Crime and Punishment

I just finished listening to Crime and Punishment as read by George Guidall. I just can't praise it highly enough. If you haven't read this book, in the name of all that is holy, do so immediately (or get the audio version, which is wonderfully read by Guidall).

I came into it expecting a masterpiece of psychological fiction. I expected to find the dark inner depths of the human mind plumbed and exposed. I expected an engaging game of cat and mouse as the murderer seeks to escape capture.

What I didn't expect was one of the finest expositions of the Christian faith I've ever read -- but that's just what I got.

Now I have a tendency to read Christianity into everything. For instance, I think "Moonstruck" is a marvelous treatment of the book of Ecclesiastes, and I have a non-gnostic interpretation of "The Matrix." But in this case, I'm pretty sure the author intended what I found there.

This book is nothing short of the Theology of the Cross in the form of a novel. A favorite Orthodox character might ask, "Was it Theology of Cross in 19th century Russia?" Yes, apparently it was. And it's such good theology!

One of the most thought-provoking aspects was the role of the Christ-figure (a prostitute, no less) in Raskolnikov's redemption. In a modern American protestant allegory, the Christ-figure would take the punishment and the guilty man would get off scot-free, but here, the Christ-figure merely joins him in his punishment. There is sin-bearing to be sure, Sonia gives Raskolnikov her cross to wear, while she wears the cross of his victim. But still, he is sent to Siberian prison (where she follows).

What pleased me as much as anything was the way Dostoevsky resisted the temptation to make Raskolnikov's redemption quick and easy. He was not redeemed when he asked Sonia to read him the story of Lazarus, not when he confessed his crime to her, not when he confessed to the authorities and accepted his sentence, not even when she went with him to Siberia. Then, just when he has me wondering if Raskolnikov is beyond hope, we get this:

Suddenly he found Sonia beside him; she had come up noiselessly and sat down at his side. It was still quite early; the morning chill was still keen. She wore her poor old burnous and the green shawl; her face still showed signs of illness, it was thinner and paler. She gave him a joyful smile of welcome, but held out her hand with her usual timidity. She was always timid of holding out her hand to him and sometimes did not offer it at all, as though afraid he would repel it. He always took her hand as though with repugnance, always seemed vexed to meet her and was sometimes obstinately silent throughout her visit. Sometimes she trembled before him and went away deeply grieved. But now their hands did not part. He stole a rapid glance at her and dropped his eyes on the ground without speaking. They were alone, no one had seen them. The guard had turned away for the time.

How it happened he did not know. But all at once something seemed to seize him and fling him at her feet. He wept and threw his arms round her knees. For the first instant she was terribly frightened and she turned pale. She jumped up and looked at him trembling. But at the same moment she understood, and a light of infinite happiness came into her eyes. She knew and had no doubt that he loved her beyond everything and that at last the moment had come. . . .

They wanted to speak, but could not; tears stood in their eyes. They were both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces were bright with the dawn of a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life. They were renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other.

I'm speechless. And even still, even at this point, we do not find a theologian of glory waiting to appear. The ending is outstanding.

He did not know that the new life would not be given him for nothing, that he would have to pay dearly for it, that it would cost him great striving, great suffering.

But that is the beginning of a new story--the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended.

A Parable

The kingdom of God is like a poker player who got a good flop and went all-in.

Christ and Life

I just started reading Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God, and it has turned out to be an inspired choice in preparation for Christ the King Sunday, though I had no such intention when I picked the book up.

In the first two chapters Willard sets up the problem he is trying to address. The problem is that Christians do not follow Christ's teaching. This is nothing new, of course, but it really is an incredible scandal. We look to Christ to "save us from our sins" but we look to nearly anyone else to find out how to live.

Of particular interest given this week's gospel reading is Willard's analysis of what he calls "gospels of sin management" wherein the whole of the Christian teaching is taken to be centered around solving the problem of sin.

On the theological right this is manifest as a wall of separation between what we must do to have our sins forgiven (and thus "receive salvation") and how we should live, with Jesus' primary role being that of providing a solution to the first.

