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.

Open Theism?

The Tears of God:

The holocaust is the bastion of contemporary theology, and forms the backdrop for a radical concern for the divine immanence. And we must wrestle with a world that feels God has abandoned it. The holocaust is the lance poking into and questioning classical theism, and its knight fueling the whole debate are questions of the emotional state of God.

I’ve written in favor of the passibility of God in the past, yet, I think I might have to reconvene and modify my position. I’ve launched an investigation into the idea, to really understand what’s at stake in the whole debate.

I think that there is a confusion of language where impassibility has come to mean incapable of emotional response or interaction. If this is the case, then surely this is not what the Bible portrays, not in the pentateuch, in the prophets, or in Jesus. Mayhap the doctrine inherited by the early church after the immediate age of the apostles is guilty of excessive neo-platonism, but might we be guilty of even among those who are radically concerned with orthodoxy being too concerned with immanence at the cost of transcendence.

What does the transcendence of God mean to and for our age? Is open theism just a symptom of our general lack of ability to speak effectively about transcendence?

If we speak of impassibility and it is synonymous with non-emotion, and divine apathy, then we must discard its value in theological discourse, because it is simply not worth laboring over in an attempt to rescue. But if by some similar term we mean that God’s life is not subject to us involuntarily, then we are correct. He is not our buddy, or our magic toolbox for fixing our problems or solving ourselves.

What’s at stake is that the world is asking for a God in her midst, and Jesus Christ is this very thing, but in non sacramental churches this has to take the form of a reformulation of the project of liberal theology that ended with Feuerbach. God has to become anthropologically stated to be immanent in many protestant circles.

Our world is looking for a God that can relate, and too often, churches across the developed world have forgotten that these “formulated truths” are much more than that and that from them we find a way of living and being in the world. I think that open theism is a necessary development of the non-sacramental communions, and maybe a welcome step towards reorienting the doctrine of God away from scholastic notions and bringing fresh life into it through considering the divine emotional life as a source of theological reflection, and drawing from it liturgy, action and response in love. The only thing we must do is to remember the divine love in such a way that it remains wholly outside human love while not unrelated to it.

While not myself a Calvinist, nor a hyper-Calvinist, I think that there is something to be said for retaining the otherness of God that the new Calvinism in Christian circles is doing. It may be horrific in some cases, but in others, like David Crowder’s music, it’s reminding Christians that we are fallible sinners. Yet, this might be best appropriated in terms of Von Balthasar’s objective divine love from the outside, not in terms of ideas about the doctrine of God. We cannot speak about God in the positive in abstract, all we know we know in Christ, and Trinity. I think Von Balthasar is the right way to go about the project of the otherness of God for the future of theology in the 21st century.

I think that impassibility is best seen as a synecdoche, as part of a whole rather than an isolated doctrine. And that what is really meant is not divine emotionlessness, but a concern for the idea that God is not contigent upon human beings for His being in essentia. Yet this whole problem is solved bot by scholastic formulations as much as by a strong doctrine of the immanent and economic Trinity. This whole shifts the locus of study from the abstract doctrine of seeming non-relationality to the location of the speaking of the divine word to us in the cross of Jesus Christ. It is there that the word of God about Himself to man is made known, and that man’s word to God is also spoken, God speaks faithfulness to humanity. Man’s word to God on the cross is trust, is faith, is hope, and all these from love of the Father, and so Christ unites faithfulness with hope, faith and love, into a mutually kenotic act towards man and God.

Historically the God of the prophets was unknowable, Heschel says that even if the prophets asserted the unknowability of God they would have insisted on the possibility of understanding through reflective intuition. (The Prophets, 288). So too, for Christians we can assert the divine transcendence as a united grammar, as a way of understanding the nature of God in which impassibility is only part of the divine whole, and the whole is understood best by reflective intuition. The impassibility is not a static unchangingness, but a dynamic perichoretic faithfulness of the persons of the Trinity to each other, it is their love that is eternal, and unchanging towards each other. The impassability is not to be conceived of a God in oneness, but in threeness, who is united in three-in-oneness. Therefore, we can jettison impassibility, as a convoluted term, but we must in some way retain the idea that God’s faithfulness to God and humans is essentially unchanging, and this we do through our basic language in the aforementioned terms, and the objective nature of divine love, not through stating that god is passable, but in dismissing the necessary intellectual exercise altogether in favor of ways that this actually applies, not in static conception but in the dynamic interaction of God and humans.

