materialism as spirituality

Spirituality is material (meaing of this world) and tries to connect the world of the divine with the world of the human. Religion, on the other hand, is external and generally focused on "otherworldly" experiences. It often has very little to say about the sacredness of all creation here and now.
Burke and Taylor, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, p 60

There are certain things that people say that can only be taken seriously if we realize they have their tongue firmly planted in one of their cheeks. For example, something like "red is the new black" is a nonsense statement unless we realize the context, and realize that it's said with a touch of humor and what the speaker may consider wit.

So, when these two make the statement "spirituality is material", while we may assume they are trying for wit, we still have to assume that somehow they are being serious. Spirituality is the new materialism, up is the new down, opera is the new punk, and jars of urine is the new art.

And why do I think that, at the very least, they have things backwards? What does it even mean, really, to "connect the world of the divine with the world of the human"?

Finally, there is, of course, the stereotypical and baseless slam against the church. It is too "otherworldly", too focused on life after death. Never mind all the hospitals and charites the church has been a part of, all the centers of learning the church has helped to found, all the causes it has supported that have made societies better. Never mind, as Chesterton points out in "The Everlasting Man", that the one thing that kept Europe from becoming like Asia was the church.

Which, of course, also includes the immeasurable good of telling people their sins can be forgiven through repentence and faith in the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ.

Were Burke and Taylor to honestly look at history, they couldn't offer enough thanks to the church, or the God for the Church, for all the good Christians have done. But they won't, they have their own agenda to push, and the true church and the Gospel it preaches is simply in the way.

un-Taylor-ing Chesterton

This is Christ for this age but also a Christ for all ages. Images of Jesus are historical and contextual, as are recitations of the gospel. Things are added and subtracted; there are differences in focues and emphasis. My opening quote from Chesterton is of help here. Chesterton wrote at a time when atheism was a sigificant and growing alternative to faith. The rise of scientific-rationalism, including new theories such as Darwin's evolutionary model, were undermining the already embattled Christian faith that Chesterton held. The gift Chesterton offers is the power of a new perspective. Rather than address issues of sin, salvation, and redemption, he appeals directly to the "atheistic" potential in the Jesus story, the singular moment in the Passion where a conversatio about atheism and God is a viable one. This is what I mean when I say that we must once again encode the message of Jesus.

In the present situation it seems that some are willing to change, rearrange, and rethink form, but there is little attention to changeof content in the presentation of the Christian message in teh postsecular. My sense is that it is the message, the very content, that which we present as being representative of Christian faith that is the one thing that needs to be revisited and re-encoded...But in some sense, as long as Christianity remains a vapor trail fo modern and premodern concepts about how the relation between the human and teh divine is achieved, Christian thinking will not contribute much to the matters at hand....The message needs to speak to our time, not times past. Chesterton made room for atheists at the foot of the cross, not by denying other realities of the story, but by isolating the very point of connection by which the potential for engagement might be effected.

Barry Taylor, Entertainment Theology, pp 209-210

And his quote of Chesterton's.

When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the very cry from the cross: the cry which confesses the God has forsaken God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a gof from all the gods of the world...they will not find another god who has himself been in revolt...They will find...only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.
from Orthodoxy

As someone who has read a bit of Chesterton, and learned more than a bit from him, I rather immediately smelled (in a metaphorical sense) that something was wrong here. I recognized that quote, though it took me a bit to find in the text file of Orthodoxy that I have (courtesy of the Gutenberg Project), but I finally did. One note--since I am using a text file for the reference, I can't give you a page number, but I can say that the quote is in chapter VIII called The Romance of Orthodoxy.

Lastly, this truth is yet again true in the case of the common modern attempts to diminish or to explain away the divinity of Christ. The thing may be true or not; that I shall deal with before I end. But if the divinity is true it is certainly terribly revolutionary. That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already; but that God could have his back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents for ever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point--and does not break. In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologise in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in that terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt. It is written, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay, (the matter grows too difficult for human speech,) but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.

A couple of times in that paragraph, Chesterton admits that he is dealing with a difficult subject, and one time admits to thinking that he what he's writing may be taken wrong. I think Taylor is taking him wrong, whether by accident or not, I'll not venture to say my suspicions, except that some of his claims show a staggering ignorance of the book.

When, for example, Taylor says "Rather than address issues of sin, salvation, and redemption...", making it sound like Chesterton does no such thing, he only leads me to believe that he has never read Orthodoxy. If he had, he would likely have read things like this.

But I think this book may well start where our argument started-- in the neighbourhood of the mad-house. Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin--a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R.J.Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.
Chapter II

And concerning the idea that Christianity needs to keep up with the times, well, consider these.

An imbecile habit has arisen in modern controversy of saying that such and such a creed can be held in one age but cannot be held in another. Some dogma, we are told, was credible in the twelfth century, but is not credible in the twentieth. You might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed on Mondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays. You might as well say of a view of the cosmos that it was suitable to half-past three, but not suitable to half-past four. What a man can believe depends upon his philosophy, not upon the clock or the century. If a man believes in unalterable natural law, he cannot believe in any miracle in any age. If a man believes in a will behind law, he can believe in any miracle in any age. Suppose, for the sake of argument, we are concerned with a case of thaumaturgic healing. A materialist of the twelfth century could not believe it any more than a materialist of the twentieth century. But a Christian Scientist of the twentieth century can believe it as much as a Christian of the twelfth century. It is simply a matter of a man's theory of things. Therefore in dealing with any historical answer, the point is not whether it was given in our time, but whether it was given in answer to our question. And the more I thought about when and how Christianity had come into the world, the more I felt that it had actually come to answer this question.
Chapter V

I have alluded to an unmeaning phrase to the effect that such and such a creed cannot be believed in our age. Of course, anything can be believed in any age. But, oddly enough, there really is a sense in which a creed, if it is believed at all, can be believed more fixedly in a complex society than in a simple one. If a man finds Christianity true in Birmingham, he has actually clearer reasons for faith than if he had found it true in Mercia. For the more complicated seems the coincidence, the less it can be a coincidence. If snowflakes fell in the shape, say, of the heart of Midlothian, it might be an accident. But if snowflakes fell in the exact shape of the maze at Hampton Court, I think one might call it a miracle. It is exactly as of such a miracle that I have since come to feel of the philosophy of Christianity. The complication of our modern world proves the truth of the creed more perfectly than any of the plain problems of the ages of faith. It was in Notting Hill and Battersea that I began to see that Christianity was true. This is why the faith has that elaboration of doctrines and details which so much distresses those who admire Christianity without believing in it.
Chapter VI

This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. The Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any warhorse; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along one idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. She swerved to left and right, so exactly as to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand the huge bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to make Christianity too worldly. The next instant she was swerving to avoid an orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly. The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable. It would have been easier to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would have been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into the bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of Christendom--that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.
Chapter VI

I could go on; indeed, I consider much of Chesterton's writings to have in some sense refuted much of the egotistical nonsense of postmodernism long before posmodernism was born. I think I'll leave it for now, though, with this last quote.

Religious authority has often, doubtless, been oppressive or unreasonable; just as every legal system (and especially our present one) has been callous and full of a cruel apathy. It is rational to attack the police; nay, it is glorious. But the modern critics of religious authority are like men who should attack the police without ever having heard of burglars. For there is a great and possible peril to the human mind: a peril as practical as burglary. Against it religious authority was reared, rightly or wrongly, as a barrier. And against it something certainly must be reared as a barrier, if our race is to avoid ruin.

That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought. It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, "Why should ANYTHING go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? They are both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?" The young sceptic says, "I have a right to think for myself." But the old sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, "I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all."

There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped. That is the ultimate evil against which all religious authority was aimed. It only appears at the end of decadent ages like our own: and already Mr. H.G.Wells has raised its ruinous banner; he has written a delicate piece of scepticism called "Doubts of the Instrument." In this he questions the brain itself, and endeavours to remove all reality from all his own assertions, past, present, and to come. But it was against this remote ruin that all the military systems in religion were originally ranked and ruled. The creeds and the crusades, the hierarchies and the horrible persecutions were not organized, as is ignorantly said, for the suppression of reason. They were organized for the difficult defence of reason. Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first.
Chapter III (aptly named The Suicide of Thought)

If, as Taylor claims, Chesterton was trying to make "... room for atheists at the foot of the cross", he was not doing so in order that the atheist should remain an atheist; rather, Orthodoxy was to a large degree an account of his own move from atheism to Christianity, and he spends quite a few of his very long paragraphs showing the contradictions of the things atheists say against Christianity. He certainly wasn't interested in pretending that the atheist could remain an atheist and be a Christian, which seems to be quite the fashion today.

keeping you informed

Simply because it's good to know these things...

