Christopraxis: A Practical Theology of the Cross

1. Introduction

PART I 1 Introduction A Theobiographical Starting Point There was an apple tree that sat just beyond the yard of the first house in which I grew up.1 At least in my memory, this apple tree sat right between my house and the house of Benjamin—my first friend. Its low-hanging branches served as the canvas in which my first friendship was painted. As far as I can remember, Benjamin was a good friend, the perfect companion with whom to spend my fourth and fifth years. Our friendship took the shape of all good childhood friendships: playing. We climbed and pretended, eating apples right from the tree, throwing the rotten ones from the ground at the older neighbor girls. That tree became our universe, a place to be together. Like monkeys in our habitat, we felt as powerful as children can when we climbed the tree’s branches. I can remember nothing we talked about, even now I can’t remember the sound of Benjamin’s voice, but his person, because he was my friend, is somewhere lodged in me. I’ve taken him with me. But the idealistic heaven of the apple tree couldn’t protect us from forces that indiscriminately crush bodies of children and the hearts of their parents. Benjamin was my first friend, and he was my first friend to die. Cancer got him. One day he was fine, running and playing, laughing and singing, and the next day a lump appeared in his armpit. Then cancer over took his body, and within months the happy, healthy child was thin as a rail, weak and bald. Once able to outclimb me to the top of that apple tree, he now couldn’t even stand. 1. I’m stealing the phrase “theobiographical starting point” from Pete Ward in Participation and Mediation: A Practical Theology for the Liquid Church (London: SCM, 2008). 3 Marlen, his mother, fought hard for him. Marlen was a European caught in the Midwest; she had relocated after marrying Benjamin’s dad. She still spoke with a deep Dutch accent; she was an anomaly in this whitewashed suburb, a true manifestation of the Old World. Marlen was liberal, brash, and an outspoken and deeply committed (if that is possible) atheist. Culturally, Marlen was three or four decades before her time. When Benjamin became sick, Marlen wasn’t sure she could bear her fate, but bear it she did, with the force and will of a lion. Benjamin’s sickness only dug in Marlen’s atheism, forcing her to refuse even more forcefully a God who would create a world where she loved her boy so deeply, but lost him so horribly. But Marlen’s brokenness couldn’t keep her spirit from yearning for something transcendent and bigger than herself to come, to arrive. She now hated a God she didn’t believe in, cursed a Jesus she thought didn’t care. It may be true that there are no atheists in foxholes, but it seems just as true, or maybe more so, that there are no atheists in children’s hospitals either. While the solider in a foxhole pleads with God to save him, the parent in the children’s hospital does just as much pleading. But after pleading relentlessly hits against the cold wall of impossibility, the pleading turns to cursing. In the wake of parents’ misery God surely exists, but sometimes as a brutal thief. After Benjamin’s death Marlen wore her theistic rage like a cloak around her atheism. She claimed her atheism all the more; she lived like a prophet from the Old Testament blaming God for forsaking God’s people, giving diatribes about the stupidity of an invisible Man in the clouds and the ignorance of people who see religion or faith as anything other than a language game given to you by your family and its culture. As fate would have it, Benjamin’s little sister would become my little sister’s first friend. Elizabeth and my sister now ran and played as Benjamin and I had. One warm summer night Elizabeth had an experience. Only a very small child herself, and only a few months after Benjamin’s death, she awoke to tell her mommy that she had seen Benjamin in her room in the middle of the night and that he was standing with Jesus. She explained that Benjamin kissed her and...