We're reading "Radical" by David Platt this summer, in the Northeast Ohio area for InterVarsity. In a simple sentence, it is sorely disappointing. Until this morning, my opinion had swung back and forth while I was reading it (and I'm still not finished); unsure if I loved what it had to say in sum or disagreed in most ways. In other words, I couldn't tell if the good outweighed the bad, but now I can, and I am sorely disappointed that it's a best-seller and people are reading it, agreeing with it, and considering themselves radical for doing so.
I don't know how many times I can read about how big his church is and how many millions of dollars the building is worth and believe that I'm supposed to take his word on how to be a 100% disciple. He talks much about blindspots, one major being American Christianity's overlooking of poverty. To that, I say "here here good sir," but I must have missed the part of what Jesus said that includes it being okay to spend millions on a church building in the first place. I also missed the part that said church buildings are an inherent part of ministry...but I digress.
David Platt mostly, isn't the enemy. Really, Christians, generally speaking, shouldn't be considered "the enemy". There is only one enemy, and he doesn't have a body. My real grievances with the book are two-fold: it doesn't go far enough and it's constantly putting on the brakes when it comes to the words everything and everyone, and a wholesale purchase of the exigetical tragedy that is the belief that all of everything that ever happened is due to God wanting more glory. I understand that the man was born blind for God's glory to be shown...by Jesus, healing him. I won't believe that Hitler rose to power for God's glory though, no matter what "good" has come of it. I won't believe that evil takes place for God's glory. Because it doesn't. God didn't allow Adam and Eve to sin because he'd be more glorified for it. Okay, that's a bold statement with which many won't take my side. It's just too clean, too easy, too blindly-overlooking-the-rest-of-the-Bible to take a few statements here and there and craft not just a sterile theology but a lifestyle, even one to mostly good ends. It's God's will that none should perish, but, if you're to believe Platt and those like him, it apparently maximizes his glory if not just some but most do indeed perish, so what must be done must be done. That, of course, begs the questions: why then? Why do bad things happen if not so God can be glorified through them? Because God loves us enough to let us decide and, in doing so, we decide to hurt each other. He also loves us enough that he's provided a way for the evil we perpetuate to be forgiven and for us to be with anyway.
It's not that I don't want to ascribe glory to God. But I think we overlook what that really means. Let's jump into Foucalt for a little bit and hopefully you'll know what I mean. Actually, let's not. Let's jump to my neighborhood, the corner of West 85th and Willlard, Cleveland, Ohio. I walk, by myself or with Alexandra, our little Havapoo (Havanese-poodle mix...don't ask me..I'm a Jack Russel man...it's her dog), around our neighborhood every single night. She's a crazy little mutt, but we love her and I'm glad to have her around most of the time. Hazlenut is far from the only dog in our neighborhood though. She is though, one of the smallest. For some reason (actually, I probably know it more than I'll go into here), the majority of the dogs in our neighborhood are pitbulls. That might sound scary. I'll be honest, it kind of is. To see a dog that weighs as much as I do pulling its owner along on a very thick chain, trying to get to Hazlenut, presumably to devour our little fluff ball, is less than pleasant. Pitbulls are the most illogical dog to own. They cost more in insurance if you can even get insurance with them at your house. They might be profitable, but I don't think most of them in our neighborhood are used for fighting. In addition to the pitbulls, there aren't, percentage-wise, and average number of single family homes in our neighborhood, and I would venture to guess most of the single family houses aren't owned by the tenants.
I can't speak for many individual stories. I don't know many people by name in our neighborhood right now. The picture I'm trying to paint though, is of powerful, quite frankly, dangerous dogs kept in homes that aren't owned by those who live there. Beyond being something of an insurance nightmare, there's something deeper going on, or at least there's a metaphor within it. A pitbull may be an irrational thing to own, but what if you can train it? What if you're the only person it listens to? It's like a weapon at that point, whether you train it to attack or not. It's going to strike fear in others, whether they know it's vicious or not. It's a symbol of power in, quite frankly, the hands of those without much social currency. It's a piece of protection in a world preyed upon by slumlords and prejudiced utilities officers.
I think, oftentimes, we allow ourselves to craft our conception of God and theology along the same lines as the pitbulls in my neighborhood. If God's plan is to get glory for himself then we're still written into the script as a major actor. We're (humanity) still the ones who have to give God glory, so it's incomplete without us. God needs us and we're doing God's will when we're helping others glorify God too. That's why big churches, expensive worship equipment, and varied songbooks are so necessary. That's why the 10/40 window is more important than the Madison Avenue neighborhood of Cleveland. It's world domination or nothing. God wants glory and he wants to use us, and guess what? He's on our side! I'm meaning to sound a bit harsh on people with whom I generally associate on purpose: we've got to be positive we're doing what we're doing because it's right...not because we're giving into our personal will to power. If God is all about God's glory, he still needs us because in his omnipotence, he still can't glorify himself. We can, apparently, effectively outdo God because we can do the one thing he can't, which happens to be the one thing he wants most. If God though, as I believe, is all about showering his beloved creation with blessing, then a syngery exists when people are actively working to love each other and God's world well. Those aren't dichotomized opposites by any stretch. I'm saying though, that God isn't motivated by selfish glory hounding as much as he's motivated by his quite literally infinite love for his creation. The question comes back though: did God let Adam and Eve eat the fruit because he loved them? Finally, I do believe, that I can say yes to that: he allowed them free will. They chose poorly.
