If humans have free will, then I choose . . . oatmeal

Do humans have the freedom to choose? This question has been one of the most central issues in human thought for ages, and has so many theological, ethical, and scientific implications. I think I may have even seen it come up in the recent Rob Bell hype. That’s why it was on my mind this week.


The thing about the free will debate (and often theology in general) is that it becomes so otherworldly and lofty that we often overlook the relevancy of the debate at the floor level. The debate rages at the heights of soteriology (views on salvation) and other metaphysical realities. But I don’t often see people discuss the implications of free choice with everyday things in life, especially discussions that didn’t bring it back to salvation or metaphysics somehow.

Now, I’m not writing to split hairs about whether Calvinists or Arminians, or compatibilists or incompatibilists have it right. More than likely, since we’re humans, they both have it right and wrong. This is also not to make light of this classic debate. And granted, what transpires below may also be very sloppy theology! But I just want to view the debate from a more practical lens and bring it down from the rafters, just for a moment.

I want to discuss the importance of choice among those who routinely are not able to choose, or who are prevented from choosing. Many people who live in impoverished areas are constantly chosen for: someone else chooses where they will live, what kind of food they will eat, when they will get up and when they will sleep, where they will work, when they can shop, where they will attend school. This kind of lack of freedom is an overall lack of an ability to participate in the exchange of life. How does that affect people? And is that what God wanted for us?

I’ll give you a specific example. Have you ever volunteered at a food pantry? Many traditional pantries are set up like this: food is donated, volunteers gather together to sort and bag the food, and then the volunteers hand those bags to the pantry clients. “God bless yous” and “Thank Yous” are exchanged. But many people fail to realize what happens later. A lot of those clients end up dumping half the bag of food because it’s not food they would ever choose to eat.

Does that seem a little ridiculous or unappreciative to you?

Well, when you go to the grocery store, what would you do if a clerk greeted you at the door, and began filling your cart before you had a chance to say hello? Now, would you want that for yourself?

So there’s a movement happening among food pantries that I’m glad Breakthrough is a part of. It’s the “client-choice” food pantry model. Basically, a client-choice pantry is set up more like a grocery store. It may look differently at each pantry, but the bottom line is that people get to pick what they want to eat. It’s not really that genius. It should be a no-brainer. And the more I think of it, I’m dumbfounded that it has taken so long for well-meaning food pantries to pick up on it. Duh, people should be able to choose what kind of food they want to eat!

We don’t go far as to place any forbidden or poisonous fruit in our Fresh Market food pantry that people are warned to avoid…or else! But at a client-choice food pantry, “choosing” allows people to be human at a most basic level. (And I’ll smack you if ask me whether God determined or knew that they would choose oatmeal over tomato sauce). This goes a long way with a person’s overall quality of life. Yet, those of us with resources and “power” take for granted how important our choices are with everyday things.

No, there is no such thing as absolute freedom. That is unfathomable. God also establishes many paths for us according to his will. But to be an everyday human, we do have choices within our given environment. And I find that the more determined a person’s life is with the everyday choices of eating and sleeping and working, then the more despairing they tend to be.

Now you can draw your own metaphysical conclusions from this example and bring it back up to the salvation rafters and all if you want. But there is a simpler experience of free choice that calls us to consider whether or not we are living as humans right now. At the floor level, freedom is a symbol of human dignity. And I think that’s why God gave us at least a little bit of freedom. It makes such a big deal with the smallest things in life.

Honestly, who knows the mind of the Lord and what all that freedom talk means when the final bell rings. Yes, it’s important and fun (for some) to debate about it. But do we debate enough about what might happen at an everyday level if more choice was infused into the lives of those from whom it has been absent for so long?

Since one of the major themes of Deuteronomy related to righteousness and justice is how people choose to live, let’s think about what is preventing so many disenfranchised people from being able to do so. We must not think of freedom as simply a matter of metaphysics or salvation, because we have a lot of other smaller and more critical life choices to make in our ministries and lifestyles before we have any business talking about how or whether we’re saved. Because if we choose to overlook how our choices affect the choices of others, we may find ourselves hanging with the goats.

