The Rea$on for the Season

An example of Godly retailing

[Originally published December 2, 2005. Please note the subtle use of sarcasm so I don't get in trouble.]

We all know that Christmas is a Christian holiday. Jesus was born on December 24th, a couple hours before Santa showed up, and then the magi came with presents for the newborn king, so that is why we get stuff too. But our nation is going to pot. Can you believe that some retail chains are calling Christmas trees “Holiday trees”? This nation has forgotten its godly heritage! Everyone knows that Jesus was born under a Christmas tree. And the ornaments sparkled in his eyes when he first opened them.

But these liberal postmodern antichristian secular humanist politically correct revisionists are ruining our nation and our godly heritage. They take our Christian symbols, like the Christmas tree, and turn them into mere cultural symbols without honoring the truth of the Bible. They shop for our holiday without understanding the meaning of their shopping. Secular consumerism is spreading across the land!

That’s why I was so glad when I got this email forward today. Someone is finally taking a stand for what is right:

Great News! Walgreens Says “Next Year Will Be Different”

Because of your efforts, Walgreens has released the following response: “Next year, you can be assured our advertising will better incorporate ‘Christmas,’ and our holiday trees will be called Christmas trees. Unfortunately, all of this year’s December ads are already printed, so it’s too late to make changes for this season.”

In addition, Lowe’s has released a statement saying they now refer to all trees as “Christmas Trees” and have removed all signs that previously calling hem “Holiday Trees.”

Your actions are bringing good results! We are hearing that many retailers are re-thinking their banning Christmas. Keep up the good work!

Would you please send the enclosed polite letter to Kmart/Sears asking them to make Christmas an integral part of their promotions and advertising next year?

Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman
American Family Association
[Note: I did not make this up!]

Wildman’s organization is helping to reclaim Christmas, so PTL! But there is still a lot of work to do. The next target is, well, Target. Wildman has laid down an ultimatum and asked Target to “make Christmas an ‘integral part’ of its promotions and advertising in next year’s Christmas season.”  But since Target has not responded he is going to call on his 2.8 million constituents to boycott the retailer for the rest of the Christmas season. “Target doesn’t want to offend a small minority who oppose Christmas, but they don’t mind offending Christians who celebrate the birth of Christ, the Reason for the [shopping] season,” Wildman said. We need to stand firm with him for a Christian retail season and a Christian consumer nation.

But in the meantime, if you need to do some Christmas shopping and you are too offended to go to Lowes, Kmart/Sears, or Walgreens (we aren’t banning them, but they still might have offensive materials laying about in plain sight), you can always go the your local Christian Bookstore. They always have an abundance of Christian gifts, trinkets, knick-knacks, figurines, ornaments, plastic hangamathingys, decorative plates (not for eating!), and an endless supply of other extruded Christmas deck-the-halls-ware that will help you celebrate the real rea$on for the season.

Another Reason for the Season

I don’t mean any disrespect to Christmas with this, I’m just saying… It’s kind of funny.

Should We Study the Bible Academically?

I’m reading and excellent book by Dale C. Allison, one of the most important scholars of Matthew. It’s called The New Moses, and it  puts forth the idea that in Matthew Jesus is subtly presented as a new Moses, especially through allusions and references, sometimes clear and sometimes obscure, to the Old Testament. In his discussion Allison makes a point that I think is HUGE for those of us who are Christians and also working in the academic discipline of biblical studies. It’s a point I have often pondered and I have also been asked about but which is rarely actually addressed in the literature.

Allison says that before the modern academic study of the Bible, the intertextual references and typology that are everywhere present in the Bible were seen as theological. This means that they implied something about God. For example, if Jesus is much like Moses, if he is a “new edition” of Moses, this points to God’s work in history as paradigmatic repetition. There is progress, but it is progress according to a consistent pattern. That is a theological point. It attempts to say something about God and the real world. But for modern scholars the study of typology and intertextuality is only of literary and historical interest. It is not about truth, but about what people in history said. (See the quotation here)

Unfortunately, this point most often goes unstated by modern scholarship, which can lead to some confusion. Here are people who are to all appearances passionate about Scripture, but in all their energy they don’t seem to be interested in the ultimate questions it raises. And so we ask, why do they bother? Why are they even interested in the Bible if they don’t believe it an inspired source of “theology” (truth)? One way of answering this it to ask another question: Why would anyone bother to study Plato, Aristotle, Dante or Milton? Presumably because they are interested in history and literature. On the other hand, I can’t help but to ponder some less complimentary reasons: Because they are drawn to controversy and enjoy playing the part of the iconoclast? Because it’s what they studied and invested their careers in and now, even though they for whatever reason are no longer believers, they still have to make a living? Because there is an “academic industry” that supports controversial biblical studies? because the media and the book buying public love scholars who used to be “fundamentalists” but have now seen the light of liberal reasonableness? Surely these are all real reasons. But also, to be charitable, we need to understand that many liberal/modernist biblical scholars do have a theological understanding of the Bible. It’s just very different from the view of most Christians. It’s a lot more subtle, a lot more diffuse. It’s about religious insight more than revelation. It’s about the appreciation of great religious minds and movements based on the conviction that all insights of these kinds are valid and important.

The Allison Quote on Typology and Theology

This is the quote from Dale C. Allison’s New Moses that inspired my post on studying the Bible academically. I appreciate the direction he takes at the end, but I think it’s a bit of a copout. Is his thinking really so complex that he can’t spend a few pages on it? He seems really good at explaining all sorts of things in the rest of the book!

I shall muster my arguments as an historian, and that is as far as the present investigation dare go: I shall not be doing theology. I am fully cognizant, however, that study of Matthew’s new Moses theme raises a very difficult issue. We may–I certainly do–admire the aesthetics of Matthew’s literary art. For most of us, however, there is no longer anything mysterious or profound about his Moses typology. Since John Toland and the eighteenth-century rationalists, and especially since David Friedrich Strauss and the rise of nineteenth-century biblical criticism, typology has shown itself to be merely a literary device. Its rather common appearance in the secular fiction of the las two centuries only confirms this. Matthew, on the other hand, like the Church Fathers, medieval theologians, and pre-liberal Protestants, almost certainly believed that typological correlations have some deep meaning, that they hold important clues for fathoming God’s obscure intentions. Was our evangelist in this particular simple deluded? Must we now dismiss his typological method as without doctrinal relevance? My own thoughts on the matter are sufficiently diffuse and complex as to exceed my powers of condensation, and this book is long enough already. For what it is worth, I am not convinced that Matthew and his typology necessarily belong to what Jaroslav Pelikan has called “the cemetery where history has buried tradition.” But my reasons must await another day. (p. 8-0)

I’ll also throw in this other quote, provided by Allison, that explains the medieval view of typology and allusion.

It is often poetic in essence. Sometimes it has greater value because of its power of suggestion than because of its clarity or precision; it hints at much more that it says. But for that very reason it is the better suited to express spiritual experience which is completely impregnated with a mysterious light impossible to analyze. Furthermore, though lacking in precision, this vocabulary is endowed with a great wealth of content. From J. Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, p. 75-76.

There is something in that approach that is worth recovering, I think.

John Calvin the Preacher

Calvin's personal seal

I just listened to a great lecture on Calvin by my fellow Regent Classmate JB Krohn, who now lives and works in South Africa.

Click here to listen: John Calvin the Preacher

Really appreciating the emphasis on Calvin as preacher and pastor. Though we often think of him as a theologian, everything he wrote and studied supported his preaching. For Calvin preaching was the unveiling of the glory of God. Preaching was the place where God met his people and spoke to them. He believed you had to preach through the Bible and that you had to preach everything that was in the text, and nothing that is not in the text.

I loved JB’s comments about how pastors are tempted to be experts on everything, the idea being that since everyone listens to you, you might as well keep talking. This is perhaps the greatest source of nonsense in the pulpit today. Karl Barth also had some good things to say about this, as he continually insisted that he was a theologian and he could tell you what theology and Bible tell you about a topic (and of course, he believed it to be of the utmost importance), but that he was not about to present you with an evaluation of an issue o question from a different perspective.

I sometimes wonder if this would not be a good approach in our public discourse, to emphasize more not so much that I believe something, but what the Bible says about it.

Several other points I picked up from JB’s lecture:

• If you think about Calvin’s personality and the sheer amount of time he spent preaching, you might be tempted to wonder if his congregants would have been bored to death. Imagine 6 AM Sunday morning winter services with Calvin and no central heating and “to death” could take on a more litteral meaning! Not very seeker friendly. But JB says that his conviction that preaching is where God meets his people led to an intensity of presentation that was anything but boring. I’ve had thoughts along these lines before. Like, if people are bored with your preaching, could it be that you are not really saying anything important? Or that you lack a certain personal zeal for the material?
• Great image of the work of the pastor/theologian: He chews the word of God in order to make it digestible for his congregation. You know, like some animals do for their offspring. Don’t push the image too far or it gets kind of gross, but I think it is an accurate picture. I think the preacher needs to understand that his job is not to pass on everything he has learned or knows to the congregation (a mistake many folks straight out of seminary make), but to use what he has learned to explain and apply the word of God to those who are under his care.
• Preaching is worship. It’s about the majesty of Jesus. Calvin was an “exaltational expositor.” Usually we make a distinction between “worship” (when we sing) and preaching. But preaching is also worship. One implication is that we ough not be obsessed with providing an application for every sermon (do we feel the need to “apply” every worship song?). Sometimes we just sit back and take in the glory of God. I have no doubt that this changes us, but we don’t have to obsess about how exactly.
• Calvin warned that the reformation in England could come to nought if the preaching of the word was not developed better. Could that apply to Evangelicalism in North America?
• Calvin’s personal seal (pictured) was a hand holding up a heart to God with the inscription, “My heart, I give you, O Lord, promptly and sincerely.”

I Am a Published Author

Click on the image to purchase!

My book Interpretación Eficaz Hoy (Effective Interpretation Today) came out last month, published by Editorial CLIE in Spain. Yes, it is in Spanish.

As you ought to deduce it is a book about how to interpret the Bible.  I wrote it for the main audience of my ministry in Latin America: Pastors who are working in their ministries but have not had the chance to attend a seminary of Bible school.  I am very happy with the design and quality of the book. It came out to 300 pages, and the publisher wants to position it as the standard work for Bible colleges and Seminaries. Since it was written for pastors in ministry it will also be an apt resource for those who are studying to enter the ministry.

I am also very happy to have received two enthusiastic endorsements. One from Craig Blomberg, who is a professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary. He is a well known author of many books on Bibllical studies. If you are into Lee Strobel’s “Cases” you will know that Craig is one of the experts he interviews. The second was from Christopher Shaw, who contrary to the sound of his name, is an Argentine and editor of the biggest magazine for pastors in South America.

In November I did a conference in Mexico and had the wonderful priviledge of signing my first books. That was a lot of fun.

The challenges of fundraising

I’m working on fundraising again. According to my sister, who has read books on this, the conventional wisdom is that you have to sit down face to face, one on one with people and say, “Hey, would you like to support my ministry? How much can I put you down for?” But I’m sorry, I’m just not going to do that to people. Maybe it’s because if someone did that to me I would tell them to take their sales techniques and stuff them.

On the other hand, I do agree that personal contact is important. The temptations I deal with are using communication methods that distance me from personal interaction, because that makes it easier emotionally.

• There’s the newsletter. If you send that out, people will read it and want to support the ministry, right? Not really. You will get a small response to that, but it will probably be people who would have found out some other way and supported you anyway. The way I see the newsletter, it is a maintenance tool. It says, “Hey, here we are doing our thing. Your support is well placed! We are using it well.” It can also set the stage for later support. So for example, you might send the newsletter to a group of people who said they could not support you. But then after a couple years things have changed and your ministry is now an option because of the communication with the newsletter. But all of us who are doing this know that the newsletter is no panacea. You have to do more than that.
• And then, email. It is very tempting to use emails to introduce the idea of support. I think that it can be OK if you already know the person and you are not using the email to avoid personal contact. For example, I have good friends who are “gatekeepers” and we both know how the system works. It’s not awkward to ask. It’s just something you have to do. In that case, you can just drop a line. But when it comes to making contact with a group, like say to ask to speak at a church, I always think it is best to call and have a live conversation, even though I am sorely tempted to fall back on an email. It’s just better to step out and talk, and feel awkward. No way around it.
• So in conclusion, the phone is probably my best friend.
• Oh, and then there’s the blog entry. Very indirect. Very non-confrontational. Would any of you like to support my ministry? You probably should, since it is has a great impact on pastors in several different countries and it even has a global reach. What could be more worthwhile than supporting leadership development of Christians around the world? It’s that monthly check that is needed. That is the bread and butter of any ministry. Think about it?

Criticisms, Condemnations and Jeremiads

I have a huge problem with people who go on long jeremiads, roundly condemning views they disagree with as evil, or as “compromising the word of God” and other such things. It really bugs me.

After many interactions with this type of thing I believe there is a profile to these kinds of attacks. It may be related to personality, but I think it is also tied to a certain evangelical subculture. These are its features or premises:

• When people are wrong about what the Bible teaches, they are not just incorrect, not growing, not in dialogue. They are deceived. They may also be hypocrites. They are morally reprehensible. They don’t just need to change their minds, they need to repent. Also they teach “false doctrine”.
• The proper response to “false doctrine” is angry condemnation. Sometimes very eloquent angry condemnation. A person who teaches “false doctrine” does not have the right to be addressed in a civil manner. Their posture makes it clear that they need stronger medicine. Or perhaps the thought is that since the teacher of “false doctrine” is already lost, he is not a concern. The goal is to attack with all force in order to keep others from being swayed by lies.
• In this profile it is very common to contrasts “the doctrines of men” with “the word of God,” the latter coinciding with the view of the defender of orthodoxy. It is “the truth”. This person remains blissfully unaware that his understanding of the Bible has also been conditioned by his own thinking, personal history and personal predilections. To even suggest this would be anathema, modernism or postmodernism. The word of God is hermeneutically uncomplicated. This is why those who disagree and “teach false doctrine” are seen as morally deficient. What other reason could there possibly be?
• Another way to say it, is that there is a failure to distinguish between the truth and my opinion. “Opinion” is not a legitimate category. It’s just a sign of compromise.
• There is an inability to distinguish between WHAT is said and HOW something is said. This is something I am continually trying to clarify for people. If, for example, on a website I run I block a comment for saying, “You are teaching the doctrines of the devil,” the typical response is to say that I am a coward, or that I am an enemy of the truth or some such thing. If I write back and say: “You can express any opinion, just find a more respectful way,” it makes no difference.  I am still an enemy of the truth, etc. The premise seems to be that anything that stands in the way of the uninhibited expression of “truth” is evil.
• The defense of “the truth” or “sound doctrine” is explicitly modeled on Jesus’ interactions with the Pharisees. This paradigm seems to justify the heaping of any amount of abuse on an interlocutor. The suggestion that we put the brakes on the rhetoric can easily get a response like, “Did Jesus compromise with the Pharisees?” This means that accusations of Pharisaism, hypocrisy, false religion, and leading the people astray are always near to hand. The basic pattern is: there are religious hypocrites who impede the truth and there are righteous defenders of the truth.

It’s a very sad situation because these people are so self-righteous that they have closed themselves off from balancing influences. All the teaching in scripture about humility, patience, respect, avoidance of foolish controversies, being an example to the world, and loving each other are tossed aside without a thought in favor of feeding a fire for doctrinal purity. I suppose this fire is fed by various preachers, radio programs and books. People who have zeal without knowledge.

Now here’s the big question: Am I guilty of dismissing these people as easily as they dismiss me?!

Are You Living Simply?

A local pastor here in Bellingham shared some ideas on how to live simply that he and his elders came up with. This would be a great forward or a Facebook survey where you get scored on how simply you live. Some are kind of funny. If you are overwhelmed you can just pick one.

• Consolidate your driving trips and save time, fuel and money.
• Don’t Shave.
• Have a TV free night or Week, or get rid of the whole darn thing.
• Get rid of Cable.
• Double your recipes and give the other half away, or freeze it for later.
• Plan your giving at the beginning of the year.
• Spend a night without electricity.
• Buy secondhand or recycled things.
• Turn your heat down.
• Keep the Sabbath.
• Utilize the Library and spend more time reading.
• Send less E-mail.
• Declutter your house and take a trip to the Goodwill.
• Check E-mail only once a day, or once a week.
• Turn off background noise.
• Cook for the week in one day.
• Plan out errands.
• Get rid of your cars.
• Make your own Christmas Cards.
• Trade toys, books, DVDs with other families.

Critizicing the Church Constructively

We live in times of great superficiality and thoughtlessness. Because of this it is often necessary  for those who call ourselves Christian to criticize our own practices and institutions. I just unloaded on the Catholic Church, for example. And I think it is legit to do this. It is also in keeping with our biblical tradition. Both Jesus and the prophets of the Old Testament were very vocal critics of compromise and hypocrisy.

I once attended a church where the pastor’s paranoia of being criticized translated into regular browbeatings during sermons about how wrong it was to criticize “Jesus’ bride”. This made it unspiritual to question bad decisions. It was ironically clear that he was protecting himself in the guise of protecting the church and it was no surprise that the church did not survive long. He is no longer a pastor today. We who are so conscious of being sinners saved by grace ought to be of all people the most open to criticism.

So I will admit that I’m not above criticism (if you catch the double meaning), BUT how can we criticize constructively? Some great thoughts from Felipe Beach point us in the right direction:

“…I’m really recognizing more and more how criticizing about elements of a worship service in church is a very, very slippery slope. More often that not, this practice generally puts us in a selfish state of mind (kind of defeating the whole reason we’re even AT church); as a result, anytime I’m in a service and find my thoughts going in that direction, it’s a chore to refocus myself on the experience of giving thanks to God, and learning how to know Him better.

Also, keep in mind, if you’re not a Bible-believing Christian, and don’t really have personal experience in these type of venues, my “complaints” are very minor ones. By and large, most churches I’ve been to are totally legit (not hiding little secret agendas or anything, much as the entertainment world would love us to think). Still, just like any family has its quirks, our church families often drive us nuts, but not so nuts that we’re going to turn our backs on them.”

It’s also important to keep in mind, in line with this, that our criticism is very often heard by non-believers. Let’s do it, therefore, “apologetically” in the sense that when we offer a critique it should have the effect of pointing to the high and excellent standards our faith is based on, and not merely highlighting out petty personal disgruntlements.

Please Tie a Large Stone Around your Neck and Jump into the Sea

Another report of systemic child abuse in the Catholic Church. This time in Ireland, where for years the official policy of church officials was to cover up allegations in the interest of protecting the reputation of the church.

The Allegations:

• The 750-page report examines complaints of abuse of over 320 children.
• It involved a representative sample of 46 priests in the Dublin Archdiocese between 1975 and 2004.
• It said the archdiocese obsessively covered up widespread sexual abuse of children by priests until the mid-1990s.
• The Church adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitude.
• Typically, complainants were not told that other instances of child sexual abuse by their abuser had been proved or admitted.
• One priest admitted to sexually abusing over 100 children.
• Another accepted that he had abused on a fortnightly basis over 25 years.

Source: Church covered up allegations of assaults by priests for decades

The greatest scandal here is not the abuse itself, as horrific as that is. The greatest disgrace is that the leaders of this “church” thought the reputation of their organization was more important than the life, health and dignity of the children placed under its care. A church that can do that does not deserve to be called a church. Shut it down. Close the doors. Auction off the property and give it to the abused. The day that happens and the guilty priests walk through town in sackcloth and ashes I’ll think about changing my assessment. This institution has lost all credibility in a world that hates above all else religious hypocrisy. This same church that stands against divorce, homosexuality, and abortion is also famous for pedophilia. It’s over guys. No one believes you anymore. You are a sad and twisted joke.

A Few Suggestions for Horny Priests

After the latest round of revelations of pedophilia in Ireland, I think it’s time to provide some practical help for horny Catholic priests. Here are some ideas:

1. Let’s set up a public fund they can use to go on a “date” when they feel the urge. Wouldn’t that be better than what they have been doing?
2. Go back to the practice of keeping live-in girlfriends, which was perfectly acceptable back in the old days (Middle Ages). That would definitely be more healthy.
3. Make sure they all have a live Internet connection in a secluded corner of their church or monastery where they can view porn. However, install filtering software that blocks child porn. Wouldn’t that be better than abusing helpless children? I think so.
4. Online intimate dating services for priests? Totally anonymous and confidential.
5. Matthew 18:8.
6. In the 16th century Martin Luther had a matchmaking service for priests and nuns who wanted out of callings for which they were manifestly unsuited. Maybe we should start that up again.
7. Deal with the problem using the resources of the Christian faith. I know that is a ridiculous notion, because it would involve admitting that there is a problem. In the Catholic Church there are no problems.
8. I offer this final suggestion as playful irony only, because it obviously goes beyond all bounds of propriety and is not even remotely possible.  In fact, it is more evil than any of the other options even though it could arguably make a pretty significant dent in them: let Catholic priests get married!

More Strange Reasons My Fellow Christians Give Against Social Healthcare

The BBC did a special on healthcare around the world and in one segment they spoke with a Christian pastor in Arizona.

This pastor presented the following reasoning for rejecting social healthcare: He does not think socialism is biblical. The interviewer asked why a socialized program that helped people did not qualify as biblical. After all, it was helping the poor and loving the neighbor. The pastor’s answer was the following:

“The Bible says that we should love people from the heart, not based on the law. But a social program makes us love others by obedience to the law and it is a form of legalism.”

This is terrible. It’s embarrassing. It’s horrible. Why?

1. It’s terrible because the Bible does not say that we should only love people from the hart and not based on the law. If you think it does then please show me the passage that makes this point, because I have never seen it.
2. It’s an embarrassingly simple logical fallacy. This pastor (and many others) confuse the biblical theological discussion about law and salvation with the role of law in society, merely because the terminology is similar. But obviously these are different topics. Law in the New Testament pertains to God’s moral requirements which humans can never achieve. Against this background Christ is presented as God’s gracious provision for salvation. The laws of a modern nation are pragmatic human arrangements that help us create a good society. It is not relevant whether they are practiced from the heart or not. The relevant question is whether they uphold justice.
3. By the pastor’s reasoning we should not have any laws, for they all require “legalistic” obedience. I wonder what his position is on abortion? I hope he agrees with me that there ought to be a law against it.
4. Finally, to say that we should not enact a pragmatic solution to a problem because the problem must be resolved “from the heart” has the convenient effect of removing all social accountability. For who can be forced to build a better society “from the heart”? By definition, no one. Thus we do nothing. We just sit back and keep anything productive from occurring because God forbid we become legalists.

There may be good arguments against socialized medicine. My point here is not to deny that. But this argument is not one of them.

Americans Love the Fiction that they are Not Socialists

You Too Can Perform the Mass!

The word online is that this is a hoax. We are all praying this is so:

“A family shouldn’t have to wait until Sunday to worship the Lord. Now you can go to church every day without leaving your home. Participate in more than 24 unique and exhilarating Ceremonies.” Prayer Works Interactive.

A screen shot of the rituals game.

But as an evangelical Protestant I have to admit that “exhilarating” and “ceremony” are not words I usually use in the same sentence without an adversative.

