Purity

I have a need of such a clearance
as the Saviour effected in the temple of Jerusalem
a riddance of the clutter of what is secondary
that blocks the way to the all-important central emptiness
which is filled with the presence of God.

Jean Danielou

Vocation: The Coincidence of Your Gifts and Passions And The Deepest Needs Of Your Neighbour

The tendency is to limit the circle of those we are to be concerned with. But if God has counted every hair on our heads, it is difficult to see how I can exclude you from the circle of my neighbour. This is hardly something new, but it must be said because in practice we don't do it. The lawyer who, in trying to justify himself and his question, says to Jesus, "Who is my neighbour?" is not thinking (at least at that stage) that the circle would include absolutely everyone. Even your enemy. (Lk 10:29-37; cf Matt 5:43-48)

This is important for a whole lot of reasons, including the obvious like peace and justice. But it is also important when discerning vocation. Our deepest vocation is to be found in the coincidence of our gifts, skills and passions and the deepest needs of our neighbour.

Please stop, please!
Silence!
Listen to the beating of your heart.
Listen to the blowing of the wind,
the movement of the Spirit.
Be silent - said the Lord -
and know that I am God.
And listen to the cry of the voiceless.
Listen to the groaning of the hungry.
Listen to the pain of the landless.
Listen to the sigh of the oppressed,
and to the laughter of the children.

Celebrating One World (CAFOD 1989)

Surrender and Healing

The Christian faith is about union with God. But to be united with God we have to give up everything – even ourselves. Making ourselves, securing ourselves, controlling our lives, our futures, our desires, our image and identity, dying to self. And in this dying we are found in God, and we discover who we truly are. All the rest is stripped off as we come to live more and more into God. It is quite harsh for it calls for a death to the usual things about ourselves that we would all think quite reasonable. And you can get a good glimpse of it when sick, diseased, facing an operation, wearing out, dying. Our fears come into play. What will happen? We are losing control. Things could happen that we don’t like. We try to gain control.

I remember hearing about a group who believed they would never die if they had enough faith. All those who died had obviously no faith! (I kid you not, such a group existed in Adelaide!) Tlak about the denial of reality, trying to gain control by manipulating God. It is a temptation for all of us, especially in the dark times of illness etc. A last ditch attempt to deny reality or escape it. A way of manipulating God. (Pray harder; and when the outcome is not what we wanted and we say, "Why did God not listen?" Well, what a give away!) When I had an operation a few years ago I discovered something about myself. I couldn’t trust myself to God. I wanted a certain outcome, and I wanted God to make sure it happened. All normal, of course, but it is not what Christian healing is about. Christian healing is not about using our faith to get what we want. Facing the darkness of sickness etc. is an opportunity to deepen our surrender to God. Anointing with the sign of the cross in the name of Jesus provides a clue: the cross is the symbol of losing life and of surrender; faith in God is not a shield from the reality of our lives. We get sick, injured, wear out, and die. Faith is about trusting in God no matter what. Its easy to trust God when everything is going smoothly, a different matter when we are in the darkness of suffering. That’s when the rubber really hits the road.Can we give our lives to God? Can we trust that all shall be well, no matter what? Can we give up our very selves in the promise of gaining life? That’s what healing is about. Sometimes the outcome is what we want. Eventually it won’t be. But that’s beside the point. The point is knowing that in the light of the resurrection of Jesus all shall be well. No matter what.

Identity vs Intelligibility?

In an early journal article Jurgen Moltmann suggests a helpful continuum to understand the history of the church. He suggests that the church moves between the two poles of relevance and identity; in the world but not of the world, incarnated in the world with a citizenship in heaven. If it moves too far to one side there is a reaction the other way. Mission and evangelism follows this continuum. Think of those churches that focus on ‘personal faith’ as a gathered community to the extent that their sectarian nature makes them irrelevant to the world around. Of course, they would say that is the whole point! Calling people out of the world that is passing away. Or consider those churches for whom their Christian faith seems little more than an overlay upon existing views on society, human relationships, etc. So relevant that they have merged back into the world around them! Mission and evangelism requires both identity and relevance. We are a people called out, yet God sent the Son to save the world. Remove the admonitions concerning justice from the Bible and it would almost be readable in one session! The goal is to integrate the continuum, although, as Moltmann says, different ages reflect different emphases.

