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14 Responses to “Jesus is my disequilibrium”

1. CrossConnect » Disturbing equilibrium on November 1st, 2006 8:33 pm

   [...] Alan Hirsch is blogging and in his latest entry he states: Christianity minus Jesus equalls religion. And this happens in more churches than we are given to believe. We marginalize Jesus all the time and in so many subtle ways. And we do this because dealing directly with Jesus (or God for that matter) is always a disturbing thing to a sin-wracked people who would prefer a stable, more controllable, religion. Like all living systems, churches seek equilibrium. We want to settle down. We want to bolt down the Revelation and make God understandable, accessible, and therefore more controllable–a ‘God-on-tap.’ Sociologists call this ‘the routinization of charisma’ (google that!) and it is written through the structures of all religions including our own. But Jesus disturbs our equilibrium. He won’t be controlled. He won’t be handled only by priests and professional religionists. He won’t be domesticated. He is Lord! Yes, Jesus is our disequilibrium. And the way back to an authentic Christianity is simply to put Jesus back into the equation. Christianity plus Jesus equals World Transformation. [...]

2. Matt Wiebe on November 2nd, 2006 1:29 am

   Thanks for this Alan. I’ve heard stuff pretty similar to this in charismatic circles for a while now. Because they are caught up in non-routinized charisma, they are criticized by religion and fire back with this kind of response. Of course, one of the problems with charismatic circles is that what was once a spontaneous charismatic encounter also becomes routinized and turned into religion.

   I wonder what we can do to break this cycle?

3. Matt Stone on November 2nd, 2006 1:29 am

   Alan, agree but there’s a thorny issue for us to consider with respect to new religious movements and related currents of irreligious spirituality within post-modernity, and that is, many within the market are now claiming to have extracted ‘Jesus’ from ‘religion’ but the figure they are advocating is very different from the Jesus of the New Testament.

   The Da Vinci Code was one of the more visible manifestations of this tendancy within our culture but there’s plenty more examples where that came from. Hindus and Buddhists, Mormons and Muslims, Pagans and Yogis all have their own Jesi to offer us as a cure to Christianity. I remember once giving away a copy of the Gospel of John to a teenager who’d shown an interest in our path and she came back with, ‘Oh isn’t this that book they dug up in Nag Hamandi a few years ago?’ This was said with such perfect innocence. She’d never heard of the four gospels we know. Others with somewhat more baggage have been rather insistant that any attempt to link Jesus to the New Testament should be dismissed as unspiritual religion.

   So, he disrupts our equilibrium, true, but other have had their equilibrium disrupted in so many other ways in reaction against the two-ways-to-live Jesus of forensic theology that a Gnostic Jesus seems more down to earth. They’ve been innoculated against the real thing and cannot recognise the New Testament Jesus as anti-religion, only as religion. So there’s a huge challenge ahead of us.

   And part of the challenge will come from within our ranks. Gentile circumcision is alive and well within the church and until we are prepared to say ‘just go cut the whole thing off’ to the circumcisers amongst us in the manner of Paul, until we are prepared to vigourously argue that spaces be created for alternate ways of telling the story, then the unchurched will continue to see it as business as usual. This goes way beyond the post-evangelical project which is still, to be honest, still overly focussed on the baggage of Christians. We have to be prepared to listen, really listen, actively listen, to what the our culture is telling us via its alternate jesi. This goes way beyond reading the Da Vinci Code.

4. Makeesha on November 2nd, 2006 3:55 am

   Really good stuff Alan. I read a book fall semester last year with one of our college group leaders called God in the Flesh by Don Everts - it is so good. We both just ate it up. The whole book is about putting Jesus back into the picture.

5. Neil Cole on November 2nd, 2006 8:13 am

   Good stuff Al. I like the math…it all adds up.

