The Cross: Atonement Analysis is One Thing. What does it Mean for Me?

I had already finished this month’s blog, sent it off to the webmaster. Then the cross broke into my life. Part 2 of last month’s blog will have to wait!

Good Friday. In addition to participating in a Zoom church service I decided to reflect on the significance of the day by reading two chapters from Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross—Chris Friesen’s and Debbie Blue’s. Amazing chapters—a conversation in a coffee shop and a sermon. As I re-read these chapters the authors, once again, impressed me with their insight and the power of their images. I wish I was as smart as them and able to communicate as well as they do. In the middle of my appreciation of their atonement theology, however, an inner voice said “Mark, read this for you. What does this mean for you?” I have thought so much about the atonement, written so much about the atonement, taught so many times about the atonement, when I encounter talk about the saving significance of the cross my default is to go to analysis. I stepped aside from my appreciative awe of their excellent work and let their words and images engage my life. I am newly impressed that even with as much time as I have spent reflecting on the cross and resurrection, I have not exhausted the meaning of the atonement—neither at the level of analysis nor at its significance for my life.

I will not attempt to condense and communicate the images themselves. I encourage you to read, or re-read, these chapters yourself. I will summarize an aspect of the content of their images and focus on how they impacted me.

One of Friesen’s images is the cross as God turning the other cheek. God does not strike back to balance the relational equation. Turning the other cheek causes the math of reciprocity and retribution to unravel, leading to a relational situation with remarkable possibilities for reconciliation and growth. A beautiful, powerful message. Rather than responding in kind to our disrespect, disloyalty, disobedience (ours today and literally at the cross) God forgives. Through God’s act we are freed from the revenge and retaliation cycle and freed to forgive as well. A great message for the men in my jail Bible study, but for me? Today? I put the book down, prayed, asked God, “What does this mean for me?” Almost immediately I thought of a few students that frustrated me this week—for not following directions or for missing class, from my perspective, unnecessarily. I certainly would not call them enemies, and I am not plotting revenge. Yet I let the frustration simmer in my being; I complained about them to a couple friends. The cross of Jesus calls me to something else. I prayed and released what I was holding against them. I invite you to do the same. Take a moment, pray, listen—who or what comes to mind? And, may this, for you and me, be more than just a Good Friday activity.

Debbie Blue’s sermon on the last part of the Gospel of Mark’s passion narrative (15:21-39) begins with powerful stories of people coming together by uniting against a common enemy. She calls it the scapegoating machine. The power of the stories is not in their grandness, not Hitler uniting Germans against the Jews, rather in their everydayness. Her point is we do this all the time. Then she turns to the cross. She observes, Jesus could have done this; he could have easily unified the crowds against the religious leaders or against the Romans. But the cross is the opposite, all the competing factions in Jerusalem unifying against Jesus.

Blue says, at this point God could have responded with the ultimate scapegoating move—displaying how bad all these people are. But, she writes:

The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ isn’t a New Great Big Way to make the machine run, the Most Powerful Fuel Ever for that old mechanism, so that now God’s people can clearly unify, the believers in Jesus against the unbelievers. It collapses the machine. . . This story is not the ultimate reinforcement of over/against, this story reveals to us the destructiveness, futility, utter deathliness of all our againstness, shows us how our deeply ingrained mechanism for creating unity leads to death, even the death of God.

But surprisingly, stunningly, beautifully, unexpectedly and amazingly, the revelation does not end with utter condemnation for the violence at the heart of the social order. . .  It’s a story about Jesus absorbing, taking in, all our againstness, accepting all the death we have to hand out, all the fears that make it so impossible for us to be truly vulnerable, all the weakness that makes us mean. He takes it all totally and thoroughly in. And comes back. Comes back unbelievably undefeated by it. Comes back, not vengeful and resentful, all hyped to form some oppositional unity, some group communion against us (or anyone), all ready to get his army up against the bad stupid scapegoating people. He comes back and he comes back again and again and always, irrepressibly for them, us, all. He comes back loving and forgiving and desiring, as always, communion with the world.

It’s a little hard to get. It may not even seem entirely appealing to us, but this story isn’t told to harden our hearts against anyone. It’s given to us to break our hearts open.  To make love and communion. To make relationship with the Other (who’s the complete other) possible. To reveal to us how we are all together now, not in opposition, not in condemnation, but in forgiveness, gathered together in the love of God (68-69).

Then as I read her next lines I thought, bounded and centered. I invite you to look for that connection too.

It doesn’t seem like this story should fuel our sense of divine righteousness against bad people, wrong ways, strange, weird others, it seems like it might break our hearts open, for relationship based not on exclusion but on the ridiculously inclusive forgiving and redeeming love of God. It shows us that we can’t relieve our separateness by making a scapegoat, we can’t create love and unity fueled by againstness. The old mechanism, the old story is not creative of communion, or if it is, that love and communion is some thin false scared union compared to the new, practically unimaginable, vitally alive, thorough and wild communion made possible by the love and grace of God (69-70). 

