science

Emergent Preaching?

April 12, 2013 by Bo Sanders 25 Comments

A good question can stimulate the brain to put together things that one had not previously connected. Stuart Harrell asked my a question about what a course on emergent “preaching” would look like. Here are some of my thought – I would love to hear yours.

My cleaned up tweets are posted as bullet-points with a clarifying thought following.

You would want to immediately address message and medium. It’s not just a repacking of the same old material.

What we are experiencing in a genuinely different expression of the good news. I watch lots of video clips of hip – fashionable – edgy young preachers who are still on an elevated stage using the exact same forms as the past 100 years … only they have added video clips and hair gel.

That is not what we are talking about. That is just lipstick on pig not that I really believe that old-school preaching is a pig, I just love that phrase.

#EmergentPreaching would involve scripture, culture, media, dialogue, experience & impartation to start.

The ‘problem’ with emergent thought is that it is neither reductive nor is it reproducible. It is environment specific (contextual) and organic. It interacts with its surroundings and emerges from its participants. It is a different animal from day 1.

I have given a LOT of thought to Emergent Preaching since my dad is a homiletics Prof. & I helped start The Loft LA recently.

One of our biggest glitches is that our ‘gatherings’ don’t translate to podcasts or video very well. We planned on being media savvy but the ‘sermon’ is broken up into conversation starters, dialogue, small groups, feedback and presentation. It’s kind of messy and we are still trying to figure out how to ‘capture’ it authentically. I think that we are going to start just throwing it out there unedited for members who missed that week in case they want to catch up.

the task of Emergent Preaching would deal with issues of power, voice, dialogue, participation, action, justice & cultural stuff.

This is where the medium must be addressed along with the message. HOW we do something is as important as WHAT we do.

Proclamation is a vital part of the Christian tradition. We don’t want to lose that! We address the form as well.

Why is there one person talking anyway? How is that person chosen? With what authority do they speak? These are essential questions to ask.

Assumptions of culture, the gospel, power, structures, and orthopraxy are vital to address in thinking about.

We are always attempting to do at least two things (this is true for every area of life). Side note: this is why saying that sex is only for procreation is ludicrous. So it is incumbent upon us to concern ourself with present cultural realities as well as desired outcomes – because we preach an incarnational gospel that must be in-bodied (embodied) to survive.

One would have to pull back the curtain & examine the scaffolding (assumptions) that hold the entire project up.

This is the tough job of deconstructing a constructive theology. There is no easy way around it.

It would be part Liberation, Feminism, Walter Wink, masters of suspicion, biblical scholarship & philosophy.

There is just no sense in even attempting to do proclamation in the 21st century under the auspices of emergence without this. Emergent Preaching would need to be well-informed and undeniably self-aware at some level. This seems unavoidable.

But it would also have to be rooted in history, hermeneutics, scripture and praxis. Those are my thoughts on Emergence Preaching.

In the end, we preach the christian gospel and not some form of god-ness or spirit-uality. We are the church after all. Accounting for history, hermeneutics, scripture and praxis is tall order. But what is the other option?

I would love to hear your thoughts on my little list and see if you had any additions.

You can also tweet me & and Stuart Harrell - use the hash-tag #EmergentPreaching

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, conversations, emergent, engaging, latest, living, sermon, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, church, Emergent, emerging, God, history, homiletics, jesus, preaching, science, The Loft LA

Psychology, Equal Sign Profile Pics, and The Bible on Television

April 1, 2013 by Deacon Jordan 4 Comments

Howdy! This week, we welcomed Stephen Simpson, one of the heads of Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary, to the show to discuss the intersection of faith and psychology. Get used to Steve, because he’ll be back on the show for sure.

Subscribe on iTunes!

Later, we talk about the worth in changing one’s profile picture to an equal sign, and the History Channel’s take on The Bible. Toward the end, we discuss Christian’s latest endeavor, a Bible study blog series that’s actually entertaining!

Standard Podcast [ 1:03:10 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Filed Under: CultureCast, latest Tagged With: prayer, psychology, science, television, The Bible

Homosexuality: the difference between TV and Greek Tragedy

March 27, 2013 by Bo Sanders 21 Comments

Blogging is a fascinating way to interact with people over an issue or topic.

Once in while a blog will unexpectedly come back to life after months of lying dormant. It usually happens when A) somebody references it month later B) when the topic hits the news again. The dying embers leap back to life in flame!

