Focus on the Family

Here's Focus on the Family's response to my letter of inquiry regarding their appalling lack of notice of poor families and the difficulties they face while at the same time pushing an obviously partisan political agenda that sometimes betrays those very families (posted on this blog as "Dear Focus on the Family", 12/28/05). My response to them is next.Dear Mr. Wrisley:



Thank you for your recent e-mail to Focus on the Family. It’s my privilege to get back to you on behalf of our staff.



In response to the points you’ve raised, you need to understand that Dr. Dobson and Focus on the Family have never presumed to issue definitive statements with respect to the most effective means of expressing Christian concern for the poor and the downtrodden. We believe as firmly as you do that followers of Jesus have a mandate to reach out to the needy; we simply aren’t convinced that government-sponsored programs represent the best way of fulfilling this charge. If in the course of speaking out about public policy issues we seem to have had relatively little to say about the importance of ministering to the impoverished, we can assure you that our “silence” has nothing to do with a lack of compassion for their plight. When it comes to politics, however, we have other priorities. In a world as complex and multifaceted as ours it is crucial to learn how to choose your battles carefully. In our view, issues such as the defense of innocent preborn life and the defense of marriage, which involve clear-cut absolute moral and spiritual values, simply *have* to take precedence over all other social and political concerns. Accordingly, in the public policy arena we have chosen to focus our energies on these urgent aspects of the fight for the family.



As for urging Christians to help the poor, we are doing everything we feasibly can to partner with other ministries that emphasize this particular aspect of the Christian calling. We think that Christians can make a more effective difference in society if a diversity of independent organizations exist, each focusing on unique emphases and specializations that reflect the work they feel God has called them to do. Though we believe that the Lord has led us to direct our primary efforts to other matters, we lend a hand as we are able to assist others in their callings. For example, we raised over 1.2 millions dollars that was distributed in its entirety to groups on the ground equipped to help Hurricane Katrina victims.



We hope this reply has clarified our perspective for you, Mr. Wrisley. Thanks again for caring enough to contact us. Don’t hesitate to let us know if we can be of any further assistance. God bless you.



Alexander Mackenzie
Focus on the Family



Dear Alexander Mackenzie:

Thank you for your response.

Let me begin by saying that your response is much preferable to the one I got from Budweiser, the company that controls about half of the alcohol sales in the US. I wrote then to ask about their ethical dilemma of selling beer just outside of dry Indian reservations. They replied that they were happy I had written and hoped I'd continue to enjoy their products. As a beer drinker, as a Christian, and as a concerned person, I was beyond annoyed.

I'm concerned that, "Dr. Dobson and Focus on the Family have never presumed to issue definitive statements with respect to the most effective means of expressing Christian concern for the poor and the downtrodden." I'm concerned because Jesus already has issued such statements, and they're frightening. So have the prophets. To fail to act is to choose not to act.

I mentioned in my letter to you that if you believe that compassion and justice issues don't belong in the realm of the government, at least Focus on the Family could do more to promote the kind of responses to daily poverty – not just emergencies like Katrina – that follow the path of Jesus Christ. Did you know that here in Colorado, according to the US Census report of 2000, less than 2% of households are same-sex households (www.gaydemographics.org)? Did you also know that here in Colorado 11% of children live below the Federal Poverty Level ($18,850/year for a family of four)? Low-income families (beneath $37,700/year for a family of four) raise the numbers to 32%. (http://nccp.org/state_detail_demographic_CO.html#definitions) Those are alarming statistics.

I realize fully the need to concentrate your energies in areas where you feel you can do the greatest good. Maybe asking you to advocate for the poor children of America (in whatever form that takes) might be akin to complaining that a five-star restaurant doesn't serve oatmeal. I write, and will probably continue to write, to remind you that “family concerns” have little to do with political wrangling over same-sex marriage or Supreme Court nominees, and more to do with strengthening all families and finding ways to meet the needs of all families.

As a student of the scriptures and of Christian history, I assure you that concern for the poor is also involves "clear-cut absolute moral and spiritual values". In fact, if we look simply at the sheer number of biblical text and mandates, justice for the poor wins out over all other concerns, including the safety of the unborn and heterosexual marriage. You and I are more complex than that, though, and understand that there is more to morality than raw numbers. However, poverty does indeed seem to be at the top of God's list of concerns. Our response to the poor is the triumphant Messiah's criteria for judgement in Matthew 25.

