In one of my more memorable meetings with Don I was caught by the following statement, the implications of which offer an excellent overview of what made Fairhaven Student Ministries successful.

If you really want to follow Jesus, then find the person sitting alone in the lunch room and offer to be their friend.

My initial response after hearing that statement was the sensation of a heaviness pulling at the bottom of my stomach. I’m not sure if Don knew it at the time, but I had first hand experience of being that person who ate alone. Eating alone is oddly similar to that feeling you get right after learning that a close friend has died in that time slows, your mind can’t focus on anything else, and you lose all sense of appetite. At the time of our conversation I had managed to become reasonably adept at avoiding being that person, but the memories were present enough that I knew it was something I did not want to revisit.

I knew, first of all, how visible one became as a result of eating alone. Though the process involved doing as little as possible to attract attention, inevitably it was as if every eye in the cafeteria was bearing down on you in an effort to determine what repulsive quality prevented anyone from wanting to be seen with you. Indeed, one of the caveats of having been that person is a familiarity with the other individuals who also face the threat of eating alone; whether due to their objectionable clothing, or wrong piercings, or unattractiveness, or questionable grooming habits. Whereas adolescent culture (and more often than not, our culture at large) dictates the importance of distancing oneself from such marginalized individuals, Don helped me see that following Jesus challenges our self-centered impulse by suggesting that it is pricesely those marginalized for whom we are to give our primary attention.

Yet the most frightening realization was that following Jesus meant I couldn’t simply visit during a lunch period, say some nice things, hope too many people wouldn’t spot me, and be on my way. I had to become a friend. Friendship isn’t just another word for being nice, but involves getting to know the other person to the point where a level of responsibility is placed on the relationship. In other words, friendship requires a commitment over time. This was not something I could accomplish in a day, or even a week. Rather, it would need to become something like a habit, something that in a small way might even change who I was, and something that posed a threat to the person who, at the time, I thought I wanted to become.

Finally, the full impact of this challenge lay in the reality that it wasn’t an idea I could just talk about, but something I had to live. For many of my Christian friends, sharing the gospel in high school involved adorning oneself with a disgraceful Christian t-shirt (disgraceful in that it was usually neither thoughtful nor creative) and “taking a stand” when the subjects of abortion and evolution were brought up. Don challenged this interpretation with his belief that the Gospel is something we embody (and vicariously, if it can’t be embodied, then it probably isn’t the Gospel.) More precisely, being a Christian isn’t about asking the question “what would Jesus do?” it’s about determining based on Jesus example, “what kind of person is Jesus calling me to be?”

To conclude, Don’s suggestion offers several profound insights about what it means to follow Jesus, which conveniently happen to be the same insights which I think made Fairhaven Student Ministries successful, in particular:

• Christianity is visible
• Christianity is nonjudgemental
• Christianity is relational
• Christianity is concerned with the other over oneself
• Christianity involves risk
• Christianity is embodied

Three years into a marriage you will discover that you married the wrong person.

Not exactly something you would find on a Hallmark card is it? Needless to say the roomful of guests fell awkwardly silent save for a few folks murmoring their dissaproval. I then hastily added the qualifier:

And it’s at that point that you begin to learn what it truly means to love.

This principle is often referred to as the “Hauerwas Law” which simply says “You always marry the wrong person.” I think the following story highlights the importance of the Hauerwas Law.

In undergrad I had a friend who had been dating the same individual for several years. However, at a certain point in their relationship this individual claimed he needed to break up with my friend because, as he put it, he had “fallen out of love” with her. The problem with this approach is that love is not something that falls on us, it is something we practice. More importantly, this limited understanding of love leaves little room for the role of other Christian practices necessary for marriage like commitment, mercy, hospitality, and forgiveness.

Hauerwas offers his own reflection in A Community Of Character:

Christians have far too readily underwritten the romantic assumption that people ‘fall’ into love and then get married. We would be much better advised to suggest that love does not create marriage; rather marriage provides a good training ground to teach us what love involves.
p. 284

Similarly, he offers this explanation via an interview with Duke Magazine:

When couples come to ministers to talk about their marriage ceremonies, ministers think it’s interesting to ask if they love one another. What a stupid question! How would they know? A Christian marriage isn’t about whether you’re in love. Christian marriage is giving you the practice of fidelity over a lifetime in which you can look back upon the marriage and call it love. It is a hard discipline over many years.

