Please read this article: It's really well written and says a lot of things that we all need to take seriously as followers of Jesus. Once again, I'm humbled by the fact that someone who is not a believer in Christ is able to articulate the situation much better than a lot of the people who do believe. As we enter the Advent time of the year, let's start/continue the habit of showing more love and grace to people who are 'different' from us. Whaddya say?
http://www.danoah.com/2011/11/im-christian-unless-youre-gay.html
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
more of my favorite lyrics...
This is a classic underground Christian alternative rock song... and the album (has the same title) is definitely worth buying if you can find it.
Mike Knott - 'Rocket and a Bomb'
Mike Knott - 'Rocket and a Bomb'
Monday, November 7, 2011
Think life begins at conception? Well... maybe...
[Update: The bill mentioned below did not pass, which is very interesting for a variety of reasons.]
I am pro-life. I oppose both abortion-on-demand and the death penalty (and attempt to live as a pacifist) because I believe that human life is a sacred gift, given by God, and we don't have the right to take another human life. Only God has that authority. Unfortunately, just saying this is not enough to solve many serious ethical dilemmas, including the issue of abortion.
But, it seems to me that taking seriously the question "When does life begin?" is vital if we hope to get closer to a valuable understanding these ethical dilemmas. Of course, for some, there is no question. Poor thinking takes place on all sides, but here is one example:
The state of Mississippi is going to vote this week on Initiative 26, which has gained notoriety as the "personhood amendment." Essentially, the voters of the state will decide on how the beginning of a human life is defined. It seems likely that the decision will be that life begins at conception. The problem is, this view does not have much scientific evidence to support it, and, I will suggest, it does not have much biblical support either.
I am pro-life. I oppose both abortion-on-demand and the death penalty (and attempt to live as a pacifist) because I believe that human life is a sacred gift, given by God, and we don't have the right to take another human life. Only God has that authority. Unfortunately, just saying this is not enough to solve many serious ethical dilemmas, including the issue of abortion.
But, it seems to me that taking seriously the question "When does life begin?" is vital if we hope to get closer to a valuable understanding these ethical dilemmas. Of course, for some, there is no question. Poor thinking takes place on all sides, but here is one example:
The state of Mississippi is going to vote this week on Initiative 26, which has gained notoriety as the "personhood amendment." Essentially, the voters of the state will decide on how the beginning of a human life is defined. It seems likely that the decision will be that life begins at conception. The problem is, this view does not have much scientific evidence to support it, and, I will suggest, it does not have much biblical support either.
Friday, November 4, 2011
I didn't write this...
This guy did. But it's so good I just had to re-post. (His blog is great, by the way. Very thoughtful theologian getting a PhD at the University of Durham.)
"The Church is the place where water is thicker than blood, and where married partners, whose earthly unions survive only until the parting of death, enter into deeper and eternal unions in the body of Christ, where the eternal friendship of Christian sibling-hood overcomes the barriers of blood, race, and status. This new order transcends and translates the old order into it. Christian married couples remain married, but now participate in a deeper and more lasting set of relationships. Rather than playing off celibacy against married life, I think that what we need to do is focus on those deeper sets of relationships, and how they transform and shape our existing ones. In a context where most parties in the Church seem to be obsessed with marriage, family, and sexuality, perhaps we should remember that the perfect human being that we follow was a lifelong celibate, with a rather ambivalent attitude to his blood relations...
People have wondered how Jesus of Nazareth, who never married or fathered children, could embody perfect humanity. Jesus may not have been a husband or a father, but he exemplified a sort of relationship that speaks beyond all of these roles and can transform them: Jesus was the Friend. While this fact is often presented in the trivializing fashion of Jesus as the ‘life and soul of the party’, this falls so far short of the truth. Jesus had an unparalleled capacity to give himself to other people in a manner that brought freedom, health, life, comfort, forgiveness, and joy. People wanted to be with Jesus. No human being has been a friend like Christ.
Jesus' friendships broke boundaries between the sexes, and between social insiders and outsiders. In the realm of true friendship we are all equals and contemporaries. Generational differences no longer matter and the differences between the sexes need not be a divide. Jesus had close friendships with both men and women, including forms of friendship that can be very rarely practiced in certain contexts today, such as profoundly homoaffective but non-sexual friendships and unsexualized friendships with the other sex. The various vocations we have as individuals are nothing but innumerable different species of friendship, conjugations of that more fundamental relationship...
In the contemporary Church, I wonder whether our incessant focus upon the categories of marriage, singleness, and sexuality is bound up with a myopic failure to see the deeper category of friendship, which both relativizes and transforms them. In the midst of the innumerable theological works that are written on the subject of sexuality, one could be forgiven for forgetting that the Bible really has hardly anything to say about what we call sexuality and that, when it does, it is accorded only a marginally important significance. In a like manner, the centrality of family and marriage in the contemporary evangelical church and awkward place of singles seems somewhat strange when perceived against the background of a New Testament in which families are most noticeable by their absence and where familial, marital, and blood bonds are consistently transcended.
