Category: Spirituality

Categories
Spirituality

Reading Journals

Last week I picked up a copy of The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann.  There is something beautiful about reading a thoughtful and spiritual person’s journals.  In Schmemann — in his formal theology of worship and liturgy and in his personal journals — I feel that I’m finding a kindred spirit.  Here is a person of great learning and insight, a theologian and pastor, who struggled with the daily grind of life and the difficulties of dealing with people in the Church, who often becomes quite discouraged, but who always returns to the practices that proclaim light and resurrection. 

Perhaps it’s particularly helpful that his ecclesiastical context — Eastern Orthodoxy in the 1970’s and 80’s — is so far removed from mine.  The joys and the problems are the same.  No one is immune — but also no one is alone.  Here, for example, is part of his entry for March 26, 1973:

Today, I thought about it all:  about the low level of church life, about fanaticism, lack of tolerance, the enslavement of so many people.  A ‘New Middle Ages’ is engulfing us in the sense of a new barbarian era.  Many churchmen are choosing and, what is worse, love Ferapont [a Dostoevsky character who is illiterate and rigid].  Especially ‘clear’ is the fact that all that is higher,  more complex, more difficult to comprehend — all this is a temptation and has to be destroyed….  If one remains in the system, one accepts it, albeit unwillingly, along with its methods.  If one leaves — in the role of a prophet or an accuser — one slides into arrogance and pride.  I feel constantly tortured and torn.

Or this on March 30, 1973:

Only when we write it down do we understand how much of our time is spent empty, how much fuss there is, not worthy of our attention, unimportant yet devouring our hearts.  All these days, in a state of total exhaustion as well as revulsion at the duties I need to be performing.  I find myself passively watching television.  But at the same time, when lecturing in the morning, I feel inspired again and again.

Or this, on October 22, 1974:

Yesterday we had a faculty meeting at our house.  Rather peaceful, but, Lord, how difficult it is for people not only to agree with each other, but simply to hear the other.  If it is the case with a small group of people who are essentially of one mind, what about the world at large?  Division and alienation are the essence of the original sin.  Unity can be restored only ‘in Christ.’

 Yes Father Schmemann — we need to hear this today again.

Categories
Daybook Spirituality

Daybook: Feb. 25 – March 8, 2011

February 25 – March 8, 2011

Lectionary

Psalm 40:1-3

I waited patiently for the LORD;
And He inclined to me and heard my cry.
He brought me up out of the pit of
destruction, out of the miry clay,
And He set my feet upon a rock making my
footsteps firm.
He put a new song in my mouth, a song of
praise to our God;
Many will see and fear
And will trust in the LORD.

Reflection

“I am convinced that if people would really hear Holy Week, Pascha, the Resurrection, Pentecost, the Dormition, there would be no need for theology. All of theology is there. All that is needed for one’s spirit, heart, mind and soul. How could people spend centuries discussing justification and redemption? It is all in these services. Not only is it revealed, it simply flows in one’s heart and mind. The more I live, the more convinced I am that most people love something else and expect something else from religion and in religion. For me this is idolatry, and it often makes contact with people so difficult.” — Fr. Alexander Schmemann

Prayer

God who waits
while we rush off
to spend the riches you’ve given us
on unworthy pursuits
that always end with us slopping with the pigs
in the mud.

God who waits
each morning outside the gates
straining into the distance
to see if we’ve finally begun,
once again,
the long and tired slog back home,
into your happy embrace,
into feasting and laughter and dance.

God who waits
here we are
now waiting with you.

Categories
Spirituality

A Lenten Blog Comment Fast

I really enjoy blogging, including commenting on others’ blogs, in many ways.  It has helped me clarify my thinking about many things.  It gives me an outlet to talk and debate about things I think are important.  At its best, I’ve learned from some really smart people, and have made a few virtual friends.