Willard says of conservative Christians, "They have been led to believe that God, for some unfathomable reason, just thinks it appropriate to transfer credit from Christ's merit account to ours, and to wipe our our sin debt, upon inspecting our mind and finding that we believe a particular theory of the atonement to be true--even if we trust everything but God in all other matters that concern us."

Contrary to this view, we have Jesus' parable of the sheep and the goats. When I was a greener Christian, I used to twist this all around trying to figure out how to get it to work in a scheme of salvation by faith alone. (Honestly, I still do sometimes.) But what I do far too rarely (and I doubt I'm alone in this) is listen to it.

This parable is the ultimate "clobber passage" for a shallow view of salvation by faith alone and for Christianity as a mere scheme for the forgiveness of sins. It is the rallying cry of liberal Christians everywhere.

But that is particuarly ironic in light of Willard's critique of the theological left, namely their tendency to deny the traditional "personal" nature of God. I say this is ironic because while the theological left loves this parable and pulls it out every chance they get, they tend to reject the opening premise of the parable, "When the Son of Man comes in his glory...." And so while they shift their focus to social sin rather than individual morality, it remains a gospel of sin management apart from the presence of God in our lives.

Willard's criticism of these gospels of sin management may be expressed with an analogy. Our life may be compared with that of fish out of water. According to the gospel of the theological right, if we accept that "Icthus" was filleted and fried for our dryness, then our soul will breathe in eternity (but for now we wither and die). According to the gospel of the theological left, we should all go about spraying each other with water as often as we can, though we must recognize that the idea of an ocean is simply wishful thinking.

Rain

It's raining today in Oregon. Those of you who have been to the Pacific Northwest know how superfluous that statement is. It's rained here 17 of the past 20 days, and as a rule it rains pretty much every day in November. But the rain today got me thinking about one of my favorite metaphors in the Bible: "Clouds without rain."

"Like clouds and wind without rain is one who boasts of a gift never given."
-Proverbs 25:14

"These men are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm—shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted—twice dead."
-Jude 1:12 (NIV)

I've never lived in an agricultural community. I grew up in the industrial wastelands of the east coast, and I've since moved to a city in the Silicon Forest. I know what the Presidents of the United States mean when they sing, "Peaches come from a can, they were put there by a man in a factory downtown."

And so I grew up with no feeling for the metaphor "clouds without rain." Growing up, I might well have said, "It's cloudy, but at least it's not raining."

And then you have Los Angelos. I love the scene in LA Story when Steve Martin tapes his weather forecasts in advance saying, "Sunny and 70 degrees." This is the American dream, isn't it? We don't want rain. We don't even want clouds. We want to live in a world where it's sunny every day.

But a strange thing has happened to me since I moved to Oregon. I love the rain now. It's a comfort to me, like a security blanket. In the summer I miss the rain. I think this is a metaphor for my spiritual life. I always believed in God in some way, but when I was younger I believed in, as C.S. Lewis says, "not so much a Father in heaver as a grandfather in heaven - a senile benevolence who as they say 'liked to see young people enjoying themselves.'" But as I've come to know Christ, I've begun to expect less sunshine and more rain, and I see now that a land without clouds and rain is a desert.


"I know the sound of the ecstatic flute,
But I don't know whose flute it is.
A lamp burns and has neither wick nor oil.
A waterplant blossoms and is not attached to the bottom!
When one flower opens, ordinarily dozens open.
The moon-bird's head is filled with nothing but thoughts of the moon
and when the next rain will come is all the rain-bird thinks of.
Who is it we spend our entire life loving?"
-Kabir

Be Gracious To Me

Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted.
Relieve the troubles of my heart, and bring me out of my distress.
Consider my affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sins.

I had a remarkable revelation about these verses this morning, as I saw how they relate to the parable of the sheep and the goats. Quite often as I read verses like these in the psalms, I find that I am not personally afflicted enough to really connect with them in any but the most metaphorical way. But today I heard in these verses the voice of the weak and afflicted calling to me.

