Archive for June, 2006
June 30th, 2006
Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.†(John 18)
Patriotism is not a Christian virtue. That’s why Christians make bad nationalists; well, at least they should make bad nationalists. But as it is, too many Christians make “model” nationalists. And as for our Southern nieghbours–which we take pains to differentiate ourselves from, there-by guaranteeing our becoming their double–being Christian, is a positive item on the resume of any political aspirant.
It wasn’t always so. In early Roman society it was a mortal risk to be Christian. The emperor and his counsel understood that anyone with an allegiance to Christ had a proportional indifference to the machinery of state. And indifference, unlike flat-out rebellion, is a cancer of statehood. Flat-out rebellion is easy, its the same game with the same rules.
Of course the ancient Christians deeply desired to live in peace with others, but their presence, because of their lack of allegiance to the emperor, was a kind of anarchy. And so they were dispensed with.
Two millennia later the tables have turned, but the picture is murkier than ever. Christianity, with its “golden rule” as a leavening agent, has had a humanizing and civilizing effect on our western culture. But the foundation and sustaining of our nations has been rarely civil or humane. Thomas Jefferson had no compunction about this grim reality and said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural nurture.”
But as far as I can tell, our place as Christians is in neither arena–patriot or insurrectionist. Allegiance to either camp is adherence to the same old dreary game. In this game the tables eventually turn, insurgents become the patriots, but nothing new ever happens.
The patriotic spirit easily becomes an idol. When it does, it can become the worst form of nationalism.
But we have the model of Jesus who was no patriot. His allegiance was not-of-this-world, meaning, he was completely indifferent to our ways of founding and keeping alive nation-states through violence.
Tags: Christianity, Patriotism, Violence
June 29th, 2006
I think it’s true that an understanding of God’s complete gratuity, complete non-involvement in violence is only understood in and through some kind of existential moment, or experience.
This doesn’t need to be anything over the top. It could be as simple as a sister-in-law remarking one day, “I don’t know if I can any longer believe in a God who would sacrifice his son.” It could be as simple as a friend asking, “How is it possible to be saved by God’s putting Jesus to death? Was that the only option?” Or as simple albeit intriguing as following a thought about desire through a couple writers and finally picking up a book by James Alison, called Faith Beyond Resentment.
These experiences, along with a couple similar ones, have marked my memory because they are so, well, unremarkable. And yet these occasions have shifted my thinking and have taken me on an exploratory journey that continually confirms itself.
All this obviously lacks any sort of theological sophistication. Admittedly, my coming to this understanding, which has now driven itself deep into me, was hardly “rational” or academic. It was existential, meaning: having been presented with something like a new suit, it was tried on, and found to fit. It was time to throw out the old wardrobe.
Of course, in this, I can be accused of taking refuge from cross-examination. It’s hard to argue against an experience turned embedded belief.
At the same time, “embedded” belief doesn’t last without at least occasional verification. In the face of centuries of sacrificial understanding, I’m quite sure my non-sacrificial perception would buckle under the weight.
But, amazingly, wonderfully, the ring of truth concerning God’s non-involvement in any kind of sacrifice or scapegoating violence grows louder. The idea, still embryonic, is gaining literary and theological backing. Rene Girard and theologians like James Alison who follow Girard’s thought are certainly responsible for this growth. But the idea is not Girard’s, it is the Bible’s, as Girard expertly documents.
For an experience, intellectual but beyong intellectual, possibly life-altering, try on Girard’s, Things Hidden from the Foundation of the World.
Tags: Christianity, Religion, Rene Girard
June 28th, 2006
After Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to a place where there was a garden. (John 18)
(Flowers outside our office…care of Hope Mission's Women's Centre)
Perhaps you've heard me quote this line from Emily Dickinson before, if so, forgive me. But it's a favorite. She said that the only commandment she was ever able to keep was, "Consider the lilies…".