As you know, I think relating church to bounded sets, fuzzy sets, and centered sets is a great tool. Reading this paragraph, however, reminded me that the tool is just an aid for understanding. What makes a centered church possible is the God of the center. It is through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection that the wild, vitally alive, ridiculously inclusive communion of a centered church is possible. Beautiful thought, but then again the question: “What does this mean for you Mark?” I began to ponder, to listen. Where do I practice “againstness” rather than allow the reality of God’s work through the cross and resurrection to flow in my life? Ironically, the very first thing that came to mind was people who have attacked me because of my books on the atonement. It is not a stretch to say I have been scapegoated. Although I have not reciprocated by openly attacking as I have been attacked, I have feed the scapegoating machine with us vs. them thoughts in private and in conversation with friends (who are “on my side”). Other us vs. them dynamics easily came to mind. There is so much of it in the air in our society today.

I took a walk and pondered. What does it mean for me to let loose the resurrection reality in these us-them dynamics? What does it mean for me to practice a centered approach with these people? A key move is to distinguish agreement from communion. I feel no call from the Spirit to change my positions. Thinking of Jesus was helpful here. Jesus practiced amazingly inclusive table fellowship. He did not, however, approve of the behavior or beliefs of all those he ate with. For instance, eating with Levi, Zaacheaus, and other tax collectors was not an endorsement of their actions. What then am I called to do? Three ideas. 

First, when I feel us-them, over-and-against, type thinking in my being (or scapegoating sort of talk with others), remind myself: I do not need this for security or identity. My security and identity are found in the center—Jesus. We do not need an other, a scapegoat, to unite us. Our communion flows from God’s loving and gracious action of inclusion. We are united by the center—Jesus. 

Second, compassion. It is so easy to see a person only as their theological position or their political position. As I wrote in a blog two years ago: How might it change our days if we wrapped every thought about another person in a blanket of blessing and compassion? (See also this blog on Father Greg Boyle.) I will seek to shift my gaze.

Third, look for common ground, focus on common values and commitments.

What came to mind as you read Debbie’s words? Who came to mind? What ideas might you add to my list?

Timely Words from Another Time

France surrendered to Nazi invaders and an armistice was signed June 22, 1940. Presbyterian pastors André Trocmé and Edouard Theis wrote a joint declaration that Trocmé read as a sermon the next day in the Le Chambon church. Catherine Cambessédès recalls, “In the church you could have heard a pin drop. I was only fifteen, yet I clearly remember my mood going from lost and frightened to safe and calm. Can you imagine what a sermon like that meant to us at a time of fear and despair? To be told, in church, that if the military situation had changed, our source of inspiration had not: it was still to follow in the steps of Jesus and the New Testament. We were not lost. We still had direction. The day remains one of the most illuminating of my life” (A Good Place to Hide, 43).

I invite you to step into that special moment and let these brief excerpts from that sermon illuminate, inspire, provide direction and calm for us as well. How do Theis and Trocmé speak to you and your community of faith today?

In this call to Christian humility, brothers and sisters, we would like to add a few exhortations addressed to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. First, let us abandon today all divisions among Christians, and all squabbles among the French people. Let us stop labeling ourselves and others, because that is the language of scorn: let us abandon right and left, peasants, workers, intellectuals, proletarians and plutocrats, all the terms we use to accuse each other of some wrongdoing or other. Let us learn to trust each other again, to receive each other, to welcome each other, reminding ourselves that every time we come together, like the early Christians, we are brothers and sisters in Christ.

Then, having abandoned these suspicions and hatreds, and the political passions that go with them, let us gather resolutely around Jesus Christ, the head of the universal Church, and embrace his Gospel, and only his Gospel, as our source of inspiration, obedience and action.

Finally, understand that the return to obedience obliges us to make some breaks: breaks with the world, and breaks with ways of living that we have accepted so far. We face powerful heathen pressures on ourselves and on our families, pressures to force us to cave in to this totalitarian ideology. If this ideology cannot immediately subjugate our souls, it will try, at the very least, to make us cave in with our bodies. The duty of Christians is to resist the violence directed at our consciences with the weapons of the spirit. We appeal to all our brothers in Christ to refuse to agree with or cooperate in violence, especially in the coming days when that violence is directed against the English people.

To love, to forgive, to show kindness to our enemies, that is our duty. But we must do our duty without conceding defeat, without servility, without cowardice. We will resist when our enemies demand that we act in way that go against the teachings of the Gospel. We will resist without fear, without pride, and without hatred. But the moral resistance is not possible without a clean break from the selfishness that, for a long time, has ruled our lives. We face a period of suffering, perhaps even shortages of food. We have all more or less worshiped Mammon; we have all basked in the selfish comforts of our close family, in easy pleasure, in idle drinking. We will now be made to do without many things. We will be tempted to play our own selfish game, to cling on to what we have, to be better off than our brothers. Let us abandon, brothers and sisters, our pride and our egotism, our love of money and our faith in material possessions, and learn to trust God in Heaven, both today and tomorrow, to bring us our daily bread, and to share that bread with our brothers and sisters.        

May God free us from both worry and complacency. May he give us his peace, which nothing and nobody can take away from his children. May he comfort us in our sorrows and in all our trials. May he see fit to make each of us humble and faithful members of the Church of Jesus Christ, of the body of Christ, waiting for his kingdom of justice and love, where his will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven (A Good Place to Hide, 307-08).

