Looking back, I marvel at the timing. About three years ago someone moved into our neighborhood from Hamburg—a Hamburger, I think is the correct term—and introduced me to what was to become the single most sustaining spiritual practice during the numerous challenges life has visited on us since then.

Our new friend liked running. One misty October morning without fully realizing what I was doing, I accepted his invitation to join him for a loop around the village. That first morning I struggled mightily to complete one kilometer. With little running experience, I wore khaki cargo pants and boat shoes, my gait similar to that of the lovechild from an ibex and a Percheron. But for some reason I understood that I had happened onto something important, that a kind of lifeline had been thrown to me, and week after week I came back for more. In the words of Forrest Gump, from then on if I was ever going somewhere, I was runnin-g.

Now, 3 years and as many pairs of runners later, I still have to shave off 2 minutes to achieve the gold-standard 20 minutes in our local 5k park run, but I have made satisfying progress nonetheless. (And yes that was a humble brag.) I have experienced runner’s highs that must have been every bit as exotic and transcendent as the high from marijuana, or from flying a plane over the San Francisco Bay at sunrise. The last 2 miles of an hour-long run where you are totally warmed up and running as fast as the ground allows you. . .truly, running has the best cost-benefit ratio of any activities known to featherless bipeds.

And really all you need is a functioning human body, although good running shoes and a little determination are also helpful. Indeed, the experience in general has put me in touch with my body ; one thinks differently about one’s hamstring muscles when running than when watching Netflix.

Actually, running puts you in touch with a lot of things. I read somewhere—Wendell Berry maybe, but I don’t want to name drop—that riding in cars alienates us from our physical surroundings. It’s true that while running I feel in touch with my hunter-gatherer ancestors and with Tony, the black quarter horse that pulled our buggy when I was growing up in an Amish community in Iowa. For me, running provides the clarity that can come only when a creature’s feet makes repeated and sustained contact with terra firma.

While running I see the lay of the land—an individual terra cotta planter, a gilet-clad pensioner in his flower garden, the full-bosomed jackdaw on a fencepost—and feel connected with our terrestrial ball again. I may have all but lost contact with my brother who lives six time zones away in rural Missouri, but when I run I realize my brother and I are both standing on earth whose molecules are intricately and instantaneously connected and I am somehow comforted.

Also, and this may sound a little Marxist, but running is refreshingly uncommodifiable. How can you monetize amateur running? It is the ultimate protest against consumerism. No crass advertisements scream out soul-destroying messages about running being ‘UP TO 70% OFF THIS WEEK!’

Also, I would like to shyly point out that becoming a runner is a momentous achievement. And yet it doesn’t end up as an important part of most CVs, though it would probably be worth employers’ while to ask. It is hard to imagine someone who is lazy or irresponsible in the workplace who also runs.

Finally, if you have read this post and it pushes you to take up running, my advice is that you observe the Rule of 3 three’s: run at least 3 kilometers, at least 3 times a week, for 3 months. See if it’s for you. If it’s not for you, you can always learn origami or bonsai or become a musher for the Iditarod, and if by happy chance it is for you I predict you will run as long as your hamstrings allow it.

Everyone belongs to a tribe, and traditional Anabaptists may as well embrace their heritage with enthusiasm.

But it gets complicated. Amid countless interactions over the past few years, I have come to sense tribes within our tribe. My accumulated data are hardly scientific, but it seems clear that many of us embrace one of three quite different modi operandi. They are as follows.

1) Accept the status quo. The Amish and Mennonites fill a niche that privileges them with a nearly unassailable socio-economic status. A successful work ethic has all but permeated our genes. Everyone likes to buy something Amish-made. To lay hold of economic security, an ethnic Anabaptist has only to do what’s expected:

• marry someone of a similar background.
• buy a house (though an increasingly rare privilege, for us there’s Old Money to reach around).
• serve on school boards and sewing committees.
• read John Piper.
• get buried at the Shady Grove Beachy Amish Mennonite Christian cemetery, leaving behind Old Money for your children who will marry, buy a house, serve on committees…

And, certainly, there are far worse ways to live your life. People in this category are often earnest Christians and peaceful neighbors, and they seldom hold up banks.