In the current turmoil in the Anglican Communion we can see this continuum and the conflict arising within it at work. Today we might use the term intelligibility rather than relevance. (I'm being kind here because deep down I think the temptation is to be relevant, which implies that irrelevance is just around the corner.) Of course, both poles in the current debate would claim that they are being both faithful to their Christian identity and intelligible, although in a candid moment the right would admit identity is more important to them and the left would admit that intelligibility is key for them. When a parish, diocese, Province or Communion holds together those from opposing poles then we have integrated the continuum. That is, communion prevents the narrowness that an emphasis on one pole or the other necessarily brings.

Thin Ice Needs More Than Personal Moral Courage

Bernhard Schlink says that the Holocaust is evidence of the thin ice that human culture rests on, and how easily we can descend into the depths of barbarity. It is tempting to think that Germany 1933 couldn't happen here. However, the way in which Australians were so easily turned against asylum seekers in recent history hardly fills one with confidence. Theologically, a doctrine of Original Sin would also suggest that we are always on thin ice. How do we stop our society falling through?

Schlink says we should learn from the experience of Germany during the Nazi years. His generation (born during or shortly after the war) criticized their parents for not showing individual moral courage. He says he and his colleagues were mistaken in their criticism because individual moral courage in the Nazi years ended up in pointless symbolic acts or extremely small victories of no lasting effect. (He cites the events depicted in Rosenstrasse as an example of the latter.) Personal moral courage is effective when it is practiced within a society with institutions that encourage and do not punish dissent, and where individual social and political views matter. When we allow such institutions (e.g. parliament, courts, churches, unions, political parties, universities) to be undermined and no longer reflect a culture of engaged disagreement the ice will, at some point, break.

It would seem to me that the Anglican Church of Australia has a role to play in this. We are diverse and have rules regulating the manner in which disagreement can be voiced and worked through. I wonder if the suggested solutions to our Communion's disagreements over sexuality are going to reinforce our credentials as the church that tolerates dissent or not? I can't see it myself, and I think that the increasing centralization across the Communion (including Australia) augurs badly for us as an institution that will not just tolerate dissent, but work it through fruitfully. After reading Schlink I see that the stakes are greater than just freedom in the church.

In as far as there was any resistance during the Third Reich and the Holocaust that had an effect beyond being symbolic gestures, its basis was found less in individual morality than in communist or socialist solidarity, Christian faith and ecclesiastic responsibility, and the honour code of officers or of the aristocracy. The lessons of the past pertain not just to individual morality, but also, and perhaps more importantly, to societal and state institutions in which individual morality must be preserved if it is to have the power to resist in the crucial moment. This applies to citizens' engagement within and on behalf of institutions to ensure their proper functioning. (Schlink, Guilt About the Past, p. 33)

Syro-Phoenician Woman

A guest post from the Revd Ron Keynes, based on Mark 7:24-37.

We have become almost inured to the sight of a Lord Who was happy to meet anyone whoever or wherever they were, and yet continue to be surprised by the Infant Church in the Acts of the Apostles stumbling over its outreach to Gentiles. This little cameo bears a close look, if only because previously traditional treatment of it tended to take off the sharp edges of Jesus’ words to the woman. Never lose sight of the fact that Jesus is in Tyre (Gentile territory by a long distance) with the obvious intent of taking the blinkers off His disciples.

It is not meet to take the children’s bread and cast it to the dogs was the rendering in the AV Bible. I recall Sunday School story treatment of this passage asking teachers to render ‘dogs’ and ‘puppies’ on the grounds that Jesus would never have been so severe on a woman as the original appeared. On the contrary, Jesus was being quite rough, as that woman would have expected, but it was not to be rude to her as much as make the disciples face the horror of their own attitudes. That lady would have expected such an outburst, and her response shows that she was ready for it.

The disciples, on the other hand, were confronted by a human being who not only handled the abuse, but showed a depth of spirit and faith that would have been totally unexpected. This sort of thing should be a constant discovery even for the modern Christian.

