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theology and power :: what’s the use?

Here’s an excerpt of a conversation that I thought others might want in on – feel free to add your two bits, eh?:

I’m going to throw a few words back; you said:

    “I’m really trying to figure things out – especially the power of nations against nations…especially “doing” theology while comfortably existing in a nation – I mean really – how does this work. Maybe they are right – in order for our ‘lil theology centers to keep tick’n out happy theology that “cares for the poor” we better keep piling money into our military piggy bank…because ALL nations will do this, so we better be the best at it.”

If theology is a detached “merely academic” enterprise, then you are right; theologians are the worst of the bourgeoisie – lazy, overfed men (and women) peddling metaphysical delicacies to those with the capital to buy a few years of listening leisure. Continue reading “theology and power :: what’s the use?”

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God’s work in Zimbabwe

Many of you will already have seen this, but what follows is a letter I’ve written to friends and family on behalf of a friend of mine who works as a pastor in Zimbabwe. Feel free to get in touch if you are interested.

Dear friends and family,

Greetings, I hope that Spring is progressing nicely wherever you find yourself this year. Here in Vancouver the cherry blossoms have just come out on the trees. I think that it’s my favorite time of year. At the moment, my only time to appreciate the cherry blossoms comes as I make my way back and forth from school. Carolyn and I are finishing up our last full semester at Regent College in Vancouver. We’ll still have a few credits lingering after this spring, but for the most part we’ll be finished; these two years have gone too fast.

My primary reason for writing is to let you know that I’m sending asupport check to Noah in Zimbabwe within the month. I’ve distilled and summarized the latest news that I’ve gotten from Noah below. He always passes on many thanks for the support that we send him. He remains tremendously busy these days and the state of his country
makes it increasingly difficult for anyone to maintain a stable existence. Noah’s commitment to serve the people around him is commendable, read a bit further to hear more about what he’s up to these days. In addition to his, I want to pass along my own gratitude; the consistent support we’ve sent over the last three years has made Noah’s family and his church an island of coherence and sanity in a whole sea of unrest. Continue reading “God’s work in Zimbabwe”

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of hospitality and hope :: coherence in corrosive times

Carolyn and I recently had the opportunity to stay with some friendly folks in Durham, NC. I want to call attention to what they are doing because I think that it offers an strong alternative to the standard American dream that is pressed (or oppressed) onto most of us from the time we wake up till we lay our heads back down on our designer pillows.

When a culture grows paralyzingly disjointed, unable to provide a coherent vision of what a good life looks like, unreflective participation in the machinery leads one deeper into bankruptcy of the soul. The need for an alternative vision is heart-felt. Christians throughout history have lived in some fairly fragmented cultures and have recognized the need to resist the toxic influence of the “values” touted by the mainstream. Continue reading “of hospitality and hope :: coherence in corrosive times”

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of enemies and evasions :: truth and consequences

As much as we expect him to, Jesus never discards the category of “enemy.” “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you; Invite your enemies to the table; go and be reconciled with your enemy” etc. I’m sure that many other people have reflected on this with greater depth and insight than I will be able to. Nevertheless, here come a few brief meditations.

Jesus had enemies. There were people who wanted to harm him, wanted to take his life. There were people in Jesus day who knew what he stood for (or thought that they did) and couldn’t stand him. He had a program, an agenda, a point. When he said, “follow me” to his disciples, it was because he was going somewhere, and he thought it was important that they come along. Having enemies means standing for something definite, something concrete, something that cannot be denied even at the cost of alienation. Living in the tension between truth and sinfulness, humanity lives in enmity. Continue reading “of enemies and evasions :: truth and consequences”

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studying theology :: life and death

What follows is a short article that I submitted to the Regent newsletter:

The reasons to study theology are probably as numerous as the students at Regent. One of my peculiar driving motivations to study theology is a (growing) conviction that bad theology kills people. One example is that of my favorite author of fiction. As a seven year-old, his pastor cornered him in a hospital hallway and told him that if he prayed “hard enough” his dying brother would recover. He did; his brother did not, and he has never since been able to take any church seriously as a place to meet God in the world.

Another example: As I study Dietrich Bonhoeffer this semester, I meet the German church of the 1930’s, who (all but a fraction) lacked the conviction to stand against the theological aberrations of Hitler’s Third Reich, and the horrendous injustice perpetrated under it. The picture of a swastika adorning an altar, coupled with the silence of the church on Kristallnacht (and afterward) bring a powerful urge to study theology hard, to be careful to get it right, and to be willing to speak out where it is needed. Continue reading “studying theology :: life and death”

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of birds and bugs :: a self to speak and spell

‘As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme’

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

— Gerard Manley Hopkins

I admit that I would leave this poem to stand alone on its own merit, or the hope that someone might be enticed to get acquainted with Hopkins (I can hardly recommend this strongly enough!). But I’m inclined to add a few words of my own to Hopkins’, if nothing else, to set this poem in the context of his thought as a whole.

Hopkins, a 19th century British convert to Catholicism and a member of the Jesuit order, was convinced that God’s assumption of human nature in Jesus Christ was profoundly good news. He recognized the significance of God-become-human in far deeper ways than most of us ever encounter. He thought (I’ll attempt a paraphrase – and hope not to embarrass him), “If God shows up in a manger in Bethlehem, why, he might show up anywhere!” Hopkins expected to see, and saw, Jesus show up through lots of particulars in his forty-four short years of life (see the poems: “Hurrahing in Harvest,” “The blessed virgin as compared to the air we breathe,” and his lengthy masterpiece “The Wreck of the Deutschland“).

