TheoSpora

Stranger Danger

2011-01-10T11:41:00.000-07:00

You know, if Jesus was born in modern day America, they never would have gotten past the information desk at the hospital, much less up onto the maternity ward. In fact, they may not have even made it through customs. A couple of middle or far eastern looking guys with vague intentions, no idea where they are going, and carrying valuable items across the border?

I can see them handing over their passports and customs declarations to the officer as she asks them:

“What is the purpose of your visit? Business or pleasure?”

“We are following a star”

“Umm… yeah, that’s not what I asked. Are you entering the country for business or pleasure?”

“A little of both I guess. We are looking for the king of the Jews.”

“Yeah, well, isn’t everybody. I guess we can just check the “business” box on these forms. Where will you be travelling while you are here?”

“Umm, we’re not really sure, just gonna follow the star until it stops.”

“Yeah, again, that’s not really the answer I was looking for. Listen why don’t all of you step aside and go see that nice officer over there; we have some additional questions we’d like to ask.”

And let’s say they are lucky enough to make it through homeland security, following a pat down, thorough check of their records and probably the confiscation of their gifts. Just think what awaits them at the hospital.

“Hi, we’re here to see the king of the Jews.”

“First and last name please?”

“Ummm, we don’t have one, but Herod told us he was here. And there is this thing with the star above the hospital.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry, but according to HIPPA rules, without a first and last name I can’t release any information.”

Given the new rules of hospitality enforced in the name of security, safety and freedom, there may be little chance for a modern day epiphany story if it occurred in contemporary America. In fact, if Mary were a product of the current American culture, I have to wonder if she would even think to let a couple strangers near her newborn, especially ones who might look as well-traveled as these souls may have been.

When I launch into one of Caitlyn’s recent adventures, my mom never misses an opportunity to share with me how much Caitlyn and I are alike, especially when I was her age. It is often a reminder of how I have changed in the ensuing years. You see, Caitlyn is a no holds barred extrovert, who implicitly trusts others, who loves new situations, and who has little anxiety about change or meeting new people.

For example, over the past couple years, Elizabeth and Caitlyn have attended a music class together on Saturday mornings. After they return, I would generally ask Elizabeth how things went. With a hint of melancholy, Elizabeth would often report how Caitlyn would wander the circle during class. It wasn’t that she couldn’t sit still, though that certainly was an issue. It was more a function of her social nature.

Caitlyn would wander the circle telling everyone hello and looking for the first available open lap to plop down in, regardless of who owned that lap, and join the festivities. The other parents in the group ate it up, telling Elizabeth how much they wish there children were more social. We just wanted her to sit still for a 2 minute song.

So, I do not look forward to the days when we have to teach her about safety and about stranger danger. I only hope that I can help her distinguish between being aware and being wary. Because the difference between the two will impact her life and the lives of those around her forever.

You see, I think awareness, as a fundamental disposition towards the world, is about taking in information, assessing its relevance, and acting according to the emotional and mental responses we have towards that information. To be aware is to recognize the happenings of the world, whether good or bad, and be informed by our hearts, heads and guts as to how we might react to the circumstances around us.

Wariness, on the other hand, prejudices the world and those that live in it as something dangerous. Wariness without awareness is a predisposition; it is the result of a decision that has already been made; and it is an attitude towards the world that somehow the world, or the people that inhabit it, are going to do us harm.

Wariness imbues a situation with caution, fear, and anxiety before anything has happened. Honestly, there are many dangerous things in this world. There are certainly times when being wary can save our lives. But truly, what kind of life do we lead when all we are is cautious? What is the purpose of living in a diverse and creative world, if all we cling to is fear or safety?

Sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I walked by a homeless man in front of a King Soopers on Colorado Blvd. He was leaning against the wall near one of the entrances, wearing a baseball cap, dirty flannel shirt and stained jeans. He wasn’t holding a sign, nor was he approaching people for money. He just seemed to watch as people passed by; present, yet invisible at the same time.

I was in a rush, or at least that is what I told myself, so I hastily made my way from my car to the entrance, careful to walk on the other side of the sidewalk. All the while, I felt his eyes on me, but I was too involved with maintaining the integrity of my personal space. He didn’t say a word, and with a brief glance I noticed that he had averted his eyes to the ground, as if he might be ashamed or embarrassed. I made my rounds in the grocery store, and intentionally left by a different set of doors so that I would not be confronted with the uncomfortable feelings that the previous non-encounter had engendered in me.

This encounter had new meaning for me when I read the news this week. By now most of us have heard the story of Ted Williams, dubbed the homeless man with the golden voice. A man who was videoed and then made into an instant celebrity when that recording was seen by over 13 million people on YouTube.

The person in this story that you may or may not know is Doral Chenowith. Mr. Chenowith is a member of a small Methodist church in Ohio and is also a videographer for a local news outlet. He was also the person who made and released the video that changed Mr. William’s life. As his friends and family explain it, stopping to talk to homeless people is standard operating procedure for him, whether his camera is with him or not. He has a special gift or talent for seeing people that are often invisible to the rest of us.

His rationale for this kind of behavior is simple. As he explained to one interviewer, “It’s a part of my faith, you may not be able to help someone with money, but you can at least say hello, how you doing, and look at them.”

His words make me wonder if the man out in front of King Soopers was embarrassed and ashamed or if it was me who felt those things.

Now you know, as well as I do, that we all have different gifts and talents. I am not on a crusade to get us out of our cars talking to every homeless person we see. But something must fundamentally change, if we are going to creatively engage our faith in meaningful ways.

In a culture that feeds off of wariness; a culture whose life blood these days is built on fear, the threat of violence, anxiety and mistrust. As a people of faith, we have to decide if wariness is the best way to live out that faith.

There are certainly people, pastors even, out there who would tell you that there is no other way to interpret the world. But that seems to fly in the face of hope, and more to the point today it may even keep us from experiencing the kinds of epiphanies that can change our lives and world.

You see, while epiphanies can come through our relationships with objects and places; most often they come through interactions with other people in the world and our faithful interpretations of those moments. But that requires us to take some risks in our lives; the kind of risks like the Magi took in following a star; the kind of risks they took in stopping to ask for directions, and then heeding the warning of a dream.

To push aside our wariness and be aware of the world around us can be nothing short of an epiphany of its own. Awareness helps breed the kind of radical hospitality needed to confront the perpetuation of fear and mistrust. Awareness helps us see people as people, rather than people as problems. Awareness enables us to greet people and situations as novel and full of possibility, rather than always seeing new moments through old rose colored lenses. We might even begin to understand awareness as a precursor to epiphanies.

As the author of Matthew reminds us, the Epiphany story is one of inclusion, of remembering the grand gestures of a God who is for all people. Epiphanies aren’t our opinions about things, they aren’t the radical concoctions of pundits, politicians or even some preachers. We would do well to remember that an experience isn’t really an epiphany unless it somehow expresses the great hope and love of a God who sent a child into a dangerous world to be a messenger of faith, hope and love through his relationships with others.

At some point we will have that talk with Caitlyn about the possibility of danger in relationships. My greatest hope is that we do it such a way that she doesn’t lose that innate curiosity and joy that comes in meeting people where they are. She will learn soon enough that there are plenty of people out there willing to fan the flames of discord, fear, violence and mistrust. I, for one, can only hope my voice does not join that chorus.

The Hills are Alive...

2010-10-18T10:11:00.000-06:00

I’ve heard it said that confession is good for the soul. So, go ahead, it’s okay. You can confess that your first thought upon reading the sermon title was the title song from The Sound of Music. You can confess to picturing yourself in a long blue dress, or lederhosen for the men out there; spinning around in a green meadow on an Austrian mountain, singing at the top of your lungs, until with a gasp you fall backwards into the grass and flowers.

And, looking up to the deep blue sky, you ponder the eschatological nature of Jesus’ ministry, or the attributes of God in relation to creation, or why you might bother to wear leather work pants while singing on a mountain top. It’s okay, you are in a place of confession. You’re even allowed to acknowledge that you might want to make the hills come alive with the sound of doctrine.

While we’re on the subject of confession, I might as well admit to an indiscretion of my own. The pulpit, for some reason seems to be a place of confession.

My rarely spoken of act happens under the cover of darkness. On these nights, I wait patiently until my wife and daughter are asleep and the house is quiet. I settle down into the cushions of the couch in our basement. Sitting there, I whip out the remote control and begin to reprogram the television in order to find some of the stations that normally never see the light of day in our home.

With the television ready to broadcast those illicit channels, I sink a little further into the sofa and let the words and images wash over me. Talking heads full of perfectly gelled hair, million dollar smiles and crowds of adoring fans draw me into the world of televangelists.

I find myself basking in glow of cheap easy grace that requires little more of me than to send in a pledge card, a check and say a quick prayer. And so, I sit there in the flickering light of the television and hope that the blissful ignorance of unquestioned and faith-filled positivism will make me feel better and quiet the discontent of my mind. I pine to go back in time to the point when all of this faith business was as simple as these carnival barkers for Jesus make it out to be.

I mean if I just believed what they had to offer; I would be wealthy beyond my wildest dreams; I would have a permanent smile on my face from all of the ways God blesses me; I would no longer have to worry about this world and its problems.

I sit there and get the chance to think that my self-esteem is the only thing that matters in this world. After a few minutes of this kind of theologically self-affirming navel gazing, I re-program the television to cover my tracks and shuffle off to bed. Of course, when I awake the next morning, I feel a little dirty and ashamed at my night-time exploits. Which makes me wonder what is it that sometimes draws me into that grand Messianic Industrial Complex.

I mean one obvious reason to watch is for the sheer entertainment value. The interpretations of scripture are often laughable, as are the ornate chairs and television productions from which they are proclaimed. Then there are the rooms full of gushing fans and the serious call centers waiting to take down your pledge information, or maybe if the price is right say a little prayer for you. It’s entertaining to watch people try and drum up support for the impoverished, the unsaved and the outcasts from the comfortable confines of a television set.

Yes, entertainment is one reason to watch televangelists, but mostly, I think it is their confidence that draws me in to that world. Because, it certainly isn’t their doctrine.

Most televangelists by my count are one trick ponies when it comes to doctrine. There are the theology of prosperity types, who claim that if you make a positive affirmation of faith, and tithe, preferably to their church, then you will receive untold wealth and blessings from God.

Another trick that some of them claim is the eschatological prophetic vision. These are the doomsayers that sit behind faux news desks and trot out the same old scriptures over and over again in order to support their claim that the end of the world is near. The problem is they have been claiming this for 20 years, using the same tired interpretations and nothing’s happened.

Now, some televangelists are “the baptize all nations” folks. They are the ones who plead for you to save your soul and make the commitment to God. They are the weepy big haired women or the perfectly styled men with the strong voices, nowadays they even come in tattoo-flavored for the kids in the crowd.

Finally, there are the faith-healers and positive thinkers. Their doctrine generally comes from the power of positive thinking movement with a little God thrown in, just to make it feel Christian. They are ones who believe that everything is up to you and if you just think right, God’s blessings will flow, as if God were some magical spigot you could turn on and off.
In fact, our parable today (Luke 18: 1-8) is one that would bolster most arguments that these kinds of televangelists would make. They might say, if you pray hard enough and in the right ways, you will convince God to act on your behalf. Persistence and positive thinking helps get God off the couch and on the road to helping you with what you need.

For all their faults, the one thing they do well is preach these messages with confidence and charisma. They don’t hide their beliefs. They speak their minds, teach their doctrines, and tell you what to do and believe in order to encounter God in your life. And despite the shallow waters in which they theologically tread, people eat up their confidence and message as if this were the last meal we would ever receive.

You would hope that people would bored with a one trick doctrine. You might hope that we would be wise as serpents, realizing that just because something is repeated over and over again, it doesn’t make it true. You would think that we would grow bored with the repetition and lack of complexity. But we, as a nation don’t, we keep listening to the confidence and the faith that televangelists have in their message, believing just as they do, that the more we hear it, the more likely it is that that message is true.

When Paul warns us about finding teachers who merely parrot our opinions, under the guise of faithful teaching, I think in a narrow way he was warning us about the televangelists of his day. More broadly, he was warning us against finding one simple comfortable position or thought or teacher and never stretching ourselves in life or in faith.

Paul was reminding us that the Gospel is something radical and life-giving, challenging us to see God in the world no matter how messy it gets or alone we might feel sometimes. Sound doctrine, in many ways, is a reflection of the notion that the Gospel “comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.” More so than that, doctrine forms the building blocks upon which we live out our faith in the daily moments of life.

Doctrine helps us interpret the world through faith colored glasses. It helps us grasp at both the biblical witness and the events unfolding in the news with an eye towards how God continues to work in the world. And, whether you know it or not, you carry doctrines with you wherever you go. Because our doctrines form beliefs, which guide our actions and reactions.

We minister types will occasionally converse about theological worldviews. Which is a fancy way of asking, “how does what you think and believe about God impact the ways you physically, mentally, emotionally and relationally interact with the world?”

A theological worldview is basically a living, breathing doctrine which guides our steps, making the world meaningful by placing theology and faith as central to the way we interpret everything: from family to parenting, voting to vacationing, from what we eat, wear, drive to where we live, work and play. We learn about doctrine so that we might begin to make sense of our experiences in meaningful ways that reveal our beliefs and faith in God.

Doctrine is something that can make the hills come alive as they sing of God’s creation. It is something that makes relationships more meaningful as we seek to see the image of God in one another. I think the major difference between the doctrines we learn and live by and those of televangelists is that ours recognizes the complexity of God’s world. Furthermore, we embrace that complexity, seeking God in moments of knowing and in times of mystery.

Let me tell you why it is important that we teach and preach and read about doctrine, why we gather together in fellowship and also seek to care for one another. We do this so that in those moments when the world comes crashing down upon you; when you knock at the doors of life until your knuckles bleed, and yet the door remains closed; when the mystery and complexity becomes overwhelming and things no longer make sense. We teach about doctrine because: it is in these moments when the rug is torn from underneath our feet that a solid foundation of faith is vital. It is in these moments that we must be able to find the truths of faith that sustain and guide us, so that we might find rest and hope again.

We must find ways of embracing sound doctrine so that we might live confidently and boldly in faith. And yet, so often our doctrines, the life blood of our faith, remains hidden from the world. We are found scratching our heads like disciples hearing a parable for the first time, often offering nothing of meaning, and when we do speak the words of faith, they fail us and world laughs or cries at our silence.

And so, when children kill themselves because the doctrine of the world they inhabit is violent and unrelenting, and safe places are few and far between. And when the church is strangely silent, even though our hearts break with the families and our anger boils at a culture that allows such tragedies. We seem lost.
We must all begin to find ways of speaking, with words and actions, through the foundations of our faith. Because, when we cannot speak with confidence about who we believe God is and how God works in a complex world, we no longer are relevant to the world around us. And people begin to believe that the truth from the church comes from mouths of televangelists.

If you are willing to let them be the voice, your voice, of Christianity, so be it. Stop learning, stop listening, stop reading and stop stretching yourself and your faith. If not, then go and find the places, the classes, the books, the people that will challenge you. Go out seeking to meet God in the world wherever that might be and boldly live as a proclamation of the good news of hope and love that God has shared with us all.

Jubilee Sunday Prayer

2010-09-12T12:55:00.021-06:00

God of faith,
     We celebrate the coming of the fall,
     As the leaves change and the weather cools,
          We look to a new year of study and fellowship,
               To new moments of worship, mission and evangelism
     As we pull the coats from our closets,
          We ask that you surround us with your loving presence,
     So that we might see the world afresh and live more deeply in faith.

God of grace,
     We lament with those whose lives have been irrevocably changed by the
     destructive presence of fire;
          We pray with those who lost loved ones as we mark the anniversary of
          September 11th;
               We pray with those who have lost homes, belongings and livelihoods
               with the fires in Boulder;
                    And we pray for those who find it necessary to meet violence with
                    violence,
                         For those who would lift up one Holy book by violently
                         destroying what is holy to others;
As we awaken to this changing world, O Lord, broaden our narrow minds so that we might find meaningful ways of living with our neighbors in ways which reveal your kingdom of heaven on earth.

God of hope,
     We often speak of imagining a world that honors your presence,
          Yet we prefer to believe that our limited ideas about you and your love
           reflect the only reality around us.
               Remind us that you are bigger than our concepts, descriptions and
               beliefs.
                    Enable us to live imaginatively, seeing the world anew through the
                    eyes of a childlike faith;
               So that our lives might be an ever-living thank offering to the grace
               you have shown us.

We ask these things, humbly seeking the guidance you offer in the prayer taught to us by your son…

Labor Day Prayer

2010-09-07T09:56:00.000-06:00

On this day, O Lord
   We celebrate the journeys that are undertaken by choice,
and lament with those who are forced to move from their homes
   whether by natural disasters,
human oppression, poverty or war;
   Each of our journeys begins with but a step,
          and as we place one foot in front of the other,
               make the steps we take purposeful and light,
                    make them gentle and strong,
     and teach us to walk with one another as a global community of faith;
          finding meaning in the steps we take along
               as well as those which are taken hand in hand with others.

O Rock and Refuge,
     as we anticipate a day of rest from the weariness this world imparts,
          guide our steps so that we might find moments of joy this day.
               enable us to remember that your son often took days of rest
               and honored the Sabbath by remembering you in prayer and
               with thanksgiving;
                    help us honor and remember your presence as we lay our burdens
                    aside in order to breathe and soak up the goodness of your world.

God of peace and justice,
     even as we stretch our legs and enjoy the day before us,
          we remember the miners in Chile,
   we remember those who are affected by renewed violence in Africa,
                    we pray for those who are returning to their homes
                    on the east coast,
                         and we pray for those in our own communities whose
                         next steps are hidden and uncertain;
     open our eyes to the many who labor, but are not rewarded;
          open our ears to the cries of those who have little rest;
               open our hearts in faith so that we might love in ways which
               reveal your hope for this world.
We ask these things, ever mindful of the prayer taught to us by Jesus,
the one we call the Christ...

...and I feel fine

2010-08-23T11:04:00.000-06:00

The text today is taken from the 21st chapter of the Revelation of John, verses 1 through 6. In this passage, we are privy to John’s vision of a new heaven and earth. He imagines the decent of a new city out of the heavens, which is often the focus of preachers who take the words of this passage literally. Searches across the internet will divulge artist renderings of the descent of the new Jerusalem. However, this passage is about so much more than just the plopping down of a series of buildings onto the earth. In fact, if you read this closely even the idea of a new Jerusalem is nothing more than a metaphor for the ways in which God dwells among us and calls us into community with one another. Moreover, the main message of this passage may be found in the latter verses rather than the imagery of the first few. Let’s take a look, and listen to how the Spirit speaks to the church today.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’ And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ Then he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life.

No court of law would have ever convicted me. Technically, I wasn’t lying; and any halfway decent lawyer would have saved me from any punishment I would accrue for my actions. After all, I was spending the night with a friend. I just didn’t happen to tell my parents where.

This was how I found myself sitting on a sidewalk at a strip mall at 3 AM. About a dozen friends and I were enduring a humid night in the concrete jungle in order to be the first in line to get concert tickets. In those days it was a risk to try and wake up early to phone in an order. The internet was no help, because, really, the internet as we know it today did not exist for this kind of purpose.

So we sat at our urban campsite, leaning against the bricks with copious amounts of snacks and distractions, watching the music store to make sure we were going to be first in line. Every once in a while one us would break out in a frenzy, flailing at the thick blanket of mosquitoes that hung over us on that Florida night. In our minds, there was great value in being the first in line for tickets to see a favorite band. And so we sat, and ate, and played guitars and held Olympic quality shopping cart races.

A few hours later we would migrate to the other end of the strip mall and camp out in front of the door of the store to buy our tickets to see REM in concert. A year earlier REM, a little band out of Athens, GA, hit the big time. And though we knew many of their older songs, in 1988, REM released one of their biggest hits entitled “It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)”

Like most years, 1988 was full of well-known and obscure events. We were wearing: Acid washed jeans and denim jackets, leggings, leg-warmers, shoulder pads and Hawaiian shirts; we were watching for the first time, the Wonder Years, Murphy Brown, Yo! MTV Raps, and America’s Most Wanted; we went to the movies to see Rain Man, Die Hard, Big and Bull Durham.

In 1988 we would celebrate an Olympics, elect a president, and mourn those who died on a plane blown-up by terrorists over Lockerbie, Scotland. But, one of the main things I remember about 1988 was probably one of the more obscure things for others.

Early in the year, a little book was introduced to the world by a former NASA engineer and student of the Bible. The book, entitled “88 reasons why the Rapture will be in 1988”, sold 4 million copies and was freely distributed to over 300,000 pastors around the world. It claimed, among other things, to have scientifically and mathematically deduced the end of the world. So convincing was the argument that even Trinity Broadcast Network interrupted its regular programming during the second week in September to play, over and over again, a show dedicated to teaching people how to survive in a post-rapture world.

As you can deduce, 22 years in hindsight, the author might have been a little off on his calculations. In fact, in the months afterwards, he went on to publish new versions of his book in 1989, 1993 and 1994 before people stopped listening to him. You know I have heard it said that the popular definition of insanity is when someone tries the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.

I am not even going to venture a guess as to what you might have expected from a series of sermons on Revelation. Our series this summer on eschatology (say it with me, eschatology, which means the study of the last things), our discourse on the eschaton (or last days) has taken a different course than popular literature or those late night ecstatic and erratic preachers.

This summer, we have spent time understanding that there is more to the Revelation of John than fantastical creatures, gory subplots and the destruction of the world. In some ways, I imagine that it might be a little disappointing that we didn’t spend more time with the four horsemen or the seven signs and seals. After all there is much more entertainment value in the imaginative parts of Revelation than the practical ones. And where a television preacher like a John Hagee might try to scare you into believing, by pointing to the death and destruction that awaits your mortal soul at the end of times… we focused our energies on things like love, patience, fear, tolerance and hope.

One of the major critiques I have of the fire and brimstone preaching I hear on late night television is their seething disdain and even hate for life and the world. There seems to be a deep seeded fear of change on one hand and a groping for some kind of ultimate change on the other. It fascinates me that people feel as though this world lives on a precipice and their only mission is to push us off the cliff.

This is a world, that God created and called good; these lives and bodies that help us navigate the world, that are gifts from God; and the relationships that we share with others, which are indicative of the community God calls us into; Some might even say that those who are trying to bring about the end of the world, are hell bent on doing so.

It’s as if, for these preachers, God has abandoned this world. That God is so far removed from us that nothing good can come of this life; and the best they can do is try to force God’s hand into making the rapture a reality.

And so you won’t often find preachers of this ilk working for peace, because the more destruction that is around them, the greater claim they have for the imminence of the end of the world; they don’t have to genuinely love, because hate proves their point about images of the anti-Christ, persecution of Christians and the coming rapture; they don’t have to be patient or seek hope in or for this world, because God is coming at any moment, and according to their prophecies, they and their followers are ready to go.

It is as if they took a look around the world in disgust, and threw their hands and heads to the heavens expecting that Jesus will just funnel down onto their shoulders saving them from this mortal coil. They, in effect, have become so heavenly-minded that they are truly no earthly good. And their position about the apocalypse and a New Jerusalem, through this lens of disdain for the world, becomes one of the more nonsensical, non-theological and unbiblical positions any one can take on the life of faith.

I am of the mind that you cannot simultaneously love God and despise God’s creation; you cannot honor God and do nothing to show that you understand what the Kingdom of heaven is like; this is why we spend a summer talking about the pastoral impact of John’s Revelation.

I can pretty much guarantee you that anyone who promises to know when the end of the world is coming, is lying. I can also assure you that most people who spend their time looking for signs about the end of the world, or predicting the future of God’s world, lack any significant measure of faith in humanity and the world God has created and ordered. When you read Revelation, you are reading a pastoral letter to a community suffering under a political nightmare; it is much like some of the letters Paul sent to other communities, only it is written with a lot more zeal and imagination. When it comes down to it, when we read Revelation, we are reading a call to live a life of deeper and greater faith.

When we reach this part about the New Jerusalem, I believe we come to find one of the most important messages of the Biblical witness. Namely, that God dwells among us; that God is with us, luring us into new moments of life where endings and beginnings become muddled and murky. For me, the story of revelation has less to do with destruction of the world and our eternal rewards and more to do with God’s presence and how God holds us in God’s memory.

The most meaningful acknowledgement we can make is not that God is coming, but that God is already here, that God has never left in the first place. The New Jerusalem is the realization that each new moment brings about the possibility for novelty, for creativity, for comfort and for hope. Every moment we feed the hungry, a New Jerusalem descends washing away an old world by refreshing life through the waters of a living faith. Every time we care for those who are sick, a New Jerusalem descends from the heavens and the tears that cloud our eyes and cause so much pain are wiped away. Every moment we tend the wounded, gather in community, confess our sins, forgive and are forgiven, A New Jerusalem descends from the heavens reminding us that everything that was old is new again; that even in death, life can be found in the presence of God; that with each moment of life, our God, the Alpha and the Omega, extends a cup of living water that renews our souls; in each moment of our lives when we plant a mustard seed of faith, the Kingdom of Heaven descends upon the earth and begins to grow once again.

As John Cobb, Jr. put it, “what we are and do from moment to moment matters to God, and what matters to God now matters to God forever, and therefore what we are and do truly matters. We should not be tempted into being observers of a meaningless show. We must be participants in the healing of the world.”

It is no lie that this world will end for each one of us. In fact, each moment we live is a moment of death and resurrection. Our comfort lies with our faith in the presence of God, with the idea that even though our worlds end, they will begin again; and in that process we are not forgotten. We can rest comfortably knowing that God’s memory is long and true, and that no matter the circumstance of our arrival at a particular moment in time, we do not arrive alone, nor do we leave alone.

Our world is a constant cacophony of beginnings and endings, of old cities and new Jerusalems; and in this way, Revelation does reveal “the end of the world as we know it…”; but it also reminds us that God is with us, that God comforts us, and that through a living faith “we feel fine”.

Thinking the Worst

2010-07-28T11:21:00.000-06:00

What’s the worst that could happen? It is probably the most over-utilized question in situations where something egregious is probably going happen.

I stood there with my friends as one of them sat in his father’s car. He just received his license and was finding great joy in, as the kids used to say, “burning rubber” in an empty car lot. He circled around the area in this smallish maroon Dodge, leaving black streaks along the asphalt. The little car took the punishment well.

After an especially loud and pungent loop he stopped in front of us and rolled down the window. With the infinite wisdom of a sixteen year old boy, he admonished us to stand back. He decided that he was going to put the car in reverse and then slam the transmission into drive so that the tires could truly smoke as they spun on the asphalt. He claimed to have done it before to great effect. With a shrug, he declared “what’s the worst that could happen?”

The car began accelerating in reverse and we saw his brow furrow and lips grow tight. With wild abandon his shoulder grabbed the shifter and he wrenched it with all of his might. At that moment the car halted its backward momentum and the tires began to squeal. Abruptly, the car halted with a loud clang. A look of worry washed over my friends face as he slammed on the brakes. Running to the car we watched him struggle with the shifter.

Apparently, one of the worst things that can happen is that a car’s transmission will no longer function as it was intended. A panicked look crept up my friend’s face as the shifter remained stuck. I think, at that moment, he just thought of his parents and imagined the worst that could happen.

Bad things happen; it is a part of life, a part of risk, a part of living. Good things happen as well; also as the results of life, risk and living. One of the great sins of the church may be that we often err on the side of bad things happening. When it comes down to it, the church actually risks very little. It is almost as though we ask and answer the “worst that could happen” question before anything has been said or done. Risk is what the church, what our faith is built upon.

How would we be different if we risked transforming our theologies? How would we change if we risked becoming radically hospitable? What would we look like if we lived into the transformative nature of faith, hope and love?

To be the church is to ask the question “what’s the worst that could happen”, and believe that it is of greater risk to not do something rather than step out in faith and believe God will be present to these moments in life.

In the end, there will be times when we step out in faith and drop the transmission of our cars through reckless abandon; in those moments when we face the worst that could happen; we realize that we never face them alone. So, maybe, the worst that could happen is that we sense God’s presence and strength in the face of disaster. In the end, that might not be such a bad thing…

I Really Don’t Care

2010-07-20T12:00:00.001-06:00

I don't care about your salvation. I don't need to know if you think you are saved. I don't really want to know your testimony; the exact moment, place and emotional state of your recognition of God? I really don't care. In fact, I am pretty sure that God could care less about your perceived moment of salvation. God knows it all anyway. In fact, if we want to be all Reformed about it, then God chose to be in relationship with you long before you could speak, walk or control your bowels.

I sat in a small circle with a group of college students. As we were talking, one person piped up and said let's share our testimonies. He leapt right in to his own life story, sharing moments of health issues and healing which culminated in a life altering moment where God suddenly became real and he was saved for eternity. Like a good little sheep I pulled every hair-raising story from the recesses of my mind and came up with a pretty good emotional journey which culminated at an alter call in Jekyll Island, GA. As the storytelling continued we reached a good friend of mine who basically said "no".

We were perplexed at her response and asked her to elaborate. She said (and these are my words 10 years later), "I don't have any tragic stories. There are no great emotional moments or epiphanies. In fact, I hate telling testimonies because it feels fake, and it puts down the people who haven't endured suffering in their lives. I don't see the need to tell these kinds of stories. I just know God is there and that I am trying to listen."

Needless to say our campfire moment came to an abrupt halt. Little did I know, she was the most Presbyterian among us. We were used to the evangelic language of the deep south and the idea that if you couldn't describe that moment of epiphany, you weren't a real Christian. I look back on that day and see the courage and faith it took to save the group from itself. In her words, I see more of God than any others that were shared.

And so, while I really don't care about your salvation, I do care about the times in your life when God becomes real. In the Reformed Tradition we have this silly notion that God has always been with and for us, long before we could acknowledge it. Our whole idea around Baptism is that God, out of God's love chooses us for relationship. So, our stories about conversion are more myth than reality in the Reformed Tradition. A more accurate assessment of these narratives is that they are the moments when the faith God has instilled in us from birth becomes real. We do not save ourselves in some grand gesture, God is been working a minor miracle of grace within us, hoping we might recognize the deep relational bonds of the divine-human connection.

In a recent article, John Cobb, Jr. challenges the church to take on as its mission "working with God for the salvation of the world". If you read this, then read that article. It is brief and full of important ideas about the true meaning of salvation. Furthermore, it reveals the kind of salvation I do care about. This kind of salvation seeks to move beyond the eternal reward and begin to think about the impact we should be having on the world as faithful people. So, while I don't care about your salvation, I do care about the manner in which you are a party to the salvation of the world.

I do want to hear your stories of struggle, success and failure as you try and live out the relationship God has initiated. I want to know about your deep wounds, created by a world that has somehow failed you or the ways in which you have failed as well. I also want to hear how God is challenging you to accept the love and grace of a living faith and life-giving relationship. I want to know how you are working with God to save the world.

Thought Provoking Things

2010-07-15T12:00:00.001-06:00

Over the past week I have read several things that made me think or see the world with a different set of lenses. Here are three of them.

Sometimes the Facts Don't Matter : In this Talk of the Nation interview we learn that when people learn facts that are contrary to the "truths" they hold as beliefs, the facts don't change our minds. This got me thinking about the people who get scared when we tell them that truth is relative. It is because truths are often based on the beliefs we hold rather than the facts we know. A fact is true, but a truth is not necessarily a fact.

Speaking of facts, Gravity Doesn't Exist. In this NY Times science article a physicist and string theorist theorizes about gravity and its existence. To make a long story short, he doesn't believe gravity exists. His argument is based on the laws of thermodynamics, and the notion that there is something that causes gravity rather than gravity being a force of its own creation. It is interesting to me that science finds these revolutionary moments around the time something is accepted as a fact, turning what was previously known into a truth.

Finally, Teddy H. builds another one. This one hits a little closer to home. I am glad T.H. has found God again and is building a missional church. However, this reinforces a belief of mine (a truth if you will) that some large churches are built on the personality of the preacher. One of the few reasons I remain a Presbyterian is the focus on lay-lead ministries rather than cults of personality. It is important to me to believe that the community of faith has a voice, a vote and a vocation in making the church work to its fullest potential. I wish T.H. the best; I wish that his experience had opened him to accept a broader theological position; I hope that his betting the farm on expanding so quickly doesn't come back to burn him. I seem to remember him saying that this was a church for downtrodden of society. Moving to the 2000 seat civic center doesn't seem to invite those kind of people. What a quick turn around...

Enjoy

Murky Waters

2010-07-13T10:48:00.000-06:00

I was not thrilled as I looked at the gray sky before me. A smattering of rain drops pelted my forehead and I frowned a little on the inside. Wandering down the gravel pathway we scoped out a perfect spot for our picnic. We checked the ground for sticks and goose poop. Satisfied that we were safe from both squishy and poking objects we set up camp for the next few hours.

Two blankets, numerous Tupperware containers, a glass of lemonade and four scattered shoes later we settled down to listen to the free jazz concert in City Park. We chatted a little; watched Caitlyn dance and play around the blankets and scoped the area for some friends who we knew were heading our way. The rain held off, save for a few droplets here and there.

Our friends would arrive about twenty minutes later, and our two blanket camp blossomed into five. Wine was poured; food eaten; conversations came and went. We laughed as the two boys and Caitlyn tested the surroundings. They were both about six to ten months younger than her. They were, as it has been said before, all boy.

As the evening wore on, Caitlyn was content to stay on the blanket and watch the world around her. This was a new development and one that my spouse and I welcomed. Caitlyn has never been one to sit still and we were relieved to have some time together without one of us chasing our wild horse.

