Off-Topic: Comic Book Reviews

Marvel's GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY #13
I didn't much like the "Trial of Jean Grey" storyline, but this conclusion actually went quite well. Still the dialogue is what shines, and I'm a little upset they haven't found better stories for these characters. I like the personal relationships and the way those are building up, and that has a lot to do with the words placed in the characters mouth. There is always some good comedy and some deep feelings, and I will continue reading for those reasons. But if they found the right story to place these characters in this book could really shine. Here's to hoping.

Storyline: 3 Stars
Dialogue: 4 Stars
Pacing: 3.5 Stars
Art: 3 Stars
Overall: 3.5 Stars

DC's DC UNIVERSE VS MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE
This last issue was good, though not as good as much of what came before. As is often a problem with good comic book mini-series the writers didn't have a firm grasp of where they all were going, or at least if felt that way. There were some very cool scenes, though, and I really had a blast with this book. I hope they do more like it in the future.

Storyline: 3.5 Stars
Dialogue: 3.5 Stars
Pacing: 3.5 Stars
Art: 4 Stars
Overall: 3.5 Stars

DC's JUSTICE LEAGUE: DARK #29
Most of the JUSTICE LEAGUE: DARK "Forever Evil" crossovers were good. But the last few issues have suffered from the same 'disease' JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA has suffered from. It is repetitive and the characters' motivations are no longer clear. They did some stuff to bring John Constantine back to his core here and that was helpful, but I still was disappointed and have been the last two or three issues. This book is capable of greatness but it is lacking here.

Storyline: 3 Stars
Dialogue: 3 Stars
Pacing: 3 Stars
Art: 4 Stars
Overall: 3 Stars

Marvel's NEW GHOST RIDER #1
The Ghost Rider was at one time one of the greatest comic book superheroes of all time. His best days were the early "Dan Ketch" days, about the first 50 issues and those comics that tied into those. But even in the early "Johnny Blaze" days, there were some amazing storylines. But recent turns have just sucked. I mean this character has been all but spit on by the writers who have had control of him, with some notable exceptions. But I keep giving them a chance because I was such a fan for so long and I know what the character is capable of. I don't like that this new book takes him off the bike and puts him in a car, but so far so good with this issue. It established the new character in an interesting way. It is too early to tell if they can actually do something substantive but this book gives reasons for hope.

Storyline: 3.5 Stars
Dialogue: 3.5 Stars
Pacing: 3.5 Stars
Art: 2 Stars
Overall: 3.5 Stars

DC's TEEN TITANS #29
This book has been so wronged recently. I mean this is a blotch on the New 52 record, for sure. But this ending to this storyline was better than most, and I sure hope they can get some momentum in the right direction. The art is and has been superb, but the rest is sorely lacking. Here, there is some genuine pathos and ethos, and I'm hoping for more.

Storyline: 3 Stars
Dialogue: 4 Stars
Pacing: 3.5 Stars
Art: 4 Stars
Overall: 3.5 Stars

Optimism & Pessimism

Someone recently told me that contrary to the opinion of most over 30, the upcoming generation gives them great hope for the future. I find this attitude better than the more prevailing attitude that the upcoming generation will somehow doom the world. The challenges of millenials and post-millenials are great, and they are a very different generation than any that has come before. They are the first generation to grow up completely within the context of the world being truly 'wired up' by the internet. I was of the generation that saw all of this happen before their eyes as they grew up, so I have some idea as to just how different the change will be. But the new generation has unique challenges, not insurmountable challenges. There is good and bad in the prevailing culture of every generation, and that is no different than this one. The new motto of "trust no one under 30" is as dumb as the old motto which was its inverse.

But I disagree that the next generation somehow gives me hope. I work with young people and see who they are, good and bad, all the time. They are no better nor worse than any other group of people, overall. They are different, not better or worse. But people will always fail you. The one persisting fact of human nature is sin. When this person said this, I was reminded of these words from Reinhold Niebuhr's BEYOND TRAGEDY (Chapter 6)

"A very special form of human self-confidence developed after the war in the so-called youth-movements. Trust the young man, they declared. Old people are shrewd, designing and cowardly, and so habituated to ancient vices that the possibility of a new creation is not in them. Trust youth. It is heroic and self-sacrificing. It brings a fresh conscience to the world, and is outraged by the evils which its elders have so long accepted. There is some truth in this estimate, as there is in every preceding estimate of human capacity. The progress of the world does depend upon the vigour and hope with which each new generation approaches age-old problems. But it is significant that all these youth movements of Europe have in this latter day been captured by the various nationalistic hysterias of the Continent. It is instructive that the most fanatic disciples of fanatic religions are young people; and that the peace of Europe is imperilled most by the young people who did not know the horrors of the last war but long for the romance of the next. What could be more pitiful than this corruption of European youth? Parents and instructors are powerless against it. Human pride has taken just another form. The form is peculiar but the pride is the old sin of Adam. This pride prevents young people from realising that their "singleness" of heart is frequently the direct consequence of their emptiness of head. Cursed be the mast that trusteth in the young man as the hope of the future.

....

Trust no man. Every man has his own capacities but also his own weaknesses. Every historic group in society has its own unique contribution to make. But there is no form of human goodness which cannot be and will not be corrupted, particularly in the day of its success. Let the wise man destroy the superstitions of the priest, and the poor man disprove the pride of the wise man; but then a new prophet must arise to convict the priest-king of the poor of the perennial sins of mankind to which he is also subject.

Ultimate confidence in the goodness of life can, in other words, not rest upon confidence in the goodness of man. If that is where it rests it is an optimism which will suffer ultimate disillusionment. Romanticism will be transmuted into cynicism, as it has always been in the world's history. The faith of a Christian is something quite different from this optimism. It is trust in God, in a good God who created a good world, though the world is not now good; in a good God, powerful and good enough finally to destroy the evil that men do and redeem them of their sins. This kind of faith is not optimism. It does not, in fact, arise until optimism breaks down and men cease to trust in themselves that they are righteous. Faced with the indubitable fact of human history that there is no human vitality which is not subject to decay and no human virtue which is not subject to corruption, hope in the meaningfulness of human existence must be nourished by roots which go deeper than the deserts of history, with their periodic droughts."

In fact all of humanity would do well to read that entire chapter of BEYOND TRAGEDY. Trust cannot be found in any particular form of humanity. Every historical situation contains within it the seeds of both achievement and destruction. No, not seeds, but rather threads. And those threads cannot be easily disentangled. I live a life of hope, knowing that in the end all will work out, somewhere, somehow, because I have experienced a God whose love is beyond all imagining, and whose very suffering is the foundation of creation and redemption, who is defeated but takes that defeat and turns it into victory, who is crucified, but then resurrected. It is God who gives me hope.

I work and fight and struggle because I know that the degree to which God suffers to give that hope is in my hands. I work hard because I know that along the way to victory the defeats that may be suffered along the way can come at a terrible cost. Humanity's ability to screw things up is something I try never to underestimate. Life can get horribly difficult on the way to the Promised Land. Thus, I fight and work and struggle, and have a generally pessimistic attitude about what MIGHT lay in wait in the future. Yet this pessimism never overtakes my optimism, and my hope that anything is possible and that what will ultimately win out is the good and the beautiful.

The truth is that I have no idea what form those hopes may take. Perhaps it isn't about this world at all, though I find that to be a rather depressing thought that flies in the face of much of the Bible. What I know is that I have encountered a reality, that I have experienced things, that I can reasonably trust to be revelations of a God whose goodness is beyond measure, and whose ability to redeem this world is real. Trusting that reality, trusting that hope, I can find a foundation for creative moral action in the world without closing my eyes to the facts of history and human nature as they actually are. I do not know how people without that experience and without faith are able to continue to hold on to both. 

Interesting Offering At "The God Article"

Here:

http://www.thegodarticle.com/7/post/2014/03/6-things-the-church-can-learn-from-jimmy-fallon-ordainjimmyfallon.html

Compare to: 

http://ljtsg.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-theology-of-play.html

Meanwhile, Over At The Maverick Philosopher...

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2014/03/christian-physicalism.html

Not Really Off-Topic: Review Of NEW Silver Surfer #1

Marvel's New "Marvel NOW" SILVER SURFER #1 is a really cool comic book. It has a classic feel to it. The storytelling is tight and the storytellERS know the core of the character they are dealing with. The dialogue isn't the best it could be, and certainly not the best we've ever seen in the Silver Surfer canon, but it is still better than average, and can be forgiven. Silver Surfer has always been a hard character to write dialogue for, and the overall story and art more than make up for the shortcoming in dialogue.

The theologically relevant thing about this story just is that it knows the core of Silver Surfer, who is a philosophically and theologically interesting character to begin with. The Surfer is a former herald of Galactus, literally complicit in the murder of billions upon billions of lives. In order to make up for past crimes, he has styled himself a protector of the entire universe, and he has on multiple occasions protected or helped to protect the whole of the cosmos. The Surfer has a high nobility about him, but it masks a deeper and very human internal struggle. The Surfer lives as one of the purest of heroes, in the style of Superman, but he has been in the past a terrible villain.

In this issue, the Surfer begins by saving an entire planet of diminutive aliens, who take to worshipping him as a god. The Surfer quickly tries to correct their mistake, and wants to dissuade them from their worship. It is very reminiscent of the scene in  The Book of Acts where Paul and Barnabas are worshipped as incarnations of Hermes and Zeus after performing some miracles. It is comical but there is something profound in it all, as the men quickly try to correct the mistake and point the way to The True Savior.

