A contribution to a debate about Empowerment and Theology

My friends and colleagues Becca Dean and Jo Dolby have been having some blog discussion about these topics here:

http://beccaislearning.com/post/34759763689/empowerment-and-theology-in-youth-work

and here:

http://beccaislearning.com/post/34772684733/jo-dolby-a-response-to-empowerment-and-theology

There were a lot of connections with some of the reading I've been doing so I thought I would put in my two penn'orth.

I’ve been thinking and reading about the end of Christian discipleship.  To clarify, when I say end, I don’t mean the finish of it, but rather the eventual aim of it, what is sometimes referred to as the telos.  I noticed that a lot of writers on Christian education were talking about different sorts of ethics and how at different times Christian discipleship had been shaped by different ethical styles.  Ethics is often divided into three styles: deontological or rules-based ethics, where behaviour is governed by a set of externally derived rules or laws; consequential ethics, where behaviour is governed by the outcome of a course of action, as in utilitarianism where the greatest good of the greatest number is sought; and virtue ethics where the character of the person is so imbued with virtues that in any given situation that person will behave in accordance with those virtues.  

In the Christian education context, the different styles have prevailed at different times, so at times Christians were taught that in order to be good they need to follow God’s rules, at other times they were taught that they needed to seek the good of others.  At the moment the underlying ethic seems to be moving towards virtue ethics and there seems to be some biblical warrant for the importance of shaping the character of a person so that they will then do what is right.  Educationalists such as Westerhoff and James K A Smith base their arguments on the originator of this approach, Aristotle, and it could be argued that the call to be transformed inwardly described in Romans 12:2 and Romans 5:1-5 is in line with it.

I think this is significant to the discussion Becca and Jo are having for two reasons.  The first is that it connects with the idea of absolute truth.  I think I agree that there is absolute truth; I’m just not sure that I (or anyone else) can be absolutely confident that I know what the meaning of that is.  I’ve noted elsewhere in my blog that Jesus says that he is the truth, and so I think my calling as a disciple is to know him rather than to seek for truth.  Absolute truth tends to fit more with a rules-based ethic and way of teaching; it suggests that if we could just know what the rule is, we could get it right, and we could then tell our children that rule and then they will be good.  It even tends towards a form of Gnosticism, which is not helpful (it’s actually heretical!) 

The second connection with Becca and Jo’s discussion is more methodological.  If the telos is to develop Christian virtues and character then we need to be equipping and empowering young people to develop those Christian virtues in themselves.  Aristotle develops his virtues based on Plato’s virtues of courage, temperance, justice, and prudence and suggests that these virtues and other minor virtues are developed in children by doing virtuous acts and thereby developing good habits leading in turn to human flourishing.  Wikipedia summarises it:  “people become virtuous by performing virtuous actions, which they might not have chosen themselves when young. They must develop proper habits during childhood and this usually requires help from teachers, parents, and law-makers.  A good community is normally required for the development of good people.”   This seems to me to connect with Jo’s scaffolding idea; young people need to be surrounded by a scaffold that supports them as they develop the inner habits of virtue.  These habits then become the ultimate empowering because young people are able to act in ways that make for the good life, for human flourishing not because of rules imposed on them, but because of their own internal virtue.

I’m still pondering the practical outworking of this, and my reading continues but I think it’s the beginnings of a paradigm shift for me in terms of my understanding of the task of discipleship which fits with the youth work value of empowerment.

p.s. In the interests of academic probity I should say that my thoughts and ideas at this stage are being shaped and refined by reading James K A Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom, Samuel Wells’ Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics, John H. Westerhoff’s Will Our Children Have Faith, Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, as well as Wikipedia.  I also own a copy of MacIntyre's After Virtue...but I haven't read it yet!

p.p.s I am aware of the irony of using a pre-christian philosopher in my thinking but arguably both Plato and Aristotle have always been influential  on Christian education.

Thoughts of a Grumpy Old Pinterester

When I’m at a bit of a loose end I quite like flicking through a magazine.  I haven’t got time to get involved in a good book, I just want to be a bit distracted by looking at some pretty clothes, something funny, a nice kitchen, or a new recipe.  I don’t take it too seriously and it is just something to fill a moment of quiet between one thing and the next.  Trouble is, I don’t often buy magazines so I don’t usually have any to hand.  That’s why I like Pinterest; it’s an easily accessible, ever updating magazine.

I’ve started to notice a few problems with it though.  Firstly, it works like pornography.  Those who talk about the effects of pornography say that although it isn’t technically infidelity, by thinking about someone other than your significant other you think about having someone else, you compare what you have with what you could have, you see other people having better things than what you have and you start to feel dissatisfied with what you have and then you feel unhappy.  Pinterest does the same thing; you go from “That’s a pretty bedroom” to “It’s prettier than my bedroom” to “Why does she get to have that pretty bedroom?” to “I hate my bedroom”.  Now, I love my home; we’ve lived there for nearly twenty years; it’s the home my husband and I have made for and with our two children and it contains more than just the stuff we own.  Of course I would change things if I could, but it works well enough and actually I can't be bothered with constant home improvement.  But I’m noticing a little worm gnawing at my contentment with it.  Pinterest!  I’m watching you!  I do not need a villa on a Spanish Island, or a free standing bath with spa jets.