I am in no way asking Focus on the Family to become Focus on the Governmental Programs Addressing Poverty. I'm asking why your focus has been so narrow. Poor families are also families, and even though they face different issues that how to juggle soccer practice and Dad's career moves, they have deep needs that are fully in sync with your organization's mission. Their physical and spiritual and psychological needs are as (some might say more) important as suburban middle-income Americans. I'm asking Focus on the Family to use your vast resources and power to defend the helpless.

Let me close by suggesting several ways you can advocate for the poor within your mission of family ministry. First, why not take a quarter each year and focus on poor families? Write letters to your supporters urging them to work on political and practical fronts to help the poor. The majority of poor children live in single parent households. Ask your supporters and listeners to join or start a Big Brothers/Big Sisters program. If you oppose Head Start programs, ask them to start their own in churches. After school attention (like child-care programs) has been shown to dramatically increase academic performance.

Focus on the Family has roughly 240 days a year of radio broadcast time. Why not commit a percentage (10%?) of that time to bringing attention to the plight of poor American families and efforts to help those families? There is a myriad of ministries that work with the poor you could highlight on a weekly or daily basis.

Partnering with ministries that work with the poor and even advocate on their behalf will only help you and them.

Finally, I encourage Focus on the Family to rethink your position on political action. I know, one is known by the company one keeps. If Focus on the Family said, along with Sojourners, “Budgets are moral documents”, you might look like liberals or worse. But remember Jesus, who was willing to associate with the wrong people in order to do the right thing. If Focus on the Family would add its voice to the efforts to bring moral social responsibility to lawmaking, including the noble opposition to abortion, it would make a great difference.

I wish you peace this Epiphany season. May the light of Christ shine on you (and on me!). I await your response.

shalom,

ian wrisley

The Church, big and little "C"

The other day I told my wife that I’m ready to be a non-attending member of somebody else’s church. I really wonder sometimes if we might be better off as “post-church Jesus followers”, meeting in homes or parks whenever we felt like it. I know there are folks out there who do just that. I sympathize with them and, sometimes, envy them. Church is hard work, especially on the personal, and interpersonal, level. Then there’s the wider scope of the Church, big C. It’s not easy talking about the Church, especially now, what with all those scandals and our postmodern suspicion of any overarching reality. The Church is what we want to leave, not what we want to flee toward. At least, that’s how I feel. After ten years in ministry, I’m ready for a break.

But I can’t just walk away from the Church, big C. If God will work at all, it’s mainly going to be through the Church. I say mainly because there are plenty of places where God is working that ain’t the Church. God’s Work isn’t contained within the Church; the Church is contained within the Work. But by and large, if you see good things happening around the world, chances are that somewhere in it there are Christians supporting, initiating, questioning, sweating, dying, praying and celebrating. That’s just who we are. That’s the Church. Wherever justice is served, wherever compassion is done, wherever lives are reordered and the current order of things is resisted, the Spirit of Jesus is in the thick of it. And wherever you can find the Spirit of Jesus, you’ll find the Church.

Defining Church so broadly might seem like a cop-out, like liberal optimism better suited for the world of a hundred years ago, or like another form of imperialism. It’s like saying, “See, that’s ours, too.” It would be imperial, if I were saying, “Ours.” But I’m not saying that. I’m saying that justice and mercy and compassion and all the rest are God’s domain, and that whenever we tread into the territory of mercy or compassion, we’re on God’s ground. God is not territorial like we are, and does not resent intrusions, but rather welcomes guests like family. Further, since God acts in other-oriented love, the justice of God is not self-serving, but self-giving. God’s people just get to come along and help out.

That’s because of how the Church is structured. Bu structure, I don’t mean the institutional matrix. I mean the organic union of Body with Head. To be a body in this sense is to be like the head. The Church is the incarnational reality of Jesus. The Church, then, takes its cue from what Jesus did, and what Jesus is doing. The Church asks itself, “What would Jesus do?” The WWJD craze shows no sign of abating. When I first started seeing WWJD bracelets and socks and coffee mugs and toilet covers, I was appalled. I was appalled because I don’t know if anyone means it. I still have an ambiguous relationship with it. I don’t think that all these suburban moms and dads who buy their kids the WWJD paraphernalia would really want their kids doing what Jesus would do. Jesus would come over for dinner and tell stories that would probably insult his hosts and befuddle his followers. He would make trouble for his family, who would think he was crazy. He would befriend outcasts, heal the sick, restore relationships, break customs, resist authorities, feed the hungry, raise the dead, and preach good news to prisoners.