It's been...what, several days, maybe over a week...since we started hearing about the New Black Panther leader who went on about how he "hate(s) every iota of a cr...." and how black people need to "kill some cr...." and some of "their babies".

And Sojourners, being of course the non-violent, anti-hate, anti-(white)-racism people that they are, have so far on their badly-names God's Politics blog, as of this yesterday (I'm writing this around noon, so who knows what may be put up later today) have posted...

Absolutely nothing about it.

And I looked about at all entries for this month, July. Not even on their Friday entries of basically links to things they deem interesting, is it mentioned.

Now, if they could find one even loosely affiliated person at a Tea Party who would go on about how white people need to "kill n..." or "kill the babies of ch....", then you can bet every dollar or other currency you have that they'd be trumpeting that all day every day for weeks--just recall how they went on about the white policeman last year who arrested the black professor when he thought the man was breaking and entering.

But a black person who is a part of a hate group like the New Black Panthers? Wouldn't want that to interfere with their self-righteous diatribes about our fictional oil addiction, or how Tupac Shakur was someone to listen to for theology, or that when Latino youths kill white boys it leads to acts of vengence taking place "before I could get my pants on."

But a black man telling black people to kill white people and their babies? Nary a peep, as of yet.

story proves nothing

Spirituality is concerned with the particular rather than the universal. It holds that the subjective-self narrative is integral to the expression of authentic faith. Religion, in contrast, is consumed with accounts of the universal human condition. As a result, people reject religion not because they don't believe but because their individual stories are overlooked and their voices not heard.
Burke and Tayler, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, pp 59-60

First, my apology for the lengthy delay in posting. It's been a busy time, and I've been doing other things.

Now, to the substance...

I suppose this is an attack on the big postmodern bugaboo called the 'metanarrative', which is what I think they mean when they refer to "accounts of the universal human condition".

Now I suppose it could be of interest to point out that these writers attack metanarratives by employing another metanarrative. In order to attack the metanarrative of "accounts of the universal human condition", they must employ another metanarrative of "people reject religion...because their individual stories are overlooked and their voices not heard".

This is a very postmodern thing to do. A few minutes ago, I was listen to a sermon by Rob Bell and Shane Hipps on Chris Rosebrough's "Fighting for the Faith", and at one point Bell says that he doesn't want to engage in debate or argument with those who are critical of him, but instead speaks of an adequate answer to them would be something like people gathering around a water cooler and them telling their stories about how they have experienced God. The sermon they preached was filled with attacks on correct biblically-based beliefs, instead substituting some kind of "big Jesus" that is present even in the ungodly practice of transcendental meditation. For them, story validates, not correct biblical beliefs and interpretation.

But what does story validated? It seems that throughout my times in church, there have been people 'giving their testimony', as it was sometimes called, relating to the people of the church how God has been blessing and helping them. Far from overlooking the individual's story, they would likely have welcomed them.

But that doesn't mean they would have uncritically accepted those stories. If, for example, someone had told of how God was blessing his affair with a woman he wasn't married to, that would likely have not been acceptable. And rightly so. A good story of how someone thinks God's blessing a sinful sexual relationship does not validate that sinful sexual relationship.

Stories are fine, and testimonies can be very effective, but story is far from enough. There is a man who has written books about what he calls "Conversations With God". The one time I read a part of one of his books, I came away knowing that whatever he had been conversing with, it hadn't been God, because his 'god' had nothing in common with the God of the Bible. People may give testimonies of how a new-age guru like Eckhard Tolle has helped them, but Tolle's teaching are directly counter to Scripture, and so even if they were helped, that help was a lie, and their testimony does nothing to validate the teachings of Tolle.

Finally, there is simply the wholesale reject of any claim about the "universal human condition". But are there no truths that can be said about that people as a whole? If so, than to reject them is unwise, even foolish. If it is true that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God", a statement about the universal human condition, then it cannot be good to reject it simply because one rejects such statements. And if it is true, then no story that says differently can be true.

getting the whole truth?

Spirituality favors a holistic view of the individual, seeing the self not as a series of compartments but as a whole entity. The tendency of religion, meanwhile, is to divide the body and spirit, emphasizing the spirit's superiority over the body.
Burke and Taylor, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, p 59

In his book 'A Christianity Worth Believing', Doug Pagitt says a bit about babies and our responses to them. For most people, a newborn is a good thing, something to be valued and whose arrival is to be celebrated. It would seem very incongruous if someone where to talk about a newborn child as a horrible sinner.

We the massed unwashed who are outside of the great enlightened Postmodern ones are at times accused of not being nuanced. In this, Pagitt showed himself to lack that 'virtue'.

There is no contradiction in saying the a chld, or any person of any age, is both precious and sinful, both a valuable being and a sinner in need of redeeming. In fact, one sees it in the Bible, "God has commended his love to us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us".

And here, we have to deal with a similar type of thing that some people seem to think of as contradictory--the body is valuable and good, the material world is a creation of God and good, and the physical body even has an important role in the resurrection, but it is not more important than the soul.

Consider marriage. The Bible says much concerning the importance of marriage, and it is a good thing, something set up by God. But then, Jesus tells us that in the age to come we will not marry, but will be as the angels. If I may put it so, Jesus tells us that marriage is only a temporary thing, something for this world only--if one of the couple in a marriage should die, the other is free to marry another.

"Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both body and soul in hell" Matther 10:28. The idea of some sort of difference between body and soul is not new. As this passage shows, Jesus taught it.

down the rabbit hole

Perhaps I'll start looking into how the whole Postmodern movement was inspired by Powerpoint, even before Powerpoint was invented. Maybe I'll use Caputo-ese, talking about how the event of Powerpoint brought about Postmodernism, permeating all thought and actions leading that made for the birth of Postmodernism, and how the fact that we now have Powerpoint only means that not all of Caputo's nonevent events actually remain nonevents.

I'll probably need Wally to help me with that.



And remember, when Powerpoint crashes, Postmodernism dies.

either/or either/or or both/and?

Spirituality adopts a "both-and" approach to life, allowing culture, context, and situation to be reflected in the beliefs and practices of the seeker. Whereas spirituality encourages tolerance and acceptance of difference as the foundation for postmodern ethics, religion tends to trade in binary oppositions. It is most comfortable with clear boundaries and "us and them" divides.
Burke and Taylor, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, p 59

In his book Can Man Live Without God, on pp 126-129, Ravi Zacharias related a time when he had a debate of sorts with a professor of philosophy, concerning this concept of "both-and'. The professor tried to say that Hinduism was a "both-and" religion, "...when you see one Hindu affirming that God is personal and another insisting the God is not personal, just because it is contradictory you should not see it as a problem. The real problem is that you are seeing that contradiction as a Westerner when you should be approaching it as an Easterner. the both/and is the Eastern. The both/and is the Eastern way of viewing reality".

Zacharias, who was born in India and born among the Eastern mind, was having none of it. He points out the contradiction in the argument, than when one studied Hinduism "I either use the both/and system of logic or nothing else?", and ends with a more everyday example, "...even in India we look both ways before we cross the street--it is either the bus or me, not both of us".

In fact, this list that Burke and Taylor have created shows the contradiction in their statement. The claim the spirituality is "both-and", but have set up a list of "us and them" in the form of "spirituality and religion", or more accurately "spirituality vs religion", and it is obvious that they think that spirituality is much better than religion.

So, in order to say that spirituality is a "both-and", they must create a "binary opposite" between spirituality and religion. Or, as the professor who debated with Zacharian put it, "The either/or does seem to emerge, doesn't it?"

It does emerge. It cannot help but emerge. Either you are 'spiritual', or you are something else--athiest, religious, fundamentalist, whatever else may be out there. Either you believe in "both-and", or you don't, which kinds of puts paid to any sort of universal application of the notion of "both-and".

