Posts filed under 'Christianity'
September 1st, 2007
We once thought, in our juvenile righteousness, that loving God was enough. It was of course the greatest commandment. We even said things like, “Love God and do anything you want.” We thought the Augustinian quip clever and thought it summed up everything there was to being a Christian and a just person in the world. We had forgotten that the other command was “like it,” and so in effect, its equal.
When we became “liberal” we thought that loving the neighbour was enough. We talked long about caring for all people everywhere and we were sincere. We thought that good will toward the global village was everything that was needed, and that in spreading this good intent people would eventually wake up to their destiny as humans and live at peace.
But it turns out, I find as I age and wonder about such things, that we need both. Both equally and desperately. And that while we can understand the encapsulation of both “loves” in one or the other, both need equal emphasis.
Admittedly a generalization but worth consideration, is that Marxism, communism was the organized attempt at loving the “sister/brotherhood.” And North American capitalism, exposed nightly on most networks as clandestine expansionism, is the governed result of “One Nation under God,” and “In God we Trust.”
Loving the sister/brotherhood in the absence of a love of God leads to a dehumanizing control of a sister or brother. On the other hand, in the vacuum of fraternal love, “loving God and doing what you want” leads to raping the earth and the exploiting her people. Holding up one love command at the expense of the other is a form of idolatry. And the outcome is pretty much the same either way.
August 27th, 2007
…righteousness and peace will kiss each other. (Psalm 85)
Righteousness is a word that probably needs a reclamation project behind it. But here’s a start: Righteousness is relaxing into God. It’s relaxing into the giver of creation, the giver of earth, body and soul. It’s the kind of relaxing that you might call love. And just maybe, you do love, because you find that God is the kind of God who wants to recline with you.
Peace is a word we have a decent handle on. But let me try this for a definition: Peace is the pain you feel when you see some misguided brothers strap on bombs and walk into marketplaces. Peace is the sadness you feel for people who hate each other.Peace is the anguish you experience for both victimizer and victim, because both are your neighbours. Peace is the unexpected experience of inner travail over violence of any type. Peace is a kind of fatal freedom that dizzies you because you’ve been relaxing with God.
Righteousness and peace kiss each other in those times we love God and neighbour intently and equally. Maybe, with any luck, and a visit from grace and mercy, we might experience this kiss once or twice in our lives.
August 25th, 2007
The other evening over dinner, my brother-in-law made the observation that their friendships at the church they once attended, must have been based primarily on church affiliation. Because outside of church reference, there was not the give and take of normal friendship development. And it was not a case of not trying.
This little profundity has stayed with me as something like an explanation of what others have experienced since moving away from a long attended church.
The realization that friendships, taken as something reasonably resilient, may only be church deep, is perhaps one shadow side of an otherwise functioning church.
This is not a comment on the vagaries of human faithfulness and reliability. We all share and carry degrees of infidelity. All of us tend to be busy and lazy at the same moment. As well, the tenuousness of “church-friendships,” if that’s what it is, is not everyone’s experience.
However there does seem to be some shared experience and I am curious as to how broad it may be. Many of us who have or had attended church for sometime, have known people in apparently long and deep friendships, where one person, because of a new direction taken by the church, or an attraction to something perceived as a larger or more genuine Christian experience, has left their church for another one, and as a result the friendship was lost; occasionally even becoming antagonistic. And, at the same time, a friendship, that was outside of church, held without any difficulty.
As a localized phenomenon, this is troubling enough. But indications are that it extends farther across the Christian church.
Of course it’s not fair to hold the church responsible for psychological and relational ills we bring to it. But there seems, beyond this, something about the church that creates or contributes to a certain dysfunction. And questions remain.
Is the church more body-cast than incubator? That is, does the church act as a presiding system instead of a nurturing facility which would allow relationships to evolve more naturally? This “more naturally” is full of its own complexities of course but it is easily distinguished from what might be seen as the “Christian church layer.”
