Opinions...

I haven't been writing lately, in any capacity. This is an unfortunate development for me because, as I've said before, writing is one of the things that keeps me sane and centred. There are some good practical reasons for this drought but as we all know practical reasons never keep us from doing the things we love.

I have been terrified lately of the danger of opinions. This is the product of many varied streams of thought. Partly it has to do with a discussion that was making the rounds on a number of academic blogs that I frequent and partly with the related experience of applying to several graduate programs. In the discussions on the blogs I just mentioned there were some bloggers and commentors who suggested that there is a great deal of danger involved with posting on blogs. The danger is that you will make a statement or present an opinion that will later, and I'm sorry I can't find a more elegant way to put this, bite you in the ass.

The relation to applying to schools seems pretty obvious but I'll spell it out anyway. I have been nervous for some time that I will not be wanted because of who and what I am. I simply do not fit into very many traditional molds and this blog is one of the best examples of my personal oddity. I love whimsy too much. I am not conservative enough. I am not liberal enough. On top of that I know that I make mistakes. Sometimes factual errors and sometimes errors of logic or rhetoric but errors nonetheless.

I am afraid of being unwanted and of being wrong but I know that this is hypocrisy. All statements are fraught with danger and written statements all the more so since they can be referred to at will. But all statements are also powerful and written statements especially so. To appropriate that power an author must be willing to risk, and in many cases to risk all. In my experience authors who are willing to take that risk are either great or awful (and occasionally they are both). That awfulness is the danger that any writer of any kind fears but it cannot be negated or set aside. It is necessary. It must be.

And so here I am, risking myself and my reputation in a forum that hardly anybody reads and anyone can find and hold against me at will. Why? Because I need to write. I need to share and challenge others and even more to challenge and push myself to think more carefully. Writing is the only way I know how to do this.

Hamilton...

Well here we are in Hamilton, officially starting yet another phase in our lives. I've had the chance to meet with my academic advisor at McMaster Divinity College and I've had the poo scared thoroughly out of me. Jinny and Liam have both officially been sick. We have a wonderful landlady and a great place to live, as well as a fairly odd neighbour who hangs out on his lawn in his boxers during the day and listens to incredibly loud music in the evenings (sounded like Rush just now...is it just me or that band mindnumbingly dull to listen to?).

I'm stoked for school to start. Orientation is on Wednesday and my first official class is next Monday. Thursday, however, I get the joy of sitting in on Intermediate Hebrew. My advisor likes all of his students to sit in the Intermediate Hebrew classes in order to maintain our reading skills in Hebrew. I think this is a great idea though I'm a little worried about that as well. I've been trying to get my head back into Hebrew but my language training at seminary was so hit-and-miss that I still have a little bit of trouble with it. Vocabulary especially is a problem, and that's the kind of thing you can only fix with regular and intensive reading. The reason I'm worried is that I'm going to be a PhD student in a room full of MA and MDiv students and I'm going to suck as bad or worse than anyone. Oh well, can't be helped now.

There are some new additions to the sidebars. Mostly these are so-called biblioblogs (blogs dedicated primarily to Biblical or Theological Studies). Partly this is because I like these blogs and the sidebar is more for my use than anyone else's. Partly this is because while I'm in school I imagine that the content of my posts will tend to reflect what I'm studying.

Don't worry, if you like my bizarre and ill-informed rants on politics, ethics, and church polity those will likely continue. I just suspect that reading lots and lots of biblical literature and books about biblical literature will probably tend to skew my posting a little.

Thoughts, Comments, Verbal Abuse?

So, any thoughts on the new layout? Check out my new blogroll on the sidebar. I've also added a few new blogs to the links section.

Failing...

I like to cook. This isn't a post about cooking per se, but cooking will serve as our illustration, so bear with me. I like to cook. One part of cooking well is knowing fundamental skills, techniques, and concepts. You need to know how to use a knife properly and you need to know that cream with a lower fat content is more likely to break...you know, stuff like that. Another important part of cooking, I am coming to discover, is that you need to try and fail a lot.

I've recently been working on my spicy dry rub and my BBQ sauce recipes. It took a lot of permutations of both to come up with something really worthwhile (which I finally did this past week incidentally). A couple of my attempts were pretty bad. Most of them were just mediocre. The final products, if I do say so myself, are pretty damn good. I'm not quite done fiddling yet but I think that now I'm down to final edits as it were.

The problem with this process is that I'm bad at failure. Somewhere along the way as I was becoming the person that I am now I got the idea in my head that I should be good at everything right away. It sounds asinine when said so baldly but I don't think that I'm alone in this silly assumption. I've met a lot of people who feel stupid for doing something wrong when there's no earthly reason they should know how to do it right.

As I noted at the outset, this isn't a post about cooking, this is a post about being better. I am trying very hard to learn how to fail well. Failing well means failing graciously, at times spectacularly, and always learning from my mistakes. And this isn't to say that failing once means never failing again. At times we learn from our mistakes incrementally and many mistakes are required. At other times learning from one mistake produces another, entirely new and novel, mistake that must then be learned from itself. There are probably even some situations (maybe many situations) where mistakes are all there is and you never get it "right," you only get it less wrong.