And as you may expect, there is no hint of a "both-and" in the teachings of Jesus; if anything, they are full of "us and them", even to Him saying that those not against Him are for Him. His parables are full of "binary opposites"--wise and foolish virgins, wheat and weeds, faithful and wicked servants, sheep and goats, lost and found sheep, those who walk by the wounded man and the Samaritan who helps him, the man in Abrahams bosom and the one in Hell.

living the zombie life

Spirituality is concerned with conscious living and with cultivating the sense of interconnectedness. Religion, by comparison, is often held captive by pseudo-orthodoxy and tends to be concerned with professions of belief rather than transformational living.
Burke and Taylor, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, p 59

First, we have to consider some of their stranger words here. What, for example, do they mean by 'interconnectedness'? And what kind of living do they consider 'transformational'? Or, for that matter, what they mean by 'conscious living' (I'm assuming it's opposed to some kind of 'unconscious living', like, maybe, people asleep, or in comas, or maybe the fictional undead-ness of a zombie?)

I consider these words to be vague, feeling words, mostly feel-good ego words. To my mind, it's not so much that these words have any concrete meaning, but that these words are how people like Burke and Taylor describe themselves, and thing of themselves. What they describe is more the sense of superiority these 'spirituality' people feel over the poor unenlightened unwashed, those who believe that creeds and professions of faith actually mean something over vague feel-goodiness.

Of more concreteness is "pseudo-orthodoxy". That seems to be saying that any attempt to say that there are certain things that must be believed is either false, or that more or all such beliefs that are called necessary in their view wrong. To put is another way, the term "pseudo-orthodoxy", as use in this context, is essentially anti-orthodoxy.

I am not anti-orthodoxy. I am very much pro-orthodoxy. In fact, I am very much pro-Orthodoxy. And I will show that Chesterton, in his book Orthodoxy, has already quite sufficiently answered these anti-orthodoxy types.

This is what I have called guessing the hidden eccentricities
of life. This is knowing that a man's heart is to the left and not
in the middle. This is knowing not only that the earth is round,
but knowing exactly where it is flat. Christian doctrine detected
the oddities of life. It not only discovered the law, but it
foresaw the exceptions. Those underrate Christianity who say that
it discovered mercy; any one might discover mercy. In fact every
one did. But to discover a plan for being merciful and also severe--
THAT was to anticipate a strange need of human nature. For no one
wants to be forgiven for a big sin as if it were a little one.
Any one might say that we should be neither quite miserable nor
quite happy. But to find out how far one MAY be quite miserable
without making it impossible to be quite happy--that was a discovery
in psychology. Any one might say, "Neither swagger nor grovel";
and it would have been a limit. But to say, "Here you can swagger
and there you can grovel"--that was an emancipation.

This was the big fact about Christian ethics; the discovery
of the new balance. Paganism had been like a pillar of marble,
upright because proportioned with symmetry. Christianity was like
a huge and ragged and romantic rock, which, though it sways on its
pedestal at a touch, yet, because its exaggerated excrescences
exactly balance each other, is enthroned there for a thousand years.
In a Gothic cathedral the columns were all different, but they were
all necessary. Every support seemed an accidental and fantastic support;
every buttress was a flying buttress. So in Christendom apparent
accidents balanced. Becket wore a hair shirt under his gold
and crimson, and there is much to be said for the combination;
for Becket got the benefit of the hair shirt while the people in
the street got the benefit of the crimson and gold. It is at least
better than the manner of the modern millionaire, who has the black
and the drab outwardly for others, and the gold next his heart.
But the balance was not always in one man's body as in Becket's;
the balance was often distributed over the whole body of Christendom.
Because a man prayed and fasted on the Northern snows, flowers could
be flung at his festival in the Southern cities; and because fanatics
drank water on the sands of Syria, men could still drink cider in the
orchards of England. This is what makes Christendom at once so much
more perplexing and so much more interesting than the Pagan empire;
just as Amiens Cathedral is not better but more interesting than
the Parthenon. If any one wants a modern proof of all this,
let him consider the curious fact that, under Christianity,
Europe (while remaining a unity) has broken up into individual nations.
Patriotism is a perfect example of this deliberate balancing
of one emphasis against another emphasis. The instinct of the
Pagan empire would have said, "You shall all be Roman citizens,
and grow alike; let the German grow less slow and reverent;
the Frenchmen less experimental and swift." But the instinct
of Christian Europe says, "Let the German remain slow and reverent,
that the Frenchman may the more safely be swift and experimental.
We will make an equipoise out of these excesses. The absurdity
called Germany shall correct the insanity called France."

Last and most important, it is exactly this which explains
what is so inexplicable to all the modern critics of the history
of Christianity. I mean the monstrous wars about small points
of theology, the earthquakes of emotion about a gesture or a word.
It was only a matter of an inch; but an inch is everything when you
are balancing. The Church could not afford to swerve a hair's breadth
on some things if she was to continue her great and daring experiment
of the irregular equilibrium. Once let one idea become less powerful
and some other idea would become too powerful. It was no flock of sheep
the Christian shepherd was leading, but a herd of bulls and tigers,
of terrible ideals and devouring doctrines, each one of them strong
enough to turn to a false religion and lay waste the world.
Remember that the Church went in specifically for dangerous ideas;
she was a lion tamer. The idea of birth through a Holy Spirit,
of the death of a divine being, of the forgiveness of sins,
or the fulfilment of prophecies, are ideas which, any one can see,
need but a touch to turn them into something blasphemous or ferocious.
The smallest link was let drop by the artificers of the Mediterranean,
and the lion of ancestral pessimism burst his chain in the forgotten
forests of the north. Of these theological equalisations I have
to speak afterwards. Here it is enough to notice that if some
small mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders might be made
in human happiness. A sentence phrased wrong about the nature
of symbolism would have broken all the best statues in Europe.
A slip in the definitions might stop all the dances; might wither
all the Christmas trees or break all the Easter eggs. Doctrines had
to be defined within strict limits, even in order that man might
enjoy general human liberties. The Church had to be careful,
if only that the world might be careless.

This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen
into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy,
humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting
as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to
be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses,
seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude
having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic.
The Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any warhorse;
yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along
one idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. She swerved to left and right,
so exactly as to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand
the huge bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers
to make Christianity too worldly. The next instant she was swerving
to avoid an orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly.
The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted
the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable. It would
have been easier to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians.
It would have been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century,
to fall into the bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be
a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let
the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own.
It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob.
To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration
which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the
historic path of Christendom--that would indeed have been simple.
It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at
which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into
any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed
have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been
one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies
thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate,
the wild truth reeling but erect.

What is most inane, and even insane, in the statement by Burke and Taylor is the statements of belief are somehow inferior to how one lives; rather, it should more accurately be stated that beliefs precede actions, and thus beliefs are most important, as they will lead to actions.

And let them not fool you, Burke and Taylor are very concerned about correct beliefs, as they define them. The whole book is about how the church's beliefs are either not-quite-right, or very wrong. Belief in hell, for example, should be either discarded or hell should be redefined; the belief that only those with faith in Christ will be saved needs to be discarded, and those of other religions and faiths should be welcomed.

theOoze and illegal immigration

So, theOoze has more directly weighed in on political matters. The writer of the article plays the very modern game of creating his own word, and trying to assign it to the US.

Today, the U.S. has become infected with the disease of immipartheid

The word is a combination of "immigrant" and "apartheid". And by "immigrant", the writer means "illegeal immigrant".

In 2007, the estimates range from 10 to 30 million undocumented, resident immigrants living in the U.S., the vast majority of which are non-white and of Hispanic descent.

And he wants to say that, somehow, how we treat illegal immigrants is like how South Africa treated blacks in Apartheid. He claims certain parallels.

1. Voting rights were restricted or non-existent.
2. Access to public services such as education and medical care were restricted and often of inferior
quality vs. those afforded their white counterparts.
3. Forms of identification emerged that designated the person as a member of a segregated class. (
consular cards, discussion about the implementation of a national ID card).
4. Movement within the country was restricted. (try getting on an airplane today without a valid ID).
5. Permits authorizing one to labor in certain occupations and/or certain geographic areas emerged.
Oftentimes, these permits did not include the spouse or other members of one’s own family.
6. The legal ownership of land was tightly regulated, precluding segregated persons from participation.

So, let's see...

Concerning #1, I doubt any country will allow non-citizens much if any in the way of voting rights. I was in Russia during at least one election, and though my being there was perfectly legal (I had a visa), I didn't even imagine that they would have allowed me, an American, the right to participate in their elections.

