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?

The Christian Narrative and Psychology

-1The Christian Narrative and Psychology

The twentieth century marked the formalization of psychology as a way that the modern human could understand their own inner workings which had become important since the Enlightenment. It established itself as a discipline by applying what had developed into the “natural sciences” to humans as objects of inquiry. The ensuing developments created a very specific branch of discourse on human beings called psychology. Psychology and Christianity have had a past filled with various interactions, some positive, others negative.

This is a proposal towards a Christian psychology, which I hope to engage in more concretely as time passes. The reason for this proposal and not an inquiry on various possible integrations is that the Christian faith has a lot to learn but it also has a lot to offer and must remain distinctively itself. Because we believe that what modernity calls psychology will be inherently problematic at some points in its interaction with the Christian narrative, we must avoid syncretism and allow the tradition to speak to us from its own voice.

Contrary to some beliefs psychology did not start in the nineteenth century, it was and is an enterprise that is native to Christianity, and various thinkers in the ancient world. Augustine’s Confessions are a champion example of Christian thought regarding what could be considered psychology. Christianity has always been concerned with the human nature’s relation to God and the world and each other, and this has led to profound inquiries into human nature, and disposition. Furthermore, ours is a religion that has been challenged profoundly to answer questions about integrity, morality, development of persons, obstacles to that development, the structure of emotions, and behavior dispositions. The tradition has often found voices that were strongly concerned about the nature of persons, Augustine, in essence based his whole program of what human nature is on its call to worship God, and sought to define the moral life and the good within the context of that calling. Far from being non-psychological, Augustine’s work reflects some of the most profound inquiry into the human condition ever written.

Psychology as presented by the current establishment is at its heart an apologetic for modernity’s conception of human being. It has at least until very recently, been a way that modernists and secularists could make spiritual and ontological descriptions that we have been taught to implicitly accept as normative. “Psychology” can be a discursive formation among others when used to assert ideas against Christian truths. But Christianity must reject these assumptions and the limitations established in order to maintain her own assertions on what is human nature, and what constitutes a psychology. Psychology can be an instructive and beneficial science when used properly, and while the descriptions of the institution called psychology may be helpful, these are not things which are foreign to the Christian narrative.

So we can see that it is not the case that Christians do not already have a psychology, it is just that its discursive structure differs from the limitations that the current establishment of psychology has demarcated for itself, and it is very narrow in scope indeed. Ancient psychology had the freedom to ask ultimate questions and saw them as affective towards behavior and development, whereas most forms of psychology represented in the American psychological institution and major universities across the world tend to dismiss these questions as secondary to their own discourse, or of an unrelated field, or consider the questions objects of study, without asking the questions themselves. Christians believe that life is integrated and while there are many aspects of being human, the mind is not separable from the rest of life, because Christians believe that the mind is a gift from God. While it is helpful for psychology to have demarcations, it is only to show that a Christian psychology has a broader sweep, and is distinctive from modernity’s project. This distinction is always welcome.

What the twentieth century schools call psychology are not the only things that might have the ability to be justifiably called by that name. What this establishment has sought to claim as a new project unheard of before modernity is simply untrue. While we have to admit the exponential growth of data in the last 150 years, we do not have to assume that with this data comes the chronological superiority of the recent developments over against the past. Christians of all types have been concerned with Human nature, development, and behaviors, St. Augustine, Kierkegaard, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Gregory the Great, C.S. Lewis (in his Screwtape Letters), Fyodor Dostoyevsky, George Eliot, and Leo Tolstoy are all Christian psychologists. The goal of a contemporary formation of Christian psychology seeks to retain their ideas our method will differ, at least mildly. I do not assert that Christian psychology only be an academic way of talking about Christian views on human nature, but that we remember that a lot of Christian psychology has been written as narrative. We should see these authors not as secondary to the main body of psychological work, but as Christians see their work through the lens of psychology and give them equal footing to the works of secular psychologists.

