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Author: mhelbert

1984 was a very, er, Interesting Year

I’ve got some kind of virus right now. It’s kicking my butt. So, I really am trying to take it easy. But, I was checking some of the posts out there in the blogoshpere and came by one by James F. McGrath. The only reason it jumped out at me is that I am currently reading 1984 by George Orwell. (For the first time. Ok, I’m a little behind, let it go.) Most of the time when I read fiction I find myself transported into the world that the author has created. For C.S. Lewis I find myself in Perelandra, Malacandra or Narnia. Tolkein takes me to Middle Earth. With Orwell, I find myself in Oceania. However, McGrath makes the point that “Orwell has written a book that seems like it ought to change the world.” This I find interesting. More than making a political statement, he was making a critique of society and culture at a very basic level. Classism, racism and any other social construct came under his scrutiny. I appreciate McGrath’s insight on this. I may have to re-read the book with my own worldview placed under the microscope.

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Be Still and Know that I Am God

Be still and know that I am God.
I get up in the morning and rush to eat and get my coffee
Be still and know that I am God.
Hurriedly, I take 1 hour, no more, no less for prayer and meditation
Be still and know that I am God.
Throw food in a bag a run off to the salt mine
Be still and know that I am God.
Put out imaginary fires and ping-ping like a Balley ball
Be still and know that I am God.
70 MPH home to workout, feed Bill, eat, crash…crash…crash
Be still and know that I am God.
Sleep, dream, toss, awaken…………….
I get up in the morning and rush to eat and get my coffee
Be still and know that I am God.

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My Perspective on the World Christian Movement Pt. 2

As promised, here is part 2 of my musings on missions.

