'Nother Sign

We drove by another one last night worthy of mention, but I didn't have my camera...argh!

"Tithe if you love Jesus! Anyone can honk!"

I kid you not.

The second week of our class, our professor entertained a lengthy and interesting discussion centered on the question, "Why do evangelicals teach the importance of a 10% tithe?" After examining several OT texts on the purpose of tithing for the Israelites, along with the percentages they were suppossed to tithe, it's more clear that our modern tithing concepts are pretty fabricated. Not only so, but designating only a portion of our income, like 10%, to God or the church, or our ministers seems to convey a completely erroneous concept, that being only a portion of our earnings/worth is God's, the rest if ours as a result of our hard work. This mentality fails to promote the idea that all of our wealth, possessions, and charity are God's.

If our financial perspectives admit that everything in our bank accounts belong more fully to our Creator, it might be easier to love Jesus by giving it away. However, I don't think the church sign was relating this theological presupposition.

I am a BIG fan of the congregation financially supporting their pastors and ministers. But I'm not a fan of it coming forth from legalism or a duty to keep up one's "Christian" appearances.

Marquee

We're in rural Alabama right now, and I always love reading all of the church signs. They are creative and theological masterpieces at times. I made Tyler pull a u-turn and into the parking lot so I could grab this picture on our way home from a trip to Birmingham last night.

Plaguing Thought

This sorta traces back to my questions about God's intevention (when, where, and how).

Revelation 3:14-22 is a rather common passage for evangelicals, as it mistakenly serves as a warning against the temptation to become complacant ("lukewarm") in your faith. But when you read the whole stinkin' passage you realize it's about wealth--not faith! Vss. 15-16, "I know your works; you are niether cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. For you say, 'I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.' You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked." This is a daunting message for the Laodiceans, who probably thought they were doing alright in this world, given their prosperity and all.

I'd rather be from the church in Smyrna, which is addressed just a chapter earlier in 2:8-17. Vs. 9, "I know your affliction and your poverty, even though you are rich. I know the slander on the part of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan."

Aight. What about this? If Rome is the big bad devil in this book of end times, and if everything that Rome does is evil, then that includes their economic system. Their coins are marked with the face of Caesar and other "lords," their taxation system is inherently corrupt, and their rich prosper off of the weakness of the poor. So the Smyrna folk refuse to participate in Rome's systemic evil. They are materially poor. Yet, John says they are rich--rich in their faith, rich in the promises of fulfillment that depend on Christ's return, and rich because God's heart is tender toward them.

Down with the rich, tepid, Laodiceans. They are indifferent to the corruption of Rome; they participate in her politics by gambling in the game of empire economics, and while they are secure in their possessions, too bad their eternity is marked by an absence from God. (I mean, "spit from the mouth of God?" That's a fairly vivid image!)

So if God's blessing resides on the materially poor, who claim their riches in Christ and who will be completely wealthy in the future for faithfully sitting at the table of kingdom economics, and not at one of those other temporal, luck-bound casino tables, if God's blessing is on them, then why do they still have to worry about the bills each month, the piles of debt, the lack of education their children receive, the multiple minimum wage paying jobs they work that still leave them financially destitute and exhausted?! I kind of want to scream on their behalf, "If you love us so much, and if we're so blessed, then where the hell is our shelter, water, and food? I'm sick of waiting for the final fulfillment; I'm tired and hungry."

It sure is a subversive picture of love and grace, you have to admit. One that the world will never understand. One that I often fail to get, even though I claim allegience to God's economic pattern. It bothers me that those over at the roulette wheel, playing with their stocks, negotiating meeting times with their financial advisors, and careless about those their power hurts are so comfortable (I won't say content or happy).

What does it mean to consider ourselves blessed? If God knows our afflictions, and the ultimate victory is alive in the power of the resurrected Christ, what is this middle time in the course of the history and future of the world all about? I am going to stop asking questions right now and go read Paul Ricoeur's, The Symbolism of Evil. Maybe that will make some sense of it all for me. (just kidding...I'm not that big of a dork.)


But seriously, when we consider the marginalized, this message of redemption and restoration sure does get bigger and better! Amen?

Last Quote--I Just Finished the Book

Wheeler compares our healthy amount of possessions to the alcoholic who says he could stop drinking anytime he wanted to, but continues to hurt people and himself in the quest for more to drink. She coins a phrase that I love: "the liberty of conscience" vs. "the bondage of addiction." The alcoholic knows he drinks too much (liberty of conscience) but he can't stop despite it (the bondage of addiction). So that, the person caught in the negative cycle has too greatly blurred the lines between liberty and addiction. The same is true for the shopper, not even the shop-a-holic. She concludes, "The only way one can be certain that possessions do not reprsent a moral and spiritual peril is continually to leave them behind!" --As the alcoholic must leave behind his drink again and again in an effort to sober up and be all that God created him to be.

Our possessions bind us to a particular location, to a certain way of life (whether we enjoy it or not) in an effort to make ends meet, and they deafen us to the call of God on our lives and in our churches. How can we be confident of our ability to discern a vocation in the midst of such economic pressure? (All questions asked by Wheeler in one way or another.) The New Testament's view on wealth is that it is more than just a stumbling block to discipleship or an idol of our worship. It is something that must continually be denied so that we can, like the camel, more easily find our way through the eye of that prickly needle and find peace and pustice in the kingdom of God. So here's my question, how do we suck in our guts enough to slide through such a tiny, pinhole opening meant to lead to God?

Give it all away-plain as that.

How do we define ourselves, for whom do we work, and to what extent does our spending threaten the human rights of others? (Again, more Wheeler questions at the close of her book.) Questions that if answered honestly will help us shed our pounds so that the slim needle hole won't feel quite so constricting and will also show the nearness of God.

Dang.

Weekly Wheeler Quote

She is discussing in her conclusion one of the points of her entire book, which is to provide a methodological and exegetical approach that leads the Biblical reader, scholar and lay person alike, to a conclusive reading that promotes better contextual understanding combined with appropriate contemporary, ethical insights. Keeping this in mind she writes,

"If the point of the Lucan discourse about anxiety and possessions (12:22-34) is to draw out the implications of Jesus' advent for economic life, then there is a third option, which is neither to disregard it nor to take its call for divestiture as a permanent and binding rule. Instead, it may serve the church as a call to single-heartedness and a warning against the insidious idolatry of a safety medicated by what one owns. Within this framework, its imperative, "sell your possessions and give them to the poor" stands as a model of, and a provocation to, "seeking first God's kingdom." It is a counterweight to every complacent self-assurance, "I have given enough," and a continual challenge to consider what the church's material life says about the true objects of its trust and its worship. To take seirously as a model is to call into question many of the assumptions of middle-class existence, including the fundmanetal assumption that there is such a sthing as "economic security" and that Christians are entitled to it."

Okay, I could go on. I wish I could post the whole book, but alas, I'll spare you. So, given the frequency of the Oprah show hosting financial analysits who work with common middle class Americans to help alleivate their debt (almost as much as that Dr. Oz is on now), I do not think we are in a position anymore to claim any sort of economic security in the middle class, which is probably just another reason that the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. And if the middle class comprises a large majority of American church-goers, what is the true object of our churches material lives as they relate to what they actually trust and worship? Dare we allow ourselves to be this honest? Aren't most churches claiming economic security (because they love God) and therefore fail to see opportunities to follow Luke's Jesus that teaches give more because they feel they have already given enough?