This week my old post on and Evangelical approach to same-sex marriage has fired back up – for obvious reasons. I’m not going to link there because I just can’t wade into the 195 comments without getting lost. I did, however, want to report about a most interesting exchange that came out of it.

Someone who disagreed with my saying that ‘homosexual’ as we currently understand and conceive of the term, never existed until the 19th century. Some people keep wanting to argue about sexual acts and missing that there are broader issues of orientation and identity that were not addressed in Greco-Roman culture or the greek language of the New Testament.

One such person – let’s call him TM – engaged the issue this way:

For example, the statement “The Bible (the inspired written word of God) is not talking about homosexuality. It didn’t exist.” seems somewhat confusing, even if we only focused on the Roman era of indulgences of the First Century. Are you suggesting that homosexuality didn’t exist in this era… simply because they may have called it something else?

This is along the lines of your attempt to make a point about television – in one sense, it didn’t exist; and yet in another, it did – as plays/theater. Are you suggesting that simply because the presentation was different that there weren’t actors and actresses who presented drama, comedy, tragedy and more to a mass audience? Are you really going to argue that because a word didn’t exist that means the concept didn’t exist?

Do you see the how the analogy works? This is really important to see because those who sincerely believe that they are being faithful to the scriptures are often mashing contemporary experiences into ancient writings in a way that is … how should I say this?
Let’s try it a different way: when your faith is constructed in such a way that you need your sacred text to speak to every area of your life – then you will, by necessity, fit your modern data into the provided molds.

My response to TM included 3 points of departure:

“TV is indeed different from ancient theatre.

1) One can sit alone in a house and watch TV, absent of the social connection and crowd interaction.

2) One can also change the channel when it gets boring. You can not do that at the theatre.

3) Plays also so do not have commercials which deeply influence us.

In those three ways I would say that one can not simply say “TV and theatre are the same” as you have.

You are comfortable mashing modern categories onto the ancient & calling them the same. This willingness to mash is why you are frustrated that the Bible isn’t talking about what we are talking about. TV is a different medium than ancient theatre – I hope that you can see that.”

It seems like a great example of the where the ‘two’ sides are missing each other in this debate.

It reminds me a great deal of the ongoing issues of conservatives ‘starting in the middle’ that I am perpetually having to point out.

That is where Ray Comfort takes the highly refined and cultivated modern banana and reads meaning, design, and intention back into it by the ‘creator’ – even going as far as it’s fit to the human hand, its easy pull tab opening, and its built-in disposal wrapping.

Maybe it would be easier for us to talk about TV & theatre in a categorical way before we wade into the elevated hostilities of the same-sex debate.

Filed Under: bible stuff, church history, conversations, engaging, latest, media, news, politics, public policy, thinking Tagged With: ancient, Bible, church, conservative, court, gay, God, homosexual, homosexuality, jesus, marriage, modern, news, paul, same sex, science, TV

The Thing That Science Can’t Get Over

February 17, 2013 by Bo Sanders 19 Comments

I read the most interesting excerpt this weekend. In the Esquire Culture Blog entitled “Deep Thought For Sunday” the author talks about the uproar in the scientific community around last years publication of Thomas Nagel’s book Mind and Cosmos.

It may help to know that the subtitle of Nagel’s book is “Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False”.

The post – quoting from a Aeon article – says:

In ancient science (or, as it used to be called, natural philosophy), teleology held that things — in particular, living things — had a natural end, or telos, at which they aimed. The acorn, Aristotle said, sprouted and grew into a seedling because its purpose was to become a mighty oak. Sometimes, teleology seemed to imply an intention to pursue such an end, if not in the organism then in the mind of a creator. It could also be taken to imply an uncomfortable idea of reverse causation, with the telos — or ‘final cause’ — acting backwards in time to affect earlier events. For such reasons, teleology was ceremonially disowned at the birth of modern experimental science.

This, of course, was not received well in the scientific community.

The ideas in the book were berated as ‘outdated’. Steven Pinker complained about ‘the shoddy reasoning of a once-great thinker’.
The Guardian newspaper trumpeted it as ‘the most despised science book of 2012’.

The Aeon article introduced it this way :

Science can’t stop talking in terms of ‘purposes’, but if the universe cares about us, it has a funny way of showing it

I know that there are many in the Homebrewed network are are far more up on science than I am. So – even though I am very interested in the subject – I thought it would be a good idea to ask the Diaconate.