Now this would seem, perhaps, to be quite blasphemous, but almost immediately I was drawn also to Matthew 25. And I saw that in this situation it is not I who am in the place of God, hearing the cries of the afflicted; it is they who are in the place of Christ calling out to me! What can this mean? What does it say about the relationship of people and God?

Which 16th Century Theologian Are You?

Disclaimer: This quiz was created by a well-intentioned but eccentric person who has never made this sort of quiz before. But try it out:

Which Sixteenth Century Theologian Are You?

The Holy Spirit and the Church

There's a great scene in The Last Temptation of Christ where Pilate is interrogating Jesus. At one point, Pilate says, "You know, it's one thing to want to change the way people live, but you want to change how they think, how they feel."

Jesus responds, "All I'm saying is that change will happen with love, not with killing."

Then Pilate answers, "Either way it's dangerous. It's against Rome. It's against the way the world is. And killing or loving it's all the same. It simply doesn't matter how you want to change things. We don't want them changed."


It's against the way the world is.

That's always the problem isn't it? The drive to protect the status quo is among the most powerful forces in human society. Even within the Church, the resistence to change for the sake of resisting change is immense.

But a couple of years ago I heard Dr. David Tiede, former president of Luther Seminary, speak a word that has encouraged me ever since. This is what Dr. Tiede said: The Holy Spirit is a disrupting influence in the Church. This is a truly remarkable insight. The Church is the creation of the Holy Spirit. And yet the Church isn't just created by the Holy Spirit -- the Church is constantly being re-created by the Holy Spirit.

Naturally, this makes the Church a very uncomfortable place to be most of the time. Countless Christians live with battle scars from church fights. Christians used to call the Church on Earth "the Church Militant", but we always imagined that the fight was against an exterior enemy. We're quickly disillusioned when we find that we have to fight within the Church. But to expect otherwise is to misunderstand the nature of humanity, the nature of the Church and the work of the Holy Spirit.

It all reminds me of the classic scene from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when the children find out that Aslan is a lion.

"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Don't you hear what Mrs Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good."

Nearly Everything

I've been listening to an audiobook version of Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything lately. It's a very good introduction to a really vast sweep of science, and I'm enjoying it very much.

But there's one thing about it that keeps bothering me. In fact, I don't know if I can even say that it's a quality of this book in particular so much as it is a quality of the secular scientific worldview more generally. The thing that bothers me is a consistent, almost arrogant, refusal to distinguish between data and interpretation -- to distinguish, for instance, between saying life is capable of evolving through purely natural processes and saying that therefore life has no purpose.

In fact, Bryson's book does a wonderful job of bringing to the forefront the immense beauty of the universe generally and life in particular, but he seems to feel the need to mention from time to time that it's all just a great, but meaningless, cosmic coincidence. But that is interpretation! Compare John Polkinghorne's vision of the beauty of God creating a universe that is capable of creating itself.

It's truly tragic. Isaac Newton once described himself as a schoolboy playing on the seashore and now and then taking delight in finding a more interesting shell while the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before him. Today's scientists, meanwhile, seem not to notice that there's an ocean there at all.

Moses and Harry Potter

There are a couple of interesting parallels between Moses and Harry Potter, but there's a striking difference too. One of the great appeals of Harry Potter is that he represents a sort of dream fulfillment in all of us. Harry grows up in wretched circumstances, living in a closet under the stairs, but he awakes one day to discover that he's rich, famous and fabulously powerful. Who among us didn't have fantasies that we'd inherit a fortune from a previously unknown uncle or that we'd one day discover our real father was not the reliable but ordinary man who raised us but rather an astronaut or famous inventor or some such thing. (Do girls have these sorts of day dreams too, or is it just boys?) In short, Harry Potter speaks to the all too human dream of a shortcut to wealth and power.

But Moses is an interesting antithesis to this. Moses is raised in the household of Pharoh. Moses is in the elite class of the most powerful nation in the world. And then he wakes up one day to discover that he's actually a slave -- a Hebrew. (Maybe he grew up with this knowledge, but he at least has a post-pubescent realization of what it means.)

How many of us dream of waking up one day to find that we're actually much more insignificant than we'd ever suspected?

