Military

Day 13: Poetic Language About God

March 5, 2013 by Bo Sanders 10 Comments

I am constantly struck by the complications of talking about God and faith. In this chapter Tony tells an amazing tale about coming to a realization about how he thinks about his faith.

The words that we use are very powerful in forming our experience.

They not only help us interpret our religious experiences. They actual create those experiences at some level.

When Tony talks about his former view of faith, he uses phrases like:

“We must take the mountain, kill the giant, win the battle, defeat the enemy, fight for truth. This language had subtly convinced me that I was just a mercenary for God, nothing else.”

This language ends up failing him. It is one of those moments in life when you realize that the way you have conceptualized faith is no longer working for you.

There are just times when the framing story, the vocabulary or the metaphor fails you.

His friend asks him, “Was this something that came from God or was it you?”

Tony answers “Well, no, God did not ask me to be a mercenary. That is just where I ended up, a hired gun in the army of God.”

This is a devastating admission. It’s not that God didn’t call him. It’s not that he didn’t do some good. It’s not that the experience was completely hollow or B.S.

It’s just that he had reached the end of his metaphor.

Tony ends with a powerful re-frame of his approach:

“So, I decided to stay in the game. I tried to see each new opportunity through new eyes, free of violence, full of love. I looked for opportunities not to fight for God, but to walk with him. I began to believe that God was the one who was creatively tilling, planting, and harvesting all around me. The joy was to take his hand as he led me into his eternal play of love.

So, like a walk in the cool of the day, God led me to a new garden to explore.”

It is no mistake that Jesus used language about gardens, plants, birds, fields, and farms. Jesus just as easily could have talked about Roman wagons and battering rams. The thing is – that language matters.

When it comes to things of soul, language matters even more than usual. The way that conceptualize, frame and vocalize the

word pictures
metaphors
framing stories
analogies

truly impacts how we both interpret things that happen and participate in our community and journey.

I have never liked the military language about faith and life. I know that Paul used it. I just think that we have lost the irony of him using it since he was a part of the oppressed minority. Paul wasn’t armed.

Paul’s military analogies don’t sound the same after our Constantinian-Christendom-Crusade-Nationalist-Militaristic historic drift.

It would benefit us greatly to migrate away from military language (even the metaphors in the New Testament) and get back to fields and farms, birds and flowers.

Of course, there is a danger in even that! Since not many of us are connected to our food sources – we are in danger of using allusions and word pictures that we have not connection to.

What are we left with then? I would love it if we would humbly revisit and revise our religions language. The analogies we use, the word pictures and the metaphors are very powerful in not just how we interpret our experiences afterward but in how we participate with them in the moment.

Filed Under: conversations, latest Tagged With: army, birds, book, books, faith, farms, fields, flowers, God, jesus, Language, Military, plants, religion, Tony Kriz, words

Day 4: Be Not Synced With The World

February 19, 2013 by Bo Sanders 10 Comments

In chapter 4 of Neighbors and Wisemen, Tony introduces the big word syncretism. This is something that I wrote pages and pages about in my Master Thesis. I went back and found a part where I utilized the work of our recently deceased friend and teacher Richard Twiss.

Here is part of that.

Syncretism is commonly defined theologically as “the union of two opposite forces, beliefs, systems or tenets so that the united form is a new thing, neither one nor the other” .
Another way to say it is, ‘the combining of two sets of practices or beliefs that make an entirely new creation not recognizable as either of its components”
A slightly more generic definition is “the mixture of old meaning with the new so that the essential nature of each is lost”.

It quickly brings implications for classic expressions of church history and theology into question. The very idea of “a “pure” religion, untainted by outside influences, is regarded by many scholars of religion to be a myth. The difficulties and implications of these concerns on classic Christianity and modern expressions are eye-opening.

This is where it is vital to listen to the contribution of Richard Twiss. Twiss insists that syncretism be understood as a Theological issue and not simply as a Socio/Cultural one.

