Five Things I Dig About Jesus

David tagged me for the Five Things I Dig About Jesus meme. I found that I had to really put some effort into this to give my honest, personal response and not just the usual rhetoric. I seem to have ended up with some of the usual rhetoric anyway, but these really are things I dig about Jesus.

1. He hangs out with unpopular people. Growing up, I was one of those not-cool, not-rich, not-athletic, not-terribly-clean kids that nobody really wanted to talk to and a few people actively avoided. And I dig that Jesus doesn't have a problem with that.

2. He touches unclean people. Unclean people are a step beyond unpopular people. There's something about them that causes even good people to be afraid to come near them. I think people with HIV are probably the best example we've got today. If we say that Jesus was miraculously immune to their diseases, we miss the point. I dig that Jesus would touch the people no one else would come near.

3. He welcomes sinners. Lots of religious types are enthusiastic about welcoming repentant sinners, but I don't think Jesus made that distinction. I think he welcomed real sinners, active sinners. Again, if we rush ahead to where he changes their life, we're missing the point. I dig that Jesus isn't put off by sin.

4. He offends religious types. By religious types, I mean those people whose self-image is tied up in the fact that they've got this religion thing figured out and they're doing it right. It's hard to point out where they're wrong, because I'd have to have it figured out to do so. But I don't trust them, and I dig that Jesus rubs them the wrong way.

5. He isn't afraid of the government. I'm a long-time "question authority" advocate, though at times I've been doing it for the wrong reasons. Jesus does it for the right reasons. He sees that those who put themselves in places of authority aren't really the final authority. He doesn't go out of his way to flaunt this, but he knows it and lives it. I dig that about Jesus.

Immigration and Sacrifice

I visited a United Church of Christ congregation this week, and the sermon was almost entirely on the issue of immigration. The pastor said he had intended to give a feel good sermon about God as Father but the events of the week didn't allow for that.

Last week a Del Monte plant was raided in Portland. There were 167 illegal immigrants arrested and sent to a deportation facility. The incident led to a wide spread panic among immigrant workers in the community. For instance, schools were reporting abnormal absentee rates as immigrant parents were afraid to let their children leave home.

The pastor's sermon hit some of the usual points about how those of us present were all descended from immigrants and so on. He said he wasn't so naive as to think we could simply open our borders -- there were issues of civil order and economics which couldn't be ignored -- but he was hopeful that if we truly intend to we could work out a just solution. Overall, it was a pretty good sermon.

I'm much more naive than this pastor. I don't see why we can't just open our borders. I'm not suggesting we close down the customs department completely -- by all means keep asking people why they're coming into the country -- but I don't see why we need to turn away anyone who is coming here looking for work.

People say that it can't be done because of the impact it would have on our economy. The cost of social services is often mentioned. I don't doubt that it would cost us a great deal, but that doesn't mean it can't be done. What it comes down to is this, the people of our country are willing to offer help to the poor in neighboring countries, but only so long as it doesn't hurt.

I would like to suggest that the situation of the wealthy United States closing its borders to Mexico's poor is a direct acting out of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Lazarus lay at the rich man's gate and longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table. And I'm sure the rich man would have been happy to let Lazarus have what fell from the table -- just so he didn't have to give Lazarus something from his own plate.

Ghost Rider

I rented "Ghost Rider" this week. It's not a bad flick, if you like movies based on comic books, which I do. Ghost Rider was one of my favorites as a kid, but I had forgotten pretty much everything about his story.

It's not a bad back story. It might seem a bit cliche, but legends like this need to build on fundamental archetypes, so you ought to expect that. It's presented as a recurring myth -- a man sells his soul to the devil and as a result he's the devil's bounty hunter. OK, so this is cool, we get a little pseudo-theology in our comic book movie. Then one of these ghost riders decides not to do the devil's bidding. That's the back story.

The demonology of the movie is a little confused as there are some issues over the devil and his son having varying strengths and weaknesses, not to mention the son being a little more evil but for some reaosn being described as not having fallen. But all of that easily fits in the suspension of disbelief any movie asks of the viewer.

So the protagonist, after becoming the latest ghost rider, finds himself struggling with the possibility that maybe, just maybe, he can get a second chance, and he decides to use his powers for good. OK, so we've got a nice redemption/grace thing going there, but somehow the story can't avoid the vengence model of religion.

The Ghost Rider's greatest power is his "penance stare" -- as his opponent looks into his eyes, he feels the pain of all the innocent souls he has wounded and is reduced to a quivering mass and presumably remanded to hell.

In the final scene, when the devil is about to release him from his curse, he refuses, informing the devil that he intends to fight against him, saying that whenever innocent blood is spilled he'll be there fighting fire with fire.

So...the Ghost Rider will chase down the wicked with hellfire and damn them by revealing their sins to them. Excuse me? How is that different from the devil? It all seems to come down to the fact that people just aren't willing to go past the idea that God likes innocent people and wants to see bad people punished. A motorcycle named "Grace" isn't going to fix this storyline.

Summary: fun movie, bad theology.

Music Meme

Via Lutherpunk.

Disclaimer: My MP3 player has a lot of storage, and I went with a play list that includes everything I have on there for any reason. I can't be held responsible for the quality of these selections.

Why are you taking yet another shuffle quiz?
Song: But Anyway
Artist: Blues Traveler
Comment: Why not?

What’s currently in your fridge?
Song: Still Remains
Artist: Stone Temple Pilots
Comment: It's kind of green and fuzzy. Whatever it is, it's been in there for a long time.

Your biggest nightmare?
Song: T-R-O-U-B-L-E
Artist: Travis Tritt
Comment: I better not comment on this.

What place would you like to visit?
Song: Down In It
Composer: Nine Inch Nails
Comment: Actually, I'm not sure I would want to visit there.

A reason to commit suicide?
Song: Keep On Loving You
Artist: REO Speedwagon
Comment: It becomes publicly known that I have REO Speedwagon on my MP3 player.

Why are we here?
Song: The Approaching of the Disco Void
Composer: John Fahey
Comment: Someone has to stop disco.

Something you never dared to say to anyone…?
Song: Custard Pie
Artist: Led Zeppelin
Comment: OK, so when I actually said it it didn't really make any sense to anyone anyway.

One thing the world really doesn’t need?
Song: Hellhound On My Trail
Composer: Robert Johnson
Comment: No one needs a hellhound on their trail.

What’s your biggest unfulfilled wish?
Song: Daniel
Artist: Elton John
Comment: Clear all the sappy music off my MP3 player.

If you could invent something, what would it be?
Song: Cross-Eyed Mary
Composer: Jethro Tull
Comment: Rock and roll flute. Oh wait, someone's already done that.

The last thing you say before you die?
Song: Girl, You'll be a Woman Soon
Artist: Urge Overkill
Comment: Hopefully, I'll be saying this to an as yet unborn granddaughter or great-granddaughter, and not one of my daughters, who are growing up fast.

What’s your destiny?
Song: Never
Artist: Gravity Kills
Comment: I refuse to face destiny.

What do you do when you’re alone in an elevator?
Song: Strength Beyond Strength
Composer: Pantera
Comment: I marvel at the fact that I am the strongest man in the elevator.

Why do people go fishing?
Song: Baby Come Back
Artist: Player
Comment: It beats listening to 70's music compilations.

What would you do with your slaves?
Song: Watching You
Composer: Melissa Etheridge
Comment: You just can't trust those slaves.

Is there a man on the moon?
Song: Not Dark Yet
Artist: Bob Dylan
Comment: I'll look when it's dark, and then I'll know.

What does hell look like?
Song: Lil' Devil
Artist: The Cult
Comment: I swear, that's just what came up.

About what would you like to write a book?
Song: Cotton Eye Joe
Artist: Rednex
Comment: I'd write a book about sex and violins.

The best thing ever is…?
Song: So Alone
Artist: Offspring
Comment: Sartre was right, "Hell is other people."

Why did the chicken cross the road?
Song: Go Outside and Drive
Artist: Blues Traveler
Comment: He was parked on the other side of the road.

Why do you listen to music?
Song: Jumpin' Jack Flash
Composer: The Rolling Stones
Comment: 'Cause it's alright now. In fact, it's a gas.

What do you do when you’re alone and nobody’s watching?
Song: Coma
Artist: Coroner
Comment: If nobody's watching, am I really here?

Why are other people so stupid?
Song: Whores
Artist: Jane's Addiction
Comment: Sorry, I seem to have poor impulse control today. That just came out.

Last thing you ate?
Song: 99 Ways to Die
Artist: Megadeth
Comment: Remember that green fuzzy stuff in my fridge?

Why is grass green?
Song: Wonderful One
Artist: NewSong
Comment: Grass is green because God is love!

Your phone is ringing, but who’s on the other end?
Song: (I'm Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear
Composer: Blondie
Comment: It's my wife. No one else calls me. Really.