Notice how Christian psychology as cited above is narrative in character, it happens most often within the context of stories, it is the stories we tell and the overarching story that is our own that motivates us to inquiry and action as regards the human person. While we embrace empirical studies, we do not place on them a favor that dismisses as irrelevant the Christian tradition, or what its authors have said about the nature of humanity. We rather give preeminence to the tradition and propose questions that the tradition can answer on its own terms. We are not bound to empirical method, but rather use it as another tool among a multiplicity of others serving the purpose of the church which is to call all humans to recognize that their reality is only as intelligible as its worship to the God revealed in the life of Jesus Christ. Psychology does not have to be an apologetic for modernity’s definition of human kind. The Christian tradition has much to offer as its own discipline alternative to the secular modernist project especially in the areas of personality psychology and psychotherapy.

Christian psychology is an alternative type of psychology that starts with foundations based not in the “third language” of reason and universal perspectives, or individual autonomy, but within the assumptions of the Christian narrative. There are words and thought structures in the Christian story ready to answer, if not already answering the questions of psychology. These answers just need to be illuminated in the context of psychology though a certain hermeneutic lens and we shall see that all over the Christian narrative and history is a rich proliferation of material on various topics that could be grouped together as a Christian psychology.

It will be the task of a distinctively Christian psychology to read these texts for their answers that would be termed “psychological” and see these either presented in full quotations or reinterpreted so that they may form a body of work that could be recognized by our contemporaries as psychology. While we do not embrace their limitations on what constitutes a psychology, we should engage in psychology and its establishment as Christians.

We should seek to allow the Christian narrative to speak to psychological questions, but on it own terms and with its own particular answers. The tradition has many answers to offer about the nature of human persons, what the basic needs and tendencies of humans are, what their teleologies and directions are in regards to their psychic nature. Christian psychology is an alternative to the modern project and its assumptions that human beings are autonomous minds cut off from all other things, and living solely for themselves. The Christian alternative offers meaning in communion and community, development through acts of service, well being through being a peace maker, being willing to suffer for Jesus, and being poor in spirit.2 Modern psychology has proliferated the view that a human being is little more than a brain operating a body, or at best some sort of soul operated by a brain trapped within a body. In most psychological establishments, the mind and its health are detached from questions of being, and seen as programmable and purely physical. The Christian narrative offers another anthropology, and thus another psychology.

Our tradition has from the beginning had a stake in certain claims about human nature, development, motivations, character formations and how to go about achieving the proper character and correcting bad character, all things which modern psychology is about. It seems to me that it is not that Christian psychology does not as yet exist, it just does not exist in a form recognized by the current psychological establishment and many Christians as psychology. Yet it is there, waiting to be interacted with.

It is my concern that liberals, both political and theological will sell themselves short on what makes Christianity Christian in order to maintain a sense of being relevant to the outside world. However, the jettison of Christian convictions in favor of others is not only going against the tradition it is going against the very grain of the universe that Christians understand through the revelation of Jesus Christ. Christians have made a metaphysical claim about the universe, starting with the teachings of Jesus who said that to be blessed (makairos gr.) is to be among other things, poor in spirit, and to mourn, and to make peace. Doing well according to Jesus, and the New Testament witness is compatible with suffering. These claims are not only metaphysical, having a claim in the way we see reality, they are psychological. Jesus is claiming that the person who is well and doing well, is one who suffers for His sake and lives a life directed towards others, wellness according to Jesus is not a private affair, but one which is for the sake of others. People who are psychically whole can suffer, mourn, be meek, reviled, long for righteousness, be merciful, be pure in heart. These are all marks of the psychologically developed Christian.

The integration approach to Christian psychology seeks usually to marry one or another view of psychology with the established Christian tradition in a form of syncretism that leaves neither one the same. Some models are influencing the church towards assertiveness and personal empowerment. We reject this assertion, citing it as idolatry. Christians believe that the real power in the world is had not by people who carry crowns but crosses. Rather than agreeing with the world’s ideas we seek to read the tradition as it presents itself to us through the church and participation in the community, and ask questions that might help us answer the same questions being addressed by establishment psychology.

The only thing that integration between psychology and theology will do is establish a hybrid that is neither here nor there and is ultimately irrelevant because it is based in neither of the two traditions strong enough to maintain a historical presence. It will be modernity’s anthropology with questions about how to see Christians develop as such, which will render largely unintelligible work. This has already been the case in many places where Christianity has been used in the psychology of religion. It is not my aim to have Christians withdraw from psychology, but to engage in psychology as Christians, backed by the tradition to which they have sworn allegiance, informed by Christian anthropology and pastoral as well as spiritual considerations.

