Equilibrium

When I was a kid, my parents had this habit of taking me and my sister to a dentist every six months or so. I always wondered if he intentionally tried to fit most of his little tools into my mouth at the time just to see if he could, but by the end of the appointment he’d be satisfied that my teeth were in satisfactory health and give me a new toothbrush and a stern warning to floss better. And if it had been a really good appointment, I’d be told to walk out the door into the lobby and press a doorbell button that lit up a big sign that said “hey hey hey, no decay.” This was a really big deal to the dentists and hygienists that I would be able to press this button.

Why?

I mean, nobody expected me to get more teeth, only to keep them healthy. Our basic assumptions tend to be limited to maintenance, not expansion; we don’t expect growth, we expect things to stay just the way they are now. Obviously our experience tells us that a single person can’t actually have more teeth, but aside from that, we think it’s a silly question because we don’t like decay. We don’t like teeth that can rot and cause pain and make us eat only yogurt and applesauce. We don’t like that things break down, that they wear out, that it takes energy and effort to maintain them at their present state. In the science of thermodynamics we call this “dynamic equilibrium,” the way that it takes energy and effort and work to just keep things the way that they are instead of decaying – we call it “entropy.”

It takes an extraordinary amount of effort to keep things at dynamic equilibrium. Your body’s mitochondria, the little powerhouses of your cells, are feverishly working day and night to produce chemical energy, something called ATP, from your food. Furthermore, maintenance requires more than just energy, it also requires your cells to die on a regular basis as they wear out, and are replaced by new versions with new mitochondria and take up the call to keep being a body. When a person’s body decides to stop fighting the entropy, something called static equilibrium begins to take hold. Without all that effort, the body re-equilibrates with the environment around it and the elements begin doing their own thing. Another word for static equilibrium is “death.” When your body stops fighting the decay, it dies.

All this effort to keep one thing going.

But let’s say that my assumptions were different, that I still wanted the world to have more teeth. What would it take? Despite the limitations of my own mouth, there is a way – I could always get together with a girl (she’d have to be a cute girl if I wanted good teeth) and then make a few tiny people that could then grow their own teeth. Speaking from experience – I’ve done it twice now – I can say that it works. There are now more teeth in the world than before.

You can sleep easier tonight.

In order for growth to happen, it requires one to transcend dynamic equilibrium. Massive changes have to take effect in order to reproduce; new hormones are created, entirely new structures are built to house this new creature until it can sustain itself, great amounts of energy are spent in the making. And when at long last the day comes, there is pain and discomfort and separation. We literally cut the two apart sometimes when the growth hasn’t gone exactly according to plan. But in the end, there’s this beautiful new infant, fragile and vulnerable. And the process is still not finished; more energy is poured in, more effort is made to make muscles and bones and organs bigger, brain cells grow and fit into new patterns, and eventually, there is no longer an infant, but a fully capable, mobile adult that can make decisions, laugh, cry, and eat sushi.

God asks us to grow.

See, growth doesn’t happen when we simply try to maintain what we have. Sure, it takes a measured amount of energy to fight decay. But in reality, the amount of energy it takes to fight against decay is best spent growing bigger, in reproducing. In the end, it is in reproducing that we are able to live as a species. But when we reproduce, we cannot make the other into clones of ourselves, we must allow them to be unique, capable on their own, with their own set of gifts and talents. We don’t dictate who they are, God works with them so they can be the best they can be.

If nature is any sort of reflection of God’s intentions – and the scriptures and our tradition resonate that it is – then we are to move beyond simply maintaining ourselves. Life is not, in the end, about us, but about something bigger, more than ourselves. God’s assumptions are not our assumptions. And so our church programs have to give up on being static, because if we try to maintain them just-so in a changing world, we’re simply prolonging the inevitable move to equilibrium. When it’s about keeping it just like it always was, we’re really saying it’s all about us. But if we grow, if we reproduce and allow the children to grow up and think for themselves, we’ve begun to act out something bigger, something grander. We act in the very character of God.

A Few Over-generalizations

Some of you may remember that I’d basically given up on the whole evolution “debate” out of what amounts to sheer exasperation with pretty much every side involved. Recently, however, I seem to have been drawn in again, mostly through discussions with several youth members at church. It has led me to do some more reading in the area, on two sides (of many) in particular, and yet I still find myself at a place of …

… “So?”

The issue that keeps coming back for me is this: how is it that the two sides in question seem so full of paradoxes, and how then can we then make these central debates to any sort of worldview?

For example, young-earth creationists claim that the universe was created in six, 24-hour days (because time was measured that way already) by a benevolent God who told them to be fruitful and multiply and to take care of their garden and the people of the earth He loves so much. I get the opposition to abortion, it seems to fit pretty well with “God loves all creatures”. However, they then oppose social health care, as if it would be such a terrible thing for everyone to be healthier, for more people to live, and for more people to live well. Now, I know there are issues with health care reform and socialized health care from an economic perspective (i.e. we can’t really afford it), but how on earth can you claim that these are issues that scripture can oppose? Sure, they’re not particularly consistent with traditional American values, but scripture isn’t particularly for or against America. I’ve yet to hear from any of the conservatives/fundamentalists how the two go hand-in-hand. Now they may, there’s the possibility since everything is really a religious issue, but I’ve yet to hear their justification for it. What the world does is only my concern inasmuch as I need to understand it to then show them the love of Christ in a way they can understand.

My beef with the other side is that they’re just as paradoxical. Most naturalistic evolutionists would say that there was no particular cause for everything, just random chance (if we can label it that). They also would tend to say, by definition, that everything arose through natural selection of genetic variation, the fittest genes survive, the most cunning are able to pass on their genetic material for a new generation. However, what I don’t understand is that the same group of people – to over-generalize – also seem to be most often in favor of universal health care, socialism, etc. This isn’t to knock those ideas one way or the other, but to notice an inconsistency: if you’re so in favor of naturally selected survival, then why on earth would you try to guarantee everyone surviving? And THEN you say that it’s our freedom of choice that we should make abortion legal. It seems a contradiction and a paradox to me as to how these can all coincide in the same worldview.

