What Does the Lord Require: Another Look at Micah 6

In a well-known passage, the prophet Micah writes in chapter 6 of his book, verses 6-8:

With what shall I come before the LORD, and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of olive oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Of course, we hardly ever hear the rest of the passage in which God levels a charge against his people for dishonest gain, violence, and deceit.  These days, Christians can be seen defending such things in an appeal to a "free market," capitalism, or national defense.  This is despite the fact that the Bible has hundreds of warnings against such things and calls for a just and merciful society.  Such passages are often directed at the powers that be, holding them accountable for how the most vulnerable are treated.  Here's just a sampling:  Exodus 23:1-12, Nehemiah 5:1-6, Isaiah 58:1-10, Jeremiah 22:3-5, Lamentations 3:34-36, Amos 5:10-24.  I'll return to this shortly.

In Micah 6:8, we have what I call the "triple play."  The three things Micah mentions that "the Lord requires" of us can be thought of as the three major aspects of our discipleship as Christians.  It's our universal call to ministry, given alongside the warning that our worship is meaningless if we are not actually obeying God (Micah 6:6).  However, the order in which Micah lists them is the opposite of the priority that they are often given.

What Micah mentions last is to "walk humbly with your God," that is, personal devotion and spirituality:  our scripture reading and prayer, church attendance, spiritual disciplines, being attuned to God's presence, etc.  This would also include the necessity of Christian community in our lives for support, accountability, etc (Hebrews 10:24-25).  However, it is unfortunate how often the Christian life is reduced to this aspect alone.  We seem to spend a lot of time on this area, which is certainly not a bad thing, as long as it's not to the detriment of the other two areas.  But one can immediately see the problem when walking into Christian bookstores, or perusing the "Christian living" section of any bookstore.  It's all about our own personal walk with God, our own spirituality.  Again, this is certainly important, and perhaps even a starting point, but it's only one part of our discipleship.  (Our "walk with God" is not always that "humble," either).

In the middle, Micah calls us to "love mercy."  The Hebrew word translated "mercy" is hesed, one of those words that is notoriously difficult to translate because of its rich meaning.  The most common lexicon definition is "loving-kindness," that is, actions that spring out of love and concern.  The word is commonly used in reference to God and his stance towards his people.  A good correlate in the New Testament Greek would be splagnizomai, the word for "compassion."  So this is the area of our life as Christians that concerns acts of mercy and helping those who need help.  Jesus gave one of the more famous examples in the story of The Good Samaritan when he was asked, "Who is my neighbor?"  "Loving mercy" would include things like sheltering the homeless and feeding the hungry, helping a community hit by a natural disaster, foster parenting, cooking meals for bereaved families, or anything else that addresses the needs of the vulnerable.  The possible list is long.

But listed first is Micah's call to "act justly" or to "do justice" (either translation is correct).  This is the stuff that Glenn Beck once told his minions to run from.  As I pointed out above, concerns about social justice are all over the Bible.  But it is in this area of our discipleship that so many individual Christians and churches face a dismal deficit.  Not only is this aspect of our faith and scripture largely neglected, I've found that many believers don't even know what it is.  We don't have a context for it, and we have to be taught to see it (just as I was).

Social justice, in my view, is a two-sided coin.  The first side is empowerment.  You may have heard the old proverb:  "Give a man a fish, he eats for a day.  Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime."  Empowerment is not only a part of doing justice but it's also an essential partner to "loving mercy."  Acts of charity and mercy, if not accompanied by a justice ministry of empowerment, can actually make the problem worse by creating a cycle of dependency.  While we certainly must work to meet immediate needs, those needs will just keep recycling if people are not given the tools necessary to break the cycle.  There is a tremendous need in most communities for mentoring relationships in which people can learn things like cooking, budgeting, parenting, job interview skills, etc.

The other side of the justice coin is that of fair societal structures; working on the policy level for fairness and equal opportunity.  This is where we have to take the proverb about the fish further:  "...teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime...but only if the people who own the water are putting fish in it."  Most churches totally neglect this area of ministry.  As I said, many don't even have a mental framework for what this is, and to make matters worse, conservative media outlets are working hard to convince people that social justice = communism or that it is a partisan, democratic agenda.  No.  It's a biblical agenda.  There also seems to be an effort to spread hatred and contempt for the poor, and people seem to think that poor = lazy (I address this fully in a different blog post).  This Micah passage, after verse 8, goes on to address some of the things the people were doing that were creating an unfair society and putting the poor or vulnerable at a disadvantage.  Justice issues are on a macro-level.  They are systemic problems and blame cannot often be placed on one individual or isolated group.  There are many examples of such problems in society, some of which I address in other blog posts as well as a page dedicated to such issues.  Examples include: wages and the income gap, predatory financial practices, immigration, equal access to things like education and healthcare, etc.

