UNDONE

stories from the pulpit

2009-12-08T09:14:00.000-08:00

Well, actually we don't have a pulpit, but this past Sunday I had a great time speaking about our value for multicultural church with pastor Kevin. It was a genuinely warm time, but you may have noticed as we served communion to one another I kind of gagged mine down, laughing a bit. Here's the inside scoop: I tore a decent size piece off, one large enough for my claws to grasp, bit into the soft bread and pulled a cap off a tooth! It was singular effort of willpower to keep from spitting the whole thing out. Not pretty, but true. We have no official theology for bodily expulsion of the elements in our denomination that I know of.

learning from orphans

2009-12-03T09:02:00.000-08:00

There is a fantastic article by Arthur Jones at the Duke Call & Response blog about Rwandans refugee AIDS orphans. <-see, it reads like a tear jerker. Not-so. It will put a smile on your face as it firmly plants a foot dead in your rectum:

We underestimated the heart of these orphans. We did not expect them to reach out to other orphans. We foolishly thought that these African orphans would act “responsibly” (that is, like we wanted) and slowly save their money, ensuring that they will have food to eat for many years to come. This is not how Davis acted.

Davis had an orphan friend named Sqberio (pronounced skw-ah-berry-oh) who was left to take care of his two younger siblings. They were hungry. So Davis gave Sqberio half of his salary every day to train him to be the second baker of Blessings Bakery. In churches in the US, we struggle to convince our church members to give 3%. Davis gave 50%.

When we asked Davis why he had done this, he did not seem to understand the question. Evidently, giving what you have is the only thing to do when your friend is hungry. Not only did Davis give up half of his salary, but he opened up a bank account and they go and deposit the money together every week. On their way to the bank and back, Davis teaches him about Jesus. Now the bakery employs both orphans at full salary.

It was good for my soul, and seems like an important read. Check it out.

Fearless Speech & the Manhattan Declaration

2009-12-02T14:38:00.000-08:00

Perhaps you are aware of the Manhattan confession, a document drafted and signed by 148 people, what Halden has labeled, “a sort of ecumenical conservative manifesto with 148 signatories from Roman, Eastern, and Evangelical denominations.” The document primarily defends against abortion, gay marriage, and the right for the church to do what it wants: three issues that everybody knew were already at the top of the agenda for churches in the US. To me, it reads like nails on chalkboards, and my emotional reaction might best be painted in this savage send-up of the document found here. Thanks, Halden. He has a couple of interesting posts, especially in the comments, here and here.

I have been thinking about the nature of the document itself and why I dislike it. I don’t think it is parrehesia, true truth-telling as regards Foucault’s analysis or biblically, either. Foucault demonstrates in his lectures, Fearless Speech, that the parrhesiast is a person permitted by the state/assembly/group to speak because he possesses the moral character to speak about truth, and does so in such a way to benefit the entire society and he speaks the truth at his own peril. (The parrhesiast was a “he” in this historical analysis, a clue perhaps to the problems of discerning parrehesia…)

By this definition, the declaration reads as false to me. It misses the point trying to look like a defender of morality and the innocent while neglecting bigger issues inherent to the very concerns it addresses. To worry about gay marriage and abortion without addressing other clearly connected gospel issues like financial injustice, militarization, orphans, and homelessness makes it smell like a conservative American political agenda drives the statement, not a Gospel one. There is a brief nod to injustice in the introduction, followed by a whole lot of self-righteous church-washing. Barely admitting historical injustice, the document is eager to note how deeply they “stand” with fallen people, but it's not really a statement of solidarity or repentance, and instead comes across as a critique that ignores the bigger picture, a document of privilege masquerading as oppressed people speaking out. It saddened me to see Ron Sider swept up in it.

The real problem with the “declaration” is that it is not a confession. It points to the justice and valor of the church without bearing witness to its own sin which is implicated in the very issues the document is opposing. For American Christians to get behind a document noting the Christian opposition to slavery as proof of its moral high ground without confessing its complicity seems disingenuous. How can we discuss the sanctity of marriage if we will not confess how slavery made the family unit impossible? How can we speak of the sanctity of life if we will not recognize Christian complicity in the genocide of indigenous Americans. We must remember that in popular opinion, especially of policy makers, the US is a Christian nation. I know it is not a US document, but that is even more concerning if evangelicalism is what emerges as a greater trans-national Church body that governments "can’t push around." They give the powers that be a good talking to, ignoring that they are the powers that be around here.

The statement further fails a test of parrhesia in that the signatories have little to lose by putting forth such a document. It is not a bold statement at all, but rather a polite recitation of the evangelical rules of belonging. Foucault explains:

“If, in a political debate, an orator risks losing his popularity because his opinions are contrary to the majority’s opinion, or his opinions may usher in a political scandal, he uses parrehesia. Parrehesia, then, is linked to courage in the face of danger: it demands the courage to speak the truth in spite of some danger. And in its extreme form, telling the truth takes place in the ‘game’ of life or death” (p.16 in the Semiotext(e) edition)

So what will happen to people who put their name to the document? Um, not much. I imagine talk show wags will laud the “courage” to produce such a document, but it took no courage at all. I could get out and read the document as a sermon in almost every church in California and people would nod their heads in approval. -and we’re a liberal state. It only retrenches the opinion of the empowered; meanwhile the poor continue to go hungry without health care and opportunity. So what is this document? Another evangelical line in the sand that’s really a mirror of self righteousness instead of speaking truth to power. I wish churches would speak out against wealth more. A critique of abortion that confessed and addressed the systemic injustices behind it would be much more trenchant, with real teeth. A critique that repented of it bigotry, materialism and self-interest would be getting somewhere.