In the Surfer's case, the issue is more complex, for the worship of the little aliens, and his attending correction, brings instantly back his feelings of remorse and repentance of his past life. He asserts, bluntly, that there is no redemption in any of his current deeds for his past deeds. His good does not balance out his evil.

It is an interesting question. Is it better for a reformed sinner to seek punishment for past sins or is it better to stay in the world, deal with the guilt and work to make things right, knowing you never really can? And indeed, no good deed in this world makes up for past sins. Karma isn't real, not as it is classically conceived anyways. I cannot make up for my past mistakes with present acts of virtue. Yet my salvation never depended on such acts. I am saved by grace, not by works. But being so saved, what is the proper response? May it not be to actually TRY to do what I know I never can, and live a life that covers my past sins?

The Surfer never experiences salvation because he does not know the kind of salvation we talk about in Christianity. Yet he remains ever an interesting case study in the repentant soul. Any comic that truly captures the essence of that soul is going to be fruitful for theological reflection. This issue of this comic certainly was.


Storyline: 4 Stars
Dialogue: 3 Stars
Pacing: 4 Stars
Art: 3.5 Stars
Overall: 4 Stars

Standing On The Shoulders of Greatness

Every minister knows well just how indebted they are to those volunteers who do the same work they do but without pay. This will be a rare, very personal post where I want to reflect on those people who play that role in my life. It can be hard being a minister. Often you feel like you are walking through a fog, not knowing where you are going, but holding on to the only light you see in the darkness and trying to show others the way. Success is never assured and failure is always right around the corner. Since success and failure are no signs of God's favor or disfavor (as God can call us to what seems to be 'failure' for purposes beyond our ken), you can never know if the road you are called to is one that will lead to anything like material success in the world.

It would be wrong to ask people to undergo the level of education good ministers must go through and to make the sacrifices they make without recompense. The laborer is worthy of his hire. Yet the work cannot be done by paid ministers alone. There is this massive body of workers, all who do what they do because they are called and without thought to the material cost. In youth ministry this is extra important as you need multiple adults to ensure the safety of kids and youth. I am often lauded for my work at the church, and when I am I feel a little guilty for two reasons. First, I know that whatever objective 'success' I have had is mostly due to the activity of God. You can work and plan and do everything 'right' and it comes to nothing unless God deigns to bless it. I experience this all the time in Bible studies. Sometimes the Spirit 'flows' in the conversation and sometimes it doesn't. It really is up to God.

But also I feel guilty because I know a lot of the work is done by people the general church knows little about. There is an entire team of adults who does so much work that is rarely recognized. This youth ministry would be nothing, absolutely nothing, without their help. They do the day to day ministry I cannot do alone. They show up and their presence is one of the most important gifts. These people use paid vacation time to go on mission trips. Not only are they not paid for ministry, they actually technically pay to be a part of the ministry. They give wisdom and love to the youth I lead, and they are looked up to for it. God moves in them in ways He could never move in me, and through them He does much of the work that is done in the ministry. At best I create the field in which the work they do reaches fruition. At every conceivable level, they are the genuine Apostles, and I am least among them.

So I say to all the adults who are involved in the ministry, to Kevin, Amy, Valerie, Christine, Stephen, and to my Wednesday Night volunteers, who are there week in and week out, to Tom and Kendall and Rhonda and Elena, thank you so much for all you do. I am humbled by your service and your ministry, to the youth God has called into our community, to me, and ultimately to our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

The Power Of The Modern World

This is, almost without argument, the most powerful generation in the history of the world. The average person has capabilities at their finger tips that defy imagination. With the advent of the internet (which really just takes off in, what, the late 90s?) people find themselves made all but boundless. They are not bound by time or space. They have access to the sum total of human knowledge, and can push the tools of creativity to near limitless heights. People have the potential to organize and move resources like never before.

I said in an earlier post that people today enjoyed comforts that were at one time reserved only for royalty, but it really goes beyond that. People have powers and abilities that are equivalent to those that the Greeks attributed to their gods. Flight, incredible speed, vast stores of knowledge and the ability to get what one wants with minimal efforts...these were once powers attributed only to divinity.

What's more, this could lead to new spiritual heights. I know my understanding of the Bible, of theology, of philosophy and of mystical practices the world over have been greatly expanded because of internet access. In that sense, the internet has helped me achieved states of being beyond what I'd otherwise have been able to achieve, even with God's help. I just wouldn't know how to navigate the Christian life as well without it.

Why, then, has the time period since the advent of the internet been one of the worst of the last fifty years? Why is the internet being used to proliferate WMDs, organize terror groups, and create very disgusting gutter porn? The simple truth is this: we are sinners, and all of this power does not guarantee it will be used properly. If anything acts as evidence for the assertions about sin nature found among theologians, it is the last decade or so. Reinhold Niebuhr once said wisely that humanity gets more and more powerful, and reaches ever greater cosmic heights of good and depths of darkness but that neither one becomes more predominant over time in the overall. When he made these observations he was really echoing the general thrust of the Book of Revelation. For all the strains made to connect specific images in that book to historical events, it is this broader apocalyptic conviction that history will reach titanic heights of good and evil that really has born out to be prophetic.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the 1940s looked forward to the world shortly 'coming of age', and realized that the main problem of the present age would be the problem not of weakness but power. The world before struggled with how to make sense of the divine in the light of human suffering. The future world, from Bonhoeffer's perspective, would struggle with how to make sense of the divine in light of human power, which he saw as quickly expanding beyond any set limits. Bonhoeffer was, to my mind, a prophet, who failed to realize just how direct his access to God was. This insight was truly a revelation.

Bonhoeffer thought that the problem of power, like the problem of suffering, could only be made sense of in the illumination of the image of Christ as God suffering. Jesus Christ, the living incarnate Jesus Christ, a religionless encounter with God, would be the only way to find some island of sanity in the chaos that would come from a massively powerful humanity. Had satan not killed the man, he may have found the key to the path to such a divine encounter, but devil won his spoils on that one.

Yet theologians never really took up this call, and I think it is time they did. We must struggle with what a 'word come of age' means in light of the Cross, and in light of Jesus Christ as the presence of God. I feel it is my duty to try to in some small way contribute to that effort, though I know it must be done by men smarter and better known than I am. I will at best lay some seeds that germinate into the life of a person who may actually come up with a solution, and a new way to approach God in this world. My own contribution is only to link what Bonhoeffer was doing with the projects of the process theologians, who see God as ultimately affected by and responsive to the world. The same God that suffers through self-giving also empowers, and it should not surprise us that such power has become ours in light of the true nature of God. God's power is to give power away, His suffering is our failure to use that power in the way it is intended. This is the beginning of a sketch of an idea. But I think it has merit. Do you?

Not Really Off-Topic: Review of SUPERMAN: UNCHAINED #6 *SPOILER ALERT*

I have been so impressed by this comic book. The art in it is ridiculous, I mean I am just blown away by every aspect: penciling, inking and coloring, which is unusually good. Beyond that, there is one central moral issue that dominated throughout, and here in issue number six we have those themes brought even more to the forefront.

Superman has been working in alternating states of conflict and uneasy truce with a being known as Wraith. Wraith is an alien from a world much like Krypton who came to earth and gained powers comparable to Superman's. Because Wraith has been here longer and so absorbed more solar radiation, he is actually at a higher power level than Superman. Both beings are seeking to take down an international cyber-terrorist group known as Ascension. In so many ways Wraith and Superman are cut from the same mold: both are orphans of alien worlds, both have similar super powers, and both have a strict moral code.

Yet Wraith has not decided to stat politically neutral, as Superman has. He has chosen sides in world conflicts, allying himself with the US government and specifically with General Lane, Lois Lane's father. Wraith is dedicated to either convincing Superman to join with him as an acting branch of the US government or destroying him for that same government. Superman believes that his powers obligate him to remain above international politics, and refuses to pick particular sides, seeking a moral perspective beyond particular political and national commitments. This conflict comes to a head in this issue, when Ascension manages to fire every nuclear weapon on Earth simultaneously. Wraith seeks to set up a perimeter to protect the US from incoming warheads, while Superman seeks a way to stop all of the weapons. He manages to do this, and simultaneously finds a way to atomically disarm the entire planet.

There are some great moral exchanges between these two godlike beings. Does God take sides in national conflicts? At what point does a person have to subvert their highest ideals to ensure the survival of those who hold those ideals? Wraith makes some good points about the need to get one's hands dirty from time to time. But Superman is keeping tightly to the trope of a messianic figure. Nations crucify Christ anew when they turn the God revealed in Jesus into a particular national symbol. In the World Wars, the One True God, who initially replaced the particular tribal gods of nations, became himself for those nations another tribal god. This was a most sinister idolatry, as it maintained in it the air of the transcendent being that Christians originally claimed allegiance to.

Yet one must be morally blind to deny that Wraith has a point. Sometimes the lesser of two evils must be chosen and fought for as if it were a good, to avoid complete disaster. This entire comic has been so interesting in part because Wraith is very much in the vein of the original Superman from the 30s, 40s and 50s... a kind of American secular Christ. DC has found a way to have its earlier symbol of particular American hope have a conversation and even a battle with its later symbol of more universal human hope. The results have been stunning.

On an aesthetic level, this issue of this book had everything. The pacing was great, the dialogue was believable and the storyline was exciting if not completely original. This is a great book, and I particularly like it because it is one self-contained Superman story, and not part of some giant story arch which dominates the pages of comics, especially DC comics, nowadays.

