The DC Gun Ban

The pacifists are going histrionic over what one person called Scalia’s “glib” opinion.  (Sometimes glibness is precisely what we need to yank us out of our careless flaccidity about the Constitution.)  Let’s take a deep breath and a closer look.

Even if we stipulate (I don’t, but if we did) that comprehensive gun bans should be allowed to stand and that the 2nd Amendment should be set aside, the key question that Scalia helped us answer is this one: IS IT THE PROVINCE OF THE SCOTUS to make it happen?

No. A thousand times, NO.  Here is Justice Scalia at his most winsomely direct:

“Undoubtedly, some think the Second Amendment is outmoded in our society, where our standing army is the pride of our nation, where well trained police forces provide personal security and where gun violence is a serious problem.  That is perhaps debatable.  But what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.”

Justice Kennedy has made a habit of citing “emerging awareness,” or more precisely his reading of same, as a proper basis for SCOTUS decisions. In doing so, he ignores the inconvenient fact that the Constitution has prescribed a straightforward means of expressing public consensus before any portion of the Constitution can be set aside.  It is not SCOTUS’ prerogative to ascertain public consensus outside the parameters that the Constitution has already set forth for measuring it.

If we want to set the 2nd Amendment aside to achieve what the pacifists desire, let the process begin, and let us do it right: get the states to vote, and get 3/4 in both houses of Congress to agree. But don’t eviscerate the Bill of Rights by simply turning it over to the discretion of one undisciplined Associate Justice, Kennedy, who is trying - in vain, we think - to look like King Solomon. Doing so puts all of the other provisions of the Constitution in equal jeopardy of being set aside as a result of one swing vote arrogating to himself the right to define the terms of public consensus.  

(We must have judges with more self-restraint than that.  It should be obvious to anyone that a President Obama will not give them to us.  It would not surprise me to find Hillary on the Court after Obama is elected.)

So, gentle reader who thinks the DC gun ban should stand, let’s say you are convinced that the SCOTUS decision is a disaster. If you are, then get 3/4 of the states and the elected representatives to vote with you, and amend the Constitution. That is the sum total of what Scalia has said: it is not within SCOTUS’ prerogative to substitute someone’s reading of “emerging national consensus” for the very simple, very concrete, and entirely objective means of measuring national consensus that we already have laid out for ourselves. There is a way to achieve what you want done, but relying on unelected justices to do it for you is an illegal shortcut that undermines the Constitution as a whole.

That you might believe the bar is set too high does not justify going around the procedures we already have in place, procedures that have been successfully used a couple of dozen times. The bar may be high - as it should be - but it is not impossibly so.

qb

Kansas and Arizona: The Enlightened

Well, this much can be said for northern Kansas and central Arizona:  these citizens are enlightened to an impressive degree.

To be more specific, Diet Dr. Pepper is available at McDonald’s in West Sedona, AZ; at Wendy’s in Topeka, KS; and at McDonald’s in Junction City, KS.

qb

How We Organize Ourselves

Let’s face the aesthetic question squarely:  questions of community structure are big-time yawners.  The conversation is always hard to get started; it seldom sustains itself except by way of pitched battles about utter minutiae; and people seldom clear their calendars to accommodate discussions of community structure.

Let’s also affirm this:  how we organize ourselves as a community of faith is peripheral to the gospel.  Jesus did not live, get killed, and rise from the dead to ensure that we organize ourselves a certain way.

But then let us also be honest:  structure is important.  Here’s why.

1.  The way we structure our community embodies and reinforces our theological assumptions, or at least the ones that were dominant at the time we structured it.  If our central idea of God relates to authority and power, we will structure our community to reflect them; if freedom and creativity, then just so.  

The framers of our Constitution had a specific counter-image in mind (i. e., King George) when they designed our formative documents, and their world view embodied and reinforced their cynicism about arbitrary exercises of unbridled, centralized power.  So they gave us a profound separation of powers, relying on checks and balances to ensure that individual liberty was adequately respected and that the “consent of the governed” was the operative currency of power.  Simply recreating a monarchy and hoping it would be benevolent and wise would have been self-defeating.  Quickly.

