the emergent buffet

Spiritual bricolage is the mining of ideas and concepts about God that already exist in the world and creating a whole new vocabulary, as well as new concepts and understandings of what it means to have a spiritual life.
Burke and Taylor, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, p 143

What a perfect way to view the emergent and progressive 'religion' that people like Burke and Taylor are wanting to create--religion as buffet. Your first trip through, maybe you get a main course of materialistic atheism seasoned with a bit of something that's like Christianity but isn't (remember No-Salt?) Go over to another table and get a spoonful or two of eastern mysticism, maybe a bit of hot-and-sour new-agey gunk, and a touch of Islamic garnish on the sides just to be religiously correct. Some things in the Judaism section may be safe, though one can have such awful heartburn when it's combined with the Islamic garnish.

Oh, and for dessert--a heaping helping of marxist-socialist social-justice pudding sweetened with artificial Jesus-talk (remember Sweet-and-Low?) with chunks of all the above mixed in.

Yeah, I did use the word "chunks" intentionally.

But don't bother about the Orthodox Christianity table. It's old hat stuff. Sure, it's got all the necessary vitamins and minerals, but it's all so...unexciting. Who wants plain oatmeal with berries when you can have superultramega oats with chocolate sprinkles? How do you know your apples are natural if the proper authorities have not labeled them as organic? Do you really want your grandma's cookies, or cookies baked in all-natural cookie-stuff and filled with raisins certified to have had bugs all around them because no pesticides were used, were hand-picked by illegal immigrants who were paid a wage someone arbitrarily decided was fair, and no puppies were harmed in their making? Can your granny honestly say her cookies never harmed a puppy? I didn't think so.

Oh, sure, Orthodox Christianity was good enough for your grandparent. It helped them through a couple of world wars and severe financial depression, not to mention the other things they went through. And, yes, they're old and going to kick the bucket soon, so you really don't want to tell them that Heaven is just a myth--let them have their comforting lies, just like kids and Santa.

But you! You're young! You're different! You're special!!! You have the internet, Google, television, channel after channel of ESPN, coffeehouses on every corner! You're postreligious postchristian postright-and-wrong postmodern postmoral postcapitalism postElvis posteverything!!! You don't want plain food, you want super-foods! You want postfood foods!!

lib fun time

In short, were Jesus to to return in the flesh, he would be executed again, not by the world but by the church. Or left by the church to die in the cold, like Sheldon's character, or to be shot down in the nightmare urban violence of America's urban warfare because Christian's support right-wing extremists opposed to gun control, or excluded as an illegal immigrant.
John Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct, p 32

Oh, joy, a favorite fun exercise of the left, "What outrageous and ridiculous things can we accuse the church of today!". Caputo's version seems to be "How the church would mistreat Jesus!"

Can I play, too?

Were Jesus to return in the flesh today...

The liberal media would write nasty things about Him, because He wasn't an evolutionist, but rather talked about Adam and Noah as if they had been real people.

Oh, and He would be pro-Israel, even as He would say some hard things about them.

Progressive churches would deny him a place in their pulpits, because He would insist on taking biblical moral teachings seriously, and spoke strongly against their attempts to say all religions lead to God. He would insist that only belief in Himself was the way to God.

Emergents would not invite Him to their conferences, because He would tell them that attempts to rethink and reimagine Christianity are misleading and wrong.

Muslims wouldn't like Him, because He'd tell them that Mohammed was wrong.

He'd tick off the Buddhists and Hindus and Mormons, too.

The political liberals (and no doubt the materialistic religious liberals) would be less than happy with Him, because He'd tell them to not love the world, He'd speak about His Father as if He is a real being and some kind of nonperson that runs around in men's minds. Plus, He'd work miracles, which would make those liberals scurry to explain them away.

Mostly, they'd get ticked off because He just wouldn't stand with them on things like global warming, robbing the rich to give to the deadbeats, homosexual rights, the right to abortion, anti-globalism, anti-imperialism, anti-this and that. He would not follow Alinsky's rules for radicals, wouldn't join in protests against police, wouldn't come down on the side of illegal immigrants.