Twiss does not believe that just because a bracelet or drums have been used for evil in the past, that it makes all bracelets or drums inherently evil. He argues that while cultural syncretism is a normal fact of life – like the addition of horses to the Plains Tribes, he calls “a mixing or blending of two cultural lifestyles that becomes something previously unknown”. He is careful to clarify that,

Syncretism is a theological issue of faith and allegiances, not merely wedding religious form. Syncretism is any belief of practice that says that Christ’s work alone is not enough. (It) is believing that by performing a particular religious ceremony, or practice, one can alter the essential human spiritual condition in the same way that Jesus does, through His death on a cross, burial, and resurrection from the dead; and continues by faith to accomplish in the lives of believers today.

If Twiss’ definition is adopted then what is and what is not syncretism becomes clear and some radical implications begin to take effect. A new conversation comes up as some items and activities that had been traditionally taboo, or at least frowned upon (or down right outlawed), are revisited and considered under the category of “intent.” Some things that were assumed to be neutral or at least in the spectrum of “not harmful” to “acceptable” need to be reconsidered in the light of this new lens.

The forms that we use have the capability of both good and bad meaning. It is the intention and not the form itself in which value is found.

Twiss uses the specific example of the use of drums to illustrate the importance of separating out the socio-cultural criteria for discussions on syncretism. Since drums have at various times in the past been used to summon evil spirits and supernatural activity has been reported to have been experienced in conjunction with drums on occasion (such as human voices or animal sounds coming from the drum), some Native believers have regarded the drum itself as evil. This has meant that any use of the drums is evil and therefore, can never be used for holy purposes. The danger of coming to this conclusion is that it is based on subjective standards and not biblical precedent. One can look at the biblical Psalms and see no “prohibiting the use of ceremony, dancing, drum playing, incense burning, assigning redemptive meaning to colors, and designing special articles of clothing for religious ceremony”

Basically, when we speak of redeeming cultural forms we are speaking of redeemed believers in Christ, repossessing those God given forms that have been erroneously given away or surrendered to ungodly and idolatrous uses and practices. We also mean restoring those cultural expressions that were stripped from us, by an ethnocentric missions mindset…In developing a contextualized style of ministry, we are looking to see cultural forms of creation, restored to original intent- praise and worship to Almighty God.

Be not conformed to the world.

People love to quote Romans 12:1-2 Do not be conformed to the world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind …

They partner this with Jesus’ saying that John 15:19 that we are in the world but not of the world.

I like to ask people what it means to be conformed to the patterns of this world. The answers I hear would astound you. Most are trivial (secular music) but some are fantastical (not having hope in the rapture).

What almost never comes up are the things that are probably most problematic about the patterns of this world.

People tend bristle when I suggest that it might be things like

credit card debt

nationalism

working for a paycheck

supporting the military

eating 3 meals a day

getting a marriage certificate from the government

driving a gas powered car

speaking english

buying clothes

watching TV

drinking coffee

any number of things both believers and unbelievers can do mindlessly and automatically.

Here is the irony of the situation:

We have preachers talking into microphones to people about the dangers of compromising the gospel with things like syncretism and challenging them to “Be not conformed to this world” … all the while they drove to church in an SUV, are in credit card debt, 20 lbs overweight, hopped up on caffeine and supporting the troops.

Does anyone else wonder what it means to be conformed to the world?

Would it help if we talked about being in sync with the world?

__________

- Twiss was the author of Dancing our Prayers: perspectives on syncretism, critical contextualization and cultural practices in First Nations Ministry, and One Nation Many Tribes.

Filed Under: conversations, latest Tagged With: book, books, conformity, credit card, debt, Military, nationalism, Richard Twiss, Romans 12, syncretism, Tony Kriz, TV

When did America become like God? or Who would die for their country?

January 11, 2013 by Bo Sanders 18 Comments

Charles Taylor, in his book Modern Social Imaginaries, utilizes the term ‘social imaginary’ to refer to god-like capacity described by Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities. The term encompasses a threefold meaning:

First is the way that ordinary people “imagine” their surroundings in images, stories, and legends.
Second is the general acceptance and participation in the imaginary by a population and not simply the theories dominated by a small elite.
Third is empowerment provided from the imaginary for widely shared practices – and a sense of legitimization.[1]

One impact of this capacity to conceptualize national identity and belonging is in answer to the question “what would make someone be willing to die for their country?”