A thoroughgoing theology of friendship has the potential to puncture numerous myths and radically to reorient our understanding and vision. A Church that spoke far more about friendship than sexuality, for instance, would have a far more challenging message to present to a sex-obsessed age. A Church that unapologetically proclaimed that a celibate person embodied perfect humanity, and carefully articulated the consequences of this belief, would strike at the heart of some of the greatest idols of our age. The fact that this is seldom done is perhaps evidence of the fact that we are also enthralled by them."
"The Church is the place where water is thicker than blood, and where married partners, whose earthly unions survive only until the parting of death, enter into deeper and eternal unions in the body of Christ, where the eternal friendship of Christian sibling-hood overcomes the barriers of blood, race, and status. This new order transcends and translates the old order into it. Christian married couples remain married, but now participate in a deeper and more lasting set of relationships. Rather than playing off celibacy against married life, I think that what we need to do is focus on those deeper sets of relationships, and how they transform and shape our existing ones. In a context where most parties in the Church seem to be obsessed with marriage, family, and sexuality, perhaps we should remember that the perfect human being that we follow was a lifelong celibate, with a rather ambivalent attitude to his blood relations...
People have wondered how Jesus of Nazareth, who never married or fathered children, could embody perfect humanity. Jesus may not have been a husband or a father, but he exemplified a sort of relationship that speaks beyond all of these roles and can transform them: Jesus was the Friend. While this fact is often presented in the trivializing fashion of Jesus as the ‘life and soul of the party’, this falls so far short of the truth. Jesus had an unparalleled capacity to give himself to other people in a manner that brought freedom, health, life, comfort, forgiveness, and joy. People wanted to be with Jesus. No human being has been a friend like Christ.
Jesus' friendships broke boundaries between the sexes, and between social insiders and outsiders. In the realm of true friendship we are all equals and contemporaries. Generational differences no longer matter and the differences between the sexes need not be a divide. Jesus had close friendships with both men and women, including forms of friendship that can be very rarely practiced in certain contexts today, such as profoundly homoaffective but non-sexual friendships and unsexualized friendships with the other sex. The various vocations we have as individuals are nothing but innumerable different species of friendship, conjugations of that more fundamental relationship...
In the contemporary Church, I wonder whether our incessant focus upon the categories of marriage, singleness, and sexuality is bound up with a myopic failure to see the deeper category of friendship, which both relativizes and transforms them. In the midst of the innumerable theological works that are written on the subject of sexuality, one could be forgiven for forgetting that the Bible really has hardly anything to say about what we call sexuality and that, when it does, it is accorded only a marginally important significance. In a like manner, the centrality of family and marriage in the contemporary evangelical church and awkward place of singles seems somewhat strange when perceived against the background of a New Testament in which families are most noticeable by their absence and where familial, marital, and blood bonds are consistently transcended.
A thoroughgoing theology of friendship has the potential to puncture numerous myths and radically to reorient our understanding and vision. A Church that spoke far more about friendship than sexuality, for instance, would have a far more challenging message to present to a sex-obsessed age. A Church that unapologetically proclaimed that a celibate person embodied perfect humanity, and carefully articulated the consequences of this belief, would strike at the heart of some of the greatest idols of our age. The fact that this is seldom done is perhaps evidence of the fact that we are also enthralled by them."
Sunday, October 23, 2011
notes on William Cavanaugh's politics & theology...
According to Cavanaugh, the common assumption in modernity with regard to the relationship between religion and politics goes something like this:
The 'wars of religion' in Europe during the modern period (15th-18th centuries) enabled the rise of the nation-state as a 'neutral party', which attempted to solve the problem by reducing religion to a private sphere away from the public discourse. In other words, religious discussion was relegated to personal pietism and worship, while law, politics, commerce, etc. were maintained as public areas of discussion that would hopefully be debated in a rational, 'peaceful' manner, something that was apparently made more difficult when religious belief was brought into the mix. This, it is said, is a primary reason why we have less religious violence now than in the past (though that assumption has been called into question post-9/11).
Cavanaugh thinks this narrative is wrong, and ought to be reversed. It is literally backward in his view: rather than religion and religious violence being the catalyst for the nation-state, the European states, caught up in conflicts over territory and power, used religion as a way to deflect from what was really going on. The 'social contract', according to Cavanaugh, allows individuals to gain certain rights (esp. property) in exchange for allowing the state government to have certain coercive powers. This leads to a situation where loyalty to the state becomes paramount, since it offers protection for what we value (safety, shelter, food, etc). The state soon usurps religion as the source of what people are willing to die for.
The 'wars of religion' in Europe during the modern period (15th-18th centuries) enabled the rise of the nation-state as a 'neutral party', which attempted to solve the problem by reducing religion to a private sphere away from the public discourse. In other words, religious discussion was relegated to personal pietism and worship, while law, politics, commerce, etc. were maintained as public areas of discussion that would hopefully be debated in a rational, 'peaceful' manner, something that was apparently made more difficult when religious belief was brought into the mix. This, it is said, is a primary reason why we have less religious violence now than in the past (though that assumption has been called into question post-9/11).
