Near Emmaus

Category Archives: Non-violence


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Israel’s wars

Thomas_Holy-War-in-BibleI am reading Holy War in the Bible: Christian Morality and an Old Testament Problem edited by Heath A. Thomas, Jeremy Evans, and Paul Copan. (It is one of three IVP Academic publications I am trying to read and review, so I’m moving slowly, a chapter at a time!) In Chapter 3 “Martial Memory, Peaceable Vision: Divine War in the Old Testament” the author, Stephen B. Chapman, makes the following statement (p. 64):

 ”…in order for Christ to appear in the fullness of time (Gal 4:4) it was necessary for God to elect and preserve the people of Israel. And apparently–this is the hard part–God was not able, given the violence of the world, to preserve Israel purely nonviolently although, even so, Israel’s history witnesses to and moves toward nonviolence as it moves toward Christ.”

Now, let me be clear, I share this quote not to reflect or comment on Chapman’s essay (which I found thought provoking). Often, when I share quotes from books I have had commenters berate the author (something that is not fair if the chapter itself has not been read) with no knowledge of the broader argument, so I am cautious about short excerpts like this one (i.e., I am not asking comments about Chapman’s essay as a whole), but I wanted to share it because it does present a common view among those who both recognize (1) Christ seems to have taught his disciples nonviolence (to some degree, even if one doesn’t affirm complete pacificity) and (2) YHWH engages and even commands warfare. Many solutions to this problem are seen as too close to Marcionism or more critical of the theology of the Hebrew Bible than even Jesus himself. Chapman’s statement seems to be an attempt to hold together a view of the Hebrew Bible as theologically authoritative alongside the acknowledgment that Jesus called his disciples to a higher ethic (maybe this falls under the paradigm of “progressive revelation”?), so it is worth sharing to hear your thoughts.

Again, the basic idea is this: does it satisfy to propose that YHWH did command violence and warfare in order to preserve Israel, but not as a basic affirmation of war in general, since Jesus (his Son) both taught peace and lived sacrificially or do you think this explanation is insufficient?

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Guns and gun violence from Christian perspectives

urlPersonally, I haven’t blogged much on the debate over how to regulate guns and curb gun violence in the United States. If you want to know why, see Bruce Reyes-Chow’s fine post “My Last Post About Guns. I’m Out.” I do hope our country will come to a place where it can be acknowledged that more safety measures that may prevent easy access to dangerous weapons is not a bad thing, but I am aware that part of the United States Meta-Narrative is “individual rights” and “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” (though, I find the Second Amendment somewhat confusing, since this statement seems to have been made in the context of maintain a standing army, not the individual’s freedom to protect themselves against a rouge government). I don’t expect my fellow citizens to change their position, so instead I focus my attention on talking to fellow Christians–those who claim to share an allegiance to Christ–about what it means to be a Christian in a violent world.

In part, I talk through this blog, so it is through this blog I want to share a few posts written by others on the subject of how Christians should think about guns and gun violence, especially Christians who live in the United States.

Michael Halcomb has been writing a series titled, “A Theology of Guns: A Christian’s Perspective”, that is six parts long as of Wednesday, January 30th:

- Pt. 1 (Lk 22:35-36)
- Pt. 2 (Mt 26:52; Lk 19:42, 22:35-36)
- Pt. 3 (Jn 2:15-16)

- Pt. 4 (Mt 8:5-13 and Lk 7:2-10)
- Pt. 5 (Mt 10:34; Lk 12:51; Rev 19:15)
- Pt. 6 

- Pt. 7
- Pt. 8

Kendall Beachey wrote a post titled “A Christian Frame: Gun Control as a Christian Conversation” where he made the following points:

1. As long as Christians frame the discussion about gun control primarily within the context of Second Amendment rights we have traded our identity as Christians for our identity as Americans.

2: A rhetoric of fear can only function as a destabilizing force with society that ultimately undermines the health of the community as a whole.

3: Violence cannot be repaired by violence.

