The Tasty Fruit of my Reading

I just wanted to demonstrate again the common themes that God has illuminated in my reading. I read Ten Fingers for God (by Dorothy Clarke Wilson), the biography of Paul Brand, a surgeon who grew up as a missionary kid in India, was educated in the U.K., then returned to Vellore, Tamilnadu, India (where I am right now), to focus on treating and researching leprosy. Paul Brand probably contributed more to the advancement of our understanding of leprosy than any other person in history: he pioneered reconstructive operations on the hands and face, he spent years tracking the deterioration of patients’ distal body parts, and found the best footwear for leprosy patients (MicroCellular Rubber, manufactured only at this leprosy center, is a soft and pliable material used for the insoles of shoes and was the result of years of research by Paul Brand and many others. I now have a pair of custom-fitted sandals with MCR insoles!).

I also read Tolstoy’s A Confession. It is basically an autobiography of his search for the meaning of life. After writing War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Tolstoy went through a period of his life where he questioned why he was alive and often contemplated suicide. He also left the comfortable, upper-class way of life and studied the philosophy and religion of the peasants. After experimenting with various paths and modes of existence, he basically concludes that true Christianity, not the form that has been distorted by centuries of false teaching and hypocritical living by the Church, but the one actually presented in the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament, is the only path that offers a worldview that is both true and satisfying. The book/essay ends with him trying to sort through the mess that the Russian Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant Churches have made of Christ’s teaching. His conclusions are spelled out a little better in the work The Law of Love and the Law of Violence. These conclusions were obviously dear to him, because he ends this essay with, “This is what I wanted to say to my fellow men before I die.” What I would write down for my fellow man if I were on my deathbed?

If you look at all the books I’ve been reading, especially The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Siddhartha, and A Confession, they all tell the story of someone searching hard after something. Even Paul Brand spent most of his life searching for the causes of hand and foot deformities in leprosy patients and how to remedy them. They all made me question what it was that I was searching for, or if I was searching at all. Once I had pinpointed the basic idea that I wanted to honor Christ by doing what He did, but I had no idea how to do this in my context, I began thinking of ways to implement this lifestyle (this search has been going on for about five years now, though I’ve had more time to dedicate to intense investigation while in my simple room here and atop “Elephant Hill”).

I found some answers when I picked up Irresistible Revolution (Shane Claiborne). I think it was that it not only documented his struggle through the fakeness and hypocrisy that pervades much of Christendom and also the emptiness of indulgent living, but it also provided a solution, or at least real-life illustrations of various solutions. It was the quest to live as an “ordinary radical,” one who radically ignores social and religious norms to live out the simple meaning of the teachings of the Bible, but who is also an ordinary person, not a super-Christian, an ascetic monk, or a member of a cult. He made sure to point out that this lifestyle of love and sacrifice and action is nothing new, just new for our generation and possibly new for your particular context. In the same way, it is not a lifestyle that is confined to a particular group of people (such as his community called Simple Way in Philadelphia), but can be manifested in a multitude of ways. It causes you to think outside of the box (Republican vs. Democrat, traditional church vs. emergent church) and asks that you simply do what the Bible and says and what makes sense, and because of this, I would say that at least giving Irresistible Revolution a chance is mandatory.

Here are the marks of what is known as Neo-Monasticism, which could be considered the general umbrella under which Claiborne’s Simple Way and other likeminded communities would fall:
1. Relocation to the abandoned places of empire
2. Sharing economic resources with fellow community members and the needy among us
3. Hospitality to the stranger
4. Lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities, combined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation
5. Humble submission to Christ’s body, the church
6. Intentional formation in the way of Christ and the rule of the community, along the lines of the old novitiate
7. Nurturing common life among members of an intentional community
8. Support for celibate singles alongside monogamous married couples and their children
9. Geographical proximity to community members who share a common rule of life
10. Care for the poor of God’s earth given to us, along with support of our local economies
11. Peacemaking in the midst of violence, and conflict resolution within communities along the lines of Matthew 18:15-20
12. Commitment to a disciplined contemplative life

I wouldn’t say it’s flawless, but it seems to be a much better way of life than what I see around me most of the time.