Anderson proposes a model of historic drift where sovereignty, which had previously been located in either religion or king (or both), has shifted decisively to the Nation in recent centuries. This is a dramatic innovation and recognizing nationality as a valid location for sovereignty has significantly altered matters related to loyalty, sacrifice and belonging.

Anderson proposes a definition of the nation as “an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.” The distinction as imagined comes because “the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them”.

Communities are limited because there must be some distinguishing demarcation outside of which are other communities (nations), which provide both competition and opportunities for cooperation. This distinction provides a vital function as classifications for the project of establishing communities.

Communities are imagined as sovereign “because the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm.” [2]
The dissolving social order of caste and class provided more level (if desperately unequal in reality) conception of both membership and participation for the mass of the population. This perceived leveling and opening gave rise to a new capacity for sacrifice on behalf of the imagined entity – an entity that was not solely and externally located in eternity or beyond, but in an ideal which one was associated (belonged) and participated and was thus responsible. To die for a religion (God) or a King was to reinforce that social order which established the hierarchical strata. Locating sovereignty within the conception of Nation – however dispersed and elusive – was a profound change.

In 1922 Carl Schmitt wrote his famous work Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty and claims that

“all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts.”[3]

In 2011 Paul Kahn wrote an engagement of Schmitt’s work with four new chapters on the same subject where he says that the capacity for the state to ask for this kind of sacrifices, the power to pardon – which is a remnant of Kingly authority, and the symbolic notion of a flag that needed to be defended are all remnants of a religious notion. The very word sovereign is borrowed from religious vocabulary. Kahn explains:

Political theology today is best thought of as an effort to describe the social imaginary … (arguing) that secularization, as the displacement of the sacred from the world of experience, never won, even though the church may have lost. The politics of the modern nation-state indeed rejected the church but simultaneously offered a new site of sacred experience.[4]

You can begin to see why the constitution is often thought of and talked about as an inspired document (sacred text) and why those who were responsible for it’s creation (founding fathers) are celebrated at patriarchs.[5] If Schmitt is right – even partially – then all of these similarities are neither trivial nor inconsequential.

The power of the state to ask for death in order to preserve itself and the capacity of people to willingly offer their lives in defense of that conception is profound. The notion of the sovereign holding the power of exception goes all the way from the individual being pardoned (as referenced earlier) to modern realities impacting all of humanity. The President has the ability to launch nuclear weapons if the President was to view that the national interest was in jeopardy.

Kahn uses this to illustrate his point. What are we saying about the nation that we are willing to jeopardize human heath, the planet, and subsequent generations for its defense? What could possibly be above human health and planetary environmental conditions? The answer is ‘only something that is of ultimate concern’.
The modern conception of the state is thus a result of religious conceptions and has replaced (in some sense) religion as the location of sovereignty one is willing to ultimately sacrifice and die for. Nation is a construct of transcendent meaning found in an imagined community.[6]

Now this is where it gets really interesting!

Arjun Appadurai, in Modernity at Large interacts with Anderson and observes that:

Modern nationalisms involve communities of citizens in the territorially defined nation-state who share collective experience, not of face-to-face contact or common subordination to a royal person, but of reading texts together.[8]

Much of the rhetorical energies of the ruling powers are used in order to urge “their subjects to give up … primordial loyalties – to family, tribe, caste, and region” for the “fragile abstractions” called nations which are often “multiethnic … tenuous collective projects”.[9]

Only within the power of national imaginaries can one see the possibility of such a monument as a tomb left intentionally empty or holding the remains of an unidentified combatant. Anderson points out the absurdity of “a Tomb of the Unknown Marxist or a cenotaph for fallen Liberals.”[10] There is no reserve of belonging that would justify such a display. It would hold little value outside the context of national identity.

And that is how the sausage called nationalism is made! I would love to hear your thoughts.

[1] Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries, 23.

[2] Anderson, Imagined Communities, 8.

[3] Paul W. Kahn, Political Theology: Four New Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, location 37.

[4] Ibid., 360.

[5] CBC Ideas podcast ’The Myth of Secularism’ part 5

[6] It is not difficult within this framing to view contemporary movements such as the Tea Party as merely an extreme example of a group calling for a romanticized notion of an imagined past or legacy.