2) Engineer an exit. This option can be very easy or very hard, depending on your exit strategy; easy, if you leave Anabaptism via the ladder that progresses seamlessly from Old Order to New Order to Beachy Amish to BMA (Barely Mennonite Anymore) to Rosedale to God-knows-where; hard, if you follow your convictions/delusions and leave cold turkey. Recently I heard of someone who went from Beachy Amish to Greek Orthodox. Now that takes chutzpah.

3) Work toward renewal. Traditional Anabaptism is highly ethno-religious. To my wife and me, leaving still feels like dissociating from one’s birth family. Furthermore, we find historic Anabaptism deeply compelling, not least its emphasis on community over alpha individuals and rock-star pastors; fruit-bearing over mental assent; and simplicity over consumerism and luxury. Most importantly, to be truly Anabaptist is to live out Jesus’ vision of suffering love and nonviolent societal engagement.

And yet. Call me alarmist, but I find these qualities to be waning among many Anabaptists today. Thus neither accepting the status quo nor leaving are great options, and on most days I find myself among those (takes on obnoxious and pretentious tone) who advocate a kind of renewal movement.

But hear me out. Renewal is not a dirty word. In fact, as Peter Enns points out, any movement that has kept its momentum has learned the value of renewal and reform. Baseball, for instance, kept its original magic while also embracing change. In the Yankees’ lineup today Babe Ruth would be like a lost child, but he would still recognize the sport, and if he interacted with 21st century New York for any length of time he would understand why the changes have been necessary.

So also the Anabaptist faith tradition must adapt, even as it stays rooted in its original hallmarks of authentic community, embodied faith, and suffering love. If we fail to adapt, the rest of the world will continue calling us quaint and idyllic, but we will be left to muddle along with an adolescent worldview in an increasingly complex world.

To avoid this, I propose three areas in which our generation must not fail to act.

First, our wooden Biblical literalism must mature into wrestling with the Bible. At times Bible scholars denude scripture by focusing on the original context so much that they fail to explore its transformative message for today. As a result, traditional Anabaptists have overcorrected and skipped any serious study of ancient biblical settings, causing them to dogmatize beliefs that are increasingly untenable. (Since I have decided not to name any specifically, I won’t mention Young Earth Creationism, Penal Substitutionary Atonement, or Eternal Conscious Torment.) This reactionism has also been lethally coupled with a crushing need to be right; too often we have subtly viewed our Christianity as superior to all other High and Low Church traditions.

The result? Our interactions in the gloriously messy contemporary conversations around hermeneutics–as well as the arts, science, and many other areas of societal engagement–have been stifled. Felix Manz would not approve.

Second, our ethno-centric practices must mature into transformative, universally-applicable practices. The young revolutionary Anabaptists may well be disillusioned with arbitrary rules like mandatory Nehru jackets (plain suits). However, that should not lead them to reject a rule of life outright. In fact, a rule of life should make more demands on us, not fewer, and it is commendable to sit down as a community and decide how cross-bearing should look. Yet wearing ethnic clothes and prohibiting alcohol and the cinema are not what it means to bear the cross of Christ. (Sheri Yutzy has written lucidly on this here and here.)

Third, our societal lethargy and right-wing political leanings must mature into Christocentric engagement. At a recent after-dinner conversation, a respected Beachy Amish pastor insisted there is a conspiracy afoot in the overwhelmingly negative media coverage of Donald Trump. He ended his riff with: “Oh, well, if they get Trump impeached, it’ll be Mike Pence, and he’s even better.”

