Resident Aliens: Chapter 3, Part 2 (Revolution)

We’re working our way through Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony by Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Williamson, published in 1989.

Christian ethics, as a cultivation of those virtues needed to keep us on the journey, are the ethics of revolution. Revolutionaries, whose goal is nothing less than the transformation of society through revolution, have little patience with those among them who are self-indulgent, and they have no difficulty disciplining such people. The discipline they demand of themselves is a means of directing the others to what is true and good.  (p. 62).

When was the last time you heard a sermon preached along these lines? But do they sound like Jesus? Was Jesus hard on the self-indulgent? Did he expect such people to be disciplined? Did he set an example of non-self-indulgence?

Indeed, the scriptures tell us that the essence of being Christlike is service, submission, and sacrifice — the very opposite of self-indulgent.

Having no use for such bourgeois virtues as tolerance, open-mindedness, and inclusiveness (which the revolutionary knows are usually cover-ups that allow the powerful to maintain social equilibrium rather than to be confronted and then to change), revolutionaries value honesty and confrontation—painful though they may be. (p. 63).

Ponder this one for a while. In modern America, we are taught tolerance, open-mindedness, and inclusiveness, but the authors declare these cover-ups for preservation of the social equilibrium. True?

Tolerance can be an excuse for not calling sin “sin.” It can be an excuse for not calling self-indulgence and even self-destructive behavior wrong. Indeed, such ideals can cause us to become enablers, helping those in need by feeding and clothing them while never bothering to call them to a better life — or even eternal life. And this kind of “Christianity,” this kind of “social justice,” only serves to make the giver feel better about himself.

Enabling sin and self-destructive behavior is to be a party to sin and self-destructive behavior. But it sure feels good to give money away to a poor person — even when you’re funding the next hit of crack. Just be careful to leave quickly enough not to see how the money is used. Comfort yourself with the notion that we aren’t called to judge how someone uses what we give them, only to give away the Lord’s money.

Christian ethics makes no sense apart from the recognition that we are also on an adventuresome journey which requires a peculiar set of virtues. For example, when Christians discuss sex, it often sounds as if we are somehow “against sex. ” What we fail to make clear is that sexual passion (the good gifts of God’s creation) is now subservient to the demanding business of maintaining a revolutionary community in a world that often uses sex as a means of momentarily anesthetizing or distracting people from the basic vacuity of their lives. When the only contemporary means of self-transcendence is orgasm, we Christians are going to have a tough time convincing people that it would be nicer if they would not be promiscuous. (p. 63).

You see, Christian ethics don’t make sense to non-Christians. Why deny yourself sex if you aren’t a Christian? Why be sober? Why not escape misery through drugs? We’re so used to the Constantinian assumption that all are Christians that we’ve forgotten why we have morals! It’s not just that our morals are commanded by God and that all are subject to God — as true as that is. It’s that our morals make sense for those engaged in God’s mission.

We don’t want to escape through drugs, alcohol, and sex because escape doesn’t accomplish God’s purposes. Indeed, escape frustrates God’s purposes by removing the motivation to actually get involved and help people. It’s too trite to say the Christianity provides “a better high,” but it does — for those who are actually engaged in the adventure of the story. The assembly, you see, isn’t about gaining an experience — a high — that allows us to escape. No, the assembly is to encourage us to engage and transform, to be involved, to see the world as God sees it. It’s not a moment of respite but a time of preparation for adventure.

A journey requires not only an end, a goal, but also the ability to keep at it—constancy. Travelers, in the midst of the vicissitudes of the journey, learn to trust one another when the going is rough. …

The modern world represents a particular kind of threat to the integrity of the personality, namely, that our propensity to change direction, to break our commitments, is made into a virtue. We call our pathological inconstancy “Passages,” “Adult Development.”  (p. 64).

Our children are marrying later and later for fear of making a commitment, of being tied down. Our members refuse to sign church covenants or even to place membership. They want to keep their options open. Commitment is perceived as a loss of freedom.

We see this in the difficulty small groups have in getting members to keep their commitments to bring the three-bean casserole. It’s hard to count on volunteers to show as nursery workers. Ministry leaders are constantly frustrated by how unreliable Christians can be.

You see, we are consumers not owners. We attend church for what we can get out of it. We volunteer out of guilt and obligation. We don’t see service as opportunity and joy. We don’t see staffing the nursery as a ministry that can bring the damned to Jesus. We don’t see small groups as a way to change people and so change the world. We can’t see past ourselves because we are selfish, narcissistic, and uncommitted.

And so we have to preach the Great Adventure, the Story. We have to give our members a vision — not just a 15-words-or-less slogan but a picture of what things could be like and how each one of us fits in it. Vision is not vision unless it can be seen.

I can’t abide vision statements. They all sound alike, and they’re all pretty trite. Most are copied from Saddleback based on where the church was 30 years ago. That’s not what we need today. Today, we need to see how it all fits together, and how bringing the three-bean casserole just because I said I would helps change the world from hell to a colony of heaven. (And it really does. You just have to think about it.) We need to see how it is that each one of us matters in the Grand Scheme of Things, that is, in God’s Story.