Other posts worth your time include the following:

- Katie Grimes: Guns for the Common Good?

- Christian Salafia: Is There a Biblical Right to Self-Defense?

- Kurt Willems: Following Jesus: The Best Gun Control Ever!

- Brian Zahnd: Why I Don’t Own a Gun

Blogs that address this topic consistently in one form or another:

- Homebrewed Theology

- Political Jesus

- ReKnew 

- Swords into Plowshares

- The Pangea Blog

- The Sword and the Ploughshare

For some of my recent (2013) thoughts on active non-violence see these posts:

- Concerns with women in combat

- Jesus, Martin Luther King, Jr., and non-violence

- 42 and active non-violence: “No, I want a player who has the guts NOT to fight back!”


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Concerns with women in combat

Mujeres soldados from the Queen Sofia Museum (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Mujeres soldados from the Queen Sofia Museum (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Last night I was listening to Texas Public Radio (TPR) in the car with my wife. The host of the airing show was discussing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s decision to lift the ban on women serving in the infantry unites of the United States. One man called into the show to rant about the horror of women fighting on the front lines. He lamented the idea of a woman, out of bullets, struggling to fight a man using her bayonet. He feared that the physically bigger, stronger gender would overpower our women, and that the result would be horrible things like rape and other abuses. He asked if we want to imagine our daughters on this situation.

My wife is quite the feminist, and she grew tired of the man’s tone of voice and argument, so she turned off the show. I don’t have a daughter, but I did agree with the man that I wouldn’t want my daughter on the front lines of war. I would die inside if I heard that she had been captured, raped, and abused in other ways by enemy soldiers.

I agree with this man: I don’t want my daughter, or any woman I know, fighting in war, but my reasons are different: I hate the idea because my daughter would be a human, not because she would be a woman.

I don’t feel this way because of gender alone, though as a man there is an inherent desire to care for my grandmother, my mother, my wife, and any future daughters. I know that it is often true that men are physically larger, often stronger. If someone attacked a woman in my life, I would defend, and I would hope to disarm the perpetrator with as little harm done as possible to all parties. This is true of other scenarios as well though. If someone attacked my brother, a man much larger and stronger than me, I would feel an obligation to defend him. If I saw a man walking down the street who was physically assaulted I hope I would have the guts to help him. My concerns is defending the attacked, the vulnerable, the weak, the oppressed–not merely a person of a particular gender.

I think this man had begun to feel something right in the wrong way. He feared the idea of a daughter being harmed because he realizes war is horrible. As a man he has allowed himself to recognize that violence against a woman is disgusting. He doesn’t need to lose that sense of the grotesqueness of combat. Rather, he needs to realize that his understanding of masculinity is warped. Men shouldn’t be seen as warriors, primarily, whose deaths are acceptable, especially in the context of modern warfare.

From defense.gov

From defense.gov

What if we mourned the thought of a searing hot bullet penetrating the chest of our sons? What if were disgusted by the idea that our brothers might have shrapnel from an IED penetrate their skull? What if we called into radio shows to argue that our uncles shouldn’t have to live with the guilt of dropping a bomb on Baghdad, or catching an Afghan civilian in the cross-fire of war, or control a drone striking a small village in Pakistan.

I remember when my brother was nearing his high school graduation. He was prepared to enlist in the military. He was given a camp to which he would report, and there was some discussion that this would happen prior to his graduation ceremony. I prayed that he would be prevented, even though he was convinced that it was the most noble of vocations. A few weeks prior to the end of the school year he was playing football with some friends, and while running he collapsed to the ground, untouched. Apparently the cartilage in the area of his hip socket was problematic, and the ball slipped from the joint. This hip injury disqualified him from service. He was devastated, and I showed sympathy, but inside I was relieved. This relief had nothing to do with his gender. It had everything to do with my love for him, something that I would feel (ideally) toward my neighbors, and their children, as I imagine anyone being sent into war, whether a citizen of the United States, Mexico, France, Italy, Iraq, or China.

