Gratitude is a Way of Living

If I asked you how you feel when you are thankful, what would you say? When I feel thankful I feel happy, I feel confident about life, more trusting and that I could be more generous. I also feel less anxious. And if I asked you how you acted out your thankfulness, what would you say? It is easy to miss the progression from feeling thankful to acting thankfully. The progression from feeling to action is rewarding because it both consolidates and deepens  the feelings associated with thankfulness and leads to the possibility of a thankful life. Imagine living a thankful life! Being happier, more confident, more trusting, more generous and less anxious!!  It could be life changing. And there are lots of spiritual exercises embedded in and practiced within the Christian tradition to help us access this way of living in gratitude. Although be warned, if you pursue a thankful life you will probably end up believing in God, or deepening your faith!

See also this post on love as action, not just feeling.

One Will Be Taken, One Will Be Left (Matt 24:36-44)

When I was taught New Testament it was still the rage to think Jesus was an apocalyptist. And not just that he was an apocalyptist, but that his expectation was that he would be returning shortly in apocalyptic style. Clearly he didn't, so therefore he got that wrong. And the church, perhaps out of out of embarrassment, or maybe to fool everyone for 'its' own self -interest, changed the preaching and expectation of the apocalyptic Jesus into something more palatable for a church that would ride out the storms of history. Sort of like the whole debate about the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. (You know how it goes; Jesus preached the kingdom, the church preached Jesus, etc.) This kind of false duality with its interpretation that saw Jesus as getting it terribly wrong and the church altering his memory to suit itself, is over mostly. Jesus wasn't an apocalyptist, and although he used the language of apocalyptic style at times, his teaching and expectation runs counter to the usual dualities of apocalyptic and subverted it within. More of that later in the week.

Matthew 24:36-44 hasn't figured large in my head for quite a while. Probably the last time I looked at it seriously I thought it was part of the apocalyptic expectation of Jesus that he got wrong. "One will be taken, one will be left." (vv. 40-41) Taken into heaven, right? The fundamentalists love this kind of stuff. But look at the whole passage again. The analogy for the meaning of "taken" and "left" is Noah. (vv. 36-39) Noah was left, not taken. Contrary to the escapist theologies so prevalent amongst us and in us, Jesus in vv. 40-42 is saying the faithful disciple is left, not taken. This raises all sorts of questions like, "Taken where?" Sure. But notice how the usual interpretation of the passage makes it say exactly its opposite! Jesus was not an escapist, and not an apocalyptist.



I, like just about everyone, thought that Matt 24:40-42 meant that people were plucked from earth into heaven.

Love: Feeling and Action

"Is love a feeling?" I asked my Year 7s this question, and they thought love is a feeling. So I asked, "Is love action?" They also thought love is an action. "Can love be both feeling and action?" Yes, they thought love can be both feeling and action. "Can love be feeling without action?" Yes, they thought love can be feeling without action. "Can love be action without feeling?" Ah, that was a lot harder. I think the majority view was that love cannot be action without the feelings associated with love. Perhaps Jesus thinks otherwise though. His counsel is to love our enemies. I take this to mean that we might have warm feelings toward our enemies, or we might not. But without action we cannot love our enemies. As far as I can tell Jesus did not say we will never (or should not) have enemies, but that we should love them. Like most people I find it easier to love those who love me, especially those for whom I have a warmth in my heart. Like most people, I find it difficult to love someone I am in conflict with, or someone who shows no love toward me, and certainly difficult to love an enemy. But I remember that love is primarily action before it is feeling. I might start with my feelings when I consider someone who I am in conflict with, but I know that it is action that will change the circumstances between us, and action need not be ruled by feelings.

Vaticanomics

Benedict XVI: good theology, funny shoes

I can remember being on a church group set the task of making socially orientated statements. You know the groups, that make statements about justice, etc. I have a great deal of sympathy for those who make these kind of statements because most people who do are probably not well enough informed to make the statements they do! However, the cry of the poor and the desire for peace need voice. Anyway, I didn't write anything much in that group, and what I did say was seen to be too conservative. (I think the final straw for my membership of the group was supporting the invasion of Iraq, with some caveats). Here is an interesting article on a possible new engagement between theology and economics via the Pope. It is very interesting, and makes a couple of good points. The most important is, I think, that the church hasn't really turned its mind to the ethics of a social, impersonal system of human interaction the effects of which are often unintended. A system like the market, for example. We are better at more personal relations, or the distortion of what should be more personal into something impersonal. The article is short and worth a read.

I like a lot of what Benedict XVI says, and incidentally, the article mentioned above speaks highly of Caritas in Veritate, in regards the rapprochement between market economics and theology. The author says that many influential business and finance leaders have found it helpful, and not just Roman Catholics.

Noah's Ark

I am doing a series with some students on 'the evil of the human heart'. I will digress into such topics as the banality of evil (compared to the 'sexiness' of evil on TV and video games). I will also do a session on the way the spiritual realm and the material world are interlaced so that we see that drug cartels are the real manifestations of the demonic, just as the legions of Rome were in the time of Jesus. I started the series this week by reading the punch-line of the Noah's Ark story. The story begins with God sending the rain to kill all living creatures because of the evil of the human heart. By the end of the story God has learned that to eradicate evil the simplistic procedure of killing all the 'evil people just doesn't work. Evil cuts through every human heart. The solution to human evil narrated in Scripture is for God to become one of us, with us, suffer and die at the hands of sinners, and be raised.

This guy made a replica ark - some people have too much time on their hands

So God learns, but guess who hasn't learned this most simple of lessons? Yes, that's right, us, humankind. Indeed, that we have not learned this is part of the evil of the human heart, perhaps even its root. (Separating the sinner and persecuting him/her). In the Noah story God learns the lesson. Of course, God didn't actually have to learn the lesson. But that we haven't learned points to our intransigence, or perhaps blindness, and arrogance. 

Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10)

People hated Zacchaeus for good reason. A tax collector had the force of Roman power behind him to confiscate and enslave tax debtors. He was a sinner whose depth of sin is matched by the hatred evoked among the people of Jericho. No wonder the people of Jericho grumbled at the grace displayed by Jesus toward Zacchaeus. When Jesus includes Zacchaeus in the people of God once more ("child of Abraham") he is doing more than forgiving a notorious sinner. He is also challenging the way in which human communities structure themselves around the hatred of sinners. This is also more than challenging self-righteousness, just as it is more than a call for us to love rather than hate. Jesus' inclusion of Zacchaeus is all of these things but it is also a challenge to the way in which human communities need to hate someone. And when you need a scapegoat there is no better candidate than a sinner. Choose the innocent as the scapegoat and the scapegoating might become apparent, even to ourselves. Better to choose a sinner, and use the sin as the (often large admittedly) fig leaf to hide our dumping on the scapegoat any latent anger we hold. Jesus is challenging Jericho to structure itself around inclusion certainly, and if that wasn't enough, just by the act of inclusion he is challenging the scapegoating endemic to human communities. If you doubt the process of scapegoating is at work in our communities just look at the way the newspaper or a politician can whip up hatred for a "sinner(s)". It isn't difficult to name it as manipulation, but there is something there to manipulate though. That kind of crass manipulation is reasonably easy to recognize; not so easy to recognize when we do it ourselves in a situation not pumped up by the media or unscrupulous politician.