Storyline: 4 Stars
Dialogue: 4.5 Stars
Pacing: 4.5 Stars
Art: 5 Stars
Overall: 4.5 Stars

Christ Has Died, Christ Has Risen, Christ Will Come Again

Life is so beautiful. I look into so many people and see within their faces something miraculous. It is something I truly do not believe I could see if it weren't for the Gospels. Not as I see it. For in each person I see beauty and wonder without measure. There is this radical vulnerability, the edge of life and death and sitting on it is a revelation of the divine. In most of the people I meet, not all (damn my sinful nature) but most, I encounter something truly miraculous. In one look all their hopes, and all their fears, and all that they are, and all they are not are summed up in one place, at one time and glory reigns.

It is like all the ancient myths and stories are true, and there is some vital and eternal force, some invitation to believe in forever and it confronts me directly. I stare in the face of each person and I stare into the face of God. I live Genesis 33:10, and John 20:28. God visits me as incarnate in the face of the other. So beautiful and wonderful is all this that I have to filter it lest I do and say things that would make people uncomfortable, like, all the time. I mean you wouldn't want to see my balling my eyes out every time I looked into your eyes, would you? The truth that confronts me is that my Father, that Love Eternal, that Infinity itself lives a particular existence in the confrontation with another person.

This experience extends far beyond human relationships. I feel the same thing when I look into my dog's eyes, and when I look at the swirling galaxies. I experience it when I hear about some new scientific fact, or learn some new truth about myself. It is as if the Eternal comes to me again and again all around, all the time, until my very self is drowned out in the ocean of wonder.

Life is terrible. There is this scene in the film THE GREEN MILE where William Wharton keeps two little girls quiet before he kills them by threatening the other one. They are twins, and he tells one little girl that if she makes noise she'll kill her sister. He tells the other sister the same. John Coughy, who plays a Christ figure in the film, says it succinctly, "He killed them with their love. They loved each other. That's the way it is every day. That's the way it is all over the world." That's about right.

Each day, I take this wonderful gift of God's very eternal self and flush it down the toilet. Each day I see people do the same, on scales both large and small. We tell Jesus Christ how wonderful He is as we nail His hands to the Cross. So much is given, and so little is received. I know of the horrors we visit on our Lord in our hearts and in our world.

Where is the human consequence of God's presence? Where is the thankfulness, in myself and in others when we truly need it? A moment of anger murders all that God is for me. A single temptation and I sell forever for a moment. Christ is dying on the Cross, and we don't care.

Where is the human consequence of God's presence? In Jesus Christ, ever...always. He is the only hope we have, and the only image of God that I've known that expresses the fullest range of my encounter with life itself. God is dead. God is alive. God is forever. Christ has died. Christ is Risen. Christ will come again. All of these things, all the wonder, and all the greatness, and all the terror, and all the emptiness, all of it is itself and encounter with God. All of it is true, all at the same time and I cannot give up any part of it without cutting out a part of my soul, and denying the truth. I see them because I have come to know and believe that Jesus Christ is Lord. As CS Lewis said, I do not only see Him, but by Him I see everything I can see. All of reality, revealed in a moment in time. In a single person. The Incarnation of God is not only experienced, but revealed.

At the base of all of this is the experience of vulnerability. Vulnerability is Love. God is Vulnerability/Love. All the good and all the bad flows from this. All the horror and all the wonder. This is what God is. Can we face it? We better. If we want to know Jesus Christ and what He really was and is and can be for us, we must.

Off-Topic: Comic Book Reviews

DC's BATMAN BEYOND UNIVERSE #8

This was a very good conclusion to a very good set of storylines. You had two different stories told throughout the last four issues. In the main story, Brainiac has come to the BEYOND universe after seeming to have disappeared for a decade or more. He almost takes over the entire planet by plugging into the computer networks. He is able to resist his normal weakness of magic by using Hawkman's Nth metal. The team fights back by finding a way to combine technology and magic. In this final story, the entire battle turns to Paradise Island, and culminates with the return of Wonder Woman to the BEYOND universe. The second story was that of Bruce Wayne and Batman Beyond facing off against the aging Man-Bat and his mutant army. It was a powerful commentary on hope and second chances, and I thought in some ways it ended even better than the Brainiac storyline. It was better paced. The artwork is limited as it is tied to the original animated series, but on many levels this comic just works. I had a great time, and while it wasn't the deepest faire out there, it had a good lesson and was a comic that could be enjoyed by a wide range of ages, which is kind of rare.
Storyline: 4 Stars
Dialogue: 4 Stars
Pacing: 3.5 Stars
Art: 3 Stars
Overall: 4 Stars

Dynamite Comics' GRIMM #11

This comic continues to deliver, and is a wonderful addition to being able to enjoy the television show, which is now back on the air. Nick's participation in the twelve labors of Hercules continues as he faces off with a Hydra Wessen, all the while trying to outsmart the Super Lowen who has kidnapped Julia and is using him for his own ends. The pacing on this was off, and as we've come to learn about the main villain's plans they are a little rote, but the individual scenes are excellent. There are moments of pure brilliance, and the dialogue goes some good places despite some supervillain cliches that are overused here. All in all, a good read and good fun.

Storyline: 4 Stars
Dialogue: 3.5 Stars
Pacing: 3 Stars
Art: 3 Stars
Overall: 3.5 Stars

DC's BATMAN 66 #9

This comic continues to deliver, though this particular issue was not as good as some of what came before. I get that they are trying to expand the villains' motivations without removing the comic element, but the reasons given for the villain's actions were silly without being funny. Still there was some great dialogue, and some very fun scenes, especially when Batman throat sings. The art is still fun though I've thought some earlier issues were better on that score too. I am enjoying the book still, and recommend it.

Storyline: 3.5 Stars
Dialogue: 3.5 Stars
Pacing: 3.5 Stars
Art: 3.5 Stars
Overall: 3.5 Stars

The Self-Withdrawing God

There is a Jewish legend that God has shrunk Himself down to the size of an atom, and that this is how God really creates things, by self-withdrawing. I find this legend very interesting.

Holy Wednesday

We do a special study on the Wednesday of Holy Week in the EYC. I'm wondering whether we should study Christological selections from The Book of Revelation, my Audio-Visual STATIONS OF THE CROSS, or approaching the crucifixion story as a dramatic story. Thoughts?

More On Youth Ministry

Hot on the heels of my recent reflections on the nature of youth ministry, there have been some major shifts in youth ministry employment in my area. I feel like I should write my vision of how a church should approach hiring and training youth ministers.

Memorizing Scripture

When you memorize large swaths of scripture it has a powerful effect. I'm not talking about small snippets for 'proof texting', I'm talking about memorizing parts of the Bible. You realize it was never meant to be read nor broken up. It flows like a play. Just give it a try. Memorize a chapter or two, see if it doesn't totally rock your world.

Why The Holy Spirit Is A Person Unto Herself

It seems to me that the personhood of the Holy Spirit stems from two central Christian convictions: that God and the Christian community are 'one' (pace the Gospel of John) and that the Christian is saved 'as a sinner'. How do I make sense of the fact that God in-dwells in me as I still remain convicted as a sinner? Some Christians have emphasized the regeneration of the believer, making the Christian into someone who stands perfected before God. This seems terribly false, to me. The other is to make this strict distinction between God and creation, and to completely remove the mystical element from religion. But the early Christian movement was clearly mystical in nature. Making a distinction between the Father and the Holy Spirit, and speaking of the Spirit as dwelling within the believer, I think, is part of the way early Christians solved this problem.

From My Unpublished Book: On Imminence & Transcendence

The Imminence/Transcendence Conversation

            This Biblical conversation is about God's place in and relationship with the world, and it is in no way a religious conversation that is restricted to the Judeo-Christian religion. Religion as a whole has long struggled with where, if any place, one may find God in the world. Is God in this world? Is God in some other world? If God is in another world, how do the two relate to one another? These kinds of questions are central to almost every religious movement. On the whole, there have been three main lines of thought that have developed. The first way of envisioning God's relationship with the world is to see God as a factor in the world. One can think of God as an impersonal or even a personal force, alongside various other forces both physical and non-physical. Most religions who follow this track think of God as more a spiritual force of nature, like a metaphysical gravity. Those religions are usually called pantheistic religions, pantheism meaning "God is in all things". God as a force may animate the universe, but God doesn't 'control' the universe. On this model, God's creative power is usually limited, and God is just one part of the overall creativity of the universe itself, albeit an important and maybe even the most important part.

            Another model for God's relationship with the world can broadly called Divine Monism. On this model the universe itself IS God. The sum total of things are really just reflections or parts of a Divine Whole. Usually, God on this model is not conceived of as personal. What's more, there really is no talk of 'creation' since there is nothing that is other than God, and all things are just the activity of God. Whereas in the first model to talk about God is to talk about one part of the universe, in the second model to talk about any part of the universe is to talk about one part of God. There are some sophisticated forms of this vision of God where in God remains personal, and the universe is seen as a part of God, but not God itself. This is called 'panentheism' the view that all is IN God.

            The final model for God's relationship with the world is called "classical theism". This is the view that predominates in the Bible. People who hold to this model believe God is completely other than the universe, standing outside of it. God is usually seen as having complete creative control over His creation, and is envisioned as omnipotent, omniscient, immutable (changeless), and omnibenevolent (all-good). Some modern versions of this view include Deism, the idea that God is like a scientist who started a cosmic process and observes it, but doesn't get involved, except maybe here or there when things get too off track.

