Well, I've been saving this particular subtopic to be the last post in this current series. It is a segue into other issues in Christian religion and Christian faith, and I want to talk about one or more of those issues, too. So this post is a bit of a transition into other topics and will therefore have the beginnings of other things mixed in with it.

One of the more intriguing scriptures in the "our wealth" area concerns what we often refer to as "Jesus and the rich young man," a biblical passage which goes like this:

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: 'You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.'" He said to him, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth." Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." They were greatly astounded and said to one another, "Then who can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible." (Mark 10:17-27, NRSV)

The first thing I'll note about this passage, just to clear a point out of the way, is that I've heard it said that when Jesus refers to the camel and the needle, what he was referring to was a particular gate or rock formation which required a camel to crawl through on its knees. The theory goes that it was very difficult, though not uncommon, for camel drivers to coax their camels through in just such a fashion. Maybe. I consulted Dr. Ben Witherington's socio-rhetorical commentary on Mark with respect to this passage, and according to Witherington, there is no known factual basis for this. He says that some manuscripts record this as "a rope through the eye of a needle," supporting the idea that Jesus was referring to an impossibility. Witherington, whom I respect and whose scholarship I have never had cause to doubt, takes this passage to mean that in terms of a rich man trying to get into the kingdom on his own, it is absolutely impossible. With God, however, it is possible.

No disrespect, then, to Dr. Witherington, but I would like to pick it up from here, because it is precisely this latter possibility to which rich Christians cling, and I want to raise some points; points which deal directly with the topic at hand, but also lead inevitably to far more broad-sweeping issues in Christianity. To get things started, I want to also refer to another scholar whose work I respect; Alfred Nolan. At least, I'm pretty sure it was Alfred Nolan, in Jesus Before Christianity, who wrote of this passage and summarized it in the following way: when Jesus says it is impossible with men but possible with God, what he is saying is that it takes a miracle for a rich man to enter the kingdom. And, adds Nolan, the miracle is not getting the rich man into the kingdom with his riches. The miracle is in getting the man to give up his riches so that he can enter. At the very least, Nolan's view should make us stop and think for a long while. More on this in a few moments.

I began this series of posts by talking about aversions and excuses, and the reactions of rich Christians to this particular passage has long intrigued me. Not only are we more than willing to presume that God will get us into the kingdom with our riches rather than God will get us to leave our riches, but we are so willing to accept this that the second alternative never fully occurs to us, and our response to Jesus' words spoken to the rich young man are even more intriguing. What I have heard said every time this passage is encountered in a group discussion, every time, is, "Yes, but look at the text. Jesus tells the man 'you lack one thing.' He's saying it to that man, not to us. That's what he lacked. You and I each lack our own thing." Maybe. Maybe so. Certainly Witherington agrees with this take, and I'm nowhere in the same league, not even close, to his scholarship. But yet what if—what if the lesson from the passage is that it really does apply to the rest of us? What if it's simply too convenient for us to explain it away the way we do? What if we don't see it, simply because we don't want to see it? What if Nolan is right?

I don't know, but here's what gets me about our standard reply. Just suppose—to pick the most provocative example I can—Jesus had said, "You lack one thing; stop having sex with that man you live with. Then follow me." If this were the case, I would venture to guess that a good many Christians would, rather than consider this to be an individual command to a single human being, use it as an additional passage in their personal sets of proof texts condemning homosexuality. Naturally, if challenged on the point, they would say that they "know" it is not an individual command directed at that one person, because they consider it to fit into an overarching theme against homosexual behavior throughout the corpus of scripture. Of course, I could say in a parallel fashion that the command (suggestion?) to go sell everything and give to the poor is also part of the overarching, interlinked themes of social justice, compassion, mercy and the like; and so therefore I "know" it isn't a command for one specific individual. Conversely, a homosexual Christian might say that the command (suggestion?) was, indeed, individual to the man, since he or she "knows" that there is no anti-homosexual arch in the biblical corpus. So. Beyond illustrating the ubiquitous condition that we all interpret scripture pretty much however it suits—which is to say, personally benefits— us, what's the point?