But, I am about to take a sabbatical from commenting on blogs, at least for my Lenten fast.  I’ll keep posting here at TGD — at the very least I’ll work on my Daybook — but I’ll be keeping comments closed and I won’t be commenting on other blogs.

I’d like to commend this idea of a Lenten blog comment fast to others, particularly if you’ve found this to be true in the past year (these are all things I’ve done):

  • You’ve managed to insult someone you admire.  I did this very recently to one of the public figures I admire most, someone I consider a sort of virtual mentor;
  • You’ve posted a blog comment in anger that displays your anger;
  • A debate in blog comments has distracted you from interactions with friends or family;
  • You’ve taken a tenuous position in a blog comment, a position you might not really want to endorse, to win a debate;
  • You’ve made assumptions about another commenter that turn out not to be true;
  • You’ve posted a comment primarily to get yourself noticed or bring attention to yourself;
  • A blog debate has caused you to lose sleep.

I could add to this list, but the picture is clear.  James 1:19-20 summarizes a wealth of Biblical wisdom on this:  “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.”

If you find, as I do, that when commenting on blogs you are often slow to listen, quick to speak, and quick to become angry — it’s time for a fast.

Categories
Spirituality Theology

McKnight on Blogging on Bell

Scot McKnight’s post today on the Rob Bell controversy is a must-must-read, both for its take on the topic in general and its exhortation to how we should discuss the topic. I reproduce it below.

I stood in horror watching the blogosphere light up last week, but my horror was not simply over the accusations made against an author whose book was not even yet available nor just over those who were denouncing Rob Bell for what they were absolutely certain was universalism. No the horror was that there was a volley of posts put up about hell. It looked like a tug of war between Love Wins! and Wrath Wins! Is this what we need? the way to proceed? the way to find resolution?

My horror, then, was three-fold: first, the image of God that is depicted when hell becomes the final, or emphatic, word and, second, the absence of any context for how to talk about judgment in the Bible and, third, the kinds of emotion expressed: we saw too much gloating and pride and triumphalism on both sides. I felt like those who watched the sinking of the Titanic and who didn’t cringe at the thought of thousands sinking into the Atlantic to a suffocating death. They were instead singing and dancing to a jig that they were right or had been predicting the sinking all along.

If there is an eternity, and I believe there is, and if there is a judgment, and I believe there is, then let us keep the immensity and gravity of it all in mind and refrain from flippancy, gloating, triumphalism — and let it reduce us to sobriety and humility and prayer. When Abraham faced the prospects of the destruction of Sodom in Genesis 18, he didn’t gloat that he was on the safe side but supplicated YHWH for mercy for those who weren’t. We need more Abrahams.

I have myself weighed in on this Eternity.Life debate in my book One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow, so I don’t want to weigh in again or repeat what I have already said. Instead, I want to set this discussion into a slightly different context: the image of God that jumps from the pages of the Bible in passages that might be called final triumphant grace. I will put it this way: there are passages that sound univeralistic, that sound like somehow God will reconcile all things in the End, and that if we don’t occasionally sound universalistic we are not being as biblical as God — and as Jesus and Paul. Yes, these passages are not the only ones to consider, but — let this be said — neither are they cushioned or cautioned or cornered off by Jesus and Paul so they don’t give the wrong impression. What the Bible is talking about here is that God’s grace will win. God will make all things right. I’m not a universalist but I want this language to be the way I talk about these topics.  So, here goes:

I begin with Jesus, whose parable of the Prodigal Son should make us stop in our tracks, from Luke 15:28-32:

28 “The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him!’31 “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

And now to Paul, beginning with 1 Corinthians 15:20-28:

20 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 23 But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. 24 Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27 For he “has put everything under his feet.” Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. 28 When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.

And especially Colossians 1:15-20:

15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

And this line from James:

Mercy triumphs over judgment (2:13).

And, once again, I don’t consider these to be the only passages that have to be considered. But let this grand and glorious vision of hope and triumphant grace and putting things to rights be in our minds and on our lips and in our emotions whenever … whenever … whenever we talk about final matters.