Here's a helpful illustration I gleaned from The DART Center that explains not only why justice ministry is needed but also why it requires cooperation and the efforts of many people together.  We all have personal relationships.  This includes our family and friends.  When we are being treated unfairly in these relationships, we have quite a bit of say and power to correct it.  At least, we have access to the source of the problem.  We also have voluntary relationships; groups and organizations we relate to by choice.  This includes church, civic organizations, businesses that deal in products or services, etc.  In these relationships, we don't have as much power and influence to demand that we are treated fairly, but we still have some.  If nothing else, we can withdraw our business or otherwise remove ourselves from the situation.  But we can't do this in our relationships of necessity, the third category.  Relationships of necessity would include government, schools, utility companies, the healthcare system and, perhaps to some extent, Wall Street and our place of employment.  These are the entities with which we must be associated if we want to survive in society.  However, if we are being treated unfairly by these groups, we are powerless to correct it.  We must gain a position of power ourselves to correct injustice in these areas, but it's virtually impossible for those being oppressed to do so on their own.  That's where we come in.  Christians are called to come together and speak truth to power.  One of the best and most famous examples of how this can happen is the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr.  As Frederick Douglass said, "Power concedes nothing without demand.  It never has, and it never will."

This is Micah's "triple play."  May we act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly.  May we become well-rounded disciples in holistic ministry, not neglecting any of these three.

Prayer for Dummies

Yeah, somebody actually wrote the book...

As a pastor, I hear a lot of people say that they don't know how to pray.  Sometimes you hear it when people are asked to pray out loud (is that a Baptist thing that people from other denominations don't have to worry about?).  In this case, I can only assume that prayer is seen as oratory; an exercise of public speaking.  If that's the case, then the hesitation makes sense because public speaking is said to be one of the top fears of humans. Other times you hear people bemoan their inability to pray in reference to life pain and struggles, stating something about not knowing how to address God, not wanting to address God, or not being able to find the right words.  Again, prayer is seen as something that does not come naturally and requires skill or training.

Interestingly, prayer remains a more popular idea than God.  There are people who don't have any belief in God but believe in the power of prayer and/or meditation.  Even more interestingly, you can find apathy towards prayer among both believers and non-believers.  In these cases, I assume, prayer is seen as being just as childish as writing a letter to Santa Claus.  Something isn't prayer, so the thinking goes, unless you are in a particular physical position, consciously directing your prayers "upward," and begin the thought with "Dear God" or something of the sort.  To some (including me), it all seems pretentious and amateur.

Why does prayer have to have boundaries?  Why does it have to have a start and end point?  Why does it have to be something profound within itself rather than something that recognizes the profundity and validity of our more natural expressions?

As far as I'm concerned, if you have ever......

• said or thought, "How am I going to get through this?"
• desperately wanted peace or revenge
• wondered why God feels absent
• said or thought, "What does this mean?"
• put your emotions into a song, a poem, a journal, or a piece of art
• pounded your fist in anger, cried in sorrow, or leapt for joy
• said, "Why does this day have to end?" or "Why can't this day be over?"
• felt thankful
• longed for the past or worried about the future
• wished for something or someone you didn't have

......you have prayed.

"Everybody prays whether [you think] of it as praying or not. The odd silence you fall into when something very beautiful is happening or something very good or very bad. The ah-h-h-h! that sometimes floats up out of you as out of a Fourth of July crowd when the sky-rocket bursts over the water. The stammer of pain at somebody else s pain. The stammer of joy at somebody else's joy. Whatever words or sounds you use for sighing with over your own life. These are all prayers in their way. These are all spoken not just to yourself but to something even more familiar than yourself and even more strange than the world."  -Frederick Buechner

A Little Conformity Might Do Us Good

These days, and among younger generations, one of the worst insults you could heap upon someone is to call them a "conformist."  This is the age of individuality, being your own person, and not caring what other people think of you.  Becoming one's own unique person is the goal, and any hint that you are borrowing identity or beliefs is an insult.

Perhaps the most obvious manifestation of the non-conformist culture is in the realm of religion.  For more and more people, it is a sign of weakness and conformity to be involved in organized religion or to claim a traditional, already established religion as one's own.  Instead, in order to be a unique individual, people create a hodge-podge of beliefs, coming up with a new name for what they believe, or they may even start their own religion.

There's one big problem with the idea that we choose our own path, think for ourselves, and find our own beliefs: It's not true.

The fact of the matter is that our context, relationships, and experiences have a huge influence on us, almost to the point of being determinative.  Sociologists have known this for a while; the rest of us have missed it. Sociologist Inagrace Dietterich once wrote,

"The modern emphasis on the autonomous self too often ignores, or even denies, the formative power of the various communities in which we participate.  We assume that our "habits of the heart" - the notions, opinions, commitments, and desires that motivate, order and guide our lives - are chosen and formed in isolation from other human beings and social realities....[But] the question is not whether we will be socialized, but what kind of society will have its way with us."  

As the old (and biblical) saying goes, "There is nothing new under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9).  Any time we "think for ourselves," we are merely processing knowledge, data and thoughts that have been passed onto us by someone else.  (It's kind of like making a recipe: the result might look unique and impressive, but it's really just age old ingredients prepared in a certain way). As we age and "become our own person," we are often merely becoming an adult version of our younger self and we still live and repeat the same patterns we learned there. Couples who do counseling with me are often shocked by the connections I'm able to make between their behavior patterns in their family of origin and the current relationship.

