The Line of Obligation

There is a division in our churches. It has nothing to do with race, gender, sexuality, or politics. It is loosely based on age, but specifically has to do with attitudes toward worship. I call it the Line of Obligation.

Above this line, people feel a sense of duty or obligation to go to church on Sunday morning. They might find worship fulfilling, but what gets them out of bed consistently is this feeling of "I ought to be there."

Below this line, the sense of obligation is gone. Church, if it is even considered, is just one of many possibilities for a Sunday morning. Those below the line who do attend regularly do so because of particularly strong faith or to enjoy the feeling of community. "I ought to be there" carries little or no influence.

As time goes by, the Line of Obligation creeps higher, and less people in our communities wake up on Sunday morning feeling the "ought to" feeling. Nonetheless, many churches continue to rely on the sense of obligation to get people there. 

As a result, churches are not only struggling to attract unchurched young people, but are also seeing many of those who do come slipping in their regularity. The answer is not to try to attract them back with consumeristic methods, but instead is to be realistic about what the end of the "ought to" age means. 

It means that we must do a lot more than try to convince young folks that they "ought to" come to church - and perhaps that we should stop considering attendance at worship the scorecard of faith. 

We have to find ways to nurture deep and abiding faith, and tight community to go with it - in ways that might go well beyond what church going meant in the "ought to" era. And when we do this, we will find a whole new way of living the faith opening up below this Line of Obligation.

A Parable for Today's Church

A man lives in a nice house in the country, just outside the city. Everyday, he wakes up at 6:30 and takes a shower and gets dressed. At 7:00 he sits down for breakfast and reads the newspaper. At 7:30, he gets in his car and drives to work, arriving on time at 8:00. This is his routine for 20 years.

Eventually, however, the city begins to grow. The country road the man lives on becomes populated with neighborhoods, apartment complexes, and shopping centers. Traffic becomes congested, and numerous stoplights are installed. The man's drive to work now takes an hour.
The man is not happy, and he complains about the new situation:

"They should not have done so much building on one road."
"They should not have installed so many stop lights."
"They should widen the road, or build a freeway."

And as he complains, the man continues with his routine. He wakes up at 6:30. He eats breakfast at 7:00. He gets in his car at 7:30. And he arrives at work at 8:30. After a while, the man's boss becomes impatient with his constant tardiness, and the man is fired.

The Matrix and Freedom

The Matrix and Freedom

In the movie The Matrix, a young man named Neo learns that what he thought was the real world is actually a computer-generated virtual reality. The real world turns out to be a barren wasteland that has been decimated by an apocalyptic war between human and machines.

Freed from his virtual enslavement, Neo voluntarily re-enters The Matrix and works toward liberating the human race from this "prison of the mind". Back inside, he learns how to deconstruct the virtual reality around him. He becomes aware that many of the rules he once thought to be absolute can be bent or outright broken.

Neo uses this awareness to move through The Matrix in startling ways. He defies gravity, dodges bullets, and eventually learns to manipulate the appearance of the virtual reality from the inside. These feats are made possible by his ability to distinguish what is absolute from what only seems absolute.
   
Christian freedom is not unlike the freedom that Neo experiences. We might not be enslaved in a virtual reality, but we do lead lives that are governed by rules and categories that we have created. These structures and limitations often seem absolute, but many are not.

For Neo, the key to freedom was knowing that the world around him was virtual, created by a computer program. For us, the key is knowing the difference between what God has ordered and what humans have ordered. When we understand this distinction, we can begin to deconstruct all the structures and rules we have created, consciously and unconsciously.

Seeing the world more as it really is, and less as we have constructed it to be, we are freed to pursue the way of Christ. This deconstructed view of the world can allow us to move through and serve the complex matrix of human society in ways that are just as amazing as Neo's reality-bending heroics in The Matrix.

Of course, there is nothing new about this notion of Christian freedom. Throughout history, followers of Christ have sought release from the boundedness of human structures and rules. The Matrix analogy merely renews this tradition of faithful deconstruction for a new digital generation.

The Human Predicament: Sickness or Boundedness

The Human Predicament: Sickness or Boundedness?