For more on the story of how Christians in this French town peacefully resisted fascism and aided Jewish refugees:

Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, by Philip Hallie. I use this book in class.

Love in a Time of Hate: The Story of Magda and André Trocmé and the Village that Said No to the Nazis, by Hanna Schott. Provides much more information on Magda and also their lives before and after the war.

A Good Place to Hide, by Peter Grose. A broader, more carefully researched history than Lest Innocent Blood be Shed. It does not add much to the faith-oriented material of the other two books, but provides greater information on the actual activities of aiding refugees, includes surrounding towns, and includes stories of refugees.

Weapons of the Spirit, a documentary that includes interviews with people from Le Chambon who lived there during the war.

Conflict-Aversion and Worship

I was reading the book Worship in the Way of the Cross. I turned a page, saw the section title “Interpersonal Cruciformity,” and wondered “Why does a book on worship have a section on interpersonal relations?” I thought, “I guess this is a topic the author is passionate about, so he stuck it in. I wonder how he will make it look like it fits?”

John Frederick’s book is a practical book rooted and framed theologically. He is scholar-practitioner, a Ph. D. in New Testament with extensive experience as a worship pastor. He leans heavily on Michael Gorman’s excellent work on Paul’s theology of the cross. I don’t want this to turn into a book review. I will just mention one thing that may entice you to check the book out yourself. He writes about the role of worship in challenging the myth of redemptive violence and reorienting us to an alternative. Okay, back to the interpersonal section.

I began the section thinking it was a tangent—assuming it would be well done because John is a good writer, but still a tangent. I ended the section saying, “John is right. It is not a tangent. Actually we need chapters like this in most ministry books.” What caused my perspective to change? To answer that I need to, briefly, share a recent experience. 

Grace Spencer, a current student, is also a scholar-practitioner. She is involved in a church plant, high school ministry, and practices restorative justice as a mediator for VORP. She is an MA Theology student passionately exploring connections between atonement theology and attitudes and practices of justice. One question she has brought up is: Why are so many Christians conflict-averse? Why do they view conflict as inherently sinful?

As I work on a book on bounded, fuzzy and centered approaches to church, I have interviewed many practitioners, including a weekend of focus groups at The Meeting House in Toronto. A group of pastors and home church leaders there were recounting experiences of loving confrontation done in a centered way. One of them said, “People are afraid of conflict. One of the things that pulls our groups in a fuzzy direction is aversion to conflict.” I immediately thought of Grace’s question, and made a note: “Have a chapter on conflict aversion in the book.”

A few pages into John’s section on interpersonal relationships, I thought back to that moment in Ontario and Grace’s question. My perspective changed. He has recognized that conflict-aversion, passive-aggressiveness, and heavy-handed coercive leadership hinder churches’ worship experience. He writes about relations between the worship leader and others on the worship team, others in the congregation, and others on the pastoral team. He shares positive and negative examples. He states:

“Holy Scripture beckons us not to the cultivation of politically correct discourse and dishonest communication but instead to its crucifixion so that we can live according to a new narrative of truth-telling. We are called . . .into the new creation culture of compassionate, charitable honesty. . . Yet we continue to promote as a virtue dishonestly withholding truth as a mechanism of avoiding interpersonal conflict in the church” (108-109).

I write this blog for a number of reasons. First, as an exhortation, let’s do what John has done and reflect on conflict-aversion in relation to an area of ministry we are involved in. Second, I hope it might stimulate further thought for you as it has for me. Third, I want to share two of those thoughts, and then lastly ask for your help and input.

John Frederick writes, “Far too often, in the name of what I thought was Christlike deference and being laid back, I allowed volunteer musicians in the congregation to engage in problematic and immature behavior without any critique or consequence” (115). For instance, a drummer, on the schedule for a particular Sunday, had come to rehearsal, but did not show up that Sunday—and gave no indication to anyone that he would not be there. John makes clear he is not advocating for a heavy-handed approach to dealing with situations like that. He asks what is the way of the cross? He shares some examples of well thought-out, carefully-worded, centered responses to situations like this. As I read I thought, most readers will probably agree, conflict aversion and fuzziness are problematic in a situation like that. I also think, however, that many will put a drummer not showing up in a different category than most things going on in the everyday lives of people involved in church. Yet, I wonder how many actions and attitudes that go unaddressed are in their own way more problematic to the life and mission of the church than the drummer not showing up. As Michael King points out, shadow impulses easily run amok, and fuzzy groups too readily allow destructive expression of those impulses (Trackless Wastes & Stars to Steer By, 128).

In the discussion at The Meeting House we equated conflict aversion and fuzziness. Rightfully so. As I think about it, however, a bounded approach and conflict aversion also go together. A bounded church must pay attention to things in the line, but it does not have to address other issues. It allows, even encourages, not confronting things not forming the line. Also, although at times some confrontation is demanded in a bounded church, it does not have to be the loving confrontation that John described. He was concerned not just about the line, the infraction, but about the person, the person’s relationship with the center and with the community.

I am conflict-averse myself. This blog is a challenge to me. I will write a chapter on it in my book not from the standpoint of expertise, but with the conviction that it is important. Like other chapters in the book, it will be short. I will raise the issue and point to resources. I know of books on methods of conflict resolution, but I also want to point readers to resources on dealing with the fear of conflict. Back to Grace’s question. Why do so many Christians view conflict as a bad thing, and what can we do to change that? Please let me know if you are aware of resources I can recommend to readers.