I want very much to become better at failing. I want to learn to take failure less seriously and more seriously. Less seriously as an infringement on my character and personal worth. More seriously as an excellent way to learn to be better.

Pace Runners and Witnesses...

If you read the family blog you may know that the Sunday before last I ran my first official road race. I ran the 10km leg of the Saskatchewan Marathon. My sister Terry and her husband Tim, along with their friend Teresa, talked me into going home for the weekend and running (they all ran the half-marathon). I've been running for awhile now and particularly since I decided to do the race, so the actual experience of running 10km wasn't all that big of a deal. I've done it a few times and I knew I would finish (in a time of 64 mins and change if you're curious). What struck me about the race was the power of the community of people who took part in it.

There were of course the runners themselves. Impressive people all, and some very impressive. At one point I was passed by a man who was in his 70s at least and probably running under 6 mins/km to my 6:30 mins/km. The fastest runner in my race finished 10kms in a little over 32 mins. Like I said, impressive.

Beyond the runners, however, were the non-runners. You can hardly imagine the number of people who show up at a marathon to do unpaid labour. There were volunteers and friends and family everywhere. In my race I don't think I ran more than a 1km stretch without seeing somebody who was there to watch, to cheer, to hand out gatoraide or water, or even to sing songs while the runners passed. To put this into perspective the run started at 7AM on a Sunday morning and the temperature was 6 degrees C with periodic rain. But there they were, holding out cups and holding up signs and calling out, "Keep it up!," "Great pace!," "Almost there, keep running!" I'm not kidding it damn near made me cry a couple of times.

There were also "pace-bunnies." At a marathon a pace-bunny trains and trains in order to be certain not only that he/she can run the distance of the race, but that he/she can run it at a precise pace. The official runners follow the 60 min pace bunny in order to finish the 10km race in 60 mins. There were several pace-bunnies, each running a specific time for the runners in each of the races (10k, half, full marathon). I frankly think it's impressive enough to run a marathon at all (hell, a half is impressive...let's see you throw down 21.1 kms), but to do it in the service of others is simply wonderful. And all of this made me think about the book of Hebrews.

In chapters 11 and 12 of Hebrews the author retells the stories of men and women of faith who serve as examples for Christians. Chapter 11 closes and Chapter 12 opens with these words:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely,^a and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, ² looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of^b the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

^a Other ancient authorities read sin that easily distracts

^b Or who instead of

The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), Heb 12:1-2.

Pace Runners and Witnesses. We need them badly. The examples of the Pace Runners and the encouragement of the Witnesses helps us to lay aside weight and sin, and to run with perseverance. Here's the thing though, you don't have to be dead to do these jobs. In fact, if you're a Christian you should be doing these jobs at some point in your life.

All of us have weak points in our faith. We have moments when our feet falter and our breath fails. All of us also have strong points in our faith. We have moments when the rhythm is strong and our muscles feel tireless and our lungs feel limitless. There are no people who are always weak. There are no people who are always strong. When I am weak I need Witnesses to call out to me along the way, to remind me that I'm doing well and that I can do it. I need Pace Runners to come alongside and to help me find the rhythm again, to encourage me to keep pushing even though I'm terribly tired. But when I'm strong again I need to be the witness, I need to pace my fellow runners. I am responsible for their well-being just as they are responsible for mine.

I owe a great debt to the many Witnesses and Pace Runners in my life. I pay that debt by taking my turn. I know I have friends out there, some who even read this blog, whose feet are failing and whose lungs are faltering. That's okay. Maybe you need to stop and walk for a minute or two and that's fine too. But then you're going to run again. You are. I know you are. You can do it, you have the strength and what you lack Christ will provide. I believe in you.

And if the rhythm is strong for you, and you can feel endless power flowing through you, then it's time to run pace. You need to come alongside someone, encouraging and challenging and helping him or her ahead. We must remember that as the Church we run together or not at all.

And of course in all and above all and before all goes that greatest of the Witnesses and that tireless Pace-Runner, Jesus Christ himself.

Barth...

While wandering about on Facebook today I ran across a quote from Karl Barth that I have not heard before. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Barth he was born in Basel, Switzerland on May 10, 1886. He was a student in Berne, Tubingen, Marburg, and Berlin and studied with the great liberal theologians Hermann and Von Harnack. He pastored a small parish church in Safenwil, Switzerland and was later a professor in Gotingen, Munster, and Bonn. In my mind one of the most important biographical details of Barth's life is his role as a foundational member of the German Confessing Church (Christians who actively opposed Hitler before and during WWII) and primary author of the Barmen Declaration. He was eventually fired from his position at the University of Bonn for refusing to begin his lectures with the requisite "Heil Hitler!" and for agreeing to take "the oath of allegiance to Hitler only with the qualification that all such allegiance is subordinate to the dictates of the gospel" (Grenz and Miller, Contemporary Theologies, 11). He died in 1968. He is without a doubt one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century and there are some theological discussions that simply cannot be explored without addressing his work. All of this as pre-amble to this quotation:

"In the last analysis what God required of man consists only in the demand that he should live as the one on whose behalf God required the very uttermost of Himself." Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 2.2, p.166.