To talk about wrath apart from this depiction of the grace-consuming God is to put forward a view of God that is not only unbiblical but potentially monstrous. And, to put forward a view of God that is absent of final judgment, yes of wrath, yes of eternal judgment, is to offer a caricature of the Bible’s God.

No one should begin to talk about hell without spending fifteen minutes in pausing prayer to consider the horror of it all.

I find some people can get intoxicated on wrath and it can lead them in a triumphalist dance of anger. And I find some who get intoxicated with a flabby sense of grace. Isn’t it better to get lost in the dance of God’s good and triumphant grace and of making things right? If we are to be intoxicated, let it be from imbibing the hope and grace of God’s love which will both win and be right in the End.

Remember the supplications of Abraham. Every.Time.

Categories
Biblical Studies Spirituality Theology

The Bible and Sex

In Unprotected Texts:  The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire, Boston University Professor of Religion Jennifer Wright Knust seeks to demonstrate that the Bible is far less clear about sexual ethics than most religious conservatives claim.  This effort only partially succeeds.

Knust adeptly dismantles the proof-text approach to using the Bible to construct sexual ethics.  Some readers who have never studied the Bible carefully might be surprised by some of her observations.  People who know the Hebrew Bible only through Veggie Tales, for example, might be shocked to learn that the Patriarchs, sexually speaking, often were not very nice men; or that the Levitical and Deuteronomic law codes were soft on divorce, unfair, by modern standards, to women, and tolerated concubinage; or that the later Israelites mixed worship of God with worship of the more licentious Canaanite gods.  Similarly, people who are unfamiliar with the details of the Jesus’ teachings on marriage and the family might be confused by Jesus’ statement that his followers must “hate” their parents (Luke 14:26) or his apparent teaching the there will be no marriage in heaven (Matt. 22:30).  And St. Paul’s ambivalence — perhaps even squeamishness — about sex and marriage in 1 Corinthians 7 is notoriously confusing, particularly for anyone trying to construct a “Biblical perspective on marriage.”

Knust highlights these and other oddities and conundrums in the Bible’s various narratives, laws and exhortations concerning marriage and sex.  This provides a useful and readable catalog, if one that very often that is transparently selling very modern, feminist readings of the text.  At times this modern-critical-feminist lens simply distorts good scholarship, as with Knust’s unequivocal conclusion that the “love” shared between David and Jonathan was homoerotic.

None of these things are surprising, however, for anyone who has actually made some effort to study the Bible.  Knust writes as though she is revealing unmentionable secrets and breaking some sort of code of silence, but that simply is not so.  For example, I remember delighting to learn, as a teenager, that our Sunday School chorus “His Banner Over Me is Love” employed a metaphor from Song of Solomon that was unequivocally and graphically sexual (“he invites me to his banqueting table….”) (see Song of Solomon 2, which also includes a rich variety of other sexual images — “his fruit is sweet to my taste” (v. 3), “his left arm is under my head, and his right arm embraces me” (v. 4), “do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires” (v. 7), and “he browses among the lilies” (v. 16)).

More importantly, Knust fails to set her observations into the broader context of the narrative of redemption and the life and practice of the Church.  Her hermeneutic seems to be merely deconstructive within the presuppositions of strong feminism.  She never sets the various Biblical texts within the framework of the life of God’s people through history, except perhaps to suggest that Israel and the Church have gotten sexual ethics completely wrong.

Even this failure can provide a useful lesson, because it is precisely the same failure that renders proof-texting meaningless.  Knust is correct to point out that the Bible cannot be used as a blunt weapon in today’s culture wars — at least without the context of a robust ecclesiology.  It is also helpful to examine whether the Church has truly been faithful in its appropriation of the Biblical texts for the construction of ethics. Often it has not.