What should you stop doing?
Song: First Time
Composer: Styx
Comment: I should stop admitting to the sappy music on my MP3 player.

A word of advice to the readers of this quiz?
Song: Can't Get It Out of My Head
Artist: Electric Light Orchestra
Comment: Too much music clouds your thinking.

Wesley and the Nature of Faith

In beginning Kenneth Collins' book John Wesley: A Theological Journey, I've received new input to my recent exploration of the nature of faith. Apparently, Wesley was beginning to explore this same territory at the age of 22.

In a letter to his mother in July of 1725, Wesley wrote, "As I understand faith to be an assent to any truth upon rational grounds, I don't think it possible without perjury to swear I believe anything, unless I have rational grounds for my persuasion."

Collins notes that this represents an early stage of Wesley's thinking on the matter. At this stage, he was basically equating faith with belief that some proposition is true. As I've said in recent posts, I think this is a very common error -- an error committed by believers and opponents of religion alike.

John Wesley, however, had no ordinary mother, as is perhaps apparent already from the fact that he was writing about theology in a personal letter to her. In her response to this letter, Susanna Wesley wrote, "You are somewhat mistaken in your notion of faith....The true measure of faith is the authority of the revealer, the weight of which always holds proportion with our conviction of his ability and integrity. Divine faith is an assent to whatever God has revealed to us, because he has revealed it."

Paraphrasing to try to wrap my mind around what she's saying, I think this means that we don't believe the specifics of our religion, for instance, because we have been convinced of them by rational argument, but rather we believe them because we have previously accepted the authority of God and we take these things to be revealed to us by God. I like this, though it has some problems.

In the previous example I was working with of the Mormon missionary coming to believe the story about Joseph Smith and the golden plates while on mission, I would analyze it this way. He initially accepted the story without quite believing it. He granted it on credit as it were. Then later, seeing God at work in his life, he tapped into a new sort of faith in God's authority and accounted this as making good on the previous credit. And so his faith subsumed belief in the story of the golden plates.

The problem is, how do we make the connection between faith in God's authority, what God has revealed to us, and the foundational stories of our religion? Does God actually reveal to us that these stories are true? If not, why do we act as if this were so?

Mulling this over I was reminded of some remarks Rabbi Lawrence Kushner has made on mystical visions. He says that while Christians who have mystical visions will typically have a vision of Jesus or perhaps of Mary, when a Jew has a mystical vision, it frequently takes the form of Ezekiel's chariot. This is fascinating, but it makes sense. Our preconceptions, it would seem, influence the way God reveals Godself to us.

Back to Wesley, after sharing John Wesley's initial conception of faith and Susanna Wesley's correction (which miraculously her 22-year old son seems to have accepted), author Kenneth Collins points the way forward. Collins writes, "It would take several years before Wesley would comprehend all three elements of the nature of faith aright: as assent, as trust, and as a spiritual sense."

I take this to be a traiditional Methodist view of faith, though it was one with which I wasn't familiar. Assent and trust I recognize as two parts of the traditional Reformed definition of faith, along with knowledge (notitia, assensus and fiducia). In typical Lutheran fashion, I tend to throw all the weight on the fiducia. But this "spiritual sense" was something new to me. As Collins describe it, faith is itself taken to be "an organ of spiritual knowledge" -- a way of hearing God.

I'm not quite sure what I think of this. On first glance it seems to me that this is a foreign element being introduced, as if faith is being conflated with its effects. And yet, it's a powerful concept and would perhaps begin to answer some of the questions I've raised above. I'll have to dwell on it a bit more, I think.

I'm Not Really a Lutheran

I was at a celebration banquet my congregation was holding a month or so ago and as I listened to the long-time members talk about the life stories and how they intertwined with the church I came to the realization, I'm not really a Lutheran.

Don't get me wrong. I think like a Lutheran. I love the Lutheran hymns and liturgies. I was baptized as a Lutheran. I was married in the same Lutheran church where my parents and grandparents had been married and where I had grown up and been taught how to be a Christian.

But I'm not Norwegian or Swedish or German or a descendent of any of the other traditional Lutheran ethnic groups. I joke that I come from a long line of Irish Lutherans. My English/Irish grandfather somehow made his way into a Lutheran church (he was at least Pennsylvanian, so I've got that going for me), and that's how I came into Lutheranism. But as I sat at the banquet and listened to the Norwegians talk about their Norwegian culture, I realized, I'm not really one of these people.

Again, I love Lutherans. I'm endlessly thankful that they let me hang around with them. I've even taken to making an odd joke about lutefisk now and then, though I've never eaten the stuff and don't intend to. Still, I can't help feeling like I'm a wolf that was raised by sheep.

I was born on Reformation Day, so I've got that going for me too, but -- are you ready for this? -- my middle name is Wesley. It's a family name. The side of my family that weren't Irish Lutherans were Methodists -- at least until my great-grandmother lost her bid for control of the congregation to another woman, so my grandfather tells me.

Now I'm not planning to become Methodist any time soon -- I'm quite happy as a resident alien among the Lutherans -- but I've recently come to the realization that I'm almost completely ignorant of the life and theology of John Wesley. So I picked up Kenneth Collins' John Wesley: A Theological Journey and an anthology of Wesley's writings. I started Collins' book last night. So far, I've learned that I also know next to nothing about the history of the Church of England after the 16th century.

What Penn Jillette Believes

I was thumbing through my copy of the NPR "This I Believe" anthology this morning, when I came across Penn Jillette's essay, There Is No God. Penn's one of those in-your-face kind of atheists who find belief in God to be foolish and unhelpful (at best), but he does it without the pretended expertise of a Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins.

It's a short essay, and so easy to respond to, so I thought I'd take a look. But rather than crow around about where he's wrong, I'd like to look at it from the perspective of seeing what religious faith looks like to an outsider.

Jillette says, "anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in God and then look for evidence of God." This seems to be a roadblock to faith -- thinking that faith has anything to do with evidence for something or ignoring lack of evidence. But on the whole, I think the basic orientation here might be right. Faith cannot begin with love of God, but neither can we look for it. It's discovered, and discovered within ourselves even. And though it clears develops in response to experience, I don't think it can be properly said to involve discovery of evidence that something is true.

Jillette says, "Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories." So by grace? But this is a common complaint of opponents of religion. Because God forgives, they say, believers care less about their shortcomings. I don't think this is a theoretical deduction. I think it's derived from observation, and the Christian community should be stung by this. But maybe this is the worst of it, when we proclaim forgiveness of sins, we proclaim forgiveness of other people's sins and say it isn't going to happen until they come to God. We've taken ourselves out of the forgiveness loop, and while he doesn't say this, I think this is the key to Jillette's talk about forgiveness -- he knows that he will be forgiven (or not) in the same way that he forgives others (or not). Didn't Jesus say that?

Jillette says, "Believing there's no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures." I believe in God, and I can do that. But again this isn't a specious criticism. I linked to an essay a while ago called What Christians Don't Do. The essence was that Christians don't dialogue. They aren't open to other truths. This is less true in some circles since the late 60's, but it remains true that at nearly every strata of the liberal-conservative spectrum, the liberal side is seen as being too accepting of outside ideas -- at least until you get to the point where they're to closed to traditional Christian ideas, but even there the dynamic looks the same.

Jillette says, "I don't travel in circles where people say, 'I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith.'" He means this in terms of listening to, and participating in, rational argument. It's a reduction of faith to believing that certain facts are true, and this reduction is happening on the side of the person of faith!

Jillette says, "Believing there is no God means the suffering I've seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn't caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn't bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future." The first jab here is obviously a commentary on how truly awful most religious attempts to answer the problem of evil really are, but beyond that, do we really come across as not thinking we can do something about suffering? I was a bit taken aback by the idea. But then I remembered something my wife shared with me. She's been involved in a discussion group recently, and when the question of recycling came up, a Christian said that ultimately only God can fix the planet and if God doesn't want to we shouldn't waste our time trying. Ouch!

In his Ethics Bonhoeffer says, "If the hungry man does not attain to faith, then the guilt falls on those who refused him bread." If the skeptic does not attain to faith, perhaps the guilt falls on those who made faith so unappealing. I think maybe it's time to stop refuting the opponents of religion and start listening to them. While their arguments may seem off-base to us, we should think long and hard about why they are making these argument.

I'm a Book Moocher

A week or two ago I came across an entry over at Eating Words confessing that he is a book moocher. After thoughtful reflection, I must now confess that I too am a book moocher. In fact, I highly recommend it.

Check out bookmooch.com. The way it works is this, you sign up for a free account. You list the books you have that you're willing to give away. For every book you list, you get a tenth of a point. For every book you give away, you get one point. For each point you have, you can mooch a book. The only cost is the cost of mailing other people your books.

