Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

End of the Line by Brian Zahnd

This is an article I wrote for the May issue of Charisma Magazine at the request of the new editor, Marcus Yoars.

END OF THE LINE
By Brian Zahnd

God is shifting the church from one seasonal platform to another. Are we ready?

Western Christianity is at a critical juncture. Those who care deeply about the church are aware of this. Things are not as they once were. Things are changing. Dramatically so. Even if we don't understand what is happening, we can certainly feel it. There is an uneasy feeling throughout evangelicalism that everything is changing. Long-held certitudes are being challenged from both within and without the Christian faith. The way things were even ten years ago is no longer the way things are today. It's easy to be disconcerted by it all. 

In the midst of pronounced uncertainty it is tempting to succumb to nostalgia and pine away for some point in the past that we identify as the "glory days." But we cannot go back. The healthy practice of recognizing the contributions of the past and building upon them is not the same thing as a regressive attempt to return to a bygone era. This is the problem with revivalism. Too often it is a naive attempt to recapture a particular past. It's like a Renaissance fair-nice entertainment for a Saturday afternoon but you can't live there. An idealized memory of the past is not a vision which can carry us into the future. Nostalgic reminiscing about the past is for those who no longer have the courage to creatively engage with contemporary challenges and opportunities. All of this is related to the critical juncture we have come to in the course of Western Christianity.

Trying to be honest sort of prayer by Stephen Imbach

TRYING TO BE HONEST SORT OF PRAYER

Beloved and most gracious Lord,

Your substance is love.

From you only goodness flows into all creation.

I’m tired of relentless struggle,

wounds unchosen, unhealed.

Loosen my grip of self-focus;

to fall,

through the darkness of the unknown,

into the certainty of your loving embrace.

Do with me as you will.

I will thank you.

Crippled,

I offer myself to you,

desiring with all my heart to  love you without reserve

and to rest in you with boundless confidence.

For you, Love, are all I need,

now and forever more.

Amen!

The Prophetic Culture of the Kingdom (conclusion and appendixes) by Eric H. Janzen

Conclusion

As I neared the end of writing this book I had coffee with a close friend of mine.  He told me a story about a young man that he had become friends with.  This young man left the Church because his experience of it had been of a surface faith.  He saw people calling themselves Christians, but living their lives as they pleased and caring little for those around them.  Sadly, this led to not only his rejection of Church, but Jesus as well.  He continues to be a spiritual man seeking God and attempting to live a spiritual life, but due to his experience of Church he wants nothing to do with Christians and thus nothing to do with Jesus.  How many of us know people like this?  Too many have encountered Christians not living out the culture of the kingdom and have as a result not encountered Christ.  This story is why I care about the things I have written.  That my friend’s friend was at the gate and walked away because of those within breaks my heart.  It should break your heart as well. 

Simone Weil's Statement of Human Obligation (1943)

Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation

Profession of Faith

There is a reality outside the world, that is to say, outside space and time, outside man's mental universe, outside any sphere whatsoever that is accessible to human faculties.

Corresponding to this reality, at the centre of the human heart, is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world.

Another terrestrial manifestation of this reality lies in the absurd and insoluble contradictions which are always the terminus of human thought when it moves exclusively in this world.

Just as the reality of this world is the sole foundation of facts, so that other reality is the sole foundation of good.

That reality is the unique source of all the good that can exist in this world: that is to say, all beauty, all truth, all justice, all legitimacy, all order, and all human behaviour that is mindful of obligations.

"At the centre of the human heart is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world."

Those minds whose attention and love are turned towards that reality are the sole intermediary through which good can descend from there and come among men.

Although it is beyond the reach of any human faculties, man has the power of turning his attention and love towards it.

James and Martin Luther: The Jewish Law, Faith and Social Justice by Ron Dart

There is good evidence to suggest that James was the brother of Jesus, and James was a significant leader (many would suggest he was the first bishop) of the church in Jerusalem. There is no doubt that James would have  heard Jesus’ insights on the Beatitudes many times, and, as bishop of the fledgling church in Jerusalem, he attempted to apply such incisive wisdom to the parishioners in Jerusalem and many Jewish Christians scattered throughout the Roman world and ethos of the time.