Many of us idealize men like Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, and if you are French, Napoleon Bonaparte, but I don’t think this is the ideal expression of genuine masculinity. As a Christian I find Jesus to be that person, one who was strong enough to realize his enemy was a victim too. I see in Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., people who followed the trajectory of Jesus’ life to the conclusion that active non-violence is more effective at ending wars than wars at ending wars.

I am a realist, which is why I am not fully anabaptistic (though, I want to be as anabaptistic as possible), so I don’t spend much time arguing that the eschatological hope of warlessness is something we can manufacture now. I live as a witness to that hope. I struggle to live a life of non-violence, as far as I am able, but I know there is a “not yet” to the “already, but not yet”. When you read this I hope you don’t advert your eyes from my argument because you don’t affirm “all, or nothing” pacifism. Even if you find nobility in war, we must admit, many of us have lost our ability to understand the gravity of death, especially those of us who are citizens of the United States. We have been handed a narrative that violence begets peace, and we have accepted it to the degree that we don’t ask if there is a way that is better. We expect our nation to be at war and we don’t ask if these wars are “necessary”, 0r “just”, anymore.

I hope with this decision to allow women to go to the front lines of combat that it will make some of us stop, reflect, and ask why we aren’t concerned about our men being placed in that same situation.


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Jesus, Martin Luther King, Jr., and non-violence

MLK Montgomery March 1965 (Photography by Associated Press)

MLK Montgomery March 1965 (Photography by Associated Press)

Martin Luther King, Jr., will be honored tomorrow with a federal holiday that celebrates his birthday. This has inspired a few thoughts:

This morning I read this excellent short blog post titled “Weapons and Jesus” from the blog Rudimentary Bible. The author reminds readers that passages like Matthew 26:52 (“For all who take the sword will perish by the sword.”) give us good reason to attribute some sort of philosophy of non-violence to Jesus while passages like Luke 22:36 (“And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one…”) temper our anabaptist ideals. He writes:

“The Jesus movement was small.  He warned against a futile effort of resisting imperial rule with violence, not unlike Isaiah who warned against futile alliances with Egypt.  That’s the most we can say in terms of Jesus and weapons.”

When we discuss Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr., we must acknowledge though Jesus as remembered in the Gospels may have inspired these men, Jesus existed in a different context. As the aforementioned blogger notes, Jesus’ movement was small and he was aware that there was no defeating Rome. Gandhi and King benefitted from living in evil societies whose consciences could be pricked by appeals to Christian teachings (the British Empire and the United States).  Gandhi and King could appeal to the Jesus of the Gospels to shame British and American “Christians” who were not following their religion’s ideals. If Jesus would have challenged Rome to live according to the ideals displayed by pagan deities then I think events would have unfolded the same way. Roman deities were murderers, fornicators, and cheaters. While Israel’s God was remembered as a warrior in various contexts there were traditions like the Suffering Servant of Isaiah or the sacrificial deaths of the Maccabean martyrs upon which Jesus could draw from the culture’s memory, but as the Jewish War of 66-70 indicates, approaches like that of Jesus were far less enticing to many than those that advocated violent uprising.

There is something that Jesus shared with King that is more important than what these men taught though: their actions. While we may have a hard time reconstructing Jesus’ teachings on non-violence because we don’t have enough material to establish whether Jesus was being more or less pragmatic (why fight Rome if defeat is assured?), or principled (killing other humans is wrong) or somewhere in-between these two poles, we do know that Jesus is remembered as choosing not to fight and that he suffered a horrible death passively.

Likewise, the early Christians interpreted Jesus’ willingness to die as (1) the will of God for a greater purpose; (2) something he could have prevented, even arguing that he said he could have asked his Father to send warrior angels to his defense; and (3) that (for most Christians) violence does not appear to be an option if one is to be a true disciple (until the rise of Emperor Constantine). We have narratives that depict the early Christians as willing to suffer violence and death as a way of modeling their crucified messiah to the world. If it is impossible to reconfigure Jesus’ exact words on non-violence it is much easier to reconfigure how most early Christians interpreted Jesus’ death.

