Happiness and Joy Now And In the Future

I recently asked a group of Yr 7s to write a short essay on what makes them happy. I then asked them to read the Matthean or Lucan Beatitudes (including woes). It stirs some questions to say the least, especially when some of Luke's woes end up on their happiness list! The gospel runs counter to the tendency to collapse happiness and joy down to a passing feeling or activities that are a little on the superficial side, and usually individualistic in tone. Jesus reminds us that there are things that are more important than the usual shopping list of 'happiness products'.

Moreover,  Jesus links happiness to a future fulfillment. "Happy are ... those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." (Matt 5:4) Hebrews picks this up in writing about Jesus as the pioneer of our faith: "...  who for the sake of the joy set before him endured the cross ..." (Hebrews 12:2). The little Greek word anti, translated above as  "for the sake of" can also mean "instead of". Both possibilities pick up the relative importance of present joys. "For the sake of" reminds us to look ahead to a greater joy for us all (Hebrews 11:39-40). The latter possible translation reminds us that there are times when the joys of life may need to be eschewed for obedience to God's call. No wonder it comes as the climax to the great honour roll of people of faith!

Hermeneutics: Simultaneously Receiving and Creating Meaning

"...meaning is by nature alive to, and structuring of, the present, something we discover to have preceded us at the same time as we collaborate in its creation." (James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong, p. 1.)

Individual Rights and the Victim Mechanism

James Alison says that our predilection for individual rights is merely the reverse of the victim mechanism. Instead of the single victim against the righteous group, individual rights pits the righteous individual against (or at least suspicious of) the potentially oppressive many. Here is what he writes:

"In exactly the same way, the modern, 'enlightened' equivalent relies on the same distortion, but from the reverse side: it is the individual who is the sacred good, imbued with inalienable rights and with an inalienable freedom and conscience. The 'many', the social other, are the threatening and dangerous element, who may at any moment fetter 'my' freedom of rights, which are always worked out over against the social other. To be able to claim the high ground of victim status is indispensable for furthering whatever cause 'I' seek to sponsor. In this case, as in the previous, there has been no escape from the founding sacrality of the victim, as indeed there cannot be without a recognition that the victim is exactly the same as the many, and that the difference is produced by a collectively held delusion." (The Joy of Being Wrong, pp. 37-38.)

The Omniscient God

We Don't Like Your Preaching

For church members who don't like the preaching at their church they might not be alone; perhaps the preacher agrees! Read this from Faith and Theology to understand this cryptic comment.

The same could be said of  the sacraments. The sacrament's efficacy is due to the presence of Christ and nothing else. Preaching that is helpful isn't helpful because the preacher is a good preacher, and the Eucharist's effectiveness is independent of the holiness of the priest and congregation. People come expecting to receive, and Christ is gracious enough to be present, in word and sacrament.

Life, Boredom and Ritual

Ron Rolheiser

Following on from a recent post that included comments about why a little boredom is not necessarily a bad thing, see Ron Rolheiser here on staying away from those who expect excitement all the time.

Sex and Transcendence

It is said that the dispute about the place of gays and lesbians in ordained ministry is about the authority of Scripture. I think not. The continuing break-up of the churches across the globe because of disputes about sexuality is more an example of using Scripture against itself by perpetuating the victim mechanism. The disputes also attest to the power of desire and sex. At stake in the debate are our beliefs about the transcendent and the material, and their union (or separation), and the relationship between desire for the material and its interlacing with desire for the transcendent (and vice-versa). As  Peter Leithart says (see below), "Doesn’t sex itself hint at a meaning different from the sexual meaning?" Perhaps we might say "in addition to the sexual meaning", although this also is inadequate because it suggests that the extra meaning is permanently separable from the sexual meaning itself. The transcendent meaning should not be collapsed back into the sexual meaning, but neither should sexual and transcendent meaning be separated. We could quote Chalcedon's description of Christ ("without confusion or separation ...") and apply it to the union of physical and transcendent sexual meaning in each human person and lover.

Peter Leithart has been discussing the Song of Songs and has touched on a number of relevant issues. This post is good on the transcendence of sex. Here is an extract.

Peter Leithart

"What assumptions about sex are behind the common opinion that the Song (of Songs) is only an erotic poem, only a celebration of human sexuality and marriage, full stop?  (Tremper Longman: “There is absolutely nothing in the Song of Songs itself that hints of a meaning different from the sexual meaning.”)  When commentators express such opinions, are they already implicitly assuming a materialist view of sexuality?  Are they coming to the text with a presupposition that sex has no inherent transcendent meaning?  To put it the other way round: Doesn’t sex itself hint at a meaning different from the sexual meaning?"

We are complex, multi-layered beings, and the whole-hearted embrace of our physicality is a joyous and fearsome thing, for carried out faithfully it leads to encounter with the resurrected Christ. And that takes us way beyond ordinary religion's use of the resurrection to merely talk about an individual's personal existence after death.