What Barth means, of course, is that the way we act should be a response to the way that God has acted. Regardless of how poetic it might be this statement is powerful only in the hands of a person like Karl Barth. It is not theoretical theology but practical theology. It must be underpinned by action.

Barth's own life demonstrated that he truly believed that God indeed "required the very uttermost of Himself" and consequently the very uttermost of Barth. Those of us who believe in the Cross of Christ must understand what this means. Our ethics must be driven not by logic or self-preservation or self-aggrandizement but by the actions of God. For a Christian all other ethical choices are absurd. We are and must be a people of the Cross. That is one of the most powerful and integral components of Barth's theology. I noted above that Barth was one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century. His intricate thought, creativity, and depth of analysis reserve him that honour without doubt.

It was his life, however, that made him not merely influential but great.

Little Boxes All the Same...

I was sick this past Monday, some weird and nasty crap in my throat. Since I was sick and not allowed near Liam I was effectively useless and sat around watching TV for the afternoon. Because my wife is such a wonderful woman she was kind enough to rent me the first season of Weeds. It's friggin' awesome. It's a wonderful show that airs on Showtime (like so many wonderful programs...Dead Like Me [tragically cancelled] and Dexter for instance) about a 40ish year old suburban house-wife who's husband died suddenly. In order to maintain her standard of living and to support her two sons (11 and 16 yrs old) she sells marijuana. How's that for a concept? I'm guessing that a content warning is a little bit redundant at this point given the channel the show airs on and the concept but in case you care consider yourself content-warned.

I bring Weeds up first of all because it's brilliant and hilarious, and secondly because it dovetails nicely with an essay I've been reading by Keven J. Vanhoozer. The essay is "Does the Trinity Belong in a Theology of Religions? - On Angling in the Rubicon and the 'Identity' of God" from his book First Theology. Vanhoozer's essay is concerned with the totalizing tendencies of both exclusivist and pluralist versions of religious dialog. The exclusivist attempts to reduce all opinions to the Same through some kind of violence or coercion. Pluralism, interestingly enough, does the same, reducing all opinions to the Same through rhetoric particularly with the spectacularly arrogant assumption that we are all praying to the same God. Vanhoozer concludes with the suggestion that the trinitarian nature of God (God as we Christians see him that is) indicates a different way forward in which there are varying opinions and points of view and we discuss and persuade each other without violence, coercion or oversimplification. In other words, I don't have to agree with you and you don't have to agree with me but we can still talk about it. We aren't the same and we shouldn't be. We don't have the same conception of God and that's allowed. "We must remember that our theological formulations are always provisional; none of them catches the sacred fish" (Vanhoozer 68).

Back to Weeds. Maybe the best part of the show (after Mary Louise Parker that is) is the soundtrack. The creators of the program use a fantastic little ditty called "Little Boxes" by Malvina Reynolds as the title track for the show. It's all about the horror of cookie-cutter culture and modern North American culture's all but unstopable attempts to reduce us all to the Same. Almost as beautiful as the song itself is the fact that in seasons 2 and 3 the producers got a different artist to perform Reynolds' song for every single episode. And each performance is a unique re-interpretation of the original.

The moral of the story? You aren't the same as me. I'm not the same as you. Nor should we be. What to do when we disagree? Talk.

Endings and Beginnings...

It seems that all I ever blog about these days is how I never blog anymore. I do apologize...again. Unfortunately my perennial excuse for not blogging has now gone by the wayside (mostly), so I'll have to think up another one. On Friday last I defended my master's thesis and my thesis has been accepted by the committee with just a few binding comments. That means that I've been passed and just need to make some adjustments to the second chapter before submitting the final copy for publication. I'd cheer but frankly I'm just too damned tired. I get the joy of walking the stage once again on April 25th, this time with a different style of black robe. That, it would appear, is the end of that.

It's strange that after so many years settling in to Calgary (and Okotoks) it's now time to pull up our roots and head off to settle in somewhere else again. It looks like, at this stage at least, that the next place we're off to is Hamilton, Ontario. I've been accepted into the Doctor of Philosophy program at McMaster Divinity College for this coming fall.

The funny thing about this move is that in a way it feels like going back in my life as well as going forward. My supervisor at McMaster is going to be Dr. Mark Boda. Mark was also one of my teachers in college, my mentor and the "floor-father" for my floor when I was a residence assistant, and he also led me and Jinny in our pre-marital counseling sessions. Jinny and I will also be hoping to reconnect with some old friends from college and before, including our good friend Kerry and her husband. Though I am thoroughly petrified about beginning doctoral work and trying to figure out how to live without money and with a child, the anticipation of reconnecting with people that I know and love helps to dull the edge of that fear.

GAHP 4, Wherein We Meet The Hound...um, I Mean Owl...of Heaven...

"Yet here it was, a letter, addressed so plainly there could be no mistake: Mr H. Potter, The Cupboard under the Stairs, 4 Privet Drive, Little Winging, Surrey."
(Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, 30).

Integral to Christian theology is the concept of calling. We believe that those who come to God do so not because of their own advanced sense of morality or spirituality, but because God has called them. This is key to the idea of salvation by grace. Salvation, that is participation in God's kingdom, is a gift given by God. Why don't I just quote St. Paul on the subject.