King’s non-violence is obvious. We have articles and books he wrote. We have interviews he gave to magazines and radio stations. We have audio, video, and transcripts of speeches he gave. Yet, like Jesus, we honor King because he died non-violently, not because he taught non-violence, per se. If King would have fought back, or killed another person in defense of his well-being, we would not remember King as we do. We might forgive him for failing to live up to his ideals. We may have debased him as a hypocrite. We wouldn’t celebrate his birthday every year. It was King’s death that was his ultimate message.

As a Christian who is an American citizen this is where I find my inspiration. I don’t call myself a “pacifist” because, well, I don’t like how it implies being “passive”. I do advocate non-violence though. I do affirm that as a disciple of the teachings of Jesus his actions speak as loud or louder than his words, and I do not think I am alone in interpreting Jesus’ death as a message greater than any of his sermons, since the earliest Christians, as far as we know, interpreted Jesus’ death as advocating for their own cruciform posture in the world.

__________

We could discuss hypothetical situations where my idealism would be challenged: would I defend my wife from an attacker in the home (yes, but not with the aim to kill)? would I have killed Hitler if I had a time machine that put me in the position to do so, saving millions of lives (we don’t know if it would have saved millions of lives since any venture in multiverse must include the reality that one change creates many others, which means it is possible that an outcome worse that World War II could have occurred)? Yet hypothetical extremes do a terrible job of addressing present concerns. When our world and nation are captivated by violent solutions to our problems–whether war against terrorist all over the globe or “Gun Appreciation Day” to advocate for our right to own weapons a few weeks after many of our children were slaughtered by weapons–we don’t need to worry about extreme hypotheticals. We need to worry about taking steps toward peace, especially if we claim to be Christians. As a Christian who is an American citizen let me say to fellow American citizens that our obsession with weapons is more than concerning. We don’t want to own something to shoot a deer only. We want something that can destroy dozens of people at one time. We want weapons made for extreme warfare to be available in our homes. I hope that this causes some to pause for a moment. Even if you are not an advocate of non-violence, surely, common sense indicates that our edginess and our culture of fear is going to increase violence.

__________

mlk-the-strength-to-love-cover-image1In his book Strength to Love King knew that his advocacy of non-violence would be deemed “impractical”, to which he retorted:

“My friends, we have followed the so-called practical way for too long a time now, and it has led inexorably to deeper confusion and chaos. Time is cluttered with the wreckage of communities which surrendered to hatred and violence. For the salvation of our nation and the salvation of mankind, we must follow another way.”[1]

I think we have bought into the lie that our wars, and our violent postures, are the “lesser evil”. We imagine scenarios where if this war didn’t happen this enemy would have risen to greater power bringing this evil on the world. Of course, none of these hypotheticals have happened, but our wars, wars we do not know how to end (as an American it seems like Afghanistan and Iraq are eternal wars, and places like Afghanistan seem ready to collapse into chaos as soon as our military withdraws, causing me to wonder what we did there that was good ultimately).

[1] Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love (Philadelphia: Fortress Press), 56.


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42 and active non-violence: “No, I want a player who has the guts NOT to fight back!”

If you haven’t seen the trailer for the movie “42″ (about the legendary Jackie Robinson) coming this April you’ll want to watch it:

tt0453562I am excited about this film. I am a huge fan of the game of baseball. Also, I happen to appreciate the study of history. Many movies have attempted to explore the dynamics of race in our nation’s past. Some have done better than others. I think this film has a good chance at addressing the topic with one particular edge: the Black character should remain the hero. In the movie “The Help” I was quite critical of the film because it made one mistake in my opinion. It made the Black characters the supporting cast when it should have been the opposite. I think “42″ will get this right.

If you watch the trailer there is a piece of dialogue beginning at 1:33 that moves me (imagine the whole film). Robinson is talking to Brooklyn Dodgers executive Branch Rickey about the persecution he is facing for being a Black baseball player:

Robinson: “You want a player who doesn’t have the guts to fight back?”

