“Clearly, Pfuel, always ready for ironic irritation anyway, was especially upset that day that they had dared to inspect and criticize his camp without him.  From this one brief encounter with Pfuel, Prince Andrei, owing to his memories of Austerlitz, formed a clear notion of the man’s character for himself.  Pfuel was one of those hopelessly, permanently, painfully self-assured men as only Germans can be, and precisely because only Germans can be self-assured on the basis of an abstract idea — science, that is, an imaginary knowledge of the perfect truth.  A Frenchman is self-assured because he considers himself personally, in mind as well as body, irresistibly enchanting for men as well as women.  An Englishman is self-assured on the grounds that he is a citizen of the best organized state in the world, and therefore, as an Englishman, he always knows what he must do, and knows that everything he does as an Englishman is unquestionably good.  An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and others.  A Russian is self-assured precisely because he does not know anything and does not want to know anything, because he does not believe it possible to know anything fully.  A German is self-assured worst of all, and most firmly of all, and most disgustingly of all, because he imagines that he knows the truth, science, which he has invented himself, but which for him is the absolute truth.  Such, obviously, was Pfuel.  He had science — the theory of oblique movement, which he deduced from the history of the wars of Frederick the Great — and everything he came across in contemporary military history seemed to him senselessness, barbarism, grotesque clashes in which so many mistakes were made on both sides that these wars could not be called wars: they did not fit the theory and could not serve as material for science.

In 1806 Pfuel had been one of the architects of the plan of war that had ended with Jena and Auerstadt; but he did not see in the outcome of that war the least proof of the incorrectness of his theory.  On the contrary, to his mind the departures from his theory were the only cause of the whole failure, and he with gleeful irony all his own, used to say: ‘I said then that the whole thing would go to the devil.’  Pfuel was one of those theorists who so love their theory that they forget the purpose of the theory — its application in practice; in his love for theory, he hated everything practical and did not want to know about it.  He was even glad of failure, because failure, proceeding from departures from theory in practice, only proved to him the correctness of his theory.” pg. 639-640

 

When I was in Thailand, I saw idols.  They were outside bakeries and 7-11s.  They would be sitting on shelves behind the cash register at restaurants.  Cab drivers glued them to their dashboards and placed pieces of their lunch in front of them.  I even saw them outside of brothels when a group of us did a prayer walk through the Red Light district in Bangkok.  I watched as women offered food to these small statues surrounded by incense before entering for her their night’s work.  They asked for forgiveness and sought protection in these idols, and they may have even hoped for salvation.

I’ve also read about idols.  In the Old Testament, idolatry is such a common practice that at times Israel is said to have an altar to some god on every high hill.  And in the New Testament, idols are similarly present in every day life.  They show up in restaurants, and just by going out to eat, some Christians apparently were complicit with idolatry.

But it seems to me that in our western society, idols just aren’t a part of every day life.  Apart from seeing them in Thailand and reading about them in the Bible, I don’t really have much experience with idols.  They seem foreign and culturally irrelevant.  I’ve never experienced the temptation to offer a sacrifice to an idol, and I’ve never had the urge to put my trust in an idol’s ability to help me.  But lately, I’ve been reading a book by Gerald May that has cast the issue of idolatry in a whole new light.  He argues that addiction is a form of idolatry.  Addiction is a form of devotion to an object that parallels religious ritual. It is western society’s version of idolatry.  He writes:

Spiritually, addiction is a deep-seated form of idolatry. The objects of our addictions become our false gods. These are what we worship, what we attend to, where we give our time and energy, instead of love. Addiction, then, displaces and supplants God’s love as the source and object of our deepest true desire. It is, as one modern spiritual writer has called it, a “counterfeit of religious presence.

Addiction is a state of compulsion, obsession, or preoccupation that enslaves a person’s will and desire. Addiction sidetracks and eclipses the energy of our deepest, truest desire for love and goodness. We succumb because the energy of our desire becomes attached, nailed, to specific behaviors, objects, or people.

He then goes on to talk about addiction as being far more commonplace than we might initially think.  Addiction isn’t limited to just those with chemical dependencies.  It’s not just the alcoholic or the homeless drug addict who struggles with addiction.  Addiction is pervasive and pernicious.  It infects our daily routines and sabotages our ability to love God and love others.

