{"id":1867,"date":"2012-05-07T12:32:28","date_gmt":"2012-05-07T12:32:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/?p=1867"},"modified":"2018-07-20T19:49:08","modified_gmt":"2018-07-20T19:49:08","slug":"simone-weil-and-the-church-uprooted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2012\/05\/simone-weil-and-the-church-uprooted.html","title":{"rendered":"Simone Weil and the Church Uprooted"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some of you know that one of my favorite thinkers is Simone Weil. \u00a0Last night I read a short chapter on this twentieth century French philosopher and social activist by another of her admirers, the historian John Lukacs, in <em>Remembering Past<\/em>. \u00a0Lukacs notes that what makes Weil&#8217;s thought so compelling is her reactionary resistance to the materialism of her context and her unwavering commitment to truth above even justice itself.<\/p>\n<p>Then this morning cleaning out my bedside drawers I stumbled upon a quote from Weil in one of my journals. \u00a0Weil, in my favorite work of hers, <em>Waiting for God<\/em>, writes: &#8220;It is necessary to uproot oneself. \u00a0Cut down the tree and make a cross and carry it forever after.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Weil&#8217;s biographer takes this statement as evidence of Weil&#8217;s capacity to love people as they really are- not as the product of an illusion. \u00a0In Weil&#8217;s time, much like in our own, it was tempting to view people and the world in terms of &#8220;categories&#8221; (the oppressed &#8220;proletariat&#8221; in a struggle for liberation being one example)- to place them in ideological &#8220;homes.&#8221;\u00a0The challenge in loving, though, is to disrupt one&#8217;s own &#8220;at-homeness&#8221; in any institution or ideology so that we can encounter others as they really are (not as we would have them be).\u00a0And, maybe this is a bit of what the apostle Paul is expressing in 1 Corinthians 9, when he says he &#8220;has become everything to everyone in order to save at least some of them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Not long ago I heard Morgan Chilalu, the pastor of a small African church in the middle of the A.I.D.S. pandemic, say this: &#8220;A church that lives within its own four walls is no church at all.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>God&#8217;s mission requires at the most fundamental level a willingness on our parts to <em>uproot<\/em> ourselves. \u00a0By this I don&#8217;t mean that we all have to sell our homes and move to the Far East to become missionaries. \u00a0But I do suspect that it does mean that any time we find ourselves becoming too comfortable in the church, we need to ask ourselves <em>why- <\/em>because what Weil is talking about, is, I think, at the core of Jesus&#8217; message to take up our cross and follow Him. <em>Real<\/em> church as Jesus envisions it, I suppose necessitates our exile.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some of you know that one of my favorite thinkers is Simone Weil. \u00a0Last night I read a short chapter on this twentieth century French philosopher and social activist by another of her admirers, the historian John Lukacs, in Remembering Past. \u00a0Lukacs notes that what makes Weil&#8217;s thought so compelling is her reactionary resistance to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":461,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119,25,15,65,122,5],"tags":[22,516,663,61,664],"class_list":["post-1867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-jesus","category-mission","category-the-bible","category-theology","category-women","tag-apostle-paul","tag-evangelism","tag-mission-2","tag-simone-weil","tag-what-is-the-church"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - 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Fellowship of Saints and Sinners","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2012\/05\/simone-weil-and-the-church-uprooted.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Simone Weil and the Church Uprooted - Fellowship of Saints and Sinners","og_description":"Some of you know that one of my favorite thinkers is Simone Weil. \u00a0Last night I read a short chapter on this twentieth century French philosopher and social activist by another of her admirers, the historian John Lukacs, in Remembering Past. \u00a0Lukacs notes that what makes Weil&#8217;s thought so compelling is her reactionary resistance to&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2012\/05\/simone-weil-and-the-church-uprooted.html","og_site_name":"Fellowship of Saints and Sinners","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/kristina.robbdover","article_published_time":"2012-05-07T12:32:28+00:00","article_modified_time":"2018-07-20T19:49:08+00:00","author":"Kristina Robb-Dover","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@saintplussinner","twitter_site":"@saintplussinner","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2012\/05\/simone-weil-and-the-church-uprooted.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/fellowshipofsaintsandsinners\/2012\/05\/simone-weil-and-the-church-uprooted.html","name":"Simone Weil and the Church Uprooted - 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