A layer is something on the outside. It never becomes a proper graft, never grows into the tissue, never becomes the strength and sinew of friendship. This layer exists as a band, a bandage, a cinch, a clamp, always external, never organic or internal. So when a few miles of geography get in the way the cord gives out. Or when a journeyer begins to question church dogma and doctrine, the band frays and breaks. Or when both of these things happen, the tie is cut.
Why? What in the nature of church might create or sustain this sort of sallowness? Does the culture of church, particularly the “sharing,” “friendship evangelism,” or seeker sensitive” type of church impede opportunities for connecting on broader levels?
Is all the requisite activity of these churches an impediment to forming relationships? Does a churches programmatic array become a substitute for relational depth. And does this allow us to skim the surface, keeping ourselves comfortable and dry?
As well, is it possible that churches that never wrestle with hard issues, under the cover of simply “preaching the gospel,” can only cultivate acquaintance? Is it possible that churches that keep all emotional response unruffled, unless it’s of a charismatic variety, can only maintain familiarity and not intimacy? Isn’t soul-ship, that is, the deeper connections, only developed in the rougher waters? And is anything outside of this simply church-life, not life-life?
I know that on many levels this observation is deficient. It’s just that it’s sufficient and ubiquitous enough to warrant at least one post.
August 21st, 2007
I’ve wondered sometimes, how much I contribute to keeping war alive. Does the steam of my half-conscious half-baked desires rise and add to the ethane that war breathes? Does war seep out of our my pours in my grasping after never-enough. Do I breath war into the atmosphere through my impatience; impatience that can set me off envisaging the infliction of wounds on the head of some mere place-stealer.
And what about resentment? How free am I from this time bomb?
Can I liberate myself from resentment without the sense that I am absolving someone who harmed me? A sidestep that misdirects energy and creates no new possibility. Can I keep an experience of being hurt, slighted, snubbed, overlooked or worse, from hardening into resentment? which will always lead to some kind of retaliation.
I’m convinced that resentment holds within itself any and all forms of conflict and the combustive capacity to set off all kinds of wars. And resentment always sustains wars, because while wars are fought by the living, or at least, the still existing, it’s the dead on each side that fuel them.
But this much I’ve contemplated and now believe. That when the dry vapours of resentment, anger and ill intent become saturated by disarmed hearts, peace will condense and rain down and wash over our faces.
This is the dew point of peace. Enough disarmed hearts to soak and quench resentment and hatred.
From where will these hearts come? How do we demilitarize our hearts to where they are innocent of retaliation and free of resentment?
Imagine the imagination of a disarmed heart. The kind of imagination that sees possibility in laying weapons aside, that sees defeat as being an opening, that understands that being killed is not nearly the final word.
August 10th, 2007
…some delightful and interesting thoughts and quotes about Sinead O’Connor’s new CD, Theology
She wanted her songs to convey the benevolent side of God as opposed to “this rumored angry war-making God” who “gets libeled every day.”
“There’s a lot that’s beautiful about religion,” she said. “It’s just you get some … nutters that misinterpret it.”
I was steered to this by my sis-in-law Rose. Reading it, I did remember the tremours set off by Sinead O’Connor’s ripping up the Pope’s picture all those years ago.
It was a fustian bit of stage play. But everyone’s entitled an occasional outburst against church intransigence and the power structures that keep it hide-bound. And the 
Catholic church (Fundamentalist church as well) still has a life-sucking unregenerate side that needs poking at.
I suspect Sinead’s approach has not softened, just matured. And in this it has become rich, graceful, compelling and powerful.
This is the way James Alison approaches the necessary changes in the Catholic church. Already a graceful thorn under the church’s armour, his voice will work its truth slowly into the seams and rivets until all that rusty shit falls away. Glory! Perhaps the same thing is going on in the Evangelical church through voices like Brian MacLaren and Tony Campolo.
August 3rd, 2007
Have been waiting to see what would become of Logan Laituri’s Christian conversion and subsequent convictions. They appear to be holding.
