Temptation (Quote)

"The greatest human temptation is to settle for too little." Thomas Merton.

Avoiding the Call of Jesus

For those who complain about missionary Christianity's claims vis-a-vis other relgions see this. Here is the crunch.

 "What is thus stated in the form of a general rejection of all particularity in favor of a vision of universal validity is, when more deeply seen, more particular and more negative; namely, a specific pattern of avoidance of the particular claims of Christian loyalty in its continuing risk and uncertainty."

Sinners

The two fundamental affirmations of Christianity are that God is good, and that we are sinners. The two go together. It is tempting, however, to split them. Most people seem to quite like the first; even those who don't believe in God! It is the second that causes all the trouble. Some people don't know how to make it an affirmation; they only hear it as destructive and over time can't stop it demolishing their carefully constructed sense of self. Others embrace the appellation of 'sinner' because it fits their low sense of self. Just another way to flagellate themselves.

We can hide from the harshness of the designation 'sinner' by looking at 'sin' and 'sinner' as forensic terms, with the simple meaning that we fail. 'Sinner' becomes a bare fact, rather than saying something about our identity as human beings. As a purely forensic term it remains external to who we are. However, a more nuanced and deeper exploration of our failure makes us realise that everything we do is tainted: we are sinners, not just occasionally falling into sin. And this is when it start to gets harder and people are tempted to recoil from 'sinner' altogether. This rejection of 'sinner' is completely understandable if our sense of self is dependent on us creating our sense of worth, through a kind of moral standing. (I'm a good person, I'm worthwhile, etc.) The 'self-made man' remains in control, separate and ultimately alone. But must at all costs avoid anything that can tear down the self-creation. (Good people can occasionally sin, but they remain essentially good, i.e. I am good.))

The alternative is offered by the gospel. God loves us. God comes to us when we are sinners to show not only that we don't have to create ourselves, but also that we can gain our true identity in that relationship of love.  Or to put it another way, when we are at our weakest God comes to us in an act of utter grace to show that we don't need to earn God's love. In Christ God's love is given freely and lavishly. And although grasping onto our self-creation will only hinder the full realisation of that love and our true identity in it, our self-creation can't prevent the generous showering of love that God gives to us. It can make us lovers of God and others. (Luke 7:47)

And we can go further than this. God's gracious act in Christ shows us that our self-creation remains irrelevant to receiving God's love. Grace is not a stepping stone to a spot where we can take over ourselves, eventually creating a self that doesn't need God entirely and utterly. We don't at some point take over from God's grace and do it ourselves and thereby eventually earn a grudging acceptance from God. Our identity is always to be found in God's gracious action in Christ.

Moralists are suspicious of the bold statement that our moral standing is irrelevant to receiving God's love. They are worried that grace then becomes cheap. St Paul's critics thought the same. Whatever you do with the call to holiness it should never be at the expense of our utter dependence on God's love irrespective of any self-created personhood or moral standing. On the other hand, St Paul did not preach cheap grace, and for all those who accept the pure gratuity of God's love an annual reading of Bonhoeffer on costly grace is a necessity. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, pp. 35-47.) Grace is not to be universalised as a principle that is everywhere present and automatically available apart from God's free act in Christ. This is the error of liberal Christianity: moving from God's love in Christ freely given and without reserve to a necessary principle universally available, conceived almost as a right. Cheap grace in other words.

Would Jesus Go to Church?

Once a month we hold an event at Holy Innocents named QT (Question Time). The event is exactly that: speakers, questions from the audience, great live music, wine from Belair Fine Wines, and delicious snacks from Foods From the Edge. Last night the question was whether God/Jesus/you/me/anybody would/should come to church? I was the speaker for the affirmative, and not just the affirmative, but that if Jesus were going to go to church (rather than synagogue) he would go to a traditional church. I made three broad points:

First, many people find church such a disappointment. We love to point the finger or regale a good conspiracy story about the church, the Vatican, bishops, priest, monks and nuns, or the generally hypocritical group of human beings known as church-going Christians. Well, I think the church is a disappointment. We are sinners. (See here for more on this point.)  But remember, Jesus quite liked sinners. When the church forgets it is a company of sinners, Jesus would disapprove. But sinners who seem to be getting it wrong and know it? He'd hang around with us.  What is the alternative anyway? Are those who say they don't come to church because the people who go to church aren't perfect saying that they would come if we were perfect? (Like them?) If you are one of those then I am glad we aren't perfect because you'd be a bigger pain in the arse than we are already.

