Pursuing Aspirations
Tena tātou katoa e te iwi mīhana… (Greetings to all the people in mission),
This month’s whakataukī (proverb) is about perseverance and endurance; refusing to let obstacles get in your way while striving to attain something of worth: “Whāia e koe iti kahurangi” [Strive for something of great value to you]. In other words, pursue your treasured aspirations.
Sadly, we have recently seen negative consequences of pursuing aspirations that are… sociopathic. We all know the white supremacist aspirations of the Christchurch mosques attacker, we can probably guess the Islamic aspirations in the minds of the Sri Lankan church/hotel attackers, but are you aware of the reformed Christian aspirations of the Californian synagogue attacker? If not, the Washington Post has some instructional reporting on the matter and Christianity Today has a reflective review here.
The assumption is that what is of value to you will be of value to your community.
The thing I like about whakataukī is that you should not interpret them through an individualist lens. The collective is always in mind. Pursuing aspirations of value to you is not a self-serving encouragement. The assumption is that what is of value to you will be of value to your community. Pursue that which you are uniquely gifted to contribute to the community. Aspirational pursuits should add to community flourishing not destroy it.
When an individual succeeds in their aspirations, the collective benefits. This was reinforced to me as I undertook my doctoral research, apologising to my Māori participants that their contribution would not likely be of direct benefit to them. Kaupapa Māori methodology is (technically): “by, with and for Māori”—whereas, my research would be applied to global missions. Nevertheless, most seemed to see (better than I) that my research had potential to increase mana Māori (Māori reputation) in the world and therefore I was encouraged in my aspirational pursuit. If I flourished they flourished so long as what we co-created did some good in the world.
In light of the spate of attacks from a variety of extremist sources I continue to reflect on how we frame our motivations for missions. What the commentary around extremism is cementing is that the era of a singular moral certainty in society is gone. You may hold on to it, but wider society is not. We live amidst multiple (plural) realities. Reactions to proclamations on social media from certain Christian commentators is not indicative of a disdain of Christianity per se. It is a damning of the imposition of moral propositions from one sector of society onto the rest of society. We should be free, by all means, to express a personal conviction, so long as we’re not demanding that others believe it. This we have a human right to do under the freedom of religion we enjoy. We do not, however, have a right to force society to bend to our reality, our particular ideal of social good. Not anymore anyway.
As I implied in last month’s post, impositional missiology is dead. Post-WWII it is now philosophically untenable. Missiology has moved a long way towards a high appreciation of those without Christ, but it seems Christian witness in the ghettos of former Christendom is very slow to follow suit. Read some of the commentary in response to the manifesto of the young Orthodox Presbyterian who attacked the California synagogue on April 27 and it is frightening to can see how Christian Scripture and theology and can be so easily twisted when treated propositionally or axiomatically—as “truth” statements without context or relational connection to the whole narrative of Scripture, history and society. Preachers take careful note.
The mission of God is inherently relational.
The Word became flesh and is at work in us as Spirit precisely to avoid mechanistic misinterpretation. The mission of God is inherently relational. God is the central Actor in missions, not us. We are, at best, participants. Our witness in the world is not to force the world to bend to our perceptions of God, it is to show the world who our God is. The most powerful evidence of that, Jesus stated in John 17:21-23, is our unity—rooted in our (collective) love for God, our love for one another, our love for our neighbours, our love for… those who do not believe as we do (enemies). We are not the purveyors of judgement, we are the demonstrators of love.
That’s not to say that love doesn’t have boundaries. I’m not inferring situational ethics, but I do encourage transcendent ethics, those rooted and revealed in the character of God. In any given social context we must nuance our moral response with the ‘more important matters’ (cf. Matt 23, Luke 11).
The temptation towards an impositional attitude, that forces ideas on others, is rooted in the original sin—eating fruit that enabled us to act like God, determining right from wrong. Jesus gives us access to the tree of life. But that access requires us to surrender that which the other tree gave us—self determination, the greatest obstacle for us to overcome.
Let’s let God be God, and we be servants witnessing to the love of God. Let’s collectively make that our aspirational pursuit. Part of our responsibility as communities of God’s people is to regulate excesses and mitigate extremism. We do that by working hard on our relationships—persevering and making every effort (Eph 4:2-3) to lovingly work together as we #stayonmission.
Whakapaingia te Atua, to tatou kaiunga ki te ao whanui (Praise to God, who sends us into the world),
Jay