[7] Anderson, Imagined Communities, 8.

[8] Arjun Appadurai, Modernity At Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, 161.

[9] Ibid., 162.

[10] Anderson, Imagined Communities, 10.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, politics, post-something, thinking Tagged With: Anderson, Appadurai, book, books, church, God, Kahn, Military, modernity, nation, nationalism, patriotism, political, politics, sovereign, Taylor, War

The Pornography of Fundamentalism

August 28, 2012 by Bo Sanders 44 Comments

- by Bo Sanders

Normally I try to be as generous, welcoming and irenic as possible. One of my favorite slogans actually comes from my venerable partner Tripp Fuller at Big Tent 1 when he said that the ‘tent’ should be big enough for every former incarnation of ourself … but I was never a fundamentalist. I flirted with being one in Bible College but never converted.

This past week I was flying back across the country after visiting my family and I was rummaging through my Ipod to see if anything caught my attention. I stumbled on an old Slavo Zizek lecture. As with all Zizek lectures he wandered through almost every topic under the sun – but two caught my attention: pornography and fundamentalism. I want to try and connect them here.

In a pornographic movie, the dialogue is secondary. It is merely window dressing. Think back to your younger years – before you were a christian. The dialogue is a thinly veiled, contrived scenario to get the actors into the same space. It is little more.

A handyman comes over to a lonely women’s apartment to fix a hole in the wall. She says something about another hole that needs attention.

You get the idea. The dialogue is superfluous to the real intention. It is poorly written and even more poorly delivered. The dialogue is a facade, it is merely intended to set up the main activity. [added later] It allows for the suspension of suspicion so that one can enter into the fantasy.

Dialogue performs the same function for Christian Fundamentalists.

Don’t misunderstand me – I am not saying that the verbiage of fundamentalists is insincere or disingenuous. It is not. Fundamentalist believe it with all their heart. What I am saying is that the words in church perform the same function as dialogue in porn. The words that are spoken are secondary to the main activities: nationalism, militarism and capitalism.

When I was in Bible College I use to set my VCR to record TV preachers while I was at school. I loved listening to preachers. I wanted to be one and I modeled myself on the famous ones. I even sent money to folks like Chuck Swindoll so I could get their tapes and listen to them over and over.

The more I read the Bible, however, the more I realized that something was wrong. At my evangelical college we studied the historical context of the Old Testament and the Ancient Near East. We even touched on some Roman legal stuff for the New Testament - while avoiding things like Empire for the most part. [Jesus’ message was spiritual after all, not political.]

I started getting a pit in my stomach when pastors would shoe-horn modern issues between the lines of scripture. It made me nervous when they would draw a direct line from ancient Israel to modern America. My fallout actually came in two parts:

Step one was simply (but quietly) objecting to the lack of translation or conversion between Old Testament Israel which was a theocracy and America which was democracy … and a pluralistic one at that.
Step two was the vehement (nearly venomous) push-back I got when broached the subject.

It was in the vicious rebuffs that something grotesque was exposed. The words that were spoken – while important and delivered with conviction – were secondary to the real driving influence and aim. The real engine is nationalism, militarism and capitalism. Those are the real gods of American fundamentalists. The christian verbiage is the fiberglass body. It is important, visible and gets most of the attention but it is not what is driving the machine.

Like dialogue in porn, it is only utilized to get the players into proximity with each other. It is only used to set up the main (real) activity.

Ask yourself these 3 questions:

Why are voices raised, fists shaken, and teeth gritted when fundamentalists talk about God pouring out love for us in Christ and salvation being found in ‘the way, the truth, and the life’? Why doesn’t the medium match the message?
Why is there unquestioned support for modern Israel regardless of their atrocities and unjust behaviors?
Why is it permissible to be so aggressive with people who disagree with you on issues like who is allowed to be married (a civil union) by the state?

The reason that the medium doesn’t match the message is because the real message is not found in the words. Like dialogue in porn, it is only meant to set up the scenario for the real activity. Spend all the time you want on analyzing it or the logic behind it, but it is like capturing fog. It is a temporary holder for the main event. In fundamentalism’s case, that is nationalism, militarism and capitalism. Don’t get distracted by the christian verbiage or the message of Jesus – you will only be frustrated and baffled. No, there is something else driving this machine. Just ask questions, even quietly, and you will hear where the real priorities are.

