Last year, a friend and I were talking about how we as human beings engage one another online and elsewhere. He said, “we have lost the ability to disagree and still love one another.” That idea still haunts me because it is the truth. While social media has exacerbated this truth, it is only a multiplier and not the root cause. I believe that the foundations of our cultural engagement began long ago as the gatekeepers realized they were losing influence and switched to fear as a control of engagement. We are even seeing the erosion of free speech in the United States because of this phenomenon.
Fear is a powerful motivator in the moment, but it soon takes more and greater fear to keep control. The gatekeepers learned how to create perpetual outrage, regardless of the ideas or people being feared. Sadly, Christians bought into this fear and outrage and have been shaped in the discipleship of outrage. I believe very deeply that the Church has been wounded by this outrage, but I also feel almost helpless to address the root problem. Why? Because the cultural gatekeepers have so stoked the fires of outrage that any disagreement of specific issues places one outside the sphere of the outraged. We do not even recognize when we do this. But we see any disagreement as an affront to our own being. Disagreement allows us to label other human beings as evil or worthless. Those of us who are clergy find ourselves walking thin tightropes as we navigate calling people to the truth of who we believe God to be.
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Our alignments have become issue based rather than faith based. We have allowed the dogma of shenanigans to rule how we perceive each other. Ironically, this also creates a deeply hypocritical approach to engagement by the gatekeepers. For example, a gatekeeper may wring their hands over a “platformed” individual who disagrees with one idea, but perfectly fine sharing a stage with someone who disagrees fundamentally with a more core idea claimed by that person’s framework. The whole idea of platforming is spurious at best, but when wielded as one more weapon of fear, it becomes obnoxious.
For people of faith, the idea of excluding can be seductive, but it ignores the very character of God throughout scripture. When Jesus declares that he is “the way, the truth, and the life” he places that firmly in the idea that Christ’s followers cannot know God apart from the revelation of Jesus. The ultimate picture of God is present in the crucified body of Jesus. Or, as James Cone so viscerally points out, the government lynched body of Jesus. The prophets, in an imperfect way, even understood God’s character and nature differently than our modern gatekeepers.
Chapter 55 of Isaiah is pretty clear that God invites all to the banquet. Even those who had oppressed Israel.
Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;
and you that have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live.
I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
my steadfast, sure love for David.
See, I made him a witness to the peoples,
a leader and commander for the peoples.
See, you shall call nations that you do not know,
and nations that do not know you shall run to you,
because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel,
for he has glorified you.
Seek the Lord while he may be found,
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake their way,
and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord,
that he may have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return there until they have watered the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
For you shall go out in joy,
and be led back in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;
and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial,
for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. (Isaiah 55 NRSV)
Everyone who thirsts, come. Those without means to pay come and receive. Be a witness to the character and mercy of God. “My ways are so totally different from those of the wicked and unrighteous that they seem ineffable, but I am telling you who I am so you will not experience me as ineffable - you can know who I AM.” Isaiah tells us that God is a God of abundance. Our culture deals in the fear of scarcity, which is counter to the truth of God. There was a time when this was the call sent forth from Christians. But we are too often dealing in the culture of fear. So much so that we cannot even talk to one another.
This week an old album came to mind when thinking about our cultural moment. Back before the Christian music industry became Worship. Inc. there were a multitude of creative musicians and songwriters. Several of the most creative came together in the collaborative group, The Lost Dogs. On their 1992 album Scenic Routes twenty-something I heard an idealistic call to breathe deeply of God in the song Breathe Deep. Maybe it was an age of naivety, but isn’t the truth of God that all are welcome to come and breathe the breath of God? Before I finish, let’s listen to Breathe Deep.
Naïve? Maybe, but this sounds very much like what Brent Peterson claims about worship in his book Created to Worship.
We are gathered and breathed in on the Lord’s Day to then be sent out to worship all week long in the places where the Spirit leads us.
As stated above, many who have critiqued local churches for neglecting those ‘outside’ have attempted to solve this hypocrisy by neglecting to be in a gathered body, refusing the inhaling of the Spirit. While caring for the lost, broken, and marginalized is the church’s vocation of doxology during the week, if individuals are cut off from the service of Word and Table, they run the risk of drawing on their own strength and not the Holy Spirit’s.
This rhythm of breathing, healing, and ministry is a celebration now of the healing and redemption God has done and is doing in the world. Yet the encounter with God in communal worship also offers an imagination of what God will do as the kingdom continues to come. Hence, the church living into the hope of the future consummation of the kingdom is called to participate in God’s further healing in all the places the Spirit blows the church. (Peterson)
How can we breathe deeply of God when we are spewing hatred and fear? We can all do a better job of inviting others to breathe deeply of God’s mercy and grace.
Peterson, Brent. Created to Worship: God’s Invitation to Become Fully Human (pp. 44–45). (Function). Kindle Edition.