As the daylight waned, the two young men, no longer enamored with the sticks they were using to dig holes in the ground, noticed a rather large mud puddle across the gravel trail from our picnic spot. They began by poking the puddle with stick, gradually placing their feet into its murky depths. Then the fun began…

Soon afterwards they were the hit of the picnic area, running the length of the puddle, covered in muddy water from their feet to their waistbands. The other picnickers watch with a sense of joy and laughter as the two boys ran faster and the splashes grew larger. Several other children attempted to join in, only to be caught by their parents before their first step could hit the water.

Caitlyn watched this from across the trail. Smiling as the boys moved from one side to the other. She asked if she could join them and we said no. She asked again, and again we said no. To her credit she never cried, never fussed and so when asked a third time, we said sure. We put her on the ground and watched her cross the trail. Caitlyn doesn’t run so much as prance; she lifts her knees up high and kicks her feet out to the side a little. She lined up at one end of the puddle and began running towards puddle, full of elbows and smiles.

The crowd around the puddle held their breath as she hit the edge of the puddle. We watched as the smile was torn from her face replaced with what could only be described as a look of horror. It took her another three steps before she realized that she had made a horrible mistake. Rivulets of muddy water stretched up the back of her legs; her once pink shoes turned a dark shade of brown. On the third step she veered off course and back onto the dry ground, seemingly in shock.

I sometimes wish I had the tenacity and flexibility that Caitlyn demonstrates. She saw something she wanted and went for it. Sometimes we do need to take the risk and experience new things. This is how we learn and grow through our experiences in the world. If we remain comfortable and clean then the world becomes boring and simple. A muddy puddle is a complicated thing depending on how we experience it. For two little boys and the crowd that watched them it was a revelation in joy and unfettered fun. For a little girl and the crowd that empathized with her, it was an uncomfortable experience in a wet sticky muck.

This is where Caitlyn’s flexibility shone like a bright star. It only took three steps into the puddle to realize that it wasn’t for her. She didn’t bother taking the remaining six to eight steps and finish trudging through it. She veered off course and evaluated the situation. Reflection on the decisions we have made, the positions we have taken is crucial to experiencing a novel world and making meaning out of it. One of the greatest sins of modern liberal and conservative church goers may be our inflexibility and the belief that we are always right. Rushing headlong into the mystery and murkiness of faith and theology without reflection we succeed in only making our self muddier and muddier.

As we step together into the novelty of each new moment, what are risks we need to tenacious about and how will we know when to stop and be reflective and flexible about the path we are taking?

Do Not fear (Just Kidding)

2010-06-28T09:22:00.000-06:00

The reading this day came Revelation 2: 8-11
‘And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: These are the words of the first and the last, who was dead and came to life: ‘I know your affliction and your poverty, even though you are rich. I know the slander on the part of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Beware, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison so that you may be tested, and for ten days you will have affliction. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. Whoever conquers will not be harmed by the second death.

From my second to my eighth grade years we lived in the same home in Decatur, Georgia. It was an old ranch style bungalow that, at one point, had its top popped and then lovingly wrapped in lime green asbestos shingles. By the time we moved into the house it was in dire need of updating and my parents set about the task of renovating it from top to bottom. This was a project that last every day from the moment we moved in through the final week before we sold it and moved to Florida.

Our slowly transforming lime green abode was the first house on a block bordered by businesses behind and to the west of us. Thankfully, there was a vacant lot that provided a bit of a buffer between our bedroom windows and the car dealership next door. That vacant lot was ringed with large oak trees and when we first moved in it was neglected, but you could see clearly from the street to the alley in the back. As time wore on, the weeds continued to grow until they formed a canopy of flimsy trees.

It was a wonderful place to play hide and seek or any manner of games that involved chasing another person while being slapped by bushes and branches. Throughout the days, months and years, our constant running wove a path from the street to the alley which enabled us to quickly move from one end of our house to the other sight unseen.

One day, a few years before we moved, I took off out of the back yard with a friend following close behind. I broke out in a full sprint around the corner of our garage and headed towards the path in the back of the vacant lot. Careening through the branches which floated over the edges of the path, I rounded a bend in the path at full speed with my friend only a few steps behind me.

The moment I rounded the corner my eyes widened as I dug my heels in the ground and skidded to stop about a foot from a large spider which sat in the middle of its web spun directly across the trail. My abrupt stop alarmed my friend and, hands out, he pushed into my back as he attempted to avoid running over me. His momentum edged me forward to within inches of the spider and its web. My heart pounded in my chest as I focused on the spider and directed my muscles and body to avoid it at all costs. I felt my body contort into an oddly tall banana shape as my arms curved over the top of the web and my feet felt as though they slid underneath it. I desperately began to backpedal trying to escape, and I felt myself let out a scream as I was being pushed ever closer to the web. Somewhat angry, definitely afraid, I practically climbed over my friend to retreat back the way I came faster than I had ever run before.

For the last two and a half years I spent my time wondering and learning about the emotion of far. During that time, I have been aware of two things, that God often tells us not to be afraid; and that fear is an inescapable human reality and one of the most powerful human emotions and forces in our lives.

To be afraid is to be human. It is to act out of the most basic emotional instincts and reactions to something that threatens us. I think, maybe, in a weird way, God tells us not to be afraid so much mostly because we really can’t help it. You see, there is this little part of our brains that makes the emotion of fear an inescapable reality.

Out of clay, the great potter saw it fit to add a little fear center to our highly evolved brains that makes us squeal like a helpless toddler when something threatening surprises us. This is why the words “do not fear” can often feel out of place. I mean, seriously, has God seen the world lately? All the floods, earthquakes, oil spills, wars, all of the crime we hear reported, and the constant food and medicine recalls. The world can be an overwhelming and scary place, and God has the audacity, when our bodies are hardwired to experience fear, to tell us not to be afraid.

The summer before I began high school, we sold that formerly lime green house and moved to Florida, far away from that frightful vacant lot. It was the first time I ever had a bathroom to myself. It was a three quarter bath, with a tiny shower stall, but it was mine.

When I showered in the morning before school I would often hang my towel over the shower rod so that I could dry myself off without tracking water everywhere in the bathroom. One morning upon finishing my shower, I began to retrieve my towel. As the end of the towel whipped over the rod, I saw that a large brown spider had ridden its way to the top on the tail end of the towel...

The next few moments happened in slow motion as I watched the spider leap off the towel, certain that it was going for my jugular. I pressed my back against one wall as it plummeted into the small shower stall with me, legs splayed into, what I was convinced, was an attack position.

As soon as it hit the floor, I leapt an equal distance out of the shower, simultaneously throwing my towel on top of it. I quickly turned on the shower. Remembering that the rain washed the itsy bitsy spider out and I was going to make sure it washed this one away as well.

Later I went back to retrieve my towel only to find that the spider was gone. For a few days afterwards I had recurring dreams of a sopping wet angry spider stalking me throughout the house…

One of the reasons that fear is so important is that it helps us survive in a world that can sometimes feel overwhelming and threatening. There are things out there, people, places, animals, objects that make the hairs on the backs of our necks stand up. These things make us want to run, to protect ourselves, to somehow escape to live another day.

In the case of our passage from Revelation the threat is the suffering, probably more specifically, the pain and torture that would accompany the suffering. The church at Smyrna recognized that there were threats in their midst; people, institutions, leaders who wanted to do them harm and to make them suffer for what they professed.

Rightfully so, they became afraid. Maybe they insulated themselves from those around them, hiding their faith and beliefs. It is natural to want to run when fear strikes, to sever the relationships that might cause us harm. Fear, left unchecked, can take over our lives and isolate us from people who care about us; it can isolate us from a community of faith, or a family, or even God. Furthermore, fear is contagious. Once something frightening is reported to be true, our imaginations take over and we begin to become more aware and suspicious of our surroundings.

One of the major stories of American history will be the attacks on September 11th. A footnote to those attacks is the five people killed by anthrax sent through the mail about a month afterwards. The reporting of these ominous letters set off a small panic in certain circles of America.

One of the interesting things about humans, or any animal for that matter, is that when we experience the emotion of fear, we become quite self serving. Fear, quite appropriately, leads to activities related to self-preservation and self-importance.

Once the widespread reporting of this credible threat reached a saturation point, a new industry popped up to exploit this goal of self-preservation. Anthrax protection kits became the rage, as stores slapped together a breathing mask, rubber gloves and goggles and marketed them as a cure for our fears. Not to be left behind, purveyors of plastic sheeting and duct tape were boxed together as protection from biological or chemical agents.

The makers of the original duct tape went so far as to create a new product which promised to seal the corners of your windows so that nothing could get in or out. A few months after these attacks we began a war on terror, a war on fear if you will, which continues today.

What is interesting about our war on fear is the tactics begin used; we tell everyone to be more vigilant, to be more aware, essentially to be more afraid of everyone and everything in order to prevent feeling terrorized.

The ironic thing about fighting fear with more fear is that it inevitably leads to greater isolation, suspicion and discord. When we fight fear with fear, our imaginations get the best of us. And ordinary garden spiders suddenly become shadowy figures stalking us in the night; ordinary people become enemies before anything is known about them; and the church isolates themselves from the people around them, pushing away the challenges and possibilities that come with novelty and creativity.

But the amazing thing is that despite all of the times we give in to our fears, God remains faithful. To the church in Smyrna, the command is that they remain just as faithful. That they have hope, even in the midst of their trials.

During my two years of study on the emotion of fear, I came to learn one important thing that helps us understand what God is asking us to realize. That is, that fear and hope are inextricably tied together.

There is no fear apart from hope, because without hope there is little reason to live, to want to survive, to attempt to thrive.

When we are afraid, we are afforded a window of opportunity to remember the things that are important to us. Fear not only saves us from something that threatens us, it also saves us for tomorrow; for all of the relationships that are meaningful to us; for all the places that help us realize God’s presence; for all the dreams that provide meaningful windows into the future.

To be afraid is not the end of the world, it is merely a fact of the world. However, for those of us who believe in an active God, a God that cares for us, a God that provides the possibilities for a hopeful future. Fear can be something positive that reminds us what is worth living for at the end of the day.

The message to the church in Smyrna is the same message that is given to the church today. The world will be a difficult place; there will be times when the obvious response to the things happening around you is fear. Don’t worry though, fear is a natural response to these difficult moments and threatening things; just remember, fear is not the end of things.

Your faith, the faith that sustains you, the faith that gives you strength, the faith that you profess in a living God is more powerful than anything that threatens you. In fact, if you look hard enough at those moments of fear, you will see the hope of God as it plays out in the meaningful moments and relationships of your life. So go out into this world and be afraid, but don’t let fear rule your life. Instead live in the hope born of being a son or daughter of God…

Pastoral Prayer – June 6th

2010-06-09T22:20:00.004-06:00

O God,
Our source of strength and life,
We come before you this day,
Humbled by the gifts of your world,
Some of us standing firm in the realities of life we face,
Others of us faltering as world consumes our energy;
Wherever we stand this day, O Lord,
guide our next steps,
enable us to run without growing weary,
strengthen us to walk and not grow faint,
for in these moments where life teems around us,
we stand ready to hear your words and act on your wisdom that guides, heals, transforms and sustains our lives.

O God Most High,
Our world is a mess,
In the pursuit of short-term gains we forget that the world lasts longer than our meager lifespan,
We drill holes in the ground,
Knowing we have little to no plan should disaster strike,
For our efforts we devastate a coast line,
Ruining the lives of fish and fowl,
And the livelihoods of countless people.
Forgive our arrogance and belief that we have the right to conquer your creation.
In the pursuit of personal freedom and gain,
We forget that the world is a much larger place than our own backyard,
Than the interior of our cars,
Than the size of our bank accounts;
As a result we leave the world worse than when we found it;
We take care of our families, of our own;
And our small circle of life is better for it.
But we truly forget what it means to risk, to lead, to step out in faith and love those around us;
Forgive us when we refuse to see past our noses,
When we refuse to get messy;
The world is a messy place, and while we will not clean it up in one generation, we can give the next one a head start.

And so, O Lord, on this day, we try;
We baptize children who may be the next leaders of the church; who may discover answers to questions of faith and science; who may lead us to a greater love, faith and hope in a messy world;

On this day, O Lord,
We commission youth and adults to serve, love and share your hope with the world. We send them forth to do your work; to make the world a better place with each step they take, with each brick they lay and with each word they say. Steady their hands and hearts to be a witness to your love and to receive a witness of love from others.

We ask these things, binding these words to those of our hearts, in the name of Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit who emboldens our lives and creates the space within us to be greater than we were yesterday. With one voice, we humbly ask that you would hear our prayer, as we remember the prayer taught to us…

3 years

2010-06-07T12:56:00.002-06:00

It's been almost three years to the day. My last post came right around the time I began my dissertation. This one comes at the end of that particular road.

A lot has transpired in that time. I became a father. I am a licensed therapist. I am a Doctor of Philosophy. I am a pastor again.

My hope is to ease into this world again. My writing has taken a turn for the academic. This is not altogether a bad thing, just an outcome of the company I have been keeping. Now is the time (and hopefully there is now time) for me to remind myself there is life outside of academia.

I hope to post once or twice a week at this point. The topics will seem similar to those before. I can only hope I am not howling at the wind. Though, if I am, it will be a mighty howl...

grace and peace...

Who do you say we are?

2007-06-06T23:05:00.000-06:00

Seriously, who are we? What are we? How did we come to be in this place at this moment in time? I know you can probably ask, and answer, this for yourself. However, think a bit bigger if you will. I am asking about your anthropology.

I know, fairly big word, first post in almost six months, plus I doubt many will read this post anyway (and of those that do, even fewer will respond); yet, doesn’t all theology, to some extent, begin with anthropology? Our experiences of the world, of people, of ourselves provide us with qualities we often ascribe to God.

Yes, we can certainly hope the God we believe in is more than the projections of mere mortals. In fact, that may be our greatest hope, that God is something infinitely more complete than our brains, our experiences, and even our hopes might concoct.

Yet, even these enduring qualities only make sense through our experiences in life. It is said that God is love, but what is love apart from the experiences of the emotion we have had, or apart from the relationships that sparked such emotions? Is the Love/God the entity of Falwellian preaching? Does this enduring/infinite love have limitations as that former preacher might endeavor to assume? Is the Love/God the entity of a schoolboy/schoolgirl crush? How even could we assume to know what love is in order to posit it to the Other?

We see dim reflections in mirrors (according to Paul at least) and in those reflections I would say we assume to know who or what God might be. We posit absolutes where the reflections are nothing more than smudged and fuzzy pictures of reality. In the end, we proclaim who God is without fully understanding or even taking responsibility for what it is we are claiming.

So, then, who do you say we are? Because who you say we are reveals who you say God is as well. After all, those dim reflections are nothing more than smudged self-portraits of often scared and lonely (joyful and hopeful as well) people. Anthropology has much to say about theology and vice versa.

As for me, at this moment in time, my hope lies in two places. First, my hope lies with that smudged self-portrait, in that fuzzy Imago Dei.Second, my hope lies with the realization that without a brighter object than myself, there would be nothing to reflect in the first place.

Grace and Peace…

Harmony

2006-09-12T22:09:00.000-06:00

What if there was an alternative to balance?

I know I said earlier that I wished to give up on balance, to let go of its safe confines and stretch out into a world that needs more than people who can only balance themselves precariously between two relatively distinct points. Work and family, serious and playful, depressed or hopeful, we often set up false dichotomies that lend themselves to the idealization of one particular way of being and also a sense of failure when we cannot achieve relative satisfaction in either domain.

Jim, a reader and commenter here, is retired from his "profession" but now works in an educational setting with kids with special needs. Why (My answer is based on my own thoughts and nothing that Jim has reported to me other than what I have read on his blog, I would expect him to correct anything I have to say about him)? He has worked most of his life and conventional wisdom says that the balanced approach to his life would be one of leisure and "retirement." Therefore, is Jim out of balance? Is he upsetting the apple cart with his approach to life? My sense is Jim has found something meaningful in his life that provides stimulation to the person he is and is becoming. Jim, in my own words, lives harmoniously with his circumstances.

Harmony is my substitute for balance. Where balance seeks a middle ground between two points, harmony seeks to embrace both points as valid and seeks to complement the multiple ways that life unfolds before our eyes. Harmony performs, plays, creates and builds on our lives. It can enrich an otherwise bland performance by altering the experience and the one who does the experiencing. To be in harmony with one's surroundings is to awaken oneself to the world of the moment, rather than looking forward to a different point in time where one must attempt to even out experiences and allay guilt.

I really have nothing against those who strive for balance. Balance can even be a way of living harmoniously with one's life. However, the more I think about harmony, the more I think it can offer an alternative to the pop culture mindset that has embraced balance and shunned grasping for the meaning in the moment. Balance works because we are a rational people. It can even be said to be Biblical, sort of. The greatest commandment is a three-way balancing act, God, self, others. Then again, how can we balance three separate things? There are no three-way teeter totters on the playground.

Maybe the greatest commandment is best enacted as a harmonious part of a life engaged in the moments of our lives. Harmony says that we do not have to sell all we have and give everything to the poor. However, a harmonious life might seek simplicity, might seek to honor God, self and others with the gifts of their life. It might seek to hear the stories of those who hurt and share their own stories of hurt and hope. I have often heard it said that the earth sings of the creation of God. If this is so, shouldn't we take the time to a hum a few bars back to the Creator?

yesterday and today

2006-09-11T12:43:00.000-06:00

I have seen motorcycles with flags blazing riding down the street in an impromptu parade.

I have briefly surveyed the media's rendition of a memorial service.

I have watched names being read, and wreaths being laid.

I have listened to reports about being prepared for an emergency.

All of these things are meant to remind us to remember. But what is it that we are to remember? Death? Evil? Coming together for a brief second? Economic destruction? Fear-mongering? I'm not sure what I am supposed to feel (or even remember) these days.

Whatever goodwill we gathered has been used and abused. The event we memorialize has been turned into a political stump upon which dissenters and those critical of the current way of handling things are constantly beheaded.

Furthermore, what are we, as "Christians," supposed to do with this day? Undoubtedly some amongst our midst will use it to further the cause of hatred in the world based on religious views; others will use it as a sacrament to inextricably tie Christianity to this particular nation; still some might see it as a prime time for an altar call. Regardless, I have no doubts that Christians everywhere will find some way to interpret this day as a rallying cry for a "God"-fearing vindictive stance to those things that are different.

At a conference this summer I spent some time with a group of people talking about the events that took place at Columbine a number of years ago. One of the sticking points for many "Christians" was an impromptu memorial that happened in a local park after the event. At the memorial, crosses were placed for ALL of the people who died including the two shooters. Those in the community decried the placement of these crosses as an act of insensitivity and they were forcibly removed from the memorial.

When we memorialize things, I think we have a tendency to glamorize them as well. We turn ordinary people into martyrs and perfect them through the reporting of their lives over the public airwaves. However, there are those who commit acts that hurt other people, and they are human beings as well. Just as we deify the lives lost, we also demonize those who take lives. How are we to deal with these people, the ones who commit atrocious acts but are nonetheless also creations of God? We have ignored our responsibility as "Christians" for too long. Instead of being a conscience for this nation, we have become crusaders bent on domination rather than humble servants of a God bigger than we can comprehend.

The people who committed these acts do not have to honored, but their circumstances and their lives need to be remembered as well. Moreover, we need to ask the tough questions that led to the creation of their beliefs and actions. We need to understand both our complicity in the creation of their situation (global poverty and hopelessness among others), and their responsibility for their actions. Christians, above all, are about the business of grace and yet where is the grace in the memorialization of this day? If we are about forgiveness, then where are the preachers and theologians who are crying out for this discipline on this day? If we are about justice and righteousness, then where are the voices who are speaking out against global poverty and economic justice for all people so that some of the conditions that breed hatred can be alleviated? If we are about peace and grace, where are the "Christian" voices that are speaking out against violence, war and terror?

Instead of a day of memorialization this can become a day of dialogue. A time where we can come together and talk about what needs to change in the world so that events like this no longer are necessary. Maybe someday we can realize that behind every religious veil we created to hide or separate ourselves from one another hides a human being who is struggling to make sense of the world, the meaning of life, and their responsibilities.

grace and peace

Still a gentleman

2006-09-10T00:12:00.000-06:00

In late May or early June my spouse and I headed into the mountains for a weekend away from Denver. Our domicile for the weekend was The Spa at Cordillera. We found out after our trip that this was the infamous place where Kobe Bryant's legal troubles began a few years earlier. It was a beautiful spot in the mountains just past Vail and the hotel was comfortable and relaxing (especially because of the deal we got for the weekend).

Our weekend was spent reading in the cool mornings and hiking in the afternoon. We hiked to Hanging Lake, a small alpine lake a mile or so off of the Interstate. I remember being surprised by the sheer number of people on the moderately strenuous trail. Moreover, it opened my eyes to the illiteracy problem in Colorado. The signs were clearly marked with the words "No Pets" (along with the requisite pictorial designation), but we passed our share of leashed and unleashed dogs along the trail. I love dogs, but dislike blatant disregard for rules, so I always feel as though I encounter a grave moral dilemma when these situations occur.

Regardless of my moral quandaries, the hike was beautiful and gave us ample time to test out our new hiking gear and Colorado lungs. I struggled a bit on the mostly vertical trail, but certainly felt rewarded at the end of the trail. If you are ever in Colorado, I would recommend taking the hike in the early summer when the snow melt makes the waterfalls thunder and the resulting mist chills the air. Nothing seems better after a long hike than standing the spray of a waterfall as it cools and soothes your weary muscles.

We chose to spend the final day of our weekend on a different trail near Minturn, Colorado. There is not much to Minturn, save for the large National Forest that backs up to it. The trail we chose to hike that day was meant to take us along a stream up to another mountain lake. However, a mile or two into the hike we found ourselves experiencing the Colorado mud season in all of its glory. At this point in the hike our trail disappeared, the multiple streams of chilled water swallowing it whole, leaving us guessing where to turn next.

Having absolutely no survival skills whatsoever we climbed a hillside and cautiously moved along a game trail that ran parallel to the streams below. When we could see the remnants of a trail below we slowly descended only to find that the trail ended a couple hundred yards upstream. At this point we decided that it was in our best interest to turn around and try another way. We sloshed our way back to the main trail and worked our way back to a fork in the trail.

Turning onto the new trail we were happy to see only one small stream to cross before we could enter a grove of Aspens and hopefully continue on to the lake. All that stood between us and the Aspens was a well-worn log that bridged the stream.

I was raised in the Southeast. I did not learn to say yes or no, but yes ma'am or no sir. I learned to open doors for women, give them my chair and walk on the outside of the curb so that they would not be splashed by cars driving through mischievously planted puddles. Much of this early childhood learning is still implanted on my brain, and on this hike it superseded common sense for some reason.

About halfway across the stream a rock stood solidly in the middle. I, ever the gentlemen, decided that I would plant one foot on the rock and one on the shore and offer my lovely wife a way to brace herself as she crossed the stream. You might able to guess what happened next.

My spouse is a petite woman who stands a good foot shorter and about sixty pounds lighter than me. However, at the moment she reached the middle of the log, the same moment we pulled one another off balance, I could have sworn she was an East German Weightlifter from the early 1980s.

My eyes widened as we began to tilt toward the earth. I could have sworn that something flashed before my eyes. Apparently, as we fell we did not let go of one another until we were too far apart to hold hands any longer. All I can remember now is the rapidly rising earth and my inability to get my hands in front of my face. The runoff of snowmelt in early June is frightfully cold, especially when you end up going nose first into a mountain stream.

Neither of us was seriously hurt. I still nurse two jammed fingers from that day, but they are slowly healing. My pride was wounded more than anything else. I am the guy who dumped himself and his wife into a semi-frigid mountain stream. We laugh about it now, as we did on that June afternoon, even though the mental scars still hurt every now and again. I learned a number of valuable lessons from that experience as well.

When your spouse says she does not need your help crossing a frigid stream, then let her cross it herself (or let him cross it himself). Being a gentleman has its limits. Snow runoff, while experienced in the mist of waterfall is exhilarating; snow runoff, while experienced doing a face plant into a mountain stream is just damn cold. Finally, it is a wonderful feeling to know that I can completely fail at a task and someone out there will still love me.

grace and peace...

balance

2006-08-04T09:33:00.000-06:00

For the last ten years, give or a take a few years, I have been concerned about balance. Not the walking on a curb without falling off kind, but the kind of balance that seeks the middle between two points. I have professed this devotion to balance with professors, clients, colleagues and friends as I sought to describe where I am and where I wish to be. If balance was a religion, then I was its pope.

I can't explain why this morning felt different from any other morning. However, as I sat drinking a glass of milk and reading the newspaper my mind began to work with this idea of balance. Suddenly, everything I sought, preached or practiced felt meaningless. Balance felt like a myth, a never-attainable goal that those who are too afraid to succeed or fail cling to in order to find some security.

We have several magnets that cling to our refrigerator door. Four of these magnets have different quotes that speak of love, passion, dreams or humility. Not one of them mentions balance or striking out and finding the middle ground in the great sea of life. Instead, it seems as though the greatest among us have found that life is best lived when we are no longer bound by the shackles of mediocrity; when we can shrug off the limitations that we impose upon ourselves and dare to see the world for what it is, good, bad, ugly or pretty.

It seems to me, that balance is an American myth that seeks to have everything in small enough quantities rather than the fullness of a few things. Monday through Friday (for some people) we strive for the modicum of success that will allow us to live peaceably and buy the things that the television tells us will make us happy. Too much success means too many responsibilities, so balance is sought in the workplace to alleviate the pressure to continually perform at peak capacities. On Saturday we seek to balance the unfulfilled needs of our work through some form of rest or relaxation, realizing by the end of the day that Monday arrives soon and our tenuous balance will be thrown off kilter for another week.

Sunday (for those of us in Christian churches) is generally the time when we seek just enough God to balance out any guilty feelings we may have had during the week. Too much God and our world is shaken to its core, because with too much God we might then have to love without abandon, live to the fullest of our createdness and care to the point where self-centeredness no longer works. When there is too much God we must heed our passion for justice and righteousness through grace, peace and love. Therefore, we find a balance that lets us live unremarkable lives of safety and comfort. I have an unrelenting disdain for bigoted rigid dogmatic forms of Christianity, much like the ones that occupy the limelight these days. But you know what? At least they are passionate and let you know about.

So, if my mythical beliefs about balance can no longer function as a basis for reality. What next? How do I live faithfully within the bounds of my createdness? How do I ensure that my passion does no harm to myself or to others? That seems to be one of keys to a passionate reorientation for me. Namely, how does my passion meet the world where it needs it the most, and as a result novelty, creativity, hope and love can thrive?

Aimless rigid passion seems harmful to the common good, it lacks creativity and emboldens triviality. Triviality, in turn, leads to evil because it cheapens God, humanity and this world we live in. A recent example of trivialization is tying a much needed minimum wage increase into tax breaks for the wealthiest families, this aimless passion for re-election trivializes the lives of those who are trying to make ends meet in an honest way. Politics aside, theological trivialization does far greater harm than any other form I know. Through theological trivialization, humanity is demonized, dogmatized and destroyed through the uncontrolled passion for control over the thoughts and beliefs of individuals.

Passion is needed in a world of mental numbness. However, passion must be guided by love, creativity, hope, grace and peace. This is what makes us stand out amongst our peers. That through our passion, when we leave this world, we leave it a better place, one where the relationships we share filled with the love and care that continually spreads when we are nothing but dust once again.

grace and peace

Interpretation, part II

2006-08-03T10:05:00.000-06:00

Interpretation is governed by beliefs, experiences and narratives that inform our ways of seeing. Therefore, when I encounter a text I open myself to each of these governing principles that, in turn, competes and/or coalesces to provide an interpretive outcome. In a sense, I react to a text through these filters which provide the grounds upon which I begin to interpret a particular passage. Personally, I am informed by stories and experiences of inclusion and exclusion. I have found inclusive stories to be more supportive of the overall belief structure that is indicative of Christianity. As a result, when I read particular texts through my constructed lenses of interpretation I am more likely than not to emphasize and look for their inclusive aspects rather than those parts that might express exclusivity. This is my bias, and I acknowledge this freely based on my beliefs about the relationship between God and humanity as revealed in the overall ethos of the Biblical text.

Having discussed how I interpret the things I encounter in my life I want to turn to a couple of passages that, generally speaking, underlie my positions regarding the PUP report. Before doing so, I want to acknowledge that my original post was an attempt to examine the PUP report through a postmodern philosophical lens. This post is not meant to replace or supplement those ideas. Instead, it is an examination of a few biblical sources that serve to inform the theological milieu from which I interpret most everything. These texts are not meant to be a comprehensive examination of the canon and its application to the PUP report. Instead, these texts inform my interpretive ethos and nothing more.

The first passage is Paul's discussion of the body of Christ and its diversity and unity. For me, the basic premise of this passage is that each member of the body performs a different function with regard to the body's interactions with its environment. I interpret this passage two ways. The first interpretation pays attention to the internal functioning of the body as a system. That is, how the body functions with regard to its unity and its diversity. Paul description of diversity makes mention of the various parts of the body (i.e. - eyes, ears, nose, mouth, arms, hands, and so on). Furthermore, he goes on to unify these seemingly disparate pieces into one body that only functions in a healthy manner if all of these parts are working and doing their respective functions. This unification despite disparity reveals how we are to work together in the face of seemingly diverse functions and points of view. Moreover, internal systemic functioning is a necessary component of life so that full engagement with the world can occur.

The second interpretation concerns external systemic functioning. This is the way in which the body of Christ sees, hears, feels, etc. the movements and actions that occur in the world outside itself. When diverse body parts engage the world there is the possibility that multiple interpretations of a particular experience will occur. Without multiple interpretations the experience becomes myopic and stagnant, requiring little engagement or thought. If the only way we could experience the world was through sound, how would that change what we believe about what is occurring before us?

For me, the multiplicity of interpretive possibilities provides the greatest access to God’s relationship with the world. If all we had was my interpretations of texts, I am not sure we could ever fully understand (not that full understanding is achievable) what was said or meant by a particular narrative. Therefore, a diversity of interpretive perspectives is necessary (even those that are harmful, for how will we know a "good" interpretation without a really "bad" one) in order to ensure that the body functions as it can. The PUP report allows for the possibility of voices to be heard that have been silenced out of fear or threat from the rest of the body.

The passage is more a group of passages. These deal directly with Jesus' encounters with ostracized or oppressed peoples. These are the women at the well, the demonized, the poor, widowed or orphaned, the Samaritans and the gentiles. There are more stories than space in this essay. Therefore, I am being rather reductionistic when I refer to them. However, Jesus' dealings with the people in the majority of these stories revolve around recognition, acceptance, and integration.

These stories often begin with a description of the "offensive" person and their relative status in the society and culture. There is a recognition both by the storyteller and Jesus of the outsider status that is often given to the person in question. Jesus' response is generally one of recognition of this status and questioning its appropriateness. There is a movement from recognition of ostracization that provides the necessary contrast to the acceptance that Jesus provides. Sometimes this acceptance comes through a questioning of the status of the individual or even the individual questioning the status of Jesus' thoughts about the situation (think about the woman who responds to Jesus' inquiry about sharing grace with those outside the Jewish faith). Acceptance is often seen in an act that embraces the ostracized or oppressed individual, thus legitimating them before the pubic. Finally, this legitimation is consecrated through an act that integrates the offensive individual back into the societal framework as a new being. Often, at least through my lenses, the integration of the individual takes place through an act on the part of Jesus rather than on the part of the individual. That is, the insider makes the move to accept the outsider back into the fold, often without significant change on the part of the individual in question. The change is often an insider movement that allows more room for the outsider's perspective to be included.

Granted my examples are short and limited in their scope and nature. I am not a biblical scholar and I do not profess to have THE interpretation of these texts and stories. My only hope was to provide a biblical reference or two that informs my overarching theological perspective. I hope it helps, any thoughts and questions are welcome and may help me further understand what I think and believe.

grace and peace

An Explainable Absence

2006-07-26T19:06:00.000-06:00

My apologies for not finishing what I started last week. I was studying for my Clinical Social Work Exam. I took it today and I passed. I am now (or soon will be) a licensed therapist in the state of Virginia. Now the next step is to seek a transfer of the license to Colorado.

It is a great relief to have the studying and anxiety behind me. I can't put into words the panic I felt when I sent the test in for grading. Furthermore, I am having difficulty describing the relief I feel now that I know I have passed. There are a lot of people who helped me reach this point. They are friends, family and colleagues and I want to thank them for the roles they played in my formation and development.

I will be out of town for the next few days, and will try and finish this post on interpretation next week. Take care

grace and peace...

Interpretation, part I

2006-07-17T09:46:00.000-06:00

A question was raised concerning the position I took in my last post on the PC (USA), the PUP report and postmodernism. The commenter basically asked how I would support the positions I took using Biblical texts as my basis for interpretation. I thought his question was valid; however, I thought it would be better answered in a post rather than a reply to his comment. What I see in his question is larger than Biblical support for a particular position. Instead I interpret his comment as a question regarding sources of insight when making theological claims. I want to broaden his question a bit for several reasons.

First, to choose particular passages to support a particular point of view is to walk a thin line between support and proof-texting (proof-texting is when you pick a verse out of the Bible to support a particular position or rationale; one example concerns what preachers did to support slavery before the civil war). Second, no one creates a theological position from Biblical objectivity. That is, no one goes into an examination of the Bible without prejudices, experiences, thoughts or feelings. Whenever we endeavor to interpret a text, we bring with us a slew of baggage that colors our perceptions. A modern point of view believes that we can divorce ourselves from this baggage and come to a meta-understanding (an interpretation that is good for everyone) of a particular text.