Christian psychology is not a matter of applying this or that theory offered by the establishment to the bible or Jesus or psychoanalyzing historical figures to get behind the text. Instead Christian psychology is a way of reading the text, a way of reading the bible the historical narrative and the church as answers to psychological questions. Christian psychology is at its heart a hermeneutic that will focus on reading Christian history, from Jesus through the saints to the world of today as part of a narrative, as part of a story able to answer our questions about ourselves and our development and nature from the convictions of our belief. Thus Christian psychology will look fundamentally different from the psychology offered to us from the establishment that has drawn its story from the Enlightenment.

There is a the question of what Christian psychology looks like in the 21st century, and I think that the answer lies in two fields. I think that Christian psychology should continue to be developed as narrative, in stories, plays, novels, and other forms of narrative that show to us the Christian life as a story we can participate in. These texts will continue to be inspirational to Christians of all levels if they are written as well told, well plotted, stories, not Christian books, but Christians writing books about everything else, including psychology. Dostoyevsky was a master of this, and I think that within the community, Christian psychology should continue to at least in part maintain itself as a storied discourse. If our theology is inherently narrative, then our psychology should be as well.

However, stories alone will not answer all possible questions and a body of work that looks like the psychology of the establishment should also be welcomed. A systematic formation of Christian answers to psychological questions is necessary. Yet this body of work might not be immediately recognizable as a psychology by established psychology because it is approaching with a different paradigm. It is a paradigm that says that The Triune God matters, it is also saying that the alternative psychology is devoid of true or ultimate meaning because it fails to realize this. We should welcome a systematic approach that would draw out a distinctive discourse we could call a psychology from our tradition and set the answers before us, and we should try to draft distinctively Christian answers to questions about behavior and development from within our anthropological commitments.

A Christian psychology must while rejecting the anthropology of the establishment continue to engage it, to assess questions about the two hemispheres of the brain, the cognitive abilities of newborns, the way in which eyewitnesses construct and reconstruct memories, the components of intelligence and many other things. The Christian story may not always have answers for these things nor do we seek proof texts of one or another part of the tradition, but that is why we have a narrative theology, it draws on developments, and sees our theology as developing towards a goal. There will be methodological conflicts, since assertions about the natural world will not lead the Christian psychology I am proposing to make judgments on the nature of God, since we see the created order as partially unknowable, since it is fallen, and mistrust natural theology as a way of reaching the God we see revealed in Jesus Christ.

A Christian psychology that rejects natural theology will be shaped very differently by these questions than a theology that makes every observable detail of ultimate importance in assessing the character and nature of God. We believe rather that only God reveals Himself to us, we cannot find Him, and He reveals Himself to us through the life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. To look at the world is to look at both a fallen order, and the birth of a new one, therefore a Christian psychology takes stock of the nature of things, but reserves ultimate judgment to her metaphysical claims, that the world in which we believe is a world where violence is passed, where disability, and personality fragmentation are at an end. A world where all things are made right. We reject the belief in inalienable rights, and the dignity of the human person, because we see these things not as inherent qualities of a person, but contingent upon the climax of our narrative, the cross. Thus our beliefs about the nature of disability, and suffering will differ greatly from those of our establishment counterparts, since our narrative shapes our interpretation of the evidence, as their narrative based in the Enlightenment shapes theirs.

Not only is a Christian psychology sourced differently from an academic perspective, drawing texts not normally considered psychology as sources, furthermore it is pastorally driven. The goal of a Christian psychology is not self-actualization or empowerment, nor is it personal autonomy, but is primarily concerned with the proper worship of God and pastoral developments towards that worship in the life of the individual and the community. Personal aims of a Christian psychology are solidarity with the poor, and the weak, a constructive correction of vices, and a mediation of the Christian narrative in intelligible ways as to make realizable by a wider audience the claims of the faith. For protestant churches, Christian psychology should function largely as catechesis does in Orthodox traditions. It is about the formation of Christians, and interactions with their teleological development, which stated exclusively is that human life is only as intelligible and proper as its worship of The Triune God revealed by Jesus of Nazareth, and all claims about the meaning of life and interpretations of data set forth are subject to inspection by this hermeneutic lens and required to be in coherence with it..

So, to be more specific, a Christian psychology should have a few key elements to make it a psychology in the first place.

