it seems odd to me
how the littlest of poems
can feel so complete

yet haiku does it
tho unburdened by rhyme-scheme
still it delivers

five in first and last
and seven in the second
go the syllables

my challenge is this:
can you reply to this blog
in haiku only?

This post arose as a reply to one of Bob's great blog entries. The he started about the connection between faith and politics. Reading his post made me think of a couple of diagrams for how these two things interact. While I was typing the comment go too long so I decided to start it as a post to this blog.

Bob's post made me wonder if we're reacting to the political realm privatizing religion by returning the favor: as the religious realm we're trying to privatize politics. I see no reason to privatize our political involvement. On the contrary I think the candidates and issues we vote for (and why we vote for them) matter deeply we should talk more about rather than less about these things.

One of the problems is that as Christ-followers in this country we sorely lack models for what engagement in the culture around us can look like. All we seem to have are polarizing options. As I was thinking about it today I took it upon myself to create a couple of visual representations of what it might look like to engage in culture. (As a side note, I just started a sabbatical from my job and I think my mind is looking for creative outlets for all its energy!)

Here's a diagram that seeks to illustrate the model I think most of us walk around with in our heads. Each of us sees ourselves as Christ-followers in the midst of our culture and country trying to figure out how we are to interact with things like politics, work, culture, money, etc... something like this:

I think there are various problems with this model.

1. It is individualistic. I see myself as a single unit – not as part of a community (ie the communtiy of Christ-followers from my church or neighborhood for example).
2. I take interaction with each element in my culture one at a time – I can choose to interact with them or not. I can choose to see them as relevant or irrlevant to my faith.
3. It promotes the idea that in life there are sacred things and there are secular things. I just don't think this is true for a Christ-follower. I think all of life is to be understood as sacred - work, education, politics, etc... (more on this in the next post).
4. I think that it lacks any connection to the larger sense of the Kingdom of God: God’s mission in the world. Rather than God being the actor - the one who takes initiative - I think of myself as having to influence all these spheres around me.

So, overall, I don't think this is a helpful model. But I do think it is the one most of us have in our heads. So what should we replace it with? How should we think about it?

I'll post what I think is a better diagram in a few days. In the mean time, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Jim 

When we were first married, one of my happy discoveries was that my well-read wife had somehow missed reading The Chronicles of Narnia while growing up. In order to remedy this as quickly as possible, I sat her down and almost immediately began reading aloud to her from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Over the course of a month or so, we wound our way through the seven volumes of the beautiful story. We fell in love with Aslan, marveled at the transformation of the various children who were summoned to Narnia and we sometimes shivered at Lewis’ depictions of evil and sin.

Just a couple of years ago we repeated the wonderful experience with our three kids. Over the course of the summer we took deep pleasure in introducing them to these wonderful stories. We read while camping, on car trips, before bed… we really enjoyed the stories together.

Needless to say, when the movie The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe came out, we were all eager to see it together. And we really enjoyed it. How wonderful that special effects have reached a level of art that is able to depict a character like Aslan with such beauty and gravity. It was fun to see all those favorite scenes played out so lavishly, fun to re-live the story so visually.

If it’s not already obvious, I really love Lewis. So while enjoying the film deeply, I was also watching somewhat critically. And toward the end of the film, during the climactic battle scene, I was taken aback by something. After freeing the creatures-turned-to-statues at the White Witch’s castle, Aslan along with the children and the revived creatures joins the battle arriving just in time to turn the tide. Soon it is clear that Aslan and his subjects will be victorious. In the final scene of the battle sequence, Aslan knocks the Witch down and we see (from the Witch’s perspective) Aslan open his mouth and with one ferocious bite, extinguish both the Witch and her reign. This accomplished, Aslan turns, looks at the children and says, “It is finished.”

My initial thought following the movie was that the line had been misplaced. Because even a cursory reading of the gospels reveals that Jesus utters the words “It is finished” while hanging on the cross just moments before his death (John 19:30). Therefore any use of this line in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, rightfully belongs at the stone table rather than during the final battle.