What do you make of the controversy surrounding purpose or teleology in contemporary science?
It there a way that we, as a theological community, can contribute to the conversation?
Is it inherently problematic to attempt to do so?
Is there a silver lining to this ongoing controversy for those of us who want to hold onto faith?

Looking forward to your insights and responses!

Filed Under: engaging, latest, science, thinking Tagged With: Aeon, blog, book, books, Culture, Esquire, God, Mind and Cosmos, purpose, science, teleology, telos, Thomas Nagel

Day 2: Double Vision

February 15, 2013 by Bo Sanders 23 Comments

I am not a fan of dualism. For the most part I push back against simple binaries. This is not because they are inherently evil. It is because they so often do not accurately reflect the reality of the situation. They are a misconstruel of the data that neglects the complexity of variables present within most every situation.

There are three things in this chapter of Neighbors and Wisemen that stick out to me. Each of them is based around a binary.

Double Insulation

The opening story features a passionate preacher from Tony’s youth. I grew up, not just in an evangelical environment, but in a holiness tradition. If you did not have this experience, then there may be a concept that you are unfamiliar with. It is called double insulation.

We took seriously verses such as

Jude 1:23 hating even the clothing stained by the flesh.

Romans 12:2 ”Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

James 1:27 ”Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

2 Peter 2:20 ”they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and are overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning.

So not only were we to protect ourselves from being tainted by sin, but we were to distance ourselves from those who did not take serious measures to keep themselves from sin.

It wasn’t enough that we were careful. We needed to be careful about those who weren’t careful.

This is why I like the way that Tony talks about two teams. I would love to hear about your experience of two teams – what did that look like in your tradition or context?

Not Reading the Road Signs

If you were driving in a foreign country you would notice all sorts of odd looking road signs. Road signs are not a universally regulated or agreed upon system. Each place is a little different.

Regardless if you recognized or were familiar with the sign – you would be a fool not observe the sign or attempt to decipher and obey them.

But when it comes to cultural road signs – we as Westerners are often guilty of doing exactly that. Stories like Tony’s interaction with this older women are fascinating to me. I am both intrigued and horrified by the cultural insensitivity that so often accompanies foreign missions.

I have experienced this ‘young people are not aloud to sit on the floor’ fertility thing. I have experienced the ‘don’t drink water too fast’ thing. I have experienced the art of drinking Turkish coffee in the Balkans.

The question is: why do we think that they are being silly or superstitious when they tell us how to proceed culturally?

The answer is an uncomfortable one. It has to do not just with cultural superiority but with an inherited and unquestioned Enlightenment mindset.

See, the problem is that the cultural behavior (or superstition) is accompanied by a physics (or sometimes metaphysics) explanation. If she had said ‘we don’t let young or unmarried people sit on the floor in our culture’ that might have been ok. But when infertility or ‘a curse’ or ‘spirit’ is introduced … we are prone to blow through the cultural road sign and say “that is silly – that is not how things work”.

There are two teams. One who knows how things really are.

My question is, why do we ignore cultural signs when we would never dream of taking that approach to signs when driving. Why not listen to the other team? Especially if we are on their home field?

The answer is an uncomfortable one.

God of the Quasar

I am fascinated by this story of reading Scientific America. I’m not questioning that God spoke to someone through magazine. I don’t question people’s experience. What I am always intrigued by people’s interpretation of their experience.

If this guy thought that God was speaking to him through this magazine … why did he not think that it was the Islamic god? Why did he think that it was the Christian god?

Especially when, as was pointed out , clearly the folks at Scientific America don’t even subscribe to the Christian god!

Is it because he had not experienced this in Islamic worship so it must be a foreign explanation? Or is it because the magazine was published in West and since there are two teams … this man who God was speaking to had to switch teams?

And if that is the case, is that the good news of the gospel?

I only thought of that because the chapter was entitled ‘Gospel’.

I would love your thoughts on any or all of this.

Filed Under: conversations, latest Tagged With: Bible, Culture, Foreign, God, holy, missions, science, Tony Kriz

Moving Toward Multiplicity

January 9, 2013 by Bo Sanders 8 Comments

Listening to Howard Zinn (author of the classic A People’s History of the United States) at a town hall meeting style presentation recorded in 2007 (you can get it on Itunes from WGBH Politics) I was struck by the need to recognize the sheer complexity of issues and multiplicity of perspectives.