It’s too bad, as I wish there were more effort put into ending abortion practically instead of politically. More adoption, more foster homes, more opportunity for poor and oppressed, more just ecenomic practices. The discussion in these ways seems like a whole lot of self righteous grandstanding while people go hungry and kill one another. Really guys? (Oh, mostly men signing by the way - only 9 of 139 are women from my count). The intonations that present this to us as a Barmen declaration worry me, too. How has the evangelical world come to see itself so clearly as the squashed? It might be good to take a note from African American traditions and confess that more often than not, when we read scripture, we are not the Israelites in Exodus, but rather Pharoah.

Well, there are also some things I have been thinking about the problems of parrhesia as a critique that Foucault gets at, but more on that later. Probably enough for a first pass - What do you think?

Rethinking Christian Community,

2009-12-01T09:02:00.000-08:00

because something may be amiss:

Swine flu, Thimerasol& Apocalyptic Thoughts

2009-11-20T01:22:00.000-08:00

Some thoughts I wrote recovering from Swine Flu:

This past week has provided me with a little bit of time to reflect on things, lying in bed waiting for my lungs to empty. I got Swine flu before the vaccines were here, which wouldn’t have mattered anyways, since there isn’t enough and I’m not medically indicated. My first epidemic! So I took up residence in the spare room and bathed in enough Lysol to peel my corneas. (For what it’s worth, being sick has only reinforced my view that “rip-N-dip” is the best way to do the Eucharist) One thing to note, though I hesitate to mention it, is that many flu vaccinations contain a slight organic mercury containing compound, thimerosal. And thimerosal, as you might recall, is at the center of a fierce argument about autism. Many parents are convinced that child vaccinations are the cause of autism though there is no scientific evidence for it. Sadly, as thimerosal has been removed from vaccinations, autism diagnoses have continued to increase.

I learned this lying on my side, reading the the lead story in Wired magazine this month, “An Epidemic of Fear.’ The article is critical of the anti-vaccination movement claiming it that puts children in the way of harmful diseases with no scientific evidence. The dynamics of the debate are intense, and my intent is not to rehash the story here: there really are important ethical questions about whether or not people should have the freedom to choose vaccinations or not. What was interesting to me as I read, phlegm gurgling, is how religious the anti-vaccination camp is about their objective. Without scientific rational, their arguments are based on intuition, emotion, and a deep suspicion of the powers that be. It's a archetypal story: gut instincts vs. hard data, humanity vs. science, and both sides have their opinions about the other's motivation. One is superstitious and not thinking clearly, while the other is deviously hiding a money trail...

I guess I feel a strange sense of connection with both sides, lying here sick. Everybody wants answers, everybody wants the suffering alleviated. I am tired of my little sick, too, even though it really can't compare in the least. But I feel more than just sick: feel knocked off my horse just as I was about to embark on some new, exciting ministry plans for me. But even my doctor can't help me now. (Though he did charge me...)

Thinking about medicine, I'm struck that as long as science describes suffering, but does not explain it, it actually might remain more faithful to a Christian vision of suffering and evil: it attaches no meaning to it, a vagary that cannot be explained. It cannot presume to explain my feeling, my story. Of course, that's not how I use it. I like the illusion of control, of explanation, -as if success and happiness in life were all attainable through a rigorous moral calculus. In this mode, the (pseudo)scientific community at times can only act like Job’s friends in the face of suffering: “it’s your fault,” “it’s part of something bigger, more profound.” As I lay here on my sick mat, I experience it as, “If you pay more attention to whom you shake hands with; if you wash your hands longer, in hotter water; if you get more sleep to be fully rested – then you can defeat your viral nemesis.” But that’s just not true. There’s stuff out there bigger than me.

What does this all tell us about ourselves? The scientific explanation is that people have a deep seated need for control we express through explanations of evil. This is undoubtedly the case. And it seems that out of our need for control through explanation, we have to make someone or something guilty so that our pain becomes intelligible. I'm quick to guess that, “it was that parent who let their sick kid come to school,” or “my fault for not protecting against the flu better. Next time we’ll wear gas masks in public places!” But there are great horrors inflicted on humanity that are not directly our fault, too. No one earns hurricanes and disease.

Trying to explain evil always makes a villain. Someone is always the bad guy when evil becomes a necessary character in our stories. I think the harder thing to do is admit the meaninglessness of evil, the absurdity of something that renders us so small and suggests we, too are meaningless fodder for the history of atoms. But surely I am ready to crap myself for a reason! Surely there is a profound cosmic meaning in my nausea? What if there isn't? What if evil, pain, sickness really is just the lack of life. To do this, I have to admit my need for a savior, and I wonder of the value of theodicies. I think I am beginning to make the turn from, “Why me?” to “Now what?” and I wonder if that's grace is really about. Still working on it.

To many, religion functions as a mechanism to control and organize the world, Christianity included. It's just another control mechanism, a different way to assign blame and take sides in order to make sense of the chaos. That's a fair assessment of religion as a human science, but it does not explain Christ himself. In Christ, evil is revealed as absurd, having no place. Our faith humanizes us, not in providing an explanation for all the "whys" of suffering, but because of the future redemption it points to. perhaps it's just the fever, but this is what I'm wondering:

Maybe the power of the Christian story is not that it tells us where all this chaos and suffering came from, but instead, where it is going. Perhaps this is what it means to understand history as apocalyptic: it makes us open to a future in which God acts. Can I say then, that the value of a religion lies not in its explanatory powers but its predictive ones?

open table fellowship

2009-11-13T11:08:00.000-08:00

Not The SAME from Recycle Your Faith on Vimeo.