Furthermore, a number of years ago I suddenly realised that my disappointment in the church's failure was really just a projection of my own disappointment in my own failure. The realisation came through a hard lesson, but the lesson is simply that I'm not the messiah, the church is not the messiah, and Jesus is the messiah. Get over it people.

My second point was that many people protest against the institutionalization of Jesus and his gospel in the church. When we separate out my first point above from this protest there isn't much left except a bit of contemporary institution-bashing. The truth is that without the institution there would be no memory of Jesus left after all this time. No means for the eyewitness accounts to be carried faithfully through the generations. It would have all been lost. A dangerous memory needs an institution. The problem is not the institution as such. The problem is when the institution prevents people from seeing the gospel. The mismatch between institution and gospel is the problem. (Although remember the point about failure I made above.)

My third and final point picked up what I think is perhaps the most common complaint about church: church is boring. Indeed the local baptist church advertises with the catchy, "Do you find church boring?" The idea is that they aren't I think. Well, there are greater sins for a church than being boring. Superficiality is the greater danger, I think. Indeed, following James Alison, I think the liturgy has hit the mark when it feels a little anti-climactic. Alison contrasts what he styles 'Nuremberg' worship (Nuremberg was a preferred site of the Nazis for their mass rallies/liturgies) with 'un-Nuremberg' worship. Nuremberg worship, through building up a sense of victimization, righteous anger and the formal identification of the 'sinners' leads to the great climax of the appearance of the messiah who will save the people. Alison contrasts this with the climax of Christian worship (particularly traditional Eucharist) with the appearance of the true messiah who is 'just there', having already achieved all there is to achieve. No mass hysteria, no invitation to the congregation to feel victimised, rather the congregation knows itself to be forgiven by the victim. No need to whip the crowd into a frenzy. An anti-climax really. This fits nicely with the thesis of James K. A. Smith in his Desiring the Kingdom, where he points out that worship is all about reorienting our desire to God. The reorientation is for our benefit, redirecting our love away from the idols of our times. And worship that shifts our gaze from the shopping plaza, the AFL/Olympics/World Cup theatrics, internet games, etc., will necessarily appear boring. Otherwise it becomes the religious version of bread and circuses. Boring is good. Jesus would approve, and come to church because it is boring. It's meant to be. (At times at least.)

Sex 'Industry'

This is good from Stephen (that's him in the picture) on the so-called sex 'industry'.

Life is a Gift (Quote)

"...we don’t get to make our lives up. We get to receive our lives as gifts. The story that says we should have no story except the story we chose ... is a lie. To be human is to learn that we don’t get to make up our lives because we’re creatures ... Christian discipleship is about learning to receive our lives as gifts without regret.” (Stanley Hauerwas)

Bless Me Father (Joke)

Bless me Father, for I have sinned. 
I have been with a loose girl'.

The priest asks, 'Is that you, little Joey Pagano ?'

'Yes, Father, it is.' 

'And who was the girl you were with?'

'I can't tell you, Father. I don't want to ruin her reputation'.

"Well, Joey, I'm sure to find out her name sooner or later 
so you may as well tell me now. Was it Tina Minetti?'

'I cannot say..'

'Was it Teresa Mazzarelli?'

'I'll never tell.'

'Was it Nina Capelli?'

'I'm sorry, but I cannot name her.'

'Was it Cathy Piriano?'

'My lips are sealed.'

'Was it Rosa DiAngelo, then?'

'Please, Father, I cannot tell you.' 

