Diversion

"...one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead..." (Philippians 3:13 NAU)

I should really be writing a paper, but I'm not.  I'm sitting here listening to the new album from Smashing Pumpkins:  Oceania.  I'm not really thinking about the new album though.  I'm thinking about how much it hurts not to be who I was when I first listened to Smashing Pumpkins.  I'm wishing I could go back in time and be that guy again.

I don't miss everything about that guy.  He could be a real ass at times.  I guess some things never change.  But I miss his confidence.  I miss his dreams and his hopes and his conviction that the world was wide and anything could happen.  That guy could handle anything the world could throw at him.  He was fearless.

He was fearless because he had nothing to lose.  He was not responsible for raising children or their college education.  He was not responsible for aging parents in the autumn of life.  He didn't give a $#!% (that's him talking, not me) about what people thought about him.  (He really did care, by the way, he just wouldn't admit it.) 

He didn't worry about what would happen if he believed things people told him not to.  He didn't worry about asking the wrong questions or what would happen if - God forbid - he actually got the answers.  He didn't worry about whether his words could destroy people.  He didn't worry about the mess of ethical consequences for every. single. decision. he made.  He didn't lay awake at night wondering if he was committing career suicide or that someday the people he loved would hate him, or whether he would die broke and all alone.  He didn't know enough to worry.  If only I didn't know now what I didn't know then.

He was scared to death about hell.  I remember that.  I might be able to ease his mind a little there.

Paul's passage in Philippians 3 is NOT Paul's emancipation from his sordid past.  That's a wonderful sentiment, and he had probably fought that battle as well.  But Philippians 3 is about setting aside the confidence (in the flesh) he had earned by his stellar (Jewish) religious past - and cultivating a similar attitude in those to whom he was writing.  Still, I think there's something bigger in this idea of "forgetting what is behind" and "reaching for what's ahead."

The thing about time is that it only goes one way.  I am not that guy I used to be.  I think I carry him around with me sometimes, but I will never be him again.  That's not God's design.  We are moving forward.  Not backward.  The past is a door that is always closed.  We can spend all our time chopping and prying at it, but it will never open up again.  The future is always an open door, but the lights are always off in there until we can get inside and hit the switch.  The present, however, is always where we are.  Here we can look around and explore, get to know the people stuck here with us, read a book, share a few drinks and make peace with the past... before moving on.

And I think it's about time we did exactly that.  Time to be moving on.  I think I might buy this album.  Me and Billy Corgan are both going somewhere.  It's true, that door up ahead is dark and a little bit scary, but it's bound to get boring if we hang around here too long.  Oh, but, after you...

Musings About Nothing

For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees?  But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it. (Rom 8:24-25 NAU)

Sometimes there's this feeling of hopelessness that settles over a person.  It's heavy and bleak and threatens to smother you like a soaking wet blanket of black nothingness.  But it's not real.  Not really.  The feeling is real.  The situations that bring the feeling are real.  But hopelessness isn't real.

Somewhere, I recall Augustine saying that evil is just the absence of good.  Like darkness is the absence of light. It's not a real thing.  It's the experience of not having present access to the thing  That's what hopelessness is, if you think about it.  It's really nothing.

That's important to remember because hope is always there.  Light is always there too, sometimes it's out of sight, or hidden from view or on the other side of a relentless, thick wall of rock or steel.  Sometimes it's a million miles away, in another galaxy even.  But it's always there, even if it's not here.  Hopelessness can't be unless hope is.

What's stranger, hope isn't really hope unless certainty is absent.  I have often heard people say that they know God is [insert pious observation here].  I've never understood it.  I've sat sweating in fear as the altar call rolled across the pews full of throbbing guilty consciences , "Do you know for certain that if you died tonight, you would go to heaven?"

Here's the thing.  Nobody knows anything for certain.  It may sound mean, but it's just a fact.  Worse still, it's scripture.  "In hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope."  You can have trust.  You can have confident assurance.  You can even have a warm fuzzy feeling way down in the depths of whatever that thing is people stubbornly and wrongly call their heart (at least there's something visceral in the KJV calling it the "bowels").  But the one thing you absolutely do not have is certainty.  No matter how many times you tell yourself or anybody else.

If you have certainty, you are hopeless.  That's a rather dismal and confusing thought.  Let it be.