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast."
(Ephesians 2:8-9).

This is Paul's way of saying that it is God who initiates our relationship with him and our eventual welcome into his kingdom. We do not step out of the world around us simply because we want to or choose to do so. We are called. God enters into our world and calls us out of it into his. Harry's introduction to the wizarding world happens in a similar way.

The way in which Harry discovers that he is a wizard sounds something like the way that many people discover that they are Christians. It actually sounds to me very much like the way that Francis Thompson describes his own encounter with Christ in "The Hound of Heaven." Thompson describes the seemingly inevitable experience of coming to know Christ. Both Harry and Thompson are pursued, they are called, they are chased down by the unstoppable messenger of another world. That chase fills Thompson with fear and apprehension because he knows how it might end. Harry's chase does contain a note of apprehension, but is punctuated with a tone of deep curiosity, again because I think that Harry has a sense of how the chase might end.

Thompson strikes deeply at the heart of his fear of the "unhurrying chase" when he writes "For, though I knew His love Who followèd,/Yet I was sore adread/Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside." Here is the terror and the power of conversion. It is an experience that cannot be erased or removed. The person who has come to the point of decision between Jesus and what can only be called not-Jesus, can never go back. One way or another must be chosen and he must choose. You see, while salvation comes to us by God's grace, it is mediated by our faith. The decision to take up or to let fall God's gift lies with us. When the Hound of Heaven finally catches Thompson, he knows that his decision between Jesus and not-Jesus will finally have to be made.

Again the same is true for Harry. He is coming, at this point in the story, to what will be the defining decision of his life. The Owls and their letters are going to find him, and at that point he will have been called. He will then choose either wizard or what can only be called not-wizard.

The reason that I use the terms not-Jesus and not-wizard is simple. If Harry had chosen not to enter the wizarding world, not to attend Hogwarts, not to take on his role as Voldemort's arch-enemy, he would not, consequently, have been a muggle. Being a muggle is not among Harry's available options. He is not a muggle. Because he has been called, because he has received his letter, he is a wizard by nature. That nature cannot be removed and is not dependent upon Harry's choice. If he chose not to attend Hogwarts he might spend the rest of his life acting like a muggle, but what he would really be is not-a-wizard.

The same is true of a person who has come face to face with Christ. He or she might choose not to accept Christ, but the confrontation cannot be negated. That person must always be not-a-Christian. Why? Because such a person has looked at what Christianity is and like Thompson seen a choice. However, unlike Thompson, that initial fear of relinquishing our so-called freedom is simply too much. And so there is no recourse. One can no longer pretend that he or she hasn't heard the call, but the call has not been accepted and so what remains is simply not-Jesus.

And so we run, like Francis Thompson or Vernon Dursley. We try to escape from the inescapable. But, whether foot fall or wing beat, the messenger follows hard after us "with unhurrying chase and unperturbed pace...."

Sigh...Yet Another Meme...

If you read the comments on my last post you will see that I was both heckled for never posting on my blog, and tagged by my wife once again. In the interests of pacifying my friend and my wife, I shall take up the meme torch once more. So the idea is things in groups of eight. Off we go:

8 Things I'm Passionate About:

God as revealed in Jesus Christ
Jinny
Liam
Family
Friends
The Bible and Theology
Literature
Cooking

8 Things I Want to Do Before I Die:

Get my doctorate
Be a great husband and father
Go to Italy (Bologna in particular)
Write an academic book
Write a non-academic book
Open a restaurant (as a retirement project, if I get that far)
Live in one place long enough to become part of the community and see my son (and any other future kids) grow up.
Train and challenge a new generation of pastors for the Church

8 Things I Say Often:

Hello Monkey!! (to Liam usually)
I love you (to Jin or Liam or both)
Holly, shut up.
Okie dokie
If you say so
No, I haven't heard back from any grad schools
Sure thing Leslie (Leslie is by boss)
Damn, I make good food!

8 Books I've Read Recently (or am reading now):

With the Grain of the Universe - Stanley Hauerwas
Old Testament Theology - Gerhard von Rad
The Night Watch - Sergei Lukyanenko
The Day Watch - Sergei Lukyanenko
Resident Aliens - Stanley Hauerwas
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana - Umberto Eco
On Food and Cooking - Harold McGee
De-constructing the Dish - David Adjey

8 Movies I Could Watch to Over and Over (this used to be songs I could listen to, but I like movies better):

Memento
The Matrix (the whole series)
Sideways
Unforgiven
High Fidelity
Harry Potter (the whole series)
Star Wars (the original series)
Indiana Jones (the whole series)

8 Things I Like in a Friend:

Humour
Intelligence
Honesty
Sense of fun
Good taste in movies and books :)
Kindness
Grace
People who challenge me

And as always, not doing the end bit where I tag other people. This blog is where memes come to die.

I'm It...

I've been tagged by my wife, and am therefore it. Seven weird things about me. Here we go.