Why this matter so much is cover in part 3: It’s a Sign.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, living, thinking Tagged With: army, Bible, book, books, church, empire, fundamentalism, God, government, Israel, jesus, justice, law, legal, marriage, Military, Old Testament, Palestine, porn, pornography, preacher, Swindoll, unjust, War, Zionist, zizek

Mitt Romney started in the middle

August 2, 2012 by Bo Sanders 5 Comments

Republican (presumptive) nominee Mitt Romney got in some hot water this week in a visit to Israel. He told Jewish donors Monday that their culture is part of what has allowed them to be more economically successful than the Palestinians, outraging Palestinian leaders who suggested his comments were racist and out of touch with the realities of the Middle East.

“And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things,” Romney said, citing an innovative business climate, the Jewish history of thriving in difficult circumstances and the “hand of providence.” He said similar disparity exists between neighboring countries, like Mexico and the United States.

There has been a lot of analysis about Palestinian ‘culture’ as well as economic, military, and other realities that have contributed to discrepancy that is so evident between Israel and Palestine.

I want to focus on a slightly different aspect of the story. Mitt Romney started in the middle and you just can’t do that. In a previous post entitled “Bullies, Bananas and the Bible” I stated:

You can’t verbalize the way things are – which is a result of the way things have been – as proof that this is how it should always be.

Creation ‘expert’ Ray Comfort famously made a fool of himself by producing a video with Kirk Cameron where he praised the glories of the (modern) banana as evidence of God’s grand design and love for human beings. You can watch the video here – it is a hoot. There is only one problem. Comfort was highlighting many of the adaptations and ‘improvements’ that were results of human modification through deliberate cultivation.

This the problem starting in the middle. You can’t just walk into the way things are, assume the status quo and then make a case for it. *

This is not an isolated school of thought. I was camping in a national park with a long time friend who lives in and loves his ‘red’ state. We were hiking out and enjoying the beauty when he began to tell me about how ridiculous the environmentalists are and how stupid it is to put all these regulations on industry – we are handcuffing these innovators who create jobs for people. His evidence was to point to the trees around us and say “look at all of this amazing space – what are they so worried about? I don’t see why we need to have all these regulations and get so upset at industry.”

I pointed out that if somebody 100 years earlier had not had the foresight to preserve this land, the timber industry would own all this land and would have harvested all these trees. It would look nothing like it did and we would not be walking or hiking there. He had literally never thought about that.

It would be like walking into a grocery store, seeing a steak wrapped in saran wrap on a Styrofoam platter and beginning to articulate how perfectly the steak was designed for your grill – how the saran wrap crumples in your hand for ease of disposal in the waste basket – how the steak is the same dimensions in thickness from side to side for consistent grilling. Clearly God designed this steak to go on your grill and for your enjoyment!!

This is the danger of starting in the middle.

John Piper’s conservative view of God is the same as Comforts view of the banana and my buddy’s view of the national park: completely ignorant and disconnected from the narrative & trajectory that lead to it.

Which leads us back to Romney: this is a consequence of privilege. I would love to ascribe it to some classicist view of god or an a-historical understanding of theology. It might be from those two things as well, but it is a consequence of privilege and the blind spot that results from it.

If you don’t account for socialization in things like gender – and instead argue for original design … if you don’t give validity to things like constructions and conditioning then you look at how society has been you will mis-attribute it to some other factor. We do it with everything from sexuality and gender to culture and race.

If one ignores systemic oppression and historic injustice and starts in the middle, then one can conclude that it is this group’s culture or collective disposition that gives them the advantage resulting in the conditions that we see today.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, living, media, news, politics, thinking Tagged With: blind spot, Culture, economic, gaff, history, Israel, Military, Mitt Romney, Palestine, power, privilege, race, reality, religion

I am not a pacifist nor am I non-violent

July 10, 2012 by Bo Sanders 57 Comments

In anticipation of recording a TNT (Theology Nerd Throw-Down) tomorrow afternoon in which Tripp and I will deal with J.R. Daniel Kirk’s blog post about violence and the gospel, I thought it would be good to put all my cards on the table.

