The Messy Life and Soul (Quote)

Our search for God and our service to others will never be conducted in a neat world. Life will never submit to our good intentions, will never fall in line, will never stand still long enough to do our bidding.

Life will never cease to be a messy affair, and our spiritual journey will never be reduced to a tidying-up operation. God and the others don’t wait to enter our life until we have put it all in order. Our journey … is about finding God and serving others in the midst of the mess. The messiest place of all will be our own soul, our own life, which, despite our best efforts, will insist on remaining human. And it is into this mess, this confusion, that God and others will invite themselves. John Kirvan

I lifted this great quote from Per Crucem ad Lucem which is from Anthony Robinson here on why 'family' is not a great self-designation for a church.

‘Many of the congregations that claim “We’re a family,” lose sight of larger transformative purposes and settle, instead, for the comfort and satisfaction of their members. The core purpose of a congregation – growing people of faith and helping people and communities move from despair to hope – gives way to lesser and even contrary purposes like keeping people happy. While it may not be a necessary outcome of the use of the family image, many congregations that gravitate towards it seem to make member comfort and satisfaction their de facto purpose.

That may be because “family” suggests to people something like, “We’re all loving and nice here.” That in turn often means no hard questions are asked and no honest challenges are allowed. It wouldn’t be nice.

I can think of other reasons to be cautious about “family” as our image for church. Families sometimes keep secrets that shouldn’t be kept in order to keep from bringing shame on the family name. And families aren’t typically that easy to join. Two of our sons were married in recent years. Turns out that putting families together is a fairly complex dance.

One last issue. The use of the term “family,” may communicate to people who are not married or to the married without children that they don’t quite fit. “Our church is a family,” morphs into “our church is for families.”

Keeping the family members happy, having everyone know everyone else and get along like “a happy family,” isn’t really the point for Christian congregations. Their goal and purpose is both different and higher.

Perhaps other biblical images like “People of God,” “Creation of the Holy Spirit,” or “Body of Christ” are better ecclesiological images? It’s not that these images don’t also have potential pitfalls. It is the case, however, that unlike “family” they are uncommon enough that people seldom have their own set ideas about what they mean. In some congregations, I hear leaders address the congregation simply as “church.” That too seems promising, reminding the gathered community that they are the Church of Jesus Christ (and the building is not).

If we must use “family,” we should be aware of the way that Jesus, while using “family,” also subverts conventional understandings of family and challenges their usual boundaries with a thoroughly new vision of “family.”’

Real Love Waits (Quote)

Only real love waits while we journey through grief. That is the real trustworthiness between people. In all the epics, in all the stories that have lasted through many lifetimes, it is always the same truth: love must wait for wounds to heal. It is this waiting that we must do for each other, not with a sense of mercy, or in judgment, but as if forgiveness were a rendezvous. How many are willing to wait for another in this way? Very few. (Anne Michael)

The Problem With the Historical Critical Method

It is not uncommon for people who study the Bible at degree level to be overwhelmed by the 'scientific' method of biblical studies they meet in the university. Some lose their faith, not because their faith was shown to be utterly devoid of value or sense, but because they did not recognise the assumptions behind what they were being taught in their degree program, and place these assumptions under scrutiny. Some leave utterly bewildered and lost, others retreat into literalism. Still others embrace the scientific method, recognising the sheer rationality of the 'science'. (The historical-critical method is a very powerful tool.) However, they too might miss the assumptions behind what they are being taught, possibly because they already hold similar assumptions! I'm thinking here, for example, of the assumption that God does not enter into our history from, in some real sense, outside it, and that everything must have a 'natural' cause (and only a natural cause) to be considered anything but superstition.

The historical-critical method, as it is called, is a great tool for understanding Scripture, but its practice can be laden with philosophical-theological assumptions that cannot be justified from the method itself. However, follow the trajectory of the assumptions and a practical atheism awaits. It is quite an experience to wake up one day and realise that you have been duped into just such a practical atheism. Again, if you have this experience of realising that you have been duped, don't trudge off to the (so-called) literalists, and don't give up your faith because, on the one hand, you can see the nihilism of a theology devoid of God's action in the world, but, on the other hand, don't know how to get God back. It is the assumptions behind the method that are critical here, not the historical-critical method itself. The assumptions I am thinking of here are utterly alien to the biblical worldview. The solution is to scrutinize them and replace them with a global view of Scripture arising from the text of Scripture itself. You are free not to believe the biblical faith, but at least then it will be the biblical faith that you are rejecting!