Concerning #2, of course access to education would be restricted. It really couldn't be otherwise. If anything, the life chosen by illegals will also effect their children--moving here and there; having to be stay "under the radar", so to speak; without the necessary paperwork, such as social security cards, to legally enroll in schools. But the fault is more with the illegals than with the society.

#3 is puzzling. As people in the country illegally, illegals don't have such IDs. Perhaps this writer is referring to things like voting ID cards?

#4 is even more strange. Movement in this country is NOT restricted, and his assertion that it is is asinine and misleading. Airplane travel has proven to be very vulnerable (remember 9-11-2001?), and you've spent a few hundred dollars to get a plane ticket, you'd probably want the airlines to make certain you're the one who's occupying the seat.

I've no idea where he gets 5 and 6.

What is most clear, from a casual walking down the street in a US city, is that immigrants are everywhere, they work and own businesses, they are free to come and go, they can cross state lines, they can own property. Those that are citizens can vote, and can even run for some offices (think Ahnald and California). As I've heard before, America is a nation of immigrants, a melting pot, and all kinds of people make up this nation, and that is a good thing. I went to college with fellow students from places like Japan and Tiawan, while in missions I attended training or served at bases with Brits, Mexicans, Philippinos, Canadians. I worked for two years at boarding school, right in the middle of nowhere in Appalachia, whose student body was sizably composed of students from many different African and Asian countries, and one could see these various races of students intermingling, in friendships, and even some in dating relationships.

I don't think the timing of this article is an accident. Though it isn't mentioned, it's too close to the time after the passing of Arizona bill to make me think it's not a response to it. Another attempt to make that bill seem racist, I suppose.

beyond what is commanded, probably not good

Spirituality trades in mystery and seek experiential, firsthand encounters of the divine. Religion, meanwhile, frequently comes across as overly dogmatic and absolutist. Religion too often imposes blanket rules and regulations on us without considering context or social and environmental dynamics.
Burke and Taylor, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, p 59

Read the New Testament, and you'll read many commands. Jesus tells us to do many things, and so the writers of the Epistles. Some are specific, others more general.

One thing I have not seen suggested or commanded in the New Testament is that we are to "seek experiential, firsthand encounters of the divine".

That doesn't mean such experiences may not happen. The Apostle Paul's conversion was brought on by such an experience, and he seems to have had other visions and supernatural experiences after that. He relates a bit about a man who was taken to Heaven itself, and many think he is talking about himself, which I'm not sure of that way or this. I have heard of accounts of people in the more recent past who have had similar experiences.

But while being open to such experiences may be acceptable, actively going to look for them is not ever commanded in the Bible. More importantly, in all of the practical things the New Testament tells us to do, none of them involve any kind of 'spiritual practices'--trances, mind-emptying meditations, repetitive prayers (in fact, Jesus' words against prayers of "vain repetition" may be considered against such a practice), isolation, labyrinths, or others.

Also, we may ask, how does one know that one is experiencing a "firsthand encounter of the divine"? Let us be real, if there is a divine, is there not also a diabolic? Does the Bible not tell us that the the Devil and demons can appear as "angels of light"? Is any man so true and experienced at the spiritual that he can know when he's dealing with the good or the evil?

This is particularly important, I think, when we consider the last part of Burke's and Taylor's paragraph. Religion says that there are things that must be believed, and says there are moral absolutes that apply to all people at all time. Christianity that is based in the Bible certainly says such things. It is as wrong for a man to sleep with another man's wife today as it was for King David to commit adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of another man. Murder is as wrong now as it was when Cain murdered his brother. Lying, stealing, dishonesty in business and other relationships, and worshipping false gods and idols, all were wrong long ago, and there is no reason to think they have suddenly become right today.

I know the New Testament's words about the Law being abolished or replaced can cause confusion. Much of what is now not followed are more like ceremonial laws, or things that the Old Testament Law called unclean but are no longer so. There are people who have dealt with it in more detail than I currently can.

The statement against dogmas and rules shows an astonishing amount of arrogance on the part of Burke and Taylor, as they essentially say that they need no guides when they deal with the spiritual, that they can venture into such things on their own, that they can determine for themselves if what they experience is really divine, and not devilish. Such arrogance should be avoided, as should, I think, any unbiblical attempts to push oneself into the supernatural. If God chooses to give you dreams and visions, or even prophecies, all well and good, but that is God's choice, not yours to take upon yourself.

are they really countercultural?

Spirituality encourages a countercultural dynamic. It challenges many of the values of material life by injecting a renewed focus on the divine. On the other hand, religion and the establishment tend to go hand in hand. While the sacred texts may encourage countercultural living, in practice, religion has embraced the values of contemporary life.
Burke and Taylor, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, p 59

Wow, so much politically loaded language in that, it's difficlt to know where to begin.

"Spirituality encourages a counterculturlt dynamic". Really? A counter to what culture? The copyright for the book is 2006, so likely much or all of it was written circa 2005 and 2006. Meaning in the time of George W Bush's second term as US President, with of course inspiration coming from the first term.

In other words, "countercultural" in this book likely has at least some hint of an anti-conservatism that President Bush represented in many people's minds, though rather imperfectly I think.

It is interesting, now in 2010, to see how things have changed. If there is a movement that could be considered "countercultural", it would be the Tea Party Movement. The people in it, largely falling into the category of 'common people', have stood up to what they consider injustices and wrongs--unfair excessive taxation; attempts by the government to gain control of such private spheres as automotive manufacturing and health care; attempts to curtail certain types of speech, notably conservative talk radio.

Yet with this counterculture movement, the take on it has been--much less favorable. Those who had previously been 'countercultural' now attack those who are against the present US adminstration, which has taken what was once considered 'countercultural' and is making it cultural. The attacks on the Tea Party, often based on lies and unsubstantiated claims, are numerous and vicious. Those who previously applauded the countercultural now attack the countercultural when their own ideas and preferences become or seem to be becoming the cultural norms, the establishment.

And this is the thing to keep in mind, in regards to this excerpt from "Heretic's Guide..."--'spirituality' is countercultural only until it becomes the 'establishment', then it ceases to be countercultural.

And one must question, as well, how much religion has "embraced the values of contemporary life". If by this Burke and Taylor mean evangelical Christians (possibly among others), then what values has it embraced? The killing of the unborn, which almost all evangelicals deplore? The drug culture? The culture of loose sexuality, which has had it's effects but which is still fought against?

If anything, one could argue that it is the 'spiritual' that embraced compromise with culture. For example, on p 49 of this same book, it seems that even their preference and pushing of 'spirituality' is a cultural thing. "The cultural shift in favor of spirituality over religion and towards a God freed from the constraints of religious dogmatism and feudalism is exciting. The table is being set for the future, and I believe we will see the ideas that have captured humanity's imagination aobut God for centuries transitioned into new contexts".

The current controversy concerning homosexuality is a prime example. While most evanglicals have stood against the legalizing and recognizing of homosexual partnerships as 'marriage', it is the 'spiritual' people, the ones who denigrate the Bible and claim to be more spiritually aware than the average ''Christian", who are all too ready to compromise with what the world wants, and to even provide spiritualized supports for it--explaining away biblical passages which forbid such sexual practices, claim that "love" is more important than "law", and when all else fails, say that those who are against it are "haters" who do not show true Christian love.

I would conclude, then, by saying this statement of Burke's and Taylor's is rather misleading.

heretics and goddesses

On pages 58-60 of A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, Spencer Burke and Barry Taylor offer a list that could be considered 'spirituality vs religion'. It's an interesting list, and I'm planning to comment on some or all of them, a bit as a time, as time allows.

Spirituality encourages us to treat each human being equally and to explore the feminine of the divine as well the masculine. Religion, conversely, is dominated by male imagery and in many places continues to oppress and undermine women. The patriachal nature of most of the world's religions often means that women have to fight for the right to be treated equally.
p 58

Interesting. Let's see...

The Bible is filled with imagery of God in the masculine. In fact, much of it comes directly from God Himself. One of the strongest biblical images of God in the Bible is as Father. He speaks of Himself as a bridegroom, especially in relation to Israel. While I suppose a warrior could be man or woman, it's a predominately male image. And Jesus is so obviously male. And, finally, the Bible constantly uses male pronouns, 'he' and 'his' and 'him', to refer to God.

