Christianese

I was in a meeting this morning where the topic of Christianese came up. One person mentioned how people's hearts are crying out to be authentic, but all they can do is speak the language of the church (or pseudochurch?) in order to not look bad or to be accepted.

Wasn't this exactly what Russia did in the Ukraine or Germany did in the Czech Republic? There was an imperial regime language that was required to be spoken or else very bad things would happen. The native tongue was spoken only in the most intimate, secretive settings for fear of being found out and punished.

Worse than that, perhaps, many good people are forced to keep their innermost thoughts to themselves because they fear being ostracized if they are honest. These people can't even find the "soulmates" with whom they can be honest because they have never spoken a common mother tongue of honesty with anyone else.

The church is meant to be a place of honesty and authenticity. It's the one place of all places where we should be able to share our deepest hearts with one another and seek healing and redemption.

As I look across the religious landscape in America (which is the one context I can address with some authority), I see Christianese as the de jure language—and in many ways, it has become the de facto language. The region is ripe for regime change.

Celebrity politicians

I was walking through a store last night and saw Bristol Palin's book. I mentioned to my wife how silly our celebrity culture is, and she noted Sarah Palin's TV show. I got to thinking, were there celebrities in the Bible?

The first one that came to mind was Absalom. Not only was he a celebrity, he was a celebrity politician. He set up a statue of himself, was kind to the disenfranchised, and was a total chick magnet. Everything was set for him to overthrow his dad for the kingship. But one thing led to another, as it so often does, and he ended up hanging in a tree by his hair and getting stabbed with three spears.

With the number of politicians we've seen recently literally hanging from figurative trees by their metaphorical hair, I wonder how much of this is tied to seeking celebrity. Is vanity enough of an instability of character that it needs to be accompanied by risky behavior that will inevitably lead to a fall? Or, as Ecclesiastes says, does time and chance happen to us all, and a proportional amount of the anonymous populace screws up in exactly the same way and rate as their representative sampling of elected representatives? Is it the much maligned 24-hour news cycle that won't permit relatively private ignominy of public figures?

The Palin family have become the darlings of a segment of the population, the hated targets of another, and the family that another segment wishes would stick strictly to their private lives and leave the world alone. Regardless, I fear that there is enough instability of character in the celebrity seeking that someone will do something really stupid. And I never want to see anyone—friend or foe—do something really stupid.

I haven't covered 12 percent of the angles on celebrity, but if you'd like to add something, I'd be curious to hear it. I'd be especially curious to hear who you think are more celebrities from the Bible.

Internet leaves litter version of phone search obsolete

As I was driving today, I saw a van with the name "A All Animal Control." That immediately tells me this company violated grammar conventions in order to make it to the top of their category in the Yellow Pages. ["Yellow Pages? What's that?"] They probably chose this because "AAA Animal Control" was already taken in our town. This is yet another cultural artifact left obsolete by internet searches. Who wouldn't search for "animal control [town name]"? No need to win the alphabetizing game in that case.

Is Google's algorithm screwing you?

I read an article today about Americans having trouble getting helpful information on NT Wright when they searched for him. I thought this odd, given that the internets should give the most relevant information about a topic. And there's the rub. In today's algorithm, most relevant has to do with where your IP address is located and what those with IP addresses in your geographical locale have searched for. So news posted from UK IP addresses is virtually inaccessible to Americans, since they're unable to see the most accurate news post in their search results list.

This fact renders some of the most pertinent websites inaccessible, not due to the inability of the user to type, but due to their inability to see the searched site. Today's new word: hinternets. Example: The search algorithm left my site in the hinternets because it was busy selling crap to the people who actually wanted to see what I posted.

Live Better Stories

I visited my college roommate up in Vail over the weekend, and we went to the Teva Games (sponsored by what was originally the footwear company). I picked up their soundtrack CD, and it had the phrase "Live Better Stories" on it. Turns out it's their tagline.

I was startled by this, since I live in the Christian realm, and I thought it was people like Walter Brueggemann and N. T. Wright theologizing about story and Don Miller bringing it to an intensely practical application. In some ways, I subconsciously thought "story" was an "Emergent theology."

