Movie Recommendation

'I am Legend'. Just watched it last night. Highly recommended.

It's a 'zombie movie' in the same way that Signs is an 'alien movie'. The subject matter provides the driving force for the plot, but there are deeper philosophical questions below the surface. Ok, to be fair, Signs was more blatantly about NOT aliens than I am Legend is about NOT zombies, but watch the movie(s) and tell me if the comparison is apt.

All I can say is, I was scared out of my skin, and I was also deeply moved. A surprising combo for a Will Smith apocalyptic movie...

Evangelicals and homosexuality

Great thoughts on how gays and lesbians hear typical evangelical discourse on homosexuality here. Give it a read.
:-)

A Prayer of Confession

Gracious Father, good Creator, forgive me for believing in Barack Obama more than I believe in you. I confess I have been more excited about his politics than about your Church.

Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a Democrat. Though you bore the full weight of racism and oppression within your very flesh, still I have not believed that humanity is one in you. Forgive me for believing there is salvation in the words of a politician.

Holy healing Spirit, breath of Life, restore your Creation, marred by the divisions of race, gender and social strata. Remind me, and remind the Body you enliven, that wholeness and reconciliation are through Christ alone. You alone our hope. 'Yes we can'? Not without you.

He is Risen!

Today we celebrate the victory of our Lord over death. Today we marvel at the Creator’s New Creation. Today the healing Spirit binds all who are in Christ as one. Because God first loved us, now we are free to love in return, and we pledge allegiance to the unstoppable Reign of God.
We pledge allegiance.
To a peace that is not like Rome’s.
We pledge allegiance.
To the gospel of enemy-love.
We pledge allegiance.
To the kingdom of the poor and broken.
We pledge allegiance.
To a king who loves his enemies so much he died for them.
We pledge allegiance.
To the least of these, with whom Christ dwells.
We pledge allegiance.
To the transnational Church which transcends the artificial borders of nations.
We pledge allegiance.
To the cross rather than the sword.
We pledge allegiance.
To the banner of love above any flag.
We pledge allegiance.
To the one who rules with a towel rather than an iron fist.
We pledge allegiance.
To the one who rides a donkey rather than a war horse.
We pledge allegiance.
To the revolution that sets both oppressed and oppressors free.
We pledge allegiance.
To the way that leads to life.
We pledge allegiance.
To the slaughtered lamb.
We pledge allegiance.
And together we proclaim God’s praises, from Baghdad to Khartoum, from Paris to Nanjing, from Jerusalem to Milwaukee.
Long live the slaughtered lamb!
Long live the slaughtered lamb!
Long live the slaughtered lamb!

[adapted from Jesus for President, by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw]

God and Gender

Thought provoking post over on Julie Clawson's blog.
Excerpt:

"A couple of days ago, Mark Oestreicher posted his thoughts on gender pronouns for God. He described his lengthy journey into understanding that solely using male pronouns limits God and alienates many women. [...]
But of course his post has stirred much controversy. There are those fearful that Youth Specialties will take a similar stance (to which my reply is - “what? actually be biblical?”). They claim that they (as youth pastors) would not be allowed to attend YS events if YS said that God isn’t strictly male. I personally find it depressing that a church would promote idolatry over unity or truth. Others there though claimed that if one doesn’t believe God is male then one therefore doesn’t believe the Bible is inerrant (which I think they are inappropriately using as a synonym for true). I was just fascinated by the whole thing. I’m used to this topic being taboo, I’m used to being told that it’s just easier to use male default language, I’m used to people being uncomfortable with including female metaphors in their God talk, but I haven’t heard such extreme “God has a penis” rhetoric in a long time."