James wrote the book of James (probably one of the earliest Christian letters), and the missive has had a substantive impact on the origins of the  catholic church, throughout church history and now. Although Martin Luther held high the centrality and authority of the Bible, he was most selective in how he priorized what was of primary and what of secondary importance in the Bible. Luther thought James was but a meagre piece of straw, and not to be taken with the same level of seriousness as the gospels and many of the Pauline epistles.

What was it about James that so offended Luther, and how did Luther go amiss and astray by relegating James to a lower level of worth in the New Testament? There are three central areas where James and Luther (if they had been contemporaries) would have clashed. Sadly so, significant clans in the Christian tradition have followed Luther rather than James in their understanding of the Bible. The results have been somewhat problematic. It is ironic, though, that Luther held high the Bible, and yet his read of it was somewhat erratic and reductionistic. Let us, though, touch on the three areas where James and Luther parted paths and why. 

Crazy Love by Brian Zahnd

Why is there something instead of nothing?
The only feasible answer is an Absolute Being (God).

But why would God create?
Why would God bother?
Why would Absolute Being sufficient in itself create other?

The only feasible answer is...
LOVE
Love Love Love
Crazy Love

The reason for (existence in the ultimate sense) is...
God and his crazy love.

The reason for everything is...
God and his crazy love

John Cleese vs. Extremism

The Prophetic Culture of the Kingdom (pt. 7) by Eric H. Janzen

Chapter Seven

The Prophetic Culture of the Kingdom

The community of Christ is a prophetic community.  The prophetic message of the community is Jesus.  The prophetic message of the community is the Gospel of his kingdom.  The community of Christ is to be the prophetic voice in the desert of the world declaring the truth and hope of the Gospel, declaring the culture of the kingdom and revealing that culture to the world.  This is our prophetic role.  The prophetic is to be a sign of something.  In the previous chapter I spoke of this sign as being a mirror reflecting God’s glory (who he is and what he is like) to the world and being an arrow pointing to Jesus.  This is one way of describing the Church’s identity, its means of being relevant in today’s world.  Our kingdom culture is thus a prophetic culture.  When the community of Christ lives a style of life that is marked by the cultural values of the kingdom it embodies the prophetic message of that culture and the Gospel.  By demonstrating the cultural values of the kingdom in the way that we live we prophetically declare the reality of the kingdom to the world.  In holding true to loving God with all your being and loving your neighbor as yourself we find the pinnacle of prophetic action.  This shows us that love is the foundation of true prophecy and not judgment as some believe.  In Revelation 19:10 we read that the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.  It is the message of Jesus to humanity, his testimony, that is the Church’s prophetic message.  The Gospel is the message of Jesus and the Church must hold to that message as its core, its prophetic declaration even if it is a difficult one.

Of Crushed Angels and Single-Stringed Ouds by Karin Dart

 Back in the late nineties I remember sitting at a table outside in our back yard pouring over two programs of study leading to two different Masters degrees. One was the counseling degree being offered at Trinity Western and the other, the Christian Studies degree being offered at Regent College, where my focus would be courses in spiritual formation/spiritual theology. I still vividly remember how alive my heart would feel when I looked at the courses on spiritual formation. I knew which university I was meant to apply to and what a rich experience that wound up being. I had the opportunity to sit in on lectures taught by Jim Houston, Eugene Peterson, Bruce Hindmarsh, three people who held the chair of Spiritual Theology at different points in the history of Regent College. It is also a way of hinting at just how long it took to complete the degree along with marriage and family commitments, raising two very lively children and my involvement with our church community.

Around the same time, from my ongoing connection with my spiritual director, Steve Imbach, I realized that my true heart vocation was in spiritual direction and Steve agreed to take me on as his apprentice. This was before Soulstream, an organization that Steve founded, even began to officially offer classes in spiritual formation and spiritual direction.

Gandhi and Grant -- Review by Brad Jersak

Barua, Arati (ed.), Gandhi and Grant: Their Philosophical Affinities. Delhi, India: Academic Excellence, 2010).

