Becoming Human-The Complexity

"It will be argued in more general terms that it is always dangerous to go to the Philistines to sharpen one's tools (1 Sam. 13:19-21). After all, to mix biblical metaphors, the gold taken when Israel spoiled the Egyptians ended up in the golden calf. No doubt some of it did. Appropriation is inherently dangerous. But some of that gold ended up in the tabernacle as well, and it is that possibility I hope to keep open. (p. 175)" 

Merald Westphal from Overcoming Onto-Theology, 175.  

Blaise Pacal Quote

"Man is but a reed,

the most feeble thing in nature. 

but he is a thinking reed." 

Blaise Pascal 1623-1662

Neo-Reformed is #3!

I have referred to the neo-reformed types in the past.  They are passionate and at times, vexing group. Their most prominent spokespersons are Mark Driscoll and John Piper. I commented on a previous blog about Driscoll here.  

They have made a pretty sizable splash in the North American world as noted in a recent Time Magazine article.  Under the title, "10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now" this group lands as #3! That is an impressive feat and underlines how significant this group is becoming in our time. I prefer to identify this group as neo-reformed, as i have stated in other posts. Yet in this article they are identified as The New Calvinism. 

hmph. I wonder if this is giving them more credit than they are due? I think that many adherents of this group seem to encourage a simple, fundamentalist and anti-intellectual view of doctrine and belief. At least, that is what i am afraid of.  

Just last weekend i listened to a Calvinist try to challenge an older Christian man about his faith because he used the word "earn" to describe part of his relationship with God. I am not opposed to an open conversations about faith and actions but i wonder why we are so passionate to have finely tuned categories of theology above all else? I have listened to many rants about proper theology but sadly few about the plight of the poor or oppressed. Why is that?  

I suspect that many North Americans, because of our wealth and prosperity, have not dealt strongly enough with the problem of triumphalism. As for myself, I am hoping to move away from triumphalism while i stay robustly committed to the tenets of Christianity.   

Becoming Human Part 5c -Sin and Monasticism

"I have only found one religion that dares to go down with me into the depth of myself."

G.K. Chesterton

"Narrow is the mansion of my soul; enlarge Thou it, that Thou mayest enter in. It is ruinous; repair thou it. It has that within which must offend Thine eyes; i confess and know it.  But who shall cleanse it?"  

Augustine

My current focus on this blog is to putter around this idea of becoming human. This might seem to be an odd pursuit.  Why would someone want to explore what it means to be human? After all, isn't being human just a matter of existence?  This is true, but i am using the word human in a fuller sense.  When i say human, i am intending for us to consider, a whole, centered person, not driven by impulses and grasping desire but rather by love and mercy.     

That is why i find the theological category of sin so helpful because it provides a means to examine and expose all the attitudes of the heart that move us away from love and mercy. This exploration of the un-examined or dark sides of our souls can be resisted for a number of reasons. Let me explore three.  

First, the category of sin can, at times, lead to control, manipulation and power games in faith communities. Second, as Stanely Hauerwas notes, "given a choice, most people in America

would rather be sick than a sinner. 'Sin' sounds too judgmental for a 'compassionate culture'" (A Better Hope, 189). Thirdly, Rowan Williams Archbishop of Canterbury states, "not judging anyone sounds at first like a very contemporary thing, the nonjudgmental attitude that so well fits a postmodern reluctance to identify any absolute rights and wrongs, truths and falsehoods" (Where God Happens, 28). Just by a cursory examination of the currents that affect our modern conception of sin, we see how complicated this issue has become.    

Clearly, unravelling this problem or rehabilitating a word like sin with more healthy viewpoint is a challenge. Particularly, because within this confusion about judgement, truth, rights and wrongs is the most ancient and simple aspects of human evasion of responsibility and blame. This has been examined in our own way in our world under the labels passive aggressive, obsessive compulsive and triangulation.    