Just some thoughts, hoping that maybe it’ll get my writing juices flowing again. I’ve been away from this for far too long and I miss it. And yet I also seem to have very little time for it. Ah well.

Cheers.

Dawkins on Missing Links

I've seen this mentioned a few times as an evolutionist being stumped by a creationist's question. I think that's ridiculous; just because you can't answer the question right away doesn't mean you're stumped - it just means it's a hard question, and those take longer to answer. In fact, I think the answer he gives later in the video is actually quite well-spoken, though it takes as much a leap of faith to believe what he's saying as any other perspective (it would seem odd that we haven't found any of the failed-intermediate species). Anyway, just thought it was interesting. Thanks to Matt Stone for the heads-up.

Michael Crichton Dies at 66

R.I.P. Michael Crichton - we'll miss your singular talent and creativity.

Christian Agnostic, Part IV: Science and the Bible

One of my biggest pet-peeves is when a Christian or a Church says "the Bible is the scientifically-accurate word of God." Now, I do understand the context for such a qualifier - science has challenged a lot of what Christians through history have assumed to be true. Galileo noticed that we're not the center of the universe, and then Einstein showed that we could be, depending on our perspective. Darwin noticed that organisms adapt to their surroundings as they change, challenging the notion that once creation happened, nothing changed afterwards.

But the context doesn't seem to prevent my irritation.

It's ironic that so much of the debate is over a book that isn't actually a science textbook. On what level do we think that Moses was thinking "biology 101" when he compiled the accounts of creation in Genesis? Who writes a science text thousands of years before the idea of sceince even existed? Who, for that matter, would do so in poetry? Poetry is reserved for the things we can't explain, not the things we can!

I also find it ironic that many of the Christian notions challenged by science are actually cultural and not really biblical; many came from medieval notions of truth, which originated in their theology. For example, the medieval notion of the earth as the center of the solar system came from theology, not the theology from the evidence. The idea was that God made man last, therefore humanity is most important (interesting that they didn't extend this to gender). Now, from a certain perspective, no, the earth is not the center. The Earth revolves around the sun - we can look up (and even GO up) and see this to be so. However, Einstein being the genius that he was, changed all that. Because of perspective, we can literally be the center of the universe again; the universe, from a certain perspective (one with its fixed reference on our planet), quite literally revolves around us. But it is ALSO true that, from another perspective (one with its fixed reference outside our planet), the earth rotates and then orbits around the sun along with seven other planets and one planetoid (sorry Pluto), along with countless moons, comets, asteroids, etc. It's not either/or because of perspective. Western culture is actually one of the few cultures concerned with what literally happened in the past; most other cultures are more concerned with how we are to act NOW, and so they tell stories FROM the past in order to instruct the PRESENT.

And so I ask, must we think that scripture is scientifically accurate? Is the reason for scripture to show HOW things are, or to show WHY things are? Science and scripture are not necessarily incompatable. Science, for example, is quickly concluding that the universe was made out of nothing, that the Big Bang had to create matter from literally nothing in order for it all to work. Christians think that too - we call it "ex nihilio" (the fancy latin term for "out of nothing") except we say that the whole thing had a cause - God. Science is still "agnostic" about the cause. But are the two fundamentally incompatable? No. Scripture never says HOW God did it, only WHY He did it (and that He did it at all). But imagine you're a person ignorant of quantum mechanics and chemical microbiology (just imagine ... it shouldn't be too hard to imagine this) and living after all of this creation stuff has happened, and then think: how do you explain it to future generations? Of course:

Poetry!

And so to extend the argument further, when we say that organisms evolve and change and adapt to their surroundings, is that fundamentally incompatable with God breathing life into Adam? Only if you have a very narrow view of a God who doesn't work with what's present to change it. And if things can't change and adapt to new circumstances, what makes you think that people can change? Why bother with evangelism or mission if we think that people will always stay as they are, born sinful? I think that evolutionary theory is quite compatable with the story of the gospel, when told a certain way:

In the beginning was The Cause, and He created the universe out of nothing. He created it with order and purpose, with complex and intricate governing rules so that the atoms and molecules would know how to interact. The universe expanded to fill the space He had created, and by His hand, the planets took shape around stars, some around several stars. One planet was just right for a particular plan, and so he made it form in a certain way; volcanoes parted the waters and created fertile dry land. The volcanic activity also cleared the poisonous atmosphere, and in a puddle of green goo, God began moving the molecules into proteins, and the proteins into cells, and the cells into all sorts of organisms. God is like a potter, molding and forming a shapeless lump of clay into a masterpiece of artistic harmony, form and function. The animals grew ever complex, until one day, in the sixth age, God's last creation came to the point where He was ready for His best creative act yet: he breathed His own life into men and women. The two enjoyed the paradise of a planet God had created, until one day, something happened that changed all that ...

Is it perfect? Of course not, but like all things, it's open to interpretation, change, and refinement. God is ever creating, building life from chaos and confusion. Retelling it this way is very risky, but in the end, after refining it, I think it will be worth it. We need to retell anew the stories for our culture in a language that makes sense to each generation, lest they become old, stale, irrelevant.

(to be continued)

Expanding Earth

Ok, how crazy an idea is this really? I'm curious for those of you who may have gone further in your scientific training than I have if this is entirely preposterous or if it has any weight to it at all. All I'm asking is that you suspend disbelief and give it some consideration. I have no idea if this is right, but it's certainly interesting.

Decentralization in Christian Missions

The Decentralized Church
Reclaiming the Spirit of the Heterarchy for Mission

By Chris Logan

In 2006, a remarkable book was released called The Starfish and the Spider. Its authors posit that there are movements in which large groups of people behave less like organizations with a clear chain of command and more like organisms. While these organizations might have clear spokesmen, distributed power and leadership (even no discernable leader), making them hard to kill, but even more so, giving them the ability to do far more than most hierarchies, to survive harsher environments, and to proliferate at astonishing rates. They called these movements “decentralized,” and there is a remarkable correlation between this concept and the many churches through history that have succeeded where others failed.

