The Life and Death of Oral Roberts

The Oral Roberts Ministry Website announced today that after an injury Yesterday and subsquent hospitalization, Oral Roberts has died at age 91.

The Tulsa World launched an article yesterday announcing briefly and with undetailed accounts how the Famed Televangelist and Icon of “Healing Ministry” had been hospitalized. He died from complications due to pneumonia, which he’d had before going in to the hospital yesterday. His son Richard was with him when he passed.

Most famous for his teachings on the goodness of God, and the “miracle of seed faith,” Oral was a visionary whose hard work and dedication to his faith were evident in what He built. He built the school where I attended undergraduate studies, Oral Roberts University, as well as a medical school which while no longer in operation was a tremendous feat for its time.

Many Pentecostals and Charismatics owe their entire ministries and styles of ministry to the work of Oral. This is simultaneously a good and bad thing. While Oral himself was humble and taught seed faith in humility there have been abuses since its popularization, and it has come to be equated with “name it and claim it” theology as well as a general apathy towards divine transcendence on a personal level. Yet, despite these things the work of Oral himself was a blessing to many of us, and while his life like any life is riddled with complications, He did his best to be faithful and we will remember him fondly.

Pentecostals around the planet are indebted to this man, who created televangelism almost singlehandedly, and expanded not only Pentecostalism but a whole generation of various faith movements in Evangelical Christianity. While we’ve seen the abuses and cheap greasy hair that has come out of imitations, the work of Oral Himself attempted to be to the greater glory of God at all times.

Many Pentecostals like Dr. Jack Hayford say that Oral almost singlehandedly created the Pentecostal/Charismatic renewal that was the protestant answer to America’s increasing secularism. While today many remember his late 1980’s money raising efforts that might have partially shamed him in the public eye until today, I think history especially Christian history will look favorably on him, and his work. It is my prediction that what we call the pentecostal/charismatic renewal will eventually be categorized as a continued sort of great awakening, and that Oral Roberts will be the defining figurehead of 20th century Christianity on the pastoral level. Maybe the third or fourth “awakening”, i don’t know who keeps track anymore.

Dr. Jack Hayford has said of Him: “Oral shook the landscape with the inescapable reality and practicality of Jesus’ whole ministry. His teaching and concepts were foundational to the renewal that swept through the whole church. He taught concepts that spread throughout the world and simplified and focused a spiritual lifestyle that is embraced by huge sectors of today’s church.”

It’s true that much of the Pentecostal explosion in the third world, including some strains of word faith and general Charismatic ecumenical movements could not have happened without the presence and impact of Oral Roberts in the Twentieth century, paving the way.

Oral Roberts has said of his life’s mission that God spoke to him and told him “Build Me a University. Build it on My Authority, and on the Holy Spirit,” and “Raise up your students to hear my voice, to go where my light is seen dim, where my voice is heard small, and my healing power is not known, even to the uttermost bounds of the earth. Their work will exceed yours, and in that I am well pleased.”

So, to all the faithful, let us remember God’s call not only to Oral, but to us. We are those people who must be the healing power of Jesus in the world. Through our works towards justice, mercy, healing and reconciliation of the world to God in and through Christ Our Lord.

To all my fellow ORU students and alumni, do not let your hearts be troubled, “God is a good God”. While we have lost two men who have shepherded our school in times of need, Pastor Billy Joe, and now Oral, we know that our work has not yet ceased.

Our lives are called to be light, guidance for the world, preservation and flavor where it is in need of our presence, and yeast, slowly spreading to overtake the darkness with God’s incalculably glorious presence and light. Let us remember what we were called to in Faith, and let us hold fast the confession of our hope. Christ is Lord, and our task is His glory.

A Broken Hope- A Weak People (Interlude)

“Will you now restore the Kingdom to Israel?” Is today the day you’re going to fix everything, cut the powers that be down to size and show them that Love and Mercy are the true powers and that Love itself is You?

I think not…and for that very reason I am angry with you. I don’t understand your choices, I don’t understand how you claim to Love so powerfully yet allow us to continue in our foolishness and idolatry day after day. Sure you’re self-emptying and all-loving, but this makes no sense. If you loved us, wouldn’t you rather set all things right as soon as possible?

What reason for the delay? Is it some divinely ordained plan to just wait until we’re so exhausted that we can no longer continue? What majesty is there in silence, in weakness, and in being trampled upon? What power can there be in allowing the world to fall ever increasingly into chaos? What justice is there in a world where money rules and corporations decide the events of our lives?

What justice can there be in a world where those who bear your name don’t bear your likeness? What justice can there be in a world where we are persecuted, abandoned and destitute? We are forgotten, just like you.

Men sing your praises with their lips and women clap their hands in exultation, people rejoice at your magnificence, but there are starving people down the street, abandoned buildings in our midst, and suffering children’s cries in our ears.

And yet, you sit in perfect passivity. You contemplate your own glory, and your perfection is unceasing. Maybe we should praise you for being the most contented narcissistic being ever. Mayhap we should be content that everything that happens is in your divine will, and that you’re just a beneficial dictator. Maybe you’re the all-loving Hitler in the sky, at least that’s the way that they paint you. They show you to us as a cloud of glory, an all powerful yet wholly apathetic and unsentimental being, so unmoved that we might burst for the compassion you’ve given us that you seem to lack, because everything is in your plan.

Your words do not rage in the hearts of the prophets, instead, they are drowned out by hushings and sighings. Your cries for justice on the lips of the autistic child are silenced or put out, your cries of love reach deaf ears when they come from the hungry and the poor. The woman in that pew is not sure how she will feed her children tonight, and the couple next to her is sated beyond their ability to spend, what manner of family is this? What honor can be had among a people mighty and sated with their own power?

Your “prophets”, your “apostles”, they ask us to believe that we too should be empowered, powerful, mighty, successful, monetarily wealthy. They tell us to seek these things, and as an afterthought mention that we might want to seek the kingdom first, because these things are irrelevant in so many ways. Your prophets maintain the status quo, they hold fast the barriers, and they’ve made a mockery of you. They’ve cast lots for your garments, but only to exchange them with an american flag. They no longer clothe you in purple, they clothe you in the seamless garment of patriotism. They crown you with lady liberty, and place the declaration of independence as a sign above you. They give you the sword, and nail it to your beaten hands, they take your beaten teeth out of your mouth and replace them with bullets, they take your wounds and fill them with the ichor of bitterness and pride. They give you to drink hypocrisy and mix it with the blood of their enemies. They lay you in the tombs of their great heroes, they inscribe your name on their war memorials and fail to see that you undo their idols. You yourself are the weakened voice that in its very weakness and suffering destroys all idols.

You do not raise your voice, you do not defend yourself against these abusers, these pilates, these caesars.

NOTHING makes me angrier than the words “It must be the will of God”. As if you haven’t clearly shown us that which you desire. I am angered, furious at your lack of standing up for yourself at times. You just sit there on your beaten tree, breathing, gasping, blood in your eyes, and you ask for our forgiveness. Let me join you, in praying for this broken world, for I cannot bear to stand outside it another moment, and at least in joining you, i may find life and hope. If all I see is darkness, at least I know you gave your life that they might have life, and that your will is life, over against the chaos of death that has usurped your good creation.

Teach me to forget my anger and forgive, that we might have heaven on earth.

Let us bear this together, for your body is life, let me be found in your wounds, and let your wounds be found in my body. Teach us to rightly stand with you, not in power, but in weakness. Teach us to surrender our power, frustrate all our plans, show us we’re all pretentious, that we might experience the joy of being dependent children, utterly lost without you.

Pope Benedict XVI’s Meeting with Artists

This Past Saturday the Pope met with Artists in a special address in the Sistine Chapel.