Randy Woodley, a Cherokee himself, in his book Shalom and the Community of Creation, observed that a large majority of native Americans understand that there is “some sort of primal power in the words of oral tradition.”[1] The transmission of ontological truth was trusted to be passed orally. They heard the words spoken “from the heart” and accepted them as truth. Yet, we in the West find it necessary to dispense with that and teach these people to read. We teach them to read the scripture, that’s good…right? In our arrogance we fail to discern that many of these people view our sacred text with suspicion. The reason? Woodley answers in a response of some native Americans: “We know that the white man translated the Bible and he could have removed things he didn’t want us to hear or he could have added things that are not true.”[2]Hmmm….
What if we had, rather, taken the time to listen to those who lived in the land? In a previous blog I wrote that maybe the Europeans were lead by God to visit other lands. But, not to conquer. And, certainly not to force their particular brand of Christianity upon the native population. Rather, what if they were lead to these lands to learn from others, to humbly listen to the stories that the indigenous people had to tell. But, Euro-Americans have a tendency to talk first and listen, well, never. (This, too, is arrogance. To think that what we have to say is more important than what anyone else on the planet has to say.) Had we listened we could have learned about the land and the people, about their special relationship to the cosmos. In dialog we could have then, maybe, shared our story. We could have had an opportunity to see where our different cultures merged and, just maybe, we could have found connecting points that would have allowed the open sharing of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Not to make others change to be like us.
But, to let our story and theirs join as equally viable realities. We could have let go of the need to control the story and let the people of the land take and assimilate it as they felt best.
Now, of course this raises the question of syncretism. And, as I’ve read about missions, this seems to be at the crux of much errant thinking. Let me digress a bit…The two major ancient churches both consider themselves the one true Church. Both the Roman and Orthodox confessions claim to be able to trace their origins back to the Apostles. Both claim to have the only accurate traditions. And, both hold tenaciously to what they perceive to be that one, true, apostolic tradition. All other claims to faith are, at best, considered heterodox. At worst, they are considered heretical. Now, I’m not a math major, but I can see pretty quickly that both cannot be right. And, to add to the confusion, along came the reformers in 16th century who also claimed to have the only true faith. What I want to point out by this is that we in the West have a long history of trying to prove that we are correct and everyone else is wrong. We have developed an unsustainable dualism that has allowed abuses that would make Hannibal Lecter blush. Now, how would things have looked had we actually built our faith on the teaching of Jesus? We would have been compelled to accept others as created equal to us. We would have had to learn to listen. Yeah, there’s a lot of red text in the gospels, but Jesus really listened to people. How many times did he ask someone, “What would you like me to do for you?” How often did he “look at,” really “look at,” others with respect and compassion? He did not, like we have in the West, simply assume that he knew what the other needed. Even today we assume that we in America know what is best for people in Africa, Asia and Latin America. We do not take the time to listen to what theymight think that they really need.
So, back to the problem of syncretism. Who said that we need to control the Gospel? Who said that ours is the only true expression of Christian faith? No one has. We seem to think that the Church and the Gospel belong to us. Therefore, we have some right to control how the story is told and how it should properly be understood. I think that there is Someone far more qualified to do that than we. Jesus told his disciples that he was going to send a Teacher. This Teacher would be Someone who would walk beside them and show them how to live in God’s new realm. Paul wrote about the work of the Holy Spirit. He wrote that it was the Spirit who provided gifts and direction for the Church. Now, it is true that these gifts are realized as people cooperate with the Spirit. But, it is God the Holy Spirit who is the director. I think that trusting in God trumps our fear of syncretism.
We Euro-Americans would do well to hear what we have actually done to indigenous people with our White, male, hegemonic, arrogant approach. What we have thought of as Good News about redemption in Christ has not had the effect that we may have thought it would. Again, I turn to Randy Woodley:
The gospel, as it has most often been preached to Native Americans, does not promise us restored balance or harmony. Actually, too often, the gospel preached to Native Americans and other indigenous peoples around the world was quite the contrary to good news. We have mostly heard the gospel as “bad news.”
The “bad news” of Jesus Christ requires people to forsake their own ethnic identity for the identity of the dominant culture. The “bad news” of Jesus Christ means trading in shared communal values for economic systems based on greed and the success of the individual over the group. The “bad news” of Jesus Christ requires indigenous peoples to accept their status as those meant to be colonized and to cooperate with their own demise. The “bad news” of Jesus Christ askes us to draw our theology, values, and meaning as people from a culture that wishes to make us self-haters.[3]
What to do? I don’t want to come across as having the answer. I don’t. No one person, or group of people does. However, a good place to begin searching for one would be to humble ourselves before Yahweh and pray for forgiveness. Forgiveness for our arrogant disregard for the wonderful diversity that Yahweh has built into humanity and the Good Creation. Forgiveness for twisting Yahweh’s Word to fit our own perceptions. Forgiveness for trampling on our sisters and brothers in God’s name. Forgiveness for not listening to the people of the land, thereby trampling on the Good Natural resources that these Others were called by Creator to be stewards of. Richard Twiss said that the Native American community does not need missionaries. It does not need us to just send money. It needs us to join in real relationship as full partners.[4] I think that maybe it’s not too late to repent and embody the love that Jesus Christ, the God who walked among us, revealed is at the heart of God.


[1]Woodly, Randy S., Shalom and the Community of Creation, An Indigenous Vision, William B. Eerdmans,
  Grand Rapids,  2012, p. 140.
[2]Woodley, 2012, 141.
[3]Woodley, 2012, 150.
[4]Richard Twiss: Hope For the American Church, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHKtDoKoD80, last accessed Mar. 20, 2013.
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My Perspective on the World Christian Movement Pt. 1


