By Tuesday night this North Carolina pastor was showing up all over Facebook and Twitter. By Wednesday morning he was the ‘most popular’ link on all of Yahoo! world homepage.

If you have not seen this video, be warned. It is in no way understated. Here is the link:  NC Pastor 

 I have 3 main thoughts about this:

1. I know tons of people who are not for ‘same sex marriage’ who would not speak of electric fences. Anytime you are suggesting some tactic that the Germans used in WWII you may want to take note.
2. This is a different TYPE of Christianity – one that is the concerned with governing morals. We going to have to address why the church is even doing State sanctioned marriage in the first place. So often we try to have the second conversation without the first – no wonder it doesn’t go anywhere.
3. My church and 50 others that I know of and communicate with on a regular basis do kind things and say loving words all the time and no one press covers it. That is the nature of the modern media. Deal with it.

Nothing thus far is that surprising – save the actual sermon by the NC Pastor. Here is my concern:

• At what point is some pastor so deep in the Constantinian compromise that he is more Roman than Christ-like? At some point do we say ‘that is not even Christian’ ?
• OR is this just one branch of Christianity and it is our obligation to treat this man as a brother who has simply lost his way?
• OR is this Preacher doing more harm than good and actually crippling the gospel message – and in that sense he is an enemy of our cause?  And at that point, what do we do with Jesus’ admonition to love our enemy?

Admission: I have been re-reading Stuart Murray’s Post-Christendom and … while that is admittedly probably not the best idea … I have to admit that this whole ‘legislating civil unions and marriages’ thing in North Carolina could not come at a worse time for me.

For what it is worth, here is my 2 cents.

1. This is not Christianity. Well, it might be Christendom but it is not whatever Jesus was after.
2. This guy is my brother (in humanity even if not christianity) and has simply lost his way.
3. Whether he is my crazy cousin or my enemy – Christ compels me to love and respect him as a person even as I wholly (and holy) disagree with his inhuman and immoral speech.

I’m not really sure what other course of action I have in this situation. I spent last week in the woods with no technology and unless I want to perpetually retreat away from all this ugliness, I have got to address this kind of craziness at some level. What else is there in the face of hate except to love?

One of the things we do is explore the symbolic meaning in our churches liturgy, rites, and songs.  I was thoroughly amused when they decided to take this practice into the confirmation service during the children’s time by explaining to the congregation the theological brilliance of one of the children’s favorite songs...Every Move I Make (lyrics here).

Here’s what my budding theology nerd of a youth said…

There is no better way to learn something than to put it in to action.  SO..the children are going to help us lead you in some action and by that I mean dancing and singing.  But first I wanted to point out the brilliance of the song ‘every move I make’ and just what concepts you are putting in to practice as you participate.  How many of you have asked the question, “How is God related to the world?  Where is God?  Who is God?  How can one image God in the light of the scriptures and the scientific picturing of an emerging and evolving world?”  I know…who hasn’t.

Any way, this catchy ditty is a panenthesitic think piece.  It takes literally Paul’s affirmation when speaking to the philosophers in Athens that “God is where we live, move and have our being.”  Panentheism insists that God is in the world but NOT to be equated with the world as in pantheism.  All is IN God but not All is God.  Likewise, the transcendence of the Creator God over God’s creation is not such that God is ever absent, distant, and requiring the rejection of creation’s integrity to act.

So as we sing “every move I make, I make in you, you make me move Jesus” We are evoking the prologue of John in which Jesus is identified as the Word of God – the creativity and logic of creation – in the flesh. It’s as if we are saying that the Word of God that brought creation into being, continues to create to this day, and was incarnate in Jesus, is in each movement and moment of our lives calling us to give flesh to God’s word of love.  Wow…I know y’all would have caught that but it just gets me so excited.

Another Youth Chimes In... What do you make of all the ‘na na na’s’

That’s easy. We are often tempted in our lives to act in less than loving ways.  In those moments of temptation just say “na! na! na! until the temptation passes

Now may you go and rock the motions with wild abandon!

One night around the fire, someone asked

“so you have learned a lot and changed a lot since you were our pastor, bring us up to speed. What has changed in your thinking in 4 years?”

It was a question that I hoped would come up and had given it a lot of thought as I flew across the country from LA to NY.

 I said that there were 3 big changes – that I had added 2 things and gotten rid of 1 thing. 

Directions: 

We had a saying that oriented us over those 11 years I was pastor: Upward – Inward – Outward: it must be all 3 – they must be in that order. I have learned that there is a 4th direction: downward. 

When we look downward, two things happen:

1. We see the earth. This awakens us to things like where our food comes from, ecology, and location – the importance of place. Christianity is an incarnational religion and it is a spirituality that is em-bodied. Location is central to the practices of christian community.
2. We see those less fortunate or less powerful. This awakens us to issues of justice. Cornel West is the one who has helped me see the importance of not just looking around (which is vital for awareness) and looking up (where our strength come from) but looking down for those who might need some help.

Adding this 4th direction brings in issues of environment, locatedness, and justice. It illustrates the importance of embodying the gospel in a place – none of us are from everywhere.

 Critique and Create:

One of the things that I have learned in my travels (from folks like Zizkek, Cornel West, Marc Ellis and Diana Butler Bass) is that there are 3 broad kinds of churches in North America:

• Prophetic – that critique the system
• Therapeutic – that help you adjust to the system
• Messianic – that look to escape the system

We were great at two of them. We had a natural Messianic element because our denomination is staunchly and passionately pre-millennial (the soon coming King! is one of our big 4 things). We also had a good dose of the Therapeutic and helped a lot of people be the best version of themselves within the existing structures.

If I got to do it again, I would add a Prophetic element and address the systems and structures that hold so much sway in our communities and in the lives of our congregations.

The example that I used was routinely praying for a guy with a limited skill set to get a job. “Jesus – please help ‘J’ to get a job”.  By not addressing the relationship of local government with factories and manufactures in our area … we were relegating the answer to our prayers to the ‘powers that be’ and J was perpetually disappointed with God and discouraged in his faith. We nearly set him up to fail.

 Those are the 2 things I have added: a 4th direction and 3rd element. But I have also gotten rid of something – I no longer believe in the supernatural. 

Why the Natural is super:

I am convinced that the church has made a major mistake in adopting the language of the super-natural. Since the epic flub with Galileo and Copernicus the church has allowed science to have the natural (things that make sense) and has been relegated to watching over things that increasingly don’t make sense and retreating into words like ‘mystery’ and ‘faith’ as cover for that which is just not reasonable.

I do not believe in a realm (the natural) that is without God. As a Christian, I believe that God’s work is the most natural thing in the world. I am unwilling to concede the natural-spiritual split and then leave less and less room for God as science is able to explain more and more. The church is foolish to accept the dualism (natural-supernatural) and then superintend only the spiritual part.

No wonder 85% of our kids walk away in their 20’s. This stuff is unbelievable. 

I would prefer to reclaim the language of the ‘miraculous’ (surprising to us or unexpected) and ‘signs’ from the Gospel of John (that point to a greater reality).

So that is what has changed since I was Senior Pastor four years ago. I look down now (at the earth, for location, and for issues of justice). I hear the Prophetic critiquing the system. And I have gotten rid of the super-natural while embracing the miraculous.

 It was so great to share these thoughts and hear the feedback from my friends as we share the week together. I would love to get your feedback or to hear how you have changed in the past few years.  -Bo 

Between President Obama’s evolution on gay marriage, North Carolina’s new Amendment banning gay marriage (again), and the United Methodist’s church decision to not admit disagreement on the issue this month’s ‘theology uncorked’ topic is rather timely.  Theology UnCokred is a theological discussion group hosted by Neighborhood Church UCC (where I serve) and Manhattan Beach Community Church UCC (where my friend Erin serves).  Any local people are welcome to join us Thursday May 24th at the Friends of the Vine in Redondo Beach from 7-9 for the conversation.  We will enjoy wine while sounding like Christians as we chat about a controversial topic.

In preparation for the conversation check out Erin and I’s podcast here where we discuss the Bible, the tradition, our own experiences, concerns, and story.  You may also want to check out some of these online resources.

* Biblical Scholar Walter Wink’s “Biblical Perspectives on Homosexuality“

* Theologian Michael Westmoreland Series on GLTB Persons and the Church

*4 different perspectives summarized 1)Rejection of God’s Design 2)Welcoming but not Affirming 3)Welcoming and Accommodating 4) Welcoming & Celebrating

* Ben Witherington gives the conservative perspective in summary

* Tony Jones 99c eBook on Same-Sex Marriage

* Clobber-Passage Bible info

Remember that those who are coming can send in your questions/topics/etc for discussion so that we make sure everyone’s interest and voice is part of the conversation.

I know that there is a real danger in painting in broad stokes and speaking in generalities. I normally steer clear of such dangers but once in a while you find something that allows you to wade out onto the normally thin ice with a certain measure of confidence.

I recently finished a term paper on Alisdair MacIntrye’s opus After Virtue which is his attempt to reclaim the Aristotelian notion of character formation within community (to oversimplify a bit). In preparation for writing the paper I went back over some classics like John Rawls and Michael Sandel (the communitarian) and others.

It just so happens that I have also been reading a lot of post-colonial critique during this year and I have a growing suspicion that I wanted to throw out there:

We have individuals (products of the enlightenment) reading a text that was written in a communal framework (a product of a communal society).  That provides a fundamental discrepancy that will never be resolved. It will always provide a disjointed experience and thought process that lacks continuity.

Let’s not pretend that we can think another way. We are heirs of the enlightenment – this is our operating system. We can download a new program like ‘christianity’ but it is operating within the individualist code. Talking with my friends who are from non-European descent (Native American, Pacific Islands or certain Asian communities)  it is clear that there is no simple conversion that an individual can undergo and simply start thinking in communal terms. We are cultural creatures and this is our culture.

It shows up when we read the Bible. It shows up when we talk of government (democracy) economy (consumerism), status, value, worth, choice, success, identity, rights, laws,leadership and … well nearly every other aspect of Western society.

The famous example of Philippians 2:12 admonishing us to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” is but a drop in the pond. It’s not just that the English language doesn’t have a plural ‘you’ (unless one counts the ya’all of the Southern US) but it is bigger than that. It is that we think in individual ‘you’s and there is no way around it.

This will always be an issue. So even when somebody talks about character formation, spiritual community, or some ideal of communitarian discipleship (be it Hauerwas, the Radical Orthodox, or any other innovative group) in the end, the church of N.America will always look mostly like it does now. The reason is that this individualism we think in is not all that compatible with the communal thrust of our very scriptures – and that is unreconcilable at some level. It can not be resolved because we can no more stop thinking as individuals than that Bible can stop encouraging community.

Why NOT the Avengers Case?

They are names of heroes, superheroes even. Superman, Wonderwoman, Lone Ranger, the Incredibles and even Captain Planet. They were all people who, though having normal lives in one moment, possessed the uncanny ability to transform into a different person when a need or opportunity to help emerged.

What all of these heroes have is common is not simply that they fought for justice, for what was right in the world, but that in their everyday lives they were open to the opportunities to do good where ever it was needed most, right then, in that moment; even if it meant flying across the city to make it happen or spending nights looking up at the sky.

"And heart!"

Look, it took me a long while to realize that many of gospel texts that seem to be about cosmic judgment aren’t really about some cosmic-epic judgment at all. They are really about how it is that we live our lives in the day to day. Stories like that of Christ the king who sits on throne and who draws a line between those who do good wherever they see it, and those who do good when they think others will see it, is not something that should startle us.

Rather, this parable really puts doing good for others back on us. Like many of the other stories that we read in our communities of faith throughout the calendar year, the feasts and festivals that the church holds as part of what it means to do life together shapes us to see the world with a different set of eyes and to hear with a different set of ears.

The parable of Christ the King, one often read as far more judging than calling, beckons us like the batman symbol cast across the Gotham skyline to see justice not as something that will get enacted out in the future, but rather as something that we enact every day, in every moment, with every choice. Or, as Tony Jones suggests at the intersection of our ongoing journey with others.

Look, in a sense, what our Christian readings, prayers, and our table fellowship call us to today, is to dress up in justice and to play our part in the reign of God that exists always before us. And this reign, is not something that happens in one place of creation and not in another. The rule of God always covers us all. The rule of God, the reign of God, is more like the ground of all being that gets glimpsed and tied into than simply put in place when the right people are in power. Rule of God is always happening though not always enacted.

What the church enacts through its readings, liturgies, and prayers, is a calling of  Christians (and all who participate in them) to be in the rule of God and to Look (for the good in others, for the good in self); to search for the opportunities and places where we can help the other, where we can do justice in the world, where can do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

When we do this, when we put on the eyes of faith, we come to see that Jesus doesn’t want us to do things in this world because he told us to. Jesus wants us do justice (to do good) in this world because as we do justice, as we do good in the world, we bring a little bit of hope to those that need it most. We bring a little more of that which is sacred to the forefront of people’s experience and vision.