Here are three assumptions I have flirted with and now reject:

1. The Hidden Jesus of History (vs the Christ of Faith of the Church)

There are many people who allege that the church distorted the 'real Jesus' into a divine figure, and that this distortion is a massive accretion placed on top of the real Jesus. If the novice biblical interpreter hasn't done some work on the Enlightenment legacy in biblical studies s/he might be easily convinced by purveyors of this assumption that one must pierce the layers of tradition to grasp the 'real Jesus'. At worst Jesus becomes a figure shrouded in mystery and beyond our reach because the church's distortion of him is opaque to critical-historical examination.

So it is alleged that the accretions are in the New Testament itself, and are not merely a later layer of church doctrine poured over the top of a pristine history contained in the New Testament. The historical-critical method is used to free the 'original Jesus' and his message from this faith distortion. So practitioners of this assumption attempt to sieve out the later accretions of doctrine, liturgy and creed from the text through a variety of methods. For example, the more complex the theology of a text, or the more exalted Jesus appears, the more likely the real Jesus is waiting to be liberated from church doctrine and faith. (A sort of evolutionary theory transposed into biblical studies - i.e. complexity comes at the end of a long process of evolution. In this case, however, complex theology is to be avoided and, where possible, pierced for its historical kernel. ) Or, again, rather than the object of biblical study being God and Jesus, and the special relationship with God enjoyed by Jesus (a ubiquitous affirmation contained within the New Testament), the object of study becomes the faith of the communities that produced the text. The text then becomes a witness to the faith of these communities, unrelated to the Scriptural and faith claim of Jesus' identity with God. This is paralleled in the debates that attempt to drive a wedge between the Christ of faith and the Jesus of history, or between faith and reason, as if the two poles are utterly immiscible, leading to the priority of a certain kind of reason and a certain kind of history over a more unified view of faith, history and reason.

As an aside, I wonder if some of the blame for this can be laid at the feet of the Reformers. It is intriguing that the impetus in this movement splitting Jesus of History and Christ of Faith came from the Protestant Church, and makes one suspicious. The Protestant Reformers' reaction against the Roman Church of the day, formulated as an escape from ordinary religion to true faith through Sola Scriptura, is only a jump away (although a long jump admittedly) from seeing the need to make the same split in Scripture itself between faith and church dogma.

In summary, if it is assumed that God cannot be involved in history, or at least that we must limit ourselves to studying only that which is the result of natural causes alone, then the historical-critical method can be used to remove God from Scripture's presentation of the identity and work of Jesus. The result can be the 'Spongification' of Jesus, or talk only of the church's faith itself (not the Jesus and God attested in Scripture), or perhaps even Jesus' own experience of God, as a substitute for Scripture's affirmation of Jesus' special relationship with, indeed, his identity with, God.

2. History as a Solid State
The assumed homogeneity of history leads some interpreters of the Bible to discount anything that cannot be fitted into our current experience. (E.g. the resurrection of Jesus) But why can't God introduce the new and unique into history through history? The Bible says God can, and to interpret otherwise requires an alien assumption to be placed over the text. As Moltmann pointed out forty years ago, the theological conclusion to be drawn from the uniqueness of the resurrection of Jesus is not its dismissal, but making it the judge of our historical experience. I know that goes against Enlightenment assumptions, but that is the point. It is the Bible's way of ordering reality and it is different than a materialistic reading of history. The resurrection of Jesus is about the future made present, not its in/compatibility with the cul-de-sac of humanity's business as usual.

3. A Hellenized Christianity
While it is undoubtedly true that research into the Jewishness of Jesus and his culture (has and) will lead to many new insights, it is not clear that this should come from a divorce between the Jewish Jesus and the Graeco-Roman culture of his era. It has been popular to blame the Hellenization of Christianity for all the distortions of the simple Jew from Nazareth alleged to exist in the New Testament and later church liturgy and doctrine. De-Hellenization was all the rage for a century or more, directed both at Scripture and the early church period of the great councils of the church. It wasn't that long ago that students of the Bible might be taught that the 'Logos' mentioned in John's Gospel was a thoroughly Greek concept indebted to the Greek Philosophies of the age. Indeed, the alleged Hellenism of John's Gospel was evidence of its Gnostic character to many. Now it is recognised that Logos/Word has a thoroughly Hebraic history as well. In relation to the great councils of the early church and the creeds produced, the doctrine of the Trinity is anything but the Hellenization of Christianity. While the formal doctrine is couched in the philosophical language of Hellenism, it is not the end-product of the Hellenization of Christianity, but the defense and confirmation of the Gospel itself. The hierarchy of the gods of Hellenism was tipped on its side with the co-equality of the Eternal Father and Son, and later, Spirit. The eternal fatherhood of God safeguards the special relationship of Jesus with God witnessed to in Scripture.


