True Humility is Hope in Emmanuel

Hatred, Ignorance, Nihilism, these are just some of the way we can describe the condition of our splintered and pluralistic North American society this holiday season. We live on the edge of these emotional extremes because it seems there is so much to be thankful for and yet so much to get angry about. If you choose to dive into injustice in both your society and the world it is easy to be become jaded. Is the only option to demand violent revolution or give up on the world entirely? If you choose to embrace the privilege of being born into a society with a powerful economy, the tendency can be to become ignorant to injustice and numb to the suffering all around you. Maybe you are relatively poor in this society filled with wealth and resources. Are you supposed to not give yourself the best chance for survival by shopping at cheap yet oppressive corporate stores?

I think the answer for us today lies in giving up our false pride and embracing the true meaning of humility. Not a humility where we feel too insufficient and insignificant to even care. Nor a pride where we put others in danger for the sake of our own ideology. Choose to watch the suffering, soak it in, understand it, weep for it, and help where you can. Don't ignore it and go back to your shopping because you fear losing your safety and wealth. Don't ignore it because you feel there is nothing you can do anyway. Don't selfishly declare you're too weak to help. But don't delude yourself into thinking you're Jesus Christ either. Help where you can and leave the rest up to God. Today's injustices will not be won through violent revolution, nor can they be ignored and distracted by our wealth and consumption. Our best option is a slow resolve. Love people in small steps and small ways, don't expect to save people, but help them anyway.

Don't expect to end religious violence, welcome refugees anyway

Don't expect to end all poverty, give generously anyway

Don't expect to reverse climate change, care for the planet anyway

Don't expect to end global capitalism, resist it anyway

Emmanuel is coming, place your Hope in him.  

Pain and Promise: Thoughts on Historical and Figural Interpretation

                The misuse of Scripture by the historical critical perspective has been well documented. Whether it is the silliness of the Jesus Seminar, or trying to prove that Adam and Eve once existed as historical people, these interpretive experiments have often been adventures in missing the point of the canonical Scripture. The central interpretive purpose of the Christian church should be to see Jesus Christ as the “golden thread which runs through the whole of the Scripture” (Gertrude Hove). 

For theologian Ephraim Radner this implies a “deliberate setting aside of certain historical presumptions” for the sake of seeing Jesus Christ in the text. When parts of a text identify characteristics of Jesus, we are called to see the text as a description of Jesus Christ. When a texts’ “narrative whole resonates with the grande themes of Jesus own life” we are called to see Jesus Christ. This way of thinking about Scripture rests on the presupposition that God is ordering “the Bible according to his own creation and recreation of human history” (Hope Among The Fragments, 98-99). It should show us that Christ’s suffering, his broken body, is calling us to suffer for one another as his Church (Colossians 1:24). 

In our modern context the problem that sometimes occurs with this Christological reading of Scripture is that we jump straight to our new life in Christ without recognizes the reality of suffering that still exists in a world that is not yet. We assume that reading Christ into the whole of the Scripture means that we can ignore the pain and brokenness of a Hebrew people, and say “well things were pretty bad before Jesus, but now that we have been made new we don’t have to worry about that anymore.” We assume that because were in Christ things will be so much better, thing will be so much happier, everything will be “so radically new” as Brian Walsh poignantly suggests in his most recent Advent blog post.

 A lot of this is due to the influence of the “principalities and powers” that surround us. The empire wants to numb us so we don’t feel the pain of our own lives, and the lives of those around us (so will continue to operate without question in the system it has designed). This is where a historical look at Scripture can reveal the pain of the people in that text, and relay to us our own pain that we so much want to resist. In Walter Brueggeman’s “Unity and Dynamic in Isaiah” he critiques the father of modern canonical interpretation Brevard Child’s for jumping to quickly from the Judgment of early Isaiah to the promises of God in later Isaiah. For Brueggeman the Judgment or social critique of early Isaiah leaves room for an embrace of pain in the middle of the book and slow movement toward God’s promises. Child’s is moving too quickly from the old to the new without recognizing the pain that is involved. It is here where a historical look at the people in Scripture can keep us in the reality of our brokenness as we “wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23). While Radner sees the over emphasis of historical critical tools as “an almost gnostic yearning for release from a world that is to be cut loose from God” (Hope Among The Fragments, 108) Walsh and Brueggeman see an overly spiritualized view of Scripture as its own gnostic denial of pain in the Christian life.            

Russell Brand the Postmodern Prophet

            The first time I encountered Russell Brand's thought was when he interviewed the Westboro Baptist Church and juxtaposed them with some rather liberal Christians. I found this exercise pointless and doubted I could ever give him another chance at bringing forward any meaningful conversation or thought to my universe. However, after a couple months I realized that if I can still enjoy Richard Dawkins on occasion, despite that fact he makes similar types of fruitless arguments toward the end of his book God Delusion (as though a handful of rude Christians or a handful of really open minded Christians represent any real spectrum of Christian thought) then I can give Brand a second chance as well.  