He tells a story from his personal life of a bout with depression he experienced.  As a professional psychiatrist, he become depressed when none of his patients were getting healed.  Another psychiatrist comforted him with the good news that his depression was a sign that he cared deeply for his clients.  He said, “you are depressed because you care deeply about their well-being.”  Upon further self-reflection, however, he discovered that it wasn’t his love for his clients that was causing him to feel depressed.  It was his addiction to professional success, and the utter absence of any signs of it that caused his depression.  He was suffering from withdrawal not compassion for his clients.

He says many of us are addicted to professional success and other seemingly innocuous intentions as well.  We can be addicted to feeling loved, getting praise from others, the comforts of TV, being thin, sex, or power to name just a few.  Some of these addictions are obviously more serious than others, but if we are forced to go without them, we will become depressed, irritable, angry, manipulative and much more.  Our addictions become intertwined with our deepest desires and even our identity, and in this sense they do function like idols in our lives.  They replace God as our source of hope, desire and love with life-draining patterns of behavior.

And just like sin and idolatry can only be overcome by the grace of God, so also the addict can only experience real healing through an encounter with grace.  As I recognize my addictions and try to stop engaging in them, I also know there is no way we can rid ourselves of idols and addictions by effort alone.  We are set free from our idolatrous inclinations and our addictive appetites only as we experience the unconditional love of God.

I experience the love and grace of God in the pages of a good book, the warmth of a loving friend, the prayers of a fellow church member, the sacrificial service of my spouse, and in the practice of spiritual disciplines like sabbath and meditation.  They are the pathways of God’s grace in my life.  They are the means by which Gods grace brings healing to my addictions and sets me on the road to recovery.

So, when an early twenty-first-century North American says, “What the church says may be OK for some people, but I think it is important to think for myself,” that person thinks that he or she is thinking for himself or herself.  No.  He is only espousing that self-centered, limited way of knowing that has been imposed upon him by his culture.  One could almost say that, because this is North America, because of the United States Constitution’s rendering of religion into a private matter, sealed off from everything important like economics, politics, and public matters, that person is not free to think anything more interesting than “I think it is important to think for myself.”  As Stanley Hauerwas has told us repeatedly, for a contemporary North American to say, “I think for myself,” is solid evidence of cultural formation, externally imposed social determination, since she did not think up the credo “I think for myself” all by herself. Pastor, pg. 211

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently returned from a trip our denomination runs called Journey to Mosaic.  It’s a sort of racial reconciliation trip designed to facilitate conversation about racism in our denomination.  One of the many highlights from the trip was a tour of Oakland we received by one of the former leaders in the Black Panthers, David Hillard.

David gave us an inside look at the Black Panthers movement.  He explained why they formed (they were a revolutionary organization aimed at claiming civil rights for those who were having their rights withheld from them), and he told us specifically what they did.  He told us about the good they accomplished and he told stories about the violent reaction they faced from the authorities in Oakland.  It was a moving experience, and I’m glad I got to hear it.

After the tour, our group gathered in a circle to discuss issues of race brought out from David’s tour.  One of the sentiments that came out in our group was that people thought the Black Panthers had the right idea, civil rights, but that they executed it poorly.  They thought it was wrong of them to carry guns in public (even though this is in keeping with their constitutional rights).

This contributed to their image problem which also came out when a few people mentioned that the Black Panthers appeared to be angry in the picture above.  Others said they didn’t see them as angry at all, and these people also said they totally understood why they would carry guns.  That’s when I realized how much racism dictates our response to this picture, and how related it is to power.   These young black men appeared to be angry to some because for some it is scary when African-Americans assert that they have rights and power.  They are organized and they are standing up under an oppressive power declaring they have rights.  They didn’t carry guns because they were planning to go to war.  The guns were a symbol.  They were an assertion that even though society won’t give us power, we still have power.

It’s akin to a woman who’s stuck in an abusive marriage.  She has been submissive throughout the relationship, but once she starts to find her voice her husband revolts.  She may only be asking for some time to join a small group or the opportunity to go on vacation with some girlfriends, but each of these innocuous requests are perceived as a threat to the domineering husband.  He overreacts in controlling ways, because he doesn’t want to lose even the smallest bit of his power.