Decentralization and the Heterarchy

The Starfish and the Spider: A Metaphor
The authors of The Starfish and the Spider use the metaphor of two animals to illustrate the nature of centralized and decentralized organizations: spiders and starfish. The spider represents a concept called “hierarchy.” It is an animal with clear structure; it has a head, a body, glands for web-spinning, legs, etc. If you were to remove, for example, a leg, the spider would be clearly wounded and have a very hard time surviving at the level it had previously enjoyed. However, remove its head, and the spider would die instantly, as the head gives life to the entire organism, directing every activity in the body. Without the head, there is no spider.

The starfish, on the other hand, represents a concept called “heterarchy,” or “decentralization,” and it is much harder to locate than a hierarchy. While the starfish and spider hold similarities in their basic shape, this is where any common thread ends. The starfish has no head. It has a varying number of arms, in which organs exist in multiple redundancies. In fact, to find the most distinct commonalities of one part of a starfish to another, you have to zoom-in to the cellular level. Instead of a brain, the starfish has a neural network spread across the entire starfish[1].

If an arm is removed, rather than damaging the organism, something remarkable happens: the starfish grows another arm to replace it. And the severed arm grows another starfish. Since there is no distinct head (and thus no distinct brain), this works to the starfish’s advantage – the organism cannot be killed in a conventional fashion. Beyond this, the starfish defies our most basic assumptions; it is a simple organism, but time and time again proves it can survive much more readily than a spider can. Cut a starfish apart and you have as many new starfish as you had pieces.

Yet often, we try to find hierarchies where there is actually heterarchy[2]. This is not to say that a heterarchy has no organization, only to say that the organization is at a different level and of a different sort than the hierarchy. In a heterarchy, units are organized at a “cellular” level, in basic units rather than in a dominating structure that requires uniformity. Each cell is unique in some way, but all are connected in a way that turns an otherwise random conglomeration into a functioning whole.

Qualities of the Decentralized Organism
Autonomy and Adaptability of Individual Units
The decentralized organism allows its individual units (called “cells”) autonomy. It is this autonomy that makes the decentralized organism so mysterious; instead of what we usually expect, the units, despite no central organization, continue to work together. For the spider-hierarchy, there is a clear structure, a clear procedure by which all things are done, a clear pathway of information. The head dictates and the body moves. In contrast, a starfish has no such pathway, rather, has multiple smaller pathways that form a network. Every part of the network has a say; in order for the starfish to move, one leg must move and convince all the others to move as well. Yet it happens at a speed that defies conventional wisdom[3].

Because cells operate with their own autonomy, the decentralized organism can be much more flexible than a hierarchy. Units at the cellular level can respond to crises on their own (re-growing a severed limb, for example), rather than spending valuable time to seek authority from a central command. In other words, they have permission to act on their own, granted by the nature of the organization.

In a hierarchy, the head requires a standard set of operating procedures for the whole organism; in a heterarchy, each cell customizes the basic operating procedures for its unique circumstances; this is called “contextualization,” the indigenization of the concepts that are common to the whole. As a result, the decentralized organism is much harder to detect than the hierarchy because it blends into the culture much more readily. In effect, a heterarchy is the result of many individual units functioning in the harmony of an organic whole. The cells become less visible, and instead of cells, we see an organism[4]. Thus, each network can be readily identified as if it were a whole greater than the sum of its parts, yet the parts themselves are just as important.

Proliferation and Contextualization
The hierarchy grows by addition, because that is the speed at which growth is possible. Because of the greater size of the “canon” that must be replicated into individual units, with greater accuracy, replication becomes slow, and time- and resource-intensive. In addition, all the additional flaws of the hierarchy are replicated into new units, and if, for some reason, new flaws occur in the replication process, these flaws are replicated into every subsequent addition to the organism. Once the cell has been “indoctrinated,” it becomes another part of the chain of command in the hierarchy. It is then encouraged to grow as big as its surrounding environment will allow. Reproduction only happens when the head of the organization allows it; thus, cells are added one at a time, rather than many at once. When decentralized organisms centralize, for example, they are effectively castrated.

Small family farmers throughout Asia have for many centuries joined together to build and manage their own irrigation systems, some of which are marvels of engineering ingenuity and operating efficiency. Yet when government programs inventoried irrigation capacity, they counted only irrigation systems built by the government. They then proceeded to replace village-built and village-managed systems with more costly, less-efficient centrally managed systems. Commonly the new systems were financed by multimillion-dollar loans from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, which the children of farmers would one day be taxed to pay.[5]

Heterarchy, on the other hand, relies on multiplication of much smaller units. Instead of requiring a lengthy indoctrination process, each cell is encouraged to divide and grow, divide and grow. The size of each cell is limited in size, and the amount of indoctrination required is minimal; only the basics of the core traits of the larger organism are communicated, allowing the organism to shape itself, customize itself to its environment[6]. As a result, the cells of a heterarchy tend to be much more outwardly-focused than the hierarchy, which spends much more time focused on indoctrination and internal growth than it does on expansion. In essence, the hierarchy makes new units “like us” while the heterarchy allows new units the freedom to allow the new path they’ve chosen to inform (but not dictate) their expression of the organization within their culture. Since each individual unit is focused on expansion, the organism grows by multiplication (sometimes, exponentially), rather than addition. And because each (new) cell is distinct from other cells, we call this “proliferation.”

The Rallying Point
The trouble with autonomous individual units is that they can easily go in whatever direction they desire. What forms them into a unique whole is the shared bond of the rallying-point, the collective thread between them. In our starfish example, the cells have coalesced into a whole because they share a common “DNA” that allows them to do so[8]. In some organizations, this common element might be a mutual enemy, in others, a philosophy or morality[9]. In many, it is combinations of these. Regardless, decentralized organisms require something common throughout all cells in order to be an organism.

Power, Rank, and Decentralization
The distinction between hierarchy and heterarchy is one of power and its uses. The hierarchy centralizes power into a chain of command; power is concentrated in one place, while the majority is simply expected to do as they’re told. The individual (or small group of individuals) at the “top” of the organization dictate what the organism is to do, and an order of rank decides who has what power and in what degree. Each level of subordinates participates in a “trickle-down” process that eventually communicates goals and procedures to the entire organization. The proverbial turning-radius of a centralized hierarchy, then, is equivalent to that of the Titanic with its three large propellers and single hull; it cannot change its direction very quickly when it sees an iceberg, and once it hits, there is no saving it.