Imagine that you wake up one morning in your bed, and you are sick. You have a headache, and you are lightheaded. You have a scorching fever, your stomach is violently upset, and you feel like you might vomit. You are so weak and in so much pain that all you can manage is to roll off the bed and crawl toward the bathroom. You realize that even accomplishing the most basic of tasks today will be beyond your capabilities.

The next day, imagine that your illness is gone, but now you wake up physically bound in multiple ways. Your hands, your wrists, your elbows, your knees, your ankles, and your feet are all tied together - not in a painful way, but it almost completely prevents you from moving. All you can manage is to wiggle yourself off the bed and along the floor. Just like the previous day, you realize that accomplishing even the most basic of tasks will be impossible.

Two days. Two different ways of being incapacitated. Two different ways of being rendered less than a fully functioning human being. Sickness, or boundedness. Which one of these is the better way to think about the human predicament?

The Christian faith, like virtually every belief system, is built on the notion of the human predicament. It assumes that there is some problem, some deficiency, something about our lives and our world that is not what it should be.

Christians explain this problem through the story of Adam and Eve. What was originally an idyllic, innocent existence is spoiled when the first humans ignore God's command and eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Since then, humans have faced the predicament of being born into this "sinful" condition, and we have struggled mightily to know how we might be delivered from it.

Which brings us back to those two days I asked you to imagine. By and large, Christians have viewed this predicament like the first day. We are born into a world where we and everyone around us are sick with sin. We have inherited the disease that first entered the world with Adam and Eve, and we continue the problem through our own disobedience.

Many of our classic hymns reflect this notion of sin as sickness, such as "There Is A Balm in Gilead" - where the saving work of Christ is repeatedly referred to as a healing ointment for the sin-sick soul. This perspective assumes that there is not only a predicament to the human situation, but that there is dysfunction - that we are doing something wrong and must be cured of our waywardness.

When we see our problem as sickness to be healed, it causes us to look for where the sickness resides - which leads us into negative attitudes of judgment and condemnation. Both with ourselves and toward others, we frame individual behaviors in terms of healthy and unhealthy, right and wrong, or even good and evil. And we see larger systems and the world as a whole in term of brokenness.

But let's look at our human predicament like that second day - when we didn't wake up sick, but rather bound up and tied together. What if, instead of being born with a congenital disease called "sin," we are born with chains that limit us - that do not need healing, but that need to be untied and unbound? How does this shift change the way we look at ourselves, at one another, and at this human predicament that we share? Does it lessen our negative tendencies toward judgment and condemnation, and instead increase our positive tendencies toward growth and freedom? In a world full of people destroying one another over notions of right and wrong and good and evil, is an orientation toward freedom instead of healing the more peaceful and compassionate path?




 

Knowledge, Truth, and How To Avoid A Snake

As I see it, there are five modes people use to discern knowledge and truth. They roughly correspond to different different movements in human history.

1) Pre-awareness (Pre-history) Knowledge that does not require cognitive process or education. Like fear of snakes.

2) Reliance on authority (Pre-modern) We believe something because it is affirmed by a trusted authority figure or institution. "This is true because _______ says it is true."

3) Rationality (Modern) We believe something because we have considered all the facts available and made a logical and objective evaluation. "This truth should be apparent to anyone who thinks clearly about it."

4) Contextuality (Postmodern) We arrive at our beliefs as best we can based on our own experiences, but concede that others might arrive at different truths from their own perspectives. Truth emerges from the conversation between different perspectives. "My understanding of truth is no more or no less valid than yours."

5) Deconstruction (Post-history) Truth and knowledge are seen as illusory, as human constructs that have little to do with what is really real. All cognitive understanding is suspect and categories that were once assumed to absolute are challenged and rejected.

In many ways, the fifth mode comes full circle to the first mode - only with an awareness of the other modes and their illusory nature. In the fifth mode, the other modes can be used as tools when useful, and set aside when not useful.

Many folks might consider the fifth mode as part of postmodernity, but I think it's important to delineate them. To see truth as contextual,and to completely deconstruct the concept of knowledge and categories, are vastly different experiences.

In fact, we would likely consider someone in the fifth mode to be mentally ill - which  would certainly be consistent with modes of knowledge that medical practices tend to use. The diagnostic manuals that psychiatrists use are based on a combination of logical experimentation (mode 3) and the passing along of knowledge through schools and publications that have been vested with authority (mode 2).