Responding to Panhandlers: thoughts on how to really help those on the streets

Arloa Sutter and Yolanda Fields, leaders at Breakthrough Urban Ministries, discuss how to respond to panhandlers.

I will not blog about Rob Bell...I will not blog about Rob Bell...I will not blog about Rob Bell...

So I waited a whole week for the smoke to clear about the Rob Bell hype, and I tried resisting.  But the pressures in my neighborhood are far too great for my fingers to sit idly.  Here are some things that I wanted to throw out there in relation to Rob Bell.

Like many others, I was amazed by the following:

*The controversy over the contents of a book that the world has yet to read.
**The piping hot tweets of Johnny P.
***The marketing genius of it all - a classic evangelical cocktail bomb.

But there are two thoughts that I want to discuss today.

The first one is short and sweet. I hate Twitter.  Twitter is to social commentary what a car is to a drunk leaving a party.  A crash happens and people get hurt.  (Of course, you can tear apart my logic and question whether that means that I hate cars.  So maybe I can't stand the "drunks" who use Twitter).  John Piper lost his credibility with me when he got behind the wheel after being intoxicated by the hype.

Second, and mainly, I'm curious about the way that Rob Bell's dissenters have sharply criticized his views.  Not so much that he has been criticized, but how. A lot of people are really concerned about whatever he is going to say in this book, and they have gone into orange-alert mode to defend the faith.  He is being rebuked.

But is it appropriate to criticize a person like Rob Bell in this way?  Has he warranted the kind of serious correction that we find, for instance, in Galatians?

Furthermore, is his line of work the type that needs to invite this level of critical dialogue?  I'm not talking about the critical, popular buzz.  I'm talking about the fact that heavy-hitting, professional theologians are engaging the situation.  The way that I understand the nature of professional theologians (professors at universities) is this:  Professors engage in high-level academic research that invites criticism from peers. That's how they mature intellectually. Delivering and receiving criticism is a primary response to work that is produced. A great example is the career of a theologian like Reinhold Niebuhr.

Rob Bell is not a professional theologian. He doesn't teach at a university. The way I understand Rob Bell is that he is a teaching pastor who produces materials to help laypeople (mostly) connect better with God.  Creating pastoral dialogue and reflection is a primary response to the kind of work that pastors like him produce. And to that end, pastors are concerned about reaching unity in their churches, and within the Church at large.

But I haven't seen a lot of unity around the hype of a book entitled Love Wins.

Now...is he above criticism or rebuke? Of course not. But has he been criticized  too soon? And has he really earned a rebuke? Yet?

And really, my main questions for discussion are...

What deserves a Christian rebuke, and what is the appropriate way for doing it?  And/or, what is an appropriate way to criticize pastoral-level writers and speakers?

Can you help me with this?

Front Porch Interview with Walter Brueggemann

I’m starting a new segment called Front Porch Interviews where I interview down-to-earth people who are making unique and meaningful contributions to urban spirituality and leadership.


Walter Brueggemann


I had the privilege of kicking off my first interview with renowned theologian, Walter Brueggemann. I caught up with him while he was in Chicago at the SCUPE Congress on Urban Ministry. He was invited in as one of the plenary speakers on the congress’ theme of peacemaking. And I thought I would pick his brain about his career, his book Peace, and his perspective on Chicago. We met over a cup of tea and hot chocolate. To my surprise, he was the hot chocolate guy.

TE: One of your theological themes is imagination – why is imagination such an important theological concept to you?

WB: The word imagination comes from the word image. We all have an “image of reality.” And that image is often dominated by a “market ideology” – the self-seeking paradigm that says that we need to be anxious about ensuring our own affluence and security. An imagination is our ability to think otherwise about the world. Jesus’ parables are clear examples of seeing the world as “otherwise.” Imagination, therefore, is the center of teaching and preaching ministries because we will not act better than we can imagine. Without discipline our imagination is dominated by market anxieties. The gospel task is to imagine outside the market ideology.