To me, this is very cool. I love to get books. I love to have books. I have six bookcases full of books and with books stacked on top of the bookcases, piled up on my dresser and night stand, in drawers, etc. So I need to get rid of some of my books so I can get new ones. Book Mooch is perfect for this. It gives me an outlet for getting rid of my books that I can feel good about, and I get more books in the process.

I signed up this morning and listed ten books, so I could get one back. Before I was done listing my books, some guy in Washington mooched three of them. A woman in Iowa mooched another one an hour or so later. (There's a feature where the site sends you an e-mail when someone offers a book on your wishlist.)

So, on my first day as a book moocher, I mooched Beginning to Pray by Anthony Bloom, The Early Church by Henry Chadwick, God & Human Suffering by Douglas John Hall, Luther: Man Between God and the Devil by Heiko Oberman and The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel, while giving away four books that were just taking up space on my shelves. Not a bad day's mooching.

Faith, Part 2

Lee's post today on Religious Myths has me visiting the topic of faith again. He's reading Keith Ward's book Is Religion Dangerous? and considering, among other things, how literally (or not) ancient people understood their religions. This naturally relates to the discussion from my previous post about Mormons and how their faith relates to the story of Joseph Smith.

In the PBS show on the Mormons, there was an interview with archaeologist Michael Coe, whose field of knowledge includes shamanism. According to Coe shamans generally begin their work implicitly understanding that they are "faking it" (his words) and then gradually come to believe that they are speaking to God. So Coe thinks this is what happened with Smith -- "that he didn't believe this at all, that he was out to impress, but he got caught up in the mythology that he created."

On the whole I think this is a reasonably plausible explanation. While Coe describes himself as "irreligious" he does seem to have some sense for the deeper significance of this connection that is made between the initial "faking it" and the eventual conviction, even if he thinks its a false conviction. And I think this is part of the path of faith.

In my previous post I referred to a Mormon who said he wasn't sure he believed the story about Joseph Smith and the golden plates until he went out on mission. And while on mission, he became convinced it was true. He came to faith. I don't think the timing of this is insignificant. There's nothing about a missionary journey that's going to convince you of the historical truth of the story, but there is definitely something about a missionary journey that can convince you that God is still at work in the world, and if you're a Mormon to begin with, this is likely to bolster your faith in the foundational story of Mormonism.

People simply do not come to faith, any kind of faith, from a distance. It's a hands on thing. I carry around a quote from St. Athanasius and pull it out frequently. Athanasius said that if we want to understand the writings of the holy apostles we must seek to live as they lived. On her blog today Kelly Fryer talked about where the apostles encountered God. She says, "it wasn't in small group Bible study! They met God out on the road, in the city streets, by the lakeshore, in the home of strangers, 'out there' as they were loving and serving their neighbors!"

So this is where we meet God. This is where faith develops. As a Christian, I'm not likely to stumble across any new definitive evidence for the ressurection. But it as I live the Christian life in the way it's been handed down, as I put my would-be faith into action, my would-be faith becomes deep faith as I discover that what they've told me about the blessing of serving others is true and I discover that I do meet Christ when I feed the hungry and welcome strangers.

Bonhoeffer said, "Only those who believe can obey, and only those who obey can believe." But obviously there must be a way in somewhere. I would like to suggest that the way in is that you "sort of believe" and then through active living of the faith you come to really believe.

Faith

A few weeks ago, PBS ran a two-part, four-hour program on "The Mormons." I caught the first part, but my DVR erased part two before I got a chance to watch it, so I was pleased to find that I could watch the whole program on the web.

The program consisted of a narrated history of Mormonism along with interviews with various people most of whom were either current or former Mormons. One of the things that captured my attention was the nature of faith among the Latter Day Saints.

Several people talked about faith in terms of really believing the story about Joseph Smith and the golden plates. One man said that he wasn't sure he believed the story until he went on his missionary journey and then, while speaking in a Lutheran church in Germany apparently, he was moved to really believe the story.

Now I would expect a lot of people of faith to want to stand up and say, "That's not what faith is!" Faith isn't about believing that some factual proposition is true. It's about trusting in God and believing that God intends good for us. Right?

But one of the things I got out of this program on Mormonism is that the relationship between faith as trust in God and believing that the stories of our religion are true just isn't that simple. And maybe this is easier to see from the outside.

For instance, part one of the program told the story of the Mormon migration to Utah in the winter following the killing of Joseph Smith. These people suffered unimaginable hardship crossing the American west in the middle of winter just trying to find a place where they wouldn't be hated and persecuted as they had been in Ohio, Missouri and Illinois. And so under the leadership of Brigham Young they loaded up their wagons and headed to Utah -- Utah! I don't think there can be any doubt that this part of the Mormon experience involved a lot of faith in the "radical trust in God" sense of the word. But at the same time, they absolutely would not have done it if they didn't believe the story about Joseph Smith and the golden plates.

Faith is a strange thing. Many people work very hard to keep faith unbound by dogma, and yet it is fairly impossible to have any depth of faith in "God-in-general". If God doesn't act, we can't have faith in God. And if God acts, faith must believe that God has acted.

But here's where things get really sticky. I am pretty certain that the story about Joseph Smith and the golden plates isn't true. At the same time, I get the sense that the faith of Mormons, anchored as it is in this story that I believe to be false, is nevertheless genuine faith of the same quality as my faith. How can this be?

Great Reading

I just found out that Kelly Fryer is reclaiming another word -- this time 'faith' and this time in the form of a blog. Check it out: Reclaiming the F Word

I did it!

Well, it took me about 16 months to get through a one-year course, but I've finally finished working my way through Bill Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek! I figure if I was taking this as a graded class I'd have probably gotten about a C, but I feel like I'm on my way to knowing something. I've even used the Greek text for Bible study and saw some things I didn't know.

Adventures in Environmentalism

A few weeks ago my wife and I were talking about trading my car in for a Prius. As I looked into it, I found that you can get a solar roof panel that will let it go about 20 miles a day on pure sunlight. Since I only drive about three miles each way to the light rail station, I began daydreaming of having a vehicle that would get me there and back without using any fossil fuels at all.

Then I had this vision of Grandpa Pickles saying to me, "We had a thing like that in my day. We called it a bike."

So last week I bought a bike for about half what one month's payment would have been on a Prius. Funny how simple things can be. Now I just need to get in shape enough to ride it. I took it out the first day and managed to get to the top of the highest hill on my way to the MAX station, but knowing that if I kept going I'd have to go back up that hill I turned around.

I'm thinking of moving to Oklahoma. I hear they don't have hills there.

Salvation from Sin

Furthering the conversation on progress or growth in the Christian life, I offer this from George MacDonald:

The Lord never came to deliver men from the consequences of their sins while yet those sins remained: that would be to cast out of window the medicine of cure while yet the man lay sick; to go dead against the very laws of being. Yet men, loving their sins, and feeling nothing of their dread hatefulness, have, consistently with their low condition, constantly taken this word concerning the Lord to mean that he came to save them from the punishment of their sins. The idea-the miserable fancy rather-has terribly corrupted the preaching of the gospel. The message of the good news has not been truly delivered. Unable to believe in the forgiveness of their Father in heaven, imagining him not at liberty to forgive, or incapable of forgiving forthright; not really believing him God our Saviour, but a God bound, either in his own nature or by a law above him and compulsory upon him, to exact some recompense or satisfaction for sin, a multitude of teaching men have taught their fellows that Jesus came to bear our punishment and save us from hell. They have represented a result as the object of his mission-the said result nowise to be desired by true man save as consequent on the gain of his object. The mission of Jesus was from the same source and with the same object as the punishment of our sins. He came to work along with our punishment. He came to side with it, and set us free from our sins. No man is safe from hell until he is free from his sins; but a man to whom his sins, that is the evil things in him, are a burden, while he may indeed sometimes feel as if he were in hell, will soon have forgotten that ever he had any other hell to think of than that of his sinful condition. For to him his sins are hell; he would go to the other hell to be free of them; free of them, hell itself would be endurable to him. For hell is God's and not the devil's. Hell is on the side of God and man, to free the child of God from the corruption of death. Not one soul will ever be redeemed from hell but by being saved from his sins, from the evil in him. If hell be needful to save him, hell will blaze, and the worm will writhe and bite, until he takes refuge in the will of the Father.

The full sermon may be found here.

Progress

Last week I posted a selection from Gerhard Forde about sanctification, and some good discussion followed. I'm still unsettled on the topic. There was a time when I took everything I read from Dr. Forde as truth. I still admire his work, but I'm not so sure I can fully get on board with him anymore.

The Forde passage I quoted spoke of the dangers of "talk of progress." Brian commented that "progress is exactly the WRONG question." I agree, I think, but as Brian also observed it's hard to get the human mind away from viewing life this way.

Anything I work at, I get better at. If I play a game frequently, I get better at it. Through years of experience, my skill as a software engineer has steadily increased. With discipline, I've been able to improve my eating habits. If I'm not becoming a better Christian, why not?