The guns symbolically represent a request for power within society, and they brilliantly exposed the white majority’s determination not to give it to them.  The guns revealed the prejudice of the majority culture by the reaction they elicited.  Just like a power-mongering husband will react angrily when his wife begins to assert her own sense of self and worth, so also a culture of oppressors will react with antagonism when the people it oppresses start to question society’s power structure.

“He left for work in the morning and never returned.  We didn’t know what happened to him.  I called friends and then I called his co-workers.  Only later did I discover that he had been pulled over on the highway and arrested.  He doesn’t have a drivers’ license — he can’t get one because he’s an undocumented worker — and once they realized he is an undocumented worker they deported him.  We didn’t even get to say goodbye.  We’ve been here for 14 years.  We have five children, and they cry every night asking when their daddy is going to come home.  I’m worried that he is going to try and sneak back into the country.  If he does and gets caught, he will be put in prison for five years.  I don’t know what to do.  I can’t work, and my utilities are being shut off because I don’t have any income.”

I heard this story from a woman whose husband was deported less than a month ago.  It was heart-wrenching.  The group of us that had gathered to hear her story emptied our wallets.  We gave whatever we had to help.  But it still left me devastated.  This story was one of many our group heard as participants on a denominational event called Journey to Mosaic (J2M).  It’s one of the two racial reconciliation “journeys” our denomination runs.

Hopefully I’ll blog more about the experience I had in subsequent blog posts, but for now, I’d just like to share some statistics about undocumented workers in the US that hopefully dispel some of the myths associated with them.  These statistics were shared on our trip, and the full list can be found here, http://www.justiceforimmigrants.org/documents/immigration-myths.pdf.

• Immigrants don’t pay taxes: Immigrants pay taxes, in the form of income, property, sales, and taxes at the federal and state level. As far as income tax payments go, sources vary in their accounts, but a range of studies find that immigrants pay between $90 and $140 billion a year in federal, state, and local taxes.  Undocumented immigrants pay income taxes as well, as evidenced by the Social Security Administration’s “suspense file” (taxes that cannot be matched to workers’ names and social security numbers), which grew by $20 billion between 1990 and 1998.
• Immigrants are a drain on the US economy:  During the 1990s, half of all new workers were foreign-born, filling gaps left by native-born workers in both the high- and low-skill ends of the spectrum. Immigrants fill jobs in key sectors, start their own businesses, and contribute to a thriving economy. The net benefit of immigration to the U.S. is nearly $10 billion annually. As Alan Greenspan points out, 70% of immigrants arrive in prime working age.  That means we haven’t spent a penny on their education, yet they are transplanted into our workforce and will contribute $500 billion toward our social security system over the next 20 years.
• Immigrants increase the crime rate:  Recent research has shown that immigrant communities do not increase the crime rate and that newly arriving immigrants tend to commit fewer crimes than native born Americans. Ruben Rumbaut, a professor of sociology at Brandeis University, found that “even as the undocumented population has doubled to 12 million since 1994, the violent crime rate in the United States has declined 34.2 percent and the property crime rate has fallen 26.4 percent.” Cities where there are high levels of immigrants, such as New York, Chicago and Miami experienced declines in violent crime during this period. Other cities with numerous immigrants, such as El Paso and Laredo, are among the country’s safest cities to live in.
• Undocumented immigrants are a burden on the health care system: The National Immigration Law Center reports that the typical immigrant spends less than half the dollar amount for medical services when compared with the typical U.S. citizen. For example, in Los Angeles County, “total medical spending on undocumented immigrants was $887 million in 2000 – 6 percent of total costs, although undocumented immigrants comprise 12 percent of the region’s residents.” Further, federal law generally bars undocumented immigrants from using Medicaid benefits except in emergency situations. Even then, immigrants as a group are significantly less likely to use emergency room services than are American citizens.

Immigrants are demonized in political debates and the news media.  They are scapegoated for our country’s economic and social problems.  They are treated poorly by authorities and subjected to racism in the broader society.  They are doing far more good than bad, but they are still mistreated and labeled illegal — even though most of us would have done the exact same thing if we had been placed in their shoes.  I hope this will change soon.  I hope we can learn to treat them more equitably and with a greater awareness of the overall benefit they provide to our society.  I especially hope that those of us who consider ourselves Christians, would recognize that the way undocumented workers are treated is a justice issue.  They are exploited and denied basic human rights, and we ought to work towards immigration reform that not only enhances the security of our country but also treats immigrants with dignity and justice.