Similarly, any time we become our own "spiritual individual," we are merely rearranging what's been passed down to us and what we've been exposed to.  Everything is borrowed.  If we come up with something that's new to us, it is just that: new to us, but trust me, it has been thought of before, and we were only able to think it because of what we have gleaned from others.  I would argue that "free thinking," as the term is used in our culture, is not possible.  We all operate within what Peter Berger called "plausibility structures."

In a Christian Century article dated Sept 1, 2011, Lillian Daniel wrote a masterful piece about this phenomenon of people saying they're "spiritual, but not religious" and rejecting anything that seems to be "organized religion."  He talks about a man who came into his office to announce his departure from the church and that he had come up with his own beliefs:  Daniel writes, "He dumped this news in my lap as if it were a controversial hot potato, something shocking to a minister who had never been exposed to ideas so brave.  Of course, this well-meaning Sunday jogger fits right in to mainstream American culture. He is perhaps by now a part of the majority."

Daniel goes on to say something that rings very true with my own experience:

"If we made a church for all these spiritual-but-not-religious people, if we got them all together to talk about their beliefs and their incredibly unique personal religions, they might find out that most of America agrees with them. But they'll never find that out, because getting them all together would be way too much like church. And they are far too busy being original to discover that they are not."

There is truth to the tongue-in-cheek quip that non-conformists are all alike. Sure, they might have a few personal tweaks here and there and motives that are genuine, but it's all taken from the same ingredients, and if you have your "own religion" or you have rejected religion all together, you are no less influenced by your context than I am. Your influences have just been different. I remember as a teenager getting a kick out of the so-called "goth" dress that some of my fellow students were donning. When asked, most of them would tell you that they are dressing that way in order to assert their individuality. I'm not ridiculing them, but it was always amazing how similar they all looked.

There's an important distinction to be made between "default" and "choice" when it comes to people's beliefs.  For example, there's a big difference between an atheist by default and an atheist by choice.  A default atheist is someone who was perhaps raised in a non-religious home where God was never discussed, so even though they might often hear people speak of God and faith, it's just not part of their contextual framework.  An atheist by choice, on the other hand, is someone who - regardless of their background - has critically engaged the question of religion and belief and made a decision to be an atheist (though often in opposition to a default religious context).  But due to our culture of individuality and non-conformity, people often end up rejecting their default belief system simply because it's the default, not out of careful consideration. It's important to own our beliefs. Contrary to the attitude of Christian apologists who try to beef up our young people with ready answers to the intellectual challenges they'll face in college, it is quite healthy and necessary for people to go through a period of disillusionment and questioning with respect to their default belief system. This can and should happen. But there seems to be this idea today that we're supposed to leave our default belief system behind, whatever it happens to be.  If we don't, we're being submissive conformists.  I've seen people leave Christianity simply because it was their "default"--what they were raised in--and they don't see a way to move from default to choice without also moving to another religion (or none at all).  Like many young adults, I've also made the journey from default to choice. It involved much questioning, doubt and anxiety. But for me, it did not involve leaving the faith I was raised in altogether, nor did it have to.

I applaud the way today's cultural trends have heightened our awareness of a bad type of conformity; that is, mindless submission. But I think we've lost the value of another kind of "conformity."  The good kind.  I think the valuable truth we're missing in this hyper-individualistic culture is that we were made for community, and that our faith journey finds fulfillment and meaningful expression in the context of community.

This false idea of the autonomous individual can be found just as strongly present in the church as outside it. You hear it in Christian theology through phrases like "personal relationship with Jesus Christ" (a phrase found nowhere in the Bible). We see it in the way the church is treated like a dispenser of religious goods and services rather than a collaborative effort in faith formation. We've totally lost the communal aspect of faith development and even salvation. That's why Christians today are confused when we read verses like Acts 11:14 or Acts 16:31 that talk about whole households being collectively saved.  In fact, the Bible is chock-full of examples of God relating to, teaching, and shaping people in the context of a community or people group. Whenever God did relate specially to an individual, it was for an eventual communal purpose. Churches have strayed a very far distance from the early church as described in Acts 2:42-47 and Acts 4:32-35, so much so that groups of Christians who do operate as the early church is described are often not referred to or thought of as a church.

When we see ourselves as totally autonomous individuals and act as competing, individual kingdoms, nothing gets done. This is why ministry (and other things that involve working with volunteers) feels so much like herding cats these days. We need to experience conformity again, in its good sense.  Modernity and the focus on the individual were not a completely bad thing; to be sure. It heightened our awareness of personal rights and freedoms and that we should never force people to do something. However, it has gone way too far, and it's time to reclaim and live in awareness of our mutual dependency.  It requires putting some personal preferences aside and holding our beliefs tentatively, and many are not willing to do that.  But it's community where we "spur each other on toward love and good deeds" (Heb 10:24-25). It's where we learn the value of mutual submission (Eph 5:21). It's where we seek and find truth.  It's where we bring together our gifts and talents to accomplish more than we ever could on our own (Romans 12:4-5). Jesus prayed that all believers would be "one" (John 17:20-21).

In short, I think a little more "conformity" might do us some good.