Now at this point Lutherans are biting their tongues to not shout something about what it means to be a "better" Christian. I once heard it said that the utensils in the Temple weren't holy because they were better utensils that any other utensils but were holy simply because they were in the Temple. And so we turn again, as always, to the question of justification.

But wait a minute. The gift is a call, right? When Christ calls us, he calls us to mission. To be a Christian is to be a disciple of Christ, and surely that is something that we can get better at, isn't it?

Jesus told a parable, "What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work in the vineyard today.' He answered, 'I will not'; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered,'I go, sir'; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?" (Mt. 21:28-31)

Now perhaps this has nothing to do with salvation. Maybe it doesn't even have anything to do with sanctification. But what does it matter? Shouldn't we be getting better at this?

Yes, Jesus Loves Me

As part of my daily routine, I pray using the PDA version of Sacred Space during lunch. Because the lunch room at work is noisy, I listen to music as background noise to help keep my focus. Generally, I don't notice the music much. Today, I happened to be listening to John Fahey's Return of the Repressed.

The scripture reading for today on Sacred Space was John 3:16-17, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." Generally, it's hard to hear such a familiar verse with fresh ears. Today, what spoke to me were the words "God so loved".

It's far too easy to slip into thinking of Jesus in terms of doctrine or proclamation. It's much harder, for me at least, to actually connect with Jesus in terms of the love of God. I don't mean to see Jesus' life as an expression of God's love, but rather to actually feel loved by God when thinking of Jesus. That is, it's hard for me to connect to it personally.

So today I was ruminating on these things, and I prayed for God to give me the grace to make this kind of personal connection. About that time, I noticed the song playing in my earplugs. It was "The Sea of Love." Now, the Fahey album is instrumental, but this song has just the right mix of familiarity and simplicity so that the lyrics flow in my mind when I hear the music.

Call me sappy, if you must. Say I'm reading to much into a coincidence, if you must. But I was touched. And so I just sat silently and listening, imagining Jesus was sitting there with me playing this song for me (and perhaps laughing at me just a bit).

And then when the song was over I said a concluding prayer as the next song started, like the music accompanying the credits after a movie. The next song? "Yes, Jesus Loves Me"!

Forde on Sanctification

In the comments on an earlier post, the question of sanctification was raised. I recalled some remarks by Gerhard Forde questioning the possibility, even, of progress in the Christian life. I found the remarks I was thinking of in the book Christian Spirituality: Five Views of Santification in which Forde offered the Lutheran position.

His central thesis is that sanctification is nothing more and nothing less than "the art of getting used to unconditional justification." He concludes the essay as follows:

In many ways, this essay has been an appeal for more truthfulness in our talk about the Christian life and sanctification. I think that should be the mark of sanctification as well. As Paul put it, we are not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought (Rom. 12:3).

The talk of progress and growth we usually indulge in leads us all too often to do just that. But if we are saved and sanctified only by the unconditional grace of God, we ought to be able to become more truthful and lucid about the way things really are with us. Amd I making progress? If I am really honest, it seems to me that the question is odd, even a little ridiculous. As I get older and death draws nearer, it doesn't seem to get any easier. I get a little more impatient, a little more anxious about having perhaps missed what this life has to offer, a litter slower, harder to move, a little more sedentary and set in my ways. ... Well, maybe it seems as though I sin less, but that may only be because I'm getting tired! It's just too hard to keep indulging the lusts of youth. Is that sanctification? I wouldn't think so! One should not, I expect, mistake encroaching senility for sanctification!

But can it be, perhaps, that it is precisely the unconditional gift of grace that helps me to see and admit all that? I hope so. The grace of God should lead us to see the truth about ourselves, and to gain a certain lucidity, a certain sense of humor, a certain down-to-earthness. When we come to realize that if are going to be saved, it shall have to be absolutely by grace alone, then we shall be sanctified. God will have his way with us at last.

Comments anyone?

As Heard on "Here and Now"

"Any time you have gone to a place where Snoop Dog does not want to be associated with you because you are so deeply immoral, that is a good moment for self-reflection."
-Melissa Harris Lacewell, reflecting on the Don Imus controversy

Life and the Cross

In discussing the transformative nature of prayer, Hans Urs von Balthasar discusses "the great danger of ironing out the immense drama which lies between the 'world's end' and 'heaven's beginning' and rendering it...flat and 'harmless'."

It seems to me that this is one of the decisively unique aspects of von Balthasar's theology. I have not found in any other theologian such a profound appreciation for the significance of Holy Saturday -- both in the life of Christ and, by extension, in the life of the Christian.

It seems to me that most Christians would be happy to skip directly from Palm Sunday to Easter, with the Cross as little more than a support that props up the bridge between these two triumphs. Good Friday (even the name says this) is something experienced by Christ, not by his followers. He died in our place, so we live the triumphant life. He died, so we don't have to.

But notice: we're going to die.

Our typical de facto theology doesn't match up well with experience -- certainly not in the long run and usually not in the short run either.

And this is what von Balthasar calls us to notice. The Christian life involves death. The servant is not greater than the master. We can't get to Easter any other way than through the Cross. And so we should expect to experience darkness, even the darkness and God forsakeness of the Cross. It's a sobering thought.

Paul says, "if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him." Look at the verb tenses. We have died. We will live.

It seems to me that the whole Christian life is lived between Maundy Thursday and Holy Saturday. Easter exists for us only in faith.

Blogging

If you've stopped by more than once, you've probably noticed that I haven't been blogging much lately. One possibility is that I've had other things on my mind. To investigate this possibility, I've started a new blog, this one about baseball. If you like baseball, check it out -- A Swing And A Miss.

So far I've just whined about MLB Mosaic and unveiled a really bad fantasy baseball strategy.

God and Monism

Having finished with Anthony Bloom's Living Prayer, I've now moved on to Hans Urs von Balthasar's Prayer. I've had this book sitting on my shelf for about three years, and only now have mustered the resolve to read it. Having read a few books by von Balthasar in the past, my experience has been that some are written with pastoral intent and are fairly accessible while others are so intensly theological that I can only dimly comprehend them. This one is a mix of both, intensly theological but pastoral.

The section I came to today particularly touched on one of my theological interests, namely the ideas of immanence and transcendence. Divine immanence is very popular these days. Everyone wants to affirm the inherent divinity within all things. Transcendence has some play too, but only in the weaker sense of mystery. Traditional affirmations about God's otherness tend to be frowned upon in many circles as awkward artifacts of the "Old Man in the Sky" sort of theism.

All this is clearly true in popular culture, particularly among the "spiritual but not religious" crowd, but I've seen it also in somewhat more academic settings (see, for example, Paul Laughlin's Getting Oriented). The prevailing wisdom seems to be that mysticism reveals that the common root of all religion lies in the experience of the Divine Oneness of all things. When it is noted that Christian, Jewish and Muslim mystics nevertheless have (sometimes) affirmed God's otherness, this is dismissed as a product of dogma imposed on these thinkers from religious institutions and not part of their genuine experience.

But what if the traditional monotheistic teaching of God's otherness isn't just dogma? What if it is an essential part of the experience of monotheistic mystics? It seems to me that this is an immensely valuable gift that Western religions bring to the table of interreligious dialogue, and it is rejected out of hand, ironically, because it clashes with implicit dogmas of Eastern religions with regard to monism.

Christians are quite willing and able to incorporate ideas of divine immanence in creation in the strongest possible terms, and we can point to testimony about this deep and constant throughout our own traditions. Nevertheless, we also insist on divine transcendence, also in the strongest possible terms. It requires, I think, a dialectical understanding.

At this point, I must quote von Balthasar. He expresses the mystical insight of God's transcendence so well.

Every awareness of existence turns into a looking up to [God], a word addressed to him, a thought of him; every situation is clarified through being related to him. It is man's anguish and his glory, his weakness and his dignity, that he must and may relate himself to God in this way; he can only be himself through God, and he can never be God. He can only affirm himself, and only then his whole environment and his fellow creatures, by uttering the stupendous No and Yes which are built into the very foundations of his being; No, I am not God; Yes, I need God as my beginning and my end. No relative being is Being, but none is apart from Being and each exists in relation and as a pointer to Being.

This is the insight that monotheism offers. Following this, von Balthasar talks about the problem that comtemplation can only lead to the insight above. We can never reach God through comptemplation. And here he brings in the Christian scandal.

There was only one way out of this impasse, namely, that infinite, eternal Being should utter its own self in the form of a relative being.

Set as it is in the context of deep mystical insight, this statement highlights what I think is the most remarkable thing about Christianity. When popular culture looks at the Incarnation, it can only see it as a product of antiquated models of God-as-superbeing who can step into another form. But that's not the Christian teaching on the Incarnation. People try to domesticate the idea and speak of Jesus as an exceptional man who was in touch with the divinity within him (and all of us), but that's not the Christian teaching either.