NT Wright on Holy Week

"That rhythm of private and public is what we find, sharply and starkly, in the events of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Today, Jesus takes the disciples into a private room, and the door is shut. Nobody else knows what’s going on. But the words he says there in private, and still more the small but earth-shattering actions he performs, will turn within twenty-four hours into the most ghastly and shocking display of GOD in public: God shamed and mocked, God beaten up and HUMILIATED, God stripped naked and hung up to die. You can’t get more public than crucifixion by the main west road out of Jerusalem. And, as in fact you can observe throughout Jesus’ ministry, you need that rhythm of private and public at every stage. The private without the public becomes gnosticism, ESCAPISM, a safe and narcissistic spirituality. But the public without the private becomes political posturing, meaningless gestures, catching the eye without engaging the heart. We need both; and the events through which we live today enable us to inhabit both, and be strengthened thereby for the ministries both private and public to which we are called."

(source)

Boyd on Biblical Genocide

Fantastic questions over on Greg Boyd's blog (check them out here). Some excerpts:

"Here's an inspired verse I don't find particularly beautiful.

Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction...
Happy are those who seize your infants
and dash them against the rocks (Psalms 137:8-9)

When an army conquered a city in the ancient world the victors would sometimes celebrate by smashing the heads of the infants against rocks. (Possibly inspired by this verse, this practice was resurrected by Christian Crusaders conquering Muslim cities). In this dark passage, the Psalmist is eagerly looking forward to this being done to Babylonian infants. He thinks the warriors who get to do this are lucky!

Most beautiful book in the world? Sorry. I'm not feel'n it.

Let's be honest. This passage is barbarically ugly, and we've got to wonder what on earth it's doing in the "inspired Word of God"! How are we to see this passage as "inspired" in light of the fact that Jesus taught us to love and bless our enemies, not hate and curse them? How could the same Lord who taught us to turn the other cheek, never retaliate and never use the sword inspire the Psalmist to gloat over the splattering of infants' heads? If harboring anger and speaking nasty words ("Raca") to another person puts us in danger of [judgment], as Jesus taught (Matt 5), what kind of danger must the Psalmist be in for harboring this utterly vindictive attitude toward the Babylonians?

[...]

In my opinion, this is the most challenging objection to the Christian faith and most difficult theological question of the Christian faith. It's a problem I want to wrestle with in my next few posts. But I want you to be forewarned: If you think I'm going to have nice and tidy answers to this question, you're going to be disappointed. I don't. I'm still in process, entertaining a number of possibilities."

As usual, I appreciate Greg's honesty. I look forward to reading his future posts on the topic. I hope you check them out too.

Peace.

Stream of consciousness: responsibility and freedom

Am I morally responsible for that which I did not freely choose? If I choose path X over path Y, it is because I can conceptualize the difference between X and Y. To the extent that Y is available to me without my being aware of it, my 'choice' of X can hardly be described as a 'free' choice.

Can I be held responsible then, for being on a path when I do not know another is available? Perhaps I can be criticized because I should have stopped and thought about it, and discovered the other path(s). But what causes me to stop and think about something? The brain typically functions on auto-pilot, unless something (from outside?) triggers its self-reflective capacities. But what triggers self-reflection? The questioning of others no doubt. Perhaps also the experience of moral crisis, that is, one's conscience. But this of course assumes that one's conscience is properly formed. A malformed conscience will not 'stop' one because its powers of moral perception are damaged. Frequently, our consciences are damaged for reasons outside our control (e.g. upbringing, environment... the fall).

The solution to bad character is of course education. But then, can we be held specifically responsible for failing to have received an education which we do not know we need? Do we blame cats for torturing mice? The moral education which makes torturing sentient beings unthinkable is unavailable to a cat for reasons of its neural structure (and human inability to overcome it).

Being blamed for moral shortcoming triggers in us our justificatory brain module. I hear "you shouldn't have done that," and I immediately think, "what are you talking about? It was clearly the most obvious thing to do in the moment!" The point of course, is that my perception of 'the moment' was deficient in some way.

Growth then, occurs when I take responsibility for my inability to 'see' (the morally salient features of my situation). By bearing the weight of my own malformed character (which I probably have not have chosen!), I teach myself to be sensitive to similar circumstances. I associate negative feelings (of guilt and maybe shame) with a particular attitude or circumstance, such that my conscience is formed into triggering an appropriate 'reflective moment' in analogous situations. Taking responsibility for my unchosen character frees me to choose to behave differently. In this way, the vision I share with my accuser of what 'ideal me' looks like grounds my transition from 'actual me' to 'ideal me'. (Truly good moral agents are thus formed, gathered, from the messy wreckage of a fallen world. This is truly the work of the Spirit.)