Review

I recently received a first edition copy of Arati Barua's collection of scholarly essays comparing and contrasting Canada's George Parkin Grant with India's Mahatma Gandhi. The book features contributions primarily from Indian and Canadian scholars and serves to further promote the interfaith dialogue that both Gandhi and Grant modelled and championed.

The book opens (see end of review for contents) with a concise introduction to George Grant by biographer William Grant and a piece on the "Motive for Coincidence between Gandhi and Grant" by Gandhi expert, Ramjee Singh. As the reader proceeds through articles by some top Grantians (Christian, Dart, Emberley, Kaethler, et al), it becomes apparent that the affinities between Gandhi and Grant are neither superficial nor contrived. In spite of their very different backgrounds, their faith-based philosophies led to comparable, independently discovered conclusions and convictions.

Both men were prophets of dissent against the prevailing modernism of their age, critical of the way technology can dehumanize the masses as we lose the capacity for contemplative life and thought. They both opposed modernity's inevitable tyranny through Western imperialism and militarism in their quite different contexts. Gandhi the Hindu and Grant the Christian both embraced a synthesis of contemplative theology, political philosophy, and their public outworking toward a just society. They lived as promoters of nonviolent resistance to moral darkness and opposed political oppression in costly and courageous ways.

The Prophetic Culture of the Kingdom (pt. 6) by Eric H. Janzen

Chapter Six

Identity Storm

I have suggested that the Church is in the midst of an ongoing identity crisis.  It is a crisis that has arisen out of our disconnection with the culture and paradigm of the kingdom.  We must face some significant questions as we consider our identity crisis, but I believe that a biblical faith and a relationship with Jesus offers some compelling answers to these questions.  I offer what insight I have in the three sections that follow taken from my journal.

Ron Dart's Spiders and Bees - Foreword by William Christian

Ron Dart's Spiders and Bees - Foreword by William Christian

Foreword to George Grant: Spiders and Bees by Ron Dart


The image of Ron Dart that stands out most strongly in my mind is a tall, lanky, dark-haired man on a snow-covered peak in the pristine wilderness of the interior of British Columbia. There is, in him, some-thing of Rousseau’s solitary wanderer. Although he’s innately social and seems to have friends of all sorts and conditions everywhere in the country, I think that he’s probably most truly himself when he’s alone with his thoughts. Because thoughts he has aplenty. He has published over twenty books. He produced one of the most innovative and imaginative literary magazines in the country. And although he ponders deeply on the wisdom of the past, that doesn’t prevent him from spreading his ideas by blogging in the present. He’s both a Renaissance man and a web 2.0 man at the same time.

To see the entire article, click here.

To build up arms - by Brian Zahnd

To build up arms
(And such arms!)
Bombs that unleash hell
The fire of Gehenna
On faceless enemies
From a safe distance
At the push of button
Cutting edge technology
To kill a million at time
Cain's club to the hundredth power
And to want their existence at all
Worse, to revere these monstrous inventions
Yea, to love them as guarantors of "Freedom"
To reject the welfare state
And embrace the warfare state
To choose the rage of Achilles
Over the peace of Immanuel
To worship Mars and the horrid drums of war
While claiming to be a follower of the Lamb
Is almost more than I can stand
I belong to a different faith
Than the religion of "shock and awe"
Because I do not love
The "nuclear option"
Nor the trumpets of Mars
Nor the rage of Achilles
And I will not accept that these "practical men"
Know what's best
For they do not
They know how to kill and destroy
And call it by benign code names
But you can't call it Christianity!
I guess I was just to stubborn
To ever be governed
By enforced insanity
And this passion for the Big Bombs
Well, it's...
Not my faith
Not my hope
Not my love

The Prophetic Culture of the Kingdom (pt. 5) by Eric H. Janzen

Chapter Five

A Call to Citizenship

At the outset of this book I said that the basic question the Church needs to answer today is what it means to be in the world but not of the world.  In understanding that the community of Christ has a distinct culture in the kingdom of heaven I believe we have found an answer.

