This is a critically-acclaimed comic 4-part series from the brilliant artist and comic book creator Alex Ross. It came out in the 90s. Wow, everyone...WOW! I think this is my new #1 favorite all-time storyline. It tells the story of an alternative timeline where Superman has been forced into retirement by a new class of superhuman who ostensibly seek to help humanity but do so without regard for the strict moral rules of Superman and his friends.
Superman comes out of retirement after the new breed inadvertently destroy the American midwest. This sparks an all-out war between the two superhuman groups. The whole comic deals with complex moral questions about power and the responsible use of it.
The really exciting part is that the whole comic is seen through the eyes of this pastor who has gained prophetic foresight and is guided by Spectre, the Angel of Justice. The whole thing is filtered through apocalyptic visions and language, it comic is actually a commentary on The Book of Revelation! Ladies and gents this is why I read comics. This book explores the biggest ideas, faith, morality, myth, life and death. Alex Ross is one of the great artists of our time, and so the visuals are second to none. The pacing is maybe the best ever, and the dialogue is great. If you've never read this book, you must do so.
This is an open-comment theology blog where I will post various theological musings, mostly in sermon or essay form, for others to read and comment on. If what I say here interests you, you may want to check out some of my books. Feel free to criticize, to critique, to comment, but keep comments to the point and respectful. Many of these posts have been published elsewhere, but I wanted them collected and made available to a wider audience.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Quotables
"But the big issues: to believe in God or not to believe in God; to engage in such religious practices as prayer, attending services, studying religious texts or not to do so; to look for “proof” of God’s existence, if one is religious (or thinking of being religious) or to regard such a quest as misguided; to be “pluralistic” in one’s approach to religion, or to regard one religion as “truer” than all the rest – these are deeply personal choices, choices of who to be, not just what to do or what to believe. I do not believe that philosophical or scientific discussion can provide compelling reasons for making them one way rather than another, although it can help us make whichever choices we make more reflectively."- Hilary Putnam
Is This A "Red Dwarf" World Or "Dr Who" World?
Is life more like the TV show RED DWARF or DR WHO? Are we are trapped on a hulking object hurling through space with nothing but rocks all about us with no purpose and only other people slightly less annoying than ourselves to keep us company? Or are we on an incredible machine with a mind of its own, on an incredible adventure as a companion to an ancient intelligence of great mystery and human form who deeply cares about us and wants our help saving the world?
Now I know these aren't the only two possibilities, but they are the ones that SEEM real to me. I find it funny that some seem to choose option A because it seems the more depressing. They think that truth can only frustrate and disappoint. "The saddest answer is always the most likely one." I know this because I find this tendency in myself. But it seems to me that this is just another manifestation of the masochism, the self-mutilation my depression used to cause when I was a teenager.
Truths can bring happiness. It is true that my wife loves me, and that makes me happy. It is true you are reading this right now, whoever you are, and that makes me happy. There are some scientific truths that have brought satisfaction to human expectations, hopes, and dreams just as some scientific truths have frustrated the same.
No, it is no more epistemically useful, it helps our quest for truth no more, to prejudice the depressing than it is to believe according to wish-fulfillment. Yet it seems to me, and hey I can be pretty dense some time so maybe I'm wrong about this, that once the full breadth and depth of life is accounted for, we must indeed CHOOSE which TV show we think we are on: DR WHO or RED DWARF? Choice sucks, especially epistemic choice, but sometimes you are confronted with equal evidence and the issue is important and you gotta lay your chips down somewhere. But there may be other criteria for decision-making than masochism and wish fulfillment. Exploring those criteria is a big part of the apologetics blog-project I'm working on right now. Still, I know which way I'll bet: I like RED DWARF, I can live with RED DWARF, but I'm a much bigger fan of DR WHO.
Now I know these aren't the only two possibilities, but they are the ones that SEEM real to me. I find it funny that some seem to choose option A because it seems the more depressing. They think that truth can only frustrate and disappoint. "The saddest answer is always the most likely one." I know this because I find this tendency in myself. But it seems to me that this is just another manifestation of the masochism, the self-mutilation my depression used to cause when I was a teenager.
Truths can bring happiness. It is true that my wife loves me, and that makes me happy. It is true you are reading this right now, whoever you are, and that makes me happy. There are some scientific truths that have brought satisfaction to human expectations, hopes, and dreams just as some scientific truths have frustrated the same.
No, it is no more epistemically useful, it helps our quest for truth no more, to prejudice the depressing than it is to believe according to wish-fulfillment. Yet it seems to me, and hey I can be pretty dense some time so maybe I'm wrong about this, that once the full breadth and depth of life is accounted for, we must indeed CHOOSE which TV show we think we are on: DR WHO or RED DWARF? Choice sucks, especially epistemic choice, but sometimes you are confronted with equal evidence and the issue is important and you gotta lay your chips down somewhere. But there may be other criteria for decision-making than masochism and wish fulfillment. Exploring those criteria is a big part of the apologetics blog-project I'm working on right now. Still, I know which way I'll bet: I like RED DWARF, I can live with RED DWARF, but I'm a much bigger fan of DR WHO.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Quotables
“If this life is not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight.”- William James
My Grand Apologetics Project Part 3 (a)
See these previous posts:
http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-1.html?m=1
http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-2-cont.html?m=1
Part 3: The Phenomenology Of The Human Adventure
In the first post from Part 2 I wrote about the experience of life as risk and venture. For most people, I think, life at it's finest is experienced as indeed a risky venture, and that at our finest moments we embrace this as something ultimately good. Another way to say this is that life is an adventure, a journey, or a story. I think most people experience life this way at least from time to time. The question as to whether embrace vulnerability is a question of whether we let that experience of life as venture determine the way we will look at the world. But this sense of life as venturesome is vague and hard to talk about. I think there are a series of other paradigmically human experiences that, when we reflect upon them, have qualities that buttress the two experiences I spoke about earlier. Taken together, they form the background for the entire human adventure. Here what I will be doing is phenomenology. I will talking about what it is like to experience life this way. At the end of this section I will draw together all I have said thus far to try to form some kind of epistemological outlook, which will then guide us through the rest of my apologetics enterprise.
a. Redeeming Laughter
Humor is an experience most everyone can relate to. I don't know that I have ever met a person who was completely humorless, though I have met a few that were pretty darn close. Laughter is part of what gives life meaning, and it is hard to imagine the good life without it. What's more, laughter is a key part to dealing with hard times and grief. One of the miracles of the human condition is the ability of people to laugh in even the most difficult of situations. But laughter may be one of the least reflected-upon experiences we have. We laugh and we engage in humor, but we rarely really think about humor (one important exception to this is Peter Berger's REDEEMING LAUGHTER, upon which this section is based, I highly recommend it.) This may be a good thing. Humor is one of those things that seems like it would die if we thought about it too much. But the whole point of the religious enterprise, I think, is being reflective about one's own humanity and one's human encounter with the world. So have you ever stopped and thought about what humor is like? What it is like to laugh? The truth is that if one stopped to think about it, and catalogue one's thoughts, they could go on and on forever, and not have said enough. And that in itself is revealing. One of the first things I want to point out about the phenomenology of laughter is that it is in some sense ineffable. One could talk and talk about it and one still would not have said enough. Laughter, in a sense, transcends language. We can never really capture what it is like to laugh in some simple rational formula.
Some would point out that humor is culturally conditioned, and this too is true. There is actually a lot of humor in the Bible, but few people are able to 'get it' because of the cultural differences between the ancient Hebrews and, say, your modern westerner. But I think there are some features of laughter and humor that cut across culture. One aspect of laughter and humor is that it is cathartic. This accounts for it's ability to help relieve grief. Think about how a joke works. In a joke a story is told that builds up tension, the punch line, or the laughter is the release of that tension. So, one phenomenological feature of laughter is catharsis. Another, which was just touched upon, is tension. But tension between what? It can be anything, any dichotomy can serve to create the tension necessary to produce laughter. Often dichotomies include the dichotomy between the human and natural world (think about jokes where animals act like people), between power and weakness (political jokes), or between life and death even (jokes about ghosts or the afterlife). Dichotomies differ throughout societies and so tension can take different forms among different peoples, and this is the reason for the cultural differences, but incongruence, tension between dichotomies, is fundamental to humor. So here we have a few features of humor: ineffability, catharsis, tension between dichotomies. Let me suggest, though, that underlying the varying dichotomies that create humor, there is a deeper one that cuts across all cultural lines. Behind the various tensions that make various jokes and bits of humor possible, is one fundamental incongruence, and that is the incongruence between the pain of the world and the joy of the humorous moment.
When we tell a joke, or when a humorous scene comes up, all that is serious, dangerous and threatening in the world is, for a moment, bracketed off. Additionally, the normal and serious power struggles of the world are thrown upside down. In the political joke of the homeless man on the corner, the most powerful man in the world is made the but of the joke of the weakest man in the world. For a moment, the homeless man runs the world. When we step into humor, all that makes life difficult is bracketed off, and we step into a world where the most important thing is joy itself, the joy of laughter. And that is the point I want to make here. Whatever you believe about what the world is in itself, when you listen to a joke, when you watch a stand-up comic, when you watch an animal do something humorous, for that moment you step into a world where the only thing that matters is joy. The serious and dangerous world is set aside as unimportant, and joy itself is made the most important thing in the world. That is just the phenomenology of laughter an humor. It has the power to heal because it has the power to remove a painful world and replace it with one that makes joy its center. This is why we can bracket off normal moral rules and give people a wider moral berth when it comes to making a joke. When someone is offended by a joke whose real end is humor itself, and not the insult that might be the means and mode of the humor, we will usually defend the comic with the words "he was only joking". Humor produces a universe of joy, if only for a moment, and we are willing to sacrifice great swaths of the seriousness of the world, no matter how serious we indeed know them to be, to make sure that world has a place in ours. That is because, I think, we all know that a life full lived, indeed a meaningful life, has to have a place for laughter in it. We will never allow the world of the serious to push the world of the comic out of it completely. Now, we move into the world of the comic only briefly. It is completely reasonable to think of this as but a momentary illusion and escape from the world. I am not at this point arguing it is anything else. I only need one to grant me this one thing: if the world was as we experience it to be in laughter, then we would have to put joy at the center of our worldview. All that is required at this point is an acknowledgment of my phenomenology, an acknowledgment that indeed that is what humor is about. We are still at the level of premises here.
http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-1.html?m=1
http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-2.html?m=1
Part 3: The Phenomenology Of The Human Adventure
In the first post from Part 2 I wrote about the experience of life as risk and venture. For most people, I think, life at it's finest is experienced as indeed a risky venture, and that at our finest moments we embrace this as something ultimately good. Another way to say this is that life is an adventure, a journey, or a story. I think most people experience life this way at least from time to time. The question as to whether embrace vulnerability is a question of whether we let that experience of life as venture determine the way we will look at the world. But this sense of life as venturesome is vague and hard to talk about. I think there are a series of other paradigmically human experiences that, when we reflect upon them, have qualities that buttress the two experiences I spoke about earlier. Taken together, they form the background for the entire human adventure. Here what I will be doing is phenomenology. I will talking about what it is like to experience life this way. At the end of this section I will draw together all I have said thus far to try to form some kind of epistemological outlook, which will then guide us through the rest of my apologetics enterprise.
a. Redeeming Laughter
Humor is an experience most everyone can relate to. I don't know that I have ever met a person who was completely humorless, though I have met a few that were pretty darn close. Laughter is part of what gives life meaning, and it is hard to imagine the good life without it. What's more, laughter is a key part to dealing with hard times and grief. One of the miracles of the human condition is the ability of people to laugh in even the most difficult of situations. But laughter may be one of the least reflected-upon experiences we have. We laugh and we engage in humor, but we rarely really think about humor (one important exception to this is Peter Berger's REDEEMING LAUGHTER, upon which this section is based, I highly recommend it.) This may be a good thing. Humor is one of those things that seems like it would die if we thought about it too much. But the whole point of the religious enterprise, I think, is being reflective about one's own humanity and one's human encounter with the world. So have you ever stopped and thought about what humor is like? What it is like to laugh? The truth is that if one stopped to think about it, and catalogue one's thoughts, they could go on and on forever, and not have said enough. And that in itself is revealing. One of the first things I want to point out about the phenomenology of laughter is that it is in some sense ineffable. One could talk and talk about it and one still would not have said enough. Laughter, in a sense, transcends language. We can never really capture what it is like to laugh in some simple rational formula.
