Politics/Religion/Violence

Kim Jong’s Front Yard

Posted on by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

If you’ve been keeping up on world news, you’ll have heard about the N. Korean missile crisis. Well, I have a personal interest in these volatile proceedings.

It’s like this: Shimonoseki is a port city located on the southwestern tip of the main island of Honshu, Japan. But what makes Shimonoseki famous for me is that it’s where my eldest son lives and works.

Thing is, Shimonoseki is the only port where trade between Japan and Korea occurs. Well, did occur. As Michael explains and responds,

06-06-17 15-56

Much of the day to day goods consumed here are Korean. Consequently, the impact of the ensuing Japanese imposed trade sanctions will probably most evident right here in this little Southern fishing town. Pretty crazy eh?

I’m thinkin about gettin a posse of highly-trained ninja together, raftin right up into Kim Jong’s front yard, and punchin him in the face… but ya know…

You’ll be happy to know that I’ll be emailing him counsel about this. On second thought, isn’t this just somethin, excuse me, something, an Old Testament Hebrew Psalmist would say?

About the picture… couldn’t resist: Michael with his star student Kazuki. (Father’s day of course.)

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Atonement/Christianity/Peace/Violence

Non-sacrificial Gospel Too Palatable? (Part 2)

Posted on by stephen t berg / 3 Comments

…concluding yesterday’s thought

The reason Yvonne Johnson was able to "escape her reality" was because of a formulaic and transactional Christianity. As in: Believe that Jesus died, "the Just for the unjust, as a substitutionary sacrifice, and that you are justified on the ground of His shed blood", and you are saved.

Yvonne said she did find moments of consolation in being convinced she was "saved", but it never lasted. Her story shows that it nearly proved fatal, witnessed by her suicide attempts and self-abuse.

Of course this was her experience. But I wonder if a richer understanding of God, an understanding of God’s non-violence and complete gratuitousness, would change everything for people like Yvonne.

Most evangelicals would be sensitive to anyone who endured a life of violence and abuse, as Yvonne did. They would go beyond simply telling her that all she needed was to "accept Christ". And they would certainly be careful in attributing anything redemptive to her suffering. And yet, in their prescribing a personal relationship with Jesus, the spectre of a transaction through sacrifice and violence lies at the bottom of how this relationship is entered into. And so, again using Yvonne as an example, she was "saved" by the transactional formula, the formula being only a larger version of what she had habitually seen and experienced outside of Christianity.

Do you see the consequence? The traditional atonement doctrine allows us to be "saved" without having to work out our deepest hurts and most caustic attitudes. At the same time the transaction between God and his Son, in some sense, lets us off the hook, because we are only peripherally involved. In God’s plan Jesus had to be sacrificed, had to be the payment, we were just God’s instruments.

But what if God is non-sacrificial, non-violent, that is, unlike us? Well, this places the entire weight of the sacrificial scapegoating death of Jesus upon us. We discover that we are the "sacrificers". And this, I submit, is far less "palatable" than dividing the responsibility between God and us. As in: Yes we bear guilt but at the same time we were simply unwitting agents in helping God carry out his immutable plan.

No matter how you slice it, penal substitutionary atonement involves God in a retributive act. And where there is retribution and vengeance there can be no reconciliation.

But, mercifully, there is reconciliation. You will recall, from the lips of Christ, that the proclamation of our forgiveness was before his death, and so, without sacrifice. And the resurrection, which is the ongoing presence of the forgiving victim, is our liberation. Because of this we don’t have to secure ourselves against anything or anyone, anymore. We don’t have to scapegoat. And in fact we can live as though death were not.

Involvement with a God who has no retributive side is a vulnerable affair. We are in a position far more fluid and open. It’s a place that is not static or formulaic. As such, we are intimately involved, and are far more responsible for how this relationship will evolve, and therefore how creation will continue to its completion.

