Derek: 00:22

Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. Today, we are continuing our series on incarnation. In the last episode, I told a little bit of my story and how I recognized this emptiness that my experience with Christianity was giving me. Jesus was always proclaimed to me as a radical teacher. Everyone wanted to kill him.

Derek: 00:42

Lives were transformed by him. The world was turned upside down. Yet, my experience with Jesus was pretty mundane. He wasn't very transformative to me or most of the people I knew. What he said sounded normal, not radical, and Jesus was pretty cool with everyone.

Derek: 00:59

People liked him, even if they weren't always wild about his self proclaimed followers. And when I did have encounters outside of the norm for me, I found those experiences with the poor or needy very uncomfortable despite Jesus having been pretty comfortable with that group of people. And I never felt as though I had imparted Jesus to those with whom I met. The more experiences I had with the downtrodden and those on the fringes of society, the ones who Jesus was seemed to resonate and speak to the most, the more my version of Christianity seemed empty. Today, I want to explore how things developed for me after this point.

Derek: 01:38

As my life began to feel more dissonance with my experience of Christianity, there were a few important events in my life. The first event was reading the book When Helping Hurts. The book takes a pretty good look at how to assist those in need and stresses the different types of poverty which exist. On top of identifying the various sorts of poverty that need to be addressed, the book also discusses the importance of having the community of those in need help. Many of us in the Protestant West tend to have savior complexes.

Derek: 02:10

We have a lot of money to throw around and we swoop in to take care of some immediate problem, but then we're gone and leave the impoverished with no support network. We don't offer them long term solutions because we're not a part of their community. All of that really resonated with me and became an important piece of my philosophy and ministry. However, at this point, I and many others who used the book When Helping Hurts actually used it to justify our failure to help others. We recognized that community was important to help the oppressed, but we were a white middle class suburban community.

Derek: 02:46

That meant we were able to, to use when helping Hertz to justify our lack of assistance to the downtrodden because they were coming from a different community. We didn't want to enable or harm the poor by simply giving money to them without being a part of their community. So rather than being an answer to the making, to making our ministry richer and more influential, this became a path to self justification and it actually solidified our failure to help. Nevertheless, it was still a good learning experience for me because that baseline understanding of the importance of community stuck with me and it would come in handy later. The second big influence for me, in my life here was first hand experience with two different Mercy cases.

Derek: 03:28

The first was a Mercy case here in The States and I'll, I'll call the woman's name in the story Samantha. So Samantha was really the first person that I tried to help well. I was very disillusioned with the way that we had been helping people, just kind of, it was so impersonal and was just kind of gross. It makes me feel gross even thinking about it. There's zero love that people felt in that.

Derek: 04:02

And again, can hear a lot more of this in season two of Consequentialism and I'll link those, but bottom line is that for Samantha, I decided along with another deacon that we were going to kind of walk with her. And so we were actually kind of on call. I got called out at night, like late at night and with this other guy and we got in some kind of shady situations but we were there for her. We helped, we visited her fiance in prison, we were there to pick him up when he was getting out, We helped him find a place to live. We set her up in a home with we gave her some pots and pans.

Derek: 04:54

We what else? We taught her how to shop and like price compare. I mean we really, really walked beside her. And even though things crashed and burned with her, not her fiance so much, but things crashed and burned with her and she kind of went back to certain lifestyle that just kind of messed her life up. At the same time, I knew that we loved her and I knew that she knew she could come to us.

Derek: 05:28

If there was ever a clear moment in her head again when she was off drugs, she knew that we would be there for her. And nobody else knew that, I had helped before. And that was just doing things a little bit differently even though I'm sure I failed in so many different ways. Just walking through life with her as opposed to asking her just some questionnaire and handing her some money to pay rent that month and then saying, don't come back because, you know, this is I mean, we didn't really say it, we didn't tell people not to come back but it was kind of, we'll help you once but then you kinda need to be on your feet because after that you're just looking for looking for money. We're just kind of an ATM as opposed to living out with people.