The Victim Mechanism

Reading Rene Girard, or the Girardian theology of James Alison, is a converting experience. Girard sees the many against the (innocent) victim as the beginning of everything we take for granted as peculiarly human. Culture, religion, language, community, even the formation of the self and self-consciousness. At the beginning of the emergence of the (recognizably) human the violence amongst us from competition was resolved by pointing the finger in blame at an individual. They are the cause of the conflict (this is the lie of the lynchers); expelling or killing that individual will bring peace. And so it did, and still does. Humankind hid from the truth of our persecution of the innocent victim, but the mechanism did bring peace, at least of a sort. We still hide from the lie. All human culture, every individual's sense of self, is predated by our relationship to the innocent victim. There is no way around this primordial murder and its justifying lie. Religion does not escape. Religion arose, according to Girard, as a direct result of the peace brought through the death of the victim. The god(s) owned/accepted the victim, and sometimes the victim would take on royal and divine epithets.

This means that the victim mechanism, with its lie, is embedded in our societies, philosophies, politics, religions, etc. We are born into the lie because the lie is at the beginning of our culture. We are born into the lie because it is the cause of our caregivers self-consciousness. There is no 'self' that can step aside from the victim mechanism and correct the distortion. Original Sin takes on a new meaning in the light of Girard. There is no possibility of a Pelagian self-salvation by trying harder to separate ourselves from the lie within us. The lie is foundational to who we are. Salvation can only come from outside us, from the victim.

Hanging Together In Communion

James Tengatenga, Chair of Standing Committee

"A proposal from Dato' Stanley Isaacs that The Episcopal Church be separated from the Communion led to a discussion in which Committee members acknowledged the anxieties felt in parts of the Communion about sexuality issues. Nevertheless, the overwhelming opinion was that separation would inhibit dialogue on this and other issues among Communion Provinces, dioceses and individuals and would therefore be unhelpful. The proposal was not passed..." (Standing Committee, Anglican Consultative Council)

 Good for the Standing Committee. If individuals, parishes, dioceses, or provinces wish to separate themselves from the Episcopal Church of the USA (ECUSA) then they can stay away from ECUSA. The rest of us can stay connected. I don't want to separate from them; I quite like them. I visited USA in the late 90s, and was welcomed by the Diocese of Nevada. Just like any normal part of the Anglican Church they had a great deal of diversity of opinion on all sorts of issues. That's one reason why I like ECUSA : just like the US itself, despite its problems, ECUSA is diverse with interesting people and ideas.

Of course, it raises the question of what a formal separation would amount to in any event. It has been suggested that if ECUSA and the rest of us were formally separated ECUSA wouldn't be welcome at formal Anglican events around the globe. I imagine some ECUSANS who like the travel opportunities of the world-wide Anglican gravy-train may lament its end, but the other 99.9% of ECUSANS would get on with the business of being the Church, and that would include their international connections and work with those who are open to collaboration. Communion is a gift of the Spirit, and like all things of the Spirit is discerned not through human fiat, words or feelings, but by its fruit. People can separate themselves and break communion with others, but for those who wish to honour the Spirit's bonds of unity, we cannot be forced to give up the gift of communion. The Spirit will find a way to go around the barriers erected by some.

John Dickson's, Jesus A Short Life

BOOK REVIEW :  Jesus : A Short Life, by John Dickson. 2008. A Lion Book, imprint of Lion Hudson, Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road, Oxford UK

Reviewed by Joan Durdin.

In recent years several popular books have made extravagant claims about the life of Jesus – often within the text of an otherwise ‘secular’ story. An example is The Da Vinci Code by novelist Dan Brown. It was widely read and made into a blockbuster film. John Dickson is critical of any books, whether by novelists, theologians or skeptics, presenting aspects of the life of Jesus that cannot stand the test of historical method.

 

Dickson is an Honorary Associate in the Department of Ancient History, Macquarie University, Sydney. He claims that his book is not primarily a work of scholarship. He intended it to be an accessible and reliable re-presentation of what the leading historical experts say about Jesus. He has chosen to explore only what historical method can discover, and what the majority of scholars accept as probable. His sources are the gospels, parts of the epistles, and the writings of accepted historians in the years between 50 and 100 AD.

The chapters begin with ‘Vital Statistics’: When and where was Jesus born? Where did he grow up? And what do we know of his family and trade? What do we know of his ministry, his teaching, his last days? The content of chapters are indicated in their headings – ‘Mentor and competitors’; ‘Kingdom of Judgement and Love’ (the subject of one of Warren’s recent sermons); ‘Strange Circle of Friends’; Miracles, History and the Kingdom’; ‘Contra Jerusalem’; ‘Last Supper’; ‘Crucifixion’ and ‘Resurrection’.

I found this book easy to read. The author avoids academic language, and occasionally lightens the content with contemporary allusions. For example, ‘the historical Jesus proclaimed God’s coming judgement in a way that would give any modern fire and brimstone preacher a run for his money’ (p, 59) . On the question of the financial cost of Jesus’ three-year ministry in Palestine, he noted that some of the women among Jesus’ followers supported him out of their own means (Luke 8: 1-3), ‘not like modern missionary supporters who send money, by electronic transfer, from the comfort of their homes!’ (p 75)

Here and there throughout the text important points are highlighted in the margin, providing a summary of the content of each chapter. There are also copious illustrations in colour, which draw our attention to some of the sources which the author used, some of the works of art which add to our appreciation of the words of the gospels, and scenes in and near the modern Jerusalem which reveal details of its antiquity.

