deepbrew

I found a fascinating blurb over at Amy’s Humble Musings on the Amish. Since I was born in a nearly Amish situation I’m always on the lookout for this sort of thing–commentary from the “outside.”

Amy thinks the Amish suspicion of technology may be more than raw legalism, and she’s drawn to their careful preservation of community.

Roz in comment 8 asks a real question: “In what way are the Amish the hands and feet of Christ? Are we not called to love our neighbors in our home areas, in our nation, and in the world? Isn’t that a HUGE part of living out our spiritual life? Does Christ give us an example of isolation in the world? It is my belief that He did not.” I agree with you 100%, Roz.

Comment 21: “…It is very hard to sit in church, when the girls in this very evangelical, reformed congregation, were wearing next to nothing and neither they, nor their mothers or fathers, saw anything wrong with it!…”

Comment 27: “Weeeelllllll, speaking as someone who, just yesterday, had an Amishman challenge my husband & myself to a drag race :) I’m going to suggest that perhaps the differences aren’t quite as different as they might seem. :/”

Comment 34: “….A friend of mine had a buggy slam into his car because the driver and his girlfriend were too busy watching their battery-powered TV/VCR.)…”

Comment 39: “…The Amish are a cult, pure and simple–no matter how attractive their simple, nonmaterialist lifestyle may seem…”

I love to hear what people have to say about the Amish/Mennonite culture. I know that many of you Mennonites out there hate to be thrown in the same box with the Amish, and you’re right, there are vast differences, but there are probably more similarities then we realize. Anyway, I’m not exactly sure what I’m trying to point out here (other than Amy’s post) except to say that I value perspectives from our friends in the Christian community.

I just bought An Idiot’s Guide to Understanding the Amish. Very fascinating! I think it’s written by a Mennonite, or ex-Mennonite, and feels a bit reactionary, but is also quite thought-provoking.

So, if you’re a Mennonite like me, and you go around on the internet reading stuff like Amy’s Humble Musings, you have LOTS of questions about being Amish/Mennonite/Anabaptist, and wish that Jesus would make a sudden unexpected reappearance and tell us all how we need do it. But I am sort of afraid he won’t do that, and that leaves it up to us, which is very scary, in a way, but also feels like a vote of confidence on his part, because obviously he thinks he’s given us (or is giving us) what we need to follow him, and do it to his satisfaction. Anyway, with these thoughts in mind, let us….. take a Sunday afternoon nap. Amen.

Update:  And if you’re an Amish/Mennonite/Anabaptist, you are also very proud of Floyd Landis, who just won the Tour de France, and whose sister Charity is a person I know from school.  Very interesting write-up about the reaction in Lancaster here.

Lately a lot of us (me, my friends, other Mennonites) have been talking about the conservative Mennonite / Anabaptist culture, and how that culture hinders us when we try to reach those outside the culture, and how we wish we could separate what is biblical from what is merely cultural. It’s easy to think that we are the only group that struggles with a culture that seems to separate us from those we want to reach with the gospel. But listen to this analysis of the typical American evangelical missionary.

“…who does the American evangelical look like? Does he or she resemble Jesus in his focus, values, and mission? Our analysis has concluded that Jesus is not the spiritual father of our Evangelical culture. Our Evangelical world is more about our peculiar culture values and what we like and dislike rather than a reflection of Jesus. If we take a hard, objective look at the Gospels, we will see a great deal of similarity between our Evangelical values and the values of the Pharisees rather than the values of Jesus.

The third issue is the logical outcome of the first two: we have a very bad case of cultural blindness. I don’t meant that we cannot distinguish cultural differences, but that we are blind to the differences between what we are as cultural Christians and what the Bible clearly articulates we should be.” (Fran Patt, Mission Frontiers, July-August 2006, p. 9)

Take the word Evangelical in the first paragraph and replace it with Anabaptist and it reads very nicely. This illustrates a tendency a lot of us, and people everywhere, have—we think our problems are unique to ourselves or to our group, and we don’t realize how common and how human our problems actually are.

The Simple Life…

Maybe what I was looking for after all.

Early to bed, early to rise. (discipline)

Simple tastes.

Simple pleasures. . .

