Jesus offered not hard sayings or high ideals but concrete ways to practice God’s will and be delivered from the bondage of sin. In other words, he taught his followers how to participate in God’s reign. He taught what the kingdom is like, what its characteristics are, and therefore what kinds of practices are done by those who participate in it and are ready for it. We believe that this approach to Christian ethics is most faithful to the biblical witness about what God in Christ intends to do in us and in the world.[12]Jesus taught his disciples to follow the prophetically re-imagined essences of the Law and Prophets (Love and Justice) in their dispersed and (now) denationalized situation, and so how to overcome the vicious spiritual, religious, relational, and political cycles of sin and oppression which the Law itself was powerless to neuter.[13] Such teachings, like narrative ethics, inspire not only what to do, but how to be.[14] His teachings and life illustrate God’s creatively upside-down Way of undercutting evil. It is how humanity is to get on with their duty of partaking in God’s plan to heal the creation project. Biblically, it is simply to follow Jesus. Ethics arising from this great drama points squarely at the “incarnate Jesus, who taught the Sermon on the Mount and the kingdom of God, in the tradition of the prophets of Israel, embodied it in his practices and called us to embody it in our practices of discipleship.”[15] Discipleship in the Way of Jesus is how to be God’s people called not only to an eternal Heaven, but also to creatively let bits of that future break into today among them, and so contribute to flow of the missio dei in history. Missional ethics is the community consideration of how to be that kind of people at this time. ........................................................... [1] There is insufficient space here to explain and defend the epistemology behind this more narrative, dialogical style here used to unpack missional ethics. Its absence should not detract from the thesis. This section may feel like too much throat-clearing of Bible basics, but it is critical for building missional ethics. [2] David P. Gushee and Glen H. Stassen, Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context. (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 25. [3] Randy Alcorn, Heaven. (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale Press, 2004), chapter 15. [4] Roger E. Hedlund, A Biblical Theology: The Mission of the Church in the World. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1991), 76-82. [5] Andrew Perriman, “Cracks in the pavement: an emerging story of creation”. Available at http://www.opensourcetheology.net/node/1082/. [6] Hedlund, 37. [7] Ibid, 68-70. [8] N.T. Wright, Lecture: “God’s future for the world has arrived in the person of Jesus.” The Future of the People of God series. 2004. Available at http://www.opensourcetheology.net/talks. [9] N.T. Wright, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, with Marcus J. Borg. (San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins, 1999), 103. [10] Various authors, Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America. Edited by Darrell L. Guder. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 1998), 102. [11] Rob Bell, Sermon: “Jesus Died to Save Christians VI”. Mars Hill Bible Church. 10/22/2006. Available online at www.mhbc.org. [12] Stassen and Gushee, 31. [13] Stassen and Gushee, chapter 6. [14] Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 116. [15] Stassen and Gushee, 58-59.]]>
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]]>"So when you see standing in the holy place 'the abomination that causes desolation,' spoken of through the prophet Daniel--let the reader understand-- then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the housetop go down to take anything out of the house. Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. (Matthew 24:15-20 TNIV)While some Christians are free to read this as referring to Christ's return, the early church understood it to mean that when Rome was knocking at Jerusalem's door with their siege weaponry and battalions and abominable imperial seals, then was the time for them to escape. To be sure, Christians did flee Jerusalem before it was sacked. While the blood of over a million citizens flowed so heavily down the street as to extinguish flames (so says Josephus), a remnant of God's people escaped that wrath and continued living and proclaiming his Way. So in the coming wrath of petrocollapse, Christians can follow this principle of Christ's call to be God's light up to the very last times before devastation. The generation was warned, had the opportunity to know what really makes for peace, but refused. It is almost reminiscent of Paul hitting the dust off his shoes as he leaves cities that reject the gospel of the Risen King. It may be appropriate for some Christians to say, "we loved and served and warned America about this, but they did not choose the way of salvation and peace, but of imperial ruin and anguish. Come, let us take God's message to those who will bear fruit with it." The axe of historic judgment falls as oil peaks, and contemporary Christians may enter into the long narrative of YHWH's Pilgrim People, carrying in their lives the banner of the loving and risen God elsewhere throughout the world. This has occurred to me as a decent choice. The time may come to depart, kick off the dust, and expatriate to somewhere like Mongolia or Latin America. What matters is that those who pursue this option are missional in both segments of it: being God's prophetic voice before it gets sticky, and continuing that sort of vocation wherever else they wind up. Nomadic Wandering Finally is the option of journeying through the land in community. Some, like the Psalters, are already doing this as a pre-collapse alternative lifestyle. Later, it may become a necessity. Indeed, I am sure that many of the landless poor will pack up and be forced to live out of their backpacks. It's like the Shire option, but much harder and less rooted. This seems to be an alright option, too, biblically. Jesus wandered around, but not to escape hard times (though quite possibly to escape the power elites he so perturbed!). And many of the prophets were likely homeless in some sense. And Paul traipsed all over the empire sharing the exciting news of God's revolution, making a living by building tents. It doesn't seem to be a stretch for some Christians to wander their country or the world demonstrating and announcing King Jesus, and making a living for themselves while they're at it. I can so happily imagine some folks wandering the oceans in sailboats, going from port to port to announce God's alternative to the hardships of peak oil. Or maybe couples adventuring through America and gleaning off the bounty of the forest and meadow. Again, like the Shire option, it's easy to romanticize this one. I think of a conversation from Pulp Fiction between two hitmen. Jules is thinking about leaving the business.