But with all their failures and inconsistencies, both Israel and the Church bear witness to very long and rich traditions of privileging the full expression of human sexuality within the context of covenantal marriage between a man and a woman.  These traditions are rooted deeply in the Biblical narrative as well as in the Bible’s specific laws, commands and warnings regarding sex.  If we cannot merely offer simplistic, legalistic answers to the questions asked about sexuality, gender, and equality in our historical and social context, nor can we merely and equally legalistically wipe away the heart of our community’s tradition based only on the not-very-new observation that the Bible is often culturally messy.  If anything, in our times, we need a renewed turn back towards the Church as the family in which unmarried and married people practice a joyful purity that bears witness to the goodness of who we are as created beings, male and female, in the image and likeness of the Triune God.

 

Categories
Daybook Spirituality

Daybook: Feb. 24, 2011

February 24, 2011

Lectionary

Prov. 8:1-11

Does not widom call out?
  Does not understanding raise her voice?
On the heights along the way,
  where the paths meet, she takes her stand;
beside the gates leading into the city,
  at the entrances, she cries aloud:
‘To you, O men, I call out;
  I raise my voice to all mankind.
You who are simple, gain prudence;
  you who are foolish, gain understanding.
Listen, for I have worthy things to say;
  I open my lips to speak what is right.
My mouth speaks what is true,
  for my lips detest wickedness.
All of the words of my mouth are just;
  none of them are crooked or perverse.
To the discerning all of them are right;
  they are faultless to those who have knowledge.
Choose my instruction instead of silver,
  knowledge rather than choice gold,
for wisdom is more precious than rubies,
  and nothing you desire can compare with her.

Reflection

“The Christian who becomes too concerned with theology is liable to confuse erudition with faith, knowledge with truth.  He is liable to think that words can capture God, and logic can define his existence.  He will never realize that inward passion which is the mark of faith.  In the case of a lover, it is a sure sign that passion is waning when the lover wishes to treat the object of his love objectively.  Passion and reflection generally exclude each other.  Become objective is our way of avoiding truth, because the truth threatens our comfort.  The passion for truth is man’s perdition; but it is his exaltation also.” — Soren Kierkegaard

Prayer

Christ be with me, Christ within me,

Christ behind me, Christ before me,

Christ beside me, Christ to win me,

Christ to comfort and restore me.

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,

Christ in hearts of all that love me,

Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the Name,

The strong Name of the Trinity;

By invocation of the same.

The Three in One, and One in Three,

Of Whom all nature hath creation,

Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:

Praise to the Lord of my salvation,

Salvation is of Christ the Lord.

(from St. Patrick’s Breastplate)

Categories
Daybook Spirituality

Daybook: Feb. 16-23, 2011

February 16-23, 2011

Lectionary

Mark 9:38-40

John said to Jesus, “Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.” Jesus replied, “Do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me. For whoever is not against us is for us.”

Reflection

“In Christianity there is both choice and no choice, freedom and compulsion.  Christianity says to man, ‘you shall choose to accept the eseential truth of life’; and this truth is so compelling that you have no choice.  Indeed once you perceive this essential truth, you have no choice but to accept it.  Once you realize that God is inviting you into his kingdom, you cannot refuse.  The choice to accept or reject Christianity is not a matter of cool deliberation, weighing up pros and cons with the intellect.  Christ demands a response of infinite passion, either of hatred or love.  Those who crucified him responded with hatred.  If you respond with love, you cannot help but accept his invitation.  Thus the choice is one of passion, not of reason.” — Soren Kierkegaard

Prayer

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the Name,
The strong Name of the Trinity;
By invocation of the same.
The Three in One, and One in Three,

Of Whom all nature hath creation,
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
Salvation is of Christ the Lord.
(from St. Patrick’s Breastplate)

Categories
Photography and Music Spirituality

New Ambient: Gethsemane's Tears

Here’s a new ambient tune I created while fiddling with my music stuff today:  Gethsemane’s Tears.  You can download the file or listen using the controls below.  It might make a nice piece for distribution of the Eucharist.