Large long term goals, small short term goals.

People….

Unhurried.

Unimpressive

Satisfaction.

Love of Christ, love for christ, enjoyment of the Scriptures.

When God created the universe, did he have a practical, utilitarian reason for making everything that he did?

I declared to Harley after church today that I think there are some very legitimate parts of life that have no practical value, and that God has made some very unpractical things, such as that flowering tree right outside the window.  Harley sort of chuckled and I realized immediately that in fact that tree does have lots of practical value in providing food for bees and other insects and producing oxygen and in general being a very useful part of the ecosystem.  I mentioned mountains, and he thought of some practical reason for them, citing Mt. Herman in Israel as an example, which somehow stores up dew in the winter and releases it to water the plains in the summer.

Maybe he is right.  Maybe God is ultimately a utilitarian.

As a plain amish mennonite, I am plainly interested in plain talk about plainness.

Merle Burkholder, at a conference at FB a year ago, said something like this: “We are losing a compelling reason to be plain.”

Tonight we had a members meeting at church and we had a very standard discussion on standard issues (church standard issues). I am realizing more and more that I care way less about plainness and conservatism than that which has been normal in my faith tradition. I know many other people in my generation with similiar skepticisms.

I think Burkholder is right. However, I would like to know what the compelling reason to be plain was in the first place.

Selfishness is ugly. I know that. Why then, do I still find myself there so much of the time? Here’s something from Lewis that must be very true.

“The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you’ll find your real self. Lose your life, and you’ll save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: Submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep nothing back.

Nothing that you have not given away will every really be yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.” from Beyond Personality, CS Lewis

This quote came from an article in the Jan/Feb 2003 Disciple Journal by Gary Thomas entitled “Selflessness.” Here’s a bit from Gary Thomas himself:

“God invites us to experience the freedom that is found when we ignore our first selfish impulses and allow God’s spirit to give us a heart for others. He wants to expand our focus and turn our eyes away from our own small world, to find ourselves by losing ourselves in service to his people.”

It is kind of paradoxical that I want to be unselfish because I know it will bring freedom and joy. However, when it comes down to real life situations, when Eric is simply dying to use my computer, but I just have to finish this post, then the freedom and joy that supposedly comes from unselfishness seem very far away. Unselfishness then feels truly unselfish.

I read somewhere once that people with dynamic, extroverted personalities are much more sought after and considered to be more effective in business and life in general. I don’t remember all the details of the article but I do remember thinking that it was very unfair and wished I could be dynamic and popular.

Anyway, all this to say that certain types of personality seem to be at a real disadvantage in life. Phlegmatic people are a good example. Phlegs, just because they are naturally more conscientious about conserving their energy, are looked down on as less desirable to society then those who run around madly from one thing to another. Why? Simply because other people don’t find them useful. Phlegs like me are under incredible pressure to PERFORM, to DO ACTUAL WORK, to EXPEND HUGE AMOUNTS OF ENERGY for unimportant things.  I PROTEST!!  This is an injustice which society has insisted on retaining far too long.  I demand fair treatment for people of all personalities!

It’s true! I really enjoy going to my church every Sunday. Perharps it may seem odd that I mention it, but to me it isn’t, because so much of my growing up years I detested church. It bored me to death. Why do I like it now?
I love the singing. Even though we do almost no praise & worship style singing, which I love, I totally enjoy singing hymns out of the venerable church hymnal. I can really get into it.

I love our Sunday School class. Our youth boys class can really get into, at times. Other times the discussion really lacks. But mostly its great. Our teacher Ivan does admirably well.

We get some really great sermons in our church fairly regularly. However, I am terribly absent-minded, and can so easily slip out into some other world. I catch myself and slap my patty, but before I know it I am off somewhere again. Terrible habit.

And then, of course, we stay and chat w/ folks for a long time after every service. This is one feature of mennonite life which I really really like. We do like each other and like to keep up with each other. Even then, it still feels like a barely know some people in church, cause our church is just too big. I wish we wouldn’t have made it so huge. Someday I hope to be in a cute little church, but for now I’m stuck in my Huge one. But I like it anyway. People grow and change there. People experience powerful relationships there. People meet God there.