And, if I’m guessing, as we do unto others as we would have done unto us, and as we share our talents with one another, as we gather rather than divide, bind those that are injured, see someone crying and offer a shoulder or help, see someone that is hungry and give them food, see the thirsty and give them water, see those that are cold and give them a jacket; as we imitate the saints living and present among us…we might just figure out that there are a few more heroes out there in the world, and in our communities of faith than we thought.

And that my friends, is pretty super.

Look.

Guest Post From…

Joshua Case is an Episcopal blogger, creative, and public theologian. He is a graduate of the University of Alabama and the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. Known as “Josh” of The Nick & Josh Podcast, Joshua currently works at Holy Innocent’s Episcopal Church in Atlanta. When not curating things religious and cultural Joshua works as a professional golf instructor.

Joshua on Twitter & Joshua on Facebook

This is the testimony of a young woman I met last week on my trip to Tijuana with Centro Romero. She was extremely courageous to share her story with us. The transcript below is translated from her Spanish:

“I was sold to a gentleman from the U.S. by my sister when I was 13 years old. I already had a baby. In the exchange, I was sold under the agreement that he would help me out with my kid because my baby was ill. I ended up being trafficked to Anchorage, Alaska. He basically kidnapped my baby away from me and didn’t allow me to see him. I was in prison, not able to see anyone for a long, long time. At that time, I was forced to have sex with men and women. Obviously, I was aware that my baby was not getting the care that we were promised. Our diet was basically rice and beans and nothing else. At the main market, at least in my case, I was 14, about to be 15, I was sold to have sex with other women.

“So, unfortunately my baby’s condition got worse. He never allowed me to see my baby and my baby was never provided with the medical care he needed, even when he was in the process of dying, he never thought about providing care for my baby. My baby had leukemia at the time, but of course I didn’t know that.

“Probably because of my mothering instinct, one day I decided that I didn’t care what happened, I needed to take care of my baby. So I found a way to escape and to take my baby to a place in which I was pretty sure that he would get the care that he needed. But the problem was that I didn’t know where I was going, I didn’t know the area or the town or even where I was. And unfortunately my baby passed away.

“When I ended up getting to a place, before my baby passed away, the people that received me didn’t want to take care of my baby. After the baby passed away, due to the lack of care, I noticed that I suddenly started receiving gifts. As I think about it now, I think they were probably trying to keep my mouth shut because they didn’t want me to denounce them or anything like that.

“After my baby passed away, instead of burying him, they invited me to cremate my baby. It was a tough situation for me because I was only 15, so I didn’t know exactly what I was doing. After my baby was cremated, the only thing that I had to be in touch with what I felt was a part of me was the ashes. Unfortunately, he basically kidnapped the ashes and I was recaptured and put out to have sex once again. I used to cry, just asking him to allow me to touch the ashes of my baby, but he never allowed me to do that.

“One time, after the cremation of my baby, I was forced to have sex with a woman and him, and he was so involved with what was happening that I was able to escape through a window. I was able to make contact with a policeman and they took me to a place where they used to take minors who are in trouble. Because I didn’t know any English, they kept asking me where I was from. They kept me in the shelter for minors for a few months.

“I found out that the man who bought me was 33 years-old, that he had a criminal record as a sex offender, and had been involved with minors in the past. But he, as a predator, kept looking for me. After a few months in the care of the police department, I realized that I was once again pregnant.

“He showed up, presenting himself as a relative. He promised me that he would be gentle with me if I came back to his place. Without the support of the police department, being 15, I didn’t have any option other than to believe in him again. At least during my pregnancy he was very loving. But, after the birth of my baby, as soon as my baby was born, he put me under the “care” of the immigration officers. He told them that I didn’t have the capacity to care for my baby and that my first baby had passed away because I physically abused him.

“I was deported from Anchorage to Tijuana. Even under those conditions, I started working at a bar in Tijuana because I wanted to put some money together for airfare in order to go back to Alaska for my baby. And I ended up going back to Alaska. I was looking for my baby and then my abuser kept telling me not to leave him because he was finally in love with me. He was getting government support because he was a single father. He asked the government to facilitate the process of getting a house for the family in San Diego county. Two months after that, we got a house in San Diego and he moved himself to San Diego, but without me because I had to come back to Tijuana. He promised that he would bring my baby girl to Tijuana so I could see my daughter. But, if I wanted to see her, I had to pay him $100.

“My pain and suffering was just too much, so I decided to give up and think that my baby was dead in the same way that I lost my first child. I decided to stay away from him. Even though being apart from him would hurt me a lot because of my child, I knew that it was the best thing that I could do for me and for her.”

At this point she was overcome and unable to continue the story.

I’ve struggled with what to say to close this post. The hell on earth that this precious young woman experienced is devastating. Unfortunately, there is no simple solution to the problem of sex trafficking. It is a global and complex problem. But I want to issue a challenge to men: We are the primary source of the demand for sex trafficking and we must begin to challenge the male-culture that says that putting others down makes us feel better about ourselves. Every single time that we make a joke about rape, call a girl a slut or a whore, or objectify women through pornography, we contribute to a culture that makes possible the stories like the one above. The fact that we are unaware that there are literally millions of stories like the one above shows how desperately we try to suppress them. If we want to end sex trafficking, we must start with ourselves.

* This is a guest post from Stephen Keating who is covering this sex trafficking conference for HBC.  Thanks to Stephen for sharing what he’s learning with us!

As I listened again I was struck with how timely the dialogue was in light of our conversation about Jesus and (s)words last week – as Tripp and I prepare to go into the podcast studio this week to record a TNT about that, as well as leaving the church. 

In his book ‘Violence’ Zizek addresses the idea of emancipatory or redemptive violence embedded in Christianity – a topic that we have discussed at length. But at one point Miles has to correct the philosopher. It concerned that issue of ‘turning the other cheek’. What Miles has to flesh out is that a master would have hit a slave – not by striking him on the right cheek – as he would an equal – but the left with a back hand. The command then is that if someone strikes you in this way (on the left cheek) show to them the right as well and in this way provoke them to a greater of level of violence than they had originally intended – accomplishing two things:

1. exposing their violence
2. positioning your dignity in the face of that violence

I have also been reading Walter Wink’s Jesus and Nonviolence.  He clarifies it this way:

There are three general responses to evil: 1)  passivity 2) violent opposition 3) the third way of militant non-violence articulated by Jesus. … Jesus abhors both passivity and violence as responses to evil.

Wink outlines that third way later in the book with a series of bullet points:

• Seize the moral initiative
• Find the creative alternative to violence
• Assert your own human dignity as a person
• Meet force with ridicule or humor
• Break the cycle of humiliation
• Refuse to submit or to accept the inferior position
• Expose the injustice of  the system
• Take control of the power dynamic
• Shame the oppressor into repentance
• Stand your ground
• Force the Powers to make decisions for which that are not prepared
• Recognize your own power
• Be willing to suffer rather than to retaliate
• Cause the oppressor to see you in a new light
• Deprive the oppressor of a situation where a show of force is effective
• Be willing to undergo the penalty for breaking unjust laws
• Die to fear of the old order and its rules

This type of thinking is as revolutionary as the day it was spoken in that famous sermon by Jesus. The binaries and dualisms that we operate in are just failing us at every turn. The overly simple  either-or options are a trap.

Here is the simple reality: loving your neighbor is a big enough challenge that it has kept many thinkers for many traditions busy trying to figure out who (exactly) is one’s neighbor. and what does love look like. We follow a teacher (in this ‘way’) who goes past that debate and says “Love your enemies”.  Let’s be honest – that doesn’t make any sense! If I love them … they would not long  be to me an enemy

I end with a Wink:  Love of enemies is, in the broadest sense, behaving out of one’s own deepest self-interest; “that you may be sons and daughters of your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:45).

They also cover Tripp’s post at PoMoMusings(@adamw)

In between, the topic of  Zombies (via the Walking Dead) and the Hunger Games is introduced by a call from Tripp’s brother, Steven Fuller

* SUPPORT the podcast by just getting anything on AMAZON through THIS LINK.We really appreciate your assistance in covering all the hosting fees which went up 20 bucks a month due to the growing Deaconate!

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One Click to the Homebrewed Hotline!

Rachel’s post [link] and it’s follow up “15 Reasons I Returned to the Church” are wonderful.  Here is her initial post and then I was hoping to hear from the Homebrewed crowd. Why did you leave the church?  If you haven’t left,  Why have you stayed?  What would be the reason you leave? 

___

Eight million twenty-somethings have left the church, and it seems like everyone is trying to figure out why.

Last week, Christian Piatt offered seven reasons here, and four more reasons here. David Kinnaman recently authored a book entitled, You Lost Me, which details the findings of Barna researchers who interviewed hundreds of 18-29 year-olds about why they left the church.

I left the church when I was twenty-seven. I am now thirty, and after trying unsuccessfully to start a house church, my husband and I are struggling to find a faith community in which we feel we belong. I’ve been reluctant to write about this search in the past, but it seems like such a common experience, I think it’s time to open up, especially now that I’ve had some time to process. But let’s begin with fifteen reasons why I left:

1. I left the church because I’m better at planning Bible studies than baby showers…but they only wanted me to plan baby showers.

2. I left the church because when we talked about sin, we mostly talked about sex. 

3. I left the church because my questions were seen as liabilities.

4. I left the church because sometimes it felt like a cult, or a country club, and I wasn’t sure which was worse.

5. I left the church because I believe the earth is 4.5 billion years old and that humans share a common ancestor with apes, which I was told was incompatible with my faith.

6. I left the church because sometimes I doubt, and church can be the worst place to doubt.

7. I left the church because I didn’t want to be anyone’s “project.” 

8. I left the church because it was often assumed that everyone in the congregation voted for Republicans.

9. I left the church because I felt like I was the only one troubled by stories of violence and misogyny and genocide found in the Bible, and I was tired of people telling me not to worry about it because “God’s ways are higher than our ways.”

10. I left the church because of my own selfishness and pride.

11. I left the church because I knew I would never see a woman behind the pulpit, at least not in the congregation in which I grew up.

12. I left the church because I wanted to help people in my community without feeling pressure to convert them to Christianity.

13. I left the church because I had learned more from Oprah about addressing poverty and injustice than I had learned from 25 years of Sunday school.

14. I left the church because there are days when I’m not sure I believe in God, and no one told me that “dark nights of the soul” can be part of the faith experience.

15. I left the church because one day, they put signs out in the church lawn that said “Marriage = 1 Man + 1 Woman: Vote Yes on Prop 1,” and I knew the moment I saw them that I never wanted to come back. 

“I am convinced that what drives most people away from Christianity is not the cost of discipleship but rather the cost of false fundamentals.” – Evolving in Monkey Town, p. 207

“We aren’t looking for a faith that provides all the answers; we’re looking for one in which we are free to ask the questions.” – Evolving in Monkey Town, p. 204

In the weeks to come, I’ll be sharing more about why I stayed with the Church–with a capital-C-- and about our search for a local faith community.

Why did you leave the church? 

Why do you stay? 

I am asked about Jesus’ relationship to swords as much as anything I get asked about. Good hearted people are quite baffled by the whole subject.

• Jesus did after all say that he came to bring a sword.
• As the word of God, he is said to be sharper than any two-edged sword.
• He is pictured with a sword coming from his mouth when he ‘returns’.
• and there is this matter of him telling his followers to buy swords

As a former apologist, I have gotten pretty good at helping the baffled work through these passages. I even has a presentation I do called jesuSword that incorporates Jesus, his words, and these passages about swords.

 In order to facilitate a lively give and take, we will take this in 3 quick addresses over the next 24 hours.

 Part 1: Jesus says that he came to bring a sword.

 Matthew 10:34 “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to turn “‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—   37 Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.

 Is it possible that Jesus was being ironic and that his sword is actually an un-sword. I say this because Jesus’ sword does the exact opposite thing that normal swords do. His sword divides family. Traditional swords are used their swords to defend their kin and kind.

Jesus was using a play on words.

Jesus was using hyperbole. In his day swords were actually for defending one’s family – for guarding me and mine. In this sense, Jesus’ “sword” is an un-sword… or an anti-sword. It does the opposite of what human swords are used for.  Jesus’ sword is not for defending family but for dividing family. Jesus did not come with a human sword but the opposite!!

