Read My Article on The Advent Fast

I am pleased to announce that my article on “The Advent Fast” will be published in Christian Reflection: A Series in Faith and Ethics. To read it you can check their website for when it is published online or subscribe to the print edition. I subscribe to the print edition, and it is a great and rewarding read. Best of all, subscribing to the print edition is free!

More about Christian Reflection:

The Center of Christian Ethics at Baylor University publishes Christian Reflection: A Series in Faith and Ethics quarterly, containing thoughtful Christian reflection and reliable guidance in engaging the ethical dimensions of today’s world. Each issue includes articles, inspirational pieces, reviews, interviews, art and worship and liturgical aids for congregational and personal worship.

Digital Fasting

A discussion has started concerning how our minds interact with digital devices and how multitasking and being always on and always present with a device can have negative effects on our minds and bodies. The New York Times ran an article on how “Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime” and NPR’s Fresh Air had an interview called “Digital Overload: Your Brain On Gadgets” this week that delineated how its not good to be hitched to your smartphone or email client. From the NY Times:

Cellphones, which in the last few years have become full-fledged computers with high-speed Internet connections, let people relieve the tedium of exercising, the grocery store line, stoplights or lulls in the dinner conversation.

The technology makes the tiniest windows of time entertaining, and potentially productive. But scientists point to an unanticipated side effect: when people keep their brains busy with digital input, they are forfeiting downtime that could allow them to better learn and remember information, or come up with new ideas.

Just like we need to fast from food, so to do we need to fast from technology in today’s world. The journalist for the NY Times (who was interviewed on Fresh Air), Matt Richtel, won a Pulitzer for his series on driving while distracting, and his research into distraction led him to studies that paint a far bleaker picture of attention spans when it comes to technology. Richtel makes an interesting insight on technology that leads to an interesting connection with fasting:

“You know, halfway through this year, writing about this and following on the distracted driving series last year, I think we’ve come upon an analogy that really informs how we’re covering this and that as I’ve spoken to scientists, they’ve embraced, too. And the analogy is technology as analogous to food…So just as food nourishes us and we need it for life, so too in the 21st century, in the modern age, we need technology. You cannot survive without the communications tools. The productivity tools are essential. And yet, food has pros and cons to it. We know that some food is Twinkies and some is Brussels sprouts. And we know that if we overeat, it causes problems.

“Similarly, after, say, 20 years of glorifying all technology as if all computers were good and all use of it was good, I think science is beginning to embrace the idea that some technology is Twinkies, and some technology is Brussels sprouts.

“And if we consume too much technology, just like if we consume too much food, it can have ill effects. And that is the moment in time we find ourselves in with this series and with the way we are digesting, if you will, technology all over the place, everywhere today” (from Fresh Air).

The food analogy is important to how we begin to think about technology. Since I use a computer so much at work, I started about a year or so ago to purposefully not spend time on a computer on Sundays. It was a meaningful part of the Sabbath for me, since checking email is work for me. So on Sundays, I don’t check email. I try not to go near the computer at all, unless I want to stream a movie or TV show (we don’t have cable). What has been interesting about my fasting from email on Sundays is that I have noticed what the Ritchel is getting at in his interview and article. We just need breaks in our lives from everything, even if it’s good for us or very productive. Taking breaks leads to self control, silence, and reflection. We need to think sometimes, not just interact, and digital fasting helps accomplish that.

What ways do you make a digital fast?

What About Almsgiving?

I’ve been reading up on fasting a lot recently and so much of the early church writers connected almsgiving to fasting, something many of us miss the connection on today. Throughout church history people who fasted gave the food they did not eat during the fast away to those who need it as alms. I’ve been convicted about almsgiving and fasting before, but haven’t ever done anything with that conviction.