The Christian teaching on the Incarnation, mind-bending as it may be, is precisely that the ground of all being, Atman, the Tao, use whatever ultra-monistic term you like for the fundamental, irreducible One-ness, Is-ness, that lies behind/beneath/within all reality became a human being and dwelt among us who were not this.

Learning Prayer

God has been teaching me this week. In the first instance, I’ve been learning rather directly from Anthony Bloom’s book, Living Prayer. This is a marvelous book. I tend to have a love-hate relationship with books about prayer. I know there’s something more I need to learn, and so I keep reading new books, but so often I’m unsatisfied.

Every book on prayer, it seems, has a section on unanswered prayer. This is where they usually turn me against them. The typical response (God answers all prayers: yes, no or wait) leaves me so cold as to suspect that the author doesn’t really know any more about prayer than I do, but is repeating taught answers. And this answer is just categorically off target for me.

This is where Metropolitan Anthony’s book won me over. He deals briefly with the misconception that “answers to prayer” are about getting what we prayed for, and then delves into what he’s really interested in. Namely, for him, and for me, the idea of unanswered prayer is more about prayer feeling like monologue – praying and not sensing that God is there. In this, I got the sense that Bloom is doing the same thing when he prays that I’m doing, but he knows far more about it than I do.

Metropolitan Anthony offers several suggestions at this point. First, it may be that we are so busy speaking to God that we don’t give him space to be present. He suggests more intentional silence – a time of standing quietly in God’s presence and only speaking when you can no longer remain silent. Second, it may be that we are placing a false idea of God between us and God. He uses the example of a schoolboy who knows his headmaster by what he does and only years later realizes that he was a man. If we approach God wrongly, but convinced that we know God, we may be praying to an idol who cannot answer. Third, it may be that God has something to teach us by remaining absent. I get the sense that I’m not in that place.

But in addition to this direct instruction two things happened that were connected.

I ride the light rail to work, and everyday on my way to the platform I pass a row of bushes which are growing along side a fence that separates them from the train tracks. Often, I hear a rustling in these bushes. I’ve guessed that there was an animal, probably a squirrel in there. I’ve looked to see it, but I’ve never managed to catch sight of it. Yesterday, as I heard the sound, rather than looking down and into the bush, I took a step toward it, and I saw a bird on the other side of the fence. This is an object lesson for me.

Today, my wife and I are at the Oregon Coast, celebrating our anniversary. I was sitting inside reading for a while, and then I decided I’d like to go out on the balcony and look at the ocean. When I went out, I could see nothing. A thick fog obscured my view. I could hear the roar of the waves. I eventually managed to spot some people walking in the sand, but I couldn’t see the water at all. I stayed and kept watching. Eventually the fog drew back enough that I could see the waves breaking on the shore, but no more. This also is an object lesson.

What Christians Don't Do

It is worth remembering, as we sit here, well-fed and in the bosom of our families, that in the ancient world, the two hardest things to do are to propagate yourself and to get enough to eat. Something of the order of 80% of families did not manage to maintain a secure male line over four generations and most of the world's population lived by subsistence farming. Consequently it is something of a surprise that the two great religions to have survived from classical times are Judaism and Christianity, one of which says you shouldn't eat the most readily available supply of protein, pork, and the other of which makes a virtue of not having sex.

-Simon Goldhill, from The 2005 Kaufmann Memorial Lecture

I came across the above lecture on the topic "What Christians Don't Do" by chance today while searching for the story from the Talmud that Professor Goldhill relates toward the end. It's a very interested read. Check it out.

We're Not Worthy

During the opening confession yesterday, I took pause at the words "We are not worthy to be called your children." A friend had joined us for worship, and I knew from past discussions that she takes issue with this sort of theology. Doesn't God love us as we are? And if God loves us, who is it who thinks we're not worthy?

But I've also been reading Anthony Bloom's Living Prayer in which he suggests that we must always approach prayer as a sort of Last Judgment and, as such, should always come before God with this sort of attitude of unworthiness.

And so for much of the worship service, my mind was occupied by this question. Two stories from the desert fathers came to mind.

The first is a story of two monks who went into town to sell the baskets they had weaved and to buy bread. Once in town they separated. One monk sold his baskets, bought some bread and waited for his friend. When they met again, the second monk said to the first, "You return to the monastery without me, for I have fallen into temptation with a woman and am no longer worthy to live in the community." But the first monk replied, "Not so brother, for I also have fallen into temptation. Let us go back together and confess our sin and receive whatever discipline is necessary." So the two monks returned to the monastery and together confessed and remained in the community as penitents.

From this story I considered the corporate nature of confession. Some of us have surely committed graver sins than others. Some of us are more aware of our sins than others. But in confessing together, we stand together. Together, we are not worthy to be called children of God. And so we bear one another's burdens.

The second story that came to mind is a story of Bessarion. A man was being sent out of the church because of some moral offense. But Bessarion arose and left with him saying, "I also am a sinful man."

This story is like the first in that it also contains an element of standing together in sin and bearing one another's burdens. It also contains a bit of the theological point that if we are to be judged on sin, none of us can stand, though I don't think this is really the point of the story.

The phrase "we are not worthy to be called your children" is clearly taken from the story of the prodigal son. If the father's reaction to this claim tells us anything, it's that he couldn't care less whether or not the son merits acceptance. We can only speculate what would have happened if the son had come strutting home saying, "Hey dad, let's party." I suspect the father would have grieved knowing that he would soon lose his son again.

And so I think this sense of unworthiness is for us and not for God. It is the condition in which we are capable of accepting reconciliation with God. Many of us these days, and I suspect it's nothing new, have trouble seeing ourselves in need of such a state. We're cool with God, right? But it's a shallow cool.

Bessarion's action was a prophetic act. It showed the church that was sending away the sinful man what true spirituality must look like.

Confession of sin -- real sin, systemic sin, far-reaching sin -- is a prized part of our spiritual heritage, but in many places I fear it is in danger of becoming a gaudy show piece more than a deep part of our spirituality. Those with different aesthetic sensibilities might need some help understanding the beauty of it.

Frittered Away

"Our lives are frittered away by details. Simplify, simplify!"
-Henry David Thoreau

I decided this year that for Lent I wanted to focus on prayer. For me, ironically, that begins with reading. I draw a lot of direction from what I'm reading, and I've got a few books on prayer sitting on the shelf that I've been meaning to read for a while now, as well as a couple that I'd like to re-read. And hopefully somewhere in there I'll manage to actual pray more too.

But we're over two weeks into Lent, and I'm just now getting started. I had previous commitments to teach classes on Luke and Acts, and I've been leading a discussion on The Evangelizing Church, not to mention my congregation is beginning a capital campaign and I volunteered for one of the early roles, so my reading program hasn't managed to get underway, and predictably my increased practice of prayer has also failed to materialize.

Helpfully, before Lent I managed to work in a reading of Alexander Schmemann's Great Lent which has given me some perspective. Schmemann talks about Lent as a journey. It's not just a season of penance, it's a season of moving toward something -- specifically moving toward Pascha, the Ressurrection. And so, it should be a season of stripping away, not holding off.

Typically, certainly for myself, and I suspect for most people, Lent is a season where you start off with great intentions, go through a couple of weeks demonstrating your ascetic powers and then gradually discover how weak you really are and can't wait for Easter so you can give up the charade. There's definitely a sort of spiritual value to that. It's real.

But Father Schmemann's model works somewhat more directly. You begin by looking at yourself and looking for your weaknesses and then trying to intentionally strip away the pretension. And rather than seeing the fast as some sort of spiritual accomplishment, it's the pressure that holds your feet to the fire, so to speak.

And so the business of my life these first two weeks serves as a sort of object lesson. What is it that's keeping me from God? It's not life, per se, because surely life is the field where God meets us. But very likely it's all that I'm trying to stuff into life.

Jesus Tomb

OK, I admit it. I watched the documentary on the "Lost Tomb of Jesus" on Sunday. I wanted to be informed in case it caught on in a "Da Vinci Code" sort of way.

It doesn't look like anybody's buying it, so there doesn't seem much point in refuting it, but for my own entertainment as much as anything else, here are some things I've learned so far:

1. Biblical scholars, regardless of theological orientation, are NOT archaeologists


2. Film makers are neither Biblical scholars nor archaeologists


3. Neither film makers nor Biblical scholars nor archaeologists tend to be exceptionally good at math

Now I'm not really a film maker, Biblical scholar or archaeologist, but I do have a degree in mathematics (albeit only a B.S.).

First, let me say that my impression is that the coincidence of names is pretty much the only evidence they have. The archaeologists were very dismissive of this aspect, saying "These are very common names." This seems to me to be on par with the "I live in New York and there are people everywhere" argument for New York being more populous than California. So I wanted to see the numbers.

