The trouble with Liberal and Conservative Bible reading

I’d like to share what I think is an amazing quote from Hauerwas’s Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America. I must thank my friend Ben Boswell for encouraging me to read this book! It has totally changed how I view the biblical criticism vs. fundamentalist reading of Scripture (or liberal open-minded person vs. ’see everything in black and white’ conservative).

In my experience, it’s common for Bible-reading people to be placed into two camps: liberal and conservative.  In camp one there is the liberal. The liberal thinks the Scriptures need to be amended by our new and privileged scientific view of the world. The truth is in the text but must be changed to fit our experience. One’s perspective combined with a close read uncovers the truth.

The conservative takes the opposite side. One cannot change truth because truth is absolute and it is revealed in the Scripture. All one has to do is read the Scripture and see the truth. There are no differing interpretations and if there are, one is right and the others are wrong. There’s also the moderate Bible reader–the middle-of-the-road person who says the Bible means whatever meaning emerges after much historical critical digging. The truth is definitely there, it’s just buried under lots of historical context. 

Both the conservative and the liberal stumble upon a major assumption when approaching the Scripture: they assume that the way a person lives or their character has nothing to do with discovering truth and meaning in the text. Any reasonable person with a rational mind can discover truth regardless of their life or the moral condition of the communities in which they reside. Contrast this modern faith in the individual mind with the those who understand the teaching of Jesus in the gospels.  Those who know the truth about Christ’s words in the gospel are those who have already committed to following him in discipleship. The crowds repeatedly struggle to understand Jesus’ parables. But the disciples get personal explanations because of their proximity to Christ. The people who hear the “true interpretation” of the teachings and the meaning of the parables are committed to a certain form of life centered around following Christ (see Mark 4.33-34). 

Hauerwas points out how the modern assumption about the significance of the rational individual’s capability plagues the liberal biblical critics and the conservative fundamentalists alike:

“Fundamentalism and biblical critics alike fail to acknowledge the political character of their account of the Bible, and they fail to do so for very similar reasons. They want to disguise how their ‘interpretations’ underwrite the privileges of the constituency that they serve. Admittedly, such realities may also be hidden from themselves, convinced as they are of the ‘objectivity’ of their method.  Accordingly, fundamentalism and biblical criticism are Enlightenment ideologies in the service of the fictive agent of the Enlightenment–namely, the rational individual–who believes that truth in general (and particularly the truth of the Christian faith) can be known without initiation into a community that requires transformation of the self. In this sense, fundamentalism and biblical criticism are attempts to maintain the influence of Constantinian Christianity–now clothed in the power of the Enlightenment rationality–in the interest of continuing Christianity’s hegemony over the ethos of North American cultures. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your ecclesiology, America is a society that is increasingly learning that it can do well without Christian presuppositions and practices.

The biblical critic and fundamentalist of course simply serve different constituencies within the North American polity [or society]. The fundamentalist serves the lower and middle class; the biblical critic feeds on the semiliterate class associated with the university. Both wish to make Christianity available to the person of common sense without moral transformation. ‘All you need is to study these texts in order to discover their plain meaning.’ Both camps assume an objectivity of the text in order to make the Bible  available to anyone, and that ‘anyone’ is assumed to be the citizen of democratic polities.”

Is Hauerwas onto something here?  Does the way we live really affect the way we read?  Is there something anti-democratic about Christianity?

The Jesus Prayer

Here’s a great article by Albert Rossi of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary on the “Jesus Prayer.” The Jesus Prayer goes like this: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

For me, the prayer is a great way to carry on the type of conversation with God that I’ve realized I need so badly. Hope you have a great day!

Beauty and the Beach

Have you ever spent an entire day reading a really great fiction book under an umbrella on a beautiful beach?  I did this recently while on vacation. What a wonderful experience. I’ve read things while sitting on the beach before, but never for the entire day, and never fiction.  I know this is a pretty nerdy topic, but I have what I call a “non-fiction problem.”  It’s all I read. I’m trying to change that with Carolyn’s help (she’s a fiction fanatic). She recommended that I read Life of Pi and I’m loving it! I’m very familiar with the beach but I never really slowed down to enjoy it. I grew up in Orlando and the beach was only about 30 minutes away. We’d go all the time on the weekends with family or with the youth group. I was just a wee little boy at the time and so I usually built sand castles or played football or frisbee with my brothers. Since living in Texas and Virginia, I’ve really learned to appreciate it so much more. So, when we headed to SC beaches for vacation this summer I was determined to really soak it up.