The placement of that one line sent me back to the book yet again. Sure enough, it never appears in Lewis’ work at all. Not during the battle, and perhaps more surprisingly, not even at the Stone Table. I think it is because Lewis had always been clear that these stories were allegory (a story that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning). The use of that line at all might have been too literal a connection between Aslan and Jesus for Lewis’ sensibilities.

My deeper concern, however, is that placing Jesus’ statement, “It is finished” during the battle scene is theologically irresponsible. In this simple statement Jesus is signifying that his life, work and death – the very mission of God to the world – is now complete in some way. This statement belongs at the cross. To suggest that Jesus work is “finished” not in his own death but in the killing of another is perhaps not only theologically irresponsible but ethically suspect.

At this point in history, in this climate of terror and war, so many of us want to read another meaning into this allegory. We want to believe that the struggle between good and evil can be simply defined. We want to believe that good can overcome evil in a physical battle with the climactic death of the evil character (as the movie might suggest). I would imagine that Lewis might have felt the same temptation. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was first published in 1950, just a short five years after the end of World War II. I imagine Lewis was tempted to make more direct links between the regime that had just been conquered in the real world and the evil that Aslan and the children were dealing with in Narnia. He could have had Aslan kill a dictator and then pronounce, “It is finished.” But he resisted the temptation to use his story that way. I only wish the filmmakers had done the same.

It is true that Jesus’ clearest response to evil was to overcome it through death. At just the point when evil seemed to have had the last word, at just the point when evil had done its worst, at just the point when evil seemed to have made a victim of the one in whom all our hopes hung; Jesus said, “It is finished.” Yes, Jesus clearest response to evil was to overcome it with death – his own death.

The line between good and evil is never simply between “us” and “them.” The line between good and evil runs through each one of us.

1. Evil seen as idolatry and consequent dehumanization
2. Evil as what wicked people do, not least what they do to the righteous
3. Evil as the work of “satan” (a Hebrew word that means “accuser”)

I find our national rhetoric that speaks of an “Axis of Evil” oversimplified and inaccurate. While it is tempting to talk of evil as something “out there” or something that “they” perpetrate against “us,” at some point we have to acknowledge that it is significantly more complicated than that. Until and unless we are willing to admit that this axis of evil, in Solzhenitsyn’s words “runs through each one of us,” we will be consigned to live in a world that idolizes the sword and returns wickedness for wickedness.

Unless we are willing to admit that evil is not just “out there” but “in here” as well, we risk falling prey to the notion that evil can be destroyed simply by hunting down the evildoers and doing away with them. But justice and the destruction of those who perpetrate evil are not the same thing. Doing away with the evil “out there” will not keep us safe “in here.” And if we intend to hunt down all of the evildoers we must, eventually come after ourselves as well.

I feel strongly that justice needs to be pursued in cases where violence is perpetrated. Violent attacks which intend to terrify people are abhorrent. And when these attacks are committed by non-state entities, the pursuit of justice becomes extraordinarily complex. But a response that does nothing but lift the sword against a nation who’s connections to the original attack are vague (at best) is a dangerously oversimplified response. A preemptive attack justified by deeply flawed intelligence is not only simplistic, it is short-sighted and ineffective.

We must be willing to think more deeply. We must do the hard work of making room for more than simple, either - or responses to these difficult issues. If evil is to be dealt with, it must be dealt with in all its complexity. It is (perhaps) understandable that the U. S. response to terrorism has lacked any resemblance to Jesus teaching about and his response to evil. But the fact that Jesus teaching and example are also missing from His church’s response to these issues is profoundly troubling.

Are none of us willing to consider what it might mean to turn the other cheek? Will no one offer a courageous suggestion for how we might return good for this evil? Will no one offer a blessing for this curse? Will no one offer love for these enemies?

Mt 5:38-48
Romans 12:21

How is it, I wonder, that we have become so comfortable – have even come to the defense of a response to evil which is so utterly devoid of the hard, complicated, complex wisdom of Jesus?