This struck me as a beautiful example of open table fellowship in our world. I immediately thought of Kevin and his desires to take part in our city. In many ways it's like a good dream; grounded in mundane reality yet full of love and creativity. I think we could do this...

MLK on Foolishness

2009-11-10T14:26:00.000-08:00

MLK on Luke 12:20

...The rich man was a fool because he permitted the ends for which he lived to become confused with the means by which he lived. The economic structure of his life absorbed his destiny. Each of us lives in two realms, the internal and the external. The internal is that realm of spiritual ends expressed in art, literature, morals and religion. The external is that complex of devices, techniques, mechanisms and intrumentalities by means of which we live. These include the house we live in, the car we drive, the clothes we wear, the economic sources we acquires- the material stuff we must have to exist. There is always a danger that we permit the means by which we live to replace the ends for which we live, the internal to become lost in the external. The rich man was a fool because he failed to keep a line of distinction between means and ends, between structure and destiny. His life was submerged in the rolling waters of his livelihood.

There is a lot here that gives me pause; is "2 realms" a false distinction? Did Jesus really think money was neutral?

But the line, "He failed to keep a line of distinction between means and ends, between structure and destiny," slays me every time. Particularly here in the OC, I think people have a hard time distinguishing between the structure of their lives and their destiny because until recently, in the seat of privilege, we believed that we could control our means, that is was our end. Anyways, it just seems liek there's a lot here to mine and mull over.

Bonus: A nice little article on how the media presents MLK.

James Cone on success.

2009-10-30T18:31:00.001-07:00

A great clip, short, (7min) by James Cone on Tavis Smiley's "State of the Black Church." It would be a gross injustice to not hear this message for the whole church in the US.

Church Dogmatics online

2009-10-23T10:55:00.000-07:00

Glen at The Hiddenness of Blog has either done us all a tremendous favor or terrible evil. He has located and arranged the Google Books versions of Barth's Church Dogmatics for your reading pleasure. I don't think each instance is from the same publishing run or house, but there is a lot of text available. It's a pretty cool find.
He explains though, that :

Google books is great. Wonderful. But when it comes to Barth, there were two bummers: One. The books were incomplete. I don’t know if there were copyright issues, or they wanted you to buy the book, but you couldn’t get it all on there. In fact, a pivotal part I was in need of was missing. Blerg. And two, they were difficult to figure out how to get to the actual volume you needed. The layout was funky. So I took the liberty of just throwing them all down here:

And here is the fruit of his labor:
The Doctrine of the World of God: Vol. I/1 – Vol. I/2
The Doctrine of God: Vol. II/1 – Vol. II/2
The Doctrine of Creation: Vol. III/1 – Vol. III/2 – Vol. III/3 – Vol. III/4
The Doctrine of Reconciliation: Vol. IV/1 – Vol. IV/2 – Vol. IV/3.2 – Vol. IV/3.1 – Index.
Clearly, this is a resource only a student with a too-near deadline could love, but I do, too. Ultimately, I guess I'm waiting for the Blogger Church Dogmatics widget. I did find some Moltmann at my local library. Anyways, Glen also mentioned a free 30 day trial, too:

Alexander Street Press. Maybe the publisher? Anyways, they claim to have the whole library online. However, like everything, there’s a catch. You have to pay. But, I guess you can get a free 30-day pass here, so if you just need it once, or are just testing it out, this would probably be a good option.

So there you have it. "Free": sometimes a great argument for "purchase".

missional church: a practical rub

2009-10-22T11:50:00.000-07:00

David Fitch has (re)posted a set of 10 theses about what to expect when joining a missional church, and I must say it is a list of things that Kevin and I grouse about to one another. (That is an admission of guilt.) He wrote it when he was a bit peeved so it might have a bite to it, but overall he addresses exactly the issues we feel sometimes. The bonus #11 is particularly poignant.

TEN THINGS ANYONE WHO JOINS IN A TWENTY FIRST CENTURY MISSIONAL CHURCH PLANT SHOULD NOT EXPECT

1.) Should not expect to regularly come to church for just one hour, get what you need for your own personal growth and development, and your kid’s needs, and then leave til next Sunday. Expect mission to change your life. Expect however a richer life than you could have ever imagined.

2.) Should not expect that Jesus will fit in with every consumerist capitalist assumption, lifestyle, schedule or accoutrement you may have adopted before coming here. Expect to be freed from a lot of crap you will find out you never needed.

3.) Should not expect to be anonymous, unknown or be able to disappear in this church Body. Expect to be known and loved, supported in a glorious journey.

4.) Should not expect production style excellence all the time on Sunday worship gatherings. Expect organic, simple and authentic beauty.

5.) Should not expect a raucous “lights out” youth program that entertains the teenagers, puts on a show that gets the kids “pumped up,” all without parental involvement. Instead as the years go by, with our children as part of our life, worship and mission (and when the light shows dim and the cool youth pastor with the spiked hair burns out) expect our youth to have an authentic relationship with God thru Christ that carries them through a lifetime of journey with God.

6.) Should not expect to always “feel good,”or ecstatic on Sunday mornings. Expect that there will ALSO be times of confession, lament, self-examination and just plain silence.

7.) Should not expect a lot of sermons that promise you God will prosper you with “the life you’ve always wanted” if you will just believe Him and step out on faith and give some more money for a bigger sanctuary. Expect sustenance for the journey.

8.) Should not expect rapid growth whereby we grow this church from 10 to a thousand in three years. Expect slower organic inefficient growth that engages people’s lives where they are at and sees troubled people who would have nothing to do with the gospel marvelously saved.

9.) Should not expect all the meetings to happen in a church building. Expect a lot of the gatherings will be in homes, or sites of mission.