I think you will find in the words that follow, an exhortation that many artists have been dying to hear. I know that as a charismatic, and a once ultra-Charismatic, i hated that we had no way to talk about beauty really. Worship services came in mass produced packages with the trappings of lights and smoke machines, all attempting to recreate something that the church has always been about and failing horribly. While comfortable, pretty, or even quaint, these scenes are not scenes of undying beauty, they will pass with cultural fads and something else will take their place.

It is my hope that you’ll take the time to read the whole address, since in it are words of profound insight, with quotes from some of my favorites, Hans Urs Von Balthasar, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and even a lesser favorite worthy of respect, Plato. The Holy Father launched this address on the 10th anniversary of Pope John Paul II’s address to artists, attempting to reestablish a stronger communication between the arts and the church and highlight the interdependence of each on the other.

It is my hope that these words encourage artists, theologians and the faithful, because they encouraged me, and have lifted my spirit.

Just some highlights from the address before I give you the full text:

“Unfortunately, the present time is marked, not only by negative elements in the social and economic sphere, but also by a weakening of hope, by a certain lack of confidence in human relationships, which gives rise to increasing signs of resignation, aggression and despair. The world in which we live runs the risk of being altered beyond recognition because of unwise human actions which, instead of cultivating its beauty, unscrupulously exploit its resources for the advantage of a few and not infrequently disfigure the marvels of nature.”

“Indeed, an essential function of genuine beauty, as emphasized by Plato, is that it gives man a healthy “shock”, it draws him out of himself, wrenches him away from resignation and from being content with the humdrum – it even makes him suffer, piercing him like a dart, but in so doing it “reawakens” him, opening afresh the eyes of his heart and mind, giving him wings, carrying him aloft”

“Too often, though, the beauty that is thrust upon us is illusory and deceitful, superficial and blinding, leaving the onlooker dazed; instead of bringing him out of himself and opening him up to horizons of true freedom as it draws him aloft, it imprisons him within himself and further enslaves him, depriving him of hope and joy.”

“What is capable of restoring enthusiasm and confidence, what can encourage the human spirit to rediscover its path, to raise its eyes to the horizon, to dream of a life worthy of its vocation – if not beauty?”

Here is the Full Text of the Pope’s address to artists:

Dear Cardinals,
Brother Bishops and Priests,
Distinguished Artists,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

With great joy I welcome you to this solemn place, so rich in art and in history. I cordially greet each and every one of you and I thank you for accepting my invitation. At this gathering I wish to express and renew the Church’s friendship with the world of art, a friendship that has been strengthened over time; indeed Christianity from its earliest days has recognized the value of the arts and has made wise use of their varied language to express her unvarying message of salvation. This friendship must be continually promoted and supported so that it may be authentic and fruitful, adapted to different historical periods and attentive to social and cultural variations. Indeed, this is the reason for our meeting here today. I am deeply grateful to Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture and of the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Patrimony of the Church, and likewise to his officials, for promoting and organizing this meeting, and I thank him for the words he has just addressed to me. I greet the Cardinals, the Bishops, the priests and the various distinguished personalities present. I also thank the Sistine Chapel Choir for their contribution to this gathering. Today’s event is focused on you, dear and illustrious artists, from different countries, cultures and religions, some of you perhaps remote from the practice of religion, but interested nevertheless in maintaining communication with the Catholic Church, in not reducing the horizons of existence to mere material realities, to a reductive and trivializing vision. You represent the varied world of the arts and so, through you, I would like to convey to all artists my invitation to friendship, dialogue and cooperation.

Some significant anniversaries occur around this time. It is ten years since the Letter to Artists by my venerable Predecessor, the Servant of God Pope John Paul II. For the first time, on the eve of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, the Pope, who was an artist himself, wrote a Letter to artists, combining the solemnity of a pontifical document with the friendly tone of a conversation among all who, as we read in the initial salutation, “are passionately dedicated to the search for new ‘epiphanies’ of beauty”. Twenty-five years ago the same Pope proclaimed Blessed Fra Angelico the patron of artists, presenting him as a model of perfect harmony between faith and art. I also recall how on 7 May 1964, forty-five years ago, in this very place, an historic event took place, at the express wish of Pope Paul VI, to confirm the friendship between the Church and the arts. The words that he spoke on that occasion resound once more today under the vault of the Sistine Chapel and touch our hearts and our minds. “We need you,” he said. “We need your collaboration in order to carry out our ministry, which consists, as you know, in preaching and rendering accessible and comprehensible to the minds and hearts of our people the things of the spirit, the invisible, the ineffable, the things of God himself. And in this activity … you are masters. It is your task, your mission, and your art consists in grasping treasures from the heavenly realm of the spirit and clothing them in words, colours, forms – making them accessible.” So great was Paul VI’s esteem for artists that he was moved to use daring expressions. “And if we were deprived of your assistance,” he added, “our ministry would become faltering and uncertain, and a special effort would be needed, one might say, to make it artistic, even prophetic. In order to scale the heights of lyrical expression of intuitive beauty, priesthood would have to coincide with art.” On that occasion Paul VI made a commitment to “re-establish the friendship between the Church and artists”, and he invited artists to make a similar, shared commitment, analyzing seriously and objectively the factors that disturbed this relationship, and assuming individual responsibility, courageously and passionately, for a newer and deeper journey in mutual acquaintance and dialogue in order to arrive at an authentic “renaissance” of art in the context of a new humanism.

That historic encounter, as I mentioned, took place here in this sanctuary of faith and human creativity. So it is not by chance that we come together in this place, esteemed for its architecture and its symbolism, and above all for the frescoes that make it unique, from the masterpieces of Perugino and Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Cosimo Rosselli, Luca Signorelli and others, to the Genesis scenes and the Last Judgement of Michelangelo Buonarroti, who has given us here one of the most extraordinary creations in the entire history of art. The universal language of music has often been heard here, thanks to the genius of great musicians who have placed their art at the service of the liturgy, assisting the spirit in its ascent towards God. At the same time, the Sistine Chapel is remarkably vibrant with history, since it is the solemn and austere setting of events that mark the history of the Church and of mankind. Here as you know, the College of Cardinals elects the Pope; here it was that I myself, with trepidation but also with absolute trust in the Lord, experienced the privileged moment of my election as Successor of the Apostle Peter.

Dear friends, let us allow these frescoes to speak to us today, drawing us towards the ultimate goal of human history. The Last Judgement, which you see behind me, reminds us that human history is movement and ascent, a continuing tension towards fullness, towards human happiness, towards a horizon that always transcends the present moment even as the two coincide. Yet the dramatic scene portrayed in this fresco also places before our eyes the risk of man’s definitive fall, a risk that threatens to engulf him whenever he allows himself to be led astray by the forces of evil. So the fresco issues a strong prophetic cry against evil, against every form of injustice. For believers, though, the Risen Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life. For his faithful followers, he is the Door through which we are brought to that “face-to-face” vision of God from which limitless, full and definitive happiness flows. Thus Michelangelo presents to our gaze the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End of history, and he invites us to walk the path of life with joy, courage and hope. The dramatic beauty of Michelangelo’s painting, its colours and forms, becomes a proclamation of hope, an invitation to raise our gaze to the ultimate horizon. The profound bond between beauty and hope was the essential content of the evocative Message that Paul VI addressed to artists at the conclusion of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council on 8 December 1965: “To all of you,” he proclaimed solemnly, “the Church of the Council declares through our lips: if you are friends of true art, you are our friends!” And he added: “This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. Beauty, like truth, brings joy to the human heart, and is that precious fruit which resists the erosion of time, which unites generations and enables them to be one in admiration. And all this through the work of your hands . . . Remember that you are the custodians of beauty in the world.”