Any reflective Christian knows that knowledge of God is by interaction, by living with God and neighbor. It does not happen in analysis or induction, but living together. So too, our doctrine is crying out for the relational God in a world that is experiencing a new exile. The postmodern era is a new exile, for a people who have not found themselves grounded in the narrative of the exodus, so the linguistic strains differ, but the holocaust is the departure of the presence of reason from the world, and our world is trying to reconcile with the departure of a presence it thought might usher in the millennium through right worship in the morality of human beings and their application of reason.

I think, in closing, that the impassibility of God is a truncated doctrine filled with neo-platonic problems, and that the best thing to do is retain the otherness of God without attaching it to neo-platonic philosophy. So, I retain my original position that God’s impassibility is at least always suspect in Christian theology if not wholly rejected. The mystery of divine faithfulness and love as wholly other maintain the otherness of God in a far more constructive way that might lend itself to liberalism, but not easily if done rightly, and if God is love, it is our task to being there, and make the task of our theology assessing the scripture without too close a philosophical assumption to guide us. Anything we wish to say about God must always be mediated in Trinity, and Jesus. The life and times of Jesus Christ reveal God to us, he is the lens through which we read the bible, and our theology, 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/impassable God is in the worst case a self-indulgent and self-contemplating monad who has no relation at all to the real world outside Himself, and it immediately undoes Trinitarian concepts from the outset. Like Aristotle’s theology assumed, it will breate an unmoved mover, a Calvinist deity, absolute, unchanging, wholly other ad nauseam. At best, the doctrine uses problematic language that begins not with inquiry into the person of Jesus or of the trinity, but one that begins in a philosophical inquiry about the nature of God, that separates the being of God from the story we know He is found in, the story mediated to us by the scriptures of the church. Christians cannot settle for a static God, even if that static response is absolute and undying love, it is invalid. Impassability and immutability remove the ability for divine choice, divine election, and divine agency if carried to their logical conclusions. Incarnation was a choice in the Godhead, a choice out of a dynamic love that relates to the outside world because it always has related to the outside world since creation.

Incarnation is a choice out of covenant faithfulness that forever altered the godhead from unknown to known. God wept for the world, not involuntarily, but voluntarily, it is the divine emotion that is able to by choice be ever capable of eternal compassions. Humans resort to callousness at a point, the divine love does no such thing, out of an eternal choice to make His love known where there is the greatest and most infuriated opposition to His love. He can and does relate to the human condition since God is now eternally both Himself and this Man Jesus, such that a real event has taken place in God, and the Divine is intimately married to humanity, that’s what the incarnation means, that’s why sacraments are important. They’re tied into what the incarnation means and speaks to us. In them we can feel the tears of God, and the Divine joy, in them we know that we are loved, not just as a matter of principle, but as a powerful and intimately connected choice, as a reaction to the necessity of man.

You cannot eat an immutable God. Case closed.

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?

Walter Brueggemann on Psalm 31 and Steadfast Love

Walter Brueggemann is a recently discovered voice of inspiration. This sermon was given at Duke University Chapel on May 15th 2009. I cannot help but be laid bare by this sermon. I love it. This is the work I’ve done for two years, this is what I hope I am like someday when i’m all grown up.

I think Bruegemman is exactly right when he mentions that this is not an ordinary life, it is a life of yieldedness, of faithfulness and waiting. It is a life of trust, of candor and of suffering. The Christian life is extraordinary.

My favorite lines from the homily:

“My Times are in your hands”

“She tastes the bread and it [The Bread of the Eucharist] tastes like faithfulness”

What do you think of this? Any responses?

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.

Wounds of Christ

Holy Father, defender of the weak, redeemer and intercessor for the poor, be our shield in the day of battle.

Lord Jesus, mighty one, by the mystery of your great passion, be our crucified God, reminding us of your great suffering.

Holy Spirit, confessor of our intercession and our defense in the day of need, plead with us for the redemption of all things.

Hail Holy Trinity, by your great and ineffable love, teach us also to love.

Have mercy upon me, and upon the whole world.

Holy One, give me wisdom in the face of my trials, that I may lead myself and those around me with your great and everlasting guidance.

Eternal Father this your church, lead your people by your great and merciful love extended to us and to the whole world.