The second thing I’ve noticed is the cute sentiments that get propagated around it in no time!  Things like this:

Really people?  Is that true or is it just a way to make someone feel better about not having the courage to sort out something in an honourable way that doesn’t destroy other people in the process?

Or this one:

Are you sure???  What sort of sick, masochistic God do you follow???  Please explain the theology of this?

And don't get me started on what people do with scripture!!!  Look at this:

Totally ignoring what the verse is actually about, justifying bad behaviour and worshiping the God of pulling yourself up by your own efforts!

Maybe we should actually analyse what the outworkings of these sentiments are before we scatter them around…the more they spread around the more people tend to view them as truth.  As I finally reach the stage of Grumpy Old Woman-ness I’m getting a bit outspoken about it.  If you follow me on Pinterest I’ve started a board called Things to Question.  Even if nobody else reads it, it makes me feel like I’m asking myself some important questions about what I’m seeing.

And finally, a big bee in my bonnet: so many images of women looking either like skeletons or like freaky body builders, with lots of exhortations to perform 3000 jumping jacks so I can look the same.  Occasionally images appear of curvier women, but sadly they are usually connected to dodgy sites!  Why are we doing this to ourselves?  Isn’t it enough that men do it to us, and increasing to themselves as well!  Let's have more of this:

I’m not even going to start on American understandings of cooking* but suffice it to say that I’m looking at Pinterest in a more thoughtful way these days.  

*No!  Opening 3 jars and adding them to a can of ready made “Biscuit Dough” does not constitute cooking from scratch.  And NO!  reducing the number of ingredients by using packets and jars does not make it a good recipe!

Handing on the flame Part Deux

On Saturday I blogged my reflections on the Olympic Opening Ceremony and had a few positive responses.  Since writing I’ve continued to think about what I mean and so I’m writing “Handing on the Flame, Part Deux” to carry on my internal conversation.  Feel free to join in.

Somewhere in the “Money” Chapter in Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster says (my summary) that Money has spiritual power because we want it and hold on to it.  By giving it away we break that spiritual power and free ourselves to have the relationship with money that God intended.  He suggests that we give away money not for the good it will do the people we give it to, but for our own sake, for our own spiritual health.  I think it’s the same principle that’s at work in the idea of the year of Jubilee.  If, every fifty years you have to give land back to the original owner you can’t become dependent on it for your sense of who you are;  you always have to know that everything we have belongs to God.  It forces a radical, paradigm shift in your understanding of wealth, power and privilege; it stops you from creating an identity based on what you can hold on to and instead forces you into a radical reliance on who you are in God.

I think that the model suggested by the Opening Ceremony has the same effect.  The Olympic heroes were in effect saying “This doesn’t belong to us; it’s bigger than what we have been and what we want” and the same would be true in the church.  We think that we can’t let young people be involved in the running of the church because they aren’t mature and wise; they don’t know enough to run it as well as we do.  What we’re really doing, though, is hanging on to our power and privilege.  Maybe this is why so many found the ceremony so moving, and why some others found it so offensive.  It was moving because it offered an opposite vision of what could be, and it was offensive because it challenged people’s ideas about a world based on prestige and success.

Cyd Zeigler on SB.com said this, which rather epitomises this attitude:

“The grand finale, the moment I was waiting for most, was the revealing of the lighter of the flame. So many great options were floated out there...and they chose one more boring and more forced than any other I'd heard: Seven no-name young athletes. I'm sorry, you've got to earn that honor. You've got to achieve greatness before you get to light the Olympic flame. You've got to inspire a nation. Instead, the event producers decided to hand the honor to a bunch of kids.”

I rather think he missed the point; that by giving away the honour to “a bunch of kids” Danny Boyle did indeed inspire a whole nation and maybe even further afield.

The Opening Ceremony programme says this:

“But we hope, too, that through all the noise and excitement you’ll glimpse a single golden thread of purpose – the idea of Jerusalem – of the better world, the world of real freedom and true equality, a world that can be built through the prosperity of industry, through the caring notion that built the welfare state, through the joyous energy of popular culture, through the dream of universal communication. A belief that we can build Jerusalem. And that it will be for everyone.”*

Maybe the same applies to the church: if we give the future of the church to our children, as terrifying as that sounds, the shift in our souls will be so profound that the church will be transformed into something we never dreamed possible. 

*Isn't it interesting that the image Boyle used is of Jerusalem, the city where God meets his people.