The heterarchy is the equivalent of a fleet of speedboats. Not only does each boat have a very tight turning-radius, but as a group, they can swarm around the iceberg and meet at the other side. The mass of the organization is distributed into small units with many motors, and even if one or two were to hit the iceberg (and die), the group as a whole would be largely unaffected; their boats wouldn’t sink because one or two others did. In a heterarchy, power is distributed throughout the group. While this means that each cell must take individual responsibility for its own continuation (which involves a certain element of risk), it also means that the organization can respond much more quickly to icebergs and other maritime threats.

However, this is not to say that there is no rank among decentralized organizations. Some of our speedboats might be closer to the front of the pack than others, some might be able to hold more people, some might have bigger or better motors, but all are still at liberty to point out threats and help the entire group to move to avoid them. While hierarchies are breeding grounds for rank-based abuse of power,[10] heterarchies are about the beneficial use of the power used by each cell. Each unit is responsible for its unique territory or specialty. It is its own expert in that area, which predisposes other units to defer judgment about that particular area to that cell. This is a form of rank, but because power has been delegated away from any one particular center, it is decentralized and thus accountable to its peers (rather than its superiors).

The Church as a Decentralized Organism
Ideally, this is the way that the church functions. Through history, it has been when the church decentralized that the most beneficial expressions of church have happened. This happens on several levels: individual churches have a better grasp of their local culture than do the bishops or executives or reigning body supposedly “in charge,” and at the local church level, the “laity” has a better chance of impacting its culture if the local church government allows them freedom in communicating the gospel to their peers, and instead of acting as a direction agency (telling the peon-like laity what to do, which often translates into nothing), acts as an empowering agency for resourcing its laity for their mission. Perhaps some examples will clarify.

Models of Decentralization in the History of the Church

From Old Testament to New Testament: The Apostolic Church
It is interesting to note that the chosen people of God were not always decentralized. The Kingdom of Israel began in its lowliest origins as the nomadic extended family of Abraham, wandering from place to place. Throughout the Old Testament, what we see is a kingdom, a centralized entity. While there are certain elements of decentralization present (accountability between the King and the Prophet, the practice of the Jubilee), the people of Israel have long been ruled[11]. Along came Jesus and changed all that.

By this point in history, the Kingdom of Israel had a puppet king who was directed by the Roman Emperor; the ultimate abuse of rank. Jesus made a connection between Israel, the Gentiles, and a New Covenant; the Kingdom of God was at hand, and it included the whole world! No longer would the newly re-birthed Israel be ruled by puppet kings or powerful rulers. The Kingdom of God would belong to the meek, the humble, the poor, the servants. Jesus, in effect, distributed power across the kingdom in these very simple statements[12]. No longer were the few powerful in God’s kingdom; earthly power of kings and rulers held no sway. If you wanted to lead, you were to become a servant to others: “In humility consider others better than yourself[13].” It is in the theology of servant leadership that we find the primary decentralizing tendencies of the church. To serve one another in humility distributes power amongst everyone. If everyone plays their part, the needs of everyone are met. But it only works so long as it is intrinsically motivated within each person, so long as it is chosen. If it is forced, if it is externally-motivated, the power begins to centralize to that which is external, and the organism becomes a hierarchy (and thus loses any identity with the Kingdom of God).

Nowhere is this more evident for the first-century church than in the writings of Paul. Paul understood the church as a leveled playing field where power has been redistributed. “Neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus[14].” Paul took a common focus – Christ Jesus – and marked it as a rallying point for what is otherwise a random assortment of people and peoples with little in common. Likewise in Ephesians 4, Paul writes that the many are to be one, united in their common goals though different in their expressions.

However, the first church did not always follow this model. Its mandate was given by Jesus in Matthew 28: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit[15] …” And yet the first thing the disciples (now apostles) did upon receiving the Holy Spirit was to remain in Jerusalem and centralize. In chapter 6 of Acts, the apostles begin appointing position of authority, a sure sign of centralization. It took a “great persecution” to scatter the church away from their comfort in Jerusalem[16].

At this point things start to get interesting. Philip went to Samaria, and while there, encountered an Ethiopian. The Ethiopian, upon conversion, went back to his people (presumably the ancient kingdom of Ethiopia)[17]. Peter also began preaching as he traveled, making it as far as Joppa. Others also traveled to Antioch, Cyprus, and Phoenicia[18]. However, once again, we see the church attempt to centralize. The council at Jerusalem in Acts 15 sparks a debate about the Gentiles that have converted; are they to become Jewish before they are allowed to become Christian? This debate shows that the Jerusalem church was trying to take power itself; instead of allowing contextualized expression of the truth learned by many Gentiles, the Jewish Christians wanted to mandate their way of doing things as the universal norm. Fortunately, the prevailing opinion was that of Peter and Paul, who were in favor of the indigenous church[19]. It is after this period that the greatest growth happens, as Paul has converted and embarked on his missionary journeys, planting churches all over the Roman world. Thomas even made it to India[20]. Various persecutions rocked the Christian world yet the church was not diminished; in fact, it grew[21].