Theological issue: is it OK for non-ordained players to perform ceremonies? Shouldn’t there be virtual ordinations? Still waiting for the Vatican to weigh in.

Is it OK to Bless Oil for Healing?

This Sunday I preached at a church in Matamoros, Mexico. It was an 80 year old historic building that belongs to a church with Assemblies of God roots. Well, to cut to the chase, there was a prayer time after the sermon where those who were sick came up and knelt at the front and the elders prayed and anointed them with oil. It was quite loud with raised voices and music and singing.  Suddenly a woman came up to me and put a small bottle of olive oil in my hand and asked me to bless it. I didn’t get what she was talking about and I had only heard about half of it because of the noise.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “What do you want me to do?”

“Could you bless this oil,” she answered, “so I can use it to heal my mother.”

I was suddenly on the spot, totally off guard and not sure what to say. This feels a lot like magic, like placing spiritual power in objects.  It also connects to superstitious catholicism. This is exactly the kind of thing that I’m always saying is a problem in Latin America. I’m always presenting my ministry as the solution! But I have to admit that I kind of froze up. With all the noise and being in a foreign environment and not knowing where the lady was coming from. I had a fleeting remembrance that helped me a bit, which was that in Acts it talks about Paul sending out handkerchiefs that cured people. So I prayed for the oil, asking that God would use it for healing. I guess that in retrospect I did not technically “bless” it.  But then I changed strategy and arrived at what was the best approach: I prayed that God would give this woman in front of me the gift of healing.

It took this picture after the service.

I think next time I will say something like: “Let me pray for you, that God will use you. It’s not the oil that heals, but God through your prayers.”  Now, whether I can really communicate that over the sound of heartfelt prayers and loud worship music is another question.

We live and learn.

How to avoid the H1N1 virus

Since I have suppressed immunities I am one of those “high risk” individuals for catching the flu this season. I did not get a vaccination becausethey ran out before I got in line. So I am perhaps more conscious than others of practices and situations that are more risky than others.

For example, In my church we do communion every week with an open plate of bread pieces. This AM started thinking about it and I became alarmed. There are two plates of bread and this means that about half of the church grabs a piece of bread from and breathes on each of the plates. Not to mention the person who holds the plate at roughly chest level the whole time. It was not because of a spiritual eagerness that I was first in line this morning for communion. This observation was probably based on another thing I experienced this week: 5-6 people gathering in a house and sharing chips out of a bowl. I suddenly felt enlightened and I thought: “I can’t believe we are doing this”! So the principle here is:

• Be careful with communal eating, especially taking food by hand from a common plate.

Another one: Shaking hands. As is well known the primary matrix for the flu is hands. Of course, the virus comes out through coughing, sneezing or spittle. But generally that does not travel from one person to another. Usually it gets on a surface and is transmitted to hands and hands go to faces (mouth, nose, eyes). I doubt that we can break the habit of shaking hands, and we don’t really need to. It’s the other habit that needs breaking:

• Keep hands out of face! I’m no expert, but as I understand it this is the primary way in which the flu is caught.

A final thought for now: We need to think not just in terms of how to protect ourselves, but how to protect our communities. One thing I see as problematic is self assessment. I don’t know how many times someone with cold/flu symptoms has told me that it’s OK because they are no longer contagious. HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT? Are you a doctor? Has the doctor declared you contagion free? Do you even have any idea of what you are talking about? Let’s be clear about this: You have no right to make medical assumptions that put others at risk. If you aren’t healthy you might be contagious, so make the assumption that protects others.

There is an exception, though: You can wear a mask.  If you do that and wash your hands (and you seem to be recovering) I think it is appropriate to appear in public with a mask. Unfortunately we don’t have a culture that values this extremely sensible practice. I think we need to start! Of course we can also wear masks to protect ourselves from sick people.  Remember that it’s mainly the hands that make you sick, but the mask protects you both ways. It minimizes risk of breathing in the virus, but is also keeps your hands out of your mouth and nose.  So:

• Don’t mix with others if you have flu symptoms (btw: a cough is not a sufficient symptom).
• If you might be contagious, wear a mask. It’s not that big of a deal.
• If you fear contagion, wear a mask. It’s not that big of a deal.

For a flu self-assessment and other good info go to: flu.gov

Healthcare and a strong view of human sin

This from an article from Brad Green on why Christians are not so sure about health care expansion.

Christians have a strong view of human sin, and thus are often not inclined to want to grant large amounts of power to any governmental body. Many Christians are wary of the tendency of governmental bodies to abuse power. Hence, many Christians in the U.S. have sought to be godly citizens by promoting justice and seeking the good of the city via other means than massive expansions of power, especially power at the federal level.

I do hear things like this all the time and I find them frustrating because they are built on false premises.  A strong view of human sin does not translate to “we should avoid governmental programs.” Supposedly the great thing about our government is its unprecedented use of checks and balances!  I happen to think they are working pretty well. In any case we do have to live together somehow and it is unrealistic to think that a nation as complex as ours can function without investing large amount of power in a governmental body. The only real question at this stage is how that large power will be used, not whether to invest it.

Hurray for working at justice “via other means” but what if some issues cannot be solved that way? Mass inequalities require mass solutions. Mass problems require mass thinking. It’s not enough to just do your little thing in your own backyard when that leaves millions of needy people untouched. How is that just?  But laws have the power to create mass-level solutions; they give us the power to do good for a greater number of people.

I don’t think it makes any sense to automatically dismiss all mass level political solutions on principle. And in practice Christians don’t do it anyway. Who was it that was trying to pass a marriage amendment a while ago?

Thank you Tameion for pointing out the article.

Philosophers and madmen

Aldous Huxley’s first novel, Crome Yellow, was written in the early 20s when the world was still reeling form the effects of the Great War (WW1). It’s one of these exploratory pieces of literature with almost no plot and an agenda that is so subtle as to be almost indiscernible (Joseph Conrad was thrilled with his Heart of Darkness because he was pretty sure almost no one would know what it was really about. That is the type of thing I am talking about). And yet for all that it is still a fascinatingly prophetic book.

Huxley’s novels are mostly excuses to deal with ideas. His most famous book, Brave New World, stands next to (perhaps even above) Orwell’s 1984 as one of the classic literary warnings about the direction the 20th century was headed. Most commentators seem to agree that Huxley was more accurate than Orwell.

In Crome Yellow you have a group of upper class intellectuals and artists “on holiday” in the town of Crome (I still haven’t figured out where the yellow comes from) in England and they lead us on a tour of all the hot topics of the early 20s: The Great war, cubism, psychology, relativity, sex, scientific progress and religion.

I was captured in particular by a conversation between Dennis, the protagonist of the story, and Scogan, a would-be philosopher. Sitting in the uncomfortably hot Summer afternoon sun, Scogan inflicts his view of the world on Dennis, who pays attention in spite of his dislike of the bright heat and the topic in general.

Three Free Sins

Webcaster Steve Brown (“a seminary professor who’s sick of religion”). Has an interesting marketing tactic. On his web site you can use a form to give 3 free sins to your friends. It’s classic internet marketing where you offer people something wacky or controversial (or both) and in return they spread your name and draw traffic to your site.

Now this is a lighthearted thing, so let’s not make the mistake of getting too indignant. Site says:

If you’re a Christian, we’re willing to bet that you need a break. It’s hard work pretending to be so pure and holy. That’s why Steve Brown is offering you 3 Free Sins.

Take 3 to see what happens when you stop obsessing on your goodness (or badness) and start obsessing on God’s love.

Take 3 to stop counting your steps and start dancing.

Take 3 to find out that the only people who get any better are those who know, that if they don’t get any better, God will love them anyway.

Go ahead, take them. They’re free.*

And I get the point. This is basically a restatement of something Martin Luther, a much respected figure, said back in the day: “If you are going to sin, sin boldly”. Luther’s point was that God’s grace is way bigger than any sins you obsess about. Of course, Luther would never have commended living a life of utter abandon “that grace may abound.” Luther is speaking to himself, a person who by nature errs on the side of legalism, not on the side of lawlessness.

I can get Luther and respect what he was saying. But I’m not so sure about the Brown marketing concept. I feel like it lacks the gravitas that Luther had and I wonder if there is a confused definition of “sin” behind it. After all, sin is what makes our lives miserable. Sin breaks relationships. It’s self absorbtion that generally hurts the people we love the most. For instance, let’s go ahead and pick those three sins (keeping them light according to the mood. No murder, adultery, etc.). How about:

1. Tell a lie to your wife.
2. Yell at your kids because you are frustrated about something totally unrelated to them.
3. And… steal a five dollar bill from your coworker’s desk while she is not looking.

Well, wasn’t that fun? It’s OK because God forgives you! (your wife, kids and coworkers, are another matter).

Anyway, I’m not trying to be the heavy legalist. I just want to point out that sin is bad for good reasons and a “free sin” may be a misnomer.

Steamboy

[I'm republishing this post from 2006 because I just watched this film again and I am still extremely impressed by it. You should watch it too!]

It’s the dawn of the scientific age 1866 London. A new application of steam technology is revolutionizing practical science, but the first thing it is applied to  is the creation of war machines to turn a profit. Two sides war over the technology because of their shared hunger for power, and steam boy is caught in the middle, seeing the senselessness of it all. I watched this with Autumn and she kept asking me who the bad guys were [note: that was in 2006. But today we talked about it too. Aidan declared at one point that "the good guys" had come but then he had to change his mind]. It took her a while to figure out that both sides were wrong. But she was later relieved when she realized that Steamboy was the “good guy.” There has to be a good guy.

One of the inventions is a massive “steam tower”, a floating mountain streaming jets of steam and hanging menacingly over the Victorian London skyline. When the mad scientist who created it is presented with the threat of its destruction, he responds that his creation can never be destroyed because something like this, once seen by the world, will be rebuilt and improved on. It is inevitable. It is not the machine itself that brings on the scientific revolution, but the idea of the machine. Once planted, there is no return. The machine will thrive and grow and improve and then in the end we arrive at… Neo?

There is a whole genre of stories like this called Steampunk (a variation of Cyberpunk) which is premised on an alternate history in which steam is applied to high technology (think Wild, Wild West). Like Cyberpunk is it has a pessimistic (dystopian) view of technological development and the uses of technology (article). This film’s creator, Katsuhiro Otomo, is also the maker of a well known animated film called Akira, which I will definitely seek out. Love you get your comments on that if you have seen it [note: in three years I still have not seen it!].

Steamboy is not simplistic or preachy, but the message is very strong: the application of science to war is evil; it’s a sellout. Science should be for the betterment of humanity, not for destruction. But the film is sophisticated enough to let the counter arguments speak as well.

BTW, if you do watch this make sure you use your DVD controls to switch the language to English before the film starts so that you don’t have to see the whole thing in Japanese with English subtitles like I did.  [note:did not make this mistake the second time and heard Patrick Stewart as the mad scientist who wants to wrestle the machine out of the hands of the warmongers]. Although it was a bit scary (PG-13) I thought it was a great way to talk to get my kids thinking about the morality of war, weapons manufacturing and science. But I would have labeled it a simple PG myself.

Second thoughts [2009]: This time around I noticed two literary connections: First the main character reminded me a lot of  Tintin because of his youthful and adventurous spirit and his unwavering moral compass. He is presented as the ideal young person to take science to its next step. Second, Robert Lewis Stephenson is featured in the film, but since this is an alternative history he is not a writer. In any case, I’m pretty sure there were several connections between his books and the story. The beginning definitely mirrors the beginning of Treasure Island.

Two brothers and two blind men

I’ve been working on an outline of the book of Matthew as part of my thesis. Although I’m only writing on 4 verses (17:24-27), there are some arguments that you can’t make unless you really know what you are talking about in all of Matthew. So, just for the record, when you hear of someone writing a thesis on “just one verse” or something like that and are tempted to say something really typical like, “That’s a waste of time because it’s too specialized,” remember that usually people who write a thesis on a little thing have to know a lot about the big stuff too. It’s a common misunderstanding that writing a thesis in Biblical studies is “too narrow.”

But it’s really is fun to observe how Matthew puts together his stories about Jesus to help us see things we might not have noticed. Example: The arrangement of these three stories brings out a point that is greater than the whole:

• 20:17-19 – Jesus predicts his death
• 20:20-28 – Jesus is approached by the mother of James and John with a request and he asks “what do you want?” She asks that they receive special honor when Jesus comes in his kingdom. Jesus says he can’t grant that, but they will be allowed to suffer like him.  Note that Matthew specifically mentions them as “two brothers”.
• 20:29-34 – Jesus is sought by two blind men and he asks them “what do you want me to do for you?” (this should sound familiar). They want to see, and he heals them.

There is no way the similarities are coincidental. Two brothers and two bind men; two requests; two “what do you want?” responses from Jesus. But… two different outcomes. What does it all mean? There are lots of things like that in Matthew.

I’ll take Larry Norman for 100

A friend and I had a little disagreement over who knew Larry Norman lyrics better, so I wrote this to put things in perspective (friend is referred to as JD to protect his reputation).

JD: I’ll take Larry Norman, for 100, Alex.
Alex: A natural object, symbolic of a deity, which does not roll
JD: What is rock?
Alex: Correct.
Alex: Wisdom tooth
JD: What was found when Larry opened the mouth of love?
Alex: Correct.
Alex: It must be stopped in order to get back to earth
JD: What is an unidentified flying object?
Buzzer: BRUZZZZZZ!
Alex: Wrong! Rob, would you like to take this question?
Rob: Sure. Why must this flight be stopped?
Alex: Correct! We’ll keep going with you Rob, since you know so much.
Alex: Overcooked fowl which Larry neglected
Rob: What is the chicken I forgot I was cookin in my kitchen?
Alex: Correct! And now for the big one. Winner takes all. The first one to hit the rubber chicken on the head with the wooden spoon gets the first try. Ready JD? Ready Rob?
Alex: While she dances in the garden he pretends to look at it.
JD: Ow! Hey, I’ve been knocked down, kicked around!
Alex: Rob, put that spoon down!
Rob: Grunt-grfmmpt-har!
Alex: You are supposed to hit the chicken in the head, not your opponent! Are you alright JD?
JD: If you’ve got a reason tell me to my face!
Rob: I do know more about Larry than you!
Alex: Now now… I’m afraid that due to this outburst we will have to give the first try to JD. JD, While she dances in the garden he pretends to look at it…

tick-tock…

JD: What is the cliff notes to Doppelgänger?
Buzzer: BRUZZZZZZ!
Rob: ha ha – looser!
Alex: I’m afraid that the “cliff notes to Daniel Amos’ album Doppelgänger” is completely wrong, JD.
Rob: Born to be unlucky, from his sho-
Alex: Rob, please refrain from derogatory remarks. Now, do you know the answer for the final Larry Norman Question? (drum roll….)
Rob: What is THE PAPER!

Puerto Rico Conference

This weekend I traveled to Puerto Rico to speak at a gathering of pastors. It was held in El Dorado, which is about 15 miles out of San Juan. PR is a very interesting place. One minute you could be at a strip mall anywhere in the US. The next minute you could be in any Latin American country. It is also very expensive and unlike Latin American countries there is very little public transportation. Everyone drives and rush hour is pretty bad. It took around an hour to get from the airport to the hotel.

In any case, it was great conference with about 130 in attendance. I spoke on biblical interpretation and biblical archeology, two topics that have more in common than you might think. Here are some pictures. For more information about my work in Latin America see: www.senderis.com/en.

The conference was held in the hotel meeting room. I''m the white blob in the middle.

Went out to dine on yummy Puerto Rican food and pina coladas (virgin).

Global Christianity – Moving Forward!

Some important items I’ve come across recently related to Global Christianity.

#1 THE NEW SHAPE OF WORLD CHRISTIANITY

Skybox talks about Mark Noll’s new book The New Shape of Wold Christianity and provides some statistics reported there:

• Today there are more missionaries from Brazil engaged in cross cultural ministry than from Britain or Canada.
• There are over 10,000 foreign Christian workers serving in Britain, France, Germany and Italy–and more than 35,000 in the U.S. Most of the missionaries in Britain are from Africa and Asia.
• This past Sunday it is possible that more Christian believers attended church in China than in all of so-called ‘Christian Europe.
• This past Sunday more Presbyterians were in church in Ghana than in Scotland.
• Today, the largest Christian congregation in Europe is in Kiev, and it is pastored by a Nigerian of Pentecostal background.
• More than half of all Christian adherents in the whole history of the church have been alive in the last one hundred years. Close to half of Christian believers who have ever lived are alive right now.

Noll’s argument goes beyond just another “look at how many Christians there are in the world” report or an “American Christians have too much influence” critique – either of which I would welcome any day. He is digging deeper.  According to George Wood the basic idea is that American Christianity grew as an entrepreneurial and voluntary religion on the Western frontier, and that has uniquely qualified it “for export” to other parts of the globe which are socially and politically similar to the American West of days gone by. So Noll is not just talking about the current situation, but the dynamics that brought it about going back some 200 years.

What is the point of this argument? Noll wants us to realize that global Christianity shares a common heritage with US Christianity in that it has grown up in socially and politically chaotic situations. Part of what Knoll is trying to do is argue that American missionaries have not been such the cultural imperialists that they are often made out to be (though, with necessary qualifications no doubt). It’s just that their brand of the faith made a lot of sense in the social political environments to which they were sent. However, all these different cultures have now made voluntary entrepreneurial “evangelical” Christianity their own in significant ways. Well, this is my distillation of various reviews with the qualification that I have not read the book myself yet. I did thumb through it at the Regent Bookstore yesterday and confirmed that I had the basic idea right. I’ll report back in when I have!

#2 FIVE REASONS MISSIONAL CHURCHES DON’T DO GLOBAL MISSIONS

My friend Pete Williamson turned me on to this great post Five Reasons Missional Churches Don’t Do Global Missions– and How to Fix It by Ed Stetzer:

“All this provokes me to ask, ‘Why are so many missional Christians uninvolved in God’s global mission?’ As the missional conversation continues and deepens, what has occurred that has led to our blindness to the lost world around us?

• In rediscovering God’s mission, many have only discovered its personal dimensions.
• In responding to God’s mission, many have wanted to be more mission-shaped and have therefore made everything “mission.”
• In relating God’s mission, the message increasingly includes the hurting but less frequently includes the global lost.
• In refocusing on God’s mission, many are focusing on being good news rather than telling good news.
• In reiterating God’s mission, many lose the context of the church’s global mission and needed global presence.”

I add a further (somewhat speculative) reasons

• Being Missional has often been explained against the foil of foreign missions. As in, “Mission is not just something that professional missionaries do in Africa”. The effect has been to negativize global mission.
• Many missional churches are very tuned into anti-imperialism and I’ve gottent the vibe at times that global mission is suspect to them on that count.
• Since missional churches are so geared to cultural relevance they are not sure what to do in other cultures.

Ed concludes: “It appears to me that many missional churches are missing the Great Commission in the name of being missional. That makes zero sense. It is a huge (but historically common) mistake.”

#3 DOES ROB BELL KNOW WHAT HE IS TALKING ABOUT?

Wayne Park rightly calls Rob Bell to task for talking as if the label “evangelical” only has meaning in relation to US politics and society: Does Rob Bell Know What He’s Talking About?

#4 COMING SOON

Coming soon, co-edited by yours truly: Local Theology for the Global Church. More on that later.

Richard Dawkins as the Billy Sunday of Atheism?

Thank you Philip Clayton for this great assessment of the New Atheism. The basic idea is that this movement does not provide any actual arguments against God, but merely makes pejorative statements about religion (as in Christopher Hitchens’ “Religion poisons everything”) and then claims the mantle of science as though it substantiates those statements, when it does not and there hasn’t even been an attempt made at a scientific argument. Thus, irony of ironies: This is logical scientific movement called the New Atheism is at bottom emotive and more akin to revivalism than to science or logic.

But experience the much more elloquent version from Philip Clayton himself!

Jesus, A Stranger and An Enigma

At the beginning of the 20th Century a theologian named Albert Schweitzer wrote a popular but not necessarily well liked book called The Quest for the Historical Jesus.

Schweitzer decided that rather than attempt to paint yet another predictable and culturally bound version of Jesus, he was going to look at Jesus as a historical figure who lived in Israel in the first century. Liberal thinkers were too busy painting Jesus as the epitome of their humanistic ideals. And for conservative Christians Jesus was nothing more than the one who died for our sins so that we could go to heaven. In that context the question, “Who WAS Jesus?” was a bit off the beaten track.

Thus Schweitzer rightly declared that “The historical Jesus will be to our time a stranger and an enigma.” For Jesus was separated from Schweitzer’s time by 2000 years of history and cultural development and during that time Jesus had become entrenched in culture and had been captured by contemporary ideologies.

Jesus had become the talking head for the spirit of the age.

Whatever we may think about Schweitzer’s conclusions, and whether he broke out of his own cultural prejudices or not, Albert Schweitzer asked the right question because “Who was Jesus?” is one of the most important questions we can ask. We tend to think that the question that matters the most is in the present, not past, tense: “Who is Jesus?” After all, we live in the world of today, not 2000 years ago. But the first question, the historical one, is crucial because it sets the stage for the second question. The first question sets up fences around Jesus to keep out the spirit of the age. Jesus himself does not, of course, need our protection, but our idea of him is in sore need of some assistance. Without the first question, the answer to “Who is Jesus?” will inevitably be just another lame and boring version of whatever it is that our culture is telling Jesus ought to be.

Today the culturally bound Jesus is the personalized one. I have literally heard people say things like, “Jesus is whatever you need him to be.” It is hard to understand the thinking of a person who says that kind of thing. Do they really think that reality is up for grabs, that you can believe anything you need to believe about the universe – “Whatever makes you sleep at night”? I suspect that is not the case. Usually it is not the nature of reality that is up for grabs so much as the idea of God or of religion. The universe is a real enough place, so the thinking goes, but religion is a fog and swamp. Who knows what is real? You might as well believe whatever it is you think is needful and that is probably good enough. After all, there are many different ways to know and experience God. They are all equally flawed and equally effective. In this way of thinking Jesus has no identity and no center, no content beyond what a person already thinks or dreams. The failure to ask “Who was Jesus” effectively silences him. He is not allowed to speak. He is a marionette of Jesus; he dances and postures to the strings of prejudice and cultural bias. He is not a stranger and an enigma. He is us.

In churches we are at least dealing with a real figure, not just a marionette. But the tendency to personalize our understanding of who Jesus is today is just as wide spread inside as outside the church. It may not be too much to say that the personalized Jesus is the foundational premise of the church today. What is the most important thing we all must do in order to be saved? Ask Jesus to be our personal savior. And I ask, “where does this language come from?” One thing for sure: it’s not strange and enigmatic.

While personalizing salvation is important in many ways, the kind of personal appropriations of Jesus that are at work in the contemporary church are merely cultural versions of who Jesus is. Our children are taught that Jesus is the dad their dad never was, who is there waiting for them when they get home from school, ready to play soccer or basketball. He is their best friend. For Christian adults Jesus is the one who gives our life meaning, who helps us when we are down, depressed or “struggling”. He accepts us no matter what we do. He is always “there for us”. Is it just coincidence that we live in a culture obsessed with personal appearance, improvement and emotional well being?  For us Jesus is the ultimate pop self-help guru. Or he is playful. He likes to hang out and tell jokes. And of course, he never ever judges anyone.

