----- Original Message ----- From: "Nick Arnett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <brin-l@mccmedia.com> Sent: Sunday, April 10, 2005 6:46 PM Subject: Re: Peaceful change
> > I can go back through the posts, but I see repeated claims that we > > can find a choice that involves far less violence than war, yet > > accomplish the most important objectives. > > Is a "claim" the same thing as a "hope?" Is an argument the same thing >as faith? I have been struggling with an answer to this, because I've had very difficult experiences with people who equate faith and hope with wishful thinking. I think that there is the same type of difference between them as there is between joy and having a good time. Let me relate a couple of experiences regarding this to give a background for my thinking. First, I have experienced this type of thing in church related work, and I've been accused of not having faith when I differ with the people. The best example of this comes from our church Our church membership started dropping about 5 years ago, close to the time I joined the Session (the governing body of the church). There was a faction on the Session who believed that God provides contributions to the church if the church is faithful to it's mission, so that to look at these type of trends and working out why...and then deciding which is integral to our mission (and thus faithfulness requires us to accept the loss of membership) and what is not integral (like playing hymns at a dirge-like pace which can be changed to attract more members). But, people refused to face hard issues. Instead they called the expectations that God would take care of the problem "hope" and "faith". I made an argument similar to the one I made here: it could very well be that we needed to risk losing the property and restarting as a smaller church if we found that our identity as a church was counter-cultural in the Woodlands. But, we needed to make that a conscious decision, instead of letting things slide...and perhaps losing our buildings and grounds over things that could be changed without seriously affecting the mission of the church. For a while, I thought giving up the site would be a very reasonable solution, until I started to see how much community work we did (ESL, babysitting for children of ESL, pre-school, etc.) in those facilities. I don't think the Lord calls us to simply hope for an easy solution....that's not what I consider Christian hope. The second example is work related. I have worked around a group that attracted the faith and hope of the management team. They told the management team that what they wanted was feasible, and that they could do it. The whole team did optimistic engineering. The team was so good at relating to the wishes of the management for what could be, they kept on getting a lions share of resources, even when they didn't produce. Now, you could argue, and I would agree, that the type of faith and hope the management team had was not spiritual in nature. Wishful thinking would be a better term than faith and hope for their actions/attitude. I would argue the same is true for the first group. We were a church that was very good with providing opportunities for advanced discipleship for believers, so-so at encouraging belongers, and absolutely terrible with seekers (to use common church nomenclature breaking potential members into three groups). As a result, we were an aging church, with a big hole where young families should be. In my opinion, the views that staying with the same old same old was not an expression of faith, but an unwillingness to leave their comfort zone. Their "faith and hope" inoculated them against having to face unpleasantness. I struggled with this for about two years, becoming very frustrated as a brick wall was put up. So, when I see the 6-point program for correcting Iraq and see a cornerstone of it is legal proceedings resulting in massive internal and external changes, I immediately feel echoes of this type of unpleasant situation. The "faith and hope" of these people stopped all discussion. If they were immunized against any arguments against their position, then there is no real chance for dialog. Trusting God for a third solution, when there just seems to be two, is a perilous undertaking. Even with 50+ years of hindsight, war seems to have been the only possible way for non-Germans to stop or minimize the Holocaust. One lesson I have taken is that trust in God is not a matter of the things of this world, even if every indication is that our desires in terms of the things of this world are virtuous (like wishing to stop Hitler's mass murder without a war that would kill many). The temptation to believe that one has God in one's pocket because one is working at being faithful to one's call is not just a problem for religious conservatives. I hope this expression of my viewpoint furthers dialog....and does not sound accusatory. It's just that after many experiences and long reflection, it appears to me that people of faith and hope still need to do hard nose realistic assessments of the choices before them. To me, the faith and hope comes in when we believe that God is still with us when there are no choices that do not involve significant harm to others....not that God will ensure that we can find a better choice, without such harm. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
