350 Action or Inaction of False Dichotomy

On October 24, people in 181 countries came together for the most widespread day of environmental action in the planet's history. At over 5200 events around the world, people gathered to call for strong action and bold leadership on the climate crisis.

At the only 350.org event listed as being held in Colorado Springs, I was pleased to find a dozen people gathering together at Broadmoor Community Church for a 350.org Dialogue. Besides meeting some kindred souls, we had a great discussion about the division (dualism) that splits our culture and our church. We shared a hope that taking action as an individual could lead to a discourse that helps fill the gap between the two opposing sides of this issue.

One never knows how the small actions you take will affect the world. Individual actions might be just what's needed if one considers the notion of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory. Perhaps our small actions will make a huge difference. If concerned individuals keep praying, acting, and hoping - we just might be able to overcome the disastrous inaction caused by the moral or spiritual belief that only two possible fundamental concepts exist.

Deep inside of us I believe we all can sense the logical fallacy of false dilemma (also called false dichotomy, the either-or fallacy). Let's work together to steer clear of the negative forces that put us into a situation in which only two alternatives are considered, when in fact there are other options.

Bono's Audacity to Hope

Back in 2006 as I was watching Bill Hybels interview Bono at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit and wondering what can Bono have to do with leadership, especially leadership in the evangelical church. I was surprised as Bono spoke about the churches role in eradicating extreme (stupid) poverty. As it turns out, this interview was a message that awoke the church or at least acted as a tipping point for action on this issue. It was a message of hope in the midst of a dreadful slumber. At each successive Willow Creek Leadership Summit, I have seen an increasing awareness and desire to solve extreme poverty.

As an Op-Ed Guest Columnist in this mornings New York Times, Bono published an excellent article entitled Rebranding America. I believe this article has the potential to bring hope to an America that has been focused on right thinking at the expense of right living. Bono calls us to adopt the audacity to hope - joining together with an American president whose heart seems set on bringing hope to a tired and hopeless world.

We have a long way to go, but I sense the direction is slowly changing towards freedom from the power of selfish darkness that has so strongly influenced our recent history. While there are still plenty who oppose both President Obama and Bono, I'm reminded of a quote by Albert Einstein, "Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."

The Kingdom and The Hierarchies

Both Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the Hall-Tonna Inventory of Values are derived from man studying man. When man studies man, he normally intends the study to be from a scientific perspective and to offer empirical evidence to support his findings. These studies result in models of naturalistic systems. This can be seen from Maslow’s observations of the “healthiest” individuals:

”...a naturalistic system of values, a by-product of the empirical description of the deepest tendencies of the human species and of specific individuals. The study of the human being by science or by self-search can discover where he is heading, what is his purpose in life, what is good for him and what is bad for him, what will make him feel virtuous and what will make him feel guilty, why choosing the good is often difficult for him, what the attractions of evil are.”

While I clearly see value in these models, I wonder if they actually help clarify or obscure the Kingdom of God. In reading the gospels, I’m often perplexed by the things Jesus said, many of which, through the eyes of man, seem to defy empirical evidence. John Stuart Mill in his essay “On Liberty” said, “The sayings of Christ co-exist passively in a Christian’s mind, producing hardly any effect beyond what is caused by mere listening to words so amiable and bland.” Could it be that by studying man we lose the meaning of Jesus’ words? A favorite anthropology professor may have captured what I’m trying to say when he said, “the study of man by man – leads man to move away from an understanding of God.”

Anxiety and Greed to Milk and Honey, a recent article in Sojourners Magazine by Walter Brueggemann, seems to flip our man made hierarchies on their head. I’ll summarize the main thoughts here, but the article is worth a more in-depth review.

Brueggeman shows that empirically, man is destined to follow a hierarchy that works through the stages of autonomy, anxiety, and greed:

AUTONOMY, “An ‘individualism’ that resists communitarian connectedness and imagines the individual person to be the primary unit of social reality.”

ANXIETY: “Without the restraint of God, one is also without the resource of God. The self-sufficient person knows down deep that self-securing and self-satisfaction finally are unachievable, because they represent life in a world where no gifts are given.”

