and God also means you and the Church!

So in the end, we ought to be able to trade our self-sufficiency for dependence on each other. Unreserved, mutual care and regard for each other. All of us.

But It's Mine

In a society where we highly value our own work and constantly evaluate those around us by what they have earned versus what they have, its difficult to wrap our brains around the idea of unreserved generosity and community. Many Churches have dabbled in it, some have taken the idea rather far with various commune-like homes. But we still like to draw our lines. A major concern is about potential moochers or leeches. We resent the idea of anyone taking from us unless they can make an equivalent contribution back into the community. Or maybe we are on the other side, too proud to partake of the community beyond what we can afford to repay. So we create special places for those who can't contribute to our satisfaction, or their own satisfaction. We still think of our own contributions as our own accomplishment -the self-sufficiency bug lingers- and we rationalize that we simply want the less fortunate to be able to experience the joys of giving. But really, we just want to protect ourselves, and so we again create a special, carefully strategized version of generosity just for them.

 

And what about enabling abusers and users? Of course we all have struggles and addictions, but they might be using our resources to support their own struggles and addictions.
At least I have my own resources to use for those things.

Do you really? Is the money you spend on cigarettes your cigarette money, or is it just as much God's money? Does the money you spend on cable TV belong to the Body of Christ any less than your tithe?

 Is the money I spend on a nice bottle of wine to share with my wife any less the property of Christ then the change I gave the homeless brother who used it to buy a forty ounce of Steel Reserve?

We can't get past our sense of "mine".
We'll share, as long as we know who's sharing what, who pitched in, and whose turn it is to pitch in. And so the especially destitute need to go through special channels to partake of our community.

 

I'm not bashing organization. I'm not saying there shouldn't be a sense of order, structure and accountability in Christian community. And of course we should encourage good, responsible stewardship of the material blessings we may have. But if we are to live out Christ's call, we should be prepared to be cheated. We won't receive every "thank you" we feel we deserve. We will be hustled, lied to, betrayed, and used. Our generosity will be abused, beaten, and taken for granted. We are the Body of Christ, after all.

We are the Body of Christ. Christ was cheated, beaten, abused, walked on. His grace has been taken for granted for ages. He didn't claim what was rightfully His, but gave freely of what He had, expecting nothing in return. He was betrayed, lied to, used. That didn’t move Him to set up self-preservation systems – but that’s what it drives us to, and it’s those systems we cling to, rather than Christ. In the midst of our attempts to live out Christ's mission, we become distracted looking for ways to protect ourselves from the injustices we may encounter, and our mission weakens.

His very life was everything we so carefully guard ourselves from. We give those guards titles such as "good stewardship" or "keeping my brother from stumbling" or "looking for long term solutions" or "putting my family first". Those aren't bad things on their own, but they are all too commonly used to mask the fear, selfishness, greed, and worry that keep us from following Christ's example wholeheartedly.

His very life was everything we so carefully guard ourselves from. Yet we want Him to live through us, we want Him to be alive in our Church.

I don't like to touch politics too often, but here it is. The President spoke about the economy last night, and although I don't think his plan will necessarily end all strife, I honestly don't believe that anyone else could come up with something better. Different, yes. Better? No.

First of all,I realize what I am about to say may automatically be misinterpreted as a call for socialism by some. If thats how narrow minded your understanding of socialism is, then I guess you have an excuse.

Since Obama's speech last night the right wing has been tossing around accusations and complaints about the government "confiscating our wealth and redistributing it". But the reality is, if enough of this nation used at least half of its brain for the past decade or so, maybe we wouldn't all be complaining about how the government "confiscates and redistributes" our wealth- we would have been distributing our own wealth just fine. People aren't losing their homes because of some mystical money black hole. The economy isn't shot because the King of America screwed us over. We screwed ourselves over with our own greed, ignorance, and deception. We could just ask the government to step out completely and let us all figure it out on our own. Yes, and then let's all regress to homeless barbarians. But no, even the right want SOME kind of government intervention. If we were so good at distributing our own wealth, I'd agree it would be an awful idea to have the government play any role. But in the jam we are in, as a result of our own foolishness, whether its Obama's way, McCain's way, Bush's way, Nader's way...we need the government to do something. Unfortunately, we all know the government hasn't proven itself to be trustworthy, and although I personally believe Obama has the most sincere intentions of any President I've seen, sincere intentions won't necessarily solve our massive crapfest.

My point is, if we can do this without the government playing with our "wealth", nobody's stopping us... lets get to it.