There are several fallacies with this point of view of Biblical interpretation. First, it assumes that there is only one interpretation to a particular passage. Second, it assumes that we can find that one interpretation. Third, it assumes that any bias we might have can be put aside in the interest of the greater good. Finally, it assumes that interpretations cannot change throughout the years.

What this leaves me with is an understanding that no matter how I interpret a passage, there will be as many objections as there are people reading my interpretation. Therefore, what I can do is be aware of my biases and make them a part of the interpretive process so that people can understand both how and why I interpret a particular passage in a particular way. The locating of myself in my social, cultural and historical positions doesn't make my interpretation correct, it just makes it more honest with regard to the experiences I have had in life.

Therefore, let me begin with acknowledging who and where I am to begin fleshing out how I come to my interpretive conclusions. I am a thirty-something white male who was raised in an upper middle class home and continues to live in an upper middle class setting. I have extensive education in clinical social work and am an ordained Presbyterian minister. I consider myself to be a left-leaning moderate who tries to balance social responsibility with personal responsibility. I have worked as a minister, youth director, Christian educator, and psychotherapist. Currently, I am a full-time doctoral student (as if that wasn't evident by all of the garbage in the previous paragraphs) who is studying the relationship between religion and psychology.

My interpretive schema is informed by several criteria. First and foremost, I believe that God is all-loving, but not all-powerful as it is currently defined. I believe that God's power lies in God's ability to fully and completely offer loving alternatives to the decisions human beings make; human beings have complete free-will and can choose not to follow God's alternatives thereby leading to disobedience and the promulgation of evil in this world. Second, I believe that the Bible has a meta-message of relationship, and is ultimately concerned with revealing the ways in which people have encountered God and attempted to reconcile events that have occurred in the world.

I do not believe in the truth of the words, but instead believe in the truth of the experiences and the truth of a God who acts in history in a variety of ways. I do not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, but I believe in the movement of the Spirit during its writing and copying. I consider myself to adhere to a historical critical method of interpretation that seeks to remember the context but also acknowledge the similarities that surround our situations.

Finally, I believe in the immanence of God, that God is with us, around us, and active in the world. God does not stand outside of reality and is instead a part of the human struggle to find meaning and hope in a world that we have all too often chosen to destroy. God loves, God struggles, God hopes, God cares and God suffers with each of us as we attempt to discover and attend to God's pull in our lives.

My interpretations attempt to take into account ideas of tradition, experience, reason, culture, society and relationships. They are the interpretations of a pastoral theologian, care-giver and counselor who ultimately believes that Christianity, at its best, functions as a reconciling ethos of the individual to God, self and all neighbors.

Now that I have located myself, my next post will deal with particular passages that speak to my position regarding the PUP report.

(Looking back over this post, I must also say that I have truly adopted the doctoral lifestyle and way of thinking. I have heard it said that the true test of whether one is a doctoral student or not is the ability to, when encountering a piece of dog crap on the sidewalk, write ten pages about its relevance and necessity)

grace and peace...

Presbyterians, PUP, and postmodernism

2006-07-13T06:46:00.000-06:00

Recently the General Assembly of the PC (USA) passed a resolution that agreed with a report made by the Task Force on Peace, Unity and Purity (the PUP report). This report is intends to help the PC (USA) deal with the ordination of gays and lesbians. Unfortunately, the passage of this report has caused discontent for a number of people who disagree with a "local option" clause in the report. Most of the rants I have read about the passage of the PUP report amount to little more than modern interpretations of religious dogma rather than honest appraisals of the underlying philosophy of the report. Furthermore, these rants tend to come from a more conservative cohort, who incidentally, also desires to embrace the "emergent movement" with its postmodern underpinnings.

Rather than continue the current course of "saber-rattling" that is happening with a number of more theologically conservative Presbyterians, I want to look at the local option issue through the lens of the postmodern phenomena that I have been discussing lately. I will use three of the four phenomena to examine this report. These three phenomena include: the disavowing of meta-narratives, the dependency on rationalization as a means of interpretation, and the emergence of new social movements. My take on the passage of the PUP report is that it is the most philosophically postmodern decision the PC (USA) has made in recent years.

First, the PUP report acknowledges the deep differences that we hold as a diverse body of theological minds and hearts. The committee was painstakingly chosen for their diverse background and theological stances so that representation by a differing number of interest groups was evident. It is my understanding that this final report was unanimously agreed upon by the members of the group. The make-up of the committee helps us begin to understand the difficulty with establishing one Presbyterian meta-narrative. Each person entered the group with a distinct Presbyterian narrative that informed their positions, decisions and outlooks. These narratives were brought together in order to derive some form of consensus about the possibilities concerning the ordination of gays and lesbians in the PC (USA). The resulting report pays attention to the notion that we are a diverse body and that as a diverse body developing one opinion that will satisfy everyone fully is improbable.

Furthermore, to attempt to establish one meta-narrative to inform and guide all Presbyterians is create an authoritarian structure that leaves little room for the mystery of God to work in the midst of the church. The local option issue, decried by a number of postmodern wannabes, is the best course for a church that is informed by a multitude of possible narratives. Moreover, its passage by the General Assembly means that the church IS informed by postmodern sensibilities and in tune with the philosophical nature of the cultural ethos that surrounds us.

Second, the PUP report attempts to eschew the certainty of rational thought by realizing the difficult and heartfelt faith of a multitude of Presbyterians. I can only imagine the difficult (and yet somehow decent) conversations this committee endured through the last two or so years. To create a document that attempts to bridge the numerous rational gaps created in traditional arguments about the ordination of gays and lesbians is ambitious. However, the language and presentation of the document seems to incorporate more than mere rational thought; instead it attempts to relate the multiple hearts and faiths that created the PUP report. Furthermore, rationality is not eschewed entirely; instead it is given a place at the table, just not the head seat.

Numerous attempts have been made so far to rationally decide the "options" churches have as a result of the passage of the PUP report. The problem with most of these options is that they create rational categories for a multi-modal document. Providing rational solutions to a relational document is misguided at best and detrimental to the denomination at worst. Furthermore, it creates a dogmatic extremism that thrusts these churches into a modern philosophical "my way or the highway" point of view. Rational dogmatism is one of the reasons why the church is mocked by younger generations these days. Moreover, it is far from a postmodern position that generally emphasizes relational modes of being over religious modes of being.

Third, the PUP reports allows for the possibility of new social movements that have the local flavor of congregations. The local option gives credence to the multiplicity of narratives and forms of relationality that are prevalent in our churches. By having an option, churches and presbyteries can be guided by the movement of the Spirit in their midst, rather than being tediously tied to a meta-narrative that misinforms their faith. The local option implies that God is bigger than the narratives we wish to tie God to, and that their may be more than one way of interpreting God presence in our midst. Through the possibility of local arrangements, the church embraces its postmodern context and gives hope to those who have been disenfranchised for many years.

Finally, I want to pay some attention to the "emergent conversation" that has been informing the positions of many churches and ministers for a while. In the PC (USA) there are some people who have become enamored with this movement. Furthermore, some of these ministers are the first to provide a reactionary negative response to the passage of the PUP report.

First, my understanding of the "emergent conversation" is that it is an attempt to apply postmodern ways of being to a thoroughly modern church. Therefore, most "emergent" gatherings are based upon the view that relationship has primacy over religious dogma. The PUP report seems to give credence to relationship in the same manner. Furthermore, given the multi-modal form of worship and the gentility that most "emergent" orthodoxies possess (I say this knowing that some churches that claim to be emergent are merely re-packaged versions of vacuous and harmful theological conditions that seek popularity rather than change) a "local option" would suit them just fine, because it allows for the relationship to dictate the beliefs of the gathering, rather than the beliefs dictating the relationships we make. Finally, my sense of a true "emergent" church is that it is an attempt to continue conversation despite obvious differences in experience, theology, and modes of faith.

True emergent thought brings people together, rather than separates them from one another.

The promise of postmodernity is not that everyone will agree in the end. Instead the promise is that we will love one another despite the fact that or even because we disagree. Furthermore, that love does not seek to make your experience and faith the same as my experience and faith; instead it seeks to allow me the space to find the voice of God and voice of love in my life while maintaining the relationships we share.

grace and peace

Postmodernism 202

2006-07-09T17:42:00.000-06:00

I will be continuing to study for my Social Work Licensure exam over the next few weeks. I will post when I need a break or if something strikes me as comment-worthy. The test is on the 26th and I am truly frightening by the amount and scope of the material I still have to learn...

This "final" essay will deal with the postmodern phenomenon concerning newly emergent social movements. I would propose that these new social movements can have a positive and negative impact on the way the world works. These social movements are, more often that not, local organizations that share particular narratives or concerns for particular narratives. This can have a great deal of impact on society. I think the bumper sticker that states "think globally, act locally" sums up this phenomena succinctly. We have more global information which makes the world a smaller place, but we have more regional specialization which makes the world more fragmented as well. It is the idea of specialization that I want to attend to first.

Several movements in the modern/postmodern church embody this phenomena. The most obvious is the contemporary/traditional worship split in most congregations. The division into preferential worship styles is a small example of how we are beginning to cater to the different narratives that people bring with them. There is nothing wrong with either of these worship styles (both can be equally meaningful or vacuous depending on how they are pulled off); however, what happens when the division of worship styles becomes a division in the congregation? What happens when the "traditional" folks don't know any of the "contemporary" people?

It seems to me that catering to individual needs in the context of the "body of Christ" will only serve to highlight differences rather than create the possibility of cohesion. This does not mean that individuality shouldn't be a part of the worship and life of the church, but the question is more about how individuality and community should mutually reinforce one another rather than detract from one another. The error I see is that we have created bodies of Christ within the context of what is supposed to be a body of Christ. That is, within one congregation new social organizations emerge that highlight the different needs of different congregation members and instead of dealing with them as a community of the whole, we might just let them go off and form their organization that functions within the walls of the whole, but is not really accepted as a part of the whole.

Sticking with our body metaphor, it is as though we are walking down the street and all of a sudden our right foot gets a hankering to take a different path than the rest of the body. So instead of working together to understand why the right foot might have a good idea or why some of its concerns might be valid we just hack off the foot and let it go its own way while we continue down our intended path. The right foot, regardless of its disembodied state, is still ours, it just no longer has a vital connection to the body as a whole and both move slower without each other. Thus, we have little in common save for a few strands of DNA and a corresponding wound.

Furthermore, as churches separate along these traditional/contemporary lines, what is to keep them from further separating? Why not a service for those members who prefer country music with ad hoc prayers and sermons under 12 minutes? This is the danger of increased specialization. Maybe not quite as absurd as my example, but we do end up catering to so many needs, wants or desires that we forget about the call to live in conversation with one another, not just with the ones who are like us or who we happen to like.

What is answer then? How are we to celebrate our togetherness and our separateness? How are we to understand the different needs and styles and narrative formulations that are present in the bodies of Christ that are called together? I am not altogether sure that we can answer this question in a manner that befits both the reality of our postmodern condition and the call to be the body of Christ. We are already a highly fractured religion even before we consider the internal fractured realities that individual congregations face.

I have to wonder if postmodernism might provide some of the answers we seek. If we head back to the phenomenon that originated this brief missive -- newly emerging social movements -- the word social stands out to me. If these new movements are indeed social in nature then a prerequisite is conversation, not agreement, but conversation. It means that regardless of how different the ideas are there is a commitment to the interpersonal. Moreover, to commit to the interpersonal is to commit to finding ways of remaining in conversation even when our views or our contexts may diverge completely.

We will always gather around people with whom we share a commonality. It is in our nature (or nurture) to want to be comfortable. However, the church has never been a place for comfort, and where it is change is necessary. The same goes for individuals and the movements they adhere to. Creating a new social movement that addresses the needs, desires and wants of a local context is wonderful. The "emerging church" can be an example of that. However, creating something separate in order just to be separate from "those people" or "their worship" or "that congregation" is not postmodern it is merely selfish. We cannot converse without a partner. Furthermore, there is nothing interpersonal when it just caters to the personal, nothing social when there is only one group doing the socializing.

The greatest opportunity that comes in the phenomenon of new social movements is the promise of new ways of talking about old problems. However, both the new social and old social must find a way to talk or a subject that both agree are important or both are just wasting air and contributing to global warming through the noxious gasses they emit when they sit and complain about one another.

There is one other hope that I will mention briefly. That hope is found in the idea that we are different and that we learn, worship and love differently. So much so that these new movements can awaken us to things that we have long denied or ignore in the interest of decorum or order. In conversation we may just find the new breath we seek when we enter the doors of a house of worship again or for the first time.

grace and peace...

Re-evaluating my zeal

2006-06-29T22:45:00.000-06:00

I will be unable to finish my posts about postmodernity this week. I am heading out of town into the mountains of Breckenridge for the weekend and will not finish writing before that time. Given the lack of comments so far, I don't think anyone will be heartbroken.

I realize that I am merely presenting information at this point. Furthermore, I am toying with a more personal final post about postmodernity, but it will take some finesse to pull it off. Truthfully, I am not sure I have it in me just yet.

In other news, I am taking the National Social Worker Clinical Exam in just under a month. I am studying like mad and reading every single theorist and mental disorder and study guide that I can get my hands on. I have even started another blog which will go strong for about another month and then we will see from there. It is basically my write-ups for the exam. If you are thinking about the exam, I am putting the material out there for free. If it will help you, have at it. The blog is at lcsw.blogspot.com.

A couple of final words before nodding off to sleep.

I am getting a lot of hits from google about pastoral prayers and so I thought I might try and write a few new ones based on the lectionary texts. No promises, just thoughts right now.

I am also getting together my first bibliography for a comprehensive exam in school on pastoral theology. So far, I have about 12-15 books to finish reading by the end of September. Oh yeah, I have to know them well enough to write a three question, four hour exam, on their content without any of the texts present.

I am completing my third article for publication on congregational care. I also have a publisher interested in one of my ideas for a book. We'll see, in all my spare time, if I have enough saavy to write the proposal and get a contract before the end of the summer.

Since I am now (and will be for a while) a poor college student, I want to make a humble request. If one of the three of you (my loyal readers) are planning on buying something from Amazon, would you mind clicking through one of the links to the left? I get a little credit from every purchase made and it will go a long way towards maintaining my caffiene habit, or even allow me to purchase a book or two for my classes. It is not required and I only ask that you consider it if you are planning on buying something or if one of the books over there interests you. Okay, I feel dirty already... enough of the groveling.

Finally, I would like to write about some of the questions you have concerning, theology, care and ministry in the church. What are things, that you would like to know more about, but are not willing to ask your pastor? Moreover, what are the subjects that peak your interest but you don't have enough time to research? I have plenty of ideas to sustain me, but I want to hear yours...

I will return on Monday. Have a great weekend...

grace and peace

Postmodernism 201

2006-06-26T10:21:00.000-06:00

This will be part three of four in a brief examination of postmodernism and its promise and pitfalls for Christianity. In this post I will look at the proliferation of information technologies as the third phenomena. This phenomena is probably the easiest to recognize in our culture, but I'll bet you didn't see it as a hallmark of postmodernity. However, when you place it side-by-side with the demise of meta-narratives it is easy to see its influence. Information technology has made the world a much smaller place. I might even say that the way in which we receive and perceive things is radically is different due to the ability of news to travel from one end of the earth to another with relative ease. Despite the lack of boldness in this statement, there are multiple things to consider when it comes to information technology.

First, Christianity no longer dominates the news media as the only valid perspective on issues. By saying this I realize that as far as we (US Americans) go, the media is still dominated by a white middle class Christian perspective. This is debatable for sure, but I am talking about the ethos from which most news arises rather than the particulars. In this country, no matter how much Christians bitch about secularism or humanistic approaches, we are largely shaded by this generic consumer version of Christianity that sticks to just about everything we report. In fact, I would point to the outcry over "secular humanism" as the proof that the way we report "news" is changing to a more global perspective. In the future, I believe that global perspectives will continue to make in roads in US American reporting. This will cause "Christian jingoists" to froth at the mouth (we can see a lot this already occurring when people adopt global views that are then construed as "anti-American" through a more conservative arm of the press). However, given the rapidity of reporting the US will continually be thrust into the global spotlight where it can either begin to realize its impact on the global culture and other countries or become politically "obsolete," much like a large obstinate Grandpa Simpson. As you may or may not know, Grandpa Simpson is the older slightly crazed member of the Simpson family. He is often seen as a forgotten part of the family whose ravings about the good old days are summarily dismissed. To be sure, he has some nostalgic value and occasionally contributes, but on the large part his influence is discounted because of his inability to "get with the times."

Second, information technology changes the way we communicate with one another. Take this blog for instance. Without the technology there would be no way of communicating these thoughts to you (though some of you might find this a good thing), unless we somehow connected in "real" life. My thoughts would be shared (or not shared) instead with a smaller group of insiders. Now, my thoughts go out for the world to read. As you might already understand, this can be both a good and bad thing. Those who find themselves on at the extreme edges of conversation now have a place to vent their views upon the world. However, there is also the possibility for greater accountability for what one says due to the ability of others to offer correcting points of view. The downside to this, as it has been reported recently, is that while we communicate with more people we actually have fewer close friends. Therefore, our communities become larger but more impersonal. This is the dual-edged sword of information technology. You get information rapidly, but most of this information can come across as lacking human depthfulness.

Finally, we have focused on the information part, the information technology part, and now we should look at solely the role of technology. Obviously I am no ludite. However, I am beginning to believe that technology has its limits. First, technology has greatly increased our productivity and even eased some of the repetitive tasks that humans undertake. However, it has not entirely lived up to its promise. Instead of alleviating stress and offering more free time, we have taken the time technology saves us and demanded more from those who use it. Productivity has become the buzzword for life, trouncing the promised relaxation that technology would provide. US Americans now work more hours per week and take less vacation than any other country in the developed world. Moreover, these increases have taken place since the dawn of the "technological revolution." Furthermore, technology has invaded churches with this same need for productivity. I may be wrong, but I have always thought that churches were meant to be the counter-cultural conscience of humanity. We were supposed to speak out against injustice and the consumerism that drives a shallowness in our culture. Instead, we use technology to prove our culture "relevance" and our ability to abide within the constraints of a common cultural paradigm. While I am not a ludite, I may be a liturgical ludite. I don't think PowerPoint presentations set us apart or make worship more valuable, nor do I think contemporary music makes us relevant. Technology can be used for great good in the church (you try writing a sermon by hand or typewriter); moreover, it can provide a valuable resource for reaching out to others and letting them know what we stand for. However, much of the usage today is merely an incompetant attempt at a "relevant" theology or liturgy that does nothing to set Christianity or worship apart from a run of the mill country club gathering.

I will add the fourth installment later this week. I leave you with one question. Namely, how will/does technology help/hinder the churches ability to adapt/stand against the pre-dominant ethos in the United States?

grace and peace...

Postmodernism 102

2006-06-23T11:51:00.000-06:00

Paul Lakeland, in Postmodernity (see left for a link to the book), describes four phenomena that could signify a collaborative definition of postmodernism. The first one, incredulity towards meta-narratives, we have already discussed. The next three include: the awareness that a society which depends upon rationalization comes at a cost, the proliferation of information technologies, and newly emergent social movements. Each of these three phenomena impacts the church differently, and as with the incredulity towards meta-narratives each provides promises and pitfalls.

First, let us deal with the pitfalls and promises of a rational society. I believe rational is meant to describe a way of knowing. When we think of rational, an image of the calm serene scientist working her way through a mathematical proof or titrating a solution in a lab comes to my mind. Rational has, in some ways, become synonymous with the cognitive and/or with scientific ways of knowing. In the modern era there has been a preoccupation with finding, through science, the ways in which we are all the same. Science, in essence, has attempted to prove the meta-narrative in order to unity humanity under one banner. Moreover, rationality has attempted to transcend cultures and societies (and even religions) in order to posit the things that are good for all human beings. Any over-reliance on one way of knowing comes at a cost. Furthermore, over-reliance on rationality is detrimental to the structure of religion in general and Christianity in particular.

I want to take a moment and work with that last statement concerning the detrimental nature that an over-reliance on rationality has towards Christianity. In the modern era, a lot of time was spent proving that Christianity was the one true religion of God. There were (are) the attempts as proving the creation story, expeditions to find the Ark of Noah, scientific attempts at proving the validity of the Shroud of Turin. Furthermore, there are numerous archeological attempts that seek to prove that every word, every situation, indeed everything in the Bible is factual. What is forgotten in these attempts is the role of faith and mystery in the life of Christians. Let me offer an example.

When I was in high school I attended a conservative Presbyterian Church in Orlando, Florida. On one occasion I heard a sermon preached on the crucifixion entitled "Jesus died of a Broken Heart." The illustration that I remember from this sermon was the minister's discussion with a doctor about the Bible's mention of blood and water flowing from the wound inflicted by the soldier. The minister proceeded to give a medical account explaining how this was possible and the medical reasons why what the Bible says happened was factual.

In a modern world this was a perfectly acceptable way of preaching this text. It appealed to an educated congregation and brought a sense of rationality to the text so that it might inform faith. If we accept the definition of theology as "faith seeking understanding" then this attempt at theology fails. It overemphasizes a rational proof of the text, and while it seeks understanding it leaves little room for faith. In the postmodern world, the response to this type of sermon would generally be a resounding "who cares?"

Instead, a postmodern approach might look at the different meanings of blood and water and the possibilities that each of them has for life giving and life sustaining. This sermon, instead of describing the medical "facts" might seek understanding through experiences with water and blood, through theological constructions of baptism and communion through the mingling of these two substances. Ultimately, a sermon would seek to say much with out telling much. That is, it would seek to describe multiple meanings without giving credence to one particular interpretation. This allows the listener to discover their own experiences of the text through the lenses they bring with them. Furthermore, the postmodern preacher uses the text to build faith through the multiple understandings present in its words, rather than an empirical attempt to prove that lack of faith in the words is incorrect. This approach gives credence to the mystery that is built into every text, allowing people from multiple backgrounds and experiences to work with the ambiguity of faith.

Finally, this turn from rationality poses some unique pitfalls for Christianity, especially evangelicals and fundamentalists. First, my impression of the evangelical church is that it fundamentally desires that the Bible be interpreted as factual. I will admit my lack of experience in the evangelical world (despite spending my high school years in what I would consider a theologically conservative church). However, with an emphasis on inerrancy the evangelical worldview runs into some problems with this multiplicity of meanings approach that eschews certainty through rationality. My experience of many evangelical worldviews (even more so in fundamentalist churches) is that they want everything to be true in the Bible down to the letter.

The emergent church is the latest incarnation that seeks to blend evangelical theology with postmodern phenomena. From my reading, this "movement" was built as a reaction to the consumer mentality of the modern mega-church. There was a sense that true community and faith was lost in the impersonal world of "cappuccino churches" and their homogenous and bland forms of Christianity. The emergent movement seeks diversity in thought and experience to enrich and inform its faith. However, there is still some resistance to a postmodern worldview and the multiplicity of meanings method of faith.

While the worship style incorporates multiple forms of interaction and learning, the theology lacks mystery and elasticity. Most of the leaders of the movement are white men from middle class upbringings. There are very few evangelical females or minorities in leadership positions who theologically inform the emergent community. Rather, the emergent movement seems, to me at least, to be a return to premodern ways of knowing using technology to enhance the experience. Premodern Christianity was marked by its dependence on spiritual ways of knowing and explaining the world. It was run by a male hierarchy who consolidated the power of the church and dictated meaning rather than embracing diversity. I am not implying that the emergent church discounts diversity; however, what remains to be seen is the active seeking out of, engagement with, and incorporation of multiple theological points of view and experiences into their view of the world.

I will work with the final two marks of postmodernity next week, but leave you with a couple questions. Can a church (theology) accept and incorporate scientific methods in order to prove its premises, while at the same time rejecting the ways that the world uses the same techniques to prove itself?

grace and peace...

The good, the bad, the ugly - postmodernism 101

2006-06-16T21:48:00.000-06:00

This is the first post in a planned series of posts about different forms of postmodern thought.

It seems to me that postmodern philosophy and thought has something to do with each of these categories. As with all philosophies, postmodernity has its strengths and weaknesses. First and foremost it is important to realize that postmodernity is ill-defined but not ill-conceived. That is, to me at least, its philosophical basis works when it is spoken of generally. However, when applied particularly postmodern philosophy can run up against some major difficulties. Let's begin with Jean-Francois Lyotard's definition of postmodernism.

In a nutshell, Lyotard describes postmodernism as the incredulity towards meta-narratives. First things first, Lyotard is a linguist whose philosophical contributions centered around the idea that we all play games with language to the extent that it is ultimately impossible to have everyone agree on one meaning for one object. Lyotard scholars would no doubt disagree with me on this point. Truthfully speaking, I have only read one of his works and therefore my exposure to his thoughts is limited. I put my interpretation in context in order to explain how I got to the meaning that I have claimed from Lyotard's work. Thus, I have also proved his point concerning meta-narratives.

Meta-narratives are the grand narratives of modernity that sought to explain how we are all alike. That is, modern philosophy posited that there were certain stories or linguistic concepts that could be generalized to all people. Lyotard objected to this assumption and instead sought to bring attention to the individuality that is present in each interpretation of the same phenomenon. The good part of this theory is that it brings in marginalized interpretations; it opens the door for multiple possible interpretations of phenomena and the validity of each of these interpretations; it also makes us aware of the contexts that we bring with us to particular experiences. However, there are some possible negative aspects as well.

Carried out to its extreme, this form of postmodernism can lead to relativism and the denial of a larger truth. Furthermore, there is the possibility for conflict when multiple interpretations are deposited into a communal milieu. The conflict is not bad itself; however, when one finds themselves incapable of hearing and validating the interpretations of other people can be further marginalized in their own communities.

For those in Christian communities (indeed all religions fall in this category), we are by definition guided by a meta-narrative. Moreover, this meta-narrative contributes to a number of positive and negative experiences in the Christian community. To put it in its most basic format, Christians are all guided by the same story. This, in and of itself, could disqualify us from the postmodern debate. However, even though we believe we are guided by the same story, in truth we are not. So many are the interpretations of this story, that I have to believe that there is little possibility for us to agree fully upon its meaning. This means that our meta-narrative is actually a series of meta-narratives.

For example, if I were to admit publicly that I believe the story we adhere to, in its most basic form, reveals that God is love, then at that same moment someone else could cry bullshit (in a Christian way of course) and they would proceed to tell me that the story we adhere to says that God is judgment or God is jealous or God is power or even God is anger. Therefore, the meta-narrative that is supposed to bind us is really a multi-narrative (my term) that has no one guiding meaning that affects humanity in all the same way.

The "good" part about this example is the possibility that there is some form of "rightness" within each of our interpretations. If we accept that there is some validity in each of the theologies of Pat Robertson, Jurgen Moltmann, Paul Tillich, Joel Osteen, John Cobb, Jr., and John Calvin, and that in none of them will we find an absolute truth that will guide every single human being, then there is possibility of a "multi-rightness" that leads to multiple ways of encountering God in the world. Therefore, the discussion of differences changes from a "right-wrong" perspective to a "my experience-your experience" perspective. This can lead to a greater understanding of the varieties of experiences that make up our relationships with God, and possibly even further enhancing all of our experiences of God through the multiple ways in which God is encountered. One way of talking about this is that the multiple experiences of God resemble the concept of the body of Christ; my experience may be an eye or ear whereas yours might be a mouth or arm (we won't posit who gets to be the ass).

My guess is that you might also see some of the difficulties with this form of contextualization. The first is that God is supposed to greater than one or even the sum of all of our interpretations and experiences. This also means that God, if God is truly greater than all of these, is something that is ultimately a meta-narrative. That is, God authors stories that are beyond the context of human experience that are good for all of humanity.

Secondly, there would be no need for postmodern Christians to evangelize if we truly believed in the contextualization of the experience of God. All experiences of God would ultimately speak the truth about God from a particular perspective. This would mean that the meta-narrative of Christianity would not be a meta-narrative for the world. Instead, God would be able to speak through the meta-narratives of all religions, rendering Christianity as one path among many to God, rather than a "one true path" religion.

The final "bad" piece would be that we carry out contextualization to the point where we no longer resemble the Body of Christ but are more like a set of body parts in Ziploc bags. Contextualization could lead to compartmentalization and the separating of the body of Christ through the individuation of worship styles, theology, education practices, dress code, music styles and so on. Truthfully, we are already a compartmentalized religion, we just have broader labels for each compartment (think conservative-liberal, contemporary-traditional, modern-postmodern, etc.). Extreme contextualization can create pockets of Christians with the same tastes or similar narratives that cling to one another rather than reaching out to the body of Christ as a whole.

As far as the "ugly" is concerned. I think that might come out in two fashions. The first is an "anything goes" kind of Christianity. The second is a "lowest common denominator" Christianity.

In the "anything goes" category, Christianity becomes diluted through the attempts to appease as many different experiential styles while not catering to one group in particular. Take worship for example. I attended a church recently that incorporated powerpoint, hymnals, a praise band, organ, scripture, prayers and a basic sermon. The worship was poorly constructed with what I can only describe as a marginally acceptable order and description. As a person visiting the congregation I was subjected to: confusion, a praise band that seemed more interested in itself that in worship, a barely functioning powerpoint presentation that was distracting at best and boring at worst. This attempt to appeal/appease all of the congregational contexts left me feeling as though the congregation treated worship lightly, they felt theologically inept and shallow, and the service made me only more determined to find a better place of worship.

I don't mind "contemporary" worship (the distinction is a misnomer because ALL worship is contemporary due to its temporal locality and its connection with the world, regardless of its casualness or the use of "praise" music). There are some new music songs and styles that provide theological depth and challenge the singer/hearer to novel theological connections. The difficulty comes in the desire to please every person's context and whims rather than focusing the point of worship, namely to direct oneself to God for a sustained period of time. Therefore, the question that must be answered is, how can we open ourselves to anything that might direct us toward a sustained period of worship with God? Is it image, music, poetry, art, sermons, or prayers (or other mediums)? Moreover, how will we use these resources responsibly in order to accentuate our worship, rather than using them to keep ourselves interested? In my theological world, God is the ultimate audience of worship, the gathered body of Christ are the actors in the play. In "anything goes" styles, the actors become the audience and it shifts the focus of worship.

The final "ugly" is "lowest common denominator" Christianity. That is, we find the things we agree on and only work with those pieces. The difficulty with this form is that it lacks challenge and doesn't move people from the things that make them comfortable. Christianity has, built into it, a sense that something is not right with the world, and God has called upon us to try and fix it, with God's help. When we hit the "lowest common denominator" form Christianity loses its edge and becomes just another social or country club where we gather to pat ourselves on the back for not screwing up the world too much more during the week.

I realize this is a long intro, but there is a lot to Lyotard and the implications for Christianity are many. I will be gone for a vacation in the upcoming week, but I hope to post another piece to this postmodern puzzle by next Friday. Please feel free to comment on what you have read. I am by no means a philosopher, and if others have insights about Lyotard feel free to add them.

grace and peace...

born again

2006-06-13T10:27:00.000-06:00

I have always shunned the term born again. This phrase brought up thoughts of witless teens handing out tracts at the Olympics, or the forceful conversion conversations that occurred with evangelicals about the state of my soul. For me, born again became synonymous with everything that was wrong with Christianity. This led me to write them off as forever lost to Christianity, mainly because of our blatant inability to respect one another and the religions we carry with us; and, on a personal note, not being able to get beyond "born again's" historical meanings. I guess that one of the greatest things about having prejudices is finding that moment when we are able to escape them...

The lectionary passage from this past Sunday was the famous text in John that gave "birth" to the idea about being born again. As I listened to a good sermon about this idea, and the need for progressives to reclaim it so that passion once again is portion of faith, and the rational becomes the radical, I heard something that disagreed with me. At the moment the words floated effortlessly into the congregational milieu, I knew they felt wrong to me. I could not agree with the idea that being born again meant that we have to die to something else.

There is nothing in the text that supports this idea, which leads me to believe that any juxtaposition of death and birth that we cling to today must have its rise in tradition. The only things that are set against one another in this text are the ideas of heaven and flesh, which if carried out to an extreme would give credence to the heretical idea of dualism. However, I am not concerned with the historical implications of a heretical dualism; instead, I want to introduce the thoughts that have once again allowed me to consider the term "born again" Christian.

First, when we juxtapose the ideas of birth and death we are saying that there is something about us that is not quite right. This something is so grievous that it can no longer live or dwell within us once we have become "born again." Furthermore, we must find some way of killing off that part of ourselves in order to live a faithful life. There are a number of difficulties with this idea. Death is final, it is penultimate act of a human life. When we choose death or when death chooses us there are no more choices to make. Life ends when death begins.

Choosing to equate the idea of being born again with death is choosing to believe that our current life is unworthy of saving. I cannot abide by that notion. Regardless of the extent of our depravity there is always a part of every human being that represents God in this world. To believe that the death of ourselves is required for new life is to believe that nothing in our lives is worthy of saving. Moreover, this "cold turkey" Christianity sets us up for failure from the get go. In fact, the grief and mourning that generally occurs with death is more likely to force us to return to the very things we were supposed to "die" to in the first place. Therefore I think it is high time to reclaim and reinterpret this idea of being born again.

The first thing I want to do is to claim the idea that being born again involves sex, or more precisely copulation and conception. I don’t know where or when we discovered that Christians should be ashamed of sex and furthermore I don’t really care. I just want us to realize that we are wrong about it and repent. Through sex the birth of a new life is possible; it is a mysterious and wonderful act that is part recreation and re-creation. It is only through the reclamation of the sacredness of sex and sexuality that we can even begin to understand what it means to be born again.