Some would point out that humor is culturally conditioned, and this too is true. There is actually a lot of humor in the Bible, but few people are able to 'get it' because of the cultural differences between the ancient Hebrews and, say, your modern westerner. But I think there are some features of laughter and humor that cut across culture. One aspect of laughter and humor is that it is cathartic. This accounts for it's ability to help relieve grief. Think about how a joke works. In a joke a story is told that builds up tension, the punch line, or the laughter is the release of that tension. So, one phenomenological feature of laughter is catharsis. Another, which was just touched upon, is tension. But tension between what? It can be anything, any dichotomy can serve to create the tension necessary to produce laughter. Often dichotomies include the dichotomy between the human and natural world (think about jokes where animals act like people), between power and weakness (political jokes), or between life and death even (jokes about ghosts or the afterlife). Dichotomies differ throughout societies and so tension can take different forms among different peoples, and this is the reason for the cultural differences, but incongruence, tension between dichotomies, is fundamental to humor. So here we have a few features of humor: ineffability, catharsis, tension between dichotomies. Let me suggest, though, that underlying the varying dichotomies that create humor, there is a deeper one that cuts across all cultural lines. Behind the various tensions that make various jokes and bits of humor possible, is one fundamental incongruence, and that is the incongruence between the pain of the world and the joy of the humorous moment.
When we tell a joke, or when a humorous scene comes up, all that is serious, dangerous and threatening in the world is, for a moment, bracketed off. Additionally, the normal and serious power struggles of the world are thrown upside down. In the political joke of the homeless man on the corner, the most powerful man in the world is made the but of the joke of the weakest man in the world. For a moment, the homeless man runs the world. When we step into humor, all that makes life difficult is bracketed off, and we step into a world where the most important thing is joy itself, the joy of laughter. And that is the point I want to make here. Whatever you believe about what the world is in itself, when you listen to a joke, when you watch a stand-up comic, when you watch an animal do something humorous, for that moment you step into a world where the only thing that matters is joy. The serious and dangerous world is set aside as unimportant, and joy itself is made the most important thing in the world. That is just the phenomenology of laughter an humor. It has the power to heal because it has the power to remove a painful world and replace it with one that makes joy its center. This is why we can bracket off normal moral rules and give people a wider moral berth when it comes to making a joke. When someone is offended by a joke whose real end is humor itself, and not the insult that might be the means and mode of the humor, we will usually defend the comic with the words "he was only joking". Humor produces a universe of joy, if only for a moment, and we are willing to sacrifice great swaths of the seriousness of the world, no matter how serious we indeed know them to be, to make sure that world has a place in ours. That is because, I think, we all know that a life full lived, indeed a meaningful life, has to have a place for laughter in it. We will never allow the world of the serious to push the world of the comic out of it completely. Now, we move into the world of the comic only briefly. It is completely reasonable to think of this as but a momentary illusion and escape from the world. I am not at this point arguing it is anything else. I only need one to grant me this one thing: if the world was as we experience it to be in laughter, then we would have to put joy at the center of our worldview. All that is required at this point is an acknowledgment of my phenomenology, an acknowledgment that indeed that is what humor is about. We are still at the level of premises here.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Quotables
"As much as humans would like to believe otherwise, love incorporates more than just the spirit. People naturally assume that the outward appearance is an accurate reflection of the inner soul. Love isnt really blind, just selectively near-sighted."- The Incredible Hulk.
On Rules And Freedom
Psalm 119:161-168
People often despise the rule-orientation of religion. In this day and age people foolishly associate freedom with a lack of rules and laws. But in point of fact boundaries and rules are necessary for freedom. Real freedom is creativity, and creativity requires rules. Think about Chess. Chess without rules isn't even a game. Cheating removes the power to genuinely create within the game. But chess with rules allows and makes possible remarkable variety and creativity.
Further, a purely chaotic universe would make creativity impossible, for no new form could endure very long, and so no act of creation would ever be completed. It would be like an artist who starts a painting but never finishes.
Of course an absolute order is no better, for in such a world new forms would be impossible. Badly placed boundaries and hardened legalism are just as evil as mindless anarchy. Freedom is found in the interplay between the two extremes.
Gods laws do not exist to limit our freedom, but to maximize it. We can tust the boundaries He sets because we know He loves us. That love can only hope for our freedom because love always wills the freedom of the other, the genuine freedom of the other. But application of these laws without the overarching laws of love for God and neighbor can lead to puritanical legalism that misses the very point for the Law's existence.
A great examination of the interplay of order and chaos can be found in this short animated film, I love it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGh97__-uLA
People often despise the rule-orientation of religion. In this day and age people foolishly associate freedom with a lack of rules and laws. But in point of fact boundaries and rules are necessary for freedom. Real freedom is creativity, and creativity requires rules. Think about Chess. Chess without rules isn't even a game. Cheating removes the power to genuinely create within the game. But chess with rules allows and makes possible remarkable variety and creativity.
Further, a purely chaotic universe would make creativity impossible, for no new form could endure very long, and so no act of creation would ever be completed. It would be like an artist who starts a painting but never finishes.
Of course an absolute order is no better, for in such a world new forms would be impossible. Badly placed boundaries and hardened legalism are just as evil as mindless anarchy. Freedom is found in the interplay between the two extremes.
Gods laws do not exist to limit our freedom, but to maximize it. We can tust the boundaries He sets because we know He loves us. That love can only hope for our freedom because love always wills the freedom of the other, the genuine freedom of the other. But application of these laws without the overarching laws of love for God and neighbor can lead to puritanical legalism that misses the very point for the Law's existence.
A great examination of the interplay of order and chaos can be found in this short animated film, I love it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGh97__-uLA
The Secret To Meditation...
No on can teach you how to meditate, they can only teach you how THEY meditate. You have to find your own way of meditating. Learning how others do it, and trying out different methods, is the only way you can find out what works for you. But in the end you have to discover what meditation is for you. Anyone who claims to know what meditation is all about, or what the one key to meditation is, only shows they have missed the point.
Be Different...Be Ordinary
At the movies they had several pre-movie commercials all with the same message: be different! It was amazing really, three commercials all for different products, all with the same message: we will help you stand out. The ordinary was denigrated and insulted, and if you don't stand out you are nothing.
This is the message of our time: be different, stand out, go your own way. But the gospel message is different. In Jesus God elevated the ordinary and the everyday, it divinized "that which does not stand out". As Peter Berger says, if Jesus was killed today, his death would not even warrant a mention on the ticker on CNN.
Today ever clamors to be the one everyone notices, to be the most effective at showing how different they are, to be the best at being different. But real greatness is not found in the halls of distinction. The movie I went to see, THE HOBBIT centers on this message. When Gandalf talks of the importance of his friend Bilbo Baggins who seems by all accounts nothing very special, he gives a wonderful reflection on all this. The most important fight in the universe, that between Good and Evil, really is fought in the everyday struggle to just do the right thing. In Gods kingdom, the president doesn't matter that much, but the auto repair guy who day-in, day-out goes to work, feed his family and run his business in a responsible way, is of supreme import.
And an additional irony is this: in this world today, it is the embrace of the ordinary that really stands out. In a world of people striving to be different, the person who doesn't care to be different is the one that really is out of the ordinary.
This is the message of our time: be different, stand out, go your own way. But the gospel message is different. In Jesus God elevated the ordinary and the everyday, it divinized "that which does not stand out". As Peter Berger says, if Jesus was killed today, his death would not even warrant a mention on the ticker on CNN.
Today ever clamors to be the one everyone notices, to be the most effective at showing how different they are, to be the best at being different. But real greatness is not found in the halls of distinction. The movie I went to see, THE HOBBIT centers on this message. When Gandalf talks of the importance of his friend Bilbo Baggins who seems by all accounts nothing very special, he gives a wonderful reflection on all this. The most important fight in the universe, that between Good and Evil, really is fought in the everyday struggle to just do the right thing. In Gods kingdom, the president doesn't matter that much, but the auto repair guy who day-in, day-out goes to work, feed his family and run his business in a responsible way, is of supreme import.
And an additional irony is this: in this world today, it is the embrace of the ordinary that really stands out. In a world of people striving to be different, the person who doesn't care to be different is the one that really is out of the ordinary.
Friday, December 28, 2012
On Biblical Translations
Never underestimate the difficulty of Biblical translation. Or the opportunity for translators to manipulate a text consciously or unconsciously as a result.
There are no more than 10,000 worlds in ancient Hebrew. For a comparison, there are 200,000 words in ancient Greek. To express specific concepts, long word strings have to be created, and context becomes supremely important. Additionally, few Hebrew words translate directly to English. They are all concept-heavy, meaning different things in different contexts but also holding a trace of those other meanings even as the context changes. To get a feel for the difficulties, I STRONGLY recommend taking some of your favorite Old Testament passages and looking them up here: http://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/Hebrew_Index.htm
It will change the way you look at it all. And similar problems exist with the Greek New Testament. So how is your average laymen to deal with this fact? First of all, get a good study Bible, preferably the Oxford Annotated, and read the notes. Beware of translations and paraphrases that remove ambiguity from the text. The ambiguity is not incidental. A more ambiguous translation is often a better one. Keep multiple translations of the Bible, and compare them. Most non-paraphrasing translations are good. I think it is hard to argue against the NEW JERUSALEM translation as the best.
But even the best translations show the mark of theological bias. Take Romans 3:22 and related texts. Many translators think that the "faith in Jesus Christ" is a theologically filtered translation. The Greek texts clearly read "the faith OF Jesus Christ". But because genitive constructions can be interpreted different ways, the standard Augustinian and Lutheran interpretation gets written into the text. But put in actual context, the second formulation is superior. While most texts nowadays asterisk this passage and notate the other translation, almost none put it in the text proper, because the theological consequences of that little change are huge, people. There is something similar with Revelation 13:8.
The good news is that examples like this are few and far between. Most textual problems are with the disambiguation of passages, which is easily overcome by keeping multiple translations around and having access to a good study Bible. So it takes some work, folks. We all want it to be simple and straightforward and a lot of ministers have made a lot of money selling as such. But to believe that is to ignore the very Bible staring you in the face. Again, check out that link. It'll blow your mind.
There are no more than 10,000 worlds in ancient Hebrew. For a comparison, there are 200,000 words in ancient Greek. To express specific concepts, long word strings have to be created, and context becomes supremely important. Additionally, few Hebrew words translate directly to English. They are all concept-heavy, meaning different things in different contexts but also holding a trace of those other meanings even as the context changes. To get a feel for the difficulties, I STRONGLY recommend taking some of your favorite Old Testament passages and looking them up here: http://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/Hebrew_Index.htm
It will change the way you look at it all. And similar problems exist with the Greek New Testament. So how is your average laymen to deal with this fact? First of all, get a good study Bible, preferably the Oxford Annotated, and read the notes. Beware of translations and paraphrases that remove ambiguity from the text. The ambiguity is not incidental. A more ambiguous translation is often a better one. Keep multiple translations of the Bible, and compare them. Most non-paraphrasing translations are good. I think it is hard to argue against the NEW JERUSALEM translation as the best.
But even the best translations show the mark of theological bias. Take Romans 3:22 and related texts. Many translators think that the "faith in Jesus Christ" is a theologically filtered translation. The Greek texts clearly read "the faith OF Jesus Christ". But because genitive constructions can be interpreted different ways, the standard Augustinian and Lutheran interpretation gets written into the text. But put in actual context, the second formulation is superior. While most texts nowadays asterisk this passage and notate the other translation, almost none put it in the text proper, because the theological consequences of that little change are huge, people. There is something similar with Revelation 13:8.
The good news is that examples like this are few and far between. Most textual problems are with the disambiguation of passages, which is easily overcome by keeping multiple translations around and having access to a good study Bible. So it takes some work, folks. We all want it to be simple and straightforward and a lot of ministers have made a lot of money selling as such. But to believe that is to ignore the very Bible staring you in the face. Again, check out that link. It'll blow your mind.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Oh Horror Movies, How I Miss You...