To state it as simply as possible: Not everything is the same. When we attempt to represent EVERYthing as if it were represented by ONE thing, we often neglect the complexity and multiplicity involved in the matter.

I will use two examples that Howard Zinn illustrated well at the community forum, then address the issues that it seemed relevant to connect to.

Zinn takes on the idea of “Family values”. Some conservative political interest say that they represent ‘family values’. But he asks “Which family?” I think it is a valid question. There are families with single moms and multiple kids, divorced dads raising a family, there are foster families, adoptive families, multi-generational families living in the same house. There are lesbian couples with no kids and gay couples with kids. My wife are were D.I.N.K.s (double income – no kids) hen she lost her job while were trying to adopt (which fell through recently) and every permeation you can imagine.

Which family is represented by Focus on the Family’s values? It is erroneous to act as if there is one kind of family and that you represent their values.

That is, unless you are saying that you value only one type of family.

That would be fair enough but you would have to stop using the phrase ‘family values’. Some families value making money or achieving success. Some value conformity. Some value religious adherence above all else. Some value military service while others value independent thinking or even civil disobedience.

Zinn says the same thing about the ‘National interest’. I am a big fan of Paul Kahn’s Political Theology and both he and Zinn talk about President’s ability to declare war or even launch the nuclear codes should the President deem it ‘in the national interest’.

But which of the many National interests? The Nation is not interested in only one thing. There are hundreds or thousands of interests. Unfortunately the reductive mono-speak is code. These buzz-words become code-words for an assume-unstated single issue that clouds the true complexity behind the language.

Zinn touched another example which has been showing up in a lot of my reading lately. The phrase ‘We the people’ is a magnificent ideal. I admire the phase and the idea behind it so much. But I think that it is worth noting that when it was written – we the people were not in the room. At the time of it’s writing, not every ‘we’ was represented.

There were no native americans in the room, no women, no blacks, no commoners. Just land-owning white males. But they had an idea – and it is that idea that we love!

I actually think that this is the exact type of trajectory mentality that we see in a progressive reading of the New Testament. When Paul says in Galatians 3:28 that “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” He is doing this exact thing. He wrote in prophetic expectation using the 3 categories employed in his day were being broken with resurrection power. Barriers between nationality (or race), legal status and gender were being dissolved. My assertion is that it was not for the purpose of homogenization but for multiplicity! The former containers can not contain what it being poured out and welling up in Christ’s new life.

This is why I don’t sweat the fact that Paul appears to by anti-gay (though I argue that he was not anti-gay in the same way that those who quote him today are). You have to read Paul on a trajectory. Within the fruit of the Spirit of God is seed of liberation and transformation. So like ‘We the people’ – it looks forward to a greater reality than was present at it’s writing. Contained within the words is an ideal not yet realized. That is part of why I don’t want to conserve the reality of the time of it’s writing, but spring board off of it to be propelled to a greater one.

We can get caught up in reductive views that ignore the inherent complexity that we are dealing with. For instance, “Is the world essentially good or bad?” or “Are humans inherently evil or innately good?” That kind of simplicity is blind to the multiplicity of factors that we are dealing with in any conversation and allowing the conversation to be framed that way almost ensured that no progress will be made.

Good people still do bad things or even do good things with poor motivation. People who do bad things often love their own families.

We do ourselves a great disservice when we allow our media to talk about ‘the evangelical vote’ or even ‘the black perspective’ as if those parameters only mean one thing or as if everyone within designations voted the same way or believe all the same things, hold all the same values and act in unison. It is fictitious, deceptive and paralyzing.

You can’t even say ‘gun owners’ and mean one thing! Our language (and the dualism behind it) is crippling our culture.

There has been a great “De-centering” that has happened to humanity in the past 500 years. If you just look at the effect starting with Copernicus and continue to Darwin, the earth is not the center of the universe and neither are humans.

It would do us well to move from a reductive mentality (center/ order) to a dynamic interplay of emergent elements. When we recognize the complexity and multiplicity involved in the reality behind our ‘code words’, we will begin to access the real issues that face us.

