To continue building on
the last section, when it comes to being a people of peace, knowing and
explaining what is right is far easier than putting it into practice. I
insist that it begins with a heart that has been transformed by God’s grace,
but there is a progression in living a life found in grace. But it must be
further learned and shaped within the domestic life of the church community.
I find it best to look
at the guidance from the early church. The very early church was good about
forming a people that would act more in the way of peace as appose to a people
who just try to convince others that it was the right way to be while showing
no sign of it themselves. This was not, and should not be, viewed as
a behavioral modification emphasis, but rather it was unique
transformation. In fact these Christians drew lots of people because
they were known for being radically peaceable and patient and it was for that
reason that the early church improbably flourished amid the violent Roman
Empire. That is of course before Constantine and others drove Christian growth
via violence and force thus making our story a cautionary tale, but let that mark
the way not to go.
To
get back on topic, in Alan Kreider’s book on the early church he shows that
some of the practices that initiated their habitus was memorizing scriptures
that they felt embodied the Gospel and God’s Kingdom being present.[1] Yes,
this looks like one of the spiritual disciplines discussed in the last post
because it is, but I’m moving to somewhere new I promise. The Sermon
on the Mount was among the obvious that Christians focused on, but Kreider
highlights another one that was cited most by early writers. It was Isaiah
2:2-4,[2]
In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s
house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall
be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many
peoples shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to
the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that
we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and
the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the
nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their
swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation
shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any
more.
This poem in Isaiah
comes right after chapter one’s judgment on Israel, but it strangely looks
beyond judgment to a vision of hope and a day when YHWH is tabernacled with the
world again. He will be the life giving presence in Jerusalem which makes it
the central place of peace that draws all nations. Walter Brueggemann also adds
that Jerusalem is the torah of YHWH in which the torah will be the clue for
peace and points to the way of justice for everyone.[3] Perhaps a
justice that only acts restoratively.
Fast-forward
to the Christian writer Justin Martyr who said that while Isaiah’s words were
not seen as fulfilled on the grand scale of a still violent and war stricken
world, they were already being formed and fulfilled within the culture of
church communities.[4] “We who were filled with war, and mutual slaughter,
and every wickedness, have changed our warlike weapons (our swords into
ploughshares and our spears into implements of tillage) and we cultivate piety,
righteousness, philanthropy, faith and hope, which we have from the Father
Himself through Him who was crucified.”[5] Jesus’ life and teaching
offered creative expression for the church community to live this out because
it had a new way in which new possibilities were emerging. But we
can only get to the new way if we are willing let grace and spiritual humility
lead us into rethinking everything.
As I said in part 1,
conflict is not a bad thing, but our perspectives and responses to it tend to
be quite terrible. Look at race in the U.S. right now. The black population
clearly sees inherent racism in many areas but particularly in our justice
system. It seems that very few whites (especially those in power)
are taking them seriously and many white people say awful things like slavery
was in the past and “they just need to get over it” because it was their
great-grandparents and grandparents enslaved and not them.
The black majority
realize they are not being heard or taken seriously and they protest and form
movements that attempt to highlight that they are witnessing police brutality
and mass incarceration rates higher among them than anyone else and they are
right. Yet nobody wants to step up for them and say “black lives matter” so
they have had to do it themselves. The response to that from many has been to
say well “all lives matter” even when they clearly don’t believe that and it
only became another division for the political right and left to take sides on
which itself seems to be a new turf for racial division. Still not
being heard though, many protests have turned violent which brought new
condemnation and equally violent responses.
Mark my words, this
intractable polarization will continue so long as the adversarial thinking
continues. Those with the dispute will continue to be ignored and downplayed by
those who do not experience it firsthand and by those who want to make sure
they stay suppressed. Now I am sure there are arguments against me
from other sides of the conflict, but it will not negate that somebody was
first not being heard and the same old cycle of conflict with anger, violence,
depression, broken relationships and so on is just being carried forward.
