As we’ve discussed, progressive proponents of the Ben Op will practice the kingdom through radical hospitality and the works of mercy (Matthew 25)
.. It’s like that joke about psychologists changing a light bulb. How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? Just one. But the light bulb really has to want to change.
.. When the Franciscans lived with leper colonies they were doing more than liturgically desiring the kingdom, they were becoming the kingdom.
.. And by a leper colony I mean find people in your local community who have been abandoned by the American Dream. Look around your city and adopt a place and community that has been abandoned by empire, a place where people are lost and lonely. Here are some ideas:
- A prison or jail
- A poor school
- A housing development
- A city mission
- A hospital
- A local laundromat
- A neighborhood or zip code
- An assisted-living facility
- A state school
- A senior-citizen home
- A local non-profit serving a marginalized group (e.g., refugees, domestic abuse victims, the homeless)
The list can be expanded and expanded. But the goal in each instance isn’t to create a program or ministry to “save” or “rescue” or even “help.” The goal, to take a cue from Samuel Wells (PDF), is simply to be there, to accompany, to share life there. To be sure, you will likely serve, help and work for people in all of these locations. But like the Franciscans and their leper colonies, the goal is simply for the church to share life in an abandoned nook of empire.
.. No one in the church has to sell their home or quit their job or live in voluntary poverty. But there will have to be some opting out of the American Dream, some sabbath as resistance, if we are to make margin in our lives to share life with others. Being with others mostly means simply showing up. Everyday.
A Progressive Vision of the Benedict Option: Part 5, Sabbath as Resistance
“You’re right,” I said, “you have to make that commitment if you want your kids to be successful at soccer. But the question I keep thinking about is why we don’t care as much about our kids becoming successful Christians?”
.. The discussion about how youth sports affects church attendance is a perfect illustration of this dynamic. Wanting our kids to be successful and fearing that our kids will fall behind their peers, we push our families to a point of exhaustion where we no longer have the time or energy for Christian community and spiritual formation.
.. At the end of my last post I said it’s time for Christians to start opting out of the rat race of modern, capitalistic societies. And that’s what I think should be at the heart of a Ben Op “withdrawal.” By withdrawal we mean opting out.
.. Theologically, a better word might be renunciation. If Christianity is going to become a locus of resistance to Empire we have to be formed into people who renounce–opt out, psychologically withdraw from–the way Empire defines success and significance. In the empire I live in that means opting out of the American Dream.
.. In the sermon I gave at ACU’s Summit last year, I shared the story of a young man who left a prestigious educational institution to teach history at a poor, inner-city high school. That’s opting out of the American Dream. That’s resisting empire, pursuing a very different path toward success and significance.
.. And notice how the opting out in these two examples–youth sports and career choices–face the exact same challenge: social shaming and stigma, the fear of “falling behind,” the neurotic anxiety about not being successful. If we opt out of youth sports we fear that our kids will not be successful or will fall out of step with their peers, making them odd and weird. If we say no to a prestigious career opportunity to pursue more servant-oriented work we fear looking like a loser or a failure to our peers, neighbors, colleagues, families, and even, in our heart of hearts, to ourselves.
In short, to opt out of empire is to experience shame. Which means that we have to become shame-resilient if we want to resist empire, individually and collectively.
And that’s why we need the Ben Op. Shame-resiliency.
.. In our own contemporary context of the rat race of anxiety, the celebration of Sabbath is an act of both resistance and alternative. It is resistance because it is a visible insistence that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodity goods.
A Progressive Vision of the Benedict Option: Part 4, Why Progressive Christians Need the Ben Op
One of the questions I often ask myself about my church, which is reflective of most churches I suspect, is this: What binds us together as a community?
As best I can tell what binds us together is liking. We’re at our church because we like it. Because we like the sermons. Or like the worship. Or like the programs. Or like the bible classes. Or like the people.
We are there–we are a “church,” a gathering–because we like the same things.
.. Lastly, there is also much that could be said about progressive Christians being functional atheists. Many progressive Christians are so crippled by doubts that their Christianity is only vestigial, a religious ornament one hangs on the reigning liberal consensus. And that feeds into statism. When your faith has evaporated and there is no daylight between Christianity and liberalism, the only Messiah left in your life is the state.
.. The dark genius of capitalism is that it leverages our neuroses into productivity.
.. And if we can’t catch up–if our lot is to be one of the failures and losers–we can drown our embarrassment, failures, insecurities and shame in food, drink, medications, and entertainments. If you’re poor it’s nicotine, cheap beer, meth, fast food, video games, porn, Facebook and TV. If you’re more well-to-do you can upgrade many of these to more “sophisticated” pleasures and distractions. You might hate cheap cigarettes, beer and UFC wrestling but you love your cigars, expensive whiskey and golf outings. Either way, it’s all the numbing decadence of empire
Benedict Option FAQ
3. Stability. The Rule ordinarily requires monks to stay put in the monastery where they professed their vows. The idea is that moving around constantly, following our own desires, prevents us from becoming faithful to our calling. True, we must be prepared to follow God’s calling, even if He leads us away from home. But the far greater challenge for us in the 21st century is learning how to stay put — literally and metaphorically — and to bind ourselves to a place, a tradition, a people. Only within the limits of stability can we find true freedom.
.. Well, what is evangelizing? Is it merely dispersing information? Or is there something more to it. The Benedict Option is about discipleship, which is itself an indirect form of evangelism. Pagans converted to the early Church not simply because of the words the first Christians spoke, but because of the witness of the kinds of lives they lived.
.. From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge—a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so will she lose many of her social privileges.