Friday, July 25, 2008

A difference

Today, I noticed a significant improvement in my bike riding. I made it all the way up Bridle Pass (a medium difficulty street climb) in 21st gear (the hard one). When I started riding in earnest about six weeks ago, I had to ride up in 8th. I feel like I have nothing left to accomplish. Or maybe it's that I have no energy left to accomplish anything. I guess if I built a wee bit more endurance, I could challenge for the polka dot jersey on the Tour.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Resurrection and new creation

I have a friend/mentor who has his PhD in theology who cautions me that, while Moltmann says some things that are gold, there is a panentheist lurking in his core. I haven't really found that yet . . . Also, he says that Moltmann is not embraced in many denominations other than UCC. That would make sense if he's a panentheist, but I haven't seen any of that in the first half of "The Crucified God."

Speaking of, I read a quote in there that I must share. It almost brought tears to my eyes, and it's given me new hope and focus in life. Now that I've ruined the quote by placing on it ginormously (Ha! I said it!) high expectations, here goes:

"The dispute over the resurrection of Jesus is concerned with the question of righteousness in history. Does it belong to the nomos which finally gives each man his deserts, or does it belong to the law of grace as it was manifest by Jesus and in the resurrection of the crucified Christ? The message of the new righteousness which eschatological faith brings into the world says that in fact the executioners will not finally triumph over their victims. It also says that in the end the victims will not triumph over their executioners. The one will triumph who first died for the victims and then also for the executioners, and in so doing revealed a new righteousness which breaks through the vicious circles of hate and vengeance and which from the lost victims and executioners creates a new mankind with a new humanity. Only where righteousness becomes creative and creates right both for the lawless and for those outside the law, only where creative love changes what is hateful and deserving of hate, only where the new man is born who is neither oppressed nor oppresses others, can one speak of the true revolution of righteousness and of the righteousness of God" (178).

I particularly love his exposition on how the "old" "righteousness" led to victims saying, "It's about time I'm vindicated. Kill the executioner!" In the new creation, it's all about creativity in love figuring out how to serve one another. (See previous posts about my radical pacifism.) We all come to the Savior with equal amounts of nothing to offer. Even if I get murdered, I don't stand before Jesus saying, "Hey, look, free pass? I was murdered." No, we all rely on the same magnanimous grace.

The idea that oppression disappears in the new creation also sparked a thought. Perhaps because Jesus willingly gave himself to all humanity, he ruled out the possibility of his being oppressed. If that's the case, we get to stand up for justice for the oppressed, all the while offering ourselves to all with no regard for our rights. Oppression disappears. This sort of activity alternately confuses and pisses off the oppressor. If we are martyred for witnessing to Christ, we get our life back at the resurrection.

Friday, July 18, 2008

The terrorist label

I'm riding the bus right now, and each time I look up to chew on a tidbit from Moltmann, I see headlines on a newspaper opposite me that remind me of "culture wars." Not of Christians despising non, but of the people we call terrorists against the people we call allies (or self).

One example is the debate raging over prisoner exchanges between Israel and anybody not Israel. Obviously, that war has had a long history. Look back to when the Philistines sent raiding parties into Israel to steal food with impunity. Anybody recognize the etymological link? Now Israel has the upper hand, and they can oppress the Palestinians with impunity. Power legitimates the use of power (speaking from fallen logic). The only thing the oppressed can do to "dialogue" is to carry out what those in power call terrorist acts.

Every people group has carried out terrorist acts at some point. The inhabitants of Ziklag probably wished that David wasn't so darn faithful to YHWH that he wouldn't take over Saul's throne already. David and his 400 men were assigned Ziklag by the Philistine king Achish when they fled from Saul, and they made it their base of operations to do what? Carry out raids. Against the Amalekites among others. When David and his men were preparing to help Achish fight against Israel, the Amalekites sacked Ziklag. Tit for tat.

Do you think the British thought, "Cute protest!" when they heard about the Boston Tea incident? That was no Party to them. That was a clever moniker the eventual victorious historians came up with. Our nation's forebears were terrorists to their oppressors.

Indian raiding parties were terrorists to Custer.