Unfortunately, the present time is marked, not only by negative elements in the social and economic sphere, but also by a weakening of hope, by a certain lack of confidence in human relationships, which gives rise to increasing signs of resignation, aggression and despair. The world in which we live runs the risk of being altered beyond recognition because of unwise human actions which, instead of cultivating its beauty, unscrupulously exploit its resources for the advantage of a few and not infrequently disfigure the marvels of nature. What is capable of restoring enthusiasm and confidence, what can encourage the human spirit to rediscover its path, to raise its eyes to the horizon, to dream of a life worthy of its vocation – if not beauty? Dear friends, as artists you know well that the experience of beauty, beauty that is authentic, not merely transient or artificial, is by no means a supplementary or secondary factor in our search for meaning and happiness; the experience of beauty does not remove us from reality, on the contrary, it leads to a direct encounter with the daily reality of our lives, liberating it from darkness, transfiguring it, making it radiant and beautiful.

Indeed, an essential function of genuine beauty, as emphasized by Plato, is that it gives man a healthy “shock”, it draws him out of himself, wrenches him away from resignation and from being content with the humdrum – it even makes him suffer, piercing him like a dart, but in so doing it “reawakens” him, opening afresh the eyes of his heart and mind, giving him wings, carrying him aloft. Dostoevsky’s words that I am about to quote are bold and paradoxical, but they invite reflection. He says this: “Man can live without science, he can live without bread, but without beauty he could no longer live, because there would no longer be anything to do to the world. The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here.” The painter Georges Braque echoes this sentiment: “Art is meant to disturb, science reassures.” Beauty pulls us up short, but in so doing it reminds us of our final destiny, it sets us back on our path, fills us with new hope, gives us the courage to live to the full the unique gift of life. The quest for beauty that I am describing here is clearly not about escaping into the irrational or into mere aestheticism.

Too often, though, the beauty that is thrust upon us is illusory and deceitful, superficial and blinding, leaving the onlooker dazed; instead of bringing him out of himself and opening him up to horizons of true freedom as it draws him aloft, it imprisons him within himself and further enslaves him, depriving him of hope and joy. It is a seductive but hypocritical beauty that rekindles desire, the will to power, to possess, and to dominate others, it is a beauty which soon turns into its opposite, taking on the guise of indecency, transgression or gratuitous provocation. Authentic beauty, however, unlocks the yearning of the human heart, the profound desire to know, to love, to go towards the Other, to reach for the Beyond. If we acknowledge that beauty touches us intimately, that it wounds us, that it opens our eyes, then we rediscover the joy of seeing, of being able to grasp the profound meaning of our existence, the Mystery of which we are part; from this Mystery we can draw fullness, happiness, the passion to engage with it every day. In this regard, Pope John Paul II, in his Letter to Artists, quotes the following verse from a Polish poet, Cyprian Norwid: “Beauty is to enthuse us for work, and work is to raise us up” (no. 3). And later he adds: “In so far as it seeks the beautiful, fruit of an imagination which rises above the everyday, art is by its nature a kind of appeal to the mystery. Even when they explore the darkest depths of the soul or the most unsettling aspects of evil, the artist gives voice in a way to the universal desire for redemption” (no. 10). And in conclusion he states: “Beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence” (no. 16).

These ideas impel us to take a further step in our reflection. Beauty, whether that of the natural universe or that expressed in art, precisely because it opens up and broadens the horizons of human awareness, pointing us beyond ourselves, bringing us face to face with the abyss of Infinity, can become a path towards the transcendent, towards the ultimate Mystery, towards God. Art, in all its forms, at the point where it encounters the great questions of our existence, the fundamental themes that give life its meaning, can take on a religious quality, thereby turning into a path of profound inner reflection and spirituality. This close proximity, this harmony between the journey of faith and the artist’s path is attested by countless artworks that are based upon the personalities, the stories, the symbols of that immense deposit of “figures” – in the broad sense – namely the Bible, the Sacred Scriptures. The great biblical narratives, themes, images and parables have inspired innumerable masterpieces in every sector of the arts, just as they have spoken to the hearts of believers in every generation through the works of craftsmanship and folk art, that are no less eloquent and evocative.

In this regard, one may speak of a via pulchritudinis, a path of beauty which is at the same time an artistic and aesthetic journey, a journey of faith, of theological enquiry. The theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar begins his great work entitled The Glory of the Lord – a Theological Aesthetics with these telling observations: “Beauty is the word with which we shall begin. Beauty is the last word that the thinking intellect dares to speak, because it simply forms a halo, an untouchable crown around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another.” He then adds: “Beauty is the disinterested one, without which the ancient world refused to understand itself, a word which both imperceptibly and yet unmistakably has bid farewell to our new world, a world of interests, leaving it to its own avarice and sadness. It is no longer loved or fostered even by religion.” And he concludes: “We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past – whether he admits it or not – can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.” The way of beauty leads us, then, to grasp the Whole in the fragment, the Infinite in the finite, God in the history of humanity. Simone Weil wrote in this regard: “In all that awakens within us the pure and authentic sentiment of beauty, there, truly, is the presence of God. There is a kind of incarnation of God in the world, of which beauty is the sign. Beauty is the experimental proof that incarnation is possible. For this reason all art of the first order is, by its nature, religious.” Hermann Hesse makes the point even more graphically: “Art means: revealing God in everything that exists.” Echoing the words of Pope Paul VI, the Servant of God Pope John Paul II restated the Church’s desire to renew dialogue and cooperation with artists: “In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art” (no. 12); but he immediately went on to ask: “Does art need the Church?” – thereby inviting artists to rediscover a source of fresh and well-founded inspiration in religious experience, in Christian revelation and in the “great codex” that is the Bible.

Dear artists, as I draw to a conclusion, I too would like to make a cordial, friendly and impassioned appeal to you, as did my Predecessor. You are the custodians of beauty: thanks to your talent, you have the opportunity to speak to the heart of humanity, to touch individual and collective sensibilities, to call forth dreams and hopes, to broaden the horizons of knowledge and of human engagement. Be grateful, then, for the gifts you have received and be fully conscious of your great responsibility to communicate beauty, to communicate in and through beauty! Through your art, you yourselves are to be heralds and witnesses of hope for humanity! And do not be afraid to approach the first and last source of beauty, to enter into dialogue with believers, with those who, like yourselves, consider that they are pilgrims in this world and in history towards infinite Beauty! Faith takes nothing away from your genius or your art: on the contrary, it exalts them and nourishes them, it encourages them to cross the threshold and to contemplate with fascination and emotion the ultimate and definitive goal, the sun that does not set, the sun that illumines this present moment and makes it beautiful.

Saint Augustine, who fell in love with beauty and sang its praises, wrote these words as he reflected on man’s ultimate destiny, commenting almost ante litteram on the Judgement scene before your eyes today: “Therefore we are to see a certain vision, my brethren, that no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived: a vision surpassing all earthly beauty, whether it be that of gold and silver, woods and fields, sea and sky, sun and moon, or stars and angels. The reason is this: it is the source of all other beauty” (In 1 Ioannis, 4:5). My wish for all of you, dear artists, is that you may carry this vision in your eyes, in your hands, and in your heart, that it may bring you joy and continue to inspire your fine works. From my heart I bless you and, like Paul VI, I greet you with a single word: arrivederci!

Here’s an image just to remind you of the context of these words:

 

Vatican Official Transcript

Imagination and Suffering Christianly

We can say this:

At the center of all the ugliness in the world is a sacrifice that calls us to change the way we think about things. There is for us a man on a cross, who shows us where God has entered into our pain, our suffering our emotional state, and said “enough.”

God has not chosen to abstain from us, and to stand aloof, the cross is where we know that God is on our side. An ugly world stood in need, and we “held him of no account.” (Isa. 53:3) Jesus shows us how God imagines the future, through the fact of his resurrection, God’s imagination about our world is one that sets all things right, that faces the realities we face, and stands alongside us.

We have one who stands in our midst alongside us, showing us that this suffering is not the end, that our suffering is not the end. There is a man who has entered into the heart of where the world feels pain, and he is calling us to go there too. He has asked us to enter his life, his teachings, and take upon ourselves his yoke, his burden, his love.