VINCENT: So if you're quitting the life, what'll you do? JULES: That's what I've been sitting here contemplating. First, I'm gonna deliver this case to Marsellus. Then, basically, I'm gonna walk the earth. VINCENT: What do you mean, walk the earth? JULES: You know, like Caine in "Kung Fu." Just walk from town to town, meet people, get in adventures. VINCENT: How long do you intend to walk the earth? JULES: Until God puts me where he want me to be. VINCENT: What if he never does? JULES: If it takes forever, I'll wait forever. VINCENT: So you decided to be a bum? JULES: I'll just be Jules, Vincent -- no more, no less. VINCENT: No Jules, you're gonna be like those pieces of s**t out there who beg for change. They walk around like a bunch of f****n' zombies, they sleep in garbage bins, they eat what I throw away, and dogs piss on 'em. They got a word for 'em, they're called bums. And without a job, residence, or legal tender, that's what you're gonna be -- a f****n' bum! JULES: Look my friend, this is just where me and you differ --Indeed, the "Nomadic Wandering" may seem naively cool and romantic to some, but hideously stupid, ill-sighted, and embarrassing to others. Both need correction. And especially to the allegedly "realist" voice of those who side with Vincent in the above exchange, it bears noting that, as St. Paul notes, "God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. (1 Cor 1:27-29). CONCLUSION All of the above options seem viable, so long as missionality is pursued. Christianity was not meant to be enjoyed privately or in seclusion from society. Rather, it is a vocation of proclaiming who's really in charge, that God's new creation is an inbreaking reality that can we can participate in today, and of modeling what the triune God is truly like. So if the Christian decides to deal with peak oil by heading for the hills ASAP, they had better be prepared to continue their heaven-sent vocation to rural folks or travellers. If they decide to stay in the city, they had better consider long and hard how they could demonstrate God's kingdom through peace amid violence and sharing amid hoarding. If they flee elsewhere just before it gets zany, Christians had better not lose sight of announcing God's reign wherever they resume life. And if they do the nomadic thing, it's critical that it not be a selfish way of escaping responsibility, but as an exhilarating way of dynamically blessing many communities. Whatever path is pursued, it must always be remembered that the Christian's duty is to seek first the kingdom, not their own survival at any cost.]]>
1) Relocation to the abandoned places of Empire. 2) Sharing economic resources with fellow community members and the needy among us. 3) Hospitality to the stranger 4) Lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities combined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation. 5) Humble submission to Christ’s body, the church. 6) Intentional formation in the way of Christ and the rule of the community along the lines of the old novitiate. 7) Nurturing common life among members of intentional community. 8) Support for celibate singles alongside monogamous married couples and their children. 9) Geographical proximity to community members who share a common rule of life. 10) Care for the plot of God’s earth given to us along with support of our local economies. 11) Peacemaking in the midst of violence and conflict resolution within communities along the lines of Matthew 18. 12) Commitment to a disciplined contemplative life.I'll be straight about it -- neo-monasticism strikes me as the most promising movement way of the Way that I've seen. It has many of the central traits that we can expect to see in the most thriving post-carbon churches: authentic commitment, nonviolence, reconciliatory civic engagement, and a celebration of simple living. Many in the Peak Oil community are primarily concerned with escaping the hardships and preparing for their own survival first and foremost. The New Monasticism bucks the survivalist attitude in favor of an incarnational entering in to the riskiest places to be lights of God's grace. As you may know, I am starting a neo-monastic community house in NE Portland soon. We've just moved in and will be forming the house mission/values/orthopraxy soon. I like to think of it as the first fully post-carbon Christian community house in the world. :) More on that in future posts, I promise. The other trend is the "Emergent Church," seems obsessed with correcting the shortfalls of carbonated Christianity. The megachurches which have only been possible with cheap oil have failed emergents awfully. Carbonated Christianity's lack of community, othermindedness, and affection for smallness, and its