An article asserting the superiority of Chinese mothers in comparison to their western counterparts has been making the rounds recently.  I’ve had it emailed to me and I’ve seen friends posting it to their facebook walls.  You can read the article “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” online.

The article is written by a Chinese mother (who happens to also be a Yale Law School professor and author) named Amy Chua.  In the article she anecdotally argues for the superiority of Chinese mothers (somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but not really) and then provides three summary reasons why.  They are:

1. Western parents are concerned about their children’s psyches. Chinese parents aren’t. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.
2. Chinese parents believe that their kids owe them everything….the understanding is that Chinese children must spend their lives repaying their parents by obeying them and making them proud.
3. Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children’s own desires and preferences

She tells stories about how these three principles worked out in her parenting style.  She tells a story of calling her child garbage, which she says was done out of love and respect and a sort of belief in her daughter’s potential to do better.  She also tells a story of depriving her daughter of dinner until she mastered a difficult piece on the piano.  And she recounts her strict rules refusing some basic childhood amenities afforded to most white American children (like: TV, video games, and sleep overs).  Lastly she says activities like drama and gym (and any other instrument besides piano or violin) are a waste of time.

She boasts that her children turned out well.  They excelled in life because she knew what they needed and she was willing to sacrifice her own time in order to make sure they achieved it.  I read this article just a few minutes after reading a book by Parker Palmer called Let Your Life Speak and I was struck by the contrasting philosophies.

Palmer is writing about vocation and how we can find a way to do the work God made us to do.  He writes:

“Vocation does not come from willfulness.  It comes from listening.  I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about — quite apart from what I would like it to be about — or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions.” pg. 4

“Today I understand vocation quite differently — not as a goal to be achieved but as a gift to be received.  Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess.  Vocation does not come from a voice “out there” calling me to become something I am not.  It comes from a voice “in here” calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God.” pg. 10

You can see the difference.  Palmer believes that our true self is given to us at birth and that the pressures and expectations placed on us — by mothers and all the rest of society — force us to wear masks that cover up who we really are.  He says that by the time we hit our 20s, our true self can be so covered by masks that it may be nearly impossible to discern any part of our true self in our external self anymore.

The tension that a parent faces (in the extreme) is between telling your child who they should become or letting them become who they want.  With the former, a parent can impose masks and false identities on their child as they try and force them into a preconceived mold of success.  In the latter the parent chooses not to exert any pressures on their child so that they are free to become “who they were born to be,” in which case they grow up to be bums.  No child choose to practice piano and do math homework when given the option to watch TV or play video games.  These are extremes, but there is truth in each perspective that can be applied to our parenting.

I think Palmer is right, we are different.  Part of our journey towards self-hood is discovering what we are good at and what we aren’t good at.  But I think the parenting style that best helps a child get to this place ought to look much closer to that of the Chinese mother in this article than the stereotypical white American mother who is letting her child’s inner self emerge.  Because the truth is, kids don’t know who they are until much later in life, and without the pre-requisite skills afforded them by hard work in school and extra-curriculurs they won’t be set up to be the person they were made to be.

God made me in such a way that my true self finds expression in pastoral ministry, but I am only able to be a pastor because I can read and write, understand theology, exercise creative thought process, be analytical, and a whole host of other things that I learned through hard work.  I’m glad my parents were self-sacrificial enough to work with me and push me to learn these foundational skills. Now, I can choose to become the person God made me to be.  But I’m also glad that my parent didn’t disown me when I quit my engineering job and became a missionary in Africa.  They were willing to embrace my journey of self-discovery without imposing an identity crisis on me.

And for me all this means, I make Josiah do math and Mercy learn her letters before they go to school.  It’s also why Mary and I will consider going into debt to give Josiah piano lessons.  My wife, Korean though she is, had a chinese mother, and she secretly aspires to be one herself.

We’ve just started our series on identity and last week I preached on how what we believe shapes our identity.  In preparation, I did some research on what Americans believe.  It turns out someone has tried to categorize and synthesize a framework of belief commonly held by youth and young adults in America.