I suppose this begins with an understanding of what we mean by human nature, and whether there is at all a human nature to be talked about. Karl Barth rejected the idea of human nature, saying that the only true human is Christ. I think Barth is right, but it does not answer the matter of we face as counselors, pastors and psychologists, so we can call it the fallen nature, or human tendency. But these questions are shaped by Christian teleological and eschatological beliefs, so that the goal is Christ, and human nature looks like Jesus himself. Christ is the source of human nature, and the true humanity, to be truly human one must be truly Christian. So, the goal of human nature is exemplifying what the church has claimed about Christ, historically, and at its heart, human nature is about the Christian virtue of charity. But we must ask specific questions within this framework about the motivations and needs of human persons, not only theologically, but theopragmatically, in terms of the Christian life, what are our needs, desires and behaviors? What in humans is necessary for them to function properly according to the purpose for which they were created?

A psychology should sketch if not at the very least make suggestions on what personality traits characterize a fully developed and mature person, keeping in mind a necessary gap between this side of the eschaton and the fullness of the resurrection. This question is really a development of the nature of pastoral care, by describing in detail what characterizes Christians as Christians in their behaviors. We recognize that modern psychologies have virtues as well, some of their virtues are merely incongruous with certain claims from within Christian orthodoxy. This is basically the work of the church anyways, describing person hood according to certain ideas that Jesus and the church have claimed, but maybe repopularizing them and presenting them in a way that liberal protestants as well as conservatives might understand. Seeing the Christian narrative and participation as part of that personhood, will help create not an autonomous individualized account, but help us ask the question, what sort of relations is a fully developed person engaged in?

When we ask that question a whole new set of ethics is being done that respects the communal nature of human being, and shares the Christian claim that all being is communal. Being itself is a type of communion, especially for Christians. So the propositions set forth should ask about what type of relations such a person is engaging in, and what type of virtues they show forth in those relations. This is the only way to undo modern psychology’s obsession with privatizing the individual. Further this leads to integrating questions about successful personhood with successful developments, especially if we open the bracket of relations to not only interpersonal ones, but questions of relation to their environment and agency.

I suppose the next thing necessary is what psychology calls neuroses, dysfunctions and disorders. In other words, a Christian psychology proposes vices or behaviors that are destructive towards the psychological formation and well being of the person and their relations. Again, this will map not only dysfunction but its effect on community life, studying the strain on relations as well as the strain on the individual, seeing both as in communion. Christian psychology maps dysfunctions and disorders carefully, developing a language about those destructive traits and relations. This again, is an exercise part theory, part pastoral care. It needs to develop a language within which to frame vices opposed to the Christian narrative and meet the needs of the individuals who suffer the vices. A Christian psychology can at this point be highly scientific by testing the responses of the tradition, or developing methods consistent with the Christian narrative and test them to see if they work. If we ever come to a place where a proposed solution does not work, or does not prove fruitful, we can reinterpret the tradition for other solutions, or innovate new methods that do so within the context of the overarching Christian narrative.

These things will help us create a psychotherapy, or in Christian terms, a set of relationships that will prevent or treat the unhealthy interactions and behaviors. Christian psychotherapy should develop itself as what the church is in its pastoral context. Thus Christian psychology will have effects on the way pastoral ministry is carried out, as well as ecclesiological considerations since, what we are talking about in discussing the behavior and well being of persons is really asking the church to consider the care and guidance she will provide to her members. It is grounded in the belief that the only thing that makes a real difference in these matters, is the incarnation, life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. Christian psychotherapy is at it’s heart reconciliation. This will take different forms on a case by case basis, but it should include the practices of confession, penance, and recognizing sin, while realizing the call of Jesus for us to conform to His call to be disciples as part of the solution to the problems we will face.