Each morning I’d head down to the beach at about 6:15 a.m. with some good reading, fruit, and coffee.  I’d get there just before sunrise.  I’d walk along the shore as the sun came up.  I was so enamored with the feel of the sand, the sound and sparkle of the water, the colors of the early morning sky–with inexpressible beauty–that I felt an overwhelming sense of peace and that this beauty is a gift. It was an amazing experience every morning. I felt as if God and I were walking together. And it took me a day or so to realize that this was more than a feeling. I started to really accept that it was true: that God was walking with me in this life; that the Holy Spirit is God and his presence in us as his people is a beautiful reality waiting for us to enjoy every morning.

This made me laugh at myself for how complicated I make relationship with God. I make things so complicated when I give into the especially modern temptation to float above God and analyze him as an abstract idea (rather than a person) from a distance despite my spiritual condition, frequency of prayer and scripture reading, or relationship to the church.  Or I assume that God is mostly interested in us doing lots of good things and I get caught up in a feverish rush to make good things happen at church all while forgetting that conversation with him is most important. As I slowly walked along the beach I noticed the shocking simplicity of the gospel: that God is walking with me in friendship (see John 15) despite the fact that I’m probably not a very fun partner with which to walk. I forget him all the time. I do the things he wants me to do but I don’t talk to him.  I wake up morning after morning without acknowledging him. If the Christian life is a journey or path upon which we walk with Christ then I am not a very good walking partner. What kind of a companion in a journey acts as if his partner is not there each day of the trip? That God is with us along this path of life is the center of the Christian witness to the world. Psalm 16.11 says “You make known to me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy, and at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”  How true this is, and how wonderful when we embrace this as our life at the beginning of everyday. The good news is that this beauty is not limited to a beach experience.

Praise that’s Premature

Check out this great Christianity Today article entitled “Praise that’s Premature” by Shane Hipps, lead pastor of Trinity Mennonite Church in Phoenix, Arizona. The article focuses on the importance of blending celebration and lament in worship. If you have time, please share your perspective. Have you ever had a similar experience in worship?

The beauty of written prayer

Here’s a great quote from Eugene Peterson on the importance of saying prayers together in church, especially written prayers. The quote is an answer to the question “What do we learn from common prayer?” found on page 8 of Contemplative Pastor.

“One thing we learn is to be led in prayer. I’m apt to think of prayer as my initiative. I realize I have a need or I am happy, and I pray. The emphasis is on me, and I have the sense when I pray that I started something.

But what happens if I go to church? I sit there and somebody stands before me and says, ‘Let us pray.’ I didn’t start it; I’m responding. Which means that I am humbled. My ego is no longer prominent. Now that’s a very basic element in prayer, because prayer is answering speech.

Prayer has to be a response to what God has said. The worshiping congregation–hearing the Word read and preached, and celebrating it in the sacraments–is the place where I learn how to pray and where I practice prayer. It is a center from which I pray. From it I go to my closet or to the mountains and continue to pray. 

A second thing about praying in community is that, when I pray in a congregation, my feelings are not taken into account. Nobody asks me when I enter the congregation, ‘How do you feel today? What do you feel like praying about?’

So the congregation is a place where I’m gradually learning that prayer is not conditioned or authenticated by my feelings. Nothing is more devastating to prayer than when I begin to evaluate prayer by my feelings, and think that in order to pray I have to have a certain sense, a certain spiritual attentiveness or peace or, on the other side, anguish.

That’s virtually impossible to learn by yourself. But if I’m in a congregation, I learn over and over again that prayer will go on whether I feel like it or not, or even if I sleep through the whole thing.”