As our beliefs change, and as our theological understandings and assumptions evolve under the administration of the Spirit of God, it’s reasonable that we would allow our community structure to change as well.  This is similar to Jesus’ idea of putting new wine in new wineskins rather than old:  a people constituted by a law of grace would not be well served by a community structured around a law of fleshly observances and external conformity to a prescriptive code.  Which suggests, therefore, the second reason for being concerned about structure:

2.  Structure provides methodological guidance to ensure that our living-together is coherent.  In other words, if our community is to be a compelling, prophetic voice testifying to the goodness of God’s active grace in our midst in the person of Jesus and the indwelling of his Spirit, then our living testimony - our actual words and deeds, and the beliefs that they inevitably express to onlookers - ought to show that it has been guided by precisely those kinds of considerations.  

If we believe that we all constitute a holy priesthood of believers, and if our lives are to testify to the kinds of divine grace that make such a priesthood viable and vital and effectual, the way we go about ordering our lives together ought to help us walk in that direction.  If our community life ultimately pits us against one another and fosters the emergence of a pecking order, then it’s possible that our structure has guided us in that direction; it’s possible that the outcome was in large measure predetermined by power-oriented decisions up front.  Modern business theory (*ahem*) says it this way:  ”your system is designed to yield precisely the results you’re seeing.”

3.  Structure gives us short-cuts to the goals we adopt in community.  Many of the common questions that arise when we attempt new initiatives can be answered in advance by due attention to structure.  We know this implicitly in relationships such as marriage and family!  When it is time to move from one town or job or school to another, an agreed structure helps us bypass much, or at least some, of the emotionally laden, preparatory conversation about what we believe and why, both of which come into play when we make decisions about which direction to go.  If a marriage under stress comprises two people who have voluntarily submitted themselves to one another in an indissoluble union, then there is no need to discuss whether or not they should stay together in the first place; they have decided that.

Structure is boring, and it is peripheral.  But it is also unavoidable.  If we neglect it, its absence will still impose on us a range of outcomes; and without divine miracles, those outcomes will not be too far from chaos and division.  We should therefore be wise and give it due, though not primary, consideration.

By the way, that means we must engage in politics, which Richard John Neuhaus defines as “free persons deliberating the question, how ought we to order our life together?”  As we think about how our churches should be organized, we cannot avoid politics, so we are better off simply asking the question, “whose politics will we adopt:  Paul’s, or Jesus’s, or Anthony Robbins’s?”

R. J. Neuhaus, “The Politics of Bioethics,” First Things 177(11):23-31, 2007.

qb

An Open Letter to J

She is a friend of mine; I hope I am a friend to her.  We served together on the search committee back in the day.  We were wounded together there by that process, and we were wounded along with many others by the result, or more precisely by the result of the result.  We were scarred, scattered, cast aside, and never - not once! - did we hear from any of the shepherds of our souls.  They had more important things to do.

Now, more than a year later, she is second-guessing herself.  Was she not submissive enough then?  Is she not submissive enough now?  Is she really little more than a rebel, a malcontent?  Is she ruled by her baser desires, her carnal instincts?

*****

As is often the case, Eugene Peterson - stern pastor to pastors - applies the salve.

Within the Christian community there are few words that are more disabling than “layperson” and “laity.”  The words convey the impression - an impression that quickly solidifies into a lie - that there is a two-level hierarchy among the men and women who follow Jesus.  There are those who are trained, sometimes referred to as “the called,” the professionals who are paid to preach, teach, and provide guidance in the Christian way, occupying the upper level.  The lower level is made up of everyone else, those whom God has assigned jobs as storekeepers, lawyers, journalists, parents, and computer programmers.