God With Us

Psalm 22:24 in the NRSV reads,

For he did not despise or abhor
the affliction of the afflicted;
he did not hide his face from me,
but heard when I cried to him.

This is a mistranslation, as the footnotes admit, but it is a felicitous mistranslation. The second half of the verse should actually read "he did not hide his face from him, but heard when he cried to him.

Through this Word, God gave me such a wonderful blessing today. I was meditating on this verse, considering how it is the very things in which we need God most that cause us to hide from him, but rejoicing in the fact that he does not hide from us, but comes to us in our affliction and weakness. This led me naturally to the cross, which was nearby already as I was in Psalm 22. And then I noticed the footnotes.

Consider this verse in terms of the crucifixion and Christ taking our affliction, our weakness, our sin upon himself. And now try to read the verse with the 'me' and the 'him' superimposed on one another and also the 'I' and the 'he'. "He did not hide his face from me/him; but heard when I/he cried to him."

I doubt that I can convey in a few words here the sweetness that I saw in this. It's one of those things that I knew already, intellectually, but was nevertheless a powerful revelation. I saw how on the cross, Christ was united with me. When he cried out, it was me crying out. And when God heard his cry, it was my cry he heard. And whenever I call to God in my weakness, it is Christ on the cross crying out to God. And God hears. And not just me, but everyone. And this led me into the most wonderful intercessory prayer as the lives of those I know who are suffering came into my mind, and I knew how God hears them.

"What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul."

St. Francis of Assisi

Happy St. Francis' Day!

I couldn't observe the feast of St. Jerome and let St. Francis' Day go by unnoticed. So here's my favorite story about St. Francis of Assisi.

One winter St. Francis and Brother Leo were walking to St. Mary of the Angels.

St. Francis said, "Brother Leo, if the friars were to give perfect example of holiness and integrity in every nation, that would not be perfect joy." Later in the walk, St. Francis said, "Brother Leo, if we were to give sight to the blind, healing to the sick, hearing to the deaf, and even bring life to the dead, that would not be perfect joy." Still later he said, "Brother Leo, if we knew all languages, all science and all Scripture, and if we knew how to prophesy to reveal both the future and the secrets of consciences, that would not be perfect joy." Further on Francis said, "Brother Leo, if we we to preach so well that all infidels came to faith in Christ, that would not be perfect joy."

Finally, Brother Leo could take no more and said, "Father, I beg you tell me, where is perfect joy to be found?" St. Francis replied, "If when we come to St. Mary of the Angels, soaked by the rain, frozen by the wind, tired and hungry, and instead of welcoming us in for a warm meal the caretaker came out and beat us with a stick, and if we humbly endure all this in patience, that would be perfect joy."

Why would he say this? All the gifts of the Holy Spirit are God's and not ours. Only our tribulations are truly ours.

Cain and Theologians of Glory

Gerhard Forde has claimed that we are all theologians of glory by nature. Once you know what he means, it's not hard to find instances of it surfacing.

Sunday evening at a Bible study at church we were discussing the story of Cain and Abel. The question was raised, "Why did God reject Cain's sacrifice?" Our pastor who was leading the study responded calmly, "The text doesn't really say. It's more concerned about what happened afterward." But a theologian of glory can't let it sit at that, and so a litany of answers was offered: "God knew that Cain was a bad person." "Cain offered his sacrifice with a bad attitude." "Abel offered the best of his flock but Cain just offered whatever was lying around."

What it comes down to is this: there must be a reason God preferred Abel's sacrifice to Cain's. Cain must have done something wrong -- something we would do right if we were in his place. If we can just figure out what the problem was, we can fix it, we can do better. This is the thinking of the theologian of glory.

The theologian of glory can read this story and start formulating a sermon on "How to Offer a Proper Sacrifice to God" but in the story, nothing Cain does is labeled "sin" until he reacts to God's favor of Abel's sacrifice. The real problem in the story is Cain's refusal to let God be God.

The Revised English Bible has a very interesting translation of God's speech in Genesis 4:6-7

Why are you angry? Why are you scowling?
If you do well, you hold your head up;
if not, sin is a demon crouching at the door;
it will desire you, and you will be mastered by it.

