When I was in
college, I hung around with a Push The Envelope, Seek Justice, Screw The Man
kind of crowd. Adults told us that we couldn’t change the world, but we
believed differently. We arranged boycotts, “Buy Nothing Day” campaigns, and
guerilla gardening. Scores of us taught overseas or worked in orphanages, hung
out with the poor on downtown streets, and wrote letters to our MPs. It was not
uncommon to wear only used clothing, to live together in large numbers, and to frequent
dumpsters for day-old groceries (fondly known as “dumpster diving”). True, we
were no draft dodgers, but we considered ourselves pretty radical in our little corner of the Christian College world.
Some would
say that at 18 and 21 we were radical for the sake of sheer differentiation, a
normal cutting of the purse strings at best. But I still believe that the
reason for our social rebellion was a bit simpler than that. The reason for our
insistent differentiation could be summed up in just one word: Jesus. We
believed that Jesus was a homeless revolutionary, loving his neighbours to the
point of death and calling his followers to do the same. If everyone loved the
world the way Jesus did, we were convinced, the world would be a different
place.
This kind
of loving was not just about being kind to individuals, though it was also
that. Loving our neighbours as ourselves took on a more corporate feel as we
tried to love our neighbours economically and globally.
How can I love my
neighbour by the way I buy groceries? The place I bank? My choices of clothing,
transportation, and entertainment? Granted, our response to these questions
tended to be unduly simplistic in an increasingly complex global economy. But
each one was wrestled with, argued over, and considered of value to how we
lived our faith.
Yet as the
years after graduation multiplied, increasing numbers my radical Christian
friends found that their convictions around loving their neighbours did not
line up with the way they’d experienced the Church. The gap between what they
understood to be the values of Jesus and the values of the human institution
slowly grew, until, eventually, they seemed like two things entirely. With both
sadness and understanding, I watched most of these friends leave, first the
Church, then the faith, and finally, theism altogether.
Some
people assume that my now-atheist friends abandoned their Christian values when
they abandoned the Church. But, in most cases, this simply is not true. They
left the Church, not because they were leery of commitment or sacrifice, but
because that is what they were looking for. Starry-eyed and idealistic, we
Christian college students looked to the Church to mentor and grow us into
great lovers-of-the-world who would give our very lives to the people Jesus
loved. We longed for a faith that transformed economic systems, materialistic
values, and individualist careers.
But what
these friends of mine found in the Church only mirrored what they despised in
the culture. They found there an inward-looking, survival-seeking institution
unwilling to take the kind of risks they felt were required to walk in the
footsteps of Jesus.
Of course,
it is a decade later and all of us realize that life is just not that simple.
Humans are the same everywhere, at once both saint and sinner, both healed and
hurting. Walking in the steps of Jesus looks differently in every context and
takes the sweat and tears of a lifetime. It is never as simple as choosing to
bank with a credit union.
I have
chosen to live from within the institution and my friends have chosen to life
from without. Yet I often think of their frustration with the institution I now
inhabit and wonder what might have been different. Richard Rohr, Roman Catholic
teacher and mystic, warns that the Church has long suffered from “too much
priesthood and almost no room for prophets.” The result, he explains, is “a
very imbalanced religion.”
Let us not
forget, of course, that Israel also had a history of casting aside, scorning,
and even stoning her prophets. Life on the edges of the Church is not an easy
place to spend life. But, increasingly, more and more of God's people are being
called to dwell in that space, the spot where the Church's gifts and the
world's hunger collide.
As we too enter a time of wilderness in the Church, when our future is unclear and the way forward in an ever-changing cultural context is unsure, it seems that now more than ever we need the voices of our prophets. They are singers, poets, and musicians; artists, support-workers and carpenters. Rarely are they theologians, pastors, or teachers (though of course they sometimes are). Our prophets are the ones quietly whispering along the edges of the Church, calling us home to a new way of living in the world.
Rohr continues: “the church, strange as it seems, has always been a bit uncomfortable with saints and mystics; it is content to just have people 'in the pews'”. My hope is that, as the old way of being God's children in the world passes away and a new way emerges before us, we will hold onto that discomfort like a good dose of medicine. We will no longer be content to "just have people in the pews" but be more concerned with seeing the kingdom born
among us. We need our prophets. It's an exciting time to be Church.
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