10.) Should not expect arguments over style of music, color of carpet, or even doctrinal outlier issues like dispensationalism. Expect mission to drive the conversation.

O AND BY THE WAY Should not expect that community comes to you. I am sorry but true community in Christ will take some “effort”and a reshuffling of priorities for both you and your kids. Yes I know you want people to come to you and reach out to you and you are hurting and busy. But assuming you are a follower of Christ (this message is not for strangers to the gospel) you must learn that the answer to all those things is to enter into the practices of “being the Body” in Christ, including sitting, eating, sharing and praying together.

If anyone out there is interested in this kind of place please join us or another missional church gathering somewhere.

Now we don't really pitch ourselves as a "missional" church: it seems like "missional" is another burgeoning church movement of sorts. Now that the emergent church is dead in its deconstructed parking space, it seems like missional church is a new more open way forward. It is, in the first place a positively stated movement.

We're a tiny mixed church that is trying to be missional (theologically) though not a part of any missional movement, so these points really ring true. How do they match up to your experience?
What do you think?

Yoder: unafraid

2009-10-21T11:35:00.000-07:00

So the Notre Dame website has an interesting bio about John Howard Yoder.

Mr. Yoder's stance reached a wide theological audience when his book The Politics of Jesus was published in 1972. But his analyses of Christian attitudes toward the state, of pacifism and of major theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr and Karl Barth had been gaining notice since the 1950's. ....... Mr. Yoder first drafted a 50-page critique of Barth's views on pacifism while a doctoral student under Barth at the University of Basel in Switzerland--and he gave a copy to Barth shortly before Barth was to be on the panel conducting Mr. Yoder's final oral examination.

That is hard.

via Check 1-2, thanks :)

the cross has nothing to do with Christianity

2009-10-16T09:59:00.000-07:00

Ok, this was too funny to pass up. I don't have TV so I just watch it online. Don't watch unless you understand satire. From the Colbert Report if you didn't know. It's a pretty savage clip, but he does tip his hand a bit by throwing in the Nicene Creed at the end :)

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

The Word - Symbol-Minded

www.colbertnation.com

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Religion

theologians and their crazy talk, pt.2

2009-10-15T12:51:00.001-07:00

Ok, here are some thoughts about theology and the church that I have been stewing over for a bit. I’m a pastor, not a theologian, so my reflections have more to do with the intersection of church and theology. I so desperately want church to relish theology in word and deed!

1.) I’ll start with my most practical argument: In the end, I think churches don’t really listen to theologians because theologians have chosen to say nothing to them. It is easier for theologians to remain in another country, with another language, instead of engaging in the assiduous work of laboring alongside churchgoers to change them and live their theology out with people in real places. Of course this is not fair nor even true, but it is perception. Teachers could be the handmaidens for what God is doing in the church through experts.

2.) Of course, people don’t want them to, anyways. Everybody’s guilty. For many church goers, theology rarely resolves anything, it doesn't get anything done-I mean, at least since the reformation… they wonder, "What's the use?" Academic theology is often the talk of privileged people. Of course, the anti-intellectualism of the congregation seems to defend against actually having their privileged lives shaken up. But If theologians can't agree on anything, how do we evaluate who we should listen to? Why would someone who cannot understand what they are saying let them steer their church? ...unless of course, they had a reason to trust them.

But academic credentials are not enough to garner trust any longer for a church that feels alienated by Academia. How bad is it?
Mark Driscoll may start a seminary.
People want (A)nswers, not answers with footnotes disputed in Godless Europe and Princeton. Sadly, theology has little utility to churches and pastors other than sussing out new growth techniques and self-protectedly reinforcing boundaries. I think that’s part of the reason there is emphasis on “theological imagination” in a lot of writing these days. So much is lost that would enrich and nourish the body.

3.) Pastors should shoulder much more of the blame then they do. Perhaps there was a time when the pastor was a go-between, someone who could interpret and apply and make sense of all those PhD concerns. Only pastors don’t really do that anymore because people don’t want it. People want leaders. They want businessmen.

And we give those people D.Mins.

The pastorate is determined by money at least as much as truth. Evangelism sells. The “life you’ve always wanted sells.”* Economic trinity vs. immanent does not. Heidegger is irrelevant to ditch diggers, bankers, programmers, chefs, and case managers, and those are the people who give, and have pastors. (Side note: liturgy isn’t really helping here, either, despite churches believing it’s the next big thing.)

We pastors pander too much to the empire’s values. I know this because 1) there are still many poor in my town, and 2) theologians point this out to me.

4.) Knowledge is a threatening power and people don’t trust the way theologians wield it because they don’t get it. They don't have community with them or perceive they share the same values in quite the same ways. Besides, aren't they all liberal? Theologians just don't live in the real world to the US church.

But how could they?

In the race to publish or perish, correct tests, attend functions, maybe even have a family, who’s got time to integrate professional and personal church life worlds? What needs to happen between churches and academic theologians: -they need to listen to one another more. Feeling “heard” builds trust and safety even in the midst of disagreement, but every person I’ve ever met in academia, friends and enemies, is struggling to survive. You can't make it without a platform. More so than the engineers and small businessmen in their churches. I'm not suggesting that everybody at the potluck pitches in on the next dissertation, but it seems like academia and the church are on perpendicular courses sometimes.

Churches need to take much more seriously the support of seminaries as academic universities, not just cookie cutter pastor factories. Please not that. You can’t train a pastor in a seminary. That happens on the job. You can teach theology in seminaries. I think the whole thing is a mess and suggest that the path should look more like: --train a pastor in a church, teach them how to care for people in the midst of community that shapes them, --then send them to an academic institution to challenge their thinking. Right now it’s the other way around. We send people to seminaries to learn how to be a pastor and then when they get into a church, they have to learn how to think. Or just do really good seeker services.