As i consider the complexity of this issue i have been drawn to Christians writers who reflect on this issue from the perspective of ancient thinkers. I am thinking most specifically of the church fathers and the monastics. I think when issues, like sin, are complicated that it is helpful to look back at how others have wrestled with this issue in a previous historical period. I think it is hard to step out of my own historical epoch and reflect on it but i can, in a more objective fashion, examine another time and place. 

The monastic tradition with all its faults, like extreme asceticism and stoicism, can be viewed with disdain and even revulsion. But we would be mistaken to simply reject it outright.  For those in who live in a highly therapeutic age, with its cacophony of self flattering and self indulgent voices, we need other voices, maybe somewhat "mad" voices to snap us out of our stupor. As Williams states, "it is left for the ironic sanity of the monk or nun to demonstrate--at some personal cost--that God's call is a far stranger thing than any human social definitions might allow" (Williams, Wound of Knowledge, 103). Maybe the ancients can provide wisdom in an age of trite slogans and easy believisms?  

To The Desert

Monastic types did not go into deserts, monasteries, mountain tops or caves simply to avoid sinful humanity but rather to find a "stable and geographic and psychological location where the important battles may be fought" (Ibid, 105). And far from being a flight away from social interaction or the challenges, the monastic tradition allowed for the social interactions among fellow monastics to be the place where they could continue to expose their sinfulness. These individuals were committed to the stripping down of the illusions of life and to find the reality of self and God.    

I find it hard to argue with this approach to faith. What kinds of evasions and illusions do we perpetuate as participants in North American culture? How do the forces of commercialism, style, celebrity, the "good life" shape our approach to life? These are great questions but ones that do not emerge at block parties or church potlucks. They are unpleasant and indicting questions. Maybe they are best sought in small groups of radicals, in deserts, in the fringes?  

  

But whatever our hesitations to participate in such a rigid self examination, it was a motivational force for the monastic movement. We, who are in the church, have some strong ideas about external behavior, which at their most servile, are evidenced only in manners. But ascetic types realize that the externals are just that, external. The true battle, on the other hand, happens deeper within. In fact, this deeper battle with sinful attitudes are pinpointed and catalogued in the seven deadly sins. This examination of the heart allows us to see that our inner motivation becomes grasping and selfish pretty, dang quick. And that the solution is not self help mantras or better relationships or more community involvement, although those things are good in their own right. But what is required is that we enter into the disquiet or clattering of our own hearts and souls. This journey is an arduous one. Most people will want to avoid it or more innocently simply not know how to go about it.    

But thankfully, we have the Lent season.  Edna Wong tells us that, "the spirit of truth does not seek comfort.  The purpose of Lent is not to escape the conscience, but to create a healthy hatred for evil, a heartfelt contrition for sin, and a passionate felt need for faith" (Wong, in Bread and Wine, Readings for Lent and Easter, 22). Sounds like something a monk might get excited about.

Becoming Human Part 5b - a little more about sin

The other day i was reading George Herbert, the great poet who wrote in the early part of the 17th century.  It is in writers like him, and some of the earlier writers on the topic of sin, that i find a language that captures the nuances of sin and of humanity.   

In a poem entitled The Pearl, Herbert meditates on how sin entices:

"I know the ways of Pleasure, the sweet strains, 

The lullings and the relishes of it;

The propositions of hot bloud and brains;

What mirth and musik mean; what love and wit;

Have done these twentie hundred years, and more:

I know the projects of unbridled store:

My stuff is flesh, not brasse; my senses live,          

And grumble oft, that they have more in me

Than he that curbs them, being one to five:

Yet i love thee."

The full poem is here.  Wow. "My stuff is flesh, not brasse; my senses live." That is some amazing verse about the human self. Herbert's poems are loaded with great metaphysical language. The kind of language that makes sense when one is willing to explore the deep contours of the heart.  

