Killer List of Hope
I’ll be the first to admit that Christians have a bad reputation, in general. At least that’s been my experience. And if you don’t believe me, here’s Shane Claiborne’s open-letter apology to non-believers in Esquire.
And yet I’ll offer some hope below, in a (positive) killer list from Lauren Winner (about what she believes people could say about Christians at the end of the 21st century, if we’re all “living faithfully”). Winner teaches at Duke Divinity School and has written several books and numerous articles on a variety of subjects. You can check her out here.
It’s not like our bad reputation has evolved from innocence or misunderstanding. There’s a reason it looms like the insidious monster it’s become.
I have my own issues with Christians, and I consider myself a believer of God. [I’m not sure I can call myself a Christian anymore, due to some changes in doctrinal thinking…I’m not sure on the technicality of that…but suffice it to say, I’m still the same person with the same aching desire for truth.]
I, like Lauren Winner, wish the following would be said about us. [The list can also be found at Kyria, from Holly Baker-Lutz’s post on the Christianity 21 event in Minneapolis in October of 2009.]
By the end of the 21st century, Christians will…
1. Be peacemakers.
2. Be expected to be the first ones to show up when disaster strikes.
3. Rest, because they know they’re not the ones in charge.
4. While resting, reconfigure their work.
5. Live well in their bodies, whether by their diet, their sex lives, or the clothes they wear.
6. Practice boredom. They will not succumb to the “fetish of the new or the cult of novelty” when it comes to their faith.
7. Be truth-tellers, even if the answer is “I don’t know.” Even “authenticity” and confession can be a pose.
8. Practice silence in small and big ways, including in solitude.
9. Live in communities where everyone has access to power, and everyone can and will share it with others.
10. Live in communities where women can do anything.
11. Go to church with the people they live near.
12. Persist in making Kingdom demands. This means taking the same request to God, over and over!
13. When we think about God, we think about what needs to change next. This is largely informed by Tozer: what we think about when we think about God is the most important thing about ourselves.
14. Eat fewer strawberries. We will tread lightly on the planet and not risk the energy and harm to our planet just so we can have strawberries in January.
15. See ourselves as small characters in a larger story. As Winner’s colleagues at Duke suggest, a “saint” can fail in a way that a “hero” cannot, which opens the doors to ideas like forgiveness and new possibilities of God.
16. Lament. (“We don’t do this well. Jews do it a bit better.”)
17. Throw good parties. After all, we’re here to practice for the heavenly banquet!
18. Not gossip. This means talking about someone who is not present. Period.
19. Have unity without obliterating diversity, and that’s because of the Trinity.
20. Understand something about grace (despite our 19 wonderful attributes above).
21. Describe reality and the spiritual sacraments in such a way as to “make mouths water and hearts hunger.”
I think it’s all about really living what Jesus taught, and who really does that, to the letter? I don’t personally know anyone who does. This includes myself.
If you think I’m picking on a select group, I am, but only because I’m a part of that group. Part of truth telling is to expose hypocrisy, even in myself. And all these prejudices and hurts are meant to be changed, transformed. I want to change my opinions….always…about people. After all, who am I to judge, when we’re all at different points in our lives? Just because several in a group behave badly doesn’t mean the kit and caboodle is rotten. I understand that.
To end this post…to show how opinions can change, how people can change…here’s a hilarious and sobering article by a Lutheran pastor, Nadia Bolz-Weber (who calls herself the sarcastic Lutheran): “God Does Not Heed My Snotty Opinions About Evangelicals,” which you can read here. She doesn’t mince words.
I’m finding my life enriched by friends who believe differently from me. I learn daily from them. They’re open-minded in their discussions and questions. Thank you to all of them. It means the world to me.
I have a dream of how I’d like the world to be–sans conservatives, sans liberals, sans religious sects, sans class, sans labels–so that we’re just us. People who accept each other with open hearts and minds, no matter where we come from, no matter our baggage.
Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
[Post image: Shane Claiborne, author of The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, who has a ministry for the poor, The Simple Way]
