Despair is a Luxury of the Privileged

Advent and Christmas can feel emotionally complex.  There is joy in the coming of Jesus, but as we are between the "now" and the "not yet," it can feel perplexing to sing about peace and joy amid intense challenges. Yesterday, my pastor said, "Advent is a season of holy dissatisfaction."  I fully agree.

Recently, I was listening to a theologian talk about the complexities of the situation between Israel and Gaza, and I heard him say, "Despair is a luxury of the privileged." 

I immediately wrote that statement down and have been contemplating it since. What a powerful, thought-provoking statement. Despair described as a luxury doesn't sound right!

But giving up or feeling hopeless is a luxury for those of us who live secure, comfortable lives.  For those in the middle of desperate situations, despair is not a choice.  The fight for survival must focus on action and resistance. They don't have the luxury of sitting down and feeling hopeless, or risk things getting even worse.

In this Christmas season, my mind goes to the challenges faced by places beyond what we hear daily from Palestine/Israel and Ukraine/Russia.  From our own team in DML, we have several partners who are also in various levels of crisis.

• India, with ongoing persecution of Christians.
• Nigeria, with escalating kidnappings, violence, and the targeting of Christians.
• Burkina Faso's ongoing challenge with terrorists.
• Cameroon, with a civil war between the English and the French that doesn't feel like it will ever end.
• The Democratic Republic of Congo, with ongoing challenges that involve neighboring countries like Burundi.
• Ethiopia continues to face internal conflict as well as conflict with neighboring countries.

And the list goes on.  I know there are dozens more.

How empty the words "peace on earth" can seem when we personally know those in the middle of these conflicts.  

How helpless we can feel when we can't effect change from the inside, because we are merely watching from a distance.

How guilty we can feel living in relative peace and comfort while many struggle.

But.

We must engage in the fight.

We can pray. 

We can encourage. 

We can listen to the painful stories that inform our prayers, as well as how we use our time, treasure and talent.

We can choose not to look away, not to anesthetize ourselves with distractions, and act like everything is okay.  

We can lament even in a season of joy.

Despair is a luxury of the privileged. Despair is NOT a posture to take when we know a Sovereign God who is at work in every place and space, primarily through His disciples who are acting on His behalf in every sphere of influence. 

Hope is a discipline, not a feeling.  It is a practiced commitment to action, even against the odds.

And so we celebrate the greatest gift ever given, which allows us to approach the throne of grace with confidence, with both joy and lament, thankful for the birth of Jesus many years ago, and also praying, "Maranatha, come Lord Jesus" (Revelation 22:20).

I wish every one of you a blessed Christmas week, with joy and peace in your heart and home.

With: Not Over, Under, From, or For

A few years ago, I was given a book by an elder from our church, called With by Skye Jethani, which seeks to move people beyond cultural Christianity.  I wish I had read this book earlier in life, as it would have helped me understand my own cultural posture toward Christianity and the positions of many people from different cultures across Africa.  As we seek to do discipleship, it's essential to understand the barriers people face, and this book helps us to do so. 

Jethani describes four common postures of Christianity using the prepositions of over, under, from, or for:  Life over God, Life Under God, Life from God, or Life for God.  Each of these positions has limitations and thwarts a genuinely intimate relationship with God. The author recommends that we unpack these positions in terms of our own relationship with God and move toward Life WITH God.

Life Under God is a posture that exists under the shackles of religious legalism.  In this posture, individuals strictly follow rules to appease a deity.  The goal of humanity is to appease and placate the divine by adhering to a strict code of moral and religious laws.  In this view, life is controlled by God, and believers can influence His actions, secure blessings, or avoid calamity by complying with His laws.  The relationship with God, therefore, is transactional - if I do this, God will do that.  This posture promotes a performance-based faith, which induces fear and undermines joy.  God is reduced to an enforcer of rules, and the spiritual journey is an anxious quest to avoid divine wrath or curry divine favor.  This posture gives rise to a judgmental and self-righteous demeanor toward those who struggle to follow the rules, thereby fostering division rather than unity.  This posture misunderstands God's desire for a loving relationship with his creation and misses the profound and liberating relationship that God offers through grace.

I personally find this to be a very common posture, from how I was raised as well as in many parts of Africa.  Works over grace, lots of fear and guilt.

Life Over God is a posture that gives the illusion of control by relying on divine principles and natural laws, replacing a relationship with God with self-sufficiency and formulaic living.  This posture believes that God has set the laws, humans need to reason and understand those laws, and then all is good.  God's guidance and an intimate relationship with Him are not required once these laws are figured out.  Faith is merely practical wisdom, defined by utility rather than relationship. 

This posture is often found in developed nations who have "figured things out" to the degree that God is no longer needed. 

Life From God is a self-centric faith, entrenched in consumerism, viewing God as a vending machine providing our personal desires and needs.  Faith is defined by utility rather than relationship.  God is a means to an end, and faith is fleeting and shallow in this posture.  God is often described as a loving Father, faithful spouse, and diligent shepherd, which are metaphors that emphasize God's relationship with us and care for
us.  This perspective seeks God's hand more than His face.

This posture is often found in the prosperity gospel teaching, that God is there to take care of you and provide all you need.

Life For God is activistic faith, prioritizing mission and purpose over a relationship with God.  Activism and service become idols in this posture, which can then lead to burnout and disconnection with God.  A relationship with the King is forsaken in exchange for seeking His Kingdom.  This is a performance-oriented faith that measures worth and standing with God by accomplishments and contributions, losing sight of grace.  Mission and purpose are important aspects of the Christian faith, but they should not supplant the primary call to be in a relationship with God. 