Imagination is not about feeling peppy, but rather is an active engagement in thinking creatively about reconciliation. Christian imagination is as much about ecstatic joy as it is about ecstatic engagement with the reality of suffering. While it leads us to aesthetic beauty and works of art, it leads us into the shadow of the cross, it is from the sufferings of Our Lord that we learn to see the world rightly. Christians do not assume we see reality, rightly, in fact we must assume that learning to see reality rightly is the first task of our imagination.

The Christian Imagination calls us to enter into that same place where the world feels pain, and actively imagine what the love of God looks like there and to set about the task of expressing and ushering in that love, be it in architecture, music, art, sculpture, painting, reflection, philosophy, theology, conversation, ecology, and everything else.

6 Things American Christians Must Remember

6 Things American Christians must remember.

America is not the church, and we cannot swear unquestioned allegiance to this nation without compromising what it means to be Christians. Power never conquers, it consumes from within. Rome, Germany, America. These are all empires who have extended beyond their reach with tyrannical power, and it has ultimately led to their downfall.

1) Power overstretched becomes a means of oppression everywhere.

Rome’s tyranny imploded on it, when the very people that it had attempted to conquer were brought in as mercenaries to fight against the conquering barbarians. Nazi Germany licensed the gestapo as a police force who became executioners of Poles and Serbs abroad, and when brought back home quickly caused the deterioration of Nazi support from within by terrorizing their own people. America has forgotten that what goes around, comes around. We may feel that the war is something we read about online, or watch on television, but its effects are all around us here, as we live in an increasingly militarized state. The oppression we’ve imposed on foreign nations is beginning to show up here at home in surprising and increasingly problematic ways.

2) We should be focused more on democracy and peace than giving in to the war cult.

We’ve surrendered our focus on democracy, on fair representation and on a better society to live in fear. We want to launch a coalition against terror, when we fail to realize we’re perpetuating the terror we seek to eliminate by by allowing our military forces to over extend their reach and let their means outstrip their ends. Christians everywhere need to remember that history has never looked favorably on Christians supporting war, and we too must remember that our first loyalty is to the church, a community of peace, justice and self-emptying love. Christians do not live in fear of their enemies, but know that God has already set us at peace, and made possible a community that seeks the best of even its destroyers.

3) War is not the Christian way.

We have to remember that war is a power of the world. The cross calls us to a very different life. It calls us to a life of cross bearing discipleship. Whether you are a pacifist or a just war supporter it makes little difference to the facts that this war is not just, it never has been, and it never will be. Whether you care to support peace or not makes little difference to the fact that it is the Christian way and the early church shows us most clearly what it means to life in a society at war. We are a people who are in every nation, yet give unquestioned allegiance to none. We are a people who transcend nations, and there are Christians in the countries we’ve come to occupy who might be suffering at our imposition upon their homes, their lands, their lives.

4) The war on terror is not a war on Islam.

America is not at war with Islam. Some people see the recent explosion of Islam as a problem, and see this war as a way of limiting the spread of its influence. This is not a religious war, it’s about expanding the power of our national influence. There’s nothing sacred about this war. Further, we have American Muslims fighting their middle-eastern counterparts. We cannot as Christians allow ourselves to be comfortable with the idea that the killing of the “extremisits” is the right way to go about things for the proper Christianizing of the Middle East. We should never be comfortable with the use of coercive force to spread the Christian message of peace. That’s like explaining chastity with pornography. You cannot spread a message of the loving redemption of the world God created if your hands and lips are stained with the blood of your enemies.

5) America will end.

This may come as a shock to some of my readers, but America will end. Every empire in history has ended, been reimagined, recultured, exported, subverted, destroyed or forgotten. As Americans we must remember that America is not the church, and America will end. We live in America, but America is not God’s representative on earth, nor is it our job to make that so. Our kingdom is not America, nor America’s well being, we live for another kingdom, the community of the Crucified God. Ultimately we live for a world where justice, peace and mercy are normative, and we must live lives that act accordingly now, because this is how our kingdom flourishes, even in the midst of uncertainty, oppression and bloodshed.

“I know men and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between Him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and I have founded empires. But on what did we rest the creation of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him.”-Napoleon

6) We must be Christians and love our enemies.

Our task is to live lives that make sense of the church, because our story does not begin with the declaration of independence, but with the Trinity’s self glorifying love. Our story begins in being image bearing creatures who recognize God in and through our neighbor, as well as our enemy.

Christians are the people who can acknowledge that the neighbor is the enemy, and we must love our enemy as ourselves. We must pray for them in love, knowing that Christ is their Lord already, and we must treat them as such. We must weep with them and for them, we must empathize with the tortures they have suffered, and acknowledge we’ve created societies that speak and trade in blood. We as Christians must repent for the bloodshed of our nation, and cry out for those oppressed by our occupation of their lands, we must pray for those in Guantanamo Bay, and those who have been mercilessly tortured by our agencies.

If we cannot shed tears for our enemies and weep for the oppressed, we must ask ourselves whether we have truly come to know the love of Christ, and recognized the deep and unrelenting call to peace that Jesus sets before us. We must ask whether we know how to abandon our interests, and pursue love and peace, justice and mercy above all else.

Nationalism and Christian Faith

Nationalism in America’s churches is in many ways more explicit and more unnoticed by participants than even 1930’s Germany. The church I work at has decided that it’s far more acceptable to say the pledge of allegiance than to take communion on a regular basis. This shows a church that has lost its way, a community not gathered around the cross, but around a constitution, around not God’s Word, but the republic.

The church I attend is confesssional, it has creeds, it has liturgies, the sad fact of the matter is that these liturgies are America’s ideology. Our creeds are not the Christian creeds, but the creeds of America. Our pastor stands to decry a godless society week after week in love and patience, but, cannot even begin to articulate the problems which we really face. I’ve heard sermons about the evils of evolution and how serving Jesus is like being in the American service, I’ve stood in silent horror as my brothers and sisters salute a flag, pledging allegiance to a bloodthirsty nation in the very community that was built as a community of peace, and cross bearing discipleship.

I’ve heard our pastor thank veterans for defending our freedom, when really, there hasn’t been anything near a just war in the history of America, and the only war that comes remotely close is the European theatre of WWII. But even that was invalidated by our decision to as a nation commit the greatest act of terrorism ever known to history. There’s no defense of freedom in the wars we fight today, or in any of our wars, it’s never been about the defense of freedom it’s been about the unnamed expansion of empire. It’s been about cultural indoctrination and the self-entitled right to supremacy assumed by the American people.

The “tolerant” Americans have sought to excuse themselves from their imperialism by calling it other things, including: a war on terror, defending our freedom, liberating the oppressed, taking out a threat to our national security, disabling a mass murderer, bringing democracy to a people in need of freedom. The rhetoric is all the same and all underlies what’s really going on. America is a darkened face, and a nation willing to commit seedy acts to save her image, to save face. Just like Two-Face and Batman in the Dark Knight, our image has been marred by the publication of torture acts, of really looking at the things we’ve done in order to save “this fair city” from “madmen”.

America’s two face is the presidency and the CIA, agencies we love to praise, that we now have no choice but to see as disfigured and disfiguring aspects of our society. So we’ve created the idea of “the troops” and “freedom” as our heroes, who bear the weight of our guilt, for better and for worse, we shove off the blame on the president, the vice president, the government agencies, the powerlessness of the american people. The mask we’ve taken on for ourselves is a deliberate and overtly intentional rebranding, a way to distance ourselves from the war we find ourselves in. Yet it doesn’t change the reality that is Two-Face, the reality that our white knights have turned out to be monsters.

Our nation is a people determined to be free of guilt, obsessed with ignoring the past to live in the eternal present. The death of metanarrative and historical unity in American culture is a sign of the ways in which the American project is mediating its own failure to itself. We have become dejected and rather than acknowledge our place in history, we’d rather displace ourselves from it in what Foucault called differance. Trying to make ourselves differ from the past and even our present, making America an ideal, an invisible unity, a sinless body removed from the sins of individual persons.

