We human beings are paradoxes: capable of both greatness and unspeakable evil. This is unsurprising if the biblical story is believed. We remain images of God (the glory) structurally and functionally – albeit damaged though we are. Yet we are sinners (the garbage). Any account of human beings that does not reckon with the paradox is flawed. We are not devils, even though we can act like them. Christians ought not to be misanthropes. But we are not moral innocents either, even though we are capable of acts of great kindness and compassion. Natural disasters can bring out the best and worst in people. For example, hurricanes are common in the USA. As the news reports come in, so often we learn stories of wonderful other person-centered heroism. Neighbor cares for neighbor; stranger cares for stranger. Then there is the looting and the insurance fraud. A Christian anthropology that recognizes the great rupture combats both a facile optimism about human perfectibility and a despairing pessimism as to human value. Instead, there is a realism about the human condition. Not only does the world need to be set right, but I too need to be set right.

Graham Cole, God the Peacemaker: How Atonement Brings Shalom, 66.

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The battle against compartmentalization has been a significant part of my spiritual journey the last two years. Out here in the West, our primary disposition is one of individualism and dichotomized living. What I mean by that is we think about “me” first (ironic because of my web address), and then about slotting things into their place, comfortable separated from one another. That’s why sometimes it’s a little disconcerting to have all our spheres of friends intersect at one event. Because we adapt to different contexts (and rapidly), when those worlds collide it brings about a bewildered sense of out-of-place-ness. Or, another way to look at it is to think of all the different “hats” we wear – our work hat, our family hat, our church hat, our online hat, our offline hat, our sports hat, our whatever-you-name it, we’ve got it.

Trouble is, we do that with God too.

I call it “box theology.” We try to put God into a convenient box, systematize Him where we can, keep Him out of spheres where it’s not conducive to the choices we want to make, and forget Him entirely a large percentage of the time. But God doesn’t work that way, does He? If we believe that He’s truly omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, then we can’t live a “box theology” life. We can’t have convenient compartments where we choose to let God in to certain parts of our lives, but not all of them. No, it’s not compatible with the way of Jesus. Instead, our lives are to be submitted – every single part – to the lordship of Christ, understanding that God is omni-everything – present in every circumstance from daily chores to intense decisions. All of life is supposed to converge in God, and our continuing story is to walk in such a way that seeks convergence, bringing about true life and pursuing real, authentic spirituality that is honest to God and who He’s made us to be: men and women created in God’s image to love Him, love one another, and help others do the same. Life that is incongruent with that ends up feeling a little empty, dare I say boxy – because God has been boxed out.

When it comes to a compartmentalized life, the prevailing question is “What can I control?” When it comes to the cross-shaped life, the question turns into a statement of truth: “God is in control.” In 1 Cor 1:22-24, Paul demonstrates how the power of God superseded the things that would impress both Jews and Greeks – power and wisdom. That was their version of putting God in a box – a fancy miracle worker or a wise guru. Thing is: Even though the Gospel looks like complete foolishness in comparison by worldly standards, but it trumps both.

God could never fit in a box. Hence, a follower of Jesus shouldn’t live a boxy life. I want my life to be completely consistent with who God made me to be, no compartments, no masks, just me, created in God’s image. I think my life would look much simpler and feel much richer. What would an anti-compartmentalized life look like for you?

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Let me tell you, it was great. I immediately noticed a difference in my “available CPU,” i.e. the ability to think more clearly without clutter. Information shifted from a passive reception through a tool that simply spat hundreds of articles at me to an active pursuit of specific information. For example, instead of reading about every baseball free agent on teams I don’t even care about, I actively sought out one article on Buster Posey’s Rookie of the Year award. Once I was done with that, I moved on. Instead of impulsively checking my email every ten minutes, I was able to be fully present with my family-an active participant.

There’s the link to spiritual sustainability-active participation versus passive reception. Life with Jesus, regardless of context, involves an active pursuit of Him. Run with perseverance (Heb 12:1). Walk in a manner worthy of the calling (Eph 4:1). Stand firm (Phil 1:27, 4:1). Fan into flame the gift of God (2 Tim 1:6). Call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding (Prov 2:6). It’s all over the Bible. To be sure, that active pursuit begins with a passive activity, namely receiving the grace of God, but a follower of Jesus is, well, a follower. An active one. And inasmuch as these pieces of technology or progress impede that pursuit, we must be willing to adapt to make them fit our identity as a Jesus follower, not adapt Jesus to fit us or them. That’s hard work, but I believe it is of great worth, for in Jesus we find the greatest joy and life to the full.

So am I going back to Google Reader and weeknight net surfing? Maybe. I’ll probably have to clear most of my rss feeds and start over, and make sure that it is actually contributing to a spiritual life of shalom as opposed to detracting from it. Any tips on how I can do that? I’m open to suggestions.