As I was watching the film, when they finally got around to rolling out their numbers, I spotted the card coming off the bottom of the deck. After showing a simplified form of how the odds were calculated (see p. 13 here), the film maker said, "So there is only a one in six hundred chance that this is not the tomb of Jesus." But wait! That isn't what had been calculated at all!

What the statistician had actually calculated were the odds that one of the approximately 1000 tombs excavated to date would contain this combination of names. (Look here if you want to read more, or if you're a math geek read here to hear what the statistician himself is now saying.)

And this is where a sense of math comes in for the second time. The 1 in 600 odds are being touted as convincing by the film makers. The conclusion is disputed on many grounds, mostly claims that the assumptions behind the calculations were wrong. That's probably so, but the thing that gets me is that given that we are talking about the odds that one of the tombs discovered to date would have this combination of names, 1 in 600 just isn't that amazing.

Consider: 1 in 600 is about the same as the odds of winning $7 (yes, seven dollars) on a single Powerball ticket.

Would you make a documentary about that?

For the morbidly curious such as myself, check out Joe Zias' critique for a professional archaeologists' take on the whole thing.

The Imperial Meaning Story

After considerable delay, here at last is my consideration of David Korten's "Imperial Meaning Story" as heard in his talk on Alternative Radio last month based on The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Communities....

For this story, I'd like to quote Korten directly.

This next story is a little harder for some people, but it is the foundation of the empire stories. The imperial meaning story tells us of a God who commands us to go forth and establish dominion over the earth. The God who favors the righteous with wealth and power, and who commissions his favored to rule over the poor, who justly suffer divine punishment for their sins. We may not know what those sins were, but they must indeed have been horrendous. Meaning is found in obedience to God and to his appointed representatives.

I wish I had a way to represent his intonations because a lot of the comic effect is lost in transcription.

It's important, and a bit disheartening, to hear Korten's claim that this meaning story is the foundation of the other two empire stories. It's relatively easy for Christians to point fingers at the imperial prosperity and imperial security stories, though we too often participate even in those. But at some point we have to recognize how deeply we are implicated in the whole matter.

To be sure, the imperial meaning story is a distortion of the Christian message (and isn't targeted exclusively at Christianity), but it's not a distortion we can entirely claim ignorance of. In fact, not even our sacred scriptures are clean of this distortion. The imperial meaning story begins precisely where the Biblical story begins, with people being given "dominion" over the earth. And the story develops as the Biblical story develops, with righteous people being rewarded and wicked people being punished. The question is, where do we go from there.

Korten offers Stonehenge as an icon of religion as "earth community" and contrasts it with the Pyramids as an icon of religion as tool of the empire. In reality I suspect that in most religions, and certainly in Christianity, these two things have usually existed side-by side. Here's a picture of that co-existence:


So what do we do about this? I think it's possible to read the public ministry of Jesus as a confrontation of precisely this issue. Jesus, following the prophets, taught us that institutions are not nearly as important as interconnectedness, that we don't live to advance our own interests but rather to lift up those in need around us.

The Christian story is a response to the Imperial Meaning story, but we have to struggle to preserve it as such.

Imperial Prosperity Update 2

I heard a story on NPR this morning about Cuban doctors defecting from their assignments in Venezeula, ultimately hoping to find assylum in the U.S. It's an interesting case.

Venezuela reached a diplomatic agreement with Cuba wherein Venezeula provides oil to Cuba and in exchange Cuba assigns doctors to work in Venezuela. The doctors are providing free health care to the poor in Venezuela. The U.S., seeking to close this gap in its economic stranglehold on Cuba, has adopted a policy specifically aimed at getting Cuban medical professionals to defect.

There's a little ambiguity here. One can argue that if the Cuban doctors want freedom, it's good that America can provide it, whatever our ulterior motives may be. On the other hand, it is absolutely clear who the victims are in this case: the poor in Venezuela, who suffer as a result of America's political goals.

Imperial Prosperity Update

An article on BBC News reports Mexican protests over rising tortilla prices. At least some people fear that growing U.S. demand for ethanol is behind the price increase, which could lead to serious malnutrition among Mexico's poor.

The Imperial Security Story

Part 3 in my discussion of David Korten's Alternative Radio speech based on The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Communities....

My first reaction was that I didn't have much to say about the "imperial security story." It seemed like such a banal critique of the current American situation with names removed in a weak attempt to claim it as a universal feature of empire. But after giving it just a very little bit more reflection, I can't believe I thought that.

True, in our current political climate the fear of enemies is more openly used to force people to love the imperial security story than at any time I can remember, but this is truly an archetypal story. In fact, I think it's possible that this idea, the idea that security comes through power and might, is the most frequently argued against concept in the entire Bible.

The Exodus story establishes the Biblical prototype as God delivers the Israelite slaves from the mighty Egyptian empire. After the armies of Pharoah were drowned at the Red Sea, the Israelites sang, "I will sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. The horse and its rider he has hurled into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation." (Ex. 15:1-2)

But it's a lesson that must constatly be relearned. When Samuel is conceived his mother Hannah sings to the Lord, "The bows of the warriors are broken, but those who stumbled are armed with strength." (1 Sam 2:4) But within Samuel's lifetime the people are asking for a king like other nations.

As the Assyrian empire rises, Sennecherib's representative tells the people of Jerusalem:

Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria! Thus says the king: "Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you out of my hand. Do not let Hezekiah make you rely on the Lord by saying, The Lord will surely deliver us, and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. Do not listen to Hezekiah; for thus says the king of Assyria: Make your peace with me and come out to me; then every one of you will eat from your own vine and your own fig tree, and drink water from your own cistern, until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive oil and honey, that you may live and not die. Do not listen to Hezekiah when he misleads you by saying, The Lord will deliver us. Has any of the gods of the nations ever delivered its land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? Who among all the gods of the countries have delivered their countries out of my hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?"
-2 Kings 18:28-35

This is the other side of the imperial security story. If you're weak, submit to our empire and we'll give you security. Yet throughout all of this, the prophets kept telling the kings of Judah not to give up and not to seek military allies but to trust in God. Their advice must surely have sounded insane. Just wait? Really? But the point is this: military strength does not bring security.

If there was any doubt where God stands on this issue, it should be cleared up in the story of Jesus. Jesus was born into the world of the Pax Romana. By its military might, the Roman Empire had brought peace and security to all who would submit to them. A letter from this time speaks of Caesar Augustus as "Savior":

[T]he Providence which has guided our whole existence and which has shown such care and liberality, has brought our life to the peak of perfection in giving to us Augustus Caesar, whom it filled with virtue for the welfare of mankind, and who, being sent to us and to our descendants as a Savior, has put an end to war and has set all things in order....

But in the backwoods of Galilee, a young woman sings of God, "He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly." (Luke 1:51-52) And how does this happen? By the weakness and humilation of the Cross.

And the Cross is the key to all of this. As you read the Biblical invectives against relying on power and strength, it's easy to move it into a theology of glory and transfer your reliance to "the power and strength of our God" but still thought of as power and strength in the traditional sense. And from there it is a short and inevitable step for a powerful nation to march with God on their side -- "Gott mit uns" as the German belt buckle read in both world wars. But the Cross will have none of this.

It is utterly amazing to me how quickly we progressed from the cross as a symbol of God's strength in weakness to the imperial story of "In this sign, conquer." It is shocking how a generation of Christians who had persisted in their faith through severe persecution allowed it to be said. And it is disheartening that after centuries of "reformation" their are still people who tout a "Christian nation" that would spread "democracy" by military force and make the bald-faced claim that our security depends on military strength.

An Even Better Communion Story

Speaking of stories, I shared the story of my daughter's first communion with some people from my congregation last night. One of the women told me the story of her daughter's first communion -- at the same congregation but a number of years ago.

Her daughter, like mine, saw that how you held your hands was the key to receiving the host but every week the pastor would simply give her a blessing, and every week she would make a grumpy face. One week, after blessing her and moving on, he noticed her grumpy face, said to himself, "I just can't do that," and stepped back and gave her the bread.

At this point, she held the host over her head and shouted, "I got it!"

We should all be so happy every week!

The Imperial Prosperity Story

Continuing my discussion of David Korten's Alternative Radio speech based on The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Communities....

Toward the end of his talk Korten emphasizes that the core of his ideas represent values shared by a super-majority of Americans. They are, he says, neither specifically conservative nor specifically liberal values. I think this is true, but his economic perspective tends to undermine whatever support he might hope to find among conservatives.

I read somewhere that liberalism is entirely based on ignorance of basic economic facts. This is, of course, untrue. It would be more to the point to say that liberals just aren't willing to subjugate all of our values to these basic economic facts. And this is one of Korten's main points.

Unfortunately, Korten's views fall under the broad label of Malthusian economics, and in many circles this means that once the label is applied, these views can be openly mocked without actually being engaged.

In particular, a lot of Korten's doomsaying turns on the assumption that the world is about to run out of cheap oil and that as it does the infrastructure of our economy will be broken as long haul transports become infeasible and our Walmarts and similar businesses become "stranded assets" as we no longer have cars to take us to them.