But I won't get too far ahead of myself. We need better language for what exactly Adam and Eve did. It's true, by Biblical translation they "allowed sin into the world." But culture and power-dynamics have greatly distorted what sin is or ever was. I'm not a greek or hebrew scholar, but I know sin, in concept, is the idea of missing the mark according to the traditional definition. That though, is an approximation for a concept found through the Bible. It's not a translation of the word used in Hebrew and Greek. If we examine what Adam and Eve actually did, it's obvious: they didn't choose to disobey God for disobedience sake. They chose to allow their interests to come before those of God. I'm a proponent of semantic hairsplitting as you may know, but it makes all the difference. Adam and Eve chose to do what was best, in their minds, for themselves; not for the world. Of course, even in that, they were incorrect. But God had to give them a choice to keep his desires first, or else they could never love. They would simply be his subservient creation with no will to love or, perhaps worse, be loved. Love is a dynamic choice in which the beloved and lover are constantly interacting and choosing to take part. It wasn't though, that the tree of knowledge was a "don't love God" choice. It was a choice to trust their own selves more than they trusted God. We were created to love God. We were created to trust God. The world was, initially, created to be stewarded by people who took God at his word because they knew his power, understood his love, and loved and trusted him back. But that's not what we've got on our hands now. That's sin: not being who God made us to be, not loving him and others as we ought; saying to him that we'd rather take our or the deciever's word for it. So often we mistake sin as breaking a commandment. We assume a law and call sin anything that breaks it. I don't discuss it much, but I don't believe in natural law theory, I'll just say that, and my reasoning is because it isn't Biblical. What is Biblical is a right way and a wrong way to live. The commandments, the law we assume that defines sin, was a covenant, akin to a vow. It has little to no bearing on what is or isn't sin...certainly, breaking it is (or was, for the OT jews), perpetuating the wrong way, but it's the same thing: deciding to live in a way that isn't trusting God first. God said, basically, through the covenant: "do all this stuff, and you'll be greatly blessed." To do otherwise is to inherently say that, either A. you believe God but want to suffer, or B. you don't take God's word on it and do what you believe will please you most.
Other than an (not as big of a deal as we want it to be because we want the power feeling objectively right affords us) opening for subjective morality, that probably isn't too Earth shattering. But read between the lines a bit: there's a right way, and a wrong way. There's not an alright way that's at least not wrong. It's one or the other, across every conceivable board. The rub, the deepest, darkest, most rash-leaving rub, comes from the fact that it isn't a lack of sin that Jesus most talks about: it's a lack of action. What condemns the pharisees? Not "sinning" and not taking care of the poor. We praise the widow because we don't read the Bible well. The widow, though valiant in her giving, isn't an object lesson in giving everything you have to Christ. It's an indictment of a system that builds huge temples and leaves the widow having so little. Read mark 12...it's true. We're so bound up in salvation not requiring works that we ignore James' stern remark that true religion is giving to the poor and marginalized...and not just giving, but actually caring for them. Part of me is very much a utilitarian universalist because I'm tired of arguing about how to get to heaven. God's powerful enough to let everyone in, so let's just shut up and start doing what he tells us to do. This is ultimately where I get worn out in reading the otherwise light-reading "Radical." It's a constant "don't worry, we're sharing the gospel while we're feeding the poor." Jesus said to love. He didn't say to do it with an agenda. He said they'll know we're his followers because of our love. That's the starting point. I can't help it but think it's incredibly unloving to only serve someone because you hope you get to share the gospel with them someday, so they can come to your church and worship God with you. It is loving to share the gospel, I'm not trying to say it isn't. But we've got to learn to love in ways that seem loving to the loved, and sometimes, no, all the time, that means laying aside any and every pretense. There's a balance, a limin to be stood within, wherein we've got to take risks in sharing the gospel, but we've also got to realize culture, context, and audience. I don't have the answer for every situation, but I know an honest, real love motivated by the love of Christ renders the question of when and how eventually moot.
There's nothing wrong with worship. I'm not trying to say there is. There's absolutely nothing wrong with sharing the Gospel...and no, I'm not really a universalist. I do think though, that we focus so much on getting to heaven that we ignore the hell people are already in. We go to church and worship because we're free from our misconstrued concept of sin and hell and we dangle that freedom on a string with no answer for the hell that is in the here and now, on the streets where the pitbulls are the only thing between you and an oppressive landlord. Maybe we focus on the gospel as getting to go to heaven so much because we have no idea how to live out the part of it that calls us to make heaven a reality here. Maybe we constructed our theologies about God getting glory through us for himself because we can't come to terms with him actually wanting us to do something about what is in the here and now, we can't come to terms with God calling us to love because he is love and wants to love through us. Make no mistake, if we were to see God's love transform the impoverished parts of our world (and my city), he would get plenty of glory, or ought to. But what's the motivation? Yes, I am basically saying that doing something for God's glory is either incorrect or at least incomplete. We are "to do all things to the glory of God," but we act like that's a pass to do whatever we want and claim some mystical ability to do it to God's glory. We are to do all things to God's glory, but what it is that we actually do matters too. God is love and God loves us, and he wants to love the world through us, for our own benefit and for the benefit of the world. If we do that to God's glory, then, my friends, we will see something real happen....not something artificial and hoped for in the worst possible ways. We've got to relinquish our theologies that favor us and those who look and act like us We've got to start loving, for real, no matter the cost...because that's what Jesus did.
To bring this full circle, I will close in saying that David Platt delivers a message the church needs to hear. But he does so in terms that still favor the American brand of evangelicalism that got us where we are. Maybe it's a step many need to take to get to a place of true radicalism that can change the world, but until we break out of self-favoring ideologies, we'll never actually renew the church...we'll just keep climbing and sliding down the same hill. The trick, dear readers, is to step to the side and get off the hill altogether.
-Zack
"Say hip-hop only destroy, tell 'em look at me boy"
-Lupe Fiasco
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