But is that who he was?

In the New Testament the whole point about Jesus is that God has spoken into our world in the most intimate way possible: by becoming one of us. This means history. Not history like a class you take, but history as in something that really happened. It means Jesus was a real person who ate, slept and drank with us. The Word (Jesus) became flesh and dwelt among us. Understanding who he was gives us the foundation to understand who he is now. Not just a trivial figment of our pious imagination, but a real person who really lived and walked around in this world. Not a myth. Not a fairy tale. And if he wasn’t a fairy tale back then, he certainly isn’t one today. If you couldn’t reinvent him back then, you certainly can’t reinvent him today.

The job of the church is to continuously re-find and re-encounter the historical Jesus. Each generation must study his teachings, contemplate his actions and apply them to it’s own time, and each generation must chip away at the stone in which previous generations have encased Jesus. We all have an interest in defining Jesus in a way that makes us comfortable because Jesus always comes like an unexpected guest and he throws the house into disarray. He is the cosmic Cat in the Hat. But then, that is exactly what we were signing up for when we became his followers: We were turning away from our old ways of thinking and acting and embracing a new way of being. In this new way of living everything around us has been relativized and continues to be relativized in the light of who Jesus was – and still is.

There is Fun After Fundamentalism

I’ve recently read two books on Karl Barth and I like him more and more. I’ve also ingested some of his ownmaterial too, but the volume of his writing is so massive that I feel like I need orientation.

BARTH AND FUNDAMENTALISM

The first book I read was After Fundamentalism, by Bernard Ramm. The idea here is that Barth is the guy who figured out who to do theology after the Enlightenment. Maybe he”ll go down in history for that. To sum up: Christianity existed happily throughout the middle ages until along comes critical reason and scientific thinking and suddenly now there are two sources of authority: reason and the church/Bible. To make matters worse, these two authorities often find themselves in conflict. Ramm says that the typical reaction of Christians has been obscurantism or liberalism: Completely ignore or completely embrace critical reason. Barth, though, was one of the guys who allowed critical reason its place without giving into it. For example, he allows for the place of biblical criticism. But he does not allow the message of the Bible to get lost in that, as so often has been the case. Each chapter of Ramm’s book is a controversial issue for Fundamentalism for which, he says, it would be very helpful to consult with Barth on. For example, in inspiration evangelicals and fundamentalists are endlessly defending the inerrancy of the Bible as if it was the basis of it’s authority. Barth says no – the basis of biblical authority is its subject, Jesus Christ. Makes a lot of sense (which is not to deny inerrancy. It’s a matter of where we start from).

BARTH’S CONTEXT

Anyway, the other Barth book is a little known and short Bio on him called Karl Barth, written right after he died. It was great to see how his theology really sprung from his situations. He rejects liberalism because it is unmasked in WWI due to its participation with the war. He rejects Natural Theology* because it led to a German Christian nation that was only culturally Christian and merely sentimental about Jesus and worst of all, allowed the German church to ally itself to Hitler (see a sobering endorsement of Hitler along these lines). His response to the Nazi-Church alliance?  ”Theological existence!” In other words: The job of theology is to speak the word of God based only on the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Don’t let Hitler into your theology! Ieisus kurios. He was kicked out of Germany in ‘34 and therefore missed all the fun. Watched it all from Switzerland. But he was the one who gave the German Confessing Church (Bonhoeffer’s group) their theological grounding. He basically did their apologetics for them and said: You guys are right to resist Hitler, and here’s why. This helped consolidate the resistance and root the movement.

Today we may look back at Barth and say, “Man he really went overboard in his denial of natural theology. He just butchered Romans 1!” But seen in context it make more sense. For Barth natural theology had created this situation of apostacy. The source of authority for the church had been clouded and he needed to clear the fog and fire up the lighthouse of  God’s revelation in Jesus Christ as normative for the church. Seen that way I have to say I think he was right.

* “Natural Theology” = what the world can tell us about God in contrast to what the Bible tells us about God.

Anne Rice: From Vampires to Angels

Bestselling vampirist Anne Rice recently came back into fold, embracing the Catholic Church of her youth. With that the Vampire Chronicles came to an end (Movie buffs think: Interview with the Vampire, The Queen of the damned) and she has since produced two volumes on the life of Christ.

The big news is that she has a new book coming out this October, Angel Time. In it she returns to the world of supernatural fiction, but now writing from within the walls of the church.

And we are all wondering:  Can she pull it off? Or, can it be pulled off at all? As Betty Carter points out over at First Things, it’s a lot harder to describe good than evil and (I add) in a way that is just as tantalizing.  I suspect that Rice’s vampires struck a chord culturally because they were all tragic outsiders victimized by the evil in which they partook.  It’s a good in between pattern for an in between society. Evil is bad, but good is too preachy.  It seems like well received cultural products mine that ambiguity. We want to see someone who is bad, but we want to know that there is a reasonableness to that badness. It’s not just that they are self-centered destructive jerks. Nothing so banal. And perhaps the complexity of fictional evil helps to mitigate the effects of our own guilt.

So I wonder, can Anne Rice write now from the side of the angels and how effective will it be? Will her old fans like it? Will it draw people who are in darkness closer to the light? The publisher’s description of the book is definitely trying to paint it as something that is in continuity with her older work:

Anne Rice returns to the mesmerizing storytelling that has captivated readers for more than three decades in a tale of unceasing suspense set in time past—a metaphysical thriller about angels and assassins. (from amazon.com)

Let’s notice what it does not say: “… but now she is writing as a committed Catholic and her novels are much more positive.”

Poster from Interview with the Vampire

One would hope that all those years in vampire land would give her a keen insight into this venture, that the same things that make Christianity in its Roman Catholic form attractive to her will also make it attractive to her vampire fans, for there is a sense in which her personal quest mirrors that of her characters. Thus her characters could presumably follow her lead into the light without being untrue to themselves. She has accepted what they long for.

There is, however, one major feature of human nature that she has going against her: on the average we are more intrigued by the darkness than by the light.

Dan Brown is back in Town

Two books coming out soon should provide enough shocking material to fuel the fires of conservative Christian indignation for the long winter.

DAN BROWN IS BACK IN TOWN

Da Vinci Code’s Dan Brown and his publisher are hoping for an encore with his new Lost Symbol. This one is set in Washington DC and its contents are guarded with greater secrecy than the state secrets of many European nations. Very little is known, except that it does feature our favorite Symbologist Robert Langdon, it will be shockingly awesome and there is an outrageous rumor tha Jesus might make an appearance as a clone. Sounds like a rip off of National Treasure, except for the part about the clone.

As the website says: All will be revealed 9.15.09. Yes, TODAY is the big day. Five million copies have been printed for the first run, some bookstores will be opening at 12:01 to sell them, and Washington DC is bracing for a wave of Brown sleuths combing the city for clues. Hey, wouldn’t this be a great setting for a thriller? An assassination plot that is planned to coincide with the chaos of the a Dan Brown book release. Oh, yes! I too could get on board the Dan Brown money train. But I’m getting off track.

THE SCOUNDREL CHRIST

Philip Pullman of the Dark Materials series (think The Golden Compass, film buffs), who has received quite a bit of flack for portraying God as a senile old man in those books, is going to one-up himself and write a shocking novel about Jesus. It will be based on the idea that Paul, not Jesus, is the one behind the New Testament portrayal. In theological circles this is a mayor yawner, an idea whose time has come and gone, but in pop culture you can keep pulling this stuff out every decade or so and no one remembers. It seems ironic to me that Pullman thinks it is unfortunate that Paul, “a literary and imaginative genius of the first order,” recrafted the story of Jesus. You would think that a fantasy writer would approve of the exercise of literary/theological license. After all, it’s what Pullman himself is going to do! I’m doing double takes on double takes here.

Philip Pullman. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe. Seems like a wholesome grandfaterhly type to me.

THE DR. RECOMMENDS A CHILL PILL

Ok, let me have my fun poking at the precocity of authors, the money-grubbing of publishers and the naïveté of easily flattered quasi-intellectual readers. But I don’t want this to be confused with Shock and Outrage. Let’s just take it easy, take a deep breath, maybe crack a few jokes and yes, provide good critiques and answers where appropriate. I just think that more and more our best strategy is to take these things in stride as part of life in the modern world. Overbearing reactions, condemnations and censures (Shock and Outrage) just guarantee that no one will listen. I also wonder if our Shock and Outrage aren’t basically unchristian? I certainly don’t find them listed among the fruits of the Spirit.

How do I love thee, WorldCat.org?

WorldCat.org, how to I love thee? Let me catalogue the ways:

1. Thou art not for profit and have no irritating commercials about enlarging body parts to distracting the seeker of knowledge from his or her more platonic quest.
2. There is no book in existence which thou dost not list, for thou art a database of a bizillion local library catalogues. In thee I can find that book whose title or author I only vaguely remember, knowing that if I do not find it in thee, it is but a figment of my fevered imagination.
3. Thou hast direct links to product pages in lesser but necessary entities such as on-line bookstores. Through thee I found my mistress (I know, it is uncouth for me to mention her to you, but after all, you are but a website): Betterworldbooks.com, for whom I may also write paean soon. It will no doubt include the amazing NO SHIPPING COST feature. Oh how I do love that as well.
4. Thou listeth amazon.com book reviews, which are the only worthy feature of that corporate soul-desicating-but-perhaps-necessary-evil regime. So I can just go to thee and be satisfied.
5. Thou allowest me to create book lists with full bibliographical data and even cover pictures, where available. Knowing that you can only grow in beauty, grace in utility I ask, however: Why not imitate the evil empire in this one thing, which is that users can upload book cover images where they are lacking? That would rock.
6. Thine book lists can export full bibliographies in all relevant formats. This is a bibliographic coup d’état against all those for pay citation managers which I cannot bring myself to purchase. I can find a book title in thee and just copy the citation and paste it into a document! Or I can make in thee an entire list and export it as a bibliography. I can also make a list of books to later consult at my library that has wifi.
7. I can share thine lists with others. Like this: Books on the Trinity
8. I can share thine lists and thine individual book pages with thine AddThis link and post them to facebook.com or other sites, or even twitter them, thus inserting a small bit of gravitas into that flighty environment.
9. Thou listeth other books of interest on each page, not so that I will be tempted to purchase them (like you know who does), but merely to serve me and increase my knowledge.
10. Thou art the best, WorldCat.org. If only the webverse were filled with more sites like thee, what a great thing that would furnish.

Until Everything Dead Is Quickened

Karl Barth, the greatest theologian of the 20th Century

According to THL Parker this is summary of the themes of Karl Barth”s Theology:

“The Bible does not exist so that ‘here and there specimens of men like you and me might be “converted”, find inner “peace”, and by a redeeming death go some day to “heaven”’. God plans a greater thing than that, nothing less than the establishment of a new world; Jesus Christ is the redeemer of all mankind, of sinful mankind, of all creation; the Holy Spirit makes all things new, “new men, new families, new relationships, new politics”; he establishes God’s righteousness in the midst of man’s unrighteousness and will not cease his work until everything dead is quickened and a new world exists.”

Karl Barth, THL Parker, 24.

What do you think?

10 Worst Bible Verses

Over on Friday Night Theology we are alerted to a list of the 10 worst Bible verses, compiled at shipoffools.com and apparently being talked up over in the UK media. It’s basically a critical list as in, I can’t believe the Bible teaches this and implied, I suppose, I can’t believe people believe this:

1. The ban on women teaching in church (1 Timothy 2:12)
2. Samuel’s instruction to ‘totally destroy’ the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15:3)
3. Moses’ command ‘Do not allow a sorceress to live.’ (Exodus 22:18)
4. The ending of Psalm 137 ‘Happy are those who seize your infants and dash them against the rocks’
5. The gang rape and murder of a concubine (Judges 19:25-28)
6. The condemnation of homosexuality (Romans 1:27)
7. Jephthah’s vow which led to his daughter being sacrificed (Judges 11)
8. God’s instruction to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (Genesis 22:2)
9. The instruction that wives submit to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22)
10. The instruction that slaves submit to their masters (1 Peter 2:18)

SOME CLARIFICATION, PLEASE

I’ll accept that there are some “bad” ones here (ones that make me cringe), but let’s clarify first that not all of them really qualify: (5) and (7) are mere description. No approval of the actions is implied. (8) Is not the full story bc the intention was never to sacrifice Isaac. (9) Classically misunderstood section that begins with “submit to each other”. (10) Not a defense of slavery, but an incitement to harmony.

But I’m no obscurantist and I will admit trouble where there is trouble. So we are left with the following “real cringers”, which I will comment on briefly:

1. The ban on women teaching in church (1 Timothy 2:12)
   I don’t agree that this is prescriptive. But admittedly other Christians do.
2. Samuel’s instruction to ‘totally destroy’ the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15:3)
   Yes. That is shocking.
3. Moses’ command ‘Do not allow a sorceress to live.’ (Exodus 22:18)
   Again, quite harsh.
4. The ending of Psalm 137 ‘Happy are those who seize your infants and dash them against the rocks’
   Takes the prize for horrific Bible verses.
5. (6) The condemnation of homosexuality (Romans 1:27)
   Yes, the Bible does seem to be unambiguous on this point (pace queer theology).

A MILD DEFENSE

First, as FNT notes, we can be guilty of taking mere poetic language or ancient rhetorical conventions too literally. Did the Psalmist himself, for example, ever dash babies against rocks? I suspect not.

Second, I freely admit that the Bible was written in particular historical contexts and that often the biblical message works in those contexts and in those priorities. But a good argument can be made that the Bible contains the seeds of and in fact helped to bring about many of our modern humane sensibilities. So for example, although Paul encourages slaves to be submissive, his theology also provides the foundation for the abolishment of slavery. Taking that lead, the church has consistently been against slavery and has even served as a conscience to modern society in that respect.

Finally, and most importantly, the Bible is not a “flat book”. Christians interpret the Old Testament through the lens of the New and therefore there are many things that you might literally quote from the Bible to which Christians will say “Of course I don’t believe that! I’m a Christian”. So this points to the inherent danger of a superficial outsider critique.

But the bottom line is that the Bible does teach things that are shocking, and though they do make me cringe sometimes I’m also glad that it doesn’t fit smugly into modern contemporary expectations. I’m not going to try to explain them away. It’s part of my belief system. I don’t want people to exaggerate the significance of them or make them seem cruel when they are not, but neither am I sitting here twisting my sweaty hands trying to find a way to hold together modern sensibilities and a biblical worldview. As Karl Barth was wont to say, “God is wholly other”.  It’s expected that there will be some shocking things along the way. But at bottom I really do believe that the biblical world view provides a more human, humane, compassionate and graceful worldview.

Trans-Neptunian Objects Are all Alone

The other day Aidan and I were talking planets and we got into the whole “Pluto isn’t a planet anymore” controversy. Kids don’t like change and so Aidan does not approve of this demotion. Well I, being the ignorant person that I am, had not really let it sink in that there is actually another rock floating out there past Pluto, which is larger. The two are Trans Neptunian Objects (Neptune being the last “real” planet). Also dwarf planets, which is more dignified for a former planet.

So I was looking at this artist depiction of Eris and suddenly it hit me, just how far away it is, this little rock sailing through emptiness. Cold, dead, uninhabitable, pointless. The earth doesn’t even figure for this rock. I mean it is OUT there, way past Pluto, and there are billions of billions of square miles of cold nothing all around it. And I thought, the earth is nothing. Everything here is so full of meaning, so busy and alive and just teeming with significance. But take a stroll out to Eris and what is it? The emptiness is too big for all that life to matter. It swallows everything right up.

This pulls me two directions: Despair rears it ugly head. You dare to think there is meaning, God, faith, afterlife? Ha! Does a grain of sand have dreams? You aren’t even anything from Eris, what do you think you are from Alpha Centauri, or the next star, or the next galaxy? Zip. Zero. Nada.

The other direction is opposite and it makes me want to have a chat with Richard Dawkings and say to him: Do you seriously believe, Richard, that this thin little film of green clinging precariously to  planet earth came about by pure chance? Go sit on Eris for a while and tell me you really believe all that emptiness can produce anything but vast unfathomable stretches of more emptiness.

This reminds me of a They Might Be Giants song which, interestingly, is a favorite of Aidan’s. It posits a germ who is left on the moon by earth scientists, but he doesnt’ know it. Then this little germ looks out at space and sings sadly to himself,

I’m all alone,
I’m all alone,
Behold the mystery that is me

The humans return and encounter the germ anew and are amazed and heartened, for they think they have found evidence of extraterrestrial life! Then the germ breaks into singing for the joyful occasion,

You’re not alone
You’re not alone
Behold the mystery that is me

Finally, the scientists realize their mistake and the germ now depressingly concludes,

We’re all alone
We’re all alone
Behold the mystery
Behold the mystery

The song really captures, even with the signature TMBG mixture of serious and wacky, that double feeling I get when I dial in to just how huge the universe is. We do seem to be all alone, yes, but it’s a great mystery. One that ultimately leads me back to God.

The Providence of God

I’ll try to keep rants short.

I just finished Paul Helm’s The Providence of God and the basic idea of the book was that God has ordained all events in the history of the universe. Nothing is left to chance or freewill, and nothing occurs which God has not purposed.

I get frustrated with this type of thing because I feel like it gives rise to more problems than it solves. Yes, it does sound worthy and respectful and proper to affirm that God has left nothing to chance. But Helm’s entire book is spent cleaning up the debree left by this explosive doctrine. If it’s true, How can we say that humans are really free? What’s the point of praying? Can there be such a thing as personal guidance? Can we really say that we have a relationship with God? And the bigie: where did evil come from? All the adjustments and explanations seem hoaky to me. For example, the solution to human freedom is that I am free to chose what I chose, but it turns out that what I chose is what God has planned all along (technical term: compatibilism). So when I do a bad thing, God planned that. But it’s still my fault. Too bizarre. It’s one of those purely logical solutions that still leaves you wondering. It is existentially unsatisfying.

I think a little free will goes a long way in this area. But that’s just me.

[note: I didn't actually "just finish" this book. It's been a while but I found this tossed to the side among my pile of drafts and thought, "you know what? The world needs to hear this."]

Contra microsoft citations manager

Tonight I took some time to explore MS Office 2007 citation manager because I thought, “Hey, this is cool! Maybe I won’t have to buy one of those citations managing programs after all.” But why did I allow myself to hope? I should have known better. It has a nice little data base creation feature and then you can create a bibliography or insert citations. But here’s the problem. Whover designed this thing at MS HQ seems to have thought that citations only = MLA citation: (Author, 1987) – That type of thing. Because that is the only citation format that is avaliable. The worst thing is that the helps, both online and in the software, tout this feature as the greatest thing and they love to list all the styles you can use. Turabian and Chicago Manual of Style are listed as options (and you can use them to build a Bibliography), but you can’t create citations in the text for those styles (footnotes listing full bibliographic details). So what is the point of this feature? If you search online it only takes a couple minutes to find people complaining about it. It’s like building an 8-lane highway and then putting a two lane brige in the middle of it. The most useful feature doesn’t work, meaning it’s the whole thing is usless.

At this point I’m still wondering if any bibliographic tool is worth the hassle. I’ve downloaded several demos and they all have their hassles. I just do a lot of copy and paste and, honestly I find fiddling with citations and bibliographies a bit therapeutic. You can forget about the big puzzle of the paper or thesis for a while and just work on a simple, well defined task, you know?

So why am I all miffed about MS? I guess it’s more the principle of the thing. I’m tired of sotware that presents itself as a solution, but in the end only wastes your time.

The Shack – Report from the field

Today I trekked up to Regent College (yes, my Alma Mater) and heard William Paul Young, author of the ubiquitous publishing sensation The Shack, speak about his book. I also heard Regent and Carey Theological Seminary faculty respond. The atmosphere was irenic and most of the people seemed to be there because they liked the book or had been touched by it.

GOOD VIBES

In the first few minutes of the meeting I realized what a hard-nosed intellectual I am and I almost felt bad about it. It became immediately clear by the introduction, the sighs of collective appreciation at emotive statements (“you can see it in his eyes that he [the author] has suffered greatly and has come to understand God’s love”), and the beneficent manner of the speaker himself that this book speaks powerfully to people. They are enchanted by it. It’s more than just information; it’s transformative. That was the mood I picked up on. But me, I breezed through the book looking for the idea of the thing. What are the concrete claims the author is making? Are the good or bad? Do they fit or don’t they? I felt pretty dense for having read it on that level. Obviously, this is a book that emotes. And as soon as I dialed into that group hug dynamic, I realized that the theological concerns that people have about the book, while important, are also missing the point. It is more important what kind of emotional message the book is spreading. That is what people are getting from it.

William P. Young is a very nice man. An eloquent yet demure presence; a good story teller. He is very vulnerable and he even almost cried. He spoke about how the book came about (he wrote it originally for his family, not thinking anyone else would care about it, a result of his healing process, etc.).

GOOD CRITIQUES

The more interesting part of the night was when Jonathan Wilson and John Stackhouse responded to the book. They were both appreciative of its message, but they both had some theological cautions: It’s not really appropriate to put the marks of the crucifixion on the hands of God the father, there does seem to be a hierarchy in the godhead in Scripture, rituals and institutions are not so horrible as they are made out to be in the book, God is actually interested in economics and politics, and the church isn’t such a bad institution, really. Stackhouse was insightful and kind when he noted that many of the controversial theological points made by the book could have been left out without diminishing its excellence. By leaving them in Young has simply given fodder to people who want to find doctrinal problems, and all this does is damage the book’s potential. Well played, Stackhouse!

However, through the night I had a growing sense that the real problem of the book, which was only briefly addressed by Stackhouse, was its individualism. Here is a book that focuses on intensely personal emotional trouble, and the answer to this trouble is found out in the woods alone with God. In the woods the character finds that God is intensely interested in him, that he is special to God, that through the deeply personal individually crafted ministration of the trinity, and without reference to other people he can find healing. This is what gives the book its power. People feel that God is judgmental and distant, like an overbearing father. They have deep seated emotional insecurities. They are incapacitated. They do not feel loved. The shack helps them cope with this by providing a vicarious healing process that will perhaps jumpstart their own process. That is the key understanding the importance of the book. And to me that is also why it is deeply problematic. As Stackhouse put it, “Where will Mac [the main character] go when he returns from the shack?” He will apparently not go to church, for he is not a church goer (he is rather typically into “spirituality” not “religion”). He will apparently just have a better feeling about himself and perhaps commune more fully with God.

The problem here is a deep seated individualism. Everything happens between me and God. Institutions (ie, the church) inhibit this process. Friends don’t seem to be particularly important either. Community is not even worth considering in the healing process. But this is not healthy or even accurate. Healing does not take place in a spiritual bubble, between God and you. Healing takes place (or ought to take place) in the context of the community, where each of us learns to love the other and be loved by the other and the goal of healing is not just to get over bad feelings (as real as those can often be), but to participate joyfully in the multifaceted community of the body of Christ. Thus, the book encourages American Christians to continue to think in the same tired and unhelpful therapeutic, self obsessed patterns that it always thinks in: God wants you to feel good, he cares about you, he loves you dearly and individually, etc. Mostly true, or true in a sense. But is it the message we really need to hear right now? Isn’t’ this just confirming our immature idea that we are the center of the universe? Isn’t this just the same old thing, just done in an exemplary manner?

