Oprah & The New Age Jesus

I received a forward from my aunt a few days ago about Oprah and her New Age Jesus and how Christians should beware, boycott, the usual conservative response. Anyway, instead of just deleting it because I know it will make me upset, I actually read it and here was my response.

Oprah is successful and people listen to her because she is willing to give and love. People listen to her message because she seems to really care about them as people, providing for their material needs.

Conservative Christians on the other hand, typically are always on the defensive, willing to boycott and throw their hands up (and send forwards saying I am not a good Christian if I don’t send it on) at anything that challenges their “traditional values or beliefs.” What if we quit all that and started going on the offensive. We should start meeting people’s needs and caring for them (with our time and money as well as our prayers) instead of sitting around all day waiting for someone like Oprah to say one wrong word about Jesus and then condemning her for it. Maybe then people would start listening to OUR message of love and acceptance?

Maybe I would listen to people more if they were doing half of the good in this world that Oprah does. Now, she probably does have wacky views and I probably wouldn’t consider her a Christian, to be honest I don’t think I have ever even watched an entire show of hers, but I can’t help but applaud her for doing the work many Christians in this world SHOULD be doing (such as the school she started in South Africa for girls)…If we weren’t so busy talking so much about what we DON’T believe in.

Important P.S. What the heck does Oprah’s bad theology have to do with voting for Barack Obama?

This post will probably only make sense to those who received the forward, which is probably a lot of people since I got 2 in 2 days from 2 different folks. Anyway, just my thought on forwards that ask me to boycott/beware of things.

The Oscars & Art

Last night I went to my annual Oscar party, a night I look forward to each year. We each fill out a ballot to see which of us will win, which usually comes down to who guessed the winner for best short animated feature. The night was filled with sarcasm and criticism of movies and actors/actresses, red wine, popcorn, and Jon Stewart...what a great combination.

At some point in the night someone mentioned that it was great to see the Oscars because they judged movies on 'art' and not on mass appeal or box office numbers. And I want to second that notion, but also maybe go a little further with it.

According to Heidegger, 'art' is what a culture has/develops that not only encapsulates that culture but propels it, it not only symbolizes but creates. The Greek Parthenon, the ancient Catholic Cathedrals, etc, are works of art because they create the culture they are a part of. And they only do this when they are 'working' (insightful wordplay on 'work of art'). The Greek Parthenon is not 'for us' a work of art because it no longer 'works' as it did for the Greeks.

How does this relate to the Oscars? The movies that win Oscars are oftentimes what I would consider "works of art." They are movies that 'work' at creating our culture. There are many movies that have come out this year that were box office smashes, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars. And I think that they are successful because they tap into the culture, they encapsulate the culture, they are, in a word, 'relatable.' But they do not move into the category of art, in the Heideggerian definition, because they stop at encapsulation and do no move on to propulsion. I would consider many box office smashes 'culture leeches' while I would consider many oscar winners 'culture propellers.'

Notice though that this is a general observation and not always the case since some box office smashes are also oscar winners and not all oscar winners are 'works of art,' but I did find that an interesting distinction as I sipped my red wine last night and made fun of Cameron Diaz and Miley Cyrus.

My Perfect Valentine

You know you have been married for a good amount of time and have an amazing wife when she gets you a JPS Hebrew-English TaNaKh for Valentine's Day. It also makes me think I am not a normal husband.

Zondervan's "A Reader's Hebrew Bible"

I wanted to advertise for the new Reader's Hebrew Bible that will be coming out in March that Pete told us about a few days ago. I have to admit I am excited. I use my Reader's Greek New Testament all the time, it was one of the best things I've ever bought for my study. The Hebrew Bible will contain in the footnotes all vocabulary occurring 100 times or less in the HB. It really does allow me to spend more time in the text and less time in the lexicon while at the same time not really losing any valuable study since I would be doing the same thing in a lexicon as I would by looking at the bottom of the page. The only downside is the lack of a critical apparatus but that allows for a much slimmer and light-weight Bible. I wonder if it would be okay to duct tape the Reader's GNT to the new Reader's HB?

Jim Wallis On the Poor

Yesterday I went downtown to the Free Library of Philadelphia to hear Jim Wallis speak about his new book called The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America. To be honest, I actually wasn't looking forward to it all that much. I didn't know anything about Wallis or the books he'd written. But after hearing him, an evangelical Christian who teaches on faith and politics at Harvard on occasion, speak in politically neutral but passionately religious language about how it is up to us to bring revolution in the areas of poverty and other social justice issues, I was hooked.

He told a story about he a conversation he had had with Bono of U2 about the text of Luke 4:18, the first public appearance of Jesus in the synagogue. The text says this:

The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Wallis didn't mention this but it is interesting that where Matthew has in his Beatitudes "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven," Luke simply has, "Blessed are the poor."

Wallis's point? If it's not good news to the poor (the oppressed, the forgotten), then it's not the good news of Jesus Christ. I think evangelicals are finally grasping the significance of that statement. It seems like "those liberals" were onto something after all.

The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience

In Ron Sider's great book entitled Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience: Why Are Christians Living Just Like the Rest of the World? there are some incredible statistics. The two most telling (for me at least) are those related to divorce and those related to tithing.

According to the sources Sider cites, only around 6% of Christians tithe (give 10% of their income to the church). If you are saying to yourself, "But the New Testament doesn't command us to give 10%, that's an Old Testament law," then you're missing the point. As Christians, we should give liberally and cheerfully. Personally, I feel as though something around 10% should be a minimum, but that's another story. What does this point to according to Sider? Rampant materialism and self-centeredness. We care more about having stuff and about taking care of ourselves than we do about other people and about the spread of the gospel. And I know this is true because if you're like me, even as I type this, I am justifying in 100 different ways why I don't give more than 10% of my income to the church and other gospel-oriented organizations. No wonder people like Jesus but not the church. Our money is certainly not where our mouth is.