And that's a good thing. We need for our doctors to be getting their information from tested and reliable sources, just as we need them to make evaluations using the most objective thought processes possible. I would be inclined not to go back to a doctor who was operating in the fourth mode, as if my opinion on how to treat a disease was just as qualified as hers.  And I certainly wouldn't see a fifth mode physician who told me that they had deconstructed and rejected most of what they learned in medical school.

The key to this system of modes is that all of them are useful tools, but none of them are absolutes. Take the fear of snakes, for example. That is purely a first mode type of knowledge. If I'm walking across my backyard and happen upon a copperhead, I'm heading the other direction before I have time to think about it - it's a process that happens away from the cognitive center of the brain, and which has allowed humans to avoid deadly predators since prehistoric times.

Imagine if I happened to be born without this instinctive fear, as some people are. When I see that snake, I would have to rely on another mode of knowledge to tell me to back away. I could remember how my mother had warned me about snakes when I was a child - a second mode authority-based response.

Or, I could rationally process what I know about snakes.  They tend to strike when surprised, and this one looks like it's poisonous because of the marks on its back - a third mode logic-based response.

Or, I could think back on previous experiences I've had with snakes, like how much it hurt when I was a teenager and got bit by a non-poisonous snake. And I could remember others' experiences - like that kid at camp who got bit by a water moccasin and had to go to the emergency room, or that snake-handling preacher in West Virginia who recently died from a rattlesnake bite - a fourth mode contextually-based response.

Or, I could totally deconstruct the situation. I could think about the fact that my eyes are processing light and sending signals to my brain, and that my brain is processing those signals and determining that it was a copperhead. And I couldn't question whether my brain was getting it right - whether that really was a poisonous snake.

And in the process, I could question the whole reality that I'm perceiving. Am I really standing in my backyard, or am I just lying on an operating table somewhere with a scientist manipulating my brain - a classic science fiction concept and a fifth mode response.

With any of modes 2 to 5, by the time the knowledge that this is a dangerous snake found its way to the part of my brain that responds by thinking "Run!", I likely will have been bit. But thanks to my automatic first mode, non-cognitive response, I'm able to retreat to safety.

In the same way, each of the modes has specific times they are useful. Telling a young child not to step into the street requires second mode knowledge to be transferred. Figuring out why you computer crashed is a third mode activity. An Interfaith dialogue on peace needs fourth mode communication to be fruitful. And writing a groundbreaking piece of music that establishes a whole new genre is pure fifth mode.

No one mode is superior to another, and we don't go through life trying to move through them in a neat progression. But as we mature, we do successively acquire the ability use higher and higher modes.

Some fields, such as medicine and architecture, demand a certain level of absoluteness that is offered by reliance on authority and rationality - with

Keeping Up With The Yadevs (How American Materialism Compares With the World's)

(Another repost from 2007 from my old blog "Discipline for Justice")

The Yadevs are a middle-class family of six from Ahraura, India. The book Affluenza shows a picture of the Yadevs in front of their home with everything they own:

1 small house (probably about 500-600 square feet), 3 beds, 4 blankets, 3 paintings with frames, 3 duffel bags (full of clothing), 1 chair, 4 large gourds, 5 small gourds, 1 ladder, 1 bicycle, 2 large baskets, 4 frying pans, 5 cooking pots, 6 small cups, and the clothes on their backs and shoes on their feet.

 

My family (The Mosses) are a middle-class family of four from South Carolina, USA. This is a list not of everything we own, but of everything we got rid of in a recent spring cleaning:

