It’s been four years since George W. Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and declared victory in Iraq in front of a banner that said, “Mission Accomplished.” I guess the lingering question is: “What was/is the mission?”
Spoken word artist Steven Connell has teamed up with Robert Greenwald (Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices and Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers) to produce a video promoting a contest to decide what should go on that infamous banner.
Watch it first:
Now, think about how absurd it is to cling to a mission that is confusing, undoable, or something worse.
SO TELL ME: What’s your mission?
SO TELL ME SOMETHING ELSE: Are you living your mission?
Pastoring in the south, I run into all sorts of interesting notions about the Church. I’m a son of the south, so I’m allowed to deconstruct (I think). One interesting phrase I heard of late was, “postmodern isn’t Biblical.” Now, after the initial shock of that statement not even computing with me, I began to sift through the mountain of self-assured misunderstanding that amounts to such a statement.
I think that only a Biblical foundationalist could adhere to this idea. The foundationalist after all will embrace the dead faith of the living far easier than the living faith of the dead. The foundationalist will scrutinize scripture for the plain sense of the Word, but will instead strip the complexity of scripture in a synchronistic approach. A view of life (and faith) that accounts for “both/and” could certainly be proof-texted to death by the foundationalist.
Yet, I find our spiritual ancestors embraced:
a creating God who occasionally condoned evil;
a vengeful God who was also a loving God;
a fully divine God and a fully human God;
a Church that embraces diversity within unity (a reflection of the Triune God, by the way);
and a gospel that speaks through a certain people and yet to and through the world.
Amazingly, I discover these things in Scripture. In fact, a cannonical-narrative view of scripture (which is holistic, healthy, mysterious, tangible, knowable, and livable all at once) yields postmodernism. And — like the good postmodern I am — I acknowledge and embrace the fact that our world is populated with a mix of different learning styles that cover the spectrum of modernism to postmodernism. It even appears that each learning style is helpful to the Church in America as we try to discover who God wants us to be right now and tomorrow.
I can think of no world view more Biblical than postmodernism.
Incidentally, I’m reading Beyond Foundationalism right now, so who knows how I would lay out this apologia in a few weeks.
NPR ran a story this morning on the Pigou Club, “an elite group of economists and pundits with the good sense to have publicly advocated higher Pigovian taxes, such as gasoline taxes or carbon taxes.â€? They propose raising the gasoline tax at an obscene rate in order to release the creative energies of silicon valley to find means of energy that are environmentally conscious, ecologically stable, and financially viable. My first impression: that’s a pretty good idea!
Imagine self-imposed restrictions and obstacles that sparked creative fervor in finding ways to eliminate those restrictions or obstacles. It sounds a lot like what we did all the time during my days in professional theatre. There was a deadline to get a show up, a group of people working on it who at first do not agree, a (very) limited supply of money, and somehow that served as a catalyst for amazing creative that worked.
What if such an approach were taken toward church restrictions and obstacles?
We don’t have enough money:
why? debt;
solution? put all funds toward that debt and eliminate funds for compassion, ministry, service to others, etc.;
result? you better believe people would find a way to eliminate unnecessary debt in order to be good stewards of monies for the purpose of serving others.
People won’t darken the doors of the building we call the “church” on the property:
why? buildings are irrelevant in the realm of spiritual reality;
solution? stop thinking of “church” as an irrelevant building and think of “church” as a verb carried out for the good of others by many participants in Christ’s work for the purpose of building bridges of irresistable influence;
result? the church will be relevant, meaninful, and helpful in local communities (which is to imply it largely is not at present.)
We don’t see not-yet believers responding to God’s grace which we believe is already at work in their lives:
why? we don’t pray for them and we don’t go to where they hang-out;
solution? pray regularly and passionately for not-yet believers with trust that God really wants to answer those prayers; also, get our butts out of the “church” building and property and spend more time in “third places” (i.e., restaurants, bars, coffee shops, the beach, the park, etc. — places that people hang out when they aren’t at work or at home) especially if that means we must cancel some of the activities that weekly take place on “church” properties;
result? we will see Christ’s kingdom multiply in surprising ways.
The social agencies and government authorities don’t seem to care much about the disenfranchised, nor are they very effective in helping them:
why? Christians have not held agencies and authorities accountable, nor named the injustices for what they are in a public and deliberate manner;
solution? we need to sing the dangerous songs of our Story on behalf of the disenfranchised and persecuted (songs which will put is un in harm’s way) while at the same time joining together with other believers to actually do something that moves persons from enablement to sustainability.
result? we will see Christ in the least of all people, we will go beyond service to capacity building, we will finally understand and live compassion and justice.
There are other obstacles that could be turned into creative catalysts. I only suggest a few. Please submit other possibilities.
Matt Mings on