Spring 2005, back from the Iraqi front-lines, through the love and influence of his girlfriend’s family, Laituri became a Christian. He took the gospel seriously–especially the part about loving enemies–and was willing to go back to the front-lines but with the proviso that he would not carry a weapon.
Not surprisingly he was reprimanded by his superior as an enemy of America. Somewhat surprisingly, well, perhaps not, he was viewed by his girlfriend’s Christian-conservative father as misinterpreting the bible concerning war.
He tried applying for conscientious objector status but somehow the paper work kept getting stalled. Instead he was assigned to a detachment that would not deploy to a war zone. Then in October of 2006 his term of service ended. Today, he’s without the girlfriend but not without a voice.
A few weeks ago, in an open letter to his fellow Americans running for the office of the presidency, he wrote:
Over four years, 4 billion dollars, and 3,000 lives ago, our nation was drawn into a conflict that few of our number now believe was initiated with our collective interests or values in mind. As a proud and decorated veteran of this conflict, I have suffered for and served my country with distinction and honor. However, my dreams and quiet moments have been mercilessly violated by the voices of the victims of our national terrorism. In Iraq, their liberation has cost as many as 655,000 Iraqis their lives. Their cries, and those of their families, have been uttered amidst a flood of sweat, tears, and all too much of their own blood.
A voice is a small thing compared to a state war machine. But I still believe the world turns on small things.
Logan Laituri’s story was published last year in Geez
June 30th, 2007
My hour with the Spiritual Formation class–a diverse group, ages, backgrounds, professions–was actually a delightful experience. And I know Deb’s presentation of the Enneagram was great…many comments.
I talked about Benedictine spirituality and mindfulness, and on spiritual disciplines. I was encouraged by the reception and the questions.
One question–a hard one–was whether I thought my spiritual formation, my Benedictine path, was making me a better person.
How do I measure that? I did find something like an answer. In 1984, when I began volunteering in Edmonton’s inner city, I was out to save people…but I didn’t really see people. Today, that agenda is gone. I can no longer fathom seeing people as ministry opportunities. I see them, like I see myself, simply and profoundly human, trying to make sense of this world and our place in it.
To a certain sectarian view of Christianity I have lost my way. I think I’m finding it.
Thank you Briercrest Seminary and everyone in the Formation class. (For anyone interested in references or whatever, I’ve posted my presentation in the Benedictine Journey page.)
Technorati Tags: Briercrest, Missionary or Mission Field, Benedictine Path, Christianity, Spiritual Formation
June 23rd, 2007
Wish me luck. I’ve been asked, by my Dr.-brother Sam Berg, to take an hour this Monday to bring my slant on God Awareness and Benedictine Spirituality to a Spiritual Formation class at Briercrest College and Seminary.
I’ve done this before and I’m never comfortable. And, admittedly, I’m even less comfortable now. Added life experience has left me with fewer answers and some embrassement over past pronouncements.
But, at least the timing is interesting. Because recently a friend wrote to me explaining that her "faith-system" has crumbled.
I’m thinking that she has had what Thomas Merton calls "a contemplative moment." That is, an experience or set of experiences that has exposed a disconnection between what she has, for years, theologically assented to, and her everyday life.
In other words, she is living through a kind of faith-vertigo that has showed up all kinds of spiritual clichés. Once comforting and seemingly solid, now quite hollow. And now comes the readying to recline in and with something else, something real. What that is, how that will come, is yet to be determined.
I remember having the prerequisites of Christian life down, and I did a good job carrying them out. But, as poet David Whyte has said somewhere, it was like, "part of me was imitating myself." This is a description of a heart unconvinced of real engagement and so it’s a heart on a collision course with the truth of life.
But the "contemplative moment," or moments, are not quasi-mystical-intellectual experiences. They come in and through the emotional mess of life. They are "rags of light," experienced on "broken hills."