John Caputo puts it this way:

The kingdom reigns wherever the least and most undesirable are favored while the best and most powerful are put on the defensive. The powerless power of the kingdom prevails whenever the one is preferred to the ninety-nine, whenever one loves one’s enemies and hates one’s father and mother while the world, which believes in power, counsels us to fend off our enemies and keep the circle of kin and kind, of family and friends, fortified and tightly drawn.”

If Jesus was being ironic or using hyperbole, it would make so much more sense than the way this passage gets used to justify violence and militarism.

_______________

Part 2:  

There are lots of swords in the New Testament.  The Word of God is compared to a double-edged sword and Jesus comes back wielding a sword. Maybe the Bible is more than ‘O.K.’ with swords and sword imagery?

Let me throw out two things:

• In the context of the Roman Empire and its occupation of Jewish lands in the 1st century, swords would have been a common item that drawing imagery out of would have been appropriate.

• A well-known pastor in Seattle, Washington is famously quoted as saying “Jesus is a cage fighter with a tattoo on his thigh and a sword in his hand, determined to make someone bleed”. He said this in reference to the fact that he “could not worship somebody that he could beat up.”

Some people dismiss statements like this and chalk it up to testosterone fueled, overly inflated, pumped up hyper-masculinity.  I worry that there is something much deeper and much more sinister involved. I think that it is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of God and the interpretation of Christian scripture.

 What is noteworthy in Revelation 19, is that the sword is not in Jesus’ hand but it comes out of Jesus’ mouth. That seems important in the poetic/prophetic  nature of Revelation. This sword is not your average sword. It is not in Jesus’ hand and that makes you wonder if the way in which this sword “strike down” the nations is not in bloody violence but in a kind of destruction that would happen as a result of a sword that proceeds from the mouth of God?  Let’s ask ourselves “is there something that comes from the mouth of God that radically impacts or consumes peoples and nations?”  Is there something sharp that comes from the mouth of God … something sharper than any two edged sword?

Oh, here we go: Hebrews 4

12 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.

So far so good! ‘It’ judges the thoughts and heart… but here comes the twist:

 13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from His sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Hold the phones! … the Word of God (it) is a person? Yes. Guess who?

 14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.

Jesus is the Word of God?    (I’m being funny but you may want to check out John 1 for clarification).

 In conclusion: the use of sword imagery  in both Revelation and in the book of Hebrews needs to be taken with a poetic grain of salt. Yes, the Bible uses sword imagery. The thing is that if Jesus’ (S)word, from part 1,  is a non-sword or an un-sword and in Revelation is comes from Jesus’ mouth and in Hebrews it is a person … then none of these passages, thus far, can be utilized to justify what so many Christian (s)words are used for. 

I’ve obviously been having fun here, but the bottom line is that just because the Bible uses swords as analogies – it isn’t a wholesale validation of swords nor a justification for using them as the world does.

________

Part 3:  Jesus tells his disciple to buy a sword?

We come to that famous passage in Luke 22 where Jesus tells his disciples to buy a sword.

 35 Then Jesus asked them, “When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?”

“Nothing,” they answered.

36 He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. 37 It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’[b]; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.”

38 The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are two swords.”

“That’s enough!” he replied.

Here are two readings you may want to consider: 

Earlier this week I engaged a political reading of Moses and the waters of Meribah from Numbers 20. My question was “why, if Moses was going to ultimately speak to the rock, did the Lord even mention the staff?”  The answer was that it was a symbol of power to be carried – yes – but ultimately resisted in favor of a better present option that might be overshadowed by the most obvious option.

It takes strength to turn the other cheek. If you don’t have the ability to retaliate … it is just being a doormat or victim? That is how I have always thought about it.

In that perspective, I have read Jesus’ odd command with Peter in mind. I see that fateful night where Jesus tells him to ‘put away your sword’ and later tells the authorities ‘if my kingdom was of this world my followers would fight.’ The implication is that Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world and so his followers don’t fight.

The sword for the disciple, then, is what the staff was for Moses in Numbers  20: a powerful option to be resisted in favor of a preferable option that is less obvious because it is less forceful.

I used to reconcile ‘buying swords’ as a sort of object lesson or training excersise for the disciples. One lesson (trust and supply) is over – next lesson: You can’t resist temptation is one of the options is not even available.

 Then, in 2007, I discovered that Biblical Scholars have a different way of handling the passage. Here is Ben Witherington: 

Lk. 22.36-38. What is the meaning of this little story, taking into account the larger context of Jesus’ teaching? Vs. 37 is the key where Jesus quotes Is. 53.12—“he was numbered with the transgressors”. Jesus is saying to the disciples—you must fulfill your role as transgressors of what I have taught you!!! They must play the part of those who do exactly the opposite of what Jesus taught them in the Sermon on the Mount. The disciples become transgressors by seeking out weapons and then seeking to use them. This much is perfectly clear from the context for the disciples then go on to say “look Lord here is two swords”. They already have such weapons and Jesus responds in disgust to the fact that they are already transgressing his principles of non-violence by responding “that’s enough” (of this nonsense).

 So either Jesus was saying that two swords was enough for the revolution (not likely) or Witherington has this right.

Conclusion: We have looked at these four famous passages now and it seems clear that although Jesus talked about swords and the writers of scripture utilized sword analogies, none of these passages is a validation of the type of violence these verses are used to justify.

In Numbers chpt 20, Miriam passes away. She had been a prophetess for the people and had challenged Moses’ authority on occasion. Immediately after her passing (this will become important) the people realize that there is no water and press Moses and Aaron for solutions. Moses and Aaron step away from the people to seek God and receive instruction to “take the staff and speak to the rock – it will pour out water before their eyes”.

Moses, as you may remember, doesn’t follow instructions to the ‘T’. He ad libs a little bit.  He does indeed gather the people but then he veers from the plan. He chastises the people and then strikes the rock. Two things happen:

• water does indeed come out
• God is displeased with Moses and will not let him enter the land that is promised.

I have preached this passage many times and have read lots of treatments. I am intrigued by this passage and have always been unsettled by one detail in the story, which I have never been able to resolve:

why does the Lord tell Moses to take the staff if he is just going to speak to the rock? Why even mention the staff?

Here is where Honig and Rosenzweig bring a unique reading. The staff represent something magical like sorcery – or the miraculous for the early 20th century. This is a political theology and what is at stake in the suspension of law in emergency conditions. Can a sovereign power suspend law in the same way that  God suspends the laws of physics in order to preform miracles? Leaders, being empowered by God, the thinking goes, could suspend ‘normal’ activity if they determined an exceptional circumstance.

In Honig and Rosenzweig’s hermeneutic the dispersed empowerment of the people (multitude) is the location for God’s will and is intended to be home to the will/voice of the Lord. But, as we know, this responsibility had been too overwhelming and was resisted by the people in selecting Moses as a king type who would speak to God for/instead of them (Exodus 20:19). This was an abdication by the people of what the Lord had desired for them as a people – to be prophets all.

This resistance is reinforced when the voice of the people rises in the absence of water, and Moses (along with his brother Aaron) turn away from the ‘stiff necked people’ and receive instruction to speak to the rock. Moses then, probably importing the top-down authoritarianism of his Egyptian upbringing, disobeys the command to speak and instead, chastises the people and strikes the rock with his staff in an act of magical sorcery. God, though it produces water, reprimands this act, and Moses is disallowed from entering the promised-land with the people.

This event is placed within the historical context, earlier in the passage, where Miriam passed away and immediately the people realized that they had no water and held a council against Moses and Aaron. Miriam’s name alludes to water and she was the sister who placed Moses in the Nile’s water when he was an infant. She had been the only one to challenge Moses’ authoritarian ways and she provided, as a prophetess, a check to Moses’ power. Without her, this reading states, Moses proved he will give the people … “not authentic prophecy, but sorcery.” In not recognizing the predictive prophecy of the people (and Miriam), Moses loses his leadership of the people.

Honig utilizes Rosenzweig’s two types of prayer – one that spontaneously arises in a situational moment, and another that is used by the community and creates an openness or receptivity – to analyze the judicial deliberation surrounding the Bush v. Gore presidential ruling. By imagining that the people could have risen up in expectation of a serious effort to count valuable democratic votes instead of waiting for a Schmittian top-down rule from the authorities. The sovereign power might have been within the people prepared for and receptive to the sign instead of what came from above it – a rupture from beyond them. This expectation is foreshadowed within the Mosaic tradition that one day all of the people would be prophets (like Miriam).

Honig asks if this metaphorical reading (which it expressly is)  is a good model for democratic politics and a comparison of the  “state of legal exception to the divine rule of god”. The people, she says, when bound together can give to themselves the powers of state and can again decide to suspend them when, as a multitude, they are oriented and receptive (having been prepared) to the consequences of such action and what they point toward as a sign.

This, in the end, is the problem with magical thinking! We abdicate our power as the people – to be receptive to and bring forward the voice and will of God – in favor of looking to magically empowered leaders to suspend the rules that govern due to exceptional (or emergency) circumstances and hand down solution (metaphorically) through sorcery.

It makes sense then why the Lord even mentions the staff if Moses is ultimately to speak to the rock. It is a metaphor (symbol) of concentrated power that is present but to be resisted in lue of the prophetic possibility of speaking. In that speaking, which is to be located in the people (multitude) prepared by prayer, that a sign is revealed that points to a greater reality. We never hear that voice if a receptive people continually abdicate that potential to exceptional leaders who are expected to provide magical results.

 The Predicament of Belief  by Philip Clayton and Steven Knapp is a first-rate book – both highly thought-provoking and courageous. Philip Clayton has consistently shown himself to be one of the Church’s most creative thinkers and is perhaps unequalled in offering imaginative tools for re-invigorating our approach to Christian faith ‘after Google’. For catalyzing and hosting constructive debate with a combination of intellectual vigour and graciousness there simply seems to be no-one better on the horizon of the contemporary theological landscape. So I’m a fan.

The first philosophical chapters of The Predicament of Belief, making a powerful case for the rationality of believing in a personal, benevolent Ultimate Reality, are ones with which I find myself agreeing without reservation. I start getting nervous when the authors’ ‘Christian minimalist’ position is taken as more than a pragmatic expression of what can be adduced without stepping beyond rational justifiability. When minimalism becomes a preferred option in the search not merely for human consensus but for truth about Ultimate Reality, my theological nerve-endings start jangling.

Adoptionism – the only solution ?

Here I would particularly like to focus on Christology. I’m torn between admiration for the authors’ brave attempt at a minimal ‘core Christian proposal’ that can function as a rallying-point for the contemporary Church and ambivalence towards their constructive suggestion. Is it a) the only viable truth-claim available in the present climate or b) a simple working hypothesis whose interest lies in its usefulness for stemming the decline in American mainline Protestantism, an attractive proposition to those alienated by traditional dogma? While I agree that sensitivity to those suspicious of doctrine in general is highly desirable, I find The Predicament overly pessimistic about rationally justifying anything approaching an orthodox theological viewpoint: their assumption that such a position cannot stand in the 21st century seems a little hasty. Especially as my experience is that the ‘spiritual but not religious’ constituency which minimalism hopes to attract is just as resistant to the ‘left-brain’ logical argumentation represented by The Predicament as to an insistence on literal adherence to ancient creeds.

In the book, adoptionism is presented as an option ‘that does not include the claim that the same person who became the man Jesus already existed in divine form before Jesus was born’.  Instead, ‘after Jesus’s death, God somehow took this individual’s subjectivity into the divine subjectivity, commingling them in such a way that they came to dwell within each other and even to become identical to each other.’ This supposedly offers a way out of the ‘dichotomy that either Jesus continues as the identical person within the godhead or Jesus is a merely human model for others to emulate.’ This ‘may be attractive to those contemporary Christians who can’t quite believe (even if they have no way of definitively denying) the complicated assertions of classical Trinitarian thought, but who nevertheless find themselves believing in Jesus’ continuing personal presence’.

Towards the end of his concise Emergent Village presentation of the book  (around the 30 minute mark on the HBC podcast), PC puts his theological hands up and admits that his preference goes to ‘adoptionist’ Christology because the alternative of an eternal preexistent Logos is not persuasive now that static Greek metaphysics have landed in the trash can of history. Not unless you believe in a ‘three bears with three chairs’ Trinity (don’t worry, you’ll understand if you listen to the audio…).

The pre-existent Logos: an obsolete accessory ?

For PC, the preexistent Logos simply has to go. But what takes its place? I find myself having mixed sentiments towards his constructive proposal. I can certainly understand his argument and agree as far as the utility of a Spirit Christology is concerned. I also very much find myself drawn to his view (shared by many of the participants in the Claremont discussion) that the resource of process thought makes a better bridge between theology and contemporary science than Greek metaphysical discourse. And I don’t want to exaggerate the extent to which Philip Clayton has taken a position that can’t be accommodated within an orthodox Christian framework given some judicious alterations in vocabulary.