Rickey: “No, I want a player who has the guts NOT to fight back!”

Robinson: “Give me a uniform, and give me a number on my back, and I’ll give you the guts.”

Our culture has debating how we should curb violence. As a Christian being an advocate for peace is an important part of my identity. Many Christians I know have succumbed to a dialogue that presents violence as a given. The only argument is who should be allowed to be violent. I hope a film like this speaks to us, reminding us that there is a third way, active non-violence (or messianic, active non-violence for us Christians).


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Why I Am a Gamer (Guest Post)

By Nick Peters

Nick Peters

[Note from Brian LePort: When I announced a call for contributions to a blog series on the NFL and Christian Theology I received a response from Christian apologist Nick Peters saying that he has no interest in talking about sports, but that he would like to address whether there is anything antithetical to Christian participating in animated violence through video games. I thought the contribution could be interesting so I agreed to post it here.]

I don’t care a bit about football. I watch the Super Bowl for the same reason several of you probably do. I want to see the commercials! The only sport I could ever get into any at all is Braves baseball. Yet I saw the question about football being violent and thought from a different perspective that I could handle that.

Why? Not because I like football, but because from as far back as I can remember, I’ve had a great interest in video games. For me, it started with realizing my parents had something called a ColecoVision (Some of you remember those I’m sure). My favorite game on it was not a fighting game but a puzzle game called Ladybug. (I would love to be able to download this game on the Wii today!) I could often reach level 100 on the game. I had it mastered from an early age. (It’s not as easy to do on the computer)

Being in Elementary School, I realized I needed to get a Nintendo soon and so like many others, I grew up playing games like Super Mario Brothers and the Legend of Zelda. Link of the Zelda series was a hero of mine growing up. I still remember taking a Nintendo Power magazine to the place I’d get my hair cut. In it, I showed a picture of Link from Zelda II and said that I wanted my hair to look like that.

And before too long, people at my school knew who was the main expert on video games. While there are puzzle games and some adventure games I still enjoy, far and long the games I enjoy the most are RPGs. I prefer Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Kingdom Hearts, etc. A notable exception could be multi-player games such as how in Charlotte I got together with friends every Sunday night to play Super Smash Brothers Brawl. When I visit my in-laws, we can play the Wii Sports or Mario Kart Wii. I also like to play the old classic games.

Now with puzzle games we don’t really have much problem of course. That my Dad and I can still play Dr. Mario today is not really a problem to anyone. What about a game where you get a sword and cut through monsters? Isn’t that violent?

Why yes. Yes it is.

Now note in this that for me, I don’t play games that have gratuitous violence. There are limits for me. I do not really like to see the sight of blood that much. I could take something such as playing Goldeneye on the 64 and seeing the blood come down when my character died, but to see someone get shot at regularly and have blood come gushing out would not be something that I want to see. Just yesterday my wife and I watched “Flags of our Fathers” and I had to cover my eyes a number of times because I can’t stand the blood. Watching “House M.D.” can be difficult and I have no idea how I got through the first season of Dexter. This could also be a question of conscience, which many of this is. Note that if someone reads this and still has hesitations and really doesn’t think they should play the games I play, that is just fine with me. I have no problem there. Let us follow a Romans 14 perspective and see this as a matter of conscience. Of course, if you have a real objection, then bring it.

Yet if we are to say that something is to be rejected because it contains violence, then frankly we Christians will have to reject the Bible as well which has much violence in it, something that we need to accept. God is a holy God and those who go against Him are dealt with in accordance with what they do wrong, and sometimes His instrument for doing that is human beings. This still goes on today. Romans 13 speaks about government being such a force that bears the sword. Yes. There are times violence is necessary.

Why?

It would be nice if we all lived in a world where everyone would sit down to peace conferences and be willing to do all that was necessary, but because we are still in the flesh, such is not going on. There are people who will want to get whatever they want and who cares about anyone else? There will be people who do not follow the rules of others and go forward on their own authority seeking to stomp on anyone who gets in their way.