One point is that in the pews, interpreting scripture is (news flash!) pretty much done in just such a way; we interpret scripture according to our own frames of reference. We all do this, and I am certainly no exception. I would probably go so far as to say that, whether we like it or not, the translations of Bibles we buy off a shelf or order from Amazon are also interpretations; much more sophisticated and more scholarly, but still interpretations. (This is one of the big areas of hermeneutics, right? What's the line between translation and interpretation?) And I think that for those of us in the pews, the interpretations aren't based upon a wide enough base. We need to be better educated, more exposed to variety of ideas and considerations, and the like. And we need to ask ourselves more basic, more fundamental questions. In particular in terms of these posts, I'm toying with questions in Christian life that are not addressed very far very often, such as, is it possible that there is a difference between "following" Jesus versus "being a disciple" of Jesus versus "being a Christian," between "the kingdom of Heaven" versus "Heaven per se," and between whatever concepts we can throw into the mix? Do you have to follow Jesus to be a Christian, or not? Is the kingdom of Heaven the same as the Heaven up in the sky that little kids dream of? What does it mean to be a Christian, and why are we, each of us, a Christian? Are we in it for ourselves, for others, for God? I bring these to the forefront today in the light of this passage, wondering if some of these broader issues do anything to help answer others.

To begin with as an introduction, as far as "following Jesus," and "being a disciple," I can't delineate any large difference between the two. A follower is a disciple and a disciple follows. The real question is, to what extent does one follow? I'm beginning to think that Jesus seriously meant that anybody who wanted to follow him fully while he was alive absolutely had to give up everything else. The twelve had left everything, including leaving their families (so much for twenty-first century "family values"). So these disciples were the ones who followed Jesus, as opposed to being people who went to witness him speak, heal, or otherwise teach and practice his ministry. I realize that some scholars would say Jesus had hundreds of disciples who followed him (physically or ethically) to varying degrees, and I suppose it's reasonable to say so. It seems reasonable to me, for example, that in a certain sense Martha (the sister of (yet another) Mary) was indeed a disciple of some sort. But to me, the overall language of Jesus seems to indicate that to be a disciple meant to follow, which meant to leave everything; including one's home, possessions and family. The fancy sounding way of defending this view is that Jesus' ministry was one of orthopraxis; the practice was in the teaching and the teaching was in the practice. The more down to earth view is simply that to grasp what Jesus was trying to teach and accomplish, you had to live with him in his itinerancy. This is all just my opinion, but I can't see that a person could really be a devoted disciple during Jesus' ministry without giving up everything as Jesus had. It was necessary to do so in order to understand what was being done by Jesus, and I doubt that in antiquity this was a surprising state of affairs as far as teacher/student relationships went.

Of course Jesus is no longer here to physically walk the earth, so where does the preceding point leave us today? I think it depends upon how the individual decides to answer it for her or his self. One way I might try to answer this, and in fact often do try, is to make a reasoned guess at where Jesus would be specifically, doing what specifically, if he inhabited my region generally. But this is a pretty dubious approach to take, and gets to why I've never been a fan of "What Would Jesus Do?" The question is one a Christian must ask from time to time, and as a friend of mine says, at the very least it's a bit of an interrupt we can generate in our thought processes, to keep us from running blindly off kilter in the middle of a situation. I can respect this, but then again what troubles me is the fact that if I have to ask, it means I don't know, and if I don't know, how can I answer correctly? Such a question simply traces directly back to my being an existentialist, I know. But of course, being one, to me the question seems as legitimate as it does unavoidable.

For the sake of brevity, at this point it seems to me the jump to make is to start talking about the kingdom of Heaven (or kingdom of God, if you prefer). There's been significant thought over the past decade or two in the discussions of the kingdom. Well, I would say you could go back to Schwietzer, who grasped that the kingdom is within us, for a good start. But, the basic idea is that Jesus spoke a great deal about the kingdom. It was one of the things he talked about most often; maybe the one thing he talked about most often. He said the kingdom belongs to children and to the destitute. He said the kingdom is amongst (or within) us. Some of the recent scholarly views of the kingdom term the kingdom as the "reign and rule of God." (I suggest Stephen J. Patterson's work on the kingdom for a really good, readable, concise presentation of the subject.) What I tend to do, in a landscape that fills most of my little brain, is to view the kingdom of Heaven as the way the world is. By this I mean the way the world is in its underlying reality. This is necessarily the way the world functions, by what means and rules if you will, in the being of God. So the kingdom of heaven is the state of being of the world as it is in God, as opposed to the state of being of the world as you and I tend to perceive, view, weigh and measure it in human terms—and the the two are radically, radically different. It's a very long story, but the part which applies here is that—in my opinion—when the New Testament writers refer to "entering into the kingdom," they are talking about entering a state of being wherein we perceive and act in this world according to the way it is in God's being, as opposed to Man's. Entering the kingdom is not talking about going to a place called Heaven; it's about existing in a different state of being. So what does this have to do with "What Would Jesus Do," and what are we supposed to do without him here to tell us face to face?

