“All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.” - Acts 2: 44-45 (NIV)

Most of us have heard the saying that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. The saying describes the observation that wealth tends to increase in proportion to the amount of wealth that one already has. Rich people measurably get richer at a faster rate than the rest of us because wealth attracts wealth. Those that have get more, while everyone else either stays level or loses what little they do possess.

The phenomenon of the rich getting richer has a name in systems and network theory: preferential attachment. Real world networks exhibit a hub and spoke structure wherein a relative few entities collect an outsized portion of the available links in the the network. Think Google or your extroverted friend who seems to know everyone. These entities are highly connected, i.e. wealthy, and as a result, when new opportunities for connection arise, such as a new website or a new kid arrives at your school, the odds are that they will become connected to these already “rich” hub entities. The rich get richer, while the rest of us are left behind.

Preferential Attachment

In naturally occurring systems preferential attachment does not present a universal problem. As a matter of fact, it is essential. Researchers have identified certain classes of neurons as “rich.” These cells connects to thousands of other neurons, creating “information highways” that are essential for motor function, cognition, and other vital body functions. Without these “rich” neurons human life would not be possible. The relative wealth, the extreme connectivity, of these special neurons does not, however, bring harm to other neurons or cell types in the body. Red blood cells and heart cells do not suffer because of the high connectivity of these special neurons.

Human networks, however, are different from natural networks. When a few people become “rich,” gathering vast amounts of wealth, power, and influence to themselves, other “poorer” humans suffer. Preferential attachment works against the flourishing of humans individually and communally. The rich always get richer at the expense of the poor.

What Does Preferential Attachment Have to Do With Jesus?

As we all do, Jesus lived in a social network. He had family and friends, an occupation, and was subject to the rule of a government. Jesus like the rest of us Jesus existed inside of a particular social context and occupied a particular role within that context. Son of God though he was, he still had relationships with the mere humans around him.

Within Jesus’ context, preferential attachment operated in similar ways as it does now. He was born an impoverished Jew in a little regarded backwater village. “Can anything good come from Nazareth,” asked Philip in the Gospel of John. (John 1:46). In network terms, the human Jesus was poor, possessing low connectivity, little wealth, and no power. On the other hand, scripture records both the real world and network wealth of others. Herod and Pilate operated as her supreme rulers, the only check on their power being the Roman Empire. The Pharisees were “rich” in power, wealth, and influence as were the much derided tax collectors. The “wealth building” actions of these individuals and groups is the source of much of the conflict in the Gospels and is the target of some of Jesus’ harshest criticism.

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Jesus’ Innovation

Preferential attachment builds, and is dependent upon, an exclusionary hierarchy. Not everyone can be wealthy. Not everyone can be well connected. Jesus’ innovation was to flatten the network and eliminate the hierarchy. In commanding his followers to “love your neighbor as yourself,” (Mark 12:30-31) and in opening universal access to God through the Holy Spirit, Jesus destroyed the religious, social, and political hierarchies that enabled people to accrue wealth and power at the expense of others. Among his followers all became equal because all were to serve as Jesus served. (Mark 10:42-45) All were to love as Jesus loved. (John 13: 34-35)

Jesus crafted a particular architecture of relationship. Notwithstanding commands to love and to serve, the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12) are perhaps the clearest example of this network architecture. Blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor, blessed are the peacemakers; these are not simply descriptions of social status of personal state, these are descriptions of relationship. We are to be humble/meek in relation to one another. We are to be poor in relation to one another. We are to make peace in relation to one another. If we are oriented towards humility, poverty, and peacemaking then we cannot possibly become “rich” at the expense of others. In such a network, preferential attachment cannot spiral out of control because each person is compelled to redistribute any wealth, any connections, that they Gian to those who have less. In the religion of Jesus the rich do no get richer for the simple fact that no one ever becomes rich in relation to anyone else.

The Role of Religion in Flattening Networks

The early church, as represented in Acts 2 (add footnote), carried on Jesus’ flattened network model for a time, but the architecture fell out of favor as the church became co-opted, first by Rome, and eventually by market capitalism. Preferential attachment became the standard for measuring church success with metrics like worship attendance, budgets, and building size coming to dominate the discourse on faith.

Maintaining a social network in which preferential attachment is not the dominant paradigm is difficult because such networks are unnatural. As noted in the opening paragraphs of this essay, preferential attachment is a necessary and helpful feature of many natural systems, but it is harmful in human systems. Unfortunately we humans tend to follow the path of least resistance, meaning that even with our best intentions our attempts to build just, non-hierarchical systems usually devolve over time. Combating this tendency toward devolution is the role of religious practice.

What does flattening networks in the vein of Jesus look like practically?how do we construct communities in ways that limit preferential attachment as many early church models did? The practice of the disciplines of the Christian faith are the key.

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Christian Disciplines as Network Flatteners

The Christian disciplines are spiritually vital. For those that practice the faith this should come as no surprise. Practices like prayer, service, and the sacraments are at the core of Christian life. What may be surprising is the role that these disciplines also play in constructing the flattened network that Jesus modeled.

The disciplines of faith continually turn us back toward the ethics, and thus the forms of relationship, of Jesus. For example, acts of service create in us an awareness of our connection with one another, just as prayer created and maintains in us an awareness of our connection to God. Understanding how we are related to one another informs how we behave towards others, whether we hoard resources or share them coupled with an ethic of Christian love and care, the discipline of service requires us to do good for others. Doing good precludes doing harm. The discipline of Christian service, done faithfully, prevents individuals and communities both from gathering and keeping wealth at the expense of others. Faithful service to Jesus and to neighbor flattens the network, repairs relationships, and blunts the effects of preferential attachment.

Christian disciplines operate similarly to the discipline of service. Intentional reading of scripture, worship, sacrament, and fellowship all turn us toward the welfare of our neighbors and Creation as a whole. When we truly practice the religion of Jesus, we cannot help but seek what Jesus sought: liberation for the oppressed, sight for the blind, and food for the hungry. When we practice the religion of Jesus, we cannot help but share any wealth that we gain, any connections that we accumulate, any knowledge, any hope. When we practice the religion of Jesus, when we love as Jesus commands, the rich cannot get richer, for every time they gain they will, in faithful relationship, give so that no one will be in need.

CrossLinks

Network Effects and Social Inequality: Study that examines the role of networks in producing inequality, particularly through the mechanism of preferential attachment.

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Gathering around a table to eat together is one of the most intimate acts in which humans can engage. The table is a site of intimacy and vulnerability, memory and sustenance. We are fed at tables, mentally, physically, and spiritually. This power to gather and to nourish may be why the Gospels record Jesus sitting and eating with so many people. What other means is effective at showing whom you care for than to sit and eat with them? This is perhaps why communion, or the Eucharist, is the central sacrament in the Christian tradition. It is a memory of Jesus, sitting with those whom he loved around a table, sharing, serving, and being in relationship.

One of the dominant images of justice building in the church is that of building a longer table. The image is derived from the Parable of the Rich Fool in the book of Luke in which a rich landowner decides to build bigger barns in order to hoard his bumper crop rather than being generous with his neighbors. The usual sermon point from this parable is that instead of building bigger barns to safeguard our wealth, we should build longer tables to share it. Such imagery fits well with conceptions of justice; wealth and resources ought to be shared widely. Everyone should have a seat at the table.

The Multiple Dilemmas of Table Building

While the image of the longer table is a handy metaphor for justice work, I am beginning to think that it is inadequate to the task of creating real justice in real world spaces. I agree with the theological statement that everyone is welcome at the table. The open communion table is a powerful symbol of the all encompassing grace of God. But a problem arises when we consider the size of our table economic, political, and social tables. With the way that our sustaining systems are set up, it is as if we have built a banquet table with room for 10, yet we, in an effort to be just and Christ-like, have invited 30. We have welcomed any and all, as we should, but we don’t actually have space for them. This creates a dilemma that traditional, economic, and political thinking cannot solve. It also presents a dilemma for theological thought that has its root in liberal economics.

The second dilemma of table building centers on who is already seated. Those who are already at the table, a.k.a., the wealthy and the powerful, must get up. This requirement is not, however, limited to the grossly wealthy or powerful. Yes, the billionaires must get up, but so must those who work good jobs, so must those who are comfortable, so must those who live lives of relative security. It is not only those who have gotten ahead by cheating and manipulating the system who must get up, but also those who have quietly and even honestly benefited from the current arrangement. For unjust systems do not survive based only on the loyalty of those sitting atop the pyramid. They survive also, perhaps even primarily, through the refusal of those of us who are just trying to get by to consider living differently. The dilemma is that you don’t have to do evil to perpetuate injustice, you simply have to go along to get along. the core of this first dilemma is that we have to tell basically good people that they are part of the problem.

The third dilemma around table building centers on the building materials themselves. If we are to pursue justice by building longer tables, then the table itself must be rebuilt. Speaking metaphorically, we cannot simply add extra chairs, nor can’t re-bring in other tables. Our current systems do not allow for extra space at the existing table, nor do they allow parallel systems, extra tables, to be set up in adjacent spaces. Our economy, our politics, and sometimes even our theology are zero-sum. If one person makes one million dollars, then 100 people have to settle for crumbs. If 10 people Get to have a significant say in how our political apparatus is run, Then 10,000 voices must be rendered silent. Our systems are set up so that the flows of money, power, and influence are severely restricted.

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Hosting New Tables

Who is the host at our tables? We Christians like to assume that Jesus is the host of the table at which we sit. In theological spaces this is true. We are invited to the communion table by Christ. At the communion table we welcome our neighbors as we together remember Christ in the feast of holy communion. But what about our economic tables? Our political, social, organizational tables? By the lack of justice, grace, and genuine relationship in many of these spaces it is obvious that Christ is not the host. Capitalism, political party, and any number of other powerful influences head up our tables. Any “god” who sits at the head of the table at which you find yourself seated who demands only your comfort, no matter the expense to others, is not Jesus. For if Jesus were the head (and we were good guests... another questionable assumption) we would readily rise and make room at his command. And not only would we make room, we would take on the role of server to those newly arrived.

Building New Tables

Tables, meaning economies, politics, and theologies, do not magically expand simply because we wish to be more welcoming or inclusive. Jesus threw tables, after all. The imperative of justice necessitates a breaking and rebuilding of the tables at which we sit, and perhaps even expansion of the banquet halls. Not only must the invitation to come and eat be made, not only must room be made for those who have been forcibly excluded, but accommodation must be created out of the old materials. A new table must be built out of the inadequacy of the old. A skilled carpenter can break down an old table, salvage the wood, and build something new and beautiful. In the same way, as extractive and exploitative economies wane, the materials and relationships of those old economies must be reworked and incorporated into the new.

In order to build longer tables, we must reformulate what it means to be human. We must reconsider what healthy relationships look like. Our fundamental understanding of how we relate to one another and to the natural world must change. Before we can build longer tables, we must remember that we were created as part of creation, not as separate entities.

In what ways are you working to build longer tables and bigger banquet halls?