5.) Theology is neither rhetoric or dialectic, but parrehesia. Theology must be completely free speech, dangerous and threatening. To speak what is true, theologians must set themselves outside the normal headspace of the world and proclaim the in-breaking of the gospel. Formal training helps to shape this kind of pointed reflection, and their critique is often as incisive as their alienation from normal society/church’s thinking. Good theology shows you things too wondrous to believe and things you don’t want to know. (Like that weird charismatic lady who throws her hands and “amens” up in worship just as you were getting comfortable, reminding you it’s a room full of people…)

6.) As truth telling, theology is the analytic side of truth in the church. As the one side of the parrehesia, theologians engage the analytics of truth for the church – they help ensure in a formal way that the confession of truth remains true, at least to what has been established; reason, tradition, scripture,etc. So it is committed to the western traditions of philosophy that consider the verification of truth. It is the science of theology that we see in universities. Here the morality of the theologian is always unfairly on trial. The goal of a theologian doesn’t determine the fidelity of theology with God’s word in this analytic sense. Nor does it determine the word of God that I might hear within their thinking. The two will never be identical. Good things are done for bad reasons and vice versa. For instance I am writing this post out of a profound and deep-seated need to control my environment through understanding, but it’s still pretty good, huh?

Oh.

..crap.
excuse me, but I need to arrange my sock drawer again..

7.) Theology has fidelity to Christ as the critique of the Church. Foucault describes the critical side as the one asking, “what is the importance for the individual and for the society of telling the truth, of knowing the truth, of having people who tell the truth, as well as knowing how to recognize them.” Here it can be admitted that despite theology’s aim to engage in God-talk, it isn’t Christian until it has love as its goal, in which case, it will always be chastened and bear witness to its inadequacies. Does it think more clearly about faith? Perhaps, but as Paul says, knowledge puffs up, love builds up. That seems to always have been the chopping block for the discussion. It’s one of those patently abused verses, and yet it still applies. Does a theology aim towards love or not? When the aim of even critique ceases to be love, perhaps all is lost…for the theologian, anyways. Love must always critique the critiquer, and chasten them, too. Who watches the watchers? Well, Jesus does and his rule of love would seem to shape the best theologies. I know, too simple, but the best critiques generally are.

8.) I love theologians and theology. Seriously. I personally feel both challenged and encouraged and the deep thinking of theologians has guided my life positively time and again. In their reflective considerations both formal and informal, I feel I have heard the Word of God address me again and again. In some of my darkest times, good theology and well considered arguments have been a rope dropped down a well to pull me up. I cannot overstate this. If scripture is the window through which the Word of God calls out to me again and again, theologians help remove the cotton from my ears to hear it! I even love theoblogians, especially theoblogians now that my time in school is over. Thank you all!

*I am not referring here to Ortberg’s book, which as a practical introduction to the disciplines is excellent.

a cartoon

2009-10-14T21:27:00.000-07:00

seemed topical :)

theologians and their crazy talk

2009-10-14T14:18:00.001-07:00

A fascinating discussion is about theologians is taking place. What is it? Well it’s long and wander-y as you might imagine, spanning various blogs, so I’ll try and sum it up. First, Halden at Inhabitio Dei stepped to, writing:

“Its hard to find a more scandalizing bunch of people than theologians, and not in the good way. One would think that among a guild of professionals dedicated to getting to know God as well as possible you’d see less infidelity, churlishness, affluence, and apathy towards injustice than in other professions.”

But Adam of An und für sich was like

,...to act like theologians are unique in their lack of attention to the poor is appalling, in the face of the massive indifference displayed by the vast majority of church members….Theologians should be exemplary in two areas. First, they should be exemplary in the degree to which they reflect intellectually on the gospel. I’d say that we’re on pretty firm footing here, on average — there are a lot of intelligent, reflective Christians out there, but few of them are going to reach the level of someone who earns a PhD, teaches, and publishes in the field. It’s elitist to say so, I know, but academic theologians really do consistitute an intellectual elite. “

Dag, yo! Halden played it off smooth:

That our attempts to talk about God often end up condemning us is, you might say, far better than the alternative. If our God-talk simply validated us, clearly we’d be doing something far worse. Though, of course this happens all the time, too.

Finally, Kuehn’s summary crushed it with, “Theologians talking to one another about themselves.”.... Child, please!

It's a topic dear to my heart, and I've been thinking about it for a while, at least from the angle of "how theology and churches interact." I will post some inadequate ramblings myself, tomorrow, but I'd love to hear your own thoughts - how do theologians exist in your world? What is their role in the church you attend?

time for a makeover

2009-10-13T10:54:00.000-07:00

time for a makeover.
I cannot for the life of me understand why HTML is so ridiculous, or why blogger is worse. Seriously. The preview in blogger looks vaguely similar to what the page will look like. I'm trying to move to our church server and host the site entirely there, but until then,
move that bus...

conservapedia bible project

2009-10-07T09:07:00.000-07:00

Ok, this is either fantastic satire or frightening: Conservapedia has launched a new Conservative Bible translation project. The goal is to alter the language of the Bible to better reflect conservative values. And yes, they have already rendered a number of books. Their reasoning:

"Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations. There are three sources of errors in conveying biblical meaning:
lack of precision in the original language, such as terms underdeveloped to convey new concepts introduced by Christ
lack of precision in modern language
* translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one.
Of these three sources of errors, the last introduces the largest error, and the biggest component of that error is liberal bias. Large reductions in this error can be attained simply by retranslating the KJV into modern English."

