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Friends United Meeting |
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March 1998
Truth's Endurance:
Radical New Ways To Show God's Permanence
By Bruce Bishop
The way I see it, Quaker Christianity is about living everyday life in the immediate presence and guidance of the Living Christ. I have the pleasure of striving to live that reality among the youth of Northwest Yearly Meeting while challenging them to do the same. They are my friends and fellow pilgrims.
What do I hope these youth will grow up to be? I want them to have an ongoing, everyday dialogue with Christ, who is here to teach us himself. Through this dialogue they can discover how the timeless truths of God's own character can be lived in fresh ways in whatever time and culture they happen to be living. And you know, it really shouldn't be different for any of the rest of us.
The vitality of early Quakerism wasn't the fact that they met in expectant silence, or that they eschewed violence or pursued simplicity and equality. The vitality was a simple, direct experience of the Living Christ. Early Friends rediscovered Christ in immediate friendship. They reveled in the joy and challenge of that friendship. And they didn't stop there.
They brought that relationship into the nitty gritty of their everyday lives, with a no-holds-barred approach to lifestyle application. They lived each moment, experienced each decision, encountered each individual, with a part of themselves firmly grounded in that ongoing dialogue with Christ. Early Quakers were people who stood as a living expression of who God was for their modern world. To examine their lifestyle was to see Christ in action. The incarnation continued in them!
The Bible is full of descriptions of prophets and ordinary folk who practiced this dialogue. The Apostles had the chance to do it first-hand with Christ in person, but the process is no less available and active for us with the spiritual Christ, our Present Teacher. This ongoing, daily experience of spiritual communion takes time and energy to develop. It is a process, with increasing sensitivity to God's voice, and is developed through the practice of the spiritual disciplines. It requires a balance of the Scripture, the faith community, and personal experience.
George Fox is one who rediscovered the Present Teacher "come to teach his people himself." Fox called this rediscovery "primitive Christianity," a return to simple relationship between Christ and humanity. I want my kids to have this kind of experience!
Today's youth often chafe under the constraints of religion. And rightly so! Religion is quite different from relationship. It is static, developed in a specific cultural time period, and therefore forever held back by the conditions of that original time culture. However, spiritual relationship and dialogue with the living Christ can lead us to rediscover or reaffirm eternal Truths. And for this dialogue to have any meaning, it requires, with guidance from the Spirit of Christ, that we evaluate the specific culture where we live and apply those eternal Truths in contemporary and effective ways.
Culture should be used as a lens to refract the eternal Truths of God, allowing us to discover cultural applications of those Truths that "scratch the people where they itch." The incarnation continues in us as we help the "intangible of God" to become tangible.
For example, in the culture of our spiritual ancestors, clothing was a significant symbol of their place on the social ladder. The way the English dressed provided none-too-subtle clues as to how they were to be treated. Quakers rediscovered God's passion for equality. They rediscovered that God loves each individual the same and treats each individual with equal concern. As they refracted this eternal Truth through the lens of their culture, its light fell on a specific expression. They saw that they could oppose some of their culture's inequality by dressing in a way that gave no indication of their social class. Others were required, therefore, to treat them simply as a person, not a position.
For 17th century England these actions were radical and culturally appropriate expressions of a passionate God of Equality. This process of spiritual dialogue and Truth application is the very core of Christianity. And it is the very task to which I challenge our youth, and to which each of us are called.
However, even Friends have failed to continue in this spiritual vitality and have succumbed to some all-too-common problems. In the joy of discovery, (or perhaps because humanity is lazy and spiritual dialogue is hard work) we have a tendency to short-circuit this ongoing, ever-changing application of truth, and set up camp on the presently meaningful cultural expression of God's eternal Truth. For a while, God's character continues to be expressed in powerful and appropriate ways. But two dangers present themselves.
