Tending in the fields

     The book of Matthew in the Bible finishes with a commission for Jesus’s disciples to go make disciples of all people and baptize them in his name. It is a great book, written by someone who started out as a tax collector and dramatically dropped everything to follow Jesus Christ when Christ walked by his tax collector booth one day and said “Follow me.” Jesus invited two fishermen named Peter and Andrew in a similar way and said, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”  

     The fishers of men idea is usually applied to all Christians and the idea is that Christians should always be striving to invite other people to a life that is blessed and transformed by learning from Jesus in a way that is similar to the disciples in the Bible. It is very obvious and almost doesn’t have to be explained after reading the stories of those guys.

    But I think for me and for many others, especially from evangelical backgrounds where we really did think that we should share our faith in some way, there is another component to these stories that is also important but hard to remember. And that is the fact that the fishermen already were fishermen, so the calling was partially to just do more of the same but at a shockingly miraculous level.  And funnily, you could look back and see that maybe Matthew as a tax collector was like a creditor stalking people to take their money, so when Jesus said, “Follow me,” it was just as tailored a calling as for the fishermen, only Matthew would be following someone who did not hate him.

    Anyway, there are all kinds of interesting things about all of it, but I think the thing that helps me balance my messed up evangelical failures with my true identity, is to think that in some ways, the calling wasn’t about transforming all Christians into evangelicals, but that it was about turbo-boosting what people were already good at, so that they could be more truly themselves and unencumbered by deceptions and traps that keep people from meeting their true potential. People could interpret it as meaning that a good athlete has permission to follow Christ’s teaching in order to become a great athlete instead of a good FCA leader. And Christ’s teaching could just as well help an artist reach heights of genius instead of just switching over to religious paintings.

     These concepts have to do with things that people often decide very early in life, and I think many people could read this and think I am honestly saying nothing at all.  But I actually do think that all kinds of people have deep, torturesome problems related to frustrations about work, identity, and Christian service.  I read once that only 13 percent of bartenders are Christians, but if people were following the example of support that Jesus demonstrated, shouldn’t bartenders be the ones serving communion? It is just suspicious, and to me could just mean that more pastors should be behind bars.

An interesting theological question for discussion:

In the Bible, a lot of the opposition people face can be divided into three categories: the world, the flesh, and the devil. It is a very standard theological idea, and I think it is interesting to consider it along with how conflict is described in literature settings.  In English classrooms, a lot of the conflict that drives stories is described as either being man vs. man, man vs himself, or man vs. nature.  

What I am wondering is if all of these categories refer to the same things in life and in what ways they can overlap or not overlap.  Would it mean that “the world” is part of nature, no matter how technological it gets? Would it mean something about the origin of demons? Some people refer to family members as flesh.  Well what would that mean if flesh and the devil could be combined, and flesh can also refer to oneself? It’s really pretty horrifying.

Probably these ideas are very obvious to some people, but I think considering all of it at the same time is actually an opportunity sometimes lost because of efforts to keep religion completely separate from things like public education.  I am sure that most teachers and students manage to have great discussions about anything, but it could be good to be aware of what gets lost in the shuffle of priorities that usually do start with a purpose of protecting people from society and other monsters.

Thoughts about Bonhoeffer

    Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote an awesome book called The Cost of Discipleship, and one of the most amazing things about it is that he himself was martyred, and not just martyred, but killed by some of the most notoriously evil people, the Nazis, for plotting to get rid of one of the worst people ever, Hitler.  The story is kind of famous, but the emphasis among Christians is usually on Bonhoeffer’s willingness to die.  That is definitely a compelling thing, especially with his book in mind, but I think people would also benefit from looking at the reasons he died, and seeing that perhaps the more significant issue is that he was willing to kill. That kind of moral courage and sacrifice is not always appreciated as much as dying for something, but I think a lot of people could learn as much from that example as from Bonhoeffer’s willingness to put himself in danger. He cracked the code on what was happening and intended to do something that others did not see as urgent.  And as much as that courage is celebrated now, many people today are still sometimes slow to see the value of justice and the sacrifice of people who make the call on ridding this earth of evil leaders, of murderers and rapists, and of child abusers.