Surely, then, the tell-tale story that follows in today’s Gospel should be the one that shocks even more. This is not just the telling of the story of the healing of a deaf-mute! This is an intended shock for the Christians of every later age that they are the deaf mutes, for they have seen the glory of the Gospel but have refused to see it in others or share or with others.

Arguments For the Existence of God

The arguments for the existence of God, whether you think they are weak or persuasive, express nothing of the living relationship with God that precedes them. They are not meant suddenly to bring people from a state of disbelief to belief. But they are meant to offer some explanation for the possibility of belief, when correctly understood.

Generally speaking arguments for the existence of God look at everything as a whole, and then ask questions about this whole. So they look at all the elements and interconnections, processes and events of the world (and cosmos) and ask if there is a way of making sense of them all as a single whole. Atheism thinks that this is an unnecessary step because the different parts make sense in themselves. There is no reason to try and make sense of the whole as a unit, so to speak.

The problem for atheism is that most people intuit that it is a reasonable thing to ask questions about the whole thing as a whole, as though there is a reason behind the whole. And this intuition has been aided by the trend of modern science to advance a theory of a 'first event' like a big bang as the beginning of the universe. (Not that the Big Bang is the moment of creation, but the Big Bang as suggestive of an origin, and therefore asking questions of the whole.)

As I understand it we know that everything in the universe is essentially energy; energy moving from one arrangement of energy to another, more complex, less complex, etc. Everything is dynamic, moving, with nothing so basic that it doesn't change and mute into another configuration of energy at some point. So everything is moving, and indeed, at the smallest levels randomly, yet at the higher levels of order predictably. Why? Why doesn't everything at some point just collapse into randomness. A little bit out, then a little more out, etc, until the whole thing collapses into meaninglessness?

People have wondered, and continue to wonder about what holds the whole together, what makes this a universe, a single whole of underlying unity and, therefore, of meaning. Some people think that we should not ask these questions. Most people do sometime in their life, and even if they think there is no meaning they will still act as though there is.

Take the argument for the existence of God that says there must be a start to all the causes in the universe. Many people then say that there must have been a start to God, which means that God isn't God, and so forth. Which isn't the point. The idea is to stretch our imaginations. God is not one thing amongst many. God is not one cause among others. God is a fullness complete within Godself. Not like anything else in the world. That takes imagination to think about. It stretches us beyond what is usual and normal to see below the surface, and to do so in a way that does not imprison us in our current way of thinking. In this conception of God and creation God is not one more linear cause, but the underlying cause or reason for all causes, for everything that is, an underlying fullness and completeness guaranteeing the order and sensibleness (rationality) of all that is.

Jesus in Need

We are having a food drive at St John's in support of the great work of the Magdalene Centre here in Adelaide. So at chapel I am talking about the reason why Christians are involved in justice work and helping those in need. There are lots of reasons, like most of the Bible is concerned with it, and compassion of course. But also because those in need are Jesus himself, albeit in a most unlikely disguise. At chapel I started with the first half of Matt 25:31-46 and the separation of the sheep from the goats. "Why are we receiving the kingdom?" ask the saved. The answer is simple, "Because you fed me, clothed me, etc." I talked about how reasonable this is, of course, if you see the king of the universe starving to help (or not) is going to be crucial. And then comes the sting in the tail with the second half of the parable: when you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.

Love God and Love Neighbour

If we listen to current debate in the church (clearly a debate we have been having since the time of Jesus) it seems it is easy to lose Jesus' dual focus of loving God and loving our neighbour. Of course, everyone says they are being faithful to the command of Jesus, but the liberal left have the tendency so to unite the two that Christianity ends up social work/peace & justice work with a veneer of God, whereas the conservative right have a tendency to separate the two, and then subordinate love of neighbour to love of God. Although Jesus does indeed put the two in that order (Mk 12:29-31), if hierarchicalized in this way the bald statement of the two greatest commandments as a summary of the whole law is not an adequate basis on which to build our practice of the two greatest commandments. The Johannine corpus makes it clear that loving God cannot be divorced from loving neighbour. (1Jn 4:7-21) This unity of love is also at the heart of the washing of the feet. Jesus' command, after showing his love for the disciples by washing their feet, is not to command a pietistic love of himself (i.e. of Jesus), but a command for them to wash one another's feet. (Jn 13:14) St Paul is explicit on this point when he says that the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, "You shall love your neighbour as yourself." (Gal 5:14; Rom 13:8-10). And James is following Jesus when he says that our faith is shown through our love of neighbour. (Jas 2:8-26).