It should be admitted

1.  that his welcome affirmation of the post-Resurrection unity of Jesus and God has bigger practical implications for the Church today than the issue of the pre-incarnate Logos and that
2.  it is historically undeniable that adoptionism was certainly a valid option within the very earliest Christian period. For those on the fringes of Christian belief who looking for an entry-point to Christian theology, an adoptionist Christology can perhaps be of value.

However, it must be said that Philip Clayton’s solution of his conundrum is not without cost, and that the price (exegetical, theological and ecumenical) is maybe higher than either The Predicament of Belief or the Emergent Village Theological Conversation seem to suggest.

Conclusion – Part 1: 

Firstly, an adoptionist position arguably leads to problems with Scripture which are difficult to solve even with a black belt in exegetical judo.

Secondly, the theological price. Get rid of the preexistent Logos and you also kiss farewell to the Immanent Trinity, Trinitarian theology of creation and Trinitarian theological anthropology. Hasta la vista to the Cappadocian Fathers – and Eastern Christian tradition more generally (as well as Celtic Christianity in the West), for which the threeness of God is as just as much theological bedrock as the Divine Unity. Philosophically, if God is not eternally Triune, then grounding otherness ontologically becomes impossible unless you go the route of ontologizing the God-world relationship (which creates other problems). If the Son is not eternal, then logically neither is the Father.

 Thirdly, the view that belief in the eternal Logos is just Greek metaphysical mumbo-jumbo has been challenged by recent research on Philo (identified in The Predicament as the conduit for Logos theology), not only by Christian scholars such as Larry Hurtado and Margaret Barker but also within Jewish studies on the part of Alan F Segal and more recently Daniel Boyarin. If their thesis of the pre-Christian incorporation of the Logos and other mediating concepts within a Jewish framework of salvation history is correct, then the notion that the Logos is a static concept derived purely from Hellenistic sources becomes questionable. If Judaism at the time of early Christianity proved capable of translating the Logos into its own conceptualities, thereby seriously tweaking the Greek concept, this raises the possibility that a creative theological appropriation of the Logos idea may equally be a way forward for us today. It’s not automatically a theological albatross.

 Fourthly, an overtly ‘adoptionist’ position risks alienating some theological constituencies (I’m thinking particularly of Social Trinitarians, admirers of Stanley Hauerwas, and ‘post-conservatives’ drawn to the work of figures such as Roger Olson or NT Wright) which might otherwise be attracted to this conversation and would certainly be welcome contributors to it. If PC wants a Big Tent approach, then prodding the roof with a sharp object may not be advisable. As even superstar theologians such as Hans Küng in the 1970s and more recently Elizabeth A Johnson have discovered to their cost, embracing an adoptionist Christology is not necessarily a way to win friends and influence people in certain circles: there are simply too many people out there willing to hit the ‘THIS IS HERESY!!!!’ button, and life is too short to have to deal with them.

in part 2: an alternative proposal. 

Doubly trained in music and systematic/philosophical theology, Peter Bannister is Associate Artistic Director and Composer-in-Association of SOLI DEO GLORIA Inc., a Chicago-based organization devoted to furthering sacred music in the Judeo-Christian tradition. He also co-directs the American Church in Paris’s participation in the John Templeton Foundation’s ‘Scientists in Congregations Ministry Initiative’, and is the author of the Music and Theology blog ‘Da stand das Meer’.

As Good Friday approaches more people will be thinking about ‘Why Jesus was killed?’  There are a bunch of reasons and probably more than one historical one too, but I think Woody Guthrie gets at least one of them right in his song ‘Jesus Christ’ so I decided to record it and share it with y’all.  Plus it might as well be the new American song for Occupy Wall Street Christians.  So Enjoy!

If you are wise then check out my favorite box set of Guthire.  It makes me smile.

Jesus Christ
Words and Music by Woody Guthrie

Jesus Christ was a man who traveled through the land
A hard-working man and brave
He said to the rich, “Give your money to the poor,”
But they laid Jesus Christ in His grave

Jesus was a man, a carpenter by hand
His followers true and brave
One dirty little coward called Judas Iscariot
Has laid Jesus Christ in His Grave

He went to the preacher, He went to the sheriff
He told them all the same
“Sell all of your jewelry and give it to the poor,”
And they laid Jesus Christ in His grave.

When Jesus come to town, all the working folks around
Believed what he did say
But the bankers and the preachers, they nailed Him on the cross,
And they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.

And the people held their breath when they heard about his death
Everybody wondered why
It was the big landlord and the soldiers that they hired
To nail Jesus Christ in the sky

This song was written in New York City
Of rich man, preacher, and slave
If Jesus was to preach what He preached in Galilee,
They would lay poor Jesus in His grave.

eBooks

This March was the month of the eBook!  Over the course of the month I have plowed through some awesome eBooks so if you kindle you need to download at least one of these for your brain.  Personally I am thrilled about the advent of eBook theology.  It is sure to create a market that gets better theology to a wider audience. Bo and I discuss this with Tony Jones in the newest TNT podcast.  Now for some eBooks!

Brian McLaren‘s return to fiction in The Word of the Lord to Democrats ($2.99) is flat out AWESOME. Imagine God getting a new prophet to speak a word to the Democratic party in our present political situation…oh yeah…and God wants the Democrats to stop being wusses and be an actually Left party.  That’s what happens.  I laughed out loud, said AMEN, & remembered how much I like McLaren’s fictional conversations.

James McGrath gives an outstanding introduction to historical criticism and the Gospel in The Burial of Jesus: What Does History Have to Do with Faith? ($2.99)  Not only is the book easy to read given the density of the scholarship being presented, McGrath also demonstrates a genuine liberal Christian stance towards critical scholarship and faith.  A perfect way to get your foot in New Testament scholarship.

Tony Jones  discusses the cross in A Better Atonement: Beyond the Depraved Doctrine of Original Sin ($2.99) and Julie Clawson gets cinematic in The Hunger Games and the Gospel: Bread, Circuses, and the Kingdom of God ($4.99). For more on either book just check out our interviews with the authors on the TNT podcast.

Books with Pages

For something PRACTICAL and USEFUL check out Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip and Dan Heath.  These two brothers examine the traits of ideas that stick, those that have impactful staying power.  The book is perfect for those who have a stack of learning, a powerful idea, or a real big dream but wonder how best to communicate it for your audience then this book is a must read.  It is based on a bunch of social scientific research and full of great examples and stories.  So if you are a teacher, preacher, or communicator of any kind this book is worth checking out.

For something PHILOSOPHICAL that is a nerd’s personal LIBRARY NECESSITY click over to Anthony Kenny’s A New History of Western Philosophy.  It is the newest history of philosophy and after a couple interactions with it I have put it on the same shelf as W.T.Jones and Frederick Copleston…which is a big deal compliment. Kenny is not only a world famous philosopher but he is also a Knight…a real one via the Queen.  I bought the four volumes put in this single volume as they came out.  I love them.  They give a summary of the period of history where the big figures and movements are discussed.  Then the second half covers the major topics and their development. Get it and nerd out.

 For something BIBLICAL and PHILOSOPHICAL get on to Keith Ward‘s newest book The Philosopher and the Gospels: Jesus Through the Lens of Philosophy.  I love Keith Ward.  In this super sweet book Keith gets all philosophical on the Gospels.  If you are interested in what Open Theism would sound like if you got to open theism via idealist philosophy and conversations with science then this is it.

Tunes!

Best album of the year thus far…Ben Kweller’s Go Fly A Kite.  This is a real deal Rock & Roll record.  Amazing melodies, great arrangements, and Ben’s perfect pop sensibilities shine throughout.  The album covers a bunch of emotions, tells some awesome stories, and keeps you humming all day long.

Most anticipated album in my world…Counting Crows’ Underwater Sunshine (or What We Did On Our Summer Vacation).  This is the Counting Crows’ first indie release and on April 10th you can expect me to go old school and purchase the physical CD and listen to it repeatedly while smoking a fine cigar.  The most exciting thing about this album is the Crows are finally recording all the cover songs uber-fans like me have enjoyed live and never had on our iPods.  When the Crows cover a song they don’t just play it, they retell it and often they own it.  And if the album wasn’t enough on April 17th Alecia and I will be seeing them LIVE here in LA.  It shall be amazing!

In the sermon I tell the story of the painting.  Hope you enjoy it.  LISTEN HERE (right click & save as to download)

To be Christian is to be human in a new way – to be fully human -  and it requires a decision to give oneself to the way of Jesus.  This decision is something only the individual can make.  It can’t be done for us and it costs all of us.  It requires us to take our own existence as seriously as God does.

•  The first was from theologian James K.A. Smith with An Open Letter to Praise Bands
  
•  The second was from Tony Jones guest posting at PoMoMusings on the next 100 years
  
•  The third was from Tara Burke over at Relevant Magazine on A Not-so-joyful Noise 

James has three suggestions for worship bands including the band leaders not praying so much between songs.  Tony thinks that public prayers should be eschewed all together – especially the written prayers of the pastor. Tara, as a musician herself, is trying to find the balance when the band hits an off note and keeping her focus on the actually worship and not on the stage performance.

The reason that I have taken special notice of this conversation is because I am in a bit of a transition. My whole life I have been in churches that utilize contemporary rock-n-roll style worship or contemporary praise for the music at the weekend public services. I was very comfortable lifting my hands, jumping up and down, and singing at the top of my lungs with my head thrown back and my eyes closed.  I now serve in a congregation that sings hymns with a big choir and an even bigger pipe organ. 

WELL – recently a group of us have been commissioned to launch an emergent gathering this fall in West LA. It is coming together so well and everyone seems to be on the same page … in every area except one: music.  You can tell that this is the one area where some fear and trepidation is present. “What will our music be like?  What kind of style will we use?”  Since the  music we traditionally have in the sunday service is so different than what we listen to in our cars … where does that leave us?

Luckily we have gifted musicians who love the Lord and I’m sure that they will navigate this just fine – plus they love Gungor so I am optimistic.

However, after reading these well written and thoughtful blogs I had three thoughts in my head:

1.  How bad is it that both James and Tara have to mention the center-of-attention behavior of the band?  It dawns on me, before I stick up for ‘worship teams’ in general – maybe I have not seen how bad it is out there and that I myself would be put-off (or horrified) at the spectacle they are referencing.
2.  Is this situation inflamed by an epistemology employed by evangelical and charismatic churches? I don’t know how else to say it but …. if you think that you are singing to God (vs. about God) and the God is actually listening to you and evaluating what is going on, then are you more critical of both the sour-notes and distracting ‘self’ behavior or overly elaborate performances?
3. If the band is there to facilitate my /our worship and connecting with God, then keeping the songs simple and somewhat familiar is a better way to facilitate a group to be in unison and not distracted. We are able to ‘enter in’  to a ‘spirit of worship’. But then people circle back and are critical that the songs are simple, repeat too much, and grow stale with constant use.

It seems to me that there is a lot being assumed when we talk about worship music. We all sort of know that worship is an all-week whole-life expression – we just sort of take a short cut in our language and talk about church music as worship.

I read the book The Argument Culture by Deborah Tannen more than a decade ago and said out loud “Oh! So THAT is why I bristle at the either/or, Republican/Democrat, Right/Left dichotomy! – now it makes sense.”

I reject the spectrum at every turn … but recently I have begun to make an exception in regards to the spectrum. The spectrum is only applicable for someone who thinks that there is a spectrum. I will only try to get them to see that not everyone exists on a spectrum nor are they accounted for by a right-left binary. I no longer try to dislodge them of the notion as a whole – I only try to introduce that a spectrum is incomplete and insufficient.

Lately I have been overwhelmed – probably because it is an election year – by binary language and dualistic thinking. In these conversations I have discovered that it can be quite effective to introduce a simple word play. Spectrums are not straight lines – like light, they bend. 

You may think that this sounds overly simplistic but just think about the rise of the Tea-Party and the emergence of the Occupy movement coming in roughly the same window of time. Now those two groups would say that they stand for completely different things. To an outside observer, however, for all the minor distinctions they share a ‘Major’ concern: the system is broken and we can’t trust our leaders to fix it. 

This week, I am starting a series on my personal blog working though the Death of the Liberal Class by Chris Hedges. He begins the book with a 25 year old former Marine walking along a highway in Upstate NY that I driven. He is disillusioned with the economic and political systems and is getting ready to do something about it. At one point the young vet says:

“I could see there was no difference between the two main political parties. There is a false left/right paradigm which diverts the working class from the real reasons for their hardships.”

I am looking forward to the series in the exact inverse proportion to how much I am dreading this election cycle.* I have lots of Tea Party types in my life and many Occupy sympathizers as friends. I hear them both saying that the system is not working and that those in charge are not capable of fixing it, that we the people need to be more hands on.