But hopelessness isn't real, because hope is never not there.  Jesus is hope.  Even when it feels like the world is a black hole sucking away every bit of hope it gets close to, Jesus is that star blinking and burning in the distance.  Drawing.  Inspiring.  Calling.  Reminding us that the darkness hasn't won.  Can't win.  Can't even really be.

Sometimes I set aside all this scientific prattling that has lodged itself in my brain, and I wonder.  I wonder if maybe we could punch through that great black film of space, we might find on the other side a world of pulsing pure light and hope.  Maybe some day I'll find out.

Voice

I have a voice.  One in a million.  One in 7 billion.  One voice that wants to be heard.  That wants to be remembered.  Remembered for being something more than dust and blood and bits of memory.  One voice afraid of being lost in the fray.  One voice afraid of the silence that waits somewhere in the distant darkness of the future.  One voice afraid of speaking.  Afraid of what I will say.  Autophobic.  Afraid of myself.  Afraid of the consequences of Being.  Being a voice.

God has a voice.  One.  Voice.  He is word.  Word.  He is all that can be said.

I am an echo.  A reverberation falling on stones.  A distortion of Word.  I am feedback.  A steady hum.

Let Word cancel out noise.  Let Voice speak in silence.

Best. Cartoon. Ever.

I hijacked this absolutely amazing cartoon from the St Genesius Blog.

The cartoon was accompanied by an amazing prayer, the Litany of Humility. A prayer that most theologians, pastors and leaders (especially myself) should memorize by heart. Never heard of St. Genesius?

Aside from Jesus, no man I have never met has had greater spiritual influence on me than C S Lewis. In fact, I think it safe to say simply that no man aside from Jesus has a greater spiritual influence on me. The amusing part is, I'm sure he would disapprove of anyone making that statement.

I ripped this quote directly off of goodreads.com. It was worth it. Excellent and honest book, by the way, recommended. (Update 3/4/12: I fixed the typo that goodreads let through.)

“His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. There is no limit to His power.

If you choose to say, 'God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,' you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words, 'God can.'

It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Heretical

I just listened to one of my seminary professors insinuate that confrontation of heresy is one of the most important roles of the Christian community today. I coughed. I cursed. Then I suffered through the rest of the lecture like an obedient and graduation-pursuing student. I hate the feeling of nausea I'm experiencing because of it.

There are things that we can say about God that are wrong. There are things we can say about God that are inappropriate. In fact, I think most people (especially theologians and preachers) spend a significant amount of time and breath doing both. Myself included. However, the heresy-burning mindset that pervades some Evangelical groups just... well... burns me up.

No, they don't really want to burn anyone. I know that. However, having been on the receiving end of "heretical" accusations, I know that it feels like they might as well be lighting you on fire. I know what it's like to lose a position in the church because a small subset of people think you "believe the wrong things." I know what it's like to be amputated from the community of brothers and sisters you have lived with and beside for years and lose (nearly) all those relationships.

We no longer live in the world of the Church Fathers. There is no governing church (unless you are Catholic) who can render rulings on Orthodoxy. In fact, I question whether there ever truly was any real such authority to begin with besides Christ himself. The apostles were not divine men, they were men who had an encounter with the divine. It doesn't take a great deal of reading through Scripture to discover that they weren't flawless.

The view of authority that demands that one source can contain all the right answers is flawed. Jesus exposed it as flawed when he confronted the Jewish authorities of his day. I wonder if he might confront the authorities of the church today.

We all believe things about God. Some of those things are true. Some of them aren't. But a survey of church history can tell you that is not infrequently the "heretics" (cough, the Reformers and the Alexandrians) who have been the catalysts for positive and Godly change in the world.

So, unless the guy you've labeled a heretic is telling you that Jesus is a jelly doughnut or that God is - quite literally - dead, take the time to listen to him before flicking your metaphorical Bic. You may find that - even if you disagree with them - they might have some points you need to consider. You may even find that the icon of orthodoxy you've been clinging to all this time is just another fractured fairy tale.