...but not THAT much!
I'm a pretty liberal guy when it comes to media. I am big on age restriction a LOT of stuff young people are allowed to watch bothers me, for them. But for adults, I have a wide berth. I take Matthew 15:16-20 to have a deeper meaning than most. It doesn't matter what you 'take in'. It matters how you respond to what you take in. THE MATRIX has some great theological issues hidden within it. In the right hands it can be used to actually help people relate to Christ. But it certainly is a violent film that could, in the wrong hands, inspire violence.
A properly attenuated heart can use the positive for God, and let go of the negative. Now some stuff is just exploitive and should be rejected absolutely. But I have always been a horror movie fan. Not that there is much positive I could do with it, but I was pretty good at just watching and letting it go. Enjoying some thrills and moving on.
But as I started down the contemplative path, the mystical path, this changed. Mysticism tends to make one extremely vulnerable to the world, extremely sensitive. Any negative imagery makes deep impresses into my soul, making it harder to reach out to The Divine and frightening when I explore deeper states of consciousness.
So, I don't watch them any more. Do I ever miss it? Sometimes. But it is an easy trade-off when I look at all the benefits the contemplative life has afforded me. Chief among them a closer relationship with Christ Jesus.
I'm a pretty liberal guy when it comes to media. I am big on age restriction a LOT of stuff young people are allowed to watch bothers me, for them. But for adults, I have a wide berth. I take Matthew 15:16-20 to have a deeper meaning than most. It doesn't matter what you 'take in'. It matters how you respond to what you take in. THE MATRIX has some great theological issues hidden within it. In the right hands it can be used to actually help people relate to Christ. But it certainly is a violent film that could, in the wrong hands, inspire violence.
A properly attenuated heart can use the positive for God, and let go of the negative. Now some stuff is just exploitive and should be rejected absolutely. But I have always been a horror movie fan. Not that there is much positive I could do with it, but I was pretty good at just watching and letting it go. Enjoying some thrills and moving on.
But as I started down the contemplative path, the mystical path, this changed. Mysticism tends to make one extremely vulnerable to the world, extremely sensitive. Any negative imagery makes deep impresses into my soul, making it harder to reach out to The Divine and frightening when I explore deeper states of consciousness.
So, I don't watch them any more. Do I ever miss it? Sometimes. But it is an easy trade-off when I look at all the benefits the contemplative life has afforded me. Chief among them a closer relationship with Christ Jesus.
Jesus & Light Part 3
Previous Posts:
http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/jesus-light-prologue.html
http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/jesus-light-part-1.html
http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/jesus-light-part-2.html
http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/more-on-light.html
Light & Darkness
When we talk about light, we also think about darkness. Zajonc in CATCHING THE LIGHT spends about a fourth of the book discussing darkness and the interplay of light and dark. There is a lot to reflect on here. For one thing, there seems to be two experiences of darkness. There is a kind of darkness that seems paradoxically full of light. Mystics talk about this a lot and I've experienced it myself. It is a darkness that exists as a 'space between' things, giving other things the room they need to exist. In that sense, it mimics the light and has many of the same self-emptying qualities.
But there is another kind of darkness that is destructive and turbid. This is a spiritual darkness for which physical darkness is one important symbol. It is a kind of nothingness that insists upon itself, and it runs throughout much of the world, and much of my soul. It is all that threatens the 'giving up' of creative darkness and light. It insists on itself. The self-emptying actions of service, prayer and meditation, have to work against and around a kind of egoism that condemns or judges our love as insignificant, false, or without value. There is a reason why evil has so long been associated with darkness.
Darkness conceals, it hides, and so it is a good symbol or 'physicalization' of all in us that seeks to avoid vulnerability and seeks only to control. For a consequence of this internal darkness is dishonesty, with ourselves and with other people. We pretend: to be 'good', to be without need for others, to know when we cannot know, to worship God when we are really worshipping ourselves. Such actions cannot take place in the light of day, but only when we hide in darkness.
Zajonc's book is as much psychology as theology and physics. One of the things he talks about extensively is our experience of color. He makes a bold suggestion that our experience of color is the result of our experience of the interplay of the forces of light and dark within our acts of perception. It is an interesting theory, and he defends it well.
I agree with Zajonc that the universe is a place of conflict, of struggle. One of the problems of modern mainline Christianity, as I have argued elsewhere, is it has abandoned conflict motifs in it's religious vocabulary and art. Our experience of evil is as palpable as our experience of good, and no religion can speak to the full human encounter with the world without talking about the struggle between the two openly. To psychologize it as so much religion does is to submit to the secular spirit of the day. I think that spirit fails just because it lacks the language to discuss these things. To adopt it's approach to these subjects is to adopt all that makes it inadequate.
Talk in Zoarastrian and other religions of a struggle between light and dark is appropriate. It captures something of the struggle we are involved in. In the Gospel of John this kind of talk takes center stage. The struggle between God and satan, between good and evil, is pictured as a struggle between forces of light and darkness. Paul uses this imagery as well. In 1 Thessalonians 5:5 Christians are called 'children of the light' and are contrasted with those who 'belong to the darkness'. Something about the struggle between God and the enemy is captured in the struggle between light and dark in the physical world.
For Zajonc, one of the consequences of that struggle is color, is beauty and variety. Zajonc's theodicy, his answer to the problem of evil, is that these eternal forces both good and evil, light and dark, are somehow necessary to make freedom, creativity and beauty possible. As I will talk about more in the next section, where I argue against Zajonc's Manecheism, I cannot follow him here. Some preliminary reflections on this: I do not think that evil is necessary for beauty. I do think that the potential for evil, the freedom that makes it possible, is necessary for the creativity and beauty of existence. I want to say, ultimately, that the interplay that brings beauty is not between light and the darkness that Paul or Zoaraster spoke of, but between light and the darkness of the mystics, that emptying that makes room for all else. Perhaps, evil is that holy emptiness pushed too far, or corrupted. Lots to discuss for next time.
I apologizer for the disjointed nature of my thoughts in some of my blogs. Much of this is about just putting ideas out there for me and others to discuss. I've been thinking a lot, a LOT about light and darkness, Christ and self-emptying recently. It dovetails with other thoughts regarding the Book of Revelation, and imagery from other non-religious sources. It is all percolating in my heart, mind and soul. Can't wait to see what bubbles to the surface next.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Off-Topic: Comic Books
I recently read a collection of back issues from the last volume of JUSTICE SOCIETY, the first 22 issues of which form a story arc called "Thy Kingdom Come" a tie-in to the legendary Alex Ross DC comic mini-series KINGDOM COME which I admit I have not read yet but is in the queue.
This story arc is absolutely the best comics have to offer. If you are new to comics, have been thinking of giving them a try, or haven't been exposed to much DC stuff, this is a great place to begin. But you need to give the whole arc a try. It is a big investment, but try digital comics (free DC app), it is well worth it. It all starts with the Justice Society recruiting new heroes for this sort of school they are starting. They are focusing on "legacies", heroes related to classic heroes from older periods either by blood, costume, or power.
As the book goes on, they start dealing with the aftermath of an inter-dimensional disaster that has reshaped the DC 'universe'. This includes visits to, and from, alternative universes in the DC canon. This culminates in the addition to the Society of an alternate-world Superman, who warns of an impending disaster from the avatar of a false god named Gog, which led to the near-destruction of all heroes back in his own home dimension (ostensibly parallelling the events told in Ross's KINGDOM COME).
As the heroes battle the forces rising in the name of this being, including members of the Society itself converted to its cause, individual heroes struggle with issues of faith and reason, and what the actions and character of an actual God would really be like. Verses and imagery from The Book of Revelation permeate the story, and one particular Bible passage seems to be the theme of it all:
1 Corinthians 8:4-6- 'So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and that “There is no God but one.” For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.'
This story arc is absolutely the best comics have to offer. If you are new to comics, have been thinking of giving them a try, or haven't been exposed to much DC stuff, this is a great place to begin. But you need to give the whole arc a try. It is a big investment, but try digital comics (free DC app), it is well worth it. It all starts with the Justice Society recruiting new heroes for this sort of school they are starting. They are focusing on "legacies", heroes related to classic heroes from older periods either by blood, costume, or power.
As the book goes on, they start dealing with the aftermath of an inter-dimensional disaster that has reshaped the DC 'universe'. This includes visits to, and from, alternative universes in the DC canon. This culminates in the addition to the Society of an alternate-world Superman, who warns of an impending disaster from the avatar of a false god named Gog, which led to the near-destruction of all heroes back in his own home dimension (ostensibly parallelling the events told in Ross's KINGDOM COME).
As the heroes battle the forces rising in the name of this being, including members of the Society itself converted to its cause, individual heroes struggle with issues of faith and reason, and what the actions and character of an actual God would really be like. Verses and imagery from The Book of Revelation permeate the story, and one particular Bible passage seems to be the theme of it all:
1 Corinthians 8:4-6- 'So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and that “There is no God but one.” For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”, yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.'
So check out the THY KINGDOM COME storyline, it is something else!
More On Light
I highly recommend this post on the blog MAVERICK PHILOSOPHER, the best blog on the web IMHO, and a big inspiration for my work here in recent weeks.
http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2012/12/on-light.html
http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2012/12/on-light.html
My Mystical Cycle
My meditative and spiritual journey is cyclical, and it follows this pattern:
From transcendence to peace, from peace to reflectiveness, from reflectiveness to doubt, from doubt to doubt's self-negation, from doubt's self-negation to struggle, from struggle to despair, from despair to spiritual warfare, from spiritual warfare to contrition, from contrition to victory, from victory to vision, from vision to transcendence.
From transcendence to peace, from peace to reflectiveness, from reflectiveness to doubt, from doubt to doubt's self-negation, from doubt's self-negation to struggle, from struggle to despair, from despair to spiritual warfare, from spiritual warfare to contrition, from contrition to victory, from victory to vision, from vision to transcendence.
The Existential Vacuum
It is ironic that the religious quest, which is supposed to be about the search for meaning, ends up so often in offering no answer to the question. Most people's vision of God makes their lives essentially meaningless. At best, they can make but one meaningful decision in life (to believe or not to believe), but all others are relegated to nothingness. For if God is truly in control of all that happens, then our lives make no difference. All we are and do is the result of divine puppetry, nothing more. God is, for most people, a being to whom we have nothing we can genuinely give anything at all.
So people have the choice of secular philosophies which offer as the only realm of meaning our contribution to a human condition which seems totally infected with sin and is under the ultimate sway of death, or religions that posit God as source of meaning but to whom we can offer nothing genuinely our own. Is it any wonder that feelings of meaninglessness ravage our society, which then turns to countless distractions and addictions?
There is a way out of this existential vacuum, but it takes complexity of thought and an openness to new ways. A hard sell in this world.
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Monday, December 24, 2012
Gospel Meetings
I have been thinking a bit about worship services, and if I seeded a church (which I may do, some day, in the future, maybe, possibly) what the worship services would look like. Whether this ever becomes a reality, the intellectual exercise of reflecting upon it is an intellectual practice with it's own value. It gives one a reason to reflect on ecclesiology, for instance. For some reason I keep coming back to the idea of four services, each based on one of the gospels.
People talk a lot about getting back to the early church. But in the earliest church, they didn't read from the gospels at all. And not long after that, each church used only one gospel to read from. It was that gospel that was the center of their lives. Now, I think that the church as a whole should be centered around the Bible, as a whole. But most liturgical churches have certain gospels assigned for certain years.
I imagine a church that had four services, each based on the spirit and structure of one of the gospels.
The Matthean Service would take place on Saturday afternoon, an acknowledgment of the jewishness of the gospel. It would be very traditional, as traditional as I could make it. The whole thing would be very formal. The reading of the gospel and communion as classically conceived in liturgical churches would be the center of the service. The sermon would be more of a homily. It would make the church feel like the temple, perhaps some early Jewish elements could be brought in. The liturgical calendar year would also be very important. A lot of pomp and circumstance (forgive the informality of this post, but these are very raw musings.)
The Mark Service would also be a Saturday afternoon or evening event. It would be a contemporary service, a nod to the stripped-down nature of the Markan narrative. There would still be a liturgical aspect, also a nod to Mark's Jewishness. The sermon, music, and communion would take center stage.