Though the church leader’s statement is problematic on so many levels I can hardly formulate a critique, we must not blame him for a much more sinister, widespread problem. Official Mennonite teaching holds that political power doesn’t bring change, which sometimes works itself out in a benign quietism. Other Anabaptists, however, assume that the horn-rimmed “family values” of the 1950s are what God secretly desires and since the Republican Party wants to restore those values, why not lend them covert (or overt) support?

But nationalism and quietism are both insidious mutations. The original Anabaptist vision anticipated deep Christocentric engagement with societal woes, so deep that thousands of its followers were martyred. Today’s societal woes and injustices are different from those of 16th century Europe, but hardly less urgent. They cry out for a response–nonviolent and nonpartisan, yet confrontational and prophetic. Perhaps if we were real Anabaptists, we would still be getting persecuted for our faith, and we would be a dying breed in quite another sense.

Thus the longer I think about renewing Anabaptism, the more I keep bumping against the sacrifice that’s required. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go reexamine those other tribes within my tribe.

This article was originally published in the Calvary Messenger in May of 2019.

Sometimes I am surprised at how little I know.

I was instructed—zealously catechized, more like—in a Christian home. Besides that, we live in a time heralded as the Information Age. What went wrong? Do I just need to spend more time on Wikipedia?

Years ago, I heard a quip about child training that went something like this: “Before I was married, I had six theories about raising children. Now I have six children and no theories.”

As a father of four gloriously multifaceted daughters, I can identify. And, to tell the truth, I feel as if I have fewer and fewer theories about everything.

Theories about what is most important in life, for instance; theories about happiness; theories about myself; theories about God.

On such foundational points as these, it can feel at times as if I know almost nothing.

But then I consider the Book of Job. Wisdom is hidden from the eyes of all the living. Wisdom is not found in the land of the living.

What? No pat answers?

Or I consider the words of the Trappist monk Basil Pennington. “We don’t have all the answers. There are lots of questions. And it is good to live in the question.” A pat answer, the monk went on to say, does not leave any room for mystery. Our faith, though it is solid, is also full of questions—and therefore full of hope for further revelation.

And I begin to think that maybe, just maybe, my decreased certainty and increased age is perfectly normal and even healthy. “It is better to have a little faith dearly won,” said the Scottish evangelist Henry Drummond, “than perish on the splendid plenty of the richest creeds.”

Paul gave Timothy a list of foundational beliefs, a kind of creed, if you will. But notice how short that creed is. Notice that it contains only six statements: God was manifest in the flesh; justified in the Spirit; seen of angels; preached unto the Gentiles; believed on in the world; received up into glory (1 Timothy 3:16).

Why is it, then, that subsequent creeds grew steadily longer? The 4^th century Apostle’s Creed is still limited to around 100 words, but the 1527 Schleitheim Confession of Faith has over 3,000. It is noteworthy that the 1632 Dordrecht Confession of Faith and the 1963 Mennonite Confession of Faith both have more than 5,000 words.

Perhaps as more and more distortions of Jesus’ gospel came along, the formal statements of faith also had to grow.

Perhaps. But could another explanation be that we have created an idol of certainty where God envisioned a shrine of mystery?

We say, correctly, that the Bible is our sacred text, our written revelation from God. Unfortunately, thanks to millennia of cumulative misinterpretation, many people assert as nonnegotiable a host of stances only vaguely supported by Scripture. In reality, there are many issues on which the Bible gives us clues but no hard, fast answers. Theories of atonement, eschatology, cosmology, and soteriology are all interesting and, I will be the first to say it, worthy of study. But are they worthy of our over-certainty and divisiveness?

Imagine a church that dedicates minimal energy agonizing over speculative issues. Imagine a church that instead pursues the things the New Testament wants us to guard jealously, such as practicing hospitality, sharing our possessions, forgiving those who mistreat us, praying for one another, and pursuing humility. Who wouldn’t want to join a church like that!