TE: Speaking of imagination, I have always enjoyed your writing style. Not all theologians go down as smoothly as you do. Your style seems to be so rhetorical and even poetic. Some of your stuff sounds like you’re starting to preach a little bit! To what do you attribute your writing style?

WB: They say that good writers shouldn’t use adjectives, but I think I use three adjectives in every sentence! I have actually had to work a lot at writing well. And my writing stays close to my oral style. I actually write longhand. I even catch myself talking out loud when I write.

TE: In your book Peace you explore shalom, the biblical notion of peace (wholeness). And you explain that one feature of shalom that God gives (as a gift) to the world is a sense of order. And therefore you suggest that the world is safe, and that this reality calls for wonder, amazement, gratitude, and a more whimsical view of life overall. While I appreciate (and I think I grasp) this view, I know many people in my city who wouldn’t. For instance, mothers who refuse to let their kids play in the neighborhood for fear of losing them to the streets. So how do you explain a perspective like this to people who live fearfully amongst chaos and violence daily?

WB: Great point. Granted, I don’t get to speak much to that kind of an audience. But overall, our talk of gratitude has to be matched by our walk. Our walk as Christians has to be speaking gratitude to those who live among violence and chaos. It won’t do for the church to talk about the assurances and promises of God, and not actually walk and live them out. So we have to develop a neighborhood fabric that lives out the reality of gratitude.

TE: Why do you think this is so hard for Christians to do?

WB: It is because that market ideology is such a powerful force. We inhale it constantly. Many people would say that this anxiety is inherently human. I say that is ideological production. And it is a totalizing mindset that is hard to get out of. It’s why Jesus ended up with 11 disciples.

TE: One particular element of peacemaking that is relevant to my ministry is access to healthy and affordable food. Breakthrough runs a dynamic food pantry on the west side of Chicago in an area that has been recently dubbed a food desert. Many people in that community do not experience the “shalom” of eating a regular healthy meal, especially in community with others. And this, of course, is just symptomatic of other problems in blighted urban areas where resources are not distributed evenly between the have and have nots. But eating plays such an important role in the human condition. You have written that “at the table is where shalom really exists.” How do you think the church might develop a theology of food that can lead to more peacemaking/justice in urban areas?

WB: [At the SCUPE conference] I spoke about the food fight that exists between those who want to accumulate and those who want to share. The manna story in Exodus is the lead story because the wilderness is a food desert. And in the food desert there is no reason to expect food. But the Israelites complained and God gave them food. And Jesus’ feeding miracles are a re-performance of that manna story. So the Church must enact a similar ministry of manna to produce food systems, turning the desert into a table, allowing people to expect and imagine otherwise in the food desert. Food pantries like yours are good examples of how we re-perform the Jesus miracles and the manna story. The battle in Church is to help people see that the Gospel is about food; it is about producing and distributing resources to the have nots. To quote the Sri Lankan evangelist D.T. Niles, “Christianity is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread.” I take that to be a material statement overall. But churches get too preoccupied with orthodoxy and church systems and all that [we forget about the holistic nature of the gospel.]

[Side bar – a great Brueggemann article to read about this is "Enough is Enough"]

TE: Are you working on any interesting project(s) right now?

WB: I’m working on a book about prophetic preaching. It focuses on the prophetic theme of loss, and not so much on God’s judgment. The prophets connect social loss to the reality of God, which is an almost impossible topic for middle-class or more affluent churches to embrace. But this is especially relevant today when you think about the economy and how so many people are “losing”– losing jobs, homes, pensions, etc. The market ideology wants us to deny the reality of loss.

TE: What do you think about Chicago, and where do you eat when you come into town?

WB: I don’t really know too much about eating in Chicago! Although I did eat at The Berghoff while I was here this week, and that was excellent.

About Chicago, I recently read Richard C. Longworth’s Caught in the Middle, and I was struck by his thesis that the Midwest generally missed the wave of globalization, except for Chicago, because Chicago is a collage of generative people – a lot is riding on the function of Chicago. So we’ll see how Rahm Emmanuel does.


If you have someone in mind that would make for a great Front Porch Interview, email me at tescobar@breakthrough.org