The Melchiorites were terrorists to all the major churches at the time: Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed.

The common thread through all these stories is the self. When we fixate on self, on differentiating our selves from others, and on assimilating and solidifying affinity groups, it's much easier to affix labels to others. When we flatten others to a single dimension in order to attach the easy peel-and-stick label, we dehumanize them. Shallow categories are so much easier than knowing, loving and serving the other. If it stopped at mental dehumanization, that would be simply dishonoring to the Creator. But it moves so easily to the next level: fear and hatred. Once those elements are involved, fear causes us to instill fear in others, particularly if we are a fearful leader. This rhetoric whips us into a patriotic frenzy to kill all the terrorists. We placate ourselves by saying that we need to do it to ensure our safety and "way of life."

Hold on just a second. We're the only ones with a way of life? What is it that the terrorists are so vehemently defending? They fear us and the way we are destroying their way of life. It's so easy to recruit other terrorists by fear-mongering. But clearly, even if the terrorists are trying to defend their way of life of oppressing those near them (and potentially, eventually, us), we must not answer by oppressing them. One day soon, the shoe will be on the other foot, and we'll have to resort to terror (merely in the "we're now on bottom" sense; the stuff we do to them is already classified in their hearts as terrorizing) to defend our way of life.

We can claim that we have the law on our side, and surely we do. The "law" in the biblical sense is an instrument of death to show that whatever fix we come up with is totally inadequate. As long as we continue to claim having the law on our side, we will use death to enforce it. God's work in the world was to bring the law to its logical end in having Jesus executed as a blasphemer according to the current interpretation of Torah, with death and sin pouring out its worst on him. At the vindication of the resurrection, Jesus showed that death had no hold on him. Why do we insist on using a tremendously destructive method that is eventually doomed to utter destruction to make the world tick? Christians must stop supporting death. We've been delivered from that. Even if death stalks us and consumes us, do we not trust the Creator and reCreator to give us our life back in the new creation?

I don't have a martyr complex. I don't want to die. But if it comes to me killing in order to defend my "way of life," I have suddenly chosen the way of death. I refuse to submit to the clutches of death and sin over my heart to defend my body from death. I will trust Jesus to either defend me and keep me around, or I will trust him to resurrect me to a new life in the age to come when I will serve him fully and completely.

I digress. There is no chance that the label "terrorist" is productive. We are all subject to the terrors of death and sin. While there are people who indeed embody terror to the point of being abjectly nonhuman (current example: janjaweed in Darfur), we don't need to categorize them. They still bear the horribly disfigured image of God, and you can bet that God wants to redeem that. (Nazi prison guards, anyone? Have you heard the stories of them seeking forgiveness? Powerful stuff. God works wonders.) Far be it from me to tell God that his work will not be sufficient in a person's life, and therefore I can end it. He has his own timetable and means of accomplishing his work of life and of terminating life. (Those last two words are theologically difficult for me, but I'm too lazy to express them differently. Perhaps Nabal's awful decisions culminated in a natural implosion of his body and spirit, because God withdrew his hand. That may be a better view than active termination.)

I redigress. Let's impose personal bans on labels such as "terrorist," because those will only perpetuate fear. By reverse construction of the biblical sentence, I contend that fear casts out love. If Jesus has called us to love, and "perfect love casts out fear," let's take that path. We will cease to feel terrorized, because we trust in Jesus, and we can go boldly forth to love the world.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Working the soil

It's only 11 am, and I'm going to go ahead and mark today as a crazy day, perhaps even sublimely ridiculous. I got up early to ride three and a half miles with my wife to Chick-fil-A for free breakfast burrito day. Yummy. She caught her bus right outside the restaurant. I proceeded to ride my bike up a hill we have avoided to this point, and I found out why. A true she-dog.

I landed at Starbucks to continue reading Moltmann. I'm disappointed at how little I got read. Some of that was due to my imminent distractability. When I was sitting outside, the drive-thru box drove me crazy. There were two times when no one was at the box over about two hours. Otherwise a constant stream of cars and Deb proclaiming a fabulous day at Starbucks. Maybe gas prices aren't affecting our spending habits that much after all.) When I sat inside, the loud music and the sometimes overly animated people were detrimental. I still made progress for which I am thankful.

