One of the more intriguing films in
2009 was “Up In the Air” which starred George Clooney—not to be confused with
“Up” which was also a very cool movie.
Clooney's character—Ryan Bingham makes a living traveling from city to
city. He fires people for a living—when
companies are down sizing they hire Bingham to come in, deliver the bad news
and provide counseling as the employees prepare to reenter the job force. Bingham spends over 300 days a year traveling. So much time that he explains he is most at
home in an airplane or an airport. The
Holy Grail in Bingham's life is to reach 10 Million miles on American Airlines. With that sort of mileage accumulation
Bingham would be treated as Airline royalty.
In truth airlines do provide significant perks to people who fly that
many miles but nothing close to the sort of celebrity status depicted in the
film. The film is based on a 2001 book by Walter Kirn by the same title. There are significant differences between the
book and the movie. Bingham's character
is not nearly as likable in the book.
And the conclusion is far more jaded and satirical. Yet, both the book and movie explore the
consequences of living without roots.
In one soliloquy from the book,
Bingham praises a particular hotel by saying that its great accomplishment is
to “help guests disappear.” He writes,
“the indistinct architecture, the
average service, the room-temperature everything. You're gone, blended away by the
stain-disguising carpet patterns, the
art that soothes you even when your back's turned. And you don't even miss yourself. Invisibility, the ideal vacation. No more anxiety about your role, your
place. Rest here, under our cloak. Don't fidget, its just your face that we're
removing. You won't be needing it until
you leave, and here's a claim check.
Don't worry if you lose it” (Up In
the Air, p. 215). Bingham trumpets a
freedom formed by having no connections that reveals itself in the end to be a
hollow and inauthentic existence.
The people addressed by Paul's
letter to the Corinthians are similar to Bingham. Though they were bound together to one
another, they suffered from a fundamental lack of trust. In 1 Corinthians 3 we read that people
separated from each other based on cults of personality. Some people rallied around Paul and others
around an evangelist named Apollos and others around Peter. In chapter 6, Paul addresses lawsuits where
one Christian sues another Christian. In
chapter 8, we read how there was division between those who saw eating meat
that had been sacrificed to idols as participation in idolatry and others who
saw it as simply good bar-b-cue. And we
know that nothing can divide one person from another more quickly than a
discussion about bar-b-cue. They divided
themselves over the way the Holy Spirit was at work in different ones of
them. The Spirit gave some the gift of
proclaiming the truth—prophecy. The
spirit gave others the gift of praying in tongues. It gave still others the gift teaching and
others the gift of leadership (chapter 12).
But the people saw this as a reason to separate from each other. Rather than seeing the different gifts as the
work of one and the same Spirit that should unite them with one another, they
saw the diversity of gifts as reasons for division. This distrust even filtered
into the way they practiced communion.
In the early church the Lord's Supper was probably a full meal. And Paul questioned their habit of some
people eating their fill before others even made their way to worship—some had
plenty from the Lord's table and others had very little. Distrust and isolation was destroying the
people in Corinth and it was stealing their capacity for authentic living.
Distrust deprives us of a necessary
resource for authentic living. The past
three weeks have seen an increase in violence between Israel and Palestinians
in the Gaza Strip culminating with a raid on Monday with an Israeli raid on an
aid flotilla. It is difficult to
understand the Israel's rationale in enforcing their embargo of the Gaza Strip
so harshly. Regardless, of the one's
position on the political situation between the Israelis and Palestinians it
seems that all of us could agree that the fundamental lack of trust between the
two groups is the factor that prevents any meaningful resolution. Unless the people involved can learn to trust
each other violence will continue. The
event itself has sparked a series of protests around the world including on
college campuses here in the US. Speaking about such protests on the UC Irvine
campus, Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater wrote, “Rather than bringing the groups
together to talk about their grievances, these kids are only growing farther
and farther apart in the gulf of distrust, anger and self-righteousness. How
will this advance the hopes for peace?” (Grater, Joshua Levine. “Stop
Protesting and Start Talking | Flotilla Crisis | Jewish Journal.” Jewish Journal.Com 3 June 2010. Web. 3
June 2010.)
This is just one example of how we
continue to live in a culture of distrust.
We can blame the erratic economy, we can blame the rising temperatures
of summer, we can blame a volcano or an oil spill, we can blame the uncertainty caused by swift changes
in laws. But blaming behavior simply feeds
the culture of distrust. Across the
board people have adopted a stance of suspicion toward other people. People suspect everyone else of having
self-serving, self-gratifying motivation underneath every action. The culture of distrust and the stance of
suspicion seem like the prudent and wise approach to a world where there are so
many scoundrels and thieves. Of course,
you could also hold your breath to avoid breathing catching an airborne
disease. It works until you realize that
you actually need oxygen to live. People are made to connect. People are made to support. We can't stop breathing and we can't stop
connecting. So, somehow we have to find
ways to meaningfully cultivate trust with others.