The human body as a trend

 

Rembrandt. The unbelief of Thomas

 

NPR reports that Katy Perry’s I Kissed A Girl, is the No. 1 hit this summer. It’s actually a very catchy song–it’s “in my head” right now.  But the lyrics about “same-sex smooching” are what grabbed my attention–I think they symbolize a certain view of the human body that is very prominent in our culture. NPR’s reaction to the lyrics is interesting too. To NPR, what makes this song unique is that it’s about kissing someone of the same sex. They describe the song as a celebration of teenage sexual experimentation and add that “this is not so strange.” Rather, what stands out about the song is that the “pop hit features a young woman gleefully mulling same-sex smooching.” 

It is easy for most Christians to hear this report and, like NPR, immediately think that the issue or unique aspect of the song is same-sex smooching. It is of course the subject of the song.  But in my view, there are more important ideas in the lyrics than same-sex smooching. I think the larger issue here–or the thing that should seem strange to us–is the notion that the body is an “experiment” that can be used or tried out in different ways.  The larger issue is about whether we make up who we are, or whether we receive who we are. From a Christian perspective, I think the more fruitful conversation about this song could focus not on same-sex smooching, but the deeper assumption of its writer, and of NPR, that the human body can be tried-out in different ways sort of like a clothing trend.

I think all of our hot button ethical debates are about more fundamental questions.  This is true for the debate about just war against terrorism and when to use violence. If the NPR report were on Grand Theft Auto 4 (I’m sure they’ve probably reported on this too), and questions about the morality of that game arose in a discussion, the same fundamental question would arise: what are our bodies and what are they for? By not talking about this fundamental question we cause a lot of confusion and assume that clarity on what is “moral” can be reached if we simply engage in “rational” debate.  

If you listen closely to Perry’s song you can detect the issue. I think the deeper, more interesting issue in this song, and in all contemporary discussion about ethics, is the theological question about human nature: what is a human person? As my friend Francis Beckwith once told me, “all the ethical issues facing the ‘public square’ are about who and what we are.” This question is inherently religious and philosophical and is, I think, the most important question we need to ask about Perry’s lyrics.  

At one point in the song Perry elaborates on the same-sex kiss: “You’re my experimental game. Just human nature.”  How revealing. The idea that people can experiment or alter themselves and that is inherently part of who we are is due to a moral philosophical shift that took place in the late middle ages. The shift was caused by numerous factors, but in general, the ideas behind it slowly emphasized that what is most important in moral decision making is the capacity of human decision or will. This development took place in Christian intellectual circles and was later secularized to the point where the human will or capacity to choose was the most important aspect of a particular ethical action. The idea of rationally choosing or willing was equated with being a human person. Descartes would famously say much later “I think therefore I am.” That which makes one human is a rational choosing mind.

It make sense that if a human person or human nature is defined as that which has the capacity to rationally choose, it would be completely reasonable to say “Human nature is such that we can choose who and what we are, including what our bodies are for.” This idea has been influencing our civilization’s ethics for centuries. Perry’s song comes in a long line of “I think therefore I am” dualisms where the body is given meaning and purpose by what a superior, choosing mind decides. The philosophy behind Perry’s song is actually rather logical, concise, and has a long history in our culture even before the idea of same-sex smooching became popular. 

For the Christian community informed by the strength of the Christian tradition (a tradition which has always sought to overcome any dualism or positing of a choosing mind vs. a blank slate body, thus the church’s rejection of Gnosticism and its embrace of the fourth ecumenical council of Chalcedon), “experimenting” with the human body doesn’t make sense.  This is because the body has already received its most profound interpretation in the God man, Jesus Christ who is fully human and fully divine. When the Word became flesh, all human flesh was given meaning above and beyond all other meanings. And that meaning was that the human body, after baptism, is actually one member or instrument of a larger mysterious body that overcomes violence in the world through Christ-like sacrifice of the church.  Paul speaks of the church as the “body of Christ.”  All uses of our human bodies are to be focused on things that build up the common good of this body (1 Cor. 12) and that cause it to grow in its ability to serve others who are poor and broken. Ephesians 2 declares that we were “created for good works.” At the end of the day, the Christian body is not a trend that can be changed, but is a body given meaning by a particular story. And this story’s central character, Jesus Christ, already showed us how to use the body in friendships, in relation to enemies, in marriages, and ultimately in relation to the governing authorities and rulers that are threatened by his power manifested in our weak bodies.