Conception is the act that creates new life. So, when we talk about being born again we are talking about re-conception rather than death. Furthermore, re-conception is not as cognitive as it sounds. Re-conception is an act of passion, a melding of spirit and flesh into a union that seeks to create something new through the love, tenderness and care that is a part of the sacredness of the act itself. In the contemporary world we have turned conception into a cognitive act or an act of science and robbed it of its mystery and passion. Conception has become one of two things in the modern world. It has either become a cognitive term that speaks of a rational imagination; or of the science of bringing life into the world. In our search for predictability we have turned a passionate and sacred act into a multi-billion dollar industry.

To be born again is to take part in a copulative act with God. There is a moment when the Spirit reaches out to us that we must passionately grab hold of and enter into willingly. In order to be born again, we must enter into an act of co-creation with the Creator. Flesh and spirit must sensuously grapple with one another and passionately embrace the possibilities that lay before them. The only way this can happen is if spirit and flesh are of the same substance. Rather than subordinating one to the other, both should have a say in the process. Much like the relationship between male and female, the relationship between spirit and flesh should be one of mutuality, love, respect and care. It is only through that kind of relationship that we can celebrate the conception or re-conception necessary for life and/or life abundantly.

In the end, death is not the beginning of new life, re-conception is. It is only through the beautiful, mysterious and wonderful act of copulation that life has any possibility of newness. To be born again is to be re-conceived. It is step freshly upon the earth again for the first time, seeing anew the possibilities for abundant life in the passionate embrace that co-creates a new vision on this earth. Being born again is not just about seeing though. Being born again means passionately embracing the possibilities of the world through new eyes, fresh limbs and a re-invigorated heart that is ready to engage in the practice of love, care, and respect that the world so desperately needs at this moment in time.

grace and peace

Irony or collusion

2006-06-07T19:29:00.000-06:00

My spouse works at a local hospital here in Denver. The street on which this hospital rests houses two other hospitals (hospital row is its nickname).

I happened to be walking home from her work place yesterday when I noticed something odd. As I passed the hospitals, I noticed hot dog carts sitting out in front of two of them. The menus were filled with nitrate-rich processed meat-sicles, ranging from the innocuous American hot dog to Bratwurst to even (for the health conscious) a veggie dog. Along with these "parts is parts" meals the carts vendors sold potato chips and soft drinks and various other foods that have half-lives longer than my life expectancy.

Ironic isn't it? The places we go to heal from whatever ails us are also the places we can go to eat what will cause us to ail in the long run. Unfortunately, the lines were long and the green spaces were inhabited with people in long hospital gowns or worse yet, scrubs, eating the processed pleasure dogs.

It would seem, at least to me, that common sense would prevail and hospitals would search for ways to beacons of health rather than purveyors of empty calories. Then again, without the venders the hospitals would suffer and lose some of their clientele. Ahhh, the mighty bottom line, could the hospitals secretly enjoy the presence of these carts of culinary crap?

Actually, what this is indicative of is the cultural ethos that only treats or manages symptoms rather than seeking to do the hard work of fighting the disease. Now, I realize that labels are being placed on packages in order to better inform the consumer. However, all the labels do is tell people how badly they are eating. The only way to stop them from eating it is to treat the disease of ignorance. Information and knowledge are two entirely different things, and I have to wonder if we have confused to two, or at least merged them in some fashion.

There is no magic pill that cures ignorance; the only way to make a difference is to be different and to think differently. One of these days we might understand that seeking health, be it physical, mental, emotional or spiritual, might provide a more satisfying life than a quick hot dog before we head into the hospital.

grace and peace

The Senate Debates Marriage

2006-06-05T13:33:00.000-06:00

There are a number of things to talk about this day. However, what piques my interest is the Senate's move to open the floor for debate about a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. They know they don't have the votes for it to pass, but they still want to have the debate in order to shore up their base of support for the November elections.

A kind of, "here, we've screwed most everything else up and wasted a lot of time and money, but we tried to ban gay marriage; that makes us okay, right?" The theological and the political are danger bedfellows. This leads me to wonder if there is any possibility for a future between these two important disciplines. I would say "yes" in general. However, given the current method of usage the marriage between these two is abusive at best.

I believe these two disciplines are married in a manner that can be described as the politically theological. This means that the primary modus operandi is political through which theology is then interpreted and applied. There are a number of problems with the method. First, it gives primacy to political concerns over theological concerns. The political culture in our country today is populated by fear, abuse and manipulation. For political gain, we will spin the meaning out of a subject (deconstruction) and then attempt to refill the concept with trivial applications that hold little or no value or grounding. When we do this with theological concepts it is called “relativism” and is eschewed by the common Christian. However when a politician does it, it is called appealing to a constituency. I call it pandering.

Take marriage for instance. The legal term, I believe, is a signification of a mutually agreeable union (a contract) between two people who seek to share lives, experiences, and property with one another. This is the political (civil) meaning as well. This legal and contractual view of marriage is the most relevant when it comes to history and tradition. Marriage, in the Christian community, was not formally conducted for many hundreds of years. Therefore, the civil meaning is the most historical and has undergone the most scrutiny throughout the ages (I doubt if every marriage in the Roman Empire was mutually agreeable).

Politically speaking, the civil meaning has been spun out and a trivial "Christian" meaning has replaced it. It is important to realize that the church has long recognized the importance and primacy of the civil contract of marriage. The theological importance of marriage is a latecomer to the dance, but nevertheless important to examine.

The theological meanings of marriage have their roots in two doctrines, the doctrine of creation and redemption (most of this information comes from the following source: Christian Marriage (1986) The office of worship for the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Louisville, KY: The Westminster Press.). These two doctrines are applied in the following manner. First, "marriage is understood to be grounded in the doctrine of creation and thus the gift of God to all humanity" (p. 82). Second, "marriage is an issue of discipleship," whereby two individuals are contractually bound to one another and "allow their relationship with Christ to form the pattern for the covenant of marriage" (p. 82). To me, these two statements seem to be far away from the politically theological rhetoric that permeates the marriage debate.

In the politically theological realm, the roots of marriage as a civil contract are usurped and a fear-based theological justification replaces the historical meanings. Generally speaking, a theology of marriage has been constructed on heterosexist fears about gays and lesbians. Thus, the gift of God for all humanity is rationalized and replaced with a gift of God for some of humanity. Caveats about sexual orientation are added and gays and lesbians are demonized for committing to one another. Furthermore, by adding a fear-based theological meaning to marriage, the Christians that espouse it are no longer required to examine their own abuses of marriage. Heterosexuals are to be blamed for the problems and abuses of marriage. We have not honored the idea of covenant and discipleship, nor have we considered it a gift from God for all. Rather than examine this log that has created the broken family, we choose to skewer and lambaste the mote of gay and lesbian marriage. The politically theological does not work because it lacks responsibility, accountability and is devoid of theological, moral and ethical force.

I would propose that we reverse things and begin to examine policies through a lens of the theologically political. This imparts a primacy to theology as the governing impetus for examining policy. Therefore, we begin with theology, in this case the doctrines of creation and redemption and move to the political, the civil contract of marriage. Here is how I interpret this working.

The doctrine of creation is bound up in the idea of the Imago Dei, or the image of God which is said to be a part of all of humanity. Being bearers of this image, we all have particular rights, such as rights to food, to not be abused, to shelter, to love and be loved without fear, and so on. Bearing in mind that all are created in the image of God and each one of us in some way represents God on this earth, then the relationships and attachments we form bear this image as well. The gift of marriage from God through the doctrine of creation cannot support the exclusion of committed covenants between gay and lesbian partners, if we are to faithfully uphold one another as representatives of the Imago Dei. The doctrine of redemption as seen through discipleship is based on a commitment to the teachings and life of Christ. It is not dependent on sexual orientation; rather it is dependent upon the willingness to live under the constant umbrella of grace in a foreign world. Furthermore, unless one wants to limit God’s grace, then there is no theologically sound argument that would exclude gays and lesbians from the table as faithful witnesses in a hostile world.

Finally, as theologically political Christians we must apply the doctrines of creation and redemption to the civil contract of marriage. Rather than emptying it of its historical importance for the order of the state and applying vacuous fear-based theological constructs, we are to look upon the intent of the policy through the lenses of theology. In this case, a theologically sound view of marriage for Christians would be two people who, viewed as images of God and disciples of Christ, desire to covenant with one another, under the grace of God and authority of the state, in order to live full lives through the giving and receiving of their love for one another.

Theology and politics must mingle with one another if the world is to become a place of justice and peace. The question is, which discipline will lead and which discipline will follow...

grace and peace

A New Look

2006-06-02T09:44:00.000-06:00

Some of the more frequent visitors to this blog may have noticed a slight change in the format. I have added a third column on the left that includes an ad or two and a couple of books that I am reading at the moment. Since I spend a good portion of my days involved in the intricacies of the written word I thought I might share a few of my favorites with you and little bit about why I believe them to be good reads. I have debated long and hard about the inclusion of ads in this space and you can see the decision that I have come to. I promise not to clutter the entire site with the buggers, but it can't hurt to have a couple around. Finally, if you are having trouble with the new layout, please let me know. My skills as an HTML editor are minimal and it took a lot of tweaking to get things looking decent. If there are problems let me know so that I can try and fix them.

Now, a couple of words about the books I have chosen...

God & Religion in the Postmodern World by David Ray Griffin

Grifin is a process theologian who has written several good books that border on being approachable. This is, by far, one of the easier books to read. Postmodernity has been weaving its way into the theology and structures of the church for a while. However, it is only now gaining a good bit more attention. The problems I have with the current renditions of postmodernity in the church are many. It has been used as a cover for relativism, casual theology and worship, and even nihilism in some forms.

Postmodernism is many things and it defies a conventional definition. Griffin's approach seeks to illuminate several doctrines through a particular postmodern lens. It is ambitious, but in the midst of his work there is a distinct call for people of varied theologies to sit at the table together and learn from and live with one another, all the while holding on to the tension present between their beliefs. This is a real attempt to visualize theology beyond the simple dogmatic phrases that have defined it in the modern era.

The Angry Christian by Andrew Lester

This is a book about pastoral care and theology. Furthermore, it is a book that seeks to reclaim anger as a vital component of the Christian life. Lester does a wonderful job of pulling together a vast swath information and research from a variety of disciplines in order to theologically construct a new meaning of anger for the lives of Christians. I have found a great deal of helpful information and practical skills in this book and would recommend it for ministers and laity alike. This is not the last time that I will recommend a book from Lester.

Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn

This book occupies a permanent place on my bedside table. Truthfully, I have not finished it in the year that I have owned it. While I have multiple reasons for not finishing it, the first is that it is so rich in wisdom and practical application that I can read no more than a chapter or two at a time before needing to set it down and contemplate. Kabat-Zinn uses the meditative technique of mindfulness in order help people find and live full and meaningful lives. There is a deep sense of fullness that permeates the pages of the book. Whenever the opportunity comes, I look forward to picking it up and reading just a few pages.

These three books have enriched my life and understandings of the world and humanity. Should you choose to read them, I hope you find the same satisfaction.

grace and peace

Colorado State of Mind

2006-05-31T11:23:00.000-06:00

As you cross the state line into Colorado something washes over your body. It's a thin film that exposes whatever idea about exercise or the outdoors you might have previously held as a farce. For me, vacations used to entail sitting quietly, reading a book or watching television or sleeping late. Occasionally, I would rise from the indention I created on the couch and go for a short walk or bask in the sunlight. If I was ambitious I would play golf or even make it too the beach for a brisk, but short, walk; serious outings generally revolved around food or shopping. However, all of that changed when we crested a hill and saw the purple snow-tipped mountains of Colorado jut into the horizon. Suddenly, the sky was bluer, the air more crisp, and with each breath we wanted to be outdoors, moving amongst the hills and trees. Vacations became destinations where we were compelled, no propelled, out into a new world. You don't just drive I-70 through the Rockies, you experience the mountains as your car thrusts you from valley to canyon to mountain pass. Your body itches and twitches as you take in the landscape. It has nothing to do with boredom or uncomfortability; rather you see a hill and want to climb it to discover what new views it holds or you discover a small creek that winds through a valley and you want to see where it takes you. I have never thought of an interstate as magical, but when you are on I-70 and you hit Vail Pass a novel view of the world explodes before you.

Just as my mind is growing and stretching from the theological explorations that doctoral work holds, my body is also experiencing new things again. I now weigh the same as I did on the day of my graduation from college, over ten years ago. I get up early and exercise almost every morning and am in better shape now than in any time in the past ten years. I awake each morning with a satisfying soreness that has more to do with pushing the limits of my body than with the inevitable creaks and groans that come with age (though there are those as well). When I lived on the east coast I was resigned to the idea that my waist size would inevitably increase an about an inch every two years. Today, I am swallowed by my pants and shorts; the thin layer of fat that occupied my waist has been eaten by that same Colorado film that pushes me towards the fresh air and mountains.

When I reflect on these physical transformations it pushes me to think about my life on the east coast, especially the pervasive mentality towards a sedentary lifestyle. What made it so easy for me to sit, rather than move? Furthermore, what is it about my life now that makes me more motivated to move? There are a number of easy things I can contribute as answers. I don't drink soft drinks anymore (I have had maybe six in the nine months we have lived here). I don’t eat at fast food restaurants as regularly as I did in Richmond. I cut down my caloric intake and introduced more fruit and vegetables into my diet (though not nearly enough, my wife would say). I eat several small meals throughout the day and one big one at dinner time. I exercise regularly. I see vast numbers of people exercising on a daily basis, riding bikes, jogging, or walking. I don't see nearly as many overweight or obese people on a daily basis. All of these things have contributed to my physical transformation over the past few months. However, I can think of two other reasons that are less obvious but equally important.

First, there is an aesthetic, a sense of beauty, at work in Colorado that I have not experienced elsewhere. I grew up around the mountains on the east coast, but no mountain range has ever captivated me like the Rockies. Where ever I wander I want to see the mountains. Their beauty beckons me, drawing me in like a moth to flame. Whether it is the sheer face of a canyon in western Colorado or the gentle rolling foothills that are closer to home, I find myself wanting to explore and touch the beauty that constantly befalls my eyes.

Second, I believe a satisfaction with my vocational pursuits has contributed to my physical changes. I believe that I have found my home, theologically and vocationally. I thoroughly enjoyed my work with the counseling center and congregation in Richmond, but I always felt like I needed something more. Here, I am satisfied in my own skin. I am writing about things that matter to me. I am exploring my creative side, examining the dark corners of my theological structures and bringing to light novel connections. I am comfortable enough to be me and to let others be themselves.

I hope that I will never again underestimate the power and feeling of a vocational home. My very life depends upon it, and it is from this home that I draw life and power. I won't be a sophist and say that Colorado is perfect; nor would I admit that it is a panacea for all that ails the world. However, for me, at this moment in time, it provides the shelter, the container, that allows me to reach out to a weary world and try and make a difference...

A deconstruction of sin: putting Calvin on the couch

2006-05-30T11:44:00.000-06:00

This is the final piece to the paper I wrote; and for a moment my final word on sin. Whenever I begin to explore strictly theological themes I run the risk of being obtuse or irrelevant. I have tried to explain my points clearly, in approachable language and concepts. However, theology, especially good sound theology is difficult. Easy theology runs a greater risk of being damaging to community in the long-run. Furthermore, developing a lived coherent theology is important because it helps us have a coherent worldview that accounts for what we see and experience. Theology is most often the result of our experiences in life and how we see God working through ourselves and others. Lest we forget, theology is finally an exercise in surmising the presence of God in our midst, or the lack thereof in the case of sin...

Deconstruction

Deconstruction is a critical theory often applied to texts in a manner where the critic engages in "undermining, subverting, exposing, undoing, transgressing, or demystifying… traditional ideas, traditional limits, traditional logic, authoritative readings, privileged readings, illusions of objectivity, mastery or consensus, the referential meaning of a text, or simply what the text asserts or says" (Ellis, 1988, p. 261). Furthermore, through the deconstructive process the critic does not put forth a new interpretation of the text, but instead "The traditional idea is… retained in order that we can focus on the act of subversion itself which, however, does not constitute a final rejection of that idea" (1988, p. 262). Deconstruction thus subverts the authority of a text while at the same time holding the text as authoritative. It is therefore a multi-layered reading of a text that seeks the subtleties within the text that undermine its authority. However, if the authority of the text is not retained then there is nothing to subvert and the deconstructionist could do nothing more than offer a critical analysis (Ellis, 1988, p. 263-264). Finally, deconstruction is a process that "hopes to neutralize the system—not by erecting another truth in its place (which would only re-establish an opposition) but—by laughing at it" (Gall, 1990, p. 415). In order to deconstruct John Calvin’s constructions of total depravity and original sin, I will put him through a fictional psychotherapeutic session.

Putting Calvin on the Couch

I imagine the following conversation taking place between John Calvin and his therapist after the final version of the Institutes of Christian Religion was completed.

Therapist (T): John, welcome back. Please have a seat, tell me how life is treating you.

John Calvin (JC): It is a fine day, although I am having trouble enjoying it.

T: You're not able to enjoy the day? Tell me about that.

JC: It is the same things that have been bothering me since day one. I can't seem to shake this feeling that I am letting someone down. The guilt is totally overwhelming and I just can't shake it (McNeill, 1960, p. 253). It's as though every time I try and think about who I am and what I want to do, I get overwhelmed with despair at how selfish and corrupt I have become.

T: It must be difficult to continually beat yourself up on the inside. You have been working hard to get to know yourself and it makes you feel depressed. I was just remembering some of our previous sessions and I have to wonder what would happen if you were to let yourself remember some of the good things you have done, that tell others who you are. I know you have this desire to be honest about your faults, but can't you also be honest about your strengths? Even you have admitted that "knowledge of ourselves lies first in considering what were given at creation and how generously God continues his favor towards us" (p. 242). That means we should consider our gifts as well as our faults, right John?

JC: Yes, I did say that. However, I said that to contrast how depraved we have become since sin was introduced into the world. Sin is inescapable and it hides God gifts from me.

T: Let's keep the conversation focused on you, instead of everyone. I want to hear you use the term "I" instead of "we." Totally depraved is such strong word. Total implies everything, and yet John you are able to recall what your gifts are and how they can be used for good in the world. Doesn't that mean that there are parts of us that are less affected by this despairing sinfulness? How can we know what is good and right if all we are is totally sinful and corrupt? Moreover, to call yourself depraved means that you are full of evil or immorality. Yet the life you have lived includes many good actions and desire to love God. Are those the actions of a totally depraved individual? All of this talk makes me wonder what would it be like if you considered yourself to be a vessel of a number of good, bad or neutral qualities? Even you have admitted to a "primal worthiness" (p. 242) that is a part of who you are. Moreover, you have told me on a number of occasions that "the mind restrains itself from sinning… because it loves and reveres God as Father, it worships and adores him as Lord" (p. 43). I interpret that to mean that we are capable of doing good things out of love for God, can you see those possibilities?

JC: Sure, buried deep within me might be some of those good qualities, but as soon as I try and recall them I am painfully aware of the value I place on my gifts and then I tend "to be unduly credulous about them" (p. 243). My arrogance about my gifts leads me to believe that "Nothing, however slight, can be credited to [me] without depriving God of his honor, and… falling into ruin through brazen confidence" (p. 255). I just can't escape this vicious cycle of sin. Even when I consider these good things I feel like I am letting God down by relying on myself. See what I mean about feeling totally depraved, it's like no matter what I do I can't escape the reality of my situation. It is so depressing.

T: What I hear you say is that while you often feel overwhelmed by the amount of sin in your life, but there are also moments when you are able to comprehend something good about yourself. Even though this might lead you to down a path of where you feel proud or arrogant, it does raise an interesting point that counters your ideas about depravity being totally consuming. John, what becomes apparent to me in our conversation is that you not only see the depressing parts of your life, but you also see a glimmer of something good. Otherwise you wouldn’t know that you were so depraved of in the first place. Therefore, maybe you and everyone else are not totally depraved but instead you might be mostly or predominantly depraved, leaving some room for goodness to spring forth from within.

JC: I hear what you are saying and I want to agree, but I am afraid that if I give in to the idea that there are some good things about me, I will no longer be dependent on God's goodness and grace to do good things in the world.

T: I thought I heard you say something to the effect that you and God work together for good in the world. Is that correct?

JC: In a sense yes. I am saying that God's grace works through me to do good things in the world (p. 306-307).

T: Tell me how God could choose to work through such a corrupted vessel.

JC: Well, actually it is the grace that does the work; I am merely a servant of grace. I don’t initiate the action; God initiates it and compels me to act on its behalf. I can’t say why God chooses humans other than we are the pinnacle of creation and have rational capabilities that allow us to recognize our depravity.

T: I am not sure if I understand how such a corrupted vessel could even hear or interpret the grace of God. Yet, I often see you doing things that embody the love and grace experienced in Scripture and in the life of Jesus. I am not sure if this makes sense to you, John, but I wonder if we might find a new way of describing the state of humanity. The word total just seems so black and white, all or nothing, when the actions of human beings occupy a space that seems grayer. Could you see yourself occupying a gray area of life?

JC: Well, maybe, if it weren't for original sin. I really feel like I was born this way, the offspring of corrupt flesh and blood. I guess a really dark gray might work if I factored in being endowed with good gifts by God and the grace and redemption through Jesus.

T: Original sin, what does that mean to you?

JC: It's simple really. Adam and Eve were disobedient to God. As a result, their good nature was corrupted and everyone since that time has been the offspring of corrupted parents, inheriting this depravity I keep obsessing about (p. 251).

T: Wow, you have really thought this out. First it's total depravity and then I come to find out it is a part of your nature, inherited from two mythic characters in the Bible.

JC: Blasphemy!

T: John, settle down. I am merely stating one interpretation of Adam and Eve. What I am trying to say is that their story is a metaphor for humanity's relationship with God. In the end, we come out with similar conclusions although we take a different path to get there. We both understand that something went wrong with humanity's relationship with God and we have felt some form of distance between us since that time.

JC: If I weren't paying you, I'd get up and leave right now.

T: John, think about it for a moment. We are arriving at a similar conclusion, just taking different paths to get there. Think about my path for a moment. If the creation stories are mythic and represent a way of imagining our relationship with God, how does that change your idea of original sin?

JC: Well, the relationship would still be estranged, right? And, sin would still be a part of humanity. Only, with your way original sin wouldn't be an inherited feature from the nature of the parents. I guess that it would have to be passed down through some kind of communication though. Otherwise, we would all get better at being good, and I know that isn't happening.

T: Great job John! That is a wonderful reframing of original sin. Rather than an inherited nature or disposition, there might be a communicated sense of sinfulness through family, culture and society. Furthermore, maybe the Original in original sin isn’t so original after all.

JC: Huh?

T: Well, think about it this way. If the features aren't inherited, then babies aren't born with pervasive sinful dispositions. Instead they are taught disobedience by those they grow up around. Which leads me to think that if there isn't a predisposition to sinfulness, then sinfulness is just the replaying of others sins; there is nothing original about it! John, it has been wonderful seeing you again, but our time is about up, don't be a stranger.

JC: It's been good to see you as well. I will think about what you have said, but I'm not sure that it is going to change anything. If there is anything that I know, it is how deep sin runs in my life. Black or white or dark gray, original or not it’s always there and I just can't forget it.

Conclusion

John Calvin's concepts of total depravity and original sin have informed the life of the Presbyterian Church for many years. Through careful biblical and theological analysis he lays out a case that beckons the reader to know themselves and know themselves as unworthy before God. Through Calvin, an understanding of our dependence on God becomes easy to see in light of the totality of our corruption. Four hundred and fifty years later through the writings of popular pastors/theologians, Calvin's message has been either watered down or forgotten. Thoughts about sin are watered down by believing that God's purpose is to give us purpose, or they are destroyed through the power of positive thinking. This unfortunate circumstance has created a vacuum whereby Christians and systems are rarely held accountable for the actions they commit. By putting Calvin on the couch, I attempted to deconstruct his view of sin, showing both its limits and authority. There is no denying the estrangement humans feel from God and the endless searches to discover why. Maybe, through a revamped Calvin we can understand the depths of our depravity and gain some insight into the love of our Creator.

grace and peace...

deconstructing sin - the destruction of sin

2006-05-23T11:40:00.000-06:00

I realize these last few posts are pretty long, but hey, the paper was 18 pages and at least I am breaking up in to palatable chunks. Of course I realize that palatable is contextual...

Rick Warren and Joel Osteen are culturally well-known evangelical pastors and authors; and their popularity makes their writings theologically significant for contemporary culture. Their appeal is far reaching and each of them has written commercially successful books about what it means to live as a Christian in the world today. As of a year ago, Rick Warren’s, The Purpose Driven Life, had sold over twenty-three million copies in English and has been published in numerous languages. His book remains on the New York Times Bestseller list in the Self-Help category and has spawned numerous side projects including journals, music and scripture memorization cards. The Purpose Driven Life is the bestselling non-fiction book in publishing history. Rick Warren is also the pastor a 22,000 member congregation in California and speaks at various engagements around the world. Joel Osteen is the author of Your Best Life Now, a book that sold 2.5 million copies in its first eight months. Osteen is the pastor of a 30,000 member congregation in Houston, Texas, and is watched around the world through a television ministry. Recently, Osteen has signed a book deal that is valued at ten to thirteen million dollars depending upon the sales of his new book. The popularity of these two pastors and authors is undeniable given the attendance of their churches and the statistics of their written works. However, the question that remains for me is what kind of theology do they advocate? Moreover, how have they contributed to the destruction of sin in popular theology?

As I read these two books, I couldn’t help but think of the fast food company McDonalds. In 2000, McDonalds introduced the advertising slogan “We Love to See You Smile.” In my opinion, McDonalds provides two things to their consumer. The first is a quick and easy solution to the immediate problem of hunger felt by an individual. Secondly, they provide a diet of empty calories that fills that same hunger for a brief period of time but has no lasting value for the nutritional needs of a human body. Holding the slogan “We Love to See You Smile” together with the two values placed on a McDonald’s meal helps me draw an analogy to Warren and Osteen. Namely, these authors provide theological consumers with quick and easy fixes, empty theological calories and a theological life that never reaches beyond the depth of a smile. While this analogy is applied to the totality of their works, it is their treatment of sin that is in sharp contrast to the work of Calvin, and is of concern in this essay.

The Purpose Driven Life

Of the two books we will examine, The Purpose Driven Life (PDL) has the most in common with Calvin’s Institutes of Christian Religion. However, I make that statement knowing that when compared side-by-side they share very little. Where the ICR is a four course gourmet steak dinner, the PDL is a Big Mac. Both meals might consist of beef, bread and vegetables but the quality of the ingredients that go into each meal are quite different. Before moving on to the PDL, I want to share two initial impressions in order to set the context for an exposition of his use of sin throughout the pages of the PDL.

The first impression I was aware of was the audience. With Calvin the audience seems to include Christians, philosophers, theologians and others interested in the Protestant movement. On the other hand, with Warren the audience is a Christian or a non-Christian, with an emphasis on the individual. The opening and guiding question for his book is “What on earth am I here for [emphasis mine]” (Warren, 2002, p. 9)? Furthermore, while the PDL expounds upon the necessity and benefits of community, they are couched in how the community is beneficial to the individual. This led me to read Calvin with an implied “we” versus reading of Warren with an implied “I.”

The second impression concerned the language used in both works. Calvin relied on traditional theological language, using rebuttals or refutations to explain his ideas. Calvin used the language and style of his time to provide a depthful argument for a way of living as Protestants in a Catholic world. On the whole, Warren’s PDL ignores theological language seeking to make points through repetition and quotation of paraphrased Scripture passages. Furthermore, the PDL contains little novel theological insight, relying on repeated phrases as pragmatic tools rather than theologically constructed meanings that help a reader critically reflect on their lifestyle in relationship to who God has called them to be.

Sin in the Purpose Driven Life

There is not a sustained discussion of sin in the PDL. Therefore, I will attempt to cull together several brief passages that either mention the word sin or imply its existence. I believe that for Warren sin is a peripheral theological and practical term, which explains his light treatment of it. Furthermore, I believe the word self-centered is sometimes substituted for sin. I interpret his use of this term as a psychological alternative to sin, meant to soften or replace the theologically loaded term and attend to its personal rather than corporate manifestations.

Warren states that sin is “failing to give God glory” (2002, p. 55) and that our failure to give God glory is rooted in our “prideful rebellion” (p. 55). This is in contrast to Warren’s statement that “living for God’s glory is the greatest achievement we can accomplish with our lives” (p. 55). Furthermore, Warren believes that God is glorified when an individual takes on acts of worship, love, service and evangelism and when they become more like Christ (p. 55-56). His discourse on giving God glory helps define what sin is not, rather than further elucidating what sin is and how it might function in the life of a Christian. Roughly fifty pages later Warren makes his second statement concerning sin and its affect on a person’s relationship with God. Here he states, “sin does disconnect us from intimate fellowship with God [emphasis his]” (p. 109). Warren also provides a small list of acts that, if read critically, could be construed as sinful. He says, “We grieve God’s Spirit and quench our fellowship with him by disobedience, conflict with others, busyness, friendship with the world, and other sins” (p. 109). Finally, Warren pays tribute to the idea of original sin when he admits that, “the image [of God] is incomplete [in a human being]… damaged and distorted by sin” (p. 173). This final reference to sin is weak at best with no supporting statements or elaboration (there are two other mentions of the word sin, both comment on how to deal with sin and will be dealt with later). Through Warren’s writings about sin in the PDL, I can state that sin has to do with a personal relationship with God and how that relationship is conducted. This is far cry from Calvin’s insistence on the knowledge of our total depravity and our dependence on God. It also progresses the notion that damage has been caused to one traditional understanding of sin and its role in the life of a Christian.

Before concluding, I want to briefly examine Warren’s use of the term self-centered. This term is not explicitly defined in the context of the PDL. However, it is used on a couple of occasions to describe immaturity, as in the case of babies (p. 182) and as the counter position of self-sacrificing service (p. 232, 233, 265). Self-centeredness is a psychological concept that has to do with preoccupation with the self. It is generally thought of as a negative term and the way it is used in the PDL does not give me cause to think otherwise. However, being self-centered has vastly different connotations than does being sinful. The term self-centered is fairly new and pertains to an individual rather than a community or widely applicable theological theme such as sin. Moreover, because of Warren’s focus on self-sacrifice and self-denial it is unclear what, if anything is left to this wonderful self that was created for a purpose in the first place.

Finally, because Warren does not take sin seriously, he cannot take grace seriously either. Calvin’s high doctrine of grace only works because of his emphasis on the depravity of humanity. Warren’s lukewarm statements about sin empty it of almost all of the traditional meanings that it carried leaving a hulking shell that has very little use for the Christian life. There are two references in Warren’s book concerning the antidote for sin. First, Warren states that “The battle for sin is won or lost in your mind” (p. 210). Furthermore, Warren believes this battle is won when someone finds themselves “adopting how God thinks…” (p. 182). Therefore, not only is sin a personal thing between God and a particular human being, but any “battle” waged against sin occurs and is won only through the power of the mind. One of the major problems with Warren’s concept of sin is that there is no systemic accountability for families, groups, communities, nations and others who find themselves in positions where they are abusing power in ways that diminish life. In the PDL the only thing accountable is an individual, which leads to a flawed and incomplete definition of sin that is dysfunctional at best. This theological “Big Mac” that Warren has provided is merely a quick meal and a bevy of empty calories that bears some resemblance to Calvin. However, Warren fails his readers by not challenging the sinful structures that permeate their lives and actions, leading to a collapse in: (1) personal responsibility and (2) dependence on God.

Your Best Life Now

Joel Osteen’s Your Best Life Now (UBLN) is best described as a self-help book with a mediocre dose of Christianity thrown in for good measure. Its chapters are an amalgamation of anecdotes, self-help taglines and rules for living a proper Christian life that emphasize positive thinking and a positive attitude. Overall, there is a theological naïveté at work in this book. This is evident through the simplistic ethic that he tells Christians to live by; namely, if I am good then God will reward me with “favor” (this could mean health, wisdom, but it mainly seems to concern material wealth and objects, i.e. – finding a good parking space, pages 42-43) and punish those who have or will do things that might hurt me in some way. Where Warren uses repetition and paraphrased scripture to prove his points, Osteen is concerned with anecdotal evidence and positive thinking as the primary resources for Christian living. Furthermore, where Warren seems to be concerned with sin as being self-centered, Osteen borders on the idea that it is a sin if one is not somewhat centered on the self. In fact it is not until the second to last chapter that Osteen even mentions the idea of giving and his reference is mostly with regard to the practice of tithing of one’s gifts (tithing includes a variety of gifts, but is mostly concerned with giving monetarily). This leads me to conclude that if Rick Warren’s book is a theological Big Mac then UBLN is a hand full of French fries, great tasting but devoid of any lasting nutritional value.

Sin in Your Best Life Now

As one might expect from a self-help book, there are very few traditional theological themes defined in the pages of UBLN. By my count, the word “sins” is used one time in Osteen’s work. This makes it difficult to define and describe the antithesis to Osteen’s perfectly positive human (though I will venture a guess). Instead of the term sin, a conglomeration of terms and phrases are used throughout the book to describe the opposite of a positive Christian disposition. Some of these include: “that ‘poor-old-me mentality,’ always negative, always depressed” (p. 14), “negative frame of mind” (p. 16), and “a wrong thinking pattern that keeps us imprisoned in defeat” (p. 30). Furthermore, Osteen states that “If you see yourself as unqualified, insignificant, unattractive, inferior, or inadequate, you will probably act in accordance with your thoughts… you will imagine yourself as a born loser, a washout, unworthy of being loved and accepted” (p. 56-57). This negative cognitive disposition is the closest he comes to laying out a definition of sin for the Osteenian vision of Christian life. As a result Osteen is, in many ways, the anti-Calvin. He focuses on the created good image and implies grace-filled living but completely ignores the idea that humans might have fallen to such a degree that only God can pull them out.