NOT SO GOOD RESPONSES

I was very disappointed when Young responded to Stackhouse and the others because he did not give an inch. He did not say, “Yeah, you might have some good points there” (it’s not like they were controversial, theologically speaking), again demonstrating his individualism. In a healthy community a story teller would say, “You are the theologian, Mr. Stackhouse, and I am the story-teller, and I appreciate your work and your perspective and your criticism, given respectfully and lovingly, helps me do better. Thank you. I will definitely consider what you are saying.” But no, he just explained the points he was trying to make, which usually had to do with trying to connect God more intimately to the alienated individual.

Some of it was strange. The basis of putting the wounds on God the Father was 2 Cor. 5 “in Christ God was reconciling the world”. He interpreted “in” as “inside”, which is very bizarre. It means “through Christ” not “inside Christ”. Another one is the claim that the Devil is the accuser means that he is the categorizer (the Greek word for accuser sounds like category), that he puts us in categories. That is beyond bizarre and is a very basic error in the use of Greek words (they don’t necessarily share meaning with modern words just because they sound the same). Clearly Young is not a very adept at this sort of thing, and there is nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is to pretend that we don’t need each other. To me, he projected the attitude (kindly and gently) that since tons and tons of people found his book helpful it was pretty much above criticism from the theological perspective. He had and experience, God gave him a gift, and others also had an experience. Presto! It’s from God. To me this seems very sad and narrow. I don’t think it’s the right direction.

Alienated intelectuals

“The problem in brief is that postmodernism is a far too comforting story for alienated intellectuals.”

Hauerwas, A better Hope (37)

Writing as transfomation

I ran accross this quotation from Michel Foucault in two separate and randomly connected books within the space of two hours. That fits my theory about good quotations, so I need to pass it on:

“The books I write constitute an experience for me that I’d like to be as rich as possible. An experience is somehting you come out of changed. If I had to write a book to communicate what I have already thought, I’d never have the courage to begin it. I write precisely because I don’t know what to think about a subject that attracts my interest. In so doing, the book transforms me, changes what I think.”

Found in

Michel Foucault, by David Macey

Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo, by David Toole

Never trust a crowd

“The crowd is self-justifying and assumes the righteousness of the cause and god it serves at any given moment. The crowd is arbitrary and capricious, and it can act just as passionately against a cause or person as it did in favor of a cause or person not long before. Motivated by the grossest, simplest, most elemental dreams and dreads, the crowd is eadily manipulated by demagogues or demagogic techniques.”

Rodney Clap “God is not ‘A Stranger on the Bus’”

in God is Not, p. 32-33.

Teach your kids to be revolutionaries

You may have noticed that I like quoting statments that have been quoted in other books. I suppose this is because for a part of one book to become a quotation in a another book, it must be noteworthy. Here’s one from Fransis Schaeffer, who is right on the money. Why is it that he got stuff like this and we still don’t?

“One of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative… If we want to be fair, we must teach the young to be revolutionaries, revolutionaries against the status quo.”

Francis Schaeffer

Cited in Church on the Other Side (p. 16), by Brian McLaren
Which citation was cited in Who’s afraid of Postmodernism (p. 20-21) by James K.A. Smith

Immortality or Resurrection?

Back in the late 50s Oscar Cullman wrote a little book called Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? I just got a copy from Ebay. In it he put forth the then very controversial idea that the New Testament hope is not so much immortality of the soul (that comes from Greek philosophy), as resurrection. Many people became very upset with Cullmann because they felt like he was destroying their faith. But he was right. Resurrection is the hope of the New Testament. This is not to say that it is a “mortal” or limited view of the afterlife, but that it is more physical. He starts the book with a brilliant comparison of the death of Socrates, who is calm and composed before the prospect of liberating his his soul from the confines of the material cage called his body, and the death of Christ, who is filled with passion and a kind of dread of what lies ahead, who does not see death as a good thing, but as and evil to be overcome – by dying:

“Whoever wants to conquer death must die; he must really cease to live-not simply live on as an immortal soul, but die in body and soul, lose life itself, the most precious good which God has given us. For this reason the Evangelists, who none the less intended to present Jesus as the Son of God, have not tried to soften the terribleness of His thoroughly human death.

…
If we want to understand the Christian faith in the Resurrection, we must completely disregard the Greek thought that the material, the bodily, the corporeal is bad and must be destroyed, so that the death of the body would not be in any sense a destruction of true life. For Christian (and Jewish) thinking the death of the body is also destruction of God-created life. No distinction is made: even the life of our body is true life; death is the destruction of all life created by God. Therefore it is death and not the body which must be conquered by the Resurrection.”

Oscar Cullman,

Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead, 25-26 (1962 ed)

Walter Rauschenbusch quote

Rauschenbusch was one of the big figures in the “Social gospel” movement back at the beginning of the last century. Fortunatelly we have gone a long way towards overcoming the false distinction that was then prevalent between soul and society. Here’s a great Rauschenbusch quote courtesy of Stanley Hauerwas. It would be a great excercize to go through each one of these categories and clarify how the kingdom of God informs them:

“The saving of the lost, the teaching of the young, the pastoral care of the poor and frail, the quickening of starved intellects, the study of the Bible, church union, political reform, the reorganization of the industrial system, international peace – it was all covered by the one aim of the Reign of God on earth.”

From A Better Hope: Resources for confronting Capitalism, Democracy and Postmodernity

Stanley Hauerwas, p. 77

Southland Tales

When I watch the preview for Southland Tales it makes me feel like Cat’s Craddle by Curt Vonnegut. In that book the world ends by a fluke discovery – how to freze water at higher temperatures. A piece of “Ice-9″ got into one of the Oceans (I think it was the Caribean) and that was all she wrote because all water that came into contact with Ice-9 immediately reconfigured itself on the molecular level into a shape resembling the cat’s cradle. In a matter of minutes most of the water in the world turned to ice. That included the water in human bodies.

Anyone want to come watch this with me when it comes out?

Barth a Universalist?

The question of whether Karl Barth was a universalist is much discussed (admittedly in a limited circle…). The already mentioned Time article has the best description of this I have come across and I think it settles the question: He was open to universalism, but did not affirm it.

“One orthodox dogma that Barth has tried to set aright—much to the dismay of other theologians in the Reformed Church —is the best-known and gloomiest of Calvinist tenets: predestination. In his Institutes, Calvin argued that God has already determined both those who will be saved at the Last Judgment and those who will suffer the eternal pangs of Hell. Barth says that this belief does not pay sufficient heed to the fact that Christ’s death was intended for all men: Man’s ultimate fate is shrouded in mystery, but Barth believes that Christ, the loving Judge, could indeed reconcile all the world to the Father. ‘I do not preach universal salvation,’ Barth insists. ‘What I say is that I cannot exclude the possibility that God would save all men at the Judgment.’”

The interesting thing about his view is that it is limited atonement without the limit. In Reformed thinking, the sacrifice of Christ is so powerful that it cannot but help to save those for whom it is accomplished. Thus, the story goes, Christ died for the elect and they were quite literally saved at the cross. But Barth says, “Hey, wait a minute… Christ’s death applies to everyone! So doesn’t that mean that everyone is saved?” The question is left, wisely, unanswered. I almost wonder if he used it as a rhetorical device to point out the greatness of God’s work in Christ.

Time is our main existential experience

Ilya Prigogine was one of the founders of chaos theory. This is a fascinating video in which he discusses time, freedom and alienation. This is really great stuff and it ought to be part of our Christian thinking, especially when confronted with certain Christain versions of determinism. (8 minutes – The first few seconds are voice only, but then the image comes in.)

Karl Barth in Time Magazine – 1962

When Karl Barth was 75 years old he made his one and only trip to the US. It was quite the occasion and I just found the front cover article that Time did on him back in the day. If you want to read the Time article (highly recommended for a good summary of his thought in layman’s terms), go here: Witness to an Ancient Truth. Otherwise enjoy some quotes from the article:

Once, upon hearing that Pius XII had paid tribute to his work, Barth smiled and said, “This proves the infallibility of the Pope.”

…

Once, asked by a stranger on the trolley car if he knew the great Karl Barth, he replied: “Know him? I shave him every morning!”

…

Shocked by the low wages paid to Safenwil’s textile workers, Barth became an active socialist, earned the nickname of “the Red pastor”.

…

On his disagreements with Calvin: “Calvin is in Heaven and has had time to ponder where he went wrong in his teachings. Doubtless he is pleased that I am setting him aright.” [In that case, he might agree with me too]

…

“Do you want to believe in the living Christ?” says Barth. “We may believe in him only if we believe in his corporeal resurrection. This is the content of the New Testament.”

Theology not from the library

“Theology does not arise from the study or the library, even if it can be prosecuted there. It arises from Christian life and activity, from the need to make Christian choices, to think in a Christain way.”

- Andrew Walls “Globalization and the Study of Christian History” in the book Globalizing Theology.

Every bit of your Thelogy into the vernacular

Two quotes reproduced in Mapping Postmodernism, by Robert Greer (p. 2-3) about clarity and communicability:

“We have not known a single great scientist who could not discourse freely and interestingly with a child. Can it be that the haters of clarity have nothing to say, have observed nothing, have no clear picture of even their own fields?”

- John Seinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez, (Penguin 1995) p. 62

“You must translate every bit of your Thelogy into the vernacular. This is very troublesome and it means you can say very little in half and hour, but it is essencial. It is also of the greatest service to your own thought. I have come to the conviction that if you cannot translate your thoughts into uneducated language, then your thoughts were confused.”

- CS Lewis, God in the Dock (Eerdmans 1970), p. 98

God…has given us Adolf Hitler

In Christian Theology Millard Erickson reproduces a couple of the statements made by the “German Christians” in support of Hitler back in the day, which are very frightening:

“We are full of thanks to God that He, as Lord of history, has given us Adolf Hitler, our leader and Savior from our difficult lot. We acknowledge that we, with body and soul, are bound and dedicated to the German state and to its Fuhrer. This bondage and duty contains for us, as evangelical Christians, its deepest and most holy significance in its obedience to the command of God.”

And:

“To this turn of history we say a thankful Yes. God has given him to us. To Him be the glory. As bound to God’s Words, we recognize in the great events of our day a new commission of God to His church.”

Then Erickson caps it off with this:

“From our perspective, the folly of such statements seems obvious. But are there perhaps some pronouncements we are making today which will be seen as similarly mistaken by those who come a few decades after us?”

Gulp.

- Pages 404-405 of the 1986 edition of Christian Theology (the link above is a newer edition)

The toilsome task of developing one’s intellect

“It is very easy to evade the toilsome task of develping and intensifying one’s intellect, and to fall into a glorified childish attitude of gay irresponsibility, and to defend oneself against every reproach by saying, ‘This is a higher form of intelligence!’”

- Soren Kierkegaard From Unscientific Postscript
Found in Emil Brunner’s Revelation and Reason

A Very Stark Book

Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity

I recently read this book. Good read.

Description

Stark is a sociologist of religion who became interested in the question of Christian origins. So he writes about history from a sociological perspective. He uses, for example, what he has learned of conversion in the contemporary setting to help set the limits for what Christian growth might have been and he arrives at the figure of 40% growth per decade until the middle of the fifth century. He also argues that it would have made sense for the early Christians to have been “middle class” (not the poorest of the poorest), since in studies of conversion, these are the types of people who tend to be the first converts.

Stark also pays attention to events whose significance has been lost on many historians. For example, he claims that the two plagues that ravaged the Roman Empire in the second and third centuries were a boon to Christian growth: Since Christians took better care of each other they survived in greater numbers. The social implication (and here is where Stark applies his sociology tools) is that they would also be in a better position to win converts after the plagues. Since more of them survived, their social networks would have fared better, while the non-Christian’s social networks would have been worse off, thus opening them to new social connections. Also, the fact that more Christians survived would also imply divine favor or protection. Further, the sacrificial example of Christians who served at the risk of their lives must have also been inspiring.

Christians also grew in number naturally simply because they did not practice infanticide and abortion and valued procreation, whereas the Romans were typically averse to large families and Roman men were often loath to marry at all. Women were also valued more highly in the Christian context than in pagan culture and thus it was an especially attractive option to them. This helped make Christianity more fertile than paganism where there was a shortage of women.

He covers various other issues like the morality of the pagan Gods and the urban conditions in the cities of the empire (of which he paints a very nasty picture), which all fed into the growth of Christianity. The overall thesis is that Christianity triumphed in the early centuries because is was simply more human than pagan society had become and it provided a religious framework that was more robust than the disorganized pluralism of the empire.

Comments

Some parts of the book are very inspiring (like the chapter on how Christians responded to the plagues) and others are somewhat laden with sociological lingo and issues. Starks’ basic insights seem solid, but at times he seems to rely too much on “sociological speculation” without taking into account the tremendous social differences that exist between us today and the Roman Empire. For example, it may be true that in the modern world converts to marginal religious groups come from the middle classes, but that does not necessarily mean it was so in the ancient world. It certainly would not have been in the northern European context 500 years later, when all religious decisions were corporate. Stark assumes congruity on this level without providing a rationale for it. Still, he does usually grant that these are “sociological conclusions” and as such, not the same thing as historical data.

I’m also not sure if we ought to make as much of the terrible urban conditions that Stark describes. They seem inhuman to us, but if they are the only way to live (what one is used to), perhaps they would not be so revolting. After all, the conditions in all ancient cities, including Medival Europe, were pretty bad. But I think he is right to complain about how little attention historians have paid to this and right to mock the notion that everyone would have access to the publish baths and toilets. Still, it may be that Christianity did wake people up to the terrible life/world view conditions they found themselves in. I guess I need a little more info and thinking on this one.

Are We Liberated Now Or… Not Yet?

I had a good talk with a friend the other day about the Gutierrez book (theology of Liberation) and he brought up two concerns about it that were well placed, and probably the most important ones.

The first is that a strong emphasis on the presence of the kingdom brings with it the danger of just stopping at the “now”. Everything is fulfilled “now”, the kingdom is here or coming into human culture in this world. But if so, what about the “not yet”? Why are we awaiting the final consummation if all the values of the Kingdom of God are working their way out into history on this side? This criticism my friend made came also with the thought that the Kingdom can never really come significantly “now” because of the radical nature of sin. If you try to “bring in the kingdom” it will just lead to another political/social disaster. So, is it such a good idea to try to “build the kingdom” on this present earth?

Fair enough. And I think Gutierrez is weak on the “not yet”. It’s not really clear what he thinks about the future kingdom or how he sees the relationship between the Kingdom of God in history and the future Kingdom of God that will radicalize all experience. On the other hand I want to say that these questions, as interesting as they are, are not crucial to the agenda of the church in light of the present reality of the kingdom of God.

I think we just need to make a couple simple connections: If God favors the poor, and God’s sphere of influence is active in the world today (the KoG), then we ought to favor the poor as well. Or, reasoning from the future, if we have our hearts set on an new heaven and new earth in which justice shall reign, and that new heaven and earth is leaking into our present reality, then surely we ought (and ought to want) to pursue justice in all areas of our experience, be it social, political or personal.

I don’t know what the relationship is between the present reality of the kingdom and its future reality, but I am connected to that future kingdom by faith in the God who acts today. That consideration seems strong enough to act and live on. And if these actions lead to the political area or even to nation building, why stop? Does a good action become bad in light of eschatological speculation? This reminds me a bit of the typical evangelical unease when it comes to the UN. Since the UN is something like or might someday become the ominous one world government predicted by dispensationalist theology, we ought to have nothing to do with it – even if it’s actually trying to mitigate global suffering and promote justice and fairness. Something that by any kind of reasoning ought to be considered a good thing becomes bad because of abstract eschatological possibilities. My thought is that we ought to let the future take care of itself and pursue uncomplicated peace and justice for everyone.

The other idea I presented to my friend was that God is at work in history apart from his work in the church. This is a fairly central afirmation in Gutierrez’ book because he saw in his time a move towards freedom in Latin America that he maintained was the work of God. He also believed that the church had to be watching for these moves of God in order to learn from what God was doing in history and participate in it (he calls is “discerning the signs of the times”).

What I like about this is that everyone loves to say that God works in history, but now one ever says how or where (except for pointing out a miracle here and there that ussually helps to justify some power structure or military victory). Gutierrez at least can say “This is where God is at work”. There is also something comforting and hopebuilding about the idea that God is taking the world in a positive direction. It’s a very differenct way of looking at things than the ussuall eschatological pesimisim we indulge in. I’m not saying this all makes the idea that God is working in history independent of the church true, it just makes it interesting.

My friend was concerned about the implications this might have for the doctrine of the church and the place of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit’s work to witness to and glorify Jesus Christ, is it not? So is not Jesus Christ the focus of God’s work in the world today? Why does God need to be at work outside the church? Is not the church itself God’s agent of grace in the world?

I do understand this, but I think that the question itself comes with some of its own answers. Why would we speak about the work of Jesus Christ as if it were anything but universal and all encompasing? It is in him, says Paul, that all things exist and are held together and he, as the head of the church, is the head of all things. The fate of the entire created order owes its existence and renewal to Jesus Christ. So, while it is true that the job of the Holy Spirit is to bear witness to Jesus Christ, the work of Christ is a universal work that must therefore go beyond the confines of the visible church.

Another thought is that everyone will acknowledge that God’s presence and power (“providence”) exist outside the church, but we see the church as being the most manifestation of that work. I don’t see why that would have have to change if God is working in history to bring about a better world.

But other questions and problems lurk. How do we determine that God is at work? I suppose it would be by determining where the principles of the Kindgom are at work. And why would God work independently of his people? Surely he would not, but if Gutierrez was correct about his own time, he himself is evidence that God works in conjunction with his people. It’s not a matter of eihter he works all by himslelf in the world historical/political realm, or he only works in the real of the visible church. It can be both in varying degrees.

Currently Reading

No end of eschatologies

It doesn’t take a lot of reading about the Kingdom of God to be confronted with a disconcerting number of “eschatologies”. Here’s a catalogue of what I have come across either in writing of have heard used at one time or another. Please let me know if I missed any:

Consistent eschatology – Weis and Scheitzer’s view that Jesus was an apocalyptic teacher who saw himself, incorrectly, announcing the imminent end of the world and the beginning of the Kingdom of God.

Realized eschatology – CH Dodd’s response to the apocalyptic thesis of Consistent eschatology, in which Jesus proclaimed a wholy present or “realized” Kingdom of God without the expectation of a future consumation.

Inaugurated eschatology – Jesus preached a kingdom that was in some ways present and in some ways future. There are many theologians with this view this, but I believe this terminology is associated with GE Ladd’s work. The other term that is used for this position is simply “mediating position” between the Consistent and Realized (Werner Kümmel and Oscar Cullman among others).

Existential Eschatology – Jesus taught an (existential) opennes to the future through his kingdom language (Bultmann).

Transcendental eschatology – On the assuption that humans relate to God as an eternally static entity, the final revelation (eschaton) is in principle nothing different than any other revelational moment. That revelation is an apprension of the being of God or man.

Presentative eschatology – Kan’t doctrine of the end (another way of saying Transcendental eschatology).

Marxist eschatology – According to Marxism, the dialectical course of history will inevitably result in a utopian society that favors the proletariat. Many see this goal-directed philosophy of history as a pseudo-Christian eschatology.

Dispensational eschatology – As in consistent eschatology, Jesus was proclaiming an immediate apocalyptic kingdom, but the reason it did not come was that the Jews rejected him as king. The Kingdom will come eventually after the “church age”. Some versions allow for some kindgdom now.

Cullinary eschatology – Treats the question of what what kind of food will we eat in the new heavens and earth and also what will be on the menu at the great feast of the lamb.

Discussion night at three trees

Tonight was the The da Vinci Code dicussion. It was actually a lot tamer than I expected, because the majority of the people there had either not read the book, or sympathized with the Christian position anyway. But the second hour got hopping when I brought up the question of goddess religion and wasn’t it true, as the book claimed, that the Goddess was a more gentle taskmaster than the male dominant God of the chauvinist Christian religion? (Sometimes you have to start trouble just to get people talking.) It ended up being a discussion of male – female roles in which several males defended the idea that the male was a “protector” just like God was and that is why God is male in the Bible. Then a female spoke up and said, essentially, I don’t need your stinking protection, thank you very much.

I had an interesting thought strike me in all this: That in contrast to the Near Eastern religions of the second millennium BC, the creation story does not posit sexuality as something that exists before creation. If I remember right, the cosmogenies of the ancient world had male and female gods that were related to a creation story mirroring human procreation. But in the Bible God himself creates sexuality, imbuing both members of the dyad with his image. The Biblical narrative does not lead us to posit a God who has more male characteristics than female. He is the source of both and he is neither.

Jesus, on the other hand was a man.

Picture of me “leading the discussion”. Next week the topic is Should we legislate morality?

The dirty little secret called… Part 4

part 1 : part 2 : part 3 : part 4

In the contemporary evangelical scene it is by large insensitive or at least unelightened to talk about the need to do things: to improve our character, to do good works, to live sacrificially. Everyone knows that this is one of the main points of being a Christian – that Christians ought to be different in the moral context – but overwhelmingly the recommended path is a pasivism. Moral growth comes through altar calls or direct divine intervention. To be fair, I do think that spiritual and moral growth happens in spite of (not because of) this kind of passivity. God is at work in our lives and unless we are dead set against growth, he will accomplish something. On the other hand it’s a sloppy way to live your life.

The first thing we need to address to get our bearings straight is this unification of salvation and sanctification in the Keswick model. As I mentioned earlier, Keswick affirms that since we are saved by faith must also be sanctified by faith. Just as it is improper to try to be good enough please God in matters of salvation, it is argued, it is improper to try to please God by our efforts after we are saved. It sounds neat and tidy, but the problem is that there is no real scriptural basis for looking at it that way.

A great example of the way Keswick spirituality misunderstands scripture along these lines is the entire book of Galatians, which, along with Romans 8 is one of its centerpieces. The interpretation goes that in Galatians Paul is telling his readers that their attempts to continue to justify themselves by works after salvation are very wrong and bad; that this work of sanctification is not accomplished by our efforts, but exclusively by the work of the Spirit in our lives.

The problem with this interpretation is that it assumes that Paul is dealing generally with any good work that we might feel like we have to do for God, when in fact Paul is dealing with the very concrete act of circumcision. And I think the crucial insight here is that circumcision is not a “good work”. It is not a moral act, it is not in keeping with love, it is not the kind of thing the Spirit is trying to do in our lives. It is, in fact, a completely unspiritual distraction from the true goal of the Spiritual life. It would be like someone saying, “That’s nice that you were saved by faith, but there is still one other thing you must do: You must become an American citizen. Then you will be truly saved.” Paul says, “No! That is ludicrous!” The problem was not that the Galatians were trying to do the right thing in “their own power”, but that they were simply doing the wrong thing.