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CrossLinks

Ethics of Wild Mind - Emergence Magazine Podcast episode exploring how the degradation of society and culture are linked to distorted beliefs about the place and role of humans in the world. The speaker suggests a return indigenous/ancient eastern ways of understanding, namely that humanity is part of the natural world. There is no separation.

The Master’s Tools Will Not Save Us - Constructing what the Empire Cannot Control - An examination of the ethics of empire and what it takes to challenge an empire of short, exclusive “tables.”

Two quotes from the book Black Earth Wisdom that illustrate the radical awareness that is needed to transform and rebuild our tables.

• “The lesson for me, is that regardless of the hope or despair of the given moment, my directive is to be fully human. My hope is to live and die as the cattail does. To be a person of peace, love, and nurturing, and not of violence or fighting.”

• “We need to think about how to simultaneously minimize harm and be present with what is. Being in the rightness of relationship with the Earth is about recognizing that I cause harm, as we all do.”

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I see this statement pop up online every time there is a new crisis or a new group of people who are being treated unjustly. And while I sympathize with the sentiment, embracing this statement may lead activists and other justice seekers down poor paths of resolution. The problem is not that systems of oppression are working as they were designed, the problem is that most of these systems were not designed at all. They evolved.

Our Systems Were Not Designed

Our social, economic, and even our political systems were not designed in the sense that someone, or someones, sat down and sketched out on a napkin exactly how things are supposed to go. Were there smaller scale processes within these larger systems that were designed to be exclusive, and perhaps even oppressive? Absolutely,1 but these smaller scale processes do not constitute the whole of the larger system. Rather, they contribute to the outcomes.

To say that something is designed is to imply intent at every step of the process. The problem with this line of thought is that we live within indeterminant, complex systems that are easily swayed by people with money and power and a lot to lose if the under classes gain more authority. But these systems are not fundamentally controllable. A car is designed. The system of roadways is designed. But traffic congestion is not the designed outcome. It is a phenomenon that emerges from the complex, constantly shifting interactions of people, their cars, and the roadways.

Our systems of government, finance, and religion are much the same as roadway congestion. They emerged from flawed sets of objectives, poorly thought out core principles, and mistakes made along the way. The simple rules from which they came were warped. This is not to say that it is difficult to find instances of malicious design. Much of mid 20th century urban planning was done with the intent of enriching wealthy whites by impoverishing and disenfranchising black urban populations. Practices such as redlining and running interstate highways through prosperous black neighborhoods are well documented as are the devastating results. These were intentional policies, designed, and created to harm people of color in the urban centers of America. But the ethical, political, and economic systems that created the conditions wherein such designs could be pursued came about organically. They evolved from the ideologies of white supremacy, which itself evolved from the economic and political insecurity of the white owners of capital. That said, awful injustice can flow from intentional design, but the presence of injustice cannot always be clearly linked to design- good, bad or otherwise.

Understanding Emergence

This may all seem like semantics and nitpicking, but the implications for social change are very real. If we fundamentally misunderstand the systems of oppression that we contend against, then we have no chance of replacing them with something better. As I argued in Mastering the Master’s Master, the tactics used to combat injustice vary based on the scale at which the system acts. Similarly, the tactics used to combat systems that are truly designed are very different from the tactics that are used to combat systems that are emergent. This is why adding lanes to highways to relieve traffic congestion often has the opposite effect, increasing congestion. The only way to challenge an emergent system is to challenge and rewrite the simple rules by which it is governed. for example, if world governments wrote rules that required auto makers to include technology that enforces a minimum separation between vehicles and/or a maximum speed limit, then many of our traffic problems would be solved, or at least alleviated. The same is true with poverty, war, and all other human wrongs. If we can discover the simple rules that drive the emergence of these phenomenon, and then challenge them prophetically, building and living in holy alternatives, then we can change the outcomes that the system generates. If we who yearn for justice can begin to understand that these great systems within which we live resolved from emergent properties, then we can begin to formulate strategies to actually design beneficial systems that support people, life, and the emergence of justice.

The only way to challenge an emergent system is to challenge and rewrite the simple rules by which it is governed.

Claiming that the system is designed is lazy thinking and outsources the blame. I like what Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote about to the holocaust. “Few are guilty, but all are responsible.” When it comes to the conflict systems within which we live his statement holds true. The outbreak of war cannot be easily traced to any individual citizen (except for the very few who sit in power and command the armed ), And yet when we live by the simple rules of fear of neighbor, scarcity, and (), And abdicate our power and responsibility to others who is moral and ethical foundations are questionable or downright evil, we become responsible for war, in poverty, in all other ill and injustices perpetrated by the systems that govern our society.

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CrossLinks

Matthew 22:36-40

• When Jesus is asked to pull out the single most important commandment from the hundreds in the Hebrew Scriptures, he selects two simple rules; love God, and love your neighbor as yourself

When is a System Not a System

• Makes the argument that what we think of as “the system” may not be, by definition, a system at all, but rather a set of disconnected, competing processes with conflicting goals. Such a setup produces emergent, and often undesirable outcomes, outcomes that were not planned or designed for.

The Science of Starling Murmurations

• An article on the simple rules that creation the complex patterns displayed by starling flocks in flight. They reveal how unexpected, and startlingly complex patterns can emerge from a minimum number of simple rules. Now apply this to human society when the simple rules are individuality, fear of the other, or security seeking...

Joshua 3: 14-16 (NIV)

“So when the people broke camp to cross the Jordan, the priests carrying the ark of the covenant went ahead of them. Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest. Yet as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water’s edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing. It piled up in a heap a great distance away, at a town called Adam in the vicinity of Zarethan, while the water flowing down to the Sea of the Arabah (that is, the Dead Sea) was completely cut off. So the people crossed over opposite Jericho.”

Today is Good Friday, one of the last days of Lent and the day on which Western Christians commemorate Jesus’ death on the Cross. It is the last week day of Holy Week and the culmination of Lent. We have spent the past 39 days wandering, or perhaps exploring, the Wilderness of Lent. We have engaged spiritual disciplines, caste, prayed, read scripture, and spent time with God.

Intention in Wilderness

I’d intended to write a regular series of essays exploring this wilderness, but as wilderness often does, I encountered a number of obstacles that caused me to change my path, to explore unforeseen possibilities and unplanned routes. I had the whole series planned out and half written. I don’t know why I didn’t expect a few twists and turns while writing about wilderness in Lent. As I wrote in the first essay, the whole season is about encountering the unexpected. It is about burning bushes, and water from rocks. It is about both privation and unexpected bounty. Lent, by its very nature, ruins our plans and, in so doing, opens our senses to the presence and movement of the Holy Spirit.

We do not, however, stay in the wilderness. It is only a transition time, a period of testing and change, not a permanent status. Israel’s forty years in the desert ended when they crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land. Jesus’ fast ended after the devil’s temptations, freeing him to begin his public ministry. Our wandering and our exploration must alap come to an end in order for us to take what we have learned back into the places where it may be used for the good of God’s people.

Thresholds in Wilderness

Leaving the wilderness is not simply a matter of choosing where to go next. There is always a marker when leaving the wilderness, a threshold of some sort. The threshold constitutes the cost of leaving the wilderness. It marks the risk of a poverty trap, the temptation to turn back and keep wandering because the wilderness has become familiar.

Scripture makes the crossing of the Jordan sound easy. The priests walked ahead with the Ark of the Covenant, the waters stopped as they entered, and the people crossed over into the land that they had been promised. But crossing out of the wilderness is never quite so simple. What about the riverbed? Though the text says that they crossed on dry land, I can imagine that the deep mud of the riverbed remained, and that it sucked and grabbed at the people’s feet. Some of their animals may have required rescue from holes or guidance around debris swept down the river’s course in flood. And once they were on the other side, Canaan still had to be conquered. The people living there did not surrender their homes just because God’s chosen people had arrived.

Jesus experienced a similar threshold. After 40 days and nights of fasting, at his weakest moment, evil settled down nearby and offered him everything. How awful must it have been for Jesus to know that he was so close to being done with his wilderness trial, to know that he was on the threshold, and to have one more obstacle thrown up in front of him?

Faith, Power, and Effort

Crossing out of the wilderness requires an act of faith, then an act of power, and then an act of effort. Israel had to step into the Jordan’s dry bed, seeing the waters piled together upstream. Jesus had to refuse the temptations of this world, knowing that comfort was just an ascent away. These were acts of faith. God supplies the power in response to our faith, stopping the flow when our toes touch the water, sustaining us against temptation in our weakened state. And then we put in the effort. We walk forward, cross the river out of the wilderness and into the promises of God.

The Jordan River was Israel’s threshold. The Cross of Calvary is ours. Today Jesus hangs high upon it. Tomorrow he will rest in a borrowed tomb. The cross and the tomb are the thresholds we must traverse, the barrier between ourselves and new life in the resurrection. Can we keep faith in God as our world descends deeper into wilderness? Can we see the temptations to power, and security, and wealth for what they are; lures to keep us wandering in wilderness, away from the peace that God offers? Can we make it through Good Friday and Holy Saturday? Can we cross this threshold? We have models in both Israel and Jesus. We can leave the wilderness. We can cross into the promised land, into the goodness of God’s kingdom. But we must cross the threshold before us to do so.

So now, as we prepare to leave the wilderness Lent I pray that you will look back on these 40 days and see where God has met you in unexpected places. I pray that you will become able to reframe the twists and turns of spiritual discipline and worldly life to see how the Spirit has dwelled with you. I pray that as you look forward to celebrating the resurrection of our Lord you will remember the blessings buried amongst the sand and the thistles that got you here.

Happy Easter everyone. May the season of resurrection before us remind us not only of the love and power of Jesus Christ, but also of the season of wilderness that got us here.

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CrossLinks

No CrossLinks this week. Happy Easter!

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Part ??? of The Wilderness of Lent

I recently finished facilitating a study of Howard Thurman’s *Jesus and the Disinherited*.

Thurman’s thoughts on racial reconciliation and black liberation got me thinking about my last essay, Becoming Unmanageable. There is a link between my essay and Thurman’s work, a link that is triangulated with the text of Ephesians 6.

In Jesus and the Disinherited, Thurman says that “an attack must be made on the enemy status” of the oppressor. The Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 6:12 that

“We aren’t fighting against human enemies but against rulers, authorities, forces of cosmic darkness, and spiritual powers of evil in the heavens.”‬‬

Ephesians 6:12 (CEB)

Thurman’s main thesis is that in order to liberate the oppressed there must be made some real connection between oppressor and oppressed, a link that is capable of breaking down the walls between the groups and creating the conditions within which psychological safety and dignity may be created and sustained. Thurman takes a deep dive into the psychology of the oppressed, examining how fear, hate, and deception are used as tools of survival against the predations of the dominant classes, and how they warp the psychology of the oppressed. Thurman does not, however, use this psychological assessment as a justification for unethical acts in the name of survival. Rather, he asserts that The Religion of Jesus calls the oppressed to the heights of moral action and transformation through love. Love your enemies, Jesus says. Assault the enemy status, Thurman says, so that it may become possible to love them.