            In my last book, when I discussed creation, I talked about a tension between the view that God was an actor within the universe, and the view that God was the director over the universe, and that these views gave us diametrically opposed images of God's creative activity. The Biblical discussion over God's place in the universe mirrors that discussion over how God creates, the two are intertwined. Here I will talk about how this discussion shaped the development of our ideas about the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. The earliest creation stories in the Bible (though not the first we encounter in Genesis) begin with a vision of creation that it inherited from the Sumerian ancestors of Abraham. It is classically theistic in that God creates a universe that is truly other than Himself. But this vision of God lacks many of the attributes that classical theism has come to identify with God (omnipotence, omnibenevolence, etc). Rather God is seen as doing battle with some ancient serpent or dragon, and out of that dragons' body God makes the universe (Psalm 74:13-17, Isaiah 51:9-10). We'll talk more about this vision when we talk about images of creation in the Bible. The important thing here is to see that we have a God who has great power over His creation, but not total power. He is limited by the materials He has to work with, and historically there have been powers that stand over against God. Either way, God is other than His creation, on this view.

            Over time, a vision of God more imminent developed. In the early Canaanite times, apparently God was seen as someone who lived in the world. The Second Creation Story, also believed to be the older of the two Creation stories found in Genesis, shows us a God who is creating within the universe, who stands among His creations, who uses the stuff that is there to make things, and who needs others to complete His creative act (Genesis 2:5-7). We see this vision of God in other places, when Abraham is visited by a rather incarnate deity (Genesis 18:1-15), and throughout Exodus God is looked as literally living on Mt. Sinai. When Moses is about to leave Sinai to head towards Canaan, he has to persuade God to make His home with the people, otherwise they might not survive (Exodus 33:12-23). The Temple in Jerusalem is believed to be God's home with the people, and it is from there that He acts as king over them (the best example is probably Psalm 84). This is a highly personalized version of the first model we talked about. God here is mightily powerful, but not all powerful. He is often trying to figure out how to deal with His creations, and literally learns by trial and error. God also needs agents to help Him care for and maintain creation, and it is during this period that talk of the "Spirit of the Lord" and the "Spirit of God" became prominent. God chose certain people to receive His power and agency, and through them He would continue His Divine plan. Sometimes there is a heavenly 'place' outside of earth God is envisioned to live in, but that realm is still part of the universe, and is intimimately connected to the earth itself (Genesis 28:10-22). God is one factor within the universe, the primary creative factor, but not the sole creative factor.

            It was probably during the Babylonian exile, and through encounters with the high sophisticated Babylonian religion, that the move back towards theism took place. The primary Babylonian deity as a Divine King, living in a royal court outside of the universe, with absolute power over creation. The ancient Semitic deith worshipped by the Hebrews became identified with this all-powerful king. That vision fit well with the prophets' move towards hard monotheism, the worship of one God alone, and as God being ethically transcendent, so good that next to Him all human morality looks like 'filthy rags'. God is envisioned as having a heavenly court, from which He judges and controls all that happens (exemplified in Job 1:6). Here we have a totally transcendent God, completely in control and absolutely powerful. This is the matrix out of which the later, Genesis 1 creation story springs. During this time, talk of angels and agents is de-emphasized. If God is all-powerful, and all-knowing, He need not rely on others to do His creative work. God deigned to enter the human realm from time to time in the past, as a special blessing for the Jews. Could would BECOME imminent to show His favor, but His home was outside the earth (Isaiah 6:1-3, Ezekiel 10). This model may have been intellectually satisfying for the prophets and intelligentsia of the Hebrews, but for the rank-and-file Judahite, this didn't sit well. They began to yearn for the days when God lived with them and acted on their behalf. God became, for the people, someone who lived in the past, and their religion seemed to be an endless looking back to the 'good old days', when God was imminent with them, and seeing God's current transcendent status as something of a curse (lsaiah 43:16-18, Psalm 78, Micah 7:15). Some of the prophets would insist that God's actions at a distant now were as great as the actions He undertook when He was seen as imminent within the world (Isaiah 43:19-21), but this never stuck.

            The prophets responded with talk of God's Chosen One, the Messiah, a perfect leader who would usher in God's renewed presence on earth, in and through Him. They also focused on a future time when God would again become imminent in the world. This change in focus seems to have helped. People stopped looking at God as being 'back there' in the past, and started to look at God as 'up there', in the future, and they adopted a kind of expectancy that made life livable by giving hope. Added to this hope was the hope of resurrection, and the view that in this future time when God was again with the people, everyone who had lived righteously would be able to share in the gift. But it is important to remember that the 'imminence' the people thought they once had and would have again was the 'imminence' of a God who was truly transcendent, truly other than the universe. The prophets and the Hebrew people did not have an evolutionary mindset, they were not aware that people's ideas about who God was had changed. They rather worked these earlier ideas into the transcendent vision that had become ascendent. Sometimes visions of imminence and transcendence are juxtaposed in an almost collage fashion (Jeremiah 23:23, WISDOM Look Up). Over time, the voice that became primary in this conversation worked like this: a transcendent God had, at one time, had become imminent in creation for the good of the Israelite people. The sins of the Israelite people and the world had caused this transcendent God to withdraw from the world, and now He lived far and away, only interacting with the world from time to time through agents, both human and angelic. Some day He would send His ultimate agent, the Messiah, and would again become imminent in the world, transforming the entire world order into something that matches the world that He came from, and where He lives now.

            There must have been something in this view that didn't completely jive with the people's own experiences and spiritual needs, because the commentary didn't stop there. Looking at God "coming in" from the future rather than "pushing forward" from the past may have relieved some of the pressure, but it did not solve all the problems, for the peopel. Sects of Judaism developed that concentrated extravagantly on the agents through which God acted, especially angels. Angels became almost god-like in their own importance for some groups (The Book of Tobit, Apocrypha look up). And messianism became one of the defining characteristics of the faith. Various groups grew up around different figures and proclaimed this or that person messiah, and that the Kingdom of God as imminent. Important during this time were the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of the Lord (Apocrypha look up), the mysterious force that God would put on various leaders from time to time in the Old Testament, especially during Judges. In Judges there is a recounting of times when the Hebrew people would turn against God and God would seemingly 'disappear' from their midst. They would then suffer enslavement by one of the surrounding tribes. Then a particular person would be chosen and receive "The Spirit of the Lord" and become empowered to free the people from their captors and return people to the proper worship of God. Especially during the Greek rule over Judah, when the Maccabees rose up and re-established independent Judahite rule, this figure and angelic figures became very prominent in Jewish worship. People simply could not abide by the idea that God was so distant, that God wasn't WITH them, and so they focused on various agents with whom they could still believe they had a relationship, and that agent essentially became a way for them to recialim kinship with the Divine.

            Most importantly, during this period a dialogue began between the Hebraic religion and the philosophy of the Greeks. The Greeks believed in a Divine Idea imminent in the universe, the Logos. This was a foundational thought or reason that pervaded all things. Some Hebrews saw connections between this thinking and the function of (W)isdom both personified and unpersonified, in some ancient texts. They also saw connections between this idea and the Spirit and Breath of God, or Spirit of the Lord. It was during this time that the term 'Holy Spirit' began to get used extensively. This is exemplified nowhere better than in WISDOM OF SOLOMON, written during the Greek encounter with the Jews as a deliberate attempt to reconcile Jewish and Greek ideas about the nature of God and the universe. The writer also saw this as a way to solve the problem of God's distance from the world, because these figures are seen as intermediaries that are both other than God, and yet parts of God Himself. In this way, and others, various Biblical writers tried to envision God as both imminent AND transcendent in the world (WISDOM look up).

            These kinds of attempts, and the use of the term "Holy Spirit" must have been widely known during Jesus' time, because Jesus seems to appropriate them into His ministry. Jesus' main goal, especially early in His ministry, was to create a moral community, the 'remnant' of Israel through which God's Kingdom would be ushered. Jesus seems to have thought the 'Holy Spirit' that was being spoken of in some circles, was going to work in and through Him and His community. In this way, the moral community Jesus was forming would be God's presence with the world until the final transformation took place. The best illustration of this is Matthew 12:22-32. In this passage Jesus claims that He drives out demons 'by the Spirit of God', and implies that this is the same 'Holy Spirit' spoken of in Wisdom of Solomon and elsewhere; He also implies that because He is driving out demons by the Holy Spirit, the Kingdom of God has come. This also clarifies Luke 17:21, "the Kingdom of God is within you". Notice that Jesus links the Holy Spirit to the Spirit of God in Matthew 12, He also links it to the figure of "The Spirit of the Lord" in Luke 4:18, and I think He is linking it with the personified figure of Wisdom, as well, in Matthew 12:42. In this way, Jesus claims God's imminence in and through Him and His community until God comes to make the whole world into Heaven and dwells everywhere on Earth. (Think about the Apostle's Creed: "on earth AS IT IS IN HEAVEN.".

            After Jesus' death and the resurrection event, the Disciples' identify Jesus Himself, the Resurrected Christ, as God's presence on Earth. As time went on, though, and visions of the Ressurected Christ waned, they were presented with a problem. They needed to make sense of their continuing sense of God in and with them with their conviction that Jesus had ascended to the Father, that Jesus was IN Heaven. The Christians had a sense that somehow God had changed them as people, in and through Jesus Christ, that God was animating the community and living within it. But they had to somehow balance this with Jesus' moral pessimism. Jesus was very down on human nature, and doubted strongly our ability to 'save ourselves'. Repentence, not moral perfection, was the sign of God's grace, according to Jesus. Yet the Christians had a strong sense that God was moving through them in a special way, that just as Jesus was God's presence with the world until the End Times, now the Christian community was God's presence with the world, Jesus having ascended to Heaven. Over time, the sense of God with them through Jesus gave way to a sense of God in them through the Holy Spirit. Facing a similar problem to the one the Jews faced when the idea that God was separated from the world became ascendent, the Christian community appropriated the same images some of them, including Jesus, had in the last era BC and early AD.