Nevertheless, sensing that my “wrong person” statement was possibly a little heavy for a wedding dinner I thought I might lighten the tone by shifting from theology to philosophy! I was reading John Caputo’s What Would Jesus Deconstruct on my flight to the wedding and found this particular passage quite insightful.

…when you get married, you are saying ‘I do’ not only to who this person is, or who you think this person is, but to whomever or whatever this person is going to become, which is unknown and unforeseen to the both of you. That is a risk, what Levinas called a ‘beautiful risk,’ but it is a risk all the same…if it were a sure thing it would be about as beautiful as a conversation with your stockbroker.
p. 45

I think one of the reasons Christians experience so much difficulty with marriage is because we have failed to articulate a definition of love that is unique from what is exhibited in popular culture.

When my wife and I were married some friends of ours suggested we consider a covenant marriage—something popular with evangelicals—as an added buffer against the threat of divorce—also something popular with evangelicals. I declined on the basis that our marriage was a commitment to God and to each other in the presence, and participation, of the Church, which to me is considerably more binding than any government legislation.

I think it’s the Christian’s inability to make these kinds of distinctions that limits our understanding of how marriage might operate as a distinctly Christian practice.

What about you? Has marriage helped inform your understanding of love? In what ways do you think Christian love is incompatible with popular conceptions of love?

I looked up the artist from one of their album’s liner notes—where it was mispelled—and learned that Vasily Kafanov, a Russian born painter living in New York City, did the paintings for all three mewithoutYou albums and, interestingly, also collaborated with Billy Corgan for the Machina/Machines of God concept ablum artwork. In particular I appreciate the texture and detail of Kafano’s artwork which at times is so stricking that it appears as if the pieces are actually made using elements of wood and metal, rather than simply painted.

Fortunately, the first two mewithoutYou albums are available on vinyl from the fine people at Gilead Media, and their most recent album Brother, Sister is likewise available at Burnt Toast Vinyl. I ended up choosing their 2nd album, Catch For Us The Foxes, simply because it is has the most vivid color palate which will make it more attractive framed on a wall.

It was a lot of work, probably too much, though I believe I have accomplished future-proofing at least 80% of the site. Nevertheless, I have decided that from this point forward, rather than making wide-sweeping but infrequent overhauls to the site I will be taking advantage of subtle but frequently occurring realignments.

What is a Realign?

In 2005 web designer Cameron Moll wrote a timeless article published on A List Apart titled “Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign,” with the basic idea that:

The desire to redesign is aesthetic-driven, while the desire to realign is purpose-driven.

Based on Cameron’s definition I would argue that my recent changes already qualify as a realign. However, going forward I intend to take the realign concept one step further. I want to be in the habit of always realigning. Allow me to make an adventurous theological analogy.

A Probably Not-So-Great Analogy Comparing Evangelical Notions of Salvation to Web Design

In the evangelical world the popular understanding of salvation is that of one specific moment in time where one is “saved” once and for all. The out with the old in with the new perspective is roughly similar to the idea of a redesign, where an old design gets replaced by a new design and everything is a done deal.

In some of the less confident, or more excitable, shadows of evangelicalism it is common to hear of “recommitting” oneself. This view believes that things can still go awry despite a well-intentioned “salvific experience” and thus the individual might benefit from refocusing their life after thoughtful personal reflection. In a similar manner, a realign understands that while the last redesign may have been well thought out, new circumstances require that recent modifications and enhancements be put in their proper place. A realign takes stock of these recent developments and carries the original intentions of the design one step further.

A third concept, uncommon among evangelicals despite being quite “biblical,” is the Pauline idea of salvation. The Pauline view of salvation, taken from some of Paul’s New Testament letters, speaks of being saved as something that is both a present and ongoing activity. From this perspective, each decision and action can take one further along the path of being a disciple of Christ. Realigning likewise suggests an always present ongoing activity where each adjustment improves some manner of the usability, accessibility, presentation, or performance of the redesign. This notion of recurring improvements is where I intend to journey with this site for the next couple years.

I hope you enjoy my work in progress. If you have any comments regarding the recent realign, or suggestions for ways you think I can improve the site going forward I would love to hear them.

This is not to say that “personal faith” is unimportant, as Augustine’s Confessions attests, or that there aren’t exceptions to my generalization—the work of Derek Webb comes to mind as does the lesser known Tom Wuest—but simply that the predominant view of contemporary worship represents an incomplete picture of what it means to be Christian.