Well, I think that in Jesus' orthopraxis he was trying to help people into the kingdom. He was trying to bring people into a different state of being. I'm not talking just physical, like giving up wealth, but more so I am talking about our whole—well—being. How we see, how we think, how we feel. How we reason, how we intuit, how we conclude. I think Jesus was really trying to call us, to show us, to invite us into, living according to the way the world is. A world of loving compassion and mercy. A world where worldly power does not matter. A world that you cannot see, cannot comprehend, cannot enter, if you are concerned about the things of the opposing kingdom: the kingdom of Man. And so the idea would be that if you are in the kingdom, you no longer need to ask what Jesus would do; you instinctively know; it's who and what you are. How you are supposed to live becomes intuitive. And so when Jesus said narrow is the gate, narrow is the way that leads into the kingdom and few people find it, he didn't mean few "go to Heaven." He meant very few enter the kingdom. Very few reach that state of being.

So. Where does this leave the discussion? I think we need to come full circle in this post, back to the possible and impossible. Being rich by the standards of Man's kingdom, that is being wealthy and having a bunch of assets racked up on a bank report, says something. Or, at the very least, it implies the very real likelihood of something: that you are in a state of being other than the kingdom of heaven. And, as long as you perceive the world and life in terms of the priorities associated with Man's kingdom, you cannot make the state-change to the kingdom of Heaven. Here's an analogy that just popped into my mind. I haven't vetted it, but let's look at it this way for now. Let's suppose that violence and peace are states of being within a person. If Jesus said, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a violent man to be a peaceful man. With man this is impossible. With God it is possible." This example is easier to analyze, if only because we aren't biased toward a particular interpretation. A man cannot be violent in his soul and peaceful in his soul, and this is the point. You're violent, or you're peaceful. To be the latter, you have to stop being the former. Would we really read this and think that the point is that God is going to figure out some way for this man to be both, or would we take this to mean that God will change the man, so that he is no longer violent? I think we'd conclude the latter. In this way, I tend to agree with Nolan: the miracle of God is to get the rich to become poor; not to bring the rich to the kingdom of Heaven and allow them to keep their riches.

The point is not the riches per se, and I think this is where the nugget of truth comes into play when people say, "It's not what I own, but what my priorities are." It is not the things in my house or driveway, nor my house for that matter, that keep me from the kingdom. True enough. But, it is extremely important to understand that they are the symptoms which indicate that something is keeping me from the kingdom. The very act of accumulating wealth indicates that there is something awry in my interior being; something that is contrary to the kingdom. For if I was in the kingdom, as fully as Jesus was, I would never have taken the time, never had the inclination, never spent the resources, to acquire what I have. I would have been doing something else with my time, my money, my mental energy; namely, helping those who are suffering. Jesus' point is, I think, it is impossible for the person who is rich to enter the kingdom. Not because he is rich per se, but because the kind of person who worked to become rich, and/or to remain rich, willfully inhabits the kingdom of man. Just as violence indicates a lack of peace, being embedded in Man's kingdom indicates I am not embedded in Heaven's kingdom. It's not complicated. It's important, yes, but not complicated. If you're rich, you're not in the kingdom. The only way you'll get into the kingdom is to become poor. And you don't want to do that, do you? And the very fact that you don't want to do it, that you don't even think you have to do it, that you argue against the necessity of it, proves its impossibility. Unless God breaks you, brings you to humility, places you somewhere that you can see, it won't happen. You are a camel, and you cannot pass through the eye of a needle. Not until you become something other than a camel. If I had to summarize succinctly: It isn't that the Way of Jesus has rejected the rich; it is that the rich have rejected the Way of Jesus.

With respect to my thoughts, feelings and opinions on the matter, this seems like the most on-target conclusion I can make to this series of posts on our aversions and excuses when it comes to our wealth.

Moving along to future posts, this discussion, to my mind, points out the need to ask ourselves, hopefully for the umpteenth time, some very basic questions. What does it mean, to each of us, when we say, "I am a Christian," and, "Having claimed to be a Christian, why do I choose to be a Christian?" These questions are inextricably linked to the discussion at hand, and the range of answers I can offer are inextricably linked to why I am talking about wealth and poverty, and what I am and am not claiming about religion and faith in this present series of posts.

