Regular Reformed Podcast

Ben Woodring

Diogenes was knee deep in a stream washing vegetables. Coming up to him, Plato said, “My good Diogenes, if you knew how to pay court to kings, you wouldn’t have to wash vegetables.” “And,” replied Diogenes, “If you knew how to wash vegetables, you wouldn’t have to pay court to kings.”

Diogenes of Sinope was a philosopher of the 5th-4th century B.C. He was a contemporary and often an adversary of Plato. Unfortunately we don’t have available to us any of his many writings, however there are stories about him, such as the one quoted above, that still remain.

Diogenes was exiled from his hometown after being caught defacing the currency that his father minted. After being exiled he traveled to Athens, Greece and began following the philosopher Antisthenes.

It is said that Diogenes once visited the oracle at Delphi after he was exiled from Sinope. The oracle told him that it was his calling to continue defacing the currency. Diogenes, deciding that he wouldn’t like to be exiled from Athens as well as Sinope, chose to interpret this as a call to deface the societal or cultural currency, rather than the money itself.

Diogenes lived a life of extreme poverty and rejected the comforts that many Athenians took for granted. He believed that such comforts and pretensions were actually an obstacle to happiness and the way he taught this to his followers and those around him was by “defacing the currency” of the society or culture of ancient Greece.

By this, I mean he purposefully rejected what was valuable to those in the society or, by his actions, he would show the folly of living as though those things were valuable. This often shocked and outraged the people of Athens. For this reason he was called “a Socrates gone mad” by Plato, whose public lectures Diogenes would often disrupt. Many of the stories about Diogenes are examples of his defacement of the societal currency.

For instance, it is said that Alexander the Great was an admirer of Diogenes and at one time Alexander visited Diogenes and standing in front of him asked if there were any special favor that Alexander could grant him. Diogenes, instead of asking for some gift or paying his respects to the man instead simply asked “Move out of my sunlight.”

Because of Diogenes’ homelessness and his apparent lack of civility he was often called a dog by those who mocked him which led to his being called Diogenes the Cynic(from the Greek for dog) and led to his followers being called cynics, not to be confused with what is commonly called cynicism today.

Some have claimed that the ministry and actions of Jesus were influenced by the methods of Diogenes and the cynic movement, and it is easy to understand why. In Jesus we have a man who rejects the comforts of society “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” who openly opposed the religious, and societal conventions of his day through a very public ministry.

However, I think the ministry of Jesus is influenced by a much older tradition than that of the cynics. In fact, the defacement of currency (in the societal sense) is also a much older practice than Diogenes. One only need look to the Old Testament of scripture and the ministries of the prophets. These were ordinary men who were called to speak the words of God, often to those in power and usually against the society of Israel as a whole.

Think of Elijah, who in one of the most public examples challenges the prophets of Ba’al to a showdown. The question is asked, whose god is the real God? While the prophets of Ba’al cry out to their god to light their altar on fire while they dance around it and cut themselves, Elijah calls out to them, mocking. “Yell louder! If Baal is god perhaps he has fallen asleep. Or maybe he has gone to relieve himself.”

Or perhaps Hosea who married a prostitute who was unfaithful to him time and again, who purchased her back from slavery after she left him. All this he did as a visible expression of the love of God toward Israel and an indictment of the people of Israel and how they have acted towards their God.

Lastly, and probably most famously, Ezekiel, who over the course of his ministry did so many strange things (lay on his side for 390 days, cooked his lentils using cow feces, shaved his head in various ways) that modern commentators have suggested he was mentally unstable.

Walter Bruggemann writes in The Prophetic Imagination “The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.” Simply put, the actions of the prophets in the Old Testament were meant to disrupt the status quo of the society to which they prophesied.

We might ask, are there any modern day men or women who follow in this tradition of defacing the currency? I’m immediately reminded of Wendell Berry’s poem Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front. In which he extols the virtues and necessity of rejecting the materialism, among other things, of today’s society. He writes:

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

The problem with finding modern currency defacers is that when a person rejects and openly defies the value system of a culture or a society, they are not praised by that society but rather they are ostracized. Look back at Diogenes, at Jesus, at the prophets, which of these men lived a life of ease and comfort, respected by the educated or rich or famous of their day? They were killed by their own people because they refused to worship their gods.