And he would die. On the cross Jesus took into himself the sins of the world. Most of us have heard something like that before, but he also took on the oppression of unjust systems, the dehumanizing forces of what St Paul called, “principalities and powers and rulers and authorities” and defeated them. He defeated them because they wore themselves out on him. He outlasted them through his goodness, not through his power. We can agree with St. Augustine that evil is only a shadow from good, not solid in and of itself. Jesus won because the vacuum of evil was compromised by his unmitigated goodness, fully unleashed in his willingness to die.

So, the Church is that people who follows the way of Jesus, in the faith of Jesus, led by the Spirit of Jesus. Because the Church is led by the Spirit of Jesus, we cannot always ask, “What would Jesus do?”, but instead, “What is Jesus doing?” “WIJD” is a dangerous question, because it is so open ended. And because it is nearly always answered from 180 degrees from where we thought we were. The question unsettles, but the answers kill and make alive. Answering that question has led Christians to oppose slavery and to hide Jews and to support environmental reform and to ordain women and to stand in front of guns with open hands and a thousand other “issues” and “causes”. When the Church listens to the Spirit of Jesus, there’s no telling where they will find themselves.

To tell the truth, it’s never been much of a stretch for me to grasp the fullness of the Church, the Body of Christ. I’m not a good postmodernist because I’m OK with the whole cloud of witnesses, the mystical body, the people of God in all times and in all places stuff. It’s not the Church Universal I struggle with; it’s the Church Particular. I look around at all the localized expressions I know, from denominations to little corner congregations, and I wonder.

I wonder how and why God would bother. We’re a bunch of backbiting, exclusivist whiners. My liberal friends are so much smarter and more compassionate than the fundamentalists, and my conservative friends are so much more faithful than those non-Christian liberals. And, of course, I’m better than all those judgmental goobers. The Church Particular, in denominational forms and localized congregations, sometimes seems so full of contradiction and bureaucracy and dysfunction that I can’t believe God could ever use these people.

But in a sense, there is no Universal, only the Particular (oops, slipping pomo). The fullness of the Church, big C, is contained within the church, little c. I hesitate to say that, and I hate the way it looks on the page, but there it is.

I think there are three ways of “doing church”, at least, history shows three wide pictures of what the church particular looks like. In The Beginning there was the tiny band of disciples around Jesus, somewhere between three and five hundred at a time. An intimate band, like a group of disciples and their rabbi, or a philosopher and students. That picture wasn’t uncommon in the early years of the Church movement. Disciples learn from masters in a very different way than the contemporary classroom methodology that permeates everything now, from the corporate world to parenting. They lived together. They ate, slept, and fought over who would clean the bathroom together. The information a teacher, rabbi, had to impart to his disciples couldn’t be separated from the person of the rabbi. Learning happened at many times and in many ways. It was formal and informal; it was information and formation; moral, intellectual, cultural, and spiritual.

But it was different from the traditional rabbi/disciple grouping, too. First, Jesus called his disciples to follow him, and his followers called theirs. Rabbis, on the other hand, were pursued by potential students. That’s not necessarily a hard and fast distinction, the gospels, after all, tell stories of people coming to Jesus to “interview” him as a teacher, but it’s close enough to not be a caricature. Then there’s the gender thing. Rabbis taught men, never women. Today things are different, but Jesus, 2,000 years ago, seems to have had close female followers – disciples. That is apparently unheard of. St. Paul also had no problem identifying women with his own “status” in the community.

Later, after the community had begun to settle a little, it became more of a family. You can see evidence of this shift even in the New Testament. Jesus himself said that anyone who obeys God is his kin. The early Church referred to one another as brother and sister, mother and father. There was continuity with the Roman family system, but radical breaks, too. There was no pater familias, for instance – no one to demand the highest (second to the emperor) honor. In volunteer families, there is a certain kind of fluidity and mutual respect that gets misplaced in many of the more traditional type. There is the kind of love based on give and take and appreciation for the foibles and abilities of the others. The family of Jesus was an amazing thing to its contemporaries because of their willingness to include anyone who wanted inclusion. It didn’t matter what geographical region or social strata a person came from, in the family, they were respected and loved.

It wasn’t long before the family and disciple cohort gave way to institutional hierarchy. It’s easy to lament the advent of and continuing difficulties spawned by the institutional Church, but it happened and continues to preserve elements and resources of the faith, like a safe or a library that we can visit and learn from, even if we’d rather not live there. The institution grew, and grows, out of a kind of survival necessity. If you’re not going forward, you’re going back; whoever’s not busy being born s busy dying; change or die. So, the Church grew up in some ways.