Throughout his work it is apparent that self is to be regarded only in terms of the positive and that anything contrary to this position is to be considered anathema in the life of a Christian. Osteen uses a variety of anecdotes to prove the value of his theological stance on humanity and our relationship with God. Generally speaking, these anecdotes move through a predictable pattern: negative thinking, negative life events, positive epiphany, change in self-image, change in circumstance and finally blessings (often materially-oriented) arrive from God (for examples see the anecdotes on pages 47, 110-111, & 117-119). Unfortunately this leads me to believe that, according to Osteen, sin should not occupy a prominent place in the lives of “healthy” human beings. Furthermore, his destruction of sin also destroys any hope of dependence on God for redemption and grace. Instead, an Osteenian Christian is dependent on and faithful to God in order to receive blessings and “favor” (p. 44), self-esteem (p. 91) and payback “for all the unfair things that have happened to us” (p. 164).

To conclude, Warren and Osteen provide a microcosm of thought concerning the place, definition and function of sin in popular contemporary Christian writing. Furthermore, because their books reach a large audience and their church ministries include large sums of people, Warren and Osteen have theological influence over the popular view of sin in the life of Christians. However, it is evident to me that anyone who professes to be a Warrenite or Osteenian Christian would have little or no concept of a theological construction of sin. Moreover, they might be oblivious to their own complicity in the sinful structures and systems that permeate the world. In the end, the Warrenite or Osteenian reader is no longer dependent on a God who offers the redemption and grace necessary for a sinful human being. Instead, sin is destroyed and the readers are left with depending on God for purpose or blessings. Unfortunately, this is a theological meal that can only satisfy for a little while, that is until these devoted Christians catch a glimpse of the next McDonalds on the horizon. Ultimately, these works lead me back to Calvin in order to deconstruct and recover his ideas about sin.

deconstructing sin - sin Calvin-style

2006-05-17T10:28:00.000-06:00

I have finally finished my last paper for this quarter... now on to bigger and better things, though I am not quite sure what. I thought I would post the rest of my paper in chunks. The first portion was done last week, and I ended up having to cut the whole first experience because of page length issues. This week I will post my synopsis of Calvin's concepts of sin. Later on, I will post my interpretation of Joel Osteen and Rick Warren's concepts of sin. Finally, I will post my attempt at deconstructing some of Calvin's ideas through a fictional conversation between Calvin and his therapist...

I remember the dour portraits of John Calvin that found their way onto the walls and covers of books at my seminary. The black and white drawings showed a man uncommitted to emotion with a long beard wearing the robes of a scholar. Many of the stories and legends of his life echoed the stark reality of the portrait. Furthermore, Calvin’s treatment of sin in the Institutes of Christian Religion (ICR) does nothing to counter these portraits of him. The ICR, according to the translator John T. McNeill, “is a living, challenging book that makes personal claims upon the reader. This is because it presents… that which laid hold upon the author himself” (1960, p. li). Therefore, I believe the ICR may be one of the first Protestant books that would fit in the contemporary book store category of “Christian living.” However, this purpose of Calvin’s text has been lost amongst the weighty language and depthful insights that challenge the reader to reflect theologically on their lives, as well as how God might be active in the world.

Furthermore, Calvin’s depth of thinking has relegated him to the halls and classrooms of seminaries, or the dark corners of local bars where students of theology speak in hushed tones about predestination, sin and total depravity. Through this essay, I hope to bring a little bit of Calvin out of this smoky obscure existence. Predestination, in my opinion, might better be left to the hushed slightly inebriated conversations of students and scholars, but sin and total depravity are too important to reside in the dark. If the ICR is truly a treatise on Christian living, then sin cannot be avoided. Calvin experienced the pervasiveness of sin as he watched persecuted Protestants die for their beliefs, and he obviously felt the weight of his own unworthiness before God. The effect sin on Calvin’s life necessitated a lengthy discussion of two concepts. The first, original sin, sought to describe the condition upon which humans inhabit the earth. The second, total depravity, was a natural result of Calvin’s understanding of original sin and functioned as a way of describing the actions of humanity in the world. These two terms come together to describe the pervasive nature of sin in the life of human beings.

Original Sin

Before diving too deeply into original sin, it is important to remember that Calvin considers two mutually reinforcing concepts to be necessary for true wisdom, knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves (McNeill, 1960, p. 35). Therefore, as Calvin opens the second book of the ICR with original sin he begins with the notion that what is important for human beings is the total knowledge of what we have been given by God, and also what we lack due to our condition following the “Fall.” Calvin states, “God’s truth requires us to… examin[e] ourselves: it requires the kind of knowledge that will strip us of all confidence in our own ability, deprive us of all occasion for boasting, and lead us to submission” (1960, p. 242). Calvin is sure that more we delve into the depths of our being, “the more dejected [we] become” (p. 244). True knowledge is therefore the result of our contemplation on how God created and endowed us with gifts meant for the good of the world contrasted with the reality that our state of being renders us incapable of fulfilling these good ends and bringing about God’s will for the world. For Calvin, despair is the only plausible result of contemplating the discrepancy between the intended ideal and the actual result, leading him to examine the historical reasons for our despondency.

The “Fall” of Adam and Eve, for Calvin, is the point in history when the originally intended and endowed positive abilities became utterly perverted. Calvin characterizes these mythic (I believe I just felt Calvin roll over in his grave at my use of the term mythic) figures as unfaithful, ambitious, proud and ungrateful. These qualities led to an act of disobedience that estranged them from God, and thus they committed the first, “original” sin. Calvin’s logic is quite clear and linear. Humanity was created “good” with qualities that matched our goodness. Adam and Eve were unfaithful and disobedient leading to estrangement from God. This estrangement perverted the good qualities, abilities and nature of Adam and Eve. Therefore, any child of Adam and Eve would be a child who is bathed in these impure qualities due to the parents’ fallen nature. Calvin states, “All of us, who have descended from impure seed, are born infected with the contagion of sin. In fact, before we saw the light of this life we were soiled and spotted in God’s sight” (p. 248). Original sin is not to be thought of as our complicity in Adam’s first sin, but instead an inherited feature that is the result of us being the progeny of an impure and perverted seed. All of this leads Calvin to assert that “Original Sin” is “a hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature, diffused into all parts of the soul, which first makes us liable to God’s wrath, then also brings forth in us those works which Scripture calls ‘works of the flesh’” (p. 251). Moreover, our birth into perpetually perverted generations, and the works we are a part of indicate the necessity of Calvin’s second theological term related to sin, total depravity.

Total Depravity

Total depravity is of primary concern for Calvin, without it grace and God mean very little. Through the imparting of Original Sin humanity can be said to reside in a state of depravity. That is, we are deprived of the nature and gifts God intended for us to use in the world. Calvin believes that being born of a broken nature means that we are “so vitiated and perverted in every part of our nature that by this great corruption we stand justly condemned and convicted before God, to whom nothing is acceptable but righteousness, innocence, and purity” (p. 251). Furthermore, Calvin believes “this perversity never ceases in us, but continually bears new fruits… [like] water ceaselessly bubbles up from a spring” (p. 251). We are thusly beginning to understand what Calvin means by way in which sin affects the totality of our being. In fact, it feels as though we have little choice in the matter! As we can see, through the eyes of Calvin our corruption extends to the core of our being, where it sits in relative safety reproducing itself through each action we take in the world. So consumed by sin are we, that even the good things we do in the world result in pride and arrogance enabling us to believe that we might be capable of goodness apart from God. We are perpetually and precariously poised preparing to pounce onto another misguided attempt at goodness, which can only result in the committing of another sin. For Calvin, the knowledge of the totality of our helplessness is necessary if we are to have any hope in the present or for the future. Total depravity, therefore, necessitates dependence on and humility towards God. As Calvin assures his readers, “whoever is utterly cast down and overwhelmed by the awareness of his calamity, poverty, nakedness, and disgrace has thus advanced farthest in knowledge of himself” (p. 267). The lower you are able to descend into your own hopelessness, powerlessness and helplessness, the greater your chances of experiencing the grace and goodwill of God. Total depravity is the totality of human “beingness” leading to total awareness of our total dependence upon the one who reveals the totality of our possibilities.

Through Calvin, sin claims a place of importance for those who wish to live life as a Christian. By original sin, human beings are made aware of the ideal possibilities and the corruption of their own abilities. Furthermore, through the concept of total depravity, all of humanity and Christians in particular are convicted to a point of utter dependence upon their Creator for hope and grace for the present and the future. For Calvin, true knowledge of oneself is only possible when one is willing to delve into the depths of their own depravity realizing what has been lost through the perpetuation of a broken humanity. Finally, sin is a primary feature of his volumes on Christian living, but he spends far more time explaining the benefits of Christian life and the goodness that can be found through dependence on God to be relegated to a simply sour soul. In fact I wonder if some of those dour portraits should be changed to recognize Calvin’s high doctrine of grace. Calvin worked hard to systematically lay out a reasonable argument for a particular brand of Christian theology. Unfortunately much of his hard work has been lost in contemporary popular manifestations of theology.

grace and peace

A De(con)struction of sin

2006-05-09T18:13:00.000-06:00

Unfortunately I must put off dealing with the "last things" for another week or two. I am in the midst of winding down this final quarter of my first year. I have completed one paper on how pastors might use the shared narratives of a congregation as a tool for helping them care for the community. I think it is a good paper, we'll see in a two weeks when I present it to the class and professor.

I am working on my second paper which is due next Wednesday. I am looking at sin, spin and the postmodern theory of deconstruction. Below is my introduction and a little explanation of the paper. I thought it might give you a taste of what I will sleep, eat and breathe over the next week. And, yes, I am reading The Purpose Driven Life and Your Best Life Now...

Roughly one year after my graduation from college I was employed by a large urban Presbyterian congregation. It was a Caucasian dominated congregation of roughly twelve hundred members who were mostly college educated and mostly wealthy. Furthermore, it was a congregation that had experienced sexual abuse at the hands of one of its ministers. The event occurred roughly seven years before I began working in the congregation. However, the community did not deal with the event in a manner that was able to provide healing and health for the members and leadership. Therefore, the fear and anxiety that surrounded the situation reared an ugly head during my time there.

Here are the facts of the situation as I understand them. Seven years earlier the male youth minister was caught having a sexual relationship with a seventeen year old female member of the youth group. The minister admitted his guilt and was disciplined by the Presbytery. His punishment included removal from the church, his ordination was revoked for a period of seven years and he was required to enter counseling. The church received quiet guidance from the Presbytery that was restricted to the family of the abused girl and the leadership of the church. The return of many of the feelings towards this situation arose around two situations. The first situation was my presence as the first male youth minister since this incident. The second situation was the knowledge that the former minister had requested a return to the active ministry in the larger Presbyterian Church.

As the anxiety arose in the congregation concerning these two situations, conversations began to take place that opened many of the previous wounds suffered by various members in the church. It is these conversations that gave me my first taste of “spin.” As the leaders began to talk about the situation there was a great deal of disagreement on the facts surrounding the incident. There was talk about who initiated the situation of abuse, the girl or the minister. They talked about the number of sexual encounters they knew of and whether the punishment fit the crime. No one talked about it as a situation of abuse; instead it was a sexual encounter. The character of the girl was brought into question and compared to the character of the minister. These conversations rarely progressed beyond argument and speculation as different leaders “spun” the facts to fit their worldview and interpretations of what the sexual abuse, the minister and the female involved meant to them.

Generally speaking little meaning or fact was left following these conversations. The spin and interpretation served the purpose of emptying the situation of any coherent meaning useful to the leaders as a whole. Without a mutually agreeable definition of sexual abuse the situation became increasingly hostile as the leadership rallied around particular interpretations. Lost in the rhetorical whirlwinds created by each interpretation was the an understanding of what happened, namely a seventeen year old girl had sex with an adult in a position of power within the confines of the church. The minutiae that ensconced each side of the argument left no room for the proverbial elephant that stood before them. Finally, in the midst of the raging debates taking place an interim minister stepped in to provide guidance. After hearing both sides argue, he attempted to inject meaning back into the polarized argument. His statement was that for legal and moral reasons, in this denomination, no sex between a seventeen year old and an adult is considered consensual. Moreover, sex that occurs between a seventeen year old and an adult is to be considered abusive. By re-injecting a definitive meaning into the debate from an outside source, the conversation was given parameters around which the meaning for the church could be discussed. This ultimately led to a healthy conversation about what the church should do with the experience.

The ability to empty the experience of an agreed upon meaning and usurp the pain and anguish it caused has haunted me for many years. Furthermore, there was an underlying theological message that I see hidden in the arguments. Namely, there was an inability or maybe a lack of desire at wanting to judge the situation. Lost in the arguments was the ethic of a right or wrong. This rendered the church impotent to talk about the situation in theological terms such as: sin, redemption, hope and forgiveness. My goal is to add a theological ending to this conversation by discussing what meanings the word sin has for a postmodern theology and world.

I begin this essay with a personal sense that sin has been overloaded with historical meanings which have led us to a point where we have attempted to empty it of its significance and meaning for the current church. In my estimation, contemporary theology has brought about the destruction of sin. Therefore it is my intention to find what, if any, theological meanings can be used in a postmodern ecclesial and theological context. I intend to do this by first looking at a historical figure that often informs the Presbyterian tradition, John Calvin. Calvin’s writings influenced the theological anthropology of the Presbyterian Church with regard to the concepts of original sin, actual sin and total depravity. I will then undertake an examination of the destruction of sin in contemporary theology through the writings of Rick Warren and Joel Osteen. These two authors have been best-selling writers in the Christian tradition for a number of years, and their theological influence is far reaching. I will use their most popular writings, The Purpose Driven Life and Your Best Life Now, to examine how they (mis)treat and spin much of the meaning out of sin. Finally, I will to return to Calvin in the hopes of deconstructing his concepts of sin for a postmodern context.

grace and peace...

gas rebates

2006-05-02T08:44:00.000-06:00

More on escahtology in a bit....

Does anyone else see the Republican gas rebates as a veiled attempt to buy votes before the fall elections? $100 buys me around two full tanks of gas (I drive a Mercury Sable, 20-25 mpg). Therefore, not only is it an attempt to buy my vote, but apparently I am a cheap vote at that.

Tell you what, keep your damn $100, close the loopholes that allow big oil companies to exploit the tax system, and use the money to buy surplus corn and wheat at the end of the year to feed those who are hungry.

Oh, and by the way, I will always vote Democrat as long as the Republicans think that money is the beginning and end of power in this world.

grace and peace

Eschatology, part I

2006-04-25T10:38:00.000-06:00

I was recently reading a blog that is dealing with different theological propositions concerning eschatology. Before I add to the contemporary fray about the end of times, a couple definitions might be helpful so that we are speaking and reading a similar language. All definitions are from the Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms (WDT).

Eschatology – The study of the “last things” or the end of the world. (WDT)

Eschaton – The final event of history, considered by many theologians to be the return of Jesus Christ to earth. (WDT)

Teleological eschatology – the view that eschatological events mentioned in Scripture are not events that will occur at the conclusion of history but are events that are being carried out concurrently with human history. (WDT)

Existential – a philosophical term referring to that which is of ultimate importance to one’s being or existence. (WDT)

Immanence of God – the view that God is present in and with the created order. (WDT)

Transcendence of God – the view that God is over and beyond the created order and superior to it in every way. (WDT)

I realize that I have tested your patience with all of the definitions. However, it is important that we speak a common language despite the fact that each of us will approach what I write full of preconceived ideas concerning eschatology.

Why eschatology? It is certainly easier to pontificate about fun Christian things like: the Jesus action figure that sits in my seminary library. It is a special one with glow in the dark hands and comes with an assortment of plastic fishes and loaves, just in case G.I. Joe or Barbie gets hungry. Despite whatever inane ramblings I could devise while reflecting on the absurdity of this action figure’s genesis, I think a brief exposition on eschatology is an equally valid undertaking...

I opened the Wall Street Journal this morning to find an article (on the front page no less) about a Texas evangelist whose ministry was an utter failure in America. A few years ago he turned his style and theology loose on the continent of Africa, and he now draws thousands of people to his “crusades.” One of the reasons why this particular evangelist failed in the States was his extreme conservatism and the fact that no one wanted to hear him preach.

Ultimately or conveniently, he has come to think that there will be more Africans than Americans in heaven and that America, (by rejecting him) has rejected the Bible (he is however dependent on American funds to continue his mission to the “unsaved” and he spends half a year in Texas raising said funds). This person infects others with a brand of Christianity and eschatology that is popular today (think Left Behind series). I want to argue for a different kind of eschatology, one that emphasizes teleological eschatology, the immanence of God and existentialism. I hope to spend another week or two building the argument I want to make, beginning today with my understanding of the psycho-biblical underpinnings that create the eschatologies of fear that permeate the theological landscape.

Biblically speaking, Revelation and Daniel are the two major sources used when a literal eschaton is constructed. These two writers help conjure the beasts, plagues, horsemen, apocalypse and also the numerous PowerPoint presentations and artistic renderings of the end of times. However, what seems to be left out of the discussion is Jesus’ ambiguity concerning the time, place, and events surrounding the last days. He prefers to leave such ramblings to the transcendent nature of God that stands outside of human history. Jesus seems more concerned about the present and what it means to live today. However, given the human capacity and desire for knowledge and thus control over the future, it is no wonder that Revelation and the prophecies of Daniel have become centerpieces in modern fundamentalist and evangelical eschatological literature.

Those who preach ideas of strict inerrancy must ultimately bow to that which they serve, namely the printed text of the canon. This brings us to another idea concerning the Scriptures as a source of knowledge about the eschaton. Scripture is a culturally conditioned, highly contextual document that reveals each writer’s and redactor’s impressions of what Jesus meant to particular communities.

From my readings, the intention of the writers was to convey the message of Jesus to their contemporaries. Remember, in that day most Christians believed that Jesus was coming back in their lifetimes (circa 100-200 CE), if they could have conceived that humanity would still be around almost two thousand years later, reading their stories about Jesus, do you think they would have changed what they wrote? Moreover, there is a tension in the writings of scripture between the immanent and transcendent nature of reality. Most descriptions of Jesus relate the immanence of his work in the world, betraying the notion of only a fully transcendent God who stands outside of the created order. Instead, scripture generally conceptualizes God as immanent and transcendent.

Psychologically, I have to consider the motives of the writers of the canon. If you believed that the end of the world was happening soon, and if you believed that the central message of Jesus was love for God, self and neighbor. How would you express the message of the immanence and transcendence of God to those who had and had not heard of the Messiah? I might imagine that I would write something that expressed the urgency of the situation, the love of God, the fear of being excluded and the call to a certain style of living in the present.

Depending on my view of the end of times, any one of these four possible motivations for sharing an interpretation of the relationship between God and humanity could surface as primary, leading me to downplay the others in the hopes of getting a particular point across to the reader or listener. Are fear, love, urgency and lifestyle the primary motivations of the writers of the New Testament? No one can say for sure, and I willingly admit that my thematic musings are speculation. However, understanding the motivation of those who seek to guide us is helpful when discerning how we should incorporate their ideas into our own.

That is enough for now, I must return to the books or I will be “left behind” in class…

grace and peace

An unsettled return

2006-04-18T09:28:00.000-06:00

I wasn’t sure if I would come back here, then again I am not sure that I am staying at this point. Doctoral work in the midst of some depressive features does not make for a healthy combination. Add to that a healthy dose of guilt – not being more social, not writing on my blog, spending my days reading Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late-Capitalism – and it comes together in a gray mishmash of days and nights that blend into a blurry cornucopia of blah.

I am trying to get back again, to find my way in a new world where everyone seems a stranger, to live amongst good people in a good place and be a good person. I am not sure what to make of my life at this moment. When people ask me what I do, I tell that I read for a living. Only that is not much of a life, so after a pregnant pause and uncomfortable silence we laugh precariously and move on to more shallow conversation. I never know what to tell people who actually work for a living. Granted, I work; I work hard in my classes; I work hard attempting to be creative with the materials before me; I work hard cleaning house and so on. Without trivializing the situation of the under or unemployed, I can see the gradual feelings of hopelessness that creep in when you cannot financially support yourself on what you have chosen to do for a living.

Throw into that mix this new revelation that the God I always knew in Reformed Theology is no longer palatable for me and all of a sudden everything is up for grabs. This in-between time is something that I have not experienced often. It reminds me of living paycheck to paycheck, precariously perched on a thin branch in fifty mile an hour winds.

Two things keep me hanging on, a wonderful spouse and the fact that I am pretty good at what I am doing. If things go well I will have two articles published by this fall and will be in the process of researching a third. I will be more than halfway done with my class work and ready to take my first comprehensive exam. All these things tell me I am progressing in good fashion; however, there are moments, days and weeks where I feel as though I have stepped out of time and out of the world.

Some of the things I am thinking about at the moment:

~ God is love, God is not omnipotent.

~ Postmodernism describes everything and nothing at the same time. It functions by trying to make the trivial into the depthful and the depthful into the trivial. I am all for the contextuality of truth and the primacy of narratives and the lack of one right way. However, I am not sure that this approach to life makes life any better.

~ If you want to build a theology that works, begin by starting with the least: build a theology around those who suffer or have suffered and see if the God you have always believed in would work for them. Don’t prance around with an untested God and believe that it works for everyone.

~ Pat Robertson is still an idiot, but he doesn’t bother so much anymore.

~ Skiing is a counterintuitive sport. Who, in their right mind, when going down a mountain leans forward in order to stay in control? However, I kind of like it sometimes.

~ Sometimes the Gnostics were right.

~ Patriarchy is probably the single most devastating institution in the world. Men should not run the world, we like power too much and testosterone keeps us from listening and relating to one another. We should be relegated to the dirty work where we can flex our muscles and make monkey sounding grunts toward one another. Men need to give up some of their power and listen.

~ Suffering is real and I am complicit in it by my lack of protest towards it.

~ Neo-cons are mostly idiots, but they don’t bother me so much anymore.

~ I am tired of petty partisanship from both sides of the aisle. I want candidates and politicians who want to make the world a better place not argue about who made the mess we live in. I want a third, better, way that really wants progress over pettiness.

~ I am glad spring is here. The blue sky in Colorado is amazing, the tulips are blooming, the trees are full of tiny little flowers, and I can’t stop sneezing.

Grace and peace

The response continues...

2006-02-03T07:59:00.000-07:00

Well, thanks for not letting me off the hook. Before we go much further, I want to add a caveat to the conception of God and God's relationship to evil.

No one knows truly how this relationship plays out. All I offer is one person's attempt to reconcile God will the pervasive evil in this world. That said, I appreciate all of the comments and careful critique of my thoughts. It helps me clarify the road I am taking and makes the journey all that much more fun. It also gives me the opportunity to test and write out my ideas in relationship to the wonderful thoughts and question you pose. So... Here we go again!

Bad Alice wrote the following:

Let me play devil's advocate. If God created us and lets us operate in perfect free will, it seems that he could also have created other beings with the same option. I tend to cringe when anyone talks about 'spiritual warfare,' but sometimes it seems as if there is more than self-interest at work in some of the most grotesque manifestations of evil. Also, if there is a spirit realm why wouldn't it contain evil forces as well as good forces? And if there isn't a spirit realm, why not?

Thanks for such thought-provoking posts. Boy am I glad there's someone willing to do all the philosophical legwork--I don't think I could get through a book on process theology.

First off, since I don't believe in a "Devil," I wonder if we will have to find another term for it ;).

My take on what I would term "senseless evil," or that evil that seems beyond self interest, is that it is a search for purity in a world of beauty. I am still working out this concept, but it has to do with aesthetics and the idea that optimal perception of the world is found in beauty - the contrast between what is and what could be in a unified object, rather than found in purity - the quest to attain one particular pole in a polemic at the expense of the other.

Like I said, I am still developing the concept, but it plays out in this way - Hitler, the instigator of probably the single most "senseless evil" event in the world, was on a search for purity in the German race, therefore he went to any length possible in order to insure that optimal conditions for purity could arise by exterminating those things he found unpure. A more recent example, though on a smaller scale, would be in extremist religious factions like the Taliban or even Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell (Yes, I did just equate Falwell and Robertson with the Taliban. The hate that these to preachers inspire is worthy of the comparison). Their search for purity in a morally ambiguous world is misguided and ends up producing more harm than good. The religious views they espouse harm other people which is inexcusable and unnecessary.

As to spiritual warfare, yes it seems as though God could have created other beings with perfect free will, even those of a spiritual nature. However, we have no evidence, biblical or otherwise of such a creation, literally or figuratively. We have "sons of God" as the only other "human-like" created beings. Almost all ideas of spiritual warfare are out of literature, Milton especially. His work is the reason why we place "Satan" in the Garden, rather than reading what is actually there. His work is where we garner this idea of spiritual warfare, of "sons of God" who turn and wage war against heaven. It is his work that feeds our imagination when it comes to the battle over our souls.

Moreover, I would say that these "sons of God," whatever they are do not have the free will we associate with humanity. We are unique in that right and responsibility. For me, this comes down to the nature of God again. If we posit, as I have, that God is good, then could God create beings of an entirely evil make-up, such as we attribute to "evil forces?" And if God could or did create such beings, would that logically negate God's goodness? Nothing in the literature that we produce on the Spiritual realm says that a "demonic force" can be redeemed, therefore, they have no choice but to be evil and then must have been created that way. The result of this is that God is good and evil because God has placed beings that interact in this world in only a context of evil. God is therefore responsible for the evil in this world. I am not yet willing to make that claim, nor do I believe I ever will be able to make it.

But it is a nice segway into Malcolm's comments:

I think it's time for you to try a Jungian perspective. James Hillman's Kinds of Power and Carl Jung's Answer to Job are both excellent sources, and they don't overlap. In the mystery of it all Jung really stretches me to conceive that God is in fact ultimately responsible for the evil. That thought is problematic only if I think of it in a willful way -- that is, God's willfully creating evil. If I think of it in a willing way, as in God was/is willing to allow evil, then it's a different matter. God is willing for evil to be, I think, because that's the only way we as human's capable of responding to his love can be free to do so.
[The willing/willful distinction, by the way, I owe to Gerald May, he defining sin as willfulness. Which reminds me of something else -- John McQuarrie (sp?) a British theologian, defined God as "He who lets be."

Malcolm, I do so miss the days when you and I sat in a mall food court over Chik-fil-a and found meaning in our theological struggles and triumphs. I long for that kind of connection with someone out here and remember our times together fondly.

As you know I am nowhere near the Jungian scholar that you are. I know very little of his theory and what I remember, I like. The concept that sticks out, and I could be misusing it here is the shadow self. That part of the self that is capable of misusing our humanity and abusing the possibilities before us. I would agree with everything you said, except for one point - that God is ultimately responsible for evil. I am still not sure I want to go that far. I am willing to say that God gives us perfect free will, which can result in our making choices that result in evil outcomes.

The question then becomes (for me at least) is God indictable for the decisions we make as individuals who have not been coerced into making one particular decision among many possibilities?

Am I indictable if you decide to murder your neighbor? As a friend of yours who has a personal relationship with you, it would not be my fault that you committed the crime. However, to a lesser extent, there could have been decisions that I could have made that might have helped you arrive at a different outcome. Fault would fall to me, only if I made you believe that your only possibility was murder. I am still not quite sure about this rationale, what do you think?

Malcolm and Bad Alice, thank you for your thoughtful comments and questions. As I continue to read and "converse" it is helpful to have others on the journey who can offer different points of view. I thought the two of you might be interested in a couple of resources. They are not quite the light reading that some enjoy, but they have had a small impact on what you have mentioned here and I thought of these authors when I read your comments:

Kathleen A. Sands, a new author to me, has written a book entitled Escape from Paradise where she discusses evil as competing goods. She is a feminist theologian who whose take on evil is unique and challenging, but I believe that there is a lot of merit to how she chooses to discuss evil and tragedy.

John Hicks is a theologian who writes a theodicy of protest. His article in a book entitled Encountering Evil by Stephen Davis is short but challenges the assumption that God is good and he believes that God is ultimately indictable for the evil in the world.

These are not easy reads, but judging from the thoughtful comments and poignant questions you have offered they might be helpful in the long run. Thanks again

grace and peace

A response

2006-01-27T09:35:00.000-07:00

All right, here goes a completely inadequate response to the great questions that were asked about my last post.

First, as to Tod’s question about whether this God resembles the George Burns character in Oh, God!, I have no idea. I have not seen the movie in many years; and when I did see it theology and theodicy was not at the forefront of my thinking. Therefore, I couldn’t say, but if someone else has an opinion on that I would love to hear it.

Second, maghretta said the following:

Disinterested caring looks like the work of God to me, and good in the face of evil looks like the powerful work of God.

Do you mean that those actions God takes are suggestive rather than coercive in effect? Or do you mean that the only action God can take without coercive effect is to reveal a possible path of action to us? He can talk to us, but he can't touch us?

As to your comment, I would agree about the latter wholeheartedly. I believe that is what I meant by saying that God’s possibilities are ultimately effective (effective as an alternate way of defining powerful). Good in the face of evil is one of the most powerful acts of human beings, and in effect God. At these times human faith in God’s possibilities are at their most congruent.

As to the former, disinterested caring is an oxymoron to me. How can you care about someone without taking interest in them? It would be a going-through-the-motions-oriented action that, in my humble opinion, would arise from a human possibility rather than God’s ultimate possibility for any given interaction. To be disinterested is in effect not to care about outcomes or the interaction, and while the action may still produce a good outcome, it would not function at its best because the possibility arose from human concern rather than an act that belies the possibilities that God offers at any given moment. Being uninterested in the other is being ultimately concerned with the self. Self-interest is by definition the root of sinful action in most modern and postmodern theologies.

Let me try to move on to your questions. First, whether God’s actions are suggestive or coercive in effect. At first I said yes, but the more I thought about it, I decided I would want you to define suggestive. Even the word suggestive can be understood as coercive. Therefore, I would say that God’s desires are always present in every moment. That given the paths we have taken to get to a certain point, there is a possibility present in any moment that, if chosen would be more revealing of God’s love in the world. Your second question is closer to what I believe I was trying to say by writing about theodicy.

As to whether, God can talk but can’t touch us, my answer is an unsatisfying, it depends. I would describe being touched by God as an internal feeling of congruence with God’s possibilities. Therefore, I would say that we can be touched by God inasmuch as we can live out God’s possibilities of love, care, and respect in the world. However, given human beings penchant for self-interest, God’s ultimately effective reality for most people amounts to talk rather than feeling truly touched by God’s possibilities.

Next, Bad Alice stated and asked the following;

What you are describing sounds very similar to how God was talked about at a Unity Church I used to attend, and in my glancing acquaintance with New Thought. Do you think that evil is purely human--there is no "adversary," Satan, force of evil, etc? I find your ideas very intriguing, but a bit difficult to square with the power of a creator God. If God can be only love, and we are his creation, then how did our ability to do evil things develop? If evil is a byproduct of free-will, then God was able to establish a system in which evil is pretty much inevitable.

I want to begin here with a statement made by David Ray Griffin in God, Power and Evil: A Process Theodicy. This statement is a basic atheistic argument that there is no God.

1. God is a perfect reality (Definition)

2. A Perfect Reality is an omnipotent being (By definition)

3. An omnipotent being could unilaterally bring about an actual world without any genuine evil (By definition)

4. A perfect reality is a morally perfect being. (By definition)

5. A morally perfect being would want to bring about an actual world without an genuine evil (By definition)

6. If there is genuine evil in the world, then there is no God. (Logical conclusion from 1 – 5)

7. There is genuine evil in the world. (Factual statement)

8. Therefore, there is no God. (logical conclusion from 6 – 7)

The result of this logic is that theologians have to work around some of these points if we are to attempt to reconcile our belief in God with the fact of evil in the world. My choice was not to give up the moral goodness of God, and rather redefine how God is powerful. I also do not believe in an “adversary” and I think that our conceptualizations of Satan are more projections resulting from an inability to take responsibility for the evil that we bring about in the world through our actions or inactions as it relates to God’s possibilities. I think that evil is human, through and through, and it is a result of God’s commitment to human freedom. (In July and August of 2005 I wrote a couple of brief ideas about this under the heading of Theological Propositions, little did I know at the time I was beginning a process of internalizing some of the tenets of Process Theology, you can find the posts here, here, here, and here). If God does not coerce then there is the possibility that any given human will not choose God’s effective possibility leading to a less than effective interactivity. Where evil arises, for me at least, is through human self-interest that ultimately breaks the interrelated world that God has created.

Rather than evil being inevitable in God’s established system, I would say that evil was possible in the system established by God, due to a commitment to freewill. With true freewill, God cannot know what possibility we will choose; if God knew, then freewill is in jeopardy and God becomes indictable for the evil in the world. This, for me, would be ultimately antithetical to God’s loving nature. God’s presence in every moment of human history assures that God is able to provide possibilities that would reveal God’s love, care and respect in the world. Humans, on the other hand, have a choice of possibilities and the inability to be perfectly moral in their choices…

This is a huge post, I appreciate it if you stuck it through to the end. I hope it begins to clarify some of the things I was talking about. If not, please question, reframe or rework it and let me know so that we can do it together. Theology is best when not done in a vacuum. Theodicy, which reaches into the depths of human finiteness to understand the infinite, should never be left to one person to try and figure out. Thanks for commenting and making me think more about what I claim...

grace and peace

all-good AND all-powerful?

2006-01-15T23:13:00.000-07:00

This is the first edit of something I have been working through over the past few weeks. It is a result of some reading, some questioning, and stepping out into some frightful non-Reformed territory. I realize that it's written structure is not the best. I also realize that my ideas are new only to me, in the sense that they have not been voiced together in this way before now. I also know that God is ultimately a mystery, a vast unexplorable Other. Rather than doctrine, I think these are my hopes about God in a post-Holocaust world.