Isaiah 57:15 tells us the two places where God dwells: in the highest heaven, and in the contrite heart. Regarding doctrinal certitude there is not a mention

In fact, to complete the journey of faith only three things are really needed: humility, embracing mystery, and gratitude. Humility causes us to acknowledge how little we do know. Embracing mystery makes us aware of how little we can know (as St. Augustine said, “If you understand, it is not God”). And finally, we are grateful that God has revealed what we need to know, more than enough to equip us for loving Him and our neighbors.

In his recent book Twelve Rules for Life, the populist philosopher and psychologist Jordan Peterson claims that the fullest life is achieved by finding the sweet spot between chaos and order. Some academics have scorned Peterson, alleging that he is more dilettante than philosopher and that at least in some instances he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. 

I certainly hope he’s wrong about the need for chaos because if he isn’t, I grew up in a near cemetery. 

My early formation happened almost entirely among the Amish and plain Mennonites, a people who are, for all their inscrutabilities, steeped in rigid order. Anything that hints of a challenge to that order is quickly identified and exorcised. Except in the areas of farming and construction, there is little place for innovations, dissent,and  questions. We have even retained the old German word for order: ordnung. Seemingly, any area of life where chaos might surface has been anticipated so that it can be dealt with promptly. 

Detailed dress codes keep anyone from creating turbulence through excessive self-expression. Males are asked to wear button-down shirts and black shoes for all church services. Females are required to wear a cape dress, an ethnically-inspired, Swiss-German sartorial evolutionary leftover; no woman must ever once deviate from that hallowed garb if appearing in public. 

Likewise, with feelings and emotions. Instead of giving vent to their feelings, members are expected to embrace a simple four-letter word: obey. If as a child you feel unheard and neglected, then you should obey. Equally, as an adult; if you feel uneasy or wistful about how the church handles an issue, you may voice that, but you must ultimately obey. For both children and adults, a failure to squelch any rising feelings, a failure to simply obey, can lead to reprimanding and accusations of antagonism and faithlessness.

The Bible, also, is kept in a static cocoon of order. In the last century, the unspoken corporate hermeneutic has remained rigid, heavily influenced by Fundamentalists/literalists such as Daniel Kaufman and Ken Ham. In most communities, alternative interpretations are not seriously entertained.

I could go on. I could say much more about the Amish-Mennonite fixation with ordnung. I could tell you about the church my family attended when I was a teenager, where the rules specified what color car you were allowed to drive. (Black was preferable; anything north of yellow was considered prideful or even damnable.) I could tell you about the one-camera-per-family-rule, or the Christmas-is-pagan-and-must-not-be-celebrated rule, or the all-men-must-wear-beards rule. But I’ll stop now. I think you get the picture. 

And really, as caustic as all that may have sounded, I don’t mind the order as much as I used to.  In fact, the older I get, the more I concede the wisdom of it. Well, some of it at least. I still don’t see the need for regulating the tassels and phylacteries on dresses and headgear for perfectly capable and sensible adult women. Or decreeing that no member must ever be caught listening to the radio. (The Internet is allowed though, presumably because of its usefulness for business, and of course the playback podcasts of almost every radio station under the sun are freely available online.) Or the rule about public school being anathema in every situation. Or…ok, I said I would stop.

Seriously, I can tolerate most of these absurdities and inconsistencies, however egregious, because I know they bring corresponding strengths. The deep sense of community, the longstanding tradition of well-behaved children, the industriousness—these are sought-after qualities for more than a few people outside our churches.

And here’s the thing. I sincerely doubt the positive traits would continue among conservative Anabaptists if you took away the unflinching structure—arbitrary and exasperating though it may be in some facets. The pervading sense of spelt-out order actually binds the community together. And the many quirks? Unreasonable as they are at face value, they give the group social cohesion and deep belonging. 

I get all of that. But I still have lingering questions. 

What if all the energy we pour into maintaining this ordnung isn’t worth the benefits? Furthermore, have those perceived benefits actually been established, using hard data? Per capita, do the Amish and Mennonites experience less violence, destructive sexual activity, and drug abuse than do other demographics? If so, is it because of the rules or despite them? 

