For the past six months I have been working on a personal project of spiritual growth and theological understanding. It has been my sojourn to try and unlock some of the secrets of how we are made as human beings, the exact nature of God's relationship with us, some of the problems with what is going on in our American political context right now. More broadly, what I am interested in, is what is critically wrong with Christianity as we know it in the North American context today. And so, I have been writing a book.
The book is entitled, "With: The Transformative Power of Going With People Rather Than Against Them". Over the next 16 weeks, I will be writing blog posts that will flesh-out aspects of this book. I want to invite you into the conversation. I want to get your help in writing this book. If anything I write over the next several weeks strikes a chord with you in any way, please let me know. If you, like me, are as interested in unlocking the secrets of God's relationship with us, then perhaps we can embark on this journey together. What I am after is nothing short of, as Hemingway once said; "writing something true". And so now, if you are still WITH me...here is installment #6:
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This book will be about the “Going With” side of the spectrum. It will attempt to show that human
development and human progress are, in fact, helped more by people who “Go With”
than those who “Go Against.” It will
attempt to show that people do better when people go with them, than when
people go against them. It will attempt
to show the transformative power of the act of tearing down of walls between
people. However, in order to understand
the totality of the conflict between both sides in this internal and external
debate, this first chapter will attempt to show how strong and salient the
“Going Against” side is. It will show
how the “Going Against” side is, actually, a fundamental part of our human
identity, and a critical part of our human development. Without a “Going Against” side, we would not
be able to function as human beings, and our primary identities as people would
not be able to form. Some of the best
examples of this theological and philosophical perspective actually come from
the Bible.
Consider, for a moment, this vignette from the first century in
the country of Israel. Here is the story
of a man named John the Baptist, who stood against all the things that ever
stood against him…
30AD North East of the Dead Sea, Israel
The blistering, noon-day heat was
pouring down upon the white-hot clay of the Judean desert. Across the horizon, which was dotted with
hundreds of rolling sand-dunes, were the mirror-like mirages that float off the
desert floor in arid places like the Middle East. These vaporous wafts of humidity cast an earie
drapery over the objects on the distant horizon. Already at noon the temperature was hovering
just above 100 degrees. Some people said
the temperature on this mid-summer day would crest well over 120 degrees at the
high point of heat in the late afternoon.
Even the snakes and the desert lizards had scampered away in order to,
evade the omnipresent glare of the sun.
Everyone sought shelter to try and save themselves from the scorching
summer blast.
Regardless of the oppressive heat, the desert on this particular
day was anything but vacant. As the
small rodents and animals scurried to their respective hiding places, an
opposite and corollary movement of collection was happening on the desert
floor. People were gathering! One by one, coming from tiny little cities
like Sebaste, and larger cities like Caeserea, and Capernaum, and even Jerusalem,
crowds were forming. First by handfuls
of ten, then by one hundred, and by some shear miracle of human nature, there
all-of-a-sudden coalesced over one thousand people at the base of a near dry
river bed. Farmers from the hill-country,
fishermen from Galilee, tax collectors from Jericho, wine makers from Samaria,
priests and religious dignitaries from the bigger cities down south
collected. All of these assemblages from
various parts of Judean Middle Eastern first century life were gathering. And why were they there? They were there, in this God-forsaken place,
to see and hear a prophet. But not just
any prophet. It was said that he was
greatest prophet since the prophets Elijah and Ezekiel – the two greatest “seers”
and “prophets” of the ancient Jewish faith.
The prophet they were there to see was a man known to most by an
unassuming and non-descript and monosyllabic name – “Yan”. We know him today as – John - “John the Baptizer” or “John the Baptist”!
Where did this prophet – this John the Baptizer come from? Because of his relatively low station in
life, many assumed that he hailed from a low, peasant stock and tribe. But this was not true. John’s father had been a high priest in the
temple, and his mother had come from a relatively good family line. Though he was far from being royalty, John
was raised in the tradition of the priests – the “Cohenim”. He knew the scriptures backwards and
forwards. He could recite the Psalms
flawlessly. He knew the traditions of
the priestly life, the dedications, the consecrations, the holy
sacraments. John had been an early child
prodigy, who could have taught, at an early age, in any Jewish seminary or
school. But none of these reasons were
why the multitudes were visiting him now.
What people loved about John was that he stood against the
status quo. John was the ultimate
contrarian, and iconoclast. He was a man
who spoke his own mind, who gave his own opinions, and who offered his own
perspectives, on all, and any subject.
And people found John’s simple honesty and integrity to be very
refreshing. Because in those days, as is
the case in our own time, nobody seemed to have the courage of their own
convictions. Either people were unsure
of what they believed, and therefore said nothing, or they were certain of what
they believed but they were too afraid to say it. Not John.
John was different. He wasn’t
afraid to say what he believed, he wasn’t reticent to say who he thought was
right, and who he thought was wrong.
Recently, Herod himself had become the brunt of John’s lambasting
sermons. Even John’s clothing was “in
your face”. Instead of the robes worn by
a priest or the simple tunic of the rabbi, John wore a camel’s pelt (the
dirtiest and smelliest of the desert animals), and leather belt around his
waist. Some said the belt came from a
bear that John had killed with his own bare hands.
John’s message was not a comforting
story or an easy or enjoyable tale. One
word could be used to describe it – AGAINST.
John was against everything and everyone who did not agree with
him. John was against the religious
establishment, against the customs of his time, against many of the traditions,
against the upper classes of people who oppressed those who were poor. John said the kinds of things that you
remembered: “The time has come! The kingdom
of God has come near.” John’s
main message was to Repent, which meant, “to turn around”, “to change course”, “to
go in the opposite direction from which you have been going.” John preached about the forgiveness of sins,
but not before he told people, sometimes from a seemingly miraculous “sense of
knowing”, exactly how they had sinned.
Such talk should have been off-putting, but people who lived in the
fist-century in Galilee could not get enough of it.
John would yell rants and shout obscenities at people – even
people he did not know. John cursed
total strangers and people who he had never even met before; “You
brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee
from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in
keeping with repentance.” To
those who followed him, it appeared that John was afraid of no-one. Nor was he sparing in his withering critique
of them. To rich people, John said, “Give
one of your shirts to the poor.” To
tax collectors, the gang-bangers and mafia bosses of the day, John said, “Give
back the money you have stolen from people.”
To rough, tough, angry Roman soldiers, who had the ability to arrest
John, or even beat him-up, he said, “Stop extorting people, and lying and
accusing people falsely.” Such
words would have gotten most people killed, but not John. At least not yet. The more John went against the life and the
lifestyles of people, the more people came to him, and the more people were
baptized by him, the more influence he had.
All For Now,
GB
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