How to hold the two together? The answer is Jesus of course, and specifically thinking here of his dual unity of person in two natures. As in so many things Christian, we hold together that which might otherwise be torn asunder. The doctrine of the Incarnation is the greatest expression of this, and is now our guiding principle in application of a theology of union. In the case of uniting love of God and love of neighbour, we should remember that the divinity of Jesus is inferred from the kind and quality of his human life. But this does not mean that his humanity is merely a cipher for his divinity (a problem with the Christian right) or that we can, in practical terms, ignore his divinity (a problem for the christian left). In a parallel fashion, we cannot love God apart from our human neighbour, yet in loving our neighbour wed should not ignore God.

A practical result is to be found in the Eucharist. The Eucharist makes no sense without our neighbour (why a priest cannot preside at the Eucharist alone), and not just the neighbour in the pew next to us. We bring our love of neighbour practised during the week to the liturgical expression of our love of God. (Not just the other way around.) When we do this bloodless piety is transformed into a genuine thanksgiving for what God's enfleshment in Jesus and his death and resurrection has won for us. We are able to love God's flesh and our neighbour's flesh, and vice-versa.

Corruption, Corruption ...

In his new book Guilt about the Past, Bernhard Schlink speaks a little about corruption. He is not referring to the bribery variety of corruption, but the corruption that occurs when we work within systems that are unjust, turning a blind eye here, asking for favours there, re-interpreting the rules, keeping the 'authorities' from seeing what is really going on. He gives the example of some of the German universities before Hitler gained complete power. As the bureaucracy around them took on the Nationalist Socialist ideology, so the university professors and lecturers tried to work within the new, unjust rules that discriminated against Jewish staff. And for a few years they were able to work within this new system, asking favours, turning a blind eye, in public agreeing while within the faculties ignoring directives. Working within a system as best they could. But then Hitler arrived at the pinnacle of his power and all that maneuvering counted for nothing. Everything that had been built up by the professors to try and protect the Jewish staff was swept away, and the Jewish staff with it. They discovered that despite their early successes in manipulating the rules, they were vulnerable to their strict application. And once strictly enforced, the professors couldn't claim the rules were unjust. After all, they had been working within the rules for years. By agreeing to work within the rules in the first place and not oppose them the professors were compromised, and eventually failed in their aim of protecting Jewish staff.

The recent attempts across the Anglican Communion (including here in Australia) to bring a monochromatic and legalistic interpretation to sexual mores feels a little like the corruption Schlink is talking about. We agree to work within the new legalisms, but we know these rules are unworkable. Who is going to exclude from parish council a man in a stable, sexual, live-in relationship of 45 years duration, a relationship that has produced grandchildren, on the grounds that he is sexually immoral or a bad example of Christian faithfulness because he is not formally married. So we fudge it, turn a blind eye. We keep it a secret. The bishops and synods are complicit in this corruption by agreeing to this kind of system in the first place. We can't make human communities look like the legalists think it should without damaging it irreparably and unjustly. We, in the middle of Anglicanism, who know that life is not as regimented as the legalists would have us believe, have allowed the conversation and the legislation of our church be hijacked by the right. And we only have ourselves to blame.

Jesus was against legalism not just because of 'salvation by works'. ("I have done my bit God, now it is your turn to do your bit and save me.") He was against it because it corrupts whole communities. There are those who think they are holy, those who enforce the holiness code, those who administer it either in a legalistic way or in an arbitrary way, those who try to work in it as best they can, and those victimised by it. Oh, and I forgot to mention those who sit on their hands.

"Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites ... " (See Mark 7)

God With Us!

Here is a great quote from Karl Barth. I have cut this from an extended quote here.