Jesus calls us out of darkness and into his light.  He rescues us from the bondage of sin and our imprisonment in the kingdom of darkness.  Consider that we were all once citizens in this dark kingdom, but now that citizenship has been negated.  When we choose to follow Jesus we shed our old home and walk freely out of that spiritual darkness to our new home in the kingdom of heaven.  We are now a part of the community of Christ, citizens of his realm.  When we choose this narrow path we are answering a call to leave one culture for another, opting for the spiritual culture of Christ’s kingdom and accepting the divine paradigm of God.

Editorial: Fasting from Blown Metaphors by Brad Jersak

I write this as a reflection on Eric Janzen’s “Prophetic Culture of the Kingdom” (part 4).

In pondering your well-thought, well-stated articles on the Kingdom of God, part 4 gave me pause to consider your admittedly biblical use of military and imperial metaphors.

I 

Military Metaphors

Re: military metaphors, you describe Christians as living ‘upon a spiritual battleground where a very real battle is underway.’ You continue,

The kingdom of heaven opposes the kingdom of darkness and opposes the powers of this world that do not worship Jesus as their lord, their savior, or their king...  We are the presence of the kingdom wherever we gather and we are to express that presence on the battleground.

All of this is familiar territory to Biblicists who read about spiritual battles, armies, and weapons in New Testament passages like Eph.6, 2 Tim. 2, Rev. 19, etc. And of course, you acknowledge that while this battle is ‘real,’ it is also ‘spiritual.’ The weapons of our warfare are not the literal weapons of the world (swords, scuds, and lawsuits); they are metaphors for the Christian practices of love (as you explained), forgiveness (Rom. 12), and prayer (2 Cor. 10). In other words, the military metaphors are not merely spiritual counterparts to the physical realities. They also function ironically. Christ did not simply talk about overpowering evil forces by means of more lethal, spiritual ammo. He calls his followers to disavow violence, harm, hatred, and force altogether. Our new weapons are upside down kingdom traits like meekness, mercy, and mourning. An entirely new set of actions is called for: turning the other cheek to the enemy that strikes you; blessing the enemy that curses you; praying for the enemy that abuses you. These aren’t just spiritual symbols … it’s irony, virtually sarcasm if we’re talking about ‘armor.’ The disciples eventually got that.

Isaiah 50 - Passion Week Reading

¹ This is what the LORD says: 
       "Where is your mother's certificate of divorce 
       with which I sent her away? 
       Or to which of my creditors 
       did I sell you? 
       Because of your sins you were sold; 
       because of your transgressions your mother was sent away.

 ² When I came, why was there no one? 
       When I called, why was there no one to answer? 
       Was my arm too short to ransom you? 
       Do I lack the strength to rescue you? 
       By a mere rebuke I dry up the sea, 
       I turn rivers into a desert; 
       their fish rot for lack of water 
       and die of thirst.

 ³ I clothe the sky with darkness 
       and make sackcloth its covering."

 ⁴ The Sovereign LORD has given me an instructed tongue, 
       to know the word that sustains the weary. 
       He wakens me morning by morning, 
       wakens my ear to listen like one being taught.

"Justice" by George MacDonald

From George MacDonald's Unspoken Sermons

Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy; for thou renderest to every man according to his work.--PSALM lxii. 12.

Some of the translators make it kindness and goodness; but I presume there is no real difference among them as to the character of the word which here, in the English Bible, is translated mercy.

The religious mind, however, educated upon the theories yet prevailing in the so-called religious world, must here recognize a departure from the presentation to which they have been accustomed: to make the psalm speak according to prevalent theoretic modes, the verse would have to be changed thus:--'To thee, O Lord, belongeth justice, for thou renderest to every man according to his work.'

Let the reason of my choosing this passage, so remarkable in itself, for a motto to the sermon which follows, remain for the present doubtful. I need hardly say that I mean to found no logical argument upon it.

Let us endeavour to see plainly what we mean when we use the word justice, and whether we mean what we ought to mean when we use it--especially with reference to God. Let us come nearer to knowing what we ought to understand by justice, that is, the justice of God; for his justice is the live, active justice, giving existence to the idea of justice in our minds and hearts. Because he is just, we are capable of knowing justice; it is because he is just, that we have the idea of justice so deeply imbedded in us.