Hopkins saw that if God valued a particular moment, a particular body, a particular place enough to plant himself there – then all moment, bodies, and places must be tremendously valuable. God must be quite excited about all the particularities, intricacies, and anomalies that he has spun out into the world. This is the main theme of “Kingfishers”; each created thing has its own existence as a gift, be it a bell, piano string (“tucked” to make its own particular tone), or stone dropped to “plunk” uniquely in a well. Each is uniquely valued in God’s eyes. Each flame and flower announces to the world, “Here I am! I am here to be what God has made me for.” Far from being a faceless speck – only one anonymous bit of carbon amongst a vast sea of faceless “others,” the good news of God’s becoming human is that he plays in ten thousand places. That means that all of those ten thousand places (or ten million) are wonderfully dignified.

I’ve been told that Christians are the people who ignore the realities of this present world, preferring instead to stare off into the clouds and sing pretty hallelujahs. There may be some empirical truth behind the accusation. But if Hopkins is right about the meaning of the events by which we recognized God-among-us, Christians are the ones looking to find Jesus wherever he might be found today (see the poem Ribblesdale). Continue reading “of birds and bugs :: a self to speak and spell”

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naming names :: God in public

On the cutting edges of our postmodern culture, anyone who is willing to say “God” in public while knowing what she means is liable to be understood as downright dogmatic, if not a fundamentalist. We the people of the grand tradition known as Western culture seem to be cultivating a grand suspicion of any specificity with regard to the transcendent. We prefer to acknowledge (agnostically, of course) the presence in the cosmos of a general transcendent fog with emotive and motivational powers, but are allergic to attributing personality, or worse, a NAME (!!) to any being we can’t poke with a ten foot pole. Furthermore, suggesting that the named deity in question has specified particular forms of adherence and enlightenment is subject to even more suspicion. In most circles (but not all), it is socially advantageous to be “spiritual” (lest one gain a reputation for shallowness or materialism), but being “religious” is akin to a minor case of leprosy. At the very least, admitting that one names God along with others in an (gasp!) organized fashion is a social sin that must be overcome by one’s personal charisma or alternatively established social status.

First of all, let’s be honest, “spirituality” characterized by avoidance of anything so structured as dogma, doctrine, or theology is a set of beliefs as well, however disorganized. In fact, it is a theology, (albeit a minimalist one where less is more!). Is there any reason to prefer this “standard” cultural theology to a more historically rooted, orthodox brand? I’m willing to admit a few:

(1) No one will ever fight a religious war, burn a heretic, or exclude someone else in defense of his or her own private “spirituality.” Continue reading “naming names :: God in public”

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our (?) bodies :: corporate and personal

Who has responsibility for your body? Whose bodies do you have responsibility for? I came across a news story with fascinating theological and political implications , happening right here in Vancouver.

The basic outline of the story: A Jehovah’s Witness couple has sextuplets. No surprise, the little fellows are a bit underweight, and in need of some medical attention. The Witnesses’ beliefs forbid them from taking blood transfusions. Doctors believe that this is just what the young ones need. Witnesses refuse. Social services takes custody of three of the babies in order to give transfusions against the parents’ will.

Now, we can all agree that it is a good thing for babies to live – no one in the situation wants the babies to die. The Witnesses believe that their faithfulness (in refusing the transfusions) outweighs the risk of (disobediently) intervening to save the lives of the children. If the god in whom they believe desires these children to live, he will grant them life apart from transfusions. But beyond that initial agreement, the situation quickly becomes very sticky.

Do we (as the collective gathered to govern the society in which we live) really want to presume the authority to intervene in issues of religious doctrine? Is that intervention possible to avoid? The government of British Colombia wouldn’t come within shouting distance of most “religious” issues. But where is the dividing line? Continue reading “our (?) bodies :: corporate and personal”

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theology and poetry :: truth and beauty

I thought I’d start this thing off with a journal entry from June :: a particularly good day…

This afternoon, I found a truth worth starving for. It sometimes happens like that – in an afternoon. Driving along, I was hijacked by the announcement of a trailhead off the side of the highway – a path leading into the woods, across streams and up into mountains. Being a rare and fortuitous “day off,” I allowed myself to be suckered into a u-turn, drove back over my thirty seconds of deliberation, and parked my rig. I abandoned the “mineral drops that explode to drive my ton of car” for the propulsive power contained in my own two legs. For all that, I’ve had nearly a perfect day.

Theology that has lost its connection with poetry has lost its connection with truth. The simplicity and depth contained within that a priori aphorism could fuel a lifetime’s thought and teaching. Poetry is the art of condensed meaning. Words contain whole worlds of reference. They sit in place on a page, but point to a thousand things beyond themselves. To enter a poem means to follow one of its manifold paths into the world it describes. A poem knows more that what appears on its page because a poem is a question, and we are all unique answerers. Theology that has lost its connection to poetry inhabits a world where truth can be divorced from beauty. This is not our world. Continue reading “theology and poetry :: truth and beauty”