After Constantine, one of the best or worst things to happen to the faith since St. Paul, depending on who you ask, it took on some of the form and function of the dying empire. Appointments to important ecclesiastical posts were as coveted then as governorships had once been. Bishops became the most powerful people in their regions. Disputes over theology and power and control often ended in bloodshed, some of it officially sanctioned.

Sometimes this is laid at the feet of the Roman Catholic Church. It’s an unfair accusation, though. Long before there was a Roman Catholic Church, there was a Church, and then a Western and Eastern Church. The institutionalism of the medieval Church hangs around today. It’s in old line denominations and I suspect we’ll start seeing in entrenching itself even in the cult-of-personality mega-churches, especially as their founders/statesmen begin to die off.

In the medieval institution, interestingly enough, the first two forms were still present, at least in some forms. Familial names were maintained. Parish priests were still Fathers and female leaders were called Mother. Even the Pope’s title comes from the Latin for Father. Little bands formed out in the hinterlands, sometimes intentionally, sometimes as disciples chased down great masters, seeking knowledge and wisdom. They often became families of monks and nuns, ruled by Abbots (Fathers) or Abbesses (Mothers). Members of such communities were Brothers or Sisters. Sometimes men and women even found themselves living side by side in these strange new families.

The same simplifying phenomenon would reassert itself in the turbulent decades after the Reformation, when the Roman Church lost its thousand year monopoly. Freed from religious restraints, imaginations flowered, and groups of every sort of belief and practice sprang into being. Some banded together as families, living communally as the monks had done, but as married, single, old and young.

I often say that the Church is an organic whole, not an institution. I think dichotomies like that are clever. I’m wrong, though, because an organic model and an institutional model have this in common: they’re both organisms. The difference is that institutions are the kind of organisms that exist for the sake of survival. They stop being a resource for God’s work in the world, in the community, and begin to see the community, the world, as a resource for their own survival. Churches that approach their role in the mission like that are not as easy to spot as one might assume. They have wonderful programs and opportunities and missions. They seem to be serving the community, but if you can get their leaders to talk about their work candidly, it’s clear that the programs, missions, and services are hooks for pulling people in. It’s like a good ad campaign for a good product: the consumer will probably benefit from the offered product, and the producer will profit as well. Don’t be fooled, though, producers want to get ahead; they’re not as altruistic as they might first seem. A church like that becomes a kind of monster producing pretty programs as bait for an unsuspecting public. The institution becomes a consumer of consumers.

An organic church, on the other hand, sees itself as an integral part of the community, the world, with more to offer than to give. It is the Body of Christ, broken for the world. An organic church has a good theology of resurrection. It understands that even if it dies, God might not be finished. A good theology of resurrection leads -- not only in church thinking, but in all thinking and faithful living – to a good theology of death. Death is a nuisance, a pest, but never the final word. G. K. Chesterton said that a love of life coupled with a complete disregard for safety leads to courage. The Church Universal and Particular, functions in that paradox.

All this leads me to want to say that the Church is a movement. But the other day I was talking to a rabbi, who said that the problem with movements is that as soon as you join one you stop moving. I can live with that caveat, so instead I’ll say that Jesus began a momentum. Where it’s going we can predict by its trajectory, but we can never determine it. Too many unforeseen variables. The momentum carries us, though.

If we can think in dynamic familial terms, with some cousins we don’t know very well and are kind of glad not to, we’ll help the organic momentum continue. If everyone we encounter deserves the old Middle Eastern respect of a father or mother or sister or brother, we’ll recognize the kingdom of God over all. If our mission is not to “expand our territory”, but to be an arm of God’s mission, we’ll retain the necessary humility to “succeed”. If we will see ourselves and our churches and our movements as resources for God’s mission in the world, we won’t become rapacious monsters. And, if we will develop a good resurrection theology, believing in the one whose power raised Jesus from the dead, we will be able to allow our institutions and dreams to die and rise to God’s momentous glory.