Kirk is one of our favorite New Testament scholars and one of our favorite bloggers. He is a masterful HomeBrewer and an Academic of renown. This week he had the opportunity to catch up on his podcasts and one our TNT was one his selected listens.

He had concerns about some of the content and in his post he said:

“What about those passages that make Jesus himself look more “violent” than selections in the Sermon might? E.g., what about the Jesus of the narrow way and crashing house from the end of the Sermon? But then there is also the question of what comes before and what comes after. There is judgment. In the OT there is war and destruction. In Revelation there is a lake of fire.”

I thought it would be good to put forward my thoughts 24 hours ahead of our recording to see what the deacons had to say.

I am not a pacifist. That label has come to mean ‘passive’ and my reading of the gospel does not allow for one to be passive in their engagement in the world.

I am not into non-violence. While I appreciate that long and astounding history of those who promote non-violence, I do not subscribe to the theory of non-violence. As a post-Colonial scholar I reserve the right of oppressed minorities to both defend themselves and to aggressively pursue their own liberation and freedom.

I do not believe that God is violent. I am resigned to the fact that humans are violent and that humans project the validation for their violence on their deity – whoever who he or she might be. Jesus shows us a different way.

So there are three ideas presented in the negative. Here are my three convictions in the positive.

I am under the impression that Jesus is the highest revelation of God. As a Christian, I hold that God was uniquely present in Jesus and that Jesus shows us what God is really like (image of the invisible God and all that).

I am a radical peace maker. I take the sermon on the mount very seriously and I am under the impression that we should be aggressive in our pursuit of peace, reconciliation and restoration.

I am convicted that violence begets more violence. While I am not a pacifist nor into non-violence (per se) I am deeply convinced that the problem with violence is that it begets more violence. This is why contemporary debates about war and American foreign policy are nothing more than drivel and posturing. Violence begets more violence. [ I don’t have enough time to go into how both Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden are products of US foreign creation}

With that in mind, I would like to acknowledge an issue raised by Dr. Kirk’s.

Jesus flipped over tables. To quote the late Chris Farley “well ladi freakin’ da!” So what? Is that what you want to do? Flip over tables at church? Well go ahead – with my blessing! But let’s be honest – Jesus turning over tables opens the door for you to justify invading foreign counties and dropping bombs on civilians who might be enemy-combatants. Seems like a leap eh? Listen to christian radio, christian TV, or Fox News. Apparently it is not that big of a jump. If all you wanted to do (with God’s blessing) is to flip over tables at church – this would be a non-issue.

Yes, the story of Joshua is a violent one. Tomorrow on TNT we will address the issue that God told the Israelites to invade Canaan and kill all the inhabitants – as well as that that damned Lake of Fire in the New Testament.

I’m looking forward to having that conversation.

______

On a different note …

I have been having the conversation for almost 20 years. It almost always goes the exact same way.

Me: Jesus told us to love one another and to turn the other cheek. He also modeled it when he was ‘led like a lamb to slaughter’.

Guy: Are you telling my that if somebody broke into your house you would just let him rape your wife?

(I’m not kidding, that it almost always the first objection)

Me: No. I would not stand by and let someone rape my wife.

Guy: I thought you were a pacifist.

Me: That doesn’t mean being passive. There are many ways to resist, restrain and deter that kind of violence.

Guy: I would kill him. I would shoot him in the face.

Me: … I think there are alternatives beside killing.

Guy: You are lying if you say that you would not kill him too. And if the Americans didn’t get involved in WWII then we would all be speaking German right now!

(Hitler is almost always the second objection)

___

In the end, I am not a pacifist because it is an ideology that one subscribes to that takes options off the table. I am not into non-violence because it limits the response of oppressed communities. I also am not a big fan of defining yourself in the negative.

What I am into into is aggressive peacemaking. I am against preemptive war and I believe that violence begets more violence.

I would love your thoughts as we prepare for tomorrow’s show.