After doing hundreds of phone interviews with teenagers for his book Soul Searching and then more research with young adults for his book Souls in Transition, he recognized some trends.  The type of faith that consistently shows up is something he calls, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.  He describes it this way:

“Soul Searching argued that the real, tacit, de facto religion of the majority of American teenagers is not any of the many historic religious faiths one usually think of when one thinks of religion but is a new, de facto religion: moralistic therapeutic deism (MTD). Soul Searching presented five key beliefs held by followers of MTD. First, a God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth. Second, God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions. Third, the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. Fourth, God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem. Fifth, good people go to heaven when they die.” Souls in Transition, pg. 154

He goes on to say that MTD continues to show up with prominence in young adults ages 18-23, and my experience has been that MTD is woven into the fabric of American culture as a defining belief structure that exists for more than just young people.  Many people I’ve met who are much older than 23 could rightly be categorized in part or wholly as believing in MTD.

Is that bad?  Does it matter?  It seems like MTD sort of gets it right.  Be nice.  Be good.  Be happy.  These are simple and helpful axioms for leading a good life.  Right?

Actually, I think no.  I have a tendency towards MTD, and my experience with it has been that it brings bondage.  Moralism just makes me feel guilty.  I do the thing I think I ought to do, but only because I am enslaved to a moral code.  Then when I break it, I provide myself with so many exceptions that my moral code constantly changes and morphs to fit my lifestyle choices.  Secondly, feeling like the goal of my life is happiness puts me in bondage to my feelings.  If I’m not happy something is wrong, and I have to fix it.  Lastly, deism (which states that God is not active in this world) leaves me feeling like everything has to be accomplished on my own and that God is not with me in the midst of life.

Christ offers me another way.  He says even when you aren’t moral, I love you still.  Don’t expect to be happy.  Life is full of suffering, and being happy isn’t your purpose.  And he says, he will be with me always, even when it’s hard.  This sets me free to just live my life under grace.  I know that God loves me and he is with me when I’m happy, sad, good, or bad.  It’s all grace.

photo from flickr.

Throughout the day, I’ve had countless Christians and particularly Christian leaders urging me and all their other social network connections to vote.  It’s left me wondering, is voting our Christian duty?

Surprisingly, theologians differ.  Some, characterized by the hard religious right (e.g. Dobson) and the progressive Christian left (e.g. Wallis) believe so.  They see voting, and political involvement more generally, to be one of the primary ways that Christians are called to transform the world.  Whether it be abortion legislation, gay marriage, poverty, or war, these groups ardently believe that Christians under under an ethical imperative to vote.  This is the way we influence and shape society, they argue.  We vote those into office who will enact the sort of laws that makes America a more compassionate and just place to live.  Others, like Stanely Hauerwas, argue for a sort of withdrawal from politics because the church should influence the world (and politicians) by living out a Kingdom of Heaven reality in the hear and now.  We shape the political process by exemplifying a better way.  Abstaining from voting for Hauerwas is a thoroughly political statement.

In his book, To Change the World, James David Hunter argues that all three are misguided.  They underestimate the power that ordinary people have outside the political process.  Hunter urges us to embrace the social power that we all have by following in the footsteps of Jesus.  He exerted tremendous world-changing power and influence without being dependent on the political process.

I’m with Hunter.  Voting isn’t our Christian duty, but I would still urge Christians to vote.  Voting communicates a fundamental Christian truth that every human life has worth, and every human voice should be heard.

Traditionally, voting has been a means of oppression.  Women, slaves and other ethnic outsiders have been denied their right to vote as a way of discounting their place in society.  Now that most of these barriers have been removed, voting is an elemental way we can celebrate the inherent dignity and worth of every person regardless of race, gender, class or any other societal barrier that usually differentiates people.  The wealthy business man’s vote doesn’t count any more than the homeless woman’s vote, and the Ivy-League educated professor’s vote counts just the same as the factory worker’s.  Voting is a beautiful expression of the intrinsic value of every human life.

And that’s why I voted today.  I didn’t vote because my hope for a better world lies in the hands of some politician or the political process.  My hope is in Christ alone.  But I still voted, because in voting I celebrate the privilege our country affords every individual.  I celebrate the equality of every life represented in every vote.  I hope you voted too.

Image from flickr.

One of the most exciting terms used to describe the church today is the word missional.  It correctly categorizes the people of God as a community on a mission — a people sent out by Jesus to extend and promote his ministry and message in the world.  But unfortunately, what it has devolved into is frequently little more than do-gooder volunteerism.