School is approaching again, so I don't know how far I'll get, but next on the agenda are a few posts on these latest questions, hopefully with a tie-in to the present series I now finish. We'll see.

For this part of the series, just a few things to consider before I start drawing to a close in a future post.

And Jesus said:

There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.' But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.' He said, 'Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father's house—for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.' Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.' He said, 'No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.' (Luke 16:19-31, NRSV)

Is it significant, or not, that the only distinction Jesus makes here between the fellow in torment and the man in paradise after death is that the first was rich and well fed, and did little to help the second, who was poor? Does it mean something that Jesus points out nothing, nothing about what we today would call "morality" in the life of either man? That the only thing Jesus mentions is wealth and luxury versus poverty and suffering?

We like to talk about Sodom with respect to God's unhappiness toward its inhabitants. Typically, we refer to Sodom in regard to perverse sexual practices. But, how often do we talk about the bottom line, the root of the problem, as Ezekiel saw it:

This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty, and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it. (Ezekiel 16:49-50, NRSV)

The root of Sodom's sin, the source of its culpability, was being rich, and proud, and not helping the poor. I like another English translation, which uses the word "complacent" to describe Sodom. It's interesting to me that many of us dress in our fine clothes, sitting in our padded pews on Sunday mornings, with our luxury cars and SUVs sitting in the parking lot, wondering what restaurant we'll attend for lunch, while speaking of the evils and impending doom of those who practice "sodomy."

And what are we told about Zacchaeus, about what and where he was before salvation, and after? Not much. Only the important parts, perhaps?

A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today." So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner." Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, "Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much." Then Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost." (Luke 19:2-10, NRSV)

How about James 2:1-5 (NRSV); who has God chosen to be heirs of his kingdom?

My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, "Have a seat here, please," while to the one who is poor you say, "Stand there," or, "Sit at my feet," have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?

It's a bit more radical in the beatitudes. Note how this relates to Jesus' teaching about Lazarus, as noted previously:

And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them. Then he looked up at his disciples and said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

In James 1:27, just before the quote noted above:

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Although there are many, many other passages along this vein, for example the many passages in the prophets which speak of social justice, and I think they form an overarching theme in the Bible, I'm aware that arches can be built and cited for or against most anything. Given a book of the Bible's breadth in time and subject matter, this is almost unavoidable. In this regard, I'm not a big fan of lists like the foregoing—although obviously I'm not above using them. I tend to think that sometimes other things are more powerful, and so instead I'll leave with the following point.

Jesus, as God incarnate, was born to a very young (let's say, thirteen-ish to fifteen-ish), unwed, poor girl who was refused room and bed at a common inn, even though she was with child and about to give birth. The Son of God was from a no-good, disrespected village named Nazareth, and born in a manger where—I presume— the animals stained the hay with their urine. What, exactly, is this story to mean to us about the nature of God and Man, and with which of the latter the former most identifies? In other words, to whom did the Lord God come first and foremost?

This one, it seems to me, is undeniably central, clear and to the point.

I tend to avoid small talk in life. That's a plus or minus, depending upon who you ask. To me, it's a plus. To those who sit with me and twiddle their thumbs thinking of things to say, it's a minus. But tonight I feel like reviewing the weekend. I didn't get to talk to my folks this weekend, so this will catch them up.

Friday was the last day of this year's Shuttle Camp for the girls, which means there were rocket launches. The older girl has moved up to two-stage creations, but unfortunately the weather scrubbed the launches for her class. So, a trip to launch the newest rocket ourselves is on the manifest. Younger girl built a nice single-stage that flew well, and it looks great sitting on the shelf with the rockets of years passed. One of the instructors attempted the launch of a modified two-stage that was too light in the forward fuselage. It spun wildly as it left the rail, and I only had time for one thought: Uh-oh. Now the second stage is gonna… Which it did, flying straight toward some of us spectators, hitting the ground between myself and a dad who was just as slow as I was, and bursting into flames (the rocket, not the dad). Which just goes to show that in the world of rockets you can plan for certain types of failures, and with others it's simply over too quick to do anything about it.

A new activity this year for one of the classes was the challenge of using a raw egg as the cargo of a craft that was dropped from sixty feet above the concrete. It was kind of a Mars rover landing type of challenge, and my daughter's team used cotton batting, wings and balloons. Their egg survived intact, so score one for the home team.