Last Sunday at Morristown Vineyard we sang “Sweetly Broken” by Jeremy Riddle, which begins:

To the cross I look, to the cross I cling
Of it’s suffering I do drink
Of it’s work I do sing

For on it my Savior both bruised and crushed
Showed that God is love
And God is just

At the cross You beckon me
You draw me gently to my knees, and I am
Lost for words, so lost in love,
I’m sweetly broken, wholly surrendered

As I was singing “Sweetly Broken” I kept coming back to the question, “what does it mean to be a disciple of a God who taught that love and justice are best expressed as willful submission to death on a cross?” As a follower of Christ, in what ways am I called to be “sweetly broken, wholly surrendered?”

As worship continued my thoughts turned to Tom Fox, a Christian who was killed in Iraq in 2005 while serving as a peace activist. I later found the following excerpt from one of his last journal entries:

Tom Fox with Children, courtesy of CPT

We are throwing ourselves open to the possibility of God’s grace bringing some rays of light to the shadowy landscape that is Iraq. We are letting ourselves be guided by something that is beyond rational, intellectual analysis. (emphasis mine)

I wonder what the situation in Iraq might look like today if evangelicals in America correctly understood the role of discipleship in the life of faith. I wish more worship music communicated a spirituality that could actually be embodied by the church, rather than perpetuating a spirituality that is trite and superficial.

Do you agree that contemporary worship music is overwhelmingly self-centered, and if so, what are some ways you think the church can correct this imbalance?

UPDATE: I also recommend reading Inhabitatio Dei’s excellent post, “The Metaphysics of Descipleship.”

The first album on my list is a somewhat obscure group known as Poor Old Lu which emerged out of the Seattle indie/grunge scene in the early 90’s. Poor Old Lu’s album Sin has earned a well deserved place in my musical autobiography. Their song “Sickly” includes the first solo that I ever tabbed out and memorized by heart and Jessie Sprinkle’s busy/energetic approach to drumming remains one of the primary influences (along with Sunny Day Real Estate’s William Goldsmith) to how I approach the kit. Most importantly the album saved me from the banality of “Christian” rock.

As a young adolescent of an evangelical family I was encouraged to pursue music that was “good,” in the sense that its lyrical content would not lead me to getting long hair, tattoos, or worse. Yet despite the goodness of my modest music collection at that time, there was something that didn’t feel right, but which my 9th grade whits couldn’t quite articulate. Poor Old Lu’s album Sin revealed unequivocally what was wrong, namely, that the rest of my music collection was skubala. Indeed everything I had listened to up to that point paled in comparison to the power, creativity, and nuance that breathed from my speakers that day I came home from the store with this odd curiosity.

At first glance Sin might seem like an odd way to begin an art/record collection. The cover is nothing more than a photograph of a hot pink marshmallow bunny set against a similarly textured neon yellow background. At the same time the crude suggestion that something as generic as a marshmallow bunny might be considered art provides a certain abrasiveness and hints that there may be more to discover beneath the surface. On deeper inspection the feeling of discomfort which the cover evokes is in keeping with the cynicism intrinsic to the Grunge genre of the early 90’s, as is the presentation of the ordinary as cultural criticism (similar to Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”). More personally, the cover also suggests a critique of the crass superficiality of generic pop-culture of the kind I had previously listened to. Lastly, the juxtaposition of a pink marshmallow bunny as a visual representation of sin uncovers the perversion by which easter has been co-opted by consumerism.

I doubt many in my pool of readers are familiar with the aforementioned band so I’m posting two tracks from the Sin album:
“Where Were All of You?” (.mp3)
“Sickly” (.mp3)

Our dream is that we fundamentally change the way we do church. That we take out a clean sheet of paper and we rethink all of our old assumptions. Replace it with new insights. Insights that are informed by research and rooted in Scripture. (emphasis mine)

While I certainly agree that the members of Willow Creek could benefit from some constructive rethinking, my suspicion is that Willow Creek’s “new insights” are nothing more than a re-branding of their previous assumptions. Theologians far and wide have spent the latter part of the 20th century debunking many of the seeker-sensitive model’s claims, especially its reduction of Christianity to a product to be consumed.

Seeker-sensitives frequently justify their concerns in the interest of being practical, and often with clear awareness of the reciprocal theological expense. Yet in addition to the many theological critiques, I believe the seeker-sensitive model (and most likely its future reincarnation) also fails in its own attempt at pragmatism. The following example from my own church experience should help illustrate my skepticism.