I have been interested in Christian missions, as in cross-cultural missions, since I was a young follower of Christ. I read the books about famous missionaries and went to missions conferences. I listened to stories of selfless heroism and noble sacrifice. Early on, I thought that my part of the task of world evangelization would be to support it from home. I never really saw myself actually ‘in the field.’ At least, not until I went on a short-term trip to Australia. Ok, not a really huge cultural shift from the U.S. to Australia. But, it created a new yearning to be more involved.
I have friends who have gone to the mission field. These folks dedicated their lives to spreading the gospel, as we understood it. They work to establish churches and to help the local population grow in our understanding of the gospel. But, as I have grown and reflected on how we have pursued missions, I’ve been compelled to rethink some things.
Our understanding of missions has been deeply rooted in a Western patristic reading of scripture. It grew out of a desire to spread the good news of forgiveness of sin through faith in God alone. This was coupled with the concept of sola scriptura, which meant that the only way to salvation was a strict adherence to how we understood the scriptures. As missionaries accompanied explorers they went out to conquer the world for Christ. In essence, this was a mandate to spread the gospel by spreading the culture. What this meant for indigenous populations was the end of their way of life. They were taught that, as the late Richard Twiss said, “You can’t be a Christian until you reject your culture and your spirituality and your ceremonies.”[1]And, when the native people would not willingly do that, they were brutally ‘converted.’ Thousands of people were systematically raped and murdered…all in the name of the Church.
I began to ask, ‘why?’ Why would the God that I saw revealed in Jesus desire this kind of wanton destruction of human beings? Did God really desire that nations and people groups become assimilated or destroyed in Christ’s name? Weren’t these the nations and tongues and people that the scripture said would one day bring praise and glory to God? Something just didn’t compute.
What really got me thinking that maybe we were pursuing missions in a manner that may not be in accord with the Jesus Way, was when I wrote a paper on Jim Elliot for a missions class in seminary. Now, I am not going to disparage Elliot and the other men who gave their lives for God. Everything they did was faithful to their understanding of the Gospel and evangelization. What I am questioning is the model that they were given to use. This model, presented here very simply, was to go into a native community and begin to educate the indigenous people. They did this by learning the language of the people, translating the scriptures into that language, then teaching the local people how to read their own language so that they could read the scripture. Ok, it sounds kind of convoluted, and, actually it is. What happens with this model is that the indigenes must adopt a Western approach to education and spirituality. Their own culture and spirituality was, and still is, deemed less important than having a “saving” knowledge of scripture. In a nutshell, as Richard Twiss observed, “You have to chuck all that stuff and just become White.”[2]
Why? What makes our Western understanding of the gospel the be-all and end-all? As I continued to pursue clarity on this, I found that there is more than one way to understand the scriptural text and the Gospel itself. I began to immerse myself in the ‘story’ of the Bible. I recognized that the text that we have has its roots in oral tradition. This tradition employs narrative and poetry and forensics and history and apocryphal stories. The biblical text is NOT a user’s manual of how to get into heaven when you die. It is a love story about Yahweh’s furious love for the cosmos. From Genesis 1 to the end of Revelation, it is God’s story given to humanity so that we can know and relate to the Divine. Story. That word has kept returning to the front of my brain. Story. The telling of events and tales and fables and myth that prick our human hearts. We find God and ourselves in stories. I began to see that my story was not necessarily yours, or anyone else’s story. Or, the story of the Auca, or the Lakota, or the Cherokee, or the Maori. God had given them a different story.
Tomorrow…Part 2


[1]“Invitation to Reconcile Clip”, Richard Twiss, CCDA, September 26 2012,
[2]“To Live in a Good Way”, Richard Twiss, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PJ0CCCVZNk, last accessed Mar. 20, 2013.
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Happy St. Patrick’s day!!

 Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s day. While the celebration may have originated on the Emerald Isle, the party has been embraced and thoroughly Americanized. Little is actually known about this person. What is accepted is that he was born a Roman citizen in Briton sometime in the 4th century. He was captured and taken to Ireland where he was enslaved as a shepherd for about 6 years. During this time he developed a strong spirituality. He wrote, “My spirit was moved so that in a single day I would say as many as a hundred prayers.” He reported that God told him that he would return to his homeland, which he eventually did. After that very little is known.
There is a story that says that many years later, he heard in a vision the voice of Ireland asking him to return to them. (The story is strangely reminiscent of the voice that Paul heard asking him to come to Macedonia, (Acts 16:9.)) As the story goes, Patrick did return to Ireland. Upon his return he was met with resistance from the Druids. His new faith in God was apparently seen as a frontal assault on their religious hegemony in Ireland. That is the background for what has become known as Patrick’s Lorica, or Breastplate. One source explains:

Saint Patrick and his companion missionaries were to travel to the court of King Laoghhaire. Along the way, waiting in ambush, were druid or druid henchmen who intended to attack and kill Saint Patrick and all his followers.
As Patrick and his companions walked, they chanted the Lorica. When they passed the would-be attackers, they appeared as a doe and twenty fawns.”