GREED: “The autonomous person, beset by anxiety, can only resolve to do better, to get more, to arrive at full control of the future by full control of the present.”

Brueggeman, goes on to show how believing Jesus’ words lets us envision a new kingdom. A kingdom with a new hierarchy that works through the stages of covenantal existence, abundance of God, and generosity.

COVENANTAL EXISTENCE: “Biblical faith is an invitation away from autonomy to covenantal existence that binds the self to the holy, faithful God and to neighbors [both global and local] who are members in a common economy.”

ABUNDANCE OF GOD: “Biblical faith, having vetoed autonomy, is an invitation away from anxiety to the abundance of God. The God of the gospel is the God who keeps giving.”

GENEROSITY: “Biblical faith is an invitation away from greed to the neighborly practice of generosity.”

This new hierarchy demonstrates one that is not always apparent to man. It reflects the Kingdom of God on earth. It is one where we build a relationship with our community (our nieghbors) through our connectedness with the God of the Kingdom.

National Cohousing Conference

This past weekend I attended an outstanding conference, one at which over 350 intelligent optimists gathered to advance a movement that is at the forefront of transforming our world. The 2009 National Cohousing Conference is the national conference for those who already live in cohousing, who are currently seeking a community, and professionals serving cohousing communities to learn new ways to "grow community." I attended as a neophyte, a newcomer with a desire to learn about cohousing – exploring the idea of living in community.

Cohousing is a type of collaborative housing in which residents actively participate in the design and operation of their own neighborhoods. More importantly, active participation requires that people work together and working together is a key ingredient to ‘community glue’, an ingredient that binds individuals together and enables them to achieve a higher purpose. In many ways, the product of community glue is social capital. ‘Social capital’ makes communities better places to live. It is mutually respectful relationships, connectedness and trustworthiness among people. It’s also networks and involvement. The term social capital was coined by social scientist James Coleman to describe community ties, and Robert Putnam furthered popularized this research in his book, Bowling Alone.

My primary interest in cohousing can be summed up in two words; missional sustainability. I’m increasingly convinced that climate change is a health issue affecting billions of people, not just an environmental issue about polar bears and deforestation. The impacts will largely be on the poor and not in the distant future. We will experience the affects within my lifetime and extreme affects in the lifetimes of our children. Climate change will have its greatest effect on those who have the least access to the world’s resources and who have contributed least to its cause. Without mitigation and adaptation, it will increase health inequity especially through negative effects on the social determinants of health in the poorest communities. Couple climate change with ‘peak oil’ and I clearly see the need to get serious and ‘work’ to transform the consumption based and individualistic culture I have so easily become a part of. Since it is clear that I contribute to the cause and that I have the ability to take personal action, doing nothing creates a high degree of cognitive dissonance in my missionally shaped mind.

Besides, even if all this stuff isn't happening, we can make better choices anyway and live a different story, the story of the kingdom of God on earth. On with the journey...

The Kingdom of God on This Earth

I few years ago, I read This Beautiful Mess and it stoked an already smoldering fire to re-examine my understanding of the kingdom of God. In this book, Rick McKinley defines the kingdom of God as the “living, breathing presence and purpose and reign of God on our planet." His writings also make it clear that the "kingdom is already beautifully present in our flawed world and…Jesus invites us as His flawed people to respond.” For many years, I had thought that I was at least partly responsible to bring the kingdom of God to earth. Seeing the kingdom as already here was not something that I grasped. In fact, there seemed to be abundant evidence to the contrary. Since then, I've grown to believe that the way to make our world a better place is to believe in and be active participants in a different story, the story of the kingdom of God on earth. The difference may not be readily apparent, but this shift has profoundly altered my life.

McKinley writes about “two gospels” - the gospel of Jesus and the gospel about Jesus: "The gospel of Jesus is usually taken to mean His announcement of the kingdom and the life He embodied in His loving actions toward the world. The gospel about Jesus refers to His atoning work on the cross and His resurrection, through which we can receive the forgiveness of sin through our faith and repentance.”