eminently flamboyant Pharisaism, rude imperialism, and gaudy worship services have stoked this movement. Fascinatingly, the emergent church isn't just responding to Carbonated Christianity: in doing so, it seems to also being anticipating what a decarbonated faith might look like. I hope to sniff out the affections and values of the Emergent Church with a "hydrocarbon hermeneutic" in coming posts. There is much darkness ahead. But barring a resource war with China gone nuclear, humanity will survive, granted in considerably smaller numbers. In this fast-rolling darkness, I believe there is also tremendous hope for the cause of Christ. The extreme comfort and luxury of the 20th century that made so many people think they don’t need God is about to go away. Thankfully, we have an answer to the coming agonies in Him. Christianity presents an incredible kingdom reality of deliverance, a providential and loving God, and of a body of people committed to loving one another through anything. Furthermore, God has a history of using hard times to build His church. In the second century, the Plague of Galen is purported to have killed up to two thirds of the Roman Empire’s citizens. Another plague in the third century was killing 5,000 people a day just in Rome. Things couldn’t seem much darker. So when these plagues came through, the pagans ran from the city, separating themselves from the afflicted. Many Christians, however, remained in the city. They tended to the sick, being Christ to their spirits by nurturing their bodily ills. Many Christians died caring for the sick in those dark times. When the pagans came back into the cities, they were amazed at the Christians for staying through the storm of the plagues. What courage and selflessness and sacrifice! Through these tragedies, and because Christians sacrificially lived out the gospel of the kingdom, more and more people met God. The Post-Plague Church was stronger for it. How will Christians today respond to the darkness of our times? The Post-Carbon Church can run for the hills, recede in fear just to survive. Or we can remain true to one another and our towns, revealing Christ in the storm by how we live. We can depend on His voice and His providence, and on one another, to see it through the post-Peak Oil meltdown. The events may not be much less severe, but by God’s grace, they will be more endurable. It will be risky. It will most definitely hurt and even cost many of us our lives. But I am convinced that in weathering dark times, there is the potential for Christ’s body to thrive.]]>
This is the second part of an earlier article responding to Christianity Today's "What's Next" series. Read it here.
Toward a Christian response to Peak Oil
Church history is a messy business, and generalizing statements inevitably oversimplify. There are many, many black spots which we must not deny. But at many points in history, God has moved individuals in His Church to cry out, "speaking truth to power."
]]> We see this in Moses' confrontation of Pharaoh, Jesus' assault on the lordship of Caesar, and anno domini as well. University of Salisbury Professor Timothy Miller writes concerning the church's voice on behalf of lepers in the Middle Ages [4]:"Greek Christian writers and preachers had apparently succeeded in convincing Greco-Roman communities of the Eastern Mediterranean to modify their initial response to isolate lepers. In Latin society of the twelfth century, however, lepers did suffer exclusion in some areas, but the concepts motivating this reaction derived from Germanic customs, not from Christian doctrine. The Christian leprosaria, branded by Watts, Risse, Moore, Brody, and Ells as places of exile, never served as prisons, but as havens of physical and spiritual support in an often hostile secular world."
Throughout history, scores of Christians have prophetically engaged their cultures by asking deeper questions and calling for more complex, more loving responses to pressing social issues. Others have failed and been co-opted by the culture Jesus wants to transform. As time pushes us forward, what will the church that's just as broken as the world by Peak Oil have to offer?
Here are a few thoughts:
(1) Life in Community
A recent study called "Social Isolation in America" concluded that most Americans today have only two close friends, marking a measurable decline since the study's 1985 antecedent [5]. In a future marked by even more turmoil and uncertainty, people and families who are "doing life" on their own will likely find it difficult to carry on day-to-day without the close support of a missional community of friends. In this fellowship, we can help individuals construct a meaningful, dignified identity through community, not consumerism.