These thoughts were mine, now they are ours, have at them...

To say that God is all-good, that God’s initial aims for human relatedness are meant to mirror the love, respect and care that God has for humanity, excludes a traditional idea that God is all-powerful. To be all-powerful is to be capable of all possible forms of interaction, forms that run the gamut of good and evil, forms of interactions from freedom to control. Therefore, if God is all-good, that is God is ultimately concerned with interactions that reveal the loving, respectful, and caring nature of God, then God cannot have the power to intentionally inflict pain and suffering, or acts of evil, through human interactions with self, other and the world. God cannot will these types of interactions, because it is beyond God’s absolute loving nature, even though God must ultimately function within a reality where these types of interactions are prevalent due to the inability of humanity to effectively relate God’s aims in their interactions. God’s all-powerfulness, or omnipotence, is limited proactive and reactive interactions that reveal love, respect and care in the world either through a possibility initiated by God or a possibility offered as a reaction to evil acts committed by human beings.

We can say that God is all-good and all-powerful inasmuch as acts of care, respect and love occur when humans interact in such a manner. Such acts reveal the nature and power of God and God’s activity in human history. Moreover, acts of care, respect and love are at their most powerful when they are reactions to or usurpations of acts of evil. God’s power lies in the ability to contrast God’s absolute good nature with the changing landscape of human interactions that ultimately miss an aimed for mark creating an evil result. Any time a human being contrasts an act of evil with an act of love, care or respect, God’s ultimate power and goodness is known and felt. Power has too often been associated with force, coercion or control. We must begin to think of power differently if we wish to apply it to God. Instead, I believe that if we wish to apply the term power to God, then we must begin to define it by God’s ability to act effectively within the parameters of God’s commitment to goodness and human freedom.

Before elaborating further on the effectiveness of God, human freedom must be understood. If God is coercive then human beings have no freedom. Moreover, God’s actions are in the present. The implication of God as the great “I AM” helps us understand how God sees God’s self interacting with humanity. The eternal nature of God is bound to the distinction that God makes for God’s self. God is timeless in as much as time has occurred. God is the God of ancestors, and the God of the moment that occurs for all of humanity. God’s future knowledge is bound to the eschaton, an event that stands outside the scope of human events. The relationship between God’s active possibilities in the present and human freedom to choose whether or not we will listen to these possibilities is troublesome for those who posit God as outside of time. For humans to have freedom, God cannot ordain the choices we make. Moreover, God cannot know which choice we will act upon; to do so is to insinuate that God foreordains evil acts that we commit on a daily basis.

God’s covenant is to continue in relationship with humanity, and God does so be offering pro- and re- active possibilities in order to continue effectively relating to the world through God’s goodness. God is a revealer of possibilities, that is God offers possibilities of interactions leading to loving, respectful, or caring outcomes that mix with the possibilities created through a particular human being’s own creative visions of interactions based on past and present experiences. Thus human freedom is assured, as the human may choose any of the multitudes of possibilities in front of them regardless of the possible outcomes. Moreover, because of God’s eternal relatedness to human history, God continues to offer possibilities related to the choices and experiences of human beings, even sympathizing and/or celebrating the outcomes of interactions.

God’s power is related to the ultimate effectiveness of the possibilities God offers to any particular human being; God can be said to be ultimately powerful because God’s possibilities are ultimately effective. Evil possibilities and actions are the domain of humanity. They are the result of the freedom to interpret a possibility, an inability carry out God’s possibilities or even an intentional ignoring of the possibilities that God offers through any given situation.

beauty and the beast

2006-01-09T20:23:00.000-07:00

This is where my current journey begins...

The day after I finished reading Elie Wiesel’s Night I happened upon a picture of Auschwitz in a recent edition of National Geographic magazine. Wiesel’s book was a horrific account of suffering and regret during his internment in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, and Auschwitz was his home for much of that time. Through his prose, Auschwitz became a surreal place to me, a place where life was denigrated, families torn apart, and faith stolen. This account of the Holocaust made real for me something that I had always thought but never really articulated: that we not only have the power to destroy ourselves, but we also have the capacity to intentionally carry out that destruction. Elie Wiesel’s words sparked my imagination to create mental pictures of that place and time. However, it wasn’t until I came across the photograph that my interest in the problems of theodicy peaked.

I sat in my office and opened the magazine to an article on modern Buddhism. As I flipped from one page to the next Auschwitz suddenly unfolded before my eyes, covering two pages. A red brick gatehouse grew from a serene field of bright green grass. Train tracks, beginning separately, melded into one as they silently worked their way through the gates. Razor wire stretched into the horizon creating a shimmering ominous net. It could have been anywhere though; nothing in that picture gave life to the idea that around one million Jews and prisoners of war died under the watchful eyes of the guards in the gatehouse. It was a threatening picture but it was also mute, telling none of the secrets that lived on the other side of that fence.

There was little silence for me though. Instead, I heard Elie Wiesel’s laments from behind the gate house. I heard him weep and cry out in anguish to God. I could imagine his face, gaunt and vacant, staring out from behind the fence. His words interpreted what I saw, darkening the green grass and filling the blue skies with thick gray ash. The clean lines and vacant tracks became dirty with soot from the haunted trains that entered full and left empty. Wiesel’s voice wasn’t the only one I heard through this picture, because Auschwitz was not alone.

A Buddhist monk sat cross-legged, meditating in the middle of the train tracks; a ghostly shadow shrouded in a black cape, blocking the tracks as he faced the horrors before him. His prominence in the picture brought back memories and childhood visions long since pushed aside. I have always been amazed by the tenacity of nature. Where I lived as a child, huge Oak trees would buckle the sidewalk as they grew and stretched their roots underneath, protesting the restrictions to life imposed by the heavy concrete. In fields long forgotten, flowers and trees grew on the husks of burnt brick buildings, reclaiming the land as their own. In the summer, kudzu, a prolific large-leafed vine would snake its way across unkempt land covering whatever stood in its tracks. To me, the solitary Buddhist grew from the tracks like a black iris blossoming in a polluted river. His presence held back those haunted trains for a moment as he meditated amidst the pain that permeates the soil. I can only guess what his meditations held, but I imagine that suffering, death and cruelty must have ventured through those moments. How could someone sit before this monument to inhumanity and not feel the voices and ghosts that permeate the heavy air? Moreover, to believe that one’s meditations or actions can affect a place is to hope that that place can be redeemed as well.

What I saw in that picture was a small attempt to reclaim the space through reflection on the horrors that we are capable of committing. The monk sat there like a single vine of kudzu creeping along the tracks, growing amidst the atrocities yet not entirely destroying the evidence. His presence, for me, was a stark contrast to Elie Wiesel’s journey within those gates.

What was created by the Holocaust are wounds that will never fully heal. But what I saw in that photograph was a stitch, a small suture that pulled together one corner of an open wound. It was something powerful that closed a miniscule segment of a gaping wound formed by an evil act perpetrated in this world. The monk’s presence to the evil, presence against the evil and cathartic response of meditation created a powerful moment of contrast that held both hope and horror captured in that photograph. For me, his presence contrasted the story and presence of Elie Wiesel created without diminishing his pain and grief.

It is through beauty – through intensely contrasting elements – that we can begin to think about the relationship between Wiesel’s work and the National Geographic photograph. These two artistic mediums, the prose of a survivor and the photograph of a visitor, provide the kind of contrast that opens the doorway to constructing new ways of working with the problem of evil as related to the traditional Christian understandings of a good and all-powerful God. Logic and proofs can only advance the relationship between these three facts (a good God, an all-powerful God, and the presence of evil) of Christian theology so far. Due to their overwhelming contrast, a purely logical proof becomes arguable, eventually leading us to pick sides, often choosing between an ever dwindling God whose power or goodness shrinks under the weight of the problem of evil, or trivializing evil and the pain and suffering of those who have experienced evil through an allegiance to some far off eschatological hope.

grace and peace

Happy New Year

2006-01-06T12:49:00.000-07:00

One year; that is how long this fine piece of subjective theological journalism has been out there. One year of writing, of complaining, of observing my life and letting a vastly anonymous world read about it.

In that time, I have move halfway across the country; I became a god-parent to our niece; I have been to Alaska, New York, D.C. Atlanta, Charleston, Morganton, Baltimore, Charlotte, Moab, Houston, and Denver; I have completed one quarter of doctoral work; My wife and I left everyone we know and live in a place where we still only know a few people. It has been a busy year and the next one looks to be about the same.

Over the last month alone several new journeys have arisen in my life. Apart from the travel plans we have (Seattle, New York, Charleston, among the other random places we will probably visit), my professional life is in a state of upheaval.

During my sabbatical and the six weeks I had between fall and winter quarter (a break that is too long in my opinion) I began re-evaluating the theology that I have held dear for many years. This new path of discovery began with two very different experiences. First, I have been working with a professor on an article about pastoral theology, formation and theological education. It will be published in a journal this coming fall and the writing and researching process has been time-consuming and wonderful. Second, I spent about two to three hours a day, Monday through Friday, reading and writing on theodicy and tragedy.

As a result, some of the theological formulations that I have grown comfortable with have been challenged. I was once, and still in some ways am, beholden to Reformed Theology. However, since my encounter with the problems of evil, writings on the Holocaust, and my work with aesthetics and pastoral theology, I have started reading about Process Theology. This, to say the least, has left me reeling for the most part.

Imagine, if you will, you, sitting in a coffee shop. You have no one to talk to, and have occupied my time with reading Elie Wiesel’s Night, an account of his years in Auschwitz. Moreover, You decided to get ahead for your Theodicy and Tragedy course by reading Louise Erdrich’s love medicine, and two other unassigned readings by Elie Wiesel (just so you know, Elie Wiesel is the one who is thought to have coined the term theodicy, which basically means any attempt to reconcile God’s omnipotence and goodness with the prevalence of evil in the world). Moreover, imagine that you just completed a quarter of work where you took all of your creative energy and twisted every theo-experiential notion that you had known to create something new. Finally, imagine that everything you ever thought about God, didn’t work when you finished reading and with your creative energy swirling, you decide find something that does work…

Welcome to my world!

So, I am embarking in this year, this second blog year, on a new theological journey for me as I attempt reconcile what I am learning with what I know. Process theology is a nasty pair of words for some people. Many claim that it is too humanistic and limiting of God’s power to affect the world. As I dive into this new theological pool, I hope to share some of what I am thinking and how it relates to what I have thought in the past. My first posts will reflect some of the thoughts from these past six or so weeks of silence and then we’ll see what happens next. Until then…

grace and peace

A Sabbatical

2005-12-02T09:58:00.000-07:00

I am going to rest for now. This has been a labor of love, mostly, for almost a year. Now, I am going to take a break and re-evaluate. I began this venture selfishly. I needed an outlet for all of the crap that runs through my head. I needed a place to vent frustrations, a place to explore who I was and was becoming. For almost a year this blog has been a good place for that.

However, over the past few months I have felt as though I don’t have meaningful things to share or discuss. My writing has taken a turn from personal exploration to writing for an audience. I have become obsessed with numbers and comments and that was never my intention. Therefore, I want to step back and take a break and re-evaluate the role and function of this medium.

If something comes, then I will post it, but I am planning to take December off in order to establish some distance and gain a little perspective on what this means to me. Thank you for reading here, for being a part of this journey, and for listening to a white middle class male bitch about his neuroses. I will return in the first week of January, around the one year anniversary of Theospora, to visit again with you.

Have a great holiday season; enjoy the sights, smells and people that make it special.

grace and peace

Jason

reflection image 3 - the courage to be

2005-11-20T23:23:00.000-07:00

“The courage to be,” that is the reason it has taken me so long to write on this image; that and two long papers that have consumed most of my waking hours recently.

The Courage to Be is the title to a book written by Paul Tillich, it is also part of what I see in this photo. How many of us truly have the courage to be who we are? Whether our lives are filled with the rain showers of doubt or the blossoms of growth, do we every feel as though we truly have the courage, the will to move beyond the facades we create and truly live?

I was about twelve or thirteen when I lost what little courage I had. It is amazing what I allowed others to take from me, destroying a burgeoning self-concept. I spent a number of years stomping that fledgling self into submission, catering to the will of others; all in the service of building a façade that placated rather than challenged others.

I will be the first to admit that my challenges are small compared to those that others face. I don’t have to face racism constantly, nor am I put down because of my gender. I don’t have to face “coming out” to family and friends and the fear, misunderstanding and hatred that occurs. I don’t have to face discrimination, except for that which occurs within my soul.

It is abusive, what we do to others and what we often do to ourselves. We highlight differences and exploit perceived weaknesses. We chose to separate by not choosing careful words when we speak to one another. Pain is prevalent because pride and power are pervasive. When I pretend to know something and I make it a law unto myself, then I rob you of the power we might share in a relationship. When I do it enough, I am nothing more than a master at the manipulation of my internal and external worlds.

The courage to be means giving you the courage to be as well. It means hearing your stories as a way of knowing who you are, not as a means for gaining the upper hand. It means equality in the way I relate to you. By making room for your courage to be, I make room for me to grow as well.

For better or worse, we sometimes become reflections of what we think others see in us. I am more apt to believe in myself when others believe in me and vice versa. However, at some point we must develop a “bullshit filter.” That is, we must construct a lens whereby we can detect the messages we receive from others and decide whether they hold some truth for us. It is not enough to merely recognize falsehoods. If impressions are false, we must then have the courage to say so and right what wrongs we see.

I wonder what lies beneath all of the piercings and tattoos. I wonder what story each of them tells. If they could talk what narratives would they tell? A lot of pain has gone into this image. Each hole, each tattoo is accompanied by pain that cannot be avoided. Pain, and I imagine beauty as well…

grace and peace

Image #3

2005-11-14T23:19:00.000-07:00

Source: Unknown
Title: Unknown
Year: Unknown

What is this?

A response to Pat Robertson

2005-11-11T16:05:00.000-07:00

I am beginning to wonder if I will ever again think that the value of theology lies in elucidating moral arguments. As Pat Robertson makes headlines again with the following statements, I feel as though theology, nay, Christianity is losing touch with the world.

Conservative Christian televangelist Pat Robertson told citizens of a Pennsylvania town that they had rejected God by voting their school board out of office for supporting "intelligent design" and warned them on Thursday not to be surprised if disaster struck.

"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city," Robertson said on his daily television show broadcast from Virginia, "The 700 Club."

"And don't wonder why He hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for His help because he might not be there," he said. (Reuters)

It is too easy to condemn remarks and thus implicitly condemn the man as well. If I am truly going to live what I say, then I have to believe that there is beauty in what Pat Robertson claims, as well as, in him as a child of God. The difficult part for one as fallible as myself is finding said beauty.

When I see art that disturbs my sensibilities I don’t run from it, nor do I tell myself and others that it is not art because it displays the horrors of the world from that artist’s point of view. Instead, I try to stay with what is disturbing, attempting to make the connections between body, heart, mind, and soul that are being pulled in the encounter. I can’t say that I always succeed, but I believe I am better for the effort.

Theological statements such as the ones that Pat Robertson likes to make are not art per say, but they do reveal something of his beliefs about who God is and how God is active in this world. However, I wish to treat his statement as though it were a picture, a window that looks in on God. If we were to do that, what would we see from this particular instance?

The first thing we might notice is that God is vindictive, especially over small injustices. Robertson’s statement implies that God turns away from God’s own creations because of the choices we make. Moreover, implied in the statement is that God sends disasters to areas in order to inflict punishment. I realize that Robertson is a little ambiguous on that particular point, but notice that he uses the term “when” instead of “if” while referring to disasters. Finally, there is the assumption that human beings have the power to remove God from their presence. Ultimately, Robertson’s God is a God of definite morality, a God whose ultimate concern is of right and wrong.

The second and possibly more powerful statement that Robertson makes is an anthropological one. Namely, that humanity can control God’s actions through the choices we make.

The question we must ask is where is the beauty in that statement concerning God and God’s relationship with humanity?
I believe that beauty is found in the desire to elucidate God’s interactivity with humankind. However, I can’t buy into Robertson’s criteria of who God is. Coming out of a basic premise that God sits in judgment of all the things we do, we cannot help but draw similar conclusions that Robertson draws. God can’t help but be vindictive if we tie God’s hands and limit God’s power to judgment alone.

I, like, Robertson also believe in God’s active power and presence in the world. However, my criteria, my base belief is that God is love. Love being defined as supportive, hopeful, joyful, realistic, forgiving, and so on. For me, a God whose power is focused on wreaking havoc and causing disasters over the smallest slights is a God that I do not know. Moreover, I believe that God does not play a role in “sending” natural disasters to punish people for their actions. Furthermore, I am not sure that we can remove God from our presence. Certainly we can make choices that counter God’s love and desire for us and for humanity, but does that mean that God gives up and leaves? Therefore, while Robertson and I agree that God is concerned with humanity, fundamentally, he and I disagree on the basis of that interaction.

As to Robertson’s second statement concerning anthropology. He and I would probably have a harder time connecting around this point. I cannot faithfully say that anything I do causes God’s will to bend or change.

There is beauty to what Robertson proposes, namely that God is an active part in our daily lives. However, without considering love and faithfulness as the foundations of God’s interactions with humanity I feel as though his views become skewed. As a part of the theological milieu, I have to wonder if his statements are helpful to the people of God as they continue to seek to bring about God’s kingdom on earth.

For me, it continues to drive home the point that a theology solely concerned with morals is inadequate in describing God’s work in this world. Rather, it may be that a theology of aesthetics, a theology concerned with the beauty of the relationship between God and humanity might help to balance and reveal a different character of the one we call God.

Reflection, Image 2 - We were meant to live

2005-11-11T11:20:00.000-07:00

It is easy to separate, to isolate, to move away from one another. Why not park myself down in front of a television? Why not shut the door to the other homogenous houses in my neighborhood? It is easier that way, that American way. I don’t need you to tell me anything that I don’t already know.

I can just live in my black and white world, warmed by the glow of reality as my television tells what life is like…

Sometimes isolation is not intentional, sometimes it comes about through the forceful separation of I from Thou, of me from you. Sometimes I do it, sometimes you return the favor. Relating has never been easy, not since we decided that theology has more to do with right or wrong than with what is beautiful and glorious.

When did morals become God? When did we decide that we knew what was right and who was wrong? Oh what a joy it would be to slough off this mortal arrogance, to find the hidden beauty inside, to open the doors of our homes and step out into the yard so that we might begin to see one another again for the first time.

We are not meant to experience reality through the pixels of a television. We are not meant to find what is right or wrong in our neighbor. We are meant for beautiful things, for wandering the world, and wondering about the created image that lies within all of us. “God’s children” is not a category or exclusive club; it is us, broken, battered, beloved and beautiful.

Fling open the doors that keep you inside. Open them wide and see and smell and taste the world in all its colors and splendor. We are not meant to be numb or dumb to those around us. We were meant to live…

Image #2

2005-11-06T20:50:00.000-07:00

Artist: Roger Brown
Title: Talk Show Addicts
Year: 1993, Etching and aquatint, 22 1/4 x 29 3/4 in.
Retrieved from: Leonard Koscianski

What is this?

Reflection, Image 1 - I want to be that guy

2005-11-04T12:33:00.000-07:00

This picture is the cover art to Robert Capon’s Parables of Grace. It was the first meaningful image of the Prodigal Son that I found while I was in Seminary, and I used it again in a study on the parable during a Lenten series at my former church. I am still trying to figure out how to do this, so I thought I would re-post this as a separate post rather than beneath the picture. I think it might work a little better even though you have to scroll down to see the picture this references

I want to be that guy. I want to be the one with arms open, welcoming the stranger, the oppressed, the poor. I know that I have given much in my lifetime; I also know there is more within me that I hoard. As much as I could be the guy with no shoes, I am more like the guy with the multi-colored coat, the one with resources and means and influence.

I want to be the guy that is admired by animals. I want to be the one that is seen by ducks and geese and dogs. They know who is gentle, they know who will treat them kindly and they draw near to that person. I want to be a friend to the environment to the only world that I will probably ever know. I want to co-create heaven on earth not reside in the hell that all too often invades my view.

I want to be the guy who is surrounded by people. Not because I am funny or share my stuff, but because I respect others and give them the opportunity to be who they need to be. I am getting better at this, getting better at listening and allowing others to teach me about who they are, but I have much to learn still. I don’t reach out as I could, preferring to remain quiet and as part of the scenery rather than the action. Then again, without people like that there would be no scenery.

Rather than being the guy with the wide-open arms, I more like the one with the crook in my hands. I am part of the background looking longingly in on the action. I do my work, I take my part in life seriously, but I am just not there yet. I have the clothing necessary to be the guy in front; it’s just that I would rather hold my crook than open my arms sometimes.

The good news is that I know where I am, where I stand in life, and I also know where I want to be. I could be picking fruit in distance, oblivious to what is going on around me; blindly doing my work not seeing the human drama that unfolds before me. I am close enough to know the good life when I see it. I just need to learn to take part, to believe that I can lay down the security of my crook and open my arms to those who need them. The work I do, I believe, is important. However, nothing should be more important than the lives in front of me.

We are, if nothing else, about community. If the church is not the guy with the open arms, then the church is useless. We become nothing more than a social club full of wallflowers. In our communities of faith we can afford to be bold. We can afford to look out at the landscape and see those who have been beaten down through oppression, violence, poverty, and ignorance and we can open our arms and damn the theology that separated us in the first place. So, I guess that I not only want to be that guy, but I want the church to be that guy, that woman, that boy, that girl, that child, that adult, that person that sees the humanity in all of us and opens wide in order to offer the greatest embrace we could ever feel.
grace and peace

Picture Number 1

2005-11-02T12:51:00.000-07:00

Artist: John August Swanson
Title: The Prodigal Son
Year: 1984
Note: Please click on the image for a larger version, and to better understand the purpose of this image please read this post.

A corporate experience

2005-10-29T09:56:00.000-06:00

Paul Tillich as a Chaplain in World War I was comforted by Botticelli’s Madonna and Child with Singing Angels (Plate 2). “Writing many years later, Tillich declared: ‘That moment has affected my whole life, given me the keys for the interpretation of human existence, brought vital joy and spiritual truth’” (Brown, 1990, p.91)

“Clearly we should add, however, that perhaps some art allows one not only to think more but also to feel more, and that in both of these ways together it manages to mean more, possibly even letting one be and become more.” (p.92) I have been reading Frank Burch Brown’s Religious Aesthetics - where the preceding quotes come from - for a paper and have been thinking about what visual art means to us.

Therefore, I have an idea for an experiment or experience whichever you prefer. I have this theory that visual art can help us connect to something deeper in our lives through engaging the senses, imagination, and language centers of our brains. What I am proposing to do about this theory is post a picture a week on this blog (assuming I can find a good place to host them). What I would ask from you (my two or three readers) is that you write about the picture. This could be creative fiction, theological ramblings, experiences, whatever comes to mind when you see it.

I would love to hear what speaks to you when you encounter something visual. My plan is to post the picture and then follow up with my own thoughts a couple days later, to allow a blank slate for those you who wish to try the experience. I would propose that you post your story, thoughts, ides, or experiences on your own blog with a trackback or link to the picture so that I can read what you have written. If you don’t have a blog, then feel free to post it here in the comments. I would just like the opportunity to read what people have written and comment if possible.

This is a process that I want to engage in for its creative potential and the possibility of reaching the depth of our emotional and mental processes. My hope is that some of you might take the journey with me and see what comes. Don’t wait for someone else to write one first, I will do my best to be that first person. Whatever comes to the surface of your mind through this process is good material to work with, be it happy, sad, joyful, painful, depressing, or so on. Your thoughts and experiences are as valuable as mine and I will respect what you have written as if it were my own.

If you have any thoughts let me know, I will try to post a picture or a link to a picture at the beginning of next week.

grace and peace

Catching up

2005-10-25T23:19:00.000-06:00

It is really amazing how easy it is to get caught up in school. I can read for days on end, especially books that appeal to the disciplines I identify with: pastoral theology, arts, and formation. I can sit in front of books- thick, heavy, weighty tomes –and only come up for food, water, and to grunt at passers by. I love exploring new ideas, thoughts and theologies. I am, at this moment, in the middle of six books dealing with things from process theology to religious aesthetics to philosophy. It is sometimes hard to keep them straight, but each holds my interest in different ways.

We are assigned pretty close to a book a class a week. This week it was neurobiology and pastoral theology, care and counseling, it was fascinating. The idea of neuroscience and its relationship with narratives, memories, rituals and imagination was really interesting. We spoke with the author of the book via conference call for about an hour, looking at the finer points of his arguments and then peering out over the horizon to the new science that was occurring as we spoke.

It is a different experience reading someone’s passion and then being able to ask them questions about what they have written. We then spent another two hours talking about the implications of this research with communities that have experienced a life of oppression. I did not realize that pain experiences actually have the effect of shrinking the brain physically, shutting down processes that could be utilized to help pull people out of the ensuing depression, pain and grief. We discussed this in the context of Katrina and the neurological implications of the devastation on the mind.

The professor had a surprise task at the end of our three and a half hour discussion. Basically, we had to answer a comprehensive exam question with two minutes of preparation and be critiqued by our colleagues. My heart leapt at this task, anxiety maximizing its presence in my mind and manifesting itself as a pronounced stutter. I survived, and even passed according to the professor. Being put on the spot like this has never been one of my strong suits. I like time to reflect and organize my thoughts; silence to weigh my words and collect any stray wanderings. This was not my element, but watching another do it gave me the confidence to let all hang out as best as I could. At the end, it was good and exciting and actually relieved some future stress related to the whole idea of comprehensive exams.

The quarter is winding down here, and there are only four or so classes left. I am working on several things including: a short paper on the study of religion from the viewpoint of Emile Durkheim, a syllabus for an entry-level undergraduate class in comparative religions, and a paper on Pastoral Theology and Visual Arts. I am also trying to figure out what I will take at the beginning of the year. I think it will come down to three classes, an unbearable burden according to many. I think that I may try Existential Theory and Therapy, Theodicy and Tragedy, and an independent study related to Pastoral formation culminating in a co-authored article with one of my professors. The professor hasn’t decided whether or not to do the article so I am not sure if that one will come through.

This first quarter has been a busy one, full of affirmations and frustrations. My world seems petty and small compared to the things that have happened in “real” life. The national unity in the face of Katrina is beginning to wear off. People who were not directly affected are starting to forget the devastation that has occurred. This is not a bad thing, but it can’t be all good either. My wife and I are looking forward to entertaining family soon. Her parents will be the first to visit us since the move and it will be nice to encounter friendly faces from back east. We continue to miss our friends and colleagues back home. I have the month of December off, and need to figure out what to do other than study Spanish and my LCSW material…

grace and peace

yes and no

2005-10-20T22:40:00.000-06:00

One recent evening my wife and I were driving in northwest Denver. We turned onto an east-west street just as the sun set behind the mountains. My only remark was that it was different from any other sunset I had experienced. It took a moment, but I realized that I had rarely, if ever, seen a sunset over a jagged skyline. I also realized that for the next few years, almost all of my sunsets would be similar. There would be no flat horizon, no sun setting over the marshlands and beaches of the east coast, everything would be different.

Yesterday, I sat in my professor’s office and handed over two paragraphs that described the paper I wanted to write for his class. Over the next thirty minutes we discussed the topic and talked about the words I used to describe this topic. I will be the first to admit that I love to read; I love the knowledge and wisdom contained in the pages of books and novels. I also realized how far behind I felt in a subject I thought I knew.

My two paragraphs blossomed into a page full of notes and corrections with arrows pointing willy-nilly connecting word to phrase to author as I sought to keep my head above water. The subject is a good one, and the ideas will contribute to the field in the long run, but the run will be long. Along with the four or so hundred pages a week I read, articles and books have been added to the list in order to catch up. This is a long way from sitting in my office in Richmond, Virginia, pounding on the keyboard, editing and creating a sermon or a bible study.

I realize today, these new things signify the end of some older things. With every “yes” there is a corresponding “no” that must be examined, must be grieved before the “yes” can be fully experienced. This is a lesson I learned a while ago, but never fully understood until this day. I am not turning away from where I came, nor am I forgetting my past. I am merely attempting to own up to my responsibilities. I said “yes” to the life I now lead and must attend to it fully; I said “yes” to maintaining friendships with people I care about in Virginia and I must also attend to that. I said “no” to living close to friends and family and must grieve the loss I feel. I said “no” to flat horizons and grieve the comfort they have given me all my life. But through this grief I can celebrate what is before me and look upon each new day and the choices I will get to make.

When we forget or choose to ignore the things we need to grieve, we choose not to fully greet the present and future. When I was a child I used to draw sunsets. Every single one that I can remember pictured the sun setting between two mountains. My ideal sunset is the one that I can enjoy here in Denver. However, if I am always lamenting the sunsets of Virginia or South Carolina or Florida or Georgia I will never be able to fully grasp the beauty that sets before each day here. I have the opportunity to enjoy my ideal, but if I am lost to what used to be, I will miss the very things I see. So, I grieve for the opportunities that I will miss, not being with those I love and care for, so that someday I might celebrate the new life that is before me.

I would caution those who are finding their way in this world, those whose footing has been shaken, whose journey seems shrouded, whose pathway has disappeared. I would caution you to grieve for what you lose when you make a choice or take a step. This doesn’t mean that you lie weeping in a heap on the floor, just that you recognize the decisions you make or choose not to make. It isn’t easy, but no one ever said that living an examined life was…

doctoral days

2005-10-11T20:24:00.000-06:00

It is reading so quickly that the words run together and form a stew in your mind. It is using and discussing words that you are not quite sure what they mean, but you know they fit the context. It is questioning the questions, debunking the theories, and grappling with issues of identity, hope, and care. For me, this is doctoral work.

I read Emile Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of Religious Life and then discuss it for four hours straight. I read essays in Feminist/Womanist Pastoral Theology. I read books about Black Pastoral Theology and then have a conversation with the author over the phone. I sit for four hours and discuss the condition of various cultures in the United States. I talk about my lack of identity as a white male. We discuss why there has never been a “white pastoral theology” and the implications therein.

Sometimes it feels like an exercise in mental masturbation. Sometimes, like today, it is fruitful and it makes you step out of your comfort zone and realize your perspective is not the only one and it is especially not any more valuable than anyone else’s. I could do without the massive amounts of reading, but then I would miss so much of the conversation, of the growth that happens when we encounter the opinions of another.

Doctoral work is the right place at the right time for me. I may not always believe that, but I am learning, I am growing, I am coming into contact with who I am and who others are as well. I can imagine that there will be times when I will gripe and moan, but at this moment it feels right, and my mind is clicking on all cylinders. While this is happening, life continues, and I aim to remain a part of it.

I feel the pain and the fear of the world as catastrophe after catastrophe decimates the children of God. I sense the hopelessness of the poor and futility of depending on an inept government to make any significant changes. I wonder how the lives of the grief-stricken move from hour to hour, imagining that many of them merely walk the earth numb and unfeeling. I know that it is not enough to talk, to imagine, we have to care and care enough to make changes.

It was reported today that congress plans to pay for the rebuilding of New Orleans by most likely cutting spending for food stamps and Medicaid. I could not think of a more racist or elitist way of building policy. It is outrageous that one would even think of rebuilding a city on the backs of the poor, while those with means get tax cuts.

If this seems outrageous to you, then email or write your congressperson and tell them so. While I am on the subject, I have to wonder what policy in this country would look like if the makeup of congress went by percentage of population according to the most recent survey. This would make congress actually look like the United States rather than look like the white guys from the populous regions. How differently would this country’s priorities look with a make up that represented us along gender and ethnic status rather than whoever had the most money and got their name in the press without screwing up too badly? Just a thought...

grace and peace

Hello Denver

2005-10-09T11:01:00.000-06:00

What's black and red and white all over?

My snow shovel...

Welcome to Denver, we are supposed to get 3 to 6 inches of snow. That doesn't mean that it will happen; but for an east coast boy who rarely saw snow growing up, the threat is enough to make me wonder about this wonderful Denver weather...

grace and peace

A statement of faith

2005-10-05T23:06:00.000-06:00

When I was ordained almost three years ago, part of the process included writing a statement of faith. Since that time, this document has been edited as my beliefs changed. As I look out over the work that I will do the next few years, I can only wonder how it might change and evolve during this time.

My desire to post it comes from the work that McKormick started tonight. He is trying to write a collaborative creedo for post evangelicals, an admirable task. Having never been in the evangelical church, what I can contribute is ideas and places to begin. Here is who I am, or atleast who I was two months ago. Feel free to comment or question anything written in here.

I believe in God, Abba, Yahweh, Author of heaven and earth, who created us for relationship and community with God’s self. In turn, we have been endowed with a desire for community with one another. This same God loves and seeks us out so that we might be reconciled. Why? No one knows save for the love that the Creator has for his creations. In the person of Jesus, we come to sense the love and care God has for all of creation.

I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only son, sent among us so that we might know and be redeemed to God. Through the life of Jesus Christ our Lord, we find the true mystery of God’s power. In the form of a servant, Jesus spread a message of love for God, obedience to God, and hope for all who lay their burdens before God. In Jesus the Christ, humanity found redemption and reconciliation, judgment and concern, life and love. Christ’s death and resurrection offers us the chance to hope and believe in a love that is greater than the bond of parenthood, a power that is greater than death, and the life ever after that God desires for us.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, who reveals God to us, sustains us, and inspires us daily as we attempt to respond to God’s grace. The Holy Spirit is among us, continually creating and renewing us, so that we may be open to the action of God taking place around us. The Spirit “sets us free to accept ourselves and to love God and neighbor, and binds us together with all believers in the one body of Christ, the Church” (Book of Confessions, 10.4, 55).