This is the particularly Malthusian bit, and it exhibits the classic Malthusian weakness -- it underestimates the progress of technology. As I write, the technology behind renewable energy sources is stepping up to the challenge of eliminating oil dependency without requiring changes to our patterns of behavior. Ever increasingly efficient wind farms and solar energy plants are making other technologies like hydrogen cell vehicles suddenly practical.

But this is relatively incidental to Korten's critique of "the imperial prosperity story." The suggestion that the machine is destined to wear itself out is only brought up to give urgency to the need for change. The fact is the real problem is with the intrinsic injustice of the economic system.

Korten's view are largely the product of his experience working in developing nations, initially working to bring the gospel of capitalism to these nations, but then changed as he saw the effects of American consumerism on people in other lands. "It is axiomatic once you think about it," Korten says, "for a few to be on the top, the many must be on the bottom." Pushing the point even further he says, "conventional economic growth indicators too often measure the rate at which productive resources of the poor are being appropriated by the rich and converted to garbage."

So here we've reached the point where economic theory slams into ethics. Is it really true that everyone eventually benefits from a growing economy, or does free market capitalism necessarily involve a group of people somewhere being crushed beneath the wheel?

Honestly, I don't know. There's compelling evidence on both sides. I feel like a better economic model is needed.

Telling Stories

Since I've probably already put myself on some double-secret CIA watchlist by visiting the Alternative Radio website, there's probably no further harm in blogging about it. The Alternative Radio program last week featured David Korten talking about some ideas from his book The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Communities (see also, this excerpt). It intrigued me enough that I bought the MP3 version and have been trying to digest it over the past few days. As much to clarify my own thoughts about it as anything, I'm going to post a series of reflections on this speech.

One idea really caught my attention. After describing the pressing problems facing America today (consumerism, imperialism, environmental destruction, etc.), Korten makes the bold claim that the key to changing all this is changing the stories by which we define ourselves. Korten identifies three main "stories" that collectively form the foundation of our current "Empire" self-understanding. These are:

1. The imperial prosperity story -- The financial prosperity of our society relies on wealthy investors having enough free cash to finance the enterprises that create our jobs. As these investors seek to maximize their own gains, the "invisible hand" of the market translates this to the prosperity of us all. We, therefore, must relieve the wealthy of regulations and tax burdens that slow this process. Furthermore, we must eliminate welfare programs which confine the poor to poverty by denying them the motivation to be productive members of society.


2. The imperial security story -- The world is full of criminals, terrorists and enemies. Our security relies on a powerful military and police force to control the chaos.


3. The imperial meaning story -- God tells us to go forth and establish dominion over the earth. This God favors the righteous with wealth and power, while the poor justly suffer divine wrath for their sins. "We may not know what those sins were, but they must indeed have been horrendous." Meaning is found in obedience to God and to his appointed representatives.

"These imperial stories," Korten says, "all affirm the legitimacy of economic inequality, the use of physical force to impose the will of rulers, and the special righteousness of the rich and powerful." He then adds, "Although it may seem absurdly simple, the key to changing the course of the human future is to change the stories by which we live."

You can probably guess that it was the "imperial meaning story" that really grabbed me. I had the initial, red-blooded American, "who is this godless communist attacking religion" reaction, but it was quickly followed by the evangelical realization that this change of stories is precisely what the message of Jesus is all about. The "story" that Korten asks for isn't a new story, it's an "old, old story" but one that we Christians seem to habitually forget.

Over the next few days I intend to look at these imperial stories that Korten presents and offer my own personal responses, which I hope will largely be specificly Christian responses.

First Communion

My youngest daughter (6 years old) received her first communion today. It was unplanned -- spontaneous even.

My congregation doesn't have a specific process for first communion. It's left more or less to the parents' discretion. I've been planning to wait until I thought she'd have some appreciation for it, at which time I would sit her down and explain the basic concepts and so on, and then the following Sunday we'd make a big deal of it. But apparently God had other plans.

Today my two daughters and I were standing at the altar steps waiting to receive the sacrament. The oldest and I were standing reverently with our hands cupped to receive the bread. My youngest, seeing that this is how it's done, did likewise. I was about to make her stop it, but I couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't contradict everything I planned to tell her about communion. When the pastor came to us, he handed her the bread without hesitation.

Tonight we're going to be reading Daniel Erlander's excellent book, A Place for You, and celebrating the occassion.

Thought and Being

As I read St. Augustine's Enchiridion recently, I noticed a parallel with Descartes' famous dictum, cogito ergo sum. Augustine writes:

It is a question whether we ought to argue with those who profess themselves ignorant not only about the eternity yet to come but also about their present existence, for they [the Academics] even argue that they do not know what they cannot help knowing. For no one can "not know" that he himself is alive. If he is not alive, he cannot "not know" about it or anything else at all, because either to know or to "not know" implies a living subject.
-Enchiridion, VII, 20

Now, obviously I'm not the first to notice this. Today, having returned to Thomas Martin's book on Augustinian spirituality, Our Restless Hearts, I read Martin's account of the parallel, which was commented upon by Descartes' contemporaries, particularly his supporters. There are also parallels, I'm told, in Augustine's On Free Will and City of God. Apparently Descartes himself denied any direct dependency on Augustine. But Martin observes, "An irreparable breach would have been created in his argument by suggesting that he discovered the principle elsewhere than in the 'thinking self,' Descartes' thinking self, of course."

This is a really fascinating idea. I've always been pursuaded by Descartes' argument, but if the thought that "I am" comes from outside the self, then perhaps I am not, or at least the "I" that is may be much bigger than "I" think.

I'm quite curious about the concept of collective intelligence, and I may write more about this soon. The evidence seems quite strong that our thoughts are heavily conditioned by our experience and even our seemingly original thoughts are constructed from prior materials. All of which leads me to ponder what is truly fundamental to reality.

Augustine, addressing God, answers in the Confessions:

We, therefore, see these things which You made, because they are, but they are because You see them.

Food for the Journey

A story on NPR this morning discussed the "growing problem" of obesity among the French. Apparently, the French are breaking with their traditional meal practices and moving toward fast food. One researcher lamented the loss of the three traditional benefits of eating: nutrition, pleasure and community. Apparently, you lose all three with fast food.

I was particularly taken with the idea that the French (and obviously Americans too) are losing the benefit of eating as community. You hear a lot about the deterioration of the family caused by a lack of family meals, but even the family meal (which usually means nuclear family) is itself a potential enemy of the community meal. How often do modern familes invite others over for dinner anymore? My experience is that it just doesn't happen.

The gospel of Luke is famously replete with scenes of eating, but eating as a form of community is rapidly disappearing. We often joke about the Lutheran predilection for potlucks, but it seems to me we could do with a few more of them.

Greek Treasure

A short time ago I added Zack Hubert's Greek Verse of the Day script to my sidebar. I can't remember where I came across it. I put it there mainly to give myself a little Greek to practice with as I try to learn the grammar. At the time, when I clicked through to Zack's site, it came out formatted strangley with the text scrolled off the screen at the bottom and I didn't really give it a lot of thought.

Today I happened to click through and WOW! I don't know how many of the features are new. Maybe he just fixed the formatting and all of this has been there all along. But it's new to me and WOW!

Clicking on the Greek Verse of the Day link takes you in to a page that has a longer passage displayed with every word hyperlinked, giving a pop-up that shows the lexical form of the word, a basic definition and parsing information. That alone would make this site a treasure, whether you're learning Biblical Greek or just want to know what's behind the English translation for a particular passage. The site has basic passage lookup, so you can view any passage you like with the above features.

It also has a feature that lets you generate a vocabularly list, according to frequency of occurance, for any book of the Bible or range of passages. For instance, it will tell me all the words that occur 5 times or more in the book of James (58 of them), so I can hone my vocabulary before trying to read the book in Greek. I can't tell you how nice I think this feature is.

There are a number of other goodies that I haven't played with much, like a flashcard generator, a concordance (by Greek word!), and an analysis feature that shows, for instance, what percentage of a book uses the indicative voice.

I've just got to say I'm really impressed with this site, and can't believe how much I've apparently been overlooking.

Augustine, Man and Creation

There's a patristic wind flowing through the blogosphere these days. Derek at Haligweorc posted a plan for reading the Fathers and it inspired Lee to inaugurate his new blog with a series on St. Augustine's Enchiridion. I meanwhile, had already been reading Thomas Martin's book on Augustinian spirituality, Our Restless Heart, and feeling prodded by Lee's work and a comment that Annie made on Derek's blog about "digested history", I decided to also pull my copy of the Enchiridion off the shelf and go ad fontes as they say.

St. Augustine gets a really bad rap in certain circles, and I think that many times it's because of what people think he says more so than because of what he actually says. A popular position is to be against traditional Christianity because its doctrine of Original Sin devalues human dignity. Semi-informed people know enough to pin the blame for this one on Augustine.