"God with us! That is too strong a contradiction, not only over against our sins and sufferings but also against the nature of our existence down to the very deepest depths of its roots. God with us! That conflicts too much, not only with our unrighteousness, but more yet, with our righteousness; not only with the atrocities of history, but more yet with history's supposed progress and achievements; not only with the misery on earth, butmore yet, with the supposed happiness and saisfaction on earth. God with us! That subjects our total human nature to a judgment, to a No, that will leave nothing left of us, and will bow us under a grace, a Yes, that we cannot comprehend. God with us!

Sex

Some basic affirmations that need to be said explicitly.

1. The Christian faith is holistic, therefore it makes no sense to separate permanently body and soul. Without the body, soul makes no sense, and vice-versa. Our relationship with God makes no sense without our body, and this applies to salvation.

2. Thus the body is both the locale of experiencing God's love now and reflecting God's glory now and in the future. (Discipleship and resurrection) Sexuality, as a facet of our bodiliness, are to reflect the glory of God.

3. Sex is body and soul. When we reduce sex to only body or soul we are escaping from the closeness of reality and the depths and complexity of being human.

4. Heterosexual sex can lead to pregnancy and children. This is to be carefully considered when having sex.

5. Sex can help intimacy and the self-giving and receiving of intimate relationship. It is legalistic to think that sex is only permissible once a couple have been formally married.

6. Sex is about pleasure not just popping out babies.

7. Both salvation and sin swirl around the human experience of sex. Because sex is tied up with desire, intimacy, pleasure, joy and 'nakedness', it can also have devastating results in our lives. However, for these same reasons it is a sacrament of God's love and salvation. Sex is also one of the most important images to think of our relationship with God and salvation. (E.g. union)


Commentary

The Song of Songs is an explicit love song, with symbolic sexual language within it. It has been spiritualized in the Christian tradition. It is easy to imagine this was done by some because of discomfort with the physicality of the content. The physicality of our existence, our relationship with God and our salvation has been, and continues to be, problematic for many Christians. Christian discomfort with the Incarnation has the same root as discomfort with sex: it is about real human life in all its reality, messiness, sweat, blood, tears and complexity. However, the intuition that has interpreted our relationship with God in terms of the physical relationship between two lovers is correct and utterly orthodox, traditional Christianity. Human bodiliness and God go together.

These days we rarely meet the obvious rejection of our physicality and bodiliness in the church. (An exception is the rejection of the resurrection of the body, but I have posted on this before, many times.) The rejection of our physicality and the ultimate union of creation and God in Christ is masked these days. One of the masks used is the rejection of promiscuity. Of course we are critical of promiscuity: Christianity takes our bodiliness seriously, a bodiliness that includes all our ways of relating faithfully. Promiscuity undoes faithful relationships and can lead to great hurt. And when it doesn't but retains a casual, meaningless character, we are critical of that meaninglessness in something so profoundly intimate. It just isn't right. But, our criticism of promiscuity is not an excuse to import any lingering discomfort about our physicality and sex. And that is what happens, and it happens a lot.

For example, the new orthodoxy required by all Australian Anglicans that says sex can only happen between those who are formally married. So I cannot have on parish council someone who is in a sexual relationship who is not formally married. So you can be in a defacto marriage, have grandchildren from the relationship, and sorry, don't bother applying for any ministry position. Ridiculous, but that's typical of those still uncomfortable with their physicality and its messiness and complexity.

If people are sharing their lives and growing in intimacy, with the intention of continuing in that growth in intimacy faithfully, sex should not be legalistically prohibited. The legalists just can't bear the idea that people are moral beings and that in the complexity of human growth in intimacy legalisms don't hold. As in all legalisms, people are driven 'underground', and those in authority (except for the maniacal and ideological legalists) turn a blind eye at some point. Corruption, corruption ... Better to be sensible in our acknowledgement of our bodiliness and in our regulation of sexual relations.

Finally, because soul and body go together sexual relations are one of the important metaphors for our relationship with God, the act of redemption and our eventual salvation in Christ. I mean the metaphor of union. It's sexual through and through.