Bringing Ellul to the City Council

Not many Mennonites run for public office; not many influenced by Ellul run for public office. Robb Davis is an Ellulian Mennonite and the mayor of Davis, California. Check out how his being a Mennonite who reads Ellul influenced the way he ran for office and how he approaches the role. Mark quoted him in the recent blogs on consumerism and reorientation. Here is a longer interview of him by Mark, just published in The Ellul Forum. Davis displays character and speaks with a tone very different than the current U.S. presidential campaign.
 

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Published in The Ellul Forum 58 (Fall 2016)  https://journals.wheaton.edu/index.php/ellul

“Bringing Ellul to the City Council: A Council Member Reflects on how Ellul has Guided his Work”

Interview of Robb Davis by Mark D. Baker

Robb Davis holds a master’s degree in public health and a Ph.D. in population dynamics from Johns Hopkins University. He has over twenty years’ experience in international development in the field of maternal and child health and nutrition. He was the executive director of the Mennonite Central Committee. He contributed an article to The Ellul Forum (#46). He is fluent in French and reads Ellul in French. He was elected to the Davis, California, city council in June, 2014 and began serving as mayor of Davis in July 2016. In addition to his role in city government he also dedicates a significant amount of time to work on issues related to homelessness and restorative justice in relation to youth crime.

Mark D. Baker, professor of theology and mission at Fresno Pacific Biblical Seminary, interviewed Robb on July 7, 2016 as part of the conference of the International Jacques Ellul Society. What follows is an edited version of excerpts of that session, including two of the questions from the audience.

Mark:  It would be surprising to many that an enthusiastic reader of Jacques Ellul would run for political office. How did Ellul’s work factor into your decision to run for city council?

Robb: I’ll start by that saying Ellul arguably is the reason I became involved in city politics. Maybe even more surprising than my claiming to have run for office on the basis of something Ellul said, which many might consider to be paradoxical, is that I am also a Mennonite. I wasn’t just trying to break some molds. I had spent about 25 years travelling the world. I was a technician, dispensing wisdom to many villages and communities all over the planet—45 different countries. I started reading Ellul, and Patrick Deneen, and they started challenging me about living and acting locally.  I realized that I didn’t know anything about my hometown Davis, California. So about 7 years ago, I stopped travelling. I decided not to get in an airplane anymore. And that changed everything, and not always in a good way. Because when you make a decision like that, all of a sudden everything that your identity is tied up in is no longer there. People in my hometown didn’t know me. When I started digging into my hometown I realized that the brokenness that I had experienced other places was actually more profound in Davis, California. We had a veneer of privilege and beauty, and not too far below the surface we had serious problems of addiction and homelessness and racism and exclusion. And the more I got involved, the more I realized that acting locally is really not fun. I didn’t really want to look at it. I wanted to leave, actually, but I stuck it out. While staffing an overnight shelter I saw firsthand how we fail as a society to treat mental health, how we fail as a society to deal with addiction, and how these things are syndromes that leave people broken, and our solutions are to toss the problems over to the nonprofits to try to figure out a solution. So what I want to say about that experience, and where I really drew from Ellul quite a bit, was the idea of the flourishing of intermediating entities outside the state. The state was incapable, even at a local level, of really effectively dealing with these problems. Into the interstices into the breach, came these small organizations. My commitment at that time was to try to work with them to make them stronger, to help them plan, to try to take some things I’d learned in my trips around the world, and to try to bring them into the community. And of course in a situation like that sometimes you do that for a while, and you’re asked to be on a commission, you’re asked to be on a task force, and then somebody knocks on your door one day and says, “Maybe it would be useful for you to run for office.” I didn’t believe that I should or could do it. And my main concern was some things that were raised today at this conference about power. Could I go into politics and authentically bring some solutions? The thing that pushed me towards the decision was the idea that perhaps in that role, and this gets back to power, I could encourage the flourishing of these intermediating agencies in the community. I could encourage them. Because one reality of being a political leader is, when you pick up the phone and say to someone, “Come to a meeting,” they’ll come. They will. I thought, “Maybe I can bring people around the table who aren’t talking to each other, maybe I can bring the school district together with the police department, together with the city, to do a restorative justice program.”

Another key factor that led me to run was born out of something I read in Ellul: “A key fact of this civilization is that more and more, sin has become collective and that the individual is constrained to participate in it.”  (Ellul, Présence au monde modern, 1948, p. 19—Robb’s translation). I was talking to a friend of mine, and we realized that if we had someone in office who was engaging in regular confession about our participation in that collective sin, maybe that would be helpful to a community. And so I’ve tried to make it my practice to be confessional.

Mark: How did Ellul influence your campaign, how you ran?

