I was just reading something that mentioned a phrase I often heard used:  “So focused on heaven that they are of no earthly good”,  referring to how some spiritualities withdraw from any responsibility to suffering around them. It is a close relative,  I think,  to the “gnostics”,  which claim to eschew physicality and maintain a strict separation between one’s physical body and their “spiritual selves”. 

When Paul speaks of “principalities and powers”, however, there are many who take a similar approach and completely divorce this from everyday reality,  and assign it some “purely spiritual and demonic sense” and thus push it into the “end times” type scenarios where the far off “end day” battles between good and evil are fought.

This is to make a gnostic-like  leap, in my estimation.  I’ve seen fist hand how today’s political evangelical Christians will outright scoff at the idea of “evil” being used to describe the actions of the Bush administration,  as if the very concept of EVIL itself is some sort of superstition.  And these are so-called “Bible believing folks”.  The thought of actually finding applications for the “principalities and powers” appears to them as some sort of outdated or paranoid , irrational approach. Perhaps the use of EVIL also carries with it “devils and pitchforks” and “Satan worship” images.  But even Scripture debunks such white hat -black hat obvious IDs of evil vs good.  It is said that evil disguises itself as “an angel of light”,  and so the Left Behind folks point to “world movement leaders” promoting peace,  but miss or ignore the possibility that disguises could also be used to attract the “spiritual” people by using hooks that appear as “Biblical” and orthodox.  (I tend to agree with the approach of Walter Wink who forwards the idea that the imagery here reflects a notion of “heavenly/spiritual” representations of earthly structures,  and Tony Campolo often refers to structures such as political and economic power structures as representing a form of these “principalities and powers”.  )

It seems that national Christian leaders are helping to make this posing appear legitimate (since there doesn’t seem to be the depth of testimony in  the Bush camp sufficient enough to satisfy the usual rigorous requirements of “theological correctness”  of the fundamentalist leanings of the Christian Right) by giving their stamp of approval to the Bush administration,  which seems to me to be bending over backwards to find theological justification for a rather weak , non-descript “testimony”.   I tend to feel that this “approval” is driven by nationalistic tendencies that all too often are stronger determinative factors in the minds of many Christian Americans than the “alternative” voices trying to speak to us from God’s story.  This is often driven by  strong urges to maintain a status-quo American lifestyle,  and I do not excuse or exclude myself from remaining within such a bubble myself (see the Willimon post “Christmas in the Empire” which I linked to in the previous post). 

I find it discouraging to feel “trapped” in this bubble,  because I know that I am unable to do this without a church that seeks to nurture a different Kingdom.  I have been trying to figure out how to say this for months now,  and have been managing to stave off the issue for some later time when I can  articulate it effectively (whatever that might be;   I suspect that it is yet another effort on my part to postpone facing this).

I also recognize that I am fighting many personal battles here as well.  I haven’t felt any sense of invitation or experienced any sense that I have something to offer.  I know intellectually and in my heart that this is not true,  but it becomes increasingly difficult to “put myself out there” when I keep getting a sense of a wall instead of some sign of a desire to know, nurture,  and help shape my sense of church.  And my sense tells me that we don’t even get to first base without some structure for the nurture of accountable discipleship,  which has to start somehow with actually knowing something about each other. 

My reaction thus far,  and for several years now,  has been mainly to stay away,  but I have known from the start that this is somewhat self-defeating.  But I don’t find much relief , despite periodic bursts of energy to try and test the waters again.  I’ve heard some good preachers,  but it’s never been the preaching (although that doesn’t hurt) ,  but the lack of emphasis on intentional discipleship and accountability.  It’s practically nonexistent. 

But I continue to search for places where I can “come and see”.