It is unfortunate, then, that in the early fourth century Constantine centralized the church by making it the official religion of the Roman Empire. He appointed positions to priests and bishops, but most importantly, funded the church and began building structures (both physical and social) in which it could settle down. It is after this period that Christianity turned from persecuted to persecutor, decentralized mass-movement to centralized conquerors. With centralization – and thus power – the church did not forget its original mandate, but instead embarked upon it with revised methods. Instead of proclaiming the truth and allowing it to transform people(s) from within (including the benevolent humanitarian work so despised by the Emperor Julian[22] and others), the newly centralized Christendom began preoccupying themselves with conquest (mission by force, as it were) and theology (the council of Nicaea and others) rather than contextualized mission for the propagation of the church.[23]

The Celtic Church
The Celtic Christian movement, begun by St. Patrick in the fifth century, is another example of decentralized Christianity at its best. From the start, the movement was promising, as there were several native factors working in Patrick’s favor: the tribal nature of the Irish, well known for their rivalry, predisposed them to a decentralized model (tribes are akin to cell-groups). Patrick himself had been a slave in Ireland for several years, learning the native language and customs and building credibility with the Irish through both[24]. Combined with Patrick’s exceptionally creative skill as an orator and singer/storyteller (in Ireland, called a Bard), the Celtic movement became a movement of the people, rather than that of the ruling classes forcing their will. The British Bishops were upset with Patrick for the very reason that he spent so much time “’pagans,’ ‘sinners,’ and ‘barbarians.’”[25]

Most importantly, the Celtic Church did not allow power to centralize in one place. Rather, power was distributed across many different tribes, each to their own, and the movement took hold as each tribe sent out missionaries to the next; it proliferated, multiplied. Patrick took special precautions not to be the person in charge; rather, he sent evangelists out who could not report to him (for example, Hilda and Brigid[26]), who he could not control. Furthermore, these evangelists worked in teams. As George Hunter writes, “Celtic Christians usually evangelized as a team – by relating to the people of a settlement; identifying with the people; engaging in friendship, conversation, ministry, and witness – with the goal of raising up a church in measurable time[27].”

Patrick, thus, was simply a catalyst, a figurehead that bore out Celtic Christianity in its natural form, not the charismatic leader of a centralized structure. And it was this movement that was responsible for reaching an entire people! The Romans had sent missionaries, but it was Patrick (and others, not the least of whom were the Celts themselves) who led the charge in an entirely new (yet ancient) method of mission that succeeded. By decentralizing their approach, by trusting the teams to their tasks, by spreading power around through networks rather than centralizing in one place, the Celtic movement reached Ireland for Christ.

The China Inland Mission
Until the opening of China to the west in the early 19th century, the Chinese interior had not met Christian missionaries since the early days of Christian expansion. The Chinese, notoriously xenophobic, had isolated themselves, claiming a certain cultural superiority over the rest of the world, and decided to remain “pure” from outside influence. That is, until the second European war with China ended in 1858 and, among other things, granted safe passage for Christians beyond the trading ports on the coastline[28]. An onslaught of mission followed, the most notorious of which was led by one Hudson Taylor.

The Chinese Inland Mission (CIM) has long been regarded as different from every other missionary movement in China, and with good reason. Taylor founded the movement on revolutionary principles, the most unique of which was that the CIM society’s headquarters were to be located in China (a first for the 19th-century mission societies). However, central to our interest is the makeup of the CIM missionary body: anybody could join; the proverbial door was opened for those with little or no formal education. All that Taylor asked was that the missionaries adopt Chinese dress and the local dialect as their own, and that the society be ever-focused on the evangelization of the Chinese[29].

Here we see many decentralized tendencies. Though he did have a headquarters, Taylor could not control the expansion of the CIM into China; it spread like wildfire. The constituents were of every class, and while few mass-movements were ever recorded, the mission truly targeted the largest groups of people. Power was thus spread across a wide group. Those that did convert were not removed from their villages and placed in mission compounds (as had been the practice in so many places), but instead became missionaries themselves. About a patient healed from a cystic tumor, Jennie Logan, a CIM medical missionary in Changteh (now Changde, in Hunan Province), wrote, “In three weeks she went back to her country home and told what had been done for her, and that it was at the “Jesus Hospital” where she had been healed. She was preaching and telling about the Gospel all day long.[30] …” In other words, the movement proliferated.

The last telling sign comes at the advent of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. When the call came from Peking (from the central government) to kill all foreigners within China, the nation rose up and obeyed. Many of the converted Chinese Christians did their best to protect their missionary comrades, but in the end, the only thing that stopped the rebellion was a military force of several different nations making its way to Peking to quell the violence[31]. Most telling, though, is that many Christians survived the uprising (though many also perished)[32] and the movement continued until the Communists took over beginning in 1927. Even today, a strong movement has resurfaced in China among the house churches, which are proliferating at an astonishing rate[33]. In any case, the Chinese indigenous church has withstood the test of time, despite many persecutions, because of its decentralized nature.

The Masai and Vincent Donovan
The last movement I’d like to explore is that of the Masai in Kenya and Tanzania in the late 1960s. Vincent Donovan, a Spiritan priest of the Catholic Church, moved there in 1965 as a young man ready to do the work of the church. But scarcely had he been there a year when he realized that nothing of much significance was happening at the mission compound. Standard practice was to help the Masai with their material needs, but little else. While the priests of the Catholic mission visited the Masai villages often (called Kraals), they did not see fit to mention the gospel. Only in the safety of the mission compound and missions schools was the gospel ever mentioned, and at that, very few Masai graduates ever retained the new religion[34]. The centralized nature of the mission compound was affecting its primary calling: to evangelize the Masai.

Instead of work through the hierarchy of the Catholic Church to enact change, Donovan decided to take it upon himself to take the gospel to the Masai personally. He packed up a Ute and drove across the plains to meet the Masai face to face in their own context. He spoke their language, and he used local culture and illustrations to teach. His basic strategy was to spend one day a week with a particular tribe, teaching them what he knew of the Gospel in whatever form was required for their understanding, and then move along a circuit to another tribe (to repeat the process). At the end of a year, he would ask the tribe as a whole (Masai culture is community-oriented, not individual-oriented) whether they would accept Jesus as Lord. If they did not, then he would move on to the next Kraal. If the tribe did accept (which ended up being far more frequent than Donovan expected), first was baptism of everyone in the kraal, then an announcement: the kraal would be responsible for teaching itself, and for evangelizing the tribes around it[35]. Donovan told them he would no longer come back to teach, but would move on to another group of kraals (though he would return occasionally to check on their progress)[36].