One may rightly say that God is really a spiritual being, and likely without gender as we know it, and it is a good point. But the fact remains, outside of a few possible cases such a in Proverbs and the feminine Wisdom, almost all of the imagery concerning God is masculine. And if we believe that God inspired the words of the Bible, then the predominately masculine imagery is itself inspired by God.

As such, then, I can only see a potential danger in any attempt to "explore the feminine of the divine". First, what does that mean? If a man is saying that he's going to "explore the feminine of the divine", what is it he's looking for?

Religions have had feminine deities. The Greek Hera, for example, seems to have epitomized the bad wife (not that Zeus was all that great a husband). They also had a goddess (Artemis?) who was a hunter, not exactly something we associate with women--men are usually thought of as hunters, and women as the gatherers and farmers. There was also the one (Aphrodite?) who epitomized beauty. And the Fates, who were women. You can find a rundown on Greek goddesses and supernatural beings here, though I will warn you about much of the artwork.

Hinduism has some feminine deities, too. Perhaps most famous is Kali, a blood-thirsty assassin and murderous goddess.

Perhaps those examples should give one pause in one's attempt to "explore the feminine of the divine". One may not like what one sees.

But I think the rest of the excerpt shows what the real agenda is. The Bible is pretty plain that pastors and church leaders are to be men. In the OT, the priests were all men, and that was how God set things up. Jesus' disciples and apostles were all men, though some say that some later apostles may have been women. When NT writers deal with pastors and deacons, perhaps the thing they take for granted is that those leaders are men.

And as well, the Bible says that in marriage, the man is the head, the leader. The husband has authority and responsibility. The Bible even plainly tells wives to 'submit'.

This is, of course, very not-PC (and I don't mean it's Mac or Linux). That is offensive to the "women need men like fish need bicycles" types. It's offensive to the "women can preach as well as men" types. It's offensive to Emergents, who pride themselves on their women-pastors.

Since the Christian religion attempts to follow the Bible, then one must appeal to something else to work around it. Hey, look, 'spirituality'. We today are more spiritual than those guys way back 2000 years ago. Oh, they were fine, we revere their works and all that, but in some things, they were just so stick-in-the-mud. And anyway, what they wrote has been misused and used to abuse women, and since that's happened, we must rethink all they taught instead of trying to understand how to apply their teachings rightly.

It should be said that, yes, there are many examples of women being abused and oppressed. I can't think of anything more anti-woman than Islam, and can't understand why any woman would choose Islam if she were not forced to.

Perhaps one could point out things in largely Christian nations that could be improved on. That's a given, and should be addressed, but it isn't helped by appealing to some kind of extra-scriptural "feminine of the divine". This has a more new-agey ring to it than biblical Christian.

support from an unexpected source

I confess that when I saw this article at Huffpo, I was expecting something very different than what I read. It is, in a way, a good source for a response to what Campolo said at Sojouners, which I referred to last week.

Obama's Jewish Charm Offensive

An invitation to the White House is a big deal and can play all kinds of tricks on people's convictions, which might explain why so many of those who visited emerged with newfound praise for the president even though the administration has changed none of its positions on Israel. The president is still demanding that Jews build no new homes in Ramat Shlomo, a neighborhood that is entirely Jewish. He has yet to repudiate his administration's position that the Arab-Israeli conflict, and by implication Israeli intransigence, fuels the Taliban and other Arab extremists. And he has yet to apologize to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the humiliating treatment he dished out in March. Most of all, the president has not reversed his biased policy of apportioning the blame for the lack of movement in the peace process squarely on Israeli settlements rather than decades-old Arab refusal to accept Israel as a permanent and legitimate fact. We have yet to hear the president forcefully condemn the Hamas charter calling for the destruction of the State of Israel or the Palestinian Authority recently naming a public square after Dalal Mughrabi, who led 1978 Coastal Road terrorist massacre which killed 37 Israelis.

He makes one of the most interesting, and possibly succinct, insights into this US President.

And herein lies the problem with the President Obama. Simply stated, the man does not seem to hate evil. He continues to believe he can charm wicked regimes into doing good, that personal charisma can persuade tyrants to lay down their arms and beat their swords into plowshares. This was the policy that the president first pursued with Iran and Ahmadinejad. It of course yielded no results, other than to embolden a vile regime who promptly stole an election and began to slaughter their own people it the streets. The president turned up the charm with Hugo Chavez with the result that the Venezuelan dictator has now become one of the president's most strident critics.

And not just concerning the President, but also many of those who support them (I mean you, Sojo). They believe that if they 'play nice', make apologetic noises, take the blame, cring and crawl and kowtow to all who claim to be victims, then they will be liked.

Will the president and his advisers learn that charm offensives can never take the place of moral policy? All the smiles, hugs, and bows in the world are never going to soften tyrants who seek not the favor of the president of the United States but unchecked power over their oppressed citizenry.

I truly couldn't agree more. I am very surprised that such a article should be found at Huffpo, and think it a good balance to Campolo's attempt to blame Israel and her allies for all that is wrong in the Middle East.

campolo throws Israel supporters under the bus

There was a time when I had some respect for Tony Campolo. In reading the book he co-wrote with McLaren, Adventures in Missing the Point, he is far from a yes-man to McLaren, but rather points out some areas where he has serious disagreements with him. I think I even wrote about one or two of those here.

But he just instantly lost that respect, when in a recent Sojourners article, he blamse Israel and her supports for all that is wrong in the Middle East.

Christian Zionism: Theology that Legitimates Oppression

The most serious threats to the well-being of the Palestinians in general, and to the Christian Palestinians in particular, come not from the Jews, but from Christian Zionists here in the United States.

It's the same old sad liberal song--when people are in difficulty, don't dare blame them, but rather others.

Is life in Palestine hard? I've no doubt. But then, when you've had corrupt leadership like Yasser Arafat and groups like Hamas, then what can be expected? Sorry, but that's usually how it goes.

And when you've plainly stated that you want to kill off your neighbors because of the race they were born into, then you kind of lose most claims for sympathy.

What troubles them most is that their fellow Evangelicals in America have very little understanding of the way the entire Islamic world views what is happening in the Holy Land, and how American Evangelicals who unquestioningly support Israel’s policies are hindering evangelism among Muslims.

Umm...last I checked, Israel was a solid ally to the US (though the current administration in the US has them worried), while Palestinians celebrated when the US was attacked on Sept 11, 2001.

And, then, there's the appeal to evangelism. I doubt that, if the US and US Christians were to turn on Israel, it would result in mass conversions among Arabic people from Islame to Christianity. It sounds, rather, like a rationalization, much like the people at Christ's crucifixion claiming they would believe if they 'saved himself'.

We do not change the Bible nor it's message to make it more appealing to others. God is not the one who must change, we are. That is one point of repentence.

They know that there is little understanding among American Christians that so many of the conflicts that exist between Muslims and Christians around the world are partially due to what is happening in the Holy Land. For instance, the media in the Muslim world has linked the oppression of Palestinians to the justification of attacks on Americans, in particular, and the western world, in general.

I've no doubt that Muslim media has done so. Sorry, but that doesn't change my mind. If not that, then something else would be used by them.

Given the historical existential situation, we, as American Christians, should lend support to the efforts to have safe and secure borders for the State of Israel and protection against terrorists; but we should be equally committed to having a well-established Palestinian state that also has safe and secure borders. We should be calling for the demolition of the separation wall that is as offensive as the Berlin Wall was. And we should be demanding that the border between these two states be the “green line” negotiated following the 1967 war.

When Israel's Palestinian neighbor is essential, and existentially, a terrorist state, then Israel's needs more than just nice words to have 'safe and secure borders'. And Palestinians need to do more than give more empty promises to have Israel or us believe them.

I want to direct you an alternate source for an opinion differing in many ways from Campolo's, the book "The Case for Israel" by Alan Derschowitz. While rather liberal himself in his views, and while not one who simply oks all that Israel has done, he is solidly in support of Israel, and gives good reasons for showing why Israel is hardly to blame for the Middle East difficulties, and how the world continues to unfairly blame Israel.

Just as Campolo unfairly blames Israel and her supporters.

more for you to read :-)

Words to Remember

This new blog is a response to something I read and posted about a few weeks ago. It's here. The quote that was most 'inspiring', in a way, was this one, from Jim Wallis.