6. Jen Reed on November 2nd, 2006 9:47 am

   I wonder if it about putting Jesus back into the picture, or stepping out of the picture to where Jesus is? If I think about the places and spaces that Jesus went to in his incarnate ministry, most of what is recorded was in different places to the accepted religious places: people’s houses, on the sea, on the streets, etc. With most of our thinking about religious places and spaces being about small groups and church buildings, do we, do I, ever step out to the other ministry spaces like the streets, people’s homes, nature? Do I choose, do we choose, to be followers of the living Christ in these places and spaces?

   But we are also to remember that Jesus did also go to the synagogues and the Temple. He worshipped the Lord, his Father, we his fellows believers, he shared from the Scriptures, and he called those in these places back to purity, to reverence and to the type of worship God seeks: to be just, merciful and walking humbly with God. What does that mean for our ministry within the church as it is today??

7. Alan Hirsch on November 2nd, 2006 10:25 am

   Matt (blog 2 above) as someone who describes myself as a “Pentecostal-on-assignment’ I think I can say that this it is precisely the Jesus factor that is dis-located (at least in Pentie circles in the West.) The emphais tends to fall rather on the Holy Spirit and religious experience rahter than Christology. And from my experince it is somewhat ‘cut-and-dried’ liturgy anyhow. It just doesn’t look like it.

8. Makeesha on November 2nd, 2006 11:09 am

   Jen- absolutely, take Jesus out - good way to see it. I guess maybe it’s about putting ourselves in Jesus’ muddy sandals as he walks around and lives in the midst of the people.

9. celtic son on November 13th, 2006 3:21 pm

   jesus is not the problem…

   perhaps, following jen reed’s thinking, the problem is not jesus, but the frame that we’ve set up around him… so in our beautiful western church buildings, we end up with long blond locks and baby blue eyes in a tall caucasian frame… or the jesus of the americas or some other jesus created in our own image. much of the confusion seems to emerge from getting caught up in dealing with people’s problems with religion, church, christians, even their problems with jesus, rather than dealing personally with jesus himself.

   matt stone raises a whole bunch of issues, related to the challenge of knowing who jesus really is, obviously this is significant if you’re choosing to follow him. can jesus be extracted from the scriptures and still be jesus? the scriptures point to jesus rather than containing jesus, so the spirit of jesus is alive and well and disturbing equilibrium. his activity won’t contradict the principles which scripture records of him, but he is not limited either to activity in the ways that he has acted before. the principles remain intact, but the package always changes…

   so when i see a beggar in the street i can be confident of how jesus would react to him today, because jesus is alive by his spirit and accessible to act today - even through me. when i see prostitutes and drunks, when i see self-righteousness, when i am self-righteous i can hear what jesus says

   here’s the thing - if i ask my kids they won’t tell me that jesus is the problem… they reckon jesus is the answer. who’s the fool?

10. Bob Carder on December 29th, 2006 4:23 pm

    Alan from good to great. I’m still hanging with you. Courageous words and just in time.

11. James on February 9th, 2007 11:48 pm

    Whenever I talk to people about a spiritual subject I always get asked “are you religious?” It’s funny how words mean different things to different people.

12. PeggyBrown on February 11th, 2007 6:31 pm

    Alan, here I am — as you suggested — and yes, I think I understand where you’re coming from here.

    Look at the variety of responses, though! Wow…I agree that one of the biggest problems is the defining of terms. I agree with Celtic Son and James that much of our issue comes from the boxes we make for our compartmentalized reality. I say something…you think our terms are the same and you agree…or you think our terms are different and you disagree…but the hard work comes when we listen fully and ask questions until we know we agree about what our terms mean–then we can begin to see if we really do agree about the issue at hand. I find that this work does not take place often enough — as Matt talked about.

    We blog to exchange ideas…but we do not all think alike, and so what strikes some of us as right on sounds off key to others. I am happy that some are willing to engage in some “choral” work here.