Derek: 06:20

The other story that that kind of gave me some exposure that that's gonna be influential in in how I'm developing my understanding of incarnation is is from Romania. So we there was this this lady that kept coming to our door, this Roma lady, and we having when helping hurts in our minds, we just didn't want to help because she would come a couple times a week and it's like, well, if we keep giving her stuff, it's gonna enable her, we don't want to enable. And I just don't know if that's a good thing. But the more we went on, I remember one day we were in a parking lot of the grocery store and we were coming out of the grocery store and there are usually Roma beggar children there. And one of our kids said, Hurry, get to the car before the Roma come and ask for food.

Derek: 07:18

And man, our hearts were just stabbed through at that moment because that we were able to see in our children what we couldn't see in ourselves and it was ugly. Like really, that's what we were teaching our kids is hurry, get to the car so we don't give the Roma any food. And, you know, really, are we going to enable the Roma with a loaf of bread and some milk? That a more dangerous thing to enable them with a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread? Or was it more dangerous for our spiritual welfare and our children's welfare that we lacked generosity and love and compassion and I don't know.

Derek: 08:04

Well, yeah, I do know. I what I think. I think that the spiritual heart that we were putting into our kids and ourselves was more deleterious than I think that the Roma were gonna be enabled by us giving that. So anyway, this lady, we'll call her Alexa, she kept coming back to our door and we had really been trying to think through what it means to help the Roma and one time she came and it's just the most inopportune moment. The kids are in the bath, Catalina is is making dinner and I'm trying not to let the kids drown, she's trying not to let the food burn and the doorbell rings and we I look out and I I am like, oh gosh, it's her again.

Derek: 08:55

And I I said to Catalina, was like, it's your turn this time. And Catalina just looks at me and she just like the Holy Spirit just kind of convicted her at that moment and just gave her this realization, kind of like I realized when our kids said, Quick, let's get to the car, and she was able to see her attitude mirrored in me and she said, Do we even know her name? And we didn't. We did not know her name though she had been to her house quite a number of times. Always outside the gate though, we never let her in.

Derek: 09:27

And that day, we decided to let her in and she had tea with us. You know, people advised and said, You might enable her, okay? We'll try to figure out how to walk with her so that we're not enabling but we're still helping in a meaningful way. Like how can we do that? Like, that's it's important to figure that out rather than just say, so I don't enable, I won't have contact with you.

Derek: 09:54

Our neighbors got on to us for letting her into our house, our Romanian neighbors. They said, oh, do you know who that is? You know, you don't let them in your house, they're gonna steal from you. And we let her into our house over and over and over again and she did steal from us, you know, and that was okay because that gave her an opportunity to experience forgiveness which she may not have ever experienced in her life before. And we were willing to be stolen from.

Derek: 10:22

We didn't like it and it was definitely awkward and difficult to walk through, but we did. People told us that the Roma don't get vaccinated and they have more diseases, which is true. And we had a child who had some medical difficulties at this point and was probably more susceptible to certain things. Do we want the Roma coming into our house? I don't know.

Derek: 10:52

So, there was a lot to think through and a lot that we had to confront in our lives about just comparing what we were receiving wisdom from godly people, people that we knew were very godly but this wisdom that just seemed seemed like a wisdom divorced from Jesus in this manner. It was basically how do you do ministry without coming alongside of, without risking something yourself? How can you do ministry without risking pain, getting stolen from, messing up, like enabling them as if, you know, nobody ever said, Oh man, if you, you know, if you give them, if you don't give them something, what if their situation is legitimate? Like, you might be giving their child who they say is in the hospital a death sentence. Now, that wasn't a legitimate concern.

Derek: 12:02

The legitimate concern was we can't give because we can't enable, like nobody ever weighed those two things like, what is the risk of not giving in this situation? Everybody always asked, What's the risk of giving? And never compared the two. And so, we had to decide, was insulating ourselves against harm what we thought Jesus taught? Or was being wise as serpents and gentle as doves and navigating the radical nature of Jesus and what He called us to, was that what we needed to do?