It is a barefaced lie, insinuated into the Christian community by the devil (who has an established reputation for using perfectly good words for telling lies).  It is a lie because it misleads a huge company of Christians into assuming that their workplace severely limits their usefulness in the cause of Christ, that it necessarily confines them to part-time work for Jesus as they help out on the margins of kingdom work.  It is particularly damaging in matters of ways and means, for we are used to deferring decisions in these matters to qualified experts or professionals…

The plain fact is that most people who set out and continue to follow Jesus are laypersons.  So why do many of us habitually and pliantly take a subordinate position under certified experts in matters of faith?  As a pastor myself, I’ve never gotten over my surprise - and dismay - at being treated with doggish deference by so many people.  Where do all these Christians, who by definition are “new creatures in Christ” and therefore surely eager to taste and see for themselves (a universal characteristic in newborns) that the Lord is good, pick up this deprecating self-understanding?  They certainly don’t get it from the Bible or from the gospel.  And certainly not from Jesus.  They get it from the culture, both secular and ecclesial.

They get it from leaders who love the prerogatives and power of expertise, who bully people by means of their glamorous bravado into abdicating the original splendor of a new life in Christ and then declining into the wretched condition of the consumer.  The consumer is passivity objectified:  passive in the pew, passive before the TV screen, vulnerable to every sort of exploitation and seduction, whether religious or secular.  And worst of all, passive in the ways and means of following Jesus, letting others who we think must know better tell us how to do it.

Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 2007), 11, 13.

*****

Five decades of ministry and five decades of working out his own salvation under Christ have brought Peterson to a point where he could justifiably claim the privileged mantle of a “called one,” especially in the company of these young, self-important pups who impose on us disciples of Jesus the unyielding yoke of the American way:  larger, more spectacular, more clever, more standardized, more influential, more powerful, more hierarchical, more impersonal, more independent, and wealthier.  He spurns it, preferring the company of the hordes and masses who wander aimlessly about, like sheep without a shepherd.  And as he writes, he brings a word of confident assurance to a tender, sometimes timid housewife, mother of two fine children, nurse, life partner to a skillful practitioner of the fathering and the healing arts, curious fellow-traveler on the Jesus way.

J, I hope you hear what Peterson is saying to you.  Deal with Jesus concerning your true heart and its motivations, as you must, and be willing to receive his rebuke when it comes.  But do not mistake the grinding, surging, throaty growl of an American-made, religious machine for the voice of Jesus.

Love,

qb

Willard’s Strategy for Persuasion

A quick reminder…this fits-and-starts series on Dallas Willard’s teaching is a response to a request by a friend of mine.  I admire Willard greatly and recommend his books and lectures; for his part, though, Willard is quick to deflect attention away from himself and toward Jesus.

—–

Today’s question is a ruthlessly practical one:  what is the appropriate strategy by which to persuade unbelievers to follow Jesus?

Willard’s answer to this is straightforward.  First, he notes that in the Scriptures, “faith is not opposed to knowledge, but to sight.”  In fact, he says, “faith is a kind of knowledge, a knowledge of the spiritual and invisible world.”  Assuming that there is more to reality and truth than the material world can supply to us, which is the biblical assumption, faith gives us the appropriate premises from which to reason.  Thus, for example:  ”in the beginning, God” represents a rich sediment for reasoning.  If there is a God, and if I am not he, then reason dictates something about my ability to discover truth and to act successfully in relation to what is.

By contrast, the world around us is heavily invested in the idea that faith is a wild, unverifiable leap; therefore, faith cannot be trusted to yield the appropriate premises on which reason can then build.  The correct basis for reason, the world says to us, is scientific research, or what can be observed with and by the senses.

That being the case, Willard says, we simply cannot start the process of reasoning with unbelievers on a common basis of logical premises.  If we cannot begin with the same premises, only by a divine or statistical miracle could we hope to reach the same conclusions.  Reason, as a means of answering the question of “how shall we live?”, is doomed to fail because Christians and the world begin reasoning from vastly different, irreconcilable points.