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We live in an era where we can clog ourselves so full of information that we actually know nothing. Or, another way to look at that is it’s so easy to fill our time and energy with things that don’t really matter. Information trumps intimacy – we’re deceived, by ourselves or society – that being privy to factual details is equivalent to actually knowing a person. Case in point, a good amount of interaction on Facebook. The other edge of this sword is that we spend so much of our time filling ourselves with information from various conduits – social networks, blogs, news sites and the like – that there is little room for much else. Eat, surf, work, sleep, surf, brush teeth, repeat. It’s a vicious cycle that leaves behind only shells of people that are defined by what they know, what they cam do, and whatever image they can project regarding those two areas. I’ve certainly fallen into that pattern, and whatever life that is, it sure isn’t sustainable and it certainly isn’t a life of shalom – wholeness and thriving the way God intended.

For me, the thing that swallows me most often is brainless collection of Internet information, most often in the form of Google Reader. I’ve always got hundreds of articles in my queue, vying for my attention and pulling me away from more virtuous pursuits like God and family (or spending time thinking about such things). It’s not that I haven’t had time to pray, it’s that my head has been so clogged with random information that it seems like a tremendous chore to even ramp up.

So I’m trying an experiment this week. No Google Reader. Zilch. Cold turkey. And no non-essential Internet surfing from when I get home from work until bed. Call it an experiment in intimacy with Jesus, family, and friends. I need some space to think and pray and breathe, and I think this is one way to find it. I’ll let you know how it goes.

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1. Every person was created in the image of God, and we are called to love our neighbor (Genesis 1-2; Matthew 22:34-40)
2. God’s passion is to set people free (Exodus 6:6-8; Gal. 5:1)
3. God hates injustice (Amos)
4. Establishing justice is at the heart of being the people of God (Lev. 23:22, 25:10-15; Prov. 3:27-28; Jer. 29:7)
5. Our participation in social justice is fundamental to our own wholeness (Jer. 29:7)
6. Jesus’ ministry was holistic, so ours should be too (Matt. 9:35-38)
7. God’s people are called to care for the marginalized in particular (James 1:26-27)
8. Those who are in a position to participate in justice must do so (Prov. 3:27-28; Luke 12:48)
9. In the end, poverty, sickness, and inequity will be abolished, and… (Revelation 21:1-4)
10. We are to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” and participate in fulfilling that prayer (Matt. 6:9-15)

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As I’ve blogged a couple times before, I’ve been slowly reading through Neither Poverty nor Riches by Craig Blomberg, as he walks through the Old and New Testaments, as well as inter-testamental literature, trying to put together a cohesive biblical perspective on the place of and posture to possessions for today’s follower of Jesus. Just the other night, I got to the section where Blomberg walks through Acts, and in particular the section on Acts 2:42-47, a very common passage used by churches today to examine what communal life looked like for the first-century church. As I read through his analysis, I was struck by a number of things:

1. The first-century church’s attitude toward possessions was an outflow of their relationship with the Holy Spirit. First, looking at Acts 2:42, Blomberg starts off with the statement, “What we do or do not do with our material possessions is an indicator of the Spirit’s presence or absence.” (Blomberg, 161) Our outward use or misuse of possessions (including money), I believe, reflects what our posture toward it is – is it something that is ultimately more important than our relationship with God, or something that holds it’s proper place as a blessing from God, in order to be a blessing to others?
2. The first-century church’s communal living was a continual activity. Acts 2:43-47 “is no once-for-all divestiture of property…but period acts of charity as needs arose.” I’ve always looked at this passage with the idea that once people came to faith in Jesus, they sold or gave away everything they had into the common pool of the church community. However, as Blomberg notes, there are even grammatical clues that suggest this isn’t a one-time act, but a repeated act of obedience to Jesus. In particular, this passage is littered with a string imperfect verbs (which suggest an ongoing, or even habitual action in past time, represented in bold here), as opposed to aorists (which usually accompany historical narratives as past-tense verbs portraying completed actions) – (1) they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and breaking bread, (2) awe came on every soul, (3) all who believed were together, (4) they were selling their possessions, (5) were distributing the proceeds to all, (6) they received their food with gladness and (7) the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. All the other verbs in this section are participles that are dependent on one of those seven imperfect (habitual or customary) verbs. Pretty cool.
3. The first-century church’s communal living is probably best understood as normative instead of merely descriptive. This one was possibly the most intriguing to me. I’ve heard a number of times that many of the narratives in Acts are meant to be taken as stories, descriptors of what happened in the early church, but not necessarily as prescriptive for the church today. However, Blomberg brings up a few interesting points. (1) While it is true that not all stories in the Bible are not necessarily timeless principles, “as part of inspired Scripture, narrative is as much a database for theology as any other genre.” (Blomberg, 163) For some reason, this struck a light bulb in me – my go-to sections of the Bible are always either the various epistles, or Jesus’ explicit teachings. But, since the whole Bible is the Word of God, the narratives are there not just for color, but to instruct and inform the people of God as well. To be sure, while there are some not so pretty stories in the Bible, there are definitely some stories in there that exemplify right praxis. And in this case, Blomberg’s assertion is that it is meant to be taken normatively. Looking at Luke’s organization of the letter, and the juxtaposition of Acts 2:42-47 against the Ananias and Sapphira episode in Acts 5, you see a contrast of a good example and a bad example of right living in the first-century church.