Christian psychotherapy does not ask us to face ourselves, it asks us to face Christ, and confront our sins with the call to being a disciple of Jesus. Christian psychology will be healing to us, but not by mediating us to ourselves, only in mediating Christ to us as the only possibility of a true self. A response to guilt will feature here, but the Christian task is the assumption of such guilt without having it mediated to us by conscience. It is acknowledging that we are judged not by ourselves, but by Christ. The only thing that conscience will give us is ourselves, and Christians must reject this since our teleology is shaped by our relation to Christ and participation in the people that He has called us to be. For Christians conscience is not the voice of virtue, but the voice of self-defense and excusability. For Christians our goal is not moral autonomy, but the recognition that all our wholeness and goodness comes from Christ and is mediated to us by the church. Conscience has no part in a Christian psychology, because it is a tool by which humans remove from themselves the responsibility of the voice of God by making themselves that voice, it is either self-righteousness or self-debasement neither of which recognizes the person of Christ as our judge and savior. For Christians the life that is whole and good is proper response to God’s commands, and necessarily include love of neighbor, proper methods of “treasuring” e.g. Matthew 6:19-24, and the necessity of communion, confession and prayer as ways in which the Christian life is lived truthfully.

In closing, Christian psychology is about living according to the life the church has seen exemplified in Christ and made possible by Him. Christian psychology is a pastoral endeavor shaped by sources outside those of 20th century considerations but should make these sources intelligible both to the outside world and ourselves as psychology through a hermeneutic lens. Christian psychology is a development from within Christianity that offers its own particular set of claims about what it means to be human, and Christian from the perspective that God matters. And Christian psychology must avoid most if not all of modernity’s concept of the human being since it is inherently opposed to the community that Christ has called to Himself. Christian psychology is at its heart a liturgical and pastoral act that is akin to a virtue ethics, but will place its pastoral emphasis on the proper worship of God, and the community which He has called to Himself as the final solutions to the problems persons face. There are methods and means of attaining these and the Christian psychologist is there mostly as an interpreter, showing the faith as a catechist, instructing pastorally, and mentoring with the truth that is Christ and His call in Love.

This Broken Child

I just feel so torn. caught between two things, wondering, waiting, feeling exhausted as i sit here another night, contemplating my life, thinking of what could have been. I was ready to embrace what should have been, but in the end nothing is really as it seems, and so i’m on my way with empty dreams.

I thought it would get better over time, and came to find myself in line for just another lame excuse, now i feel i wear a noose, and tonight i am broken. Tonight, you win. I don’t know if that’s your aim or not but you have reached it.

Screw bad poetry, you fuck with me. End of story.

I’m just tired, and I don’t know what the hell you want from me.

Is it faith? Is it piety? Is it love thy neighbor?

Whatever. I’m done. Holy blessed Trinity, forgive me my arrogance and malice, bless this tender child who beats his fist against his chest and cries “Injustice!”

Forgive the scandal I make, for I know that you alone embrace this broken child.

simple quote

hope is the core of our existence, it is in the audacity of believing the unbelievable that we find our greatest strength -eli

Evangelicalism and Politics: Beginning of the End?

Many people that I have been around recently say that politics is too closely tied to Christianity to the detriment of both, because the Church becomes a political institution and politics becomes muddled in religious wars and cultural wars. A ray of hope may be breaking forth on the horizon.

First of All, I’d like to thank my lovely girlfriend for drawing my attention to the article in the first place. Seen here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080503/ap_on_re/evangelical_manifesto;_ylt=At4QSytfrvEuUD7Ujn10xIE7Xs8F

I think that the downfall of Evangelicalism has been to conserve enlightenment ideals alongside traditionally Christian ethical practices. This marriage between Christianity and politics has proved to be detrimental to Evangelical culture, since the faith was watered down to primarily political collectivism rather than a dynamic faith community. Christianity is not about becoming a collective body of angry people united as a massive superorganism of political activism without being informed by faith. The downfall of the evangelical model of Western Christian Culture has been in being politically active at the expense of dialogue with faith.

The Christian conception of culture needs to be informed by faith, and what today are labeled “liberal”
concerns as far as social issues go. The Christian faith should not have a single political party, that’s absurd, what we need is careful evaluation of the direction of culture as issues arise. It seems ridiculous to me that the “Christian” political party is more concerned with keeping people out of America than with helping devise a new method of economic wealth for the planet, than with espousing a positive view that would empower minorities and women to run for president, that would be concerned with protecting and cultivating the environment.

It’s sad that the conservation is not of the teachings of Jesus but Enlightenment superiority of the white race, conservation of capitalist economics without social concern, conservation of oppression rather than liberation, biblicism rather than biblically informed dynamic life within scripture. It strikes me as odd that Christians are largely the beneficial idiots to either party rather than being actively engaged in culture.