Now you might think that lily-consideration is child's play and you would be correct. That, I think, is the point. I love that Emily was able to remain child-like. And you know how Jesus felt about children.
Quite possibly, in the particularity and in the essence of this "consider the lilies" commandment, are kept all the others.
In her book, Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, Joan Chittister relays this story:
"There are three stages of spiritual development," a teacher taught. "the carnal, the spiritual, and the divine.
"What is the carnal stage?" the disciple asked.
"That's the stage," the teacher said, "when trees are seen as trees and mountains are seen as mountains."
"And the spiritual?" the disciple asked eagerly.
"That's when we look more deeply into things. Then trees are no longer trees and mountains are no longer mountains," the teacher answered.
"And the Divine?" the disciple asked breathlessly. "Ah," the teacher said with a smile. "That's enlightenment–when the trees become trees again and the mountains become mountains."
The story shows the movement of self from self-consciousness, through a tearing away from the self-as-object, to a true consciousness. That is, it's a movement toward innocence. It's a movement away from the division of sacred and profane. In this "movement" epiphanies are possible every day.
Our temptation will always be to look for and to expect the Divine in the grand things of life, the visually and audibly impressive, the things that bring us to our feet emotionally. But when we follow the movements of Jesus, his welcome of women and children in a culture where only men counted, his days in the desert, his long silent years in Nazareth, we are taught, once again, to invert our deeply held assumptions of worth and value, station and position.
Perhaps our spiritual health is finally dependent on our not forgetting that God is present in the seemingly insignificant, that he hides in the defenseless and in the ordinary. Jesus habitually reminds us that God’s Kingdom is an upside down one.
The idea of God in weak things, in simple things, in waste places, is, well, ignoble. But we know that the real turning point in history, as Fredrick Buechner has said, "wasn't the day the wheel was invented or Rome fell, but the day a boy was born to a couple of Jews."
Tags: Meditation, Spirituality
June 26th, 2006
Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. (Matthew 5)
There’s a panhandler outside of Starbucks. (note to self…find origin of the word panhandler) He’s sitting swami-style, with his back against the wall, just beside the red Sun newspaper dispenser. From my table I can’t see his face, only his body and his stained hands as they intermittently appear holding out a grey cap.
He’s not doing well…it seems. No one has change…they say. I wonder about his situation, wonder if I should take a coffee out to him. I do an inventory. Check my memory for action categories. And then I check my backpack for change. I have some and decide I’ll donate on my way out, when it’s time to head for work.
I’ll do my Hope Mission query with him, of which I have several versions depending on the encounter. They vary from probing and skinflintish, to, “No problem–and make sure you don’t spend this on food.”
The first time I used this later one, the guy dropped his hand and burst out laughing. I honestly can’t remember if I gave him any money. We had a good visit though. I used it too often after that, with varying responses. I don’t use it much anymore. But in the right context, with the right person, it’s a sure opening as it releases the little knot of tension inherent in that situation. And it’s certainly more engaging than proffering conditions that won’t be followed in any case.
A young lady just bought the panhandler a piece of coffee cake. He leans forward to thank her and I see that he is young with fine straight features.
Another lady comes in and reports him to the Starbucks staff. She seems satisfied, her humanitarian deed completed for the day.
Everyone gets tired of beggars. Do beggars get tired of begging?
I gather myself up to go and fish the loonie out of my pack. When I get outside there are two women talking to the young man. They’ve each given him money and a third woman is lined up behind them with a handful of change.
I decide against joining the que and pocket my pittance. I walk away with the unsteady thought that at this rate he’ll make more money than me today.
Tags: Christianity, Poverty
June 25th, 2006
I have appreciated the comments and questions from Len in a few of my "atonement" posts. I'll attempt to respond to some of his questions over the next number of posts.
There is however a question about God's nature that touches every question about Christ's death, any question about atonement. It is this: Is there violence in God? Did God command the wholesale slaughter of nations, the wiping out of false prophets, the killing of first born, and so on?