It's just got to be a delightful Colbert-ian ruse, otherwise, we've all been duped by the evil forces of F.F. Bruce and the NRSV committee. Scholars everywhere must be scrambling to control the damage, their inattention to "precision in the original language" exposed. A lot of those verbs are conjugated, you know...

Thankfully, if you are confused about the Bible you're reading, they offer some interpretive guidelines:

"As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:
Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias
Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity
Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level
Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".
Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots"; using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census
Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story
Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels
Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God." "

Here's an example of the extraneous additions they've detected in the Bible:

"First Example - Liberal Falsehood
The earliest, most authentic manuscripts lack this verse set forth at Luke 23:34:
Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

Is this a liberal corruption of the original? This does not appear in any other Gospel, and the simple fact is that some of the persecutors of Jesus did know what they were doing. This quotation is a favorite of liberals but should not appear in a conservative Bible"

You almost believed that! It does make for a great introduction to text criticism, though.
I'm not trying to espouse a political position here, but I am a theological one: this is bad interpretation all the way 'round. Still, it's hard to argue with tenet #10, " Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness." Never mind that it contradicts rule #3: they may just adhere to a simpler worldview. Poe's law?

If there's one thing to be drawn from this, at least it highlights how much everything is interpreted. Every time we read scripture we are biased by our own assumptions and viewpoints. I mean, at least they are honest about theirs. How much more damage has been caused by the church's hidden and unexamined biases' that just reflect "the way it is" (slavery? women? imperialism?). And so the project undoes itself so far as it tries to better represent absolute, timeless, universal propositional truths.

Entertaining stuff. It's like a giant Chinese Finger trap: I want to look away but can't, and today, somewhere in the distance, I hear D. Hagner gently weeping.

free journals trial

2009-10-02T14:28:00.000-07:00

Once again, Sage is offering free trial access to their online journal content until Oct 31. So you can gird your mental loins for Halloween. They seem to do it every year, so I feast and print like a gorging bear and then hibernate on it until the next time. So here's a dilemma- I would, at some point, love to put in our church budget an item for either the Logos software (GK/HB grammar and/or Church Dogmatics) or Sage Journal Access. If you had to pick, which would be most useful? For the link, just click their banner:

Who do people say I am?

2009-10-01T11:01:00.000-07:00

There is a brief but interesting article in the Baptist Standard about the differences between the right and left sides of American Christianity:

WASHINGTON (RNS)—A new report confirmed long-held assumptions about religious activists from the left and right. The only thing both sides seem to have in common: faith is a more important part of their lives than among the general public.

But beyond that, the two poles differ dramatically on political priorities and biblical interpretation.

If you’re a conservative religious activist, you’re likely a male evangelical who reads the Bible literally and views fighting abortion and same-sex marriage as the top political priorities.

On the other hand, if you’re a woman who attends a mainline Protestant church, hold an expansive view of Scripture and think health care and poverty are top priorities, you’re more likely to be labeled a progressive religious activist.

I'll resist poking too much fun at the descriptions, after all, they seem to confirm the basic tension and stereotypes we carry around with us. Unfortunately, the article doesn't delve into the theology of each side, it describes more the social perceptions. I would like to read more about the theology that under girds both poles - this seems more fruitful for finding common ground than the specific policies we argue over.

It also confuses me about what to call our church, Epic: we really don't see ourselves as conservative or liberal. We're not emergent or mainline, just American Baptist. But we're not like Southern Baptists, whom most people associate Baptists with! And in Orange county, anything short of John Piper is liberal, so I know we an look different to many Christians. And that's ok; I'm already used to looking different...

Now we're trying to be a church that is for our city. Perhaps instead of trying to figure out who we think we are, one day the city will tell us whether or not we were a church that loved Fullerton.

*photo by Patrick Dirden

audio resource update

2009-10-01T10:19:00.000-07:00

I've been able to find another 20+ lectures. Thanks you all for your suggestions and please keep suggesting :) Thanks, too to Ben Myers at Faith and Theology for driving traffic up - it's a helpfully targeted pool of suggesters, I think. It's amazing how little there is in terms of deeper lectures available. I wonder how much copyright/ownership laws have to do with it. A shame, really. I would love it if professors, theologians, seminaries - everyone really- utilized the Internet Archive site more profligately. Probably won't happen but it sure would make searching easier.

Besides, some of the most beautiful music is already over there, a soft bed for the theologians to fall into: (Sense:Bubbleblower)

monday's moral dilemma

2009-09-22T08:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday in a parking lot I parked next to someone whose car wouldn't start. They had, what I estimate to be, almost absolute zero mechanical knowledge. -at least of Honda Civics, so I offered to help. Hood up: everything looked in order, even the battery. So they thrust the key in my hand and said, "You try." So I did. I climbed in and put the key in the ignition.

Here's where it gets interesting. When I push the key into the ignition, it wouldn't go in, so much so that I questioned whether or not it was the right key. The key cylinder looked pretty chewed up, too. The radio was missing; a tangle of wires hung through scraped up plastic, and there were odd signs of neglect: junk here and there in odd places, things out of place in the car. It didn't take long for me to realize the problem was not the battery, but the shift-lock - a connection between the ignition and the shifting mechanism that keeps the car in (P)ark so that you can't start it in (D)rive and run over someone accidentally.

As the engine fired up and the person drove away, I identified the nagging feeling tugging at the tiny bell inside my mind: was this a stolen car? I have no way of knowing, but the possibility was disconcerting. Now I don't think the person I helped stole the car - that seems highly unlikely since they couldn't start it. Perhaps the car was stolen from them! I know first hand how crappy that is. But it did cause me to pause for a moment and wonder: what if I did aid someone driving a stolen car? Were my actions morally right or wrong? What is the Mind of Christ in such a thing?