So why did I begin with the story of the 70-something year old man in the beginning who had been effectively severed from his community? I venture to say, that had that person been a part of a vibrant church community living under the reign of God and following the patterns of Acts 2:42-47, that never would have happened. Not even close. Relationally, people in the church would have swept in and helped that guy get back on his feet, taken him in, participated in finding work training programs, financially supported him to tide him over through his turbulent life season. I do remember that guy saying he still trusted in God as the ultimate provider, but for him, I think that took on more of a “big-picture, in the grand scheme of things” perspective, rather than a tangible, “right now” perspective. The beauty of the gospel is that the promises that are alluded to in Revelation – such as the absence of poverty – are meant to be at least partially realized now as we pray “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

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“Jesus through his parables teaches that God’s dynamic reign has broken into human history through his person and ministry in a new and decisive way and that God intends to create a new community of his people who model, at least in part in the present, what God intends for all humanity and what he will one day perfectly create in a new age.”

Craig Blomberg, Neither Poverty Nor Riches, 113.

This sentence really struck me as I read it today, because I’ve always seen the parables as so counter-cultural, so upside-down, but the reality is that Jesus was talking about life as it’s supposed to be. God’s intended design.

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I think there’s a lot of virtue in the “reuse” prong of the three R’s trio – reduce, reuse, recycle. It’s a value of mine that I think feeds directly into an ethos of sustainability and long-term viability. When there’s a chance to buy something used instead of new, I typically go for it. Here’s a couple shots from my test run yesterday. By the way, that shirt with the stripes on little m? Marcia made it, crafted from scraps harvested from a shirt purchased at our local Salvation Army Store. Used stuff is cool.

little m on a bench (San Francisco, CA). Nikon D200, 105mm f/2.5, 1/350s, f/2.5, ISO 200.

The 2 Clement (San Francisco, CA). Nikon D200, 105mm f/2.5, 1/2500s, f/2.5, ISO 100.

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One of the key phrases that I dwelled on in my sermon was the section from Numbers 32:16-27. The tribes of Reuben and Gad saw some good land that fell short of the Promised Land, and decided it was sufficient for their people, and asked Moses if they could just chill east of the Jordan and be exempted from entering and conquering the land. Moses rebuked them, and they have a change of heart. In verse 17, they say, “we will take up arms, ready to go before the people of Israel, until we have brought them to their place.” In that short sentence, there is a huge element of “taking a hit for the team.” First, when they say “ready to go before the people,” they are literally saying they are (1) eager and almost hurrying (“ready to go”), and (2) they are going to the front of the line (“before the people”), thus bearing the brunt of the casualties in battle. Second, they agree to go with every tribe “until we have brought them to their place,” meaning that they’ve changed their tune and instead of being the first to settle in, they’ll be the last of the twelve tribes to finally sit down. Another key component in Numbers 32 is the prevalence of the phrase before the Lord, meaning a holistic approach to life that submits everything to God. The question that I posed was this – What does it look like to go before the people and before the Lord?

I told one story of Maximilian Kolbe (that I heard about from a Michael Frost talk recently) as an example of someone who quite literally took a hit for the team, and in his case someone he didn’t even know. Paul in Philippians 2:3-4 says, “in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others,” and then gives the example of Jesus Christ as the pinnacle of he who truly and completely took a hit for the team of humanity on the cross. We were talking about a similar idea this last Sunday at our church in SF as we read through 1 Corinthians 4. There, Paul’s life as a servant of Christ and a steward of the mysteries of God formed the basis for a lifestyle that continually gave of himself for the benefit of those around him.

In the midst of such powerful, self-sacrificial examples, I think it’s also important for us also to think of examples that permeate our everyday life. In addition to “superman”-like examples, but ones that make an impact even in the seemingly mundane. As we walk into this posture of counting others more significant than ourselves in activities (usually involving a sacrifice of time or money) from big to small, I think there will be a cumulative, transformative effect on our lives. So here’s my first go at a list.

Simple ways to take a hit for the team in 2010

1. Providing a meal.
2. Giving someone a ride.
3. Recommending someone else for a paying gig.
4. Babysitting.
5. Fixing someone’s car.
6. Hosting.
7. Loaning stuff.

Feel free to add to the list.

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