Who is Our Enemy?

Herein lies the link between Thurman and Ephesians. We do not struggle against people when we combat white supremacy, extractive capitalism, war, poverty, or any other complex issue. We struggle against the ideas and cultures that drive and manipulate the people who embody white supremacy, extractive capitalism, and warmongering. We must recognize the actual enemy.

The enemy is not the person in front of you, the master who enslaves or the authoritarian who dictates; for every master has a master, some idea or pipe dream of security that drives them, their co-conspirators, and the host of their followers to sow fear and propagate violence. We love our enemy, and attack the enemy status, by recognizing that the enemy which we so easily perceive, the racist, the misogynist, the thief, the liar, the murderer, does not act in a vacuum. They are subject to the “powers and principalities” (KJV translation) that corrupt the minds and spirits of people. This does not, of course, excuse their behavior, for the requirements of the Religion of Jesus exclude no one, but it does serve to explain why evil and injustice seem to be perpetual.

The Enemy: Powers and Principalities

It is easy to over-spiritualize the enemies that we face. The scripture itself says that there are “forces of cosmic darkness and spiritual powers of evil in the heavens” with which we must contend. We cannot discount the role of evil in our struggles, but neither can we control evil. We can resist it, but we cannot or eliminate it. What is within our grasp to combat, however, are the more earthly forces - human creations of ideology and dogma.

Humans have spent our whole existence building systems of belief and bounding that exclude or oppress others in the service of security seeking. Two Millenia ago the people of Israel were commanded to refrain from intermingling with the tribes surrounding them. Four hundred years ago slavery was established as a permanent socio-political status (ref) in the United States for the purpose of extracting black labor. The ideology of White Supremacy was the child of this establishment. Capitalism, authoritarianism, exclusive theologies and a host of other systems of thought and being were all established to create, protect, and enrich some favored group at the expense of others.

The problem for those who wish to resist or transform these ideologies is that they each of them operates beyond the human scale. These harmful beliefs are enacted and guarded by humans, but they are, in fact, collective intelligences, spanning human communities and individuals on massive scales. One cannot, for example, be a capitalist by oneself. Capitalism is a system that cannot exist if there is not another with whom to trade or to profit from. Similarly, White Supremacy has no meaning in isolation. It works to define the relationships between groups of people. Every ideology, whether harmful or helpful, works at the scale of the society that endorses and defends it.

These are the powers and principalities against which we fight. It is these harmful ideologies and systems that are our enemies. And even though they have human faces, white supremacy, extractive and exploitative economic systems, and exclusive theologies all operate outside of the realms of reason and emotion. Such ideologies cannot be directly reasoned with or shamed since they are not human. As well, the worst of them create a type of ungodly armor that blunts and deflects all reasoned or emotion based argument directed at those who identities are built around adherence to the structures and divisions that they set up.

If we take the context of the whole of Ephesians 6, what Paul seems to be saying is that we ought not bother fighting the person(s) who controls our condition. Treat them as Christ would, value as Christ would, see them as Christ would. And then focus your energies on fighting the powers and principalities that master the master by using the gifts of God and the tactics of Jesus. This looks like loving the human faces in front of us so that we can see the true, large scale enemies beyond. Then we must make a scaled attack.

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Making a Scaled Attack

“Empires do not collapse because people politely request inclusion. Empires collapse when their logic is disrupted.”
- The Master’s Tools Will Not Save Us

In order to work for systemic transformation, to master the master’s master, we must understand the scale of change. Every complex problem exists at multiple scales. There is the problem that we can see or which we experience, and there is the scaled or institutional ideology that creates the problem. Different strategies are required to effect transformation at each of these scales.

At the human scale, the scale at which we experience the problem, we can engage logic and emotion. We can argue the unfeasibility or risk of harm for a potential action. We can appeal to a person’s sense of decency, empathy, or tell the stories of our own hurt. Such actions are capable of transforming interpersonal relationships. The marriage can heal, the estranged child may return home, the hurt feelings may be assuaged. We understand how to deal with human beings who, out of their own shortcomings, have wronged us. Most of them need not be classified as an enemy. Many times the wrong is simply a mistake or misunderstanding. We understand, intuitively, how interpersonal relationships work and can apply tools and strategies to solve the problem. The same cannot be said of systemic wrongs, the scale at which our enemy lies. Something greater is required to make a scaled attack on the ideologies that generate systemic violence and injustice. Our intuition here is often lacking. We fight the actual enemy, the large-scale enemy, through the creation of alternative practices of life.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott is an example of the creation of alternative. Faced with the indignity of being forced ride in the back of city buses, despite paying the same fare, black people in that city organized to create systems of transportation, finance, and community support that did not rely on the white supremacist systems that denied them basic dignity. Of course, the strategies before Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks made headlines by refusing to release their seats, were already in work, mostly through the women who had been organizing long before King and the other males faces of the Civil Rights Movement came on the scene.

Jesus also created alternatives. His insistence on eating with “sinners,” healing on the sabbath, and preaching the good news to those who really needed to hear it made a way for the people to live in dignity, ensured that they were loved and saved by God. The alternatives that Jesus built ultimately overcame an empire. And even though his followers eventually succumbed and became the empire, building new versions of the same systems and ideologies that oppressed Jesus and his Jewish contemporaries, Jesus’ example still stands.

Simple Rules

The paradox is that alternatives that are capable of making scaled attacks on the “master’s masters” are always simple. Grand acts of political and economic resistance are crucial, but transformation comes through small acts of resistance that are rooted in what Paul calls “the armor of God”. How can you support your neighbors? How can you help the hungry eat? How can you love like Jesus did? How can you embody the Holy Spirit in your day-to-day life, not ignoring the large scale problems, but living in way that renders them powerless to oppress? Living this kind of simple alternative is the scaled attack that both challenges the enemy status and strikes at what masters the master. Successful small scale alternatives challenge the legitimacy of the large scale. If it can be shown that what is presented as necessary is, in fact, not so, then what power remains for the large scale? It is small, simple acts, done consistently, and in relationship with others that make us unmanageable and thus effective at attacking the large scale.

We make successful attacks on large scale injustice by living with integrity and love at the small scale. To be clear, we need large scale movements, and honest politicians who will stand for what is right, but more than these, we need everyday people who challenge the drivers of war, racism, misogyny, unjust economic growth, and every other oppressive ideology with their everyday living. We must keep in mind that systems of oppression have never been transformed only through direct confrontation with the human faces of oppression. It is only when people at the ground level, in their own daily lives choose love that systems are made new and the masters are mastered.

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Cross Links

1. Becoming Unmanageable

   1. “To become unmanageable is to do what Jesus did, to raise the possibility of power without violence, of community without hate, of provision without theft. To become unmanageable means to find ways to work together at the scale of the community to create the conditions necessary for people to thrive, physically and psychologically, where they are, and without having to take from others to gain a measure of security.”

2. Thinking in Systems: A Primer

   1. “Hunger, poverty, environmental degradation, economic instability, unemployment, chronic disease, drug addiction, and war, for example, persist in spite of the analytical capability and technical brilliance that have been directed toward eradicating them. No one deliberately creates those problems, no one wants them to persist, but they persist nonetheless. That is because they are intrinsically systems problems - undesirable behaviors characteristic of the systems structures that produce them. They will yield only as we reclaim our intuition, stop casting blame, see the system as the source of its own problems and find the courage and wisdom to restructure it. .. Obvious. Yet subversive.” (pg 4)

3. The Master’s Tools Will Not Save Us - Constructing what the Empire Cannot Control

   1. Essay about resistance to empire. Written primarily for academics, the author’s prescriptions for resisting empire are widely applicable.

In Sunday school, many of were are taught that Jesus was crucified because his claim to be the son of God upset the Jewish authorities. The logical course for the religious authorities would have been to rid themselves of the blasphemous troublemaker in a public manner to discourage others from making similar claims. A more sophisticated teaching pits Jesus against the Roman occupation and its Jewish political allies, with Jesus calling out the hypocrisy and injustice of Roman rule. Placed alongside the religious implications of Jesus’ divine parentage, the political proclamations of this poor Jew from Nazareth would have placed him firmly the category of “enemy of the state.”

The religious and political challenges presented by Jesus of Nazareth were dangerous enough to the ruling authorities, but the truth is that others had made similar challenges before with no lasting impact. Armed rebellions and political maneuvering by the Jews had resulted in little but increased oppression. Others claiming special knowledge of the will of God had been swept aside with little notice. What, then, made Jesus so special? What systemic threat did he present that made his execution necessary?

Empires and all other totalizing systems live by management. In scripture Joseph is lauded for saving Egypt from famine by instituting a strict system for managing the supply and storage of Egyptian agriculture. Historically, Rome grew to dominate Europe and large swaths of Asia and North Africa by developing efficient systems for managing the flow of people, materials, and information. Modern global economies and governments work on similar principles. Efficient management is the structure upon which any large scale enterprise is controlled.

In light of the necessity of the management ethic of empire, we can see that the systemic threat presented by Jesus, both then and now, is his absolute unmanageability. He did not fit neatly within either the Roman or Jewish systems. He saw through and beyond the restrictions imposed by those systems. He didn’t so much reveal the injustices of political and religious empire; anyone living on the underside of that dual occupation knew them intimately. Instead, Jesus provided alternative models of dignified life, models that spread his brand of unmanageability throughout the underclasses. It was the spread of this unmanageability, written of in Acts and the Epistles, that built the church and centered the love ethic of Jesus as an alternative way of being in the world. We too must become unmanageable as the powers of our world descend further into authoritarianism and oppression.

Becoming Unmanageable

We do not become unmanageable by directly challenging the power structure. Marches and protests, as valuable as they are, serve primarily as means to surface the injustices perpetrated by the powers that be. As we have seen throughout history, and especially with the recent happenings in Minneapolis, marches and protests can be managed. They can be quietly ignored by the leaders. They can be violently put down. They can be forgotten in the swift spin of the new cycle. Let me say clearly that movements for solidarity with the oppressed are never wasted, but in a managed system, be it political, economic, cultural, or otherwise, such actions cannot have the desired effect.

To become unmanageable is to do what Jesus did, to raise the possibility of power without violence, of community without hate, of provision without theft. To become unmanageable means to find ways to work together at the scale of the community to create the conditions necessary for people to thrive, physically and psychologically, where they are, and without having to take from others to gain a measure of security. We become unmanageable by refusing to play by the established rules of the game. We become unmanageable by taking the refuse of our institutions and composting them into fertile soil for new ideas and new, supportive experiments. We become unmanageable by inviting others into supportive community, refusing to go it alone. We become unmanageable by becoming so numerous in our efforts that no entity, government, corporate, or faith-based, can crush enough of us to stop our momentum towards beloved community.

These models already exist. The challenge is to bring them into the awareness of the general public So that they may be replicated and adapted where they are needed. I have included some of these models in the CrossLinks. What unmanageable models do you see emerging?