Robb: In The Technological Society Ellul, commenting about propaganda, states: “Whether technique acts to the advantage of the dictator or the democracy it makes use of the same weapons, acts on the individual, manipulates his subconscious in identical ways, and in the end leads to the formation of exactly the same type of human being” (375). What I saw is that people running for office even locally were using propaganda for very, very specific ends, which is the building of allegiance toward themselves. They have around them people using propaganda to do one basic thing: build allegiance toward that figurehead. Why? Because it’s a lot easier to raise money when you can invite someone to pay $300 a plate at a table around a leader than it is to give it to some disembodied political party or university. So right out of the gate, I was being told, “You’ve got to sell yourself. This is about you, Robb. This is about your image; this is about what you’ve done in the community.” And I knew I couldn’t do that. I mean, I could have done that, but I felt like that was idolatry. That the real problem with propaganda is that it creates allegiance towards something that’s not God. And I am a follower of Jesus. So I struggled with that.

When I was discerning whether to run or not, through a long series of conversations others helped me understand that it came down to two things. Could I run a campaign where I could be honest about my limits? And the limits of political power? I brought that commitment into the campaign, but my campaign team said, “Do not ever talk about that.” I wrote an essay that I put out on a local news blog, without telling my campaign team, and it was entitled, “I’m going to disappoint you.” What I was trying to say is, “you are projecting on me many, many hopes. You are projecting on me your desires. I’m going to disappoint you. Because there’s no way I can fulfill those needs.” So that decision to not listen to my campaign team, and to actually get them upset, was an intentional act to try to communicate that I did not have solutions to these problems. That all I offered was the ability to try to bring people together, to try to work together to solve some of the issues.

Mark: With the campaign team, was it one time you did this, and they said, “Robb that’s stupid,” and then it was over, or was it ongoing conflict with them?

Robb: It was ongoing conflict, but not about everything. For instance, I made a commitment during the campaign, that my political career begins and ends in Davis. So I am committed to localism. I’m committed to this bioregion. I’m committed to naming the giftedness of the people in this town and drawing on that giftedness to solve our problems. I’m committed to understanding the natural resources, to solving conflict locally. So I laid that out and I said, “This is my commitment, that I will not seek higher office.” My campaign team was okay with that.

I think the reason I won, even though I did not always follow the counsel of my campaign team, is that we knocked on every single door in the community and I held almost 40 face-to-face meetings around tables in neighborhoods where we sat and listened to people. And, oh my goodness the fear and the trauma I encountered in a privileged community like Davis; you would be shocked by what people were afraid of. And all they wanted was someone to listen.

Mark: Let’s return to your comment about confession for collective sin. Can you give an example of how you do that?

Robb: I am asked to speak frequently at different events. Recently I spoke at a demonstration against Bakken crude oil coming through our town by rail. It is very volatile and there have been railroad accidents and explosions in other places, killing many people and causing significant environmental destruction. What I mean by public confession is standing in front of a group of environmental activists and saying, “You know the oil company is not going to the Bakken formation to make our lives miserable. The oil-producing company is not going to the Bakken shale to give us heartache, or to challenge our goal of local control of land use. They’re going to the Bakken shale because we’re telling them too. We’re asking them, we’re begging them, our society, our lifestyles are drenched in oil. That’s why they’re going.” Now, that’s my public confession of my participation in systemic sin. We’re raping Canada’s timber to build houses in California. We’ve despoiled the Ecuadorian rainforests to drive our cars. We need to say that; we need to acknowledge that. And I’ve felt like I could make a commitment to do that. And in the end to be confessional to acknowledge my role in the systemic.

Mark: Ellul wrote: “The first great fact which emerges from our civilization is that today everything has become ‘means.’ There is no longer an ‘end;’ we do not know whither we are going. We have forgotten our collective ends, and we possess great means: we set huge machines in motion in order to arrive nowhere” (Jacques Ellul, Presence of the Kingdom, p. 63). How have you observed this?

Robb: Two months after I was elected an MRAP, Mine-Resistant Armored Personnel Carrier, arrived in our town. It looks like a tank without a turret.  It was surplus military equipment sent by the U.S. Government at the request of our police department.

Mark: Sent to your town and many others. . .

Robb: Many others. Hundreds of towns across the United States. I asked, “We need a tank?” And the police said, “Yes. We need it for lone shooter events were somebody’s hiding and shooting. We need it in case of a disaster. We need it in case there’s a riot.”

Means and ends. The day it arrived, the first thing that came into my mind was, “Means and ends.” What did Ellul say about means and ends? Now let’s think about this vehicle, the MRAP. It has an end. It was developed for a reason. It was developed for one very specific reason. It can carry large numbers of soldiers down a flat Iraqi road, have an explosive device go off underneath it, and preserve the lives of the people inside. It was created because of a lie. If you disagree with me that the Iraq war was a lie we can discuss it later. The end to which it was set was based on a lie. It achieved the end of keeping people alive, but when the war was over, the U.S. Government needed to do something with it, and so it committed to sending these MRAP’s to every community that wanted one in the United States, no strings attached. A vehicle worth $750,000 each.

And our police are saying to me, “We need it. We need it.” So I challenged them, and I said, “What’s the concern? Security, right? We need it for our security.” And we did Town Hall meetings, and people came and said, “We need it for our security.” That’s the end that we’re trying to achieve, security.

So I asked the police in public meetings, “What’s the security threat?” They said two things, which are very telling in this world. And think of this through the lens of Ellul. Everything is becoming means. We’ve forgotten the ends. So we have a machine that’s created for certain ends, which are based on a lie, now this machine, this means, is coming to a community and what we’re trying to do is find an end that justifies this means so that we can keep it. We “create” ends to justify its continued use. But it’s an instrument of power and control.