3 small baskets, 3 dish drying racks, 1 water filter w/ pitcher, 1 teapot, 1 water bottle, 1 medium canister, 4 storage jars, 1 wooden spoon, 2 storage racks, 1 cheese slicer, 1 small bucket, 2 tea pitchers, 1 Etch-a-Sketch pen, 1 colander, 10 small storage bowls, 3 coffee mugs, 6 cooking bowls, 4 dinner plates, 12 baskets, 5 tote bags, 5 pillows, 6 pairs of shoes, 2 pairs of slippers, 1 baking tray, 15 children's books, 3 pairs of baby shorts, 6 pairs of baby shoes, 3 baby hats, 3 onesies, 1 bib, 1 wine rack, 2 jigsaw puzzles, 2 purses, 1 cup, 3 sponges, 3 paintbrushes, 3 pictures with frames, 2 cookbooks, 1 vase, 1 flashlight, 3 bottle openers, 34 baby toys, 1 computer mouse, 4 stuffed animals, 2 computer games, 1 telephone, 2 TV trays, 2 blankets, 2 lamps, 1 spatula, 13 compact discs, 16 VHS movies, 1 infant pillow, 1 video baby monitor, 1 backpack, 1 stool, 1 suit, 5 dress shirts, 1 pair of shorts, 1 world map, 3 books, 4 t-shirts, 1 pair of jeans, I pair of pants, 2 bras, 1 headband, 1 pair of gloves, 2 baseball caps, 3 neckties, 3 pairs of socks, and 7 coat hangers.


Yadev total possessions:  70   
Moss total possessions thrown out:  244 
 
(Even after our spring cleaning, our stuff still filled up a house 3 times the size of the Yadevs'.)

Update: This photo essay published by Peter Menzel in 2013 shows the possessions of families from around the world. It reinforces what I learned about American materialism from doing this post.

Then he told them a parable: The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, "What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?" Then he said, "I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, "Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, and be merry."

But God said to him, "You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."

- Luke 12: 16-21

Shopper's Paradise or Consumerist Hell?

(Republished from my old blog, Discipline for Justice - July 2007)

It was an ordinary Tuesday afternoon when the epiphany struck. I was driving on Broad Street in Richmond, Virginia. What had once seemed like a shopper's paradise revealed itself as a consumerist hell.

Miles on end of strip malls, home improvement warehouses, and chain restaurants, with no coherence or strategic planning. Nightmarish traffic on the street and in the parking lots. Space for pedestrians and bicycles nonexistent. Worst of all, endless signs and billboards, each one trying to get noticed by being larger and louder.

Most disturbing, however, was what I did not see. Virtually nothing was appealing to the eyes. Nothing incorporated the natural beauty of our creation or reflected the amazing potential human beings have for creativity and design.

Instead, in service to the relentless pursuit of profits and consumption, we have produced this sprawling, soulless, utterly unappealing mess. And not just on Broad Street, but on nearly every street in every city and town in the country. As I hurried back to the refuge of my seminary campus, I muttered to myself, "We can do so much better than this."

Aesthetic catastrophes like Broad Street are just one symptom of a culture that is squandering its abundance. Despite amazing technological advances, we are missing out on the creative and ethical possibilities that lay before us.

Do we really want to be remembered for our strip malls, our bloated highways, and our endless patches of concrete and asphalt? For our decaying urban centers, our exclusive gated communities, and our 3000 square-foot homes on 1/2 acre lots? For our love affair with fossil fuels and plastic, and for our literal mountains made out of garbage?

Since the economic boom that followed World War II, we have launched ourselves into a materialistic feeding frenzy. Signs now indicate that the frenzy is becoming a death spiral. Our habits of gross over-consumption, which all but the oldest generation take for granted, cannot and will not last.

In addition to the ugliness of our commercial sprawl, we face a growing gap between rich and poor; the uncertain future of our financial systems; and the shameful injustices of our health care and educational systems - not to mention the psychological and spiritual chasm that overly commercialized children and adults are being pushed into. But despite the many warning signs, most Americans seem unaware and unconcerned about how far out of balance our lifestyles have become.

Economist Juliet B. Schor reveals the depth of our collective denial:

"Consumerism as a way of life is so ingrained, it's hard to recognize within us and around us. it is, in the now-famous words of George Orwell, 'the air we breathe.' Like air, it's everywhere, we're dependent on it, and perhaps most importantly, until it's really dirty, it cannot be seen. We experience consumer society as something natural. But it's not."

Now more than ever, people of faith and social concern are called on to be a voice of sanity and reason within this culture of frenzied consumption; to lead modest and disciplined lives that foster humility and sustainability; and to seek alternatives to the commercial monstrosity that we find on Broad Street and so many other streets.