Filed Under: conversations, engaging, latest, living, media, news, politics, thinking Tagged With: book, books, church, conservative, Emergent, family values, Focus on the Family, Galatians 3, gay, history, homosexuality, Howard Zinn, Language, Liberal, Media, paul, Paul Kahn, politics, progressive, science

People Do Change Their Minds

August 15, 2012 by Bo Sanders 4 Comments

Recently I was reading an article by Richard A. Muller called “The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic” in the NY Times. Muller is a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author of “Energy for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines.” Muller begins by saying:

Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

Muller ends by saying:

Science is that narrow realm of knowledge that, in principle, is universally accepted. I embarked on this analysis to answer questions that, to my mind, had not been answered. I hope that the Berkeley Earth analysis will help settle the scientific debate regarding global warming and its human causes. Then comes the difficult part: agreeing across the political and diplomatic spectrum about what can and should be done.

This made my think back to an article that I had read a month ago by Kevin DeYoung entitled “Why No Denomination Will Survive the Homosexuality Crisis”. DeYoung basically says that we are all talking past each other and that there is no way that conservatives, liberals and those want a compromise can ever get along or agree.

His conclusion is:

“My plea is for these denominations to make a definitive stand. Make it right, left, or center, but make one and make it clearly. Insist that member churches and pastors hold to this position. And then graciously open a big door for any pastor or church who cannot live in this theological space to exit with their dignity, their time, and their property. Because sometimes the best way to preserve unity is to admit that we don’t have it.”

I feel for DeYoung. He is in a tough ecclesiastic place. But … I have to respectfully disagree. After all, people do change their minds.

Here is the odd part of this conversation: Things are not static. People are not givens, and views are not set in stone. Things change.

Now there is a caveat.

What I would want to bring to attention is that in both the issue of climate change and homosexuality (and I would add emergent evolution) the migration is not symmetrical. The movement is predominately one way traffic.

I don’t think that the issue of LGBT rights is as much of a forgone conclusion as some others. I do not think that it as inevitable as I ofter hear. I think that there is a lot of hard work ahead to educate, to protect and to actually legislate.

But here is why I am hopeful. Having a friend who is gay is how so many young people report changing their minds on the issue. It’s amazing – knowing someone who is gay, being a friend is a powerful influence. That element paired with advancements in science bringing greater explanation are major reasons for hope.

People who grow up in Bible believing churches, have a gay friend and figure out the need to read the Bible different on that issue. But rarely does the migration happen the other way. Somebody is ok with their gay friends, then reads the Bible and says “hey I think that this 3,000 year old understanding of sexuality is more accurate than what scientist, sociologist, and psychologist are telling us today.”

That is why I am hopeful. Not because it is inevitable. Not because ‘gay is the new black’. No – I am hopeful because the movement is almost exclusively one way traffic and because having a friend can be such a powerful influence.

In both climate change and evolution – people do change their minds. Mostly based on science. But in the realm of human relationship, there is nothing like a friend.*

So I would like speak against Mr. DeYoung’s proposal and put forward a counter-proposal:

I make a motion that we give it time. That was don’t initiate a parting of the ways. That we live in the uncomfortable tension and let God sort it out as God’s Spirit works within us, among us, and all around us. That we acknowledge the plurality of perspectives and we don’t make this a terminal issue to the relationship.

Can I get a second?

-Bo

*p.s. I know that somebody is going to come on and post that their is someone at their church who ‘wants out of the gay life style’ and that reinforced their previously held view. The thing is that within the construct of a church culture where one is told to ‘pray away the gay’ (to use a common phrase) is it the same kind of friendship I am talking about. If you are the ‘healthy’ or normal one and you are wanting to change them … it’s not exactly a symmetrical mutuality. When someone is under shame from the institutional frameworks of the church, they are not free to be the kind of friend who who is most likely to change one’s mind.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, living, thinking Tagged With: baptist, Bible, book, books, church, climate change, denominations, Deyoung, Episcopal, evolution, gay, God, history, jesus, LGBT, Methodist, Presbyterian, science, sex

Evil Is as Evil Does

June 7, 2012 by Bo Sanders 28 Comments

Earlier this week I wrote about Dealing with Demons - a progressive take, and in it I mentioned that the Devil was a personification of when evil is too big and too bad for us to comprehend as a human result … we outsource to an ancient, cosmic bad guy. Many were able to track with the demon thing but some hit a snag with the Devil thing.

Then what is evil? Where does it come from? Is it real? Is it ontological?

Let me entertain the 3 suggestions that were brought up by responders to the blog: Augustine, Process and Relational Reality.

Augustine had a theory called “privatio boni”. Back in my apologist-evangelist days I would explain it like this: Evil isn’t something, it is the absence of something. Like darkness is not a thing, it is simply the absence of a thing. Wherever you do not have the presence of light, you automatically have darkness – so where God’s will is not obeyed, you automatically have sin and evil.