    It seems, Alan, that you have chosen to see equilibrium as complacency — so the context of Rev. 3 and the proper context (thank you!) for the door scenario. With that definition, I can see how you see Jesus as necessary disequlibrium.

    But does equilibrium have to mean that? Can it mean the proper balance of actions that serve and lead and submit out of motivations of love and grace and mercy? In that case, disequilibrium would be where we find much of the church today because actions and motivations are out of balance.

    What is it that provides the balance. Ah, this is where I think Jesus is. When Jesus is truly acknowledged and obeyed as LORD, then there is equilibrium. When he is not obeyed as LORD, there is disequilibrium.

    I find that most people just don’t really have a good concept of what it means for Jesus to be LORD. Certainly we Americans have a hard time with it. (I found Japanese Samuri culture, like portrayed in “The Last Samuri” with Tom Cruise, shows a powerful image of what it means to have a liege Lord.)

    We tend to want to pick and choose what parts of the Truth who is Jesus that are comfortable or convenient for us: Savior, Friend, Brother, Servant, Sacrifice — these make us feel good and warm…Jesus is doing for us. Master, LORD, holy, righteous — these make us feel fear and guilt…Jesus is expecting something (obedience) from us!

    But when we put them together we get the whole picture. And as others see Jesus (as LORD) active in our daily lives (Christianity) will we see world transformation.

    What keeps it from becoming routine? What keeps the spark in a marriage? Moving forward. Working at it every day. Not taking it for granted. Not making it a chore but a privilege and a joy. Remembering and telling the stories…to the new children!

    No magic wand or pill here…obedient walking by faith a step at a time.

    I am encouraged to see you all out there doing the hard work to make difficult connections with the not-yet-Christian for whom we must throw out most, if not all, of our comfortable terms and creatively find ways to show them Jesus as he really is.

13. :: in a mirror dimly :: » Blog Archive » The Institutional Church on February 15th, 2007 2:43 am

    [...] Alan Hirsch on the institutional church from Scott McKnight’s Jesus Creed Blog: [...]

14. Inconvenient Truth on December 17th, 2007 1:41 am

    You said,

    “Actually what Jesus taught cannot properly be called religion at all, in fact Ellul rightly calls it ‘anti-religion’ precisely because it undoes all religion. It effectively dissolves any need for a complex mediating institution with all its priestly/churchly paraphernalia”

    Lets be clear Jesus specifically emphasized that he had not come to destroy the law (Torah) or the Prophets, so it’s rather obvious, the people who opposed him, launched these allegations against him and he refuted it.

    Therefore, to attribute some, anti-religion intention towards Jesus, would be defining him in a manner in which his enemies defined him, and ignore what he said about his mission, as was completing it.

    With that said, he is de-constructing the mindset of the lost sheep of Israel and not religion. His mission as he himself stated was sent to the lost sheep of Israel and he was dealing with the on the ground reality of their disease.

    The disease infecting contemporary Christianity is not a legalistic interpretation of scripture or over-emphasizing of works over faith, therefore, we should not extrapolate his specific medicine to cure our contemporary ills, the ills of today are totally opposite of the Jews’ then.

    With that said, the contemporary ills of Christianity is the lack of tradition via the disintegration of the law and biblical foundations, hundred of years in the making, including aspects of the Ten Commandments and instead opt to add aspect of Pagan tradition and co-mingle it with Christmas, Easter, changing the Sabbath, images, etc.. etc..

    The tradition of the Law and in particular the Prophets were instrumental in pointing out the corruption of the lost sheep, essentially were the standard bearers for repelling foreign gods, and practices. However, foreign gods and practices are so ingrained in Western Christian nations, that we pay homage every time we say a day of the week.

    With this being case, with the condition being the opposite of the Jews, so should be the medicine to add balance, the co-mingling of pagan practices and idea should be extracted from the religion and place heavy emphasized on the tradition of the Prophets, that Jesus himself clung too.

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