The Luke Service would be something totally different. It would probably be a Sunday noon event. I would like to see a pot luck dinner, which ends with a communion that would involve a larger piece of bread for each person, and a sip from a wine cup. This would acknowledge the Lukan tendency to focus on the equality of all people under Christ. There would be a place for any person or group to come up and sing a song, say a prayer, or give any reflection they like. The only formality would be the Bible readings, and perhaps the music would include some program aspect. It would remove most of any sense of a hierarchical structure, acknowledging Luke-Acts special concern for going out and reaching the Gentiles.
John would be deeply contemplative, with perhaps no music at all. There may be a meditation portion. We would break up into groups of 3-5 and communion would be passed around those smaller groups. A sermon would have to be central. But the service would end with a foot washing every Sunday, as the early Johannine communities probably did. It would probably take place Sunday morning.
Anyways, these are just kind of crazy "if Josh ran the church" ideas. But reflections upon them are appreciated.
People talk a lot about getting back to the early church. But in the earliest church, they didn't read from the gospels at all. And not long after that, each church used only one gospel to read from. It was that gospel that was the center of their lives. Now, I think that the church as a whole should be centered around the Bible, as a whole. But most liturgical churches have certain gospels assigned for certain years.
I imagine a church that had four services, each based on the spirit and structure of one of the gospels.
The Matthean Service would take place on Saturday afternoon, an acknowledgment of the jewishness of the gospel. It would be very traditional, as traditional as I could make it. The whole thing would be very formal. The reading of the gospel and communion as classically conceived in liturgical churches would be the center of the service. The sermon would be more of a homily. It would make the church feel like the temple, perhaps some early Jewish elements could be brought in. The liturgical calendar year would also be very important. A lot of pomp and circumstance (forgive the informality of this post, but these are very raw musings.)
The Mark Service would also be a Saturday afternoon or evening event. It would be a contemporary service, a nod to the stripped-down nature of the Markan narrative. There would still be a liturgical aspect, also a nod to Mark's Jewishness. The sermon, music, and communion would take center stage.
The Luke Service would be something totally different. It would probably be a Sunday noon event. I would like to see a pot luck dinner, which ends with a communion that would involve a larger piece of bread for each person, and a sip from a wine cup. This would acknowledge the Lukan tendency to focus on the equality of all people under Christ. There would be a place for any person or group to come up and sing a song, say a prayer, or give any reflection they like. The only formality would be the Bible readings, and perhaps the music would include some program aspect. It would remove most of any sense of a hierarchical structure, acknowledging Luke-Acts special concern for going out and reaching the Gentiles.
John would be deeply contemplative, with perhaps no music at all. There may be a meditation portion. We would break up into groups of 3-5 and communion would be passed around those smaller groups. A sermon would have to be central. But the service would end with a foot washing every Sunday, as the early Johannine communities probably did. It would probably take place Sunday morning.
Anyways, these are just kind of crazy "if Josh ran the church" ideas. But reflections upon them are appreciated.
What Christmas Is (And Is Not) About
I heard this pastor say on the radio that God came in the form of a Baby in a Manger because He had already tried coming in power and might with His people Israel and had failed to properly draw them in, and so now He was trying a new track: taking the non-threatening form of a Baby.
First of all, this seems inconsistent with the standard evangelical line concerning God's nature. It isnt a problem for me to talk about God "feeling His way through" His relationship with His Creation, but I am in a line of theologians that advocates Open Theism and/or Process Theism. But this guy is of a tradition that would see me as heretical. How, then, can he talk about God "experimenting" in this way?
Further, he cherry-picks Jewish history. Yes, early Jewish history is largely a story of struggle between Yahweh and His people. But by Jesus' time, the Jews had for the most part become what God, through the prophets, had demanded they become.
But my real problem with this formula is it removes the full power of The Incarnation. On this guy's view God, in God's self, remains what the Jews had always taken Him to be. Jesus doesn't really CHANGE our view of God, no. Rather, God remains what we intuitively expect Him to be, and we then project that image onto the man Jesus. But the Incarnation has little power if Jesus is not, in some sense a revelation of God, opening up new avenues of relationship and thought with and about The Divine. If in Christ we don't see God in a new way, then Jesus was superfluous. I mean, isn't this the theology of glory Luther railed against? Doesn't this amount to a rejection of the theology of the cross?
The "stumbling block" of the New Testament (see: 1 Corinthians 1:23) is not that the dominant Jewish vision of God 'just so happened' to meet us in a vulnerable form. To me this amounts to a denial that Jesus and The Father are one God but separate persons. No, the real stumbling block is the paradox of the Cross and the Manger: the radical vulnerability of God, and the power of that vulnerability. To be sure, this God is the same God we know in the scriptures of the ancient Israelites, and indeed visions of a vulnerable God are found there (see: Hosea 1 and Genesis 32:22-32). But this is the final triumph of that vision as the lens through which all understanding of God must be seen.
The world already worshipped power, might, and glory. Christ came as a corrective to all that. That real power IS vulnerability is paradoxical, indeed a 'stumbling block'. We can't in the final analysis try to make superficial sense of our kneeling at a manger. There may be a way to reason the implications out, but it must always look like the absurdity it is, lest the Incarnation lose it's real power to transform our hearts and the world (1 Corinthians 1:17). The Vulnerability of The Manger is the very power of God. This is the madness of Christmas, this is it's real glory, and they are one and the same.
First of all, this seems inconsistent with the standard evangelical line concerning God's nature. It isnt a problem for me to talk about God "feeling His way through" His relationship with His Creation, but I am in a line of theologians that advocates Open Theism and/or Process Theism. But this guy is of a tradition that would see me as heretical. How, then, can he talk about God "experimenting" in this way?
Further, he cherry-picks Jewish history. Yes, early Jewish history is largely a story of struggle between Yahweh and His people. But by Jesus' time, the Jews had for the most part become what God, through the prophets, had demanded they become.
But my real problem with this formula is it removes the full power of The Incarnation. On this guy's view God, in God's self, remains what the Jews had always taken Him to be. Jesus doesn't really CHANGE our view of God, no. Rather, God remains what we intuitively expect Him to be, and we then project that image onto the man Jesus. But the Incarnation has little power if Jesus is not, in some sense a revelation of God, opening up new avenues of relationship and thought with and about The Divine. If in Christ we don't see God in a new way, then Jesus was superfluous. I mean, isn't this the theology of glory Luther railed against? Doesn't this amount to a rejection of the theology of the cross?
The "stumbling block" of the New Testament (see: 1 Corinthians 1:23) is not that the dominant Jewish vision of God 'just so happened' to meet us in a vulnerable form. To me this amounts to a denial that Jesus and The Father are one God but separate persons. No, the real stumbling block is the paradox of the Cross and the Manger: the radical vulnerability of God, and the power of that vulnerability. To be sure, this God is the same God we know in the scriptures of the ancient Israelites, and indeed visions of a vulnerable God are found there (see: Hosea 1 and Genesis 32:22-32). But this is the final triumph of that vision as the lens through which all understanding of God must be seen.
The world already worshipped power, might, and glory. Christ came as a corrective to all that. That real power IS vulnerability is paradoxical, indeed a 'stumbling block'. We can't in the final analysis try to make superficial sense of our kneeling at a manger. There may be a way to reason the implications out, but it must always look like the absurdity it is, lest the Incarnation lose it's real power to transform our hearts and the world (1 Corinthians 1:17). The Vulnerability of The Manger is the very power of God. This is the madness of Christmas, this is it's real glory, and they are one and the same.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
My Grand Apologetics Project Part 2 (Cont)
b. The Expansive Self
The next experience I want to touch on in this section is the discovery of "the true self". Just as reflective people tend to search for what it means to "truly live", we also almost inevitably struggle to answer the question, at the most fundamental level, "who am I, really?" We know intuitively that our normal way of thinking about who we are is fundamentally flawed. Day-in, day-out, when we think about our wants and our needs, we objectify our experience of self-hood. And when we talk that way we speak as if we are atomized, separated individuals. But even the most superficial reflection can illuminate the falsehood of this 'treatmemt' . For we all know that our very selves are shaped by a series of relationships, spreading out in concentric circles beginning with an intimate circle, out to a wider community, and out to national and worldwide human connections. It should not take long, and we all realize this even if we don't verbalize it this way, that the self is a relational object. We are, in large part, constituted by our various relationships.
Now most of us, most of the time, live put a series of trade-offs between the various circles, giving so much to our close family and friends, our community, our nation, etc and expecting a certain amount of well-being back. However, if one lives this kind of structured existence long enough, one is likely to experience some kind of dissatisfaction with it. This is not universally true, and so unlike the first experience, I don't think my appeal here will have as wide an appeal. But I think most people will find themselves in some kind of crisis of self-identity.
If this doesn't take place through some kind of unease with life's balancing acts, it may come as a result of a loss of a major self-constituting relationship: wife, parent or even the loss of ones nation. Eventually, many people turn not to any particular relationship, but to ones relationship with reality itself. Having lost all that makes us who we are, either in fact or in terms of satisfaction, we can still find a fundamental relationship above and yet inclusive of all others. At one point many people experience a shift in self-awareness, from a set of concentric circles to life as a whole. One experiences oneself as one part of 'something bigger', which has no clear and definite boundaries. I want to focus on the phenomenology or the content of the experience: participation. For what does it mean to be a part of a universal self if there is no self to be a part of? And indeed, that is what it is like to have this kind of "expansive" self-experience.
Now, like the experience of risk and venture, this experience need not be tied to any particular religious tradition or theological formulation. Many people religious or irreligious, theist or atheist, can understand what I am talking about here. If you can't grasp even the concept, if you know nothing about the experience, then we part ways here and that's that. But if you can identify with the experience I'm describing, then we can continue. That is true even if you take this experience to be illusory or explicable in purely material terms.
c. Conclusions and Reflections
In the end, I think both of these experiences are part of one fundamental truth expressing itself in two different but similar experiences. That insight is this: we stand radically vulnerable to the world, but this vulnerability is not to be feared, but embraced. Like it's experiential expressions, this insight is not inherently religious. I am not at this point ready to defend or even talk about "God" in any sense.
It should also be clear that these experiences are far different from what most atheists address when they talk about 'religious experience'. But I would contend that these are two of the most common experiences religious people refer to when they use that term. These "fundamental" experiences shape the religious persons view of everything...including epistemology. It is at this level debate must begin. To jump to less ground-floor details is to risk talking past each other. I have tried to avoid this error by giving my imagined interlocutor ways out up to this point. If you take these outs, then arguments about future issues are beside the point.
One consequence of these experience and the attending insight is epistemological. For the experiences is in the position of being unable to prove the veridical nature of the experiences or the truth of the insight about vulnerability. For to seek absolute proof is to remove the vulnerability one has come to see as good. Some beliefs become about choice, and must be about choice if life is about risk and venture. And so no one can take these experiences seriously unless one in some sense chooses to, lest they lose the very thing they have grabbed a hold of.
Thus we face the final question: will we take these two experiences in earnest? Will we choose to take life really lived as life risky and venturesome? Will we live as if who we are is inclusive of all reality? Will we stand vulnerable to the world, smiling?
If you stand in need of convincing one way or another, you've already made your choice. But do not pretend you disagree with me about God or mystic visions or anything else. We do disagree on those points, but those disagreements emanate from this one. But if you like me have had these experiences, these experiences, and you answer yes to those epistemic questions, for that is what they are, then we can move on.