We arrived home late Friday night and all three kids went to sleep easily, so the tired mom and dad stayed up to watch the movie The Bucket List. It's a good film; worth watching. The combination of camp, rockets, getting to see the girls again after their week of absence, the movie, and probably a bit of being tired all combined to leave me with a tear of weary joy in each eye as a lay down to go to sleep. "I had a good day," I whispered between myself and God. "Thank you for my life."

I'm steeped in a battle of wits with one of the puppies. A while back she figured out how to climb our rock wall and get into the neighbor's yard. Finally I resorted to running a dog-rated electric fence along the top of that wall, which did little to deter her. So I ran another line lower, back from the fence, which did the trick. But it only took her a couple of days to figure out that she can climb the metal gate on the other side of the house and get into the front yard, scale the wall into the front courtyard, and sleep on the front porch. So I ran the electric wire all the way around the fence in the back, and stretched it across the path to the metal gate. She came around to see what I was doing as I finished my work, stopped dead in her tracks, ducked her head, and backed off. War over, I figured. Until this past week, when I found her on the front porch and the wire by the gate torn down. So on Saturday I fortified the defenses with a bit more engineering, to find her tonight on the front porch again. She broke only a small portion of the wire, leaving the rest of the improved design functional with its secondary skirmish line, which she would have had to have engaged to scale the gate, intact. Yet she obviously defeated this perimeter. She would have felt the shock, I'm sure, and in fact there are claw marks up the side of the house (!!) where she climbed up by the corner of the gate. Hmph; War just beginning, I guess. She is one stubborn, determined foe, and I am now back to the drawing board. Perhaps something with cotton batting, wings and balloons...

Today was a party and ongoing sleepover for the two-stage rocket girl's birthday. Nine little girls in the house today and tonight. We'll see how the "sleep" part of sleepover pans out. It's almost midnight at the moment, and they just started a movie not long ago. I can tell I'm distracted; I posted Merton Monday before the clock rolled over. And with that, the weekend is officially over. Work tomorrow, and I don't want to go. But then again, I never do.

One more story to tell, but it stands well enough alone that I'll save it for a separate post. Besides, it's not a small talk story, so will get me back to my normal posting self. Have a good week, all.

To the truly humble man the ordinary ways and customs and habits of men are not a matter for conflict. The saints do not get excited about the things that people eat and drink, wear on their bodies, or hang on the walls of their houses. To make conformity or nonconformity with others in these accidents a matter of life and death is to fill your interior life with confusion and noise. Ignoring all this as indifferent, the humble man takes whatever there is in the world that helps him to find God and leave the rest aside. — New Seeds, chapter 14

Back to the series on dealing with common aversions and excuses regarding our wealth, the next one is based in the following of Jesus' parables:

For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money. After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, 'Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.' His master said to him, 'Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.' And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, 'Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.' His master said to him, 'Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.' Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, 'Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.' But his master replied, 'You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. (Matthew 25:14-29, NRSV)

I find it interesting that it just so happens that the English word for a certain amount of money (actually a weight of metal) is "talent." It's not uncommon for Christians to simply use this passage as a reference to natural abilities (talents; get it?) like leadership, working with one's hands, etc., and not use it to refer to money. On the one hand this is an unsophisticated association of the coincidental word "talent." On the other hand, some Christians use this passage as one which actually is speaking about money, and here is the irony because in my opinion the parable is indeed metaphorical, speaking not of money necessarily, but all sorts of things including… well, talents. I tend to think that Jesus' point here is that no matter what we have that has been granted to us, we are to use it to bring forth some sort of increase on behalf of the Grantor. We are supposed to be serious, wise, and diligent in making something more out of whatever we have been given. Certainly we aren't to waste what we have been given. We aren't even supposed to protect it with no hope of increase. We're supposed to nourish it in some way; even risk it with a calculated chance of gain for the sake of God. There is an implication of willful responsibility being exercised. The buzzword often assigned to this is stewardship, and there's certainly nothing wrong with the word or the concept it signifies. Take care of what God gives you, utilize it wisely, and do so in a way that God has more from your labor than when he started with you. This is pretty much axiomatic, I tend to think, and it is a lesson we should take to heart.