Shortly after finishing college I became involved as the worship pastor of a church plant. I grew to discover that is was a particularly peculiar church for a number of reasons, and one of the more peculiar was the insecurity concerning tithe. The thinking went that church needed to be relevant, and asking for money, despite a ‘wealth’ of historical precedence, might create an unnecessary barrier for those unfamiliar with church. Therefore, out of practical concern the baskets were passed unassumingly during announcements as a seldom mentioned curiosity. As months went by the church financial situation began to look grim. At the same time, the collection baskets gradually began working their way up to more prominent positions in the worship service. Initially we simply added language encouraging members to consider consistent giving as a habit. This turned out to be largely successful so we promoted the activity to occur during a worship chorus (this had the double effect of ensuring that people were standing which, as church planting literature is fond of sharing, is statistically proven to yield greater contributions.) Eventually, “tithing,” while arguably not a seeker-sensitive term, ended up getting its own weekly sermon series encouraging members to make commitments of giving 10% or more to the church. (The option of whether to tithe from one’s net or gross income was beautifully answered with the option of receiving a net or gross blessing.)

Amazingly this entire shift took place in the span of less than a year. My growing question was what happened to practicality and the need to be relevant? (Confession: I was a seeker-sensitive apologetic at the time.) The response came as a mandate to honor biblical principles. In the years since serving at that church I have often heard the same binary language, relevance and practicality set against being biblical or God-honoring used to support or throw out any number of church practices.

My hunch is that these concepts actually have very little influence in the decision making process of many seeker-sensitive leaning pastors. In reality these competing terms are not much more than scapegoats for the decision-makers conscious or sub-conscious personal preferences. In the same way I anticipate that Willow Creek’s new model, as a continuation of a consumer-based approach, is unfortunately just as susceptible to the false pragmatism of the previous seeker-sensitive model.

I think my growing awareness of this problem might help explain why I’ve become increasingly interested in the Liturgy. The history, community, and scope of the liturgy collectively functions to stabilize us from our own individual self-driven impulses. By following the liturgy we seldom have to worry if what we’re doing is biblical or God-honoring or doubting how a particular practice might be relevant.

What about you? Have you been positively or negatively shaped as a result of seeker-sensitive approaches to church? What is your understanding of the role and importance of the liturgy? How else can we avoid crafting church practices based on our own self-driven impulses?

Like those in the Social Justice tradition, Cavanaugh recognizes the systemic neglect of workers at the bottom of the supply chain and the problems with assuming that these “irregularities” will work themselves out over time all while serving the greater good. By doing so Cavanugh questions what free means to these workers. Yet he takes this deconstruction of free markets one step further and questions whether those at the end of the supply chain are likewise ever capable of making free decisions. Building off of Augustine’s understanding of sin and human freedom Cavanaugh argues that our decisions are not free from external interference nor are they free from the struggle to determine real vs perceived needs. Instead Cavanaugh writes:

Freedom is thus fully a function of God’s grace working within us. Freedom is being wrapped up in the will of God, who is the condition of human freedom. …Autonomy in the strict sense is simply impossible, for to be independent of others and independent of God is to be cut off from being, and thus to be nothing at all. To be left to our own devices, cut off from God, is to be lost in sin…

Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire, p.8

As a recovering techno-gadget-addict, I think his discussion of consumerism perfectly demonstrates how freedom, understood as an action of God’s grace, can guide our economical decisions. Contrary to what I was expecting, Cavanaugh is cautious to point out that nothing is wrong with tangible material goods per se, but rather it is the perpetual cycle of dissatisfaction and desire, and the quest to turn everything - and anyone - into a commodity, that is behind the problem of consumerism. It is what GM calls “the organized creation of dissatisfaction.” For Cavanaugh, “it is not simply buying but shopping that is at the heart of consumerism.” The problem with shopping is both its ability to create dissatisfaction with what we have, and its propensity to separate material things from their production, from which we have arrived at our current culture where nearly everything is disposable. In essence, our wanting takes precedence even over our having. He goes on to write:

We are not to cling to our things, but to use them for the sake of the common good. But to have a good relationship with others, it is necessary to have a proper relationship with things. We must understand where our things come from and how our things are produced. Things do not have personalities and lives of their own, but they are embedded in relationships of production and distribution that bring us into contact, for better or for worse, with other people’s lives. A sacramental view of the world sees all things as part of God’s good creation, potentials signs of the glory of God; things become less disposable, more filled with meaning.

Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire, p.32

I seldom feel the need to post reviews on my site as there is usually plenty of that elsewhere (and one can always browse my reading list to see what I recommend), but Cavanaugh’s work occupies such a barren field in the teaching of Christian ethics that I feel it warrants special attention.

I also recommend Cavanaugh’s article “The Unfreedom of the Free Market” (which is basically a summary of chapter 1) and for those of you new to William Cavanaugh, like myself, I suggest exploring catholicanarchy.org’s excellent Unofficial William T. Cavanaugh Internet Archive.

So I’m interested to hear what you think:

1. Do you think a “free market” exists?
2. How has Christianity changed your approach towards material goods and consumption?

As I have explained in a previous post, unless you are shooting 300mm+ nature or sports photography, the benefits of having a wide-angle lens far outweigh those available with an ordinary optical zoom. Not only are you able to fit more content into your image, but you also gain a more realistic depth of field and a higher aperture.

Yet what truly separates the SD800 from other wide-angle compact digital cameras is the recently released CHDK firmware hack. This hack unlocks previously unavailable features such as a battery indicator, live histogram, increased exposure times, improved video quality (hi-speed SD card required), script support for KAP, and most importantly the ability to capture images in RAW, a feature typically limited to more professional SLR cameras.

RAW is the original pixel data captured by the camera’s CCD before it is processed by an image correction algorithm and compressed into a JPG. In other words, a RAW is to a JPG, what a WAV is to an MP3. Thus, being able to capture RAW gives you finer control over how the image is optimized. To demonstrate the significance of RAW I’ve posted a basic example below. The first photo was taken using the default JPG settings, the second is a RAW image optimized by yours truly. A simple comparison of the skyline in each image should serve to demonstrate the advantages of shooting in RAW.

JPG image, enlarge

RAW image, enlarge

Visit the CHDK.wikia site to download, install, and tweak the CHDK firmware. For the less hip, the firmware is also available for a number of other cameras in the Powershot series.

Other resources

• A working with RAW video tutorial from every designers favorite monopoly
• dpreview’s overview of the Canon SD800
• Flickr’s gallery of SD800 users

We’re not living in an unredeemed world, we’re living in a redeemed world, that’s the whole point of our faith in Jesus Christ. So if we live in a redeemed world then it’s very proper for us to struggle…because we have the redeeming presence of Christ.

…the turning point is the death and resurrection of Christ. We live in a redeemed world. We’re never going to fully realize it, but what we’re called to…is to overcome.

It strikes me that the position McDonagh is critiquing is also a common underlying assumption among many of this blog’s dissenters.

Christian Realism

Christian Realism assumes that, because the nature of sin cannot be completely overcome until Christ’s return we are allowed certain compromises so that we can achieve a not-yet-complete justice in order to foreshadow the complete justice which is possible only on Christ’s return. This is often articulated as a civic responsibility to “fix the world” while we are “still here on earth.”

The Reality of Christ’s Presence

What McDonagh’s comment suggests, and what I sympathize with, is that because of the resurrection, Christ is actively present and working in the world. Though we are still confronted by sin, our calling is to live and act as witnesses to the present work of Christ who alone is able to overcome sin.

Also present in the panel was Stanley Hauerwas who argues quite succinctly that,

If Christ is fully present in the body and blood of the Eucharist, God’s peace is fully present. …our failure, is not embodying that.

The lecture includes:

Defending Just War Theory: Three Views

• Gilbert Meilaender, Valparaiso University
• James Toner, United States Air Force Academy
• Russell Hittinger, University of Tulsa

Abolitionism: A Christian Response to War?

• Stanley Hauerwas, Duke University
• Enda McDonagh, St. Patrick’s University, Maynooth
• Michael Baxter, C.S.C., University of Notre Dame

(By the way, though I disagree with some of the Air Force Academy speaker’s arguments for Just War, I highly commend the U.S. Air Force for being the only military branch with an ethics department)

While the aforementioned arguments primarily relate to the topic of Just War, I think the underlying assumptions of Christian Realism vs. the Presence of Christ are inherent in the arguments for a number of other issues including abortion, euthanasia, politics, social justice, and even church planting.

What do you think? Are we called to just actions that, while imperfect, allude to the true justice that is possible only after Christ returns, or are we called to witness to what Christ is already doing, even at the risk of appearing less effective?