All this is not to suggest that we should return to a pre-critical era. (The kind of scholarship represented in the work of N. T. Wright, Richard Bauckham, Benedict XVI, Hans Urs von Balthasar or Karl Barth is not pre-critical.) Rather, as a thought experiment attend to the Scriptures with the full arsenal of techniques of the historical-critical method minus the above prejudices. What is required is to attend to the text with an openness to see the correspondences between history and faith and the priority of God in the critical distance between the acts of God and our usual experience. If it is not assumed that Scripture's presentation of the unique relationship of Jesus with God is an alien overlay on the real Jesus, it is surprising to discover what the historical-critical method reveals about Jesus that is supportive of the faith of the church and yet not an offense to reason and historical study. (I will shortly post on a book that provides some interesting thoughts on John's presentation of the identity of Jesus with God.)

Trust the Most Difficult (Quote)

And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.

(Rainer Maria Rilke Letters to a Young Poet)

Repentance Vs Remorse

It is important not to confuse repentance with remorse. Repentance swirls around the triad of self, God and others. When we repent we look at ourselves and the human being we are (and in contrast, the human being we are called to be). We are cut to the heart with an awareness of what we are doing to others and therefore the whole human family. This is much more than sorrow for individual acts (but includes this). And in repentance we are struck by our disobedience to God, our 'stuckness' and therefore our need for God. The three - self, others, and God - are coordinated in repentance, and mutually present, for it is impossible to reflect on the human being I have made myself and not be aware, at least in the background, of our creation in God's image. Remorse, on the other hand, tends toward the severing of the ties that bind this triad together. Sorry that you were caught? That's remorse. The desire to be a better person without being led to reflecting on our relationship with others (and what we have done to them) and God (and not the god who is a tool in our hands to make us feel better about ourselves, but the real God who justifies us) is remorse, not repentance. Remorse is about us alone; repentance is about us being pulled into the orbit of others as real people, and into God on God's terms.

When repentance begins we can start at any one of the three mentioned above. But repentance will move us further than any one of them.

Determinism = Nihilism (Quote)

Here is a great quote from David Bentley Hart I copied from Theology Forum.

[...] there is a point at which an explanation becomes so comprehensive that it ceases to explain anything at all, because it has become a mere tautology. In the case of a pure determinism, this is always so. To assert that every finite contingency is solely and unambiguously the effect of a single will working all things – without any deeper mystery of created freedom – is to assert nothing but that the world is what it is, for any meaningful distinction between the will of God and the simple totality of cosmic eventuality has collapsed. [...] Even if the purpose of such a world is to prepare creatures to know the majesty and justice of its God, that majesty and justice are, in a very real sense, fictions of his will, impressed upon creatures by means both good and evil, merciful and cruel, radiant and monstrous – some are created for eternal bliss and others for eternal torment, and all for the sake of the divine drama of perfect and irresistible might. Such a God, at the end of the day, is nothing but will, and so nothing but an infinite brute event; and the only adoration that such a God can evoke is an almost perfect coincidence of faith and nihilism. (Doors of the Sea, pp. 29-30)

Telepaganism Hinn Style

Far out. You have to listen to this.

All Things Necessary For Salvation

Following on from the last post about Sola Scriptura, I like the the way Anglican formularies speak of Scripture as containing all things necessary for salvation. Of course the faith in Christ can be found in other writings, and should be used for our spiritual sustenance. The Church put Scripture together not as the sole repository of faith, but the canon or rule, the touchstone and norm for all doctrine and faith. While this doesn't solve the culture wars within the church by supplying the means for a legalistic solution to the variety within Christianity, it is not relativizing Scripture either. It is just being honest about the historical process that formed Scripture and the necessity for interpreting Scripture.

Sola Scriptura

If Sola Scriptura is taken to mean that only the Bible is used in theology and is the only authority in life, then it just doesn't make sense. As Ben Witherington III points out in a guest post at Theology Forum, the New Testament itself does not provide a full justification of the New Testament! So, for example, there is no list of the books of the New Testament in the New Testament; it was the church that decided which books would be included, and to which books Sola Scriptura would be applied. And another excellent example he cites is the Council of Nicea and the Creed it produced. The New Testament as we have it had not been set at this point in Christian history. However, those assembled felt perfectly able to set down the normative faith on the basis of the apostolic witness, which included the books of our New Testament, as well as other writings.