But are we not told that blessed are the peacemakers?

Those familiar with Westerns know that Wyatt Earp referred to his gun as the peacemaker. Let’s suppose I had been out somewhere and came home and heard my wife screaming inside. I go in and find some man attacking her and getting a weapon, I manage to kill her assailant. In doing this, I have become a peacemaker the way Earp said his gun was. The person who I dealt with was someone who was violating the peace. By eliminating him, I have restored the peace that he shattered.

“But Jesus told us to love our enemies! Should we kill them?”

Most of us would not consider it loving to lock someone behind bars in a destitute situation for years or to charge a really hefty fine for something. This is what we do however! Why? Because love does not mean everyone gets to do what they want without any consequences whatsoever. Now some have argued that Jesus would forgive people. Yes he would. So should we. However, there is a difference between private and public forgiveness. Someone can privately receive forgiveness for what they’ve done, but they still owe a debt to society and that debt is to be repaid. For an example, David in the sin of Bathsheba was privately forgiven, but his son still died. Forgiveness does not automatically mean there are no consequences. In fact, the Christian narrative should remind us that all actions we do have consequences.

If someone is out there actively doing evil, you can be sure that they are NOT seeking forgiveness. They are not in a state of repentance. I hold that Christians should always be willing to forgive, but they are not to offer forgiveness until the person comes to them and asks for forgiveness. Some might think that is not a good attitude to have, but why think that when that is the exact position God Himself holds?

Yet are we not to turn the other cheek?

Jesus’s statement was about an event in the private setting that constituted a simple insult. The idea was to end the cycle of retaliation before it starts. It says absolutely nothing about physical danger. It is not being like Christ to do nothing while someone inflicts serious injury on innocent people. If you are insulted, it can be a mark of character to simply not choose to retaliate in private. In public, matters are different. While it can be questioned whether Edmund Burke said it, I can easily agree with the idea that “All that is needed for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing.” If we sit back and do nothing in the face of evil, let us not be surprised that evil flourishes.

So what about the gaming area since you are the one doing the activity?

And I have no qualms about it. Note for instance that in many games today, one is fighting monsters who are not rational human beings and seek only destruction. (Never mind in these worlds for some reason they all breed like rabbits and are all deadset on destroying you and your party) There are times you fight people, but again, this is in a public forum with fighting those who wish to do evil and are not repentance. There are times in RPGs where you can be given the choice to let a character go who seems repentant.

We also should realize that a game must be considered in the world that it is in. We can look and say that on Earth it would not be like this, but then on Earth we don’t have dragons flying around us and imps breeding everywhere. In this world, if one does not fight evil villains, then the good of the whole world will suffer and we must seek to bring about the good of the world and not just that of an individual.

Of course, we must be sure we are fighting for the good of the world. Are we doing that? If someone is going on a quest and slaying monsters but they’re only doing that so they can get to the hapless village and destroy it, then it would be apparent that while they could be doing good on the way, their overall approach is not good and is therefore something that should be condemned.

Now what about football with all of this? It’s also important to consider that men by nature do tend to enjoy violent activities. That’s the way we are. We’re warriors at heart. Men like something to fight for. One of the reasons I believe marriage can domesticate a man for instance is that it gives him something he can fight for. Many of us men would hopefully be ready for action immediately if someone were to do something that would endanger our wives. We have this instinct to protect and fight born into us. We grow up with toy guns and swords and all manner of activity like this.

What we need to ask is what are we going to do with all this aggression and energy that we can have? Football could be a fine outlet for some people, though I would advise them to be extremely careful. Several older people today suffer greatly because of injuries they got when playing football while young. Of course, on a field, one should only use enough force to take down an opponent. (Don’t expect technical terms from me on football. I couldn’t tell you) I do understand that there are such things as unnecessary roughness in a sport like football. It can be necessary to knock down your opponent. It does not mean it is necessary to pummel him on the ground to keep him down.