            My girlfriend also happens to be rather fond of Brand, so in an effort to give him a second chance, I acquired tickets for his Aug 23^rd show in Calgary. The stand up show which is entitled Messiah Complex represents an interesting mix of religious pluralism, a touch of postmodern philosophy in the vein of Jean-Francois Lyotard's incredulity toward's metanarratives (whether Brand realizes it or not), along with a few standard sex jokes.

           

            Brand is fully aware that in today's context we have to be intentional about who we are and what we want to follow; otherwise what we understand to be true will be falsified and manipulated for the purpose of those who seek to control us. State authority, corporate advertisers, and religious leaders will often seek to manipulate what is true for their own gain. Che Guevara was a man who was respected for his firm communist ideology along with being incredibly violent. Today he is reduced to a t-shirt logo. Ghandi has become the symbol of all that is good in the world, yet he treated his wife in a way that most today would not approve. In order to describe the world faithfully it requires nuance.

Most impressive was Brand's introduction of modern philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and G.K.Chesterton. Brand described how Nietzsche declares that “God is dead” because society is no longer under the authority of a Christian nation. According to Brand, Chesterton counters that despite this reality; people will still create objects of worship of their own accord. This warning of idolatry continued all throughout his show. In the midst of a diverse and packed out crowd of young and old, Brand was preaching to an audience that most Canadian churches today would dream of having.

While I am excited for the ideas that Russell Brand is bringing forward in his most recent tour, my warning to him is that as a religious pluralist he will never truly be able to immerse himself in the truth of any one religion. For Brand the central message of Christ is simply to love one another. And this generically seems to be what he believes to be the centrality of most religions. By denying the particularity of a belief system, he will never be able to experience the truth of it from the inside out. It will always be as a passing critical observer. While Brand is correct in suggesting that there really is no conclusive historical evidence for any one faith over another, this doesn't mean that the best way to engage them is as though you are at a buffet. Christianity is most real when you are inside of it, and I assume that most people of faith who believe their religion to be ultimate reality would suggest the same. This doesn't mean that there isn't truth in most religions; it simply means that in order experience the heart of a tradition, you have to enter into it fully and submit yourself to it. For us Christians this means that Jesus Christ has never given us the option to simply see him as a good guy or a great teacher. He demands that we see him as God incarnate; he demands that we see his death and resurrection as the ultimate work of his power and glory for the world he created. If we refuse to see this, the truth we see in Christ will always be but a hint of who he truly is. If Russell Brand refuses to dive into one religion with all his heart, he will always be left with crumbs of truth, and never the meal.   

"This Too Shall Pass" Treeplanting and the Importance of Death and Ressurection in the Midst of a Static Empire

The prominent tone of our culture is to embrace superficial change and promote static living. When God frees his people from Egypt and sends them out into the wilderness to rely only on him the insecurity is barely tolerable. They have no way of physically seeing how or when God will feed them and sustain them and so they complain if "only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death" (Exodus 16:3). Yet it is these periods of change and limited resources where we are most open to growth and change. The problem of living in a well-established empire is it is easy to become numb to our true purpose and the suffering of others. As long as you play by the rules of the empire you will remain fed, clothed, and housed. Your God given potential to build, imagine, and live for the betterment of others may never be reached, but your hardship will remain small. This is the quandary of the Hebrew people in this passage. They can go back to Egypt and live as slaves to the empire of Pharaoh or they can live into the promise of Genesis 12 that through them "all peoples on earth" will be blessed. The human heart was made for more then just a static slavery to the empires of our world. We were made for a radical dependence on God where we name, produce, and take care of his planet. Our unique gifts our purposed for relationship. These temporal tasks allow us to continually live into a life of death and resurrection. We are made for life and death.  In Tolkien's Middle Earth imagination the greatest gift God bestows on humanity is death. The great elves grow weary of life overtime, while we die and our made new in Christ. Leaving the mystery of our final apocalyptic home aside, this is what we are made for.

In my own life treeplanting has helped me to experience this reality. A few days ago I was planting trees on a particularly cold and rainy day. While it had been raining in intervals throughout the week it came crashing down on this day. The temperature dipped to zero, the wind and rain cut inside me, the cold earth caused my hands to be barely operational, and the reality of death and resurrection moved me forward.
"This Too Shall Pass" allowed for each step to continue. "This Too Shall Pass" allowed for one more tree to be planted until the truth of that day's death and next day's resurrection became reality.