I believe the word missional ought to properly characterized the church (and I hope it does ours), but I lament the way the word has been redefined in popular Christian culture.  Many churches and Christians now think that being missional is about helping poor people have a better life.  It is expressed in worthy activities like helping homeless people find a job, feeding people in a soup kitchen, or engaging in activism to alleviate poverty.  But there is an attitude that Christians can carry with them into these activities that ends up undermining their acts of service.

In his book Disciples of All Nations, Lamin Sanneh (a naturalized U.S. citizen from Gambia and professor at Yale) explains how this same shift occurred in foreign missions to the ultimate detriment of the missionaries’ ministries.

“The distraction came about by way of split prorities as missionaries spoke variously of the gospel of enlightenment, the gospel of healing, the social gospel, and the gospel of sex equality…. Social uplift became the goal and rationale of the gospel.  The work of Christ was construed as lifting people out of poverty and backwardness…Yet, Paul Allen deliberately rejected any means of propagating the faith that might distract people from the truth that the Christian faith was founded not in human philosophy but in the power of God.  Missions had a thousand plans, but God had only one.  Salvation was not by the thousand capillaries of cultural assimilation.” pg. 226

“Allen recalled the Roman slaves who lived in social conditions deeply repugnant to what the West called the Christian life still converted to Christianity before any ameliorative social remedies were available to them.  The Christian life embraced slaves and concubines without bashfulness or reservation while they were slaves and concubines because the Christian life did not make social disadvantage a disqualification of membership.” pg. 229

Whenever being missional takes this sort of turn — when the church becomes simply an institution for helping people improve their lives and move out of poverty — the result is a compromised gospel.  It becomes harder and harder for Christians who have made it (in a socio-cultural sense) to rub shoulders with those who don’t.  It becomes difficult for us to accept the drug addict, homeless man, prostitute, or the alcoholic into our midst without seeing them as a project to improve.

But the truth is, the Christian faith is open and available to all.  Salvation is not hindered or encumbered by circumstances, and Christian communities are at their best when they reflect this.  They are at their best when people proclaim a message of new life, salvation and hope for a better future even for those living in the worst of situations.  This is the transformative truth of the gospel.  Our lives don’t have to be going well for God to be present in them.  We don’t have to be successful and we don’t have to be put together to know and experience God’s love.

This is a radical message, and it is the foundation for the right kind of missional activity.  When this is the foundation of our missional mindset, then we can interact with other similarly broken people and carry to them a message of love and acceptance.  We can serve the homeless man, alcoholic, or drug addict not out of a sense that we need to fix them to get them saved, but that God loves them even in their brokenness — just like you and me.  Unless we carry this attitude into our acts of service and into our missional ministry then we will undermine and sabotage the very good we seek to do.

Photo from flickr.

Last week, late night (fake) news hosts, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert announced their upcoming rallies to be held on 10.30.10.  Stewart announced his rally first.  The Rally to Restore Sanity is for people who think all this passionate dialogue about politics has gotten a bit too crazy.  Colbert countered with his March to Keep Fear Alive, because he thinks we should stay afraid.  After all, reason is just one letter away from treason.

I agree with Colbert.  Reason is just one letter away from treason, especially when it comes to matters of faith.  Being reasonable is perhaps the greatest killer of faith in all of America, and when we consider that Jesus is our king, being reasonable leads many of us to be treasonous.

• Tithing is unreasonable, so we treasonously withhold our possessions from God.
• Sacrificing for others, especially when they are unappreciative, is unreasonable, so we treasonously live only for ourselves.
• Forgiving someone who wrongs us and doesn’t say sorry, is unreasonable, so we treasonously reject the path laid out for us by our King, Jesus.
• Turning the other cheek is certainly the unreasonable thing to do in a conflict, so we treasonously fight back and violently assert our value through power over others.

In the Kingdom of God, being reasonable can very well lead us to be treasonous towards our King.  Love and grace are not reasonable ways to live, so we choose the treason of reason.  That’s why I’m with Colbert.  Not in the sense of keeping fear alive, but in his assertion that reason is often just another way of saying treason.  Being reasonable is just code for being apathetic and self-interested.  It’s the sort of life that is antithetical to the call of Christ’s citizens to live under the authority of our sacrificial King.