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 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 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.

_________________________________________________

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…

Make Something Day, 2009

It’s the time of year when we start thinking about gifts. No, I’m not talking about Christmas. Friends Jason and Brooke Evans started Make Something Day a couple years ago as a way of practicing an alternative economy of simplicity and gift-giving on the most conspicuous consumption day of the year: Black Friday. Naturally, this idea appealed to me right away as it goes hand-in-hand with the gift economy approach of the Twoshirts.org Community.

Here’s a snippet from the MSD website: Continue reading…

The Mega-Freeloader Church

In 2005 the Hartford Institute of Religious Research conducted a “Megachurch Report,” among 1210 “mega-churches” in the United States at that time (qualified by having an average weekend attendance of over 2000). This was double the number that existed in the year 2000. These churches had a total average attendance of 3612 people every weekend (most are 2000-3000, while a few are over 10,000).

How effectively are these churches making disciples? This is a notoriously difficult question for church leaders and observers to answer, but what if we took just one indicator; volunteer service. I think most would agree that serving according to your gifts through ministries like outreach, children’s ministry, admnistrative support, prayer ministry, counseling, etc. would be at least one obvious fruit of living in a covenant relationship with your community of faith.

Continue reading…

A Life of Gifts

I remember exactly when I realized our fun little experiment at Twoshirts.org had swerved completely out of my control: it was the day I learned someone had given away a grandmother.

People had been giving each other lamps and toasters and other such items for months. That alone was amazing to me, because for years I’d been fascinated with Acts 2:44-45:

“The believers had everything in common and gave to each other as they had need.”

Really? Everything in common?

Continue reading…