Liberty University in a nutshell

If you went to Liberty, this will most likely be hilarious. If you didn't, it might still be funny but only in the same way that sometimes you laugh at jokes that you think should be funny but then get really embarassed when someone asks you why you're laughing and you don't have a good answer.

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.

Communal Sex Lives?

About a month ago I read an amazing book called Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity, and it was a real eye-opener. There are many things to admire about this non-traditional approach to sex, but one thing in particular has really caused me to question a lot of my assumptions about the community's role in our sex lives. There is even a chapter called Communal Sex: Or, Why Your Neighbor Has Any Business Asking You What You Did Last Night. Here is an exerpt from that chapter:

"...the Bible tells us to intrude - or rather, the Bible tells us that talking to one another about what is really going on in our lives is in fact not an intrusion at all, because what's going on in my life is already your concern; by dint of the baptism that made me your sister, my joys are your joys and my crises are your crises. We are called to speak to one another lovingly, to be sure, and with edifying, rather than gossipy or hurtful, goals. But we are called nonetheless to transform seemingly private matters into communal matters...[Sociologist Wendell] Berry claims that "the disintegration of community" began when we started treating marital sex as a wholly private matter, when we severed the connections that link marriages to households and neighborhoods and communities" (56-7).

It is curious the many things we take for granted and assume in the ways we think. For most of history, even up until the 20th century, marital sex wasn't just between a husband and wife. How could it be when the majority of the populations lived (and still do in 3rd world countries) in one-room houses or huts? Your kids knew when you had sex. Your kids heard when you had sex...Scary thought?

In any case, my point is that we are to live in community because we are the body of Christ. What affects one part of the body affects the whole, whether we confess it or not. And our sex life is just one of those areas that we should be able to share about if need be, it just happens to be one of the hardest. But in the end we are free. We are free to be open and free to share because our worth isn't based on what we can hide from people about our sin and our humanity, but is based on a love by a God who already knows it and loves us anyway. Yet sometimes I think we value people's opinion but not God's. It's okay if God knows, but not so and so. Hmmm, interesting. But, as always, I am open for correction, rebuke, wagging fingers, etc.

"The best thing that could ever happen to any one of us is that all our sins would be broadcast on the 5 o' clock news." - Derek Webb

A Prayer by Anne Bronte

Reflecting on the past few years here in the Philly area, I've realized how much my faith has grown. This is surprising considering how incredibly often I have been plagued by doubt here at seminary. I feel like I have survived the turbulent waters of 'being honest with the text' and 'letting the text be the text' and have passed to the serenity of a 2nd naivete. But as I reflected on that and praised God for his hand in all of it, I came across a poem that I have really become attached to in the past few days. It's by Anne Bronte, third of the famous Bronte sisters (Charlotte & Emily) and is found in an amazing book called A Sacrifice of Praise which is "an anthology of Christian poetry in English from Caedmon to the mid-twentieth century."

A Prayer

My God (oh, let me call Thee mine,
Weak, wretched sinner though I be),
My trembling soul would fain be Thine;
My feeble faith still clings to Thee.

Not only for the past I grieve,
The future fills me with dismay;
Unless Thou hasten to relieve,
Thy suppliant is a castaway.

I cannot say my faith is strong,
I dare not hope my love is great;
But strength and love to Thee belong:
Oh, do not leave me desolate!

I know I owe my all to Thee;
Oh, take the heart I cannot give;
Do Thou my Strength, my Savior be,
And make me to Thy glory live!

Choice as Neglect

I was at a party on July 4, talking with JR Briggs of Resonate about books. He said that he gets anxious in a bookstore because every book he chooses is his choosing 1000 other books to NOT read. I can definitely relate to that. But as I thought about that statement later I found it to be true in almost every sphere of life. In fact Derrida talks about this in his Gift of Death, which is an excellent book by the way. But it is true that our choice in almost everything is a choice that excludes almost an infinite amount of other possibilities. And this has very practical implications in our Christian lives. Every time I choose to eat a fancy restaurant, I am choosing to not send that money to a starving family in Africa, and I am responsible for that decision. But every time I choose to send that money to a starving family in Africa, I am choosing to neglect a starving family in Asia. Of course this could go on infinitely, but hopefully it helps us to see that our choices affect more than just those things or people that are directly influenced by that decision. So it seems somewhat funny and trite when we think about this concept in terms of books, but not so funny when we think about it in terms of hurting people in this world. Now this could easily lead to despair, a labyrinth of neglect, a drowning in the awareness of the profundity of every decision we make, but it doesn’t need to. But then again, maybe that’s the point.

Gratitude

Tonight I went to a church service, and it was good. There was one thing in particular that made me really think. At the end of the time of singing (sorry for the lack of a better word, I refuse to call it "worship") the music leader prayed, "God, I wish there were words big enough to show our gratitude." For whatever reason, it hit me. We kind of do have 'words big enough to show our gratitude.' They are called 'actions.' Of course the leader didn't say this intentionally but I understood those words in my own life as giving lip service. It's much easier for me to say, "I wish I had words big enough to show my gratitude" while I am missing enormous opportunities to show my gratitude by loving my neighbor as myself, by letting my neighbor borrow my lawn mower (even though I know I won't see it again for 6 mos, or ever), by giving up on the lame excuse "I just don't have time" so that I can volunteer at a homeless shelter, so that I can take time to pray for the less fortunate, by giving up my vacation time at work to go to help Katrina victims. That is gratitude. Now even those might not be gratitude enough, but I have to say it's much better than cop-ing out with a "I wish I had words..."