Secondly, the divorce rate is no different among Christians than among non-Christians. In fact, of those Christians who divorced 90% were believers when they divorced (the other 10% got divorced before becoming a Christian). Why? As Sider's subtitle suggests, Christians are more interested in living just like the rest of the world, with perhaps a little more security and ticket to heaven thrown in for good measure. We aren't interested in "turning the other cheek." We think Christianity should make us happy and when it doesn't we get to take matters into our own hands.

Of course, many people suggest that statistics are unreliable, but I don't think anyone is surprised by these statistics. They aren't saying anything that we haven't already seen over the years. But the question remains, what do we do about? Or more directly, what do I do about it?

Jesus Wasn't The Messiah?

What? I saw this book in a local Christian bookstore the other day and I am actually really tempted to buy it. If there is anything I think that the Bible tries to make a case for it is Jesus's Messianic claim. I would interested to see how exactly Hagee argues for this. Without having read the book, this ad seems to say that Jesus himself never claimed to be the Messiah, was not therefore the Messiah, and therefore all of our Jewish hatred in Christian history has been unfounded and we should support Israel because Scripture clearly says we should do that.

First Problem:

Even if Jesus never claimed to be Messiah, that doesn't mean he wasn't. At least, that's what Peter and Paul think. If Jesus didn't intend to be the Messiah, we have some major doctrine of Scripture issues to work out because apparently none of the disciples got the memo.

Just doing a 5 second "biblegateway" search of the term "Christ" got me 467 times in the NT in which that term is used. Does Hagee think that was Jesus's last name or something? Any Greek-speaking Jew during the 1st century would have known "christos" to be the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew משיח or "anointed one," transliterated as Mashiach or Messiah. For more proof that this was how Paul took the term "Christ" see N.T. Wright's great book The Climax of the Covenant.

All 467 times aside though, is it true that Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah?

24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth."

25 The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us."

26 Then Jesus declared, "I, the one speaking to you—I am he."

John 4:24-26

Without the myriad of other texts in which Jesus implicitly (as well as explicitly) shows himself to be Messiah, I think this one should be given a second thought.

But, to be fair to Hagee, I have not yet read his book. He may have some good answers to these questions, but my guess is, if he wanted to overturn all of Church History's understanding of Scripture, his book might want to be a little longer.

Oh yeah, and if I can apply Ockham's Razor to this situation, we probably shouldn't hate Jews because Jesus says we shouldn't hate anyone and should love everyone, even our enemy. Something tells me Hagee made it more complicated than it needed to be.

Aristotle on Friendship

Today, as I was researching for the discussion portion of LivingRoom (a group I am a part of that meets on Sunday nights), I re-visited some of what Aristotle says about friendship in his Nichomachean Ethics. In his discussion of "friendship among equals," he gives three foundations for such relationships.

1. Utility - Many friendships are based on a common benefit in terms of a service or good. I tend to think of this relationship as a business relationship. The two parties are friends but only insofar as they serve each other's purposes. This probably happens in many other friendships too and as Aristotle suggests, isn't a great foundation for a lasting friendship

2. Pleasure - This actually took me a little by surprise. In our day friendship is almost always based on pleasure. I am friends with people because we are similar and we enjoy "the pleasure of each other's company."

"Those who love for utility or pleasure, then, are fond of a friend because of what is good or pleasant for themselves, not insofar as the beloved is who s/he is, but insofar as s/he is useful or pleasant. Hence these friendships as well as the friends are coincidental, since the beloved is loved not insofar as s/he is who s/he is, but insofar as he provides some good or pleasure. And so these sorts of friendships are easily dissolved, when the friends do not remain similar to what they were; for if someone is no longer pleasant or useful, the other stops loving him/her.”

What I found as I thought about this is that all too often our relationships to other believers are also founded and based on the wrong things. They are all too often founded on things that are "coincidental," and we therefore love conditionally, on something found within us.

Of course, Aristotle's solution is the third type, the virtuous person, but I think that is still changeable and still in flux. It is still conditional on the virtue of the person.

For Christians however, our foundation for relationship is never found within but always without, in our being united with Christ. It is unchangeable and fixed and therefore never "coincidental" but unconditional. Christ's commitment to us is what grounds our love for other believers (and ultimately everyone on earth, i.e., our "neighbor") and since that commitment is never changing and is unconditional, so ours must be. We do not love for my sake or for the other, but for Christ's.

What Would Jesus Deconstruct?

Along with Smith's Who's Afraid of Postmodernism I am also reading the second book in the series, What Would Jesus Deconstruct by none other than John Caputo. I have enjoyed it so much (if nothing else, it reads like a philosophy book...ah, the good 'ole days). I thought I would include some of my favorite one-liners from the book so far:

About the (in)famous WWJD:

"My hypothesis is if our friends on the Right really mean to ask that question instead of using it as a stick to beat their enemies, they are in for a shock...It will be an eye opener to the Christian Right, who, having tried to blackmail us with this question, will discover that the slogan they have been wearing on their T-shirts and pasting on their automobile bumpers all these years is a call for radical social justice!"

"In my view, a deconstruction is good news, because it delivers the shock of the other to the forces of the same, the shock of the good (the "ought") to the forces of being ("what is"), which is also why I think it bears good news to the church."

"We sing songs to the truth as if it were a source of comfort, warmth, and good hygiene. But in deconstruction the truth is dangerous, and it will drive you out in to the cold."