This offers a wholly different perspective from the traditional "If you do well, you will be accepted." Cain is more concerned about "doing well" than God is. I don't know which one is a better translation, but I think the REB better fits with the point of the story. And Cain reacts to God's speech as a theologian of glory scorned:

Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let us go out into the country."

St. Jerome

I see on LutheranChik's Festivals and Commemorations sidebar that today is the feast of St. Jerome.

For a long time I've imagined St. Jerome as a very gruff man -- obviously very learned but more than a bit cold. So much of what I've read about him has to do with him feuding with various other churchmen of his time. And then you have the influence of Luther on my opinion of Jerome. Luther would occaisionally cite Jerome's opinion in support of a point he was making, but hardly ever without also noting what a worthless chowderhead Jerome was in general.

But as fate would have it, this week I was reading Mario Masini's book Lectio Divina wherein he quotes frequently from St. Jerome's Letter to Eustochium. What a jewel this is! It has me reconsidering what kind of man Jerome might have been.

Jerome wrote this letter to Eustochium, whom Masini describes as the first Roman noble woman to take a vow of consecrated virginity, to encourage her in her newly chosen way of life. One of the remarkable things about the letter is the flourish with which he employs the Song of Solomon in describing the monastic life. Here are two of the passage which Masini quotes:

Be then like Mary; prefer the food of the soul to that of the body. Leave it to your sisters to run to and fro and to seek how they may fully welcome Christ. But do you, having once for all cast away the burden of the world, sit at the Lord's feet and say: "I have found him whom my soul loveth; I will hold him, I will not let him go." (Song 3:4) And He will answer: "My dove, my undefiled is but one; she is the only one of her mother, she is the choice one of her that bare her." (Song 6:9)

Do you pray? You speak to the Bridegroom. Do you read? He speaks to you. When sleep overtakes you He will come behind and put His hand through the hole of the door, and your heart shall be moved for Him; and you will awake and rise up and say: "I am sick of love." (Song 5:8) Then He will reply: "A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed." (Song 4:12)

Is this really the same Jerome noted for his constant bickering? His friends must have been baffled by the side of him his rivals saw.

A few other blogs (none of which I have seen before today and therefore cannot vouch for) which are celebrating St. Jerome's feast:

HOOPLA!
AMU Life
Liberty, Order and Tradition
The Church Militant
Paleo Judaica

And a blog which I have seen before:

Aardvark Alley

Great, now I've got two dead blogs....

September has been largely a lost month for my blog as I've been extra busy at work and been preparing an adult Sunday school class based on For the Life of the World in my spare time. My non-blogging productivity during this time doesn't bode well for the future of my output here, but I intend to pick it back up, and it'll probably suck me in full throttle again.

But the time away has me rethinking what I want my blog to be. I'm not entirely satisfied with the overall direction it's taken. I'm not the sort to post on the details of my daily life in the manner of a public diary. I've strayed into the political realm from time to time, but the path from there to whiny, ill-informed temper tantrum is just too short. At other times, this has been an extended book report (I've still got more to say about Rabbi Kushner's book). That's fairly useful for me in developing my understanding of what I've read and may be something I continue. I'd like to get more into exploring the Bible and sharing what it says to me.

We'll see. I can't promise it will be more interesting than the silence of the past month, but I'll probably do something.

Seeing Poverty

This week's Speaking of Faith program is very good. It's called Seeing Poverty After Katrina (click the link to read more and listen).

It talks about how government programs aimed at helping with racism and poverty have led to a situation where the poor are hidden in neighborhoods the rest of us never see. Ex-FEMA director Michael Brown is quoted as saying of the hurricane relief effort, "We're seeing people we didn't know existed." And, of course, that's the problem more generally. We don't help the poor because we don't know them.

This may be insensitive...

...but I just had to share it.