This all becomes clearer in chapter 5 where, after all the castigation (and suggested castration), Paul tells the Galatians the way forward. He gives them “the keys to the car”, and it’s not “just let God do it” or something like that. It is simply that in contrast to this silliness about circumcision, they ought to serve one another in love because that is the whole point of the law (gal 5:13-14). And no, it’s not bad to try to do this. Its a good a necessary thing, in fact, because if we don’t do it (if we allow ourselves to get sidetracked from the true goal of sanctification) we will devour one another with jealousies and contoversies.

You might remember that in part 2 I gave the Keswick interpretation of Galatians 3:3:

“After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?” In Keswick thinking this means: Having rejected the attempt to please God on your own when you accepted the work of Christ, are you going to continue living in Christ as if you still had to please God by your own effort, as if you still had to try to be good for him?

Now we can see that “human effort” here is not “by trying with your own will”, but “by doing things that are completely unrelated to the will of God, like cutting yourself in a very sensitive area.” The NIV is not very helpful here, by the way, and seems to favor a “Keswickiam” interpretation by rendering the Greek “by the flesh” as “by human effort”. A literal translation of the entire phrase would be: “Having begun by the Spirit will you complete by the flesh?” Of course, “flesh” has multiple connotations here because we are talking about what the human condition does unaided by the Spirit (“sin”), and we are also talking about a very literal fleshly operation (circumcision). To translate it “human effort” is not so far from the mark, but it in the context of this debate of the place of human effort in sanctification, it seems to me that it causes unnecessary confusion.

So what does it mean, then, to “complete by the Spirit?” That’s easy. Paul tells us at the end of chapter 5. Instead of pursuing the things of the flesh (enmities, strife, jealousy, etc.), seek the things of the Spirit to obtain the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, etc.): “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit” (5:25). I don’t think the parallels between 3:3 and 5:25 are coincidental. This is Paul amswering his previous rhetorical question:

Having begun by the Spirit, will we come to completion by the flesh? (3:3)
If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. (5:25)

One of the things that put this all into place for me was the meaning of “walk” in 5:25. This is really what it comes down to, isn’t it? However you may be reading this, you want to know what it means to do this thing, that does it mean to “walk by the Spirit”? The Greek word here is stoikeo and it means to keep up with or keep in step with. So Paul is saying, “since you got here by the Spirit, keep up with that the Spirit is doing!” (see these other Pauline uses of the word: Gal 6:16, Phil. 3:16, Rom. 4:12). The implication is that the Spirit is at work in us and that we must march along in file with that work (the term can be used like that, in the military context). So this is not about some sort of mystical source of “willing” that if we can just tap into it will “make us good” without any willing on our part. No, it’s a simple urging to get with it and follow the lead of the Spirit (and not get distracted by useless controversies about cutting oneself).

Another passage helps to confirm that this is the Pauline view:

So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. (Phil 2:12-13)

What?! Paul, are you telling us to work on our salvation?! Indeed, he does seem to be doing that. But notice why we are to work: because God is already at work in us, pushing us to choose and act in ways that are in keeping with his will and purposes.

We work together with God at this thing called the Christian life. God initiates and empowers and we respond by choosing, acting, working, obeying. It’s not a bad thing to obey. Paul is not worried that a good thing done “in our own strength” will somehow turn out to be rebellious or arrogant or unspiritual. It’s already a given that we can’t do this on our own. Those who are in the flesh cannot do the things of the Spirit (see Romans 8). It is only because the Spirit has begun a work in us that we can even think of living holy lives that are pleasing to him. But having said that, let’s emphasize the fact that we do have the ability to move forward – to “Keep in Step with the Spirit,” as the title of Packer’s book puts it. It also seems to be implied that we also have the ability to interfere with it or perhaps even call the whole thing to a halt.

The dirty little secret called… Part 3

part 1 : part 2 : part 3 : part 4

I was stuck pushing the car, and the reason was sanctification by faith. (see Part 2)

And now you are probably confused right along with me because you are thinking, “Yeah, that sounds right! We can’t work to please God with our own efforts. That’s wrong. But then how do we get to be better people? How do we stop lying and lusting and being selfish?”

Now do you see why I was irritated? I’m trying hard to do the right thing and along comes some wise guy telling me I’m trying too hard. And then he dissapears into a whiff of smoke. What am I supposed to do? Nothing? Is nothing going to accomplish what effort could not? Do I “just believe”? Is it lack of faith that causes me to lust, and rage and brag and chose my own benefit over that of others? If so, how excactly do I “believe more”? And how can I believe more if it is not by some sort of moral effort of the same kind that I am being asked to cease? You can’t say that I need to pray more, because prayer is hard to do. It takes effort and discipline to pray when I don’t want to do it, which happens quite frequently. You can’t tell me that I need to read my Bible more because it takes work to force myself to read the Bible on a consistent basis, and that kind of self-effort is the very thing I am being told to repudiate. You can’t tell me that I need to do anthing at all to enter into the victorious life of santification by faith because anything you tell me to do will involve an act of the will on my part and I’ve already been told I must not do anything.

And this is really the root incoherence of this way of thinking: On the one hand we are told that it is basically bad to “try to please God” to “be good in our own flesh” or “by our own efforts”. But then we are offered spiritual sounding solutions that can only be succesfull by the application of the will, such as prayer, Bible reading, fellowship, etc.

To be fair, Keswick teaching is a little more coherent on this point because, as part of the Weslian Holiness movement, it looks for a second experience of grace after salvation. So I believe the reason Major Ian Thomas would not tell me how to start the car is that he was using the story to be me to come down to the altar and have an experience. You suddenly just want to do good because you had faith.

Be that as it may, a sloppy Keswickism is rife accross the land and perhaps by this time completely cut loose from from its moorings in Cumbria. But the proclamation one comes across incesantly is that we don’t have to do anything to please God, that we are trying too hard, working too hard, “striving” “in our own strength” “in our own flesh”, whereas God just wants to accept us as we are, that we just need to “be in his presence”, understand his love, or whatever.

So here is the dirty little secret (and I admit that it’s a bit of an overtatment to call it a “dirty little secret”, but it made nicelly scandalous title): you have to excercize your will to grow spiritually. You have to “do” stuff. But nobody wants to talk about it because 1) it sounds heretical and 2) no one wants the responsibility that is implied if we have to work at this thing called the Christian life. It’s like sex in Victorian England. Everybody was thinking about it, but no one was allowed to talk about it. If you tried to say anything, you got the suspicious raised eyebrow and you though, “Oh man, I guess I better not say anthying about that or I’ll get in trouble.”

conclusion to follow…

The dirty little secret called… Part 2

part 1 : part 2 : part 3 : part 4

To review, I was stuck in the slow lane pushing my own car, I didn’t go forward for the alter call (is that an “altarcation”?) and I was experiencing fleshly irritation at being strung along by a deep secret that never delivered (see part I).

Later on I was able to put the victorious life principles of Major Ian Thomas in their historical theological context. This is Keswick (say “Kesik”) spirituality, a deeper life teaching that grew out of yearly conferences in Keswick, England in the early 20th Century. And it wasn’t until I read a critique of it in JI Packer’s Keep in Step With the Spirit that I was able to undertand the ideas that were at work. One of the main features of this teaching is that since we are saved by faith without works, we can only be sanctified by faith without works.

“Without works” here comes with a particular kind of weight. The asumption is that everyone tries to please God through their own efforts and justify themselves before him, to pretend that they are good enough to stand before him — and that Salvation is the breaking of this self-righteousness and the acknowledgement that we are not good enough and must rely on the work of another, Jesus Christ, to be justified before God.

Fair enough. But there is a problem with the asumption that the root evil of the human race is this attempt at self-justification. It is simply not the case. Sure, many people will say “I’m not a terrible person” when they are told that they need a savior. But then, many other people just say “that’s your truth” or, “what you need is to become enlightened” or “what’s on television tonight?”. The other problem with the asumption that everyone is attempting to justify themselves is that it places us in the conflicted position of 1) afirming that non-Christians really are attempting to measure up to God’s standard, where scripture seems to say the exact opposite and then 2) painting that attempt in a negative light; as if it were a bad thing to attemp to do good!

Ok. Now now the pieces are falling into place. We are getting to the juicy part. If the root problem of humanity is the attempt to be good enough “on our own”, and if becoming a Christian means repenting from that self-powered self-righteousness, then surely we cannot continue in these misguided attempts to be good once we have repented from them! If we are saved by faith from the attempt at self-powered righteousness, surely we must continue our Christian walk in that same manner – by faith. So, not only are we justified by faith, we are also sanctified by faith. We did not earn our salvation by work or by “doing” and we cannot expect to grow in that salvation by work, or by “doing”. As Paul said the the Galatians “After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?” (3:3) In Keswick thinking this means: Having rejected the attempt to please God on your own when you accepted the work of Christ, are you going to continue living in Christ as if you still had to please God by your own effort, as if you still had to try to be good for him?

go to Part 3

The dirty little secret called… Part 1

part 1 : part 2 : part 3 : part 4

If you’ll indulge me in another one of those “back when I was in Bible school” openings, back when I was in Bible school we had a famous speaker come through for a revival: Major Ian Thomas, preacher of the secrets of the deeper life. As expected, I was deeply impacted. Only, I was not impacted as expected.

The message came down to one striking metaphor. If you were trying to live your spiritual life “in your own strength” you were like a man who had just purchased a new car. He had the keys in his pocket. He had a tank full of gas. It had a stereo and all the extras. It had all a man ever needed to go down the road in style. The man had been overjoyed and he immediately started pushing the car down the road under his own strength. You say, “Hello, man! What on earth are you doing? You have the sweetest ride in town, a full tank of gas and the keys in your pocket. Why are you pushing this baby when you ought be sailing down the road in comfort?”

It might seem absurd, said the Major, but don’t laugh! This is exactly what many of you are doing today in your spiritual life. You have all the resources you need to live the victorious life, but you are not taking advantage of them. You are trying to live the victorious life “in your own strength”. You need to pull the keys out of your pocket, turn on the engine, and let the Holy Spirit do the driving!

At first I was fascinated. I was like, “Ok, ok. Show me the secret; give me the keys! I’m worn out by the struggle to live a holy life! I’m pushing that darn thing and I’m about to fall over.” But in the end I was disappointed because, after a weekend of admonitions and metaphors, the keys were never delivered. In fact, the secret to the victorious life seemed to be just that: that you didn’t have to do it on your own – not how to not do it on your own – just that you didn’t have to do it in your “own flesh” or “own strength”. There were alter calls, of course, and many went forward to claim the deeper life. But was about up to “here” with alter calls at that stage of my life and I was not about to go forward to ask God for something that didn’t make any sense anyway. After a few days of fleshy irritation at being strung along I decided that this whole approach was spiritual sounding mumbo-jumbo that people either pretended to understand and didn’t or understood only because they knew beforehand what the speaker was atempting to communicate.

What did it mean? I’m supposed to stop trying to “be good”? Was that it? I knew enough about myself to know then, as now, that if I stopped trying to “be good” there would be one guaranteed result: I would be bad – deeper life principles or no. And if that makes me unspiritual, I thought, then I have my explanation! I am too unspiritual to understand the deeper life and I’m stuck pushing the car.

go to part II…

Definition of salvation

In Bible School we had to take a theology class on “Soteriology” – the study of salvation. The first day of class the teacher handed out 3×5 cards and told us to write a definition of how to get saved. Then he went through each one in front of the class and whenever the definition said something about repentance or anything that implied change of behavior or doing, he pointed out that this was incorrect because we are saved by faith and nothing else.

Interested in your thought on that one.

But for today, class, we are going to look at a definition in Gustavo Gutierrez’, Theology of Liberation. One of the basic ideas in this movement is that salvation is integral, meaning that it encompases every aspect of what it means to be human both on this and the other side of “eternity”. This means that God is at work right now in history to renew all aspects of what it means to be human, and that we Christians ought to participate in that “salvific” activity:

“Salvation is not something otherworldly, in regard to which the present life is merely a test. Salvation–the communion of human beings with God and among themselves–is something which embraces all human reality, tranforms it, and leads it to its fullness in Christ: ‘Thus the center of God’s salvific design is Jesus Christ, who by his death and resurrection transforms the universe and makes it possible for the person to reach fulfillment as a human being. This fulfillment embraces every aspec of humanity: body and spirit, individuals and society, person and cosmos, time and eternity. Chris, the image of the Father and the perfect God-Man, takes on all dimensions of human existence.’*” (p. 85)

The lines of controversy here run through the now and not yet divide. How much are we saved now? How much do we not get yet? And it is complicated by the fact that for some life after death means a disembodied life in “heaven” while for others it means existence in a renewed cosmos that works the way God originally intended. So in the first case it does not make much sense to talk about salvation applying to this world in a wholistic sense because salvation is inherently something not of this world. But for those who see a future renewed cosmos the question becomes more important or at least more interesting.

It something akin to the controversy over healing. Is there healing for everyone in this life? Some would argue “yes” because healing flows from the redemptive work of Christ on the cross. But others, like me, will argue that while it is true we are living on the other side of the victory over death and illness, we are in the now and and in the now we do not enjoy a complete experience of the salvation that is yet to be revealed. The not yet still breaks into the present from time to time , but our experience of it will always be incomplete until the restoration of the entire created order. And yet, we (or at least I) do not for that reason toss out miraculous healing as irrelvant or impossible. Why? Because God is now doing partially what he will one day do fully.

So here’s the million dollar question: Shouldn’t we pursue all aspects of the soon to be revealed complete restoration of the universe on this side of the consumation, even if we know that we are only bound to experience that restoration in a limited sense? Healing, wholess, forgiveness, a just society?

*The quote within the quote is from the “Medllín conference” in 1969, which was an important milestone for the Liberation Theology movement.

Larvacam.com

I was sitting up here at my desk talking to Cathy and I happened to glance over to my web cam and I go, “What on earth is that?” Upon closer inspection I noted that the lense was stuffed with dried mud. My first thought was “Aidan…” But we dismissed that option as to bizzarre even for him. Then, as Sherlock Holmes recommends, after eliminating all the impossible options what is left is the truth, or something like that, we decided that it must be a yellow jacket nursery. Cathy set to picking the crusted mud away, and it was not long until a friendly larva showed its squirmy white form and said “Mommy”. The web cam is now hanging out the window and we are both feeling a little squeamish. Ok, maybe a lot. I’m thinking I should have left it as is and created a web site to document its emergence. Another web site not for the faint of heart. I’m afraid to check and see if larvacam.com has already been taken. Can you check for me and let me know?

Good Night and More Good Luck

Just when you get to the part of the film where you would normally start feeling this glow of self satisfaction and cultural pride because the McCarthy era was a bad time of our history that was nevertheless overcome by our love of freedom, you realize that this is not the end of the film, and that the point of the skirmish between Murrow and the junior senator was not so much to take heart warming trip down memory lane, but to help us think about the role of journalism as an institution that holds power accountable.

The film is really a critique of television. Murrow actually loses his show as MacArthy goes is going down in flames. Why? One would have thought that Murrow’s victory would have guaranteed the place of issues-oriented journalism in television for years to come. But although all this controversy was very interesting, television was a business then just like it is today, and controversy causes all kinds of requests for technical support in a machine that ought to run smoothly. There will always be an advertiser with vested interests who complains about the content and pulls out, or a politician who needs to be appeased because one of his supporters is upset. Maybe the audience really does like thought-provoking news stories, but they don’t like them as much as Wheel of Fortune, and the wheel of fortune requires no maintenance. This isn’t brain science. It’s a business principle called “picking the lowest fruit” applied to the public sphere. You do the thing that is the most profitable and you don’t do the thing that is the least profitable. If you are taking time away from doing the most profitable thing to do the less profitable thing you are losing money! Why would you want to do that?

Television was cursed from the start by the nature of the medium. Since it requires a lot of money to run, it can only do the most profitable thing; and the most profitable will rarely be the most worthwhile thing.

Good night and good luck

Good night and good luck speaks to us about today from yesterday, through the true story of Edward R. Murrow’s confrontation with “the junior senator” (as Murrow called him) Joseph McCarthy and the downfall of McCarthyism. In the film we see iterations of the same pressures felt today: Don’t you think the people who know the secrets know better? Dissenters are unpatriotic. Suspicion is enough act upon. What are you reading? What are your rights? Paranoia lurks.

To be fair, the “McCarthy era”(early fifties) had a right to be paranoid. The USSR was militant and expansionist and nuclear war was a disturbing new possibility, never before experienced by the human race. So let’s be careful not to judge McCarthyism as a kind of absurd fuddyduddyism. If it is going to be the icon of the crumbling superficiality and enforced homogeneity of the fifties, if we are going to dismiss it with an annoyed wave of the hand and a roll of the eyes as if McCarthy were the progenitor of modern day fundamentalist crusaders of inconsequentia, let’s at least remember that those people back then were actually really scared. The possibility of atomic death hung over their heads. There was, or at least they thought there was, an evil empire on the move, whose aim was to subjugate the entire world under an oppressive political ideology. There was a global conflict afoot.

Now, once we have let that sink in, we are ready to make judgments. And we can see that McCarthy was really a coward because he traded truth for safety. When things become frightening cowards run to simple self serving interpretations. Murrow is a hero because he kept his head and dared to make almost pedantic distinctions while the barbarians were howling outside the gates. No, he said, we are not going to set aside due process just because we are scared and in danger. We have certain principles and we must stand on those principles even while the bombs are falling. I don’t care, Murrow might have also added, if someone happens to look like a terror- I mean communist, or if his father happened to frequent certain web sit- I mean read certain books, or if you think you are in imminent danger of a terrorist atta- I mean a nuclear holocaust. Being faithful to the noblest part of who you are when you come under pressure – there is the true test of individual or collective character.

He will show you the moves

Click for the video

Two book reviews

I have two “forthcoming” book reports slated for publication in the Evangelical Review of Theology, which is the organ of the World Evangelical Alliance. I signed up for the discussion forum a while ago, but was unable to start any trouble. We did all, however, get an offer to do book reviews. They send you the book for free and you write the review! I can’t tell you much about them because of my contract (that was a joke), but here’s the jist:

The Known God and the Question of Being, by Stan Grenz. I really wanted to review this little tome because it was Greanz’ last before his untimetly death last year, and Grenz was one of my teachers at Regent back in the 90s. Grenz is probably the evangelical who best promoted a view of postmodernism that was not totally critical, that acknowledged the validity its critique of modernism and accounted for that in his thinking. Of course he got lots of flack for it from modernists who think the gospel is: “Though shall affirm that though knowest with absolute certainty the absolute truth”. In this book Grenz says (paraphrasing), “The method of starting to do theology from philosophy was disolved with the the downfall of modernity. It’s time to start doing philosophy and theololgy from Scripture (not scrap philosophy, mind you, but put it in its proper place). The foundation of this endeavor (this “theo-ontology”) is the biblical teaching on the trinity. A very very good book that takes time to read and is worth every minute.

Beyond the Bible. The great New Testament scholar I. Howard Marshall also wrote something last year that lands right in the middle of the controversies of the age, in his old age. The point here is that sometimes the teaching of the Bible leads Christians to go beyond what the Bible says in other places, due to the trayectory of grace in history. So, for example, the Bible is OK with slavery, but we are modern Christians are not. What is happening here? Well, the Bible contains the seeds for the abolition of slavery, but not all cultures and times in the Bible were able to acheive that kind of human freedom. We have “gone beyond” those parts of the Bible. More controvercially he applies his ideas to the place of women and genocide (the controvercy with genocide being whether we ought to give such a negative spin to the biblical events). You can see the basic idea. I sent my review to Dr. Marshall and though I was somewhat criticall he emailed me back and said he didn’t think I was too far from his position. What do you think?

There is something that likes a wall

You know that Robert Frost poem that goes “Good fences make good neighbors”? Cathy pointed out the other day that those lines are what the poem criticzes, not what it promotes. I read it and she’s right! Then a few days later I heard some official in texas talking about guarding the border with Mexico saying, as if it were common knowledge, that very thing: Good fences make good neighbors. I wonder if the saying predates the poem? Seems possible. But the retort to that statement in the poem goes:

“Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,”

In order to justify my actions before Mr. Frost, I will say that I did know what I was keeping in and what I was keepting out when I built this fence, and that eventhough they were not cows, even he might think there is something that would like this wall.

What it is keeping in: My kids, and it’s keeping them in from the well trafficked alley. What it is keeping out: Drug dealers. Ok. that is a bit melowdramadic. But drug dealers were the original reason for making the wall. Since then they have moved on to more closed quarters. However, we did not make the fence to keep all the bad things out an burrow into our private square footage and it is not going to be as high as you see in the picture.

But now the victory is mine! I have prevailed against mankind’s greates foes: Anarchy, Entropy and Sloth. Dance a jig right now to celebrate with me. Sing along with Cool and the Gang “Celebrate good times — Come on!!” Du du du du, du dudu du!

New JW outreach method

It’s always interesting to watch the JWs at work. Their approach is so unhip and awkward that I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t something to it.

This morning as I waited for the bus on Alabama I watched a brand new Volvo with two Starbucks-toting, well-dressed, middle-aged women pull into the alley next the stop. I thought, “Humm, I wonder why they are pulling into that spot?” distractedly. Then one of them got out, fiddled with something in her trunk and walked towards me. I thought, “Volvo, well-dressed, starbucks getting dropped off at the bus stop? I don’t think so.” By that time she was standing next to me, holding out a display of Awake! magazines and asking me if I would be interested in “our magazine.” I said, “No thanks,” thinking, “with all the stuff I know about JWs you’d think I could come up with something more intelligent than ‘no thanks’”. She thanked me back with a smile and walked back to her car, which she then had to turn around because it was a dead-end alley. Then she had to wait for traffic to pull into the street while I looked on awkwardly. All this just to offer me a silly magazine.

I watched the car speed away and was gratified to see that it pulled into the alley before the next bus stop, where I could see a hunched over figure on the bench. She got out again (the passenger was apparently just along for the coffee) and did her thing and moved on. I was gratified in a different kind of way when I noticed that the elderly gentlemen who mounted the bus from that stop did not carry an Awake! magazine either. The whole experience was strange and intriguing, but weirdest part was – Starbucks toting JWs in a Volvo?

Letter to Donald Wildmon re: NEA “endorsement”

Dear Donald,

I am as concerned as you are about what our children are taught in public schools. But I can’t for the life of me understand how you arrive at the conclusion that the wording of this new NEA proposal translates into aggressive promotion of homosexual marriages and “active support of two men and one woman, three women, two women and three men, etc.” If you have solid reasons for saying this, then it is crucial to state them. But to jump to this conclusion from the data you have provided it irresponsible, alarmist and unbecoming of someone who claims to be a follower of the One who is the way, the truth and the life.

Would it be any wonder if NEA members dismissed your perspective a hopelessly biased and paranoid? I am certainly ready to do that, and I’m on your side!

Sincerely….

Concert and Fathers day

Saturday night was the Elemental concert and the next day Father’s day. A fun time was had by all. I will convess that my fingers are very sore from playing for about 4 hours yesterday. Clic on the picture to see more. There is also proof that my fense is progressing.