Chris Hedges analyzes the crisis and articulates the root causes better than anyone I have found. The slant of the series will revolve around one simple question “If Hedges is right about the world – how then should we do theology? 

The Tea Party, the Occupy Movement, the global economic crisis and the ongoing wars are telling us something … and it is not about the End of Days. Doing theology in this environment will inherently have some continuity with historical approaches but it will require some tools that may not be familiar to us as well as some necessary innovations.

 The left and right think that they are far apart, but in a bent system they are closer than they would believe. At some point on an arc the far right and the far left almost touch. 

I end the way Hedges begins, with a quote from George Orwell:

At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is “not done” to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was “not done” to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.  “Freedom of the Press”

* Tavis Smiley has been saying for quite a while that this will be the ugliest and most racist election in modern times. 

1. There is nothing better than  ’shuffle songs’ while driving
2. I could use any of these in a sermon – there is theology in all of them

So I got thinking about the top 5 albums that I love to do theology to/with?  Here is my list, I would love to hear yours

5. Alison Krauss  & Union Station: live

4. Five For Fighting: America Town 

3. Mumford & Sons: Sigh No More  

2. Blues Traveler: Four

1. OAR: In Between Now & Then  

You can see from my list that A) I like music with guitar & drums B) musicians who don’t dance while they sing C) rich lyrical tapestries

Honorable Mention goes to MeWithOutYou: Brother Sister 

It is taken from William Jennings Bryan‘s attack on ‘modernist’ religion which he believed was undermining the foundations of society.  As much fear as it is sure to put in your hearts, when you get done repenting for listening in biology class I would love to hear what you think about updating the stairs of descent.  What are the stairs labeled today? Should they even be stairs? Should they being going down?

This descent is how Bryan understood the Modernist decent into religious, moral, and cultural relativity.

I have some theology books and Homebrewed stickers to giveaway for those who help me come up with a new rendering! So Deacons lend us your creativity.

Now for a word from Mr. Bryan….

Is the Bible true’? That is the great issue in the world today, surpassing in importance all national and international questions. The Bible is either true or false it is either the Word of God or the work of man. If  the Bible is false, it is the greatest impostor that the world has ever known . . . .

As there can be no civilization without morals, and as morals rest upon religion, and religion upon God, the question whether the Bible is true or false is the supreme issue among men. As the Bible is the only book known to the Christian world whose authority depends upon inspiration, the degradation of the Bible leaves the Christian world without a standard of morals other than that upon which men can agree. As men’s reasons do not lead them to the same conclusion, and as greed and self-interest often overthrow the reason, the fixing of any moral standard by agreement is impossible. If the Bible is overthrown, Christ ceases to he a Divine character, and His words, instead of being binding upon the conscience, can followed or discarded according as the individuals convenience may dictate.

I was on my lunch break today and I went to the Weather Channel website to read a fascinating set of articles about the conditions that contributed to last week’s deadly swath of destruction.  I got a Tweet so I clicked over to Twitter to see what was going on. I scrolled down the stream and noticed that John Piper was getting a lot of pushback. After reading his blog on how God used the tornadoes to kill people  … I am left with some questions:

I have challenged Piper’s tornado theology (and suggested a better way to read the Bible) before and been told “You are mis-reading him. If you gave him the benefit of the doubt, you would see that he is really concerned about God’s glory.”

But in today’s post, he is saying exactly what I have been interpreting him as saying! Why do reformed folks think we are not getting his real message? Look, I get it – and I just don’t like it. Its not that I am misunderstanding him. I am understanding him and disagreeing. This is not semantics or rhetoric. We actually disagree on substance here.

It’s tough to be hard on somebody if they are consistent. But after reading Piper’s newest blog, I am a little bit turned around. He says:

Therefore, God’s will for America under his mighty hand, is that every Christian, every Jew, every Muslim, every person of every religion or non-religion, turn from sin and come to Jesus Christ for forgiveness and eternal life. Jesus rules the wind. The tornadoes were his.

He follows that up by saying “But before Jesus took any life in rural America, he gave his own on the rugged cross. Come to me, he says, to America.”

As I read Piper: Jesus sends tornadoes to punish the wicked. He also sends them to the righteous because they are righteous (to show this according to the blog). So here is my question: we are supposed to turn to Jesus because of the tornadoes, a turn to righteousness from wickedness … but then God causes tornadoes on the righteous too?

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On top of the provoking questions we are joined by a special guest, Deacon Dr. Eric Hall, who brings his own unique take on the issues of the week.  We start by engaging some recent blog posts and then move to more philosophical matters.

We want you to join the TNT podcast. Comment on the blogs, call in 678-590-BREW, or click the “Send Voice Mail” button on the right side of the homepage and your voice can shape an episode soon.

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Here’s the ‘don’t be a dick’ pledge put out by Ben Gleib. Here’s the blogs we talk about…She who is not, Did Jesus need to die to save us from our sins?, I hate religion but love Jesus, What is theology and Secularization – focusing on the work of Heidegger, Charles Taylor (both Secular and Modern Social Imaginaries) and Eberhard Jungel.

During those 40 days leading up to Easter our deepest need for change won’t be addressed by eating fish on Fridays instead of cow flesh or giving up chocolate until Easter. Perhaps what we need is something like the watchfulness Jesus encouraged — or what Gandhi called Experiments in Truth: practices that respect the bodily nature of human spirituality and transformation. (Check out his freshest book for more details)

In this special episode you will hear Mark Scandrette lay down the challenge.  It was recorded live at my home in preparation for some Lenten experiments with some friends and my high schoolers in confirmation.  Just among my friends there are some taking a fast from all critical speaking (including self-directed criticism), meat & alcohol (I’m one of these), gossiping (I would have linked to them but…), and all media (which means they will be behind in the podcast episodes come Easter).  Just this past week’s time of sharing was pretty powerful example of how much one can learn and change in the right type of community.  Any way, I’m sure you can imagine when you hear the conversation.

Be sure to check out some VIDEO from Mark’s visit here. For more audiological Scandrette check out his first and second visit to the podcast.  Then there is the Homebrewed 3D event with Philip Clayton and Daniel Kirk we recorded in Mark’s house.

Here’s the PODCAST!

I also recognize that it is getting harder to do in our contemporary context. I am a loud critic of simple dualism (constantly contending with my Evangelical associates)  – but even I must concede when there are two main schools of thought that have set themselves up in opposition to each other.  I buck the ‘spectrum’ thinking like Liberal v. Conservative (as if those were the only two options) in almost every circumstance. However, when it comes to reading the Bible, it is tough to avoid the set of major trenches that have been dug on either side of this narrow road.

 The first group reads the Bible in what is called a ‘straight forward’ way and while they spend a lot of time with the text, there is little acknowledgement of what is going on behind the text. This group reads the Bible primarily devotionally, preaches exegetically and views it as not just instructive but binding for all times and places.

In my interactions with this group, there is little awareness of hermeneutics (in may cases they may have never heard the word before) and even less willingness to engage in scholarship that does anything behind the text.

The second group engages in Historical-Critical methods. They are willing to look at things like redaction (later editing). They don’t harmonize the Gospels into one Gospel. They are willing to acknowledge that Matthew and Luke’s conception, birth and subsequent details do not line up. They understand that while the story of Daniel happens in the 5th century BC – it was not written in the 5th century BC. They joke about Moses writing the 1st five books of Bible (how did he write about his own death?).

 Lately I have been engaging books like :

How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now by James L. Kugel

To Each Its Own Meaning, Revised and Expanded: An Introduction to Biblical Criticisms and Their Application by Stephen R. Haynes

Whose Bible Is It? A History of the Scriptures Through the Ages by Jaroslav Pelikan

She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse by Elizabeth A. Johnson

Sexism and God Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology by Rosemary Radford Ruether

 Over the last 4 years, it has become painfully clear to me that we have a problem when it comes to reading the Bible. Simply stated, those who spend the most time with the Bible know less about it but make greater claims for it than those who do more scholarship on it but may have little faith in it. 

I was listening to a seminar on the Historical-Jesus and talking to several friends of mine who do Historical-Criticism, here are 3 sentences that no evangelical I know even have ears to hear:

• Paul didn’t even write that letter
• Jesus probably didn’t say that sentence
• The Bible is wrong about this

I get in trouble for saying much much milder things about the literary device of the virgin birth, the prophetic concern of Revelation which is limited to the first 2 centuries CE, and  Jesus being ironic about ‘bringing a sword’. Can you imagine what would happen if I thought that Paul didn’t write the letters that are attributed to him, that Jesus did not utter the red-letter words we have recorded in the gospels or that the Bible was wrong about something?  I can’t.

So how does a moderate engage Biblical scholarship without stumbling over Historical-Critical pitfalls and Historical Jesus land-mines?  The thing that I hear over and over is

“Just stick with N.T. Wright. He has navigated the gulf for you”

Now, I love N.T. Wright as much as the next emergent evangelical (especially his Everybody series) … but I am as unwilling, on one hand, to forego the best and most comprehensive stuff (like Dom Crossan’s work on Empire) as I am, on the other hand, to subscribe to the inane prerequisites of the Jesus Seminar.

What I would really like to see is a move within the emerging generation that is tenacious about engaging contemporary scholarship while fully embracing the kind of devotional passion that the innerant camp demonstrates  – all the while avoiding the fearful and intimidating chokehold that camp utilizes to squelch innovation & thought.

I want the next generation to both find life and direction in the scriptures and also to not have to read the tough parts with their fingers crossed behind their back.

a hopeful moderate – Rev. Bo C. Sanders

For those who do not want to scour the comments to find the links to other resources:
Daniel Kirk’s book  “Jesus have I loved but Paul?”
Ben Witherington’s  book list   

This whole controversy gets to me at two deep levels:

•  I used to say those things. Just 4 short years ago I was an evangelical church-planter who regularly contrasted Jesus’ message to ‘religion’.
•  I am shocked at how dismissive so many educated and/or mainline folks are being to Bethke’s poem.

I have heard many people just brush aside his use of ‘religion’ as ignorant, immature, stupid, uneducated, silly, shallow, un-historic, and false. The thing that I want to yell is

“YOU FOOLS – like it or not, that is how people use the word religion in our culture.”

If you asked A) people under 40 and B) evangelicals to define religion you would get a picture that is almost identical to Bethke’s .

I now hang out with mainline folks and people who read books on theology. They are  quick to say

• that shows a poor understanding of religion
• that is a silly/stupid/shallow definition of religion
• that shows little historical perspective on the role that religion has played

Like it or not – this is the definition that many young people are using for religion. When they say (increasingly) that they are spiritual-but-not-religious , this is what they mean.

I am pursuing a PhD in the field of Practical Theology for the very reason that I want to engage how people live out their faith – practice it – in particular communities. The two things that I am willing to concede up front are that

• Many North American Christians and most Evangelicals utilize simple dualism (Physical v. Spiritual, Natural v. Supernatural, Temporal v. Eternal, Secular v. Sacred, Old v. New Testament, Law v. Grace). This is how they think.
• Religion is conceptualized as the man-made structures that attempt to facilitate, replicate, and falsely imitate the real thing that God does/wants-to-do in the world.

It is popular to say in these circles “Religion is man’s attempt to connect with God. Jesus is God’s attempt to connect with man.” *

I know that there are many good attempts to connect with religious tradition. I have heard many addresses regarding the root of the word religion and how the ‘lig’ is the same as ligament or ‘binding’ and how it is an attempt to bind us together – not to have us bound up in rules! My question is this: Are you willing to engage this dualistic and uniformed populist definition of religion that is in place OR would your rather hold to your enlightened and informed historical perspective and allow a conversation to happen without you because you are above it? **

I know that it can be frustrating to circle back and entertain naive perspectives. But if the alternative is to let the conversation happen without a historically informed perspective, then I think we have no choice but to concede the initial conditions of the dialogue in an attempt to express an informed/educated alternative.

*   there are alternatives like “Religion is our attempt to connect with God, Christianity is God’s connecting with us.” 
**  I have intentionally provided two alternatives to honor the dualistic nature of this mentality. 

J.W.: So, what does your god look like? And how is that look any different from Piper’s or Driscoll’s?

