The Fast I Choose

Welcome to the first post in my new blog. I don't have a terribly clear vision of what I want to do with this, but I have some vague inkling that I'd like to make it a space where I can explore and hash out how I and others in the church are doing theology and what impact it (necessarily) has on individual lives, communities, congregations, and the world. Ideally, it would be nice to have a place to reflect upon, make connections regarding, and garner support for various endeavors in social justice amid which I may find myself, and find myself wanting company. I've updated a LiveJournal nearly daily for over 4 years now, and I feel like it's time I carved out a spot in cyberspace where I'm doing something more and vastly better than whining about my personal life. Besides, writing is in my marrow, and if I hope to use it to establish and carry out orthodoxy and orthopraxis in my life and in the communities with which I identify myself, I figure I had better get some practice other than writing papers for school and recounting the day's events with sometimes overwhelming verbosity.

I felt the need to come up with a clever name for my blog, and who knows if I'll stick with the one I chose, but in a way it works because it's Scripture and it's all about social justice. Here's the context, in case you don't run in my particular faith circles and didn't catch it:

"Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
⁷Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?" — Isaiah 58:6-7

The preceding verses show that although the house of Jacob may fast and "lie in sackcloth and ashes" (v. 5), God says to his people, "[you] oppress all your workers" (v. 3) and perpetrate injustice against others. God will not hear the cries of a people who mistreat their brothers and sisters so. In the book of Amos, God declares that unless justice is carried out, he will not even hear their praise and worship:

"I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
²²Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
²³Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
²⁴But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." — Amos 5:21-24

All of this is stuff that the good liberal Christian knows. However, I am aware of the subtle ways in which the most sincere efforts to pursue justice can fall short of God's vision for his fallen world. It is so easy to become an activist, to protest injustice everywhere, to raise a much-needed voice against oppression in all its insidious forms. But Stanley Hauerwas and others warn that it is possible for the church to get so wrapped up in standing against something—whether it is standing against war, against poverty, against homosexuality, against immorality, or any number of things—that she forgets what she is standing for. The church stands at the foot of the cross for the sake of all of God's children whom he longs to come to know him through relationship and community, which the church is meant to establish as mirrored in God's very nature as Trinity, three in one, a self-contained community of unconditional love.

So that's a handful of scattered thoughts posing as an introduction to this blog. Please to enjoy—or not, and either way, comments are encouraged. Also, the list of websites I've posted includes all kinds of resources: church websites, social justice initiatives, various nonprofit organizations, intentional communities, Christian publications, and some links of my own dealing with my music or projects with which I am involved. I'll be updating that list occasionally, so keep checking it out—you may find something of interest.