Unfortunately, the human person and the body, for our contemporary culture, seems as if it’s just another trend. It can be worn any way one chooses similar to a pair of jeans. The meaning of personhood for the Christian, however, is much more beautiful and deep and broad and has its origins before time began. It is more than the sum of a particular mind’s thoughts on a given afternoon. The meaning of personhood for Christians comes from a beautiful narrative which we receive when we hear the good news. We receive identity not from one’s own mind, mood, or even period of time, but from the living narrative that is the church and its sacrificial witness to the world as Christ’s body (Rom. 12; 6). What greater meaning for our body could there be than to witness to the love of the Creator of all bodies? What good news it is that we don’t have to figure out “who we are” or labor under the enormous existential weight of experimenting and discovering a meaning for our body. As Robert Song has written, Christ has delivered us from the “chaos of lifestyles.”

Measuring Happiness

Here’s a report about a global study which shows more people around the world are happier now than 25 years ago. The researchers say that economic growth, democratization, and social tolerance all contributed to higher rates of happiness around the world.

The problem with any such survey is that no one has ever been able to define happiness. Many philosophers have tried but the jury is still out.  Is happiness a good feeling or good state of affairs–or is happiness about being a good person? And if we say it’s about being a good person, then what does the word “good” mean?

With these questions unanswered, the idea of happiness behind the first study can’t be used as a definitive marker or measure of how the last 25 years have gone. Happiness escapes us because it is supernatural. The word points to that aspect of our experience which is completely mysterious. But the politicians and the managers like to measure and control and so they don’t do well with mystery. The idea of happiness is language that represents a mysterious religious longing. Humans long for and imagine all sorts of things and call them “good.”  Aristotle got us pretty close to a scientific definition by saying happiness is that toward which we all tend or desire.  But as good as this is, it is still absolutely vague.

Ludwig Wittgenstein once said: “What is good is also divine. Queer as it sounds, that sums up my ethics. Only something supernatural can express the Supernatural.” And this sounds a lot like what Christ said about the good in explicitly Christian terms: “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone (Mark 10.18)” To assume that we can precisely define, measure, and control happiness is another sign that we’re unhappy with being human and that we want to be superhuman or participate in things above our humanity (notice all the superhero movies).  We need Someone to try and show us what happiness is by using another Word.

Jesus and sinners and Getting high on Mt. Sinai

My brother Donny showed me this video yesterday. What a great way to get across the very important message that Christ is not a “church lady” (You’ve got to see Dana Carvey’s SNL skit to fully get that reference).  This video may be the best way to combat legalism and the rule-focused morality that we were handed before people started recovering the idea of virtue. Jesus’ time with the disciples was spent not by making sure they weren’t dancing or smoking but by calling them to give up their entire life for the sake of the kingdom. Christ always points us beyond sin and beyond human failure to the freedom and holiness that comes only through his death-defeating resurrection. Sin, of course, must be overcome, but it’s not the focus; it doesn’t get the leading role. The focus is on Christ’s resurrection power available today and consummated in the future in the form of a loving community of self-sacrificial people.

In other news, make sure you check out this story about Moses’ drug habits. According to a professor of cognitive philosophy at Hebrew University, when God revealed the law to Moses, it wasn’t God but Moses’ own stash of Mt. Sinai drug plants he was grinding up and smoking:  ”As far as Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don’t believe, or a legend, which I don’t believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effects of narcotics,” he told Israel Radio in an interview on Tuesday. This is a real low-point in the historical-critical approach to the text. And it gives a whole new meaning to the “burning bush.”

N.T. Wright on the Colbert Report

N.T. Wright appeared on the Colbert report last night. You can watch it by going to the Comedy Central website or clicking here. I recommend watching the entire episode, especially because Cookie Monster makes an appearance before Wright. I’m still not sure which guest I enjoyed more.

Any thoughts about No Country?

I finally got around to watching No Country for Old Men last night. What a powerful movie. Have you seen it? What did you think? Does anyone have any insight into the last scene where Tommy Lee Jones’s character describes his two dreams?