How to do theology

I read bunch of things at random out of Theology of Liberation (Gustavo Gutierrez) and then decided I needed to go back and read it from cover to cover, including the introductions. In the intro to the first edition (1973), we get some really neat statements about methodology, like this:

My purpose is not to elaborate an ideology to justify postures already taken, or to undertake a feverish search for security in the face or the radical challenges that confront the faith, or to fashion a theology from which political action is “deduced.” It is rather to let ourselves be judged by the word of the Lord, to think through our faith, to strengthen our love, and to give reason for our hope from within a commitment that seeks to become more radical, total and efficacious.

If only we could all think like this about our faith…

When it comes to music, everything is Elemental for me

Elemental is playing this Saturday at 3 trees coffee. You are urged to come. Since our keyboard player is unavailable for the near future we are now a three piece: Guitar, bass and drums. On some songs we switch an instrument for the Keys. Mitch bought a red Ibanez electric and now I want one just like it. Except maybe mine could be black. Here’s the song list for Saturday. As you can see, we play a wide variety:

Heaven (Blue grass rock)
Coldness (Acoustic rock)
Bad Moon Risin (Credence)
Silver and Gold (Acoustic Rock)
O Love My Love (I’m actually not sure about this one)
Soft Breeze (Based on a bird song)
Be with Me (Classic elemental)
Down on the Corner (Credence)
Down in the Delta (Blues with driving groove)
Victory (Head banger music)
Save Us (Blues rock)
Riding on the Wings (R&B ish)
My Girl (Otis Redding, among others. Originally The Temptations?)
Like A Dream (ballad)
In His Light (I’ve never heard of this song. Hope to know it by Sat night)
Pray (ballad)
Fields of Gold (the Stingster)
Always There for You (Stripper. I will wear tights for this one)
Take Me Home (Denver)
Waiting for the Light To Shine (From the Huck Finn musical)
Goin’ Back (reminds me of ragtime… but it’s not)
Poor (classic blues)
Hard Day’s Night (Beatles)
Happy Together (Who did this?)
Jeremy Found (Jazzy)
40 (U2)
Save Us* (reprise)

Murder Must Advertise

I’ve been spreading sheetrock mud on my bathroom walls the last few days as part of an effort to rejuvenate my bathroom. When I say rejuvenate, I don’t mean on the analogy of a discrete face lift that takes you from, say, 49 to 44 and a half. It’s more like those dudes in Star Trek Insurrection that stretched their skin over their faces with clamps. The bathroom was nasty. The point being that as I spread and sand I have been listening to Dorothy Sayers’ Murder Must Advertise on tape for the third or fourth time. If I forget to turn it on, I will be sanding way and suddenly words like Diane Demomery, or Newtrax or Death Bredon will pop into my head, and I will think, “oh yeah. The book on tape.” And turn on to the witty rhythms of Whimsey – Lord Peter, that is.

In this story Lord Peter Wimsey works incognito in an ad agency as Death (pronounced Deeth) Bredon in order to clear up an unfortunate accident on “the iron staircase”.

Jolly good fun – Wot?
Oh yes, quite.
I say, Tallboy, did you actually see Victor Dean fall?
Coo, he said reverently…
Can I have it wid me in me baff?

The lines just pop in and out of my head.

There are more characters, subplots and word play in this one book that in all of DB’s bestsellers. The best part is that it is performed immaculately by Ian Carmichael.

There is this great contrast between moral Peter Wimsey and Diane Demomery, the dishy but sluty, mostly unsober party girl who is always “So dreadfully bored” and thinks that Wimsey can give her a thrill. But he’s not the slightest bit interested or fascinated in spite of the fact that he has ample opportunity to jump in bed with her several times. In fact he insults her, or tries. But she can’t really be insulted. The thing is, Wimsey is not turned off by some kind of prudishness. Oh no. He is not prude. This is a man acquainted with the underside. It’s just that she has nothing to offer him. His character is such that he is not attracted to wantonness. She tempts him, but he is not tempted. It’s great stuff, really. You can check out the book on tape from the Bellingham Library when I’m done with it.

Rid thyself of thine own impedimentia

What’s up with William Gibson? All his books are too much like Neuromancer. Unquestionably Neuromancer is the hands-down classic cyber-punk SF masterpiece. Others have tried and even done it well (like Niel Stephenson), but nothing compares to Neuromancer. It’s the classic exploration of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and a future of the technology industry that seems all too possible, not to mention the background to The Matrix. And all the while he weaves in a subtle critique of contemporary culture that is just, well… he squeezes the juice out of the theme like a robotic hand might perfectly squeeze a juicy orange that has been bio engineered to juicy perfection. What, you haven’t read it? Looser. Like the term “impedimentia”, which has become a part of my vocabulary. It’s all this stuff from earth that an obscenely wealthy family has carted up to a satellite over the years. I want to write words like that, that coin themselves. (Notice also the whisper of insanity that comes with the word).

But the point I was preluding up to was that I have been frustrated by WG’s other books. They all seem too similar. He just reuses the same universe with somewhat different characters. Kind of like what Dick Francis does, you know? It’s interesting, but only because it is familiar. I read the one about the girl who lived the remains of the Golden Gate Bridge (see the climax of Johnny Mnemonic), but I thought it ended wandering a bit a field. My latest attempt was Count Zero (which is the web handle for one of the characters). But it was all so the same as the rest. Come on WG, the world you have created is weighing you down. I sold Count Zero back to the used book store half-read for half the price of the purchase and spent the cash on a salt bagel and an almond-rum truffle. Create something new, man!

Spain treck

I had a blast. It’s a very different place than you imagined. Favorite experiences:

• Mastering the Metro (subway) in Madrid. Well, I say “mastering”. I rode it successfully three or four times.
• The fountain in Barcelona (see pics). There was this whole avenue of fountains leading up to a palace with searchlights shinning out from behind. The main fountain was a light, water and music show. Really amazing.
• Walking around Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia. It’s the church in the pics. In construction for 80 plus years. Gaudi was an “art nouveau” architect (I don’t think that is the right category in architecture, bur that look, style and era). Designed everything after the pattern of nature so it is all more flowing and less symmetrical than we are accustomed to. I’ve always liked his work, so it was great to see it in person, but I didn’t really have time to soak it all in.
• Going to a museum of ham (Museo del Jamón). You eat ham and cheese and bread from a bar.

A Crazy Thought From Mars

I hade this rather bizarre thought that occurred to me while reading Philip K. Dick’s Martian Time Shift. We usually think of the crazy person as one who escapes from reality into unreality in order to cope. But what if the crazy person’s problem is that they can no longer pretend along with the rest of us?

Father Brown

Michael’s comments (see Elemental Fun) inspired me to take a little trip down memory lane and reminisce about Father Brown.

Michael and I started Father Brown while we were attending Multnomah School of the Bible in the 80s. That was before Multnomah had adjusted to the reality of contemporarity and people who dressed weird and played electrical instruments were suspect. And so we were suspect. Michael and I came up with the name on a trip where we had nothing better to do than float ridiculous band names (you always do that when you are trying to name a band). “Father Brown” was perfect because it alluded to something vaguely Christian, but also intellectual because Father Brown was the GK Chesterton sleuth of the cloth. Also a “Father” was much classier than “pastor”, you know? Especially when you are an independent thinker/rocker at a rather stuffy Protestant school.

The funny thing was that the next day we were telling all our friends about our new band name and I thought I heard Michael say Farmer Brown and I’m like, “Did you just say Farmer Brown? And he’s like “Well, yeah – what else?” And I’m like “Dude! It’s Father Brown, not Farmer Brown!” And I try to wrap my mind around how we could have been talking about different band names for several hours. After a brief discussion I was able to convince him that Father Brown was cooler sounding, more intellectual, and that Farmer Brown sounds too much like a hippie band (although at that time Michael would have seen that as a good thing).

Father Brown consisted of 4 or 5 members and my roommate Dave was the manager. Our best song was Love Rhino.

I’d like to sing a song, but I don’t know what to do
So I think I’ll sing a song about you
Your hair is pretty and your legs are long
You always have fun because you’re a blond

You’re my love rhino
I – I know
You’re my love rhino

Looking back, it doesn’t sound very intellectual. But there were some better songs, which I don’t precisely recollect at this time.

For a practice room we took over one of the many little practice rooms where you are supposed to play your trumpet or do vocal exercises. We had heard that a person could actually rent one of these rooms and be the exclusive user. So we thought, “Hey, let’s rent a room!” Of course we didn’t tell anyone we were going to cover up the windows, tack up posters, fill it with guitars and amplifiers and take apart the organ so that there was more room. We got away with it for a couple months until the director of the music program put the organ up for sale without actually looking at it. How surprised was he when opened the door to the practice room, potential buyer in tow, and found the organ in pieces and buried under stacks of rock paraphernalia. The organ was easy to put back together but we didn’t get to keep the room.

Elemental fun

Tonight was another Elemental concert. I ussually hate going to hear bands play, but it’s a little different when I’m in the band. Then I do go, and I enjoy it. Tonight was the best concert we have put on since I joined up a few months ago. There was lots of energy and we maintained the flow from song to song much better than last time. There was a particular member of the audience who was a little too comfortable with talking to everyone between songs. In situations like that I always think its good to just say, “two, three, four” and start playing again. BTW I have a bit of a pet peeve about musicians who spend too much time talking about the song they are going to play. Can you play the darned instrument or not?! And if you are goint to ramble, please don’t start with “I wrote this song when I was going through a rough time…”

Sorry. I’m a little hyper right now. This fells like when I used to work swing shift at Poor Richards in Portland. I would get home between midnight and 1 AM all pumped up and ready to cook some more stakes! That reminds me. One night that summer there was this group of half drunk partiers hanging out in the park behind my apartment and they were telling these really dumb and not funny and often quite sick jokes that all started with “I knew guy named so and so…” and then he liked to do something disgusting that just so happend to rhyme with his name. I got really tired of it after a while so I stuck my head out the window and yelled, “I knew a guy named Reese. He liked to call the police.” There were several “aw man” (like, what a lame joke man) but it was not too much longer before the comedy troop moved on to a new venue.

Those were the good old days.

It was that summer that I bought my silver Yamaha trumpet for $150.00. Yesterday I decided to dig it out of the attic, clean it up and blow some saliva through it. The kids thought it was the coolest thing since fried Nemo. Aidan is especialy intrigued. I taught both of them to blow it right so that it actually produces a trumpet sound (most kids try to sing the note while they blow into the mouthpiece). So now I have another thing to imagine that my kids will excell at someday. Aidan Haskell, world famous trumpet player. Asks the interviewer: “So, where did you learn to play the trumpet?” World famous trumpet player Aidan Haskell answers: “Oh, my dad was always draggin instruments around the house, writing songs, making recordings, playing his guitar in the wee hours of the night in the living room, which was right next to our room. I’m not bitter really. I din’t need all that sleep anyway. One thing about dad though, he was terrible singer. Still, he could play a mean bass. For a while played with the Senti’s you know, in their early band called Elemental?” Interviewer: “I see that you had an interesting childhood…” Aidan: “I can’t tell you all of it or I’ll get in trouble.”

Gospel of Judas: The bare facts

• We don’t know where it was discovered, but some speculate it was part of the Nag-hammadi stash (the source of the famous collection of Gnostic Gospels).
• Over the last fifty years it has popped up for sale from time to time, but the price has been so outrageous that no one bought it or got to look at it for long.
• It was purchased recently (I can’t find an exact date) by the Swiss Maecenas Foundation for 1.5 million (and they say people don’t care about history any more!).
• MF teamed up with National Geographic to restore the manuscript and make it available to the world.
• The release last week has obviously been timed to take advantage of both the Easter season and the impending release of the Da Vinci Code film. On April 6 National Geo released two books that appear to be the results of the project: The Lost Gospel, which tells the “incredible story of how this incredibly precious document passed around the world for over 20 years going from buyer to buyer while coming precariously close to degrading beyond any hope of usefulness” and the Gospel of Judas, which is the text and commentary. Both are written by Bart Erhman, who is the scholar that headed up the project. Yesterday a third book was released, The secrets of Judas, by James Robinson. He was not involved in the NGeo project, but he did play a part I the history of the manuscript and he is also a Gnostic Gospels expert.
• We have known about the Gospel of Judas for a long time because the second century pastor and apologist Irenaeus (c. 130-202) mentions it in his book Against Heresies (Book 1, ch 3, par 1). Here is the paragraph in question: “Others again declare that Cain derived his being from the Power above, and acknowledge that Esau, Korah, the Sodomites, and all such persons, are related to themselves. On this account, they add, they have been assailed by the Creator, yet no one of them has suffered injury. For Sophia was in the habit of carrying off that which belonged to her from them to herself. They declare that Judas the traitor was thoroughly acquainted with these things, and that he alone, knowing the truth as no others did, accomplished the mystery of the betrayal; by him all things, both earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown into confusion. They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas.”
• You can read the text of the gospel from the NGeo site: View the Gospel of Judas. Whatever complaint one might have about the timing and motivations of NGeo, one must be impressed with how well they have publicized the contents. You can even see the Coptic version (that’s the language of the manuscript).
• As for the contents you basically have two things going on. Judas and Jesus discuss the fact that Judas will betray him (to say “plan” is too strong a word). Secondly, Judas is presented as a favored disciple and Jesus teaches him cosmological truths like “A great angel, the enlightened divine Self-Generated, emerged from the cloud. Because of him, four other angels came into being from another cloud, and they became attendants for the angelic Self-Generated. The Self-Generated said, [48] ‘Let […] come into being […]’ and it came into being.” That should give you a feel for how it reads. There are many breaks and missing lines.

Now opinions. The idea that this text threatens Christianity, as many news outlets have stated or implied, is as ludicrous as the idea that the Da Vinci Code exposes the biggest lie in history. There are plenty other Gnostic gospels that already say very unorthodox things like this, and we already knew this text existed thanks to Ireneaus. It’s one of a number of second century documents written well after the cannonica Gospels which teach Gnosticism. The question of the value or “threat” of these documents can be discussed and settled without any reference the Gospel of Judas. It does not add anything new.

The only reason this is such a big deal in the media is that it is ridding the wave of the DV Code and the current fascination with ancient documents that purportedly turn Christianity on its head. If you read the gospel it is fairly obvious that the main agenda is not to present an “alternative version” of what happened at the crucifixion, but to use the inversion of the Jesus-Judas relationship as a means to teach Gnostic cosmology. It does not give us anything upon which to judge the authenticity of its claims, except what can be determined by the tools of archeology, and by those standards it does appear to be a second century document. By the way, some news items were saying that the manuscript had been “authenticated” by scholars, which was very cheap, biased and egregious on the part of news editors because it makes it sound like the claims have been authenticated, when all it means is that this is indeed an ancient Gnostic document, not a modern forgery.

A year without shopping

Thanks to Kristi for the link to this article: A year without shopping. It’s about a NY couple who resoved to not shop for a year, meaning that they would only buy necesities (tp, groceries, soap, coffee). They would not eat out, go to Starbucks, take taxis, shop for fun, shop for gifts, go to the movies. Sounds like a good step. They did still watch television, which seems strange. After all, TV is the most aggressive advertizer in the world. Why put yourself through all that desire manufacture when you know you aren’t going to be able to fulfuill it?

What is “shopping”? I guess in this context it is take to mean buying things you don’t need or buying things for fun.

Palestinian Christians on the recent Hamas victory

An email list I am on sent me several letters from Palestinian Christians that comment on the recent Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections. Here are a few quotes from four different Palestinian Christian leaders (I left the names out in case it might matter).

• Any anger or fear the international community feels toward the results of this election should not be directed at Hamas, nor the voters who gave them power. Hamas’ victory can be traced to the dismal U.S. negotiated peace process with Israel. For over a decade this peace process has brought no freedom or life to Palestine, in fact conditions in Palestine have seriously worsened over this time. For ten years the Palestinians waited on the peace process, while Israel dramatically increased their settlement building in Palestinian territory, built a separation wall deep into the West Bank, isolating towns, confiscating land, destroying homes and farms. Ten years after the peace process began we have almost nothing. However, we have a democracy and we were able to vote for change. If Hamas gains our freedom and we are able to build a state, we will support them in the next election, if not we will change again.
• Attacking Hamas for being a fanatical movement is unfair in the context of the Israeli/Palestinian struggle. The Keneset has produced very fanatical movements that did not draw nearly the international condemnation Hamas’ victory created. However, a fanatical movement in power does not automatically produce chaos in the peace process. In fact, often these fanatical movements produce some of the most dramatic achievement towards peace. The Israeli Likud party at one poinpubliclyly declared that Palestinians don¹t exist, but they started peace talks in Madrid with many Arab countries. In 1997 Begin, a militia chief famous for massacring hundreds of Palestinians, was elected Israeli prime minister and later signed the peace treaty with Egypt. We hope that Hamas¹s time in government will produce similar results in the peace process.
• We need to wait and see. Things are not clear not only for the Christian Communities but for all the Middle East Future. Meanwhile, I think the threat for the Christian Community is not a government by Hamas, it is the ongoing exodus of the Christian people from the West Bank. Before 2000 there were about 50,000 Christians in the West bank including East Jerusalem. The last Consensus says that there are about 38,000 Christians. Which means that the theory that in 2025 there will be less than 10,000 Christians in the Whole Palestinians territories including East Jerusalem. That this real Threat.
• Our message to the Government of Hamas, members and leadership, is the message of Our Lord Jesus Christ in his Sermon on the Mountain: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: the kingdom of heaven is theirs. Blessed are the gentle: they shall have the earth as their inheritance. Blessed are those who mourn: they shall be comforted. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for uprightness: they shall have their fill. Blessed are the merciful: they shall have mercy shown them. Blessed are the pure in heart: they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: they shall be recognized as children of God” (Mt 5:3-10).
• Finally, what about us Palestinian Christians? My answer is that we are called not to be afraid; neither to panic nor to withdraw from the public sphere. We are called not to feel as if we are just spectators but rather to participate with many in this quest for a new Palestinian identity. We are called to replace old and ineffective structures by engaging in this process of building a new political system that is modern, meaningful, and accountable. In a context of commercializing religion, we are called to provide a new sense of deep spirituality. And in a context of disorientation, our vocation is to offer the vision of a new promise and of dynamic identity. This is not only a challenge, but an honor and a privilege to be able to participate. It is at times like these that we are most needed.
• This is the only time in the Middle East that a one party rule has ended peacefully by democratic elections. We cannot but accept this as the best way to rotate political power. The people decided that enough is enough with Fatah and its rule. They opted for change. This change has not only to do with the power of Hamas but also with a process that is necessary for our society. In reality, this change means the end of the PLO as we know it, since its parties and structures do not relate anymore to the issues of Palestinian society. A new political landscape has to emerge now. This brings with it endless possibilities.

If you would like to get on this list, which sends email out only occasionally, let me know.

Letter to a Dr. Zeus Character

As a shool assignment, my daughter, age 7, wrote the following letter to the fish from Cat in the Hat:

Dear fish,

I thing you are right about the cat in the hat. He is trabull with a capitull T. I agry with you. You are a very SenSabull fish.! If I were you I would do the samething!.

Greenland missionary

Greenland missionary

My sister Kristina has been hanging out in Greenland for the last few month. Yeah, people actually live there. Before she went there it hadn’t really occurred to me that anyone inhabited those parts, so it’s been an education. She is there on a YWAM mission trip, living in a parsonage with several other young people and doing evangelism as YWAMers are prone to do.

Some interesting facts about G-land:

• It’s Danish and that is the language they speak. There is a combination of European and native inhabitants.
• When she got there in January the sun was only up from 11 AM to 3 PM.
• The ocean froze and they went walking, sledding and ice hole fishing. Apparently salt water ice is much stronger than fresh water because it freezes horizontally. You can drive a car on a thickness of four inches (I’m like, how did they arrive at that conclusion?) and when it gets weak it bends, so you get a chance to move on before your plummet into the deadly cold waters of the artic.
• Things she has eaten: Whale blubber, Sea lion stake, narwhale and turtle – oh wait the turtle was eaten by my friend Guillermo in Iquitos, Peru last week. I can’t keep all these missionaries straight.
• They use sled dogs, but you aren’t supposed to pet them.
• The bay where she is staying has icebergs floating by. Imagine drinking coffee in the morning while you watch an iceberg saunter by.
• There is no homelessness.
• Greenlanders are very much aware of the reality of global warming. The ice used to freeze every winter. Now it freezes intermittently throughout the winter. This is unfortunate because the frozen ocean has always been a means of transportation. Kind of backwards: In winter you have grater freedom to travel.

You can see more about her trip (including many pictures): toravalon

Prayer of Jabez fails to claim territory

In 2003 Wilkinson moved to South Africa with much fanfare to refocus his ministry on Africa. He was concerned about AIDS, poverty, racial reconciliation and discipleship and made an especially good initial impression in Namibia. Christianity Today described his goal in October of 2003: “Southern Africa’s conservative Christians provide the workers, while Wilkinson provides new strategies for evangelism, church planting, pastor training, and holistic outreach.” (Mr. Jabez goes to Africa)

His projects seemed to grow and expand, Jabez like, with large financial donations in South Africa, campaigns and networking with other ministries. A top Nigerian leader told him, “God’s anointing for Africa is on you.” His most recent project was to take on Swaziland, a poor and small country in southern Africa with one of the world’s highest rates of HIV. Wilkinson was going to create “Dream for Africa.”
“…a $190 million project that would house 10,000 orphans on a 32,500-acre complex by the end of [2006]. The plan included a golf course, a dude ranch, abstinence training, and the planting of 500,000 small vegetable gardens.”
But after several months of struggling with the Swaziland government and a perceived insult from the King himself, Wilkinson announced he was quitting the whole thing and retiring from active ministry at 58. (Jabez author quits Africa)

Now, it’s not so strange and crazy that a person at the height of his power and influence should suddenly announce that he is burnt out and drop out of leadership. Living under the spotlight can be taxing and often the cracks don’t start to show until it’s too late. But the case of Bruce Wilkinson is special and especially important to note because it is a parable of the superficiality of American evangelicalism. Wilkinson himself is a fine person with a good heart. I don’t doubt it. But he is clearly the product of a culture of unreflective sentimentalism that confuses spirituality with emotion and self-absorption.

The biggest non-sequitor in all of this is, of course, that this is Bruce Wilkinson the famous author of The Prayer of Jabez, who is calling it quits and going home. This is the guy who sold millions of books that told us, based on the most tenuous exegesis, that we could pray for God to expand our territory; that it is OK for us to pray for our own desires because in fulfilling our desires God will bless others as well. Truly a theology crafted for American evangelicalism. We were all feeling a bit guilty about how self-focused our spirituality was. Now Bruce tells us that it’s OK. When God gives you what you want, it will bless others. So when the very person who teaches us the lesson fails the test it becomes particularly poignant. It requires some kind of a response; even if it’s just a gently spoken “I told you so.”

Any serious Bible student already knew the whole Prayer of Jabez theology was at best a sideshow in the biblical panorama. Something that a reasonable person could sort of agree to with the reservation that the Biblical teaching on the subject is much more complex than the scant details of life of poor old Jabez. But yes, there is a basis for saying that God will use your desires to bless others.

The problem is that when you let loose this kind of “secret” or “principle” on an adolescent culture that is already obsessed with self you just open wider the door to emotional decision making and instability.