When I was done, I asked if they had any spent coffee grounds. The woman handed me a small, but very heavy bag. I asked for another bag to split the grounds, noting that I was riding a bike. That elicited some raised eyebrows and a "Good luck." I split the bags, enjoying the quite pleasant chocolate aroma coming from what consisted mostly of spent espresso pucks. I doubled each bag in on itself and tied the top in a knot. I hung each bag on a handlebar and deliberately set out for home, always conscientious of tearing bags. I made it the two miles home quite nicely.

Arriving home, I had to see exactly how much coffee I had. I guessed 24 pounds. I had 36! This is where the working of the (soon-to-be) soil began. I dumped a bunch of grounds into our compost container, and began mixing everything together. We had some really rich compost going already, but it was very dense and matted together. Hopefully the grounds will not only enrich the nascent soil, but will break it up into much loamier material.

Nwo on to a prdocutvie afetronon! Gosh, it hard to type with your fingers crossed!

Monday, July 14, 2008

The world is a wishing well

Over the five weeks that I've been riding my bike everywhere I possibly can, I've picked up over thirty pennies. I have ridden past a few more for safety or laziness.

One day I commented to my wife, "I'm not complaining, but wouldn't it be nice to find a quarter?" The next day, we were riding together and she shouted back to me, "There's a quarter!" I stopped and picked it up. Naturally, I said, "I'm not complaining, but it would be really nice to find a five dollar bill."

A couple of observations. Coinage gets really chewed up on the pavement. Also, what's with the predominance of pennies on the ground? I think I found a dime once in addition to the quarter, but that's still about 94% pennies.

Has inflation made Ben Franklin irrelevant? I'm not talking about "benjamins"; those still seem to be quite relevant. What happened to "a penny saved is a penny earned"?

Since I want to foolishly believe that our culture is more frugal and intelligent than it is, I've developed a theory: Kids are dreaming big these days. There aren't enough fountains or wishing wells around, so they've decided, "The world is my wishing well." (Not that kids these days know what that is.)

Seriously, I don't think adults are just dumping pennies out the window. (Twice I found bunches of ten pennies in intersections.) I'm pretty sure parents give kids in car seats some pennies to play with. On moderate summer days, the windows are open. What's a kid gonna do? What comes naturally: Chuck pennies out the window.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Courage and controversy

I was at the mall with my wife today, and I saw a t-shirt that said something to the effect of "Courage is the most important trait of a warrior."

Here comes the controversy: I beg to differ. But you probably knew that already. While it doesn't make a pithy t-shirt quote, in my view, the most important trait in a warrior is that he (or she, perhaps) knows the value of humanity. A true warrior will have a humanizing vision. A true warrior doesn't see the enemy as objects, but as fellow subjects (not subjected to something, but as subjective beings). A true warrior feels so deeply what he is fighting for that it's worth defending at all costs. A true warrior knows what's worth killing for.

The only reason to feel something deeply enough to kill is because it is deeply rooted in one's humanity.  Therefore, killing is undertaken with extreme gravity. Killing takes away someone else's (potential for) humanity, which quite possibly destroys one's own humanity. That's why I put things in terms of what's worth killing for, and not what's worth dying for or worth fighting for. The latter two can be undertaken within oneself with minimal impact on others. But when it comes to taking lives, that is a grave matter.

I should also note that humans have a long history of fighting and killing. For most of our existence, we've been killing for clan groups, hunting territory, water rights, etc. Now we're killing for nations, for resources, for oil. Not much has changed. But for a modern soldier, it's very hard to be the described warrior. I don't discredit a soldier's courage, commitment or sacrifice. They often go willingly to defend their country, fully knowing the consequences. But when a soldier is called to defend an idea, like America or freedom, it's a tough calling. I don't think there's the gravity of humanity in most of the national wars. I see the gravity of humanity in the genocides of Darfur and Rwanda. I see the gravity of humanity in the Husseins torturing and killing athletes for whatever reason. But I don't see the gravity of humanity in preemptively invading with now-known faulty intelligence. I'm sure President Bush agonized over the decision to invade. But the results have been difficult. I've heard from soldiers that have fought in Iraq that we are helping a lot. I've also heard that we're wasting our time and lives on both sides.