Me:

Thanks for asking! Actually there is quite a substantial difference. Let me point out just a couple of things to start:

A) I don’t believe that language about God is univocal (as I have said). SO we begin in humility understanding that all our words, metaphors and concepts are OUR best attempt.
B) I believe that langue (since it is not univocal) functional relationally. When Jesus uses ‘Father’ language, he is talking about the WAY in which relates to a father. Not that God’s ontological being is Father in an exacting and representative way. It is an expressive use of language. That is the nature of language.
C) The way that Scripture is expressed is historic. I believe that the Bible is Inspired by Holy Spirit. That means that Holy Spirit was at work in the authors and ultimately in those who collected and validated the canon. (I confess this by faith). Those authors were historically situated and particularly located. They expressed their thoughts in their best language in their best frameworks. We see that historical locatedness and account for it when we engage their writings.
D) Whether you call it ‘original sin’ (I don’t) or ‘human nature’ or (my favorite) relational brokeness and conflicting biological impulses … humans have a problem. We are not 100% whole. Something is wrong (we don’t even do the good we WANT to do). That means that in every epoch and era there are things in place that are not perfect. Those show up in scripture – since it is a snap shot of its environment. The Bible is fully human (and I believe fully divine in a Process sense) but it is not ABSENT of humanity. It is full of humanity.

So If you take just those 4 things in contrast to Piper and Driscoll, then my God talk is:

1. in Humility not certainty or pushy
2. Relational not static or exacting
3. Historical not trans-historic
4. Human not un-human

Does that help? SO that is my starting point. From there I diverge wildly from the other two.

J.W.

Well, first of all, thanks for a response.
Second, no offense, but you use an awful lot of words to not say too much. Or, to say the same thing over and over while denying that you are saying one thing, yet actually affirming another. Since I don’t have any real idea what you believe Piper and Driscoll believe, I still don’t know that you are painting a different god or not.
You start out saying that all expressions of God are only a best attempt, but then you claim to believe the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So, which is it? Our best attempt, or Holy Spirit inspired? See the problem there. It’s either one or the other, can’t be both.
Certainly the Bible is written situationally. God could have inspired men to write it so it only made sense at one point in the entire course of time, or He could have inspired it so that it meant the same thing from beginning to end, from the beginning of time to the end of time. And written so that ordinary people could figure it out with a little help from His Holy Spirit. Which is what I believe. You seem to believe that only post-modern thought with a lot of help from certain philosophers can figure out this whole humility, relation, human thing. Sorry, way too many creeks have flowed over their banks throughout history for me to believe that only recently have we been smart enough to figure this whole mess out.
God (Holy Spirit) inspired the whole Bible. He could have very easily caused His writers to use words that wouldn’t mean anything to their (at the time, current) readers, but would only matter eons later. IF that is what He intended.
Again, you haven’t showed me anything but dichotomies, and nothing of substance that disproves anything Piper et al believe-which I still don’t know what you believe they believe.

Me:

1) I did use a lot of words, but it was to say quite a bit. Unfortunately it was not what you were looking for so you think I didn’t say much. I assure you that I say quite enough in my 300 words to get in a lot of trouble in many circles!

2) You are 100% wrong that “It’s either one or the other, can’t be both.” Inspiration is not the OVERriding of human intent – it is the filling UP and expanding of human intent. Inspiration does not make something inhuman. You are thinking of something else not inspiration. Then you accuse me of dichotomies? Weird. I am talking about a participatory-relational model that transcends either/or thinking. You must be confused.

3) Here is an example of the difference (which you apparently were not able to pick up on): It is equally a valid to call god She as it is to call god He. Because in the end, god is neither. Those are pronouns that stand in for their antecedent but which do not entirely explain god or contain god’s ontological reality. God did not give Christianity a masculine feel. We did. God is God that is beyond our biological categorizations and anatomical classification. God is not defined by those – we simply conceptualize God and these terms and portray those conceptions in our language.

This is the nature of language. It is symbolic – analogical – and metaphorical.  That does not mean that we are not saying anything when we talk about God. We are. It does not mean that there is no inspiration. There is. Those are not mutually exclusive.

To quote Elizabeth Johnson in She Who Is :

Words about God are cultural creatures, intwined with the mores and adventures of the faith community that uses them. As cultures shift, so too does the specificity of God-talk. 

To call God She is just as accurate and as inaccurate as calling God ‘he’.

Forgive us for hiding our doubts
accepting easy and trite answers
and letting others give us knowledge of you
as if you were an object to hold and not an illusive subject -
as if you were a mountain and not a fire.

If you will, like your three disciples on the mountain,
transfigure our vision of you – terrify us with newness
rupture the stories we tell ourselves that keep us from loving our world as it is
free us from the bondage of finality,
finality in our understanding, our forgiving, our justice, our living

If you will, take us up the mountain
transfigure our entire reality
and give us the courage to follow Christ
down the mountain
and into the world transfigured by the God we know not yet
but discover along the way

Here’s my prayer for this Transfiguration Sunday.  The lectionary text is Mark 9:2-9.

This is the challenge Mark Scandrette dropped at the Homebrewed Christianity Head Quarters this Wednesday.  I thought I would post this clip from the gathering to entice a few Deacons into grabbing some friends for some experimenting in the way of Jesus this Lent. Check out the Homebrewed visit to Mark’s house in San Fran here and his last interview on the podcast here.

An Experiment in Truth from tripp fuller on Vimeo.

Here are three reasons that I think we have permission to move on if we were so inclined:

• Jesus didn’t use the word.

It might seem simplistic but Jesus didn’t speak english and there is nothing magical about the english word ‘kingdom’. The New Testament uses the phrase Basileia Theou. Maybe we should just go back to that. We keep words like ‘koinonia’ and ‘selah’ in their original form so maybe we could just say when Jesus did and let it go untranslated. Then people would have to reconstruct what the concept means without importing all of their preconceived impressions.

• The age of Kings is over. 

I can not believe the hysteria that occurred around the ‘Royal Wedding’ of William to Kate Middleton – especially by Americans. Just the name the House of Commons make me wince. I am so glad that Age of Kings is over. Divine Right would be just laughable to me … if I didn’t know how much sway it held for so long. Regardless, those days are over and maybe it is time to update our language about God’s ways as well.

• The power of pronouns. 

Even those who acknowledge that the nature of language is symbolic and metaphorical – even those who recognize that God language is not univocal – can get caught up if one refers to God as ‘She’.  Even those who know that it is only a pronoun that functions as a place holder want to be careful about the antecedent to the pronoun.  That is why I am not sure that it would work to move to a counter Queendom, a more inclusive Kin-dom or a non-authoritarian Commonwealth.

Now I know that there will be some obstacle to overcome.
Number one among them will that ‘it is in the Bible’. Let me say two things
A) I love that it is in the Bible. It was powerful imagery for its day and it says something really important about God.
B) The authors of scripture conceptualized of God’s work in a way that was relevant to their time. Maybe we should as well.

Another problem I see is Christmas pageants. What will be do when we quote passages like Isaiah 9:7 which get translated into english as “His kingdom will have no end”. But I think it would be fine to have passages like this along side the shepherds and the manger (both are virtual artifacts of an agrarian society)  - as long as it was not our primary (or only) way of articulating and conceptualizing the work of God in the world.

One last thing to suggest: Jesus was in a context that was dominated by Empire. He positioned his vision and language in contrast/opposition to it. But is that our predominant contemporary element? I would suggest that in a venue of Global Capitalism  it may be more appropriate and powerful to speak of the Economy of God. 

* I always have to clarify that as a man, I am not anti-masculine. I really like being a man – it’s just that only using masculine terms may have been helpful for clarity when Genesis 1-3 was written, it has become unclear and unhelpful. The hegemonic patriarchy of religious language is pitiful to hold onto and especially when it is done in a univocal way. 

The most measurable and tangible way I know how to pose this question is something along the lines of the following: how does your church spend its money, and what does this show about its values? (we could talk about time and energy as well, but I’m focusing on this dimension because I think it might be the most important for our context.)  It’s temping at first to suspect that this is too much of a practical way to frame the topic from a theological perspective, but I want to argue that it might be one of the most profound theological questions that can be asked, especially for churches that are enjoying the privileges of imperial security.

Defendants of the currently dominant but perhaps waning church structures in America are quick to argue that there’s no “one size fits all” solution, and that’s fine.  But then I would still want to say to them, how and when do you plan to start actually contributing to this so-called mandate for change in the world with your current financial model?

Most churches dedicate the vast majority of their budgets to payroll, building and utility costs.  Obviously, these things are necessary, and I would even concede that something like the aesthetic quality of a worship venue can make a big difference with respect to what audience is being reached and that it is therefore sometimes a worthwhile investment.  Programs that foster spiritual formation shouldn’t be neglected, and of course staff members have to be paid in order for some tasks to get done.

At the same time, I don’t think this is enough, and in my view it’s probably not even a primary concern for Christians in comparison to the severity and urgency that characterizes the concerns of our global ecological and political-economic situation.  And this has everything to do with eschatology.  Along with many other homebrewed deacons, my contention is that if our beliefs about the future are such that relying on God is emphasized to the point of justifying the apathy that we as Christians seem to be comfortable with most of the time, then we have a bad eschatology.  On the other hand, as Tripp and Bo articulated quite well on the TNT podcast a few weeks ago, an eschatology of co-laboring orthopraxis – as opposed to an otherworldly one – need not consign us to completely depend on our own strength either.  That was one of the mistakes made with the post-millennialism of protestant liberalism at the turn of the 20th century.

With that said, let me give an example of how this might be done in practice.  So there’s a church in Austin that set a goal a while back to work toward structuring themselves so as to allow for giving away half of what they receive in monetary donations every year to non-profit programs and charitable project partners (a homeless food ministry in Guatemala, building a school in Uganda, staffing an after-school program in East Austin, and various other sustainable development initiatives).  A few years later now, they are already more than halfway there, having consistently been giving 35% of their tithes and offerings to these outreach partnerships.  They see this as only fair, since they expect themselves as a membership to tithe… because if we’re all giving ten percent of our income, but the church spends most of that on itself, how do we expect to actually do something about the greatest threats to our planet and human life? And this is not a small church.  They have a big building and a big staff.  And yet with this long-term goal in place, they’re still using their big suburban resources to make a substantial difference in the world despite the other challenges that come along with a missional-attractional approach to ministry.

Perhaps even more radically, a totally different church in Waco, TX of comparable size pays all of its staff members the same salary – from the senior pastor to the secretary (in addition to a stipend per child in the family).  This frees up a ton of their resources for their missional church planting efforts around the world and forces their team of pastoral leaders to walk the talk of living simply.

Now, it may be that neither of these churches are quite “up to speed” with an appreciation of the most pressing global crises from the standpoint of their theological significance, but at least they understand the intimate relationship between organization, budget allocation and missional accomplishment.  In light of these examples then, I just have to wonder: can we not ask this same question about balance sheets and God’s economic values wherever we are and begin to think creatively about how to work toward a better future – by leading churches to put their money where their mission is, by actually contributing a sizable portion of their cash flow to the realization of new creation in the present?

I never struggle to believe in God. I believe in the deep core of my being. I have faith in my bones. I breath this stuff. I am filled with Holy Spirit and that gives purpose to my day and direction to my life.

I never doubt the reality of the Christian faith … until I listen to a conservative like John Piper or Marc Driscoll talk. Then, it is all too apparent to me that we are (at least partially) projecting our greatest hopes and dreams onto the screen of the heavens. We are outsourcing our fears and evils onto a cosmic bad guy called the devil. We have created a galactic father figure in the sky (paging Dr. Freud).

It is so clear when Piper talks that it makes me want to retreat into the post-liberal work of George Lindbeck!  

Xenophanes is famed to have said:

“If oxen and horses and lions had hands and were able to draw with their hands and do the same things as men, horses would draw the shapes of gods to look like horses and oxen would draw them to look like oxen, and each would make the gods bodies have the same shape as they themselves had.”

It gets boiled down to “If horses had gods – they would look like horses.”

Most days I can stave that off. I can avoid the haunting suspicion and nagging doubt … but what Piper does is create a God in his own image – there is no other way to say it – it is idolatry.

So what? you may ask. Why even bother with it?  Because, I believe that there really is a God.

C.S. Lewis wrote a poem one time called “a footnote to all prayers” (it references Pheidias who was  a legendary statue maker in the ancient world) 

Footnote to All Prayers

He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshipping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskilfully, beyond desert;
And all men are idolators, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.

Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.

This is why we must acknowledge what it is we are doing when we pray, when we preach, and when we practice. We are doing the best we can with words, symbols, sounds and images. But if those images are solidified and codified past their point of original artistry, mysticism and metaphor – then it becomes something deadly to the soul and dangerous to the one seeking the real and living God revealed in Christ.

Prof. Jeffery Kripal joins the podcast this week to philosophize about his love for the paranormal and mystical part of human experience.  In doing so he turns to the wonderful world of comic books and science fiction but not as a reporter or historian but as a place where deep metaphysical issues and religious questions are being addressed through pop culture.  I have been thrilled to share this conversation ever since we recorded it.  While many of our regular listeners won’t be able to go everywhere Jeff goes philosophically…Gnosticism & psychedelic drugs… I am confident his cultural exegesis and mapping of mystical narratives will have you entertained and intrigued.

