Archive for May, 2006
May 31st, 2006
They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?”
Some of you may remember a little booklet/tract, called the Four Spiritual Laws. Inside there was a picture of a train. The engine was FACT. The middle car was Faith, and the caboose was Feeling. I remember being sold on the concept. This, I thought, is the way spiritual life operates; or was supposed to operate.
I busied myself with getting all my facts straight. Read all the Josh McDowell, Hal Lindsay, Henry Morris, and Wilber Smith, books. After a few years I discovered that all the facts that could be proved were not that interesting and ones that were, never really touched my life.
I also learned that all the facts that were offered as facts were not as evidently factual as these erstwhile scholars and theologians would have me believe. (Yikes! I'm sounding like Jean Chretien, "A proof is a proof is a proof…) Too many of the conclusions seemed forced rather than revealed. On the other hand, there was mystery and possibility in the "facts" that invited questions. And it was in these soft malleable "facts", or disclosures, where spiritual life seemed to flourish.
I'm older now, I know a great deal less than I did then. But I know I'm not a train. I know that this train never existed and that every attempt at making it run was wind and smoke. It was not the case that in getting all my facts straight, (not a possibility anyway) that they would flow nicely back and prove, convert or strengthen my faith, and then my feelings would happily follow along.
There will never be an absolute metaphor for the way we come to know, and be, and walk with the Spirit. Perhaps the closest metaphor, while always provisional, is biological. An organism is about interrelationships. Faith and feeling and truth are all inter-related. A grand humming matrix. And all intimately and intricately connected to our social and physical environment, our health, the processes of our personality and temperament, even the vagaries of culture. And you can't make a train out of these. (But you can make quit a wonderful soufflé.)
Too many Christians are down on this age. The terms secular humanism, liberalism, and the big one, relativism, come to mind. But this age is our gift. We have the ability, however flawed, to step to the margins and glimpse a social, cultural, religious or philosophical perspective that we couldn't before.
The gift of postmodernism has weaned us from being strict descendents of the Enlightenment and the Western Christian tradition. While the Enlightenment is still with us, it is dying, and as it does the temptation to slide all the way in the other direction is real.
But the gift of Jesus is freedom. Freedom from the tyranny of absolutism and radical relativism, both of which end in nihilism. It is in relationship with Jesus that I have an opportunity, should I decide to accept it, to recognize my enslavement to my western culture and my religious tradition along with my propensity for violent defense of these and to be receptive to listen to what the Spirit says.
May 29th, 2006
Do not turn my heart to any evil,
to busy myself with wicked deeds
in company with those who work iniquity;
do not let me eat of their delicacies. (Psalm 141)
My Lectio Devina this morning recalled for me last night's news coverage about the Oiler victory "celebrations" on Whyte avenue.
If you tuned in, you saw images of, well, common idiocy. You saw guys under the spell of the mob-angel, fueled by too much alcohol, do what comes natural under those conditions. You saw thousands of other people who would normally call down or report such vandalism, or at least leave the scene, which would dissipate the power of the mob-angel, instead stand by and cheer. An action that makes them as complicit as the trashers and maulers.
Actually in principle, this event is not unlike a civic, or political, or religious rally. When given the chance, the mob-angel–or the "irrational collective spirit"–operates the same way at every such gathering, in every venue. It uses a point of common identification, or invents one. It then produces a common enemy, or a fear, or a cause, or an appeal to nationalism or civic pride, in whatever form. Then, having laid the ground work it strikes the match–Der Fuhrer speaks or the Oilers win–and the thing explodes. The type and size of the explosion and the type and size of the mob-angel, is of course dependant upon the elements involved. Nuremberg is a long way from Whyte Ave., but the "giest" at work is of the same nature.
And what of our involvement? Our susceptibility of, and our contribution to the mob-angel depends on the strength and quality of our desires. It is because we don't know what we desire and because our desires are weak and often contradictory that we are susceptible to the social-dictates of the herd.
Our mothers always warned us of the corrupting influence of "bad company". But a warning is not really what we need. We need to reorient, deepen, and make simple, our desires. And the only way this happens is through imitation of one who loves us and has good desires for us.
Allow me a bit of a paraphrase. Do not be conformed to the desires of this world, but be transformed, by the renewing of your minds, in imitation of Christ, so that you may discern what is good and acceptable. (Romans 12)
Pardon the double negative but…we do not get to not serve something, however we usually do get to choose who and what we serve.
In imitation of Christ there is detoxification, allowing our desires to be redefined. Mind renewal allows us to switch angels; from having our actions scripted by the mob-angel to becoming willing captives of the Peace-angel.