Oh, no doubt, he would have some things to say to conservatives, too, and not all would be complimentary. He'd probably warn them about compromise with those of similar political ideas but seriously different religious beliefs. He'd probably tell conservative Christians to stop trying to appear nice to the world. He'd likely say that there's too little difference between the progressive who blatantly abuse and mishandle His Word, and evangelicals who water it down and make the Gospel the ultimate self-help method and God a perveyor of good feelins. And I'd hate to think what He'd say to the Word of Faith crowd. He'd probably say some things about speaking the right things but not living by them.

Which side would attempt to kill Him? Oh, certainly those of other religions have killed many Christians, so there's that to consider. I think progressives and emergents would, like the Jewish religious leaders of old, be so disappointed with the real Jesus over the one they've tried to imagine and deconstruct that, in order to preserve those imagined and deconstructed Jesus', they'd have to do away with the real one.

And I think there would be conservative Judas' who would be more than willing to sell Him out.

vibes

Spirituality begins its discussion of the sacred from the desire for an integrated life. Religions often operate on a sin-redemption paradigm, which has little resonance in today's society.
Burke and Taylor, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, p. 60

"...little resonance in today's society". Well, maybe. So?

When has man wanted to know that he is a sinner in need of redemption? Yes, it doesn't resonate in society--any society. The Pharisees in Jesus' day seemed to not mind calling other's sinners, but were not so happy when Jesus did it to them. As they write a few pages later...

Although the link between grace and sin has driven Christianity for centuries, it just doesn't resonate in our culture anymore. It repulses rather than attracts. People are becoming much less inclined to acknowledge themselves as "sinners in need of a Savior." It's not that people view themselves as perfect; it that the language they use to describe themselves has changed. "Broken", "fragmented", and "lacking wholeness"--these are some of the new ways people describe their spiritual need.
p 64

So, people don't want to think of themselves as sinners, we shouldn't deal with sin? If a person has a serious illness, are doctors not allowed to deal with that illness or call it by name if it "just doesn't resonate in our culture anymore"? If a patient has cancer, is the doctor not allowed to use the word 'cancer' because "it repulses rather than attracts"?

As the Scriptures say, Christ died for our sin. If Christ died for our sin, then our sin is a serious issue, and should not be shunted aside because it "just doesn't resonate in our culture anymore", or it "repulses rather than attracts"; indeed, it could be said that we should stress it even more strongly when among people to whom it doesn't resonate and for whom it repulses rather than attracts.

It is not our job to rethink, redesign, reimagine, rewhatever the message God has given us, especially if the message is not well-received. Trust me, if all we have to deal with are people saying it "just doesn't resonate", well, that's rather mild compared with the tortures and persecutions and martyrdoms Christians have suffered and still suffer. Some people have given the "It's not relevant and it's repulsive" in rather definite, strong, and (for the Christians) painful ways.

one thing i've been working on

My postings here have been rather infrequent for a while. There have been reasons for that. Work was busy for a while, for one thing.

Here is another reason, a bit of something I've working on.

En Passant

It's a bit of work about things that are of concern to me that I see and hear about in the church. I'm not going to say it's overly deep, it's certainly on the popular level. Much of it is non-fiction, except for some chapters about a fictional 'dream', which are my attempts at fiction and biting humor. It does deal with some emergent stuff, though is not confined to those issues.

So, it's up for anyone to read. Do so, please, and address whatever in it is of interest to you.

a correctiong, of sorts

A few posts back, I gave a quote from the book "The Heretic's Guide to Eternity" which was itself a quote attributed to one Carter Heyward. In that post, I referred to Heyward at least one time as "Mr. Heyward".

Silly me.

Carter Heyward

Isabel Carter Heyward (b. 1945 in North Carolina) is a lesbian[1] feminist theologian, teacher and priest in the Episcopalian Church - the province of the worldwide Anglican Communion in the United States.

Well, this was...enlightening.