It’s time we make it clear that different views of the role of government are legitimate and essential to a robust democratic discourse; but the hateful and even violent rhetoric that has been employed in the past, and is now having a resurgence again, is dangerous and destructive and should be renounced and rejected by people of faith and good will across the political spectrum.

Now, it's pretty clear from the context given in the article as whole, linked to in the earlier entry, that Wallis is talking about right-wing rhetoric, like the mysteriously unproven charges that Tea-Party people yelled racial insults at a Congressman on the day the Health Care bill was passed.

As you'll see on Words to Remember, though, I have a bit of a different take on "the hateful and even violent rhetoric", and I give real examples, not hypotheticals.

grasping at fictitious straws

We are Exiles Who Follow an Alien, Undocumented, Migrant Messiah

And, so, Sojo digs to the dregs of desperation for any argument.

The dominant narrative — the one about illegality, rule of law, blah, blah, blah — is persuasive because it provokes and exploits the one emotion that has driven American politics since 9/11: fear. We’re told by critics and commentators that Americans have never been so angry, that our public discourse has never been this strident and dangerously uncivil — all the red-faced name-calling, the ugly race-baiting, the shrill, snarky meanness.

Umm...yeah, the usual gaggle of protestors from the left have been ratcheting up the nastiness, haven't they? Not that they've ever been tolerant of those who dare to disagree with them, mind you.

But much of the anger — at least the real anger, not the feigned rage of opportunistic politicians — is symptomatic of Americans’ deep-seated xenophobia.

Yeah, everywhere I look, only one kind of people, all around. Every other kind of peoples, must be in hiding.

(that's sarcasm, btw, because that statement is so patently false, I'm surprised this Sojoer can get away with writing it)

We are exiles who follow an alien, undocumented, migrant Messiah. As Edgardo Colón-Emeric notes (in the sermon linked above), “Jesus did not have a valid birth certificate. Mother’s name: Mary; Father’s name: unknown. In fact, Jesus had no papers in his name, no title deed, no rental contract. Nothing. ‘Foxes have dens, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.’”

Ah, here's the main part. Unsubstantiated claims about Jesus, must have taken lessons from Borg and Crossan.

When was Jesus ever an undocumented alien? Some post-ers point to when he was taken to Egypt,when Herod tried to kill him. But considering that both Israel and Egypt were under Roman rule, which another post-er points out, that won't hold.

Valid birth certificate? Didn't know such things were around at the time. Much of the rest of it is simply "shrill, snarky meanness".

A phrase formerly associated with interrogators of the Third Reich — “let me see your papers” — will now enter the lexicon of law enforcement in Arizona. Jesus — in the guise of the brown-skinned “other” — will be asked for documentation he doesn’t have.

And the crowning touch--comparing Arizonans to Nazis. I think that, too, qualifies as "red-faced name-calling, the ugly race-baiting, the shrill, snarky meanness".

a peculiar blindness

In a rather interesting (mostly in a good way) post a Sojo, ther writer makes a statement that seems...rather biased.

The racism I have struggled with was the fear of recklessness in white men. The type of recklessness that can decide to go to one country pick up a group of people, enslave, degrade, hunt and herd them for several hundred years.

I'm always rather astonished when someone makes this kind of argument against people they would call 'white'. Shall we take only a surface look at the long history of slavery? We can see how, in Exodus, the Egyptians, likely a darker-skinned people, made slaves of the Hebrews. One can think of the Greeks and Romans, the Babylonians, and no doubt other ancient peoples who attacked and conquered other places and took those thye conquered as slaves. In modern times, the sex slave trade is quite prominent in some parts of the world, few of which are recognized as white places. Not to mention the veritable slavery women suffer under in the Muslim countries in north Africa, the Middle East, and some parts of Asia.

I have no wish to excuse slavery as practiced by the US and Europe, but this idea that it is some kind of sin peculiar only to whites is without any kind of historic support.

a little shy of a full deck

What else can you say, when a supposed news channel has this as a caption.

Law Makes it a Crime to be Illegal Immigrant

Umm...no. By definition, being in the country illegally was already a crime, before Arizona passed its recent bill.

Yep, deep thoughts from MSNBC. No, please, you don't need to thank me.

dilbert is my hero

The last line of this comic had me in stitches, which also explains why it's now in the header. Rather apropo, some may say.

not holding my breath

A few days ago, I linked to a Sojo post by none other than Wallis himself, where he wrote this.

It’s time we make it clear that different views of the role of government are legitimate and essential to a robust democratic discourse; but the hateful and even violent rhetoric that has been employed in the past, and is now having a resurgence again, is dangerous and destructive and should be renounced and rejected by people of faith and good will across the political spectrum.

One may wonder, then, what he thinks of rhetoric like this.

Today, I think Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh want today to be declared, uh, a national holiday. I suggest it be called Beck Memorial Day. This is the kind of day 15 years ago when Beck was still working, uh, in a bath house as a towel boy. This is the kind of day that, 15 years ago that Beck, when he woke up and heard about the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building he applauded. He clapped. He danced. He jumped around like a drop of water on a hot pancake griddle! He was just as happy as could be! This is what Beck and Limbaugh and the rest of these right wing freaks want to see happen again. And again. And again. Endlessly.

After the bluegrass hillbillies/commercial break, Malloy repeated, "You just know Beck was just hoping for something bloody and murderous would occur. He's been directing his minions to do this."

This place is rather small, so whatever I say may not amount to much, but if Wallis is serious about not liking "hateful and even violent rhetoric", then I call on him to condemn this statement, made by the left-wing radio personality Michael Malloy.

But I'll not hold my breath, waiting for him to do so.

religion of story

Jonathan Merritt...wrote, "According to Public Religion Research, 37% of evangelicals ages 18-34 have a close friend or relative who is gay. Only 16% of evangelicals 35 and older can say the same"...The difference goes far in explaining why younger Evangelicals are changing their opinion on sexuality. Knowing a gay person is like observing the retrograde motion of the planets
Brian Mclaren, A New Kind of Christianity, p 281

First, he ignores rather completely the other aspects of society that influence the young--pressure, for example, especially the one called 'political correctness', where things have become such that it is simply verboten to question homosexual behavior. One can also recall how homosexuals and the left reacted to the Mormons in California, in regards to the defeat of the gay marriage amendment, to see that this pressure can border if not outright go into violence against those who dare to disagree.

But mostly, I want to point out that this is simply the emergent practice, the postmodern practice. Objective truth is trivialized, even discarded, and 'story' is brought in to take its place. If you're one they consider 'oppressed', be it for race or religion or sexual choices, then your story is credible (even if not factual or true). Story is the new truth.

Strangely, in my years, I've known many people who have done many things.

For example, one of my best friends in college lived with his then-girlfriend for a while. Funny, but I don't consider premarital sex ok, even with having known people who have engaged in it. I knew other people who may have participated in recreational drug use, probably marijuana, and I can't say that I approved then or approve now. I knew some who would drink too much, and I can say I ever considered drunkenness a good thing. I've known people who have done hard drugs, usually in their past, and it has done nothing to make me think that doing those kinds of drugs is good.

I've known people who cheated on spouses, and can't say that I consider marital unfaithfulness a good thing. I've known people who have had children before they were married, and was never tempted to consider that maybe abstinence was a faulty ideal.

Heck, I've even known some gay people, and they've been nice enough people. But that doesn't mean their sexual practices are good. Being nice doesn't mean all you do is ok.

HIs argument that simply knowing gay people will make one approve of their sexual practices is simply specious, and tying it into a faulty theory of the solar system is ridiculous.

never let the truth interfere with propoganda

Such is the Left's motto. Such is what Jim Wallis tries to do today.

The Oklahoma City Bombing Anniversary and Home-Grown Terrorism

On this terrible day, I have to ask: Are we concerned about the clear history and threat of domestic terrorism, or just foreign-based terrorist attacks?

Very likely, both. But the other question is, is Wallis concerned about either type of terrorism, or the propoganda value he can squeeze from this anniversary.

Are we as concerned about potential terrorists who are home-grown Americans with white skin as we are sometimes obsessed with darker-skinned suspects of Middle Eastern descent? And are we willing to focus our attention on the white right-wing violence of so-called American or even “Christian” militias, like we are now seemingly ready to unleash the forces of law enforcement against the mostly harmless but very vulnerable people who crossed the border illegally? Those are some of the questions we should ask as we watch the MSNBC documentary tonight.

