Land theology and squatter psychology

For the past 3.5 years, I have been a squatter. I have lived in the Permsup community, a place of uncertain existence. Permsup has been home to about 500 people, the majority of whom have lived there 12-15 years or more. Some have lived there for 40 years. Ever since before I moved in, we were aware that a road project was scheduled to come straight through Permsup, evicting everyone. This pending eviction has hung over our heads like a cloud that destroys hope for the future and the freedom to plan.

It has affected me in very concrete ways. Because I never knew how long we would be here, I always felt hesitant to invest in my house and in long-term thinking programs of development. If I had known Permsup would still mostly be standing 3.5 years later, I would have made a lot of improvements to my house, both for my own living situation as well as to be a community resource center, perhaps with a computer lab for teaching skills to the neighbors and so on. In affect, the cloud of eviction forced me to live like a camper, wanting to live there among the people to identify with them and stand with them in solidarity and build relationships, but afraid to really move in and invest like this was truly my home. I was always afraid any investments made would be bulldozed away in short time.

And so it is for my neighbors as well. They live an uncertain existence, never feeling like this is truly their home, but cherishing the cheap housing it provides currently too much to plan for a better and more costly future. Without land rights, a community cannot develop. There is no foundation. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the area’s I’m hoping to grow in in the coming year is the spirit of grace-ful dialogue. (I.e. speaking the truth with love, constructive conflict, etc.) One of the models I look to in this is Brian McLaren. As can be seen from my other posts, I’ve gained a lot from McLaren’s writings in the last year. But I believe perhaps his greatest contribution to the church will be remembered as the grace-full-ness in which he shared his ideas and engaged critics. One of my mentors who knows McLaren personally said that he is the “classic non-bridge-burner”. He does everything he can to maintain relationships and avoid burning bridges. Especially as I continue to be shaped in my theology by McLaren, Dallas Willard, and N.T. Wright and begin to be more vocal about this new worldview and understanding of what the Good News of Jesus is (which might be pushing the envelope for many in traditional evangelical circles), I hope to learn this spirit of grace-ful dialogue so that I might point to the Kingdom of God at all times. As this same mentor of mine says, its more important to be in right fellowship than to be right.

I just read this article on McLaren’s website. It is a “friendly note” to his critics sharing his desire for grace-ful dialogue between them that would represent the Kingdom of God well rather than the mean-spirited dialogue which often predominates in religious debate. I think it is a great summary of Christian ethics for grace-ful dialogue and useful for meditating on and putting into practice. I hope you are blessed by the article as I have been and will be.

I’m preparing to lead a manuscript study next Monday in our house church in the Permsup squatter community. We’re looking at Mark 3:20-30, the passage about binding the strong man. As I’m thinking of ways to get our folks to connect with and experience this passage, I realize that the traditional Strong Man, Satan, is a squatter himself. My neighbors and I in Permsup are squatters on the land. We don’t own it and in fact a highway is planned for construction right through here. We will be evicted. When the day of eviction comes, we could, I suppose, put up a fight and stand our ground, making the authorities remove us forcefully. In which case they would have to essentially bind us up or overpower us like the strong man in the passage. It could be done. And we would be removed and the land be freed for others. For the government to build their road. For the “real” owners to sell their property or develop it.

I’m not trying to demonize us squatters, to be sure. But I think its interesting to compare to Satan’s situation. He squats on a lot of land, both literally and figuratively. He’s not the rightful owner to any of it. And though it may take force, we can remove him and return the land or “land” to the Kingdom of God and its purposes. We need to claim that authority to evict Satan the strong man squatter. To evict him from people’s lives, to evict him from social dynamics, to evict him from misusing alcohol and sex, to evict him from disease, to evict him from people’s worldviews where he maintains the reign of hopelessness and fatalism….We need to bind him up and steal (or more accurately as I’ve described to reclaim) people’s lives and communities from him. These goods are infinitely valuable in the Kingdom of God.