Of course, every Christian will have to examine themselves. My great concern for us gamers is not that we will become violent people, but that we will spend too much time with our hobby. I make it a point for instance that when game time comes here, I usually listen to an MP3 at the same time so I can at least be educating myself as well. (Somehow, I don’t think this would work in a football game) Of course, that doesn’t hold if I’m playing a multi-player game with friends in which it’s just fun fellowship. Now if you really have serious qualms about this and you’re not even sure why, you can examine those, but you do not have to partake of something. This is the freedom of the Christian.

As we observe our freedom, let us be careful about how we approach another person’s freedom. What you might find questionable they could have no problem for and let each be fully convinced in his own mind.

Nick Peters is a Christian apologist. He writes for Ratio Christi and he has a personal blog called Deeper Waters.


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Wisdom from Boyd and Martin.

Greg Boyd (click for source)

I have been particularly impressed with two pastors who have addressed some weighty matter recently with wisdom.

First, I want to point to a sermon series by Greg Boyd where he seeks to reconcile the violent depictions of God in the Hebrew Bible with the God revealed to us through Christ. He argues that we should understand these depictions as “shadows” like the Law, Sabbath, holy feasts, and other things that pointed to Christ but that were incomplete without Christ. I am wrestling with his words, but I admit that they are very thought provoking. If you have the time watch/listen to “God’s Shadow Activity” and “Shadow of the Cross.”

Jonathan Martin (click for source)

Second, Jonathan Martin was late to the discussion around Doug Wilson’s use of words like “colonization” and “conquering” to describe the so-called “passive role” of women in sex, but he may have given one of the best responses. In “Gender, race, and Pentecost: the world has moved on.” he humbles us all.  Martin reminds us that God is doing amazing things around the world while we act as if we are the center of the Christian universe. These are three of my favorite  excerpts:

“The future has already arrived, and it has little to do with people like me.  In the global body of Christ, we have seen a remarkable shift in the balance of power.  Those of us in the west in general and North America in particular are used to being in the seat of power and influence; we are used to being those who shape global conversation in the Church.  Our sense of self-importance is innate.   Drunk on the rhetoric of America as a new Israel, our Christian faith a curious syncretism of sentimental piety and manifest destiny, we send missionaries into the world.  We ship our virtues and vices wholesale into all the earth.”

And

“I am a Pentecostal by heritage and tradition, but culturally I am one of the bourgeois pastors whose day might seem to be coming, but in many ways has already passed.  The whole white male, coffee-drinking, apple product-using, Coldplay-listening type.  It is a very small world that we live in that feels deceitfully large.  We have blogs, we write books, we talk about the most recent issue of Christianity Today.  So it is easy to think we are the center of the universe.”

And

“The average Christian in the world right now is an African or Latin American female in her early 20’s.  She doesn’t read our blogs and she doesn’t readChristianity Today.  She doesn’t know or care who I am and she never will.  The names Piper, Driscoll, Chan, Bell, Stanley, Warren—mean nothing to her.  Like most Pentecostal women coming into the kingdom around the world, words like “complementarian” and “egalitarian” are not in her vocabulary, nor Calvinism and Arminianism.  Unlike some of my brothers would lead you believe (where their lunch table is the only one that cares about Scripture and THE GOSPEL while anybody who believes differently from them in these tired conversations are flaming liberals), she takes the authority of the Bible very seriously.  But more importantly, she believes in the power of the Bible in ways that are incomprehensible even for our most rabid “conservatives.”  The western filter and language that frames these issues will not be determinative for her, unlucky as she is not to read our blogs.  She may well in end up leading a church one day where she preaches Jesus like a woman on fire and lays hands on the sick and watches God heal them, though this will surprise those Reformed colleagues who are sure all female church leaders have been trained by godless-Unitarian-lesbian-leftist-radical feminist-seminarians (she didn’t have access to seminary at all–unfortunately she has read the Acts of the Apostles).  Who knew?”

I recommend taking the time to listen to Boyd’s sermons and read Martin’s article. This is why the pastor-theologian is so valuable to the church. We need more people like them!