Of course, the problem with this is that it predicated by God being “all powerful” or omnipotent. Augustine explains:

For the Almighty God, who, as even the heathen acknowledge, has supreme power over all things, being Himself supremely good, would never permit the existence of anything evil among His works, if He were not so omnipotent and good that He can bring good even out of evil. For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good? In the bodies of animals, disease and wounds mean nothing but the absence of health; for when a cure is effected, that does not mean that the evils which were present—namely, the diseases and wounds—go away from the body and dwell elsewhere: they altogether cease to exist; for the wound or disease is not a substance, but a defect in the fleshly substance,—the flesh itself being a substance, and therefore something good, of which those evils—that is, privations of the good which we call health—are accidents. Just in the same way, what are called vices in the soul are nothing but privations of natural good. And when they are cured, they are not transferred elsewhere: when they cease to exist in the healthy soul, they cannot exist anywhere else.

An alternative to that comes from Process thought – which does not see God’s power as coercive (able to unilaterally act however God wills) but persuasive, engaging the possibilities of each moment, complete the contingencies of the past, to bring forward the possibility of a preferable future. John Cobb explains in Process Perspectives II that there are many factors that create the multi-layered web of evil. Human sin is just one element. He also names

Chance and Purpose
Survival instinct
Communal Identity – and fear when it is threatened
Deep held but mistaken beliefs
Institutions
Obedience of authority

among others, as potential ingredients in the creation of evil.

I want to make it clear that the systemic evil of degrading the Earth in our current situation is not primarily the result of individual sins of unnecessary wastefulness by those who know they are falling short of the ideal. The systemic evil results from our industrial-economic system. This system came into being out of a great mixture of motives. Some of them were narrowly selfish, and some of the decisions people made in the process were no doubt sinful. But not all. Some people rightly saw that the development of this system brought prosperity to nations and eventually to most of their people…

Since I believe that to some extent we all miss the mark or fail to fully actualize the initial aim, I do not exclude sin as a causal element in the establishment of this system. My point is only that to explain the rise to dominance of this system primarily in terms of sin is extremely misleading. The evil results from a mixture of good intentions, ignorance, and sin. It is also profoundly brought about by the power of the past in each moment of human experience. (p. 135)

A third option for thinking about this is a Relational Approach. I first encountered this through reading Native American approaches to theology with my mentor Randy Woodley (who’s new book Shalom and the Community of Creation just came out).

If you go back to the story of Eden and can resist the temptation to retroject a Greek understanding of ‘original sin’ and substance into the story, you will see that it is primarily about relationship. What happens in Eden is a fracturing and a resulting alienation in 3 directions:

humans from God
humans from each other
and humans from the earth that sustains them.

As Genesis continues, the fractures stretch out and the impact of the alienation is greater and greater. Soon brother kills brother, generations are fractured … then tribes, peoples and societies.

I love this approach! Once you get away from the substance/material approach the whole Gospel reads differently! God’s relational covenant with Israel and the resulting Law, Christ’s relationship to the God and ushering in a new covenant which radically altered (and began to repaired) our relationship to God – to each other – and to the earth which sustains us (where do you think bread and wine come from?)

The gift of Holy Spirit re-connects us in an inter-related family of God. The perichoretic reality of the Trinity is about the relatedness of the Godhead and not primarily about matters of substance and matter (ousia). Evil in this picture, is that which results from brokeness and fracturing, which leads to alienation, and is then complixified through exponential increase of family systems, tribalism, social structures, societal realities and institutional frameworks … it becomes so big and so bad that it is nearly unimaginable to our mind. At this point we are tempted to outsource the badness to an ‘entity’ which is the personification of evil.

So those are three really good ways of beginning to address the problem of evil. They all have strengths and weakness – but in the end, they are better than saying ‘the Devil made me do it’.

I will end by quoting Cobb again:

The ways in which even what is good in human nature and society can and does become destructive are so numerous and so effective that the mystery is how good sometimes triumphs over it. This is where I see the need to emphasize God’s directing and empowering call to novel forms of goodness.

John B. Cobb Jr.. The Process Perspective II (p. 137). Kindle Edition which sells for $7.63

Filed Under: bible stuff, books, church history, engaging, latest, living, thinking Tagged With: Augustine, Bible, book, books, church, death, demons, Devil, eden, evil, God, history, Holocaust, Holy Spirit, jesus, john cobb, Native American, Process, Randy Woodley, reality, science, sin, society, St. Augustine

Does one need to understand theology before one can not believe in God?