If reason by itself cannot succeed in persuading the unbeliever, then what can succeed?  Willard takes Jesus to say that we can put Jesus to the test of experience.  Willard would have us put Jesus’ teaching and example to the empirical test:  does Jesus deliver what he promises, a full and abundant life, thoroughly infused with joy despite circumstances of all kinds?  Does he deliver an eternal kind of life, a life that is starkly different from that experienced by those who do not put their confidence in him?

The corollary, then, is clear.  Christian communities must take Jesus seriously:

We are beyond the point where mere talk - no matter how sound - can make an impression.  Demonstration is required.  We must live what we talk, even in places where we cannot talk what we live.  We stand again on Mt. Carmel (I Kings 18:19 and following).  Or perhaps the best comparison is the world of the first century, when children of light first entered it.  The test is reality.  If the bewildering array of spiritualities and ideologies that throng our times really can do what apprenticeship to Christ can do, what more is there to say?

There is no effectual response to our current situation except for the children of light to be who and what they were called to be by Christ their head.  Mere “reason” and “fact” cannot effectively respond, because they are now under the same sway of public spirit and institutions as are the arts and public life generally - and indeed much of the “church visible” as well.  Only when those who really do know that Jesus Christ is the light of the world take up their stand with him, and fulfill their calling from him to be children of light where they are, will there be any realistic hope of stemming the tide of evil and showing the way out of that tide for those who really want out.

Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart (Colorado Springs:  NavPress, 2002), 231.

Don’t miss Willard’s scathing indictment of the “church visible.”  He will not let us off the hook.  It is the church who has terribly misled the world to think that Jesus is powerless against the driving forces of contemporary culture.  We have done so by adopting the world’s assumptions, if not in public word, at least in deed, both private and public.  For Willard, our actions betray our genuine beliefs.  If we believe that discipleship is costly, we will not delude our brothers and sisters into thinking that it is not.  If we believe that salvation is a cross to be borne, we will not market a gospel eviscerated of its suffering.  If we believe that earthly forms of power - economic and political alike, which perhaps amount to the same thing - are utterly incapable of yielding a just and joyous life that is actually worth living, we will not strive for economic and political power as a means to promote our agendas.  If we believe that Jesus really is the master of all things and the most brilliant ethical teacher ever to walk the earth, we will follow him to Calvary.

That, in a nutshell, is Willard’s strategy for persuading the masses.  It is ruthlessly empirical.  With the Psalmist, Willard says, “taste and see that the Lord is good.”  But one supposes that Willard would go further and say:  we cannot just “taste” him.  We must eat his flesh and drink his blood.  We must chew and savor the way of Jesus, the way of discipleship, the way of suffering and submission, the way that does not try to co-opt the machinery of this world to ascend to a position of moral influence.

In light of modern, evangelical Christianity in the West, that is a strident word of caution.  We do well to heed it.

qb

The Last Repository of Class in Professional Sports

OK, let’s stipulate:  no professional sport is perfect, and no professional athlete is perfect.

Glad that’s out of the way.

Later today Rocco Mediate and Tiger Woods will square off in an 18-hole playoff for the U. S. Open men’s title.  Mediate is a really good golfer with a few pelts on the wall; he is not intimidated by Tiger, but his comments to the media, as well as his history generally, reveal a man who is humble, joyous, grateful to be where he is and grateful for the opportunity to share the stage with Tiger.

For his part, Tiger is not the one making a big deal of his (excruciatingly?) painful left knee; he is aggressive on the course, but he also seems to be pretty humble.  Anyone who loves his mom and late father the way Tiger does…well, there’s a lot to be said for that.  I’m a big fan of Tiger Woods.  

I was not previously a fan of Rocco Mediate, but that’s just because he flies under the radar and is not spectacular.  I am a fan now.

I know that there must be a lot of pressure on professional athletes and their sponsors to be spectacular and edgy and all that stuff.  I know there is a lot of pressure to maintain some sort of public image that translates into $$.  But so far, the sport of golf has resisted that pressure with a brand of conservatism that really pleases me.  Tiger respects the game and its history and its heroes.  Listen to folks like Davis Love, Freddie Couples, Ernie Els…they are heirs of a great heritage, and they know it, and they respect it.