We are an eschatological faith that looks to the end of time when all things will be reconciled to God, and in that faith we seek out the end, but it should not cost us our awareness of the present reality as unimportant. We need to look to the end as the source of the final hope, but that should nto remove us from culture or politics today. Republicans pander to Christians telling them what they wish to hear in order to easily win votes, and the recent trend to incorporate faith into Democratic politics is no better. Both sides are pandering to a culture that is dry, dominated by old money, and seeks to retain that money. We should be actively concerned with human rights, not torture, and taxes.

As a Christianity, we need to be Christianity, not a political body, but a faith community first. Everything else is secondary. It’s sad that Christianity is not known for its spirituality or personal connection to faith, but to politics. On the popular level, we are a civic religion, conceived of as a political party with a tax exemption.

Faith is always independent of culture, and it should be. This does NOT mean cut off from. They need interrelation, dialogue, and dynamic life as expressed in the idea of perichoresis, or interpenetration that is dynamic and alive. Culture and Christianity are not to be opposed to each other or removed form each other, but as Christians in culture, we have to meet the judgments of both God and culture in out advance forward.

The way to do this is not to retreat as is the case of many fundamentalists, or to accept cultural virtue as the highest virtue as is the case with theologically liberal people. We need an Evangelicalism that supports itself by being a faith community first, then engages in politics, perhaps as a whole, but still actively and dynamically weighs the issues, not with cursory glances and ignorance, pandering to the soundbyte culture that is so prevalent, but really researches the country we should be.

I find that my professor was right in saying, “If you salute the American flag in your church, I doubt your salvation.” We are not the state, the state is not the church, it was exactly that mentality that led to Hitler’s Germany. If we follow down the path that Evangelicalism has seemed to be on, I doubt we can live actively without becoming another military state in the long line of civic religion nation states that have manifested themselves since the Enlightenment.

As a country, our greatest weakness is our belief in our own innocence, someone once said. If we are to advance in cultural engagement, it is not as Americans, but as Christians first.

I am in full favor of the idea of the manifesto. It’s high time we got ourselves out of our mess and back to being a religion. I will hope to read the document and publish a review once it is signed and published.

Thanks For Reading,

Eli

The Anointing and The Other: Reflections and Confessions on Solidarity

Lately, I’ve just been exhausted. Tired beyond belief, the semester is almost over, but i feel as if I’ve come out with more scars and bruises than ever before. It’s almost over, but at what cost? I know that God is faithful, and that we need to have faith in his goodness. But it’s a little bit of a catch 22 that the things you need to be faithful are the very things challenged by the problems you face day to day. The things you need to be strong are the very things made difficult by the problems you face.

Time and again, we are strapped to some irreconcilable grief or evil that afflicts us, and we are sometimes ignored, told to have faith, stop sinning, press through, or just keep on keeping on. These remarks are empty, and filled with vanity, the vanity of self righteousness. What about compassion, what abut binding up the broken hearted? I feel that too many times I have fallen short in realizing that the Spirit of the Lord comes upon me to bind up the broken hearted, to preach liberty to the captives, to preach good news to the poor, and declare the good and acceptable year of The LORD and the day of the vengeance of our God.

The Spirit of The LORD is upon us so that like Jesus we may care for others. When I go through hard times, how often have i sought God’s counsel through his Spirit to come upon me and draw me into serving others and binding up their hearts and in the process my own? I sometimes forget that the Spirit of God comes upon me to help me help myself through helping others.

I have often heard about how the anointing is for personal benefit, which by all means is true. How can anyone who has felt the blessedness of actual grace conveyed either through the Eucharist or in prayer deny the self development and personal benefit of actual grace? However, such grace is not meant to be used only for self, but through self, in relation to others. Grace should inspire me to be aware of theirs and to bind up broken hearts, to reach out to heal, to stand with others and comfort them by the grace that is within my life. The grace conveyed from myself to the other, that is where we connect with each other and relate to each other in Christ by the Spirit.

I confess that I have fallen short in proclaiming liberty to the captives in my own life. I have fallen short and allowed myself to become a captive as well. I have failed to be the voice of liberation and comfort to those who need solidarity and guidance, I have failed to love those near me in the ways they need it most, and failed at being the strong one. I have not lived up to expectations and have not strengthened myself in The LORD, nor have I looked to the presence of God for my guidance and support. I have not led people out of captivity, but have entered into captivity with them and at times found myself trapped in the very darkness that i was trying to bring the light of Christ to.