Magi

They ought to give us more pause, more discomfort. We should be less self-assured in their presence and question some of the foundations on which we’ve built our religious world-views. But we domesticate, and we have tamed them, taken away their foreign habits and taught them table manners. Be careful, though: like all things domesticated, we may be lost to their power, but their power is not lost.
They came from the East, their beards curled and perfumed, their accents strange, their religion unapproachable. They were Magi – philosophers, yes, but also astrologers who mapped human history in the stars. They were probably priests of Ahura Mazda, the god of light first preached by the ancient Zarathustra, also called Zoroaster, in some uncertain age.
Babylonian seers, mystics whose compatriots are mentioned by name by Roman writers, came to Jerusalem, the great city at the crossroads and in the cross hairs of much of the ancient (and modern) world. There seems to have been no language barrier, which is no surprise, really, for people traveling through a world dominated by the Roman Empire and Greek culture. They came looking for a boy, born some time recently. Their search caused a quite stir among the courtiers of Herod, a pseudo-king, a puppet, really, who was superstitious but not faithful, and cruel.
Good Christians and Jews are also superstitious, and even though we cannot cite you chapter and verse, we know that astrology is a sin, and isn’t there something in there about stoning them? It’s in there (find it yourself, you’ll see), but the Book seems more interested in revealing a strange world, indeed. We, who domesticate the world into mechanized parts, are confronted by a cosmos teeming with life: stars and rocks and hills and mountains and animals and trees groan, dance, sing, bow, speak, keep silence, and celebrate the activity of God. No wonder those men who looked could see what’s been called “the only unique event in history” (Dag Hammerskold).
There are religious and anti-theistic scientists of a certain bent who comb the annals of history to either prove or disprove the Bethlehem star, as though that would finally answer the question(s) of Jesus. Some believe they’ve found it in ancient Chinese references to an astronomical event around 10-6 BC. There are those who say (rightly) that stars do not stop over anything, and those who say (rightly) that the term “star” can refer to a lot of astronomical phenomena, and that to appear to stop is good enough. Clearly, both groups have more than science on their agenda.
I don’t think we could ever have dreamed up the Incarnation. At the apex of our faithful imagining, we might dream this story of pagan philosophers coming to worship the boy Jesus, but it’s not likely. We’re too provincial and small-minded. We’ve domesticated the world with science and we would domesticate God with reason and religion. We wouldn’t have our god speaking to these strangers, not in their stellar medium, at least. Were we to imagine this story, the liberals among us would have the Three Wise Persons and the Holy Family celebrating their diversity, honoring the womanhood of Mary and treating Jesus as special in his own right (but not the unique offspring of God). Then they’d organize a protest march against Herod. Our conservatives would have them deny Mary any status while celebrating motherhood in general, worship Jesus, start a war with Herod, then return to their own country to evangelize their neighbors (door to door, with tracts). But it’s not our story; it’s God’s story, and God will not be tamed.
Many Christians either believe or just live as if Jesus is our property. Get this: Jesus is surely present in and through his community in a special way, but cannot not be fully contained by this community nor owned by us. Jesus is sometimes called “the man for others.” That’s truer than true. He is the Jesus of the Jews, the Jesus of the Zoroastrians, the Jesus of the Hindus, Muslims, animists, and atheists. He belongs to the world, to whom he’s given himself, and the world belongs to him.
The Book says that everything is moving Godward (God was in Christ reconciling all things to himself – Colossians 1:20). That’s certainly the case with these Magi. The stars themselves (and astrology, too?) were moving toward the center of God’s activity in the world, which is Jesus, as were the Magi. That should transform our notions of evangelism.
If God is inexorably true to all who dare to look, we can finally stop being sales reps for “the best retirement community imaginable,” or pushing the ultimate religion buzz. We can allow the truth to speak unapologetically and irreducibly. What a relief for those of us who say we’re not evangelists! What bad news for those of us who think we are! We can speak the Word of the Wild God, who “kills and makes alive,” (Deuteronomy 32:39) without feeling the pressure to get results. We don’t have to fully grasp it, (and) we don’t have to be able to defend it, because the word is not our word but “a fire, a hammer that breaks rocks into pieces” (Jeremiah 23:29). It comes to anyone who has ears to hear and eyes to see.
By Word of God I do not have in mind any modernistic formulations about the Book that try to tame it, formulations that use words like “inerrant”, and “infallible”. The Book knows nothing of such defensiveness. I mean the star-like frontal attack on the assumptions of the-world-as-it-is. I mean projections of hope beyond hope that God is acting and will act. God is already busy calling the most unlikely people to the feet of his son.
I used to paraphrase my mother, “You’ll be surprised by who's at the Resurrection,” until a friend shot back, “Yeah, and who ain't.” The Magi and their descendants do indeed cause us to stumble, because they, of all people, do not belong, at least, not as many of us order things. But here they are, and their presence gives me hope.