The Sorensens

For the past week or so I have been trying to “think beyond salvation”. Some verses from Matthew (25:31-46) keep popping up, stirring my thoughts. I will ruthlessly paraphrase. When Jesus returns everyone will be brought before him, and he will divide people to his left and his right. In the passage, the criteria for where you fall is the truth of this statement: “I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” The words are pretty strong, so strong that I am almost uncomfortable to put them up, but here is how it ends just the same “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

When confronted with such a bald statement connecting actions (caring for the hungry, the poor, the prisoners) to salvation one can imagine the church saying “but we are saved by grace, you know!” While without a doubt we are saved through the grace of God rather than through our own actions, my concern is with the implicit conclusion that since we are not saved by “works” that they are then unimportant. So when I say “thinking beyond salvation” I mean that we should avoid debating issues like this, as such debate ties our hands and feet. If I try to distill God’s commands down to the things I need to do to be “saved” then I am going to naturally try to make that list small, and it is going to escape the whole point. My mindset shouldn’t be “what is the minimum I can do to be saved”, but rather, “how can I please my Father?”. You can think of it in terms of marriage (or any relationship for that matter). What odds would you lay on a relationship where one party spends most of its time trying to clearly lay out the requirements for the relationship rather than loving and pleasing the other?

Now it is possible to go too far in this direction. It is important to understand relationships, to know what makes them tick. In christianity we should know what we believe. But it is my opinion that both myself and the church today falls a bit heavily on the side of legality. As christians we should be thinking further than minimum requirements. As a church, don’t you think most would agree with little difficulty that we should be feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty? If we know it would please our Father, we should jump right in on it together.

~haakon

Jenny and I have been talking a bit about the fact that we are really good about sitting on the fence. By that I mean that we talk big about what we believe, about what is important to us without letting it affect our lives in any significant way. We are quite adept at maintaining this division between “belief” and action. We would like to do something about this. On Saturday we had a good conversation in which we threw out some thoughts:

1. Just Do Something

Part of the problem is that we are looking for “the big thing” that we should be doing. What should we be spending all our effort on? What drastic life change to we need to make? We are coming to the realization that we need to just start, do something small and go from there. This thought is echoed in a few things we have read recently. “We are called not to be successful but to be faithful” (Mother Theresa). Or, this gem, “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly” (G. K. Chesterton).

For us, we are beginning to think more about poverty and justice. I just finished reading the book “Irresistible Revolution, living as an ordinary radical” by Shane Claiborne. He writes, “I had come to see that the great tragedy in the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor” (113). This hits home to us. We think we would like to be about hospitality, giving food to people who don’t have it, sharing our home, etc. But in reality we don’t even know anyone who has needs like this. So, for us the first step is to get to know those people. Fortunately we have a connection through church to Edinburgh City Mission and we hope to get involved there and begin meeting people that we can be in community with.

2. Living in Scotland has been a good opportunity to get off the fence.

In many ways life in Seattle was a fast track towards the American Dream. When we were first married, both of us were working, earning good money, enjoying a comfortable life in up and coming Ballard. Our first chance to deviate from normal was Jenny stopping her work as a teacher. This decision flew a bit in the face of the American Dream. Yes, it meant we would not be able to buy a house anytime soon. Couldn’t have two sweet cars, can only buy so many books / cds. But, it also meant more time to spend together, more time to spend with others. That our house was free to invite people over. We continue to be really happy with that decision.

In the same way moving to Edinburgh has been another detachment from the American Dream. We have again traded progress financially for experience, learning, and growth. What we fear is that we might not make enough of this opportunity. As we discuss how long we should be here, how much we miss family and friends, one thing we talk about things like “Why we are here? What we are supposed to be learning. Have we accomplished what we came here for?” Jenny put it more strongly yesterday, saying that we can’t leave Scotland until we have learned / changed enough (begs the question, ‘how do you define enough?’). And even then, should we return to our Seattle life? By then we will have three people in our family, and it would be even more natural to follow the normal way of things. Who knows? But we do think we have more to learn here.

3. At some point, we need to try out life that is 100% other / God focused.

While point 1 is true (just do something, however small), sometimes it is necessary to make more drastic changes. Again quoting from The Irresistible Revolution “If you ask most people what Christians believe, they can tell you, ‘Christians believe that Jesus is God’s Son and that Jesus rose from the dead.’ But if you ask the average person how Christians live, they are struck silent. We have not shown the world another way of doing life. Christians pretty much live like everybody else; they just sprinkle a little Jesus in along the way” (117). If we only ever make small changes we risk having lives just like everyone else, with a little bit of Jesus sprinkled here and there. So we find ourselves thinking that at some point we are going to need to try something a bit more radical, and that it won’t lend itself nicely to the life we have right now.

This is a all a bit nebulous right now. What does it mean? How would we do it? What is “it”? For how long? Where? I suppose the closest thing we could describe it to is missions work, or community living, or something of that sort. There are lots of logistical challenges, but we are keeping this in the back of our heads.

So, these are our thoughts while we sit on the fence. Meanwhile, we will try to get started with something small!

~haakon

I have been thinking lately about what I have, and what I buy. My thoughts go something like this…

1. If I need X, then others in the world needs X. 2. I can afford X 3. Others in the world cannot afford X. 4. Will I be comfortable at the end of my life to face God and say, “it was ok for me to have X because I happened to be lucky enough to be born in a rich country, and so clearly you are ok with me having X while other people went without”? 5. Probably not.

Therefore, if I need something, then others in the world do too, and I should work to share with them. Or, maybe I don’t really need X. These are my thoughts. I think the general idea is sound, but it could get challenging in practice, particularly to avoid being formulaic or legalistic. So, can I live it?

-haakon