Lessons from Laodicea

Missional Leadership in a Culture of Affluence

Lockhart

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498239042
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

"I'm rich and I don't need a thing," bragged the early Christians in the big city of Laodicea. The Apostle John, however, saw their affluence and arrogance through a theological lens. He declared them to be bankrupt, "lukewarm Christians" whom God would gladly gargle and spit out. Today, the mainline church in the West finds itself in a dominant culture of Laodicean affluence, where even faith is a commodity to be consumed. While the gospel spreads and thrives in the global South and East, the Western mainline church looks longingly back at Christendom and forward in fear. As Christians living in a North American culture that highly prizes the unholy Trinity of individualism, consumerism, and secularism, we require a new kind of missional leadership to "pray" attention to what God is doing in the world around us. This book names the challenges and promises inherent in partnering with the Holy Spirit in order to offer missional leadership in a culture of affluence. It is about both living in Laodicea and leaving it behind. We are no longer in a Babylonian captivity but a Laodicean one. This work helps chart a course for Christians who long to let go of "country club religion" and instead belong to a community that helps equip missionary disciples, resistant to the dominant culture and resplendent in the love of our triune God.

Part I

Living in Laodicea

Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.

—Matthew 16:25

No one can serve two lords. There is only one God, and that God will either be the true one, who asks us to give things up when they become sin, or it will be the god of money, who makes us turn our back on Christianity’s God.

—Archbishop Oscar Romero, 21 January 1979

Chapter One

Canaanite Idol—Gideon’s Prime Time Debut

If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.

—Dietrich Bonhoeffer

It’s funny how language changes over time. As a greying Gen Xer, I remember that if something was “rad” or “radical” as a kid that meant it was cool. Today, a radical is someone that Homeland Security would tackle at the border. Growing up, if someone talked about a mouse it was likely a rodent running around our family cottage at Lake of the Woods. Today, the first thing you think of is a device to help you navigate your computer. In a similar way the language of idol has shifted in contemporary culture. People speak of sports stars or Hollywood celebrities as “my idol.” Luxury cars and mansions are “idolized” by the masses as something to be desired. In no small measure, the hit television show American Idol has helped shift the word idol from a negative to a positive connotation over the series’s long run on the airwaves. I recall watching the debut season of American Idol in 2002 when “idol worship” swept across North America. Thousands of people lined up at convention centers across the country and auditioned in front of celebrity judges to win the right to compete on national television against other talented singers. As the season progressed, the judges offered their comments on people’s ability—but the genius was found in the invitation for the television audience to phone in and vote on who should stay and who should go. To be honest, like watching car races for the crashes or hockey for the fights, I think a lot of us watched the show not only for the amazing entertainers but also for the selection process that revealed an astonishing number of folks who believed they could sing but whose voices were, in fact, reminiscent of fingernails on a chalkboard. Do these people not have any friends who love them enough to tell the truth? It’s a little bit like that old expression that the truest measure of a man is found somewhere between the opinion of his mother and the opinion of his mother-in-law. Except in this case, it was the opinion of these contestants’ families and the harsh panel of judges.

I recall an episode of American Idol several seasons ago where the last contestant of the evening was named Renaldo. He came out for his audition dressed head to toe in an angel costume, complete with wings and a halo. The judges were harsh, as you can imagine, especially when the only thing angelic about Renaldo was his costume and certainly not his voice. What an odd assortment of characters, I thought, as I sat on my couch watching judges, angels, and idols pass before my very eyes.

Well, this very same curious cast of characters—judges, angels, and idols—also appear before our eyes as we read the story of Gideon in the book of Judges. In fact, we owe American Idol a small debt of gratitude for placing the word idol back in our everyday vocabulary. Being more familiar with the word idol helps us get into some of the Old or First Testament readings a little bit easier. While our contemporary society has transformed the word idol into a positive concept, when we look at the word through a biblical lens there is no such translation possible. Turning to the Bible’s witness in the book of Judges, we find a competition that involves idols but with stakes much higher—not American Idol or its poor cousin spin-off Canadian Idol but Canaanite Idol, starring Gideon and friends.

The book of Judges in general, and the character of Gideon in particular, are not parts of the Bible that most folks venture into. I often wonder if there is something inside us that feels the further and further we go back into the First Testament the harder it is to relate to our times. Yet, the character of Gideon defies this belief by presenting a lifestyle and mind-set that is remarkably contemporary.