The other day a reader of this blog sent me an email that went something like this:

[For a good many years I worked off and on with an anthropologist who worked with us in staff training activities to help overcome some of the cultural barriers we faced in working with Indian communities. Her contention was that folks will usually part with money before they will give of their time. Also that most of us are pretty selfish when it comes to giving of our time. Guess I wonder how this fits into the total giving equation. Visiting the sick, sitting with the dying, or comforting the grieving is not a highly visible act, or at least I don't think it should be, but it can take a part of the soul, if that terminology works. It also means the giver probably has other uses for the time. I know money is always welcome and hopefully put to good use but on a general societal basis money may not be what is needed . Maybe just a bucket of chicken. A large tin of coffee at a wake, or a tender touch and a kind word is worth more.]

These of course are good points. I'll probably return to them toward the conclusion of this series of posts, but for the moment point out that we can and should be using whatever it is that we each, uniquely, have been given. Maybe it's money. Maybe it's time. Maybe it's an ability. Maybe it's a personality trait (or even a quirk) that is useful in helping other people. Maybe it's simply being another human being in the right place at the right time. Making our very selves available to others is a use of the life we have been given. Don't sit on your butt watching television, when there are people who could use your help dealing with a problem. Certainly all of these fit, and fit very importantly, into the idea of this parable. Everything I have in this very moment is in my possession for the purpose of furthering God's kingdom. I mustn't waste it. I mustn't let it lay dormant. I must use it, even if using it puts it at risk.

And this is really the point I've been hovering around in these posts; that what we have, including but not limited to our money, is in our hands so that it may be used for the kingdom (I plan to speak more about "the kingdom" when I close this series), not for ourselves. But, it is far too easy and far too common for us to take the idea of stewardship and use it to justify the way we protect what we have so that it will remain ours. Being a good steward comes to mean that we polish our fishing boat once a month and protect it from the elements. Being a good steward comes to mean watching my investment portfolio so I'm sure to have more money for myself in ten years than I have now. And from the outside looking in, if we have done little for the kingdom, what have we really done but protect ourselves by placing all of our resources under a rock?

To the point of aversions and excuses, I'll say it briefly and simply. Being a good steward is a poor excuse for spending a Saturday polishing a boat and buying a new cover to protect it from the elements; being a good steward is more about what we could have done instead of buying a new toy and taking care of it. Being a good steward is a poor excuse for investing money so that it will bring more wealth and luxury to ourselves; being a good steward is more about who we could have helped with that money yesterday. Being a good steward is a poor excuse for keeping resources for myself while I think, "that family over there is suffering because they're irresponsible, so I'm not giving them something they would already have for themselves if they were good stewards like I am." Being a good steward is about figuring out how to relieve their situation using whatever I've been given. This is the kingdom view, which is almost certainly the view Jesus intended by his parable.

"Being a good steward" is about bringing forth increases in the kingdom, not about protecting our own wealth, time, energy and luxury. Come to think of it, using the idea of "being a good steward" to justify our selfishness is about like using the idea of "loving my neighbor" to justify having sex with the mailman.

I've posted before about Vinnie, a mentally challenged young man I know, and from that post I'll remind the reader of two things:

(1) Vinnie speaks pretty well and gets his point across, sometimes he's really funny without trying to be, and he always speaks sincerely. He knows the value of communication and of being transparent. (2) Vinnie knows the value of many things much better than I do. Lots of times he comes to church at the same place I go. Vinnie was formed by the same Loving God as me. That's why he's my brother. I'm going to watch him more closely this year. I think he's here to be a teacher—for people like me.

I saw Vinnie at church services today. He came up to me after they were over, said "Hi," and held out his hand to shake mine. I returned the gesture, offering, "Hi Vinnie. How ya doin' today?"

"I'm doing good I was just wondering if you have any plans for lunch today—" he said. Most of his sentences are spoken with the inflection of part statement, part question.

At this, I was thinking Vinnie was trying to ask me out to lunch, maybe because I gave him a ride home recently. So I said, "No, I don't, I'm just going to go home because I have some other things I gotta go do later. I don't really have time to go out to lunch today. But thank you very much for asking."

"Ohhhh okaaaaay," Vinnie said as his eyes gazed past me, looking around the church auditorium, as if searching for something. I decided it would be a good idea to try to clarify the conversation, so I asked, "Were you wanting to ask me out to eat with you today?" At this point, I'll just note ahead of time that this is how we normal, average, blah-blah people think: Ah-hah! I did a nice thing the other day, and so I'm being offered payback! Good for you, Vinnie! That's so nice of you!