Our first danger is the simple fact that we lose focus on the core of Christianity. God did not create humanity so that we would wear gray. Christ did not die a painful death so that we could sing hymns and choruses once a week. God created us, and Christ died for us, in order to be in relationship with us. The entire purpose of humanity and Christianity is to be the Bride of Christ. When we skip over the relationship and camp out on the cultural expression, we shift our focus from the dynamic dialogue and create an idol. Relationship is replaced by Religion.
The second danger is the fact that culture is not constant. This is why "wearing gray" and plain language seem quaint today rather than powerful. The cultural application of simple clothing had no foundation to support it once culture shifted. This is also why youth today have a hard time finding value in religious activity that is grounded in a culture they have never experienced.
When the lens of culture shifts, the old way to express that absolute Truth for that particular culture no longer carries any power. Hear me now. I am not saying that the Truth changes; I am saying the way we express that Truth needs to change. This is the difference between compromise and contextualization. To compromise would be to change the Truth to fit the culture. To contextualize is to illustrate the same Truth in a new and appropriate way that makes sense for the current culture.
Jean-Pierre de Caussade's book Sacrament of the Present Moment is summed up by Richard Foster in the introduction: "All who seek God have a perennial tendency to idolize the means through which God is made known to us. Perhaps it was by means of an altar call that God wonderfully broke into our lives. Perhaps it was in the reciting of a particular liturgy, or the singing of a special hymn, or the reading of a specific book, or in the unmediated quiet of our home, or while we were in a particular posture. We then take that living experience and calcify it and idolize it as the way to meet God. Without realizing it, we soon turn a vibrant, life-giving reality into a new legalism, which breathes death."
Youth come into this picture from the outside. They grow up seeing everything for the first time, and therefore can easily spot those areas where we have a commitment to a cultural expression that no longer has meaning. This causes them to be cynical, and often causes us to be defensive. Yet youth can also serve a prophetic role, helping us to see things again for the first time.
The solution to this problem is to realize that this whole process, this relationship with the living Christ, must be permeated with spiritual communion. The dialogue between the individual and Christ must be the starting point, the ending point, and the point returned to for constant evaluation and sustenance. We need to recognize that Christianity is a relationship, not a religion. And this relationship takes place within the context of a specific culture. Therefore, the way this relationship is expressed must be "within context" of the culture in order to be meaningful.
For us to lament the lost days of gray cloth as a powerful expression of God's character would be foolish. Instead, we need to take a look at the culture we are currently living in and dialogue with Christ about how we can most powerfully express his call to equality today.
We must also recognize that in our period of mass communication, several "time-cultures" might exist at the same time, within the same town, in the same pew. This calls for great effort to be given to spiritual dialogue and great sensitivity to the voice of God. Our situation may be similar to that of the Apostles when they experienced a large influx of a Gentile culture in what had primarily been a Jewish tradition.
Was one of these cultures going to be swept aside by requiring specific dietary guidelines? Or could God's eternal character be expressed in a different cultural milieu? God seemed to come down solidly on the side of the latter option by encouraging Peter to "rise and eat!"
If our youth can capture the critical importance of spiritual dialogue, if they can learn to see Christianity as a living relationship with the Present Christ, then they can become people of integrity, with a no-holds-barred approach to application of Truth to lifestyle. And that is something desperately needed in today's culture, and in our own yearly meetings.
We need to discipline ourselves to live each moment sacramentally, invalidating every written law while living by the laws written on our heart. "For the time is coming and has now come when the true worship will be of the Father in spirit and in truth."
The essence of Quaker Christianity is the non-static Spirit of Christ that moves us into Truth each moment and compels us to make each moment a sacrament, to live sacramentally without the aid of religious laws, duties, or restrictions. The spirit of Quaker Christianity is relationship with the Living Christ, not religion or doctrine. May this spirit write fresh new chapters in the book of Quaker history!
Bruce Bishop has spent the last ten years living the joy of his Call as youth superintendent among youth and young adults of Northwest Yearly Meeting. When not laughing, wrestling or listening to youth, he enjoys spelunking, hiking and baking. For the last seven years he has "lived in community" as a growing endeavor to experience Christ in his relationships.
Copyright (c) 1998 Friends United Meeting
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