Holy Spirit, affirm the celebration of life and keep us from the snares of destruction, lead us not into the path of blood thirst and oppression, but keep our ways from the path of destruction

Most Merciful God, entreat us to suffer with you, and teach this child to lift up your sacred heart as the foundation of all my doings.

May your sacred heart be my guide, and by your holy wounds, teach me to pray.

May your hands that blessed the little children, nailed to the cross remind me to bless others, who are all your children. May I see in your crucified hands the greatest of mercy, and feel the warmth of your sacred embrace as you lead me to my brethren in mercy. Concerning the wounds oh holy Jesus, teach me to see them as my own, and may my hands bleed with your great and sorrowful passion for the sake of the whole world.

May your crown of thorns remind me to think upon the higher things, to be intentional about pursuing the good of others, and to meditate upon your holy sufferings. May my mind be fixed on your cross, and upon your resurrection, may your great and holy purpose be at the forefront of my mind, even as I remember your cross, and may my eyes look to your wounds for strength.

Wound in the side of Christ, teach me to weep for redemption, teach me to weep for the reconciliation of all things, wash me with this cleansing flow, and let me also become a fount of mercy and grace, a wellspring of your life as others come into contact with me, may they be refreshed by your living waters. Teach me to establish justice in seeking the life of the age to come, and to daily renew my hopes by your great and dolorous passion.

Back of Christ, bearing my sins, the immeasurable weight that is our world’s fallenness, teach me to pray. Holy Christ, with your back torn open by the iniquities of man, teach me obedience, as you yourself suffered as a servant unto the father, so let it be with me as well. Holy Christ, with your aching wounds bleeding for my redemption, and the redemption of all life, thank you for that healing which you bring.

Feet of Christ, teach me to carry the message of peace and support myself upon your holy cross, from which you have ruled the world. Holy Christ, who in your crucifixion made public spectacle of the powers and rulers of this world, teach me to walk in your ways, and against the empire. Feet of Christ, lead me into the path of solidarity, and open my heart by walking in your light. Teach me to love my brother as wholeheartedly as I have loved you, and draw me closer to your everlasting life in this age and in the age to come. Blessed feet, teach me to carry the message of peace, and to make reconciliation a reality, teach me to unite myself with those suffering, and to recognize my own sufferings as well. Blessed feet of Christ, lead me to the feet of Our Lord, where the crucified God stands as both judge and savior of the whole world.

Holy Christ, by your wounds, and the mystery of your sorrowful passion, have mercy upon me and on the whole world.

Holy Christ, by your wounds, and the mystery of your sorrowful passion, have mercy upon me and on the whole world.

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.

Sex Changes and The Light of Humanity

Quirky title. thought so. But anyways, don’t let it throw you.

What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
- John 1

In Him was life…and that life was the light of humanity, that light shines on….

I’m not going to go into a super deep reflection or anything, I just, i think that as I go through my day, I’m trying to remind myself of the significance of all of this, and what God means for reality as a unified whole.

In Christ is life, that life is our light, I can’t give a commentary that decrypts the message, other than, He has brought life into being. My own life, redeemed, as I’ve been talking to my friends from years ago this week, I realize that in Him I have found life. That life has brought me out of suffering in the past, has brought me suffering in the present, has changed me, has given me light.

There is darkness. . .screw the darkness. The light for humanity that is found in the life manifested in Christ shines on. There is no reason to allow depression to choke out hope, no reason to let doubt steal my sanity, to let fear steal my humanity.

I’m thinking that while it’s easy to doubt, it’s not mine. It doesn’t belong to me.

It leaves you feeling pretty hollow
It might be nice to look at
Don’t forget you’re stuck with it tomorrow

- Dresden Dolls “Sex Changes”

It’s ok to struggle, St. Peter says that we all shall, and we do. Life is composed of interludes of suffering and rest. But to give up, as they say it leaves you feeling pretty hollow. And there’s everything that comes with that tomorrow.

There is love in this beating heart, there is hope in these tired hands, and they are weary, but determined, to look to Christ for strength.

Thanks For Tuning In,

Thanks to:

- The Dresden Dolls

Resurrection and Beauty

Do you ever just stop and wonder at the beauty of the world? Catching if even for a moment a glimpse of something truly beautiful? Do you ever just get the feeling that somehow things are going to work out alright? This is not to paint a wondrously idealist picture of reality, but sometimes, standing in the light of the sunset, I can look over my shoulder, and feel a sense of comfort, like everything that was created will be put in place. I can hold my girlfriend’s hand and appreciate the heavens, knowing that something beyond her, or me is coming. Standing there in the sunset, I can catch a glimpse of the eschaton, enveloping my heart.