My brother Vinnie, though, he's much more clearly focused than us, far less calculating, with no ego whatsoever. His response? "Uhm no I was just going around asking the older people to see who's going out to lunch to see if somebody might take me out with them—" I smiled broadly and genuinely, and explained again that I was going out of town, and didn't have time to go eat. Vinnie told me good-bye, and continued with his quest.

The lesson from Vinnie to me here? I'm having trouble finding all the right words. It's a very clear, very simple lesson, but it's big. It's a big lesson about how we should relate to other people, versus how we actually relate to other people. I think the best way I can put it is, Vinnie wanted food and he wanted companionship. No calculations. No ego. No attachment to outcome. No strings. No reading into things. No hurt feelings. No embarrassment. Clean. Pure. Simple. Childlike. Innocent. Just basic human needs, as natural and acceptable as daybreak and nightfall. I need. You give? No? Okie. I ask somebody else.

Naah… we normal, average, blah-blah people would never be satisfied with something so uncomplicated. We can't seem to think we're alive unless we have something to be unhappy about, and somebody to blame for it.

The next aversion in this series of posts is about taking care of our families, and there's a bit of hand waving we have to do around the word "families." It's somewhat about relatives, with a special emphasis on those closest to us. I've heard this aversion several times when I've mentioned the idea of spending too much money on our personal lifestyles. The response is along the lines of, "Well, Paul clearly says that if I don't provide for my family, I'm worse than an unbeliever." True enough. The verse being quoted, plucked from its context, is:

And whoever does not provide for relatives, and especially for family members, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. (1 Timothy 5:8, NRSV)

I'm certainly not going to argue with this, especially since it is in the middle of Paul talking about a number of guidelines for taking care of others; most notably widows. What I find interesting, though, is that if we read a bit further we encounter Paul saying something that nobody, to date, has ever bothered to mention to me when he or she speaks of providing for his or her family:

Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. (1 Timothy 6:5-8, NRSV)

So, I've wondered from time to time, if we could ask Paul what it means to provide for family in a Christian way, and if a Christian should be content with food and clothes, what is expected in terms of provision? Personally, I distaste trying to slice and dice verses in this way, but if we are going to quote 5:8 in an effort to defend our wealth, shouldn't we also consider 6:5-8 along with it?

To be fair, I need myself to be willing to read further, for Paul also says,

As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share… (1 Timothy 6:17-18)

And so it appears that there were indeed rich Christians, and Paul doesn't tell them to become poor. He does imply though, that they need to be generous and ready to share, and this is after he notes:

But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. But as for you, man of God, shun all this… (1 Timothy 6:9-11, NRSV)

To summarize and place things into the present, personally I would include shelter and medical care as part of providing for my family; although admittedly this is a bit beyond what Paul was literally saying. And apparently it's okay to be rich, given that you take care of your relatives, you're not arrogant, you strive to do good, you're generous, and you share. (I understand that all these are open to interpretation (and subsequent misuse), too. More on this, probably, in a future post.)

But all in all, my point is about the aversions we tend to have. I still think the larger context of the passage begs us to reconsider what we're dealing with when we use "providing for my family" as a license (which is to say, excuse) for excesses in our lives. Plain and simple, anything beyond necessities is beyond the scope of what Paul meant when it came to providing for our families. So, no: I don't consider my kids' Wii, computers, toys, plethora of clothing, cell phones, mp3 players, DVDs, CDs, pets, music lessons and instruments, sports lessons and equipment, orthodontics, educational trips and summer camps to fall under the biblical idea of provision. My children are materially spoiled, because I let them be, because I am. They are children. They are innocent. My problem is greed; greed for myself and for my family. But I'm not going to be obtuse and hypocritical, and claim that to the contrary I'm simply following Paul's admonition to take care of my family. Such a claim would be a selfish and gross manipulation of scripture, beyond what even I can bear. To live in wealth and claim, "Hey, man, I'm just following Paul" is, simply, ludicrous.

To some men peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others peace means the freedom to rob others without interruption. To still others it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and pleasure…

So instead of loving what you think is peace, love other men and love God above all. And instead of hating the people you think are warmakers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed—but hate these things in yourself, not in another. — New Seeds, chapter 16

Outside of reading The Cost of Discipleship and being aware of the general legendary respect given by many to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I've never studied him. I've been working on this post for about an hour, and have decided to just give up trying to write it. This interview is compelling at so many levels, I don't know where to start talking about it.