So what's up with Teva? Why are they so enamored with story? I think they are tapping into a rich craving that people have, which some Christians have been working with. So it's not just religious groups talking about living better stories.

Shane Hipps, author of Flickering Pixels, was an ad executive who handled the BMW account. He decided to bail when he realized that having the power to make a grown man cry using a BMW commercial wasn't all it was cracked up to be. But somehow, Teva has produced a profoundly religious—actually, profoundly human—video without Christian overtones. And it made me cry.

It's so beautiful to encourage people to be fully alive. I would protest that the activities in the video aren't the only way to be alive, but they are still a very important avenue. And for those of us Christians who are into creational living, we have a touchpoint here.

Live Better Stories.

A hermeneutic of versejacking

On this blog, each post "of late" has come with some disclaimer. This time, it is "I will be through seminary in less than two weeks."

My last reading assignment has shed light on a question that has vexed me for years. The assignment was “Were the English Puritans the ‘Saints of the Most High’?” by W. Sibley Towner. I'm pasting below a modified version of a homework question on the reading.

On one level, the article points out that it is perilous to force correspondence of every detail between a Scripture text and an event. Prophetic visions aren’t to be taken as prenarration or even allegory. The article aims to take the edge off the fact that millennia of Scriptural interpretation have gone against what seem to be sane exegetical principles. It speaks to my issues with interpretation. I describe my tension with the title of an essay written by John Walton (now of Wheaton): “Inspired Subjectivity vs. Hermeneutical Objectivity.” What made it okay for Peter to say, “For it is written in the Book of Psalms: ‘May his place be deserted; let there be no one to dwell in it,’ and, ‘May another take his place of leadership,’” which are two versejacks extraordinaires, but I intuitively know that what many interpreters do to texts is simply similar violence? The only difference seems to be that Peter was inspired, and since the canon is now closed, none of the rest of us is permitted to ravage the text to carry off our own edificatory plunder. Where Towner’s article succeeds is in offering a plausible alternative to this tormented worldview. Of late I’ve been wrestling with certain African hermeneutics where it seems Spirit-filled people are truly enlightened by their terrible exegesis. Why can’t the Spirit work in his people this way? So Towner says we should see both sides of the exegetical transaction as serving a greater reality. The greater reality is God’s grand purpose in his creation, and a valid interpretation of a text is one that corresponds in a similar way with the ethos of God’s creative and redemptive work. So the text and the interpretation are both equidistant from the greater reality. It so happens that the text is canonized and thus scrutinized till kingdom come. I’m not yet willing to say I fully agree with this, but it is such a refreshing alternative to a decade of wrestling that I must consider it.

Paul and replacement theology

I've been discussing so-called replacement theology with some friends recently. In short, its opponents tag the idea that "the church replaces Israel in God's plan" as replacement theology, even though this is probably an unfair simplification of a quite complex issue. I don't have time to write a treatise of my position (at the moment), so I'll merely share some thoughts that emerged from reading one little phrase in 1 Corinthians. I hereby affirm that I don't think I'm doing violence to the text or context by focusing only on these few words.

The topic is the monetary collection at the end of 1 Corinthians. Presumably the beneficiaries of the collection would be predominantly Jews, because they were poor Jesus followers in Judea. (Any Romans/Gentiles would probably be merchants or soldiers with enough income to get by.) Notice how Paul refers to them: "Now about the collection for the Lord's people."

What denotes "Lord's people"? Jesus followers in general? Nope. This is specifically about believers in Judea. Any believers in Judea? Not really. I don't think Paul was necessarily putting a burden on Christians throughout the empire merely because there were needy persons who were Christians who happened to live in Judea.

My understanding of this may not be completely solid, but I think there's something more going on here. I think "Lord's people" refers mainly to Jewish Messiah followers. But why the enigmatic special designation? Why not "Now about the collection for the Messiah followers in Judea"? At this early stage, it appears Paul had a appreciation for the Jewish ethnicity that brought us Jesus. They got a special designation that theologically could apply to all but really does apply to some specifically.

I don't think we could accuse this early Paul of rapacious replacement theology. He still did honor the Jewish ethnicity, even if "Israel" was already being redefined as anyone who followed Jesus.