That feeling, that endless comfort tinged with longing, I would argue, is the resurrection. Today, I sit at rest, and know that the world is being set to rights and I am an irreducible part of the reconciliation of all things, because God made it that way. That sense of beauty, of wonder, I feel to be the knowledge within me about the coming goal of the universe. Just like if you’ve lived in the south, or anywhere where it rains a lot, you can feel a shift coming. I think that beauty does the same thing. We can feel the grace of God in His creation, and can feel a need to develop the beauty that we have a sense of.

God created us and began the work of creation in us, and will carry on our createdness, until its completion. There are brief moments, when we stop and pause and think “I think the universe is good.” Or “Is everything really ok underneath it all?” Resurrection says that these glimpses of the beauty and rightness of things is what we’re really really waiting for.

Resurrection is the belief that while we are wanderers in the current age, traveling across endless landscapes of deserts. We are faced with things that are sometimes dark, leaving us weary and hopeless we take step after step in seemingly aimless direction at times. Resurrection answers that wandering with the belief that we are steadily approaching something new on the horizon, a new city, a new mode of bodily existence ,a new beauty which awaits us as we travel. Resurrection answers the desperation of our hope with a solemn assurance about our longing, no we are not yet perfect, no the world is not yet perfect, but it shall be. The God Man sit bodily upon the throne of grace, steering the world from the hearts of his saints, claiming from within creation a place for himself that will spread into all things.

This is the resurrection of our God, this world is loved and has been rescued, and will not be abandoned. I see something so beautiful that I want to approach it steadily. No matter how long the night gets, even if at the end of the journey my faith is fragile and weak, in the light of the resurrection I can find strength, by looking to it, i have hope.

The “progress” I’m talking about is personal, not political. It will not be found in the deification of leaders, or have an answer in politics. It is when the I and thou relationship between human and God adopts a face, the thou becomes the “You” becomes the “Jesus” as a person and not an idea. The approach is not just to declare the Lordship of God, nor merely his love. But when we look to that Great Savior, we see resurrection, beauty, life, and from those flourish all other things, that is when we have a taste of home upon our lips, and a prayer in our hearts.

“Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will be Done, On Earth as it is in Heaven” is the cry of this beating heart, and as I pause today to think, I remember the way in which that kingdom first reached me. In the arms of my mother, tenderly holding me and overflowing with divine love, she embraced me, and in those arms was a sacrament, a symbol of the love of God, conveying grace to the little child, who would grow up and turn away, only to be forgiven time and again. Parenting is a sacrament. As I close this thought, I would like to reiterate that God loves this world, and refuses to leave it, as we can see in the love we share, in the people we love, in the less fortunate we care for.

Resurrection, is about surprises, and I know that what awaits at the end of those glimpses is more surprising, more shocking and more beautiful than even I can imagine.

Thanks for Tuning in,

To My Mother

In honor of the up and coming Mother’s Day 2008, I would like to write a special thank you to my own mother, a woman of faith whose life illuminates my own. I am grateful for the love evidenced in her life, and the beauty of her person, and since I am far, I keep you near in my heart. I feel as if your love and dedication to being a good mother has helped form me into the man I continue developing into. I dedicate this page to you, and honor you.

In honor of a wonderful woman, within whose love everything has place to become itself, as in CS Lewis’ The Great Divorce, mother, you cultivate and nurture into life even those things which are dead. Your love gives place for all things to flourish, may you continue to live such a wonderful expression of the sacred heart of Our Lord.

Blessed are you mother, from whom love flows in abundance,

Blessed are you woman, giver of life, expression of Our Lady unto Christ,

Blessed are you mother, from which I drew my life,

I honor the life I have been given as a sacrifice unto Our Lord,

May you live Forever in His Presence

May you be honored greatly for your unseen, unknown works,

Blessed are you, Woman of God, for your heart is bountiful in mercy

Thank you for your forgiveness,

Thank you for your endless love

Such as only a mother can give

May you be Blessed, not only today, but forever

Such as is the will of the Triune Lord

In the Name of The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit

Amen.

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.