This is the posture I continue to wrestle with today, as do many church and ministry leaders. What a shame to seek the Kingdom and miss the King.

Life With God is a posture that serves as an antidote to the inadequacies of the other models, shifting from performance, principles, consumerism, and activism, to presence with God.  Each of the other methods treats God as a means to an end, for control, security, personal fulfillment, or purpose.  Instead, our identity is to be found in being God's beloved, which liberates us from the endless cycle of striving and performance.  

Skye Jethani evaluates many conversations that he has with believers through these postures, seeking to understand better the potential barriers that people face when living out these postures.  I wonder how these postures strike you in terms of your own faith, the faith of those in your culture or church, and how unpacking these postures could help people know better how to be WITH God?

I do encourage reading this book and the quote below shows how this relates to DML and HOW it is we are to work WITH God, not for, under, over, or from Him.

Letters to a Diminished Church

Dorothy Sayers, a brilliant English writer and theologian, lived from 1893 to 1957.  She was a pioneering female graduate from Oxford. She is known as a Christian apologist in an era of skepticism.  A number of her articles were compiled into a book titled

.

Letters to a Diminished Church.  

For years, I have read this quote from that book during our teachings on a theology of work:

Work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do.  It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental and bodily satisfaction, and the medium in which he offers himself to God. (page 134)

Recently, I decided that because this is such a good quote, I should go to the source and read more.  Her whole chapter on work is exceptional.  

Sayers believes that the church has had a difficult time taking the lead in economics because it is trying to fit a "Christian standard of economics to a wholly false and pagan understanding of work."  Without the proper understanding of work (as stated in the quote above), there cannot be a proper understanding of economics from a Christian perspective.

Sayers states that a "thorough-going revolution in our whole attitude toward work" needs to take place, stating that it should not be viewed as "unnecessary drudgery to be undergone for the purpose of making money," but the way in which "man should find its proper exercise and delight so as to fulfill itself to the glory of God."  Sadly, the thinking about work as something we do to make money is so ingrained in us that we can barely imagine what it would be to think of the work done.  These questions would need to be asked:

• Of businesses, not "will it pay" but "is it good for people?"
• Of businesses, not "what do you make" but "what is your work worth?"
• Of goods, not "can we convince people to buy them" but "are they useful things, well made?"
• Of employment, not "how much per week" but "will it exercise my faculties to the utmost?"

She contrasts how we feel about work with how we feel about hobbies.  With hobbies, we freely give our time for the pure satisfaction of the work.  There usually will be no economic return from our hobbies.  We do it because we find it to be very good.  We don't bargain with it.  We look forward to doing it and are willing to put in lots of time, including weekends and evenings.  Hobbies energize us.

When work is looked upon as a means to gain, it becomes hateful; it becomes an enemy rather than a friend.  We want more out of it than we put in it.  Because this is often not the case, we feel society is always in our debt, leaving us with a grudge against it for our work.  We try to get through our work to get to our leisure.  Sayers says that the "greatest insult the commercial age has offered to the worker has been to rob him of all interest in the end product of the work and force him to dedicate his life to making badly things which were not worth making" (page 137).

This needs to change.  How can we begin to change our view of work to match our view of our hobbies?

Sayers posits that it is the business of the church to help people recognize that work is sacred, that it is as sacred a vocation as a specifically religious work.  

She says, "The Church must concern herself not only with such questions as the just price and proper working conditions. She must concern herself with seeing that the work itself is such as a human being can perform without degradation, that no one is required by economic or any other considerations to devote himself to work that is contemptible, soul-destroying, or harmful.  It is not right for her to acquiesce to the notion that a man's life is divided into the time he spends on his work and the time he spends serving God.  He must be able to serve God IN his work, and the work itself must be accepted and respected as the medium of divine creation.

"In nothing has the Church so lost her hold on reality as in her failure to understand and respect the secular vocation.  She has allowed work and religion to become separate departments, and is astonished to find that, as a result, the secular work of the world is turned to purely selfish and destructive ends, and the greater part of the world's intelligent workers have become irreligious, or at the least, uninterested in religion.

"But is it astonishing?  How can anyone remain interested in a religion which seems to have no concern with nine-tenths of his life?...Let the church remember this - that every maker and worker is called to serve God in his profession or trade, not outside it...The Church wastes time and energy and moreover commits sacrilege in demanding that secular workers should neglect their proper vocation in order to do Christian work - by which she means ecclesiastical work." (page 138-140, emphasis mine)

But she then gets even bolder:

"It is your business, you churchmen, to get what good you can from observing his work - not to take him away from it so that he may do ecclesiastical work for you.  But if you have any power, see that he is set free to do his own work as well as it may be done.  He is not there to serve you.  He is there to serve God by serving His work...If work is to find its right place in the world, it is the duty of the church to see to it that the work serves God and the worker serves the work." (page 142, emphasis mine)

These are powerful words.  The faith/work integration movement has side-stepped the church in many ways, but Dorothy Sayers is bringing it directly to the church. 

How I wish the church had heard and acted upon these when they were written.  What would be different in our world today if the 2.4 billion Christians had consistently heard a different message about work, along with specific discipleship for their workplace?

Thankfully, we are starting to see a small change, as some denominations are beginning to have workplace discipleship ministries, and pastors are getting out of their offices and visiting people in their workplaces, encouraging them and teaching about the goodness of work. We continue to pray for this message, through the words of apologists like Dorothy Sayers will find a home!