Practical vacuuming

I have to add this....

Less than two hours after my previous post, Kirby Vacuum salesmen showed up at our door and we agreed to a long demonstration in exchange for a free carpet cleaning. Apparently, since we're not in "the Kirby family," our vacuuming is horribly inefficient. The Kirby Sentria promises to clean deeper and better than ever before. How practical.

Being practical

What does it mean to be “practical”? I think our first assumption is that being practical means “finding the best ways to make something work.” If you need your carpet cleaned, the practical thing to do is to vacuum it or have it shampooed. It would be impractical to get down on your hands and knees and pick up specks of dirt, one by one. That would take too long, would be an inefficient use of your time, and wouldn’t get the carpet as clean.

To take this further, you might consider buying the latest vacuum that promises to clean even deeper and faster than the previous model. In less time you can get your carpet clean like never before. At least, until the newer model comes out.

In decision-making, practicality reigns as well. “Roberts’ Rules of Order” is an efficient way to allow for debate but to move forward with consensus. It allows dissent to exist but not as a roadblock to progress (usually). Voting in the US works similarly: the person with the most votes wins the election (George W. Bush being an exception). The winners are the majority, the losers are the minority. All for the sake of progress, efficiency, and effectiveness.

This kind of “practical” thinking dominates American Evangelical churches, too. At our church, we operate our boards based on Roberts’ Rules, and usually everything is unanimous. I have heard of situations of disagreement, but in the end, the “yeas” have it, the gavel slams, and the decision is made. Period.

Does this kind of “practical” thinking create space for the prophetic voice? Does it allow for a minority voice to sway the majority? Does Christianity, founded by a man who was crucified as a common criminal (crucifixion being a practical way of controlling the population through fear), simply ask for majority rule, or does it allow space for the small minority voice to sway the majority?

For example, suppose a church board of 10 met to discuss an important decision. Of the ten, nine agreed with one course of action, and one agreed with a different course. In a church where efficiency, practicality, and consensus are the watchwords, the majority rules and everyone moves forward. But in a church that isn’t so intent on quick decisions, that wants to discern the Holy Spirit, perhaps the lone voice would sway the rest. This is horribly inefficient—Jesus had a way of being so, too—but it strikes me as profoundly countercultural and therefore worth considering. We too often assume that because things are going well and there is consensus, God must behind all of it. But perhaps we have pushed God completely out of it. Thankfully, God’s grace can resist our attempts to refuse it.

There is another sense of being “practical.” It doesn’t ask “what works” but rather “what must I do?” This is practical in the sense of practice. Spiritual practices aren’t about efficiency and results. Rather, they are faithful, active responses to God’s grace, which will not be confined to our understandings of success, effectiveness, and growth. In other words, God’s ways may not always seem best to us, but that is no excuse to follow them.

The Gospel is counter-intuitive. We say, “Pursue life, liberty, and happiness.” Jesus says, “Take up your cross and follow me.”

Barbaric

I’ve just been introduced to Erwin Raphael McManus. I read The Barbarian Way with a men’s small group from our church. According to the dust jacket of the book, McManus is “lead pastor and cultural architect of Mosaic in Los Angeles, California….As founder of Awaken, Erwin collaborates with a team of dreamers and innovators who specialize in the field of developing and unleashing personal organizational creativity. As a national and international consultant, his expertise focuses on culture, change, leadership, and creativity. He partners with Bethel Theological Seminary as a futurist and distinguished professor.”

What is a “futurist?” Can anyone help me out here?

Anyway, The Barbarian Way has a similar feel as the über-masculine fare of John Eldredge and Wild At Heart, but while Eldredge focuses primarily on men, McManus’ call is for the entire church: lose your “civilized” understandings of Christ, Christianity, and faith. Be a barbarian for God by “following the path of Jesus in a passionate journey full of mystery, danger, and untamed faith” (from the dust jacket). Barbaric followers of Jesus care more about following Jesus than they do about identifying themselves as members of the religion “Christianity.” “They’re not about religion; they’re about advancing the revolution Jesus started two thousand years ago” (6). The image of barbarian hordes swarming a genteel society and turning civilization on its head is McManus’ model for how followers of Christ should live out their faith. And if you want to be a follower of Jesus, says McManus, “there is within you a raw and untamed faith waiting to be unleashed” (13). Such faith, such a calling will empower you to “fight for the heart of your King. For some, doing this will be just way too barbaric, but for others, their only option will be to choose the barbarian way” (15).

I think McManus is on the right track in terms of his critiques of Christianity—American Christianity, I assume, although he doesn’t use this term. He wants to dismantle domesticated notions of safety, common sense, and comfort and replace them with dangerous, barbaric passion, risk, revolt, and invasion—with the weapons of love and sacrifice. He sees what Constantinian Christianity—the church in power and not on the margins—can do to faith, that it waters it down, clouds it with lesser issues like national security, national defense, and patriotism (though he doesn’t mention those terms). In part, he shares camp with Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon’s Resident Aliens. In short, he has touched on a central point that should resound throughout the walls of American Christendom: We need to wake up and take the call of Christ seriously; stop seeking safety and comfort and pursue righteousness and active faith.

The problem I have with McManus is that he is essentially a Christian anarchist. Consider these quotes: “Two thousand years ago God started a revolt against the religion He started” (114); “Anyone who can picture Jesus as the great Advocate of tradition is doing some serious doctoring of biblical history” (114); “Like barbarians destroying civilization, they are to remove every nonessential obstacle between God and man” (115). Maybe this is why McManus is called a “futurist”: his concerns are only for the future and he only cares about the essentials of our past (I wonder how he determines what is and is not essential). His barbarian way would seem to paint a picture of a God who is constantly starting over with his creation, rather than a God who is at work redeeming creation. Jesus did not “revolt” against Judaism, he completed it. The revolution he led didn’t throw out tradition and history, it reframed them and redefined them within the context of his Incarnation. Simply put, Jesus doesn’t change history, he defines it. That is why he is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

I am all for recovering the radical Gospel, but only within a church that remembers its past as well. Traditionalism stifles, but Tradition can lead reform. If McManus is seeking to lead us in “The Barbarian Way,” perhaps the raw, passionate lives of St. Athanasius, St. Francis of Assisi, and John Hus can enrich and inspire us. Learning about the martyrdom of St. Ignatius and St. Polycarp are fine examples of “barbaric” Christianity. And what about Dorothy Day? Pretty countercultural.

Help me out, please. Why don't Christians care about their great heroes of the past? Why do American Christians care more about George Washington than St. Augustine? Why must we always try to reinvent the wheel? Why do we think we need more? We have an abundance of faith, testimony, ministry, passion, mysticism, martyrdom--in short, an abundance of "barbarians"--throughout our past. Sorry, Erwin, you haven't discovered anything new.

Don't ge me wrong. I am glad for people like McManus in the Evangelical world. But as much as he'd probably bristle, he's cut from the same cloth as "domesticated" American Evangelicals. I just wish he cared enough about the whole church. They would discover they don’t have to reinvent the wheel, nor destroy civilization. Every day I thank God that he chooses to redeem my past rather than obliterate it.

Erwin, if you do know a lot about our Christian past, then use your position and influence to tell those stories! I would think they would only bolster your barbaric argument.