My Grand Apologetics Project Part 2
For reference see these previous posts:
http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-1.html
Part 2: The Dawning Awareness
I want to start with human experience. Broadly speaking, I will be discussing what some would call religious experience. But it should be noted that at this level, I am talking about experiences that not everyone would label that way. Rather these are experiences that I think everyone has at one time or another, though they may not reflect on them extensively. What I want is to take two ways people encounter the world and reflect upon their phenomenology. Now phenomenology is the study of the nature of experience. It explores what it is LIKE to have one experience or another. So laughter is an experience. A phenomenology of laughter would include a discussion of the cathartic nature of laughing. It is the content of experience. There are two fundamental human experiences that I believe lay at the foundation of belief in God. One is the experience of life as fundamentally an adventure. The other is the experience of selfhood as something that is true expansive. Let me explain what I mean by this.
a. Life As Risk and Venture
What does it mean to 'truly live'? This is a question that, in one form or another, vexes most reflective people at some point in their lives. We struggle with the question of what it means to have lived life to it's fullest. There are many different ways in which people 'live out' this question. But over and over again, when you look at the content of these different paths to 'true living' one fundamental insight seems to bubble to the surface: life, at it's most basic, is an adventure, and must be lived out that way if one is to get the most out of it. Let me give an illustration of what I am talking about:
Think about romantic comedies in film. Most of these movies include some male character who has an aversion to commitment. We all know this guy. He sleeps with countless women but refuses to open his heart to any of them. That is until he meets the female lead. She is usually someone he has never slept with that now stirs within him a desire for love. Almost invariably, the film contains two central conflicts. The first has to do with the man: he has always known a life of relative ease and safety, where he never really has to take any risks, but always gets what he wants from his encounter with women. Will he finally take a fundamental risk with himself, will he put his relative comfort on the line for at least the chance at something that may lead to an even better kind of life, but will cost him his beloved security?
The second question has to do with the woman: will she take a chance on someone who does not, at this point, give her much evidence that he is worth the risk? Will she let the hope of something better for the both of them guide her actions? Or will she only go with what she already knows to be true and choose the safer route?
Now I'm not here to morally defend these types of films? Many people have trouble with this formula for both moral and aesthetic reasons. Still, I think there is a fundamental insight here into a near-universal truth: we want the characters to take the risk, for we see in risk and venture a fundamental truth about our own lives.
We experience the world on an intuitive level as an adventure. We believe, rightly or wrongly, that a life without genuine risk-taking, without moving beyond what is safe, certain and known, is a life hardly worth living. We all know the experience of going out on a journey not knowing how it will end, and this experience in some sense colors all our acts of decision-making.
So, now, what is the phenomenology of this experience. I suggest that in our primary moments of true and creative risk-taking, it is like the world is not indifferent to risk and venture. It is feeling of working in concert with not just individual realitIES, but reality itself. It feels like our adventure is the worlds adventure. I think that no matter who you are, you can in those moments of true venture understand what I'm talking about. It feels like the world smiles with you.
Now at this point I am not talking about "God" in any traditional sense of the world. My language is couched in no particular religious language. Indeed, I am not even ready to draw any conclusions from the experience. Rather, I simply want to point to the fundamental experience as life truly lived being about risk and venture, and what it is like to experience life that way.
Anyone is free to argue against the experience as reflecting real truth. Many deny that risk and venture IS life really lived. They would counsel against taking a fundamental risk with oneself, and encourage a more rationalistic and certain approach to life. Further, one can agree with the insight while rejecting any significance behind the experience that accompanies it. But still, I would contend that the experience of life and the attending insight is broadly shared and the phenomenological examination I give can be understood and acknowledged by most anyone. At this level it is only that acknowledgment I seek. If you don't see what I'm talking about, if you can't relate then you just can't and we are at a ground floor disagreement that cannot be resolved. But if you do see what I see, if you know the experience of which I speak, then we can move on, whatever other beliefs may, at this point, separate us.
http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-grand-apologetics-project-part-1.html
Part 2: The Dawning Awareness
I want to start with human experience. Broadly speaking, I will be discussing what some would call religious experience. But it should be noted that at this level, I am talking about experiences that not everyone would label that way. Rather these are experiences that I think everyone has at one time or another, though they may not reflect on them extensively. What I want is to take two ways people encounter the world and reflect upon their phenomenology. Now phenomenology is the study of the nature of experience. It explores what it is LIKE to have one experience or another. So laughter is an experience. A phenomenology of laughter would include a discussion of the cathartic nature of laughing. It is the content of experience. There are two fundamental human experiences that I believe lay at the foundation of belief in God. One is the experience of life as fundamentally an adventure. The other is the experience of selfhood as something that is true expansive. Let me explain what I mean by this.
a. Life As Risk and Venture
What does it mean to 'truly live'? This is a question that, in one form or another, vexes most reflective people at some point in their lives. We struggle with the question of what it means to have lived life to it's fullest. There are many different ways in which people 'live out' this question. But over and over again, when you look at the content of these different paths to 'true living' one fundamental insight seems to bubble to the surface: life, at it's most basic, is an adventure, and must be lived out that way if one is to get the most out of it. Let me give an illustration of what I am talking about:
Think about romantic comedies in film. Most of these movies include some male character who has an aversion to commitment. We all know this guy. He sleeps with countless women but refuses to open his heart to any of them. That is until he meets the female lead. She is usually someone he has never slept with that now stirs within him a desire for love. Almost invariably, the film contains two central conflicts. The first has to do with the man: he has always known a life of relative ease and safety, where he never really has to take any risks, but always gets what he wants from his encounter with women. Will he finally take a fundamental risk with himself, will he put his relative comfort on the line for at least the chance at something that may lead to an even better kind of life, but will cost him his beloved security?
The second question has to do with the woman: will she take a chance on someone who does not, at this point, give her much evidence that he is worth the risk? Will she let the hope of something better for the both of them guide her actions? Or will she only go with what she already knows to be true and choose the safer route?
Now I'm not here to morally defend these types of films? Many people have trouble with this formula for both moral and aesthetic reasons. Still, I think there is a fundamental insight here into a near-universal truth: we want the characters to take the risk, for we see in risk and venture a fundamental truth about our own lives.
We experience the world on an intuitive level as an adventure. We believe, rightly or wrongly, that a life without genuine risk-taking, without moving beyond what is safe, certain and known, is a life hardly worth living. We all know the experience of going out on a journey not knowing how it will end, and this experience in some sense colors all our acts of decision-making.
So, now, what is the phenomenology of this experience. I suggest that in our primary moments of true and creative risk-taking, it is like the world is not indifferent to risk and venture. It is feeling of working in concert with not just individual realitIES, but reality itself. It feels like our adventure is the worlds adventure. I think that no matter who you are, you can in those moments of true venture understand what I'm talking about. It feels like the world smiles with you.
Now at this point I am not talking about "God" in any traditional sense of the world. My language is couched in no particular religious language. Indeed, I am not even ready to draw any conclusions from the experience. Rather, I simply want to point to the fundamental experience as life truly lived being about risk and venture, and what it is like to experience life that way.
Anyone is free to argue against the experience as reflecting real truth. Many deny that risk and venture IS life really lived. They would counsel against taking a fundamental risk with oneself, and encourage a more rationalistic and certain approach to life. Further, one can agree with the insight while rejecting any significance behind the experience that accompanies it. But still, I would contend that the experience of life and the attending insight is broadly shared and the phenomenological examination I give can be understood and acknowledged by most anyone. At this level it is only that acknowledgment I seek. If you don't see what I'm talking about, if you can't relate then you just can't and we are at a ground floor disagreement that cannot be resolved. But if you do see what I see, if you know the experience of which I speak, then we can move on, whatever other beliefs may, at this point, separate us.
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Jesus & Light Part 2
And so, as Jesus lives out the character of light, so we must embody the character of Jesus. The Christian life is about love, and as Paul says, "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." (1 Corinithians 13:4-7)
Love is as much about withdrawing as influence. Love wills the freedom, the genuine freedom, of the other. We must be a self-giving people, seeking to empower others and helping them discern what Gods will is for THEIR life. Think about parenthood. A parent who raises a child to be ONLY what they want them to be, or who seeks only a clone of themselves, is not loving that child properly. Rather, most parents know that they must help that child be the best "them" they can be.
Back to Zajonc, Zajonc emphasizes the mystery of the nature of light. Light's nature includes countless paradoxes that Zajonc illustrates in stunning detail. Jesus, too, will always remain a mystery to us. The revelation of God in Christ remains a revelation beyond simple rational explication. Vulnerability-as-ultimate-power will remain a truth we can see and point to in the man Jesus, but one that we can never simply explain. John's strange revelation of "The Lamb Slain From The Foundation of the World" is the purest expression of this reality, but is visual rather than verbal.
Vulnerability alone is not enough. Light gives visibility to the world. Our vulnerability, too, must contain the mysterious power of The Holy Spirit. It must be effective and illuminating, it must be, to borrow a Chinese phrase, wu-wei..a non-action that is paradoxically the perfect action. This comes through the presence of God, to which our actions must point. It is an act of faith. This line from the film OF GODS AND MEN comes to mind:
"Weakness in itself is not a virtue, but the expression of a fundamental reality, which must constantly be refashioned by faith, hope and love. The apostles’ weakness is like Christ’s, rooted in the mystery of Easter and the strength of the spirit. It is neither passivity nor resignation. It requires great courage and incites one to defend justice and truth and to denounce the temptation of force and power…”
Love is as much about withdrawing as influence. Love wills the freedom, the genuine freedom, of the other. We must be a self-giving people, seeking to empower others and helping them discern what Gods will is for THEIR life. Think about parenthood. A parent who raises a child to be ONLY what they want them to be, or who seeks only a clone of themselves, is not loving that child properly. Rather, most parents know that they must help that child be the best "them" they can be.
Back to Zajonc, Zajonc emphasizes the mystery of the nature of light. Light's nature includes countless paradoxes that Zajonc illustrates in stunning detail. Jesus, too, will always remain a mystery to us. The revelation of God in Christ remains a revelation beyond simple rational explication. Vulnerability-as-ultimate-power will remain a truth we can see and point to in the man Jesus, but one that we can never simply explain. John's strange revelation of "The Lamb Slain From The Foundation of the World" is the purest expression of this reality, but is visual rather than verbal.
Vulnerability alone is not enough. Light gives visibility to the world. Our vulnerability, too, must contain the mysterious power of The Holy Spirit. It must be effective and illuminating, it must be, to borrow a Chinese phrase, wu-wei..a non-action that is paradoxically the perfect action. This comes through the presence of God, to which our actions must point. It is an act of faith. This line from the film OF GODS AND MEN comes to mind:
"Weakness in itself is not a virtue, but the expression of a fundamental reality, which must constantly be refashioned by faith, hope and love. The apostles’ weakness is like Christ’s, rooted in the mystery of Easter and the strength of the spirit. It is neither passivity nor resignation. It requires great courage and incites one to defend justice and truth and to denounce the temptation of force and power…”
Jesus & Light: Part 1
...Now, with the connection between Jesus and light in mind, consider this quote from Arthur Zajonc:
"Do we ever see light? You and I are in this room; the room is filled with light. If we were seeing light we wouldn't see each other; it would be in the way. It's a little bit like if we had a wall between us. We would see the wall by we wouldn't see each other. We have light between us right now but we do see each other. In fact, if there were no light between us it would be dark and we would see nothing. So we see by virtue of light but light in itself is, in some sense, invisible."
Philippians 2:5-11 "In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. "
"Do we ever see light? You and I are in this room; the room is filled with light. If we were seeing light we wouldn't see each other; it would be in the way. It's a little bit like if we had a wall between us. We would see the wall by we wouldn't see each other. We have light between us right now but we do see each other. In fact, if there were no light between us it would be dark and we would see nothing. So we see by virtue of light but light in itself is, in some sense, invisible."
This was a shocking truth for me, something so close and yet so hidden. Light is invisible! Light MAKES things visible but is itself invisible. It is, in a very real sense unavailable. But in this unavailability, it illuminates all things. Zajonc talks about the 'character' of light as completely self-giving, and self-emptying. This instantly for me brings up one of my favorite passages in scripture, perhaps my very favorite:
Isn't it fascinating that the reality which Christians take to be Ultimate Reality, the self-giving Christ Jesus, corresponds to the very way in which the physical universe's most fundamental 'thing' behaves in relation to everything else. Visible light is like a revelation of Jesus Christ. I cannot tell you how this realization lifted my spirits when it came to me. All these messages from The Holy Spirit about light were coming to me and then I found this book which seemed to bring all of this together. It is like visible light is the world conforming to the character of light.
To come on this subject:
What, then, it means for US to be the light of the world
Color and the interplay of light and dark
The danger of Manecheisn
DC's Lantern Corps: a modern myths of light
.....hope some of that wets you whistle, Im so excited to share my thoughts on this matter!