If yes, then God's supposed institution of rites and ritual sacrifice, both to recall some of these events and for obtaining virtual purification makes sense. As well, with respect to purification, the recognition that sacrificing bulls and goats is a temporary solution until the ultimate (human/god) sacrifice could be enacted, also makes sense.
In this case God is a good God but with a violent and sacrificial side. A god, in other words, that is not unlike the pagan gods, except, perhaps, much stronger. To equate God's violent side with God's acts of justice, as is sometimes done, seems to me, only adds to the confusion.
If however, Jesus is the perfect ontological reflection of God, or as the New Testament has it, "the exact imprint of God's very being", then the sacrificial mechanism, that is, the mechanism of doing away with others to preserve and solidify the group or nation, needs to be exposed and undone. And the Hebrew sacrificial system of formal rites and rituals, needs to be re-storied.
If Jesus, who prayed for and loved his enemies, is "the image of the invisible God", then there is no violence, retribution, or vengeance with God. Jesus in fact is God moving toward us, standing in as ultimate victim, not as payment, but as self-gift. As such the substitutional atonement which is violent at its core, asks to be reinterpreted in light of God's having-nothing-to-do-with-sacrificial violence.
To call Jesus' self-gift as the "ultimate sacrifice" is of course legitimate as long as sacrifice is understood rhetorically and not as sacrifice as payment or appeasement.
June 24th, 2006
Things are changing. Evangelical and orthodox and mainline churches are getting together to care for the unfortunate in their nieghbourhoods.
And it's happening in our own city. Check out the story here.
To my mind this is truly a hopeful sign for the church: One, that different churches are working together, and two, that their collective attention is upon people in need of social care.
June 22nd, 2006
For he delivers the needy when they call,
the poor and those who have no helper.
He has pity on the weak and the needy,
and saves the lives of the needy.
From oppression and violence he redeems their life;
and precious is their blood in his sight. (Psalm 71)
We live in a time when our ability to empathize with "victims" comes easily, almost naturally. We don't question this. We think it has always been this way. But doing so discounts two millennia of the leavening effect of the Sermon on the Mount.
In a era where people were at fault for their station in life, in other words, when the question, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?", made perfect sense, there probably would not have been something like a Hope Mission.
Identification with, and empathy for, "the victim", is a remarkable thing. And as far as I can tell, biblical revelation is responsible for this. The cross is the cause.
Reading successively through the scriptures, we are slowly but progressively awakened to the suffering of the victim, where finally, everything culminates in Jesus, the innocent victim.
The cross exposes our victimizing ways. Our scapegoating method of making peace through having, "one man die for the people than having the whole nation destroyed."
Now that Christ has exposed this mechanism as an idolatrous lie, we are left with only two options to deal with violence. The first is more violence. The supposed redemptive or sacred or "good" violence, that sets things in order through visiting violence upon violent ones. This only creates victims out of victimizers. And of course, the same old mechanism is at work here. So really, this option is an impossibility. It has been tried ad nauseam and it always leads to more violence–finally apocalyptic violence.
The other option is almost as impossible. It is the renouncing of all violence and vengeance. Our model here is Jesus and all those over these millennia, who in the face of violence, have imitated him.
They were able to imitate Jesus in non-violence because they discovered that they had taken part in his lynching. But then, in some way, perhaps in many different ways over time, they were visited by his forgiving presence. And they were cut to the heart; and the nearly impossible became possible.
June 21st, 2006
The pictures in this post were all taken during my walk to work this morning.
Several weeks ago, Randy Loewen, a Chaplain at Hope Mission happened to mention to me that he enjoyed one of my posts. He said it was fairly observant. (Well, one out of a hundred-plus is not exactly major league, but I’ll take it.)
We talked more and agreed that the attention given to the art of observance was scanty. True, some people are more observant than others. Perhaps more accurately, different people observe different things. And this is a good thing; in fact crucial for community.