I pray that our soldiers are making a positive, human difference. I pray that they can be true warriors.

Food for thought (perhaps literally)

I'm reading The Crucified God by Jürgen Moltmann for my SysTheo class, and I read a particularly thought-inspiring (partial) paragraph.

"The cultic division between the religious and the profane is potentially abolished in faith in the Christ who was profaned by crucifixion. Thus the eucharist, like the meals held by Jesus with 'sinners and publicans', must also be celebrated with the unrighteous, those who have no rights and the godless from the 'highways and hedges' of society, in all their profanity, and should no longer be limited, as a religious sacrifice, to the inner circle of the devout, to those who are members of the same denomination. The Christian church can re-introduce the divisions between the religious and the profane and between those who are within and those who are without, only at the price of losing its own identity as the church of the crucified Christ" (44).

He takes my eucharistic conviction a step further, to a place I had wondered about, but hadn't dared go. The step before this, which is where I am currently, is that the Lord's Table was always meant to be a potluck, not some solemn religious ceremony where trays are passed with wafers and grape juice. Even the Anglican (and others') model of going up to a rail, while better, doesn't get to the idea of table fellowship.

Compared to Moltmann, my eucharistic model was the Last Supper, where it seems to be an intimate group of Jesus' followers. On the other hand, God's point through the sacrificial system was to dine with his beloved humans estranged as they were. What's to say that the Lord's Table isn't meant to be block parties? Some will object that Communion is a sacred celebration. "Can't have the riffraff defile the Lord's Table." By that standard, I don't think Jesus did a sacred thing his entire life. Conversely, as Rob Bell stated in the title of his speaking tour two years ago, "everything is spiritual." Perhaps the first step is figuring out Jesus' view of sacred v. profane. Then a rethinking of the eucharist. Anybody up for that?

How about non-Christians at the Eucharist?

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Universalism revisited

In a couple of previous posts, I queried whether God's grace might be so overpowering as to redeem the entire creation—Hitlers, Stalins and Amins included. In a Systematic Theology lecture I listened to today, I found a rather illuminating outline point in the notes. "God's love is universal, Christ's act is universal, and the atonement is universal, but some resist this love. That is the mystery of sin and evil."

I still won't discount the pleasant thought of God redeeming everyone, but this helped me to make sense of that austere nagging in the back of my mind, saying, "There's no way everybody gets in." (Not that nagging in my broken mind is the source of truth or anything.) It seems to me that God isn't stopping anybody from "getting in." Perhaps it's our hardness of heart rejecting God.

That opens a whole new can of worms about how free we really are. The professor of this course said early on that "the Bible has no place for free will." He laughed a bit and said, "Maybe I'll have the TA explain that to you later." He sounded dead serious, but I have a really (really) hard time believing that.

No mysteries will be solved at this hour, I'm sure. I've got a bit more reading to do, then off to bed!

Monday, July 7, 2008

Patriotism Sunday

I mentioned in my previous post about American religion, that some of the key features are self, capitalism and inclusivity. (I should note that that inclusivity only includes the currently fashionable groups to include. Terrorists are definitely out.) One other hallmark of American religion is flags!

I forgot how sick I get when I go into a church on the Sunday proximal to the fourth of July. The flags everywhere, the "praise to America" hymns, etc. I passed by a church on Saturday that had the sermon title on the marquee: "Happy birthday America/Independent of tyranny/Dependent upon God." I can only assume by the title that the tyrants are the British? Those feelings that the early Americans felt were presumably very different from how the Native Americans or the slaves or the Iraqis felt (feel).

I do have to grant the possibility that there was a bait and switch in there, much the same as at my church. Perhaps they were going to sing "happy birthday, America" (happy two hundred thirty-second birthda-ay), then talk about how the power of sin and death were broken through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and how we're all dependent on God to break free from that. But I kinda doubt it.