I think the disconnect between fasting and almsgiving today is because of the decentralization of food from the neighborhood and community. The democratization of food purchasing in our country, when you can use food stamps at Aldi’s, Whole Foods, Costco or the farmer’s market stands in stark contrast to the corporate overtaking of our food systems by the industrial oligarchy of corporate food profiteers (watch Food, Inc.).  The democratization of food purchasing and the corporate overtaking of our food system has led to people on food stamps blending in at supermarkets when purchasing and to receiving over-preserved, high fructose corn syrup laced chemical equivalents of foods in donations (there is a growing movement of soup kitchens and food pantries getting local produce; let this continue to blossom!). The bottom line is that those that need food do not stand out in society. That’s a good thing when it means you’ve eliminated the problem, but a not so good thing if you haven’t. People just aren’t aware of the problem anymore. It’s hidden.

What do you think the disconnect between fasting and almsgiving stems from in our culture?

Four Hundred Years and Still We Disobey

“The translation I have used is the King James Version, not
only because of my love and respect for the language of that version, but also
because it is the version that most English-speaking Christians have been
reading for the last four hundred years while disobeying or ignoring Christ’s
commandments and praying for His help in their wars.”

—Wendell Berry, on why he chose the King James as the
version for the excerpts from the gospels in his book Blessed Are the
Peacemakers: Christ’s Teachings About
Love, Compassion and Forgiveness

Implicit in this choice is the lesson that to create change we must speak the language of the past.  How many of us who are emerging, ancient-future, missional, etc. speak in a “new” language to distinguish ourselves from the ideas of the past yet try to use this “new” language to try to change those stuck in the past?

We must learn to express new ideas in old language, then we will be not speaking past each other but speaking poetry.

What to Do When the Empire Strikes Back

In developing my lesson for our small group on the last two beatitudes (Blessed are the peacemakers… & Blessed are those who are persecuted…) I started playing the word association game with empire and kingdom to lead toward a discussion of how to exist as peacemakers who are active in a world of persecuting empires.

EMPIRE…………………………………………………………………..KINGDOM

War……………………………………………………………………………..Peace
Brute force……………………………………………………..Purposeful Service
Live by the sword………………………………..Beat swords into plowshares
Power through greatness………………….Power through the least of these
Appeasement………………………………………………………..Reconciliation
Greed……………………………………………………………………………Tithing
Might makes right……………………………………………….Love makes right
Peacekeepers………………………………………………………..Peacemakers

The role of the kingdom as peacemakers is to be diplomats of Christ’s coming kingdom of peace, love, and truth to the citizens of the world who all too often assume and accept the world’s distorted view of peace.  The Empire solves problems in ways that are contrary and evil mutations of the Christian’s calling to be a real peacemaker.  Case in point, the United States Armed Forces concept of "peacemaker" is to not make peace but instead  keep peace through appeasement or war, hence the military naming a nuclear missile program the Peacemaker/Peacekeeper program.  This name was an important statement of the way the world lives and dies by the sword—it will use the sword to keep the peace, but if necessary they will make peace by launching a nuclear arsenal capable of blowing up the world hundreds of times over.

Persecution comes to the point where we have to decide what happens when the empire, the powers and principalities of this world, strikes back at us.  This all hinges on turning the other cheek, which is not a submissive act but a subversive act, an act that does not fight or flee but instead perpetually resists.

Ron Sider’s Christian Peacemaker Teams have called this the Third Way of Christ, to not fight or flee as the world does but to stand with Christ and

• Seize the moral initiative

• Find a creative alternative to violence

• Assert your own humanity and dignity as a person

• Meet force with ridicule or humor

• Break the cycle of humiliation

• Refuse to submit or to accept the inferior position

• Expose the injustice of the system

• Take control of the power dynamic

• Shame the oppressor into repentance

• Stand your ground

• Make the Powers make decisions for which they are not prepared

• Recognize your own power

• Be willing to suffer rather than retaliate

• Force the oppressor to see you in a new light

• Deprive the oppressor of a situation where a show of force is effective

• Be willing to undergo the penalty of breaking unjust laws

• Die to fear of the old order and its rules
(adapted from CPT and Walter Wink)

This takes a radical reorientation to how the Christian approaches persecution, particularly when the empire seems so out there and we aren’t really persecuted by the powers and principalities of this world agressively but indirectly.