1. I love Iron Chef: America. No really, I'm not kidding. I watch Iron Chef every night before I go to bed. In fact, since there are only 7 spaces in which to hold my considerable weirdness, I'm going to cram my general love of Food TV into this item. If I'm watching television (excluding DVDs) I'm almost certainly watching Food TV. Actually I was watching Iron Chef when I posted this.

2. Like my wife, I'm a huge sci-fi/fantasy nerd. I do try to mask this obsession a little, but at the end of the day it simply cannot be hidden. In fact when Jinny says in her post that she can beat almost anybody at Harry Potter SceneIt...I'm the almost. The same goes for Star Wars Trivial Pursuit.

3. I think that semiotics and literary theory are fun. I am, in fact, the only person I know who has a favorite semiologist. My favorite semiologist, for the record, is Umberto Eco.

4. I like school.

5. I am the only person I know who liked both Happy Gilmore and Punch Drunk Love.

6. I love to cook. Sometimes I actually like the cooking even more than I like the eating.

7. I watch movies and read books over and over and over again. Some people do this, and some people don't. I do.

There ya go, the 7 requested pieces of personal weirdness. I won't be tagging anyone else on this little meme, mostly because I'm tired and don't feel like blogging anymore. If you read my blog and feel like doing this particular bloggish thing, knock yourself out. Cheers all.

Co-opting the Church...

I have a question. I mean this as an open question, one for which I have no real answer and would be perfectly happy to hear one.

Why is the Evangelical Church in North America so firmly entrenched on the conservative end of the political and economic spectrum? When I ask "why" I'm not looking for answers that explain this away, I'm looking for a defense of this logic. I know the theoretical reasons why evangelicals generally vote conservative: abortion and gay rights. But these are red herrings, smoke screens, false problems. In Canada at least, these questions have essentially been settled. There are no politicians, no political parties, no government hopefuls, who will make good on a promise to repeal laws legalizing abortion or gay marriage. It's not going to happen. I'm not defending this, in fact I'm actively anti-abortion, I'm just facing facts. If someone disagrees with my assessment, then by all means correct me. You're going to need a fair stack of hard evidence, though, because our current government campaigned on a platform of social conservatism and hasn't done one single thing to change the nature of either of these evangelical hot-button issues.

I suppose what I'm really looking for is a justification from evangelicals for their insistence on voting for and running as economic conservatives. Economic conservatives believe (in an extreme form) in a laissez-fair free market economy. Such right wing thinking is founded upon an individualist ethic. That is to say that in this ethic we are operating on the fundamental assumption that every individual should act in such a way as to protect his/her own interests above all else, and that the consequence of this kind of behavior will be a prosperous and harmonious society. I'm not joking, this is really the foundation of conservative economics. If you ask a Milton Friedman-style economist he/she will propound this very ethical system.

So how the hell did the Church get married to this ethical system? According to all of Scripture and all of Christian history (and I'd say all reason and common sense, but we'll set those aside for now) individualism is bad. Very bad, in fact. Not just bad or very bad, actually, but downright evil. How did we, the very people of God, get sucked into such a deep association with a system that is, at its very rational foundations, wicked and evil? Again, correct me if you think I'm wrong, but it seems to me that we've been co-opted people.

Let me put this as starkly as I can. I won't be a conservative stooge anymore. I'm against the pillaging of the poor. I'm against unrestricted free markets. I'm against policies that benefit the rich and the super-rich while crushing the middle-class and the poor. I'm against tax-cuts for corporations. I'm against the privatization of essential industries and services like the police, the fire department, hospitals, education and the military. I'm against for-profit wars. I'm against war in principle.

I'm against all of these things and all of their cognates for one reason, and only one reason. I'm a Christian.

So, Mr. Harper, Mr. Bush, you've taken something that belongs, not to me, but to God. You've taken his Church and co-opted her, deceiving her to gain power in order to execute agendas that run completely and incontrovertibly against her express purpose (Phil. 2 anyone?).

I'd like to say, therefore, on behalf of myself and Christians everywhere, that we'd like to have our Church back now. Please and thank you.

Riffing, Stewards and the Concept of Christian Economy...

Consider this post a riff on my wife's recent thoughts concerning Christianity and environmentalism.

In her post Jinny is essentially asking whether or not environmentalism should be at the core of a well constructed Christian morality. My answer to this is, not at all surprisingly, yes. It seems to me that God has created the world and that, as the most intelligent of his creatures, we have been given the responsibility of taking care of that world. This is a very easy case to make if I'm allowed to refer to the Christian story. All I have to do is tell the story of Genesis 1-2. If I were to have any trouble convincing people that taking care of the natural world is humanity's responsibility, one would consequently imagine that it would be people who don't believe in the Christian story. Strangely enough, however, that is not the case.

The people that I most often hear condemning environmental activism are conservative Christians. Please don't take this to mean that all conservative Christians are anti-green, or even that most of the conservative Christians I know are anti-green. I'm just saying that if I meet someone who thinks global warming and climate change are lefty propaganda, that person is usually a conservative Christian. This strikes me as not only wrong, but weird.

