Trying to be ordinary, trying to be radical.

As you can see from this picture that I cribbed from the website, Jill and I took some of the middle school guys from church to see the third showing (total!) of the documentary The Ordinary Radicals on Tuesday night. Ben and Jake are also there, just off camera to the left.

The film uses this last summer's Jesus for President book tour as a structure for telling the larger story of the changing face of evangelicalism, frequently manifested politically. How by trying to follow Jesus, and by reading the Bible, what used to be a primarily politically right group of people is moving out of general American conservatism, but not necessarily into general American liberalism, per se, moving into a kind of third political sphere. There's more than the political stuff, but that's the easiest place to see the change. Apparently, I'm part of that shift.

For me, the film was just more encouragement to live more radically, to live more simply, to love people more, to listen to people more, to really live a whole life that tells the story of God. I hope it had the same impact on the youths I brought with me. Since we're also reading The Irresistible Revolution together, I think it might. It also had some really beautiful stories about particular people who God is using to love people. I was inspired; the people in this movie are the kinds of people I want to be.

One of the difficulties in communicating what's going on to people who are still entrenched in general American conservatism is that this new political face finds a lot of common ground of praxis with anarchists and progressives (and hippies), which can very easily look like a shift to the left. Maybe it is, some, but I think that maybe it's just shooting off in a new direction, and in our country anything that's not right looks left, and vice versa.

Zack Exley is interviewed in the film, and Jamie Moffet, the director, had him stand up to help lead the Q&A afterward. Zack said something at the end that I've been trying to think through for quite a while, actually, and finally had something to say about it. He talked about how this film helps him start bridging the gap between secular progressives and the new breed of evangelicals, that both groups have a lot of similar goals. How Creation Care, for example, has a lot of the same goals as typical secular environmental groups.

I think these kinds of partnerships can be good for everyone involved, and I would also hope that this film would also help people bridge the gap between the traditional evangelicals and the new evangelicals. I'm sad, though, because I think that this latter bridge may be a very long conversation with some people, late into the night at the kitchen table, where the traditional evangelicals are like a father hearing his daughter wants to elope with her boyfriend, and he's so angered by the mere mention of the topic, that very little actual communication will take place.

But what I wanted to say at the talkback in response to Zack, but didn't, because it was awfully late for a school night, and we had to leave, is that I don't think the goals of the new evangelicals and the secular progressives are the same. It's the praxis that's similar. Not that that's neccessarily a proble, but that distinction can be confusing for everyone involved. Maybe with the secular progressives, taking care of the poor, and resisting the consumerist empire, and non-violence, taking care of nature, & etc., are the goals. Which is why you see the progressives willing to go to pretty significant lengths to accomplish these things, put aside the US constitution, or flat-out take money from people that have more to give to those with less. For them, since these other things are the goal, nothing should get in the way.

And it's not that Christians should ignore the poor, or believe the narrative of redemptive consumerism and progress, or kill people, or destroy nature in pursuit of progress, but that these aren't the goals. God is the goal. As Zack said on Tuesday, for example, the progressives don't have anything fueling their desire for equality, no underlying reason for it, other than that it seems right. The new evangelicals think everyone is made in the image of God.

And so, as one woman named Rachel was saying at the talkback, there comes a particular tension when trying to live socially just and consumerisictly ethical as a new evangelical. She talked about how much morality was overtaking her thoughts lately, and how we can do all these good works, and without morality, we're still going to be judged by God. I wasn't sure what she meant by morality. What I wanted to say, but again, didn't have time for, was that morality is way more than sex, which is what it sounded like she might have been talking about (and something we've become completely obsessed with on all fronts as Americans/American Christians). But taking care of the poor is a moral issue. Not perpetuating slavery by buying things made by slaves is a moral decision. Loving people who hate you is a moral struggle. All through the prophets, God uses sexual morality imagery to call attention to immoral uses of power and abdication of the responsibility to care for the poor (also, idolatry).

So, when I recycle, it's because I think God's story about him loving creation is true. When I hang out with people who live on the streets, it's becaue I think that God's story about his image being in them is true. When I say I'm against war, it's because I believe God's stories about beating swords into plowshards, and not pulling up the weeds with the wheat, and turning the other cheek. But for me, God's the point, not the thing that I'm doing.