By Faith

Following on from a previous post regarding our relationship to nature, it should be remembered that the biblical affirmation of the goodness (not perfection) of nature is a statement of faith. Without that faith perspective any objective view of nature should include its savagery, and sheer cyclical pointlessness. To do otherwise is to ignore (or interpret away) the reality of evolution through natural selection. This doesn't mean that nature is bad or worthless, but just that, without the eyes of faith, nature's imperfections should make us a little more circumspect in regards to the romantic claims we make of nature. This is why I am not one who subscribes to a 'back-to-nature' ideology as the universal panacea for our woes. On its own, nature cannot 'save us'.

The goodness of nature is not the only aspect of our lives that requires faith to be recognizable. Recognising our (and everything's) salvation in Christ is also an act of faith. It could hardly be otherwise. This explains why it often seems that life is anything but saved, and why we should be suspicious of pop gospel claims (and its secularized siblings in the self-help industry) that complete happiness and satisfaction is (or could be if you just did the latest self-help fad) the reality of our lives. Underneath our usual lives we can see the underpinning grace of God, and we can live this grace in the joy and pain we experience in life. But when it comes to salvation there will always be evidence to the contrary right in front of our faces. To see in this contrary, through this contrary and beyond this contrary evidence, God's activity requires faith, and a faith encompassing the realities of life, like crosses.

Go To Church and Be a Better Person (Going to Church Series)

Now I know we are a religion of grace and that we don't earn our salvation, and we are certainly not in the business of superficial moral perfection or liberal 'enlightenment'. However, I think it is true that going to church will make you a better person. Of course, I have to add caveats to this statement like, which church you go to will make a difference. (Go to the loony right and you'll end up a loon). But I stand by my previous sweeping generalization: church is one of the few places left we can go where we will have enacted for us in the liturgy, and hear in scripture and sermon, some of the greatest bits of wisdom ever struck in human culture. And despite the fact that the church can have some of the worst people attending, most of the best and most human people I know I have met through the church. Without the church I would never have had the resources to transcend the little bit of humanity I had when I became an adult. If I didn't go to church and put my puny little existence into a much bigger frame, I would slide into utter superficiality, and one that I consider rather bleak.

We Are Not Alone

We don't like the idea of being alone. But given the vicissitudes of human community people end up seeking solace in all sorts of strange places. UFOs are one of them. Some people love the idea that there is an intelligent 'other' separate from our flawed human history. We can't trust each other, but maybe we could trust ET! Well, yes, I have some sympathy with the desire to step outside of reality, but, obviously, we can't, and that is exactly what the doctrine of Original Sin is trying to communicate.

Some people do the same with nature. The unspoilt outdoors where we leave behind the corruption of human history and what we have done to nature. Or leaving the human community to find companionship with our near genetic neighbours of the animal kingdom. Pets don't betray you. (Although not all our genetic neighbours are that friendly and will eat us if given half a chance.)

I'm all for the unspoilt wilderness and the guileless relationship I have with Gromit our dog. But it is hardly an answer to human sin and the pressing problems of humankind. And I shouldn't finish this post without mentioning how people use God just like a UFO. An intelligent 'Other' removed from the blood and sweat of human history. But in this case we are clearly not thinking of the God of Jesus.

Follow Your Gifts

Following on from God's Call (Part 1), the second part to my preaching series on God's call asks how we can discover our call. For most of us it doesn't come in a Damascus Road experience as depicted in the picture. So where do we start? You won't be surprised if I say that the identification and use of our gifts is crucial. It is really pretty obvious that if God has given us certain gifts and passions this should be explored as an indication that God's call is to be discerned in and through the exercise of these gifts and passions. But what if you don't see how these gifts or passions could be used productively in your life? Or can't see how they could make a contribution, or not see how you could make a living from them? Then, at this point, concentrate on developing your gifts. You might be born with a talent, but that isn't enough. We have to use, grow, develop our gifts and passions and, as we do, a door will be there at some point to open. Needless to say things might not work out how you thought. But after all, it is God's call to us that we are talking about.

Evil is Close

It is commonplace to either understate the reality of evil or froth at the mouth about it. I doubt these two misrepresentations are exclusively Christian, but we do them well. Some Christians are still stuck in the Enlightenment's hope of progress, and think that with greater education, the curtailing of religious mania, and greater justice in the world evil would essentially evaporate. Such Christians are offended or embarrassed by the inclusion of 'evil' in the public life of the church, and edit out mention of it in, for example, the baptismal liturgy.