            So while I am not saying, as some Christians do, that the Trinity is somehow prefigured in the Old Testament. I am also not saying, as others do, that somehow these ideas originate in the New Testament alone and that we should talk about the Holy Spirit only as a phenomenon that was encountered after Jesus' life, death and resurrection. Rather, I am claiming that there was a conversation in the Old Testament out of which the conversations about the Holy Spirit sprang. The New Testament writers were appropriating an experience and a conversation that had originated IN the New Testament, and without that conversation, we probably would not be talking about the Holy Spirit at all. Without the Jewish sense of both God's distance and the need to see God as imminent, the Christians could not have made sense of their own experience of Christ as both ascendent and animating the community. There is an evolution here, one that reaches an apex in the New Testament, but that started long before. There is no escaping the Old Testament conversations regarding God's relatoinship with the world when it comes to the Holy Spirit, just as there is no way of escaping the Old Testament creation conversations when it comes to talking about what it would mean for the Holy Spirit to be "The Giver of Life". It is for that reason that I will rely heavily on the Old Testament conversations surrounding the Breath of God, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Lord, and Wisdom. I think my justification for doing so, given here, is pretty solid.

            Simply put, there is important value in seeing God BOTH as imminent AND transcendent. To talk of God's transcendence is to talk of God being the Ultimate Force in the universe, one that cannot be overcome and that will triumph over the evil forces that oppose It. To Talk of God's imminence is to talk about God being something you can genuinely have a relationship with, a God that you can care about at all. A God that cannot or does not return my love for Him is not a God I can reasonably worship, and so any attempt to make God completely transcendent is not likely to last long. What's more, people experience God, and you cannot experience what is wholly transcendent. If it is religious experience that brings me to God, then it is in and through those experiences I am going to talk about God, and that will necessarily lead to some kind of imminent model. Without the Bible's total commentary on these issues in play, we cannot get a clear picture of what a mature Pneumatology will look like.

            These are the major conversations that are in play when we talk about the Holy Spirit, and they provide the justification I think I need to talk about the Old Testament when I discuss the Spirit. But these conversations bring up others we need to touch on, and there will be others that will play some role as we move forward. It is to a quick rundown of those that I now turn.

"Isn't That Insulting To People"

One of my Hindu students at the private school I work at took issue with something I said the other day. I had been emphasizing the line I've long said was so vital from the account of Jesus' suffering and death, where Jesus turns to the women of Jerusalem and says "weep not for me, but for yourselves." I've long thought that this was one of those lines that just had cosmic significance. There are certain passages and moments in the Bible that come to one as directly the Word of God. I do not think the Bible is the Word of God, but I do think it contains the Words of God, and this is an example of that.

He said that Jesus' words and my attending message that it is humanity that has the problem, that sinful humanity should weep that it needs a savior to die for it, is rather disrespectful to humanity as a whole. He asked how I could be so down on people. It is an excellent question, that shows the young man has thought deeply about what I said.

I believe in sin. I believe that sin is a horror and a terror. I am not very positive about human nature. Yes, I am down on people. I don't see how one can fail to be down on humanity when one is aware of human history. A person may be transcendent, amazing and incredible but people as a whole are nasty, brutish, prone to groupthink, and just downright rotten. GK Chesterton once said that sin nature or original sin, was the only doctrine in Christianity that was empirically verifiable. I don't know if I'd go that far, but I see what he means, and I can't see how anyone can FAIL to see what he means.

A lot of this may be projection. I see within myself a terrible darkness that I have to fight against constantly, but I don't think it is mostly projection. I think that a survey of history makes clear what I am talking about. In the end, I understand my Hindu friend's discomfort. Certainly eastern philosophies like Hinduism and Buddhism have a hard time with original sin, given the fact that they rely on processes they consider to be simple and knowable as routes to escape from the evils that they perceive the world to be dominated by.

I remain deeply influenced by Reinhold Niebuhr. His defense of original sin strikes me as extraordinarily powerful. I take his arguments against enlightenment-based religions like Hinduism and Buddhism to be definitive. I see great values in these ways of life, and I have learned so much from both religions, but especially Hinduism. They have great insights, including some that Christians lack and could use. But I believe they misdiagnose the basic human problem, and so fail to come up with an adequate solution. Jesus Christ only makes sense as Lord and Savior once the problem of sin is understood from the point of view that most Christians understand it from. I think that the arguments for the problem make sense, and so I take Jesus Christ as a solution to also make sense. But I understand why many would not see it the way I do. I believe, I see it this way, you do not. That is just the consequence of dealing with an issue that is ultimately beyond scientific certainty.

MavPhil On Hegel On Original Sin

http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2014/03/hegel-on-original-sin.html

The Life of A Youth Minister

Few people could imagine what all this job entails. I'm often asked how I could POSSIBLY fill forty hours in a week. "What do you do?" is the question. A youth minister does everything a parish minister does, but on a smaller scale. A youth minister also does tons of other work that is totally disconnected from the normal life of most ministers.

I am an event planner, counselor, preacher, teacher, advertiser, fundraiser, small time handyman, comedian, theologian, professional volunteer, child care specialist (babysitter), and more. No two weeks are ever alike. I may spend hours on the phone and talking to people in crises, or building a Ga-Ga Ball pit on the church grounds. I have been on over 20 mission trips, totaling nearly six months of service work. 16 of those trips I planned, executed and led.

And all the while I'm planning for my weekly Bible studies and work at a church school. There are continuous jobs, things that you are constantly working on, like the Bible studies, and keeping up with acolytes, and then there are things that you can never plan for, like the death of a youth's parent, or someone in the depths of a drug problem.

But in many ways, this is the best ministry has to offer. So many ministers have to spend so much of their time administrating. While administration is as much a part of my job as anything else, it takes up much less time than the nuts and bolts of what every minister wants to do. I get to spend copious amounts of time in fellowship with others, playing games and reading and talking about scripture and the presence of God in the lives of those I lead. Counseling is a much bigger part of my job, than it is for many pastors, as many of my youth search for an older person other than their parents to lean on. I am constantly preaching and teaching, though on a smaller scale than a head pastor.

There are weeks that are difficult and frustrating, as with any job, but this is truly God's work, and a gift from Him to all who do it. It is a blessing and a grace to be able to do this kind of work and get paid for it. I get to spend my life helping others and I am recognized and supported financially for the fact. In that sense, my life is endlessly missional.

However, there have been costs. My family life is less than I'd like it to be, and I feel part of the reason I don't have children is that I have so many other people who truly need me and need my focus. The work is not usually hard but it can get very hard very fast without warning. Additionally, even when the work is not hard, there is a lot of it. It is the amount of work that is really difficult, not the intensity. There is a reason why the average 'life expectancy' of a youth minister at a job is 18 months.

The point of this post is not to complain, at all. I love my life. The costs are clearly worth the benefits and how many people get to say that about their lives? I implore you all, though, not to be confused as to why your youth minister's job is full time, and don't ever ask them, surprised, what they do in a week. They do a lot. Trust me.

An Interesting MavPhil Post

maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2014/03/the-science-of-older-and-wiser.html

This is particularly interesting in light of my recent post on post-modernism.

Not Really Off-Topic: Review of GRIMM: THE WARLOCK #4 *Spoiler Alert*

GRIMM: THE WARLOCK #4 was, by my estimation, the best comic I bought and read this week. While the art still leaves something to be desired (will they ever get on top of this over at Dynamite Comics?), and the pacing was a little off, everything else worked well. I was surprised how well this thing ended, given the fact that I thought this side story of the GRIMM comicverse was not as well done as the main GRIMM comic book has been. But it ended on a pleasantly surprising note, and moreover I thought it elevated the entire mini-series.

Throughout this series, Nick has been struggling against a series of highly ritualized crimes, including brutal murder. He discovers that this Warlock is upset by the way Nick has modified the ways of the Grimm, and is creating an inter-species Wessen community in Portland. This Warlock sees the long-standing conflicts between various species as the proper way of things, and has created a spell that will allow him to manipulate several Wessen species (most notably the Bee-species whose name escapes me at the moment), to kill Nick, and thus destroy the community he helped create. The Warlock rightly realizes that Nick is the glue holding this whole bizarre situation together.

Nick, with the help of Rosalee, creates a counter-potion and finds a way to turn the bees into a locus not of murder and chaos, but of dancing. Dance replaces mayhem and murder and there is this beautiful seen with pollen falling from the air, where everyone is dancing and finally turn on the Warlock, warning him not to return to Portland.

The metaphor of dance holds great power for me. Not only because I am a dancer, but also because one of my favorite sermons was one by Reverend Ben Skyles, where he talks about Jesus a 'The Lord of the Dance'. Dance is a perfect metaphor of the power of motion over stagnation, and creative order over chaos. The Warlock in this issue specifically allies himself with chaos, and wants to use it to disrupt the community of peace Nick helped create.

Beyond the metaphor of dance as a cosmic kind of rebellion against chaos, there is the long and philosophical commentary on peace. Peace threatens the evil created by the extreme of chaos, and every vision of order that requires the chaos of war for its existence. This vision of Nick as peacemaker has deeply Christian undertones, and is a refreshing break from the violence that sometimes defines the television show and the comic books of GRIMM. It is the one thing I sometimes dislike about otherwise excellent phenomenon. Nick in this book affirms the power of love over hate, and peace over chaos and discord. That these values are what Nick really stands for is what makes the show and the comics, in the end, something that not only entertains but enriches.