Mutant Linkage…

* Mutants & Mystics was a Patheos book club so there are a ton of blog reviews, a Kripal interview, round table, sample from the book, and more…check it out.

* Ryan Parker has the most uber-awesome review of the book

* If you dig the interview check out Jeff’s podcast The Impossible Talk Podcast where he and his film making partner Scott Hulan Jones have “sophisticated, open discussions of and lectures on the paranormal and anomalous dimensions of American culture.”

*Now for a fun moment from X-men…

• Prophetic Christianity – critiquing the empire
• Therapeutic Christianity – chaplains to the empire
• Messianic Christianity – escaping everything (including the empire) through utopian visions

Nowhere are these three more evident than in the realm of preaching.

I found this flowchart a couple of weeks ago. It is just a simple illustration but it reminded me of so many sermons that I have heard. I love a good sermon. I love listening to good preaching and I love trying to deliver a good sermon.

But I have been haunted by this funny flowchart since I first saw it.

The reason that it got to me is that so many sermons I have heard follow this exact formula. It is like they are using this exact progression for sermon prep.
…which wouldn’t be terrible – IF the point of the gospel was to make people happy.

If the point of the gospel was to make people happy then this progression would be the best and most helpful thing that has ever been invented.

But, and this is a big butt, if the point of the gospel is anything other than making people happy, then this kind of formulaic thinking is the most distracting thing in the world.

In fact, I am almost willing to go out on a limb and say that the point of the gospel is something other than to make people happy and therefore… this is not the way that we should be constructing sermons. I’m not the only on who thinks so. One of my favorite books has a section about Postmodern Christology that says:

 Of course, the goals and ethos of spirituality in this culture are very different from those of the early church or even the modern church. The postmodern notion of religion is characterized by consumerism:

“the individual in the role of consumer is encouraged to pick and choose from a vast inventory of religious symbols and doctrines, to select those beliefs that best express his or her private sentiments.” 2

Such spirituality is individualistic; it does not require a form of communal direction or oversight but may be enjoyed in the privacy of one’s own life. This kind of spirituality is effectively delivered within the marketplace of desire. The church of the third millennium finds itself in the midst of a culture that has become

“nothing but a meeting place for individual wills, each with its own set of attitudes and preferences and who understand that world solely as an arena for the achievement of their own satisfaction, who interpret reality as a series of opportunities for their enjoyment and for whom the last enemy is boredom.” 3

I am haunted by this reality. If we think that consumerism is the problem and we think that christianity is the solution then we are in competition with other options. What is clear is that we are no longer the big kid in the sandbox. Christianity no longer has a monopoly as it did during Christendom when so many of our doctrines and expectations were solidified.

 I have utilized a lot of whit, sass, and spunk in this post but now I just want to say it:

The point of christian preaching is not to help people be happy. In a consumer culture we are called to empower the believer, comfort the downtrodden, challenge the status quo and proclaim a preferable future.  It is also within the scope to proclaim freedom to the captive, remind the righteous  of their roots, impart gifts to those in need, and call the wayward to repentance.

The one thing that I am sure of is that the goal of christian preaching is not to make consumers happy. If that is the case, we need to utilize a different flowchart than the world provides when preparing to preach.

if anyone doesn’t want to talk about preaching but would rather chat about environmentalism and postcolonial stuff – I have this other article as well. 

The “Inverse Theology” that is referenced is from Walter Benjamin and Theodore Adorno.

Also referenced is the popular blog from last month “Undercover Boss” by Stephen Keating 

Two things: #1 If you want to read an amazing response to Piper (via Rachel Held Evans) then check out HBC Deacon Austin Roberts’ response here:

#2 It might be far more profitable to avoid the whole Twitter/Facebook/Internet argument and read these women:

Elizabeth Johnson on She Who Is 

Sally McFague on Metaphorical Language about God 

Rosemary Radford Ruether on Sexism and God-Talk 

Ellen Leonard on Women and Christ

Monica A. Coleman on Making a Way Out of No Way

Naomi Goldenberg on the Changing of the Gods and the End of Traditional Religions 

Rita Nashima Brock on The Feminist Redemption of God (Christianity) 

Letty M. Russell on Church in the Round: Feminist Interpretation of the Church

Jacquelyn Grant on Black Women’s Experience as a Source for Doing Theology 

In my opinion, that would be a fantastic spend of your time.    - Bo

You can watch the whole video on his page or Download the MP3 HERE for your iPod.

Here’s Chris’ summary of what we talk about….

Synopsis:
No more playing golf with Pharaoh, says Tripp Fuller – who’s convinced that if progressives would care less about being politically correct and more about the radical discipleship Jesus taught, then the North American Church would look much, much different. Here are my notes from the interview:

Filling the Gap
Tripp believes there’s a big gap for progressives to fill in American Christianity, where people are looking for a more moderate, inclusive, and less confrontational way of being in Christian community. He says if progressives can get over their laryngitis, the harvest is ready.

Therapeutic vs. Prophetic
We all want to be taken care of – and that makes taking care of others very tough. Tripp reminds us that Jesus didn’t come into the world to make us happy, but to do the prophetic work of reconciling the world to God.

Understanding Today’s Young Adults
Saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in school debt, economically forced to live far from home, today’s young people are more about time and talent than treasure. The church of the future will likely see less paid clergy and more lay ownership/involvement to make things work.

You can follow along and ask questions on Twitter at #EVTC where the main sessions will also be streamed live.

Some of you will be looking to download some last minute audiological goodness for your journey.
Here are some suggestions:

Philip Clayton was interviewed on Doug Pagitt’s radio show. Link is here [all of these are also available on I-tunes]

a quick follow up to the post earlier this week

 I wanted to thank everyone who gave feedback on the Four Locations of Theology in the 21st century post from earlier this week. I appreciate the comments here, on facebook, and the emails.  It has given me a lot to think about and I wanted to clarify three themes that have emerged.

Three clarifications:

• Reason seems to be the suspicious quadrant. Every time I bring up quadrilateral, more than half of the conversation will be centered on reason. This week was no exception. Reason draws the most concern – which is funny to me because tradition is the one that I find most suspect.

Here is the thing I would want to clarify: the other 3 themes of Scripture, Tradition and Experience all have reason woven into them. Those who wrote the scriptures, those who established the tradition and even our won experience are all saturated with reason. It is inescapable. The scriptures did not fall from the sky! They passed through the author’s minds and were processed with reason. Same with tradition. The creeds were not divined in some sort of supernatural ceremony. The were constructed and reasoned. Our experiences are interpreted utilizing our filters, frameworks and lenses.

 It seems important then to clarify that those three are not independent of reason but are dynamically intertwined with it. It would be useless to take out reason (as some have suggested) because it interlinked and inescapable. 

•  It may be that the quad needs something else. Some suggested replacing one of the 4 elements with an alternative. My favorite idea came from my friend Raphael who said

 “I suggest we add a fifth source for the practice of theology in the 21st century: Imagination!”

Admittedly, it would no longer be a quad! but I think that the tradeoff is that you would get adventure and zest incorporated and not just a static, conserving, or historical product.

•  There are no guarantees. Even if we could all agree to utilize the quad for the theological endeavor, there is no guarantee that we would all come up with some thing or come out with the same conclusions. This seems to be a major concern – that we can not ensure the outcome of such an endeavor.

I am surprised at the conserving nature of such mentalities! People are ok to ‘go on the journey’ as long as we predictably end up basically where we started.

Think all you want. Explore new thoughts and incorporate science … just don’t stray too far from the foundations of antiquity!  Integrate new realities and account for ongoing historical developments … just make sure that you end up with the same thing we started with.

I have not overstated this hesitancy and resistance. But the reality is that there are no guarantees. You may start out an Evangelical and end up being an Emergent type working in a Mainline church with Process theology as your main conversation partner!  (for instance)

 In summary: 

1. You can’t get rid of reason, it is already present in the other three. Scripture, Tradition and Experience are inextricably laced with it.
2. The quad may need a little something extra. The 21st century may require some zest, adventure and imagination
3. There are no guarantees. While we want to honor the historical expression and provide continuity with the trajectory … it might look a little different and think a little different than it did in the 3rd or 17th century.

Thanks for all your feedback, thoughts, and concerns. I appreciate the conversation.

In the article Olson is trying to fight off criticisms from the ultra-reformed, or rabbid-Calvinist wing of the Evangelical camp. Folks like MacArthur, Piper, Driscoll, and Mohler – besides being continuously contentious – are always throwing around words like heresy and orthodoxy at folks like Olson, Rob Bell, and Brian McLaren (all former pod guests).

 Here is the thing: there is no Evangelical Orthodoxy

I love reading books like Revisioning Evangelical Theology by Stanley Grenz, Discovering an Evangelical Heritage by Donald Dayton, History of Evangelical Theology by Roger Olson.  I was part of the the Lussane gathering of young leaders in Malaysia. I was very vocal last summer that Evangelical is not only a political term but has deep theological implications and is inherently and historically theological (I used Bebbington’s 4 indicators) .

 But there are two things I think need to be clear:

I got a book called the Evangelical Catechism. It is a compilation of consensus beliefs from 200 leaders, pastors, and thinkers that were surveyed. I like the book – but that is not the same as a catechism! We have no Pope, no ability to call a council, no catechism … so we need to knock it off with the “Orthodox” insistence and throwing around the word  “heresy”. LOOK: there actually is an ‘Orthodox’ church and they think that  the likes of Driscoll, MacArthur, and Piper (as well as the rest of us) has lost their way!  *

1) There is no evangelical catechism and there is no evangelical orthodoxy!  I proposed earlier this week that a dynamic conversation is the best we can hope for (I am partial to the Wesleyan quadrilateral). Can we have consensus? Ok. Can we have conversation? Absolutely. Is there a governing body to enforce your brand of ‘orthodoxy’? NO – so knock it off. Get some new words in your vocab. Think of some other ways to say what you want to say and stop pretending like you believe only what the early church believed. It fantasy at best and delusion at worst.

2) You can’t kick me out of the family. We all have siblings that think we are off and even wrong. Some brothers don’t talk to each other for years … but they are still family. That is not what determines if you are a part of a family! It is not how it works. So snuggle up sister! We are in this together, like it or not, we have the same parent, we were birthed through the same water, and we have the same blood. We don’t have to agree on everything – but stop trying to kick me out of the ‘fam’ bro! We are in this for eternity.

Now I know someone will come along and say “I told you its a meaningless term” … but I want to say

Hey Mr. Jones – if you don’t want to be evangelical that is fine. But some of us call this family and it means a lot to us. If you are done with the term, fine. But to us it has deep meaning we still use it as a family name. If you don’t count yourself as a member anymore – that is your call. But stop telling us who are inside the conversation that Evangelical doesn’t mean anything. It does to us. 

We may not have a catechism or an actual orthodoxy, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t a  living branch on the family tree.

I also shared some thoughts about Christian unity and conformity on a TNT episode. 

* I appreciate the real Orthodox and have learned much from them.

Tony Jones gave a little pushback to Daniel Kirk (a recent guest on Homebrewed) about homosexuality and the Apostle Paul. Both Paul and homosexuality are hot topics right now so the discussion was vibrant.

Kirk is clear about those infamous Old Testament ‘clobber’ passages but is a little more allusive when it comes to the New Testament. He pulls what appears to be equivalent to an ‘argument from silence’ saying that Jesus would have commented on it if he wasn’t OK with the dominant view of his day. Tony makes this argument:

Apply that logic to any number of other moral or ethical issues, and I’ll bet that Kirk and his fellow evangelical biblical scholars don’t agree. For instance, Jesus was silent about:

• Slavery
• Abortion
• The death penalty
• Corporal punishment
• Racism
• Rape

I could go on. Does that mean that we should argue that Jesus was implicitly endorsing each of these? Of course not.

The same line of reasoning has been showing up over and over again in blogs written by women about issues of church leadership, image-beauty, and marriage.

 It is tough to argue about what the Bible doesn’t say. 

I actually try to pull this off in the latest TNT (Eschatology and Resurrection) when it comes to reading the Old Testament. I use the story of Lot’s daughters (Genesis 19) and point out that there is a noticeable lack of commentary in so many places in the Bible. In that Genesis 19 narrative it never says “and what they did was wrong” or “and they should not have done that”.   It just tells the story.

I compare this to the Canaanite conquest when the Israelites come out of slavery, violence, and oppression – into a new land – and then become violent and oppressive to the inhabitants. It reads to me like a cautionary tale about groups who escape violent oppression and come into a new area will always think that A) God is on their side (which is different than saying ‘God is with them‘  B) God has prepared the land especially  for them C) that God wants them to kill the current residents

 I got this idea of the cautionary tale from a book called Native and Christian - specifically two essays entitled The Old Testament of Native America by Steve Charleston and Canaanites, Cowboys and Indians by Robert Allen Warrior.

