Jesus Brand Spirituality (pt 3)

Part One: Active Dimension
Ch 3: Repairing the World

Wilson begins the chapter by talking about the contempt many Christians (or at least Evangelicals) often have for “environmentalists.”  He likens this to a “trademark infringement on the Jesus brand,” saying

Religious contempt toward those who care passionately about the environment has nothing to do with Jesus, but it has found a way into much of the religion that bears his name.  I hope and pray this is changing, but when an environmental scientist encounters contempt, the scientist often assumes the contemptuous person also carries the name Christian

He goes on to say (very correctly, I think) that many people who claim to follow Jesus have been taking their cues from the talking heads and personalities on radio and television (“All someone has to do is wrap himself in the flag and build a powerful enough media platform, and we hang on every word he speaks as though it were the gospel”).  All of this is to say that we should be looking for “trademark infringement” whenever and wherever it occurs.  Because religion can both reveal and obscure Jesus, we sometimes have to dig through the mess of religion to find him.  Wilson states that a good place to start is the gospels, where we find Jesus on a mission to repair to the world…and extending an invitation for us to join him.  The chapter culminates with this mission being broken down into the following three categories:

Justice for the Oppressed
Wilson speaks of Jesus’ inaugural address at his hometown synagogue, reading the words of Isaiah (Luke 4.18-19):  good news for the poor, freedom for the prisoners, release for the oppressed, and the beginning of Jubilee.  In all of this, Jesus’ intentions would be to right those things that had gone wrong and free the oppressed of the world from the oppresive powers and structures. 

He then poses the question of justice to a very personal story of a married couple he was good friends with.  In a moment of mental instability, the husband shot the wife.  So Wilson asks, for the wife and in this situation…what does justice look like?  How does it unfold?  He looks at the various social and personal dimensions, but none of them ultimately bring justice to the wife whose life was taken from her.  For her, the ultimate justice is then resurrection and life literally restored.

Breaking the Cycle of Violence
The primary vehicle Wilson speaks of here is that we love our enemies.

Not only this, but one could also say that the entire Jesus movement is to be organized around love of enemies.  Jesus is the expression of God’s love for all of us who have opposed, through the failing of our lives and perspectives, the coming of God’s kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven.  Jesus taught us only to expect God’s forgiveness inasmuch as we are willig to extend it toward those who trespass against us.

He pursues the questions of what this might look like on a personal, social, and global level.  What if Christians in the U.S. called an end to the “culture wars?”  He ends with a “modest proposal” that I actually loved: what if Christians who object to the teaching of evolution in public schools observed a one-year moratorium on attempts to overturn the teaching of it in schools…and instead expended that effort toward volunteering public school science teachers with any classroom needs they might have.  Christian leaders could gather with leaders in the field of evolutionary science and share their concerns and each could understand each other’s conflicting perspectives.  The aim would not be to debate the issue, but for each side to understand the other side’s perspective.

Tending the Garden
As followers of Christ, we are called to tend and take care of creation.  “Jesus is about the renewal of the earth, which has already begun.  Those who follow him are to act as though the earth is the Lord’s, because it is.”  Wilson talks about some of the various environmental problems we face (especially in the U.S. due to our overconsumption).  Wilson states, and I heartily agree with him, that those in the fields of science and religion need to work together to help bring people into the state of cooperation that will be required to solve these problems.  And in the end, it all begins to come together and connect–not tending the garden properly leads to oppression of the poor, because it’s the poor of this world that are most affected by things like climate change and pollution.  And we’re not going to be able to begin addressing these issues until we can put aside our differences and love our enemies enough to work with them in solving these problems.  In all of it, we need to seek Jesus as the supreme center and source of leadership on how to get there from here.