And by the way, the documentary referenced in the interview is available at Netflix for instant viewing.

One of my other pursuits. I figure this one goes well with the current series of posts...

A portion of one of my favorite Merton passages. The photo is from my trip to the Abbey of Gethsemani, where Merton lived and wrote.

[There] is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace and my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find Him I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find Him.

But although this looks simple, it is in reality immensely difficult. In fact, if I am left to myself it will be utterly impossible. For although I can know something of God's existence and nature by my own reason, there is no human and rational way in which I can arrive at that contact, that possession of Him, which will be the discovery of Who He really is and of Who I am in Him.

That is something that no man can ever do alone.

Nor can all the men and all the created things in the universe help him in his work.

The only One Who can teach me to find God is God, Himself, Alone. — New Seeds, chapter 5.

For your consideration, my opening notes in in our poverty, the book:

THE JESUS story began for me many years ago, and it was a story that began with a given: Jesus is the Son of God. From the given flowed many claims, demands and concerns; claims of what was right and wrong, demands to be good, and concerns of not being good enough. For a while, that approach worked for me. The given was enough, and I could be good enough. Yet in time it ceased to be—perhaps because I ceased to be.

I think that my problem with the story was that it was too big in all of the small places, and too small in all of the big places. It increasingly became a story that seemed to have itself backwards. Somewhere along the way, I decided it was all but completely wrong.

But by that time it had already become a story that I could never fully let go, and maybe this was the point of it all in the first place. If so, it served its purpose well, and to it I will forever be in debt. Whatever the case may be, I have had to rewrite the story for myself—a process that I now realize will continue for the rest of my life.

I will always think of God in terms of particular ancient stories and with the accent of a particular religious language, but I have learned that what matters far more than the stories and the language is the meaning of the stories, and the messages the language is trying to convey. I have learned that finding a way to see God clearly is the only thing that matters—that in the midst of a world that can seem ambiguous, arbitrary, pointless and even malevolent, we are in fact awash in a sea of immeasurable love. This I have come to know beyond any shadow of doubt.

What we must do is discover the vision to see this love, and find the courage to submerge ourselves and drown within it. This is the great challenge of the Jesus story, and it is the sheer depth of this challenge, rather than any intellectual debate, that has caused serious emphasis upon Jesus' story to often be viewed with great skepticism. Jesus called us to accept more than we are willing to accept, to reject more than we are willing to reject, to love more than we are willing to love, and to give more than we are willing to give. Jesus called us to live within the reign and rule of God, and we are typically unwilling to do so. This is why people like you and me killed him.

Yet while most of Christianity focuses upon Jesus' death, I believe we must choose to think instead of his life. I fully understand that as far as Christian doctrine is concerned, the death and resurrection of Jesus are of paramount importance. But I can never escape the feeling that to focus upon them to the exclusion of everything else is a way to cheat at believing the story. It seems to me all too convenient to say that Jesus died for us, and that is the end of that—than to say Jesus called us to live like he did, and that this is the beginning of everything.

The opening and concluding paragraphs of in our poverty, chapter 10:

To many people the Bible is more important than God. They consider the Bible to be the only validation of anything man can possibly have to do with God. They believe there is no point in believing there is a God unless you believe in the Bible. To them there is no useful God apart from the Bible, and there would be no point to God's existence without the Bible. Reduced to its pure practicality, their view is that without the Bible there is no God.

If I am to live in this physical world and see it rightly, see each created thing as a manifestation of God's glory, I must see that the world, both in its visible forms and in its hidden forms, is part of the word of God. I must then take what I see and I must love what I see; not love a particular thing as if for its own sake, but love it for the particular word or words of God it is. I do not need to love the things of this world, but I must come to dearly and passionately love the spirit of God as it shows itself to me within and through them. Once I have seen and learned to love what is before me, I must welcome this love into my heart that it may compel me to act in accord with God's word all around me. If I cannot do this, the meaning of all these things will be lost to me and I will not hear his voice. Each utterance of God around me will fall upon my deafness, and if I hear anything at all it will only be because I mistake my own voice for that of God.

Probably just me, but is Jimmy Carter the only president in my lifetime who… no, that would seem rude. Let's just say he remains the only politician to impress me; which cannot be wholly unrelated to the fact that he wasn't particularly successful at being one. The mp3 here has some stuff worth hearing.