And so, the police said, “Well, we have drug deals going down in our town, and the drug dealers are stealing each other’s stashes, and they get into gun battles with each other, and we need it in case we’re going in to arrest the drug dealers because they’re heavily armed.”

Okay, now think about that in terms of ends. The first question was, “Who’s buying the drugs?” And the police turned to me and said, “Our largest problem is drug sales--a heroin problem among our young people and a methamphetamine problem among our middle-aged population.”  This is a real problem in our community. The demand for drugs is not dropping out of the sky; Again, these guys are not cultivating drugs and selling them just to make our lives hell, they’re doing it because there is a demand. So how do we respond to this problem? We’re going to address addiction with an MRAP. We are trying to achieve certain ends (reduction in drug sales) by focusing on the wrong means. We should be looking at the causes of addiction, not stopping drug sales caused by it with an MRAP

The second one is even more telling. It gave me chills and I hope it gives you chills too. The assistant chief of police came to me separately, and said, “Robb, we have legitimate concerns. There are people in this community who are tactically trained. They’re trained in police tactics, and they know how to counter us, and by the way Robb—some of these folks have PTSD. If they get guns in their hands, it’s very difficult for us to deal with them.” And I said, “We have people in our community who are tactically trained, who have PTSD, and access to weapons?” He said, “Yeah. Former military.”

Means and ends, right? We go off to Iraq. We wage war. Men come back with PTSD, tactically trained. And the way we deal with them is an MRAP so that we can take them out? And the government is not paying anything to deal with the PTSD? This is the way we’re dealing with the problems in our community? With an MRAP? So we voted to get rid of it. It felt significant, but the Department of Defense sent it 10 miles north to the city of Woodland. We were the laughingstock of the neighborhood. The big blowback came a few weeks later though and relates to another insight from Ellul. In the film, “The Betrayal of Technology” he said, “Technique will not tolerate (or accept) any judgment passed on it.  In other words, technicians do not easily tolerate people expressing an ethical or moral judgment on what they do.”

“Technique does not accept judgment.” Moral Judgment.  And then Ellul wrote, “in other words, the technician.” I find it very interesting that he started by saying, “la technique.” Which shows me that technique is a spiritual power. In addition to the technicians, there is la technique, there is technique, which is the Power. The blowback we got, which was severe, and I almost thought I was going to be recalled, was that we were accused of compromising the security of our city. We were accused. I sat with the police and the police said, “We are the experts. We understand security. You are a politician, you do not know about security, you’ve taken a tool of security out of our hands.” I said to them in a public meeting, “The problem I have with the MRAP is that it is a symbol.” It is a symbol of the most destructive military force that the world has ever known, and we’re bringing that into our community.”

Most politicians don’t want to talk about ends, because a lot of times the ends that they’re working towards are hidden. They’re not the ends that they say publically. Push them on ends. Push them. Push them. The other thing is that we do have, in every bureaucracy, we have people who are enamored with means who will look for ends to which the means can be applied. It is means in search of ends.

Mark: In what ways have you personally felt challenged in relation to these themes we have been talking about, and what have you done in response?

Robb: People don’t corrupt you overtly. They do it this way: “Man, you’re amazing. You know if you—I know we have a weak mayor form of government Robb but, if you push this, it’ll pass, because people respect you. And so, could you push it?” So it’s subtle. It’s people projecting their hopes on you and convincing you, or trying to convince you that you are the solution to the problem, and if you take the lead—and that’ s every single day. Every single day there is the temptation to use power in a way that looks good, but here’s what happens. For instance, I want to work on restorative justice with youth. So one day I pick up the newspaper and it says, “Robb Davis led the initiative on restorative justice.” I read it and think, “Actually, no I didn’t. There were like 10 of us in the room.” So I have a choice at that point. Am I going to go correct the paper and say, “Actually there were 10 of us in the room, and I didn’t lead anything.” Or am I going to let that go.

And most people would say, “Let it go. Let it go.” Because if you let it go, you can move that initiative forward so much more quickly. People will follow you. And you’ll be able to move much more quickly.”

Here’s what happens: The goal is restorative justice. That is the end that you want to achieve. What happens when you start listening to those voices, or when you don’t correct those errors, or when you accept you know that praise? You actually start going doing that path. And you start saying, “You know what’s most important is that I am able to bring change.” And so what I need to do is I need to accumulate a little more of that status and power so that I can be better at bringing change.

Two things can occur. First, I can use the positive end, restorative justice, to justify means inconsistent with restorative justice itself and, for me, importantly, inconsistent with the way of Jesus. Second, with increased emphasis on the means to achieve power, eventually the original end of implementing the practice of restorative justice can get lost. Achieving power becomes the true end—even if not the acknowledged one.

Therefore, I must re-orient regularly. I so easily get pulled off track.  As part of that re-orientation I have had to do things likego before people and say, “You know what, I should’ve spoken up earlier, I had nothing to do with that. I didn’t do anything about that. I can’t take any credit for that.”