America’s ecclesiological apologetic for itself is that it is an invisible body, perfectly unmarred by the sins of the past. The ideal still lives on, despite historical failures, because these were the failures of presidents, of leaders, but not of America. Underlying America is a strong belief in her invisible unity, despite her radical inclusion of most peoples (although there are some dissenters like Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh). But nevertheless, the claim of America’s idealistic unity and legitimacy as this ideal society in the minds of both conservatives and liberals stands.

As Christians, we do not hope for America, we do not hope in America, we do not take oaths of allegiance, to church or state, baptism is our yes. We need take no oaths of allegiance to the church, to the bible, to the Christian flag, to Jesus. Baptism is our yes, so let us live as though it matters. Pledging allegiance to the Christian flag is rarely if ever done without pledging allegiance to the American flag first, and it just goes to show where the priorities are.

I think that this video shows the problem in explicit detail so you know i’m not just making this up.

the only difference between that first video and the one that follows is not all the children in the first video have flags, but the sentiment is the same. The only difference between American and German fascism is that Americans are gathered around the invisible church that is “Christian America” rather than a charismatic leader. Fundamentalist churches have displaced the invisible church with the visible america in need of “restoration”. My only question is, were we a Christian nation while we moved in slaughtering indians, or after that, when we decided to import slaves to create our livelihoods? Was it at our earliest founding, by Catholic missionaries? Or was it when Puritans decided to betray the natives who had taught them to work the land?

What separates the “Christian” nationalism above from the one presented below?

What would Bonhoeffer say? What would Karl Barth say? What might St. Paul say? Augustine?

My Thoughts on Veteran’s Day

It’s an abomination to thank anybody for murder. Whether they are soldiers in this country or any other. Murder is murder. Our exalted rhetoric about the defense of freedom is an abomination, it’s horrific. I do not thank them, not as veterans of this nation, because more than words of thanks they need love from a community that hopes they shall be set free from their burden someday. As humans I stand with them enduring the weight of the evil that comes with killing in the name of a nation state, and its purported ideas of freedom, justice and free consumerism for all. They have fought for empty ideals, vanity and desolation. They are the ones who must live with blood on their hands, and we are responsible too for the blood which they shed. We are guilty of creating societies where bloodshed is praised as heroism, and where the murderous are exalted. We should not celebrate as much as weep. The taking of a single life does infinite damage to the psyche.

On Teaching Scripture

I was recently having a conversation about this issue and hope that this might spur some dialogue.

I think that the teaching of scripture is about the formation of disciplines in the listening audience. It’s teaching them to think in and with the narrative that scripture presents to us. Teaching scripture is less about looking at the text and more about looking with the text at the One it witnesses to.

Theology is at the heart of our preaching whether practical or speculative, whether historical or spiritual, it’s the content of our message that will determine what values are being formed in the congregations we are teachers for. Theology has a very practical voice, as theologians and teachers our imaginative challenge is to understand the text’s voice in such a way that it speaks not to a reality out there, as to the realty we participate in here and now through the revelation of the cross and our call to take up crosses and die as a peaceful community bearing the marks of Christ in our bodies.

Now, while I agree that putting the bible into the hands of individuals is a danger if there is no central visible authority, including the creeds and the sacraments, i think that this can be a somewhat productive exercise if it leads to communal dialogue and poring over the witness together. The scriptures challenge us to wrestle with them, and to know them we must face the challenge that is this haunting book, we must walk away from it, both with smiles and with tears, with rejoicing and great sorrow. Our knowledge of scripture is not and never a mastery of a text, it is a humble reception, a yeilding, and a self-disclosure, as we open ourselves to this story, we will find it opening itself up to our interpretation. This witness shows us a world that is often broken, unjust and painful, we have to be able to recognize it for what it says and live in the haunting world of the text. This text shows us humanity as a broken object. Yet, it teaches us that despite our ideas about the world we find ourselves in, we know the character of God and His faithfulness, and that in itself challenges us to live a different life.

Teaching the scriptures is not atheological, as many of our contemporary low churches would have us assume. Nor is it all theological in a sense that we turn the church into a class of elite super-nerds bashing each other with the text. The first message of this text, the primary message is the crucified God who has shown us that He is for us, who has suffered that we might know the faithfulness of this God. It is not the pastoral task to innovate fresh revelation as has been assumed by some charismatic and third-wave circles. Our task is to understand that what has been given to us is the fresh revelation, and we must look with the text to understand the one it witnesses to. The text speaks in ways that challenge our imaginations to conform to an ever increasing consciousness of a world outside ourselves, a time outside our nations, and a history initiated at creation which culminates in new creation.

The way to live and do theology is prayer. Theology is liturgical at heart and it should seek to create liturgies public and personal for Christian living. Theology is not a set of rational philosophical tenets with no corresponding voice in the world we find ourselves in. Our theological preaching is a dialogue with the Crucified God, and it forms the worldview we live in, as a backdrop, that sets all things within itself. All Christian action, all human action is theological, we must merely ask ourselves which gods and powers we are serving with our preaching and with our lives. The speaker of the message will determine the way its content is read and received, our best task to show the world that Christianity matters is to be that community so shaped by this text in love that we come to trust one another, speak truthfully together, and share the common discipline of following a path alternative to the one the cultures of the world would ask us to follow.

As a charismatic, i would challenge the contemporary “prophets” to remember that the prophetic task is not soothsaying, divination or even a “word from the Lord”, the prophetic task is reading this text rightly, that we might nourish and evoke a consciousness that is alternative to the one the world has to offer. The pastoral task is not to show people they can be more blessed and baptize their greed in Christian language, nor is it to Lord power over them. Our task is to serve them by wrestling with the text, and come along side them, calling them into encounter with the magnificent beauty that is The Lord God of the Cross. Our task is to call them to look with scripture at the world that God has changed and to see it accordingly, to imagine our world, with converted imaginations. Teaching scripture is about knowing the fresh revelation, the self-interpreting word of God which is Jesus Himself and the undeniable glory of his sufferings. The fathomless beauty, the yawning abyss of divine love, which can only open itself wider and wider, to bear all things. Our task is to point to this, and let it shape the way we think, teach, preach and live.

“There can be and should be no non-theologians in the body of Christ.”

-Karl Barth.

A great book expressing this very thing is Stanley Hauerwas’ book A Cross Shattered Church

St. Mark the Monk

“Unless a man gives himself entirely to the Cross, in a spirit of humility and self-abasement; unless he casts himself down to be trampled underfoot by all and despised, accepting injustice, contempt and mockery; unless he undergoes all these things with joy for the sake of the Lord, not claiming any kind of human reward whatsoever – glory or honor or earthly pleasures – he cannot become a true Christian”

This is a quote by the Orthodox Father, St. Mark the Monk. I love this quote, and I think it rings true. Christianity is the process by which we learn to renounce all things save One, and to will this one thing is the purity which we all seek.

Christian Reflection On Labor Day

A Christian Response to Labor Day:

I think we should be grateful for our particuar place, which we should feel is a part of our embodiment, and thus our vocation. But we must also critique our penchant for war as a country and the deification of patriots, labor unions and inalienable rights. We should remember that we are creatures, and that labor day is also a call to remember our labors unto God, to steward creation, and to take care of a world which is very good.

A christian engagement of labor day should i think also remember workers, in all countries and concern itself with remembering the struggles put forth to make the world we live in one that comes at sometimes no cost to us but high costs to them. We should remember that what we call labor here is in many cases built on the intensely difficult struggles of others and that our country has reached success through stepping on other countries along the way.

I think that a Chrisitan engagement of labor day remembers that this country we find ourselves in was built in part by slaves, and by the power of people breaking their backs for the institution called industry, by children in factories, and men starving during the great depression.

Further, it remembers that the place of that memory is not as an idealistic ancestor worship but sees labor as part of embodiment and what it means to be created as a human being. It remembers the Labor of God, both in Creation and the cross as labors of love and generosity.