Once again, Donovan had several advantages going into his mission that seem to appear so rarely throughout Church history (though it is possible, however grievously, that the church simply hasn’t noticed them). The Masai are a decentralized people already; spiritual, nomadic, and used to communal life, they are ideal candidates for a decentralized church. Donovan also had the trouble of distance to cover between kraals, meaning he could not simply plant himself in one place and invite the Masai to him. In addition, because Donovan was alone, he could not rely on his own inexhaustible supply of teaching energy, knowledge, and wisdom to evangelize the Masai, but instead was nearly forced to rely on the locals to begin teaching themselves. The power, then, was in the hands of each kraal, not in some central location. Donovan’s decentralized method, though it did not convince every tribe he visited (some said “no,” as was their right[37]), it was remarkably successful in its aims.

Why the Church Resists Decentralization

While I wish I had more space to talk about the Wesley Networks (mid/late 18th century), John Williams and the South Pacific (early 19th century), the CMA Organic Church movement in California (present day), and others, the real issue is why this seems to be the exception, rather than the rule. Despite the many advantages of a decentralized heterarchy, the Church still, to this day, resists the change. Decentralization is about power, and those with power are rarely persuaded to abandon it, even those in positions of authority within a church, the place where servant-hearted leadership should be the norm, not the exception.

It is when one person’s work becomes more important than another’s that a church begins centralizing and eliminating the dignity of its constituents. Sadly, this has been the pattern throughout history. The very existence of two groups (the clergy and the laity) proves this point: we still do not see our laity as missionaries, and we see our clergy as more holy, more spiritual than the unenlightened masses that go about their daily jobs blissfully unaware of the structure that has been taught them since birth. That movements of a decentralized nature have been revived through history is a note of hope, that the church can still recover its ancient mandate, but the process is slow and painful. In some respects, the reclaiming of their apostolic authority by the people is of utmost importance.

The people are stronger than their leaders, by sheer numbers, and if they change their minds as one, there is no stopping the cascade that follows. However, people can be tricked into submitting to authority by empty promises or the sheer charisma of the occasional leader, or by our human nature as “sheep,” which prefer to be led rather than to lead[38]. The few that do stand up to lead often become drunk with the power they’ve been given, and abuse their rank.

To decentralize the church, then, requires a miracle of God. It requires us to lean on the Holy Spirit like never before; it is not by our own power that heterarchy can work. Yet it has happened, when those with power and charisma have led those in their influence to greener pastures and then given away that power to the people. Decentralization is dangerous, it is messy, and it is uncontrollable, but when the rare leader sees its potential and hears the whisper of God in his ear, a movement is unleashed that will once again change the world.

Works Consulted

Church and Mission History

Bevans, Stephen B, and Schroeder, Roger P. Constants in Context: A Theology for Mission Today, Third Edition. Orbis Books: MaryKnoll NY, 2006.
Neill, Stephen. A History of Christian Missions, Second Edition. Penguin Books: London England, 1986.
Tucker, Ruth A. From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya: A Biographical History of Christian Missions, Second Edition. Zondervan: Grand Rapids MI, 2004.
Walls, Andrew F. The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith, Tenth Edition. Orbis Books: MaryKnoll NY, 2005.

Decentralized/Missional/Organic Church

Claiborne, Shane. The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. Zondervan: Grand Rapids MI, 2006.
Cole, Neil. Organic Church: Growing Faith Where Life Happens. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco CA, 2005.
Donovan, Vincent J. Christianity Rediscovered. Orbis Books: MaryKnoll NY, 1978.
Frost, Michael. Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture. Hendrickson Publishers: Peabody MA, 2006.
Hirsch, Alan. The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church. Brazos Press: Grand Rapids MI, 2006.
Hirsch, Alan and Frost, Michael. The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church. Hendrickson Publishers: Peabody MA, 2003.
Hunter, George G. The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity Can Reach the West … Again. Abingdon Press: Nashville TN, 2000.
Hunter, George G. Radical Outreach: The Recovery of Apostolic Ministry & Evangelism. Abingdon Press: Nashville TN, 2003.
Logan, Jennie Manget. Little Stories of China. Self-Published, No Publishing Date Available.
McLaren, Brian. A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I am a Missional + Evangelical + Post/Protestant + Liberal/Conservative + Mystical/Poetic + Biblical + Charismatic/Contemplative + Fundamentalist/Calvinist + Anabaptist/Anglican + Methodist + Catholic + Green + Incarnational + Depressed-Yet-Hopeful+ Emergent + Unfinished Christian. Zondervan: Grand Rapids MI, 2004.
Seamands, Stephen. Ministry in the Image of God: The Trinitarian Shape of Christian Service. InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 2005.

Group Dynamics

Brafman, Ori and Beckstrom, Rod A. The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. Penguin Group: New York NY, 2006.
Fuller, Robert W. All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc: San Francisco CA, 2006.
Korten, David C. The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community. Berrett-Koehler Publishers: San Francisco CA, 2006.
Lencioni, Patrick. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco CA, 2002.
Walker, Danielle; Walker, Thomas; and Schmitz, Joerg. Doing Business Internationally: The Guide to Cross-Cultural Success. McGraw Hill: New York NY, 2003.

Human Psychology

The Arbinger Institute. Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc: San Francisco CA, 2002.
Deci, Edward L. and Ryan, Richard M. Intrinsic Motivation and Self Determination in Human Behavior. Plenum Press: New York NY, 1985.
Langer, Ellen J. Mindfulness. Da Capo Press: Cambridge MA, 1989.