Anniversary

On Sunday, Carolyn and I celebrated our sixth year anniversary! I can’t believe we’ve been married that long. It seems like yesterday that we were standing in front of the church exchanging vows. It has been a wonderful journey.

In order to commemorate the special day, below is a small picture from our wedding. It’s a silhouette profile shot. I think profile shots can really scare people–it’s a view of yourself you rarely see and so you can easily forget what you look like from various angles. But when you do stumble upon the profile pic it’s almost as if you’re seeing another person who looks similar to you, but in a scary unfamiliar way. The same thing happens in the mall when you try on a shirt in one of those ’surrounded by yourself on all sides mirrors’–you know, the ones that have about eight panels. Every time I’m in one of those things I think, “Wow, that angle is bad…and so is that one…and that one’s even worse…let’s just go with the two-dimensional view from now on. Carolyn looks great here, but the shape of my head seems to resemble some sort of elvish creature. It looks like I belong in a scene from Lord of the Rings where a line of elves are walking through the forrest in the moonlight.  

One of the things I’ve learned about marriage is that it takes a lot of “work” but that work pays off in the same way that work in a garden pays off.  It’s very easy to appreciate one another, all while neglecting one another. I do this with some of the plants in my yard. I’ll walk by and appreciate their beauty without realizing what they require to remain beautiful. Carolyn and I can appreciate and enjoy each other all while forgetting what sustains the presence of our marriage. There are certain things we need, which, if we don’t get, can make our marriage really dry really fast. 

Both of us need “face time.” Carolyn and I have learned that if we try and share time after work in the living room it’s tough because the TV might be on or the phone may ring. So, we’ve found that dinners at a table work the best for us. Shocker, the dinner table our parents (or grandparents) talked about really is important. We try and have one date night a week where we go to a restaurant, sit down, and talk about our experiences and feelings face to face. This has really helped us stay on the same page despite very busy weeks.

Both of us also need organization to function, so we try and have vino budget meetings–I know this sounds weird. But if you have to talk about bills and money why not make it fun?  Our budget meeting usually consists of sitting down at the dinner table with laptops, important bills, and a glass of wine or other food and drink. The last item is the key ingredient. Without it, we tend to push off the budget meeting to “next week.”  Talking about money can be pretty tense so having something to snack on and a glass of wine helps to chill us out a little.  

Both of us need prayer and play. We try and get this through a Saturday morning Sabbath. But we’ve failed a lot in keeping it.  It’s the one we struggle with the most. Each Saturday morning we try to go to breakfast together and read Scripture and pray. But Saturdays are so busy with other “household” chores that it’s easy to push this time of rest to the back burner. I think this is the most important thing we could practice in a culture that makes us think our value is based on our work and the net worth produced by that work. Sometimes I feel as if the capitalist vision of society, in which we are constantly baptized, is sort of like an invisible bondage to our own intemperate desires. It seems we are free, but we are chained to the assumption that we can satisfy ourselves through endless cycles of production and purchase. The Sabbath teaches us to think the opposite: value is based not on the quality and quantity of work but on the God who can out produce everyone–the God that created everything out of nothing. Sabbath reminds us that God is in charge of progress not us. Resting gives us time to appreciate that creation and worship God as its source, primary caretaker, and goal.  

Lastly, both of us need to hear about the ways we can become better spouses for one another. I remember a professor at ACU saying that she and her husband go to marriage counseling every five years for a “check up.”  We go to doctors annually for physical check-ups, why not go for an emotional, spiritual, and psychological one?  

These are a few things that I’ve learned can really help a marriage. But everyone is different. Maybe you have other ideas that have helped your marriage. Please don’t hesitate to share them with me!

 

 

Yoder quote and other things…

Here’s a quote from Yoder that I think raises the question of whether a Christian must vote in our society:
“Perhaps Christians in our age are being made ready for a new awareness of the continuing relevance of the Apocalypse. There is a widespread recognition that Western society is moving toward the collapse of the mentality that has been identified with Christendom. Christians must recognize that they are not only a minority on the globe but also at home in the midst of the followers of non-Christian and post-Christian faiths. Perhaps this will prepare us to see how inappropriate and preposterous was the prevailing assumption, from the time of Constantine until yesterday, that the fundamental responsibility of the church for society is to manage it.”