Theology - the Nature of God
Author of a number of books and numerous articles, Carter Heyward's most distinctive theological idea is that it is open to each of us to incarnate God (that is, to embody God's power), and that we do so most fully when we seek to relate genuinely to others in what she calls relationality. When we do this, we are said to be 'godding', a verb Heyward herself coined.[4] God is defined in her work as 'our power in mutual relation'.[5] Alluding to mainstream Christian views of God, Heyward has stated 'I am not much of a theist'.[6] For her, 'the shape of God is justice',[7] so human activity can, as theologian Lucy Tatman has observed, be divine activity whenever it is just and loving. In her book Saving Jesus From Those Who Are Right, Heyward asserts that 'the love we make... is God's own love'.[8] In Heyward’s work, God is therefore not a personal figure, but instead the ground of being, seen for example in compassionate action, which is 'the movement of God in and through the heights and depths of all that is'.[9]

[edit] Theology - Jesus in Carter Heyward's thought
Again in contrast to the more traditional Christian focus (on Jesus Christ as God incarnated as a redeemer), Heyward believes that 'God was indeed in Jesus just as God is in us - as our Sacred, Sensual Power, deeply infusing our flesh, root of our embodied yearning to reach out to one another'.[10] This power works to change despair, fear and apathy to hope, courage and what Heyward terms 'justice-love'.[10] But God's Spirit is not contained 'solely in one human life or religion or historical event or moment'.[11] God was Jesus' relational power for 'forging right (mutual) relation, in which Jesus himself and those around him were empowered to be more fully who they were called to be'.[12] Insisting on the God-incarnating power of all, Heyward observes that 'the human act of love, befriending, making justice is our act of making God incarnate in the world'.[13] Interestingly, in her recent work she suggests that even the non-human creation may incarnate God, commenting that 'there are more faces of Jesus on earth, throughout history and all of nature, than we can begin even to imagine'.[14]. Not unrelated to this perception, Heyward founded the Free Rein Center for Therapeutic Horseback Riding and Education at Brevard, North Carolina, where she is an instructor[15]

Well, no wonder the Oozers quote her so favorably. And no wonder she wants people to belief it's ok to read the Bible in such different ways than those people long ago. She certainly does.

don't tell me what i don't wanna hear!!

Spirituality begins its discussion of the sacred from the desire for an integrated life. Religions often operate on a sin-redemption paradigm, which has little resonance in today's society.
Burke and Taylor, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, p. 60

"...little resonance in today's society". Well, maybe. So?

When has man wanted to know that he is a sinner in need of redemption? Yes, it doesn't resonate in society--any society. The Pharisees in Jesus' day seemed to not mind calling other's sinners, but were not so happy when Jesus did it to them. As the Heretic's Guide writers write a few pages later...

Although the link between grace and sin has driven Christianity for centuries, it just doesn't resonate in our culture anymore. It repulses rather than attracts. People are becoming much less inclined to acknowledge themselves as "sinners in need of a Savior." It's not that people view themselves as perfect; it that the language they use to describe themselves has changed. "Broken", "fragmented", and "lacking wholeness"--these are some of the new ways people describe their spiritual need.
p 64

So, because people don't want to think of themselves as sinners, we should do away with sin? If a person has a serious illness, are doctors not allowed to deal with that illness or call it by name if it "just doesn't resonate in our culture anymore"? If a patient has cancer, is the doctor not allowed to use the word 'cancer' because "it repulses rather than attracts"?

As the Scriptures say, Christ died for our sin. If Christ died for our sin, then our sin is a serious issue, and should not be shunted aside because it "just doesn't resonate in our culture anymore", or it "repulses rather than attracts"; indeed, it could be said that we should stress it even more strongly when among people to whom it doesn't resonate and for whom it repulses rather than attracts.

It is not our job to rethink, redesign, reimagine, rewhatever the message God has given us, especially if the message is not well-received. Trust me, if all we have to deal with are people saying it "just doesn't resonate", well, that's rather mild compared with the tortures and persecutions and martyrdoms Christians have suffered and still suffer. Some people have given the "It's not relevant and it's repulsive" in rather definite, strong, and (for the Christians) painful ways.

what are you doing in another universe now?