May 28th, 2006
…who by understanding made the heavens,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
who spread out the earth on the waters,
for his steadfast love endures forever;
who made the great lights,
for his steadfast love endures forever. (Psalm 136)
Today my wife and I had an opportunity to be serenaded by birds, squirrels, and a few dogs in the distance.
We watched a downy woodpecker scamper up a tree quick as sound and tap out a few drum roles.
I lit a fire and burnt some dead-fall as well as some pruning's. We watched it die down to where the coals came alive and flashed orange and peach-pink.
Overhead, aspen leaves shimmied and high spruce boughs swayed.
There is something reverent about time spent with trees. We lose touch with the earth to our detriment, physical and psychological detriment. Perhaps we even lose touch with a dimension of God. The God who shows us steadfast love through the things God created.
May 27th, 2006
It's a curious phenomenon how a sports team can bring a city together. Well, "together" with qualifications.
Still, driving home tonight from my son's place on the north side of Edmonton, it seemed like the whole city was leaning on its horn in congenial exultation.
I know this can turn sour with the emergence of the irrational collective spirit, and things get silly crazy–especially over on Whyte. I overheard a conversation by a couple police officers telling some people at the Tokyo Express the other day, how they prefer to see the Oilers lose.
But this aside, as we were driving down 97th Street and then along 104th Ave, seeing groups of people waving flags, leaping and cheering, and car horns blaring, strangers high-fiving…the city felt jubilantly friendly.
If only we could find a spirit that could keep us like this all the time.
May 25th, 2006
It's truly disappointing that Mark Dever only mentions in passing, and so easily dismisses the work of Rene Girard. If he would but scratch the surface of this anthropologists thinking he would understand that the language of sacrificial atonement serves not to promote but to undermine and expose our ways of running culture through sacrifice.
May 24th, 2006
The following is a thought from my daughter Teryl Berg, in response to a post called "Great Big Mercy".
It stands on its own as an insight into the perennial human preoccupation with light and darkness.
Ahhh…the well-established antithesis between darkness and light. At the risk of over-extending this metaphor, I’d like to be a darkness advocate for a minute. (I always feel bad for the underdog.) Alright, so I understand the generally accepted viewpoint of light as being life-giving and clarifying. I can even relate to the religious extension of light as good and righteous. However, after taking a few biology courses I sometimes get the feeling that darkness is being misrepresented, or at least not sufficiently appreciated. As just one example, let’s look at the process of vision. It seems appropriate, considering this is all a matter of perception anyways.
Vision is actually accomplished by the brain’s interpretation of sensory input from the eyes. Our eyes are equipped with photoreceptors in the form of rods, for night vision, and cones, for vision in bright light. The light-absorbing ability of these molecules is determined by the response of the retinal + protein configuration when exposed to light.
For example, rhodopsin (the rod configuration) undergoes a conformational change, when it absorbs light. This change causes retinal to detach from the opsin (protein), in a process referred to as “bleaching,” rendering the photoreceptor inactive. Bright light keeps rhodopsin bleached and unresponsive. This is the cause of the familiar experience of temporary blindness when walking into a dark building after being outside on a sunny afternoon. Initially your rods cannot perceive the faint light and it takes a few minutes of darkness for your bleached rods to become fully responsive again.
So why the biology lesson? Well, I think there could be an interesting parallel between our physical vision and religious vision. I often feel as though there is too much emphasis on the differences between dark and light (in the metaphorical sense) and not enough celebration of the delicate and necessary balance between them. To continue the vision analogy, yes, light is essential. Without light our photoreceptors would remain inactivated and we would be left groping in the dark. But…paradoxically we can also be blinded by an overexposure to light, so that we lose our clarity in dimly lit situations.
Under intense light our rods become hyperpolarized and incapable of communicating with the brain. The synapse is inactive and no chemicals can be released. Basically, darkness is required to depolarize the rod cells and reestablish that connection. Similarly the church can become hyperpolarized, incapable of connecting to real life situations. Those who are overexposed lose the ability to see beauty in the shadows or understand the subtlety of silhouettes. Even colors begin to lose their distinction if the light is too intense.
I think that sometimes religion bleaches our perception to the point of sensory numbness. We are left with a limited and washed-out vision that does not allow us to derive joy from sensory experience. Perhaps, at times, it might be better to feel carefully in the darkness than to walk blindly in the light.
Gwendolyn MacEwen says it best in her poem, "The Shadow-Maker."
My legs surround your black, wrestle it
As the flames of day wrestle night
And everywhere you paint the necessary shadows
On my flesh and darken the fibers of my nerve;
Without these shadows I would be
In air one wave of ruinous light
And night with many mouths would close
Around my infinite and sterile curve.
May 23rd, 2006
In response to my "Pop Culture" post, my friend, who recognized himself in print, sent the following: (I couldn't leave it in the comment wilderness.)