Bruce’s own trajectory bears this out. In the last 15 years he has started several different ministries, changed his mind and not really completed any of them. To be fair, his interest in Africa has been long standing. But what of the goals he set for WorldTeach back in the 90’s, which was to reach the top 2% of the world’s population by the time he is 65 years old? That job is not finished and he has already gone to Africa and come back defeated! And what about the purported move to Hollywood and what about the Dream Giver Coach Project? The recent history of Bruce Wilkinson looks like the story of a man casting about desperately for the most exciting thing to do, ready to drop last year’s great project the minute a better one comes along.

And then we get to Swaziland. The sheer lack of endurance here is boggling. First we have this incredible vision of housing 10,000 orphans and spending 190 million dollars. He works on the project for all of a year and a half and then gets fed up with the process and goes home burned out. According to some accounts, a crucial turning point was the inability of the King of Swaziland to cater to Bruce’s schedule while they were both in New York. It starts to sound like there is an unhealthy attitude here, a kind of triumphalism where everyone has to bow to the will of God (as shown to Bruce) because, dare we add, he has asked God for this territory. Was Bruce really going to Swaziland to serve, or was he going to conquer? And who does conquering bless? But surely this incredible Dream for Africa is a vision worth fighting for, worth enduring for. What about all these AIDS orphans? What about all that poverty? Those poor people in Swaziland don’t have the luxury of burning out and going home to Atlanta for an early retirement, and if Bruce Wilkinson really cared about them it seems like he would have stuck it out a little longer.

And so we come to the crux of the parable. The problem with Prayer of Jabez spirituality is not so much that it is heretical or completely false, but that it is so completely right for the self-absorbed western Christian. It came from the West and, like its maker, to the West it will return because it is the kind of fantasy that can only be lived out in the wealthy West. It is only here in the land of plenty that we can seriously pretend it is such an easy matter to pray the prayer of Jabez and have everything turn out peaches and roses for everyone involved. But what if God doesn’t just expand our territory magically and we have to go out there and put in some really hard work to expand the borders? What happens when we get tired of the territory that God has given us? What if we get sick or discouraged in the process? What if it isn’t fun anymore? What if we lose the feeling? What if we aren’t sure that this territory is really what we wanted after all? What if someone else’s territory looks more glamorous? Back on home soil we can always look around for a new publishing or teaching trend that will tell us in a slightly different way that it is still OK to focus on ourselves after all, even if the 10 other versions didn’t quite work out.

Cruise Ship theologians

Sometimes it’s therapeutic to write a letter of complaint but when you’re done scathing the recipient you think better of sending it. On this one I’m not really sure, so I thought I would let you decide. What do you think? Should I send it? It’s about an apologetics teaching cruise or

“an unmatched cruise conference experience. On September 16, 2006, we’ll set sail from Boston aboard the ms Maasdam. We’re planning a voyage you will never forget. It is specifically designed for those who care to represent Christ to a world looking for answers to life’s toughest questions.” (see the whole flier)

The names have been left out of the poster to protect the guilty, but you can get them all from the flier.

Dear [director of the ministry],

Although my wife and I love to sit around our kitchen table making snide remarks about your material, I am not totally sure that this is a healthy exercise and I would appreciate it if you would help up to curb our sarcastic tendencies by ceasing the practice of sending us material that is so perfectly apt for such an activity.

The Anchoring our Hope boat tour of your latest marketing campaign is a case in point. The material is suffused with the bizarre tension between the serious “We are handling absolutely crucial material for your life!” and the glib “You can have fun too!” Hear from the greatest minds – but you don’t have to know anything. Challenging presentations – and fall colors! [Speaker’s name], PhD, and his dog spot who does intelligently designed tricks! This is theology as entertainment. Admit it!

Since you are one of those greatest minds, I am sure you are familiar with CS Lewis’ theologians in hell who had a grand time discussing important theological questions in their little houses in that endless shantytown. Point being that there are certain circumstances in which the context nullifies the import of “challenging presentations.” I also think of that painting made famous by Keith Green’s ministry in which a group of people are having a grand old time on a platform (or was that a boat?) while all around the sea is churning and brewing with drowning people.

There is nothing really challenging about this cruise, except that it is challenging for some to see that this is the ultimate form of evangelical escapism. For seven days you can pretend that everything is OK: The world is beautiful, and we have all the answers. “Starting at $1348.00!” I shudder to think of the amount of cash people are going to lay out for this tour while our brothers and sisters around the world suffer from hunger, abuse and injustice. I am not suggesting that we must take all the problems of the world on our shoulders, but maybe we should at least have the decency to not flaunt our wealth and pretend that this kind of luxury is spiritual.

Let me put it this way: Can you imagine Jesus accompanying you on this challenging voyage, slated to speak after an introduction by that hip guy with the famous sounding name from “Cool Strategies”? If you can imagine that, read one of the gospels. Then try again. Still can? Read another one. I bet you can’t make it through all four and still imagine Jesus on your tour.

Sincerely etc…

Integral Mission

Integral Mission is a new web-zine featuring the perspective of Argentine theologian Rene Padilla. His first entry gives you an idea of where he is coming from: Why do people hate Americans? His answer is that Americans the big bullies of the world playard. Padilla has been a long time critic of Northern capitalism’s interference with South America and I think he’s on to something. The only problem is that it will be very hard, if not impossible, for American Christians to hear what he has to say because: A) they think he’s nuts for even suggesting the US acts inappropriately in Latin American (oh, yes, the CIA got involved in a few shenanigans down there back in the day, but why would we bother to interfere with those poor countries?), 2) Christian Americans are so committed to capitalism and US hegemony that to them a criticism of “what America stands for” is the same as a criticism of the Christian worldview and is probably communism or socialism.

I think that Padilla more than anyone else connects the present reality of the Kingdom of God to the necessity of a prophetic response to global politics. It’s not brain science. If we are to live out the values of the Kingdom of God in this world that means that we are to apply the standards of that kingdom to every sphere of life. That includes politics and society. It’s not the same think as wanting a Christian government or Christian leaders in the halls of power, and it’s not pursuing a political agenda that will benefit those “like us.” It’s measuring the actions and policies of the nations of the world by the standard of the Kingdom of God and calling them to account where appropriate.

I hope the magazine does well, but I have to admit that the whole thing looks a little low tech. In the next issue they are promising a word from Brian McLaren.

The Commodification of Valentine’s Day

Commodification: to assign economic value to something that traditionally would not be considered in economic terms, for example, an idea, identity, gender. For instance, sex becomes a marketed commodity, something to be bought and sold rather than freely exchanged. (wikipedia)

International Justice and Cultural Relativism – Just a thought

At a recent discussion at 3TC we spoke with a couple college students who really had the whole relativism thing going strong. I asked the usual things about murder and rape and child slavery and one of them said that yeah, kidnapping kids and forcing them to work 16 hours a day in a dingy building probably wasn’t cool. I’m like “yeah…” But one of them wouldn’t go there. He stuck firmly to his guns and kept shooting the bullets of relativism: Who are we to impose our standards on their culture, we don’t know what it’s like, and further, who are we to impose our standards on them when we (the US) don’t have that great of a record for human rights abuses ourselves lately. That’s hypocrisy. I couldn’t resist asking very gently and almost as if it were merely of passing interest, “So hypocrisy is the one thing that is wrong, then?” He shrugged and said that was just what he thought about it.

I recount this little interchange, not to rehearse the same old story about how the relativist got caught absolutizing, but because I got a new take on that whole debate about us imposing our morality on people in other cultures, and I wish I had thought of it in this circumstance because I think it might have taken the conversation in a better direction. I was perusing the web site of International Justice Mission, an excellent institution that works of justice all around the world, and I noticed that they address this very question right on the home page of their site. Obviously it comes up a lot. To the question “What right do you have to impose American standards on other countries?” They answer simply that they aren’t imposing foreign standards on other countries; they are encouraging countries to enforce existing laws. The fact is that most countries have laws against child labor, slavery, prostitution, kidnapping, rape, female genital mutilation, and just about any terrible injustice you can imagine. The problem is that due to corruption, lack of funding or lack of collective will, these laws are often selectively enforced. Sometimes it takes an outsider to say, “Hey, are you really going to let this thing go on here? I thought you disagreed with that?” And it works quite well.

The other source of moral authority the IJM sites (in a print brochure) is the UN. It also has international laws against injustice and it is not one culture imposing its will on another, but a participation of all the countries in the world working together. It’s not brain science to figure out what is unjust. Everyone can agree to some basic things and everyone has. Enforcement is where it often breaks down.

So I guess the point of this is that national laws around the world and the UN both point to a common moral standard among human beings from different cultures and countries. So making a big deal out of international justice is a fair call by several different standards, the other one being the Bible.

Missions Fest Report

This Friday I went to Missions Fest in Vancouver BC to do a workshop called The Kingdom of God and the Global Mission of the church. I was pleasantly surprised when 40-50 people showed up, including a large cadre of eager young minds. I suspect they were from a local Bible College and were attending workshops for credit, but I didn’t ask.

My talk went something like this: There is this silly distinction that is often made between the spiritual and the physical in which “preaching the gospel” is more important than living christianly. It leads to disinterest real world issues like justice, economics, care of the poor, etc. The real rub comes when we start asking exactly what we mean when we talk about preaching “the gospel”. It turns out that evangelicals can have a pretty sloppy definition of what that is: Asking Jesus into your heart, accepting him as your personal savior, etc. These phrases and approaches that are not false, but they aren’t complete either, and are certainly not biblical definitions of the gospel. So the spiritual sounding statement that it is more important to preach the gospel can actually be just a meaningless generality. But what happens if we do give the term “gospel” a biblical definition?

The time is near.
The kingdom of God is at hand.
Repent and believe the good news! Mark 1:15

I used the above passage to illustrate the fact that the gospel (the “good news”) that Jesus was preaching was something like this: “The time has come for God to reclaim his fallen creation! Stop pursuing your own agendas and join in with God’s agenda of forgiveness and restoration.” Then he went about working out that restoration as the par excellence agent of the kingdom by healing, casting out demons and inviting the poor to participate in the great move of God.  Ultimately his death on the cross closes the door on the old creation and users in a new reality. So, if the good news is that God is restoring his fallen creation and we are called to participate in that movement, the “gospel” is the broadest possible term, including everything in the entire creation and certainly everything that has anything to do with human beings.

The Bible focuses specially on the restoration of the relationship between God and humans because human beings are the most precious part of his creation and, as Paul tells us in Romans 8, the fate of the universe is dependent on the fate of humans. So of course the spiritual and relational renewal of people is much discussed. Unfortunately too often the good new becomes nothing more than salvation out of this universe to a heavenly non-corporeal reality to the neglect of the clear biblical vision for a restoration of the entire created order. We are the new humanity, God’s co-laborers in the creation of a new world where righteousness reigns.

The Torture Papers

I was in a bouncy Friday mood yesterday so I decided to go down to Henderson Books during lunch and see if there was anything interesting in the Spanish section (BTW, the foreign language section there is really great). There was a large pile of as yet unsorted books in the main hallway and the massive tome on top of them caught my attention: The Torture Papers. What the… It’s 1200 pages of official Bush administration documents relating to torture and interrogation of terrorists. As you may know I have spent a little time looking into this matter (article), and I have to admit that I had no idea there was this amount of documentation available. I thought the “Torture Memo” was enough! Just the existence of this work is damning all by itself. Since neither you or I have the time to read 1200 pages of obfuscationist legalese, I thought it would be good to at least quote some of the editorial reviews at amazon.com (these are editorial reviews, not amazon.com user reviews):

[This] compilation of administration documents is…riveting, chilling, and infuriating. They clearly reveal that, at the highest levels, the Bush administration sought legal justification to circumvent both the Geneva Convention and other international accepted norms regarding the interrogation and treatment of military detainees. We have top Justice Department officials claiming “non-state actors” are not protected by the Geneva Convention. We have Department of Defense officials approving “non-injurious physical contact…” (by Jay Freeman – Booklist)

The memos and reports document the systematic attempt of the US Government to prepare the way for torture techniques and coercive interrogation practices, forbidden under international law (book description)

The Torture Papers may well be the most important and damning set of documents exposing U.S. government lawlessness ever published. Each page tells the story of U.S. leaders consciously willing to ignore the fundamental protections that guarantee all of us our humanity. (Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights)

Not only did the lawyers and policymakers knowingly overstep legal doctrine, but they did so against the advice of individuals in their midst, notably Secretary of State
Powell and William H. Taft, Legal Advisor to the Secretary of State (editor’s introduction to the book). (full reviews)

Here’s a frightful description of the president’s license to make war from one of the pages that amazon.com made available:

The president has constitutional power not only to retaliate against any personal organization, or State suspected of involvement in terrorist attacks on the United States, but also against foreign States suspected of harboring or supporting such organizations.

The word that makes me nervous is “suspected”. Mere suspicion is not legally actionably in our justice system. Why is it enough in matters of national security?

Three Trees discussion nights

Lately I’ve been hanging out at Three Trees Coffee (one of the worthy institutions linked on the right), especially leading discussion night. The idea with discussion night is to talk about hot and controversial issues in a way that is both respectful and allows for a full statement of everyone’s views. The participants have always been a mixture of Christians and non-Christians. From the beginning Mitch, who runs 3TC, wanted to use the “talking stick” concept where you have a presentation on a topic and then participants get to respond while holding the stick. Once they are finished, the stick is passed on to another person and so on. There is a time limit (originally it was five minutes), but someone else can grant you their time if they want to.

It’s a good idea, but we had several problems with is that led us to make some modifications. First off, it was clear pretty quick that we were not going to have people giving tidy five-minute responses to the topic. In fact, most people can’t just talk publicly for five minutes (and many who can ought not to!). But also, there is a tremendous value to interactivity, and to have an event called “discussion night” where people can only make speeches just doesn’t seem right. Also, the original ideas was that you only got five minutes total. Again – not conducive to discussion. So we dropped the stick idea and settled on a hacky sac. The discussion leader presents some relevant material for however long he thinks is appropriate (it could be a lecture). After his talk, he owns the sack and he tosses it to whoever has raised their hand or is next. The participants can talk for a total of 3 minutes at a time (though when things got busy we took it down to two) and there is no limit to the amount of times you can talk for the allotted time span. When the participant is finished (usually before their time is up), he tosses the hack back to the discussion leader, who then passes it on to the next participant.

I’ve been surprised at how well this works. People take the sac seriously, and it can be interesting to watch how they hold it because sometimes you can see by their mannerisms the status the have attributed to the sac. There are also inevitable misses and near misses as the sac gets tossed around. I almost landed it in a coffee mug. The clock and the sac define quite well the bounds of the interaction and keep certain individuals from hogging the conversation. I think it might also embolden others to speak because they have the assurance that they will not be interrupted or brushed aside.

We have some other simple principles as well.

• You can’t insult a person (ex, someone called a certain view “idiotic” and was gently chastised). You can argue your point until your face is blue or your time is up, but you make personal attacks.
• Don’t expect to get away with making radical claims without strong evidence. The couple of times this has happened (ex, “Muslims hate Christians”) I interrupted and just said that in my opinion that kind of statement requires some strong evidence. It’s not that the participant can’t make the claim. It’s more like putting an editor’s footnote on it that tells you to take this with a grain of salt. I think this is important because one of the main sources of confrontational arguments is broad, unsupportable generalizations put forth with great conviction.
• This isn’t a principle, but it’s becoming practice: We aren’t legalistic about interruptions. If you have the sac, you own the time. But often it is appropriate for someone to put in a quick clarification or counter point, and that is OK. That keeps the dynamic of interaction going. We just have to be careful to draw the line if the interruption is inappropriate or is too lengthy.
• The facilitator is not limited by the time rules and can interject comments as he or she sees fit. Maybe I will do another post in which I flush out what I am trying to do when I facilitate.

I think this is a really great model for discussion and I hope we get a chance to hone it and create a discussion culture for 3TC that can be used by other groups as well.

These are the topics that have been covered to date:

• Can we know anything for sure?
• Should marijuana be legalized?
• Christmas – commercialization and celebration
• The Washington State smoking ban
• Consumerism – What is it and is it bad?
• Torture and appropriate methods of interrogation

Next week Mitch leads “What is good art”. I can’t put it into words, but I’m thinking it’s probably something like a Thomas Kinkade painting (ducking…).

Letter from Birmingham Jail

Our pastor read an excerpt from the Letter from Birmingham Jail last Sunday and it was terribly inspiring. That itself shows the greatness of the MLK JR: That just reading a letter he wrote 40 years ago could be inspiring. It has all the themes that I spend a lot of time thinking about: making God’s kingdom a concrete reality in our time and place, speaking out against injustice and apathy, calling the church to a higher standard, and challenging unjust authority.

MLK JR was in Birmingham jail for participating in a peaceful protest against the unconstitutional racial segregation ordinances that were in force in that city. The city leaders had agreed to take down segregation signs for the city’s businesses, but it had never happened. That’s when MLK JR and his organization was invited to participate in a non-violent protest. They were all jailed for holding a demonstration without a permit (presumably they applied for it but were denied).

One of the notable points of his letter is that he bemoans the apathetic middle, what he called the “white moderate”. These are the people who are not aggressively segregationist, but don’t do anything to change matters either. It’s easier to go along for the ride than to stop the train, especially if you happen to be riding in first class anyway, if you know what I mean. It reminds of the kinds of things that are said now days about terrorism and the global impact of US self-protective policies. I have come across some people who speak gleefully about killing our enemies, turning Iraq into a parking lot (“we have nukes, let’s use them”), and imposing US will on the world. But most people have enough decency to sense that it’s not really that cool to revel in destruction and power. Still, the tendency is to go along with the status quo and work harder at defending the current (and as it happens advantageous) state than at understanding the facts of the matter.

The other major criticism in the letter is towards the church, which MLK JR expected to come on board with the civil rights movement, but instead remained on the sidelines, spoke of “waiting for the right moment,” and even participated aggressively in upholding segregationist policy. I sometimes despair at how self-focused and defensive the church is too and how hard certain apologist of the norm work to uphold their enculturated vision of the gospel against the basic issues of justice, fairness and love. Said Martin: “far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent and often even the vocal sanction of the church.” He also speaks out against the Platonism of the American church, “I have heard many ministers say, ‘Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern.’ And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which make a strange, unbiblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.”

Just the other day I asked someone if they wanted to help an aid organization I support. The response was, “I would rather pray for them and preached them the gospel.” Aside from the fact that there was no evidence he was doing either of these in the first place, and that the Gospel of the Kingdom does not set up such distinctions between the physical and the spiritual, there is just the plain and simple lack of compassion. I don’t care what your theology tells you: if you can stare down a starving child in the name of some self-serving spirituality, there is something seriously wrong. Of course, we don’t literally stare down needy people because we don’t see them, and because of our lack of imagination we can relegate the rest of the world to a place somewhere out there where people might be hungry and sick and dying but what they really need is “the gospel.” What is happening to us when simple compassion does not at least command a feeling of empathy; when we use high-sounding spiritual principles to escape from basic human (not to mention Christian) duties?

Here’s a great quote from MLK JR out of Robert Inchausti’s Subversive Orthodoxy that shows again the greatness of the man and his vision. In the midst of hate and conflict he does not notch up the rhetoric, but he calls for a methodology of change that is consistent with the principles for which the church stands. “If you will protest courageously and with dignity and with Christian love, the historians will have to pause and say, ‘There lived a great people – a black people – who injected new meaning into the veins of civilization.’ This is our challenge and our overwhelming obligation” (p. 102).

Mad at Bush: Torture

To review up to this point, I am mad a Bush for starting the war on Iraq. The reasons given for the invasion were not valid, as a host of people pointed out at the time. Far be it from me to impugn someone’s motivations. I don’t know why Bush wanted to invade Iraq – I just know that his given reasons weren’t good enough and even he is now admitting this. Because of that I don’t trust him. Beyond this, he consistently makes choices towards conflict, violence and confrontation.

Let’s take torture for example.

The biggest problem with the whole torture question is that Bush has not wanted to close the possibility of violent interrogation. Clearly, if Bush wanted all US detainees to be treated with dignity and to avoid any hint of abuse, he would come out and say so in a statement peppered with references to “the American people” “freedom” and “democracy”. But he has not. Instead he says things like this:

“There’s an enemy that lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again, so you bet we will aggressively pursue them, but we will do so under the law. … We do not torture.” (article)

His administration requested the infamous “torture memo” which explored just exactly how much suffering could be inflicted on a person before it might be called torture. It was deemed that as long as the pain inflicted on the subject of an interrogation did not cause organ failure, impairment of bodily function or death, and the psychological damage was not long term, it was OK to use “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.” Or at least it was not likely to be prosecuted, since “the criminal statute penalizes only the most egregious conduct.” (memo)

The memo was prepared in August or 2002, which was two years before the reports of Abu Ghraib hit the fan. Everyone was shocked, horrified and an investigation was mounted to “get to the bottom of it” as if no one had any idea where this had come from. (article)

But is it really reasonable to believe that there is no relationship between the 2002 memo and the “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment” we saw at Abu Ghraib? I’m not saying the memo was added to every soldier’s field guide, but it seems clear that it defined the mood of the administration, and that mood was passed on to the troops.

To be fair, though, most of the hints and allegations of torture are related to CIA operations, not army. At this moment they are coming to us from several different quarters:

A recent Washington Post article revealed a network of secret CIA prisons set up explicitly to avoid the problems inherent with operating under US law. After 911 several ideas were floated to deal with this problem of accountability (including a prison boat, and prison on a remote lake island in Zambia), but the CIA eventually settled on creating their own little gulag archipelago, in some cases using facilities in former Eastern block nations. “…CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA’s approved “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques,” some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. They include tactics such as “waterboarding,” in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning.” (article) The bad guys are back in Eastern Europe – this time it’s us.

The same article also claims the CIA was working on a detention center at Guantanamo, but had to pull out when it became clear that there would be increasing scrutiny of that operation. A lot of good that new scrutiny has done the UN. They just canceled a scheduled inspection of Guantanamo because the US would not allow them to interview the detainees.

“Since the Americans have not accepted the minimum requirements for such a visit, we must cancel,” Manfred Nowak, the UN envoy in charge of investigating torture allegations around the world, told AFP in Vienna. “It would have created a disastrous precedent.” (article)

What does that tell us? Why do we have to hide prisoners from the representatives of the organization that works for world peace? How can it hurt us for them to talk to the bad guys? Aren’t we on the UN’s side when it comes to fair treatment of prisoners? Why are we acting like human rights abusers (deny, bluster, claim sovereignty)? The answer isn’t complicated. Our president cares more about security than human rights. This is not rocket science.

Allegations of torture and mistreatment in Iraq and Afghanistan are still going strong, where detainees claim they were slapped and punched during interrogations, deprived of water and shackled to the wall in cruel positions. (article) In Iraq five soldiers were recently found guilty of abuse against detainees. “Four of the five were charged with and pleaded guilty to striking a detainee with an open hand, fist and wooden stick and kicking the detainee. Two pleaded guilty to writing derogatory words on detainees’ clothing and compelling them to repeat humiliating statements.” (article) The army has punished more than 100 personnel for abusive behavior. The good part is that there appears to be a crackdown the military at least.