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Cross Links

Haudenosaunee Confederacy
This Indigenous model of governance was the basis of the US system of government.

Farmland Commons
The Farmland Commons is innovating a model of community land ownership and stewardship to safeguard our environment and food supply.

The Master’s Tools Will Not Save Us

An examination of how empires fall amid the creation of alternative models of being. “Empires do not collapse because people politely request inclusion. Empires collapse when their logic is disrupted.”

The Prophetic Imagination, Walter Brueggeman, pg. 62
Theologian Walter Bruggeman notes this in his book, “We are largely confined to reflection on the given pieces, and our modest expectations are confined by our reason, our language, and our epistemology. We have no public areas in which serious hopefulness can be brought to articulation. What is most needed is what is most unacceptable – an articulation that redefines the situation and that makes way for new gifts about to be given.”

• We will not solve the overlapping crises of our world through better management of the existing pieces.

Power of the Powerless
Vaclav Havel’s examination of the state of his home country under Soviet occupation. In it he notes that “Power cannot be held over a people or within a people when the objective of conflict is the restoration of broken and damaged relationships.” This is becoming unmanageable

In our finance based economic system, we consumers tend think of money as a finite resource. We earn, spend, save, and invest, all in the hopes that we will have enough to get through the month. Even those of us who have earned enough to live comfortably without having to worry about a paycheck still keep an eye on our income sources (or pay someone else to do so). At the scale of the consumer, we are limited to the money that is made available to us, and we assume that the same is true for governments.

But at governmental scale, money is not so limited. Money isn’t earned so much as it is created, often through debt. The government borrows money whenever it makes a major expenditure, whether it be $11.3 billion for munitions and jet fuel in an attempt to bomb a foreign country into submission, or $99.8 billion for SNAP benefits in 2024.

The argument has been well established that this is a moral issue, an issue of corrupt values, and not an actual budget issue. But it is also a language issue. We must stop telling ourselves that politicians are finding money for pet projects and wars of distraction. This money is not being pulled from some secret vault. It is being created as desired and used to perpetuate myths of scarcity and danger from abroad.

The question for we citizens and we people of faith then becomes one of language, for language is one of the primary tools in the creation of values and morals. What language are we using in our communities and churches when it comes to aiding and uplifting the “least of these?” What limitations are our words placing on our efforts to build beloved community? What can we create at our scale that can become capable of challenging the values that create money for war but not peace, missiles but not migrants, frigates but not food? If we can reform and refine our language then we can begin to build systems that are not reliant on conjured government (or corporate) finance. And if we can decouple our needs from government largess, then the impetus to wage war and “secure” the nation through military and paramilitary (police) violence will cease. It can be done, and it begins with language.

Cross Links

Meditation, Anxiety and the Money System
Comedian Josh Johnson deftly calls out how our money system generates anxiety.

Finance as Capital’s Imagination
Presents an analysis of the politics of the imagination under financialized capitalism. Makes the argument that money, and finance in particular, serve as the source of imagination in a capitalist economy, driving the creation and interpretation of values, morals, and ultimately actions.

The Unsettling of America, Wendell Berry, pg. 24
Wendell Berry says this: “The responsible consumer thus escapes the limits of his own dissatisfaction. He can choose, and exert the influence of his choosing, because he has given himself choices. He is not confined to the negativity of his complaint. He influences the market by his freedom. ... By making himself responsibly free, a person changes both his life and his surroundings.”

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When I conceived of this Lenten series I had grand plans. I mapped out a series of essays based on different aspects of the wilderness experience. I had outlines and scripture references. I had CrossLinks ready to go. And then I sat down to write. And sat. And sat some more. Nothing more came. I was tempted to be frustrated by my lack of ability to progress, but then I realized that this stoppage, this stillness, is part of my Lenten journey.

My norm is busy. I have a demanding day job. I am a husband and father. I work in ministry. I have hobbies and other non-professional pursuits. I’ve got stuff to do! Therein lies the problem. This Lenten series that I’d planned is just one more thing that I have to do, one more task to fit into already busy days and evenings. Can you see the problem?

One of the invitations of Lent is to stop, is to pause and take measure of our relationships with God, with our world, with our labor, and with all of our relationships. I sometimes wonder if we err in adding fasting practices for Lent, for even as we take something away, we are adding something. The fast occupies mental and spiritual space. If we fast from social media, for instance, we have to figure out what we are going to do to fill that space. This can be just as exhausting as the constant movement of our normal being.

All of this took me back to Matthean account of Jesus fasting in the wilderness.

“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.  After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.”

- Matthew 4:2

The thing that strikes me about this text is the lack of movement. There is the initial leading of the spirit for a purpose. Afterwards there was the series of temptations by the devil. But in between, for 40 days and nights Jesus fasted. As far as the text indicates, Jesus didn’t do anything during that fast. He did not eat or drink. But he also didn’t go to synagogue, or make furniture (he was a carpenter), or teach, or study. If we are to go strictly by what the text says, Jesus simply was. He spent his time just being.

This essay finally came as I sat on the balcony of the Terrace Hotel in Lake Junaluska, NC. The trip up here is the first time during Lent this year where I have had time to simply be. I am here for meetings, yes, but I also have free time to watch the lake, to see the sun and moon rise and set, and to sit in rocking chairs and enjoy the cool breeze coming over the water. During these still times I have been able to reconnect with my soul and with God.

God does not invite us to be alternatively busy during Lent. Rather, the invitation is to actually stop, to take a break, to listen for the Spirit within us and to engage that Spirit in small quiet ways. I offer the same invitation to you. If you are struggling with your Lenten fast, perhaps you can cease the struggle and simply be. Discard the guilt of missing your prayer time, or forgetting your devotion, or slipping and eating the chocolate or checking Facebook. It’s ok. Actually pausing to be with God is far more important, and effectual, than any defined practice. Perhaps your fast this Lent could be a rest from fasting.

My prayer is that you find time to rest this Lent, and in so doing find a deeper connection to God. Remember, the call of faith is not only to do. The call of faith is also to be with the Creator, in body, mind, and spirit.

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Matthew 4: 1-2 (NIV)

“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.”

Exodus 16: 2-3 (NIV)

“In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

This essay begins a series on Lent entitled “The Wilderness of Lent.” Through the series I will explore the wilderness motif of the Lenten season and what engaging with spiritual, physical, and social wilderness can teach us.

Image credit: Fredric Edwin Church

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Christian season of Lent. Lent commemorates the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness, fasting and being tempted, before beginning his public ministry. It is a time of fasting, prayer, and reflection for many Christian denominations worldwide.

Found in all three of the Synoptic Gospels, the story of Jesus’ 40 day fast and subsequent temptation is often preached as a means to call out the evils and brokenness of our world. “Even the messiah had to suffer hunger and temptation. Even Jesus had to go through the wilderness,” the preaching and teaching often goes. We focus on the hunger, the deprivation, and the temptations of Satan, viewing these conditions as inherently evil. We are urged to have faith and hold fast to the promises of God as we traverse our own wildernesses. We work to get to the “other side” of these trials because the other side is where good lies. The implication is that God is somehow absent from the wilderness experience, that our survival is based on our personal faith, or that the wilderness is somehow devoid of blessing. But what if we have learned the wrong lesson from Jesus sojourn? What if God and goodness are not found on the other side of wilderness experiences, but within them?

Before exploring these questions, however, I want to first explore the concept of wilderness, both biblically and from the standpoint of complexity theory.

What is Wilderness?

Put simply, wilderness is unmanaged, uncultivated space or time. A wilderness is not simply a place where humans do not dwell. It is, rather, a place that humans do not control, a place that humans have not cultivated to meet our own needs. A wilderness is a place and a time that shapes humanity rather than humanity shaping it.

Though it is often portrayed as such, wilderness is not inherently dangerous. It’s unmanaged and unpredictable wildness often seems dangerous to people who are more accustomed to the conveniences of civilization and modernity, but wilderness in itself poses no direct existential threat. The threat that wilderness does pose is to the continued functioning of the established order. Once a person, organization, or society enters a wilderness, they can no longer rely on the processes, understanding, and faith that sustained them in easier times. Wilderness beckons toward newness, reinvention, and rebirth.

Lastly, wilderness is always present in some form. We are accustomed to thinking of the big catastrophes - famine, war, incompetent presidential administrations, climate change - as wilderness moments, but wilderness occurs at every scale of human life. Even when the economy is great and the government is stable, there will be, somewhere, a corporation that is failing, a farmer’s crop dying from disease, or a personal bankruptcy. Wilderness does not only exist at apocalyptic scale, it is ever-present and unavoidable. It is part of the cycles of life and history.

Living in the Wilderness of Lent

Lent is liminal, preparation space. It is supposed to be tiring and testing. But it is also meant to draw us closer to God, to help us understand God’s nature and our relationship to the divine. Such understanding does not come without a bit of suffering as Israel’s time in the wilderness shows.

The sixth chapter of Exodus recounts how the people grumbled against Moses and Aaron for leading them out into the desert to stave to death. In response, God rains down quail and manna for them to feast on. While the terrain was arid and less than hospitable, it is important to note that Israel did not complain about having no food. They’re complaint centered around the relative luxuries that they’d left behind in imperial Egypt, “pots of meat and [] all the food [they] wanted.” (vs. 3) Their gripes were about the ease that they left behind, the assurance that the well-managed Egyptian system provided to even their enslaved. Israel traded that ease for a desert that had been inhabited, if sparsely, for millennia. The people who lived there knew the abundance of the wilderness; where the springs bubbled up, where the uncultivated fruits grew, and where the wild game grazed. Instead of looking for these unmanaged resources Israel complained, forcing God to provide a visible signal that they had not been abandoned to starvation. They could not see that wilderness will sustain, but only if we reorient our concept of security and break free of our dependence on the orderly, managed, cultivated sterility of imperial supply systems in favor of the abundance of wilderness.

Lent is our desert, our wilderness, a time when we strip away the comforts and conveniences that we are accustomed to in order to grow closer to God. We do this stripping through disciplines of fasting, prayer, and meditation. We take on a practice of deprivation so that we may find the abundance of God in unexpected places. We give God the chance to meet us without so many of the distractions that hold our attention and command our allegiance. We must not rush through or curse the experience. We must take our time and trust in the abundance of the Lord, for only God can supply our every need, despite what our well-managed, severely cultivated society tells us. God is present, even in wilderness, and is ready to provide us with everything that we need, if only we will embrace his wild side.

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CrossLinks

Wilderness as a Metaphor for God in the Hebrew Bible

Presents the idea that God is a desert God who works best in wilderness situations, whose salvation is delivered through the experience of wilderness.

The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature

Article about the American concept of wilderness and the lack of historical and ethical integrity in that concept.

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Climbing the high pass
I see the marks of battle,
deep scars in the stone,
still smoking trunks of trees
blasted by forces that I cannot fathom.

The Great Golems fell here,
collapsed into shattered stones,
pebbles, and shards, and
iridescent geodes,
wound through with copper and iron.