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, conversations, engaging, latest, living, thinking Tagged With: Bible, Fox News, God, Hitler, jesus, Kirk, Military, violence, violent, War

Jesus and His (S)words

April 12, 2012 by Bo Sanders 39 Comments

Jesus tells his disciples to sell their bags and buy swords. Why? And why then does he reprimand Peter for using a blade at the moment when it seemed to be most appropriate? Was Jesus being inconsistent? Did he change his mind in the moment? Was it a test? Did he set Peter up to fail? Why did he say that ‘those who live by the sword, will die by the sword?’ and then tell his disciple to buy them?

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.

I would love to hear your thoughts – I just have one request: please don’t use the word ‘Pacifist’ when speaking of Jesus. That set of commitments belongs to a distinct school of thought that did not exist in Jesus day so it is anachronistic to use in that way. He was certainly into non-violence and radical peace-making but Pacifism is a unique configuration of convictions.

_______________

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.

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, conversations, engaging, latest, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, God, guns, Hebrews 4, jesus, John Caputo, Matthew 10:34, Military, non-violence, pacifist, peace-making, Revelation 19, swords, violence, Weakness, word, words

Violence in the Hunger Games

March 23, 2012 by Bo Sanders 28 Comments

Writing a paper on Globalization calls for a serious study break and tonight I headed to the opening day of the Hunger Games. There are three things that you should know about my movie going experience:

My theater is one block from UCLA and I appeared to be the oldest person in the theatre.
LA is wonderful for diversity. This was the most eclectic group of folks I have watched an opening night movie with since I watched the Waterboy in New York (1998)
I have intentionally not watched a single preview or read anything about the movie whatsoever. I hate how previews ruin the narrative experience for me.

In short I will simply say this for the movie:

It was better than advertised.
The DeColonial themes in the first half of the movie were incredible (I will write more about this next week).
If you are contemplating going, you should go.

That being said, I left the theatre with three quotes running though my head. The first relates to a scene where a young person (on the badteam) is killed and the crowd I was with … cheered. Now, up to that point violence had been a very bad thing and an unwanted/inevitable element of oppression and Imperial spectacle. I’m not even focusing on the violence against women angle here – just the violence alone. Chris Hedges talk of war movies the same way:

“They turn war into porn. Soldiers and Marines, especially those who have never seen war, buy cases of beer and watch movies like Platoon, movies meant to denounce war, and as they do, they revel in the destructive power of weaponry. The reality of violence is different. Everything formed by violence is senseless and useless. It exists without a future. It leaves behind nothing but death, grief, and destruction.” - Death of the Liberal Class (p. 55).

As a Christian I am always amazed by an ever-present paradox.Often in my circles, folks who have air-tight orthodoxy cred and are in complete alignment with the Creedal formulations … have an openness to violence and a willingness for militarism the betrays the very story of the Jesus that they so passionately proclaim. Then they run into somebody like John Caputo who’s orthodoxy & ontology are surely suspect by who gets Jesus right:

“The kingdom of God is the rule of weak forces like patience and forgiveness, which, instead of forcibly exacting payment for an offense, release and let go. The kingdom is found whenever war and aggression are met with an offer of peace. The kingdom is a way of living, not in eternity, but in time, a way of living without why, living for the day, like the lilies of the field – figures of weak forces – as opposed to mastering and programming time, calculating the future, containing and managing risk. 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.” -The Weakness of God, p. 15

I think I would rather be with Caputo and get Jesus right than to have the right Christology and miss the whole point with Jesus. The final quote comes from Franz Fannon in the Wretched of the Earth:

”The starving peasant, outside the class system, is the first among the exploited to discover that only violence pays. For him there is no compromise, no possible coming to terms; colonization and decolonization are simply a question of relative strength. The exploited man sees that his liberation implies the use of all means, and that of force first and foremost … (it) will only yield when confronted with greater violence.” (48)

I watched the movie tonight and drove home with these three quotes in my head. What do we do with movies meant to expose the Imperial spectacle of violence and end up glorifying it? Is this a case where the medium is the message and if violence is on a screen it can not communicate the badness of violence but exalts all violence? How do we as Christians navigate the spectacle of violence from our friends watching MMA to our congregants applauding war, electric chairs, drone attacks and torture? What if they have better Christology, Ontololgy, and Creedal subscription than we do … but get the violence question wrong and miss the whole point of Jesus’ life and death? And how do we who occupy the privileged place, the place of power, and the dominant narrative recognize that violence in support of the hegemonic status quo is not the same as violence against and in revolt of it? That what is good for the goose is not necessarily what is good for the gander if the goose is the only one armed to the teeth?