As I reflect on my past, I would say that I had based much of my world view on the gospel about Jesus. I knew who Jesus was, I knew what Jesus did, I knew that because of Jesus - God loved me unconditionally, and I accepted Jesus into my heart. All of this, I still know and hold very dear. In no way would it be correct to say that I have left the gospel about Jesus behind.

Instead, I have come to more fully embrace the gospel of Jesus in combination with the gospel about Jesus. The simplest way that I can say this is that I understand Jesus to be the king of His kingdom and I worship Jesus as my king as I choose to live in His kingdom, the kingdom of God on this earth. Living in His kingdom, under His rule, has opened my eyes to the holistic nature of the place that I live. Things that I once saw as mundane, just resources, or just messes - I now see as beautiful aspects of God's kingdom to be valued, cherished, explored, and to be entered into.

I'm thankful for my Malaysia experiences and the experiences traveling with Compassion. These experiences helped me see the gospel about Jesus as the "gospel for the offended against" and the gospel of Jesus as the “gospel for the offender.” I realized that I had been focused largely on what I needed - the “gospel for the offender” (the forgiveness of sins). This is because I had little experience with being offended against. As I came to be with and know more people who were offended against, my heart was opened to Jesus' loving actions for the larger world, the world of the we - not just the me.

So for me;

- the gospel about Jesus is the key that opens the door to the kingdom of God on earth. His atoning work on the cross and His resurrection, through which we can receive the forgiveness of sin through our faith and repentance, enables me to see that Jesus is lord. Wholehearted acceptance of the gospel about Jesus lifts my oppression and allows me to enter in.

- the gospel of Jesus is the key to seeing and participating in the kingdom of God on earth. The life He embodied in His loving actions toward the world are the same loving actions I can take. But, His kingdom can be seen and I can participate only when I place Jesus on the throne of my life and follow Him as King of the kingdom He brought to earth, as well as, the King of my life.

We become active and accountable citizens in His kingdom. We see His kingdom, we joyously bow down to Him as King of this kingdom. We become full participates and work as servants of the King to maintain and restore His Kingdom on earth. We see how precious His kingdom is, how connected we are to it, and we align our lives to His kingdom. At first, this seems altruistic - maybe even against our own interests, then we realize that we are one with His kingdom and His kingship is good news for all.

Cause and Effect

This graphic was published in the May 16 edition of The Lancet: Managing the Health Effects of Climate Change. One can clearly see who causes climate related health problems and who pays the price.

As someone with a missional worldview, it is hard to look at this chart without getting upset with myself and my community. How can I/we continue to say we care, if we don't take action.

Doubt & Faith (Fox or Hedgehog)

My friend and I recently had an interesting conversion about doubt and faith. We've come to the conclusion that without doubt, our faith can tend towards a know-it-all form of arrogance and without faith, we cannot truly participate in the story of the kingdom of God on earth.

Doubt stokes our internal wonderment, a desire for learning and growth - leading to change and development. The absent of doubt, leads to a feeling of superiority - a form of unteachable pride. Jesus teaches us to guard against this, we are to be humble and I think our humbleness helps to ensure we remain teachable. This humbleness enables us to be free to question our assumptions and is an antidote for our prejudices and predispositions.

Elton Trueblood said, "Faith is not belief without proof, but trust with reservations." I have faith because I see the proof of God's love towards his creation all around us, as Saint Paul states in Romans 1:20; "for since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made."

Faith coupled with doubt enables us to explore all of God's created world and continually realign ourselves with the story of the kingdom of God on earth. We can refuse to settle into the pattern of a hedgehog thinker as explained in Philip Tetlock's, Expert Political Judgment:

Hedgehog thinkers are thinkers who "know one big thing," aggressively extend the explanatory reach of that one big thing into new domains, display bristly impatience with those who "do not get it," and express considerable confidence that they are already pretty proficient forecasters, at least in the long term.

Enabled by faith, our freedom to doubt lets us take advantage of what Tetlock calls fox like thinking;

Being thinkers who know many small things (tricks of their trade), are skeptical of grand schemes, see explanation and prediction not as deductive exercises but rather as exercises in flexible "ad hocery" that require stitching together diverse sources of information, and are rather diffident about their own forecasting prowess.