Labor day for Christians means remembering that while we participate in the American narrative, and we do so as Americans, it is only secondarily to our lives as Christians. We are inescapably American, and while we love this country, it is a penultimate love, it cannot claim our total allegiance, not in its stories or its collective memory. We . I further think that labor day can help us reflect on our labors as a church body, while remembering that our lives as Christians are told by another story.

This year, Labor day falls on the monday after the 23rd sunday of ordinary time. And for the church the liturgical color is green, it is a reminder of growth, and for me a reminder of our expectation that a new day is rising and has already risen, and a new world is coming yet is already here. It is a reminder of the coming future and its already present place among us at the Lord’s table where we gather to meet new creation.

It is the feast day of St. Regina who was a martyr, according to what we know of her from some sources. According to these sources

“She was born in the 3rd century in Alise, the ancient Alesia where two hundred years earlier Vercingetorix had fought so valiantly against Caesar. Her mother died at her birth, and her father, a prominent pagan citizen, entrusted the child to a Christian nurse who baptized her…In 251, at the age of fifteen, she attracted the eye of a man called Olybrius, the prefect of Gaul, who determined to have her as his wife. He sent for the girl and discovered that she was of noble race and of the Christian Faith. Chagrined, he attempted to have her deny her faith, but the saintly maiden resolutely refused and also spurned his proposal of marriage. Thereupon, Olybrius had her thrown into prison.”

Her Symbols include: Shepherdesses, Against poverty, impoverishment,torture victims.

What we should do with these things in this particular year is remember where we are at as a country, and what her life can remind us of. While we are in recession, or coming out of one, whatever the case is, we can remember those who are less forutnate than we are. We can remember those who are oppressed, we can remember martyrs who like St. Regina have suffered for the faith. We can remember the internally displaced refugees, and those who are laboring to liberate them, we can remember the labors of those working for peace, and the labors of those who are our neighbors. We can remember the workers without jobs, the people who will not be celebrating today, the people who have no labor to set themselves to, the families concerned about their tomorrow.

We can remember them and pray for them, we can be Christians and offer them a better allegiance, a better society, and a better hope, the Christian hope that What God The Father has done for Jesus, He will do for all of us at the appointed time. That our hope and our labors towards that hope are not in vain but are worth the work which we put into them, because that work will be caught up into God and recreated to justify all things finally at the end of all things.

We can take this time to reflect as well, on the readings for today, and see what they mean, and how they challenge us to encounter Jesus Christ and give up ourselves and embrace Him and only Him.

Reading 1
Col 1:24–2:3

Brothers and sisters:
I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake,
and in my flesh I am filling up
what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ
on behalf of his Body, which is the Church,
of which I am a minister
in accordance with God’s stewardship given to me
to bring to completion for you the word of God,
the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past.
But now it has been manifested to his holy ones,
to whom God chose to make known the riches of the glory
of this mystery among the Gentiles;
it is Christ in you, the hope for glory.
It is he whom we proclaim,
admonishing everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom,
that we may present everyone perfect in Christ.
For this I labor and struggle,
in accord with the exercise of his power working within me.

For I want you to know how great a struggle I am having for you
and for those in Laodicea
and all who have not seen me face to face,
that their hearts may be encouraged
as they are brought together in love,
to have all the richness of assured understanding,
for the knowledge of the mystery of God, Christ,
in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Responsorial Psalm
Ps 62:6-7, 9

R. (8) In God is my safety and my glory.
Only in God be at rest, my soul,
for from him comes my hope.
He only is my rock and my salvation,
my stronghold; I shall not be disturbed.
R. In God is my safety and my glory.
Trust in him at all times, O my people!
Pour out your hearts before him;
God is our refuge!
R. In God is my safety and my glory.

Gospel
Lk 6:6-11

On a certain sabbath Jesus went into the synagogue and taught,
and there was a man there whose right hand was withered.
The scribes and the Pharisees watched him closely
to see if he would cure on the sabbath
so that they might discover a reason to accuse him.
But he realized their intentions
and said to the man with the withered hand,
“Come up and stand before us.”
And he rose and stood there.
Then Jesus said to them,
“I ask you, is it lawful to do good on the sabbath
rather than to do evil,
to save life rather than to destroy it?”
Looking around at them all, he then said to him,
“Stretch out your hand.”
He did so and his hand was restored.
But they became enraged
and discussed together what they might do to Jesus.

Today’s Collect is:
Almighty God, every good thing comes from you. Fill our hearts with love for you, increase our faith, and by your constant care protect the good you have given us. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

-Quotes on St. Regina Taken from http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/calendar/day.cfm

Body and Character in Luke and Acts

Body and Character in Luke and Acts by Mikeal C. Parsons

Mikeal Parsons has illuminated ancient attitudes about the body and its relation to morality in the ancient world that are fascinating and seem to on the whole make more sense of the biblical texts he has chosen to illuminate than other conjectures such as the immediate presupposition of inauthenticity. Parsons has shown continuity with the texts being examined and Luke’s overall message convincingly, while not completely persuaded, I feel that Parsons has done a great job of bringing an orthodox view of the text as plausible back into the academic arena through a brief and scholarly study which presents alternative views of the text informed by a largely ignored area in terms of biblical scholarship.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term physiognomy, it is an ancient pseudo-science about the relation of the physical body to the perception of character, namely ideal bodies were inclined to ideal morals and disabled or deformed persons were considered to have flawed morality corresponding to their physical appearance. Parsons has shown how this consciousness was permeating the ancient world’s perception of literary characters beginning with Greek poetry, and its use in making moral judgments about literary figures. He parallels this to Luke’s presentation of the four characters he has chosen to examine in his inspection of the use and subversion of .

Parsons has chosen four pericopes to cover in his short but penetrating study, the story of the bent woman, Zacchaeus, the man lame from birth, and the Ethiopian eunuch. He provides keen insight to each of these stories, and informs us of how these characters might have been received by Luke’s audience before he turns the tables on the audience by overthrowing the general pathos which their stereotypes have taught them to adopt.

It is interesting to see the way that the “physiognomic consciousness” plays into these stories and seems a plausible way that the authorial audience would have seen the text. I don’t know what my ultimate reservation is, but I feel that my suspicion of the work might lie in its lack of theological finale. While touching on various topics I thought he might delve into more, Parsons refrains, perhaps to keep the work objective, perhaps because he works best as an expositor, but I feel that the conclusions that could be drawn from the work were not present sufficiently, and left me curious to see more. Instead I was left with a brief epilogue whose last two sentences were a wonderful conclusion yet, seemingly unfinished. Although Parsons has invited theological inquiry based on his study, which I hope to see some of soon.

The book also has great virtue though, as a work which forces us to reconsider our own biases of morality based on outward appearance, and we are reminded that the early Christian community is radical, because it includes the weak, the frail, the outcast and the judged. In the formation of theology, especially moral theology in the advent of this century, it is an important work in historical ethics of the Christian community.

I feel that what was important to my observation and inquiry in the characters presented in the stories Parsons presented was the way healing played a role in the stories, because it has different effects on the person being healed at each turn. The bent woman is obviously healed of a disease which afflicted her 18 years, and is physically healed from what has made her outcast, and the same goes for the lame man. While the connecting factor between these two is a healing and common theme of weakness and morally dubious character, which is interesting in itself, my initial concern is with Zacchaeus and the Ethiopian Eunuch.

If Parsons is right about Zacchaeus being a dwarf by congenital defect, Jesus does not restore him to the community by their standards of what a moral person looks like, which while seemingly obvious is still significant. This means that Jesus in Luke’s narrative does not see dwarfism as barrier to the kingdom of God, nor does he see it as a lack of wholeness. For someone developing a theology disability or deformity, it is highly significant that this is the case. For Luke’s Jesus is a healing Jesus, and I think it is noteworthy that Luke’s Jesus does not make Zacchaeus taller. If we look at the text with its physiognomic dimensions Jesus challenges Zacchaeus to become magnanimous in character, which would seem difficult to the people who underrated him as a person small of character due to his physical stature. Jesus also calls him a son of Abraham, Jesus sees Zacchaeus as part of the eschatological community by virtue of the choice which he has made to bring restitution to his failures. His salvation is not merely a matter of his being good now, but is a reinterpretation of his social status as well, making him equal in the community of Jesus’ followers despite his physical differences.