We walked in a bit late to my church, and they were mid-Introit. "God Bless America." I think I crawled out of my skin and ran back to the car. But somehow my corpse stayed. I'm thankful we weren't there for the "Organ Praise" which was "The National Anthem." There were two giant American flags hanging on either side of the sanctuary. (What does "sanctuary" mean again?)

But a mysterious thing began to happen. (I should have known something was up when I saw a bunch of foreign flags around the sanctuary.) We started singing songs that talk about God ruling over his creation. About how we're brothers and sisters with people around the world. About bearing each other's burdens. Singing the wonderful verses of American hymns that pertained to not America. (From "My Country, 'Tis of Thee": Not for this land alone,/ But be God's mercies shown from shore to shore;/ And may the nations see that men should brothers be,/ And form one family the wide world o'er.) Then the sermon title: "One World, Under God"! The pastor was preaching to the choir to me, but I think it might have been a significant message for many in the congregation.

I'll include the full text of the closing hymn, "O God of Every Nation":
O God of every nation,
Of every race and land,
Redeem your whole creation
With your almighty hand;
Where hate and fear divide us,
And bitter threats are hurled,
In love and mercy guide us,
And heal our strife-torn world.

Keep bright in us the vision
Of days when war shall cease,
When hatred and division
Give way to love and peace,
Till dawns the morning glorious
When truth and justice reign,
And Christ shall rule victorious
O'er all the world's domain.


Amen, amen and amen! I still get gander bumps when I think of the implications of this song. Please don't misunderstand me. I don't hate America. I enjoy the "freedom," convenience and relative sloth. I really do. But I feel like the real America believes the preceding hymn, that we should serve the world around us. I don't believe America is the kingdom of God or the church. However, it appears that most Americans believe that America is God's country (or for the secularists, that luck has shone so greatly on us that we're entitled to grind our boot on the rest of the world's neck). Yet we behave in the world exactly the way God detests. This is why the words of the prophet Amos apply so strongly to America, particularly these:
"Seek good, not evil,
that you may live.
Then the LORD God Almighty will be with you,
just as you say he is.
Hate evil, love good;
maintain justice in the courts.
Perhaps the LORD God Almighty will have mercy
on the remnant of Joseph" (TNIV).
We aren't the remnant of Joseph, but God will be with us if we seek good, not evil. And by "with us," I don't mean that we will win military victories. Because more than likely we wouldn't be fighting.

God bless the world.

The only way

This post is pretty important to me in that it has consumed my thoughts a quite a bit of late. However, I'm listening to Weezer's Red Album for the first time, and it's pretty catchy at the moment. I don't have the discipline to quit one or the other of these two activities, so who knows how this post'll turn out.

I read recently (regretfully, I can't recall where) that a Barna-esque poll found that 67% of Evangelicals don't think that Jesus is the only way to heaven, including President Bush. (Not that I look to politicians to be theologians, or even Christians, but that fact was part of the point of the article.) For all I know, Bush could have been giving homage to the most important religion to a president, that is, America. The hallmarks of this religion include vague references to God, but always affirming self, capitalism and inclusivity.

I've posted some wonderings about universalism of late. I'm coming more to the conclusion that universalism is an open question, but that any salvation is definitely only through Jesus. Usually when someone affirms Jesus is the only way, that indicates they are extremely conservative, say-the-prayer-or-else type of folk. But in my christology studies, I'm seeing the broad effectiveness of Jesus's life, sacrifice and resurrection. I'm also seeing anew the Father's extravagant grace (which is a significant understatement). It would be scandalous for a person to be as open and gracious as God is, let alone for a deity. For the righteousness, justice and holiness that are ascribed to (and surely true of) God, he sure behaves irresponsibly. I have a feeling that non-Christians don't know of this, and Christians aren't willing to tell. We've reverse engineered the image of God onto himself from our own twisted reflection of him.

What if God really wanted to redeem everyone (including the rightly infamous Hitlers, Stalins and Amins)? If we attribute infinite power, glory, grace, etc. to God, wouldn't that be his prerogative? Particularly if we engage the big story of the Bible, we will begin to see how insane God's graciousness appears. If we continue with our systematic denuding the Bible of its message by picking sentences that we think fit our picture of God the best, we will continue to create our god in our own image.