Is the apparent order a kind of lethal stagnation, or is it real, hard-won order? Is there a profound chaos going on just beneath the surface that we would do well to address? 

Does our sense of order keep us from other important values, such as being able to empathize with (and learn from) those whose lives are wrecked and they know it?

Maybe these questions are ill-founded and unhelpful. Maybe the Amish and Mennonites really have found the perfect balance between chaos and order, to return to Jordan Peterson’s motif. Maybe we are living out the original monastic insight of enrolling ourselves under a predetermined rule rather than freewheeling down the path of our own devices.

Maybe it’s everyone else who is wrong, and we have simply found a way to “let our ordered lives express the beauty of God’s peace,” as the Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier has it in a favorite Mennonite hymn.

I am left with questions. I feel deeply ambivalent about the issue of ordnung. But as I wait for further epiphanies, I am also hopeful. I know the Christ is working to reconcile everything in every crevice of the Universe: bond and free; Republican and Democrat; slum-dweller and suburbanite; respectable sinner and desperate sinner; male and female; heaven and earth; and, yes, even chaos and stagnation. I find comfort and rest in knowing that it isn’t Anabaptism or any other ism that is heading up this reconciliation, but the eternal Christ.

Regardless of the degree of order in your church, that’s a message to get excited about.

For as long as I can remember, I have heard God referred to as a male. In the words of a song we often sang, “There’s a father up above and He’s looking down in love.” Recently, I’ve been giving it more thought. Is God male? Is God both male and female? If so, is there a ratio? Perhaps God is 30 percent female, for instance, but 70 percent male. Predominantly male and thus the pronouns are masculine.

After discussing it, most Christians would probably agree that God transcends male and female categories. However, my guess is that fewer Christians would feel comfortable using female pronouns for God. It’s all a bit much if one grew up in a traditional religious setting to sing there’s a mother up above and she’s looking down in love (though of course that particular song is problematic for other reasons too, which we won’t address today).

And yet I am posing the question.

Praying the Psalms forms the bedrock of my devotional life. One day last month I deviated and put in female pronouns instead of the male pronouns in our English Bibles. Now it read, “God has made her salvation known and revealed her righteousness to the nations” (Psalm 98:2). I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but that fresh reading led me to a minor theophany. Did my prayers displease God that day? If so I did not sense his/her disapproval.

I like the quip from the Mennonite writer Michael Pahl that God is not a woman but then neither is she a man. Or in the similar, but markedly more patriarchal, words of the Catholic Catechism: “God is neither man nor woman: he is God.”

Personally, I remain uncertain what to think. I see valid reasons both for and against the use of male pronouns for God.

Reasons for:

• Jesus often talked about God as father.
• Throughout church history, people often referred to God with male pronouns.
• It is lovely to think of God as initiator, a trait often associated with maleness.

Reasons against:

• Using only male pronouns downplays core characteristics about God.
• Jesus and other biblical figures used female imagery to talk about God. (Father is only one of many metaphors for God.)
• Some of us will find it hard not to attribute negative human male tendencies onto God if we use only male pronouns.

No matter what pronouns are appropriate, this seems certain: God must always transcend our current conception of God. As St. Augustine said, “If we understand it, it is not God.” We must always choose between a box-demolishing God or a God-demolishing box (Greg Boyd).

Of course, it is as easy to box God in as a female as it is to box God in as a male. The further I go in my faith journey, the more I see that God is not a fixed being with a street address. God is dynamic. God is spirit and must be worshipped in spirit and truth. Personal, yes. Loving and relational, yes. But not a static old man on a throne somewhere. Both male and female, but also transcending both.

Closing thought: perhaps Jesus, God incarnate, came as a male because that was the most eloquent way for an omnipotent God to defy stereotypes of male power, show a radical willingness to lay aside might, and, ultimately, win us through sacrificial love.