Websites

Bible Gateway: http://www.biblegateway.com/
Wikipedia: http://www.wikipedia.org/

Notes

[1] Brafman, 35.
[2] Ibid., 36.
[3] Ibid., 35. It is remarkable the similarities that can be drawn to a flock of birds, or a school of fish, or, closer to home, a riotous mob of people.
[4] For example, instead of a set of individual birds flying around, we see a flock changing direction as one.
[5] Korten, 10.
[6] Cole, 124.
[7] Brafman, 54-55.
[8] Cole,113-121.
[9] If what appears to be a decentralized group coalesces around an individual, he is usually a figurehead only; his power is like that of others, but his gift is the ability to disseminate a message. In other words, he is not in charge. The best way to tell if such an organization is truly decentralized is if it continues in like fashion after he dies or leaves, or if it disintegrates. If the organization continues, the individual was a figurehead, if the organization dies, then the individual relied on his charisma only to centralize the organization.
[10] Fuller, 7.
[11] At some level, this was self-inflicted. Recall the request of the Israelites for a king to rule them in 1 Samuel 8.
[12] Matthew 5-6, Luke 6.
[13] Philippians 2:3-4.
[14] Galatians 3:26-29 (TNIV).
[15] Matthew 28:19 (TNIV).
[16] Acts 8:1-3.
[17] Acts 8:26ff.
[18] Acts 11:19-20.
[19] Acts 15:
[20] Neill, 45.
[21] Ibid., 35.
[22] Ibid., 37.
[23] Ibid., 41, 43; and Radical Outreach, 60.
[24] The Celtic Way of Evangelism, 91.
[25] Ibid., 24.
[26] Radical Outreach, 103.
[27] The Celtic Way of Evangelism, 47.
[28] Neill, 274.
[29] Ibid., 283.
[30] Logan, 36. I am fortunate enough to have come by this manuscript because it is a family heirloom. Jennie Logan was my Great-Great-Grandmother, and in addition to this testimony, her work is the only I have read so far describing any sort of mass-movement in China during the period between 1850 and 1950.
[31] Neill, 287-288.
[32] Logan, 29.
[33] The Forgotten Ways, 19.
[34] Donovan, 12-13.
[35] In some instances, this had already begun taking place. As he instructed them, certain individuals began standing out from the group who picked up on the message more quickly than others. Donovan began using these to help teach their brethren. See pg. 84.
[36] Ibid., 72.
[37] Ibid., 81.
[38] My friend Troy once gave a sermon about this. He was confounded that there are so many illustrations of the church as a flock of sheep, given that sheep, in his eyes, are so dumb; they stand where they shouldn’t, they move away from the shepherd where there is danger, and they’ll lag behind the flock to much on one more tidbit of grass. It takes a strong shepherd to keep a flock moving in the right direction. Then he realized how much like sheep people can really be, and he made it a sermon illustration.

The Beauty of Solar

My KCW Professor found this rather wonderful article about the things we can do to start conserving electricity. Now, ok, it's not perfect. The rather obnoxious suggestion was made that we should avoid having children. I'm sure my unborn daughter would love to hear that; "sorry honey, we'll never give you a little brother because it'll save us some electricity." Nope, don't like that much at all. Al Gore isn't really my favorite guy, either; but truth be told, despite that the man can be a menace, he does have some good things to say. The other thing I'd suggest is that the suggestion to replace your light bulbs with CFLs (Compact Flourescent Lights) is probably not the best way to save electricity, since, while it does save power, also is a known cause of skin cancer. And they hurt your eyes; I never run the ones we have because I get headaches and dizziness from them.

But aside from that, read it and read it well. Again, the link.

The Great Debate

Before you watch, you have to read this first.

I've decided not to make any claims about this being right or wrong, rather I'm hoping this will generate some discussion on the issue. As you know, I never think that an issue is simple, but rather has many complex facets to flush out and discuss. Good science means that we will have to debate about stuff, and also means that our results will never be DEFINITE, only (ultimately) a best guess. It means we are never FINISHED; it means we continually refine our theories in light of new research.

Many of you have probably seen Al Gore's take on this issue, but my friend Rob sent me this and I found it ... well, compelling, I guess. The science behind it fits a lot of what I learned in school, but then again, the other side to the argument makes sense too. Just watch it with an open mind, is all I ask, then tell me your thoughts - positive AND negative, but try to keep some of both - in the comments section. I will warn you it's about an hour long, so make sure you've got some time on your hands before you watch it. It's worth the time.

And, to give you both sides, a rebuttal against this particular argument.

Complexity

I think that Americans use words differently from one another.

If you've followed my writing for any period of time, you'd know I like to talk about the way we talk about stuff a lot. I think our language accounts for a lot of the misunderstandings about things because it's linked to something greater: culture, the summation of our collective experiences, attitudes, and beliefs.

For example, I couldn't help notice in today's news articles on Iraq that the democrats call their ideas for removing troops from Iraq "troop withdrawal." Now, bear with me - I'm not calling it a good or bad term (just that's what they call it), nor am I asking whether or not we should remove troops. This is not a discussion on that part of morality. What I've noticed is that the way we talk about things tends to show how we feel about them, but it can also confuse other people who think about them differently.

In this instance, the democrats view "withdrawal" as a good thing. "Withdrawal" is such a nice word; it's intentional, but not harsh. It speaks of "we don't need to be here anymore." It's gentle, simple, elegant, clean.

Until you say the word "withdrawal" to a conservative republican. "Withdrawal" doesn't mean the same thing to a republican; in his mind, "withdrawal" is the equivalent of "retreat," which essentially means "they beat us." It's a bad thing. I'm speaking in broad, sweeping generalizations of course, because obviously not every republican thinks this way, nor does every democrat mean something so benign. It's an over-simplification (mostly) to make a point: how we say stuff matters.

So the democrats started using another word, "redeployment." A word many republicans don't mind so much; it too is benign, because it doesn't have the same imperative "we're leaving now" feel to it that "withdrawal" does; it's not a retreat, more like a shuffling of the deck. I think the republican agenda was like that to begin with, but somewhere over time it got lost when they discovered that 'fixing' things in Iraq was going to take a lot more time and effort than they could manage. And lots of Americans don't like the idea of staying anymore.

Another great example of the language differences, the words "a long time" mean something very different to different people. I was just reading this news article about the troop redeployment and the title says "U.S. Commander in Iraq Sees Long Commitment." Now, when I saw the title my first reaction was "well ya think?" (I believe it'll take several generations to make the middle east into at least a semblence of non-violence, and peace another few generations). Imagine my surprise then, when I read this statement from the middle: "If you’re going to achieve the kinds of effects that we probably need, that it would need to be sustained certainly for some time well beyond the summer."

The summer?

"A long time" to me (at least, in this context) is decades, not a summer. But that's not what he meant when he said a long time. If he hadn't clarified his definition, I would've been left thinking "oh, I guess this thing is far from over" and would've been even more confused when the troops are suddenly withdrawn from Iraq long before I expected an end.

Our language matters.