And then there are those Christians who seem to be obsessed with evil to the extent that human agency within it disappears, or certain people are identified entirely with evil. While I have some sympathy with that identification, those who do this seem to spread the just wide enough to catch those they don't like. (A tendency a bit evil in itself.) And the obsession with evil is then perverted still further by Hollywood which makes evil almost sexy (in a perverted way) or so 'other-worldly' that people are distracted from its actual locale. And I should also mention the teenage attraction to evil/demons which seems to derive from either self-hate or plain old teenager rebellion.

So what are we meant to think of evil? Well, first, it is real. Second, it isn't like Hollywood. It is to be found in the lives of real people, and manifests itself in individual perversion right up to whole societies. Third, it isn't sexy either, more banal than anything (but don't let this fool you, evil kills and destroys. Hannah Arendt attached the label of 'banal' to evil in her reporting of the Eichmann trial and the evil of Nazism.) And yes, I think sometimes people earn the appellation 'evil', although not necessarily for good. I looked into the eyes of a drug-crazed maniac yelling satanic abuse in my face from two inches away while he had a screwdriver poking in my belly. Two lives were lost after that night, and it doesn't feel like I was encountering 'merely' human failure that night. He was in the power of evil.

St Paul is right when he says that we are in conflict with more than flesh and blood (Eph 6:10-17); but we don't meet it apart from flesh and blood. It is close to each one of us in the distortions that make up our psyches, and the compounding historical perversions and distortions embedded in our global human community (and in each one of us; just as the doctrine of Original Sin says, we are sinners even before we 'sin'). Evil is opposed (personally and communally, historically and spiritually) through the traditional spiritual disciplines (including good counselling) and in our opposition to social movements of oppression and terror. And if you are really serious about opposing evil in your own heart and in the world, then truth, justice, peace and faith are essential.

Ultimately, evil is defeated on the cross and in the resurrection. Jesus' self-surrender and desertion by the Father to the power of evil, in utter openness to its power, defeats it. This is the truly disturbing heart of Christianity. Some atonement theories, and some interpretations of them, make the cross and resurrection in some way an overpowering of evil, as though God's power is of the same kind as evil, just of a greater magnitude. God's power in Christ is of an entirely different order, the power of self-sacrificing love given over to the power of evil and death. And in the apparent defeat of the cross, when all seems lost in the 'slabby darkness' of the tomb, there we discover that evil was 'tricked' (as the Fathers said in a variety of ways). The powerlessness of love overcomes evil in its (love's) powerlessness. Luckily God did it for us on the cross and resurrection because I don't have the courage to do it in my own life. If that terrible night with the man with the screwdriver was replayed I wouldn't give myself over to the evil, or watch as someone else fell into its power.

The Importance of Worship Without Expectations (Going To Church Series)

One of the ways to misunderstand worship is to come to worship for a purpose. It is easy to say about worship: I'm coming to be re-filled for a new week; I'm coming because I love hymns (or whatever kind of song); I'm coming to receive the sacrament (celebrated in a certain form, whether traditional or not, catholic or protestant); etc. When we do this, no matter how laudable the reason, we are worshiping for a reason other than what worship is for. Worship is to give thanks, to be open to God, not coming with our agenda. When we do come with an agenda we run the risk of manipulating God and indulging in magic. This is hard because we have all had the experience of worship that is badly done, lacking content and style, or even if spoken in our native tongue, it still seems to be alien to us. So we are tempted to think that what we should do is seek out what we want in worship. I am, of course, sympathetic to this because it has, for one thing, made churches more responsive to people if they wish to survive and flourish. And this has been a blessing to traditional churches, even though some may die because they won't/can't move. But, and this is a very large caveat, the danger is merely magnified when we go to worship with a particular outcome in mind.

Why do I say this? Let's think a bit more about magic. Magic is the use of a formulaic set of words and actions to bring about a certain outcome; manipulation of whatever the 'magic' is being used on. If you come to worship with a certain outcome in mind (whether it be how you should feel, what you should receive/get out of it, the content, the spiritual nourishment) aren't you doing magic? The minister, musicians or preacher become the magicians for you to get what you want from God.