A good way to sum up Gideon’s beliefs would be to say he was “spiritual but not religious.” Gideon grew up hearing stories from his parents and grandparents about God. He heard stories about how God had rescued his ancestors from slavery in Egypt, parted the Red Sea, and guided them under Moses’s leadership to the promised land and so forth. But during Gideon’s lifetime the people of Israel had fallen on hard times. They were oppressed by the Midianites—a foreign power—and for as much as the old folks might talk about God, Gideon had not experienced him and wondered, if their God was so great, why were their lives so miserable?

As a result Gideon and his friends had no clear allegiance to the God of Israel and were happy to kind of “mix and match” their belief systems with whatever else came along. In fact, if you were to drop by and visit Gideon and his buddies you would see them relaxing in their front yard on a Saturday afternoon grumbling about the latest raid by the Midianites, drinking a two-four of “Promised Land Pilsner” and admiring the latest idols erected in Gideon’s front yard—the Asherah Pole and an altar to Baal.

While toiling away on my doctoral work, I learned a great deal about Canaanite gods and goddess as a frequent visitor to the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. When one enters the museum, there are seven galleries dedicated to different ancient cultures in the Middle East. Archaeologists from the University of Chicago visited the Middle East, at the time known as the Orient, back in the days when you could more easily put artifacts in your pocket “Indiana Jones style” and bring them back to Western museums. The Canaanite exhibit is exquisite. It explains how the Canaanites had many gods but El was the main creator god. His wife, the goddess Asherah, was worshipped by many throughout the region, including where the Israelites lived, by dedicating a tree that over time was often sculpted into ornate wooden poles with carvings of various shapes and designs. The image of these trees reminded me of preaching one summer in rural Connecticut where locals painted large roadside rocks like eagles, sharks, and even a huge American flag. El and goddess Asherah had a son who was known as the Canaanite god Baal. The Oriental Institute has a statue of Baal, perhaps something like what Gideon put up in his backyard. Baal was a fierce-looking warrior who was often seen holding a massive lighting bolt that gave tribute to his role as the storm god. In fact, Gideon’s choice to have both an altar to Baal and an Asherah pole was a powerful combination—mixing the divine forces of storms and fertility—it’s like the rainmaker meets Viagra! Of course, in a land dependent upon rain-fed agriculture and children to help work the farm you can understand why these two gods were so revered.

Gideon, feeling that the stories he learned about God from his parents and grandparents in Sunday/synagogue school were a little lame, decided to cover all his bases by mixing and matching various religious beliefs from the local area. As a result, his “spiritual but not religious” belief system was fairly shallow and totally subjective. Gideon’s freedom to mix and match religious traditions is, in many ways, the most contemporary expression of a la carte spirituality available in our society today. You know, folks who feel spiritual but not religious. They express a sincere yet shallow belief system that enables them to mix and match various world religions while not belonging to any faith community. Where I live, in the Pacific Northwest, this is especially true with Eastern religions. Just recently I was chatting with a guy on the treadmill beside me at the local gym. I knew him well enough to say “Hello” from time to time but not much more than that. As we were jogging along on our adult hamster wheels he said to me, “I heard from someone that you’re a pastor or something, is that right?” “Yup,” I replied, debating whether telling him I was a Presbyterian would clarify or clutter the conversation. Instead I said, “How about you—are you a spiritual person?” “Oh yes,” he said wiping his glowing forehead with a towel, “I’m a Buddhist.” “That’s great,” I replied innocently, “what is it that you find compelling about the teachings of the Buddha?” Silence. He slowed his treadmill down and looked over at me like I was a space alien. “Oh, I don’t know anything about that—I just like to do yoga a couple times a week.” Perfect.

Subscribing to a vague notion of Eastern religion appears to be socially acceptable these days. In fact, the premier of British Columbia, Christy Clark, even tried to spend $150,000 of public money recently to shut down a major artery in our city for yoga on the Burrard Bridge. As Premier Clark said, “India has given the world a great gift in yoga, with dedicated followers around the world.” She continued enthusiastically, “It’s become part of the cultural fabric in B.C., and particularly so in the Lower Mainland. That’s why we’re inviting beginners and yogi masters alike from across the province to Vancouver—to come together to celebrate yoga in record numbers, and most importantly, have fun.”1 Where once a major North American city might be shut down for a Billy Graham revival, today people grab their yoga mats and lattes, ready to bend bodies in a downward dog.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those folks who get all upset about yoga. It’s fine as a workout and if one is actually a dedicated follower of Hinduism then expressing one’s spiritual beliefs through yoga is understandable. I even have a Christian pastor friend who started her own “Yoga Chapel.”2 For years I have been involved...

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Preface: 
Botox or Bypass?
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: 
The Laodicean Captivity of the Church
• Part I: Living in Laodicea
• Part II: Leaving Laodicea Behind
• Bibliography