Whether you believe that this actually took place isn‘t important. What is important is that this humble man dedicated his life to his God first, then to his enemy. He trusted in Yahweh as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
I blogged awhile ago on the lorica. Here is a link to that post.

http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5067338810724188678#editor/target=post;postID=9143587280916013320

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Questions that Haunt: Reprint

My journey from conservative, fundagelical to a freeing of my inner liberal has led me to many thought-provoking sources. One of them is the blog of Tony Jones, “Theoblogy.” I have appreciated Tony’s ability to stretch me…in a good way. I have also appreciated the times that I simply don’t agree with him.
He has been on vacation that last week and has had several other individuals pinch hit. One of them is a guy named Richard Beck. Now, until yesterday, I had never heard of this person. But, I read his response to Tony’s “Questions that Haunt” series. This week Beck explained his take on loving God. His conclusion is that “To Love God is to Love Flesh and Blood.” For a blog post, this is one of the best expression of what it means to be a Progressive Christian in today’s culture. I encourage you to read it with an open heart. Allow Ruach Elohim to touch the very core of you with the love that is central to Beck’s piece.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/tonyjones/2013/03/08/8214/

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International Women’s Day

I was going to wait until tomorrow to get into this topic. But, I found out that today is International Women’s Day. So, I thought better of it and am going to share this now. One of the things that I’ve been trying work through for the past few years is the idea of egalitarianism. It’s more than abundantly clear that the Biblical witness testifies to the equality of gender. There is no longer any male or female in the body of Christ. We are all Yahweh’s children. As such, we are compelled to love and respect one another as equal beneficiaries of God’s grace and mercy. That’s why it breaks my heart to read reports such as this:
http://news.yahoo.com/half-girls-south-sudan-forced-marry-140334618.html
We talk about equality in this country. Yet, we are mostly ignorant of what happens in other parts of the world. It seems inconceivable, (yes, I like The Princess Bride), that this kind of activity can still happen in the 21st century. It should be! Yet, in many parts of the world women and girls are considered property for the benefit of the male population, bought and sold like cattle. As Christ followers, we are under a mandate to express God’s love to ALL creation. Hey, folks…that includes women. Yet, we in the West tend to gravitate to hot button issues like abortion and education and 2nd amendment crap, while real, human, flesh and blood females are being treated worse than many of us would treat our pets. I don’t know about y’all, but I cannot sit idly by and do/say nothing. This must end!

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Curds are curds are curds

Christ followers have a tendency to curdle into small lumps. These lumps have affection, or at least a modest tolerance, for others in their lump. Now, some of these lumps think that they are the one and only true curd. All others are some kind of fraudulent curd. They may look like the real curd, smell like the real curd, maybe even taste like the real curd. But, they cannot be the real curd. Problems tend to arise when there is a whole bowl full of curds stating that they are the only true curd. They are forced to rub their curdy little elbows because they’re all in the same bowl. This makes them extremely uncomfortable. They wish that they could have their own bowls. In fact, many of the curds believe that as long as they can keep from being polluted by the other pseudo-curds, they will when a special time comes be transported to their own bowls in some kind of glorified curdled curd. The truth is, however, that curds are curds. They are all formed out of the same curd-making stuff. The little curd battles that they fight do nothing but deform themselves.
This is kind of the way that I feel about a lot of what I read from various sources. There are the self-proclaimed gatekeepers of evangelicalism, Albert Mohler, Owen Strachan, and others. These people are convinced that their understanding of Jesus and the Church is the only possible understanding. Any who would differ with them are on one slippery slope or another that inevitably leads to some disastrous outcome. They lead through fear and manipulation.
There are others, like Fred Clark and Tony Jones who are more than willing to point out the deficiencies of Mohler and company. But, they are also willing to point out their own deficiencies. That’s kind of refreshing, but it’s still one curd calling another curd a curd.
There are still others who simply refuse to get involved. They ignore the other curds in the bowl. I think of much of the Orthodox faith. They are content to play by themselves.
Then there are folks like Brian McLaren and Justin Lee. These people can see the distinctions between people and their beliefs. They use their experience as a guide to what they think and believe. Both, but especially Lee, are gracious toward others. Even when that other really deserves to get smacked up-side the head. People like these give me some hope for us as a species.
One of the things that we tend to miss in all of the posturing and arguing is how much we really need each other. In the so-called ‘bigger picture,’ we are all still fellow travelers on this big ol’ marble in space. According to the Bible, we have are co-workers in the field of Yahweh. So, we can be different and still united. I think they call that diversity.
Anyway, all that to get to this. I was reading a poem by Walt Whitman this morning. He was by no means a devout follower of Christ. Yet, he seemed to understand our need for one another better  than most of us who do claim to follow Yeshua. His poem, “Stronger Lessons”…