These three topics: homosexuality, women’s roles in church & home, and religious violence are not just arguments from history … they are on our doorstep knocking angrily everyday of the 21st century. They also share something else in common: the make arguments from silence about what is not in the Bible.

Here is where it gets even stickier. I was reading an old article by Roger Olson (also a former podcast guest) from Christianity Today 10 years ago. He was illustrating how American Christianity came to be and specifically the influence that the 1800’s had on our contemporary situation.

I also stumbled into Tad Delay’s blog about American Populism in early American religion, dealing with The Democratization of American Christianity by Nathan O. Hatch. Tad explains :

The language of a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” a sinners prayer for salvation, and a strong emphasis on unschooled individuals reading the Bible without need for rigorous theology came out of this period. Those with any training or expertise were openly spoken of as the enemy. The most flamboyant and charismatic circuit preacher garnered fame- which was certainly a goal of many- but to be charismatic, you had to convince the hearers that the message was simple. So, the message became very simple.

And this is where I get really nervous. A plain & simple reading of the Bible is one thing – a surface understanding I am always encountering and navigating. That is one thing. But arguments about what God didn’t say and what is not in the Bible are complex and nuanced. Our popular simplistic impulse leaves us in a pickle – one that I am not sure we  commonly have the tools to get out of and one that leaves us with an increasingly irrelevant message that our young people simply walk away from.

If everything needs to be understandable to anyone … we might be in trouble when it comes to reading the Bible in 21st century.

In this hour, Tripp and Bo take 4 calls from hotline and respond to questions about eschatology and the resurrection.

You can call in with any questions or comments at 678-590-2739 (brew) and let us know what you want us to talk about.

Two books that we reference today are Surprised by Hope and Simply Christian. We also alude to the John Cobb prayer podcast.  Thanks to Jason, Angela, Garret, and Keaton for calling in!

Graphic Option TWO

I love the quad! I am a proud descendant of Wesley and I still find it quite helpful to utilize the same quad.  Here is why I find each element so valuable.

In the Driscoll interview (he was going after the host because his wife is a pastor) he said something that is hugely troubling about its implications for the value of certain types of people. Driscoll was asking about how many young single men have come to Christ in the past year. Not how many people, but how many of them were men. Still not satisfied, he asked about what kind of men they were – were they strong men?

Do you see the sequence? (some might call it a pecking order)

He asked not about numbers of people who came to Christ, not about Church health or the British context (ie. implications of having a Church of England)

• How many were men … specifically young single men.
• Not men in general, but a specific type of man (strong)

Some may want to simply dismiss this as an eccentric fascination of an isolated mentality. I beg to differ.  I see this as a ongoing, if below the surface, mentality that is pervasive in the North American Protestant-Evangelical-Charismatic camp (also known as ‘my people’).

I have written recently that we may worship success more than any God – and I don’t want to make sweeping generalizations about the fallout of the 20th centuries rejection of the Social Gospel or the inherent downside of anti-intellectualism that is still widely pervasive – what I am saying is that Driscoll’s views and Tebow’s fans are not an anomaly. They are the logical end expression of an underlying belief about who God is and how God works.

The Driscol-Tebow controversies are merely the public manifestation of an underlying theology surfacing in examples that bring to the public’s attention to what is always bubbling just below the surface – or behind the closed doors of the sanctuary.

The Gospel as it is configured in some quarters is surprising to those who are outside this stream. Does Jesus love everyone? Technically, yes. Is there a type of person that Jesus loves more … or a part of that person (soul, gender, etc.) that Jesus is more interested in?

If this concept is completely foreign to you – I may need to come at this a different way:

I had a chance to talk to a faithful saint who suffers from a chronic degenerative disease. She found a piece that I wrote about why we need to move away from old understandings about curses. She had undergone more than a decade of people ‘discerning in prayer’ that someone had placed a curse on her when she was younger and then attempting through intercession and deliverance to break the enemy’s power over her.

She was intrigued by my insistence that God was not picking and choosing who to intervene for and which situations to interfere in. She had heard last week’s interview with John Cobb where he said that we believe that God is doing in every situation all that God is able to do that in situation.

This is a radical assertion and a sharp departure from the common belief about how God can and does work in the world.

I told her about an old interview that Tripp did with Bruce Epperly where Tripp paraphrased him by saying “God does not hold out or run out”.   Think about the implications of those two statements:

In every situation God is doing everything that God is able to do

God does not hold out or run out

I love this view of God. Some people get really upset because God is not as powerful as the Zeus-Caesar (theos) character they have been told lives up in the heavens watching us all and intervening/interfering according to ‘His’ will. But we are actually saying that God is powerful – its just that God’s power is a different kind of power from the unilateral and coercive power that has classically been ascribed to the Divine Being.

In this past week’s TNT I said that I thought something really positive came out of the pushback we got from our cross-efforts with Rachel Held Evans and Kurt Willems. It became clear that Process-Relational thought really is saying something quite different than classical theologies based on Imperial assumptions and Greek metaphysics.

This is not a simple tweak of the existing system (like Open theology). This is not a program that you just download and install into your already in place operating system. It is not a patch that employ to get rid of the bugs and kinks in the classical program. Relational thought is a different operating system (to use the fun Mac v. Microsoft Windows analogy).

I am excited about the upcoming Theological Conversation Jan 31-Feb 2  between the Emergent Village and Process-Relational thought. I am not under the impression that P-R is for everyone or that many folks will ‘convert’. But I am hopeful that we can engage, in a significant way, the ongoing and persistent glitches that  (while they may rarely come to full blown Driscoll-Tebow levels) are perpetually just below the surface.

I like reading Linbeck.* I used to say that I love Lindbeck but I ran into two snags:

•  I had no idea what people did with Lindbeck. I did not realize that it often led to retreat into a neo-Catholic expression.
• I did not (and still do not) fully understand that there is some inherent wrinkle in his idea that language creates our religious experience that implies a one-way limitation of language – not allowing our experience to change language and that somehow limits God. Like I said, it is a philosophical wrinkle that is a bit technical for me.

Having said all that … 

What I am a big fan of is his critique of language. He has a riveting analysis of the way that religious language functions in our communities and personal experiences.  I was prone to like Lindbeck because of my deep appreciation for Nancey Murphy’s book “Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism”. I was primed for what Linbeck brings to the table.

To become religious–no less than to become culturally or linguistically competent–is to interiorize a set of skills by practice and training. One learns how to feel, act, and think in conformity with the religious tradition that is, in its inner structure, far richer and more subtle than can be explicitly articulated. The primary knowledge is not about the religion, nor is that the religion teaches such and such, but rather how to be religious in such and such ways. p. 35

Then I found out that saying you appreciate the post-Liberal approach is like saying you cheer for the New York Yankees in Boston. I get the concern with the descendants of Lindbeck’s work … but I am still suspicious that he is right about how language works in our faith communities.

Fast Forward: I was reading some stuff to get ready for the 2012 Emergent Village Theological Conversation and I stumbled onto a section of Whitehead’s thoughts on religious language.** I got to a section called “Doctrine and History”. After dealing with the fact that language does not have a one-to-one correlation and that all language thus requires interpretation, the author explains:

“The language of a tradition and the central doctrines that reflect and support that language are the prime turbulence of the particular mode of existence characterizing that tradition. Furthermore, as human existence is shaped in specialized ways during the course of history, experiences occur that are not possible to persons shaped by other traditions.”

I resonate with the idea that a person is shaped by the language one is groomed and conditioned by – and that would both empower and naturally shape the experiences that one has and the interpretation of those experiences … even (or especially) the religious experiences.

It just makes sense that because religious in a communal endeavor – one is always a part of a community that has a tradition and set of practices/beliefs – that it determines, at some level, both the types of experiences one has , can have and how one translates or interprets those experiences.

 This is a vital assertion for the 21st century! We no longer live in the monopoly of Christendom or the frameworks of the Colonial Era where one tradition imported and imposed foreign expectations and alien interpretations on another.

With works like “The invention of world religions” by Masuzawa  and “God is not One” by Prothero (among many others) we are entering a time in world history (and thus church history) where we need to come to terms with two things that both Lindbeck and Whitehead are pointing out:

• Language is both inherited and powerful in shaping our experiences and subsequent interpretations of those experiences.
• Language used in doctrines like ‘the Church’ and ‘Eucharist’ actually facilitate the ability to have certain experiences that are simply not available to those outside the community or language game. Practices like Yoga or Ramadan would be the same for those in different traditions. That is why North American Christians who do yoga are not having the same experience as those in India.

We live in an era where the realities of inter-religious education, cross-denominational communication and trans-national citizenship are going to challenge all of our inherited traditions and conceptual frameworks.

If we are unwilling to do so and insist on simply repeating the same rote answers week after week under the misguided impression that we are being faithful to the tradition … we are in danger of an irrelevance that leads not only to extinction but ultimately failure to accomplish our great commission.

* George Lindbeck wrote “The Nature of Doctrine” and along with Hans Frei (author of “Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative”) is credited with starting the Yale School of thought. One of the most famous proponents of which is Stanley Hauerwas famous for his books like  “Peaceable Kingdom” , “Resident Aliens” as well as other things.

** Alfred North Whitehead was a 20th century philosopher who is credited for helping to come up with what became Process-Relational thought.

• podcast with Dr. John Cobb
• Calvin blog with Rachel Held Evans
• Granny blog with Kurt Willems
• Paul Capetz on Calvin 
• Tony Jones blog on Prayer

It is a wild and woolly 30 minutes as they prepare for the 2012 Emergent Village Theological Conversation. You have two week to sign up and get yourself to Southern California.

p.s. it was 76 and sunny here yesterday*

* previous results do not guarantee future success  

I have said before that I respect Tim and that he does not think God helps the Broncos win football games.

Why I love Tim: He works incredibly hard, has an amazing energy, lives out his faith, and serves orphans. This guy is incredible!

Why I hate his success: If you are in the NFL, you are gifted. Every player is extraordinarily talented … and I think that those talents come for God. I would prefer if we said that every player was blessed by God –  some acknowledge it and some are quite vocal about.

The assertion that God blesses one player more than another is where I run into the problem: that God is picking and choosing this person over that one – and interfering in this moment but not that one is a view of God that is irresponsible and indefensible. 

 I will go as far as to say that it is somewhere between superstition and missing the entire point of Jesus’ life and message. This certainly is not a Christian view of God.

Last week Tripp had a blog posted by Rachel Held Evans where he said that God was not omnipotent and that the future is not determined. In the TNT podcast that comes out today, Tripp and I talk about the line of reasoning that some people took in not only their objection to Tripp’s note but came to the defense of an omnipotent conception of God . Some people just came out and said “the book of Job shows that God is omnipotent”. This is a terrifying sentence to hear from a Christian.

There are three things about Job that need to be clear:

• It is not a newspaper report. It is a dramatic presentation (broken into distinct acts).
• That God rewards those who do right and love God and punishes those who disobey and turn away from God … is exactly what the book of Job is written against. That is against the narrative of Job’s life story at the beginning and against what God says at the end.
• Christians believe that Jesus lived a perfect life – and was brutally murdered. I see that as the Death of Job’s God. That old concept of God died on the Cross.

So the BIble doesn’t teach this view of God and the history of the world does not reflect this view. God does not reward those who are faithful and put down those who are evil. The evil prosper and the righteous suffer as much as everyone under that evil. 

We have to stop with this superstitious system of rewards and benefits that treats God like God as some sort of cosmic Gum-ball Machine.  It is extremely hurtful and insulting.  The part that baffles me is how prominent the view is among evangelicals … who make bold claims about being based on the Bible and ‘being Biblical’.

This view of the interfering God who doles out blessing to ‘His’ favorites is a relic of the past that we must outgrow.

This antiquated, superstitious view needs to die on the Cross so that the God revealed in Christ can be resurrected for our time. 

In the past week people over at Tony Jones, Rachel Held Evans, and Kurt Willems have been asking prayer and the relationship between Process theology and Openness theology.  Well John Cobb is here for you!

Of course y’all sent in questions about other stuff too…Occupy Wall Street, Postmodernism, Economy, Ecology, and other theological goodies.  I (Tripp) did this interview in Cobb’s library so listening to it will be like my first time because in real time I was a very distracted FANIAC!

For other resources check out:

Our TNT podcast about why people should come to the Emergent Conversation.

Marjorie Suchocki’s entry level PDF is super helpful.

The schedule for the conference looks amazing!

Bruce Epperly’s podcast continues to generate conversation.

His book Process for the Perplexed is fantastic.