Cavanaugh thinks this narrative is wrong, and ought to be reversed. It is literally backward in his view: rather than religion and religious violence being the catalyst for the nation-state, the European states, caught up in conflicts over territory and power, used religion as a way to deflect from what was really going on. The 'social contract', according to Cavanaugh, allows individuals to gain certain rights (esp. property) in exchange for allowing the state government to have certain coercive powers. This leads to a situation where loyalty to the state becomes paramount, since it offers protection for what we value (safety, shelter, food, etc). The state soon usurps religion as the source of what people are willing to die for.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
notes on Graham Ward's 'schizoid Christ'...
Graham Ward is a theologian who will be the new Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, beginning in Fall 2012. He has written extensively on a range of topics, particularly the relationships between theology and culture. The following are some notes I took while reading his essay, "The Schizoid Christ", as part of a systematic theology seminar.
In the essay, which is included in a collection of essays related to Radical Orthodoxy, Ward is essentially working against a conception of the self as an individual subject who is in control of its own consciousness and identity. He speaks of the 'operations' of Christ rather than an 'identity' of Christ. he would thus rather "examine this profound theological nexus as a mobile site for the production of desire and belief, love and hope." (p. 229)
Some may be taken aback by his use of the term 'schizoid', as it infers the mental instability of schizophrenia, which most Christians would be uncomfortable with as a description of Jesus Christ. However, Ward - drawing from Deleuze and Guattari's philosophical writings - suggests that "'schizophrenization' is therapeutic" inasmuch as it allows a variety of representations the opportunity to show themselves. So, the self that is free to be 'schizoid' can apparently, in some sense, reveal more of itself than a self constrained by the traditional understanding of selfhood as 'identity'. The reliability of such a view is not something I can address at present.
In the essay, which is included in a collection of essays related to Radical Orthodoxy, Ward is essentially working against a conception of the self as an individual subject who is in control of its own consciousness and identity. He speaks of the 'operations' of Christ rather than an 'identity' of Christ. he would thus rather "examine this profound theological nexus as a mobile site for the production of desire and belief, love and hope." (p. 229)
Some may be taken aback by his use of the term 'schizoid', as it infers the mental instability of schizophrenia, which most Christians would be uncomfortable with as a description of Jesus Christ. However, Ward - drawing from Deleuze and Guattari's philosophical writings - suggests that "'schizophrenization' is therapeutic" inasmuch as it allows a variety of representations the opportunity to show themselves. So, the self that is free to be 'schizoid' can apparently, in some sense, reveal more of itself than a self constrained by the traditional understanding of selfhood as 'identity'. The reliability of such a view is not something I can address at present.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Kierkegaard on the difference between talking and acting...
As a Christian, this continues to be a very challenging word for me to hear... since I am still too often in the camp of those who ridicule. From Kierkegaard's Journals:
"Take the rich young man — let me then preach about his not being perfect, that he could not bring himself to giving everything to the poor, but that the true Christian is always willing to give everything. Let me preach this way, and people are deeply moved and I am esteemed. But if I were a rich young man and went and gave all my possessions to the poor — then people would be scandalized. They would find it a ridiculous exaggeration.
Take Mary Magdalene. Let me preach about her deep consciousness of sin, the passion which becomes indifferent to everything but her sin, which goes out to the Savior, opening herself up to all kinds of ridicule, etc. I... will be regarded as an earnest Christian, I will be esteemed. If, however, I myself, conscious of being a sinner, if suddenly I actually step forward with a public confession of sin, offense arises immediately, people will consider it vanity and ridiculous exaggeration.
To preach that the true Christian consults God in everything is moving... if in actuality a man does step forward and refers to his having consulted God, this is censured as presumption, pride, exaggeration, madness. Picture those quiet spirits who, remote from life, filled their souls with only the thought of God — it will move to tears... But let someone really do it and he becomes an object of ridicule."
"Take the rich young man — let me then preach about his not being perfect, that he could not bring himself to giving everything to the poor, but that the true Christian is always willing to give everything. Let me preach this way, and people are deeply moved and I am esteemed. But if I were a rich young man and went and gave all my possessions to the poor — then people would be scandalized. They would find it a ridiculous exaggeration.
Take Mary Magdalene. Let me preach about her deep consciousness of sin, the passion which becomes indifferent to everything but her sin, which goes out to the Savior, opening herself up to all kinds of ridicule, etc. I... will be regarded as an earnest Christian, I will be esteemed. If, however, I myself, conscious of being a sinner, if suddenly I actually step forward with a public confession of sin, offense arises immediately, people will consider it vanity and ridiculous exaggeration.
To preach that the true Christian consults God in everything is moving... if in actuality a man does step forward and refers to his having consulted God, this is censured as presumption, pride, exaggeration, madness. Picture those quiet spirits who, remote from life, filled their souls with only the thought of God — it will move to tears... But let someone really do it and he becomes an object of ridicule."
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