Categories
Daybook Spirituality

Daybook: Feb. 4-15, 2011

February 4-15, 2011

Lectionary

Mark 8:14-12

The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. Jesus enjoined them, “Watch out, guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” They concluded among themselves that it was because they had no bread. When he became aware of this he said to them,
“Why do you conclude that it is because you have no bread? Do you not yet understand or comprehend? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear? And do you not remember, when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many wicker baskets full of fragments you picked up?” They answered him, “Twelve.” “When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many full baskets of fragments did you pick up?” They answered him, “Seven.” He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”

Reflection

“When a person needs help of any kind, he seeks out someone who has the ability to help him.  He might get that person to help him out of the goodness of his heart; but more usually he must pay for the help he receives.  The helper thus sets a high value on himself.  Jesus Christ by contrast never needs to be sought.  He knows our needs before we know them ourselves, and he is offering to help us before we ask.  He sets no value on himself, but gives himself totally to us without asking any reward.  And we soon discover that he is the only one who can help us in our deepst needs” — Soren Kierkegaard

Prayer

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the Name,
The strong Name of the Trinity;
By invocation of the same.
The Three in One, and One in Three,
Of Whom all nature hath creation,
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
Salvation is of Christ the Lord.

(from St. Patrick’s Breastplate)

Categories
Law and Policy Spirituality

Good USA Today Article on Conservative Christians and Gay Rights

Some friends may disagree with me, but I think this piece in USA Today is excellent (HT:  Q Ideas).  Excerpts below:

You get the sense, observing the shifting cultural landscape, that we’ve reached a point on gay rights that is similar to that moment in a football game, or an election, or a relationship, when you know it’s over even though it’s not over.

It appears increasingly obvious that social acceptance of gay men and lesbians and insistence on their equal rights are inexorable. If the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” weren’t enough to signal the turning point, or the classification of several gay-resisting Christian right organizations as “hate groups” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, there came news that Exodus International was ending its involvement in the anti-homosexuality “Day of Truth” in U.S. high schools. “We need to equip kids to live out biblical tolerance and grace,” Exodus President Alan Chambers explained, “while treating their neighbors as they’d like to be treated, whether we agree with them or not.”

Add it up, and you see a decision point at hand for socially conservative Christian groups such as the Family Research Council that have led resistance to gay rights. Do they fight to the last ditch, continue shouting the anti-gay rhetoric that rings false and mean to the many Americans who live and work with gay people, or who themselves are gay? Or do they soften their tone and turn their attention to other fronts?

Prayerful discernment and simple Christian decency would strongly suggest the latter. The alternative looks worse by the day — a quixotic battle more likely to discredit its fighters and their fine religion than win any hearts and minds for Jesus. Christianity has far worthier causes than this.

For all its drama and rally-the-troops appeal, “fighting to the end” is a sure loser. More and more Americans — young people in particular, Christians very much included — know gay men and lesbians and see how the anti-gay talking points and caricatures fail to square with the reality under our noses.

 But the Bible says … “Young Christians increasingly have family members who are gay, have people in their lives who really matter to them who are gay, and that changes how they approach these issues,” says Gabe Lyons, author of the new book The Next Christians and a leader and chronicler of the new generation of evangelicals. “This doesn’t mean their convictions on the matter have changed, but in this new environment, people don’t want to see their friends being discriminated against; they don’t want them labeled as someone who should be feared and blamed.”
….

In explaining its withdrawal from the “Day of Truth,” Exodus International outlines a smart way forward for conservative Christian groups — one that does not require that they sacrifice their core beliefs. Note that Alan Chambers did not announce a change in his organization’s philosophy that people can be saved from homosexuality through faith in Christ. What he did signal, though, was a change in tone and emphasis, and in doing so he invoked a foundational Christian principle: Treat others as you wish to be treated.