Just a few choice morsels from Jesus For President (p. 228)
The church is a people called out of the world to embody a social alternative that the world cannot know on its own terms.
Ironic that so many people in the church adopt the categories and the “realism” of the world, and become skeptics of the relevance of Jesus by constructing elaborate systems of theological justifications for placing American values on a par with Christian values (of course, this is not what they say is happening. They just say that Jesus REALLY meant this or that, because he would recognize “real world” necessities.
The church is not simply suggesting political alternatives. The church is embodying one.
This is where the defenders of the the “American Way” values will jump up and question the motives of those who cast doubt on “free-enterprise”, and who “live in a fantasy world” that believes that non-violence is , in actuality, the way of Jesus.
Dan has a great first post in a series of posts (don’t know how many are kin the series, but this is part 1) on the “mythic discourse of protection”
The violence of our contemporary world is sustained by the mythic discourse of protection. That is to say, violence is routinely justified as a means of protecting the vulnerable, and, in particular, protecting those whom we love. Thus, troops are mobilized and forcefully cross international (and other) boundaries, not because said troops are “going to war” but because they now operate as international “police” forces. In contemporary discourse, a basic (shall we say “ontological”?) shift has occurred in the nature of armies. The armies of the dominant global powers are no longer aggressive forces trained for terrorism and conquest. Rather, they are defensive forces trained to implement, and police, “the peace.”
Of course, there is nothing new about this discourse. Empires have always waged wars for the sake of peace, and, in retrospect, we have been able to see that, time after time, it was these wars which were the greatest obstacles to peace. History has taught us that empires that promise peace through violence are, inevitable, the primary agents of the perpetuation of violence in the world.
The promise of the church is this: none of us alone are Christ (that’s blasphemy), but all of us together are Christ to the world (that’s ecclesiology)