And these "moments" reveal that life cannot be sustained by propositions, specifically Christian propositions. That propositions are lies if they lead. That propositions are only true as by-products of story, of narrative, and connect with truth only through ongoing existential verification.
It’s like Barbara Brown Taylor in her book Leaving Church says,
"Narrative is not a choice I make when it comes time to tell the truth; it is the way that truth comes to me–not in crisp propositions but in messy tales of encounters between people and people, between people and creation, between people and the Divine."
As a Christian, when Jesus becomes more artefact than present-story it’s time to stop.
When I can no longer locate my story among the "street people, hookers and bums," or more urgently and at least as profoundly, read my narrative as part of the lynch mob, corrupt corporate execs, scaly operatives, and suicide bombers, it’s time to stop.
Time to rekindle, if possible, a desire for connecting moments. This is apparently an answer, but really a non-answer.
Technorati Tags: Briercrest College and Seminary, Thomas Merton, Barbara Brown Taylor, Spiritual formation, Benedictine Spirituality, Christianity, David Whyte
June 20th, 2007
I’ve referred to geez magazine (see sidebar link) a couple times in past posts, but, forgive me, I need to make special mention of geez’s sixth issue because they’ve published something of mine.
So, next time you’re in Chapters, Coles, Smithbooks…pick up a geez. Better yet, by-pass the nasty conglomerates and subscribe directly. Why? Well, yes, there’s me, ahem, but infinitely more than that…as say the editors,
Because it’s time we untangle the narrative of faith from the fundamentalists, pious self-helpers and religio-profiteers. And let’s do it with holy mischief rather than ideological firepower.
Technorati Tags: Geez Magazine, Holy Mischief, Seeing the Wonder, Christianity, Spirituality
June 8th, 2007
David Silverman / Getty Images
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Before reading scripture non-sacrificially, that is, before coming to the place of reading all of scripture through the lens of the gospel, I was a "just war" advocate. In a way, reading the Bible through the Gospels instead of the other way around is the only way to read it against yourself, instead of for yourself, an admonition, I believe, of Karl Barth.
Anyway, before this kind of slow organic existential realization, I reckoned the best a Christian can do in the face of conflicting biblical messages about violence and about God, and in the face of practical realities of human rivalry, is to accept Augustine’s "just war" theory.
The criteria for Just War is:
the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
there must be serious prospects of success;
the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.
Hattem Mousa / AP
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Now, if there is an attractive aspect of "just war" it’s this: If administrations agreed upon these criteria, almost all of the wars over the centuries could not have been justly waged.
But then, it makes one wonder if there has ever been a "just war" and wonder, even, if there can ever be one…especially considering the last condition. So even as a pacifist, "just war" in this strict sense, seems somewhat attractive.
Of course WWII and the Nazi Holocaust is always used as the lynch-pin to support "just war" and to dismiss pacifism out of hand. However, while entry into WWII might pass the "just war" test, the argument would be on much better footing without the two nuclear strikes upon Japan. But that’s what happens in war; that is the ’spirit’ of war. Restraint becomes impossible. Violence blinds us and war becomes it’s own reason. (This is one of the lessons in Chris Hedges’ book, "War is a Force that gives us Meaning.")
Jamal Saidi / Reuters
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As well, there’s also the historical scholarship that says that if Germany wasn’t so demoralized by the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler would never have risen to power in the first place. That we help create Stalin’s Hitler’s, Hussein’s, Khomeini’s, and Bin Laden’s, through our exploitive policies and scapegoating violence, not to mention our inability to "wage just war," is evident enough. The Middle East is too clear an example.
I may be wrong but I don’t see Jesus endorsing "just war." I see Jesus as peace-giver. But I also see Jesus as angry at injustice, and as actively putting himself in the way of oppression, but always in a non-violent way. Jesus was a pacifist, but he was never passive.
Technorati Tags: Jesus, Just War, Nazi Holocaust WWII, Chris Hedges, Stalin, Bin Laden, Christianity, Peace, Violence
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