So I look forward to what is going to come out of today’s playoff.  If Mediate wins, what a wonderful thing for his career…it won’t be long until he’ll be eligible for the Seniors tour, and he’ll have a major championship.  No doubt he will be gracious in victory.

If Tiger wins #14 (who can believe that!), he will also be gracious in victory.

And I expect that either of them will be gracious in defeat, yielding the spotlight to the other.

I wish it would rub off on Chad Johnson, Terrell Owens, Allen Iverson, Pacman Jones…

qb

The Ethical Environment of Post-Peak Oil

A couple of years ago, qb’s job on Sunday mornings was to open our adult Bible class hour with some introductory thoughts.  One month in particular, the theme for our opening thoughts was this:  are our children equipped with the ethical base to live as disciples of Jesus in the post-peak-oil era?

Admittedly, at the time the question sounded sort of “out there,” if you know what I mean.  But the recent riots and strikes in South Korea over surging oil prices suggest to me that the time has come to re-engage the question:  what is the appropriate ethical posture of a disciple of Jesus in an energy-limited society?  We haven’t had to deal with that kind of scenario in several hundred years, and now, the genie is out of the bottle; we know what it is like to have apparently limitless supplies of high-density fossil fuels, and we can never go back to our primitive, naive mental state when we were content to live on horseback and camelback.

The late research ecologist, H. T. Odum, once revived an interesting hypothesis, originally formulated by Alfred Lotka in 1922 as a possible, additional thermodynamic law:  open systems evolve and self-organize in such a way that those processes or organisms that can scavenge energy more efficiently than others have a significant (insurmountable?) competitive advantage and end up being the dominant species.  Odum and his protege, C. A. S. Hall, called the hypothesis the “maximum power principle.”  The corollary is obvious:  if you want to be competitive for the long term in an evolving society or ecosystem, you must learn to scavenge available energy more efficiently or effectively than your competitors.

The idea never really caught on as a formal, thermodynamic law, but it still lurks out there because we know it to be true in an approximate sense.  Why is it that we could not allow a foreign enemy to overrun Kuwait in 1990-91?  Aside from the question of unprovoked aggression and the altruisms that are expressed by our political figures, the invasion of Kuwait threatened our access to vital oil supplies from a relatively friendly nation.  Instinctively, we know that energy hegemony is the most important form of hegemony, the one from which all other forms (economic, cultural, political, military) derive their coherence and power.

But that begs the question:  can disciples of Jesus base their ethics on such a hegemonic drive?  It seems clear to me that the answer Scripture gives us is a resounding no.  So it brings me back to my three boys, who are learning from the world around them that “to the victor belong the spoils,” “look out for number one,” “all reality is physical,” and “win at all costs.”  That is the language of hegemony, the language of meritocracy, the language of secular leadership.  But it is not the language of the Bible, and it is clearly not the orientation of Jesus, the slain lamb of Revelation 5 and Matthew 26.

That is why what I have called on this blog, the “Myth of American Exceptionalism,” is such a sinister force.  It is not to say that America’s political arrangements are not the best the world has ever seen; I believe that they are and that the Constitution is a product of incredible genius.  It is also not to say that political freedom and economic freedom are not intimately and inextricably linked; I believe that they are.  And I do believe that feeding the world requires maximum economic freedom.

But the Myth of American Exceptionalism goes further:  it justifies and reinforces our nation’s baser, hegemonic impulses and sets those impulses forth as self-validating.  Our brand of political and economic freedom being indispensable to the world’s well being, virtually anything that secures our hegemony is by definition a contribution to the world’s well being and therefore a global good.  We seem to think that if America does not survive, the world goes in the tank.

