Following Jesus in the 21st Century

I have finished reading a book by Eugene Peterson that I find helpful, enthralling, and challenging.

Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology

Why am I enthralled? Peterson has a way with words, carefully crafting sentences and paragraphs that are both easy to read and profound. The book resonates with much I have personally been observing, learning, and thinking about. The book is challenging because it exposes many of my own struggles and weaknesses, and those of the Christian communities, from the local to the global, that I am a part of or have been involved in over the years.

The title of the book, "Christ plays in ten thousand places" is taken from a line in the poem As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

A few things that stand out are the following.

The basics matter

Love God and Love others. It can't get "simpler" than that!

Basic concepts: creation, sin, redemption, judgement, Trinity,...

Basic practices and habits: Bible reading, prayer, holy communion, fellowship, reading literature, Sabbath, meals together, hospitality,... We need to do these in an intentional, disciplined, and regular way, and be mindful of their profound theological meaning and significance.

Cultural pressures will choke or derail the Christian life, individually and corporately: individualism, consumerism, pragmatism, immediacy, managerialism, competition, efficiency, functionalism, ...

Most of these pressures derive from living in a capitalist society that is unrelenting in shaping our thinking, desires, and actions. I need this thing. I desire this thing. I will buy this thing.

Abstractions distract. We have a natural tendency to favour the abstract and impersonal over the concrete and personal. But the story of God's action recorded in the Bible is one of particularity of times, places, and persons: Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Jesus, Peter, Paul, ...

It is a story, not an academic philosophical treatise. The Triune God is not a philosophical concept or an impersonal being but rather three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Church is not an abstract concept. Churches are Christian communities of particular persons with particular life histories, relationships, struggles, sins, joys, ... Community is complex and messy.

Be rooted in a time and place. Peterson gives a profound and creative exposition of Genesis 1 and 2. The six days of creation and the seventh day of rest define the reality of the rhythm of life. The Garden and the Promised Land are specific places, highlighting our need to be rooted in a particular place. We are not to be nomads, literal or spiritual.

Here is a small selection of quotations.

“If we don't know where we are going, any road will get us there. But if we have a destination - in this case a life lived to the glory of God - there is a well-marked way, the Jesus-revealed Way. 

Spiritual theology is the attention that we give to the details of living life on this way. It is a protest against theology depersonalized into information about God; it is a protest against theology functionalized into a program of strategic planning for God.”

“God’s great love and purposes for us are all worked out in messes in our kitchens and backyards, in storms and sins, blue skies, the daily work and dreams of our common lives. God works with us as we are and not as we should be or think we should be.”

It is all about Jesus! 

“Jesus prevents us from thinking that life is a matter of ideas to ponder or concepts to discuss. Jesus saves us from wasting our lives in the pursuit of cheap thrills and trivializing diversions. Jesus enables us to take seriously who we are and where we are without being seduced by the intimidating lies and illusions that fill the air, so that we needn't be someone else or somewhere else. Jesus keeps our feet on the ground, attentive to children, in conversation with ordinary people, sharing meals with friends and strangers, listening to the wind, observing the wildflowers, touching the sick and wounded, praying simply and unselfconsciously. Jesus insists that we deal with God right here and now, in the place we find ourselves and with the people we are with. Jesus is God here and now.”

The Christian life, individual and corporate, happens in the context of a specific culture. In the West, this culture is dominated by the ideology of the market.

“We live in a culture that has replaced soul with self. This reduction turns people into either problems or consumers. Insofar as we acquiesce in that replacement, we gradually but surely regress in our identity, for we end up thinking of ourselves and dealing with others in marketplace terms: everyone we meet is either a potential recruit to join our enterprise or a potential consumer for what we are selling; or we ourselves are the potential recruits and consumers. Neither we nor our friends have any dignity just as we are, only in terms of how we or they can be used.”

Here the Church and the Gospel of Jesus offer a counter-cultural liberating message: human identity and worth is intrinsic and independent of the whims and ideology of the market.