I have not preached good news to the poor, or at least not often enough. I often find myself isolated, contaminated by my own busy mind and packed schedules. My calendar is often overloaded with time to spare and at the same time packed to the brim with things to do. I have often found myself too preoccupied to live out the solidarity that I preach, too focused on my grades and my classes, or just myself to remember the poor. Sometimes, I myself am one of the poor, forgotten and untouched, isolated and alone, but this should not be impeding me from reaching out to others. The problem is that it is the very issues of life that tend to isolate me from others, I keep myself aloof in order to solve something on my own because there are days I have no one I can trust.

I need to remember the good news myself, keep it in my mind when I am poor, that there is a God in Heaven Who has done the unthinkable. While I was estranged and in pure enmity towards Him, a self declared enemy of God, He chose to adopt me into His family. The good news is that this family will reign over all the earth through the firstborn of many brethren, through the God Man who has been appointed to steer the world towards the recapitulation that God has ordained to be His will from the beginning. The good news is that Jesus Christ is already The LORD of this world, and that His kingdom is spreading through the work of his followers, those being conformed to his image and spreading the light of his image throughout the world by resembling him. The good news is that time is being redeemed by the work of God in time, and that all things are being reconciled to God by Christ and the Spirit.

The good and acceptable year of The LORD is now, it is when we choose to do right in the eyes of God. It is when we are the ones who bring the light of Christ into the darkness in the world. Martin Luther King once said that the good and acceptable year of the Lord is when [people] decide to do right. It is when we decide to bless others, to love our enemies, when we bind up the broken-hearted. These all foreshadow the final acceptable time wherein all things will be reconciled to the triune God in blessed assurance of continued purpose in being created by a loving Creator.

Our Father in Heaven has called us to be His agents, and by His Spirit to have compassion, by His Spirit, to give peace, by the same Holy Spirit to deal justly and establish righteousness. We are fallible and will never simply progress towards this goal in time without God. Creation necessarily depends on its Creator.

Any progress that is to be had will be in individuals dedicating themselves to causes and committed to those causes, forming deep bonds of unity with people and the world around them to accomplish those goals which the Kingdom of God has called us to. More important than anything else is to remember that the Holy Spirit, teaches us to bless others, and to help them, by bringing light into their darkness, but it’s not a quick fix process. I need to remind myself to look to God for strength for the long haul, this is not an easy bake oven or a microwavable situation. I need to inspire those around me, through real commitment to them, not shadows of real compassion.

This is the vengeance of our God, peace that burns chaos, love that dissolves alienation and marginalization, justice that overcomes failure and defeat injustice and scandal, righteousness that reestablishes order, and sets about the restoration of everything.

Eulogy for a Friend

This is an older work republished.

And I would ask the sky to shed tears for the lost, including me, for I am beyond any land I have ever known. Destiny whispers faint memories in my ears, and the voices make my mind wander beyond good and evil to a place I have never known before. Everyday is just another trial at the hands of judgment, and penance is an unachievable task for I am forgone the choices of my past existence. I suffer destitution for the sins of my fathers, and I weep for the ashes of the ancients.

I would ask the sky to shed tears for the fallen, for they know not how to stand. In the face of their enemies they have collapsed, and life is no more for them. I would ask the guardians of dreams to guide them through the shadows of this world and into the next. For this is the way of things. Faith teaches us to fight for the ones who can no longer struggle, to stand for those who have no faith, to speak for the voiceless. I would pray that the fallen are found in other dreams, other walks of life, not this poor existence.

I would ask the sky to shed tears on lovers for they are all so lost in this world. May the blessings of Arcadia be their guidance to the true path of this life, for not all is lost without love. The stars will weep for the lovers who are lost by their feuding, and untimely loss will fall away. This is the dying day, when the wise are lost, and the lovers are brilliant. This is the day when the lords of chaos will weep with at their creation of this love. Tonight is a night when all is lost and the world is ended with a single whisper, in the end the skies will always weep.

I would ask the skies to weep for the lament of the sinners, who try to tear away from the lies of this world. There is no freedom in this world. Fresh tears will caress the dead as they pass.