In this light, I was very pleased with the section of the Enchiridion I read today. In approaching the problem of evil in humans, Augustine formulates a position that looks a lot like the traditional Lutheran simul iustus et peccator, except the saint ascribes goodness to the human as human before their meeting Christ.

We find this to be true in many, indeed in almost all contraries, that they cannot coexist in one thing simultaneously. But while nobody doubts that good and evil are contraries, not only can they exist simultaneously, but evils cannot exist at all without goods, and they can only exist in goods, although goods can exist without evils.

This is all Augustine's doctrine of creation and of evil as corruption of good. What is created is good simply because it was created by the supremely good God. But listen to how he deals with the question of human evil.

But what is an evil man if not an evil being, since man is a being? Moreover, if man is something good because he is a being, what is an evil man but an evil good? But when we make a distinction we find that he is not an evil because he is a man, nor is he a good because he is wicked, but he is a good because he is a man and an evil because he is wicked.

List to that again, a wicked man "is a good because he is a man and an evil because he is wicked."

The humanists who grumble about the doctrine of Original Sin tend to have a sort of romantic notion of the inherent goodness of humans. We are good because of the great and noble things of which we are capable. There's a "spark" of goodness at the core of our being. Augustine, though he might recognize a partial truth in the "spark," locates our goodness in God. We are good, essentially good, because we are God's creation. As long as we exist, this goodness remains. And yet Augustine's view allows full responsibility for our actions. Though remaining always good, we are also evil when we behave wickedly.

Verbal Abuse

When I was younger I had a theory that you can't really learn a foreign language past the age of ten. Then one of my cousins learned a foreign language to prove me wrong. Now I've revised my theory to I can't learn a foreign language past the age of ten.

As you may know, I'm trying to teach myself Koine Greek. I was doing well until summer vacation, which set me back nearly to where I started. I made another go at it and was back on track until Christmas vacation tripped me up again, though not as bad as summer.

Now picking it up again, I've discovered why Bill Mounce puts verbs off until chapter 18 of his book. If he had started with verbs, I would have given up right away! Different roots in different tenses, key letters dropping out between vowels, rules getting treated more like guidelines.... Whose idea was this stuff anyway?

I'm sure if I had grown up speaking Koine Greek this would all make sense, like the irregularities in English do. As it is, it's making me nuts.

On the Road?

I just happened to notice that I've had three (now four) completely unrelated posts that I titled "On the Road" in the past year. I guess I just can't quite get Kerouac to leave my brain.

Significance

The universe, it has been observed, is a very, very, very big place. Cyberspace, though not a place in the strictest sense, is also fairly large. When you perform a search on Google, for instance, it searches something in the neighborhood of 20 billion web pages. This is a fairly staggering figure if you think about it. Web pages outnumber people on the earth by about three-to-one.

Given that figure, it might seem that any given corner of cyberspace would be fairly insignificant. And yet.... And yet, it appears that random people keep coming across my blog (and I assume everyone with a blog sees this same thing). Mostly, they seem to come here from Google. This never ceases to fascinate me. I've posted on this before, but I came across something today that surprised me enough that I just have to share it.

As of today, if you perform a Google search for What's wrong with the four spiritual laws, the number one result in the list is an entry from my blog. That's not a blog search -- it's a straight search of the entire Internet. Now, strangley, this top result is a post on Lutheranism, with my actual post entitled "What's Wrong with the Four Spiritual Laws?" listed as a sub-result, but there it is.

Google's mission is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." In my experience, their results tend to weight blogs too heavily (probably because of the tendency of bloggers to crosslink to one another, which plays into Google's search algorithm) so we could perhaps equivocate over the definition of "information." Nevertheless, it's an extraordinary result. I, "poor stinking bag of maggots that I am," post my idiosyncratic opinion on a well-established pillar of conservative evangelism, and, thanks to Google, several people a week find it.

It's just weird.

How Lutheran Are You?

I came across this in a post by Brobrooz on Beliefnet. I expect it will spread quickly.

You are 93% Lutheran! This is most certainly true.

Nicely done! Martin would be proud of you! You may or may not have room for growth in understanding Lutheran terminology and culture. Good thing Salvation is by Grace and not by merit. We can add nothing to what God has done for us in Christ Jesus. But it never hurts to learn a little more about the church on earth. Thanks for taking the quiz!

How Lutheran Are You?
Create a Quiz

I was born on Reformation Day, I have a press-on of Luther's rose on my car's rear windshield, and the ringtone on my phone is "Patrem Omnipotentem" from Bach's Mass in B Minor, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to see that I rated very, very Lutheran.

The Church Repentant

I was thinking today about the metaphors of the Church Militant and the Church Triumphant. These ideas have fallen into disfavor in many circles for basically sound reasons, but I think we lose something if we just toss them aside without replacing them.

The primary problem with the Church Militant metaphor is that somewhere along the line we forgot who we were fighting and what we were fighting for. The strength of the metaphor is that it emphasizes the fact that the Christian life is a struggle, not just individually but also corporately. While the Church may be a city on a hill, it isn't just basking in the sunshine. Christ calls us to hard work. The weakness of the metaphor is that it too easily gives way to them false notion that the purpose of the struggle is to conquer the world for Christ. It gives the impression that we (the insiders) are "the good guys" and everyone else (the outsiders) are "the bad guys." The Church Militant starts to look like the Church Triumphant-in-Many-Places-and-Working-on-the-Rest. That is, in our scope of influence we've already won (contra Phillipians 3:13).

Following the Reformation, Protestants offered the idea of ecclesia semper reformanda, the Church is always reforming. This is good in as much as it reminds us of our constant need for self-examination. The danger, however, is that it presumes an ideal state of the Church. In fact, the implicit suggestion is often that the only reason the Church is always in need of reforming is that we need to fix the things we have broken and get back to some previous state when everything was right. Though posing as a dynamic view of the Church, semper reformanda too easily becomes a slogan of ideally static ecclesiology.

I would like to suggest the metaphor of the Church Repentant. It's been used before, but not much and perhaps not in the sense I mean. Thesis number one of Luther's 95 Theses was this: "When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, 'Repent!' he meant for the Christians whole life to be one of repentance." Lutherans have generally taken this to mean not the stopping of individual infractions (and hence a return to some hypothetical perfect state) but rather a constant turning toward God. The Benedictine idea of conversatio morum, the commitment to being open to change and growth, is useful here.

These ideas of repentance and conversatio are typically applied to the individual, but I think we need to grow them and apply them to the Church as a whole. We need an ecclesiology in which the Church itself makes a commitment to growth and change in Christ. Our calling is not to maintain or return to a state of glorious perfection but to move forward and to be open to what God would have us be today.

On the Road

"If we don't know where we are going, any road will get us there."
-Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in 10,000 Places

The saying above is probably best considered proverbial, but I attribute it to Eugene Peterson because of the context he provides for it in the introduction to his book, Christ Plays in 10,000 Places.

The saying, as applied to spirituality, leads me immediately to think of that class of people who are "spiritual but not religious." There are a handful of ideas that just bounce around in my mind like flies that won't go away no matter how many times I swat at them, and the idea of being "spiritual but not religious" is one of them. My natural inclination is to try to find a way to get a handle on them so I can properly squash them. The challenge is to resist that tendency and instead seek a better understanding. The above saying in Peterson's book gave me a sort of skeleton key that I could use for either purpose.

It's quite easy to apply the saying derisively to those who reject any formal religion, and this is probably in line with the proverbial spirit of the saying. The "spiritual but not religious" are a bunch of blind wanderers who are going nowhere and this saying is another club I can bash them with.

But the saying subtly offers more than that. Viewed positively, the road will get us "there." Where? Well, who knows...but somewhere. It's about the journey not the destination. You have to appreciate the importance of the trip. When I drove my family across the country this summer, I kept telling them, "We aren't going somewhere; we are somewhere." And this is a point easily missed with regard to the spiritual journey.

As Peterson observes, despite the declining popularity of religion, we live in a time in which there is enormous interest in spirituality. I don't think this can really be considered a bad thing. Obviously, I'm not about to become "spiritual but not religious" myself, nor do I think it's the best course for anyone else. (I haven't yet tamed the annoying fly.) But there's good in it. I might even, grudgingly, say it's good.

It seems to me that the best thing the Church can do in this age of freelance spirituality is to stay faithful to our traditions, to remain available while continuing to offer what we've always offered. I suggested somewhere that we may be entering a time when Christian congregations play a role in society similar to that played by monasteries in the early middle ages -- an example and a guide in the midst of chaos.

Our culture is determined to explore the spiritual landscape. That's not such a bad thing. When I was 20, I did the same and eventually found my way back to the Church. I ended up on the right road, but I took the scenic route -- and I learned some interesting things along the way.