Ah, the famous Route 66 — the place to get my "kicks." Too bad, this pleasurable highway often causes my underthings to bunch. The routine goes something like this: as I contemplate a more faithful walk - voluntary poverty, abstinence from anger and no more hanging from guy wires after Oilers games, my thoughts of piety are derailed by the latest high-priced, hi fi accessory. Oh vain man that I am - an audiophile doomed to an eternity of silence and Lawrence Welk reruns? Or is there hope still available, even for such a one as this? I'm thinking there is. Martin Luther, who liked a good pub song as much as the next heretic, put it this way - "If grace abounds, where sin abounds, let us abound in sin, that grace may all the more abound." And Marty's declaration sounds even better when punctuated by a high quality sub-woofer and a Jimmy Page lick.
May 22nd, 2006
In the last edition of Christianity Today, Mark Dever laments that a growing number of evangelicals believe Christ's atoning death is merely a grotesque creation of the medieval imagination.
Well, this is good news. It means that the sacrificial reading of scripture is finally giving way to Christ's echo of Hosea, "Go and learn what this means, I desire mercy not sacrifice."
May 21st, 2006
"They've always approached the criminal law problem as a problem of healing rather than as a problem of punishment, whereas whites tend to look at it the other way around."
This is a quote from Judge Peter Ayotte whose work at the Alexis reserve in central Alberta has served to bring a breakthrough in native-justice. Recidivism is down, while hope and the health of the reserve is up. And it's all because of community-lead restorative justice. What I'd call hard-nosed mercy.
At Edmonton's Hope Mission we are familiar with the over representation of aboriginals in our shelters. We are also familiar with the this same phenomenon in the prison system because our shelters often serve as a kind of halfway-house for aboriginals getting out of jail.
That's why the article by David Staples, "Breaking the shackles of white justice", is so hopeful and heartening.
For anyone interested in what's happening in the restorative justice arena, or for anyone just needing some good news, it's well worth the read. Check it out in the Sunday Reader of today's Edmonton Journal.
May 20th, 2006
Psalm 102 was my lectio devina this morning. You may remember the verse: For my days pass away like smoke, / and my bones burn like a furnace. / My heart is stricken and withered like grass; / I am too wasted to eat my bread. / Because of my loud groaning / my bones cling to my skin. / I am like an owl of the wilderness, / like a little owl of the waste places.
I have a friend who is in a fight with Cancer. Heavy doses of chemo and radiation leave her with burning bones and the extreme fatigue of being "too wasted" to do anything, let alone eat.
But "fight" is my word. She wrote to me a few weeks ago and said that in fact her cancer is something like "an answer to prayer". She immediately added in her own unique and lighthearted way, that I would now be able to confirm that, "she's finally lost her mind."
You need to know this about her. For years she has asked that she would, "…really feel God's love", because she, "…wasn't sure what love felt like, never mind God's." Her quest was God's love. Our little group knew this was her grail, we talked about it on a weekly basis.
She writes, "So I got both the cancer and the love and it is well worth it - although last week when I felt so bad and when I start to again that isn't quite so easy to say. But it is wonderful. Now I finally understand JOY. Incredible!!!"
It is tempting for me to question her on this. My pain for her doesn't want to see her with Cancer. I don't want her to suffer or die. And I'm trying to choke back these words but I don't care if it's adding something profound to her life. In our little group we would occasionally remind each other that we were all doing the best we could with what we had…but that we could always improve if something was added in. Well, this kind of adding in is too much. Too costly. I want to go back to talking about it, I don't want it to happen…like this. But my own words bring me up short. This says much about me and my faith and my twisted and childish love.
I also resist the connection between her prayer for experiencing God's love and her contracting cancer. But neither can I answer this for her. She is the one in the throes of the thing. She can see further than me into the mystery of what shape truth takes here.
But while I don't believe that God works this way, I do believe, as does my friend, now much better than I, that God is not distant. That God is intimate, and in love with her, and wherever and in whatever place she occupies, she will know this love-supreme from the inside.
Ending her letter, she writes, "I have two verses (of course I don't know where they come from) that are my mainstay right now. "Who by worrying can add a single hour to their life?" and, "nothing can separate you, neither…. (you know the long list) from the love of God." How blessed we are. Thank you so much for your prayers."
The psalmist says toward the end of the poem, "Let this be recorded…so that people yet may praise the LORD."
Thank you my friend for being this recording for me. You bring back a message of a depth of love that I have yet, or may never be able to plumb, as you have. You are a gift of mercy, shedding more light for dim eyes.
Dear friend, I know you'll warm to this verse. (It's from the next Psalm and ended my morning's lectio.) "Bless the LORD, O my soul, …who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy."
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