{"id":33461,"date":"2023-10-24T08:29:01","date_gmt":"2023-10-24T15:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=33461"},"modified":"2023-10-18T08:39:10","modified_gmt":"2023-10-18T15:39:10","slug":"course-correction-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/course-correction-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Course Correction"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p><strong>Black-and-white thinking<\/strong><br \/>In Oxford and immediately afterwards, our cohort had numerous conversations about over-simplified thinking. Simon Walker spoke about the overwhelming complexity of our current era and how our brains desperately grasp at over-simplifications. I found his explanations comforting. It\u2019s not our fault that we reach for simplicity. Our brains crave it. Of course, as responsible thinkers, our task is to stay engaged in the nuance and reject \u201cpantomimes\u201d, as Walker called them. [1]<br \/><br \/>I bring this up because I\u2019m about to take you on a journey that will necessarily be over-simplified. Bear with me. <br \/><br \/><strong>Close your eyes and imagine<\/strong><br \/>I\u2019d like to imagine together a giant game of tug-of-war. On one end of the rope, we have unregulated capitalism. On the other end we have Christian fellowship as described in Acts 2. Capitalism, by nature, entails the relentless pursuit of profit whatever the consequences. It sets up the accumulation of material wealth as the highest aim. Karl Polanyi traces this posture back to the Industrial Revolution \u201cwhich was accompanied by a catastrophic dislocation of the lives of common people.\u201d He goes on to lament the \u201creadiness to accept the social consequences of economic improvement, whatever they might be.\u201d [2] Previously there was a certain societal contract of obligation to one\u2019s neighbor and perhaps ideas of decorum about flaunting one\u2019s wealth. These societal norms were elevated above capitalism; in a sense they \u201cregulated\u201d the system. But as those societal norms weakened, the accumulation of personal wealth and by consequence the unabashed pursual of self-interest became acceptable, indeed lauded. In some, certainly not all, streams of evangelicalism, this has gone so far as to produce a certain disdain for the poor. [3] If \u201cthe pinnacle of identity in market society is the individual who \u2018pays his way\u2019, is in \u2018nobody\u2019s debt\u201d [4] the corollary seems to say that the less fortunate must be lazy, morally inferior, all-around \u201cless-than.\u201d <br \/><br \/>To return to our tug-of-war analogy, on the other end of the rope we have Acts 2:42-27 which paints a picture of Christian fellowship. As an integral part of their brand-new faith in Jesus, this community prioritized sharing and providing for those in need over and above holding on to their personal wealth. We find no moral judgement against the poor, just a fraternal love and devotion to the fellowship of believers. <br \/><br \/>Some of you good evangelical readers are probably worried that I\u2019m launching into a defense of socialism. Don\u2019t worry, that\u2019s a conversation for another time. My aim in using the tug-of-war analogy is to show how modern individualism pulls us away from the communal nature of our faith. In its very essence, the Christian faith is meant to be lived together in a way that I fear modern, western evangelicalism misses completely. In the New Testament, notably in Acts 16, we see examples of whole households coming to faith and being baptized together. We see kinship language used to address believers, pointing toward the church\u2019s nature as a spiritual family. This implies far more solidarity and mutual accountability that we see in most evangelical churches today. <br \/><br \/>When we allow our individualism, inherited from our culture, to override this essential \u201ctogetherness\u201d of our faith aren\u2019t we buying into the \u201csecular religion\u201d of the capitalism market that Dr. Clark references in his dissertation? He writes, \u201cPolanyi sees a move from a Christian society with a responsibility to others, which limited the effects of markets, ultimately replaced by a turn to the self that \u201crenounces human solidarity\u201d with the development of the \u201csecular religion\u201d of the market.\u201d [5] If we allow this to happen, individualism has become our idol. <br \/><br \/><strong>Living in Tension<\/strong><br \/>How do we back away from the cliff of black-and-white thinking that I\u2019ve nearly pushed us over? How do we deal with the very real tensions of living in a capitalist society and living in beautiful Christian fellowship at the same time? Again, the tug-of-war analogy is useful. <br \/><br \/>Despite my teenage dream, I am not going to go live in a Christian commune. Church leaders, you are not going to impose a redistribution-of-wealth scheme on your congregations. But maybe we could start asking ourselves and asking each other, what is enough? How do I know when I have enough\u2026money, material possessions, reputation, influence? Is more always better? What are the limits I won\u2019t cross in the pursuit of self-gain? <br \/><br \/>However we choose to live out this communal faith, I\u2019m convinced that the church can and should play a role in correcting the excess individualism and materialism that we see all around us.<br \/><br \/><\/p>\r\n<p>______________________<\/p>\r\n<p>1\u00a0Simon Walker, Lecture given at Portland Seminary Advance, (Christ Church College, UK, September 25, 2023).<\/p>\r\n<p>2 Karl Polanyi. <em>The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time<\/em>. (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001) 35.<\/p>\r\n<p>3 Kaitlyn Schiess, \u201cThe Disrupters Podcast.\u201d <i>InterVarsity Press<\/i>, InterVarsity Press, 9 Jan. 2023, www.ivpress.com\/the-disrupters-podcast.<\/p>\r\n<p>4 Clark, Jason. <em>Evangelicalism and Capitalism: A Reparative Account and Diagnosis of Pathogeneses in the Relationship<\/em>. London School of Theology, 2018. 143.<\/p>\r\n<p>5 Ibid.,\u00a0135.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Black-and-white thinkingIn Oxford and immediately afterwards, our cohort had numerous conversations about over-simplified thinking. Simon Walker spoke about the overwhelming complexity of our current era and how our brains desperately grasp at over-simplifications. I found his explanations comforting. It\u2019s not our fault that we reach for simplicity. Our brains crave it. Of course, as responsible [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":186,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2489,467,4],"class_list":["post-33461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp02","tag-clark","tag-polanyi","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/186"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33461"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33482,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33461\/revisions\/33482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}