What's the alternative? A couple of places to start. First, let's not pre-decide what we should receive from worship or how we should feel. Maybe your expectations are wrong. Maybe the conversion the gospel asks of us is exactly directed at our expectations of God. Second, come to worship to give thanks for all the graces in life, especially the grace of Christ and the Spirit. What we receive that day, if we come to worship without expectation, can be received as gift, further grace in our lives. this means that, instead of preconceived expectations of what God/worship should do or be like, let us approach worship with the expectation that God will indeed be present (even, at times in an apparent absence or dryness), but not necessarily as we would like.

The Dragon of Grandiosity (Part 2)

Continuing on from yesterday's post, unregulated grandiosity is a disaster relationally. The real person you are relating to will intrude into your grandiosity. They might not worship you, or then again might not want you to be their slave, and our grandiosity won't like that at all. However, the best location to deal with grandiosity is to relate to others, so that where we can find healing for our grandiosity is exactly that place where we can be undone by it. There is nowhere else to go to be healed other than relating to real people (and a real God, but more on that later).

No one is ever fully healed of grandiosity. It must be confronted and worked with, intelligently. Relating to real people is essential, as are two other techniques. We need to keep in contact with our real humanity, which includes particularly what the Christian tradition calls our sin. We are not the centre of the universe. The other tool is prayer. Prayer enables us to direct our own spiritual energies, and those we receive from others, onto the one who is able to carry it, namely God. These two techniques of connection with our sin and prayer are important especially for those leadership professions where people transfer their individual grandiosity onto the leader. For example, teachers, priests, politicians,and counsellors are all susceptible to this transferred grandiosity, and it can be disastrous. Look how much ego there is in politics, secular or ecclesiastical, for example. It also goes part of the way to explain the moral failure in these professions. When a priest, politician or counsellor has an extra-marital affair, Moore is suggesting that it is, at least partly, an attempt to ameliorate excessive grandiosity by human failure. (There's a better way to do it, of course.)

Facing the Dragon is an important book, and while the Jungian language can get a bit too much at times, it is worth it for the deep insights into being human.

Some quotes:

When we consciously face our hidden superiority complex, our preening sense of entitlement, enlightenment, and self-righteousness, then we can escape our delusional claim to be helpless victims and our anxieties mysteriously begin to diminish. (p. 207)

Spiritually speaking, you don't ask, "Am I a sinner?" You ask, "How am I a sinner?" So psychologically speaking, you shouldn't ask, "Am I carrying any narcissistic pathology?" You should ask, "Where is my narcissistic pathology? How am I acting it out? Where is my continuing residual unconscious, unregulated grandiosity possessing me and destroying my relationships?" (p. 147)

I love to teach comparative psychotherapy , because all therapies are trying to help you do that same type of thing, to be more realistic, to be less totalistic in your claims, to do less exaggerating, to do fewer behaviors based on some sense of entitlement or special exemptions, and help the individual to face limitations. All therapies tend to address these issues in some form or another. (p. 144)

Sometimes people think if they just prayed enough, or went to enough masses, then their grandiosity would stop being seductive. Or if they became a cardinal, or a bishop, or a mother superior, it would not be seductive anymore. The truth, or course, is just the opposite, because the more successful you get, the more seductive grandiosity gets. The more traumas and tragedies you have in your life, the more grandiosity will attack you. It can tell you how impressive it is that you are still alive, or it can chide you into depression by suggesting you might as well go ahead and commit suicide. Many suicidal thoughts come from a grandiose perfectionism. (p. 136)

(On the need to pray if you are in a profession of archetypal transference of grandiosity from others onto you, e.g. priest, politician, teacher)
If you are in one of those helping professions where you get a lot of archetypal transferences, you do not pray because it is pious or sweet or nice ... You pray to stay alive, to get help in dealing with your grandiosity... You can take that energy that is coming toward you and, through your prayer, pass it on. "Here," you say, "this is really yours, Lord. Take it. It belongs to you." (p. 95. See also p. 93.)