The Cost of Discipleship Ok friends, strap yourself in, this is going to be a rather longish ride (post) and the first child that asks “Are we there yet?”….. Over the past several days many of you have asked the same questions. So I took one comment from a beloved reader and will use it as a place to focus my response. I have left it anonymous: “I truly hear what you are saying as Ive been reading your posts these past few days, but I MUST ask you to please tell me what you believe human beings ARE called to do in the face of violent evil being perpetrated against others? While I agree that a Christian has the perfect right to believe and behave as one who thinks one should not retaliate or defend themselves, but only pray and offer love to those who abuse or are even killing them. - That is indeed their choice to believe it is what God desires of them. - However, It sounds as though you would say we have no part in the defense of those being raped, beheaded and buried alive before our eyes; that no one should physically defend the children and women; that no one is supposed to physically defend those being attacked, nor respond to a group that has as its main and primary goal the eradication of the very existence of people identified with specific religions/people groups, and as such cannot be negotiated or compromised with! I can find nothing in Scripture that would lead me to believe God desires that type of passivism from His children when faced with the need to defend the innocent. Not even in Matthew 7. Jesus purposely and specifically permitted his death on the cross. You and I might debate His precise reasons beyond the cessation of the need for blood satisfaction, but I think we both would agree He did not have to let it happen. He could have stopped it at any time had it been His will to do so. I cannot picture the Jesus I know and love desiring us to allow this torture and genocidal behavior to continue without an effort to stop it! And no, it doesnt work to say leave it to those in power in the secular area because each individual involved is a person of spirit, as well, who must make a choice, even if the action is a collective endeavor.” ******** Thanks to N.N. for these questions and for many of you who asked similar questions. Let me begin by saying what I write is only my reflection, yours may be different. But this is how I see things. First, I am oft asked “What should we do?” My reply is to ask “Who are the ‘we’ in your question?” If by “we” you mean people in general I have no reply to that for I do not think Jesus or the New Testament writers engage in general ethics. Jesus was speaking to his followers and the apostolic church was writing to Christians. It is important to keep this at the front of our minds for if we don’t we will end up trying to figure out what God’s will is apart from the very specific context of discipleship to Jesus and all that entails. Second, I too, like everybody else am horrified and deeply offended at the moral atrocities being committed at this time by ISIS in Iraq. Some of you read the Psalm of Lament I composed last week as my way of seeking to engage this issue on a deeper level than just abstract anger. That we feel this moral outrage at all is astonishing. Why? Because not too long ago in our human history we had no sympathy for innocent victims. All human history is grounded in violence done to victims. Our very founding mythologies testify to this from the Enuma Elish to the founding of Rome in Livy (Romulus and Remus) to the founding murder myth of Genesis where Cain slays Abel. Human culture is violent culture. There has never been a time when we were somehow pristine, clean and pure. Our hands have always been bloody. Many of you are aware I utilize the work of René Girard to understand human origins in violence done to innocent victims and the way human culture has always maintained itself and regrouped and re-founded itself on victims. The blood of the victim is our life-source as a species. Without our scapegoats there is no such thing as human culture. We are vampiric (and this dawning realization accounts for our popular fascination with vampires in books and cinema), and we create gods in our own image who are vampiric, who demand blood, who need blood to satiate their anger and hostility. In the way I see things, the trajectory of the Bible and the very nature of revelation itself, is a move to help us become free from the logos (logic) of violence and embrace the logos (logic) of the kingdom of God, manifested in Jesus as healing, peacemaking and non-retributive (or forgiving) social behavior. My book The Jesus Driven Life attempts to read the entire bible from this perspective. It also shows how Christianity so easily took the peace message of Jesus, wedded it to Greek philosophy and ended up muting the very heart of the Gospel voice. Just as Israel has dwelt in exile from the time of Nebuchadnezzar until now, so also Christianity has been in a state of exile from its beginnings until now. BUT…. It was Judaism that introduced the critical principle into religion and culture. Prior to the Jewish prophets, religion was not questioned. It simply was the way things were. The Jewish prophets brought something altogether new to the table in their critique of idolatry, so much so that Jewish scholar Sandor Goodhart refers to the major principle of the Hebrew Scriptures as ‘the law of anti-idolatry.’ Scholars of the history of ideas recognize the effect the introduction of this principle has had on human culture and it can be (and has been) argued that without it we would not have modern science! Our ability to think critically is a deeply embedded component of that which constitutes biblical revelation. The book of Job is a most excellent example of this. The standard reading of Job which sees him as a complainer and even the interpretation which follows the lead of God at the end and castigates his supposed friends is only halfway there. If you really want to understand the Book of Job, go read the play Oedipus Rex by the Greek tragedian Sophocles; then you will understand that Job is the anti-Oedipal character. He absolutely and resolutely refuses to be blamed for what is happening around him even though his friends beg him to consent so they can then ‘go on to sacrifice him.’ Job is ‘the critical principle’ in action! The passion narrative of Jesus has the exact same structure as our founding myths; it is the story of ALL against ONE, that sad story that had played out thousands of millions of times as our species developed. The gospel is myth BUT it is myth subverted, myth undone, myth deconstructed. Yes it is historical, but inasmuch as myth hides victims, the gospel is anti-myth, for the gospel reveals the innocence of Jesus. It is the story of ONE for ALL. Jesus’ story is that yeast in our history that is has helped to see our victimizing tendencies. What does any of this have to do with the violence in Iraq today? Everything! We need to understand the role that vengeance plays in social formation, as well as the human solution to the problem of vengeance, the use of ‘sacred violence’ or divinely sanctioned retribution. As long as we believe that our violence is good while the other person’s violence is bad, we are stuck in The Matrix of Sacred Violence. It is this Matrix Jesus came to dissolve and deconstruct by offering an alternative vision of human community grounded in ’70 x 7 forgiveness’ , a way of being human that kept no record of wrongs (as God did at Calvary, 2 Cor. 5:16-21). Jesus’ entire ministry, his teaching about God’s reign and God’s character are completely counter-intuitive to those Christians who still dwell in the Matrix of Sacred Violence. This is why they cannot and will not see that their blood thirsty gods are not the Abba of Jesus, this is why they defend sick versions of penal substitution atonement theory with all their might, this is why they wrap Jesus in a national flag and turn him into an eschatological Terminator on steroids. They cannot abide Him, so they morph him, distort him and turn Him into a grotesque parody. They make the Gospel into myth again, this time arguing that God needs and demands scapegoats. They operate out of zeal and holiness codes with moral outrage, a feigned morality, for their victims are selective. Followers of Jesus are both in this world but they are not of this world. Their allegiance is to Jesus as Caesar, not a country, not an ethnic identity, not a political party or platform, not even a religion. Jesus alone is their Lord. Their citizenship is ‘in heaven.’ Their authority is from the True Human seated at the right hand of Majesty, a Majesty which endured human violence and responded with forgiveness and mercy, not the outpouring of retribution. Thus, followers of Jesus take their marching orders from Him alone, not from any earthly authority, nor any sense of morality. The world operates in terms of right and wrong; the kingdom of God operate in terms of eschatological restoration and the promise of resurrection and a reboot of all creation. If you understand this then you understand that what we, as followers of Jesus can do, is this: we can do anything but commit or justify retribution or violence. We can pray. We can join Christian Peacemaker teams and lay our lives on the line. We can financially support humanitarian aid organizations. We can gather together and peacefully protest. But we cannot ever, ever act in the manner of the myth making world and justify retribution or violence. We cannot think that the Sermon on the Mount with it’s “turn the other cheek” and “love your enemy” is vitiated by other Bible verses. We cannot just equate Jesus with all statements about God in the partial myth, partial gospel of the Jewish bible. We must, like Jesus did, like Paul did, like so many in the apostolic church did, like so many others have done, rightly discern that God is revealed not as the group which persecutes and justifies violence, but as the victim who endures and forgives violent acts. This is the cost of discipleship. It costs a person nothing to go to war. Anybody can take up a gun and kill another. That’s easy. But laying down your life? That’s the hard part. Taking up your cross daily? That’s hard. Hating those who commit murder, rape, genocide? That’s easy. Loving one’s enemies? That’s hard. Holding a grudge or remaining bitter at someone? That’s easy. Forgiving another person seventy times seven in one day for the same thing that is hurtful? That’s hard. If you think this Christian thing is about narcissistic bliss, star spangled feelings, dazzling worship services or the extraordinary you have not yet begun to follow Jesus. Count the cost. Think about this business of what following Jesus entails before you decide. If you don’t, you will walk away after half a minute. Look at this text and notice carefully the juxtaposition of the attitude of the sons of Zebedee, who would love to be like Elijah (or Phineas). Note well what Jesus says to them. The notice what immediately follows. Discipleship is all about the renunciation of all violence, justification of violence or recourse to violence. As the time approached when Jesus was to be taken up into heaven, he determined to go to Jerusalem. He sent messengers on ahead of him. Along the way, they entered a Samaritan village to prepare for his arrival, but the Samaritan villagers refused to welcome him because he was determined to go to Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to consume them? But Jesus turned and spoke sternly to them, and they went on to another village. As Jesus and his disciples traveled along the road, someone said to him, I will follow you wherever you go. Jesus replied, Foxes have dens and the birds in the sky have nests, but the Human One has no place to lay his head. Then Jesus said to someone else, Follow me. He replied, Lord, first let me go and bury my father. Jesus said to him, Let the dead bury their own dead. But you go and spread the news of Gods kingdom. Someone else said to Jesus, I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say good-bye to those in my house. Jesus said to him, No one who puts a hand on the plow and looks back is fit for Gods kingdom. (Luke 9:51-62 CEB) Now ask yourself, do you really want to follow Jesus?
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 14:46:04 +0000
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