I gather these remnants as I climb,
sorting, searching for pieces useful enough,
stuffing them,
sand, grit, and all,
into satchel and pocket.

I look to my left and see
wrens doing the same,
twig and branch and pebble
snatched up and carried away
to build high homes.

And to my right I see
a fawn, its mother watchful,
settling into a downy patch of green,
a good bed for the evening,
hidden among the ruin.

But me, I descend,
back down the high pass,
weighted by my cargo,
back to the shy stream - still running clear.
Back to the budding foundation
of a structure situated
beneath greening oaks.

I am met there
by other gathers,
other salvage makers,
also come down from the high pass.

We lay our burdens,
together.
Raising walls from the leavings
of giants,
from the fallings
of automatons,
from the last gasps
of iron lunged beasts.

We build home.

As I wrote in an earlier post, the lens that I most use to view the world is the Complex Adaptive Cycle (CAC). The CAC is a useful tool for interrogating world events, ideologies, and economies. It helps us to figure out where we stand in the historical cycle and what the events of our time might be pointing to. This is useful precisely because if we want to enact meaningful change we must first know where we are.

As a brief refresher, the CAC consists of four phases, the r-phase, k-phase, omega phase, and alpha phase. The r-phase is the phase of rapid growth and development. The k-phase is the phase of stability and maintenance. The omega phase is a period of creative destruction, a time when all of the structure and processes built in the r-phase and maintained in the k-phase are destroyed and the system’s tightly managed resources are released. System actors in the alpha phase capture those resources and use them to experiment with new ways of being, building the systems, ethics, and relationships that will define the next historical cycle. For the purposes of this essay we will focus on the omega and alpha phases for hope is found in them.

We are Trapped

Each phase of the Complex Adaptive Cycle comes with a trap, a set of conditions that prevent progress through the cycle. According to the literature, “If an adaptive cycle collapses because the potential and diversity have been eradicated through misuse or due to an external force, an impoverished state can result, with low connectedness, low potential, and low resilience, thus creating a poverty trap.” Put simply, a Poverty Trap occurs when the resources and diversity that were supposed to have been released in the Omega Phase remain locked up. When this occurs progress through the cycle halts.

A Poverty Trap looks like compounding crises, rising injustice, and growing economic and social poverty. A society, culture, organization, family, etc that is caught in a poverty trap keeps cycling through the same destructive patterns, working to break down the systems and institutions that have become maladaptive in their attempt to survive past their usefulness. The Untied States, and much of the world is currently caught in a Poverty Trap.

How Did We Get Here?

The roots of our current set of crises stretch back decades. While there are many subtler causes, it is useful to look at recent US political history through the lens of the CAC to get a broad sense of how we got here. I will start with the election of President Barak Obama.

President Obama was elected in November 2008. When he assumed office, the world was in the midst of a financial crisis, and the US and its allies were still fighting wars in the Middle East that were sparked by the terrorist attacks of 9/11. He campaigned on a message of hope and newness, a message that resonated so strongly that he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize shortly after taking office.

The Obama presidency occurred during what I call “max k,” the period of the k-phase where the imminent collapse of the system can be sensed via an increase in the frequency of crisis and rising ineffective of the standard measures for staving off said crises. He was the system’s last gasp at stabilization, the last and best attempt to ward off collapse. But there were too many rigidities built up, too many systemic weaknesses. Too many were left out of the prosperity and security that the system of liberalism promised. Too many were left to fend for themselves with neither a strong community nor a government safety net to back them up. Obama’s attempts to redirect the system were ultimately futile because the culture’s conservative impulse was still stronger than its progressive impulse. He could not bring the needed change by working within the system, not because he wasn’t skilled enough or his ideas were lacking, but because internal, incremental change wasn’t enough to restructure what was functionally an already failed system.

Obama’s “failure” opened the way for Donald Trump’s first term. Brought in by a conservative wave that looked backward for solutions to current problems, his presidency was marked by incompetence, uncertainty, and chaos. Many of the norms that have governed our country and society for decades were discarded, and not only by the president. He presided over a disastrous response to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, his posturing alienated many friendly world governments and bolstered dictators. The first Trump presidency dismantled parts of government and civil society that had worked to hold together the previous order, ensuring the onset of the omega phase.

Many rejoiced at Joe Biden’s election, thinking we were out of the woods with the election of a Democratic president. But we elected a liberal rather than the progressive that was needed to restart the forward momentum of the cycle. As well intentioned as he was, Biden could not drive us forward towards completion of the omega phase. On the contrary, the election of Joe Biden revealed the Poverty Trap. His election was the result of the system falling back, of people seeking the stability of the k-phase after the chaos of Trump. No serious forward progress was made under Biden the Poverty Trap worsened with the second election of Donald Trump. The liberal impulse that elected Biden failed to recreate the stability of the k-phase emboldening the conservative impulse, landing us where we are today.

Completing Omega: A Reason for Hope

Poverty Traps come about when the work of omega is not completed. They surface when the conservative impulse is too strong, retarding the necessary dismantling of the previous order. This impulse is not evil, but great evil is often done through it because it is very easy to abandon a moral and ethical framework of conservation. Whereas the liberal impulse seeks stability in the now, the conservative impulse can wallow in nostalgia, seeking a return to a “great” past, a simplified and half-blind memory of a stability and security that never broadly existed.

What we are seeing now is that the conservative impulse, emboldened and strengthened by the failures of the Biden administration, is overstepping it’s authority and its capability. It is not possible to return to an imagined, or even a real past. The actions of the current administration have set up a feedback loop which has activated and strengthened the progressive impulse. Our hope lies in this activation, for with the strengthening of the progressive impulse, we may be able to escape the poverty trap, complete the work of omega, and enter into a healthy alpha phase.

Into Alpha: Building a New World

We have to complete the omega phase, meaning that we have to grieve the old order alongside God, even as we participate in its dismantling. We must turn (repent) and began to experiment with new and progressive forms that will become the building blocks of the new order (k-phase) to come.

As painful as it is to see neighbors mercilessly rounded up and caged, and as difficult as it is to see armed troops in our streets, these are signs of hope, signs of the coming collapse of the old order. Scripture speaks in similar terms. “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘ who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.’” (Revelation 1:8)

While Revelation 1:8 may appear to be a simple statement of God’s identity, it is actually far more. This statement, used for centuries as evidence of the eventual end of the earth, is also a revelation of the cyclical nature of God and of history. God is, God was, and God is to come. Our history is the same. We are, right now. We were, some time ago. And, with God’s help, we will be. From the ashes of what was rises what is to be. From the rubble of the omega phase, from the violence of ICE raids and the rantings of sociopathic presidents, from the uncertainty of day-to day life and the desperate need to keep living, people who believe in God and believe in the inherent goodness of one another will pick up the scattered pieces of our republic and reassemble them into something more just, more relational, more resilient, and perhaps even more loving. Thanks be to God that no frightful end is ever cemented. We will gather up the resources left by the crumbling of our past and, in hope, and with one another, build a better future.

Questions for you to ponder

How are you finding hope in these times?

What role are you playing in completing this omega phase or in reimagining and enacting the coming alpha phase?

Cross Links

Revelation 1:8
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”

Understanding the Complexity of Economic, Ecological, and Social Systems
A treatise on the Complex Adaptive Cycle and how it applies to the complex systems in which we live.

Until We Win: Black Labor and Liberation in the Disposable Era
An examination of how capital has affected people of color and how we can come together to build something new and better.

Transitions: From Collapse to Emergence
A brief guide on periods of transition in complex systems.

I recently re-read one of my favorites, The Final Encyclopedia by Gordon R. Dickson. Below are some notes/thoughts that I had as I read the book. Writing in the 1960’s, Dickson was a witness to a social unrest similar to what we are seeing today.

These notes are not a complete thought, rather they are a musing on the themes of the book and how they are relevant to what we are seeing today. I wrote this month’s ago, well before ICE’s violent rampage through American cities was in full swing. As you read these thoughts see if you can match the characters in the book, their motivations, their actions, and the outcomes, to the patterns that we see in our politics today.

Note that (spoiler alert) the “Others” do not win at the end of the series of which The Final Encyclopedia is a part. They are defeated through a love of humanity, through a rejection of power as the sole means and end of life, and through knowledge and wisdom. I definitely suggest you read the whole series. It is long (the whole Childe Cycle is 12 books!) but worth it.

I would love to hear what you think about Dickson’s description and how it fits with what is happening now. Use the comments to help me finish this.

“We are dying. The race is dying. Look and you have to see it. The people on all the 14 worlds don’t realize it yet because its coming too slowly and because they are blinded by the limited focus of their attitudes toward time and history. They look only as far as their own lifetime. No, they don’t even look that far. They only look at how things are for their own generation. ... the beginnings of decay and death are plain to see. ... The race as a whole will start to die because it will have stopped growing, stopped going forward. There’s only one hope, one faint hope. ... The cure has to be a cure of the spirit, a breaking into some new, vaster area for all of us to explore and grow in.”

- Tam Olyn to Hal Mayne
- The Final Encyclopedia, pg 34

The whole plot of the Childe Cycle, of which The Final Encyclopedia is the third from last book, centers around humanity splintering into distinct cultures, each with its particular expertise. The most prominent of these Splinter Cultures are

The Dorsai (the warriors), the Friendlies (the faith holders), and the Exotics (the psychologists and inteligentsia). This splintering was driven by a variety of forces, political, economic, cultural, and historical. The distances of space across the 14 inhabited worlds serves as a physical metaphor for these forces.

“Full Spectrum” humanity has died out on all but a few of these 14 worlds, with Old Earth containing both the majority of humanity and the majority of these unspecialised, non-expert humans. The influence and power of these people has waned over time, undermined by the superior focus and finley honed talents of the Splinter Cultures. Earth, humanity, is cut off from newness and, as a result, is stagnating, teetering on the brink of extinction.

Into this dissatisfied age are born the “Others,” people who, through either genetics or education, have incorporated the best of the Splinter Cultures into themselves. They develop into a potent political and economic force that is capable of speaking into the pyscological tensions of a disintegrating humanity. They have discarded the strict specialization of the cultures from which they emerged, yet they have not become the generalists that humanity had been. They have fallen short of becoming fully human. They have re-membered only bits and pieces of what it means to be human, grafting on only those human elements that they deemed useful or that would gain them advantage.

This piecemeal re-membering, in response to the massive psycho-social tension inherent in the situation, renders them as a people whose only reason for existence is to satisfy a lust for power and control in an attempt to gain the security necessary to hold at bay the impending dissintegration of the species and culture. As such, the Others have no culture of their own. They are homeless and unrooted, chameleons and near-gods to the people whom they seek to dominate.