Have you learn’d lessons only of those who admired you,
        and were tender with you, and stood aside for you?
Have you not learn’d great lessons from those who reject
        you, and brace themselves against you? or who treat you
        with contempt, or dispute the passage with you?

Maybe we do need to stop and take a closer look at those other curds. We may find ourselves in the process.

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Thoughts…

Humanity marches ever onward.
Tho there are no more lands to conquer,
No people to displace,
No new territories to plant our banners,
No fauna to drive to extinction,
No minerals to exploit and deplete,
No place left to spread our disease.
Gone, the proud people of the Land,

Gone, the free Range,
Gone, the mighty Bison stampeding o’er the plain,
Gone, the trees and woodland creatures,
Gone, the innocence of this place.
O, virgin continent!
Lost to the ravishing of the rapist who overpowered you
And took Your virginity.
Exploited for a moment’s gratification…
Left lying in your own blood.

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1st Nations and White Privilege

Over the years I’ve had numerous occasions to reflect on what the colonial mindset has done to the American continent’s indigenous people. Yeah, I grew up with cowboys and Indians, the Lone Ranger and Tonto, and all of the other evidences of white privilege in this country. But, something never quite sat right in my heart. The First Nations people were human beings. Their world was invaded by outsiders. How were we right? So, like a good little White guy, I started looking at some of the humanitarian and philanthropic ways to “help the poor Red Man.” Little did I know that I would one day run head long into Randy Woodley. Nor, did I anticipate the effects of Dr. William Myer on my worldview. These men, along with Rev. Jennifer Crumpton, Caryn D. Riswold, and the bloggers at Womanist Musings have stretched me to the point of breaking. In fact, I have broken. I’ve broken with the white patristic ideal of America. I’ve broken with the idea that White makes Right. I’ve broken with the idea that God has ordained males for the divine work on Earth. These things make me wish that I was NOT a White Male.
But, I am. I can’t change that. And, for whatever reason, Creator saw fit to make me this way.
However, back to my original thoughts.
Some folks think that humans came to this continent some 10,000 years ago. From these original travelers came the indigenous people that Columbus and the Mayflower, and perhaps the Norse met. I’ve read some blogs and other sources written by Native Americans that indicate that they KNOW that Creator gave them the land. This land. The land that we call ours. In fact, from Columbus to Cortez to the Jamestown community to every White European to set foot on this continent, we have said that God gave US this land. It was God who led the explorers west. It was God who allowed the Conquistadors to triumph. In our arrogance we have interpreted the seeming military successes of our forebears to mean that we were/are right. Everything that we have done in this hemisphere has been god-ordained. This country is God’s country.
Bull.
What if……
The First Nations people are right. Creator gave them this land to live on. To live with. What if those roots were allowed to grow deep and produce much good fruit because Creator Yahweh ordained it so? And, what if God did, in fact, lead the Europeans here? We have been taught that God sent the Europeans to this continent to bring the Gospel. To bring civilization. But, what if Creator brought them here to learn? The indigenes knew the land. They knew Creator. They knew the true reality of life here. What if that’s just what the Europeans needed to learn?

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