Ironically, the more I take responsibility for my (formally unfree) actions, the more I am formally free to act differently (because of my 'moments of conscience'), and therefore the more likely I am to conform myself to what I should be, and the more I become good. The more I become good, the less I need to take responsibility for unchosen bad acts (presumably because I do less of them). Taking responsibility thus creates formal freedom. Formal freedom creates the possibility for change. Change can be harnessed for transformation. Transformation makes me good in character. And a good character makes formal freedom unnecessary. The true freedom of good character makes formal freedom obsolete.

Succinctly, taking responsibility, which is to say, accepting the moral consequences of something beyond our control, which is to say, being enslaved to the good, leads us to true freedom, via the formal freedom caused by pangs of conscience. Slavery leads to freedom.

Our Just God: Person or Principle?

R.C. Sproul has said:

"The Gospel is called the 'good news' because it addresses the most serious problem that you and I have as human beings, and that problem is simply this: God is holy and He is just, and I’m not. And at the end of my life, I’m going to stand before a just and holy God, and I’ll be judged. And I’ll be judged either on the basis of my own righteousness – or lack of it – or the righteousness of another. The good news of the Gospel is that Jesus lived a life of perfect righteousness, of perfect obedience to God, not for His own well being but for His people. He has done for me what I couldn’t possibly do for myself. But not only has He lived that life of perfect obedience, He offered Himself as a perfect sacrifice to satisfy the justice and the righteousness of God. " (source)

Now, notice how the legal problem of the individual's standing before God becomes the sole definition of 'justification'. Notice also that Jesus' sacrifice is necessary because of 'the justice and the righteousness of God'. My question is this: how does our conception of God's justice affect how we view Christ's death?
The background for this question is the Socratic question of whether the good is loved by the gods because it is good, or whether we call 'good' that which is loved by the gods. The question that Socrates raises in the Euthyphro is one of the relationship between the gods and the good (or perhaps in that dialogue its 'piety' that's at stake... I don't remember clearly).
But we can ask the same question: what is the relationship between justice and God? Is justice whatever God does, or is justice that which God must do? Which do we place higher: God's subservience to an impartial justice, or God's personhood which supercedes mere 'legal' justice?

There are a host of false dichotomies in the above paragraph, of course. But I have to wonder how faithful to Scripture this picture of God being constrained by a regard for abstract justice is. If we emphasize the personhood of God, does this lower the importance of justice? Or perhaps reframe it? What is 'justice'? And is 'justice' in the penal substitution model of the atonement the same thing as 'justice' in Scripture? If N.T. Wright is correct to suggest that "God's justice" in Romans refers primarily to God's covenant faithfulness (to bless the world through the seed of Sarah and Abraham), then what becomes of Sproul's definition of 'the Gospel'?

Righteousness 'by proxy' as it were, which is the heart of the Christian's justification before God on a Reformed model, is already hard to comprehend. A relational context which emphasizes that God is a person, and not a legalist embodiment of principle, makes this easier to begin to comprehend. But on the Reformed model, it is precisely the impartial, absolute, disembodied eternal 'justice' of God which is made central to 'the problem' addressed by the Gospel. Making sense of 'imputation' of righteousness in that context is much more difficult. If God's justice is that strict, how can it be so loose as to count one man's perfection as the perfection of other men and women?

The good news (Good News?) of course is that God is impartial not in an abstract sense, but in a personal, loving sense. God's justice takes into account our circumstances rather than ignoring them (and is this not true justice?). God is fair. This does not mean that our brokenness and the evil of our hearts is somehow 'ok', but rather simply that God does not punish us for that which is not our fault. The legalistic binds of evangelical Reformed theologies of the atonement and of the gospel are escaped with a closer reading of Scripture which simultaneously emphasizes the fairness and justice of God, and the corporate nature of salvation which retrieves the centrality of the promise to Abraham and Sarah.

Sorry Sproul...