Spirituality operates on a new cosmology that sees a "multiverse" rather than the universe. It attempts to redefine the practice and experienc of faith in a post-Newtonisn world. As Marshall McLuhan said, "The phrase 'God is dead' applies aptly, correctly, validly to the Newtonian universe which is dead. The ground rule of that universe, upon which so much of our Western world is built, has dissolved." Religion operates on premodern views of the owrld. Ever since man took pictures of the earth from the moon, our understanding about cosmology and the nature of being has evolved into a postmetaphysical understanding of life.
Burke and Taylor, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, p. 60

If you read that, and are thinking "What does any of that mean?", join the club.

A few months ago, some big progressive type had a shindig about "Theology After Googles". I think I wrote a bit about some things he wrote about it. Pretty much, we are to think that, after the advent of the internet search engine Google (sorry, MSN and Yahoo and all you other search engines), we have to redefine and rethink and redo and rethis and rethat all things theology.

This is hardly new. Some took the true horrors and evil of the Nazi death camps and extermination chambers to tried to formulate a theology after Auschwitz, and some of them concluded that God is dead, though without consulting God, I would suppose. Burke and Taylor are trying to say that the lunar landing or the first photos from orbit somehow necessitates a need to rethink and all that in theology.

Sometimes, it seems like every new invention or big event has some people saying we need to rethink God because of it. Why? What does Google have that trumpts God? Why does even an ugly event like the killings in the Nazi camps mean we have to rethink God? Is this all not just ways so shifting blame and responsibility?

It strikes me that the ancients were made of much heartier stuff. Jeremiah walks among that ruins of Jerusalem, and cries out to God. Daniel gets carried off to a foreign country, and sticks true to his God and the true beliefs in Him. Nehemiah actually believes those old words of God concerning the return of His people from exile and so acts on them. Jesus actually tells the disciples that Jerusalem will be destroyed and the Temple torn down, and they don't try to redefine Him and rethink His words and try to explain away what He told them.

There are true contradictions that should be avoided. But there are also seemingly contradictions that are not really contradiction, but rather, like colors, enhance the overall picture. Gideon can say "The Lord is peace" and believe that that same God can tell him to raise an army and kill the people who have conquered them, and he can see no contradiction in those things. And there isn't a contradiction.

Emergents and progressives seem unable to comprehend that. McLaren posits that God in the Old Testament is at times "unchristlike", a blasphemy if I've read one. His god is a small, weak thing, a creature made in McLaren's own image, not the great, grand, at times frightening God we see throughout the Bible.

Man can make whatever technological advances they want. They still haven't surprised or surpassed God. If anything, man's tech advances have only made us worse. The person who could at one time have only killed a few people with bare hands or knives can now kill scores with guns, or even thousands with something as seemingly innocent as airplanes, not to mention nuclear weapons. Lies which would have not even been heard about in another country a few hundred years ago can reach the other side of the world in seconds now.

pomo reading shenanigans

Every generation, on the basis of its own social and cultural history, tradition, education, and experiences, reads the Bible in ways that our ancestors would not recognize. This is because we always read the text of our own lives in relation to the biblical texts," Carter Heyward observes.
Burke and Taylor, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, p 108.

Every generation reads the Bible in ways people before us would not recognize? Oh, really? And what proof can this Mr. Heyward offer for that claim?

Perhaps he bases it on things in the writings of the early church fathers? Irenaeus? Justin Martyr? Or is his way of reading them, let alone the Bible, so different that he can't even read them correctly?

And why just the Bible? Do people read Plato and Aristotle that same way? Or other Greek writers, poets and playwrites and philosophers? Can we not even understand Homer in any correct way?

Now, I've read a small bit of a few of the early church fathers. Not much, I admit, but a bit. I know, for example, that Justin Martyr had an eschatology that was rather a lot like what he today call Futurism, meaning that there would be a time when an Antichrist would rise and rule before the physical return of Christ. Though, as well, he thought that the church had taken the place of Israel, which I have a few problems with, but as with other Christian writers like Chesterton and Lewis whom I have found informative, I reserve the right to disagree as well as agree.

But I don't think the read the Bible in some kind of way that was so different from my own that it would not by recognizable to each other. Granting areas of disagreement, if the problems of language could be bridged, I think we could mostly understand each other.

