An Idiot Giving Tree

This article is by Alexander Sosler, Assistant Professor of Bible and Ministry at Montreat College:

Culture changes with the winds and waves of time and movement, and Christian commentators attempt to discern “the signs of the times.” In every age, we can look around and see that things are not the way they are supposed to be. And often we look back to some golden era when things were better. That’s often what politicians encourage us to do — to return to a better era, because right now is not good. Or maybe it’s not the country that needs to be great, but the church. So, we look at the Reformation and think things should be like that — a period of personal piety and vitality in a dead church. Or the medieval church with its renaissance of art and architecture. Or we look back to Constantine and the establishment of Christianity and the end of persecution. Or the early church in Acts where they held everything in common and devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship.

Whichever time period we resonate with, our changing culture can be viewed as a threat, as an enemy, as those “others” out “there” hell-bent on marginalizing at best, or destroying at worst, the Christian church.

In her book of essays, The Givenness of Things, Marilynne Robinson wrote,

Cultural pessimism is always fashionable, and, since we are human, there are always grounds for it. It has the negative consequence of depressing the level of aspiration, the sense of the possible. And from time to time, it has the extremely negative consequence of encouraging a kind of somber panic, a collective dream-state in which recourse to terrible remedies is inspired by delusions of mortal threat. If there is anything in the life of any culture or period that gives good grounds for alarm, it is the rise of cultural pessimism, whose major passion is bitter hostility toward many or most of the people within the very culture the pessimists always feel they are intent on rescuing.^[1]

She calls it cultural pessimism. Perhaps you could call it fear. But in our world, we can be so consumed by news, disasters, pandemics — not to mention our own sins and failings — that it’s hard to be postured by anything but fear. Or pessimism. Or frustration. And it can position us in the world as bitter toward the people we are intent on rescuing.

And, as Robinson argues, this pessimism towards our current world is always fashionable because we are human — there are always threats that encourage a somber panic in us.

In the February issue of First Things, Aaron Renn argued that the wider culture has gradually pivoted over the last thirty years from a positive view of Christianity to now a negative view — from a “Positive World” to a “Neutral World” to a “Negative World.” These shifts roughly parallel the movement from the seeker sensitive culture of Bill Hybels, to the cultural engagement model of Tim Keller, to the more antagonistic Benedict Option recently proposed by Rod Dreher.

Renn is sympathetic toward a cultural war strategy, surmising that it has the strength to form people by opposition. He’s less favorable toward the seeker-sensitive model (whose adherents are largely retired). Renn writes disparagingly of the cultural engagement crowd, perhaps uncharitably labeling their theology as “a thin veneer for secular progressivism.” He believes that those engaging with culture will end up mirroring culture’s values. Renn’s article concludes with a suggestion that Christians think deeply about the strategy of our Christian witness in our “Negative World.”

I have a proposal:

A Ministry for All Times: The Idiot Giving Tree

There are two paradigms I want to provide for a new ministry strategy in the “Negative World.” The Swiss Theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar argued that love alone is credible — that is, the church is seen most compelling when it is a “poor and servant” church rather than a triumphant or bombastic one. And love, in the example of Christ, is sacrificial. Even when our truth claims are rejected, the watching world will see the church as credible by the love it embodies.

A good example of this kind of church is featured in a children’s book.^[2] In The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, a boy and a tree grow up together. There are a mutual acceptance and love in the relationship. The boy swings for his branches and climbs his trunk, and the tree is happy. But the boy gets older and starts wanting different things. In essence, the boy uses the tree for what can serve the boy. He picks the apples to sell them for money; he cuts down the branches to build a house; he finally cuts down the trunk to build a boat to sail away. At last, the boy is now an old man and returns to the stump of the tree. The tree, diminished at this point, doesn’t have anything left to offer the boy. “I don’t need very much now,” said the boy, “just a quiet place to sit and rest. I am very tired.” And the tree is good for that.

I think in many ways, culture has used the church so long as it’s been useful. For a short time, the relationship was mutually beneficial (“Positive World”). But the church does not have much to offer a secular world. The church is no longer an essential service (“Neutral World”). It is a diminishing institution with diminishing influence and diminishing numbers. But at some point, perhaps sooner but probably later, people may return to the tree of the church and see a stump. And what can we offer a tested, tried, and tired people? I want to propose that by our sacrifice, people will know where to return. Love gives us the credibility. But if or when they do return, we need to be the kind of places that offer the hope of true rest. This will require serious and robust formation and piety. And in the meantime, as people may use the church for what serves them, we trust that God can make dead things alive again — even mere stumps.

I am reminded of J.R.R. Tolkien’s view of history: “I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’ — though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.”^[3] There may be some victories along the way, but the church ought to be prepared for suffering as they follow a crucified Lord. It’s here — in the suffering, liminal spaces — that the church is credible.

The second illustration comes from Baylor Professor Alan Jacobs. As already noted, there’s much about fear of the cultural decline in today’s world, and what ministry may look like in light of decline. So how should we approach a world gone mad? How much should we worry about being publicly reproached or having our property plundered? Should we fear that the abomination of desolation is at hand?

Jacobs references a passage from Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon about being an idiot. At several points in the book West states her belief that, by nature, men are lunatics and women are idiots. What she means is that men are malleable by circumstances, running to and fro after whatever happens to be going on at the time. Women, on the other hand, are idiots (in a good way), less distracted and more engaged in the task at hand.

Here’s the passage that Jacobs draws on as West is listening to her husband have a political argument:

Just then my eye was caught by two large, loosely formed spheres in neutral colours, one blackish grey, the other brownish black. These were the behinds of two peasant women who were employed by the municipalities to weed the flower-beds at the corners of the square. They were being idiots, private persons in the same sense as the nurse in my London nursing-home, who was unable to imagine why the assassination of King Alexander should perturb anybody but his personal friends. They were paid to pull up weeds, and they wanted the money, so they continued to pull them up, even when the students raised a shout and brought some gendarmes down on them not fifteen yards away. As I looked at those devoted behinds, bobbing up and down over their exemplary task, and the smug face of the automatic rebel, I thanked God for the idiocy of women, which must in many parts of the world have been the sole defender of life against the lunacy of men.

What this means for Jacobs is spelled out in a prayer:

Lord, make me an idiot, an idiot for Thy Kingdom. Keep me focused on the weeds I need to pull, the garden I am charged with tending. Let the lunatics run and shout as they will, but keep me at work on my humble daily ‘exemplary task.’ In the name of Jesus I ask this. Amen.

 My idea for a Christian witness in today’s age is to be idiot giving trees: tending to our gardens and offering the goods of our land to anyone who passes. More than “staying in our lane,” an idiot giving tree is unconcerned with markers of success, prestige, or recognition in any form, whether it be op-eds in newspapers or getting interviewed by Terry Gross. Such a tree would simply give what was needed, without chasing relevancy, power, or self-preservation. And after the culture takes and takes from a church that’s busy looking after its own plots, perhaps it’ll finally find a stump upon which to rest.

After all, love alone is credible.