Transitions

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. (Heb 10:19-22 NIV)

The writer of Hebrews tells us something very important in this passage. In the cross, we are invited to enter a “new” way of faith in God. The context of Hebrews views the Old Testament as a “shadow” of the realities to come in the cross and the future. While there are symbolic similarities, there is a discontinuity between the Old and New ways of living in relationship to God. We no longer live in faith the way we used to live in faith. We no longer view God the way we used to view God. We no longer see religion and tradition the way we once did. Our old clothes and old wineskins don’t fit anymore. We have entered something new.

The fulcrum of this shift in faith was Jesus Christ, the cross and the resurrection. Writers of what we call the New Testament faced a frightening and dangerous prospect. They were invited, called, commissioned to record and lead people into a faith transition. The long preserved and cherished approach to relationship with God and with each other had been turned on its head by Jesus. The former chapter of Judaism, out of which Christianity had itself been born, was coming to a close.

I have perceived a tendency on the part of some contemporary Old Testament scholars and preachers to downplay this shift. Whether their views emerge from an absorption and appreciation of the Old Testament texts or the fear that we will somehow divorce Christianity from its Jewish heritage, I am not sure. However, though these are genuine concerns, they don’t change the fact that there is a radical departure in faith from Judaism to Christianity. Both the gospels and epistles describe the conflict which ensued because of this departure. The gospels show the religious Pharisees and Sadducees seeking to destroy Jesus himself and the letters of Paul tell us of the persistent threat of Jewish legalism. People don't get that riled up when you tell them a version of what they already believe.

Of course, those who subscribe to the academically popular “New Perspective” (see E.P. Sanders, James Dunn and N.T. Wright) suggest that the Jewish leaders weren’t really that legalistic after all. Instead, their views are better described by the term covenantal nomism. This view emphasizes that the Jewish people (a broad and disparate demographic for such a subtle theological category) did not believe they were made righteous by works. Good works were not a prerequisite for entry into a covenant relationship with God, they sustained it. In other words, faithfulness to Torah law (and tradition) doesn’t “get you in,” it “keeps you in.”

Aside from sounding suspiciously similar to much popular Christian soteriology (doctrine about salvation), this theory proposes a subtlety that is practically irrelevant. Paul still argues that righteousness has nothing to do with works (Romans 4:1-5). Then there are those, like Dunn, who suggest that when Paul speaks of the “law” he is really referring to the ethnic identity markers (observance of feasts and special days, circumcision, dietary laws and cleanliness rules). But this is just not congruent with Paul’s description of the law in terms of ethics as found pervasively throughout Romans 2 (specifically, Rom 2:25-26). The best efforts to create artificial continuity between the New way and the Old way may reconcile Christianity with its Jewish family roots, but only by minimizing the radical and scandalous nature of the gospel and virtually ignoring all that hubbub Jesus causes in the gospels.

Alas, I digress. Then again, it's my blog and I am allowed to take liberties!

Transitions don’t sit well with us. They stick out like sore thumbs and stuck-out feet. They trip us up and make our lives difficult. They get in the way of our cleverly devised plans and ideas. They piss us off. And we don’t mind shooting the messengers. First-century believers were received (by both Jews and Romans) like jury duty notifications: discarded, shredded and burnt.

In Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian, the character Neo makes the point, “the dangers of transition are real. But are the dangers of the status quo less real?” It seems to many, myself included, that modern Christianity has also entered a transition. It has divided itself relentlessly to the point that it has no center of unity. The “empire” mindset it has developed for itself since the conversion of Constantine can no longer be sustained. The world has polished the mirror of the past for us and we can no longer avoid the scars, blemishes and flat-out ugliness marring the face of our faith. Jesus isn’t the problem. Faith isn’t the problem. The problem lies in the religious accretions of human arrogance and ignorance, the unwillingness to let go of our toys and our security blankets and embrace God in his mystery and allow others to do the same.

If Christianity really has reached a transitional point, then those of us who recognize the need for adaptation and change have a choice: maintain silence in the face of the status quo or speak with love and respect as transition advocates. There may be gladiatorial arenas, lions and no shortage of stonings if we open our mouths, and there is always the chance that we may be wrong. But is that less dangerous than living a faith that is an illusion? Will we live our own faith, or someone else’s? Are we called to seek the "Faith of our Fathers" or are we invited simply to find our own faith in the Father? The transition will not be pleasant. It may not be fully congruent with the old way we did faith. But if we trust the Spirit of God and let Jesus be the center, we may discover something beautiful as we move from here to there.