While to us this may seem commonplace, or to be assumed, it is highly uncharacteristic of ancient religions at large and specifically uncharacteristic of Judaism. While it is noted that deformed persons had a popular place in the Roman culture it was as objects of ridicule, collected like trophies by the emperors Domitian and Nero, and Augustus even bought a congenitally short small person as a pet for his niece.

While Jesus encounters him, he makes no move to “heal” Zaccheus as in cure him of his congenital defect, even though in other cases he does, such as the man blind from birth. This raises interesting questions.

The Eunuch as well raises some interesting questions, if he is a castrated or sexually mutilated man is not restored sexually by baptism or by extreme unction as he is brought into the community through baptism which is just as important as if he had been. While he is through Parson’s argument given a new place in the community and a new honor in Christ, he is not healed at least in the sense of a physical restoration of function, and though the audience is forced to reconsider his character, his role in the community is reinterpreted by the early Christian community as one who is ritually pure.

The Christian polemic against the temple cult and a new and radical inclusivism are only part of the whole picture of the moral formation which Luke is using through these illustrations.

It seems that in light of physiognomy early Christians reject the assumptions of morality as inherently tied to physical appearance, which was not to remain so historically as some prominent Christian leaders that Parsons notes were persuaded by physiognomic interests. It might even explain what we moderns think absurd theological considerations when we read about some church theologians and the way in which they think Christians should laugh properly in society.

In conclusion, I feel that this book is important, and should be read by anyone with an interest in the Abrahamic community, healing, or outcasts as themes in Lukan literature. I would like to see the implications these texts have for Christian healing and a theology of disability. While books on the subject of disability and theology are coming from every angle and exploding in the contemporary interest, I think it’s of great value to examine why Jesus healed the way he did and what healing might have been in Christ’s idea of His mission. It seems important to me to know whether Jesus had a particular physiognomic concern, or whether he had a moral or ontological concern for the people he healed. While it would be largely speculation, the text might provide some insights, though we must allow that it was not built in such a way as to answer that question directly. I’d like to do some more work reading Luke-Acts and commentators on the text since it is of great interest to me.

On Impassibility and Classical Theism

The following is taken from a comment i made on a friend’s blog. Let’s hear some responses:

As a scion and proud heir of neo-orthodox theology I cannot help but feel that the yesterday today and forever is a statement about God’s faithfulness, not his ontological state. We cannot have an immutable God if He is to remain the God Jesus has revealed to us. The incarnation is an event not only in time and space but in the Trinity itself. The Crucifixion is another event in the Godhead and cannot be reduced to an ambiguous mystery that doesn’t fit in with our concept of God.

The life and times of Jesus Christ reveal God to us, he is the lens throguh which we read the bible, and our theology, and any patriology any word we wish to say about the Father will not be true unless mediated to us by the life of His son, for no one knows the Father except the Son.

An immutable God is in the worst case a monad who has no relation at all to the real world, and at best one who will ever remain static in the face of our love. Even if that static response is absolute and undying love, it is invalid, because it was a choice in the Godhead, a choice out of a dynamic love that chose the incarnation, a choice out of covenant faithfulness that forever altered the godhead from unknown to known. From otherworldly to our very neighbor, whose face we can see, whose wounds we can touch, whom we eat and eat with.

You cannot eat an immutable God. Case closed.

The Trinity and the Encountered and thus Encountering Life

The inner life of the trinity as love can be recognized by us as love only through our participation in that life as it already is and draws us into it. To know the inner life of the Trinity requires that we participate already in the kenotic and self disclosing Other seeking love of the Trinity. There is no epistemology apart from participation. To believe otherwise is blasphemy. Only love understands itself, and only love can disclose itself, and it shall only disclose itself to love when speaking in the epistemological framework. Love is the truest reality that has been revealed to humanity, and it is inescapable. To be a Christian one must believe in and be shaped by their understanding of Absolute Love. In concrete reality love will overpower even non-love, but it will only do so by conforming non love into love through a Taboric experience, through a transfiguration that in the self disclosure draws non love into encounter and thus opens its eyes. Love is always the apriori, and it will always necessarily apprehend and invite the situation before releasing itself and its disclosure into the encounter with the Other. -Eli

Interactions

I breathe you in, your fingertips scratch across my lips like hands lifted high in prayer, I see you there, waiting.

Please don’t hold this against me, I feel something changing. Silence is waning, and we are waiting. I feel, your hand in mine again and it all depends, on breathing.

I can’t flourish in this half breath, with this canopy of fading embers being all that remains.

What remains is just a construct, a shadow, forgotten holidays and high holy days.

Break it all down into simplest terms, don’t forsake me now.

Let’s make a few of you and me, but where do we begin?

Don’t deserve me now, let’s get out somewhere different than where we were before.

Don’t tell me you never knew, it’s rising like prayers in our midst, as your hand collides with mine and your love meets my eyes.

Reflecting the endless interlude between presence and absence, i feel the tension of our union

Blessed Mecca, return to me my innocence, my wanderings in your presence, as I cross these streams in the desert, the sands shift underneath my feet, I am searching.

I am drunk with this wine and searching for a mirror, my life is in my eyes and the light behind them streams out like fresh water, whispering across the face of these arid dunes.

Prayers rise up like the ashes of a funeral pyre, calling out, my heart longs for return, my feet take me further, I feel closer, you are closer.

My daggers cross themselves before me like stars in my hands, let these lights in my hands rend the heavens, and tear down the veils.

The coldest night brings the warmest hearts, join together when the coldest man grabs his altar, and spills himself upon it.

Remember my words and echo yourself in their reflection, repetition makes for meditation.

Meet my gaze and drift away if you wish, but don’t say i never tried, don’t deserve me now, don’t desert me now.

It all depends on breathing, and i feel your fingertips scratching prayers once again, into these praying lips.

Why Sexuality Matters

My Dialogue with Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body: An assertion on why purity is important.

Just recently I’ve been thinking a lot about sexuality, purity and wholeness. In recent dialouges with with fellow students, professors friends and colleagues it has come to my attention that while I have a basic idea of what I believe about sexuality and the body, I’ve not spent much time developing or writing on it much, and this was surprising to me considering how sacred my theology of the body has become. So today i wanted to spend some time in thought about my person, your person and why sexuality matters.

So, first of all, what is the body? Here i’m gonna lay out an assertion of the human person according to what I believe the scriptures are telling us and several interrelated theories on being. From there we’ll talk about being and practical theology and finally conclude with the importance of sexuality to human identity, and ultimately why sexuality matters.

For a long time I’ve been disturbed by the question of what happens at marriage that inherently changes something, how is it that before a ring almost everything is off limits and then by a simple token everything is ok? What difference can a ritual make in ontologically shifting something from one place to another? Is marriage really that important in uniting two persons into one flesh, or is it a formality with pretty metaphors?

So, to answer my own question about marriage and the ontology of such a union, it is my belief that what has happened is in our conception of being when we lost the idea of being in communion we took a shift from the idea of communion as a necessary element of being. To be a person is to be a being-in-relationship, and therefore to necessitate a constant dialogue between an internal and external self-hood.

Sartre shows us in his Being and Nothingness that in reality man is never being in itself as for example a rock is. A rock simply is, but we as people lack being-in-itself because being-in-itself lacks consciousness. We are being for itself and thus lack definite being and are forced to create our being out of nothingness. And as foray into dimension theory and the propositions of time purported by H.G. Wells, if anything lacks duration it cannot be said to exist. Humans therefore are not and cannot be static being or inherently and diametrically dualistic beings, for change affects people in time and therefore their being is dynamic in that when viewed in 4 dimensions height, length, depth, and duration being is never in itself, but in relation to time, space, objects and other objects of being to discern and develop our own being.