Dickson’s insight into the conflicts of the 1960’s (and other eras of human strife) was prescient for what we see today. It is, perhaps, no coincidence that both the 1960’s and the 2020’s were omega periods, with populations immersed in what Neil Howe and William Strauss call “The Fourth Turning.” Seventy years on from the 60’s and we have again reached a period in the historical cycle where psychological dismemberment is rampant and a group of “others” rises to fill the vacuum left by the cataclysm of institutions. Nixon’s and Trump’s appear during these times, gathering followers with promises to restore order, security, and familiarity, soothing the anxieties of those who have become too specialized to survive absent the backing and guarantees of grand institutions both seen (like governments) and unseen (like cultural, ethnic, racial, or economic norms). Their dependence drives their anxiety and their willingness to follow those who claim both difference from those who ran the institutions that, in their failure, failed them and who claim to have the keys to salvation.

Herein lies the power of the “Others.” Because they exist outside of these institutions and are thus not dependent upon them, they are able to clerly articulate the failure. They are further able to speak convincingly about it, a talent that is also connected to their independence from these formal and informal institutions.

Because they have no culture, no home, and no rootedness to the things that “normal,” non-specialized persons depend upon, their action is centered in domination and destruction. To build new institutions that foster freedom and wholeness is anathema to Others because such institutions would strip them of the power and security that they have built by stealing bricks from the foundations of the very institutions that they have decried as corrupt and failed. Empowering the everyday person robs the Other of the ability to sit atop the pyramids that they have built through their theivery.

Some additional notes:

Others have spent their lives as powerful, though marginalized, people. Their charisma flows from this marginalization, from being forever outside of the common institutions. This lack of common security keeps them highly attuned to when systems and institutions begin to enter omega and they are often, if not always, the first to respond to the first signs of rupture. This attunement is also at the core of their ability to draw other Others into their campaign.

Combating Others does require a spiritual awakening among the unspecialized peoples, a metanoia and a repentance, both for allowing the construction of selective (meaning non-inclusive) institutions and for becoming dependent upon them through specialization in the pursuit of ever more granulated and commodified profit.

CrossLinks

The Childe Cycle
A scholarly description of the series and its themes.

But anger isn’t the only emotion that I want to embrace as the world falls apart. I’ve got another playlist, entitled “Against Injustice” that evokes a different set of emotions. With songs by Rising Appalachia, Miko Marks, U2, Mumu Fresh, and Bill Whithers, this list is about hope, restoration, and even joy in the face of evil and autocracy.

As one of the most famous proponents and developers of the doctrine of nonviolent social change, Martin Luther King, Jr. was keenly aware of the role emotion played in justice seeking. In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” he wrote eloquently about the need to examine oneself and one’s motives, and then to undertake a process of purification so as to be able to withstand the inevitable violence of pushing back against Jim Crow. If you were marching with King, you had to have your emotions under control. Rage and uncontrolled fear were incompatible with the nonviolent approach. It is important to note, however, that nonviolent does not denote emotional passivity.

In the pursuit of justice there is space for the whole range of human emotions. King is often portrayed as the spirited, but otherwise calm, preacher. In contrast, his contemporary Malcom X was branded angry and borderline violent. But how often must King have felt anger? How often did the disappointment of which he wrote in “Birmingham” rise to ire? Might it be that anger over his people’s mistreatment served as a catalyst, pushing him toward nonviolent movement? The fact that he did not publicly display these hotter emotions is not evidence of their absence. If this is the case, we must then ask whether or not Malcom X, for all of his evident fire, employed joy or grief in his work? How might these cooler emotions have served the intellect and spirit the drove him to seek the full and complete liberation of his people?

Jesus too expressed the full range of emotions. In John 2 he angrily flipped tables in protest of the corruption of the Temple worship by the merchants and money changers. He wept for his friend Lazarus. He was resigned in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before he was crucified. And on the Cross he grieved for the short-sightedness and lack of faith of his people.

The happenings in our country stoke many emotions. Fear and anger come easily into play when confronted with brutal immigration raids at home and war mongering abroad. Disgust, revulsion even, may rise as we watch politicians spew racist claims and other outright lies. These emotions are valuable in that they alert us violations of our moral and ethical codes, but they need not be what drives us. Like King we can be driven by hope. Like Malcom we can be driven by the certainty that things don’t have to be this way. Like Jesus we can be driven by a deep love for and joy in, the Lord. Our resistance need not be emotionally monochromatic. We must approach resistance and justice seeking as complete human beings, refusing to cut ourselves off from emotional connection to others. For it is this emotional connection that helps us through the dark times and into the light of justice.

Cross-Links

What Drives Moral Progress

Article which argues that the more we feel and care, the more moral will be our motivations.

To Imagine and Pursue Racial Justice

An examination of what is required for a successful movement towards racial justice. Concludes that joy and fun are necessary components to sustain any long-term movement.

The Woke Christian Creed

Political Playlist

Against Injustice Playlist

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. It’s not for any great ethical reason. I simply wasn’t raised in a family that practiced annual self-improvement, so resolving to change something about myself or my habits never became part of my thinking. I did experiment with choosing a yearly theme word or phrase for a few years. This practice was helpful for a time as each theme helped me to focus on a particular way of being in the world, but it didn’t last. I just cannot get into the hype of setting an intention or resolution for an entire year.

New Years

I’ve been thinking about the idea of the new year since December. I, like many others, was ready for 2025 to come to a close. It was a tough year. I lost several family members, including my father. My son left home for college. Finances were tight. And my day job tried its best to wring every drop of life and intellect out of me. This is is not to say that 2025 was all bad, after all my son graduated from high school and went to college, but I was exhausted by the time Advent and Christmas rolled around. But in looking forward to putting 2025 behind me, it occurred to me that turning the calendar is not like flipping a switch. We do not step into January with a clean slate. We bring all of our history with us.

The history of the Gregorian calendar is far more than I want to get into here, but I find it interesting that the new year falls eleven days into winter. This seems like odd timing. Other cultures pin their new years to the season or to the lunar cycle, but ours falls outside of these regular and measurable transitions. Our new year does not honor natural cycles. More importantly, it does not honor personal cycles.

This disconnect between the timing of the new year and personal cycles, alongside the practice of making annual resolutions presents a dilemma. It is difficult to make significant life changes without major disruptions to our families, our livelihoods, or our faith. This is why most people fail to follow through on their resolutions past the early weeks of the year. We get the gym membership and go faithfully for a few weeks. We stop eating sugar or drinking coffee. We read a book that’s been our list for a while. We get up early to pray and read scripture. But something always gets in the way. We get a big new project at work, or the kids have sports practice, or we just get tired and forget. And then we feel bad about forgetting or faltering in our goals.1 There has to be a better way of approaching life and change.

The opportunity is to look at our lives seasonally rather than annually. As I mentioned above, my father died last year. I am still in a season of grieving him. That season did not end on December 31. It carried over into the new calendar year, just like the rest of my history. It would be foolish to try and resolve my way into a new season starting on January 1. I must honor my season, no matter the date and no matter the messaging of capital.

Discarding the Annual Resolution Rollercoaster

Living at our lives seasonally makes space for the reevaluation of practices and habits as needed. We become free to keep or change parts of our lives in tune with who we and where we are rather than feeling locked into a decision made according to an arbitrary date. This is grace. We no longer need to fear the “failure” of giving up on a long term resolution if we are viewing our lives seasonally. We do what is needed for the season. And when we enter a new season we change without guilt.

Living our lives seasonally allows us to stay anchored in our identities. Our history, our memories, our relationships form us and make us who we are. Oak trees do not miraculously transform into maple trees when the season changes. Grown from an acorn, spreading roots, and weathering years of changing conditions, an oak remains an oak no matter the date. And yet, in the spring it greens and sprouts new leaves. In summer it digs its roots deeper into the soil in the search for water and nutrients. In the fall its leaves are transformed into a vibrant palette of reds, yellows, and oranges before they dry up and fall off in the winter. Through it all, it is still an oak tree. It’s rings tell the story of its life. It’s branches tell of storms weathered and birds sheltered.

We are similar to oaks. Like a tree we grow, endure, and change, but we remain fundamentally who we are. Living seasonally helps us discard the urge toward annual reinvention. We are children of God, seeking God in every season and circumstance. This is our anchoring identity. We begin anew, not with the insecurity of a sales pitch, but with a solid identity in Christ. For Christ walks with us through every season, reminding us of our belovedness no matter what we do or do not resolve to change.

Cross Links

Additional resources to explore the topics of seasonality, identify, and grace.

Comfortable Space, Corrupt Spirits

In the beginning was the Word
and the Word was with God
and the Word was God.
The Word was with God in the beginning.
Everything came into being through the Word,
and without the Word
nothing came into being.
What came into being
through the Word was life,
and the life was the light for all people.
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light.

We have entered the time of year where it feels like we are running towards the end. There are less than 30 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas and the societal urge is always to fill them up, to accomplish everything that is left to do and to set ourselves up for the new year. There are last minute projects to finish at work, gifts to buy, decorations to hang, worship services to attend. There is so much to do, and the temptation to simply run and run until the end of the year is so very strong.

But we must not set our pace at a run, for these 28 days constitute the season of Advent, the time in the Christian calendar that we set aside to remember the coming of the Light, the Holy One, Jesus, the messiah into the world. Advent invites us to slow down, to remember the one who was born as an impoverished baby, and to anticipate his return as the triumphant king, the returned savior.

I have always loved the imagery in this text from John. As a science nerd I imagine God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit gathered around a tight churning ball of pure energy before uttering the word, “Let there be light,” and unleashing the cosmos in the Big Bang. Into that expanding, chaotic mass Jesus came, a light in the darkness, a flame to show the way to the good and the godly.

It is important to note that the Light did not eradicate the darkness. Nor did the darkness overcome the light. They coexisted, and coexist. They push against one another, making and taking space. The Light came into the world not to eliminate the darkness, but to make space for something other than chaos. For life cannot thrive in chaos. There must be some order, some creation of just and proper relationships. Most life thrives in the light. And even the forms of life which do thrive in the darkness still require structure and order.

Which gets us back to running. In our busyness and our running it becomes impossible to see the structures that keep us bound. We work ourselves at an inhuman pace, believing that the “job” is all important. We speed by neighbors who are in immediate need. We stumble blindly as we hurry towards accomplishment. We seek sustenance from that which cannot sustain. When we run, we confine ourselves to the darkness, stumbling through the chaos that is often portrayed as life. There are blooms of light all around us, small flames of hope, love, and justice, but we cannot see them at a running pace. When we walk, however, we become able to see the candles fluttering in the darkness, the signs of hope, the edges of the Kingdom of God.

In our society there is always much to accomplish in these last days of the year. We are primed to run to the end. But we can resolve to make and keep our own pace, to honor the coming of the Light into the world, and to recognize the light that we cast ourselves. Slow down. Rest. Honor your life and the lives of others as Jesus did in his ministry, for it is only at a pace that honors life that the world is transformed and the Kingdom of God emerges.

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It is not the blood red skies

or the angels like spinning wheels overhead.

It’s not the fires, or the earthquakes, or the rumors of war.

Neither is it the tongues of flame

leaping from temple to temple,

or the soldiers in the streets.

All of these are mere signs,

signals of divine intent.

They are not divine

Conclusion.

Such events merely clear the way.

They blast the logjam barricades.