Jesus & Light: Prologue
I will be rushed today, so my posts will be shorter:
I will be posting off and on about light. As I work on my third book (my second is finished but unpublished, I am still toying with it) I have been thinking a lot about light. Light has become a minor obsession for me. As visions of light started to dominate my "visitations" I was given a book by a friend, CATCHING THE LIGHT by Arthur Zajonc. He's not a Christian but there is a lot of stuff Christians could learn from it. It the history of light in science and religion. I'll refer to it from time to time in these reflections. For now, just meditate on John 8:12. And ask yourself this question: what is light like? It is the character of light that Zajonc makes clear in his book. I think reflection on light can help us understand the Revelation of God we have in Christ Jesus. Hopefully mre to come later today.
I will be posting off and on about light. As I work on my third book (my second is finished but unpublished, I am still toying with it) I have been thinking a lot about light. Light has become a minor obsession for me. As visions of light started to dominate my "visitations" I was given a book by a friend, CATCHING THE LIGHT by Arthur Zajonc. He's not a Christian but there is a lot of stuff Christians could learn from it. It the history of light in science and religion. I'll refer to it from time to time in these reflections. For now, just meditate on John 8:12. And ask yourself this question: what is light like? It is the character of light that Zajonc makes clear in his book. I think reflection on light can help us understand the Revelation of God we have in Christ Jesus. Hopefully mre to come later today.
Friday, December 21, 2012
The Limits of Discernment
Ecclesiastes 3:11
Ecclesiastes remains one of my favorite books of the Bible. His project is mostly negative, breaking down our normal way of thinking about God, the meaning of life, and our place in the world. In many ways contradictory of much of the Biblical message, I find Ecclesiastes a refreshing and brave principle of self-criticism within scripture. Ecclesiastes itself cannot be taken uncritically, and I side with other books over and against it on many points. However, the picture would not be complete without it, and scriptural revelation is a whole-Bible experience. Ecclesiastes is one of the strongest arguments for the approach to scripture I laid out in my book CONVERSATIONAL THEOLOGY.
In this passage Ecclesiastes shows us the limits of discernment. We may be able to identify God's call, but we can only ever guess at its purpose. God's overarching plan is just too big, and His mind too alien, for us to understand where we fit in the overall. Think about it: God may send us a vision to be at a certain place at a certain time not to stop some great tragedy or perform some great deed, but to, say, keep you from a certain street corner at a certain time so that a car isn't delayed and two people who are meant to meet can.
There are probably countless ways in which God is guiding the universe in ways we can't imagine. Failure is no evidence that Gods Call was not genuine. We cannot determine what the function of our calling even was. No, success is not the measure of the genuineness of Gods presence in our lives. We can be called to what the world would call failure. We don't even know the standard by which God is judging failure or success. No, that isn't where the meaning of our lives is found.
In the end we do what we are called to do for as long as we are called to do it because it is God who calls. We get messages and visions and we can discern their content, but we can only rarely discern their true meaning.
Ecclesiastes remains one of my favorite books of the Bible. His project is mostly negative, breaking down our normal way of thinking about God, the meaning of life, and our place in the world. In many ways contradictory of much of the Biblical message, I find Ecclesiastes a refreshing and brave principle of self-criticism within scripture. Ecclesiastes itself cannot be taken uncritically, and I side with other books over and against it on many points. However, the picture would not be complete without it, and scriptural revelation is a whole-Bible experience. Ecclesiastes is one of the strongest arguments for the approach to scripture I laid out in my book CONVERSATIONAL THEOLOGY.
In this passage Ecclesiastes shows us the limits of discernment. We may be able to identify God's call, but we can only ever guess at its purpose. God's overarching plan is just too big, and His mind too alien, for us to understand where we fit in the overall. Think about it: God may send us a vision to be at a certain place at a certain time not to stop some great tragedy or perform some great deed, but to, say, keep you from a certain street corner at a certain time so that a car isn't delayed and two people who are meant to meet can.
There are probably countless ways in which God is guiding the universe in ways we can't imagine. Failure is no evidence that Gods Call was not genuine. We cannot determine what the function of our calling even was. No, success is not the measure of the genuineness of Gods presence in our lives. We can be called to what the world would call failure. We don't even know the standard by which God is judging failure or success. No, that isn't where the meaning of our lives is found.
In the end we do what we are called to do for as long as we are called to do it because it is God who calls. We get messages and visions and we can discern their content, but we can only rarely discern their true meaning.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
A Theology Of Play
Matthew 18:3
Psalm 98
Peter Berger, in his book A RUMOR OF ANGELS (an absolute must-read) argues that there are a series of paradigmic human experiences, the phenomenology of which point to the existence of a transcendent source of meaning and value in the universe. I will discuss this more when I return to my apologetics project. But right now I want to talk about one particular 'signal' that I think is particularly relevant right now: the experience of play.
Berger says play is our first encounter with eternity. When we play, we step out of our normal experience of time. Think about football for example. It isn't 3:00 PM on Sunday. Not for those playing, and not for those watching. Instead it is 4th down, 1 yard to go, 2:39 on the clock in the fourth quarter. It isn't true that time simply flies when you are having fun. On the contrary, a single moment, a single throw of the ball, can be an eternity. No, in play we step outside of time. Eternity is willed and known intimately. Play brackets off time.
And just as it brackets time so it brackets the seriousness of the world. Whatever pain or tragedy a person is going through, it melts away the moment that joystick, ball, or crossword puzzle is picked up. This is why plays and musical groups' activities can go on even as the city around them crumbles due to an invasion. It is how Christmas could be celebrated by warring parties in WWII.
Of course some may see this as simple escapism, and it may be. But if one chooses to take the experience itself in full earnestness, then a different picture emerges, both of us and our world. Jesus transvaluates human values. The lowest are raised up as the highest, the highest are made the lowest. The seemingly unimportant becomes of supreme value. This is the real meaning of the Matthew passage. Children were, in, Jesus time, the most insignificant, the lowest. To command others to seek to be like them was oxymoronic.
Jesus Himself embodies this idea, as I've said many times. God comes as the lowly, not the great. This vision of God ultimately justifies our experience of play. For what is insignificant, silly, un-serious, is elevated over all that seems to threaten life and all that is, by the lights of the world, important and supremely serious. Psalm 98 shows us a cosmic picture of play. God skips, jumps and dances with the world. Life must be joyful, even in the face of great tragedy. When we make it so, we give witness to the God of Psalm 98 and to the Truth of Christ.
So whatever world events may be, make sure to make Christmas a time of joy and fun. Nothing could be truer to the One whose coming it commemorates.
Psalm 98
Peter Berger, in his book A RUMOR OF ANGELS (an absolute must-read) argues that there are a series of paradigmic human experiences, the phenomenology of which point to the existence of a transcendent source of meaning and value in the universe. I will discuss this more when I return to my apologetics project. But right now I want to talk about one particular 'signal' that I think is particularly relevant right now: the experience of play.
Berger says play is our first encounter with eternity. When we play, we step out of our normal experience of time. Think about football for example. It isn't 3:00 PM on Sunday. Not for those playing, and not for those watching. Instead it is 4th down, 1 yard to go, 2:39 on the clock in the fourth quarter. It isn't true that time simply flies when you are having fun. On the contrary, a single moment, a single throw of the ball, can be an eternity. No, in play we step outside of time. Eternity is willed and known intimately. Play brackets off time.
And just as it brackets time so it brackets the seriousness of the world. Whatever pain or tragedy a person is going through, it melts away the moment that joystick, ball, or crossword puzzle is picked up. This is why plays and musical groups' activities can go on even as the city around them crumbles due to an invasion. It is how Christmas could be celebrated by warring parties in WWII.
Of course some may see this as simple escapism, and it may be. But if one chooses to take the experience itself in full earnestness, then a different picture emerges, both of us and our world. Jesus transvaluates human values. The lowest are raised up as the highest, the highest are made the lowest. The seemingly unimportant becomes of supreme value. This is the real meaning of the Matthew passage. Children were, in, Jesus time, the most insignificant, the lowest. To command others to seek to be like them was oxymoronic.
Jesus Himself embodies this idea, as I've said many times. God comes as the lowly, not the great. This vision of God ultimately justifies our experience of play. For what is insignificant, silly, un-serious, is elevated over all that seems to threaten life and all that is, by the lights of the world, important and supremely serious. Psalm 98 shows us a cosmic picture of play. God skips, jumps and dances with the world. Life must be joyful, even in the face of great tragedy. When we make it so, we give witness to the God of Psalm 98 and to the Truth of Christ.
So whatever world events may be, make sure to make Christmas a time of joy and fun. Nothing could be truer to the One whose coming it commemorates.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
"What About Me?"
For those who have not seen all of the show LOST, * Spoiler Alert*
Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li1pDiTbh-I
Read: Luke 15:11-32
This is one of the pivotal scenes from the show, and for me it is very rich in spiritual and theological significance. Benjamin finally meets the spiritual being he has been blindly serving much of his life. Serving, but not knowing. Benjamin Linus has never been allowed to directly contact Jacob, but is only given his orders through intermediaries. He is hurt that John Locke, who has been on the Island and serving it far less time than he has, is being allowed direct and unmediated access to the man he has so desperately wanted to know for so long.
Benjamin was given purpose and direction by Jacob, but it was not enough. Benjamin wants to know why he did not get the same access others have. It isn't about Jacob, or the Island, or Benjamin's place in the world, it is all about Benjamin, "What about me?" Isn't that the question we always ask. God requests of us that we fill that role which He has carved out for us, or rather that He thinks we need to play in the world as it is, but it never is really enough. We all turn to God, all the time and ask "what about me?" We don't want a God-On-The Cross, we don't want to have to put our focus on what God wants and needs, rather we want FROM God, we want a God that will vouchsafe our desires, plans and needs in the world. That is the God we want, but it is not the God we get. We turn to God and ask 'what about me?' and God's response is indeed "what about you?" or more accurately "what about them?"
It brings up another scene from the movie RANGO. Rango is complaining to the God-figure in that movie, the Spirit of the West, that he cannot be the hero he wanted to be. Everyone has seen him as a failure and a fake, and he cannot face them after all of that. The Spirit's response is "it isn't about you, it is about THEM." He demands that Rango take the focus off of himself and put it on the needs of others. Jacob is basically insisting that his needs, and the needs of the island, have to supersede the egoistic demands of Benjanim Linus. And isn't that what Christ is really all about? It is about reorienting our view of what God is and what our relationship to Him is about. We stop demanding of God that He take our cross away from us, and we seek instead to help God with the cross He is carrying.
But this will never be enough, not for me, and not for anyone. All the time we will find ourselves turning to God and again demanding that our wants and needs are more important. We will seek a god that will offer safety and security in the world, and hide us from the vicissitudes and horrors. And when that doesn't happen we will ask "what about me". And like Benjamin Linus, when we do that, we take part in the horror that was visited upon Christ. We trade a false god for the One That Is, and we murder Jesus Christ anew. Praise be to God that He loves us beyond our sin, and will always give us a new opportunity to imitate Him, to be with Him, by accepting life for all it really is. The measure of our faith will be how often we take that opportunity and push it as far as it can go. Oh God, please help me do this. Amen.
Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li1pDiTbh-I
Read: Luke 15:11-32
This is one of the pivotal scenes from the show, and for me it is very rich in spiritual and theological significance. Benjamin finally meets the spiritual being he has been blindly serving much of his life. Serving, but not knowing. Benjamin Linus has never been allowed to directly contact Jacob, but is only given his orders through intermediaries. He is hurt that John Locke, who has been on the Island and serving it far less time than he has, is being allowed direct and unmediated access to the man he has so desperately wanted to know for so long.
Benjamin was given purpose and direction by Jacob, but it was not enough. Benjamin wants to know why he did not get the same access others have. It isn't about Jacob, or the Island, or Benjamin's place in the world, it is all about Benjamin, "What about me?" Isn't that the question we always ask. God requests of us that we fill that role which He has carved out for us, or rather that He thinks we need to play in the world as it is, but it never is really enough. We all turn to God, all the time and ask "what about me?" We don't want a God-On-The Cross, we don't want to have to put our focus on what God wants and needs, rather we want FROM God, we want a God that will vouchsafe our desires, plans and needs in the world. That is the God we want, but it is not the God we get. We turn to God and ask 'what about me?' and God's response is indeed "what about you?" or more accurately "what about them?"
