Did God Neuter Himself For Christmas?

A friend shared this with me today. Back on the last day of Advent Kester Brewin posted on the subject of Gifts. Here’s a snippet:

The incarnation is the gift that carries no cargo. It has been emptied of all power. It is thus both offensive in its simplicity and infuriating in its humility. It is as if the church would prefer God to have done something powerful and strong – that’ll show them! – but God refuses. Why? Because that would twist the power-relationship, and leave us less than free to make our response to it.

In How (Not) To Speak of God Pete Rollins describes Derrida’s view of the perfect gift thus:

(1) the receiver does not know they have been given a gift
(2) nothing is actually given
(3) the giver does not know they have given anything.

Continue reading…

The Myth of Selfless Giving

Jason Evans posted an interesting piece today about the problem of giving to receive, based in part on a current NPR story about conscientious capitalism in efforts like The Red Campaign. He quotes Harvard professor Richard Weissbourd from the story, who laments,

“I do feel like, as a country, we have lost a sense of morality for its own sake,” says Harvard professor and psychologist Richard Weissbourd, who teaches about moral development. “You should just be generous to be generous. You should do what’s right because it’s right, not because of what you get back.”

I protested a bit in Jason’s comments, saying there’s no such thing as selfless giving, and he asked for a deeper explanation of my position, so… Continue reading…

Toward a Missional Economy, Part 6

This is the final installment in my series on moving churches toward a practice of missional economics: Part 1: Manna in the Desert, Part 2: Manna in the Postmodern Desert, Part 3: From Wealth Building to Gift Giving, Part 4: From Scarcity to Abundance, and Part 5: From Altruism to Reciprocity.

The Modern Doctrine of the Autonomous Self
Each of these three paradigm shifts lead us to another major dilemma rooted in our commons Modern concepts of the self and the life of virtue that only the cross of Christ can address. The common thread of all the dominant economic paradigms previously mentioned is the Modern doctrine of the autonomous self.

Concerning this, theologian Thomas Oden states, “The rhetoric of unrestrained, individual freedom is a prominent earmark of the spirit of modernity.” Westerners today simply assume that well-being means being free from dependencies on others. Likewise, Christopher Kaiser observes, Continue reading…

Toward a Missional Economy, Part 5

This is part 5 in a 6 part series on moving churches toward a missional economic practice. You can check out the previous posts by clicking: Part 1: Manna in the Desert, Part 2: Manna in the Postmodern Desert, Part 3: From Wealth Building to Gift Giving, and Part 4: From Scarcity to Abundance.

From Altruism to Reciprocity
The third, and perhaps most difficult, shift is the move away from altruism and toward reciprocity. It has becomes clear in recent years that charity often exacerbates poverty by creating a one-directional patron/client relationship between those who give and those who receive. When we treat those with little money and material possessions as though they have nothing, we exclude them from their human vocation of work (i.e. “gathering” in Ex 16) and thereby debilitate their role in the community. Even worse, we create relationships of co-dependence that merely serve to perpetuate the modern hierarchies of power and control. In altruism, the patron remains powerful and the client remains weak. With altruism the implicit goal is not equality, it is relief. Continue reading…

Toward a Missional Economy, Part 4

In Part 1 I proposed that the gift-economy in Exodus 16 (and by extension, 2 Cor 8) as the defining economic narrative of the bible. In Part 2 I suggested that Postmodern subcultures are already demonstrating a shift toward these economic “rules of the household,” providing a missional opportunity for the Church in Western Culture. And in Part 3 I said the first of three paradigm shifts required is “from wealth building to gift-giving.” Today, I’ll touch on the second shift.

From Scarcity to Abundance
The second shift we must experience in order to embody the economics of Exodus 16 is from scarcity to abundance. The modern science of Economics relies entirely on the concept of scarcity, assuming that there isn’t enough for everyone. Therefore we must compete in order to build our own wealth and hoard enough to provide for ourselves in an uncertain future. Yet the outrageous proposition of Exodus 16 is that God is able to meet our daily needs. Actually, it’s even more outrageous than that, for God’s intention is clearly that through His provision, and the economy of His people, everyone’s needs will actually be met. This is what biblical “equality” means. Continue reading…

Toward a Missional Economy, Part 3

In his excellent book, Walking With the Poor, Bryant Myers proclaims,

“The incarnation smashes any argument that God is only concerned for the spiritual realm and that the material is somehow evil or unworthy of the church’s attention.”

As we saw yesterday, Postmodern cultures seem to have already demolished this dualism and are experimenting deeply with economic practices that are compassionate, generous, and inclusive – thereby joining the material realm of economics with the spiritual realm of communitarian well-being. I’m convinced what we’re seeing are the fingerprints of the Missio Dei on these subcultures, especially with their embrace of an economics that bears a strong resemblance to the “rules of the house” found in passages like Exodus Chapter 16 and 2 Corinthians Chapter 8.

If this what God is doing, the missional Church will have to embrace at least three major paradigm shifts in order to join Him on that mission. Today I’ll touch on the first. Continue reading…

Toward a Missional Economy, Part 2

Yesterday I said that economics permeates every realm of life as the “rules of the household” for handling our resources. I also proposed that Exodus 16 is the defining economic narrative of the bible, that it’s rules create an economy of sharing so that everyone’s needs are equally met, and that the implications of this cut deeply into what it means to live together as a community.

Manna in the Postmodern Desert
With these rules of the household in view we can readily recognize similar economic undercurrents being explored outside the Church today. This is where our exploration becomes “missional,” by asking the question, “What is God the economist doing in the world around us?” Continue reading…

Toward a Missional Economy, Part 1

I recently spoke on “Economy and Mission” at Verge L.A. 2009. Since starting Twoshirts.org almost two years ago, this has been a significant subject of study for me and it has direct bearing on how we shape community – something we’re currently neck deep in defining over at Ikon Community. So, over the next few days I’ll share my Verge presentation here in the hopes of stimulating some thoughtfulness about how missional churches might follow the Holy Spirit in cultivating subversive, grassroots economic communities in a desert of greed and inequality.

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I am an economist. Not by education or by training. The truth is I don’t know much about “macroeconomic rigidities” or “consensus forecasts,” but what I do know, perhaps naively, is that the heart of economics is merely the stewardship of resources, or, quite literally the “rules of the household” (Greek: oikos & nomos). Therefore, I am economist simply by living.

This means you are an economist too. It doesn’t matter if you’re poorly educated or hopelessly impoverished. Economics isn’t about what you know, or how much you have; it’s about how you handle what you have. Everyone has stuff, and everyone has a way of figuring out what to hold on to and what to let go of.

Obviously, then, God is also an economist because God has stuff – lots of stuff! So if, as I take it, “mission” means going where God goes and doing what God does (John 5:19) then a critical question for us is, “What is God the economist doing?” Or, perhaps a more helpful question for shedding our cultural prejudices would be, “What are the rules of his household?” Continue reading…