The priest sighs in frustration.
'You're very tight lipped, and I admire that.
But you've sinned and have to atone. 
You cannot be an altar boy now for 4 months. 
Now you go and behave yourself.' 

Joey walks back to his pew, 
and his friend Franco slides over and whispers, 
'What'd you get?'

'Four months vacation and five good leads.'

Evil and Suffering

There is no neat explanation for the apparent contradiction of a God of love and a world of suffering and evil.  And it wouldn't make much difference anyway.The Bible tries a couple of times to present a cause, but it is not the comprehensive answer some look for that magically solves the contradiction. Instead the Bible is more interested in the future metamorphosis of the present rather than explaining the past cause of our present suffering. Christianity affirms that God is creator of all that is and will bring it to its final conclusion. All shall be well. Eventually. It is the gap between our present experience and that future that makes us cry out in lament and fury now. The lament expresses not just our grief,disappointment, rage and confusion, but also expresses our desire for the kingdom to come now. "If the kingdom were here now, this wouldn't have happened. Marana tha, Come Lord Jesus!" It is this desire for the kingdom which is important to remember in intercessory prayer. We ask legitimate questions about the point of intercessory prayer, but intercessory prayer is an expression of our desire for the kingdom to come now in some place or in someone's life.

Hard To Spread Gospel?

Traditional congregations complain that it is difficult to spread the good news. Well, yes, of course. The good news is countercultural and requires both dying and living simultaneously. Traditional congregations might also complain that it is difficult to know what to say and when. And that is very different from the first complaint. The first complaint is true and necessarily so. And I find that if I keep the gospel countercultural it is easier to know what to say and when because of the gap between gospel and the world. The less the gospel, or my living of it, is countercultural the more difficult it is to talk about it in a way that is engaging and more than platitudinous. If my life is no different to the world around, what is there to say? Some affirmation, but that soon becomes a little tired on its own. This might also give us a clue as to why the religious right focus on personal issues like sex. It is an easy target and saves having to ask harder questions about our acceptance of the world's ways over the gospel.

Pius XII and the Nazis

Here is something interesting from Walter Kasper. This extract (below) provides information I was unaware of and casts a different light on the usual readings of the Pius XII's relationship to the Nazis.

"Pius XII was Pope (1938–58) during one of the most difficult times of the papacy during the Second World War while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by Germany. The contemporary assessment of his Pontificate during the Second World War was rather positive. In his Christmas radio message of 1942 the Pope was very clear and the Nazis understood very well what he wanted to say. The New York Times, which is not known as a church–oriented newspaper, had already in 1941 published an editorial where it spoke of the Pope as the only voice in the silence and in the dark with the courage to raise his voice. After the deportation of more than 1000 Jews from Rome (only 15 survived) in October 1943 he ordered a general Church asylum in all convents and ecclesiastical houses, including the Vatican and Castel Gandolfo. According to authoritative estimates, about 4500 Jews were hidden.

After the death of the Pope the then minister for foreign affairs and then Prime Minister of the State of Israel Golda Meir thanked the Pope with warm words for what he had done in dark times for the Jewish people. In a similar way, the then Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem Herzog also praised the Pope for what he did. These are only some witnesses of high–ranking and well–informed persons who were well aware of what had happened, and who can be called witnesses of the time.

With Hochhut’s fictional play The Deputy (1963) the perception changed radically. Since then the reproach of silence about the extermination of the Jews has become widely spread. Hochhut was not an historian and today there is evidence that he was dependent on communist sources.2 One of the first to defend Pius XII was Joseph Lichten, a Polish Jewish diplomat who later, as director of the International Affairs Department of the Anti–Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, played a distinguished role in interfaith–dialogue. The serious recent historical research is differentiated. There are still today Jews who defend Pius XII, and on the other side there are Catholic authors who are critical about his attitude. So there is no clear frontline between Jews and Catholics,5 though the majority of Jews, especially in Israel, are still critical. Whether this is partly due to a lack of information about more recent historical research work, I would like to leave open."