At the hub

Intersection – “the act of bringing two things into contact; the place or point where two things cross each other.”

For the past year I have been reflecting and writing in this column under the rubric “the intersection of faith and life.”

This is an enviable perch from which to watch the world go by. An intersection is a hub of activity. Meetings happen. Collisions too. Sometimes they are avoidable accidents – someone going too fast or looking the wrong way. Sometimes they are inevitable – the statistical product of traffic flow, mechanical failure and weather. The intersection is where the rules of the road have instantaneous significance.

Intersections are also where we get lost. On the main road, there is only one question: what direction am I travelling? At the intersection, however, choices multiply and one wrong turn can lead to another and another. Orientation is lost and things get mixed up.

Recently our family spent four weeks driving around the United Kingdom. There, intersections are often roundabouts. These are not the quaint traffic circles Canadians occasionally encounter. They are multi-lane, black holes of madness, sweeping in tons of metal and scores of angry people and then whirling them in reverse onto unknown highways and byways.

The unwritten rules of these intersections are driven home by horns, gestures and expletives mouthed through glass. I think about those intersections when I write.

But what does it mean to be at the intersection of faith and life?

Nearly 2000 years ago, Jesus prayed for his followers who are in, but not of, the world (John 17:6). And there we have two highways and their intersection bluntly described: two kingdoms, and their respective populations coming into contact and crossing each other.

Jesus’ point is unmistakable. His followers live at the point of the intersection, fully immersed in the flow of traffic, but they are not travellers on the dominating causeway. They are at the same place but they are not on the same road.

Clearly this is a dangerous place and Jesus’ prayer is for his followers’ safety. “Protect them by the power of your name. . . . My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them. . . .” (John 17:11,15).

This has been a notoriously difficult concept for Jesus’ followers to live with.

There are, of course, moments when we do feel like aliens – when we try to explain our faith to a puzzled friend, classmate or co-worker, for example. More often than not, however, the reality that we are on another highway is lost to our consciousness. We don’t feel that different from the other inhabitants of the intersection and besides, who wants to be an alien?

Some have proposed that there is really only one road with the illusion of many paths and that once the veil has been lifted we will see the reality of the One Road. There is no intersection, they say.

Others have suggested that two roads are merging and though there is some confusion in the merger, the blending is what gives us joy. The revelation of Truth is evolving as the various highways melt into one.

Still others believe that Jesus called us to be transformers and that we have the responsibility of taking over the intersection. The world needs Christians to repair and possibly take over their great highways.

At one time, the Mennonite tradition taught that the intersection truly is an intersection. We are to be courteous, productive aliens – but unmistakably aliens. The otherness of our kingdom is not defined by a season of persecution or misunderstanding; it is fundamental to our nature.

Because they taught this, Mennonites were constantly tempted to withdraw from the intersection altogether and often forgot that this was never part of God’s plan for us.

In a post-Christian world there is nowhere left to withdraw. We need to learn again what it means to be in, but not of, the world. For me, this is the question of the intersection of faith and life.

But it is not a strange question. It is exactly the question the first generation of Jesus’ followers had to answer.

James Toews is pastor of Neighbourhood Church, Nanaimo, B.C. and this year’s Intersection columnist.

Note: For readers interested in exploring this subject further, the theme of the latest Direction (Fall, 2005), a publication of MB schools and conferences, is “Culture Critique.” Bruce L. Guenther has a good review of Neibuhr’s classic, Christ and Culture. Contact Kindred Productions (toll free: 800-545-7322) to order.

—jt