Repent By Hugging a Tree

Every preacher I know has a sermon on repentance. The difference is in degrees. There are those with an intense repent message and those with a mild one. The intense message are those messages you and I see in popular culture. It is the guy on the street corner. It is the preacher in Footloose. It is the message that says you need to give up some action. The ol’ “We don’t smoke or chew or hang with those that do.” Stereotypically this is found in conservative circles, but it is not limited to it. There are liberal circles that have their own version of an intense repentance, but the knock on liberal circles is that the call to repent is more mild. So mild in fact that some might not even say that liberals call for repentance. This mild message often comes as a reaction to the more intense repentance message and sometimes is a message that is not preached often in liberal circles.

Of course these are broad stereotypes and there is much more nuance in the messages of repentance. However, if the call to repent is intense or mild, one thing seems to hold true across conservative and liberal circles. The call to repent focuses on substance, and less on form.

When repentance is focused on the substance of our lives, then we begin to think that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is, as Dallas Willard says, a gospel of sin management. When we think that repenting means that we need to turn away from one set of actions that lead us to hell or unhealth, and take on a new set of actions that we think will lead us to salvation or health, then we are in the realm of sin management. We can get a life coach or a trainer to help us change the substance of our lives. We don’t need any divine help to change the substance of our lives, individuals and human communities can do that. The Christian call to repent is not focused on the substance but on the form of our lives. For this we need divine help and cannot do this on our own. Of course, the paradox is that if we repent in form, the substance of our lives will change.

Psychologist at St. Mary's University in Halifax, Canada Dr. Kenneth Hill looked at 800+ people who were lost in Nova Scotia and found that most of them repented of their substance. What I mean is when a person was lost, they stopped walking in one direction, turned and walked in a different direction. This is often how repentance is thought of. We are going one way and we need to stop and then start going a different direction. But this way of repentance is just in substance, not in form.

https://nasar.org/education/hug-a-tree/

Dr. Hill found there were two people who were lost who repented not in substance, but in form. One of these "repenting-in-form” people was a 11 year old child. When this child was lost in the woods, they did not stop walking in one direction and begin walking in another direction. This child just stopped walking. This child repented from the act of walking altogether. This child repented in form.

This 11 year old was taught in school that if he was ever lost that he should “hug a tree and survive”. 

Of course, this runs counter to what we would think is the “correct” thing to do. You may think that to hug a tree is to be passive and that we really need to work to be found. We think that if we are not working for our salvation then we will not be saved, if we are not working to be found then we will not be found. We are not confident that anyone is coming to save us or even that we are lost to begin with, and so in our efforts to “save ourselves” we get more lost, walking in circles. 

Christianity says that we are to repent of our form. Specifically we are to hug the tree of the cross and in doing so we will be saved. This is the Good News of Jesus Christ! We are to repent (turn) from trying to save ourselves, we are to turn from our refusal to admit we are lost, we are to turn from the very form of our lives and hug the tree of the Cross.

We are to trust that there is One who is coming to find us, save us and bring us into salvation.

The Sensible Church

Church leaders are sort of freaking out these days.

There are many reasons for this, and I am sure you can relate to more than a few of them. The uncertainty of participation in a COVID world. The decline of membership. The decline of finances. The reckoning of Christian nationalism. The nationalization of everything. The intersection of justice and mercy. Denominational splits and local church infights. New theologies and new mediums for communication…

The uncertainty of the sea change prompts church leaders dive into the resource reserves in the hopes to find something to help navigate the choppy waters. The way we typically think about how to solve problems is to either look to the past or to the future. Generally, conservatives look to see what has worked in the past to solve present problems. Progressives scoff at conservatives and say something like, “what got us here cannot take us there.” And so, progressives tend to look to the future to solve present problems.

This way of framing things overlooks the flaw that conservatives and progressives share. If we look to the past or the future church leaders are looking for what is sensible.

And that is a problem.

Sensible is attractive because, well it is sensible. Our minds tend to gravitate toward what makes the most sense and go in that direction. The sensible option is often an easier option to “sell” to others and get people on board. That which is sensible is also well supported by loads of books and resources, so it gives the impression that the sensible way is the best way.