Joy and Peace, and More

The presence of Jesus brings joy and peace to those who experience it. But it never brings comfort without also bringing a gift that we cannot bear as it is so shattering to our pride, and without also bringing a costly demand upon our minds and actions. Jesus being with us where we are means our being with him where he is. If Jesus is with you, what is he demanding of you - urgently - in your actions about poverty, or peace, or race, or your neighbour? If Jesus is with you, he will not let you wear blinkers about your relations with your fellows. If Jesus is with you, your life may be turned inside out. (Michael Ramsay)

Not Without the Flesh

Only in the flesh, not in the spirit, can destiny and history come into being. (Romano Guardini)

More Than Scaffolding

In yesterday's post I said that the usual identity markers of relationship, career, possessions, etc are not our true self, but should be considered as scaffolding around the true self, and that at some point we have to jump from the scaffolding onto the actual edifice of the true self. It is still a useful metaphor. If you do the inner work one day you can wake up and think, 'I don't need to use XX as the explanation of who I am.' It is possible to find a sense of self that is not dependent on the quantifiable. However, the metaphor breaks down if pushed too far. The scaffolding is sacramental and therefore our encounter with God that brings to light the true self is through and within these quantifiable and external markers of identity. (Although not exclusively so.) But both (scaffolding and sacrament) are entirely different from deriving a sense of self from these quantifiable markers alone.

Who Are You?

When we strip away the external markers of identity, what is quantifiable, what is left?

A woman in a coma was dying. She suddenly had a feeling that she was taken up to heaven and stood before the Judgement Seat.

Who are you?" a voice said to her.
"I'm the wife of the mayor," she replied.
"I didn't ask you whose wife you are but who you are."
"I'm the mother of four children."
"I did not ask whose mother you are, but who you are."
"I'm a schoolteacher."
"I did not ask you what your profession is but who you are."

And so it went. No matter what she replied, she did not seem to give a satisfactory answer to the question, "Who are you?"

"I'm a Christian."
"I did not ask you what your religion is but who you are."
"I'm the one who went to church every day and always helped the poor and needy."
"I did not ask you what you did but who you are."

She evidently failed the examination for she was sent back to earth. When she recovered from her illness she determined to find out who she was. And that made all the difference.

(From Anthony de Mello, The Prayer of the Frog, vol 1, pp. 191-192.)

When we are stripped of our external identities we struggle to answer the question of who we are. The irony here is that what is 'inside', the centre, is more important than any of these externals, yet we struggle to know this centre. And even more ironically, when someone loses one of these externals (e.g. employment) we notice, but we hardly notice if someone has lost their soul.

This inner life is the realm of faith, religion, and God. The externals are too, of course, but in the same way 'having' and 'doing' is related to 'being'. There is something more pivotal in 'being' and not just 'doing', about who we are rather than justifying ourselves through quantifiable external markers. The quantifiable, external markers are not bad in themselves. But the pursuit of them as proxies of the true self lets us down. In relation to the development and sense of self these external markers are more like scaffolding around the real person each of us is. climbing them does give us a sense of height, and of the proportion of the self, but at some point we have to jump off the scaffolding and grab hold. Done rightly, some of those externals can lead us to the point where we can jump off into space and land on the other side. Jesus is deeply suspicious of the external markers, or should I say, how we use them and use them against others. Those who don't have the right markers, in the right quantity, are excluded or persecuted.

If we are looking for the true self we will find it in our search for God. Jesus' sense of self was not a self-enclosed confidence grounded in himself. It was entirely grounded in his relation to the the one he called 'Father'. It is a striking feature of the Gospels that Jesus' prime relationship is with God without excluding relationship with others, but the latter do not serve as quantifiable markers to make himself feel OK or attack others.

Happiness (Quotes)

Check out this page for some quotes on happiness. Here are a couple of examples:

"Joy is not a constant condition. Most people manage a settled cheerfulness, but this, no matter how admirable, has nothing to do with joy, which flashes suddenly on our darkness. Like the light in an El Greco painting, joy does not merely illuminate the landscape. It transforms it." Sr Wendy Beckett

"If what most people take for granted were really true?if all you needed to be happy was to grab everything and see everything and investigate every experience and then talk about it, I should have been a very happy person, a spiritual millionaire, from the cradle even until now?What a strange thing! In filling myself, I had emptied myself. In grasping things, I had lost everything. In devouring pleasures and joys, I had found distress and anguish and fear." Thomas Merton

How To Hold Onto It (By Michael Leunig)

Life, the planet, yourself, family and friends, body and soul, food, ... anything important really.