Yes, because it is only "white right-wing violence" that is the problem, or so he wants us to think. How right-wing the OKC bomber was is up for debate, though it fits Wallis' agenda to try to make him so.

Oh, and we are concerned with "white...violence", but if you bring up Bill Ayers and his connection to the current president, Wallis would likely have a fit.

It should also be noted that the special Wallis touts is by Rachel Maddow, hardly a paragon of unbiasness. It would be no surprise if her 'special' leans more than a little left, while trying to make the right look bad.

Because that is what this is all about--setting up the Tea Party people for when something bad happens.

It’s time we make it clear that different views of the role of government are legitimate and essential to a robust democratic discourse; but the hateful and even violent rhetoric that has been employed in the past, and is now having a resurgence again, is dangerous and destructive and should be renounced and rejected by people of faith and good will across the political spectrum.

Yes, he's right, in a way. Unfortunately, it's his side that is using "hateful and even violent rhetoric", and he is not prepared to "renounce and reject" them. If he even recognized it when he hears it.

a sojo-er hears only what he wants

I suppose I should give small props to this guy for actually attending a Tea Party and making a modicum of attempt to be fair, but in the end, all he comes away with is a nonsense interpretation of what happened, and I can't give any props for that.

Wearing My Jesus Goggles to the Boston Tea Party

First, have to cringe that at "I'm more spiritual than them" aspect of the title. Yeah, you go 'Jesus goggles', whatever those are.

Palin walked right into the debate over American exceptionalism, stating that as the greatest nation on the planet, America is, in fact, exceptional. (Implying that we can do what we please, thank you.)

Really? Apparently, this person has no idea what is meant by "American exceptionalism". It has nothing to with a "do what we please" attitude, but with the idea that the US, when founded, was a very diffirent kind of place than had mostly come before. That we allow people to succeed and fail as they are able. That we give people freedom, not try to control them. That the government is of, by, and for the people, not the people mere vassals of the state.

Do we erase all national affiliation when we follow Jesus? No, but we affiliate ourselves first with the kingdom of God, which changes everything. Militarism — even in the name of “freedom” — is wrong for the Christian, in all cases, at all times.

I assume, from that last statement, that this person is a confirmed pacifists. It's just a shame that people had to sacrifice and die to support his freedom to denigrate them.

Which brings me to the concept of “freedom.” This really is the operative concept within the Tea Party movement: freedom from excessive taxes and government intrusion of all kinds. This freedom, signs and speakers proudly announce, came at a price — the price of brave American soldiers in 250 years’ worth of foreign and domestic wars. But they opportunistically omit that our freedom also came at the cost of Native Americans, foreign and domestic soldiers and civilians, and our natural resources. I would argue that a Christian cannot blindly accept freedom that sacrifices lives and our Earth, not when the very core principles of our faith were violated to achieve it.

Yeah, don't exercise your freedoms, you ingrates!

I'll buy this guy's arguments when he gives up his freedom of speech, freedom to assembly, and the other freedoms he thinks the Tea Partiers are so bad to want to protect.

This person is likely supportive of the movement on ideological grounds rather than economic grounds, which, as I mentioned earlier, was the platform for the group’s beginnings. Most likely to be rich, white, and older than 45, Tea Party supporters largely oppose what they perceive to be policies that disproportionately favor the poor over the rich. In other words, most point to differences in class as the reason why they support the Tea Party.

Here it is--Tea Partiers don't like helping the poor! Bad people!

But you have to understand, this is lib-speak. Not liking policies that "disproportionately favor the poor over the rich" is lib-speak for not liking socialistic redistribute-the-wealth policies.

with friends like this...

On Sojo's God's Politics blog, Shane Claiborne, an (maybe former) emergent in good standing, has thrown the emergent church under the bus. It's quite a mess, as he employs all the 'bad language' against it that they like to hurl against everyone else. Emphases mine.

A decade or so ago, a bunch of young, mostly white evangelicals started seeing similar conversations beginning to spark all over the place about the reshaping of evangelicalism, the rethinking of missions, and reimagining what it really means to be the church...

Nonetheless it has always been evident that this is not the whole conversation or renewal happening in the church — and the fact that the dozens of books and cover stories done on the “emerging church” hailed mostly faces of white men shows the many forces of colonialism, privilege, and all the other principalities and powers that still threaten to hold our faith captive...

...In my opinion, “the movement” became a bit narcissistic, and often became little more than theological masturbation:...

Some “emerging church” folks have repeated some of the mistakes of fundamentalism (only with more tattoos), and others have repeated the mistakes of liberalism (only with more wit).

So all that to say, I find the “emerging church” language, at least the Emergent™ brand, utterly unhelpful. So I will not spend much energy, beyond this note, to try and defend, or for that matter destroy, what seems to me little more than a brand name for a product no one can identify.

And, of couse, Claiborne engages in a bit of, shall we say, covering his own backside.

In fact, much of the time I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with critics who thought they were critiquing me but really were only critiquing “the emerging church.” I was merely guilty by association, and an association with something I could not even identify, much less align with.

With FoEs like that, emergent almost doesn't need people like me.

A New Kind of Christianity: The Jesus Question

The two chapters which McLaren devotes to this question are based on a couple of quotes from sources he doesn't identify, though in the footnotes he does give a YouTube web address for one of them.

The first one is from someone he only calls "one of my most loyal and dedicated critics". This person said...

In Revelation, Jesus is a prize-fight with a tattoo down His leag, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.

McLaren, of course, finds this appalling. He tries to compare this to how the character Ricky Bobby sees Jesus in "Talladega Nights", p 121. He then brings out one of his favorite weapons--the Scare Tactic. "So, in successfully rejecting an insipt "hippie, diaper, halo Christ," we may unintentionally protect and uphold the white supremacist Jesus, the colonial Jesus, the Euorcentric Jesus, the Republican or Democrat Jesus, the capitalist or communist Jesus..." p 122. The paragraph and his various Jesus' goes on longer, I really don't want to give them all, I hope that's enough.

McLaren does reference the place in Revelation 19:11-16 where the other person gets the idea of Jesus, but he says this like sci-fi stories. "For example, when we read or watch Planet of the Apes, Star Trek, The Matrix, or Wall-E, we don't think the writers and filmmakers are trying to predict the future. No we understand they are really talking aobut the present, and they are doing so in hopes of changing the future." p 123

Which means that how McLaren interprets this passage is to say that the correct interpretation is rather the opposite of how it looks. "Rather, this image fo Jesus as a conqueror reassures believers that the peaceable Jesus who entered Jerusalem on a donkey that day wasn't actually weak and defeated; he was in fact every bit as powerful as a Caesar on a steed..." p 124

"Revelation celebrates not the love of power, but the power of love. It denies, with all due audacity, that God's anointed liberator is the Divine Terminator, threatening revenge for all who refuse to honor him, growling "I'll be back". It asserts, instead, that God's anointed liberator is the one we beat up, who promises mercy to those who strike him...The suffering, serving one who bled on a cross--not the one with a commitment to make others suffer and bleed--is the King of kings and Lord of lords." p 126

Here's the second quote that McLaren responds to.

The only reason Jesus came was to save people from hell...Jesus had no social agenda...[He didn't come to eliminate poverty or slavery or]...fix something in somebody's life for the little moment they live on this earth.

"For him, Jesus is not the one who saves from poverty, captivity, blindness, and oppression, even though these are Jesus' very words (borrowed from Isaiah) to describe his mission. I think you'll agree, my faithful critic's statement can only make sense, first, if we interepre Jesus within the confines of the Greco-Roman six-line narrative; second, if we predetermine to read the Bible as a constitution; and third, if we construct and solidify our understanding of God before seeking to understand Jesus, rather then letting Jesus serve as the Word-made-flesh revelation of God's character" p 128.

Over the next several pages, McLaren does an interesting exercise, comparing Jesus in John to events and people in the OT books of Moses, doing so in order to support his view Jesus as an earthly liberator.

"But even these few examples, selected from so many more, make it clear that Jesus, contrary to my loyal critic's assertion, did not come merely to "save souls from hell." No, he came to launch a new Genesis, to lead a new Exodus, and to announce, embody, and inaugurate a new kingdom as the Prince of Peace(Isa. 9:6). Seen in this light, Jesus and his message have everything to do with poverty, slavery, and a "social agenda"." p 135

My thoughts on this.