It brings up another scene from the movie RANGO. Rango is complaining to the God-figure in that movie, the Spirit of the West, that he cannot be the hero he wanted to be. Everyone has seen him as a failure and a fake, and he cannot face them after all of that. The Spirit's response is "it isn't about you, it is about THEM." He demands that Rango take the focus off of himself and put it on the needs of others. Jacob is basically insisting that his needs, and the needs of the island, have to supersede the egoistic demands of Benjanim Linus. And isn't that what Christ is really all about? It is about reorienting our view of what God is and what our relationship to Him is about. We stop demanding of God that He take our cross away from us, and we seek instead to help God with the cross He is carrying.
But this will never be enough, not for me, and not for anyone. All the time we will find ourselves turning to God and again demanding that our wants and needs are more important. We will seek a god that will offer safety and security in the world, and hide us from the vicissitudes and horrors. And when that doesn't happen we will ask "what about me". And like Benjamin Linus, when we do that, we take part in the horror that was visited upon Christ. We trade a false god for the One That Is, and we murder Jesus Christ anew. Praise be to God that He loves us beyond our sin, and will always give us a new opportunity to imitate Him, to be with Him, by accepting life for all it really is. The measure of our faith will be how often we take that opportunity and push it as far as it can go. Oh God, please help me do this. Amen.
Notes On Revelation 17 Part 2
17:6b-18
But who or what is this harlot? What nation or city does she represent? John is supposed to give us a clue in the second half of Chapter 17. The first clue we are given is her connection to the beast. The harlot is dependent on the beast. So who the harlot might be, is dependent on who the beast might be.
Some have suggested that the harlot is the modern European Union, or perhaps some part of it like Germany. The European Union is made up of many smaller nations, and so it may make sense of the many heads, which John tells us is vital to understanding is message in 17:9. The countries that make up the Union have become more and more reliant on certain key members like Germany, and so this may be the meaning of 17:2. Some have also suggested China. Think about the world’s growing reliance on China economically. Many have even suggested the United States, which is still the economic center of the world today.
There are some Preterists who think that Jerusalem during Jesus’ time is the correct interpretation. The harlots of the Old Testament were always Israel, after all. And one of Jesus’ biggest complaints was the close association of the Jewish leaders with Rome. On this view, the harlot is Jerusalem riding on the back of the beast, which is Rome. Jerusalem ha strong economic ties with Rome. But Rome eventually turned on Israel and destroyed her, and this is the meaning of the beast’s secret hatred and eventually turning ag
Another Preterist account identifies the harlot as Rome herself. The city of Rome had become great because of the political machinations and religious blasphemies of her leaders. The emperors of Rome were, as we know now, incarnations of satan. John has seen this. But Rome is more than it’s leaders. It is a city of nearly a million people. And those people enjoy relative safety and security due to the horrible actions of those who lead them. The Romans prided themselves as living in the very city of the gods. Rome itself is named after a goddess, Roma.
God’s message is that this so-called ‘goddess’ which is supposed to be incarnated in the city is actually a witch-demon, a spiritual manifestation of all betrayal of God. Rome is, in fact, a city that sits of seven hills, and was even called the City on Seven Hills in some circles. Preterists who hold this view say verse 9 all but spells it out for us. The horns represent emperors. The ten heads may represent emperors that will come later on, or they may represent nations that are close to Rome but that secretly wish for it’s destruction. The sexual imagery represents all those nations and all people who make peace with Rome for economic reasons. But the leaders which the city of Rome worship are the terrible beasts of satan, and it is only a matter of time before they turn on the city that they lead. Through mismanagement, selfishness, war, and political machinations, they will destroy the city they helped build. God, the real God, loves his creation and lives for that creation. But the beasts only help Rome for their own selfish purposes. They love their creation not at all, and ultimately they will destroy it. It is hard not be impressed by this argument, for this is exactly what ended up happening to Rome.
The Idealist position has already been touched upon. They claim that evil economic structures and cultural sins are always buoyed up by a corrupt political system. But those who get fat or those who find pleasure by the auspices of governments are bound to eventually find themselves hoisted by their own petards. Once the political structure falls, and it always does, those people get their comeuppance. For idealists the harlot is the incarnation of all cultural and economic evils of every society, and the beast is the political and governmental evils that makes them possible.
We will finish with a commentary on both verse 14 and 17. The harlot is involved in the war against the lamb. But as terrible as the harlot is, and as terrible as her demonic cohorts, the beasts, are, it is the lamb, that simple and powerless nearly dead Lamb Almost Slain that will triumph. Again, it may look impossible. These beasts could surely destroy a near-dead lamb. But within the vulnerability and suffering of the Lamb is what is really Ultimate in this picture. The Lamb cannot be defeated. The power structures of our lives are the very web within which all sin and rebellion take place. Sexual sin is about having control over our immediate feelings and about objectifying the other. Greed is all about control. The harlot embodies sins that emanate from the will to power, which is the beast. The only thing that can really blow this process sky high is an awareness that true power is within powerlessness. That vulnerability is what is truly ultimate. And no force on earth can defeat Ultimate Reality...God will always win, no matter how
The turning of the beast on the harlot is this ultimate truth. Evil pretends to be ultimate, satan pretends to be god. But underneath, no matter how great these forces may seem, we can see their true weakness, we can see through their lie, if we look with wisdom. For evil is always bound to destroy itself. What is good is positive and creative, what is evil is positive but destructive. Cancer will eventually kill the body it exist within, and thereby kill itself. Evil destroys its own environment and so eventually will lead it its own oblivion. All sin is a form of suicide. If we can see this, we can recognize that the Lamb is that which is truly ultimate. We can start giving up power, and letting go, and thereby find a way to begin fighting against our sins.
That God inspires the beast to hate and eventually destroy the harlot is a sign that even these creatures, in their rebellion, are not completely free of the sovereignty of God. He can still influence them to serve His ultimate purpose. Before God triumphs over the beasts, He triumphs over the harlot, and He does it without lifting a finger: the beast will do it for Him. God, by creating a moral universe, has already created the seeds of the destruction of evil. Sin cannot pretend to be God, because any sane person can see that evil can only exist with a universe that is ultimately good. If it were not ultimately good, it would not exist, because evil is self-destructive by it’s very nature. It cannot reach out in mutuality, in love, and so it cannot form the connections necessary to buoy itself up. The connections it does make, through greed and lust, are ephemeral and will eventually die out. In the end even evil will serve to prove the Goodness and Glory of God. “The one who has wisdom” will be able to see this.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Notes On Revelation Chapter 17 Part 1
I promise I won't do this too often, but when I was continuing my work on writing the REVELATION Bible study for the Tuesday afternoon study group, something came out that I think was one of the best things I have ever written, I'll be posting it today and tomorrow.
17:1-6a
There are some images from the Book of Revelation that strike deep into the popular hearts and minds of the people. Curiously, the image of the Lamb Slain, perhaps the most important image in the Book, is little focused on. It is the imposing figures of the Four Horsemen, and the Beasts, and ultimately the Prostitute of Babylon.
As we’ve discussed before, in the Old Testament the image of Harlotry is very important. Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel all spoke of Israel as God’s wife. When Israel betrayed God, she was painted as a prostitute or harlot. The image of her adultery against God is almost always graphic, and shocks many of our puritanical sensibilities (see: Ezekiel Chapter 16). But the scandal and the shock is important. It is to communicate to us the pain and disgust God feels at the horror of His beloved people turning against Him and towards other gods. So powerful was this theme that the prophet Hosea was commanded to marry a woman that he knew would cheat on him, so that he could share in God’s pain resulting from the idolatry of Israel.
This is quite a message: the sinfulness of man pains God. God is hurt by our betrayal as a devoted husband is hurt by his wife’s adultery. God knows pain, and that pain is the pain that results from the loss of love. It is this message and this imagery in mind that we must bring to bare on the image of the Prostitute of Babylon. Whatever City Babylon is, it embodies or symbolizes the entire reality of mankind’s sins against God. It is the source of the Pain of God, and is a place that exists as the betrayal of the Lord. It is betrayal of God incarnate. Whatever else is true of these passages, Christians must keep this message in mind: to sin is to betray God, and betrayal of God hurts God. God loves us as a spouse, as an intimate partner. To sin is to literally commit adultery against God. That is a supreme cost for the Lord, and that can be no small things to us, ever.
The first thing one is going to notice about chapter 17 is that same scandalous message. It is, and this is not to overstate the matter, almost pornographic in its presentation. Some say the Harlot of Babylon is nothing more or less than the cultural manifestation of the evils of all societies. Every political-religious order that is based on control, every nation of power and might, supports a culture that is rife with sin. Sexual sin is one of the easiest for a society to fall into. It is so easy to see sex as an unambiguous good, especially in a godless society. In a godless society hedonism reigns. This was no abstraction in John’s day, hedonism was an organize Greek philosophy that permeated much of Roman society. In hedonism, what feels good, is good. Sex, because it feels good, is sanctified in all it’s forms. But quickly it becomes nothing more than a drug, removed from the love relationship it was intended to be connected to. People act like animals, and we all have seen the effects of this.
This is important in the context of the juxtaposition of the beast and the Lamb. Rome and all great nations like it, make a pretense to divinity. They pretend not only to be a great kingdom, but indeed God’s kingdom. But so much of society is so sick and twisted. Freedom is quickly misused and becomes nothing more than anarchy. Sexual sin is found in every nation and every culture. A nation whose power is used to buoy up and indirectly protect such animalistic behavior betrays its true nation. No country is God, for a country is made up of people, and people are apt to act more like animals than like God.
Of course futurists are quick to point out that sexual mores are terrible today. The legalization of pornography, the prevalence of plural marriage, and similar practices betray the fact that the harlot is arising all around us. Preterists will be just as quick to point out that as bad as sexual behavior is today, it was worse in Rome. Sex was completely commoditized and even made sacred. Orgies accompanied many religious services in the Roman Empire, and they were done publicly for all to see. Idealists will emphasize the fact that all societies everywhere and at all times hide terrible sexual sins.
But the sexual imagery, powerful and important as it is, in facts represents a totally different ever-present sin: greed. The kings’ sex with the harlot represents absolute economic reliance upon her. The clue to this is verse four, which emphasizes her great treasures. Other kingdoms seek out this nation and do her bidding so that they can share in her riches. But whereas on the surface this brings success, whereas they can only focus on the beauty of the ‘woman’ that they see, underneath they are really having sex with a tool of the devil. The woman rides upon the beast, which is an extension of the devil’s power (verse 3). Underneath she is terrible to behold. This city, this nation, is to the world is a beautiful thing. But underneath, John sees her as she really is: a prostitute of demons, and the very incarnation of all betrayal of God. This is betrayal of God made manifest as a spiritual being, that then becomes incarnate in an actual place. What’s more this woman drinks the blood of those faithful to God and to Jesus Christ.
The message here is twofold: the first is to any nation that would do business or become economically reliant on this evil nation. They are participating in the slaughter of the people of God, and they will pay for their connection to this incarnation of sin. It would also serve as a powerful reminder to any church that seeks to give lip service to Caesar worship while retaining belief in Christ alone. To involve yourself with Rome for economic gain is to take part in her terrible deeds, which includes the murder of your brothers and sisters. If you sacrifice to Caesar, you are having sex with a monstrous demon!
Off-Topic: Comic Book Reviews
Thought I'd lighten the mood a bit with a digression on one of the comic book series I'm reading. I plan to do this from time to time.
Today let me tell you about DC's EARTH 2. Basically this is alternate universe where some of the biggest names in the DC Vault (Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman) have been killed and the world has been reshaped by a war against alien invaders (led by the villainous Darkseid).
A few years later various supernatural forces have started to choose and empower new 'wonders' (the name for superheroes in this world) to fight some new rising worldwide threats. Three of these beings, Flash, Hawkgirl, and Green Lantern (Alan Scott), are starting to team up while a world government organization works both with them and against them using their own 'wonders'.
The book is incredibly well done. Basically a re-imagining of Justice Society, it puts new twists on classic characters that stay true to what has come before and yet surprise at any turn. Alan Scott has long been my favorite Green Lantern, and while I am not a fan of the shift in sexual orientation, I feel overall this book is handling him better than any other has in a long time. There is exciting and mysterious political intrigue, some interesting interpersonal dynamics between the wonders, and a lot of fun "shoot-em-up" action.