In a world that often seems more broken than whole, I believe that God actively seeks, inspires, and calls us together so that we may have abundant life. It is in this broken world that the Body of Christ should stand as a place where wholeness might be found. Through the preaching of the Word and the enactment of the Sacraments we unite ourselves with our brothers and sisters in Christ throughout all of creation. Our Sacraments connect us with the living God and community around us. They offer us the chance to celebrate, hope, love, and renew our lives and devotion to the God who first loved us. Through the words of scripture, we encounter the Word of God – timeless, revealing, and ever-present. In the stories we read, we gather a sense of the drama that unfolded between God and God’s creations. In these words and through the life of the living Word we find the never-ending message of God’s love, justice, and desire to renew and reconcile with the creations God so dearly cares for. As the Body of Christ encounters God in worship, scripture, preaching, teaching, and the enacting of the Sacraments, we can only be reminded of a God who lives and seeks to be known by all of creation.

As I come in contact with God’s good but broken creations, I believe in the need for acts of reconciliation and messages of hope for all of God’s creations. I have felt God’s pull, call, and tug towards ministry for many years. As a Minister of the Word and Sacrament, I understand my life and vocation to be service at the pleasure of God, and as God calls, there I will go. Where ever I am called, I hope to offer a place of safety where the living God can be encountered; and where the living God is encountered, people can find the healing, hope, and courage of a God who seeks them wherever they are.

As the Body of Christ we rejoice because “nothing in life or in death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (BOC, 10.5, 78-79). However, we must not stop with mere rejoicing. Faith requires action, and our faith in God requires that we take our experiences of God into a world that needs the message of a Creator, the healing touch of a Redeemer, and the inspiration of a Sustainer.

If...

2005-10-04T23:31:00.000-06:00

If, as I believe, there is no God without art, music, dance, and nature...

...then why do we elect a President who is a "faith-based leader" but only concerned with test scores.

If creativity is the mother of invention, and artistic tendencies bring that out...

...then why are schools cutting programs for art and music so that children can pass standardized tests that measure retention at the expense of other forms of intelligence.

When did an "eye for an eye" replace "love God, self, and neighbor" as the overarching theme of the Bible?

Why must "non-defense" programs that aid people be cut in order for us to keep the promises of an incompetent leader with no oratorical skills and little common sense or regard for others?

Why is the political leadership of this nation, both Democrat and Republican, devoid of any creative ideas to help us be a nation of equality rather than a nation of haves and have-nots (maybe they spent too much time on the standardized tests)?

Why do we, the voters of this nation, continue to elect incompetent inbred politicians whose greatest redeeming quality is the ability to not answer questions or hold themselves accountable for what they do or say?

I listened to the "speech" of the President this morning and left feeling dirty and disgusted. I am not sure what to think anymore; where are the ministers who speak out against the injustices in this nation?

Where are the ministers who know better than to believe that war is only and best option?

Where are the ministers who rally against poverty and the inequitable policies of the government towards those who are poor?

Where are the ministers who know that gays and lesbians deserve the same rights and benefits that all citizens of this country claim?

Where are the ministers who open their doors to the oppressed of this country so that they might find peace and solace?

I know that Jim Wallis isn't the only one out there who thinks that real Christians fight poverty, not just on the local level, but by electing people who will create and vote for equitable and fair policies that benefits the "least of these" in our midst.

As a heterosexual, priviledged, white male I am as much of a contributor to this dilemma through my silence, I don't know what I am going to do about that yet, but this is a start. These are theological questions that I ask, and they demand theological answers. When you read them and thoughts run ramshackle through your brains, remember one thing:

God is love.

Then formulate your theological answers. If you post them here fine, just so they are honest and thoughtful. I don't write a lot of political things because I feel like it is a waste of energy. This is different because I think the church is called to be the conscience of the state, and we are doing a pretty poor job of articulating good theology in the realm of public policy. Advocacy is also one of the tasks of supportive Pastoral Theology. One of the ways in which we care for one another is by changing the power structures in place that oppress and devalue our fellow human beings. If you don't think that happens, then you haven't been watching the Katrina coverage...

grace and peace

Pastoral Theology revisited

2005-09-28T16:18:00.000-06:00

Here is the version of my concept I presented to my class. The language has been cleaned up a little bit, based on some suggestions from you and my own editing. It was well received by the class (all four of us) and the only sticking point which I need to continue to refine is the amount of theological reflection in the process, and the idea of introducing theological thoughts and reflections to the community. For some reason both of the other students in the class had difficulty understanding why this was necessary in a pastoral theological setting. To me, it was common sense that good theology was never done in a vacuum and that ideas, experiences, thoughts and reflections needed to be discussed in a communal setting in order for theology to be real and have a real impact.

Thanks for all of the comments, suggestions and frustrations. It seems like the biggest frustration was that it wasn't practical. Rather than having teeth it theorized about the biting motion, and that was its intention. I was asked to define something that I had practically done for three years. That meant stepping back from the practical work of theology and asking: what, how, and why?

The most frustrating aspect of this assignment for me was its brevity. When using images, it is important to fully conceptualize the picture so that the description can be fully understood, this was difficult to do in a half page. As I continue my studies, I am sure there will be opportunities to flesh out the practical dimensions of this model, as well as, its continued academic applications. It is a theoretical definition, and one that I will continue to work with during my time here.

I believe Pastoral Theology is better conceptualized than defined, allowing for a fluid and open approach to theology that has roots in the experiences within and outside its distinct boundaries. Therefore, I offer an image of Pastoral Theology to be played with rather than a definition that might constrict. The image I offer is the helical or coil spring. This type of spring is usually circular, spiraling into three-dimensions with distinct vertical and horizontal components. Furthermore, helical springs generally have gaps between strands of coiled wire giving the sense of both occupied space and openness. Finally, helical springs offer a diverse number of usages and functions.

A visual inspection of Pastoral Theology reveals a vertical, God-human dimension, and an equally important, horizontal, human-human dimension. These two relationships are bound to the image of the spring, by the rising circular coils. Along this spiral I see the work of Pastoral Theology as containing four points of reference: experience, reflection, introduction to the community, and re-interpretation. The gaps between wire strands signify openness to other sources of knowledge and inspiration. Thus, a helical spring model of Pastoral Theology embodies enduring relationships, an ability to incorporate new dimensions into its thought and praxis, and relating its distinctive theological ideas through a process of experience, reflection, introduction, and re-interpretation.

Moreover, helical springs have three mechanical functions: compression, tension, and torsion. The compression function is generally supportive. The tension function flexibly holds independent pieces together. The torsion function operates by coiling and uncoiling to release stored energy. These mechanical functions help us to understand the under-girding functions of Pastoral Theology. Support, intentional binding of distinct disciplines, and the release and retention of knowledge and experiences are the functions from which the work of Pastoral Theology rises.

grace and peace

Pastoral Theology

2005-09-24T00:21:00.000-06:00

My first assignment in my first doctoral seminar is to define Pastoral Theology. A relatively new discipline, Pastoral Theology is unique in that it incorporates a number of other theological, as well as, social science disciplines in its conception. The whole subject is about 50 years old and is still in its infancy. So after four hours of class, I am required to say what I believe something is, without knowing a whole hell of a lot about it.

It is supposed to be a half a page, but I am a little over (surprise, surprise). I won't turn it in until Tuesday, so if you have any comments let me know. If it makes no sense let me know. I am new to this whole create your own definition thing...

I believe that Pastoral Theology is something that is better conceptualized than defined. This allows for a fluid and open approach to a theology that has roots in the experiences contained within and outside of its distinct boundaries. Therefore, I offer an image of Pastoral Theology meant to be played with rather than a definition that might constrict.

The image I offer is the helical spring. A visual examination reveals this type of spring as circular, spiraling into three-dimensions with distinct vertical and horizontal components. Furthermore, helical springs generally have gaps between strands of coiled wire giving the sense of both occupied space and openness.

Rather than a simple circular pattern, the spiral offers points of movement whether progressive or digressive. Likewise, Pastoral Theology contains both the vertical, God-human dimension, and the equally important human-human dimension. These two relationships are held within the bounds of the spring, but open and part of the things that affect it. Along this spiral I see the work of Pastoral Theology as containing four points of reference: experience, reflection, introduction to the community, and re-interpretation.

Thus, a helical spring model of Pastoral Theology embodies enduring relationships with marked boundaries, an ability to incorporate new dimensions into its thought and praxis, and relate its distinctive theological ideas through a process of experience, reflection, introduction, and re-interpretation.

Moreover, helical springs have three mechanical functions: compression, tension, and torsion. These also function for our concept. The compression function is generally supportive. The tension function flexibly holds independent pieces together. The torsion function operates by coiling and uncoiling to release stored energy. These mechanical functions help us to understand the under-girding functions of Pastoral Theology. Support, intentional binding of distinct disciplines, and the release and retraction of knowledge and experiences are the pieces from which the work of Pastoral Theology rises.

Here is Seward Hiltner's definition of Pastoral Theology. Hiltner is credited with being the "father" of Pastoral Theology and one of its earliest and more prolific theologians. I include his definition for comparison's sake.

Pastoral Theology is... that branch or field of theological knowledge and inquiry that brings the shepherding (defined as healing, sustaining, and guiding) perspective to bear upon all the operations and functions (defined as communicating the gospel and organizing the people) of the church and the minister and then draws conclusions of a theological order from reflection on these observations.

The quote is direct, with a few parenthetic additions for clarification, from his book Preface to Pastoral Theology written in 1958, published by Abingdon Press. It is out of print but you can find copies for five bucks on the internet, it is worth it if you are interested in Pastoral Theology.

grace and peace

good things

2005-09-22T00:30:00.000-06:00

From the inside it is easy to see where we get it wrong— the politics, the wrangling for position or power or favor, the petty struggles over tradition, the longing for when things were better (often in some distant memory long since scrubbed of any dirt or darkness). The church can be a difficult place to find a home, especially when you are charged with its care. Ministers can be a lonely bunch and ministry can be a lonely lifestyle depending on the congregations we choose to serve. However, there are churches and programs and people that do get it.

Many people found within the walls of churches have large wonderful cavernous hearts. They are lights on the hill that could never be hidden no matter how hard you try. They are volunteers who show up time after time, not out of a sense of duty, but because they hear the call just as surely as any trained minister would. These are people who lead classes, sing in choirs, serve on sessions or boards or committees. They are the ones who make sure that communion is set up and the candles are lit and the heat works on Sunday mornings. They are the reason the church still works and will continue working.

There are churches whose mission is to reach out to people. I am not talking about evangelism; in fact evangelism is one of the things wrong with the church today. I am talking about churches that care for their communities regardless of how the community is categorized. There are churches who advocate, who offer helping hands, who give of the very soul that lives within the community. These churches don’t offer services with the stipulation that someone “come to Jesus.” They offer services because that is what Jesus told them to do regardless of who the person is or what they might believe.

There are churches who faithfully stretch the limits of worship, ushering in new forms of praise and penance and preaching. They stretch their arms wide and cast a net of many voices, giving way to art and dance and song and laughter, all the while focusing their eyes on the God that dwells above, among and within them. These churches think through what they do, not only trying to communicate with the culture around them, but doing so in a way that does not rape the tradition from which they come.

There are churches that excel at reaching out to one another, creating lasting bonds that embrace, envelope, and encourage all who happen to wander within the walls. These are the comfortable communities that don’t allow you to be complacent. They are the places where people come to grow and doubt and stretch their faith. Here people find a safe place to look at the faith of the faithful and laugh, cry, and hope.

There are churches who don’t take themselves too seriously. These churches know the Bible and know its limitations. These churches know their traditions and know the need for change. They hear the voice in the wilderness and run to meet it with joy and thanksgiving. The people of these churches always start their prayers with thanks and end with hope, for they know that the love of God knows no bounds.

There are good people, good churches doing good things. Maybe the best things about these houses of holy is that they are horrible at marketing, they find no use for clever postcards or combat witnessing, they stink at building campaigns because they waste their money on helping those in need, and they are horrible at bullet-point theology. To find these places that soothe the soul and comfort our afflictions, places that hug and hope and hold, that pray and worship and serve we must look hard. Sometimes they are found in large congregations, and sometimes small congregations hold the keys to the kingdom.

We know it when we find it though, something just feels real, maybe almost too real. The question is: are we willing to risk reality for the sake of the relationship offered to us? Are we willing to wade through our own darkness to embrace the light that surrounds us? Can we chance that we don’t know all of the answers, we may never know all of the answers, and that is good enough for our lives?

grace and peace

Maybe I am uptight...

2005-09-18T20:27:00.000-06:00

My response to the comments of my last post became long enough to be a post themselves, so here it is.

I want to thank everyone for their words. There are times when I wonder if I am a bit uptight about worship. But then I remember how many times I have laughed ay my own mistakes and enjoyed the play that occurs between myself and the congregation.

So, I don't think I am uptight about worship, but I am a bit frustrated with those who don't take care with the language they use and the worship they create. That is as much of an abuse as anything good that could occur. I may be picking on small things during this service, but if they aren't teaching about the small things, then what about the big things?

The most frustrating part is the ignorance of those who are supposed to know better. Tod has experienced me as a worship leader before and knows that I make mistakes but I am not sure if he would call me uptight or not, Tod?

Therefore, I will become a great deal less frustrated when people think through the things they are asking others to be a part of. Too many people try to copy the hottest worship model in order to increase the size of their church, without simply asking the appropriate questions.

How shall we label each part of worship?

Why do we use only masculine pronouns when referring to God?

Why do we choose a praise band over organ music?

What do the songs we sing say about what we believe?

What effect will our decisions have on the overall experience of worship?

How can we include more people in a service of God?

and so on...

There are many questions that need to be asked before creating a liturgy for a congregation. So, I might quit being uptight when people quit being ignorant, especially those people who are in charge of the worship life of the multitude.

Read a book (Marva J. Dawn's is excellent, Ron Byars has some good words as well (he was my preaching and worship prof.), Gordon Lathrop has some excellent stuff on the history of worship). Learn about denominational history and traditions. Find ways to know why worship is structured a certain way and then make changes. Without the history and connection to people of all times and places (thanks Erin) worship is meaningless and obsolete.

In my denomination worship comes out of scripture, and on top of that there are several hundred years of tradition and trial and error. There is so much rich material out there that one just needs to look and find out how to best communicate it to a congregation. This congregation's worship looked like it was put together piece-meal, as if they just wanted to thumb their nose at history for the sake of being popular.

On a side note, my best friend (a Baptist minister) and I were sitting in an ecumenical service one time when another minister got up to pray. He and I often joke that for our various heresies we have permanent seats on the bus ride to hell, he gets to control the radio, I get to navigate.

Any way, we were sitting at this service and about a third of the way through the prayers of the people, the minister starts with the "Jesus wejus". From that day forward we decided that sitting together in worship may not be the best thing. Between the elbows and convulsive (though silent) laughter both of us were practically in tears by the end of the prayer. This may seem sacreligious to some but we had a great time, and I really don't think God minded so much.

Worship is a vertical and horizontal experience. It is a focused time where we communicate with God and with the community that surrounds us. That doesn't mean that we cannot laugh and enjoy ourselves and play in the space that has been created. However, a safe place of worship must be created before anything else meaningful can happen. Safe places are created when the community can feel as though each member has equal part in the experience rather than showing up to be entertained. Safe places are places of trust and growth where we can lay our faults and imperfections before the community and have our wounds tended by God and then by one another.

Good worship, in a safe place, is about God, never about us...

... and thanks to all those who respond here. Your comments and thoughts are meaningful and give me pause to think and clarify what it is I believe and what it is I hope to share with others. Every comment is important because it also lets me know a little bit more about who you are as well, and that can only be a good thing...

grace and peace

A problem or two with worship...

2005-09-16T01:51:00.000-06:00

So, what is worship? What is it about gathering together in prayer and song and sermon that ignites the spirit and soothes the soul? Worship is the ritual of liturgy and history and tradition and experience all rolled into the present moment looking towards a future time. However, worship sometimes becomes nothing more than flattering or sucking up to God, and it is then my brothers and sisters that trouble begins.

Last Sunday I found a place where worship did not feel anything like worship to me; but before we get to some thoughts about that particular service, let me comment on a couple things.

Proportionally there was a greater number of people my age or younger at this service than in any other one I have experienced. Something must be working for them. Second, the pastor seemed very pastoral. She knew the names and children and stories of the members of her congregation. My guess is that she is a wonderful minister who serves joyfully and faithfully.

I am proud and happy to know that the congregation is cared for by the minister. I am ashamed of the education and discernment of the congregation concerning liturgy and worship.

First things first, I am a traditionalist when it comes to liturgy. I believe there is an order to worship and that each part and movement should be designed to allow people the freedom to find God in the moment. I believe that hymns should be sung, prayers prayed, scripture read, sermons preached, and sacraments performed. I believe worship, as Calvin would say, should be decent and in order.

I also believe that all worship is contemporary. The lines drawn today are arbitrary and obnoxious. Just because you have a guitar and a drum set down front doesn’t mean that your worship is more contemporary than one that sings hymns from a hymnal and plays an organ. If the worship doesn’t feel real, then it isn’t worship; it is a trip down memory lane or some glorified form of God flattery. Music is not worship, but a component of worship that enables people to feel the presence of God through other means than scripture and prayer. Worship is the experience not the pieces assembled to provide the experience.

I like alternative instruments in worship; I like liturgical dance, responsive prayers, and mixing things up. However, ritual and liturgy should be familiar to a congregation. The order of worship should be comfortable, but not restrictive. In the PC(USA) this is established in five parts (with scripture playing a central role in each part): gathering, proclaiming, responding, enacting, and bearing. If you want to know more about this mention something in the comments and I will write a little more.

Let’s return to our service last Sunday. First, the worship leader wrote a welcoming/statement of faith for the congregation to read. The Presbyterian Church is a creedal church and it is proud of its rich history in stating what it believes through creeds and confessions. I guess the Apostles’ or Nicene Creed wasn’t good enough, nor the more recent Brief Statement of Faith. If I wanted to hear someone’s personal testimony about God, I would gather around a campfire, sing kumbayah, and wait for the Spirit to move. This is corporate worship and the worship leader forgot the most important thing, namely that it is not about him.

Second, when it came time to sing hymns, these were noted in the bulletin as “opening worship, worship, and closing worship.” Music, in and of itself, is not worship when it is merely a part of the service. What about scripture readings, the baptism, the sermon, and the prayers, are they not worship as well? What is it about people of my generation and the theologically abhorrent music they pass off as “praise hymns?” I can get a better dose of music, lyrics and theology from Linkin Park, John Lennon, Wilco, Dave Matthews Band, and Ben Folds Five. At least they are honest about their experience of life and the struggles that ensue rather than the sugar-coated rotten theology of today’s contemporary worship music.

There are good modern hymn writers who are theologically sound and musically creative. Take the time to find them rather than buying the TIME-LIFE Worship songs of the millennium collection, learning a couple of chords and then trotting them out as real hymns. Additionally, music should complement the scripture of the day, and not detract or become an entirely separate thing from the rest of worship. We are talking about building an experience, not doing the latest and greatest thing.

Third, I bear no ill will against praise bands, but leave the lead singers at home. The pair that led the music basically drowned out any sound the congregation made, and these times of “worship” became the Biff and Buffy show. The intention of hymns in worship is a creative way of encountering God through musical prayer. This is not about singing well or being the loudest or being in front of the crowd. That is what Karaoke is for on Saturday night.

My worship professor put it this way, the entertainment of the congregation is not the purpose of worship, in fact the congregation isn’t even the audience in worship; the congregation is the performer and the audience is God. The pastor is just there to help facilitate the experience through the liturgy of the day. If you want to be entertained go to a movie. If you want to entertain then be a comedian. If you want to help facilitate the growth of the body of Christ through liturgy and preaching so that they might find themselves drawing nearer to the Divine through communal worship then be a minister.

Fourth, longer does not mean better. Just because you plan worship for an hour and fifteen minutes doesn’t mean you have to use it all. The sermon preached that Sunday could have been tightened up to about five minutes from the rambling forty that it lasted. Sometimes, simpler is better and there is no need to carry on just filling time.

My sense is that this has more to do with the expectations of the congregation rather than the needs of the preacher (though sometimes that is assumption is wrong). I hear all the time that preaching is supposed to be engaging, funny, hopeful, inspiring and generally agreeable. Scripture is rarely any of those things. At times, it is tedious, sorrowful, challenging, uncomfortable, with glimmers of hope thrown in just to keep us reading. The sole responsibility of the preacher is to encounter, engage, and wrestle with the text. My personal way of handling the time is to preach until I am done. Sometimes this lasts fifteen minutes, sometimes it lasts twenty-five. When the text is done with me, then I can say no more.

Fifth, I understand the need for spontaneity in prayer. However, if you are planning on leading one for the people, do me a favor and practice. I am tired of the “Jesus weejus” and “Lord Ijus” type prayers. You know what I am talking about. Whenever people find themselves at a loss for words or just want to start a new part of the prayer they say “Jesus weejus thank you for everything” or “Lord, Ijus wanna thank you Father God for the beautiful day…” These statements are the equivalent of “ummm… and uhhh” in secular speeches. They serve little purpose other than to fill gaps where thoughts have escaped. If this happens to you, say nothing. Silence is often more poignant than anything we can usually come up with anyway.

Finally, take down the projector screen and put the cross back on the wall. Don’t be afraid of the organ or guitar or drums or flute or trumpet, they are all beautiful instruments. Mostly, remember that worship is not about you, it is not about me (whether I am leading or part of the congregation). Worship is about an encounter with the Holy that transcends the individual parts of the liturgy. It is about drawing nearer to the presence of God in a community bound together by prayer and laughter and love and hope and struggles. No one person is greater than any other when we enter a sanctuary. Some facilitate, some follow but all of us have the responsibility to perform for God and then take what we learn into the world around us…

grace and peace

gggrrr...

2005-09-11T23:01:00.000-06:00

What am I doing here? This question haunts my thoughts at the moment. I am not thinking metaphorically, I wonder about the present. What am I doing here in Denver, in school again, in a doctoral program?

Orientation was Friday, and I was not blown away. There were no epiphanies, save my ability to speak to my advisor rapidly about my interests and what I wanted to study. Most of my time was spent listening to people tell me how hard it was and wondering why any school still operates on the quarter system.

Classes begin on Thursday if I can find my immunization records, make sure I have health insurance, and get approval for an independent study on pastoral formation. Of course this needs to be done by Tuesday if I actually want to take classes. Why can’t programs send you the necessary forms beforehand? Instead, my day was filled with “oh yeah, one more thing…” What a pain in the ass.

Therefore, I wonder why I am here. I know the obvious answer. God called you here; God has a plan for your time here. Let’s be truthful, I may have felt pulled but it was my call, and sometimes I regret it. To be called halfway across the country, to a land where I know no one sucks.

Why couldn’t I just finish my engineering degree and draw pretty lines for the rest of my life. I wouldn’t be near so poor; I wouldn’t put this tremendous pressure on myself to succeed; and I would be living a hell of a lot closer to home. It is just so frustrating at the moment. My wife, despite all of her qualifications and her desire to work, can’t find meaningful employment. Her migraines are wreaking havoc on her head. It has been a long weekend, and then we decided to go to church…

I will have write about my first experience in an evangelical church. To say the least I was under-whelmed, unimpressed, and if this is what my generation has to offer to worship, I want to renegotiate my birthdate and find someone who is doing something truly great…

grace and peace

all that glitters...

2005-09-07T20:17:00.000-06:00

The gray clouds swept over the mountains and continued through the city. Their transit time was less than an hour and the relief they brought was minimal. It was just enough to coat the leaves of nearby trees the damp air clinging to my lungs. My wife and I sat on our front porch and munched on left-over pizza. As I washed down a bite with a cold beer, the wind began its invisible movements over the earth. I could see small clouds in the distance glowing red as the sun began to set. Then the show began. A tree living in yard not far from us began to twinkle in the twilight. Between the wind, the fresh coat of rain, and the sunset I was privy to the creation of a golden masterpiece. It looked like strands of natural Christmas lights, like a flock of Tinkerbells, like a shower of stars and I was fortunate enough not to miss a single burst of golden light…

I like to flip during commercials. Sometimes between just a few channels; at other times I attempt a marathon through every channel. One time I happened to catch the local “Jesus channel” which featured a show from Robert Tilton. I guess it was a show, though truth be told it sounded more like an infomercial. Robert, dressed in an expensive suit, hair coiffed, face freshly tanned, stood on a harbor in front of numerous boats and yachts. He was earnest and I could tell he believed what he was sharing. Tonight, he wanted you to call and buy his book, “How to Be Rich and Get Anything You Want”. I watched him for about five minutes as he told me I could get rich and he had the scripture to prove it.

I know a little bit about Robert’s past fall from grace and the theological atrocities that he has committed over the years. However, here he was again, touting his wares on “Jesus TV” and it made me wonder how many people were ordering at that moment. He wouldn’t do it if people didn’t buy it. He couldn’t do it if people didn’t want to take the easy road out. The thoughts that ran through my mind were grizzly. He believed what he was sharing because it worked. People who are desperate; who need contact and care send him money because he tells them it will help them. I am pretty damn sure that it doesn’t…

I know Robert Tilton is a nothing, a nobody who earns millions raping the bank accounts of the poor and the infirm. I am really not all that mad at him. I save my ire for the programmers and people who own the stations that allow this abuse to occur. Those who fill the time slots with whoever will pay, regardless of the message.

There are many more like Robert, some have been caught in their lies, others are more sneaky and insidious. They would rather peddle a pitiful gospel in the hopes of warming your hearts and greasing the gold in your wallets. What I don’t understand are the people who buy into this theology. I realize that theology is a finite pursuit by a finite species. It is an imperfect craft that can both serve and destroy humanity depending on which parts you choose to highlight.

Regardless, however you twist the words, prooftext the source, or hone your charisma the message of Christianity is service and suffering punctuated by moments of beauty, healing and wholeness. I don’t understand how some “preachers” come to any other conclusion, especially those who espouse a theology of prosperity. Christianity is the ultimate existential enterprise culminating in death and the hope of eternity.

There are beautiful things about life in the body of Christ, but it is infotainment, ill-conceived righteouness, and abuse that is all too often seen by others. Today, much of the public face of Christianity stands on the precipice between relevance and huge joke. Whether it is intelligent design, faith-oriented politics, the theology of prosperity, the “smiling preacher,” or some purpose-driven self-help drivel Christianity will not be taken seriously as a way of life that can change this world while abuses continue. Even worse, we risk becoming irrelevant.

Until we recover the beauty of the relationship between God and ourselves, God and EVERY one else (regardless of race, gender, religion, lifestyle, sexuality, whatever other label you want to ascribe to others), and God and this world we live in, we will be a joke and not a very good one at that.

I don’t want a revolution. I don't want a new style of worship or fancy gimmicks and light shows. I don’t want a public figure speaking for my faith and what I need. I don’t want faith based initiatives, prayer in schools, intelligent design or the Ten Commandments posted anywhere.

I want us to go outside and see the sunset. I want us to wave to our neighbors instead of hunkering down in the air conditioning. I want us look beyond theology and find God once again. I want us to understand sin, and better yet understand grace. I want us to live responsibly and conserve our resources so that, should I ever have children, that their grandchildren can see the beauty of this world. It is not enough to get all I can while I am alive. All that glitters may be gold, but I will happily take the gold of my sunset over what some of Christianity is peddling at this moment…

grace and peace

texts: Matt. 18:15-20, Rom. 13:8-14 title: together

2005-09-03T00:31:00.000-06:00

I once had a black Labrador retriever named Buck. I say once because he now lives with my parents, as he has for the last seven years, in the mountains of North Georgia. Buck is a gentle, playful, loving dog without a mean bone in his body. And at 85 pounds, I believe he is one of the largest lap dogs known to humanity. However, Buck is also deathly afraid of lightening and thunder.

He wasn’t always this way. About three or four years ago, Buck was riding in a kennel in the back of my parents’ pickup truck when the truck was hit on the side by another car that recklessly pulled into traffic. He wasn’t physically hurt by the crash. However, from that day forward he has been mentally afraid of riding in the car, and of the noise and violence of thunderstorms.

Buck physically shakes when storm clouds produce their symphonies and light shows. His body trembles with fear; and I can only imagine the memories that these strange noises call up for him. One of the only comforts for Buck during these times is being near and physically touching my mom or dad. There is something about being in the presence of someone else that helps to calm his nerves and settle him down.

It is our ability to be present, as best we can, to one another that sustains us through violent and fearful times. When Katrina hit the Gulf shores of Mississippi and Louisiana last week, no one could have imagined the devastation and destruction.

Thousands upon thousands have been displaced, have lost friends and family members, have lost everything they worked for, lived with and some have even lost the people and things they loved.

Storms like Katrina bring up some of the most difficult questions in the lives of the faithful. Why do these disasters happen? Why would God allow this? What does it mean? They are good questions, all of them, but they are unanswerable unless you wish to play god.

As I thought about this disaster, I thought of three primary ways we could respond to disaster like this: we could respond with cynicism; we could respond out of fear; or we could respond with love. Either way, we are called to respond directly to the things that happen in our lifetimes. That is the crux of our Matthew passage.

We aren’t called to sit complacently and judge or gripe about what is happening around us. Whether personally or globally we aren’t to go behind people’s backs and speak ill of them.

No, we are held to a higher standard of direct love for God, ourselves, and one another. Out of our love for one another, we are to speak and act in a manner that directly deals with the person and action.

We see this example over and over again in the ministry of Christ, a caring confrontation with an offending person that dealt directly with a behavior or situation. Or let’s put it another way, if Jesus saw that something was amiss in your life, he would tell you about it, and he would tell you in a way that showed how much he cared and loved you. This is not a boot camp type confrontation, though he did shake things up a bit, but one that sought healing and wholeness in the process. Paul echoes this in his letter to the Romans as well. He believes the only thing we are to owe one another is love.

So, no doubt you have seen the devastation, the destruction, the loss of life and livelihood. We cannot go anywhere without being reminded of what has happened. While disasters like these are unexplainable, the response of the Body of Christ should not be.

There is to be no fear among us, there is to be no cynicism either. Our only way to respond to any event in our lives is to directly love and be present to those who are before us.

Whether it is care for a frightened dog, whether it is being present to someone who has lost a loved one, a livelihood or is just lost, whether it is responding to a disaster financially or through volunteering our time and talents. We can be sure that there is no better way, no better hope for humanity, no better life for God’s children than to directly love one another as best we can in every circumstance.

In a few moments we will partake of the Lord’s Supper, a time where all of the faithful from generations past and generations to come will sit at the table and share a meal together. I would ask that when you partake of the bread and cup, that you would remember your brothers and sisters all over the world who, for whatever reason, cannot do what you do today.

Remember, pray, and be present to how God calls you to respond this day to the grace and love that you have been given. Then, when the time is right, do what God asks, and go out and love.

Divine Worship - 9:30 A.M.

2005-08-29T20:43:00.000-06:00

Forty-five minutes down the interstate and we pull into a town that is one stop sign away from being forgotten. I left the directions at home, but felt that if I drove down both streets in town I would eventually find what I was looking for.

A small red-brick church sat on the corner across from the railroad tracks. The sign above the door read “Byers Community Church – Divine Worship 9:30 A.M. I don’t know about you, but I have never been a part of “divine worship” before, and I am pretty sure that I have never led a “divine worship service.” There is a first time for everything.

We arrived a few minutes early; the person who was supposed to meet us was a few minutes late. The inside of the building was smaller than I expected. White-washed walls were illuminated by cracked stained glass; on one wall hung a picture of “lily-white Jesus” complete with golden halo, herding sheep. People began to arrive shortly after the door opened and I greeted as many as I could.

After robing in the closet-like office, the music started and I returned to my seat. Someone pushed play on a tape player and a drum beat introduced the “contemporary” hymn song of the day. The best thing about contemporary Christian music and songwriting is that 99.9 percent of it will be forgotten.

It is interesting leading worship alone for the first time. You get to do things your way for a change. The placement of the pulpit in this sanctuary was askew, so I decided to step to the center and lead parts of the service, and nobody complained. I almost tripped over my robe at one point and got to laugh about it with the congregation, making sport of my big black polyester gown. It is a good community church, filled with good people. They just happened to hear one of the worst sermons I have ever preached. It started this way…

There was supposed to be a lay reader for the first scripture verse, when no one came forward, it was no big deal. I rose, blindly grabbed a Bible from underneath the pulpit and found the pericope. Unfortunately, I picked up the King James Version. My mind raced as I half translated and hiccupped my way through the garbled passage. I ended saying “This is the Word of the Lord,” expecting to hear a resounding “Thanks be to God.” Instead, I think I could hear crickets chirping in the distance. Apparently, that was not a tradition of this church.

I stumbled through a quick background of the Romans passage and read it without a hitch. Then, I started the sermon during which I stuttered, lost my place at least four times, and skipped ahead a number of times only to repeat myself over again. The sermon content was pretty good and I thought it fit the scripture passage; my delivery was, at best, inept.

When I reflect on what happened, I can pinpoint one difference between this Sunday and all of the rest, the audience. I think I expected to look out and see familiar faces. Instead, everything was new. There were new squirmy children, new scowls to ponder, new eyes in which to find sparks, and new faces to interpret. It felt like I was back at the beginning again. My first sermon was something like this one, only the content was worse. I was telling people whose names I had already forgotten what I thought; and all I wanted was to sit down and blend into the background.

When the service ended, I walked to the back to wish people well on their journeys. A number of comments were made that I’m not sure how to take.

“It’s good to hear the contemporary news make a sermon!” One women exclaimed.