It seems that some Christians have lost touch with their own story. I think that this loss of connection might be related to the concept of stewardship that I grew up on. I'm not sure where exactly I picked it up, but at some point in my young, evangelical Christian life, I was given the impression that stewardship and being cheap were essentially the same thing. I was taught that as Christians we are supposed to be good stewards of the money that God has given us, which seemed to entail not being materialistic, getting good deals on everything, saving wisely, and, of course, giving to the church. That all sounds great on the surface, and some of it is perfectly good financial advice, but it doesn't really have much to do with stewardship.

Stewardship has nothing in particular to do with saving money or hoarding money or spending money or money at all for that matter. The relationship between stewardship and money is tangential at best. A steward takes care of someone else's possessions, that's his job. As I just mentioned, the argument for suggesting that humanity is meant to steward the earth and all that is in it is pretty easy to make if I can just quote Genesis 1:26-30...so I will.

26 Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." 27 And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 And God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." 29 Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; 30 and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, [I have given] every green plant for food ";and it was so.

Now perhaps some daft fool will argue that this passage indicates that we as humans are allowed to do with nature as we will. Strictly speaking this may be true, a steward does indeed have the opportunity to piss away all that has been entrusted to him, but I feel fairly confident that the true master of this world will not look kindly on a race of stewards who destroy his creation. The world does not belong to us. It never did and it never will. It is someone else's possession, and consequently it seems to me high-time that we start treating it that way.

Do you know the Greek word that we translate as "steward"? It's oikonomos. Sound like any English words you know? Economy perhaps? Coincidentally it is this word, economy, that is most often sounded as the trumpet-call against more stringent environmental regulations. "It will destroy business," we are told. "It will damage the economy," cry the naysayers. Which economy? We have allowed the meaning of the word economy to be reduced to one single context, the world of capitalism. What if there are other kinds of economy? The Greek concept of economy has more to do with the management of a task or of a divine mandate. Maybe we as Christians need to untangle ourselves from our political and material task-masters and realize that their economy is not our economy. Our economy, the task for which we have been given responsibility, is to manage God's world in a way that honors him as its creator.

Given this alternative Christian economy, the question now becomes: How can we not be environmentally minded?

Done...

Yes, it's true, the time has come...I'm finished my thesis. I hit the final keystrokes tonight and tomorrow morning I'll put all of the Word documents together into a single pdf and email it off to my supervisor for him to review. All I can say is that I'm happy and that my brain hurts. No promises of blogging anytime soon, my creative faculties are pretty much pooped out right now. Plus I've got a whole lotta renos and house work to catch up on. But when the inspiration and drive hit me again I'll be sure to let y'all know. Cheers everyone.

Intertextualilty...

Intertextuality is a concept that floats around the worlds of literary studies and semiotics (the study of signs, from literature to clothing labels). Here's how Jonathan Culler describes intertextuality:

Intertextuality thus becomes less a name for a work's relation to particular prior texts than a designation of its participation in the discursive space of a culture: the relationship between a text and the various languages or signifying practices of a culture and its relation to those texts which articulate for it the possibilities of that culture (The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature and Deconstruction).

A little while ago at work I listened to the entire The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. I'm not a huge King fan, mostly because I don't go in for horror as a general rule. The fact remains, however, that King is really quite a good writer. One of the things that makes me think he's a good writer (and almost a great writer) is the magnificent intertextual layering of the Dark Tower books, particularly book one, The Gunslinger. By the close of book six King's "participation in the discursive space of [our] culture" does start to collapse into a much more self-conscious use of outside cultural and literary material. King spends less time building characters and events that we know from our cultural-creativity-soup and more time tracing the lines of where each one of those characters comes from. I suppose you could condemn King for this, but I wonder if the problem isn't that Culler's concept of intertextuality is a little bit too narrow. Umberto Eco, for instance, has stated explicitly that many of the intertextual layers of Name of the Rose were created intentionally (see his essay "Intertextual Irony" in On Literature), and this from one of the world's leading novelists, literary critics and semioticians.

The above is a fairly meandering way to suggest that both intentional homage and completely unintentional intertexture are fun. They both make reading interesting and immediate and they help to tell so much more story than is on the page. For those of you still not quite getting the intertexture thing let me give you an example from King's The Gunslinger.

The main character in The Gunslinger is the Gunslinger. He does have a name, Roland, but the character is really the Gunslinger. King describes him as tall, thin, he has hard, cold, blue eyes and is a single-minded, all-but-invincible warrior. He carries two big revolvers, one on each thigh, and has two belts of bullets criss-crossed over his chest. He wears a flat-topped hat and looks old, as though he was chiseled out of bare rock. Picture this character, place him in your mind's eye. Is there any chance that he looks an awful lot like this?

In my very first reading of the very first description of Roland the Gunslinger, all I could think of was Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven (absolutely his best acting role and arguably his best directorial offering, which is really, really saying something). I know now that King actually did have a modified version of Eastwood in mind as he designed Roland, but that the idea of Eastwood would come so completely and perfectly to my mind is, I think, a product of an intertextual relationship. It's not just that King meant me to think of Eastwood that makes this relationship intertextual. He just wanted me to think of an archetypal character and in my culture (and King's as well) that archetypal character has found its most complete representation in Eastwood's various portrayals of the darkly aberrant yet honorable anti-hero. Cool hey?

What, you might well ask, is the point of all of this semiotic gibberish? Our lesson of the day from literary criticism: intertextuality is fun. That is all.