Other big hits from his poems:

Aaron

The Agonie

Redemption 

Prayer 

Becoming Human Part 5 - Good Old Fashioned Sin

Two Sundays ago, the second Sunday of Lent, i spoke in church about the grand narrative of the Fall in Genesis 3.  

I am following a traditional arc of stories for the Lent season at our church to try and reconnect what we do with the greater Christian tradition.  I also feel compelled to explore the contours of the topic of sin.  

Why would i choose this focus?  I have been trying to discern that myself.  I think one of the reasons is my belief that we need to know our own hearts.  That is, we need to develop some awareness about what motivates us to do what we do.  This is not just some obsessive-compulsive project but more than that.  It is the desire to have a sense of the contours of our inner life.   

I find lots of corroboration for this view point from various writers.  I am thinking of Henri Nouwen, Richard Rohr, Kathleen Norris, and Parker Palmer as representatives of a school of thinkers that believe we are living under a number of false illusions.  Each on of these believers are encouraging their readers to look more deeply into the patterns of the heart.  The reason for this is straightforward.  We are living in a time of great spiritual and social apathy and indifference.  Rather than exploring our personal malaise through prayer and heart searching, popular culture encourages the life of diversion, escapism and consumerism.  Christians are those who inhabit a tradition that would seek to resist this latter approach.  

But facing the heart is hard work and takes a level of focus and resolve that popular culture does not necessarily support. Kathleen Norris has noted how when she was growing up people spoke of being guilty but now the center of concern seems to be reduced to the problem of "feeling" guilty.  For a society that is deeply influenced by media in all its forms, the line between "the actual" versus "the virtual" seems to be a blurry one indeed. As Mark Twain once quipped, "denial ain't just a river in Egypt."  

I believe that the sin language of the church can help the society look deeper into the motives and goals that lie behind social behaviors.  It should strike us with some sense of irony that Alcoholics Anonymous seems to encourage this kind of honest heart examination more thoroughly than the church.  As a pastor i find this to be a curious development.  And it teaches me that the church is probably more committed to image management then they would care to admit, or better, confess!    

So, why is the sin language that might bring liberation from the denials, justifications and hedgings that go on in the world being omitted or ignored in many Evangelical churches in favor of warmer, therapeutic language?  Why are Christians shying away from the kinds of language that might actually create more responsible and honest people? Perhaps it is  a legitimate beef with the wounds of the past.

But i think that the wounds of the past cannot totally make sense of the resistance of humanity to admitting failure and sin. Something is at work within our hearts that leads us away from the truth about ourselves. It is a combination of fear, despair, anger and other such things.  I think it comes from a word that is dropping out of sight. What do you think? 

Becoming Human Part 4 - Maturing Theological Reflection

I think the issue bringing our humanity into deep interface with our faith tradition has been one that has driven many theological and religious explorations.  

Early Christian thought was shaped by platonic and neo-platonic thought.  Both of these philosophical schools are very interesting but tend to emphasize rationality and ideas but minimize the body and the importance of social context.  That is a gross generalization but please humor me.      

So what happens when a person finds that the classical, philosophical categories of theology are too abstract or intellectual?  What happens when the category of sovereignty or  

impassibility feel like wooden church ideas with little contact to everyday existence? 

a. Suck it up and keep 

affirming what feels empty and meaningless.

b. Declare their is no God and go load up on  Sartre novels.

c. Try to work out the dissonance between beliefs and experiences. 

d. Go pound a litre or two of Tiger-Tiger Ice 

Cream.

Working out the tension between theological affirmations and real life experience seems to fuel a significant amount of back breaking effort for people who love Jesus.  Though someone might feel stressed out when cracks show in their theological beliefs, it is actually a good and helpful to test belief systems.  In fact, it is imperative to both question, challenge and critique our own systems to avoid the pitfalls of legalism, violence and hypocrisy.  We also need to find a space wide enough for our faith to develop, mature and grow.  