The pacing on the book is usuall great. Good paneling and the stories flow well. You don't get the sense that things are jumping around too much. While NO comic book really gives all the bang for your book, ie, they are all too short, this one feels longer than most. And the art, WOW, just stunning people. So check out the series, get the back issues, start buying the new issues, it is well worth it.
Today let me tell you about DC's EARTH 2. Basically this is alternate universe where some of the biggest names in the DC Vault (Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman) have been killed and the world has been reshaped by a war against alien invaders (led by the villainous Darkseid).
A few years later various supernatural forces have started to choose and empower new 'wonders' (the name for superheroes in this world) to fight some new rising worldwide threats. Three of these beings, Flash, Hawkgirl, and Green Lantern (Alan Scott), are starting to team up while a world government organization works both with them and against them using their own 'wonders'.
The book is incredibly well done. Basically a re-imagining of Justice Society, it puts new twists on classic characters that stay true to what has come before and yet surprise at any turn. Alan Scott has long been my favorite Green Lantern, and while I am not a fan of the shift in sexual orientation, I feel overall this book is handling him better than any other has in a long time. There is exciting and mysterious political intrigue, some interesting interpersonal dynamics between the wonders, and a lot of fun "shoot-em-up" action.
The pacing on the book is usuall great. Good paneling and the stories flow well. You don't get the sense that things are jumping around too much. While NO comic book really gives all the bang for your book, ie, they are all too short, this one feels longer than most. And the art, WOW, just stunning people. So check out the series, get the back issues, start buying the new issues, it is well worth it.
Monday, December 17, 2012
My Grand Apologetics Project Part 1
This is the first in a series of posts, which will probably span the next few weeks and months. It is an extended effort at apologetics.
Part 1: The Limitations of Apologetics, and, Why Most Apologetics Sucks
a. A Caveat
The first thing that I want to establish is that apologetics is a work of theology and philosophy. Both theology and philosophy are fields that, for the most part, do not allow much certainty. Proving things in science is relatively simple. You create theories to explain phenomenon and then test those theories to see if they can hold up to extreme scrutiny. This process is simply awesome, because it allows us to gain some level of certainty about a range of issues. But those issues are not all inclusive. There are some issues that are just not in the purview of science and cannot have the scientific method applied to them.
Deductive reasoning allows us a similar level of certainty as does mathematics. But again, these aren't universally applicable. Even in the case of strict deduction, one cannot attain certainty unless one has all true premises and a valid argument. Validity is easy to check. True premises often are not. Most premises are to one degree or another controversial. In those fields where strict deductive reasoning do not apply or where it's conclusions are questionable (and it usually is), and we can't apply science, we have to make due with more halting and imprecise processes of reasoning. You may be able to form beliefs based on some real processes, but they will not give you the certainty that science or strict deductive reasoning does. There are some who will take issue with this attitude. They will insist that only science can give us beliefs that can be rationally held, or knowledge at all. This is, ironically enough, pretty easy to prove false. Take the proposition: "only science can bring us knowledge". Well, do you KNOW this? How do you know it? It isn't science, there is no experiment one could do to falsify the statement. On it's face it can't meet it's own standard of evidence and so cannot be known to be true.
Of course one doesn't need fancy turns of logic to see that what I am saying here is true. There are a plethora of issues where different sides give equally good reasons for believing what they do. In politics, in ethics, in philosophy and elsewhere, the general standard by which one judges whether a belief is reasonable or not is not whether the belief can be proven true in a scientific or strict deductive sense, but whether one can make a strong case in one direction or another.
So in what is to follow, that is what I intend to do. I do not think what I will say on these matters is completely unassailable. There may be good objections. But I do not think the objections are obviously superior to the case I make here or to the counter-objections that could be raised. This caveat, this moment of awareness, brings me to my second point in this section....
b. On Why Most Apologetics Sucks
The first reason most apologetics sucks is it doesn't take account of my point in (a). Most apologists aim too high, they aim for a goal that could never be reached in almost any area of life. They use reasoning that seems to be, by all objective standards, what I called above 'halting and imprecise'. Religious apologists usually make a pretense to a level of knowledge that is reserved only for areas like math, science and those few deductive arguments that command almost universal rational assent. Apologists make arguments that could give some reason to believe in God. But they act like they have given a proof, as in some absolute certain ground for belief, that God exists, or that Jesus is God, etc. This pretense is easy to spot, and gives most apologists, who I think are sincere, an air of unreliability. They act like the proposition that God exists is obviously true and that only a sinner or moron could fail to see it. But nothing they say gives them reason for that kind of confidence.
The second reason that the apologetics projects of most people is rather less than satisfying is that most apologetics seems completely disconnected from the way most people's religious and spiritual lives works. People start from some fact about the world and then reason to the conclusion that there must be a God. They use the fact that the universe had a starting point, for instance, as a piece of data that proves that someone must have initiated the universal process. Or they point to the order in the universe and reason their must be an orderer. Now some of these efforts, taken not as proofs but as incomplete and limited arguments do have some weight behind them. They are not simple and obvious fallacies. But they bare little resemblance to the reasons most people have for believing in God. For most people, most of the time, religion is a matter of experience, and encounter, and relationship. People shy away from this kind of defense because they fear the subjectivity of human experience. There is no way, though, to escape from such experience. It is the locus of most people's beliefs.
c. Is There Any Good Stuff Out There?
In a word, yes, there are some great apologists out there and some great books I highly recommend. And I will be relying heavily on all of them to help make my case here. But their approaches are not simple or for the weak of mind. They realize the depth of the subject they tackle and the importance to share one's personal experiences with others if any kind of real progress is to be made. One of the books, MYSTERY WITHOUT MAGIC, by Russell Pregeant, spends the first 100 pages or so talking about the nature of human experience. The conclusion that it makes sense, perhaps the most sense, to believe in God isn't even established until halfway through the book. That is why it is hard to imagine trying to engage in apologetics in some kind of classic debate forum. In good apologetics, the very nature of human experience or human knowing has to be fully examined before the reasons for belief can be grasped. This series of blog posts will be an attempt to give as bare bones an argument as is possible, from this experiential kind of approach.
For those who are interested in good works of apologetics, I suggest: MYSTERY WITHOUT MAGIC by Russell Pregeant, A RUMOR OF ANGELS by Peter Berger. For those who have a stronger background in philosphy, I'd add Alvin Plantinga's WARRANTED CHRISTIAN BELIEF and Alfred N Whitehead's RELIGION IN THE MAKING. And with that nod to the shoulders upon which I stand done, I look forward to getting deeper into this subject over the next few weeks.
Part 1: The Limitations of Apologetics, and, Why Most Apologetics Sucks
a. A Caveat
The first thing that I want to establish is that apologetics is a work of theology and philosophy. Both theology and philosophy are fields that, for the most part, do not allow much certainty. Proving things in science is relatively simple. You create theories to explain phenomenon and then test those theories to see if they can hold up to extreme scrutiny. This process is simply awesome, because it allows us to gain some level of certainty about a range of issues. But those issues are not all inclusive. There are some issues that are just not in the purview of science and cannot have the scientific method applied to them.
Deductive reasoning allows us a similar level of certainty as does mathematics. But again, these aren't universally applicable. Even in the case of strict deduction, one cannot attain certainty unless one has all true premises and a valid argument. Validity is easy to check. True premises often are not. Most premises are to one degree or another controversial. In those fields where strict deductive reasoning do not apply or where it's conclusions are questionable (and it usually is), and we can't apply science, we have to make due with more halting and imprecise processes of reasoning. You may be able to form beliefs based on some real processes, but they will not give you the certainty that science or strict deductive reasoning does. There are some who will take issue with this attitude. They will insist that only science can give us beliefs that can be rationally held, or knowledge at all. This is, ironically enough, pretty easy to prove false. Take the proposition: "only science can bring us knowledge". Well, do you KNOW this? How do you know it? It isn't science, there is no experiment one could do to falsify the statement. On it's face it can't meet it's own standard of evidence and so cannot be known to be true.
Of course one doesn't need fancy turns of logic to see that what I am saying here is true. There are a plethora of issues where different sides give equally good reasons for believing what they do. In politics, in ethics, in philosophy and elsewhere, the general standard by which one judges whether a belief is reasonable or not is not whether the belief can be proven true in a scientific or strict deductive sense, but whether one can make a strong case in one direction or another.
So in what is to follow, that is what I intend to do. I do not think what I will say on these matters is completely unassailable. There may be good objections. But I do not think the objections are obviously superior to the case I make here or to the counter-objections that could be raised. This caveat, this moment of awareness, brings me to my second point in this section....
b. On Why Most Apologetics Sucks
The first reason most apologetics sucks is it doesn't take account of my point in (a). Most apologists aim too high, they aim for a goal that could never be reached in almost any area of life. They use reasoning that seems to be, by all objective standards, what I called above 'halting and imprecise'. Religious apologists usually make a pretense to a level of knowledge that is reserved only for areas like math, science and those few deductive arguments that command almost universal rational assent. Apologists make arguments that could give some reason to believe in God. But they act like they have given a proof, as in some absolute certain ground for belief, that God exists, or that Jesus is God, etc. This pretense is easy to spot, and gives most apologists, who I think are sincere, an air of unreliability. They act like the proposition that God exists is obviously true and that only a sinner or moron could fail to see it. But nothing they say gives them reason for that kind of confidence.
The second reason that the apologetics projects of most people is rather less than satisfying is that most apologetics seems completely disconnected from the way most people's religious and spiritual lives works. People start from some fact about the world and then reason to the conclusion that there must be a God. They use the fact that the universe had a starting point, for instance, as a piece of data that proves that someone must have initiated the universal process. Or they point to the order in the universe and reason their must be an orderer. Now some of these efforts, taken not as proofs but as incomplete and limited arguments do have some weight behind them. They are not simple and obvious fallacies. But they bare little resemblance to the reasons most people have for believing in God. For most people, most of the time, religion is a matter of experience, and encounter, and relationship. People shy away from this kind of defense because they fear the subjectivity of human experience. There is no way, though, to escape from such experience. It is the locus of most people's beliefs.
c. Is There Any Good Stuff Out There?
In a word, yes, there are some great apologists out there and some great books I highly recommend. And I will be relying heavily on all of them to help make my case here. But their approaches are not simple or for the weak of mind. They realize the depth of the subject they tackle and the importance to share one's personal experiences with others if any kind of real progress is to be made. One of the books, MYSTERY WITHOUT MAGIC, by Russell Pregeant, spends the first 100 pages or so talking about the nature of human experience. The conclusion that it makes sense, perhaps the most sense, to believe in God isn't even established until halfway through the book. That is why it is hard to imagine trying to engage in apologetics in some kind of classic debate forum. In good apologetics, the very nature of human experience or human knowing has to be fully examined before the reasons for belief can be grasped. This series of blog posts will be an attempt to give as bare bones an argument as is possible, from this experiential kind of approach.
For those who are interested in good works of apologetics, I suggest: MYSTERY WITHOUT MAGIC by Russell Pregeant, A RUMOR OF ANGELS by Peter Berger. For those who have a stronger background in philosphy, I'd add Alvin Plantinga's WARRANTED CHRISTIAN BELIEF and Alfred N Whitehead's RELIGION IN THE MAKING. And with that nod to the shoulders upon which I stand done, I look forward to getting deeper into this subject over the next few weeks.
The Challenge of a Christic Worldview
Christ must be the center of not only our world but our worldview. The man Jesus, and the truth of the Incarnation must tie everything together. It must help us make sense of every aspect of our experienced world: from the deepest emotional realizations to the most banal scientific fact, from the smallest swirling atom to the most immense spinning galaxy. Christ is what ties it all together. This quest must be one the whole church undertakes. We have to start the work of worldview building again, testifying to the truth we have experienced through that process. That is the witnessing work we need to be engaged in.
And this cannot take place in the ivory tower away from the life of everyday people. It must be the work of the church, not only the seminary. It is the community's experience we are trying to tie to the new growing scientific, ethical and philosophical awareness. The compartmentalization of theological worldview building to a select few academics is the great failure of modern mainline Protestantism.