A warning then for all those who would deface the currency. Be prepared for exile.

Contributed by Ryan Salyards.

The first half of the last millennium found the early church faced with the challenges of growth in the midst of broader cultural upheaval. From the persecution perpetrated by Emperor Nero to the apparent triumph of Constantinian Christendom, there is one question that has warranted constant re-evaluation: What is the role and mission of the church in relation to the surrounding culture?

Centuries later in a seemingly different world, this same question needs to be asked. Specifically in the west, where cultural upheaval has provided explicit reason to re-evaluate it, Christians would be remiss not to reconsider our long held assumptions regarding the relationship between the church and the surrounding culture.

We can no longer confidently or consistently assume that political prominence and cultural influence we have historically enjoyed are beneficial to the witness of the church. This assertion may seem counter-intuitive to many.

From the perspective of the humanistic, pragmatic nationalism that serves as the basis of much American theology, it is undoubtedly so. However, scripture proposes an entirely different standpoint from which to proceed.

In Psalm 146, we are reminded not only to withhold confidence from institutions of political power but to hope in the Lord who sets prisoners free and lifts up the oppressed. Similarly, in Hebrews 11 it is made clear that the life of faith in Christ is one of pilgrimage, rather than politicization. We are reminded to live as the faithful lived, as “strangers and exiles on the earth”, desiring “a better country, a heavenly one, city prepared for them.” The Christian is first a “citizen of heaven”, awaiting the full foundation of Christ’s kingdom, confident in his provision and protection until he comes.

While political power, moral legislation and cultural influence appear to be the sure path to protect and preserve Christian values, it is not the method prescribed by scripture. In fact, by adopting this humanistic approach to cultural transformation and placing our hope in the political schemes of the state and self-serving lobbyists, we neglect Christ’s own plan for his kingdom; we misrepresent the gospel; and we denigrate the peculiarity upon which we found our identity as the Church.

Christ’s kingdom, in his own words, is not of this world, and will come to full fruition as a result of His work, not ours. By seeking political power and cultural influence as a means of achieving what only He can, we trade the redemptive and restorative plan of God for short lived legislative morality. Similarly, the inordinate focus with which the American church seeks cultural prominence results in an unfortunate misrepresentation of the gospel.

In the words of Saint Paul in 1 Timothy, “Jesus Christ came to save sinners”, not the Supreme Court. It is “the word of the Lord” that stands forever, not constitutional law. Christ came to save his people not the governments and cultures of this world. It is, however, made clear in scripture that nations will be judged and I suspect our own will not escape this fate. A Christian would do well to examine the depth of his allegiance to these United States in comparison to his allegiance to Christ.

Lastly, since the days in which the people of God wandered the desert or lived in exile under the rule of pagan tyrants, we have been provided both clarity and comfort by scriptural reminders of our status as pilgrims or sojourners in this life. God’s promise is not one of cultural influence, however, it is something greater. In order to enjoy the comfort of living with a hope greater than that which the world can provide it is necessary to remain distinct in allegiance and culture.

To assimilate in a manner that softens the peculiarity and sometimes offensively alternative nature of Christianity is to sacrifice the foundation of the church’s identity. If we are not peculiar, if we are not set apart by the love of God in our manner of life and thought, if our lives are not built upon the gospel rather than the assertions of American Culture, than we are not the Church.

As many professing believers celebrate the election of Donald Trump and look with misplaced hope to the upcoming years in American politics, I’m left to wonder if things weren’t better under Nero. Granted, we are not thrown to lions, but we also don’t place our hope in Christ in any real and concrete manner. It is relegated to the realm of the afterlife. Furthermore, the self-satisfaction and humanistic arrogance that often stem from political power tend to extrapolate the ill effects of misplaced hope. Hope in the pseudo-Christian character of our sinful nation is such misplaced hope and it is founded upon such hubris. It will lead to fear and despair. Hope in Christ, however, will not fail, despite the trials of persecution and life in exile.

Perhaps, for a time, some of us will revel in apparent triumph as we once did under Constantine. But perhaps others might remember, that as Nero played and Rome burned, as we met among the graves of our fathers and were torn to pieces in the arena, Christ was seated firmly on his throne and we placed our hope in him.