Technorati Tags: Atonement, Christianity, Peace, Violence

Atonement/Christianity

Non-sacrificial Gospel Too Palatable?

Posted on by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

A thoughtful Pastor friend of mine asked if perhaps it was possible that a non-sacrificial reading of the gospel was really an attempt at making the gospel, specifically the atonement, more palatable. Well, this is a perfectly legitimate question, especially considering our (my) too ready recourse to lazy inoffensiveness.

Certainly, the blood-sacrifice atonement theory, which supposedly depicts God as divinely just and righteous, seems far less palatable than a non-violent gratuitous God. And I agree that playing down anything in order to please our sensibilities is a fool’s game that eventually explodes in our faces.

But there is a curious bit of paradox at work in this question. First of all, the reason "palatability" makes sense in this context is because of the gospel’s own work in exposing our violent ways. That is, it is our awakening to the victim, as victim , that is being accomplished by the gospel. Outside of the broad influence of the gospel, there are no victims, only deserving lynchings and expulsions. In this "limited context", the notion of "palatability" has come into our view because of the gospel; and to dismiss our aversion to the violent death of a victim is to act against the gospel revelation.

However, admittedly, this is a bit of a side-argument that operates in a "limited context". More to the point, while it’s true that through the gospel we are waking up to our victimizing and our propensity for exclusion, we still fail to live in this truth. We revert to the lie that to secure everything from our place in line to our reputations to our nations, we need to sacrifice one another. And so the "palatability" charge, or the failure-to-keep-a-stiff-upper-lip charge, does makes sense. Here, being unwilling to sacrifice is a sign of weakness.

It’s like this: Yes, blood sacrifice, ghastly business for some, but here we stout-hearted are, looking into the face of it and not flinching. Where as all the limp-souls are scrambling for protection under the beneficent robe of a grandfatherly God.

But lets examine this further: What does it mean to face up to the "hard thing" of substitutionary atonement? Isn’t this "facing-up-to" a kind of abstraction? It’s like the "thrill" of a gory horror movie. We feel the thrill, but only because we are safe in our seats.

Penal substitutionary atonement is something like this. It works fine as a bit of theoretical abstraction. That is, having faced up to the blood sacrifice, having acknowledged that the sacrificial death was necessary for our justification and for God’s appeasement, having been "covered by the blood", we are henceforth saved, as long as we stay under the covering .

But as Yvonne Johnson explained, (Rudy Weibe, "Stolen Life") "Christianity fooled me so well in prison for a while. It saved me from facing a lot of my reality."

And this "being saved from my reality", highlights why the charge of "palatability" can be exactly reversed.

(More in tomorrow’s post.)

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Peace/Spirituality

Aletheia and Myth

Posted on by stephen t berg / 0 Comment

Finally, beloved, whatever is true…and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.(St. Paul)

Have you ever had the experience of looking at a total stranger and for what ever reason, without there being any outward signs of difficulty or distress in the person, your heart goes out to him. Maybe it was a look, a mannerism, an almost imperceptible moment of awkwardness. Whatever it was, you experienced a connection with him just beneath consciousness.

And perhaps with it, a memory flooded back about the first time you discovered there were other people in the world besides you. And they were real. Real as you. They had hopes and fears and desires and appetites…just like you. And you really hadn’t noticed how concrete that was before and you were almost overwhelmed by it all. And it made you wonder; and it changed the way you thought about yourself and about your place in the world.

Whatever you do, hang on to those signs of humanity. Trust the truth in them. They are real and ultimately the difference between a full-life and a life of sleep-walking, a compassionate life and a preoccupied life. It’s so easy–as a matter of fact it’s our default position–to live within the myth that our desires are uniquely ours.

Aletheia is the Greek word for truth. It comes from the root letho, which is the verb “to forget”. The prefix a is the negative. So the literal meaning of the Greek word for truth, aletheia, is “to stop forgetting”. Aletheia is the etymological opposite of myth. Something to remember.

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