Maybe that’s true.  But the life and teachings of Jesus do not align well with it, and we have to make some hard decisions as to how (or, first and foremost, whether) we are going to live prophetically in a world where American hegemony is now significantly at risk.  I don’t know if my boys are going to know how to do that.  

Hell, I don’t even know if I know how to do that.  

But this much is clear from current events:  we’re fixin’ to find out.

qb

Willard: How Brokenness Thwarts Community

An interesting start on a syllogism by DW:

_____

[B]rokenness manifests itself as an inability for people to do what they know to be right, and the ability to do what you know to be right is a prerequisite for true community.

_____

That is worth pondering.

This morning at our men’s Bible study, we put I Peter 2 in dialogue with Hebrews 7 and asked the question:  Setting aside the ceremonial offering of sacrifices for others, what is the specific content of our “priesthood?”  What is the priestly function, and what is the nature of its authority in the body of Christ?

In evangelical circles, we have outsourced the priestly function to the professional specialists, to whom we grant increasing authority as they bring in the harvest we have hired them to bring.  

• Priests mediate our access to God; so the rhythm of our lives as disciples centers on the weekly gathering where the priests do their thing.  
• Priests are a Darwinian meritocracy; so we gravitate toward the winners so that we can be identified with them (I Corinthians 1-4, anyone?).  
• Priests have a special dispensation of access to the ongoing speech of God to his creation; so we unquestioningly defer to them when they claim to have “a word from the Lord.”  
• Priests paradigmatically represent the God’s faithful stewards, to whom more is given; so we treat small churches as farm teams where the priests learn to ply their trade, and then we call them up to the major-league megachurches when they’ve proven themselves worthy.  

The church thus organizes itself around - would it be too strong to say, “centers itself on?” - the demonstrably successful, professional priest.  The community is priest-centric; the rest of us are, in large measure, off the hook.  (That is, unless we exercise a prophetic function and critique the priest.  Then, we are called rebels and agitators.  Reminiscent of good ol’ Ahab’s greeting to Elijah:  ”what’s up, you troubler of Israel?”)

But that is not the picture of the “priesthood of all believers” that emerges from the dialectic of Hebrews 7 and I Peter 2.  Here we find one High Priest, and then a sea of under-priests who serve one another and submit to one another voluntarily, ushering one another and being ushered ourselves into the deeper presence of God.

If this latter vision is correct, we are decidedly not off the hook; your responsibility as my priest is to seek God and to love him with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, so that you can edify me - build me up, and usher me to God.  Likewise, I am responsible to you as your priest to do the same thing, however that is expressed with the gifts God has given me.  

The healthy community of faith requires individuals who are learning to be whole - spiritually formed in Christlike integrity, humility, and holiness -  so that each one can be vested and trusted with authority when the circumstance requires it.  There is no place for a pecking order under Christ’s high priesthood, which was Matthew’s quarrel with the scribes and Pharisees in chapter 23.  There is, accordingly, neither male nor female, neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free; instead, the kingdom of God is available to all, and each of us is expected to seek God’s will and character so that each of us is:

• ready and equipped to serve as the others’ priest when we are called upon to step forward; and
• ready, able, and willing to step back and step down when others are called to step up and forward.

Random thoughts:

The priestly title is of no use if the priestly function is not being exercised.

It is no wonder Jesus came to heal.  Broken people cannot serve the community well; they are, in general, unable to surrender themselves or to step forward for others as priests.

Yeah, I know it’s not a very coherent post yet.  Too much swirling around in my mind.  I’ll come back and clean it up when I get some clarity.

qb

How Would Jesus Wai?

Twenty years ago this week, I left Thailand with a group of 42 Aggies for Christ.  Leaving Bangkok’s old airport was bittersweet; it was my first and only trip to the Far East, and now it was the halfway point.  Nineteen days in Thailand, from Song Khla to Chiang Rai and from the doting Indian tailors of Soi Sukumwit to the Kalashnikov-enforced destitution of the Burmese border, I marveled at a culture that embodied so many lessons from the kind and generous heart of Jesus.  