They fill the craters and carve passes through mountains of obstructing stone.

They stamp a road upon which to walk,

a road out into the wilderness that we have shunned, no,

feared, for as long as we’ve wallowed

in the musty pocket stink of wadded up

“freedom”

The angels and the fires and the quakes come,

to release us,

to lace up our shoes for us,

to pack us a light snack,

to send us.

For the apocalypse will not be hurried.

It will not be mistaken for mere event.

There will be no taking up of the wizened saints,

though they just might tell us where to go

They might just lend us a mule for the long walk.

For they have been out and back. They do not know this road,

but they do know that there is one,

and that every now and then

a bird may fall nearby and

and drop may dribble from a stone,

and that this is enough,

and that this is the apocalypse;

the road,

the bird,

the drop,

all in their time.

All

in

time

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From a spiritual perspective, crisis is another term for wilderness. In scripture, especially in the Old Testament, every crisis resulted in, or was the result of, a sojourn in the wilderness.

Complexity and the Wilderness

I identify two phases of the Complex Adaptive Cycle with wilderness, the omega phase and the alpha phase. These are the two phases where certainty and predictability are lowest. In omega, the known order breaks down, often destructively. Norms are discarded and the institutions that survive are less trusted and, therefore, less effective. Alpha is a period of experimentation, of seeking, and often failing, to find where God is at work in the world. We see these phases mirrored in scripture. For the purpose of this essay I am focusing on the narratives in Exodus and Numbers to illustrate how these two phases operate as wilderness.

The book of Exodus presents a sweeping omega narrative. It begins in a late k phase (stability) with the Israelite people oppressed by the Egyptian Pharaoh. They cry out to God who hears and sends deliverance in the persons of Moses and Aaron. Their interactions with Pharaoh, as directed by God, kick off a series of plagues that devastate the Egyptian economy and ultimately people. In the end, the political hierarchy of Egypt is decimated when Pharaoh and his army drown in the Red/Reed Sea and the Israelite people are cast out into the desert to begin their wilderness journey.

The last half of Exodus along with the book of Numbers relate the generative, experimental portion of Israel’s wilderness journey. During this time the people travel through a literal wilderness where they face starvation, thirst, and threats from wild animals and other nations. The people test God’s limits at every turn, working to figure out who they will become in relation to one another and in relation to God on the other side. Despite the testing, however, God continues to be with them, giving them commands to follow, correcting/punishing them when they strayed, and providing for their needs. At the end of Numbers Israel leaves the wilderness, secure in their identity as God’s chosen people and trusting in God’s promise of a land to call home. They enter that land, conquering, and settle down to grow their number and live in God’s promise.

In Israel’s wilderness God provided four main things: a prophetic voice, shelter and sustenance, guidance, and assurances of presence. As we traverse the wilderness that is our world right now I believe that the church must provide the same.

A Prophetic Voice

When Israel cried out to the God of their ancestors for rescue, God’s response was to name their oppression (Exodus 3:7-8) and then send someone to speak “truth to power” on their behalf. Like God through Moses, in wilderness times the church must boldly recognize the marginalized and publicly name their oppression.

To be fair, many churches and faith leaders are already deeply involved in this work. My own UMC, at both the denominational and local church levels, vigorously advocates for the poor and the marginalized. But more is required. In the wilderness those who would be prophetic must do more than advocate, more than lobby the owners that be, more than offer charity. In the wilderness the church must develop (read: conduct experiments) alternative means of meeting the needs of the most vulnerable. It is in the coupling of speech and alternative action that the prophetic voice rings true.

Shelter and Sustenance

The offering of alternatives to “business as usual” segues well into the need to provide shelter and sustenance. Of course, in the biblical text these were literal. God provided miraculous food and water for the people and led them to good camping areas each day. (Exodus 16) Shelter and sustenance are necessary at all times but are critical in times of wilderness when resources are scarce. This is true for both literal and metaphorical wildernesses.

The church must provide spiritual and shelter and sustenance to all who sojourn through this wilderness. The particular crisis of the US government shutdown is an extension and exacerbation of the broader crisis. Cuts to SNAP and federal housing aid are leaving many questioning how their physical shelter and food needs will be met. It’s certain that the church should provide for these immediate needs as part of its prophetic witness, but we must also recognize that the deeper dysfunction and root of this wilderness is spiritual. The church must, in its worship and disciple making, provide shelter for these immediate needs spiritually homeless and sustenance for the spiritually malnourished. Weekend faith “snacks” will not suffice in the wilderness. In alpha and omega the people need the Bread of Life, Living Water, and the meat of scripture to sustain them on the journey.

Guidance through the Terrain

As the Israelites began their journey out of Egypt it is highly likely that some among them had some idea of where Canaan, the land promised them by God, was located. It is equally likely that they had no real idea how to get there or wha hazards the journey would hold. They needed a guide so God went before them, appearing as a pillar of cloud during the day and as a pillar of fire by night. (Exodus 13:21-22)

In wilderness times the church must serve as a guide. It is not so much that the terrain of omega and alpha is inherently dangerous, it is more that it is unknown and unpredictable. For example, ten or twenty years ago pundits were able to use polling data to make fairly accurate predictions about the course of US politics. Economists could foresee, with a reasonable margin of error, how the global economy would react to certain stimuli. And many churches could reasonably expect solid attendance and steady giving. Due to rapid changes in communications and other technologies (among other things), these predictable conditions are no more.

The church’s guidance won’t take the form of GPS-like turn-by-turn directions a to the destination. I believe it will look more like the guidance of a service dog. The dog doesn’t know the end point of the journey, but it can see the obstacles ahead and maneuver its charge around them. The church is capable of seeing the spiritual obstacles, things like unchecked consumerism, ongoing racism, sexism, and discrimination, toxic individuality, and an unprecedented and growing dependence on algorithm and AI driven digital tools in our everyday lives. (I am aware of the irony of declaring this on an algorithm driven communication/social media site…) These obstacles blind us to the Spirit of God in other people and to the connection that we share in that spirit. These obstacles put us against one another. And create obscene profits for then corporations and governments that grow powerful off of our dependence. The church must steer us back into the way of Jesus, placing love and grace at the core of everything we do. It must guide us into strong communities that can reconnect us with God and one another and that can withstand the rigors of the wilderness.

Assurance of God’s Love and Presence

When it feels like everything is falling apart it is often difficult to perceive the presence of God. Israel began to experience this lack very early in their journey. They’d barely started out of Egypt when Pharaoh changed his mind and chased after the people with his army. As soon as his chariot appeared behind them, the people forgot about God and turned on Moses. “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt?” (Exodus 14:11, emphasis mine) It was not to God that they complained, but to God’s representative. They lost all sense of God’s presence and care at the wilderness’s first trial.

How might the church make real and palpable the presence of God in this wilderness? How might it make clear that care that God gives? The emergency measures that many churches traditionally engage in - food banks, clothing closets, etc. - are recognized ways for Christians to show God’s love. Intercessory prayer and offering comfort to people experiencing trauma are means of exhibiting God’s presence.

In “normal times” a poor diagnosis or a lost job are largely individual or family concerns. They are individual moments of wilderness. Conversely, Wilderness Times are systemic. In “normal times” churches can deploy disciples to offer comfort and aid on an as-needed basis, but in Wilderness Times these efforts to make visible the presence and power of God must become systemic to match the times. The church must figure out how to be the presence and care of God by feeding, clothing, healing, and comforting whole communities.

The Church in Wilderness Times

Ultimately the need before us is not to simply traverse the wilderness with as few scars as possible. In scripture, the wilderness is an opportunity for transformation and growth. It is a place and a time that fostered repentance and a strengthened identity in God. But we do have to take advantage of this opportunity. Israel took 40 years to figure out that transformation and growth are not automatic. If the church is to be faithful then it must embrace both the challenge and the opportunity of this wilderness to work for transformation and not only survival.

How is the church using this wilderness time to build alternative communities of support and well-being that reduce our collective dependence on failing institutions and industries? What is the church doing to rebuild our communities such that they develop resilience so that when the next crisis comes along the systems of support will already be in place to mitigate suffering? These are the questions that we must ask alongside the more immediate questions of how do support our neighbors who are newly hungry, newly naked, newly unhoused, or newly unemployed. Wilderness Times demand that the church do both.

I am hopeful that as we continue our journey through this wilderness that the church will engage in the systemic, spirit-soaked labor if working with God to make this world, not just better, but new, not just reformed, but transformed. Let’s feed our neighbors and get to work building the localized, networked, supportive systems that will ensure that the next time crisis hits they won’t go hungry in the first place.

I’d love to hear how your community of faith is journeying with others through this wilderness. How are you all providing a prophetic witness, shelter and sustenance, being guides, and making God’s care and presence known? Feel free to share in the comments.

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Cross-Links

Becoming Israel in the Wilderness of Numbers

• A paper that traces Israel’s struggle to form its identity as it wanders through the wilderness.

Stand Out of Our Light

• Former Google advertising strategist, now Oxford-trained philosopher James Williams launches a plea to society and to the tech industry to help ensure that the technology we all carry with us every day does not distract us from pursuing our true goals in life. As information becomes ever more plentiful, the resource that is becoming more scarce is our attention. In this ‘attention economy’, we need to recognise the fundamental impacts of our new information environment on our lives in order to take back control.

When the World We Have Trusted In Is Vanishing

• Interview with theologian and Old Testament Scholar Walter Brueggeman on change and transformation. Brueggeman helps us to see a way forward in the wilderness.

Suppose There Were a Samaritan Today — a response to Vincent Harding

• An examination of civil right leader Vincent Harding’s call to spiritual and prophetic change.

The Church as a Company of Nomads

• An examination of how the early church saw itself in the world, as a people transiting a wilderness, seeking God’s vision for transformation and wholeness. A call for the church to engage in more than political action to foment change. Calls the church back to spiritual action and hope.

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The Faith Part

First, I belong to the United Methodist faith tradition. I am a lay person (which means I am not ordained) though I am married to an ordained Elder in the church. I believe deeply in our Wesleyan theology which is centered in a theology of sanctification by grace and a commitment to moving toward perfection in love in this life. We believe that sin is a very real issue, but it is not our focus. Grace is at the center of our faith. We also believe that no one should check their brain at the door to the sanctuary and have as a tool The Wesleyan Quadrilateral which gives us a unique method for approaching questions of faith. We ground ourselves in scripture, and then put the biblical text into conversation with our reason, our church’s traditions, and our personal experience. All of this together helps give us a picture of God’s presence and activity in the world.

The Wesleyan Quadrilateral
Source

The Nerdy Part

Second, I am an engineer and I love a good system or framework of logic. There are three such frameworks that I use (alongside the Quadrilateral) to try and make sense of this world. The first is Complexity Theory as represented by a framework called the Complex Adaptive Cycle (CAC). Originally developed to explore the evolution of natural systems by ecologist C.E. “Buzz” Holing, the Complex Adaptive Cycle provides an elegant framework for understanding the cyclical patterns of complex organisms.