Of course what is sensible to a progressive may not be sensible to a conservative. The Bible is full of examples of people doing the sensible thing but it is not what God desires. And for as easy as it might be to “sell” the sensible, it also instantly sets up an us/them divide where the “them” are idiots because “they” don’t do what is sensible able. In fact we often look to the other and say that their actions “don’t make sense.” It is also unhelpful for church leaders to be looking for the “best” way when we should be looking for the “faithful” way. But these are not the deeper problems with the sensible church.

It does not take any courage to be sensible. Faith is not needed to be sensible. In fact, courage and faith can be liabilities to the sensible church.

The call of Jesus to the church is not to be sensible, but to have courage to be faithful. The way of the cross is not sensible. Trusting that God is alive is not sensible. Resurrection is not sensible. Unconditional Grace is not sensible. Forgiveness is not sensible. Rejecting many leadership principles is not sensible. Reconsidering the core mission of the church is not sensible.

Desiring to be the sensible church is the symptom to our lack of faithful courage. We look to the past and the future for what is sensible, but the Good News is that we are liberated from being the sensible church. We are freed from having the answers, the best plan, the business model, the strategic vision, the marketing campaigns or any other action an organization might consider sensible. We are freed to be the foolish followers of the folly of God in Christ Jesus.

Maybe Paul was writing to the Sensible Church in Corinth when he wrote 1 Corinthians 1.18-25:

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,
‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
   and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’
Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

What Marty McFly Has To Do With Jesus Christ

Marty McFly is a character in the "Back to the Future” movies. When I watched these movies as a kid I really thought he was a moron. I mean really, who gets all in a tizzy and looses all sense of self when called a chicken? It was a clever device for to move the character along in the movies but he seemed really over the top as a human being.

But maybe not.

Recently Hidden Brain had a podcast called “Made of Honor”. It explores cultures called “honor cultures”. These are the places in the world where ones honor and reputation are at the very center of one’s life. It is the defense of that honor that dictates behavior that seems irrational. McFly’s behavior may be over the top, but it makes rational sense in an honor culture. At its best, honor culture can spur acts of bravery and courage. It can ensure that the weak are defended and the integrity of a community/family/person are upheld in the face of a threat. At its most unhealthy, honor culture can lead to spirals of violence, systemic power structures, and rationalizations that justify all sorts of unethical behavior. The McFly family is steeped in honor culture values, which get him into all sorts of trouble while also is a contributor of his motivation.

Jesus was one who was also steeped in honor culture, you don’t have to go far into Biblical studies to learn about how the honor/shame culture influenced behavior. To be very reductionist: one avoided shame and tried to gain honor. It might be thought of as a bank account. Where one wanted to accumulate honor (credit) while avoiding shame (debts). This is not a “bad” culture, but it can influence and even condone harmful things.

Jesus, born and raised in the honor culture of his time, teaches a different culture. Specifically, Jesus teaches a “dignity” culture. Where honor cultures circle around protecting honor, dignity cultures circle around the worth of every person. In an honor culture, children can be dismissed since they have little honor. In dignity cultures, children cannot be dismissed because every person is a child of God. Dignity cultures uphold the dignity of those “caught in the very act of adultery”. It upholds the dignity of sinners and tax collectors. It speaks out against those who take advantage of others (Mark 5:25-29) or are stumbling blocks (Romans 14:13). Dignity cultures are scandalized when an innocent victim is killed. Dignity cultures take seriously that some lives need to be protected because those lives are more at risk for harm.

Dignity cultures can be threatening to honor cultures (which contributes to why Christianity is counter cultural), because dignity cultures do not keep score of where honor is. The hierarchy of honor is broken in dignity cultures. In dignity cultures people are asked to sometimes look the fool (1 Cor. 1:23) and forgive seven seven times seven times. Dignity cultures can be threatening to honor cultures because we loose all sense of who "has merit” and who “has earned” what. We loose who is of value and who is not - because we come to see that all people have dignity.

The problem with dignity cultures is not they go too far, but that often those who live in dignity cultures do not go far enough and fall back into a version of honor culture. When we reserve dignity for some and refuse the same dignity to others, we are using dignity language to reinforcing honor culture.