Overall Rating: 4 Stars

Postmodern Morass

My Moral Theology teacher at Iona School is a hardcore postmodernist. I find his approach to philosophy in general to be problematic, to say the least. I find his approach to ethics to be confused as well. What he is, is a decent moral psychologist. But he confuses moral psychology with moral philosophy and theology. This is sad, for me, as this is the last of my classes at Iona, and most of the program has been unbelievable... as scholarly and right-headed as any program at any seminary I've ever heard of, which is not to say improvements could not be made. 

I have read the postmodernists with interest, and I've even been instructed from time to time. But the basic approach to human problems and to philosophy which deconstruction represents is all but evil, to me. I write this extended commentary on the approach put forward by my instructor as a way to work out my own intellectual salvation which is I guess the true reason for any blog. Here I will work out my frustrations constructively and hopefully leave a door open for my fellow students who may not have had the exposure to philosophy that I've had. I say to my fellow students: "stop and think for a moment."

Ontology and Epistemology

Almost all the problems in my class stem from one. But this problem is extraordinarily basic, it is something that any first-year undergrad should be able to avoid. My teacher conflates epistemology and ontology. Epistemology is the study of the nature of knowing. It asks what it means to know anything and how we know what we know. Ontology is metaphysics, it is the study of what the nature of existence is. It asks what it means to exist and how things exist as they do. My professor holds to a fallibilist epistemology. Moreover, he is a pluralist about epistemology. Roughly speaking, this means that he thinks that certainty about what we know eludes us, and that there are a plurality of truth-claims about the world that can be reasonably held.

So far, so good. The reasons to be a fallibilist and pluralist about epistemology far outweigh the reasons to reject these positions, as far as I can tell. The problem is that he then goes on to indicate that this plurality of knowledge-claims is equatable to a plurality of worlds in which people life. Roughly speaking, he says that all of reality is determined by what he calls 'narratives'. He went so far to say, for instance, that my belief that my dog is conscious makes him conscious. The stories we tell about life are what make life what it is.

Moreover, he makes narrative the skeletal structure of everything that humans do. In other words, all narratives are, all things being equal, constructed the same way and have the same ontological weight. To explain by analogy, some philosophers seek some basic atomic 'thing' of which all is composed, and believe that at base all we see are particles in the void. All other realities other than these particles are illusory. In the same way, since all is 'narrative', then narrative is all we have. Thus because one can in some way create an analogy between religion and science, religion and science are both the same thing, a 'narrative'. The vast, vast structure difference between the activities of science and religion are all but ignored.

Structural differences matter. A house and a boat are not the same thing because they are both made of wood. Frogs and humans are not the same thing because both are made out of cells. The 'atomism of narrative' my teacher puts forth simply doesn't follow. Even if we grant that this mystical thing he calls 'narrative' is really the substance of everything, it wouldn't tell us anything about what one or another thing actually is, any more than saying all things are composed of atoms tells us much about planets and stars.

But the real problem, the real problem, is that first problem. Ontology and epistemology are different. It is one thing to say that I can be certain of very, very few things. It is another to say that everything I believe is what happens. There are horrific consequences on the semantic, moral (personal discourse, talking out of both sides of your mouth) and theological level. I need to deal with each of these individually:

The Semantic Consequences 
Saying that every statement is equally true is equivalent to saying none are true. The predicate "is true" only makes sense if the predicate "is false" also makes sense. There is a great animated film, THE INCREDIBLES, that deals with this issue. This guy tries to make all people superpowered. He says at one point, "if all people are super, than none are." If there is no way at all to adjudicate between true and false then the meaning of both fails us.

Think about this statement: "X is true in your narrative.' Well what about this statement: "'X is true in your narrative' is true in your narrative." And this one: "'"X is true in your narrative is true" is true in your narrative' is true in your narrative."? Every statement about what we just said is itself just another narrative. That is what philosophers call a vicious regress. It swallows up all we say. In the end nothing we say means anything at all. It doesn't. Because there is no empirical background, no truth, no fact of the world to which our statements back up into. All there is is narrative upon narrative, down to infinity. What none can then convey is the only thing that matters: semantical content.

On this model, nothing we say has meaning, at all. For the definitions of words are always up for grabs. There is no 'fact of the matter', nothing to which our words refer or that fix their meanings, that can make anything we do have any substance. In the end, all human speech is no more than 'quacking'. Even our own thoughts lack content. What is left is duck speak. To accept that every person creates their own personal reality by what they say is ultimately self-destroying. You cannot accept it because even what you say has not reality behind it. You do not really SAY, anything at all. All you do, is quack. This is soul-death and mind-death. At the end of this road there is not only no one way the world is, but no way for the world to possibly be, at all. There is nothingness, bare and absolute nothingness. No God, no you, no me, just the illusion of the illusion of the illusion.

The Moral Consequences
There must be limits even to epistemological pluralism. While much of life may remain to us uncertain and even unknowable, for us to have any ground by which decision can be made there must be at least some rocks on the river of life. George Orwell's book 1984 argues this so succinctly. The basic argument of that book is that the only freedom we have is the freedom to say "2+2=4". The state robs him of his freedom by forcing him to believe what is patently untrue: that 2+2=5. There must be some semantic grounds, and even epistemological grounds.

My professor talked a lot about us choosing one narrative over another. But choosing, the very act of taking a risk and moving from one story about life to another story about life, requires some ability to at least describe what I did as actually, truly, choosing. It cannot be just the case that: 'the fact that you chose to change narratives is true in your narrative.' The semantic problem, above, removes my ability to say that. It makes that statement equivalent to neither choosing nor not choosing. It means that I didn't, in fact, choose at all.

I must be able to assert what I believe and know that, at least, I have asserted it. This requires some island of fact in the sea of uncertainty. Now can I be CERTAIN of any of this? No. But I can assert it and assert it as true, and that assertion has to stand as fact. Not fact 'for me', because the act of asserting it is a public act, an act that is given 'to the world'. If it is not, then it is nothing. One of the huge underlying blind spots in my professor's outlook is the inability to adjudicate between belief, knowledge, and assertibility.

So this ontological confusion robs us of any and all freedom. Additionally, it removes moral responsibility. If anything I say can be construed 'from a certain narrative' to be true, the I can, at any time, adopt this narrative and make what I said true 'for me'. I can lie, cheat, and steal, and these things will be truth, fairness, and charity, so long as I've adopted the proper narrative. I do not have to own anything I do because, in the end, there is no fact of the matter about what I've done. Now I'm not certain about moral objectivity, at all. But to say I do not KNOW whether there are moral truths and to say there are none, are two different things. To say that I do not know which moral perspective is correct, and to say that all are, are also two very different things.

I can act on belief, I can assert what I believe is true, I can work to shape the world according to my beliefs, all the while asserting their truthfulness, and I can be consistent. What I cannot do, is try to convince you that I am right about anything at all, if I think you and I are both right about conditions which contradict one another.

It is, finally, disrespectful to impose my views on other people. It is wrong, and I'd say even evil, to refuse to take people at their word. If someone believes that I am WRONG and they are RIGHT, then forcing my own view upon them, painting what they say in such a way that we are both right, and in fact they are actually saying we are both right, is rude and disrespectful. As I've said elsewhere:

"The real reason to adhere to logical rules when engaging in discourse is respect. In any debate, there must be some rules, without them real discourse is impossible. Logic is, for me, those rules that help ensure that debate is morally grounded, as much as anything else. The either/or fallacy, for instance, makes it possible for someone to cut off debate from a great number of people by making a particular issue about one of two positions. "Religion is either about morality or it is about nothing." What about those who think religion is about happiness, or truth, or any other number of things? Are they just out in the cold now? Why is their position reduced to 'nothing'? Pointing out logical fallacies is not rude, it is a way to stop rudeness. If you speak in contradictions, then you have cut off my ability to respond. I cannot really say anything at all, in response to you."

 The Moral Consequences 2- Talking Out of Both Sides of Your Mouth (Beauty)
One of the things that was frustrating about my professor, is he would openly admit he was talking out of both sides of his mouth. He would make truth claims about God, about sin, and in the next moment say all narratives create our reality. He would assert the Christian narrative as true, all the while saying all narratives are true. He literally used the term 'talking out of both sides of my mouth.'

This happened simply because he wanted to treat the issues as epistemology at some times, and at others he treated them as ontological. But he wanted to maintain the conflation. This is terrible. It is, really, an illustration of the way the semantic consequences bring about moral consequences. I cannot understand anything you say. I have a right, if we are going to dialogue, to know what you mean when you say things. If I don't have that, you have robbed me of the ability to respond to you at all. You can define any word however you want at any time, and in that way 'win the debate' without actually saying anything at all. Not by leading to agreement or even clarity (the latter often being the best we can hope for), but by obscuring to the point that the only person who knows where they are is you. It is selfish, it is self-centered, and it is bully behavior, all in the name, disgustingly, of being magnanimous.

Take the issue of beauty. My professor says we cannot judge a narrative true, but we can judge it beautiful. But judgments of beauty can be deconstructed and relativized faster than anything else. Is is true that the narrative is beautiful? Or is it just 'true for you?' And if it is true for you why can't I make it true for me that being a selfish bastard is a beautiful story?

The worst part is that I am a process philosopher, I believe that beauty is vital to both ontology and ethics, and epistemology for that matter. But I believe in truth claims. I believe that though I cannot be certain that what I see is, in fact, beautiful, it is still beautiful and that I can assert this with warrant. Not with certainty, but in confidence, and in the confidence that what I say is, in fact, true.