On the one hand, I acted out a desire to be kind and hospitable, but it is possible I helped someone perpetuate a pretty strong wrong: I enabled some people to gain from their crime. I don't think I did anything wrong, but rather helped someone in tough spot. Short of finding the pink slip, I can't guarantee the ownership of anyone's car, so my aid was founded upon some pretty basic assumptions of trust and humanity. I tried to help a stranger, and they must take responsibility for the rest of it.

What struck me about this is that it is the same line of thinking we use regarding homeless people at freeway off-ramps: "I won't give them money because they'll spend it on booze." Now, for whatever reason, giving money, as opposed to the time and knowledge, seems more morally ambiguous to Christians here, as if it is too great a power to be given away to people who don't seem to be as adept at money management as we are. There are some differences in the situations - the person in the car has had a kind of "normal" life interrupted momentarily, while the homeless person lives an interrupted life, but sometimes it feels like we get a funny kind of paternalism about helping homeless folks, as if we really know best and understand their moral fiber better than they themselves.

In the end, I've decided to "give when asked" like Jesus taught (Luke 6:30), even if I do become responsible for 40ozs that the homeless person buys. For me it's a Pascalian wager - it seems more likely that I in my middle class anesthesia will ignore the homeless and less likely that I will contribute to the drug addictions of the suffering on the street. And even if I do, at least we can say that we're in it together. When I just roll on by at the stoplights, it seems to me that I reinforce the desparate isolation and separation between the haves and have-nots.

What do you think?

to remember sept 11th or not

2009-09-11T14:15:00.000-07:00

I have been reading much about how community forms us, and on this day, it was inevitable, I suppose that I would cross paths with Hauerwas. I find this prayer still challenging. It makes me consider how what we do on a daily weekly basis as a church does or does not impact the world around us; does or does not mean something. Here is the 2nd half of his letter to the campus, a prayer, for the day: (click for the full text link)

American imperialism, often celebrated as the new globalism, is a frightening power. It is frightening not only because of the harm such power inflicts on the innocent, but because it is difficult to imagine alternatives. Pacifists are often challenged after an event like September 11 with the question, “Well, what alternative do you have to bombing Afghanistan?” Such a question assumes that pacifists must have an alternative foreign policy. My only response is I do not have a foreign policy. I have something better—a church constituted by people who would rather die than kill.

Indeed I fear that absent a countercommunity to challenge America, bin Laden has given Americans what they so desperately needed—a war without end. America is a country that lives off the moral capital of our wars. War names the time we send the youth to kill and die (maybe) in an effort to assure ourselves the lives we lead are worthy of such sacrifices. They kill and die to protect our “freedom.” But what can freedom mean if the prime instance of the exercise of such freedom is to shop? The very fact that we can and do go to war is a moral necessity for a nation of consumers. War makes clear we must believe in something even if we are not sure what that something is, except that it has something to do with the “American way of life.”

What a gift bin Laden has therefore given America. Americans were in despair because we won the cold war. Americans won by outspending the USSR, proving that we can waste more money on guns than they can or did. But what do Americans do after they have won a war? The war was necessary to give moral coherence. We had to cooperate with one another because we were at war. How can America make sense of what it means for us to be “a people” if we have no common enemy? We were in a dangerous funk having nothing better to do than entertain ourselves with the soap opera Bill Clinton was. Now we have something better to do. We can fight the war against terrorism.

The good thing, moreover, about the war on terrorism is it has no end, which makes it very doubtful that this war can be considered just. If a war is just, your enemy must know before the war begins what political purpose the war is to serve. In other words, they need to know from the beginning what the conditions are if they choose to surrender. So you cannot fight a just war if it is “a war to end all wars” (World War I) or for “unconditional surrender” (World War II). But a “war on terrorism” is a war without limit. Americans want to wipe this enemy off the face of the earth. Moreover, America even gets to decide who counts and does not count as a terrorist.

Which means Americans get to have it any way they want it. Some that are captured, for example, are prisoners of war; some are detainees. No problem. When you are the biggest kid on the block, you can say whatever you want to say, even if what you say is nonsense. We all know the first casualty in war is truth. So the conservatives who have fought the war against “postmodernism” in the name of “objective truth,” the same conservatives that now rule us, assume they can use language any way they please.

That Americans get to decide who is and who is not a terrorist means that this is not only a war without clear purpose, but also a war without end. From now on we can be in a perpetual state of war. America is always at her best when she is on permanent war footing. Moreover, when our country is at war, it has no space to worry about the extraordinary inequities that constitute our society, no time to worry about poverty or those parts of the world that are ravaged by hunger and genocide. Everything—civil liberties, due process, the protection of the law—must be subordinated to the one great moral enterprise of winning the unending war against terrorism.

...

Christians are not called to be heroes or shoppers. We are called to be holy. We do not think holiness is an individual achievement, but rather a set of practices to sustain a people who refuse to have their lives determined by the fear and denial of death. We believe by so living we offer our non-Christian brothers and sisters an alternative to all politics based on the denial of death. Christians are acutely aware that we seldom are faithful to the gifts God has given us, but we hope the confession of our sins is a sign of hope in a world without hope. This means pacifists do have a response to September 11, 2001. Our response is to continue living in a manner that witnesses to our belief that the world was not changed on September 11, 2001. The world was changed during the celebration of Passover in a.d. 33.