This dynamic selfhood is the consciousness that we have of ourselves being aware of things outside ourselves and our idea of the perceptions with which we interact with the world. This, not even this is static since our perceptions change, ideas develop, and over time this self matures, corrupts, decays, grows, evolves, becomes more self aware, less self aware, directed, misdirected and always interactive. The self as relates to other objects in both time and space, in memory, and perception outside the internal perception of what we believe to be ourselves. Sartre helps us do away away with Kant’s dualism of noumena and phenomena, showing us that there is no ungraspable appearance behind things but rather only things in themselves as they appear.

 

The external self constitutes the internal self because that self is projected onto the external world and receives its selfhood back from the dialogue between the projection and reception of meaning. The internal self is not an objective reality but exists as interpreted through our perception of self that emerges through interaction with those things that we have relationality with in the world outside our physical bodies. In Sartre’s idea the for-itself of being makes of the world a blank canvas onto which it projects its being, and in marriage, to get back to the topic at hand, there is a mutual imprint of being which allows both giving and reception of being through mutual imprintedness.

Hopefully I have done some justice to what I believe Sartre is saying.

Marriage is the mystery by which human being becomes truly alive, it is sacramental, holy, and relational. The thing that changes is not the world, but our perception of self, from the myself which we are so involved in in our day to the ourself which is become myself. Therefore as we search for being in the world, the world reaches us through the eyes of another such that as we explore out for ourselves, the meaning of ourselves is presented to us in another. The other becomes the I and vice versa such that the other person is a mirror of ourselves as we explore identity through the perceptions and reflections brought out in the living interlocution of being. So that when we are called to love one another, as we do in marriage, we find our self consciousness should be caught up in neighbor consciousness. The I and Thou becomes the We that is You and the You that is the mirror of myself. 

So how does all this preliminary dialogue take us back to the matter of sexuality?

Let’s begin with an assertion by the brilliant and moving theology of the body by Pope John Paul II:

 

It seems that the second narrative of creation has assigned to man “from the beginning” the function of the one who, above all, receives the gift (cf. especially Gn 2:23). “From the beginning” the woman is entrusted to his eyes, to his consciousness, to his sensitivity, to his heart. On the other hand, he must, in a way, ensure the same process of the exchange of the gift, the mutual interpenetration of giving and receiving as a gift. Precisely through its reciprocity, it creates a real communion of persons.

 

Giving and receiving is perichoretic, it is interpenetrational and dynamic between the two persons of the union making it sacred. The being of two persons becomes completely mysterious in that they become not absorbed in one another, nor annihilated in the other, but having substance in the other each person is a mirror to which the other looks for that penetrating substantiality. The giving is within both parties and the reception is within both parties. The man in the garden received the woman and looked upon her, being given over to him not in the sense of her reduction to object but in the sense of his embrace of her, his reception of her is in itself a giving. In her being received she is also receiving.

 

The man is enriched not only through her, who gives him her own person and femininity, but also through the gift of himself. The man’s giving of himself, in response to that of the woman, enriches himself. It manifests the specific essence of his masculinity which, through the reality of the body and of sex, reaches the deep recesses of the “possession of self.”…At the same time he is received as a gift by the woman, in the revelation of the interior spiritual essence of his masculinity, together with the whole truth of his body and sex. Accepted in this way, he is enriched through this acceptance and welcoming of the gift of his own masculinity. Subsequently, this acceptance, in which the man finds himself again through the sincere gift of himself, becomes in him the source of a new and deeper enrichment of the woman. The exchange is mutual. In it the reciprocal effects of the sincere gift and of the finding oneself again are revealed and grow.

 

It is in giving oneself to the other that the other becomes the mirror through which the self truly develops. The union of marriage sanctifies ontologically what already occurs naturally, and in their giving to each other, they are enriched. Marriage is an invitation to love one’s neighbor, to care for one another and to stand for one another.

So, in short what’s all this talk mean to me? I’ll tell you.

This body is sacred, it is baptized into the already resurrected body of Christ, my person is intimately connected with Christ, through the eucharist, and through the Spirit of life which animated Christ back to life and raised him from the dead. This body has been marked and sealed as a sacrament of the eschaton. Therefore when considering the integrity of the body, it is necessary that I should consider my person an extension of the literal body of Christ which is sacred.

Therefore as a sacramental entity this body and the bodies of my fellow humans are sacred, bearing in them the image of God, the image of Christ. Unity before marriage is not about merely disregarding a tradition, it is a violation of the spirit which animates us all, who is within us and gives us life. It is a violation of being reflecting onto another and being reflected on in such a way that the mirror formed in mutual union is never expunged and the connection is formed, because it has to do not strictly with an unimportant ritual but with the notion and condition of being itself is adultery an inadequate resolution.

To quote liberally someone, I believe it was C.S. Lewis, who said that the person who lusts does not love too much it is that the person loves too little to truly love at all.

In short, those are my thoughts for today. I hope that someone wanted to hear that. I know I’m not done with this topic, but thanks for tuning in.

Also, I realize i didn’t follow my basic outline at the start, sorry for those of you who expected better. whatever.

eli

What Does the Resurrection of the Son of God Mean Today?

I was thinking about my Christian experience today, and as I was considering the implications of a certain emotional state, I got to thinking about the Victory of God in Jesus, and the idea that despite all things God has won a victory in this world and that ultimately, I am participating in that victory.

 

Sure, today I am not in the best state, but I have hope. Hope reaches into me, to lead me towards the victory of God. I am the essence of all consciousness, being constantly resurrected from a fallen state. I am baptized into the body of the Risen Lord, and united with him by one Spirit, made one flesh with him by that same Spirit. I am not forsaken, but am embraced by this beloved who ushers me into his presence with glee, as I approach with trembling reverence.

 

My tears are merely prayers in a different language. In them is the hope of glory, as true suffering somehow brigs true redemption. Our ideals are not God’s ideals. The Risen Lord shows us that in suffering is the cosmos replaced where the chaos once was. Idealism is ultimately backwards, and in those ideals I am further from the Resurrection of the Son of God than closer.

 

So it occurred to me that in order to truly experience the meaning of this great and glorious resurrection, it means that I must not shed the ideas that I have thought were ideal, I must also embrace those which are seemingly backwards to me.

 

Suffering is not the emptiness of dejection, though that is experienced, it shall prove to be more integral to the resurrection of my person than should I never have suffered. The world, I can’t speak for, but for me, for Eli, this suffering is my invitation into God’s plan of redemption.

 

So, as I enter into the lower depths, I know that my war with the forces of evil is not in vain, as I leave behind those things which would lead me from the narrow path, I find pleasure in the backwards ideals of God. Sipping a Lady Grey tea blend and wondering about all this gives me pleasure, and as I pursue my future, I realize that in time I will get there, regardless. Today is a day, tomorrow shall be another, and ultimately, it is completed in such a way that my purpose will be accomplished, I have faith and hope that the path set before me is not in vain and that which I feel called to complete will be completed because I have dedicated myself to it and to enjoying today.

 

I am enjoying beauty, the joys of mentoring, and being mentored, the beauty of togetherness, the bliss of separation, the ebb and flow of presence and absence.

 

Beautiful.

 

As you read this, I don’t think you’ll understand half of what was said here this day, and for that I am sorry.

 

I don’t blame anyone or anything for these things which we pass. We are all journeying towards something, and I am whole in the redemption of my body. I am whole in my expectation that this is going to be well. 

 

So, brothers and sisters, my little children, remember that suffering causes the redemption of things outside ourselves, and in the end, it is not about how God is going to save me. It’s about how God is going to save the universe through me.

 

Love one another, as I remember to do the same. Hold fast. Stand strong.

 

The Resurrection shall live through me today, and in this we are well pleased.