The Theological Consequences
One of the worst consequences of all this is the equality of narrative that takes place. On this model, the saintly act is no more special than the act of the cold blooded murderer. Everyone writes their own story, right? But God hath not ordained one story better than another. What's worse, we quickly get into this place where everyone is building their own reality. Your child has cancer? Well change the narrative? You made that happen, or the story you accept did. Do you believe this? Do you buy it?

How do we make sense of God standing with the victim unless there is, in fact, a victim? We can't. How can we make sense of their being a God that we will into existence? Well why not will into existence a God that gives us everything we want? Why not create a God that allows us to be the selfish bastards we are, and gives us all good things BECAUSE of it? This erases the very existence of the only narrative that matters?

I believe that narratives are important for understanding our world. In this and in one other thing (see below), the postmodernists have something. I take people's stories, change them and give them back all the time. But I do this because I think that the narrative I give is, in fact, truer. There may not be one all-encompassing truth that we can just grab hold of, but that doesn't mean such a truth doesn't exist, nor that all attempts at telling the story of existence are equally far from that truth.


That Thing About Certainty
Even when it comes to certainty, we cannot be absolutists. If we claim all is uncertain, we are setting up a dichotomy for no good reason. This is true of relativism, too. The whole idea is to get away from creating strict dichotomies, but by claiming that the world is EITHER a world of facts imposing on values, or values simply interpreting and creating facts, the worldview of the relativist and the pluralist actually rests on a dichotomy. Doesn't the assertion that SOME things may be created by narratives and others not so created make some sense? Mightn't it be true that we are certain about at least a few things?

I believe some things I do not know and am not certain of. I believe, strongly, that my dog is conscious. I know enough about philosophy of mind to know this is a controversial statement. I know that I do NOT know that my dog has consciousness. But I believe it. That I have no certain grounds for this belief does not make the belief arbitrary nor does it mean I somehow make it true (next time someone points a gun at you, go ahead and try to narrate it away... I mean Jesus who really believes this crap?) My belief that my dog is conscious is more important, more action-guiding and more powerful than my certain knowledge that 2+2=4. Beliefs being without certain grounds is not equivalent to beliefs being without any grounds. Knowledge is not certainty and it is not even knowing that or even necessarily how, you know. Belief is not knowledge, and so on.

Conclusion
I ended that earlier-referenced post once in this way:
"Yet the world does not fit into nice logical little boxes, either. There may be times when our language cannot be used to express an ideal exactly, but must rather kind of 'point' to the idea behind the language. Sometimes I have to kick the ladder of logic aside, to paraphrase Wittgenstein. The important thing is to be up front about what game one is playing. If I have left logic aside, I cannot demand that I be taken with the same precision as when I am being strictly logical, nor can I expect my words to have the same air of authority or certainty. It is being honest about when one is dialoging and when one is pontificating. Sometimes no interlocutor is being addressed, or imagined. Yet even here, one must be careful. There are some fallacies that should never be committed, the example given of the either/or being one example. Not because they necessarily get one closer to the truth, but just because they are plain rude."

There may be places where truth eludes us, and where logic cannot help us with certainty. There is no place, however, where truth should be abandoned as a goal and as a hope. There may be places where ambiguity is necessary or inevitable. There should be no place, however, where we should use it to obscure what can be precisely said, and understood. 

Off-Topic: Comic Book Reviews

DC’s SUPERMAN/WONDER WOMAN #6
This was a good, not a great, comic book. I liked some of the twists, the way Wonder Woman villains teamed up with Superman’s enemies without anyone knowing it, but there was something about the whole issue that was off. I didn’t like the halting, back and forth nature of the fight scenes. The pacing of the whole thing was off too. In fact, that may have been the primary problem…the pacing. The art was still good and overall the storyline was good, the dialogue was okay, but the pacing felt rushed, and there was something repetitive about this issue vis a vis the last issue.
Storyline: 3.5 Stars
Dialogue: 3.5 Stars
Pacing: 2.5 Stars
Art: 4 Stars
Overall: 3.5 Stars

Marvel’s SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN #29
I had to pick up this issue thanks to the inclusion of Miguel O’hara…Spider-Man 2099. I’m worried that when Peter comes back Doc Ock’s consciousness is going to go into O’hara. I’m not happy about this, and I hope they don’t pull that crap. Overall, this book was okay. I didn’t like the way Norman Osbourne seems all but all-powerful in New York City. Ock’s internal monologue and dialogue still bothers me, too. The only positive here is Spidey 2099. They did a good job with Miguel and his dialogue.
Storyline: 3 Stars
Dialogue: 3 Stars
Pacing: 3.5 Stars
Art: 3.5 Stars
Overall: 3 Stars

DC’s JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #13
I hear they are discontinuing this book, and I can’t say I’m surprised. I am, however, disappointed. This team had potential. But it didn’t get to have one single non-TRINITY WAR/FOREVER EVIL storyline. And it did not weather FOREVER EVIL well. Justice League and Justice League Dark did, but not JLA. It has been repetitive, focused on only two characters without much interesting said about either, and ultimately went nowhere. This book has just sucked. This issue is no different, and that is sad, because the characters involved originally really could’ve done something. DC really fouled this up.
Storyline: 1.5
Dialogue: 2.5
Pacing: 1
Art: 3.5
Overall: 2 

Spiritual Pride

One of the consequences of mystical experience is spiritual pride. It is the inevitable result of a sinful being encountering directly the Divine. Christ died on the Cross so the way between mankind and humanity would be clear. The devil no longer stands between God and man (Revelation 12). But humanity remains stained by the domination of evil. We remain sinners even as we have been saved. Thus there seems to be no way for God to touch the heart of a human being without some risk of spiritual pride.

Now there are two types of spiritual pride, one moral and one experiential. Moral pride is self-righteousness. A person sees how God has changed their lives, and takes a certain pride in this. This pride inevitably causes one to look down upon their fellow human beings. Of course, this pride is not completely false. It is not true that one has no influence upon one's place in the world. The problem is that the heights that God pushes us to are far beyond anything any sinful human being is capable of. And so the height and breadth that is reached is taken to be some sign of one's own unique value. It is like a child who genuinely thinks they are taller than everyone else because their father has put them up on their shoulders.

Some people don't have a very strong sense of themselves as a 'good' person. But another type of pride can develop and in someways it is the more dangerous. It is the pride of encountering God. One has a mystical experience and this starts to make one feel very special indeed. But it makes even less sense than the former type of pride, for mystical experience is given by God as God gives the rain, it falls on the righteous and the unrighteous alike. A person who can 'see' by the grace of God could be an Isaiah, but they could also be a Balaam. God gives vision not according to any calculation of moral rectitude or worth. One may even suspect that there is some random genetic or psychological predilection. There is no proper place for pride of any kind here.

Of course the cure for both kinds of pride is first and foremost the Cross. Seeing the weight of our sin and the cost of our pride should break it's power. The pride itself is the murder of God and if we see this it should help to break the power of the ego in these cases. In the case of experiential pride, there is also the fact that experiences of the darkest sort may also result from the pride. The mystic can 'see' the spiritual realities that underly the religious struggle. Thus pride and shortsightedness both become manifest in the dreams and visions, and they are terrible to behold. One must never, ever ignore these experiences in favor of the more transcendent experiences simply because they are difficult or disturbing. They are as God-given as the other. They are ways of crushing down the demon of ego so something better can be put in its place.

But in the end it is that vision of God on the Cross...it is the gospels themselves, that really endure. A Christian must never fail to face the Cross fully, to be broken down. If we fail to share in the crucifixion we will have no way to share in The Resurrection.

I must admit that this reflection comes from some recent personal experiences. I felt my ego expand with some amazing cosmic encounters and then had it broken to the ground with the worst kind of confrontation with the pride that developed. I am sorry for my pride, and thankful for the vision both beatific and soul-crushing.

Greek And Christian Conceptions of The Eternal

The Greek philosophers were constantly trying to find that which was eternal in the universe. They intuited, rightly I believe, that only that which is truly eternal can be truly meaningful. Meaning was equated with eternity in the Greek mind, even if they did not conceptualize their quest for the eternal in this way. I'm reading Stephen King's THE DARK TOWER series right now, and it is quite good. In it there is this monologue about 'the tyranny of scale'. The human mind can conceptualize the eternal, and the infinite, and once conceived it crushes down every attempt at finding meaning within the temporal flow of things. Buddhism is founded on just such a realization.

So the Greek sought to find some eternity above and beyond the flow of time. Plato exemplified this quest, and believed he had discovered the end of it in the realm of forms. Ideas, mathematics, concepts...these for Plato were the very presence of the eternal. 2+2=4 no matter what happens in the world. Nothingness does not degrade this fact, death cannot steal it away. Ideas for Plato were more real than the things of this world, than physical objects and the things of direct experience.

But other Greeks sought other ways in which eternity could be touched, contacted and shared in. Heraclitus thought that change itself was the only thing that was truly eternal. Democritus thought of eternally existing physical atoms. For Epicurus, the quest for the eternal was abandoned altogether. Enjoy the moment, said Epicurus, for all that is and stop worrying about the grand nothingness that surrounds all we do. It seems to me that modern atheism is Epicurian to the core. But I for one have never been convinced by their arguments that Charybdis is not something to be feared.

Of course the Greeks were not the only ones to seek what truly lasts. The Hebrews, too, sought the eternal. But they saw eternity as belonging to God alone, and His law. Morality, the truly right, was the only thing that really lasted forever. What is immutable, and what will ultimately outlast all, is the Will of God. Certainly, Christians took up this idea. For them, too, God and the eternal are one.