—

Recently, at a church youth event, I gave some advice to a teenage girl about guys. I told her that when evaluating someone’s character, you should consider not only how they treat you but how they treat everyone in the community. She responded, “That’s exactly what Alicia Keys said about her old boyfriends in a magazine I read the other day!!!”

—

My cat Wilson really loves it when I put a towel on the windowsill. He not only gets the outdoor view but also lots of cozy relaxation. He was so relaxed yesterday that a neighbor thought there was something wrong with him. That I would go through the trouble of getting a towel for his window experience is probably the type of activity that drives noncat people crazy! However, I will say that I used to be a noncat person and I’ve come around. Once you appreciate the cat for what it is, you start to see them in a whole other light. I still love dogs too. I consider myself a cat and dog person.

No time to eat?

Then you’ll be happy to know that Yum Brands has just released the “wearable feedbag.” A new level of multi-tasking is now available!

New Wearable Feedbags Let Americans Eat More, Move Less

Mark Moore on the radio

My good friend and ministry partner at Springfield, Mark Moore, was on the radio yesterday here in the DC area. He did a great job in the interview! Take a listen here. The interview is under “hour 2″ of the Friday June 6th show. You’ll need Realplayer and the interview starts at about 11 minutes and 20 seconds into the program.

My inbox is full but my life is empty

I received the following e-card today from one of my closest friends:

Although the card was meant as a joke, it really does ring true. It’s actually how I’ve been feeling the last couple of days.

I think my own experiences with emptiness are related to a broader problem in the Christian tradition. The emptiness many of us often feel has much to do with the fact that we’ve largely left behind ancient practices like simplicity (see Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline for an introduction). Such practices fill you up because they put you in touch with God who asks you to empty yourself. Through these practices God teaches us, as he did Brother Lawrence, that by emptying ourselves on behalf of others, we end up filling ourselves with himself. God’s way of emptiness (others-centered love) is the true path to being filled. Philippians 2 is sort of a model for this. Disciplines like simplicity help you to remove obstacles from your life that may distract you from care of others.

But we’re not trained to drink deeply from God in the morning. We’re trained to eat, drink, and apply all the perfect products in the morning. When you combine this lack of training in the spiritual disciplines (which is really nothing other than the Way of Christ in the Scriptures) with the fact that we are surrounded by technological innovations that dislocate us from particular communities, we become like hamsters on a wheel. We become isolated and insatiable. Every selection, every pick, and every click can become like one step after another on a wheel of endless entertainment preferences that have little or nothing to do with the people nearest to us. Our running is endless because it’s fueled by an endless desire for personal Love. The problem is that this personal love can only be experienced in a Christian community that exhibits the spiritual disciplines in the spirit of God’s way of emptiness.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being on the wheel. I’m tired of emptiness. Is there another way to live where you don’t constantly run after getting some more stuff? I think there is but I’m not sure exactly how to get there. I have some ideas about how we can at least start trying:

1. We must cultivate a love for all Christians in all nations across all periods of time and let this love become stronger than any commitment to any particular nation or political party. One way to do this is to get to know our history as the people of God (for a great intro with fantastic pictures see David Bentley Hart’s new Story of Christianity. If you don’t know who you are you can’t know where you’re going). 2. We must also form practical ways of living out the disciplines and this may mean doing radical things like reorganizing the way we live and “do church”…see for example, the “new monasticism.” I don’t know about you, but living on the same street with the Christians in my life that have impacted me the most would seem to really revolutionize the meaning of “church.” 3. I think we need a complete reformation of our liturgy (or the order, style, and content of our worship). For the Church of Christ in particular, I think this could start by examining the relation between worship and life in the prophets of the Old Testament and then ask how our worship practices help emphasize this relation. Geoffrey Wainwright’s chapter on “Ethics” in his Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine, and Life is helpful here as is the blossoming Missional church movement being cultivated by Guder and CofC groups like Mission Alive. Another way a free church (such as the CofC) can reform the liturgy is to recognize the liturgical calendar and preach from the Revised Common Lectionary.