Paul portrays a vision of a trusting
community for the Corinthians. In
chapter 15, he reaches the finale of a
theme that is woven throughout this letter.
Here he writes that the the most essential gift he had ever
received--the gospel—was received through a trusted community. He beckons the Corinthians to remain true to
the gospel. It is by this gospel they
are saved, it is on this gospel the Corinthians have taken their stand. The gospel's content is simple—Christ died
for our sins according to scripture, he was buried, and on the third day he was
raised. This is a summary of the entire
Christian proclamation. And there are
those who say that all they need is this message and nothing more. But Paul's point is more nuanced than
that. As he runs through the litany of
people who witnessed the resurrection he is revealing his understanding that
the gospel depends on people who will share the gospel.
For all the talk of Paul's singular
experience of conversion Paul himself recognizes the necessity of being within
a trusted community. Influential 20th
Century sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann have written about the
social construction of reality.
Basically they assert that we know what reality is because other people
have taught us to think about reality.
In their classic work on social constructionism they wrote, “To have a
conversion experience is nothing much.
The real thing is to be able to keep on taking it seriously; to retain a
sense of its plausibility. This
[retaining of the plausibility of conversion] is where the religious community
comes in. It provides the indispensable
plausibility structure of the new reality.
In other words, Saul may have become Paul in the aloneness of religious
ecstasy, but could remain Paul only
in the context of Christian community” (quoted in Gaventa, From Darkness to Light, p. 5-6).
In this letter addresses so many
divisions and points of distrust, Paul has offered some of his most memorable
and vivid descriptions of the cultivation of a trusting and trusted community
and relationships. It is in this letter
that Paul responds to the distrust that emerged around the various spiritual
gifts and who possesses them with a word encouraging everyone to seek after the
gifts that are available to everyone. “Where
there is prophecy” Paul writes, “it will cease. And where there are
tongues they will be stilled. And where there is knowledge it will pass
away” (1 Corinthians 13:8). What remains
is faith, hope and love and the greatest of these is love. It is in this letter that Paul offers the
vivid metaphor of the trusting community as the body of the Christ where it
makes no sense for a hand to say to an eye “I don't need you.” It is this letter where Paul speaks most
passionately about communion “There is one loaf and one cup. And because there is one loaf, we who are
many are one body in Christ” (1 Corinthians 10). And then here, “I pass on to you what I have
received.” Paul speaks most poignantly
about trust in response to a people plagued by distrust.
Cultivating trust within connects us
to an essential ingredient of authentic living.
Trust is a largely intuitive approach people. But one of the things that we can put our
finger on that generates trust is the knowledge that a person has our best
interest at heart. When we know that a
person's advice or a person's actions are enacted in order to help us or at the
very least intentionally constructed so that our needs are protected, then we
learn to trust that person. That is what
we have found in Christ Jesus—one who always acted in our best interest. This is the gospel we have received, on which
we have taken our stand, by which we are being saved—that Christ died for our
sins.
When I was younger, a man that
worked with my scout troop described how he learned to like classical music. He said that he didn't naturally like
classical music. He hadn't been raised
listening to it. But he reached a point
in his life where he wanted to like classical music. He said he found one part of Scheherezade
that he liked. This was back in the old
days when you played music on a phonograph record. He learned exactly where on the the record
the part he liked was and he would put Scheherezade on the turn table and he
would put the needle down and listen to that small portion of the song over and
over again. Eventually he got to where
he would leave the needle on the record longer and he would place the needle a
little earlier in the song. And by
building on just that one portion of the song he like he was able to develop an
appreciation for the entire song and building on his appreciation of that one
song he was able to cultivate an appreciation for classical music
generally.
Trust works the same way. Learning to trust involves finding that
quality in others—to find those who reflect the character of Christ in our
lives by seeking our best good.
Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck defines love as, “The will to extend oneself
for one's own or another's good—for their spiritual growth.” The response to our culture of distrust is to
begin by forming communities of trust.
Generally, that starts with cultivating one or two trusted relationships
where another friend responds to you as Christ would respond to you—seeking
your best interest and your spiritual growth.
And while we are cultivating relationships of trust. We reciprocally realize that we must be
people others can trust. Increasingly, I
find that the real goal of the Christian life is not understanding the
intricacies some theory about Christ but increasingly cultivating the character
of Christ within us. We receive God's
grace because God has placed people in our lives who can demonstrate God's
grace to us. And we pass on what we have
received in Christ. We receive God's
grace because God is good to us. Others receive God's grace because God is good
through us.
No comments:
Post a Comment