Post Script: I loved this conversation and am so grateful for the insightful and sincere responses. I am thankful for intelligent exchange without disrespectful or snarky dismissiveness. As I have watched the conversation evolve, it has become clear that something else is needed in the post. So I want to add it for future clarity.

Empire is a particular formation of government and power and, given its pretence to be global, generates a ‘collective spirit’, an anthropological construction, that allows and approves of certain behaviours, reactions, feelings, and attitudes of the social and political actors, that shapes a certain logic and way of conceiving life, and that imposes and translates itself into values and a hegemonic Weltanschauung (ethos).[1]

[1] Néstor Míguez, Joerg Rieger, and Jung Mo Sung, Beyond the Spirit of Empire: Theology and Politics in a New Key ( 2009), Kindle Locations 204–207.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, media, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, church, colonial, crowd, decolonial, Franz Fannon, God, Hedges, Hunger Games, jesus, John Caputo, Media, medium, Military, violence, War, Women

Bending the Spectrum: Occupy the Tea Party

March 22, 2012 by Bo Sanders 8 Comments

I have never been a big fan of ‘spectrum’ thinking. The language of far left and far right just rings hollow for me. It is insufficient for the most part and in the end, inaccurate.

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.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, living, news, politics, thinking Tagged With: Argument Culture, Chris Hedges, Christian, church, conservative, Culture, Democrat, Liberal, Military, Occupy, politics, Republican, spectrum, Tavis Smiley, Tea Party, theology

War and Weight Watchers

May 30, 2011 by Bo Sanders 6 Comments

On this holiday when we remember those who served and died, there are so many interesting things that get presented and portrayed in regards to our national storyline. Some of them are valiant and deep, others are pithy and cliched. There is one, however, that gets used pretty flippantly and after I hear it a dozen times or so, it starts to grate on me a little bit.

“Freedom isn’t free”. You see on T-shirts, bumper stickers and hear it is discussions about past wars. I get it. I see what is behind the saying.
No, freedom isn’t free – not in this world of selfish sin (on a small scale) and dominating Empire (on a big scale) but I think that it is important to make two clarifications about this saying.

Freedom is not solely the result of our military – and freedom is not all our military does.

The first one is important to clarify because in our Military Industrial Complex (Dwight Eisenhower warned of it and those who profit from it in his farewell speech), our the freedom that we enjoy is not bestowed by military action. That is not the source of our freedoms.
The second one is important to clarify because freedom is not the only business that America’s foreign policy participates in. The US involvement in S. America, Asia, Africa and Europe is not simply explained as a ‘force for freedom’. There is a lot more going on than just a heart for global democracy.

I think this is appropriate to address on occasions like Memorial Day. It is not dishonoring to those who served and died to use our freedoms in order to call for accountability for America’s addiction to militarism or to examine America’s foreign policy.

In fact, seen from my point of view – it is downright honoring to utilize my freedom this way and it demonstrates an appreciation for the exact freedom that allows me to spend time on this day off to do so.

It seems more essential than ever in the current budget crisis.

Gareth Higgins said in his interview (Homebrewed 102) that looking at the budget and not accounting for the (untouchable) military expenditure is like being on weight watcher and not counting any of the points of an unhealthy breakfast and wondering why the program isn’t working.

It is one thing to say that our freedom comes at a price. No one is debating that. But to not count the cost and then wonder why we are flirting with bankruptcy is just foolishness disguised as patriotism.

On this Memorial Day, I am already dreading September 11th – the Ten year celebrations and the unquestioned, unchallenged national story.

What we need is theological examination of where freedom comes from and what is the real price.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, news, politics, post-something, thinking Tagged With: 9/11, Budget, Freedom, Gareth Higgins, Memorial Day, Military, September 11th, War

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