But in the broad sweep, we thought that our powers of observation were wanting. Certainly there will be things that always escape us. In fact good filters keep us from information overload. Essential for psychological health, especially in our time.
But this is something other than our waning ability to live within our bodies, present to the moment. I know my own experience is that self-occupation, in all its guises, easily becomes preoccupation and keeps me from engaging the stories, the events, the moments of genuine life going on all around me.
And that’s the thing. So much life goes on around us, and only in pausing do we pick it up. We’re often guilty of having eyes and ears but not seeing or hearing.
I remember becoming wide awake to this. It was ten years ago. I was sitting in a lawn chair, appropriately on the front lawn of our acreage in Stony Plain, reading Thomas Merton’s, "New Seeds of Contemplation". And I remembered several childhood moments as as if I’d been transported through time. My observance of life was strong then. What I didn’t remember was how I lost this.
So for the past decade I’ve tried, with varying degrees of success, to be intentional about observance. And I have placed things in my life that hopefully cultivate this. For example, I have belonged to the same small group for the past six years. Our watchword is, “Come and See“. Also, I continue to read Thomas Merton and authors like him. And my mentor, Father James, always helps bring me back, demonstrates in his own being, that a discipline of observance can become the art of observance.
All these things help me appreciate even a brief and simple moment, standing talking to Chaplain Randy and hearing his own reflection on observance…which woke me up yet again to its importance.
June 20th, 2006
I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. (John 15)
Sixteen years ago I had a philosophy professor who shifted my view of the world. It wasn't so much the philosophical concepts–which I didn't always grasp anyway–that caused the shift; it was the way I was introduced to ideas, to other ways of thinking. It wasn't the text, it was the teacher that tilted my world. It wasn't the academic information that I first found compelling, it was Vaden House, and his way of engaging the world of ideas that was self-yielding and flexible, without shades of regression on one hand, or gullibility on the other.
There was no power broking with Vaden. If he was sifting through a problem and discovered an untested avenue, or a new idea, or a new formulation of old idea, he would share it. There was no hording of information so as to use it at some opportune time to impress his students. Everything flowed. Everything was open to discussion. And because he had an abiding love for God and a deep faith, things were open to reinterpretation, things were negotiable.
He had no fear of being blind-sided. No fear of being washed off a rock by some rogue-wave. Because he didn't live…tied to a rock. He lived on the water, floating free, with the vertically steadying effect of a sea-anchor–a concept I've taken to heart because it rings true to being a contingent self.
His soul-space was open. Sitting in his office before or after a class was like being in a hyperbaric chamber. The oxygen was denser and the energy this created was never dammed-up. It flowed through him and you felt your own energy responding. Even though Vaden had a superior mind, what he offered me was not a teacher/student relationship, he offered me the friendship of a fellow pilgrim.
It's astonishing that Jesus–Son of God–offers this kind of friendship.
Jesus declines control and passes-up the power inherent in having the special knowledge of a Master. Instead he makes everything known, everything is brought into the open.
But taking away the master/servant arrangement is destabilizing. We servant/slaves don't always want liberation. Much safer to be stuck in place and rag about the conditions, than risk the new thing. On the flip-side, we who are set on being masters, usually won't relinquish power. Much safer, not to mention prestigious, to stay in control by manipulating who gets to know what.
In the confines of a master/servant relationship nothing much new ever grows. But the destabilizing fraternity of friendship is a green-house. Things flourish here. And here is where we find Jesus.
Although we may want to fall back on a Master/servant relationship with Jesus, it is no longer an option. Only, I suppose, a delusional option. Friendship with Jesus, and all that that implies, is the only way ahead. And if, as Christians, we want to help others, modeling this non-manipulative friendship, which is true friendship, is the only thing that will generate the possibility.
June 18th, 2006
I had an article published in yesterday’s Edmonton Journal. You can check it out here.
It will serve as today’s post.
Happy Father’s Day!
Tags: Father’s Day
Previous Posts
Front Porch Pictures
