Chapter 15: Spotting Yoder

Anthony remembered how vulnerable weight-lifting could be back in the high school years. His body was tall and lanky and it was hard for him to build muscle like guys like Ryan, whose leg strength was almost double what his was. So Ryan’s next question was an extra-challenging, a call for him to be even more transparent.

RW: OK, now I want to hear your critiques of Yoder. Do you disagree with him on anything?
AT: Oh sure. Yoder is, by no means, the perfect theologian. Of course, much of my critique is how Yoder is interpreted and is actually lived out. The human element gets in the way! I’ve got 7 points of critique for you: (1) one of the biggest critiques of Yoder is that he seems to boil every bit of Christianity down to ‘social ethics.’ Everything seems to be socio-political. Maybe he goes a bit overboard in order to critique our highly-individualized, spiritualized and forensically justified Christian culture; (2) with this said, I think a form of individual spirituality, within the wider contours of Yoder’s socio-political vision of Jesus, Kingdom and Church, is important. I’ve thought about trying to combine Henry Nouwen’s more spiritually contemplative vision of Christian faith with Yoder’s communal vision. For a while, those two guys were at Notre Dame at the same time! It is easy for me, in light of all of my reading of Yoder to criticize the proliferation of ‘relationship’ language on the lips of evangelicals. Everything is about a personal relationship with God, interpenetrating my struggles and guilt and shame. But I know this has got to be an element of the Christian journey. My devotional reading [the Evangelical ‘quiet time’] and my times of solitude and prayer are still vitally important, in spite of Yoder’s critique of individualism and spirituality; (3) reading Yoder tends to make me a bit too idealistic with how our Monday night community is organized and how we relate to each other. Life is just a lot messier than Yoder’s pretty language about the church being such a revolutionary experience. But then again, Yoder’s emphasis on conflict resolution as a key practice for every community simply assumes how ugly it can get. Sure is hard to pursue each other with love, gentleness and humility time and time again. Sometimes, I’d rather just miss out on Monday night and spend the 2 hours watching Monday Night Football, or quite frankly, cleaning my sock drawer! And quite often, I’d rather not resolve conflict by approaching the other member of our community. I’d be much more content just lamenting to my wife about the whole ordeal. But these practical commitments always pay off. They are extremely hard and taxing but transformative; (4) other times, I have my doubts about Yoder’s historical reconstructions about the 1st century ‘political’ Jesus. His proposals, although quite convincing, seem to stand and fall based on proposals that aren’t given a lot of air-time with most Christians I rub shoulders with. His vision for what normative Christianity should be is so different than the popular options on offer that it can be extremely jarring to carry on a conversation with brothers and sisters in Christ whose categories assume common ground with me; (5) on a more personal note, before our Monday night community started, we experienced a lot of loneliness. We had very little koinonia, solidarity, with other Christians. We tended to focus far-too-much on how different we were than how the majority viewed their Christianity. We’d be quite jaded today without the common vision of our community; (6) Yoder can be a bit ‘elitist,’ what with his big theological vocabulary and critique on the American evangelical and political scene. I can see how Yoder can be both frustrating and intimidating to read, especially coming from a mainstream Evangelical tradition that has been far-too-anti-intellectual in the past century; and (7) lastly, I wonder, at times, if Yoder’s vision of following Jesus may just be too demanding. He is certainly raising the bar very high for what it means to be a Christian disciple. I mean, this practice-oriented communal vision of Christian faith is a lot harder than most brands of Christianity on offer where fine-sounding worship music, a good sermon and guaranteed salvation of heaven are emphasized.
RW: You are speaking about my world now.
AT: Yeah, and trust me, I’m looking forward to your sermon in the morning.

That last line was really comforting to Ryan because he subconsciously was doubting, with all of his critiques of conservative evangelicalism, whether Anthony would be interested at all in coming to one of the services in the morning and he was not so sure if he was feeling bold enough to invite him. But with Anthony bringing it up as something that he was going to obviously participate in was deeply meaningful.

As they left 24 Hour Fitness, Ryan thought to himself how it would be a great challenge to start really thinking differently about his workout experience—to take it more seriously as a power that enslaves humanity. Ryan wondered how some of the other social structures in his life like watching TV, eating meals and his own church could be criticized and energized by a more ‘powerful’ engagement.