The counter-cultural
witness that was in Isaiah’s vision, Jesus’ embodiment and the church’s
continuation was that conflict was the uncomfortable failure that brought
opportunity for change. But the hurt ones were heard by the other side who
would confront the issues by taking it seriously and empowering all parties to
work for change as one people, not “colorblind” as they say, but
color-bound.
To borrow Kreider’s
illustration, in Acts the Hellenists within the church community were upset
with the Hebrews because they were neglecting to feed their widows in the daily
distribution of food (6:1-6). Now note that the response was not to
ignore them, or downplay their issue, but rather they assembled as a community
and decided to appoint seven notably responsible people who would shoulder the
task of distributing food just to them. The whole community liked the idea and
it worked well.
So what I am trying to
get at is that along with God’s grace and spiritual formation is the need to
develop practices and skills that say we to belong to each
other. There are three main skills I will throw out there to
consider (Kreider and Augsburger both tout these). The first two are
interlinked, “attentive listening” and “truth speaking”. Each highlight that
communication is the key to a strong relationship, yet always has to be
centered on some idea of love for the other. As David Augsburger says, “To love
another is to invite, support and protect that person’s equal right to hear and
be heard. To love is to listen; to be loved is to be fully heard. Love is first
the action of the eyes attending, the ears attuning and then the soul
connecting.”[6] And if you follow the God who is love then there
should be no reservations about wanting to follow this.
Subsequently, “attentive
listening” is to suspend judgment and receive the criticism not in a way that
reads something else into it or using what is being said to create ammo for a
counter argument, but by truthfully attending to what is said and meant and
uninterruptedly identify with what they are feeling. Another way to think about
it is as a matter of being open to a different perspective and goals and taking
it seriously. "Truth speaking" correspondingly works to
mutually use the simplest and clearest words one can come up with to convey and
clarify their meaning and experience. Then, as Miroslav Volf says,
“…we enlarge our thinking by letting the voices and perspectives of others,
especially those with whom we may be in conflict, resonate within ourselves…”[7] This
helps us to see and hear each other.
The third skill is alertness to community wisdom. Community is
always a complex intertwining of lives and experience that is part of something larger especially in the church sense. Churches are usually a close knit
people who have entered the story of the Prince of Peace and we can often
recognize those among us who genuinely embody that (usually the older
generation). We then learn that way of peace best when those who have been well
formed by it consistently model it, teach it and empower others to do it better. We
are creatures of mimetic behavior (see Rene Girard for more on that) and
so it must first be learned by observing others doing it well and then become a padawan of sorts to follow "the way". Thus the way justice and peace is learned and practiced inside the church will
become the way justice and peace is practice outside of the church and if it does not embody
Christ’s peace we might need to raise some questions to our church
leaders.
Now, I believe
this can only lead to conversations about mutual accountability and how to
discern as a community. Yet what this is about is that we are to be a people so
committed to the practices and values of peace (as-well-as belonging to each
other) that good outcomes will be subsequent but not central to our
task. Peace is the way, not the end goal.
So to tie this back
together we live lives in flux. What began with encountering God’s
transformative grace and work should continue with our connecting with God in
spiritual disciplines of fasting, prayer, worship, silence and so forth to
internalize Jesus’ way of peace, and then this should lead us to outwardly
rethink how we relate to everyone else and become better at making room and
tending to each other. If we do this regularly together, we will be
a community that no longer needs to fear conflict because with God we know how
to care for it, transform it and even welcome it into our lives growing together.
[1] Alan Kreider. The Patient
Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable rise of Christianity in the Roman
Empire (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic 2016), 91.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Walter Brueggemann. Isaiah
1-39: Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press
1998), 24.
[4] A. Kreider, 92.
[5] As quoted by Kreider from
Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho 110.3.
[6] David Augsburger. Caring
Enough to Confront: How to Undersand and Express Your Deepest Feelings Toward
Others (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Publishing 3rd Ed. 2009), 29.
[7] Miroslav Volf. Exclusion and
Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation (Nashville:
Abingdon Press 1996), 213.