We've made up a lot of stuff about how the righteous people before the time of Jesus were looking forward to him as the means of their salvation. That's mostly a crock. They trusted in the Creator God, firstly, and if they were privy to the revelation, they trusted in the Covenant God. But there were people who got that people are meant to love and serve one another. I would say that this is a result of revelation as well. Regardless, God will be faithful to his faithful, whether they name Jesus or not. This idea stops short of universalism, but it's still good to muse about. If, in fact, people who haven't heard of Jesus are "in," what does that mean for missions? Shouldn't this fact just make us lazy? No, I would contend that the more understanding we have, the better off we are; the less understanding, the less we are able to live as fully human.

TF Torrance posits in his book/lecture series "The Mediation of Christ" that Jesus reveals God to humanity and reconciles humanity to God (and God to humanity). These twin functions of revelation and reconciliation are held together in Jesus as the nexus of deity and humanity. Jesus bore all our struggles as the new Adam, meaning all the temptation that fallen humanity has given in to over the generations, he bore in himself. As the new creation, Jesus has emptied temptation and sin and death of its power. But he is also God who is showing his creation how to live. If God chose to have all the horrors done to Jesus, and his response to them, be sufficient to show humanity in its entirety how to live in the new, restored creation, I guess I'd be content with that.

All that to say, Jesus is the only way of reconciliation to God. Whether that means only the people who say some pagan incantation (sinner's prayer) get to heaven forever when they die, or whether that means that God is hopelessly enamored with every one of the people he has created, even though we continually, actively attempt to destroy his creation, and that he wants to restore his creation and his humans so that they can dwell forever in the new creation serving him, I'm not really sure. I would lean my inklings toward the latter in that false dichotomy.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Dobson v. Obama: The cage match

I guess the cage match is more of a foil that I always fantasize about. And in this case, it runs directly counter to what I'm talking about. Perhaps you heard in the news that James Dobson, erstwhile president, but still very actively in control of Focus on the Family, condemned Barack Obama's twisting of Scripture. In one of the greatest cases of "does he realize his mouth is talking without him thinking (again)?", Dr. Dobson said, "He's deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own world view, his own confused theology." I'm not terribly careful about saying that about other people, but when I say it, at least I realize that I'm exactly as subject to that judgment as the person I'm talking about.

The distortion in question has to do with Obama's statement that "said Leviticus suggests slavery is OK and eating shellfish is an abomination. Obama also cited Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, 'a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application' " (from Yahoo! News). I love that Obama is probably the first presidential candidate in history that has noted that Jesus wouldn't christen (as it were) our Defense Department. I don't know how Obama handles the other passages hermeneutically (I haven't taken the time to chase that down yet), but this is the first time in my memory someone so public has called into question the infallible doctrine of American self-preservation.

I'm reading God So Loved the World: A Christology for Disciples by Jonathan R. Wilson. He puts in book form many of the things I have suspected for a while, related to whether the church/humanity gets to kill each other to get our own way. To wit, "Jesus Christ overcomes the world in his death by refusing the lies of the world and remaining obedient to the Father. When he was facing death, Jesus could have followed the way of the world and used his power to destroy his enemies; he could have played by the rules of the world's system of justice to avoid a guilty verdict. But he remained faithful to God, giving up his life in the world for life in the kingdom" (p 180). It's worth noting that Wilson is an anti-dualist; his use of "world" here isn't about "earth," but about the anti-kingdom world system. Another delightful little phrase from Wilson: "Christ's followers are misfits. But that is a blessing, because to be fit for the world is to be fit for death" (p 167).

Why is it that "Christian" "leaders" are so often pro-militarism? Why do they snuggle up in so many other ways to the world's rules? It's as if they say, "In order to expand my influence, I need to say things that will feel agreeable to my public." I'm not sure Dr. Dobson actively says that, but it sure seems like it. He gets in people's faces about raising their kids, but they flock to him. Why doesn't he get in people's faces about how killing people in the interest of or the defense of a nation plays exactly by the rules of the creation-destroying world system? Because he doesn't want to lose his audience? Because he doesn't understand his Bible? Because "he's deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own world view, his own confused theology"? I'm just askin's all.