McLaren may well be right that sci-fi is most often not interested in trying to predict the future (though I suppose Jules Verne could complicate things a bit, like writing about submarines before there were such things). But equating biblical prophecy to sci-fi just won't work, and is a rather childish attempt to negate the importance of prophecy. They are two different things.

Also, McLaren shows an amazing lack of historical context, in his dismissing of the return of Jesu in judgment. Here are some excerpts from very early church leaders, Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, and what they wrote about Christ's return.

“So that you ought rather to desist from the love of strife, and repent before the great day of judgment come, wherein all those of your tribes who have pierced this Christ shall mourn as I have shown has been declared by the Scriptures. And I have explained that the Lord swore, ‘after the order of Melchizedek,’ and what this prediction means; and the prophecy of Isaiah which says, ‘His burial is taken away from the midst,’ I have already said, referred to the future burying and rising again of Christ; and I have frequently remarked that this very Christ is the Judge of all the living and the dead. And Nathan likewise, speaking to David about Him, thus continued: ‘I will be His Father, and He shall be my Son; and my mercy shall I not take away from Him, as I did from them that went before Him; and I will establish Him in my house, and in His kingdom for ever.’ And Ezekiel says, ‘There shall be no other prince in the house but He.’ For He is the chosen Priest and eternal King, the Christ, inasmuch as He is the Son of God;
Justin Martyr, dialogue with Trypho, ch 118

For the prophets have proclaimed two advents of His: the one, that which is already past, when He came as a dishonored and suffering Man; but the second, when, according to prophecy, He shall come from heaven with glory, accompanied by His angelic host, when also He shall raise the bodies of all men who have lived, and shall clothe those of the worthy with immortality, and shall send those of the wicked, endued with eternal sensibility, into everlasting fire with the wicked devils.
Justin Martyr, First Apology of Justin, ch 52

If the Father, then, does not exercise judgment, [it follows] that judgment does not belong to Him, or that He consents to all those actions which take place; and if He does not judge, all persons will be equal, and accounted in the same condition. The advent of Christ will therefore be without an object, yea, absurd, inasmuch as [in that case] He exercises no judicial power. For “He came to divide a man against his father, and the daughter against the mother, and the daughter-in-law against the mother-in-law;” and when two are in one bed, to take the one, and to leave the other; and of two women grinding at the mill, to take one and leave the other: [also] at the time of the end, to order the reapers to collect first the tares together, and bind them in bundles, and burn them with unquenchable fire, but to gather up the wheat into the barn; and to call the lambs into the kingdom prepared for them, but to send the goats into everlasting fire, which has been prepared by His Father for the devil and his angels. And why is this? Has the Word come for the ruin and for the resurrection of many? For the ruin, certainly, of those who do not believe Him, to whom also He has threatened a greater damnation in the judgment-day than that of Sodom and Gomorrah; but for the resurrection of believers, and those who do the will of His Father in heaven. If then the advent of the Son comes indeed alike to all, but is for the purpose of judging, and separating the believing from the unbelieving, since, as those who believe do His will agreeably to their own choice, and as, [also] agreeably to their own choice, the disobedient do not consent to His doctrine; it is manifest that His Father has made all in a like condition, each person having a choice of his own, and a free understanding; and that He has regard to all things, and exercises a providence over all, “making His sun to rise upon the evil and on the good, and sending rain upon the just and unjust.”
Irenaeus, Against Heretics, Book 5 Chapter 27

McLaren essentially says that if we believe in this coming of Christ in judgment, then we negate all the things He taught about forgiveness. The truth is, no, we don't; rather, he is the one who has to make what Jesus and others say about His second coming mean something else.

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: and before him shall the gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.
Matt. 25:31-32

Behold, he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.
Rev 1:7

And to these also Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophecied, saying, Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgement upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their works of ungodliness which theyhave ungodly wrought, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.
Jude 14-15
these scriptures found in the book "What the Bible Teaches" by R. A. Torrey

McLaren seems to have almost no concept of justice, outside of what he considers "social justice". He can only seem to see Christ return in judgment as revenge, not as justice, just as he can only see hell as torture, not justice.

I can't help but find it off-putting that McLaren doesn't say who said the quotes he gives, or really when and where. I'm pretty sure that the first quote is from Mark Driscoll, I think I've heard him say that or similar. The second I'm not sure of, and when I looked up the YouTube address he gives in the end notes, it wasn't there. As such, looking up those quotes and checking the contexts is much more difficult. I would especially like to see the context for the latter.

Since he goes on for several pages concerning how Jesus is like Moses, going into it in detail is probably beyond what I'd care to do right now. There may be some points of interest, but as with most things with McLaren, I doubt either his claim, or his interpretation of it. Some of the parallels are rather weak, I think. "Just as Moses was initially rejected by his brothers (Exod 2:14), so Jesus was initially rejected", p 131. But such rejection was and is hardly uncommon. One could find rejection with almost any prophet. "In Exodus, God's presence was associated with the tabernacle, a sacred tent, and John says, "The Word became flesh and lived [made his dwelling, tented or tabernacled] among us" (1:14)" Unless there is some relation between the word John uses that is interpreted "dwelt", then this parallel isn't really saying much.

One thing I want to bring up is his attempt to re-interpret the concept of a Promised Land. "As we considered earlier, the narrative beings with the longing for a literal homeland...Gradually, the idea of a promised land morphs from a geographic reality into a social one: "a land flowing with milk and honey" becomes a society in which justice flows like water." pp 132-133.

One must be careful of saying too much here, but the practical outcome of such thinking should be clear--if there is now no geographical Promised Land, it does away with any divine right the Jews may have to the land of Israel, which plays into the Left's ideas about Israel and Palestine. I don't want to go so far as to charge anti-Semitism against McLaren, but just as he likes to play scare tactics about the ideas of others, so I think we can think of all-too-really-horrible outcomes that could come from his ideas.

Earlier, I pointed out where McLaren seems to show a streak of anti-supernaturalism when he wrote about the Nile turning to blood in Exodus, saying instead it was a red tide. He does it again, in regards to the prophecy in Isaiah 40:1-5, which speaks of "the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established as the highest of the mountains and shall be raised above the hills;".

"Obviously, the prophet isn't predicting a literal tectonic shift in which Jerusalem rises further above sea level and Mt. Everest sinks, but rather a time when God's wisdom draws nations up to the higher level of relating, so disputes are settled nonviolently, wisely, peacefully..." p 134.

Umm...no, it's not "obvious" that this is only metaphorical language. The God I know and love and serve is the One who made the world, the One who made the waters into literal blood, the One who parted the waters of the Red Sea so that Israel could flee, and it is not beyond His power to literally fulfill this prophecy. Unlike McLaren's new-agey view of mankind going to a higher level, I think this prophecy will be literally fulfilled, that the Lord will Himself judge and arbitrate, and not the UN or any other man-made organization or institution. Certainly not anything McLaren is associated with.

This 'new-agey'-ness shows through a time or two more.

"Jesus evokes Moses directly in his conversation with Nicodemus, saying that the Son of Man (a complex term drawn from Daniel 7:13-14, which I believe suggests a new generation or genesis of humanity) will be lifted up as Moses lifted up a bronze serpent in the wilderness (Num 21:9)." p 132.

Jesus claiming to be the Son of Man "suggests a new generation or genesis of humanity"? What??? Is McLaren claiming that "a new generation or genesis of humanity" must be lifted up, as Moses lifted up the serpent? And how new-agey does "a new generation or genesis of humanity" sound?

He makes much of how the world 'hell' doesn't appear in John, "(John, it should be noted, never mentions hell, a highly significant fact)" p 130. But this quote has a footnote, which shows the shenanigans. "Since we aren't assuming the six-line narrative, it would be an unwarranted conclusion to equate words found in John like "condemnation," "death," and "perish" with the word "hell," which is never found in John." p 275.

Claiming there is no hell because John doesn't mention the word is like claiming there is no love because Ruth doesn't use the word, or there is no God because Esther doesn't mention God. It's a weak argument, emblematic of desperation, a thin straw a drowning man will grasp at with unthinking hope that it will keep him afloat.

Finally, you'll find very little about the crucifixion in this part of the book. I've found one mention it it of that event, "If you don't want to worship a guy you can beat up, then I might humbly suggest you reconsider Caesar and the Greco-Roman narrative. It sounds like "Christ and him crucified" is not for you. At least not yet". The one real mention of the crucified Christ in these chapters is little more than a cheap shot.