Holing’s cycle has been adapted to describe many kinds of complex phenomenon including social phenomenon. The basic framework consists of four phases within which a complex system can exist. These four phases form two “loops.” The Front Loop consists of the r-phase and the k-phase. The r-phase is the period in which a system experiences rapid growth and increasing levels and degrees of organization. Think of a new church plant that doubles in size in the span of a few years or months. Organizations in the r-phase are entrepreneurial in their energy and outlook.

The Complex Adaptive Cycle
Source

The second phase in the front loop is called the k-phase. The k-phase is a period of consolidation and conservation. The entrepreneurial period has passed and the fledgling organization of the r-phase becomes highly organized. Think of a large church with lots of staff and well executed and funded programs.

The back loop of the CAC consists of two phases, the (omega) phase and the (alpha) phase. The omega phase follows the k-phase and is a period of “creative destruction.” In omega, the structures that were built up and defended in the k-phase are dismantled. The resources that were tightly managed in the service of maintaining stability, order, and predictability are freed up and identity and ideals begin to be challenged. This should sound familiar to Christians as most of the apocalyptic texts in scripture are representations of the omega phase.

The second phase of the back loop is called the alpha phase. Just as omega is a period of creative destruction, alpha is a period of creative experimentation and reorganization. Using the resources freed during the omega phase - money, time, loosening of ideological structures, etc. - small groups try new and innovative ways of being. Whereas entities in the k-phase are highly controlled, managed in a top-down fashion, and intensely inter-related, entities in the alpha phase are often decentralized and independent. There exists a high tolerance for risk in the alpha phase because the costs of failure are, relative to the r and k phases, low. Think of a new church plant that is trying (and perhaps failing) at all sorts of new things.

The second framework that I use is Network Theory. Imagine a map consisting of randomly scattered dots. Imagine further that there are lines linking pairs of these dots. Such a map can be used to visualize the relationships between friend groups, the interactions of different brain regions, or even the connections of the global economy. There is, of course, a ton of complicated math involved in any real study of networks, but I use the framework mainly as a way of remembering, and visualizing, how we are all connected to one another and to the Creation.

The third framework that I use is something of a combination of the first two. Panarchy brings together the insights of the Complex Adaptive Cycle and Network theory. To quote ”Buzz” Holing, “Panarchy is the hierarchical structure in which systems of nature, and humans, as well as combined human-nature systems and socio-ecological systems are interlinked in never-ending adaptive cycles of growth, accumulation, restructuring, and renewal.” Put simply, panarchy connects the cycles of the CAC with the link structure of Network Theory revealing how the actions and/or phase of one group or level in a hierarchy affect the actions/phase of other levels.

Panarchy Illustration
Source

Putting it All Together

I wrote in the launch essay for Cross-Link that my intention is to “look for the spiritual dimensions in everything, but without limiting ourselves to “spiritual” resources for interrogation and interpretation.” The resources above are how I “read the theology” in secular texts in world events.

The CAC helps me to interpret the stories in scripture. For example, can we think of the wilderness wanderings of Israel in the books of Exodus and Numbers as that nation experiencing an r-phase, a time of figuring out who they are, establishing their identity in God, and figuring out their ways of worship and being in relation to this Yahweh who saved them from Egypt? Or can we think of Solomon’s reign, with its splendor and order, as an example of the k phase?

Panarchy shows us how and where new forms of faith and being emerge from those who are on the “underside” of society, how their experiences and their resistance to oppression “flow up” to disrupt and remake the levels above them. Doesn’t this sound like the prophets of the Old Testament who emerged from the desert to proclaim God’s displeasure and foment change?

Network theory helps me to see that my actions here on the East Coast of the United States have consequences for the lives of peasant farmers in China and elsewhere through the links of the global supply chain. It convicts me of my complicity in the poverty and injustice foisted on others and makes me aware that I have neighbors near and far for whom I bear some responsibility.

And above all else, scripture, read through the lens of Wesleyan theology, tells me how I should respond to these revelations; by shining a light in my little corner of the world, by doing good, doing no harm, and worshiping God not only through words and song, but through informed, knowledgable, and faithful action.

I look forward to exploring our world through these frameworks with you all, my neighbors. Check out the Cross-Links below, and please add your own in the comments! Until next time.

Peace,

NA

Cross-Links

Understanding the Complexity of Economic, Ecological, and Social Systems

• A foundational text on understanding complex systems and panarchy. Examines how these two frameworks can be used to understand a wide variety of systems and situations.

Introduction to Network Theory

• A Cambridge University slide deck that gives an introduction to the fundamentals of network and graph theories. Provides a beginner level of understanding of how these networks are constructed and used. There some math, but nothing to be afraid of.

Panarchy: A Scale-Linking Perspective of Systematic Transformation

• A good primer on panarchy and systemic transformation.

What We Believe

• The basic tenets of Wesleyan Theology as expressed through the United Methodist Church.

Becoming Israel in the Wilderness of Numbers

• An exploration of how the wilderness journey of the Israelites formed their identity as the people of God.

Years ago I facilitated a small group study at my church. We did not study the Bible or a particular book on faith or spirituality. Instead, the group was centered around the Social Principles of the United Methodist Church. The group was called “The Current” and the idea was for participants to observe to current events throughout the week (hence “The Current”) and link those events to our United Methodist beliefs and ideals as expressed in the Social Principles.

Each week we discussed what was happening in the world and worked to figure out what we ourselves believed using the Social Principles as our foundation and guide. In crafting the class it was my hope that if we could connect the events happening to and around us with our United Methodist Christian beliefs, then the inspiration to act in faithful ways would not be far behind.

Each week I challenged the participants to teach widely, engaging with local, national, and international news and information sources. I asked them to engage with sources that did not affirm their usual political or theological stances. I asked them to pray and to engage with both the Social Principles and their chosen news sources almost as if they were scripture. We would exegete, searching for what meaning or message God was trying to convey through world events.

So, why am I bringing up an old small group? When I started A Complex Theology it was my hope that engaging faith through a complexity lens would allow me to do something similar to The Current, to link a broad spectrum of issues with faith and spirituality. Unfortunately, I found that the complexity framework was (surprisingly) too limiting for what the Holy Spirit was trying to do in me. The Substack sat mostly empty. Frustrated, I prayed and cast about for what to do and that is when the memory of The Current returned. Along with the memory came the idea for a relaunched Substack and a new name: CrossLink.

The idea behind this relaunch is to look for the spiritual dimensions in everything, but without limiting ourselves to “spiritual” resources for interrogation and interpretation. There are a host of secular resources available that provide the factual, theoretical, and even spiritual insights that we need to learn how to faithfully navigate and work toward positive change in the world. Every essay, poem, or post will be footed by these “cross links” as resources for further study and contemplation as we all journey the paths of personal and communal salvation and redemption.

So welcome to CrossLink dear neighbors! I pray that you will take this journey alongside me, traveling outward from the tenants of our personal faith and into a world that desperately needs to hear the Good News. The only thing that I ask is that you remember this: that while scripture is the foundation of our faith, it is not the only source of Good News.

Where are we?

This is a question that has come to ground my theology and way of being in the world. Where are we is not a geographical question, nor is it temporal, although it touches on both arenas. Where are we is a spiritual question that delves deeply into the collective conscious of humanity and our place in history. It is an attempt to locate ourselves relative to the forces that drive history.

Where are we has become such central question in my spiritual journey as a result of my study of complexity theory. One prominent model in the complexity lexicon is that of the Complex Adaptive Cycle (CAC). Developed by ecologist C.E. “Buzz” Holing, the CAC provides an elegant framework for understanding the cyclical patterns of organizations through history. Holing's cycle has been adapted to describe many kinds of complex phenomenon including social phenomenon. The basic framework consists of four phases within which a complex system can exist. These four phases form two "loops." The Front Loop consists of the r-phase and the k-phase. The r-phase is the period in which a system experiences rapid growth and increasing levels and degrees of organization.

The Complex Adaptive Cycle and Spirituality

“I am the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”
- Revelation 22:13

What does the CAC have to do with spirituality and theology? I will go more in depth on what each of these phases mean in later posts, but for now let it suffice to say that the CAC exists throughout Christian scripture. The four phases show up most prominently in the Old Testament. Israel goes through an omega phase in its exit from Egypt. They spend 40 years wandering through the desert in an alpha phase. The periods of the judges and the early kings define the r-phase. And finally Solomon and the later kings represent the k-phase period. Israel again experiences an omega when they suffer invasion and exile, thus starting the cycle over again.

There are three crucial things to note in this description of the CAC in scripture:

1. The cycle repeats.

2. The cycle always goes in order (alpha, r, k, omega) although there are often waypoints, delays, and smaller loops along the way. (These will be covered in later posts.)

3. Most importantly, God shows differently in each phase. In order to figure out what God is up to, and how, we have to know where we are in the cycle.

God’s Phase Characteristics

God's "phase characteristics" are revealed by who or what God raises up or provides in any particular phase, as well as by God's emotions and direct actions. Where is God loving, gracious, forgiving, wrathful, or judgmental? What leaders, institutions, enemies, or God-ordained events emerge that align with God's desires, actions, or emotions? We can begin to locate ourselves in the historical cycle once we become attuned to how God tends to appear in different phases.

Scripture reveals several core characteristics that God exhibits in each of the four phases. These are:

1. In the r-phase, God is mostly silent and observant, allowing the people to build within the framework created by the successful experiments of the alpha phase. In the r-phase, God speaks to offer course corrections.

2. In the k-phase, God is prophetic, condemnatory, justly judgmental, grief filled, and angry.

3. In omega, God is prophetic, hope giving, redeeming, and, ultimately forgiving.

4. In alpha, God is active, creative, and abundant, working with and through humanity to build new life and new ways of being.

This is not an exhaustive list, but it covers the major characteristics attributed to God in the narrative arcs of scripture.

So, where are we?

So, where are we? It can be hard to say because some of the phases tend to blend into one another. The k and omega phases can sometimes be difficult to distinguish, especially as k begins to give way to omega. The alpha a r phases tend to do the same.

Regarding the American political arena, the end of the Obama presidency and the beginning of the first Trump presidency seemed to be a clear transition from k into omega. Trump’s defeat by Biden seemed to be a step out of omega and toward alpha. Trump’s re-election makes it clear that we are still firmly in an omega phase in the United States. Similar political movements around the world reveal that we may be in a global omega.

So what do people of faith need to do?

I will be exploring this more in future posts, but at the very least we should be praying as we face this omega. We should be grieving as God is surely grieving. We should also be looking for the prophets. What truth tellers is God raising up? Where is hope to be found amidst the chaos? Where is grace abundant? Find those spaces, however small or insignificant they may be, for there God is at work. Once you’ve had time to grieve and sit in the ashes (this is a prime omega activity in scripture), go look for God and then join in what God is up to. Omega always feels like the end, but it simply a rough beginning.

I will be exploring all of the aspects of the Complex Adaptive Cycle and how it relates to spirituality and faith in future posts. I look forward to your comments and thoughts!

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