Another women whispered as I passed, “It was nice when you applied the Bible to our lives, I need more of that kind of preaching.”

“I felt like you were talking to me,” said yet another woman.

The men said nothing expect for their desire for a cup of coffee.

My only thought for all of these comments was, “what the hell was the guy before me telling these folks!?”

I am my own worst critic and always will be. I know this. Thankfully, many things happen in worship that are beyond me. That is how it should be. It is not up to me to call upon the holy. I am merely a servant and most of the time not a very good one. God was, is, and will be the one member of all of the services in which I participate. Therefore, wherever I miss a cue, whatever sentence I fumble or whoever sits in front of me God will be the one to reach them. I am just the bumbling messenger.

Today, I awoke to good reviews. Most of the people told Presbytery Executive they enjoyed the service and the sermon. Even my wife liked this one (she thinks I am a buzz-kill when I preach). So, I will return next week and stand and deliver. I will administer communion, but this time I will be among familiar faces and maybe that won’t be so scary. Maybe this time worship will actually feel divine…

texts: Matt 16:21-28, Rom. 12:9-21 title:grace

2005-08-26T09:21:00.000-06:00

The following is my sermon for August 28th. This is a rural congregation and my first time preaching before them. The texts are taken from the lectionary (RCL Cycle:A, 15th Sunday after Pentecost). It should be an interesting Sunday ;).

I read in the Denver Post on Tuesday that a nationally known televangelist had called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, the leader of Venezuela. Now Hugo Chavez may not be the best of political leaders, but when a Christian minister calls for our country to kill someone for their ideological beliefs I have to question what they are emulating and teaching the members of their congregation.

And on a larger scale, I really wonder how this differs from the cries of terrorists around the world? Leaning on religious zealotry and abhorrent theological conclusions that create an atmosphere of unrest and intolerance sounds like a familiar condemnation doesn’t it?

Mostly, I seem to have forgotten which one of Jesus’ teaching moments or sermons this position mirrors. And despite a subsequent apology, histhe words are out there and cannot be retracted and there has been little call for accountability. Anne Lamott a Presbyterian author once said, “You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

Let’s turn to Matthew for a moment; we’ll talk about this story a little later. What we have in Matthew is a passage foreshadowing Jesus’ suffering and death in Jerusalem. The expectation of the Messiah in Jewish theology was that he would be a great leader and conqueror, not a suffering servant. Peter’s words are not out of order in this context.

Jesus’ admonishment given is adequate as well. Peter is thinking in earthly tones, just as all theology is an earthly pursuit. Peter merely repeats what he has been taught, and seeks to have Jesus conform to those ideas, not unlike our televangelist.

I can even see Peter waving a finger in front Jesus’ face, “There is to be no suffering for the Messiah. No, the Messiah is to cause suffering to the enemies of the Jewish state.”

Jesus’ response is simple and to the point: don’t limit what I will do by thinking of it in earthly terms. God’s ideas are greater than anything conceived by humans.

Whether you are a televangelist with a penchant for shooting your mouth off, or a disciple with a knack for not getting the message, or even a congregation member just trying to do the right thing and get along in the world, there something to this idea that God has greater plans than we can conceive.

When we lived in Richmond, my wife, worked for the Richmond Ballet for a couple of years. Part of my duty as her husband was to attend the ballet with her occasionally. Whenever a show time would come around, I would begin to behave a bit like a two-year old complaining about not wanting to go, having to go, having to dress up and shower and shave.

Once I got there though, things changed. I can’t say that the ballet was always a great experience, but there were times, moments, when the choreography, the music, the movement of dancers and lights would come together to create something that was greater than the sum of its parts. In these moments, I truly enjoyed the ballet, allowing it to bring tears to my eyes and soothe my soul.

I wonder if this is why we often refer to dancers as graceful, because somewhere between what they do and what we see and experience, a connection greater than expected occurs.

Both Paul and the author of Matthew attend to this phenomenon of greater things in our passages today. The author of Matthew attends to it in the context of the cross, of attempting to get across to finite human beings the grand scope of God’s work in the world. The idea that we are to accept something contrary to common sense, knowledge and teaching is so foreign to Peter, that he cannot fathom the scope of the grandest of plans.

Grace is that way as well. It is the mysterious dance God choreographs with humanity that when our eyes meet we immediately know that something greater has occurred. Grace is fluid and moves in and around all lives to a hidden symphony created through a partnership with the Creator. And while Matthew points us towards the phenomenon, Paul tells us what happens to us when we experience the Lord of the Dance.

Paul attends to this greatest of plans by describing an ethic of life to the Roman Christians. It is how Paul thinks they should respond to the grace they have received in their lives. No single thing that Paul said is intended to be the penultimate act of a Christian, but instead he creates a balance between the different reactions to the grace that happens in our lives.

Love, goodness, honor, passion, service, hope, rejoicing, harmony, humility, peacefulness and forgiveness, it’s not a short list, nor is it an easy list to live up to. And, I could be convinced that one of the greatest curses of humanity is to know the importance of these things and to be impotent in carrying all of them out.

But, that is another of the grandest functions of grace, a gift of God fashioned for a people in need. Grace offers the coverage necessary to allow us to continue to live a life more meaningful and complete. Humanity has a hard time grasping this free gift, and the grand idea behind it, so like the televangelist and Peter we try to limit its scope and who receives it. Never understanding the limitless boundaries of grace, and that what God has created for us, given to us, is so abundant that it is never meant to be kept by us.

One of my favorite hymns has the following refrain:

Dance, then, wherever you may be;
I am the Lord of the Dance, said he,
And I'll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I'll lead you all in the dance, said he.

The dance of grace is probably the most important one in which we will ever have a part; and that is just it, we only have a part. We are not the keepers, the choreographers, or conductor. We are bit players cast in order to make the prima ballerina look her best.

We can only do our little part of the dance. There isn’t a single prima ballerina in the congregation today. However, every single one of us has a part that is important and the dance could not continue unless we arrive on cue.

Paul knows that times will be difficult, he knows that sometimes people will repay our kindness and our gentleness with animosity or even hatred. But he calls us to focus on our part in the dance, let the prima ballerina do her job. We must, with all of the passion our lives can muster, dance with all of our hearts, minds, souls, and strength. Or else, all of the grace we have received is for naught.

There can be no perfect performances, but there are times when our passion compliments the dance of the prima ballerina so much that the audience is moved to tears and their souls are soothed once again.

Read this on Chavez...

2005-08-26T07:49:00.000-06:00

No, seriously. Read this article for an understanding of why the animosity has reached a crescendo. Then, I promise no more about Pat Robertson until he says another really stupid thing. That should be sometime tomorrow.

Pat and Hugo: The Real Story

Heads up to greg at The Parish.

P.S. - Pat's apology was too easy, too free. I am not saying that his speech needs to be limited. However, there needs to be some accountability on the part of his followers for words like these. I would love it if some of them would "grow a set" and voice their displeasure.

Nice no longer...

2005-08-24T00:26:00.000-06:00

I don’t get it. Today, I read about Pat Robertson’s thirst for the blood of the Venezuelan leader. His cries for an assassination attempt still reverberate in my chaotic mind. Eventually, he will back pedal; he will blame someone else for his ineptness (probably a vast liberal conspiracy). Whatever words trail from his thin lips, Pat Robertson has to go. I am not talking about my own cry for blood, but more of a forced retirement. There are two things that piss me off about these comments. The first has to do with politics and the second theology.

First, what really gets me is the lack of comment from the current political administration. There is no real attempt to establish distance or discredit this idiot. The administration’s position is that he is allowed to speak his mind. If this is the case, then why is there such an outcry over people who protest the war? Why do administration officials allow themselves the opportunity to call protestors cowards and traitors? Are they not allowed to speak their mind just as freely, without a redressing from administration officials? It is easy to document the close relationship between Robertson and the Administration; does that give him special leeway when it comes to free speech?

I am not trying to get paranoid and militant like many on the far left. I just want parity. Free speech is free speech no matter the message. People who protest should not be sequestered so that they are not heard. They should not be shouted down as cowards and traitors for not supporting a war that has been created against their will.

I know people who watch the crap this man believes is theology. They are good people who want to do the right thing. I think the best thing they can do is withhold their money from him until he apologizes. Pat Robertson and his “ministry” do not deserve a dime until it more adequately reflects the ministry of Christ; one of grace, love, hope, healing, and peace. I know that most of the people who read here don’t watch this drivel, but I will bet that they know someone who does. Challenge that person to hold him accountable for the damage he does in this world.

Second, for the most part, I try to live and let live when it comes to really bad theology. However, Pat Robertson is damaging Christianity. He is wounding its soul and rendering it impotent to make a decent impact in the world. People like Pat Robertson are the reasons why there are quotes about how the world would be a better place without religion.

For someone who claims to take the Bible seriously, his theology and politics certainly don’t belie that claim. You could tell me that he has done great work handing out food and clothing to the world. However, that is of little import given the impetus behind the action. Evangelism, saving the world for God, converting the unsaved hungry dying masses is the ultimate goal of any program this ministry undertakes. Now it is in the business of recommending assassination targets

Did the Good Samaritan require the beaten man to convert in order to receive aid? There should be no ulterior motives to service, no threats, no promises, no if-thens, no requirements. It is God’s duty and God’s alone to save the people of this world. Any claim otherwise is blasphemous at best.

The only thing worse than the theology is that it is broadcast nationally and people listen. I want people to take the ministry of Christ seriously. I want to take the ministry of Christ seriously. I believe it is hard to do so when people like this are given a national stage that is constantly used to mock Christianity. Pat Robertson has perverted the faith more often and more egregiously than almost any other national figure. Why do we let him continue to do so?

The only thing worse is Gordon Robertson, whose theological ineptitude outpaces the old man’s by a long shot. This type of religious abuse will continue until a large enough audience begins to hold these charlatans accountable for what they say.

My guess is that those of us on the left of center lack the necessary fortitude to make a difference. My small part is this post and the dream that a movement begin that topples this regime in favor of one that more closely sits at the heart of Christianity. A movement that is about remembering God and remembering, loving and caring for all of God’s creations regardless of condition, theology or religion.

There is no room in my beliefs for the deliberate call for the death of another, no matter how heinous the crime. There is no precedent for it, there is no teaching concerning it, and I will not tolerate the language or the intent. If we are about nothing else, we are about second, third, fourth, fifth, etc chances. If grace means anything, if love is worthwhile, then those who believe cannot stand by and let this abuse continue…

grace and peace

Tagged again...

2005-08-19T17:38:00.000-06:00

I was tagged by G. over at The Wicker Chronicles back in early July, to answer some bookish questions... (This just goes to show how long it has been since I have been bloggingly social)

1. Total number of books I've owned: I really have no earthly idea. When I started seminary I brought 23 liquor boxes of books. During our move to Denver (two weeks ago) I brought 500-600 books. We got rid of several boxes full before we left. So I would put the number owned somewhere over 1000 during my lifetime...

2. Last book I bought: I recently picked up a number of books for classes, but I don't think those really count. My recent personal purchases have been several poetry books by Mary Oliver, Wherever You Go There You Are - by Jon Kabat-Zinn, The Gift of Therapy - by Irvin Yalom, The Soul of Politics - by Jim Wallis , and On Writing Well - by William Zinsser.

3. Last book I completed: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I am not sure that counts because it was on CD. I guess the last one I read was Taking Care by Carrie Doehring, who will be one of my future professors.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me: (Not listed in order of favoritism)

1. Wherever You Go There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn
2. The Gift of Therapy by Irvin Yalom
3. Listening to Your Life by Frederich Buechner
4. Writing About Your Life by William Zinsser
5. Dynamics of Faith by Paul Tillich

4b. What are you currently reading: I read several books at a time. I'm reading On Writing Well by William Zinsser, several back issues of The Christian Century, and Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein.

5. Which 5 bloggers am I passing this on to? (If they want to and have the time!)
Erin at Surface Ripple
Adam at The Pub
Jim at Brainwaves
Brandon at Badchristian.com
Meg at Bridget Jones Goes to Seminary

on writing...

2005-08-19T16:38:00.000-06:00

I always believed that in order to write, something important had to happen. Days will pass without a single major event and I will scratch my head wondering what to say next. I will dive into my past, project into the future, or force the present to succumb to my needs for a good story. Usually, I end up with muddled thoughts and a headache. I am realizing what needs to be said will come in time, without my help.

Since I graduated from college, I have never really had to look for a job they tend to find me. I have made contact with people. I have talked and inquired about positions. However, despite my charms, every job I have held has been one that fell into my lap. In Charleston, I was approached about interviewing for a DCE position, twice. In Richmond, I was transitioned from intern to staff member in the counseling center. My service at Southminster Presbyterian Church was a gift from a friend.

Now, in Denver, I have been approached about preaching in a rural congregation. It is odd that my life has worked this way. I imagine some have had similar luck. I also imagine it rarely happens for others. I can even imagine others struggling to find their place in the world. If I have any faith at all, it is seen in how I view work.

There are areas where I struggle mightily; these areas come naturally to others. I am a social coward at times. I am not unapproachable, nor am I rude. However, the words that come naturally on the keyboard get lost in conversation. I continue to work on that part of my life. I guess there are almost always trade-offs. That is what makes me unique, what makes you unique also.

I wish writing was easier or that I had more faith in what I say. I long for words and events to fall into my lap. I envy the interesting lives of others, sometimes wishing to awaken to the same drama. Easy doesn’t cut it though. I think my best stuff comes out of my struggles. If I don’t wrestle then I gain little except empty words. My life is no more important than any other, just different. My words are my own, my thoughts are my opinions. They are already important to me. If, somehow, they connect with your life then those connections are important for you as well.

Nothing earth shattering or especially revelatory occurred today. I woke up. I went for a walk. I ran some errands. I agreed to preach two Sundays at Byers Community Church. I played a computer game and bought a book and ate Chinese for dinner. It is these days that prepare me for the drama. They are not unimportant because they make up the bulk of my life. If I breathe, think, move, speak then my day is not wasted. It is the same with writing. If it breathes, thinks, moves or speaks to another then no word is ever wasted.

grace and peace

Oh My God...

2005-08-17T17:03:00.000-06:00

I seem to get a lot of Google hits for this brief recounting of a drive down "Oh My God Road." The following is a description of what I remember and what I felt as my wife and I slowly made our way down the mountainside. My impressions are that given the switchbacks and relative size of the road it would be better suited for mountain bikes than cars. However, given the blind corners and lack of guard rails, I would caution one to be careful becuase the road is not much wider than a car and half with a slight shoulder on one and a sheer drop on the other...

Twenty-five miles west of Denver we entered the I-70 parking lot eight miles from three rockslides. There were warnings but we had no idea how long the clean-up would take, and besides we were on our way to a resort for an anniversary weekend. Well, three hours and six miles later we found ourselves getting off of the interstate to visit Central City for a much needed bathroom break.

For those who wish to know, I will know Central City for its decrepit casinos and, well, that is about it. The ride into town, eight miles off of the interstate was pleasant because we were practically the only car on a four-lane highway to nowhere. Our only worry was that the people in traffic knew something we did not.

A quick sandwich, a visit to the bathroom, and a new set of directions later and we hit the road again in an attempt to bypass the traffic jam we left behind. It just so happened that our directions took us down Virginia Canyon Road, otherwise known as "Oh My God Road," literally. No really, the signs actually say "Oh My God Road."

You see, "Oh My God Road" is a nine-mile road that connects Central City to Idaho Springs, where supposedly, the traffic ended. Our journey started off like many journeys in Colorado, uphill. It was a nice trek up a two-lane road to the top of the mountain. When we reached the pinnacle, we saw the fallen remains of an old mining set-up left for dead. The water chutes had decayed and fallen in places; towers stood silent against the blue skies awaiting a changing of the guard that would never come. Our solid pavement turned suddenly to hard-packed gravel; a sign told us the road would close due to construction on August 16 (2005). We knew this would be our only chance to drive "Oh My God Road" in its current state of being.

Four hundred yards later, the pavement re-appeared beneath the tires, and collectively we laughed shrugging off the moniker we had come to fear. "Oh My God Road" became "Geez That’s All Road?" Our comfort and laughter was ripped from beneath us all too quickly.

In what seemed like two or three short breathes the road began to narrow and the pavement stopped. The crack and pop of gravel beneath our tires filled our ears as my foot softly rested on the brake pedal. Our car slowed to what seemed like a crawl as we alternated singing a "Slow Down" chorus. Our road was about a car and three quarters wide, graveled, with no guard rails and washed out shoulders. At fifteen miles an hour you can see a lot of the road you travel, especially when you are at the top of a mountain and there is nothing between you and the valley floor.

Even now, I can feel the panic set in as I describe the road to you. My heart begins to pound, much too large for the chest that holds it. My breath shortens into quick staccato bursts offering little relief to my oxygen starved brain. My hands are tense much like the white-knuckled driving that occurred that day. I didn’t need "Oh My God Road" to tell me about my fears, but she whispered them in my ear all the same. The pictures my mind creates about danger and pain and fear were all too real during our descent. Panic was the obvious choice, but panic wasn’t an option. There was no where to turn around, no going back to the safety of pavement and guardrails. There was only down and that meant driving headlong into my fears.

We took it slow, trying to laugh those fears away. My wife, ever the great comfort in my life, praised my feeble attempts at bravery; her words were a welcome salve on the panic that had set in. Switchback after switchback we hugged the mountain side of the road. One time, and one time only, did I dare look down at the side of the road and it was a mistake.

We did look out and ahead. We saw the stand still traffic of I-70 and laughed at the poor souls stuck on the bridge with nowhere to go. At least we were moving! We marveled at people who had built cabins along this road, vowing never to be so silly ourselves. Six or seven miles later the valley floor rose to meet us. Looking up we could no longer see the road we had taken. Like an unmarked grave it left little trace on the mountainside.

About an hour and a half later, when we cleared the traffic, "Oh My God Road" became a source of pride. We had conquered what was bound to be the scariest road we had ever taken without a single scratch or scar.

A thousand things sift through my mind as I think of that brief nine-mile journey. Panic, fear, pride, hope, and joy are all a part of that carnival ride down the mountain. What I will remember most is that I, we, did it. When push came to shove, we started and we finished and that means something.

For me, fear is a powerful motivator and a powerful foe. It has the power to stop me dead in my tracks; it has the power to make me run for my life; it also has the power to draw from within my greatest potential. I think fear is a catalyst that feeds a great amount of potential energy within each of us. Fear forces a choice, a battle that must be fought within each of us. We can give in and give up, we can live to fight another day, or we embrace what is before us, befriending the very thing that threatens us. There are consequences for each action, benefits and drawbacks, risks and rewards, and no choice is inherently good or bad. The choice we make is but one in a million choices we will make in our lives.

I know many of the fears that lurk in the shadows of my soul, fears of failure, fears of inadequacy, fears of losing or not living up to my "potential." They remain real despite my small success on August 14. I suspect that there are very real fears in each of our lives. Ones that we dare not share. The problem is, the more we silence our fears the more irrational and large they loom in our lives. There is little we can do save having the courage to be who we have been called to be. In that thought lies one of the few things that can silence the fears that hold our souls.

I would like to thank the person who built "Oh My God Road." I won’t thank them for their engineering prowess nor for their eye on safety, but I will thank them for striking at the heart of my fears. I would thank them for making me panic and sweat and curse them to no end. I would thank them for making me confront my lack of control, for making me stare long and hard into the face of the things I fear and still go on. I would thank them for helping me make one fear a companion instead of a nuisance, a compadre instead of an enemy...

Theological Proposition #2

2005-08-11T21:19:00.000-06:00

I will consider myself forever entangled with the exploration of the vast mysteries of who and what God is, as well as, how God is active in this mortal plain. My sense that God is an Ultimate Projection is just one fruit (or maybe foul) of that exploration. The idea that God’s attributes are created through the language and images and experiences we have on earth is probably not new. We, as finite beings, can only ascribe (or project) things we know to the Creator. As such, all things ascribed to said Creator are flawed from the beginning. The things of finite creatures can reflect images but never comprehend or view the full scope of the infinite.

Therefore, for God to be God, God must be of a substance that at the same time reflects the image placed within and steps beyond our finitude and individual (and communal) projections.

I have no problems with saying that where love or mercy or hope is found, there we will also find God. However, we must also make room for the idea that where hatred, oppression, and injustice is found, we will also find God. God’s attributes suffer in the hands of men and women. We can certainly witness this through the obvious polemic that occurs when we venture to call Mother Theresa and Fred Phelps (of God Hates Fags fame) worshippers of the same God.

Each of these people has projected their internal worldview onto their ministries. God, for each of them, becomes who they are (or were). In the arms of the faithful, God is continually created and re-created. In the case of Mother Theresa, one might look at the witness of her life and view God as compassionate, merciful, giving, and sacrificial. These are also the qualities that she displayed throughout her life on earth. In the case of Fred Phelps, people see the judgmental, fear-inducing, intolerant characteristics of God. Moreover, these are characteristics that Mr. Phelps displays through his constant homiletic and social intrusions. That said all of these characteristics can be supported through various scriptural references and historical claims.

If this is the case, then is all that we know of, or attempt to ascribe to, God flawed? Is each characteristic of God that we endeavor to ascribe fundamentally and inescapably finite, and thus fails in its bid to adequately approach the actuality of God? Certainly we can ascribe our deepest fears or our deepest hopes to God, but is that everything? Can the Ultimate Projection really be more than one mind or even one gathered set of minds projects out into the world?

All of this is a long way of describing why I feel so beholden to the mystery of God. It is why I can honestly answer tough questions with an “I don’t know.” It is why I get so mad when people attempt to create answers and put words into God’s mouth based on either their interpretation of a 2000+ year old writer or their own internal fears and needs. What happens with these situations (and all situations) is that the Ultimate Projection becomes merely another projection.

Being okay with the mystery of God also means being okay with the mystery within me as well. For me, mystery is the most comforting and confounding piece of my faith. It is comforting that I do not need to have or create the answers to life; I can attempt to release the Ultimate Projection from the confines of my mind. It is confounding because of one question. Namely, how do I relate to something that is at its core everything I know and none of it at the same time?

The closest I can come to realizing the potential of God is to be open to various interpretations as they speak through the experiences of my life. As each person projects their internal realities into the Cosmic Stew that is the Ultimate Projection the concoction grows beyond the limits of one person, group or community. The love, mercy and hope mingles with the judgment, intolerance, and fear. That mixture combined with a healthy dose of mystery (mystery meat anyone?) is a recipe for something that is at once a reflection of our internal image of God and a healthy respect for the very “thing” that is our Author.

Therefore, the Ultimate Projection can no longer be a “he” or a “she.” The Ultimate Projection is at once both she and he, child and adult, elderly and young, mother and father, brother and sister. At the same time, the Ultimate Projection is none of these as well. Such is the mystery, that what we choose to believe in is at the same time everything and nothing…

Denver days

2005-08-09T22:41:00.000-06:00

It is hard to remember when I last wrote. Life has a way of passing by the windows of my soul when I am holed up, and I have certainly been holed up the last week or so. Denver is a beautiful place, frighteningly beautiful.

My wife and I took some time last Friday and headed up to Boulder for the afternoon. After living at a height of 5,280 feet for two weeks we decided that we were acclimated enough to attempt a day hike. Our effort was… painful.

Our neighbor mentioned that the Flat Irons were an easy hike outside of Boulder and beautiful to boot. We decided that would be the kind of hike we could handle. We were wrong. About 100 yards into the hike my lungs began to burn, my heart was pounding in my chest and my thighs were killing me. I guess I should appreciate the opportunity to hike, but it hurt and the only thing I appreciated at the moment was a rest another hundreds up the trail.

As the hike progressed and we entered a tree lined area, the shade cooled our sun beaten heads and enabled us to keep moving for another two or so miles. We never made it to the Flat Irons. Our hike ended when our boots began to rub blisters on the backs of our feet. The area was beautiful and we look forward to returning for another attempt soon.

The hardest part about moving here has been the loneliness. We have said “hi” to the neighbors, visited a neat little church, and spent the better parts of most days walking our neighborhood, but we still have no one to call “friend.” That part is slow going because we have no routine outside of our domain. We have been together 24/7 for almost a month now, and as much as I love my wife, we do need a break now and again.

The executive presbyter in Denver has mentioned a very small rural congregation that he would like for me think about preaching to in the future. Initially, I jumped at the opportunity to preach again and get out of the house. However, the more I begin to think about it, the more I fear the opportunity. The congregation is currently in conflict due to the circumstances around their current pastor leaving.

What do I have to offer these conflicted people?

I know this is not about me. I know this has nothing to do with my skills, my ministry, whatever. There is little, in the realm of ministry, that concerns me, but then again it has everything to do with me as well. Ministry is already a lonely passion, but to be placed in a situation where the people are conflicted, where half of the people will instantly look upon me with suspicion is to be placed in the lion’s den wearing gazelle flavored cologne.

The more I look behind the fear, the more I see the isolation and depression of moving lurking in the shadows in my mind. The shell that houses my mind seems dark and hollow at the moment. The friends and colleagues that used to fill the voids seem distant, though their echoes are always present. There is no one to have lunch with here, no one to play golf with, no one to relate back to me the messages that keep me sane, keep me real. My wife can be good for that, but she is dealing with her own demons at the moment…

At some point I must wake up from the fog that has clouded my life and embrace the world around me. It will happen at some point, I am just impatient…

grace and peace

Theological Proposition 0.5

2005-08-03T13:20:00.000-06:00

I don't know why I place these things out here. I am not ashamed of the way I think or believe, but more the inability to coherently translate all of my ideas from the brain to the fingertips. If this makes sense, great. I feel that it jumps a little bit, but then again that only proves the somewhat futile attempt to describe the indescribable....

There are assumptions that I make in all of the theology I do and believe. These assumptions are a part of my heritage, my education, my experiences, and my emotions. When I write, preach or teach, these basic ideas, basic to me at least, are factored into every result that bursts forth from my mouth and the material used.

In my short lifetime, I have come to rely upon three assumptions. First, within each person is a mark or imprint of the Ultimate Projection. Second, within that same person, the mark or imprint is hidden through the individual and communal acts of sin perpetrated throughout his or her lifetime. Third, the Ultimate Projection remembers, despite the actions of an individual, what has been previously given and desires that each person attain, as best they can, congruence with that imprint.

I realize these three assumptions are fairly standard for systematic theology; they coincide with creation, fall, and redemption. However, the emphasis placed on each can only be particular to the experiences of one’s own life. For example, I am drawn to the redemptive piece of this tri-fold puzzle. This comes through my experience of being exceptionally hard on myself. The appealing nature of this particular aspect of my relationship to an Ultimate Projection stems from my need for grace, forgiveness and hope.

I could choose, and many do choose, to only focus on this assumption and its interplay in my life. However, doing so would only create a lop-sided view of what it is that I believe greater than myself. Therefore, an Ultimate Projection can only be more completely described through relationships with ourselves and one another. My sense is that the more we begin to understand ourselves, through internal and external means, the better we understand that which is imprinted within us.

To do or be good in this world is to rely on the insights of our collective encounters with this Ultimate Projection. I can only project those qualities of God that I experience in myself or in others. You can do the same. We can share these projective ideas with one another in a way that builds a greater sense of who God is; a Projection that takes on a larger meaning that we could intend.

Throughout the millennia, there have been attempts at describing what or who this Ultimate Projection is. Largely, these exercises are futile, because any attempt to describe only places restrictions on that which is believed to be indescribable. The best we can hope for is a close approximation of who/what the Ultimate Projection might be based on the experiences we have with that which is greater than we believe ourselves to be capable of doing/being. Love or hate, sadness or joy, hope or futility are all things that can push us beyond what we thought ourselves capable of handling. Each of these, in turn, could be used to describe the various states of an Ultimate Projection in an anthropocentric way. However, an Ultimate Projection must not be bound by our descriptors as well, it also must be free to be more than the mere emotional or even rational states we wish to ascribe to it.

Our new home

2005-08-01T10:34:00.000-06:00

I would be an interesting specimen for a phrenologist; after four days in our new home, I have hit my head three times on the pipes in our basement. I am now dwelling in the land of short people, and it hurts.

The moving in phase has hit a bump in the road for the moment. After three days of unpacking and placing items in our place, our energy has waned and we now just sit and stare at the boxes for hours on end. Our bedroom has yet to be set up; our clothes lay dormant in their cardboard cells; we have food, which is always good. In fact, the kitchen was the first and is the only room that is 95% complete at the moment.

One thing we are learning is that the people who told us about Denver’s weather were only half right. It is beautiful out here. However, all of the sunshine we receive has translated into a week of mid-90’s heat much like the rest of the country, and we have no air-conditioning. So our lives are lived with the constant hum of fans as background noise. This is not a bid for sympathy, just a fact of our existence.

There are still days where I wake and say to myself, “what the hell have I done?” I hope the questioning will stop soon; I need people to talk to, friends to meet. We have been fairly self-contained for the last week, and I can tell that we need some human contact that we are not married to.

These transitions are always interesting to me. I have moved twenty some odd times in my short life, so being in a new place is easy for me. It is a time to re-invent and try new things; a transitional period where two worlds are colliding and what comes next is something entirely new but made up of the old rags of my existence. My life is funny in that way.

We live in a wonderful area, a lot of younger couples and tree-lined streets. We have a park within three blocks of our rented house and a grocery store within eight. We have a front porch and afternoon shade. I am learning how to make a Mojito and soon that will be our occasional evening drink as we watch the world pass by.

There are several churches in the area, but I am not sure where we will try and attend. The neighbor across the street attends an “emergent church” called Soul that was an offshoot of an Evangelical Presbyterian mega-church. The EPC is too conservative for my taste, they don’t ordain women and that is the first thing that tells me we won’t get along too well. It would be interesting to see how the “church” works, so we may try to attend the “conversation” once or twice just to get the flavor.

Truthfully, I am so entrenched in the PC(USA) culture that I would have a hard time not being involved in a theologically progressive congregation. I need the freedom to stretch and struggle with God, not the answers that I find in most places. I am really beginning to feel my desire for mystery taking root in everything I think and believe. It is much more interesting for me not to know than it is too know. I feel more alive in the fluidity and flow of ambiguity than in the safety and security of solid answers. I am beginning to wonder if there is a home out there for one who seeks to find their home everywhere though…

unload, shuffle, sit, rest, sleep

2005-07-28T10:14:00.000-06:00

I am standing in an empty house, soon to be our home. The hardwood floors carry my voice throughout each room as the echoes fade from front to back. This is a naked place, old but not dusty, cramped but not small. Our little Colorado bungalow will be our home for the next year as we seek out our place in this village of two and a half million souls.

Our trailer sits out front, loaded with everything we own. The day is cool and sunny, highs in the upper 80s, I think. I am ready to unload, but the unloaders we hired will not be here for another two hours. I have popped a couple Ibuprofen to ease my joints into the days activities. The ramp is set up, awaiting many busy feet, hand trucks, and the unloading of our stuff.

“How much can I unpack before my back disagrees with my mental age?” I can only wonder and try.

So far so good, our trip was uneventful except for a check engine light in Kansas City, MO. We arrived two days earlier than expected and have been alternating our days between rest and getting lost in the city. The city is set up on a grid; however, sometimes streets will end and then pick up a few blocks later. This phenomenon has frustrated our attempts to get around, and sitting in the car trying to re-orient ourselves is not easy any longer.

Tonight we will rest in our new home, learning of the creaks and groans that occur at odd hours. Our landlords are nice people, so are our neighbors. We are in a good location where we could never afford to buy, but that is beside the point. My time is short on the computer today; my thoughts are one-sided, much like a Labrador playing with a tennis ball. Unload, visualize, place, shuffle, sit, rest, sleep. That is the rest of my day, in a nutshell…

grace and peace

The Journey Begins

2005-07-24T20:52:00.000-06:00

Our great adventure across the country began on a humid 96 degree Tuesday. Three men, who I knew very little but would come to have great respect for, loaded all of the possessions of our home into nineteen linear feet of a twenty-eight foot trailer. Tom, Thomas and Lawrence sang, strained, and shifted our furniture from its resting place to its well-packed new home.

They were modern day locomotives, churning along in the heat of the day to help us begin our great new journey to Colorado. The day was fraught with joy and sorrow. The banter between the moving men kept us going as we loaded box and sofa and bed. The house becoming noticeably empty as each piece was removed and our footsteps echoed on the hard wood floor.

The heat wore our bodies down while the emptiness wore on our emotions. It was hard to leave, and I remember finally standing in the doorway fighting the urge to close the door; staring into the now bare house that had bourn our triumphs and defeats for the past three years. I will remember the sound of the back door slamming against the frame for a long time to come, for my heart fell as the latch clicked into the slot and the handle refused to turn for my hand once again.

Numb, tired, grungy we drove in silence to the hotel that would be our home that night. Having sold one of our cars to friends that same day, our woundedness was almost greater than we could bear. We had said good-bye to too much, and now we are homeless shacked up with my parents, grandparents, aunt and uncle in Charleston, South Carolina; the only place that seems hotter than our home.

It is Friday and we fly back to Richmond in a few hours to begin the drive across the country. I look forward to it on one hand, but there is something nagging me that I am not able to process yet. I have wept for friends, for colleagues, for safety and for home. I have yelled and patronized and rationalized to make myself feel better, but for now there is only emptiness. I am as cavernous as the empty home we left behind, a shell waiting to be inhabited or claimed.

The reality that school is frightens me to the core. I am a student once again and it feels horrible. I can sense the old, rational self bubbling to the surface once again. I can feel the disdain for feelings and connection well up in my being. I will not let go of what I have become, that is my hope. I do not want to be the student I was, I need to be the person I am. But for the moment, I am homeless, wandering, frightened, but not alone…