"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go visit you?"

"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." [Matthew 25:37-40]

The Paradox of Death & Life In Christ

I thought may I had over-emphasized in my last post, but I randomly opened a book on the shelf by Rodney Clapp called Tortured Wonders: Christian Spirituality for People, not Angels. The page I happened upon said this:

As we learn to acknolwedge and admit the reality of death, rather than deny it, we can prepare for our own death by familiarizing ourselves with it while it remains (probably) at some distance...We should not downplay or suppress the reality of death in our worship. Every occasion of worship, after all, harks to the death of Christ on a cross. Every baptism is a death, a drowning, and we should not gloss this.

Where then is the paradox? That this death brings life. It brings life now, but only insofar as its hope is in the future, not in this life. To grasp your own death as a Christian is to truly "hide your life in Christ" (Colossians 3; II Corinthians 4:18; Hebrews 11:1). You are dead to what goes on in this world and alive only to the Kingdom of God. Everything we do in this world is worthless unless it translates into eternity, unless it impacts the Kingdom. And I am sorry to say, even most of what we do at church doesn't impact the Kingdom and will eventually waste away with the rest of us.

The Royal Consciousness

Walter Brueggemann rightly speaks of the "golden age" of Solomon as a time of spiritual decay. Times of satisfaction are never good for the Spiritual life. It is in the passion and the longing for something more just and right that we thrive as spiritual people. Those times where we are in no danger and have become "established", Brueggemann calls "the Royal Consciousness" (more or less, although I am summarizing and editing a bit).

He says:The royal consciousness leads people to numbness, especially to numbness about death. It is the task of prophetic ministry and imagination to bring people to engage their experience of suffering to death (Prophetic Imagination, 41)

How true this is! We, as Christians, HAVE to learn to take the advice in Ecclesiastes, "Meaningless (or better translated, Stupid!), Meaningless, all is meaningless!" The world does not work the way we think it should. We can't keep putting that fact under the rug and keep our happy faces on all the time. The quicker we can come to grips with the fact that we will all die and that the good people oftentimes get screwed in life while the swindlers and thieves get rich, the quicker we will give up this nonsense of security.

You will not be remembered. A sobering fact indeed. No one, I mean no one, will even know you ever existed except for some name on a list, in a hundred years. We have to face this fact. But we still try don't we. Why? Because we cannot face our own death. We cannot imagine truly a time when we will no longer be. But if we can do that, if we can move as Heidegger calls it, into Authenticity, then we are free. We are free to serve God because we truly understand, not just with our mouths like we like to do, but with our lives, we will understand that everything is futile in this life, everything.

Needing Christ

This is Christianity: Let a person begin seriously to realize his need for Christ. Let him literally give all his fortune to the poor, literally love his neighbor, and so forth, and he will soon learn to need Christ. Christianity is a suit that at first glance seems attractive enough, but as soon as you actually put it on - then you must have Christ's help in order to be able to live in it. -S. Kierkegaard

Do I need Christ? I thought the other day of the Scripture "and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleed in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied" (1 Cor 15:17-19).

If this is suppose to be true, does my life reflect this? No way. If I found out that Christ has not been raised, I would not be pitied above all men, I would be sorely disappointed, my beliefs would be shattered but my life wouldn't. I would just change my beliefs and change my life direction and go on without hope. Have I come to a place where I no longer desire the American dream? Where I actually put all my eggs in one basket, I no longer try to keep one foot on this earth "just in case it isn't true". How is that faith? How is it faith to try and still have my life, the career I want and a family I want and things I want? I have failed miserably in this. I want to be in that very risky and terrifying place of knowing that if I have put my faith in the wrong God I am to be pitied above all men, that I have absolutely nothing left in this world, I am competely screwed because I have given it all to Christ. And by "given it all to Christ" I mean loving my neighbor and giving to those who need it most because that is what my savior has called me to. I have the Gospel, why do I keep trying to supplement that? Because I am scared of the question, "what if it isn't true?"

Deferring Meaning - Subjectively

"If you are a scholar, remember that if you do not read God's Word in another way, it will turn out that after a lifetime of reading God's Word man hours every day, you nevertheless have never read - God's Word" (S. Kierkegaard).

As I study for finals, I realize how guilty I am of this. It is so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that what a text means is what a text meant, a poor hermeneutic of any text, much more so the Word of God. Why is this so easy? It allows for a disengagement of the text, the text no longer means anything to me; actually, only in some vague sense then can it mean at all.

It is also easy to defer a subjective reading of Scripture until 'you have it figured out.' However, Kierkegaard again reminds us of a stinging truth. "His point is that there are enough perfectly clear [texts] to keep one busy without having to wait for the conclusions of biblical research before one can live as a Christian" (R. Bauckham, James, 7). What then, I ask myself is the point of learning it in the first place? It is for the love of the Church. I agree that not everyone needs to be deep thinkers theologically, they only need to be deep doers Christologically. However, some do need to be deep thinkers theologically. I am certainly not 'cut from the same cloth' (as Dave D would say) intellectually as even many within my own institution but I don't need to be more intellegent than others, only faithful.

But one thing is clear, the more I know, the harder it is to engage in the text in a subjectively meaningful way. Understanding redemptive-history is important, but Scriptures are also written to us and not just for us.

Once more, as Kierkegaard says,
when you read God's Word you must (so that you actually do come to see yourself in the mirror) remember to say to yourself incessantly: It is I to whom it is speaking; It is I about whom it is speaking.