A modest proposal

A few years ago I read somewhere* of a proposal that when a couple with children split up, the house and the money needed to maintain it as a household should remain with the children, and the two parents should alternate which of them lives there.  This is in contrast to the current arrangement where two parents maintain households and the children move back and forth between them.

The thinking behind this novel idea was that if we say that the needs of the children come first, then what children need is a stable, consistent home environment, and the fact that the two parents no longer want to live together shouldn’t deny them this.  They should have their home, which is near their school and their friends, with their own rooms and possessions in one place.  The parents on the other hand, if they want to be part of their children’s lives, have to shuttle back and forth between their children’s home and any other home they might want to have.

You can see straight away that adults would complain that this idea is completely unworkable because parents would never know where they were, they would get confused, they wouldn’t have the things they need around them, they would never be able to relax, nowhere would feel like home, and they might have to spend time away from a new partner they love and want to be with.

But this is what children of separated parents have to go through all the time and it just adds to the pain and suffering that the breakdown of a relationship causes.

I’m actually not telling this story because I have an axe to grind about divorce, which is going to be painful and difficult no matter how it’s managed, but because I think our response to this proposal says something very important about the way we view children in our society.  We use a rhetoric of them being important and that their needs must be met first, but our actions say something different.  The axe I do want to grind is that this is what happens in church life.  We say that children matter, that they are important, but, when it comes to putting their needs before our own, we somehow miss the mark.

Us Baptists have been talking recently about re-imagining the future, but I wonder what church would look like if we wiped the slate completely clean and then started again with what children need to grow in faith?  Then fitted adult needs in after that…recognising that some might not be met because our best has been used for the children.  It would as startling and radical as the proposal I started with, but it might also mean that we assure the future not only of the children who grow up through it, but of the church itself.

How are you reacting to that???  What does your reaction mean?

*If anyone can tell me where I read or heard it I'd be grateful

John 15...

Jesus said:

I’m the mobile phone network and you are the iPhones.  If you don’t have my SIM card installed in you, you can’t connect to the network and then you can’t use all your apps.  If you aren’t connected to the network then you are a useless bit of kit and God will tidy you away.  But when you have my SIM card fitted in you, you will be able to be useful and helpful, with lots of good apps and people will know that you are connected to a really good network.

The Return of the Prodigal

I was reflecting on this famous painting the other day. Actually at a very nice lady’s funeral – she liked the painting so it was on display during the service.  As I looked at it I was dramatically struck, in a way I hadn’t been before, of the postures of the three main characters.  The son is, as might be expected, kneeling abjectly at the feet of his father.  He looks tatty and half-starved, because he is.  He’s made a big mess-up and he knows it and he hopes the father will allow him to work as a servant on the farm.  The father has responded to this by embracing the son; his arms enfold him, drawing his face into the father’s robes, surrounding him with the warmth and safety of his cloak.  What a rush of relief the Prodigal’s heart must feel to be pulled back into the familiar smell and feel of his father’s love.  The father’s face is gentle and accepting, full of love.

But off to the side is another figure, and to me he almost looks incidental to the painting, like he wandered in by mistake.  He seems to unbalance the picture, and simply stands staring down at the display in front of him, hands protectively across his chest.  He is richly dressed, and his face appears to be disapproving and remote.  Who is he?  He could be a passing official, a customer, anything unconnected with the story.  But he is actually the older brother.  He is the one who stayed with the father after the son left, but it doesn’t look like he had much joy of it.   I don’t know what your family is like; mine isn’t super close, but I can say for definite that if one of my siblings disappeared and was thought dead I would be heart-broken.  And if that sibling then returned after some time I would not be standing around looking disapproving.  Despite all our ups and downs I love my sisters and brother and their safe return home would make any differences and squabbles trivial compared to the great joy of knowing that my family was once more safe and whole.  I would be happy for my parents, having watched them suffer a period of sadness thinking they had lost a child.  To know that they didn’t have to live with that pain any more would mean something to me.

That’s the point of the story though.  We’ve lost sight of it because of its familiarity, but Jesus was talking to a group of religious leaders who were moaning that he was welcoming the wrong sort, and this was his response to that.  Because for the last two thousand years we’ve identified with the younger son, we haven’t noticed that we might have become the older son.  We are safe at home in church where we have everything the way we want it, but when younger sons turn up having made big messes we are more interested in the rules they have broken than the knowledge that our family is whole again.  That’s what struck me about the painting: the thing that is so wrong about the painting is not the son or the father’s behaviour, it’s the older brother whose posture jars so badly.  He shouldn’t be standing out there looking daggers, he should be in the thick of the embrace of his family.

There was a delicate synergy at work here, because the lady whose funeral I was at was a member of the welcoming team at church and she was one of the most welcoming and embracing people I knew.  She had a way of offering a kindness and acceptance to all who came through the door that was truly beautiful and she will be greatly missed by many.