Required Reading...

I've been pounding away at my thesis with a little more gusto than usual over the last little while and have consquently been neglecting my poor little blog and its faithful band of readers. I know I say this a lot, but sorry about that. I don't have a lot to write at the moment, but I do have some reading assignments for you all.

Recently Fred (aka Slacktivist) has been posting extensively on North American Evangelicalism's obsession with the morality of homosexuality. Regardless of where you stand in this particular debate you need to read all seven posts in his Gay Hatin' Gospel series. I'll start you off here, with the very first in the series. This is an issue that Christians need to examine more critically than we have been. It's time to stop towing party lines (whether liberal or conservative) and start finding an honest and loving way to be Christians to the gays and lesbians in our lives.

For those of you who have been following, and perhaps even shaken by, Richard Dawkins' anti-religion apologetics, you need to read Nicholas Lash's response in the New Blackfriars. In a relatively short article Lash rips into Dawkins' argument to a rather astonishing degree. I haven't read Dawkins' book, but from the excerpts I've read here and there it seems to me that Lash is right to indict Dawkins for being ignorant of the copious amount of research and literature available on religious and theological topics.

In any case, since I'm not writing anything here, you may as well go and read some of the above.

GAHP 3, Wherein MOTORBIKES DON'T FLY!...

"'I had a dream about a motorbike,' said Harry, remembering suddenly. 'It was flying.' Uncle Vernon nearly crashed into the car in front. He turned right around in his seat and yelled at Harry, his face like a gigantic beetroot with a moustache, 'MOTORBIKES DON'T FLY!'"
(Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone, 24).

Except, it turns out, that they do. In Jo Rowling's world of wizards and muggles motorbikes do, in fact, fly (though in flagrant violation of Ministry of Magic laws concerning the enchantment of muggle artifacts, cf. the Weasley's flying Ford Anglia). What is more, Vernon Dursley knows that they fly, or at least that they very well might fly if a wizard got hold of one. Vernon Dursley knows about the wizarding world. He knows that it exists, he knows that Harry's parents were wizards, he knows about Albus Dumbledore, and he also knows by now that Harry is a wizard too. Why, then, does he continually close his eyes to the relentless truth that magic is a part of the fabric of reality in his world?

One of my good friends is an honest to goodness magician. It's what he does for a living. He makes tables fly and women vanish and he can change an ace of spades into a jack of diamonds. His name is Derek and he is the person, more than anyone else, who has helped me to see the danger and horror of that accompanies the death of the imagination. He helped me to understand how to look at the world with a greater sense of wonder. He showed me that above all we choose to see wonder, we choose to experience magic in our lives. I have no interest in knowing how it is that Derek makes things fly. People who need to know a magician's tricks have completely failed to understand what it is that magicians do. They don't understand that knowing won't make it more magical. The magic, the wonder, is in the choosing. We experience the magical and miraculous when we adjust the way that we see the world.

It was Chesterton who said "the world will not perish due to a lack of wonders, but due to a lack of wonder." All of the great accomplishments of civilizations, all of the glory and wonder of creation, and all of the art and literature the world has to offer, every miracle ever performed, are so much nonsense and waste in the hands of a person who is unwilling to see them. The same is true of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is Vernon Dursley's great sin. He has no interest in living a life of wonder. He chooses to live a mundane life.

GAHP 2, Wherein We Meet Albus Dumbledore...

"Nothing like this man had ever been seen in Privet Drive."
(Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, 12).

Jo Rowling has explicitly stated that Dumbledore was never intended as a "Christ" figure. I can't see why anybody would ever have thought him one, but it's always good to get such things out of the way.

What Dumbledore is, is a wizard. He is, I would say, the wizard. Though it may be the case that "everything from his name to his boots was unwelcome" in Privet Drive, it is equally true that "everything from his name to his boots" epitomize what a good wizard can be. Though one might fixate upon Dumbledore's great moments of power and authority (and there are indeed many) in trying to understand the character, all that we need as readers is found on the 12th page of The Philosopher's Stone. Dumbledore is a kind, whimsical, joy filled man. He knows laughter, but he also knows pain (the broken nose, we will finally learn, tells us this). He is a man of great depth, but he does not take his own depth too seriously. What a wonderful way to live.

One of my friends once said that though Socrates and Jesus never met, they would have been great friends if they had. I would suggest the same thing about Jesus and Dumbledore. Though the Gospels never tell us that Jesus laughed I have always imagined him as a man who could live honestly in both despair and joy. He could eat and drink and enjoy all that life offers in one moment, and in the next he could lift the suffering and self-tortured up out of their mire.

There are a great many things that can be said about Jesus, and I think that all of the true things we can say are very good, but my favorite thing about Jesus is what a wonderful human being he was. In much the same way that Dumbledore is the wizard, Jesus was (and is) the human.

Not surprisingly Jesus is also, like Dumbledore, seldom welcome in the bourgeois world that we inhabit. But, again like Dumbledore, he is here nevertheless.

Wise Justice...