Mark: As you point out, to make effectiveness the supreme goal can become problematic, yet you do seek to be effective, correct? As you state, you desire to see an increased practice of restorative justice. You want to be effective in that.

Robb: Yes, we can’t live without some commitment to effectiveness. The problem is making effectiveness or efficiency the supreme goal that drives and determines everything.  I have found it is of utmost importance to have made premediated commitments. For instance, like Ellul I am committed to not use violence. Without that commitment, if violence appeared to be required to achieve a goal I might too easily succumb to the ends justifying that means—the means of violence. Ellul has certainly been a key influence in helping me, as a follower of Jesus, determine what my pre-commitments are—things I will not do in spite of what efficiency may demand or promise. This is not to say I am always faithful. As I just said, re-orientation is a constant necessity.

David Lovekin: If I were an average citizen in Davis I would probably have the idea that you are a thoughtful politician, more thoughtful than most, but would I know you are a Christian?

Robb: I made a decision to bring some explicit Christian theological language into my day-to-day political work. One explicit way I bring in faith language, and I think an authentic way, is to say what I’m actually doing as a leader in the community is I’m looking out for giftedness. I’m looking for gifts that can be brought to bear on dealing with the challenges of our community. So I use concepts like that, that we are given gifts. I don’t say God gives us gifts, I say we are given gifts, and they’re for the good of the community. That’s Paul. I also say, to my colleagues, “What we need to be modeling as a council is grace and forgiveness.” I talk explicitly about needing to reconcile the broken relationships in our community. And I do that by encouraging factions, whether it’s in the business community or whatever, to go through mediated processes. And these are things that have never happened before in Davis, but we’re starting them, and we’re having some success. And I talk about reconciliation and forgiveness. Grace, reconciliation, forgiveness, giftedness. Confession. I encourage people to confess when they hurt someone else. So I bring those terms in because they’re meaningful to me. I think they’re meaningful to the discourse. People definitely pursue me afterwards on certain things and say, “Where did you get that from? Like giftedness. What do you mean by that, Robb?” I haven’t had any pushback, and part of it is I’m not saying, “Paul said,” “Jesus taught.”

David Gill: As an ethics professor I always say to my students something like this: “Ethics is a team sport, not a solo sport. So you’re not going to do well living or discerning what’s right all by yourself. So you need some people around you.” So my question is, do you have some people around you who will help keep you sane, keep you in check so you don’t get arrogant about good things that happen?

Robb: In the spirit of confession, I think I’m doing that rather poorly. Leadership of this kind is isolating. And there are real trust issues. So the people who I trust are not engaged in city politics. And people engaged in city politics have some trust issues. Can I just acknowledge that? So I’m not doing a very good job at that. And it’s lonely and it’s not healthy.

Mark: But you do have people that you get together with who pray for you?

Robb: Yes, every two months we have a small group of people who come together on a Saturday afternoon and they put their hands on me and they pray for grace and patience and wisdom. You know, that’s important. But it’s not easy to get a group of people around who can simultaneously entertain deep conversation on policy and really be trustworthy--that they don’t have an interest that they’re trying to push. And I haven’t found that group yet. And I’m despairing that I will. And so, maybe I’ll just leave it at that.

Talking About Peace Peacefully

The session had not gone well. It was part of the Canadian Mennonite Brethren Conference’s new pastors orientation that I helped lead about ten years ago. I had done the section on Anabaptist ethics. The segment on our peace position had turned into an argument. Although many in the room agreed with me, others attacked me. Perhaps because they felt attacked?

The next day flying out of Winnipeg I sat on the plane reflecting sadly on the session. I had used the same material that I had used in my Discipleship and Ethics class for a number of years. We looked at some biblical texts and I told my story of converting to Christian pacifism through experiencing the reality of war in El Salvador and reading Jacques Ellul. Often this class session at the seminary had an element of tension and argument because many in the room did not agree with my position, but the tension in Winnipeg had been much worse. Why?

In a moment of clarity and humility I recognized that I had done the very thing I teach against. I had operated from a bounded group mentality. I headed into the new pastors orientation with a bit of crusading zeal to move Mennonite Brethren towards being more Anabaptist. I hoped that I could use the fact that the peace position is in our confession of faith as leverage to get the new pastors to change their stance—if they were not already pacifists. Of course I sought to be persuasive, and give good arguments, but fundamentally my attitude was: this is not an option for a Mennonite pastor (or shouldn’t be). I saw those who argued against me as being on the wrong side of a clear line.

“I had practiced line-drawing judgmentalism as a way of staying on the right side of a line myself—of being included in the group of true Anabaptists.”

Then, reflecting deeper, I recognized that not just was I communicating a strong sense of “ought” in a litmus test way, I also personally felt a strong sense of ought. I was trying to pass a litmus test myself and stay on the right side of a line. I imagined the true Anabaptists among the MB’s (and other Mennonites) cheering me on for addressing this issue directly in this setting. I could also, however, imagine their cheers would turn to jeers if I did not press the issue. So with that group looking over my shoulder I felt pressure to not just talk about peace, but specifically about Christian pacifism in relation to the military. I had practiced line-drawing judgmentalism as a way of staying on the right side of a line myself—of being included in the group of true Anabaptists. Although not as intense, the same dynamic had influenced my teaching on peace in Discipleship and Ethics. In a course rooted in a centered approach I had continued to approach one topic in a bounded group way.

