Do you suffer from post-millennial jitters? Sex, death, taxes, or impending overthrow of the status quo got you down?
Peeking over the edge of a new year, the world looks as scary as ever. Nuclear fissile material (that could kill thousands and give the rest of us a slow cancerous death) is now available at your local Terrorist Depot. Lunatics, trained by our own tax dollars, take out the citizenry with a Bushmaster assault rifle, while Smith & Wesson decides that marketing to kids isn't such a bad idea after all. Let's not even talk about the stock market, pedophilia, or the decline of the median household income.
It has ever been thus. Violence, sex, money, and fear of change are part of the human condition. Playwright Euripides covered the territory in "Medea" in 431 B.C.E. A woman tries to secure her hold on political power through deceit, sex, and murder (even of her children). "Civilization," says actress Fiona Shaw, who's currently playing Medea, "is a very thin veil of words."
About the same time the play was written, Hebrew scholars were publishing the book of Esther in Persia (then at war with Greece). A woman with relative safety under the king's political protection chooses to fast, pray, and risk death in order to challenge the king's worldly power. Esther's uncle Mordecai reminds her that perhaps she has been given this palatial life just so she could act in faith and save the Jewish people—perhaps she was chosen "for just such a time as this."
We always have a choice in how we live. Our "times" don't change that much over history. What plagued people in the time of Medea and Esther plagues us still. As Christians, then, how do we choose to live in times such as these?
The earliest followers of Jesus wrestled with this question: How should they live their social witness? Our lives, like theirs, are a complex web of history, economics, politics, relationships, and faith. Yet, as church historian Roland Bainton reminds us, "Christians brought to social problems, not a detailed code of ethics or a new political theory, but a new scale of values." These new values were rooted in a charismatic movement bent on living in harmony with the kingdom of God.
Theologian Gerd Theissen says the first Christians focused on four things: peace, human dignity, benevolence, and a revolution of values. They addressed directly the violence, sex, money, and fear of change we find covered on the nightly news. However, they were not simply reformers who wanted worldly systems to be more just and equitable; they were translators of a heavenly language that had a new way of measuring values.
As Christians today, we can claim that same idiom. Our Jesus-based language addresses violence by speaking of a peace that is de-militarized, but not de-politicized; a social peace based on mutual security, not mutual destruction.
Sex, in our vocabulary, presupposes that all people—unborn, aged, rich, poor, male, or female—are made to reflect God. Individuals are not valued for their ability to contribute to the society, government, or even some theistic divine plan. Every human being is cherished; every relationship is a sacred bond.
In the Christian mother tongue, money and the stratification of society are met with benevolence—it is better to share than to hoard. The rich should give to the poor; the poor should share with each other. All distribution of wealth should promote the equality and dignity of the giver and the receiver.
Finally, this language is eloquent about revolution—not political insurrection, but Spirit-driven resurrection. Wherever we have conformed to ways of the world, wherever we have accommodated ourselves to fear, wherever we have chosen small deaths over abundant life, our native speech patterns call us to remold our life to model more closely the kingdom of God.
Euripides' tragedies exposed the widest range of human depravity (not unlike The New York Times). Esther confronted the consequences of measuring one's actions by the values of God. Jesus taught a hope-infused heavenly language that directly addresses our life today.
Instead of succumbing to the carpet-bombing of fear-traders, we must figure out how we want to live as Christians. What holy word will we speak in such a time as this?
Rose Marie Berger is an associate editor of Sojourners.
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