This is why I try to get my news from a variety of sources, liberal and conservative. If it's possible, I try to get the same story from three or four different places, but for some things it doesn't always happen.

Anyway, I went to a talk today by a guy named Omar. He's half-Iraqi and half-Texan. How this combination happened, I do not know, but suffice it to say he's a really nice guy. He talked about the differences between his family in Iraq/Jordan/Amman and in the USA. He said that most conservatives that's he's met (and many liberals as well) tend to think "Arab = Muslim = Terrorist." If that's true, he's half-terrorist. He said that if you think like that, then from the Arab's perspective it's "American = Christian = KKK member."

Which is obviously not so.

The language we choose matters.

Statistics, for example, are notably easy to manipulate. I can make them say anything I want to by giving certain information but leaving out certain other information, leaving the reader's own prejudices and assumptions to fill in the blanks. What I choose to say matters, but also what I choose NOT to say (in other words, what I choose to omit). If, in an article about the toll of the war, I say "3000 people died in Iraq since 2006!" it begs all sorts of questions; which people? Americans? Iraqis? Both? And then, how does that compare to other wars? How did they die? Statistics are not really reliable unless you qualify them with descriptions of where and how you got the information.

My biggest problem with the press as it retells the story of the war in Iraq is that they tend to focus on only one part of the picture. Some press tell about the death toll of American soldiers without mentioning how many Iraqis die daily. Some press talk about the cost of the war to our budget, neglecting to mention the many sorts of cost - namely, the lives of the people over there, both American and Iraqi. Some press rant about how many civilians Americans 'brutally' (yet often accidentally) kill and how we should then pull out, neglecting to mention the many car bombs specifically targeting Iraqi civilians because they're a different religion or even a different brand of muslim than the assailants.

The story is never - EVER - simple. There are many complex sides to an issue that we must always consider, and making broad, sweeping generalizations about something is rarely, if ever, a good idea.

I am the king of broad, sweeping generalizations; trust me, I'm learning this the hard way.

I've been learning this about global warming. At one point, I said that I didn't believe that global warming was happening. I did some reading, had a few conversations, discovered that ok, there's plenty of scientific evidence to say that the world's average temperatures are climbing. Whether this is faster or slower is debatable, mind you, but temperatures are definitely climbing. I was surprised, but ok, I can accept that. Then I wondered, "what is the cause?"

So I read statistics about human pollution and SUVs from all the Greens, and then I read statistics about natural processes like volcanic eruptions and the rise in Mars' average temperatures and Al Gore's house from the conservatives, and I came to a realization: it's not really one thing. It's never JUST one thing. We might like to generalize and SAY that it's one thing, but it's not. It's EASIER to say it's one thing and blame it on one thing, but unfortunately for our peace of mind, there are ALWAYS multiple causes for any given situation, any number of causal chains that led to a specific occurance.

To say that it's all one person's fault or all one demographic's fault or even all of one species' fault is entirely wrong. To what degree each element effects the outcome is something we can debate another time, but that's not the point: the point is, let's try to understand the whole picture before we go placing blame or rush into rash actions that will have huge impact on everybody. We've been given this planet to look after, our fellow men and women to look after; we need to honor that responsibility for its complexity.

Fun Videos

Time for fun with videos.

Correlation?

She's amazing. Another gem from Jessica at Indexed.

[Logic Error]

I've been pondering the necessity of "logic" as of late. The trouble at the moment is that logic has begun to seem a bit tiresome; so many people use logic to prove so many things. The end result is that we have a lot of people that can "logically" prove whatever they really want to.

The thing about logic is that first, you have to buy into the system. If you believe logic works, then it works. It is its own language. Mostly, logic works within systems, languages. The so-called "laws" of logic only apply within a certain language. For example, the word "cause" can mean different things in different systems - determinists believe "cause" to mean (and therefore "be") something different than, say, libertarians do.

The trouble that comes from this is when different systems try to use logic to prove their side. I've just been reading about the "free will" debate in a philosophy book, and it seems to me that the two systems have nothing in common. One system claims that we are free because of their definition of the word "cause", and the other system claims that we aren't free out of an argument based on their definition of "cause." Yet another system says that we're only sort-of free because of yet another definition of the word "cause." And all three systems use logic to prove their way, and more logic to disprove everybody else.

In other words, our definitions of words assume certain logical arguments, thereby forming one large circle of logic. Logic is a self-contained system.

Since language is culturally based, it stands to reason (no pun intended) that really, somebody's stance on a particular issue is usually related to the way they have learned their language. It turns out that the eskimos have many different options for the concept of "snow," whereas in Queensland, Australia they only conceive of snow as one sort of thing. How important a concept is relates to how useful it is in practical experience.

We look no further than the game of basketball for an exmaple Professor Walls gave in class. The winning team often attributes their success to their amazing abilities as athletes (free will, as it were - "we just wanted it more"), whereas the losing team often often attributes their failure to "fate" ("I guess it was meant to be, we tried so hard!").

And so while logic is a nice little system of itself, it is necessary that you believe in logic for it to work - it is a self-contained system. Science, religion, and even atheism are all self-contained systems, where the language they use "proves" their beliefs. If something doesn't prove a belief, the language used is modified until the evidence matches the belief.

I, for one, have yet to understand how logic can account for things like paradoxes (of which the Christian faith contains many) or the flow of time. So many logic arguments presuppose a linear flow of time, when this has never actually been proven to exist. We may think that it's linear, but then again, earth looks flat unless you take a look at it from farther away. And who's to say that your five senses (or more or less, since some cultures don't acknowledge certain senses and others claim more than five) are not deceiving you?

No, faith is involved. We cannot be certain that we know something, but we can be certain that we believe something. And I mean everybody.

I submit to you a new definition of religion: "religion is any self-contained lingual system which, by virtue of its culturally-refined definitions of words and use of grammar, may be used by devout adherants to prove itself and disprove other lingual systems."

What say you?

Dissent in Unlikely Places

Just so that somebody is saying it ... are we sure we all buy into this whole Global Warming thing? I'm still skeptical, there are still scientists out there - reputable ones from Yale and the like - who aren't so sure it's happening the way the politicians say it's happening ...