On the other hand, I've recently had some encounters with those who could be said to read the Bible in ways that a Justin or an Irenaeus would likely not have understood, though maybe Irenaeus, in his studies of the Gnostics, would have been familiar with similar things.

The encounter began when I responded on an internet board to someone writing the he or she didn't believe that Christ died for our sins. I responded by posting several New Testament scriptures showing that Christ did indeed die for our sins. I was then told that this wasn't good enough because they weren't from the Gospels, that I was quoting Paul and John and not Jesus. And when I responded that I was quoting the Word of God, I was then told that if I was going to quote the Word of God I should quote Jesus, because of John calling Him the Word in that Gospel, that Paul and the other epistles-writers were struggling to understand Jesus' death and resurrection and what it meant to them (putting into question the concept of divine inspiration in the epistles), and that we can't even say that Bible is really the Scriptures.

And, to go to another though rather related source, even the words and teachings of Jesus are not enough. "...I could live with the idea that Paul condemned what we today have constituted as 'homosexuality' and that if anyone ever asked Jesus about it (and if they did we have no record of it) he would have said the same thing as Paul...In my view, even if there is a dominant view against homosexuality in the Scriptures and tradition...I would argue that on this point the Greeks were right and the dominant tradition among the Jews and Christian is wrong...Indeed, by invoking the spirit of a certain Jesus, I would argue for a counterfactual conditional: were Jesus alive to day and familiar with the pros cna cons of the contemporary argument, his centeredness on love would have brought him down onthe side of the rights of what we today call the 'homosexual' difference..." (Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct, pp 108-109). In other words, Jesus' own acceptance of and agreement with the laws against homosexuality is not enough if one can spin (I mean, deconstruct) things to the benefit of one's agenda. Even granting that the Bible never condones homosexuality means that we today must do so, in the minds of those who would call good what is evil. And apparently showing what the Scriptures say about the blood of Christ is not an "intelligent argument", whatever that means.

And there are others, too. I would wonder if Irenaeus would feel forgotten, because after he put a 1000 year kabash on Gnosticism through his works, it's back and people want to make such Gnostic gospels as authoritative as the biblical Gospels (or maybe take the authority of the biblical Gospels down to the level of the heretical Gnostics).

So, maybe Heyward has a point. Though if his point, and that of the Heretic's Guide authors, is that one way of reading the Bible (or, more accurately, interpreting it) is as good as the other, well, even they don't think that's true. If anything, Burke and Taylor and other emergents and progressives use themselves as the starting point for reading the Bible--they are the ones that judge and even condemn the Bible, not the Bible that judges us and both condemns us and tell us of God has provided us salvation. They even have the gall of judge and condemn God, as McLaren does in "A New Kind of Christianity" when he says that there are times in the Old Testament when God is "Unchristlike".

I really can't imagine a Justin or an Irenaeus thinking the God in the Hebrew scriptures was unlike Christ. When that happens, I think McLaren's views of God and of Christ are seriously, even fatally, skewed.

motes and beams

Spirituality focuses on authenticity and honesty. Religion tends to emphasize perfection and holiness. In fact, so great is the pressure to be progressing that people often lie to each other and even themselves about their religious experience and where they really are in their lives.
Burke and Taylor, A Heretic's Guide to Eternity, p 60

This is one criticism they have that has a bit of validity. What I question is how much "authenticity and honesty" is in their spirituality.

For one thing, we have to question what is meant by "authenticity and honesty". Perhaps it involves many things, but one sure thing it seems to involve is that one can admit to practicing what was once considered bad and sinful behavior (homosexuality, worshiping other gods, wanting other people's property through 'social justice', breaking the laws for rather lame reasons) is not only something they can now admit to, but also things that these people will support them in doing.

Now, on the other hand, if you disagree with these people who practice "authenticity and honesty", well, you may find that your own "authenticity and honesty" is somewhat less welcomed.

Perhaps there is pressure in churches to appear more spiritual than one really is, I'll not deny that. But I don't think that the church is alone in that fault, but that emergents are as prone to it as any other. The truth is, the 'emergent conversation' is not so welcoming of dissenting voices as they would like to pretend. One need only ask Mark Driscoll how welcoming they were of him when he started questioning them.

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".