May 30, 2012 by Bo Sanders 36 Comments

Last week I posted on an interesting article (I’m not Sure most Christians know that) where Terry Eagelton reviewed Richard Dawkins’ book the God Delusion. One of the concerns that showed up in responses to both that post and to Eagelton was whether, if one has dismissed the idea of God as some sort of cosmic leprechaun, does one even needs bother to look into the matter at all as there is an a priori assumption in place.

The comments section of the Eagelton review is the truly fascinating part. The first response asks if one is convinced that the stars don’t determine one’s fate, is one obliged to look into the nuances of astrology. The next points out that if one is going to write a book on it, then yes. It is an enjoyable (though contentious) and intelligent exchange.

So the question is “Does one need to understand theology before one can not believe in God? “

It may not come as a surprise that I am going to say ‘Yes!’

Let me place two caveats in place :

I respect the ‘death of God’ theologian greatly. What they are doing philosophically makes more sense to me than almost anything else. What many fail to understand is the huge gulf between saying that ‘there is no god’ and ‘God died’. That is for another post.
One is free to simply not believe in a god if one were to so desire. Although I believe that that humans are homo-religiosus (to follow Paul Knitter and others), I don’t presume to impose that upon others.

With that being said – I need to be clear: I am not addressing Dawkins specifically. You have to be careful with that because he has such passionate defenders who are aggressive apologists.

The New Atheists (and their followers), it seems to me, have simply proven that they don’t believe in the fundamentalist’s God. Which is fine – neither do we.

As interesting as Aquinas and his 5 proofs can be, if you have not engaged Tillich & Cobb, or Altizer (for example) then you are not engaging the idea of ‘God’ that we are engaging.

So you don’t believe in the construct they had in the 14th century. Neither do we.
You think the fundamentalist are full of hot air. So do we.

That is my only point. I have no other agenda. I just wanted to point out that if you have not engaged what is being engaged … then the God you don’t believe in is not the one we believe in either.

It would be like me not believing in Neuroscience or String Theory or Molecular Biology because they seemed to be a lot of speculation, abstraction, and I couldn’t see it in a microscope (whether or not I have looked through one).

Beat up people from the 14th – 17th century all you want. Pick on wooden literalist and fundamentalists if you like. But things have changed, thoughts have evolved, and God is not what She used to be (thank you Elizabeth Johnson, Rosemary Radford-Ruther and Mary Daly). This is no longer the monolithic mega-idol - the giant edifice of christendom – that was (in theory) centrally defined, tightly controlled, and purported to be universal.

If you want to say that you don’t believe in God, you are going to have to be much more specific.

______

post-script: I have enjoyed reading all of the articles that I have been referred to including P.Z. Meyers Courtier’s Response and the many a book reviews – including my favorite from H. Allen Orr in the New York Times entitled “A Mission to Convert” which includes the following two quotes:

Gone, it seems, is the Dawkins of The Selfish Gene, a writer who could lead readers through dauntingly difficult arguments and who used anecdotes to illustrate those arguments, not to substitute for them.

One reason for the lack of extended argument in The God Delusion is clear: Dawkins doesn’t seem very good at it. Indeed he suffers from several problems when attempting to reason philosophically. The most obvious is that he has a preordained set of conclusions at which he’s determined to arrive. Consequently, Dawkins uses any argument, however feeble, that seems to get him there and the merit of various arguments appears judged largely by where they lead.

Filed Under: engaging, latest, living, thinking Tagged With: a/theist, Bible, book, books, church, Dawkins, Eagelton, God, history, jesus, new atheists, science

What has changed since I was your pastor

May 21, 2012 by Bo Sanders 8 Comments

Last week I had chance to return to the place where I had been a pastor for 11 years. I have been away for 4 years pursuing higher education. It was great to reconnect with folks that I love very much. The trip also included a chance to head out into the woods with a group of guys for a week-long canoe trip in the Adirondack Mountains.

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:

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.
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

Filed Under: conversations, engaging, latest, thinking Tagged With: Bible, book, books, church, Diana Butler Bass, Directions, faith, God, jesus, Marc Ellis, Natural, Prophetic, science, Supernatural, zizek

Claremont School of Theology