There is enough bounded group paradigm still in my being that thoughts like “what will they think of me?” continue to pull at me. Yet sitting on that plane I knew I did not want to repeat the bounded teaching I had just done. I wanted out. I brought all this to Jesus. I rested my insecurities about being on the wrong side of line in his loving embrace. I felt liberated—and not just emotionally. It liberated me to ask: what is Jesus calling me to do in the class session on peacemaking?

As I stepped away from my litmus test of true Anabaptism and centered on Jesus I felt energy for that class session I had not experienced before.

“How can you become a more active agent of peace—no matter where you are on the just war-Christian pacifism spectrum? Think of ways that people in your communities, church, family, city, and nation trust force/power as the best means of dealing with various situations. Think critically about the myth of redemptive violence.”

Rather than seeking to get students to line up in agreement with my position, knowing that many would reject or resist, I felt a calling to seek to move everyone in the class to become more active agents of peace—no matter where they are on the just war-Christian pacifism spectrum. I decided to address underlying issues relating to the gospel and the violence-condoning world we live in. I now ask students to think of ways that people in their communities, church, families, city, and nation trust force/power as the best means of dealing with various situations. I seek to lead them to think critically about the myth of redemptive violence. Mostly what I do now in that class is tell stories of Christians (individuals and communities) that imaginatively use other means besides force and coercion to address problems (diverse situations from breaking up fights, defusing riots, VORP, stopping thieves, church conflicts, to cooperative business models). I invite students to imagine how they might do the same.

I think the material I used to share in class is valuable, and I still include it, but now as part of the pre-class reading. Students read a biblical argument for Christian pacifism by Tim Geddert  and my story of converting to that position. They also read a document by the Christian Reformed Church that argues for a just-war position. I make some brief comments on the question of the appropriateness of Christian use of lethal force at the beginning of class. I underline that there is a whole continuum of positions on that question, and encourage them to think deeply and clarify where they are at on the continuum. Then I exhort the Christian pacifists to be active pacifists, and exhort the just-war people to really practice that position, take it seriously, and not just follow wherever the governments leads in any military action. Then I say: “The previous question about whether it is appropriate for Christians to use violence to defend justice is an important one. It does, not, however capture all that is entailed by a gospel of peace. Nor do I think it is even the most important thing for us to reflect on in this class session. Therefore, for the rest of the class I want to press broader and deeper. What does it mean to be agents of peace and reconciliation in our setting today? How can we live out this calling? I believe that God calls all Christians to engage these questions--regardless of how you answered the question in the previous section.”

What has happened as I have shifted from a bounded approach to a centered approach in this class session? The tension level has decreased dramatically. I have had students tell me, “I was braced for this class session. I almost skipped it. But to my surprise, I did not feel attacked and the class was very helpful.” Of course one way to lower tension is to lower demands, to take a fuzzy approach. I have not done that. I have changed the challenge, but the challenge is there. My experience with this class session reinforces my conviction that a centered approach facilitates greater change and transformation than a bounded approach. Previously the class contributed to change in a small slice of the students in the class—those who were unsure of their position and were open to explore. For those who already were pacifists they were unchallenged—the “choir” cheering me on. And those in opposition tended to dig in their heels, or just tune out for this class session—letting the Mennonite do his Mennonite thing. Now, however, most all of the students lean in, engage the material and display an openness to apply it in some way.

“I have changed the challenge, but the challenge is there. My experience reinforces my conviction that a centered approach facilitates greater change and transformation than a bounded approach.”

Writing this blog has also led me to reflect how a different setting calls for different application of the centered approach.

At the seminary, on the issue of Christian use of lethal force, students have different centers. That, I think, leaves me two appropriate options. I could have a class in which we acknowledge that and in a respectful, non-bounded, way dialogue about our differences. Or, the option I took, leave that question and move to the level of a common center and engage the topic of peacemaking from that shared center. The gathering of Mennonite Brethren pastors is different, or should have been. There should have been a shared center of the confession of faith’s stance. It still bothers me that people were becoming licensed to minister in Mennonite Brethren churches and openly disagreed with the confession of faith’s articulation of our peace position. Even so, my bounded-group approach to that reality was not appropriate or helpful. A centered approach to the problem of having pastors who did not embrace the church’s peace position requires much more than a one-hour session at orientation. It would require conversation much earlier in the process. If the potential pastoral candidate did not affirm the denomination’s position it would be important to discern if there is openness to journey toward that position--to begin dialogue about it. If the person states firmly that he or she will not change, then I think an appropriate centered response would be to suggest the person seek a different denomination that has a center more closely aligned with the potential pastor. A session like the one I gave could be a valuable part of a process like that, but not in the way I gave it.

I advocate for taking a centered approach in all areas. It is, however, especially imperative in this area. We must talk peacefully about peace. As former student and current TA David Ewert observed after editing this blog: “The medium must fit the message. A bounded approach to peacemaking is ineffective because it is self-contradictory. Peacemaking seeks to connect rather than separate people. Therefore humility is vital to the process of dialogue.”

How might you enlarge the number of people you talk with about peacemaking and enlarge the call to peacemaking through taking a more centered approach?