Not Just a Favoured Few...

A guest post from the Revd Ron Keynes. (Pentecost 23, Year B: Ruth 3:1-5; 4:3-17; Mark 12:38-44)

There is often a fairly strong reason why Christians are often charged with being ‘against the world’ and somewhat troglodytic. I have mentioned elsewhere something of the struggle even with my children, as they tend to belong to a later generation, not quite up to X. However, there has been some rethink by younger people as the World Financial Crisis has done its job in bringing some factors back to balance, and Global Warming perhaps adding to the rethink.

If there is one aspect of life that tends to be reflected in almost all cultures and countries, it is the determination of the powerful ones to advertise both their power and wealth and demanding all the best that the country has to give. Even some religious people fall victim (or demand the position) and become very much a part of the problem. As the Gospel reminds us, in Jesus’ day the practice was rampant. Today’s world tends to have it in terms of salaries and perks of CEOs, where the matter is totally beyond reality.

Contrast that, if you will, with the story of Ruth and Naomi, a beautiful and moving tale of tragedy and ill fortune, made remarkably more touching by the commitment of daughter-in-law (of a different race!) to a mother of her late husband. There is a story of quite lovely proportion, of self-giving quite beyond the norm. It was a most moving moment when, at our youngest daughter’s wedding, this passage was chosen as one of the readings. ‘There was hardly a dry eye in the house.’

I wonder whether the rich and powerful ever stop to ponder what is important in life, and what is marginal. I have to say that my experience of ‘pretty people’ is that such a title is a misnomer of the first order, and selfishness and refusal of ordinary human responses is obligatory. On the other hand, ordinary little people seem to have a far more balanced perception of what is important and what is not. And are not the basics of life really quite simple and uncomplicated? Or am I fooling myself?

The reason that Christians tend to be so against today’s life-style of self-aggrandizement is that it leaves almost every other person right out of the equation. Bugger you Jack, I am all right. And it does not need to be the ‘high and holy ones’ who have such a blind stare. Do you not meet, constantly, even little people who demand their priority with great rudeness and pomposity?

Life’s reality does have a habit of blowing down our proud houses of cards every now and again. And it all comes back to the business of what is true and just, for those capacities have a habit of returning from the dead. It is not all that long ago that the film ‘Greed’ was greeted with yells of delight. And it did not take long for the outcome of that pattern to blow up in everyone’s faces.

Life is for everyone, not just a favoured few. Faith is for everyone too, though there seem to be rather fewer takers, for some reason. Peace and even prosperity is far more likely to ensue when the gentler path is chosen by all. And there can be little fight against that!

Idolatry Instead of Faithful Discipleship

Kyle Strobel, over at Theology Forum has an excellent post on being a healthy church movement. His criticism below should not be directed at evangelicalism exclusively. See here for the full post.

"I have been thinking, as of late, about the various strategies in evangelicalism to navigate the marketplace of ideas. It seems to me that the typical evangelical strategy to “win” (sorry, I don’t mean this to be polemical (yet) but I can’t think of another word which is accurate), is simply to create something of a boys club. In other words, we surround ourselves with people who both agree with every word that comes our of our mouth and who won’t actually attack our views in any significant way. This is enough, in itself, to be idolatry, but it rarely stops there. The next step is to start a movement. A movement, in these terms, is nothing more than simply organizing leadership and adopting worldly strategies for kingdom building. Once teaching, leadership and dogma can be disseminated, there is a twofold turn outwards: First, a turn outwards to evangelize – not Christ as much as the movement itself - and, second, a turn outwards to attack anyone who thinks differently. The latter turn stems from the inherent fundamentalism in evangelicalism which equates difference with danger."

Getting Rid of the Dead Wood

I can't help thinking that the Pope's latest stab at church union by allowing dissident Anglicans to recognise his authority and cross the Tiber will, in reality, get rid of some of our dead wood. I know I shouldn't, but ...

Here is a very funny video (linked from Inhabitatio Dei) from a satirical US Show. It's very funny, and the points he makes are good. Like, how much sense it makes for the Pope to welcome into the Roman Church those who have trouble with their current authority structures. Someone is going to be in for a shock, either the ex-Anglicans (most likely) or the Pope (he'll just get annoyed and boot 'em out). Stay with the video even when the goosey Episcopalian priest comes on. The interviewer keeps on making the point.

And also from the same blog I picked up this comment by Hans Kung on Benedict's latest strategy for church union. Hans is not amused.