But the eternal-as-good is not found in some abstract law, nor some immutable will, for the Christian. Christians believe that eternity is discovered in and through a particular person. Goodness incarnates in our relationships with other people because God became a person. God entered into the ever-changing, and often unreliable web of human relationships that define this world. And so where we see our brother, there we see our God. Jesus is revelatory of God's nature, and God's presence. That wonderful something, that changeless ground that Plato sought in ideas God gave us in the form of a human being, and in all of those who share that human being's likeness.

Most people I meet, and God forgive me it is not every one, but only most...flawed and imperfect as they are... comes to me as a confrontation with the divine, as an opportunity to participate in what will truly last. In so many people who are involved in my life, I see in them an opportunity to truly know God, to feel His presence. I am astounded and amazed by what I see in the face of the other. It is an opportunity to make my life in this moment truly last forever. The present moment, when it involves relationship constructively entered into, becomes a globule, a droplet, that suspends forever in a realm beyond my seeing. The beauty and wonder of the world, and the human soul, is experienced by me as something eternal. Jesus was God's way of telling us that we can truly trust those moments, and believe. As I've said before, the main thing Jesus saved us from was an inability to reasonably trust God and the world, Jesus saves us from unbelief.

I have a hard time in this world, sometimes, because I let the wonder I am feeling spill over too much into the content of my relationships. I want to tell everyone I meet, "you are so wonderful that to see you now is to see the Face of God." Is every relationship always like that? Is every moment retained and experienced as the eternal? No, not at all. But more often than not, I stand in wonder of the world I live in and the people I share it in and in that wonder is a covenant, a promise that I hear loud and clear: "there is something that lasts forever, that means something, and you have found it."

More On The Church... From My Book CONVERSATIONAL THEOLOGY

The Institutional Church

So where do I come in on this issue? First of all, let me say I think we can find a lot of conceptual value in talk of the Holy Spirit legitimizing the church. One way to say this is that I can only recognize the authority of a church if I feel called to by The Spirit. You are called to membership in this or that church organization, and you may be called to membership in none. In the end your God-inspired conscience must be your guide. I also would like to talk of a distinction between the institutional church and the 'hidden church', a distinction some other theologians have made (some talk of the visible and invisible church, others of the little and the big church), but with the difference that in my system both have salvific import. The institutional church is a group of people who come together to perform various functions which facilitate their personal relationship with God, and who come together in the name of helping along God's plan of cosmic salvation. This church has concrete duties it must enact in order to stay true to the role it has perceived it should play in the economics of salvation. First and foremost, the church must proclaim, and as much as possible make real for people, the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus. It must try so much as it can to give people the opportunity to respond to Christ. It does this by reading the gospel, and through the Eucharist. The word of God in Christ remains a word beyond simple rational formulation; it remains a word beyond language. As much as possible, it must be experienced. One must encounter the suffering God, one must encounter the God who forgives, one must encounter the sinfulness of oneself. This can only happen by constant reading of the gospels, reflection upon it in preaching, and through the rituals that make these stories and their significance real to the participant. This is how the message of personal salvation gets out. The church cannot 'save souls', no matter what evangelicals think. Jesus central message was neither sola scriptura nor sola fides, but 'God alone', and that message must be preserved. Only God can save souls. The church's job is to proclaim the reconciliation of man and God in Christ Jesus. To tell of what the Lord has done.

My view is that the church's goal must not be primarily the salvation of souls, a job it could not perform, but the salvation of lives, the salvation of the world, and the preservation of the truth. The church's second function must be it's existence as a community of penitents. Niebuhr said, “The church is not a congregation of people who can pride themselves upon their unique goodness. It is rather a congregation of people to whom the eternal God has spoken and who answer the eternal word in terms of Job's contrition: "I have uttered things too wonderful for me, which I understood not. Wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes." I think this a very true statement. The church must bear witness, not only to the Word of God in Christ, but also to the sinfulness of the world, and even more important its own sinfulness. If it fails to do that it fails to adopt the central vision of community that Jesus held, and it runs the risk of idolizing itself and making itself just another route to self-centeredness, rather than a way for people to respond to God. It must, in other words, maintain within itself the prophetic experience. A third duty, one I've thought the church has long failed in, is to train its members in the art of theological dialogue. We must become educators, both of the content of scripture and its form. I have argued that one cannot understand one's own revelation from God in abstraction from the conversations around God's Word that have grown up in the past. This being the case, we must find ways to talk about those conversations in as broad a sense as possible. This means, in part, bringing science into the conversation of the church. Even in fairly liberally minded mainline churches, the issue of cosmology is sorely lacking. More importantly, we need to talk about the Bible in all its intricacies, and train our parishioners how to do the same. The Bible has to play a central organizing role in our lives, or else we will lack the ability to with any honesty be able to make God real to the world. Last, but certainly not least, the institutional church must make attempts to advance the Kingdom of God in the world. It must do this by involving itself in the political and moral issues of its day, and especially by tending to the suffering.

By identifying itself with the lowest, the weakest, the outcast, the church prompts recognition of Christ in them, and thus advances the opportunity for The Spirit to move within us as a response. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that the church is only the church when it exists for 'others', when it shares in secular problems, and when it proclaims to all people what it means to live in Christ. That is one of the best summaries of the institutional church I can think of.

The Hidden Church

I have spoken of people's souls being subject to a cosmic rebellion and cancer, to being subject to a kind of cancer itself, and people as 'heroine addicts’, which probably strikes many people as rather pessimistic. I plead guilty. I am rather pessimistic about human's abilities to 'save themselves' to become who and what they truly are on their own, or find any ultimate fulfillment through their own moral deeds. Even more, I doubt our ability to move with much confidence on many moral issues, our cognitive and especially evaluative faculties being hurt by the disease of sin. Earlier on, I said moral stature cannot be a test of redemption. I stand on the precipice of cynicism, but I am held back by the knowledge of a God who is so good He refuses to leave us to our own failure. That being the case, one may question how I can posit any moral role for the church, how I can believe it can take part in God's plan of cosmic salvation. I want to put some of this off until the next chapter. For now let me simply say that I think that the institutional church can only attempt to advance cosmic salvation, that such an attempt is a necessary response to knowledge of God in Christ. However, it can never know if it is actually advancing God's Kingdom. This will become clearer later on, but for now let me say that cosmic salvation can only be done in and through the 'hidden church'. The hidden church is simply the community of people through which God's Plan for worldwide transformation is operating. Because of sinfulness, we can never point to any of our actions as in themselves holy.

The Hidden Church is the Holy Spirit alive within the world, various people and realities becoming Christ for others because God is moving within them... the institutional church should operate in the hope and even the belief that the hidden church is behind the veil there, within that institution, but it can never know it. If it did, it would violate its call to be a community of penitents and thus cease to be the church in any form. It must work for the betterment of the world, never knowing if its deeds are right, but simply making the best moral insights it can with its own sin-stained processes, and throwing itself on the mercy of God, confident only that in Christ God saves us from our sins. If it can do this it can preserve its job, and perhaps do more. There will be, ideally, moments, places, adventures where the church seen will become a visible sign of invisible grace, an outward veil of the hidden church, within which God's Kingdom really is advancing. Individuals may dimly perceive these moments, but the church can rarely lay claim to them, and then only in hindsight. Here I come in and create a bridge between the Pauline and Gospel commentaries on the church community. The church must always work for God's Kingdom, but it can never create it by its own power. Only God can transform any act into an act of grace, only God can make the profane Holy. God's call may lead even to proximate defeat and suffering, the church must accept this defeat confident that in God's hands it is always a doorway to victory. God often must temporarily be defeated in the world in order to bring about ultimate victory.

 In the same way that Jesus' remnant was more like a supernatural door through which God by His power would step, rather than some vehicle whose actions would build God's kingdom itself, the institutional church must do its duties only in the trembling hope that God will use those duties to make of this old world, a new world (Martin Luther King, Jr.). Any simplistic progressive formula, or any deification of the church’s activities, must be roundly rejected. Paul's emphasis on the individual activity of the Holy Spirit, and his rejection of the institutional church, gives us an enlightening glimpse into the ways of the hidden church. The institutional church must be aware of the possibility that the hidden church, that is, God's continuing salvific activity, may manifest itself anywhere, at any time, depending on God's abilities and desires. "The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." (John 3:8) The true church may be in the home of a person watching a televangelist, or in the cup of the homeless man on the street, or within other religious communities, or in the heart of the atheist. Mindful of the fact that it can have no confidence of its own holiness, it must continue to do its duties, and if it does so, in contrition and without the left hand knowing what the right hand is doing, more often than not that hidden church will appear within its walls, and many Sundays will be Pentecost Sundays.

Before we talk about issues of immortality and eschatology, I want to make one final comment on the consequences of my 'hidden church/institutional church' model.  One consequence is that on most moral issues the church can never allow itself to be split. Given the call to penitence and the nature of the hidden church, individuals can never have a sure hold on many moral issues, and every one must be held with the attitude that it is my sin that matters first and foremost; in such an atmosphere moral disagreements are bound to grow up. Christians must love each other, and seek penitence together primarily; moral disagreements must take a back seat to these attitudes. Every person must fight for the right according to their best moral insight, and dialogue is vitally important. But then all must bow down and say again 'Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner'. And always we must be aware of the possibility that our opponent, not us, is the real route by which God is advancing His Kingdom. It may be that it is through this attitude, more than any specific moral stance that the hidden church advances in the world.