Theologian Gene Veith expresses this journey in his book The Spirituality of the Cross.  He states, "What i needed was a spiritual framework big enough to embrace the whole range of human existence, a realistic spirituality...that is not a negation of the physical world or ordinary life, but one that transfigures them."  Yes!  Exactly!  

Once the often times painful reconciliation of experience and belief is complete, a new kind of faith is born. One that is more mature; one that does not look to others for verification; one that is compelling, fruitful and honest.  

  

Unfortunately, this is not true of all Christians or denominations.  Some seem to encourage naivety and blind adherence to doctrinal statements.  Kierkegaard teaches us that this is an immature and weak form of faith.  In fact, a great danger exists for those who refuse to address the dissonance that rings loud and clear in an atrophied faith: institutionalized Christianity. This is the worst kind of religious expression.  It is rooted in fear, ignorance and institutional maintenance rather than in grace, learning and sanctification. Instead of encouraging blind adherence we must salute those brave theologians, artists, and writers that seek to unflinchingly explore the tensions and incongruities within the Christian faith tradition. 

We may not completely agree with the new groups who have emerged as a result of these kinds of explorations.  Groups like Open Theism, Radical Orthodoxy, Post-Liberal Theology or the Emergent Movement, have no shortage of critics and naysayers but i am glad that they have the courage to believe that Christianity can be deeper, better and more informed.  

Becoming Human Part 3 - Story Shaped Life

What does it mean to be truly human?

This is a pretty interesting and also massive question. Whenever we approach this topic we can easily be overcome by the number of options that are available.  On top of a specific  anthropological theory, and an attendant personal philosophy, are the numerous factors that influence each individual life.  What does it mean for an individual in our time to discover their true self?  Is their a way to find a true sense of self that honors the gender, social standing, and ethnicity of each individual? 

Christianity, and all religions, provide a framework for their adherents to interpret life circumstances and come to a sense of self within a world of flux and change.  This is open to abuse but more positively is an empowering aspect of faith and trust.  In recent years this ability of faith to provide a grid for understanding of self in the world has experienced a significant resurgence.  A theological book which highlights this is "Why Narrative: Readings in Narrative Theology."

This is a fascinating book because it tracks the re-emergence of the narrative tradition of reading the bible.  It is doubly fascinating because it explains why narrative theology is so important.  The editors, Hauerwas and Jones, believe that narrative is "a crucial conceptual category for such matters as understanding issues of epistemology and methods of argument, depicting personal identity, and displaying the content of Christian convictions" (italics are mine).    

This book encourages the reader to see how altering our theological method can have a significant impact on how we understand ourselves as human beings in the world.  It is hard to downplay the importance of this work for a re-invigoration of Christianity in the west.  After reading this book, i was and remain convinced that North American churches need to re-discover a narrative practice for preaching and teaching in order to find a better way to understand our human selves and to live with meaning in the world.  

A popular review of this book back in 1991 also noted the potential impact of this approach to theology, and as we are saying, human identity.  George Stroup wrote in Theology Today:

"There is a deep and profound confusion concerning not only what it means to be Christian, but also what it means to be male or female, husband or wife, father or mother. In the midst of this massive confusion about identity and the absence of what were at one time compelling narratives and living traditions, it is hardly surprising that there is both a fascination with and a longing for narratives that recreate an ordered world and provide meaning and direction to personal and communal existence. The interest in narrative across the spectrum of theological disciplines is not because theologians have run   out of topics to debate and discuss; rather, the theme of narrative touches an exposed, raw nerve in the life of Christian communities and in the life of the larger culture."

The issue of finding an approach to life that has a good end in mind, a focus for human action in the midst of excessive individual freedom and encourages active social participation is sorely needed.  I think narrative readings could help us become more human.  What do you think?

Bus Slogan Generator

I mentioned a couple of posts back about the Bus Slogan Campaign put on by atheists and christian in the u.k.  I just discovered a link to a Bus Slogan Generator.  You simply type in your own suggestion for the caption and it will show you what it would look like on a double decker bus.  Cool!