Derek: 12:36

And my wife had a particularly profound moment for her where we have family devotions and so we were able to have Alexa. She came over one time, we're having lunch and we do family devotions after each meal a lot of times And just so happened to be reading from the Beatitudes because we read through Matthew over and over and over again. And she was at the part where Roma, Ramona was, I'm sorry, Alexa was sitting across from us and Catalina was reading about give to the beggar, give to the one who asks of you. And she had a literal beggar sitting across from her. What do you do with that?

Derek: 13:25

Turn it into metaphor, that's what we do with it rather than sit in that uncomfortable question and ask, What if Jesus really meant what He said? So those were two very life changing experiences for us, some significant confrontations with who we were, who we wanted to become, and who Jesus was. And so those those are going to shape a lot of of what I talk about in in this series. So in these experiences, it became clear to me that while community was important, like the book When Helping Hurt says, true. Many of those with whom we came in contact for Mercy Needs had what When Helping Hurt's called a poverty of community.

Derek: 14:12

So when I attempted to help the impoverished and remain on the outside, I was essentially insulating myself from inconvenience while simultaneously damning them to the perpetuation of their circumstances. Yes, their community was important for helping them, but why wasn't I a part of that community? Or why didn't I choose to become a part of their community? It's one thing to excuse oneself from helping the poor when you go on a missions trip and live halfway across the world from the impoverished. But when the impoverished live a town over or a few blocks over, what excuse did I have for not entering into their lives and becoming a part of their community?

Derek: 14:48

You know, and sadly, our church which was located in an area that was becoming more and more diverse and and the socioeconomic status was going down, we figured out a way to move to a much more affluent area and there were lots of spiritual reasons for that and maybe it was ultimately good. I don't know, I wasn't was kind of at the time that we were transitioning out to Romania, so I don't know but we try to spiritualize reasons for why we get out of communities where there are people who have a poverty of community and then we can use the excuse that we're not in their community so I guess, you know, we don't want to go against when helping hurts and enable them. We need their community to help them. So through these experiences, I began to realize that a large part of what my Christianity, and I'd argue Western Christianity in general, misses, is that we fail to be incarnational. We fail to enter into community, into relationship, into solidarity with those not like us.

Derek: 16:02

This is a particular problem for we who live in white suburbia because our world is relatively safe, relatively secure, relatively wealthy and relatively closed off to expressing problems. We don't know anyone in real need, anyone who is downtrodden or oppressed by circumstances or other powers. Yet as I read more and more of the Bible, I see that Incarnation is central. Obviously, there's the Incarnation of God and Jesus, the Word made flesh, and that's central to the Bible as a whole. But even beyond the central way in which God condescends among all the other ways we see Him stoop throughout the Scriptures, we also find that the Apostles identify our incarnation as central to what it means to be a Christ follower.

Derek: 16:54

You can see this in a number of places, but Philippians two is my favorite of course, which I'm sure you've heard over and over again. And if you've listened at any length, you've heard me recite that over and over. But Philippians two is is all about laying out the case for Christ as an incarnator, and then calling us to incarnate and focus on other in the exact same way that Jesus did. We not only become Christ incarnate to others through His spirit of servitude, but also by being mediators and a royal priesthood. We put Jesus on display for the world.

Derek: 17:29

In the next few episodes then, I want to flesh out what various ways of incarnation might look like. I want to look at different occurrences of incarnation and identify how we might become the incarnators incarnators God calls us to be. Understanding incarnation is going to be important not just to understand Christ's relationship to us, but also our call as Christians and our job for the world. And of course, as we understand what it means to be incarnate, that will influence our understanding of issues like poverty and generosity and non violence and enemy love. That's all for now.

Derek: 18:08

So peace and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.