Day 8: Guiding Texts

Biblical Texts: Isaiah 58 and Matthew 19:16-30

My favorite part of Isaiah 58 is verse 6; “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?” The irony of course is that religion that God wants to see (think of James here) is not a bunch of religious rule-following, sin avoidment, dancing and singing, etc. I don't think God is against those things, but it does feel like Isaiah's pronouncement is that unless you care for the poor, these other acts of religion are useless.

The Matthew text is a good example of this. The young man was good at being religious. Maybe he would have been a good youth pastor. But he apparently wanted to practice the duality of faith where you can have your cake and eat it to. Wealth on earth and Jesus everafter.

I guess today's post matches yesterday's to a certain extent, with the moral still being that personal piety isn't enough. Maybe that's not the best way to say it. It isn't that personal piety is not enough. The truth is, if personal piety is the goal, you're missing the bigger picture. The bigger picture is radical departure from the ways of the world! This involves personal piety, a life of servitude, and renunciation of everything you think you own. I guess it means choosing to be a disciple.

Secondary Text #1: Tony Campolo

"When we talk about Jesus, we must make it clear that he is not just interested in our well-being in the afterlife. He is a Savior who is at work in the world today trying to save the world from what it is, and make it into a place where people can live together with dignity."

Secondary Text #2: David E. Fitch

"Stanley Hauerwas [states] that liberal society and its justice forms us into people that work against us being followers of Christ. '[Democratic] liberalism,' he says, 'becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; a social order that is designed to work on the presumption that people are self-interested tends to produce that kind of people...'

John Milbank carries the stance of...Hauerwas further by describing how democracy and capitalism are built upon an ontological foundation of violence...one person against the other. But Christians assume something totally different. We assume that the world and all therein were originally created as a unity together participating in the ever-flowing work of God into the world...The work of Christ was to restore this peace...

Democracy and capitalism therefore fundamentally play on a politics that does not restore humanity to a mutual participation in God but replaces such participation with a politics based on the discrete wills of all individuals getting along without killing each other. The justice based in democracy and capitalism does the same. And once we see democracy and capitalism in these terms, evangelical participation in such a justice is heresy. The only politics we can truly participate in is the church as the restoration of God's relationship with humanity in creation. The only justice that makes sense is that worked out in relation to God through Jesus Christ in the church. Only from this standpoint can we enter society with Christ's justice."