(2) Creation Care
Understanding care for the environment as a worshipful act imbues profound meaning into ecological stewardship. In this framework, our sacrifices for the environment become opportunities to glorify God. We can then teach others about a creation that groans for the restoration and renewal to come, and provide opportunities to participate in this process today.
(3) Simplicity
The coming age of less means a reduction in creature comforts that we know and love. We can consider the impact of our present choices upon the next seven generations, or we can act without concern for the world our children will inherit. Throughout the history of the church, monks and mendicant orders such as the Benedictines and Franciscans have disciplined themselves to be content in plenty or in want. We must resurrect this virtue and begin teaching it. As Mother Theresa put it, "it is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
(4) Re-localization
Luther and Calvin encouraged Christians to select a church by proximity, implying that followers of King Jesus should be able to be Christians with any community of Christians. But 17th-century Puritans didn't bring this idea to the New World. Perhaps we can redeem ourselves by embracing it today. As we learn to "be human" with the people who are near us, we can teach our culture to do the same by example. What might our cities look like if we began to befriend our neighbors? Community that can thrive without affinity is strong indeed.
What "deep questions" will you ask? And more importantly, what will you find?
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[4] Miller, Timothy S and Smith-Savage, Rebecca. "Medieval Leprosy Reconsidered." International Social Science Review, Spring - Summer 2006. <http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IMR/is_1-2_81/ai_n16701818/print>
[5] McPherson, Miller, Smith-Lovin, Lynn, and Brashears, Matthew. "Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Network over Two Decades." American Sociological Review, Vol 71. June, 2006: 353-375. <http://www.asanet.org/galleries/default-file/June06ASRFeature.pdf>]]>
The term "global oil-production peak" means that a turning point will come when the world produces the most oil it will ever produce in a given year and, after that, yearly production will inexorably decline. It is usually represented graphically in a bell curve. The peak is the top of the curve, the halfway point of the world's all-time total endowment, meaning half the world's oil will be left. That seems like a lot of oil, and it is, but there's a big catch: It's the half that is much more difficult to extract, far more costly to get, of much poorer quality and located mostly in places where the people hate us. A substantial amount of it will never be extracted.After peak, oil supplies will decrease by 3-8% annually, even as our growth-oriented economies ratchet demand for oil ever upwards. Anyone who’s taken Econ101 knows what happen next: gasoline prices skyrocket. To boot, oil becomes increasingly expensive to extract. Thus, $7-10/gallon gasoline can come about relatively quickly. This peak is expected by 2010. Even scarier, we may already be there. This isn’t just bad news for your commute. Peak oil will affect every part of how we live. Necessities like food, water, clothes, & shelter, and fun stuff like Halo 2, Heineken, & Big Macs all depend on cheap, reliable oil. The American dream depends on it. Whether we want it or not, peak oil is going to permanently awaken us from that dream. An oil-based economy such as ours doesn't have to deplete its entire reserves of oil before it begins to collapse. A shortfall between demand and supply as little as 5-10 percent is enough to totally shatter an oil-dependent economy and reduce its citizenry to poverty. Don't miss the scope of petroleum's reach: petrochemicals are vital to more than your car. Roughly 10 calories of fossil fuels are required to produce every 1 calorie of food eaten in the US. The size of this ratio stems from the fact that every step of modern food production is fossil fuel and petrochemical powered: pesticides are made from oil; commercial fertilizers are derived from natural gas, which is also about to peak; tractors and trailers are constructed and powered using oil; food distribution is entirely dependant on oil. In the US, the average piece of food is transported 1,500 miles before it gets to your plate. In short, as one Peak Oil researcher notes, "people gobble oil like two-legged SUVs." Hydrogen won’t save us: it’s an energy medium, not an energy source. Neither will biodiesel: it takes more fossil fuel energy to grow the crops than what we’d get out of it. Additionally, no combination of alternatives can even begin to replace the role of cheap, abundant oil. Peak oil is an incoming tsunami for the American way of life. It will become increasingly cost-prohibitive to drive to work, school, church, and the store. Consumer goods produced out-of-state or made of plastic will increase persistently in price. Crippling prices for food production and transportation threaten the convenience and low prices of the supermarket. Globalization will be forever reversed. Our survival depends on our ability to live on less and work together. Next week, I'll start to unpack what influences cheap and abundant energy has had on our faith.]]>