It is no wonder then that great empires of our world want nothing more than to deny this reality. All efforts are made to maintain the status quo, death is discussed at a minimum. Conversations about suffering are about as impolite as the Religion which so deeply promotes its discussion. Even as the collapsing utopian fantasy of the empire becomes blatantly obvious, the establishment will deny their future death until the very end. Until that end those who suffer will remain unheard, the homeless will continue to be sent to the outskirts of Vancouver, the jails will continue to be full of first nations people who barely had a chance, and the empire of Stephen Harper will continue to form a ridiculous line between the criminal offender and the victim as though they are not interconnected. Those of us born on the track of the empire will continue be numbed by the suffering all around us when our central value is based on the measurement of that empire. It is here where we must be continually open to deconstructing the false fantasy of the empire through poetry, music, art, and story. This is a major purpose of the prophets and poets in the Hebrew scripture, and every empire interested in maintaining their stability and oppressing our imaginations is "threatened by the artist" who is willing to speak truth to their power (Walter Brueggemann, Prophetic Imagination).

The Idolatry of Community

The narrative of the Tower of Babel reminds us that simply being in a strong community is not what God wants. Scripture tells us the people of Babel had such a coherent identity in relation to one another that they all "used the same language and the same words." They became such a unified force in the world that nothing they purposed themselves to do was "impossible for them" (Genesis 11:6). This lack of diversity and fear of God forced God to scatter them and confused their language. God fragmented their strong tight knit community...

The Problem of How to Understand Sin and Righteousness

Understanding original sin is a complicated issue. Should we fully accept Augustine's perspective? Or Luther's? Or how American evangelism has altered the original understanding of those perspectives?

The purpose of original sin is centrally to show us that we need God. Not to solely judge us on some personal level. Judgement is primarily intended to be a positive thing where God makes the world right. Psalm 82:3 declares that God will “judge the poor and the orphan.” The only coherent way to read this passage is to see Judgment as God’s bringing justice to the world, and making all things right.

I think Jesus often uses the term "righteous" as a rhetorical strawman to make a bigger point.

In Luke 5 Jesus is said to be eating with sinners and tax collectors when the Pharisees come to ridicule him for associating with such people. He responds that he has "not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” We know from other passages that Jesus obviously does not think the Pharisees are "righteous" in its most literal meaning, but is juxtaposing their self-righteous piety with people who are fully aware of their brokenness  It is not about who is good or bad in the individualistic modern sense, but God's grace which is over all of us.

A Response To My Friend James Wilt

Dear James,

When I read your article A Fall From Grace I deeply resonated with the frustration and pain the Christian religion has caused you. I too have had a two year relationship ended because of Christian misperceptions of sexuality and marriage. I have also had close Christian friends attack me for dating outside of my faith. On a deeper level, this is a misunderstanding of the most fundamental Christian principle: Grace.

And James I think you are closer to this then I have ever seen you. Your realization of Christianity’s corrupted “anthropocentric belief system” is a profound one. You see Christianity is never meant to be centrally about us, but about God and what he does for us. The mantra of mature evolutionists that we stop seeing ourselves as “special” but should work towards cooperative and communal adaptation with nature is a strong one. It is also not as far away from the Christian tradition as you might think. The central tenet of Christianity is not meant to be about us fulfilling a "divine mission" but is most centrally about a shepherd who would sacrifice his life for one lost sheep. It is most centrally about a God who chooses an obstinate and ever failing nation and refuses to abandon them, in spite of their ignorance and betrayal. This is a God who suffers for us and therefore understands our suffering; all of us; humans, lions, and lambs.

The central goal of the human ideal is not our human fulfillment of it, but how it exposes our need for God, and his promise of loving reunion for all creation. Redemption is not a slow evolutionary process. It is and it isn't. We are all paradoxically found and lost. At home yet homeless. I am glad your new direction has humbled you, and I pray that if you feel the need for Christ’s unconditional grace in your life, you will see he never left you. I realize this may sound arrogant, but hopefully it is also comforting. In my own attempt to run away from Christ, this has always brought be back.

Your Friend,

Jesse

The Problem with Christian and Muslim "Fundamentalists"

Fundamentalists like Muslim Egyptian Sayyid Qutb and American Christians like John Hagee and Dyson Hague are trying to compete with modern rationalism’s search for objective reality by declaring their interpretation of scripture to be their own supposed objective realities of pure revelation.  

While the Quran and the Bible have always been seen as God’s Word and therefore true, by Muslims and Christianity respectively, understanding the interpretation of scripture as a complex weaving of lenses and methodologies has almost always existed to some degree. This traditional reality is often ignored by these fundamentalist. This is not to say that all methods of interpretation should or have been accepted as legitimate, but even within an Orthodox perspective both Islam and Christianity have made room for a variety of interpretations within the central tenets of their faith.

The categorical definition of “fundamentalist” being referred to in Christianity has specific roots in early 20^th century Protestant movement which sought to hold onto to the supposed “fundamentals” of the Christian faith against supposed liberal theology and secular reason based criticism support The categorical definition for Fundamentalist in Islam refers to the early 20^th century subsets of Islam which sought to emphasize Islamic law as something which should be forced onto a society, and exists outside of an interpretative framework. For these specific sects, it often means that God is revealing the truth of scripture to them in such a specific way that they refuse to allow any other theologians to reason with them, and usually damage the society along with the religion in which they dwell...