Fred Clark has another great post over on Slacktivist (even if the title is a little bit on the nose). He questions, once again, the Bush administration's so-called "just war" in Iraq and the potential for a just war against Iran. Bush and co. have consistently claimed that the US invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq were and are just. The reasons that I've heard usually have something to do with Weapons of Mass Destruction (or WMD-related weaponish-type kinds of programs) or the tyranny and aggression of Sadam Hussein's totalitarian regime. Fred rightly notes that even if Bush's claims about WMDs or Hussein's tyranny are accurate (and we know now that the former claims were certainly not accurate by any stretch of the imagination), these still do not qualify for the traditional definition of a "just war."*

One of the real troubles in attempting to wage a just war is that you need to be able to determine the potential damage the aggressor may cause, the likelihood of being able to avert that potential damage, and the possibility a war might actually cause more suffering than it averts. When determining whether or not a war is just you need a very important faculty. You need wisdom.

One of the kids in my youth group back in Regina once asked me about the difference between wisdom and intelligence. I gave the fairly pat answer that wisdom is the ability to apply intelligence correctly. He didn't buy it, and rightly so. A better understanding of wisdom is found in the biblical Proverbs. Wisdom in Proverbs is a moral faculty. It is the ability to make not only good decisions, but right decisions.

The unjust invasion of Iraq is not only an intellectual failure (though it is that), it is first and foremost a moral failure. It is unwise and therefore unjust. George Bush has always been something of an enigma to me. On television he sounds, to be frank, like a bumbling idiot. But I don't believe that a truly stupid person could be a governor and then a president. I do, however, believe that a fool could do those things. What the war in Iraq, and current American foreign policy in general, demonstrates is not that Bush and Cheney and their advisers are stupid. It demonstrates that they are fools.

*I'm pretty sure that his Catholic definition for a just war is actually Thomas Aquinas' definition, but I don't have any of Thomas' works close at hand so I can't be positive.

Redemption, Dependence and Question Number 11...

When I first conceived of the previous post, 10 Questions, one of the questions that I was planning to use was, Who is your favorite obscure bluegrass/gospel musician? For some reason I just forgot to include the question. The answer is Derek Webb. A little while ago I decided to stick one of Webb's songs on a mix CD. I hadn't listened to that song or any of Webb's solo music for a long time and I started jonesing for some more Webb. Consequently I've been listening to Webb's first solo effort, She Must and Shall Go Free, while driving to and from work.

There are very few musicians, particularly musicians who have come up through and become famous in the Contemporary Christian Music industry, who have the ability to create deeply meaningful lyrical creations. Derek Webb is one of those few. Listening to a Derek Webb song is a lot like reading Bonhoeffer or Barth or Grentz or Chesterton, but with a catchy guitar lick in the background.

My favorite song on She Must and Shall Go Free (for the time being) is called Nothing (Without You). Check out the lyrics:

I’ve got the dress, i’ve got the ring
i’ve got a song that i can sing
i’ve got the bread, i’ve got the wine
but i’ve got the life i’ve left behind
i’ve got everything, but i’ve got nothing
without you

i’ve got the law on my heart
i’ve got your love tearing me apart
i’ve got a vow that i can’t keep
but i’ve got your promise getting me to sleep
i’ve got everything, but i’ve got nothing
without you

i’ve got your works, i’ve got my faith
i’ve got all the wine that you can make
i am the kiss of your betrayer
but i’ve got your grace on every layer
i’ve got everything, but i’ve got nothing
without you

(bridge)
‘cause you see it’s all just a show
you either hate it or you don’t
and only time will tell the difference
if you get it clearly or with interference

i’ve got the race, got the election
but win or lose, i’ve got protection
i found a lobbyist in the devil
but i got salvation in a rebel
i’ve got everything, but i’ve got nothing
without you

What Webb understands about Christianity, and what he communicates so powerfully with all of those familiar inconsistencies that often devour our lives, is that the redemption promised in the Scriptures absolutely requires dependence. By this I mean to say that I cannot redeem myself.

In the letters of Paul the English word redemption is a translation of the Greek apolutrosis (anybody have a good Greek font that works in Blogger?). What many people don't know is that the origins of the word are found in the slave trade of Jesus' day. At that point in history slavery was simply a cultural fact. Slaves were everywhere. Anybody could become a slave if his or her life just took the wrong turn.* But any slave could be freed if his or her life just took the right turn. The act of freeing a slave generally involved purchasing the slave (you really can't free what you don't own), and that is where the word apolutrosis comes from. It means the act of buying back, or redeeming, a slave. This is the concept that Paul is co-opting in Ephesians 1:7 when he says that in Christ we have "redemption through his blood." He is saying that we were captive, held in slavery, and have now been redeemed, purchased and set free. The cost of this freedom was the life of Jesus. This is why I can't redeem myself. I just don't have the requisite capital.

When Derek Webb sings "I've got everything, but I've got nothing without you," this is, I think, what he is trying to say. He is saying that the brokenness of the world, the brokenness in my heart and my life, cannot be healed by my efforts or yours. The redemption, the release from slavery, is dependent upon Christ. I am, and must continually remain, dependent upon Christ.

*For an entertaining (albeit horribly violent) look at pre-Christian culture, including the practice of slavery, check out HBO's hit-series Rome.