Friday Beer Blogging

OK, I haven't had this one yet, but I'm making the pilgrimage north today to see my beloved Baltimore Orioles take on the Seattle Mariners at Safeco Field, and you can count on me having at least one Curve Ball Ale -- maybe more since I'm taking the bus back to my hotel. Look for it to be enjoyed with hot dogs.

Blame

Blame. Why does it always have to be blame?

In today's SoJo Mail, Wes Granberg-Michaelson blames the devastation of Hurricane Katrina on our misuse of the environment and the gap between rich and poor.

In the statement, Granberg-Michaelson says, "When I see the devastating effects of Katrina, I don't simply regard these as an inexplicable 'act of God.' I also focus on the sins of humanity. We've disobeyed God's clear biblical instructions to preserve the integrity of God's good creation, and to overcome the scourge of poverty. In the aftermath of Katrina, we desperately need not only compassion, but also repentance."

Is this really any better than "Repent America" blaming the disaster on the wickedness of New Orleans? Yes, the poor and the sick were ignored by upper and middle classes that hopped in their nice new cars and said, "you should all leave too" as they drove away. But is this really the best response right now? One of the chief complaints I hear about Sojourners is that they make everything an excuse to harp about social justice. I feel that here. If your only tool is a hammer....

Earlier in the week, I received an e-mail "from Howard Dean" which said, in part, "The federal response over these crucial first days has been totally unacceptable. There will be a time for a full accounting of the preventable part of this disaster, and those responsible will be held accountable. It will be soon." This e-mail at least claimed to be primarily about passing on information about what I could do (primarily sign up at http://www.hurricanehousing.org to host hurricane survivors), but being an e-mail from democrats.org, it just couldn't pass on making a jab at the Republicans.

This kind of reaction make me sad. It hurts. It's not just that they are the manifestation of the darker side of humanity. It's that it's a manifestation of this darker side being so deeply ingrained in us that we think we should take it out and show it to people -- as if it will help.

I remember the morning of the 9-11 attacks, one of the broadcasters, I think it was Peter Jennings, talking in strong terms about how the responsible parties would receive swift justice. And I was thinking, "For God's sake man, can't we mourn a while before we start taking revenge?" And then over the next days and weeks and months it just got worse until it seemed like our whole country had become one gigantic angry mob.

Nine-11 was an easy case. We had a nice, well-defined enemy to hate. Not so with Katrina, but that doesn't stop us from looking.

Has anyone seen a "theologian of the cross" type response to this?

Luther

It occurred to me this morning, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone else has commented on this previously, that Martin Luther was the world's first blogger. It has been estimated that during his life Luther was the author of anywhere between a quarter and half of all printed material in Europe, and they say the printers began printing the first pages of his essays before he had even written the last pages. Straight from his mind to the printed page with no editing, rethinking or revising -- is this not the essence of blogging?

Not Curvatus in Se Enough

The traditional Lutheran diagnosis of the human condition is that we are "curvatus in se" -- turned in on ourselves. I've always thought this was a very good description, but it occurred to me today that in a peculiar way some Christians are not curvatus in se enough. Specifically, their ability to detect sin seems to utterly lack this curvature.

I saw on LutheranChik's blog today a link to a group of "Christians" who are blaming the devastation of Hurricane Katrina on the sin of the victims. The director of the organization quoted himself (I'm guessing) as saying, "Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city." I'm speechless. Well, almost -- really I just don't want to make public statements of the nature this provokes me to.

The group's website claims that they desire "to adhere entirely to the teachings of the Bible." I must have missed that part in the Bible that teaches us to say, "See, I told you God didn't like you" to people who have just experienced devastating loss. Aside from what bad theology it involves, this is just such an unimaginable lack of compassion that it must be literally painful. It's definitely painful to read, but I mean it must be painful to the person who wrote this filth. How can he not see it?

But this is just one example of a big, ugly wart on the public face of Christianity. I'm not going to accuse individual Christians, conservative or otherwise, of being generally guilty of this sort of thing -- to do so would be a denial of the Holy Spirit -- but somehow this self-righteousness manages to bubble to the surface. And everyone, Christian or otherwise, sees it and says, "Eeewwwww!"

Is it possible to be so curvatus in se that you can't see yourself?