No doubt some of you will be thinking, “Hey this is not fair! Bush just agreed to go along with the anti-torture legislation!” True enough, and I applaud McCain’s work on that. I also think most of Mr. Bush’s “American people” don’t think it is appropriate to use degrading methods of interrogation and don’t want our nation to practice them. But member, my point here is that I’m mad at Bush, and deciding to finally cooperate with the anti-torture bill hardly gets the Prez off the hook. First and most obviously, he has been battling any limitations on interrogation methods from the start. Second, pay close attention to the payback (“the Graham-Levin Amendment”) that comes in the same legislation: detainees would not be allowed to use mistreatment as part of any legal action, but (by implication) any testimony gained under duress could still be used against them or others. (article)

Now I ask you, why would anyone want such a provision?

And then there’s Cheney, blatantly arguing for a torture license for the CIA. What is worse? Practicing torture but at least having the moral intuition to deny it, or making an explicit case for it?

As I already noted, Bush maintains he is going after the bad guys “under the law.” But Under what law? International law? Geneva Convention? US law? Military law? The CIA seems to be looking for a place where no law applies and then, technically, there would be no laws broken. Do they allow torture in orbit? Bush can only claim to be acting “under the law” because he is dealing with specialized and high nuanced interpretations of the law like the one on display in the “Torture Memo”.

The spirit of all the torture laws and standards is to eradicate the practice, not to allow for a little bit of it as long as it doesn’t go too far. And trust me: from now on they will be rewritten to make sure no one else can apply bushist sophistry to them. We are talking about basic issues of human dignity and human rights. Until a few years ago I thought the US stood for these things against communists, totalitarian dictators and South African bigots. I suspect most Americans want it that way. But Bush and his administration have brought this kind of violence into our discourse. They have placed our purported security before questions of justice; self interest before basic human values. Under the Bush administration America is for America and there is a bad guy out to get us peeking around every corner. Just about any action justifies the end of protecting America. But don’t think the world misses our hypocrisy: We trumpet freedom and democracy in Iraq while at the same time plot ways to treat prisoners inhumanely out of the public eye. This is no way to lead the free world.

Next: Civil Rights

Mad at Bush: Iraq

I’ve had it with Bush and I’m ready to sport any of the anti-Bush bumper stickers:

• Impeach Bush
• Bush lied – People Died
• Bush is not a family value
• Better one lie in the hand than two in the Bush.

I don’t usually get involved in politics with such strong opinions, but I’m fed up. I’ve had it. The damn has burst.

WMD

There never were any WMD and there never was a good reason for thinking so. We all know this now. We should have know it then. At the risk of sounding arrogant I will tell you how I knew so you can use the same insight next time around (like Paul, I am a man who has been driven to extremes):

If the government does not present evidence for a certain action, it is because the evidence does not exist.

I had this discussion with several people during the buildup to the invasion of Iraq and I found people stretching the rules of reasonableness to an extreme in order to justify the military action. Everyone agreed the available evidence was weak and sketchy. We had no hard evidence of intent to use WMD against the US and we had no hard evidence that Iraq had the capability to do so even if such a predisposition existed. Why, then, were we invading another country? I still don’t know what Bush’s motivations were:

• Finishing the job his father started? Maybe.
• Lashing out at the easy target because we couldn’t find Bin Laden? Possible.
• Using 911 as an excuse to put into play a much deeper agenda? My guess.
• It’s really about controlling the world’s supply of oil? Very possible

But I don’t know and I will probably never know. What I do know is that the invasion of Iraq was not a justifiable outgrowth of 911 and it was not a reasonable response to the actions of Iraq. Everyone now knows this and I suspect that many people knew it back then too, but were paranoid enough about our global historical situation that they were willing to go along with something decisive and violent.

Rationalizations

During those months the typical response to the obvious lack of evidence was to say “the government knows something they can’t tell us for security reasons,” which was and still is ludicrous. Here we are publicly broadcasting our intention to invade Iraq for the entire world to see, and you are asking me to believe that there is some sensitive bit of information that we can’t be told for security reasons? Don’t you think that if Bush had more incriminating information he would have used it to justify his actions to the rest of the world? But more fundamentally, this is a democratic nation and no administration should get away with leading the country to war without providing solid reasons for it. But then again, maybe we aren’t a democratic nation after all. The weirdest thing about all this is that the reasoning “there’s information they can’t tell us” was never given by the administration itself. The administration placed insufficient evidence before us and (most of) the public deduced “they must have more information”.

One person I talked to rejected my skepticism out of hand because he said he could not take such a cynical view of our government. Well OK, maybe we can trust the government of la-la land to always do the right thing, even when they can’t tell us the reasons for their seemingly bellicose actions; but this is planet earth. You know, the place where power corrupts, politicians lie and millions die at the hands of power hungry megalomaniacs. Just something to keep in mind.

And now that it’s all over and we are up to our neck in the mess or Iraq and everyone knows there was not enough evidence for the invasion, the defense goes like this: “Well, it’s true that we didn’t have a good enough reason for the invasion, but it was still a good thing to do because Sadam Hussein was a tyrant.” Bush himself is finally admitted the intelligence failure and parroted the same rationale that his supporters have been giving for the last two years: “Saddam was a threat and the American people, and the world is better off because he is no longer in power.” (article)

Politics of the powerful

Lesson in how the politics of the powerful work: A couple years after the fact you can admit that you didn’t have a good reason for your actions, even if until recently you have explicitly stated the opposite. People will go along with this. Deny, deny, deny. Then when the moment is right admit you were wrong. The fact that you lied or were just incredibly unwise from the start becomes unimportant somehow. Clinton was the master at this of course. And I would vote Clinton back in to replace Bush in a second because at least his immorality didn’t get 30,000 people killed (yes that is the latest body count article – oh plus 2140 of your friends, family and neighbors).

I don’t understand why this doesn’t faze us. Truly, I am baffled. How can we swallow this admission of failure and then be satisfied with an ambiguous, “but the world is a better place anyway.” With that kind of rationale our presidents will be invading any country they feel like. Come up with a cardboard thin excuse, prop it up for a year or so and then admit the “failure” (“take responsibility”) and say that the world is a better place anyway. It is? By what measure? Is Iraq a better place? And who are we to make those judgments? And why did we do this in the first place? The answers all make me very uncomfortable.

A friend recently said, “The thing I like about the US is that even though we pretty much rule the world, we do it peacefully. We aren’t like the Romans who ruled the world through violence.” After I picked up my jaw from the floor and put it back in my mouth so I could speak again, I responded, “How can you say that when we have invaded two countries in the last three years?” (In case you forgot we did invade another country named Afghanistan recently) I think he did come around to seeing my point, but it’s an illustration of how absurd the American view of the world can be. I fear that we could do just about anything and justify it with some lackadaisical off hand remark, as if it was an accounting error or an innocent oversight. It seems hard to escape the conclusion that americans don’t care very much about what happens beyond their borders. “yeah, maybe it was wrong to invade Iraq but shoot: it didn’t turn out so bad, did it?.”

But we should not let this go so easily. The invasion of Iraq was not a justifiable action; it is not our place to declare that the world or people in Iraq are now “better off” as if that balanced out the deception, lack of restraint and lack of wisdom of the Bush administration. It is not OK to invade other countries because of what they might do to us, and we should not trust the man who led us into this situation. He does not deserve to be our leader.

Next: Torture

Principles for good discussion

Tonight we talked about opinions, perspectives and whether we can know the truth down at Three Trees Coffee shop. I put together these principles for good discussion to help us talk about how we should interact with each other and it led to some interesting discussion. I would love to get some input on them. Did I miss anything? Should I take anything out?

1. Listen explicitly to what others are saying in order to understand them.
2. Interrupt only rarely and when it seems crucial.
3. Don’t hog the discussion.
4. Ask clarifying questions.
5. Ask others what they think.
6. Don’t be afraid to express yourself forcefully. But know the limits of propriety. These can vary from group to group.
7. Admit clearly and quickly when it is obvious that you were wrong.
8. Don’t be afraid to say that you disagree. But be prepared to back up your position well if you do. It is also OK to say that you think you disagree and why.
9. Never tell a person they are wrong. You can question their arguments, data or reasoning, but never dismiss a person.
10. Don’t generalize.
11. Avoid straw men like the plague. A straw man is an inaccurate portrayal of a position that makes it look silly or absurd.
12. Don’t argue against what you think a person stands for based on their identity.
13. Know what your unspoken motivations are.
14. When you have benefited from what someone has said, say so.
15. Make sure you understand the difference between fact, interpretation and unconsidered opinion.
16. Fact: data that is indisputably accurate. But careful – people have different standards. Is what we hear in the news accurate? Anything we read in a book? The Internet? Learned in School? Everyone has their own trusted sources of information. How good are yours?
17. Interpretation: Facts can be interpreted in different ways, often legitimately so. Be willing to admit that a different interpretation of the facts is legitimate when this is the case.
18. Unconsidered Opinion: Need I expand?
19. Pay special attention to facts.
20. Track the issue. Don’t let the subject change randomly if an important or interesting topic is being left unresolved.
21. Let people finish their explanations.
22. Ignore perceived insults as much as possible. If a perceived attack bothers you too much you say so and say how it makes you feel.
23. Try to discern what people’s motivations are and bring them into the discussion as much as possible.
24. Never attack perceived motivations.
25. Explain what you don’t mean when you might easily be misinterpreted.
26. Don’t gloat when someone changes their mind because of your input.
27. Don’t ever patronize. To patronize is to lecture people about things they already know or might already know.
28. Don’t lecture either.
29. Don’t pretend to know things you don’t know. If someone tells you new information don’t nod along as if you already know all this.
30. Be aware of how emotionally invested in the topic other people are.

Three Trees Grand Opening

Last Friday night was the grand opening of Three Trees coffee house in Bellingham. This event was the culmination of the long and hard work of Mitch and Rochelle Senti, who have been chasing the vision for two or three years now.

Three Trees is shaping up to be a fascinating blend of discussion, music and coffee with a Christian subtext. I hope the fact that I intended to show up for a half an hour but left four hours later because I could not break away from the intriguing conversations is a sign of good things to come. Among the issues we were bantering about was the question of how to create a “Christian” discussion space. We all wanted to engage non-Christians in a way that is “relevant” (sorry for the cliché) and not domineering, but there were different ideas about exactly what this meant.

Maybe the root issue here is what we think we are doing when we discuss important questions with others. We Christians tend to think of conversations with non-Christians as competitions between mutually exclusive views, and no doubt this is often the case. But it seems like a healthy conversation is a give and take in which both (or several) perspectives tug, nudge and push each other towards a common center. I feel like there is a good metaphor I could be using here but am missing it: Kind of like water tricking into a pool from different directions? Like tennis balls bouncing against each other in a large bowl? Like firemen pulling on a sheet to catch a person who is about to jump from the fifth floor of a flaming apartment building? And the jumper is truth or beauty (or both as some have suggested), except that when the truth jumps the metaphor falls flat because it’s the firemen who will suffer if they fail to catch it.

The problem with us conservative Christians is that we have this propensity to think that we are completely right and the non-Christian is completely wrong, which is just ridiculous. We have a message about God and this world which is true, but there are many other very important things in the world that we can learn from those who have not accepted that message. This includes perspectives on moral, social, personal and even religious questions. For example, many non-Christians point to the consumerism and superficiality that is on display in many megachurches, and they are right. Why deny something if it is true? Why not learn from it and incorporate it into our thinking? I think I already said this in another post, but I’ll repeat myself: Let’s not confuse our belief in The Truth with being right about everything.

Subcultures can create the illusion that a certain perspective is the only reasonable one, and that seems to have happened to many Christians throughout the centuries. It’s true today too. But if we are going to be able to engage in productive discussions with non-Christians we have to relax our hold on many ideas that are not central to the gospel message, but are central to the Christian subculture we come from. If you are wondering what some of those ideas might be just read some of my other blog entries ;0)

Churches Cancel Christmas

Check out this post by my friend Pete (a pastor) on the popular practice of closing church down for the celebration of the Birth of Christ:

Churches closed on Christmas

I left these comments on his site:

Appel’s comment just about summs up the problem:

The best way to honor the birth of Jesus is for families to have a more personal experience on that day.

Let’s all go hide in our personal little worlds. Christmas is just between God and our nuclear family. What a parody of what Christmas has been to the historical Christian community. Imagine a priest 500 years ago deciding not to celebrate the “Christ mass” because it’s too much work for “volunteers” or takes people away from their sentimental family gatherings.

It strikes me as strange that pastors would use speculation about posible attendance of non-Christians to influence the decision to hold a service. Don’t we want to do this thing regardless of who might come? Don’t we want to celebrate the birth or our lord, savior and founder together with our community? The argument that we can do this on any other day falls flat. Theologically it is correct, of course, but it only shows where our priorities are because we can also have our family time any other day. Why are we letting that newcomer crowd out the ancient tradition of our forefathers? Because our personal universe is more important than history and community.

Another observation is that the Christian community has no business complaining about the secularization of a holiday that it does not itself celebrate as a religious event.

Shut up, you atheist!

I was doing something very productive on the Internet when I came across this jewel:

And I had to click on it. If you care to do the same thing you will be transported to the wonderful world of American Vision, where you can purchase a three DVD set on how to think like a Christian. Apparently there is a close connection between the founding fathers, the way America should be, and Christian thinking – and we need to recover that.

In the New England Confederation of 1643, the Pilgrims stated: “[W]e all came to these parts of America, with one and the same end and aim, namely, to advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.” American Vision exists to see this vision realized. (article)

In the DVD set the late Dr. Bahnsen shows how, based on 1 Peter 3:15, God “expects us to be able to give a reasonable defense for the hope that is in us.” Kind of makes you wonder how a dead person can put out a new DVD set, but we’ll let that one ride. When I read on I thought someone was pulling my leg. I looked around the site, “Is this one of those mock sites that makes fun of strange ideas by pushing them to the extreme?” If so I’ve been hoodwinked because it looks real. Here is how the description of Dr. B’s teaching continues:

Dr. Bahnsen reveals that our job as Christian apologists is not to change unbelieving hearts, but to simply close the mouth of the unbeliever.

Double take. Is there a typo? A word missing? Am I having a dyslexic moment? No, it really says that.

So if some dead white guys 350 years ago said that they came “to these parts of America [hey, don't look at me. I'm from Washington state]…to advance the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ,” they must have been right, must have meant exactly what we would mean if we said that, and it must be our godly duty to “recover” that vision by shutting up the opposition? I don’t think our founding fathers would have approved of such undemocratic behavior, especially the freethinker John Adams; even if they are on display in the header of the American Vision web site. Neither would their other founder, Jesus, be too happy with kind of treatment of the outsider that is being recommended.

Barth and Resurrection Continued

As I mentioned in my previous Barth post, Karl Barth didn’t fit in anyone’s camp. Apparently these days he is getting flack for having been too conservative whereas back in the day he was too liberal. There was an interesting interchange after the ETS session that is worth noting. Since it was about the resurrection, one of the attendees felt the need to rehearse a well known incident that evangelicals have always used to prove that Barth did not believe that Jesus literally rose from the dead. In the early 60s Barth made his last trip to the US, now an old man, and in a press conference he was asked the following question by Carl F. Henry, who was the editor of the then new publication Christianity Today:

Henry delighted in recounting a time when he sparred with theologian Karl Barth. Barth invited questions from a group of 200 religious leaders attending a luncheon in his honor. Henry rose and identified himself as “editor of Christianity Today” before asking Barth about his views on the historical fact of Jesus’ resurrection. Barth retorted, “Did you say Christianity Today or Christianity Yesterday?” As the audience howled with laughter, Henry countered, “Yesterday, today, and forever.” article

I think Barth was trying to get Henry to see that he was focused too narrowly on the resurrection as a past event, whereas the resurrection is actually the ongoing unfolding of God’s redemption. But Barth did not deny the literalness of the resurrection, and to focus on that literalness as some kind of test of orthodoxy is to miss the point of the all encompassing nature of the resurrection in Barth’s thinking. Conservatives in general have continued to miss this point, or if they have gotten it they have nevertheless remained unsatisfied and, as illustrated in the session I attended, continue to offer up the incident as a cliché assessment of Barth. For Barth an obsession with “historical faith” (ie, “what happened” or the apologetics of the resurrection) could be an attempt to hide from the real lord Jesus Christ today. I do think it is very important to treat the gospel accounts as history. But could it be that we sometimes take refuge from the frightening reality of the risen Christ by runing to the past or by burrowing into a text? The past is there to teach us about the present.

As the other attendee was describing the Bath/Henry match I was growing agitated and rehearsing in my mind a comment of Barth’s I had read somewhere: “Mark well,” he had said, “bodily resurrection.” Before I could remember where I had heard it Dawson himself brought it up and used it to counter this silly notion that Barth was somehow anti literal resurrection (it was an account of a conversation between Barth and Tomas Torrence in the introduction to Torrence’s book Space, Time and Resurrection).

I caught up with Dawson a few days later at AAR and I was able thank him for the talk. I told him that I thought Henry’s question was typical of the conservative/fundamentalist urge to find heresy lurking around every corner. Instead of trying to figure out what a person is saying, the fighting fundy listens for the right words and phrases to be uttered. Where they are not forthcoming everything becomes suspicious.

What the left needs to know (AAR 2005 study group)

Due to my ongoing confusion between right and left, I misunderstood the topic of this study group and what I thought would be a criticism of the right from the left was in fact a self-evaluation of the left by the left.

By “left” I mean liberal Christians who are de facto politically liberal as well. The two need not go hand in hand: You could be a political liberal without being a Christian, of course; and you could sort of be a political liberal and theologically conservative too. This problem with terminology was brought up during the discussion time, in fact.

Another problem with terminology was that the group constantly referred to itself as “progressive”. One of the speakers said he didn’t really like that term because it seemed to buy into the modern myth of progress too easily and arrogantly. Since I was in the front row he might have felt hearty agreement vibes from me at that point. Can I remind “emergent church” “contemporary Christians” and “extreme” youth pastors that they are making the same mistake? An audience member said that “liberals” should not so easily give up the term “conservative” to the left. “We haven’t moved on since Jesus,” he said. “How about you?” I didn’t send any good vibes to him. To say something like that requires so many readjustments of the message of the Bible that I don’t even want to get involved in the conversation. But honestly, I don’t like being called a conservative. It sounds too much like I and trying to maintain the status quo, and that is most definitely not what I am about. Neither was it what Jesus and the prophets were about. One of the most important questions for conservatives to ask themselves is whether they are confusing the Kingdom of God with the status quo. Oh, and if they have any idea what the Kingdom of God actually is. That’s an important one too.

It is very important for us “conservatives” (I’ll come up with a better term some other time) to understand that “liberal” Christians are very moral people. Some of them are wet noodles who accept or justify anything, no doubt about that; but then I’ve met a few of those in fundyland too. But there are many people in the liberal subculture who have strong moral convictions, who speak about them frankly and live according to them aggressively.

Some of those convictions are indeed in line with the message of Jesus. There is an interest in the poor and marginalized. Yep. Jesus cared about that one. There is an interest in democracy and equality. Ironically, that is not something we hear Jesus talking about directly but it is a priority that is shared in a weird way with the right. Conservative Christians love to talk about America and democracy and freedom. On Thanksgiving we always thank God that we live in this country where we are free to worship and in many conservative circles it’s hard to tell the founding fathers and the 12 disciples apart. I’m not sure what to do with that one, so I’ll just stop at the mere observation. The left is concerned about justice and there is definitely a biblical warrant for that.

These are all good things and in some cases the right is sadly lacking the compassion of the left. But I can never wrap my mind around the way the left can throw abortion into that mix. How can they reconcile throwing out a helpless human life for the sake of convenience while at the same time be passionate about justice in other areas? And why is it, on the other hand, it that the right gets the problem of abortion so clearly and passionately, but misses other huge justice issues like international imperialism and middle class centrism? Can we get it together here, people? Killing the unborn is not nice or just. Torturing and bombing are not good either because they are also killing people for convenience. Both imperialism and abortion exist so that people can go on living the kind of life they want to live at the expense of others. Why is this so hard to put together?

The atmosphere of the packed room was very clubby, very “we are a gathering of liberal Christians”. I agreed with most of what was said in the presentations, but it wasn’t really that controversial. One professor from Claremont School of Theology (Ellen Ott Marshall) argued that the left is more aware of the need for theological humility and of the problem of moral ambiguity. She wanted to make sure that the “left” was not guilty of doing the very thing it saw the right doing: Sloganeering, oversimplification, self-righteous rhetoric. But she also admitted that this was a bit problematic because all that stuff actually works and produces results.

Marshall meditated on the problem of the liberal (enlightened?) person who can see all the sides of an issue, including their own complicity in the problem. This awarebess can introduce a certain measure of ambiguity into moral assessments and a certain lack of conviction or “proactivity”. On the other hand, there were plenty of people in the room who did not seem to be affected by this paralyzing ailment. Still, I am always impressed when someone can be self-critical. It makes me feel like I could probably have a reasonable conversation with them.

Another talk was an analysis of the politics and religion of Tony Blair, the British PM, by a Scott named Doug Gay. His conclusion was that although Blair is a privately religious person (Anglican), but that religion does not seem to make much of a difference when it comes to broad policy making. He juxtaposed the following terms to contrast the tendencies of the Blair government with Christian values:

Spin – Truth
Social Inequality – Justice
Participation in the war on Iraq – peace

Looking back on his presentation it seems unfair that nothing was said about Blair’s recent promotion of aid for Africa. It’s also interesting the Blair is castigated for not allowing his religious values to inform his policy making. It seems that liberals aren’t against allowing religion in politics; it just has to be the right religion, or the right interpretation of a religion. Fair enough. It’s the excact same thing conservatives do. The other two talks focused first on the life of the legal civil rights activist Pauli Murry, who in an interesting tid-bit could not get into the University of North Carolina in the 30’s to study race because she was black, and on the “living wage movement” which is a recent campaign to ensure that inner city workers on government projects get a decent wage.

In the discussion time an older woman who made it clear in no uncertain terms that she was “one of them” nevertheless made a plea for retaining the language of scripture over against using the terminology of secularism. To my surprise everyone seemed to be nodding in agreement. Maybe it’s the influence of Martin Luther King Jr. But then there had to be a little discussion about how you have to be careful because not everyone is a Christian, and of course a Jewish person had to stand up to highlight the problem inherent in their participation. The issue had come up because one of the speakers had quoted and old black spiritual that said something about how the armies of Pharaoh were destroyed in the sea. So of course the comment came that this song seems to talk about destroying the enemy rather than loving him and so on. Everyone nods and agrees and says “oh, yes” with expressive concern in their eyes. You start to see the paralysis inherent in the system and you start to see the point about ambiguity made in the first presentation.

I think the most enduring lesson of the experience was to see a group of liberals talk about the problems of “the right” with the same kind of disdain and self-confidence that conservatives use when they return the favor. That just makes things harder for me because my views tend to be all accross the board when it comes to the things that liberals and conservatives fight about. But don’t worry, I do’nt see myself as a lonesome prophet. I know many people in the same situation. Perhaps the categories are slipping and losing their value?