As one who enjoys reading both history and biography, I found Dickson’s book a lucid, engaging account of the life of Jesus, an account which confirms my Christian belief. I think that it could be used to advantage as the subject of group discussion. Participants could share their own questions and comments, and hopefully advance their own grasp of the essentials of Christian belief that come from a study of the life of Jesus. 

Yes, But ...

Last week I quoted from Diana L. Hayes. it was a good quote (see here), quoting in turn, and in approval, St Augustine about our need for God. In the same small article - written like a manifesto for a new spirituality - she says that churches, synagogues and any of the other traditional forms of institutional religion are not answering the deepest yearnings of people anymore. "Perhaps this is so because these institutions have become so involved in naming and thereby controlling the Spirit that they no longer have it within their midst... They have lost that which they sought and claimed to own and have become 'whitened sepulchers' devoid of life, of knowledge, of hope, of the spirit." (p. 54)  Seems a bit extreme, but it is written as rhetoric, so a bit of exaggeration is mandatory. Would the traditional religion she mentions be like that practiced by St Augustine himself? Presumably. Yes, of course, churches and church people can think that God is theirs, thereby making God into an idol. It is a common human failing, even when the god owned is the more common idol of wealth, power, family, longevity, security, etc. And I think it was Jesus who used the" whitened sepulchers bit", and he was most definitely traditional. (Unless, of course, you think nothing good can come from Israel, and therefore agree with the "Jesus went to India ..." antisemitism.) It seems quite a common practice for contemporary 'spirituality' to take from traditional religion its great insights and truths, cut the truths away from all the practices, beliefs and history that produced those truths, and then claim that, somehow, you know the truth better and can get there from some other route. Call me a skeptic, but it just doesn't hold water. Bonhoeffer, with his hint about a religionless Christianity, is used in a similar way. But Bonhoeffer was traditional. And the great figures who stood for justice and peace, favourites of the non-traditional movements, were traditional Christians. Think of Romero, or Dorothy Day. And then there is the deep spirituality of the mystics like Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and Brother Laurence, not to mention Francis of Assisi, and so many others that are beloved of new age religion, but flap around like fish out of water in it. The traditional faith and its traditional practices produced the mentioned greats. A strict, traditional sacramental and prayer life, with traditional ethics, theology and Scripture reading grounded the great mystics. Yes, the traditional church fails to be anywhere near perfect, but it has always thrown up the greats like Augustine and Teresa, as well as the ordinary, traditional Christians who do so much good in the world despite their failings, and who will always, it seems, be a disappointment to the new age.

Diana L. Hayes, "Who do You, God, Say That We Are?", in Mary Hembrow Snyder, ed. Spiritual Questions for the Twenty First Century, pp. 53-56.

Desire for God

If you have been following the comments on expectation and desire between Cecil and I (here), then check this out from Laurence Freeman. Here is an excerpt:

The certainty of the fundamentalist must be sacrificed and radical doubt must be allowed to question us all. Our experience with the death of certainty is also the death of desire—the egotistical desire to be right, to be safe, to be better than others. Such death is our sharing in the cross. The rebirth of desire that follows is the transformed desire that springs from a pure heart in the vision of God. This “desire for God” is not like any other desire we have known. Yet “happy is the person whose desire for God has become like a lover’s passion for his beloved,” St John Climacus declared. It does not exhaust itself or lead us to exploit others in order to fulfill it. It is both desire and freedom from desire as it was experienced before. [. . . . ]

Restless Hearts (Quote)

'Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee, O Lord.' Surely, St. Augustine spoke the truth. For he too knew that lust and greed could consume one's very existence, filling one's life with supposedly all that one could wish for but somehow still leaving an echoing, gnawing emptiness within the core of one's being. This emptiness is our hunger for God, for someone or something greater than ourselves, who transcends our everyday world and carries us beyond that world, enabling us to have hope. (Diana L. Hayes)

Meditation (Quote)

Meditation is . . . about stillness. It is like the stillness of a pool of water. The distractions that we have when we begin to meditate are only ripples and currents and eddies that disturb the water. But as you begin to meditate, and stillness comes over you, the depth of the water becomes clearer and clearer in the stillness. The experience of meditation, the experience to which each of us is summoned and of which all of us are capable, is to discover that depth within us which is like a deep pool of water, water of an infinite depth. (John Main)

It's About God Not Us

When Abraham barters for the lives of the inhabitants of Sodom through the presence of a few righteous individuals, he does so not because of a sense of his personal standing in God's eyes, and it is not because prayer (if you have enough faith) always 'works'. Abraham does this because of the God with whom he is speaking. It is about God, not Abraham. Interecessory prayer is like this before it is anything else. It is not grounded in our fullness or standing. The very fact we are asking tells us of our need and incompleteness. We ask God.

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'.