Mark and Louise Zwick, founders of the Houston Catholic Worker House of Hospitality, embody the life made possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus. They know, moreover, that Christian nonviolence cannot and must not be understood as a position that is no more than being “against violence.” If pacifism is no more than “not violence,” it betrays the form of life to which Christians believe they have been called by Christ. Drawing on Nicholas Berdyaev, the Zwicks rightly observe that “the split between the Gospel and our culture is the drama of our times,” but they also remind us that “one does not free persons by detaching them from the bonds that paralyze them: one frees persons by attaching them to their destiny.” Christian nonviolence is but another name for the friendship we believe God has made possible and constitutes the alternative to the violence that grips our lives.

I began by noting that I am not sure for what I should pray. But prayer often is a form of silence. The following prayer I hope does not drown out silence. I wrote the prayer as a devotion to begin a Duke Divinity School general meeting. I was able to write the prayer because of a short article I had just read in the Houston Catholic Worker by Jean Vanier.4 Vanier is the founder of the L’arche movement—a movement that believes God has saved us by giving us the good work of living with and learning to be friends with those the world calls retarded. I end with this prayer because it is all I have to give.

Great God of surprise, our lives continue to be haunted by the spectre of September 11, 2001. Life must go on and we go on keeping on—even meeting again as the Divinity School Council. Is this what Barth meant in 1933 when he said we must go on “as though nothing has happened”? To go on as though nothing has happened can sound like a counsel of despair, of helplessness, of hopelessness. We want to act, to do something to reclaim the way things were. Which, I guess, is but a reminder that one of the reasons we are so shocked, so violated, by September 11 is the challenge presented to our prideful presumption that we are in control, that we are going to get out of life alive. To go on “as though nothing has happened” surely requires us to acknowledge you are God and we are not. It is hard to remember that Jesus did not come to make us safe, but rather he came to make us disciples, citizens of your new age, a kingdom of surprise. That we live in the end times is surely the basis for our conviction that you have given us all the time we need to respond to September 11 with “small acts of beauty and tenderness,” which Jean Vanier tells us, if done with humility and confidence “will bring unity to the world and break the chain of violence.” So we pray give us humility that we may remember that the work we do today, the work we do every day, is false and pretentious if it fails to serve those who day in and day out are your small gestures of beauty and tenderness.

Yoder on the Canadian threat

2009-09-10T08:44:00.000-07:00

The beginning difference between the nationally defined vision of human dignity and the biblical one is the place of the outsider. The Abrahamic covenant begins with the promise that all peoples are to be blessed. The early centuries of Hebrew experience seemed far from that goal, with the exclusion of the Egyptians and the Canaanites in particular and of the "enemy" in general from the scope of saving concern. Yet the story moves steadily toward the inclusion of all nations. The concern of the Mosaic laws for "the stranger in thy gates," Jeremiah's acceptance of the dispersion, Paul's mission to the Gentiles and Jochanan Ben Zakkai's acceptance of the fall of the second temple are only the most notable of the milestones along the way to the deterritorialization of the believing community. "They take part in everything as citizens and put up with everything as foreigners. Every foreign land is there home, and every home is a foreign land...

It seems clear that in the ordinary meaning of "civil religion," the American experience has always needed the polar outsider to precipitates a common self-awareness: the savage, the slave, the infidel, the "hun, the "Jap," the godless communist...It may be that our own ethnically mixed society demanded a foil of a racially polar bad guy nation to reflect upon ourselves a borrowed sense of natural unity.

The challenge is simple: if we accept that traditional territorial definition of the community under God, we deny the unity of the human race in creation, the cosmopolitan reality of the church in mission and the eschatological vision of the world in redemption. The alternative is to accept the claim that this nation, any nation, every nation under God is called to multicultural reconciliation internally and to practical humanitarianism globally. Is it too much to ask of the United States that national interest be seriously qualified by commitments to the dignity of other nations and peoples, acknowledged in the form of real claims held by others upon our cultural and economic resources? If we are willing (as I fear we are) to leave it to the Swedes and the Canadians to project internationalism as a realistic policy, then let us at least not burden the God of Abraham with our provincialism. The Priestly Kingdom, p. 189 -90, emphasis mine.

Strong medicine, that.
It’s fascinating to me how the outsider lends a “borrowed sense of identity” in his thought, as if our national identity, insofar as it is defined in contrast to others, is false somehow, with no intrinsic identity. Or perhaps it is false, just a cover for greed? I also appreciate Yoder’s estimation of the sweep of history in scripture, and how it applies to our understanding of community. But most of all, I am glad to see his warning about the Northern Threat.

Don't let Canada win.

(What'd I miss?)

profound theological insight #613

2009-09-07T21:41:00.000-07:00

Naming your fantasy football team the Fili-O-Quakes will not garner divine favor for your team. Nor will anyone think it's funny.

But I did.

america causes cancer

2009-09-03T11:28:00.000-07:00

believe it.
best headline ever.

America Causes Cancer
Psychology Today
August 7, 2009

Hispanics living in Florida have a 40 percent higher cancer risk than those who live in their native countries. A new study reconfirms previous findings (with Japanese) that Americans have a carcinogenic way of life.

Is there any logical connection between what really threatens American lives and the money spent defending against these dangers?

The U.S. spent $636,292,979,000 last year on military expenditures (presumably defending the nation against terrorists and Russians). Total U.S. spending on medical research was about $95 billion, about 1/7th the money that went to the military.

Yet a study published in 2002, found about a quarter million Americans die each year from avoidable causes—things that proper medical care would have detected and treated. How many died from terrorist attacks?

The Urban Institute has estimated that about 22,000 Americans die annually simply because they lack health care. That's about seven times the total toll from 9/11 every year.

Good point, great title.