I am currently in a doctoral program, studying semiotics—cultural symbols—which requires a great deal of reading. Probably the greatest benefit of an education is the wise guide (teacher) who can give a curated tour of the best there is in any given subject, and such is the case with this program. Dr. Leonard Sweet has opened the door to an entire world of scholars and theologians who look beneath the surface of things and reveal mysteries. Now I would like to open that world to you.
Table Fellowship
Organic systems are complex, making things up as they go along, responding to life’s challenges and surprises, being constantly changed, adapting, adjusting, being resilient … or dying. Even bones are alive, often bending and bruising rather than breaking.
Leonard Sweet, So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church, 43
Being in a building with a book of rules, rites and rituals, tiered society, and a catechism so revered it cannot be updated (unlike the Bible, which is regularly retranslated and interpreted) is not organic. Even Christians are beginning to figure that out.
But how do we give all those things up? What would truly “outside the box” look like?
Promiscuous Grace
Jesus was promiscuous in his table fellowship. He was happy to tuck his feet under anyone’s table, and tuck into whatever dish they served him.
Leonard Sweet, So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church, 77
What is really interesting about this quote, and its underlying meaning of Jesus going from home to home, eating and talking for hours at the table in true Mediterranean style, is its corollary in ancient Greece. Archaeologists now think that the reason democracy arose in Greece, and that there were such leaps in philosophy, science, engineering, and art is because of this selfsame phenomenon of table fellowship.
All over the city, in Athens, or Thebes, or Sparti, people invited each other to each other’s homes to drink wine, eat platefuls of food, and talk about ideas. They would discuss, debate, engage in dialogue and dialectic, then disperse to other people’s houses, regroup and talk about ideas again. In just a fortnight, the entire community’s creativity and ingenuity would have been constantly exercised, and out of that came a steady stream of social and scientific invention.
What if we, as the church, did that?
Reason Versus Relationship
It is not religion and reason that go together, but religion and relationship—atoms alone do not make up the universe, but rather atoms in relationship with each other, held together by the weak force.
Leonard Sweet, So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church, 104–105
There is much to not thank the Enlightenment for in terms of spiritual insight, or the treatment of women and children. The Enlightenment put great stock in science, reason, and a resurgence of Greek philosophy. But Jesus is a person, not a set of principles. Systematic theology, the darling of intellectual theologians, would like to nail God down, sew God up, and essentially have power over God by defining God and God’s ways. But God will not be bound by human logicking.
The irony is thick, as the field of economics cannot control human behavior with economic theory, the field of psychiatry cannot control the human psyche, and all anthropology and sociology can do is observe and try to codify human behavior. Yet theology so often tries to control who God is and what God can do by creating a complex structure of doctrines designed to hem God in. Jesus had a saying for that.
The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
John 3:8 NRSVUE
So, how do we keep true to truth, “truthing the truth in love,” without codifying it into a system we insist God must operate in?
Truthing the Truth
The reality of the resurrection, and the power of Christ incarnate in the church is what drew pagans to Christianity, not the philosophy of Jesus’s teaching.
Leonard Sweet, So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church, 112-113
What do we think is drawing people to Christ today?
“Relations require action; beliefs require only assent.”
Leonard Sweet, So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church, 117
A philosophy is for discussing, but a relationship requires relating, interaction, give-and-take, because relationships are organic.
How do we move from the words of the economy of exchange to the living Word in relationship?
“We may want answers, we crave certainty, but what we get is narrative.”
Narratives bend, revealing hidden truths when the reader is ready, revealing wisdom in a light refraction that only mature eyes will discern. Remember “The Never-Ending Story”? That’s our destiny, not a finish line with “the answers.”
Leonard Sweet, So Beautiful: Divine Design for Life and the Church, 141
What I’ve been mulling over, after finishing “So Beautiful,” is how hard it is to do relating well, and what a dearth of teaching there is on this in church.
“Two Lungs, One Exhale”
I like Sweet’s analogy of the two lungs of mission and character breathing in God and God’s presence (relationship in the content of connection) by which we come alive to breath out Christ’s life (incarnation in our context). (pp. 161-162, 166) This is good conceptualizing. But what about the nitty gritty of real people?
Ignatius: Bad Guy or Good Guy?
Sweet brought up Ignatius as a positive example of expressing the timeless Gospel in a contextually creative way, drawing on a pagan model, rather than selling out (p. 183). I have got a ginormous bone to pick with Ignatius. I think he was trying to cope with real people and just got scared. Take a look at what Ignatius wrote to the churches. It is hair raising. I think he did sell out.
Fresh Reading of the Text
But still, yes, we really need to know and understand our context, and love the people who live within it, then speak the beautiful truths in ways the people “can take it” (pp. 202). The Bible needs to be read together, in community, with hearts fresh enough to understand the stories in the current context, with these people (pp. 212–213). There is plenty the apostles did and taught that was legitimately in conflict with the scriptures they had.
- Circumcision was no longer a thing. Just like that.
- Kosher was done. Out. (We would have to read the books of the Maccabees to understand how shocking this was.)
- Even food sacrificed to idols was okay.
- Not only could any Jewish man be a leader, rather than only Levites, but any Jewish woman could too. Oh, and guess what, even non-Jewish men and women.
- And get this, the Acts 15 council did not expressly forbid sexual immorality (nor define it). Here is what they said: “If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well” (Acts 15:29).
Earned Secure Attachment Style
So many I have met in churches have either an avoidant or chaotic attachment style. Earned secure attachment happens in healthy relationships, but most churches do not seem to encourage that sort of thing.
Forgiveness
Sweet talks about “letting go” and “moving on” (pp. 245–248). But there are so many people who have been traumatized by spiritual and physical abuse in the context of the church, that I think it cannot be as simple as that. So many people are left bereft. I would never ask them to do either of those things without first processing the pain.
Even under normal circumstances, our capacity to forgive can only come from a place of wealth. If I am going to pay down the debt of pain rather than require some sort of recompense, then I will need a way to absorb that debt. Counseling helps us develop the necessary emotional wealth, and can guide us to access the spiritual wealth from God’s copious supply through the seal of the Spirit.
But these things also take time. A small slight may take a small amount of time, depending on the health of the relationship and the health of the individuals. But one small slight heaped upon another and another and another … that will require a bit more emotional and spiritual wealth, and a bit more time. (Who buys a house for cash money? We open 30-year mortgages). And relationships tend to develop bad feedback loops, negative patterns, maladaptive coping mechanisms.