Next were the suffocating, self-obsessed, indifferent hordes of Hong Kong and Seoul.  The wondrous part was over.

As I wrote the previous post on the posture of the request, I reflected on what I had learned in Thailand.  How beautiful, I thought, to greet someone with a deep wai, or to duck down in respect as I pass him by…

Unfortunately, of course, the naive farang’s insistence on giving a deep wai to a servant or a person in a lower stratum is mai suphaap, out of protocol; a hasty, unthinking nod to one’s hands is all that’s expected.  One reserves a deep wai, with head below one’s hands, for an encounter with someone of high estate, wealthy, titled, noble.

I have to wonder, though:  if Jesus had met an AIDS-wracked, 5-time loser-at-love at a well in the midday sun of the Hill Tribes, how would he wai her?

I think I know.

qb

Willard: The Posture of the Request

Forgive me for writing off the top of my head here, but I want to unpack a bit more what I hinted at in my previous post.

I seldom like to say that anything I’ve read has been “transformative” - usually that just means that it confirmed what the reader already thought, and so reinforced the reader’s existing outlook - but in this case, what Willard draws out of the Sermon on the Mount has transformed the way I interact with everyone, including my children.

In The Divine Conspiracy, Willard eventually gets to Matthew 7:7-11 and identifies what I now believe to be a universal truth of discipleship to Jesus:  the posture of the request.  This posture, undertaken with humility and not cynicism, will turn the world upside down.  (That would be a good thing.)  Would you be willing to read it, and then continue with what follows?

—–

The centurion implored Jesus, saying, “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented.”  The exchange that followed makes it clear that the centurion was asking Jesus simply to speak a word; he did not want to impose on Jesus, or to presume on Jesus’ time or physical stamina, or perhaps to let Jesus see his home’s disarray.  (That last one is clearly anachronistic self-projection on qb’s part!)

What is interesting to me about the exchange is the contrast that Matthew draws between the centurion’s posture toward an itinerant, homeless rabbi and the centurion’s posture toward his professional inferiors and servants.  With his underlings, the centurion is demanding and prescriptive; with Jesus, he places himself at Jesus’ mercy by means of the posture of the request.  Clearly, Jesus is autonomous, and the centurion respects that.  But it goes further, much further:  the centurion gives Jesus the option of declining his request.  If Jesus does not respond favorably, the centurion’s servant suffers horribly and endlessly, presumably to the point of death.  The centurion has left the possibility on the table that he will be turned down, even though the implications would be unbearable.

That is the nature of all sincere and consequential requests.

The more important it is, the more likely I am to demand it.  The higher the stakes and the urgency, the more strident my demand will be.  And if I am refused, the affront is personal, and it is a violation of my dignity.  I am so important, what right do you have to refuse me?

To Willard, Jesus would have us lay all of that down, and his half-brother picked up on the implications:

What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members?  You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask.  You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.  You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God?  Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.  Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: “He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us”?  But He gives a greater grace.  Therefore it says, “GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE.”

I wish I knew precisely what sweet ironies were in James’ mind as he wrote what we now have as Chapter 4.  But the pervasiveness of asking in the NT is astonishing and enlightening.  It is, on a moment’s reflection, a necessary part of humility; it says, “what I want may be important to me, but it is not so important that I will presume to override what you want.  Refuse me if you will, and I will be content nevertheless.”

In fact, the posture of the request emphasizes the dignity and autonomy of the other, not my own.

Paradoxically - and this causes me to wonder about what ironic James was thinking - we tend to elicit more favorable responses when we issue a gentle request than when we pull rank and make a demand.  The request is a powerful, social lubricant that stands over against the cultural norm of entitlement.  If we are really Christ’s, what we want is unity and mutual affection for the long term, not simply to have our own way in the moment.  Christ shows us how in Matthew 7:7ff:  we should place ourselves beneath others in every dimension of our lives.

The posture of the request is central to discipleship to Jesus.  Thank you, Dr. Willard, for pointing that out so wonderfully.

qb