Category: church

Forced corruption

Remember. The problem is not corruption or greed. The problem is the system. It forces you to be corrupt.

This line is a quote from Slavoj Zizek’s speech at Occupy Wall Street.  I will not try and wade into the larger conversation about this movement (see here for frequent updates).  I want simply to focus on this line.  For me this line is a stumbling block; and I believe stumbling block is precisely the correct term.  I continue to believe in autonomous morality.  I continue to believe that it is possible for each individual to make a morally valid decision in real life circumstances.  I believe this despite the fact that I know it is not true.  And so I come to a stumbling block, an offense.

I sat with this line as I visited a man from my neighbourhood.  Our church is not exactly a hot spot for those seeking material support though we get our share of traffic.  The process is almost always the same.  There is prefacing story which sets the person both in morally acceptable or pitiable conditions.  This often includes acknowledging some religious conviction, some desire to work, and some immediate pressing need.  I will then wait for the second half of the conversation in which the person will move inevitably towards his (almost exclusively a male) best shot at getting something out of the exchange.

And there I sit, Solomon on his throne, judging how best to suggest sawing his child in half to reveal true motivations.  I stand as the face and gate-keeper of what should be the symbol of consuming charity.  Now to be sure charity is not paternalism but why does paternalism exist in the context of giving charitably?  Still one must learn to be responsible, correct?  To the extent that responsiblity lies in the realm of economics I will continue to be corrupt in my engagement with those in need.  To the extent that responsbility is integrated into a relational fabric there may be a chance to level out life experiences.  Current capitalist economics demands a responsibility based on severed points of accountability.  It demands I take care of my house.  And this is where existentialism remains important in conversations about social systems.  One must ultimately be converted into a larger house; a house that still has rooms and boundaries but a house that also has a larger and expanding commons.  The church in North America, by and large, cannot offer a commons to those who seek it.  And until then I may be forced to remain corrupt.

Christian Discourses, Helplessness Blues, and the mechanics of liturgy

[This started as a simple update on my Kierkegaard reading then turned into something I wanted to edit and develop but I doubt that will happen any time soon so I thought I would throw it up in its disjointedness.]

As I mentioned in my last post, the first half of Kierkegaard’s Christian Discourses was firmly okay.  It was gently pastoral in tone while attempting to stir and provoke in content.  The second half entitled “Thoughts that wound from behind” promised to be more engaging.  The preface of the second half read,

The essentially Christian needs no defense, is not served by any defense – it is the attacker, to defend it is of all perversions the most indefensible, the most inverted, and the most dangerous – it is  unconsciously cunning treason.  Christianity is the attacker – in Christendom, of course, it attacks from behind. (162)

The final line is of course of utmost importance for what follows because Kierkegaard’s attack is against the notion that Christendom can implicitly produce Christians.  Kierkegaard begins by noting the role of circumstance in the power of a message how “the sickbed and the nighttime hour preach more powerfully than all the orators [because they] know this secret of speaking to you in such a way that you come to perceive that it is you who is being addressed, you in particular (164).  Kierkegaard relates this to his understanding of the ‘Lord’s house’ and how it is to be a place more terrifying than terror (for awakening that is) though pastors take it to be a place to preach for tranquilization.  The Lord’s house is by definition the space that a human encounters the truth, that is, encounters God.  This is a horror becuase it is an encounter with sin.

Here in God’s house there is essentially discourse about a horror that has never occurred either before or after, in comparison with which the most horrible thing that can happen to the most unfortunate of all people is a triviality: the horror that the human race crucified God. (172)

This discourse of terror is the first discourse and it is necessary.  The Christian is to use this discourse to win people – “but woe to you if you win them in such a way that you leave out the terror” (175).  So use this discourse to terrify people but “woe to you if you do not use it essentially to win them for the truth” (175).

While these discourses began with a pointed and promising account of attack or ‘awakening’ they settled into what (from a contemporary perspective) is a now familiar account of the need to ‘break from the herd’ in how you understand your own subjectivity and how it is formed.  I do not doubt the ongoing validity of this message it is only that the ‘herd mentality’ is now precisely in being unique and original.

How then does one break from the demand of uniqueness and become formed as an individual?

There is the already well commented on lines from Fleet Foxes recent single Helplessness Blues in which they harmonize on being some cog in a greater machine.

I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see
And now after some thinking, I’d say I’d rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me

In that instance the strength of individuality is in its submission to something  beyond the scope of a single subjectivity.  I think this is a fair response.  The problem of course is that there is no such static machine in which humans function as the cogs and pulleys.  The response in HB is a sort of almost naive localism.

If I had an orchard, I’d work till I’m raw
If I had an orchard, I’d work till I’m sore
And you would wait tables and soon run the store

I say almost because of the final lines of the piece.

Gold hair in the sunlight, my light in the dawn
If I had an orchard, I’d work till I’m sore
If I had an orchard, I’d work till I’m sore
Someday I’ll be like the man on the screen

They recognize that this too, this honest labour, is the production of the entertainment industry.  It is the production of flat subjectivity that will not truly intervene in the existing order.  For Kierkegaard subjectivity is based around the primary human dialectic of being a synthesis of the eternal and the temporal.

It is the final section of Christian Discourses that offers some help in understanding how the Christian can engage in the practices of faith while attending to the internal dialectic of subjectivity.  This final section is a collection of discourses to be read at Friday Communion services.  As such they offer a rare glimpse into Kierkegaard’s direct and public communication on church liturgy.  There is no strength in the basic repetition of Communion as an act that builds an alternate imagination.  This would be to function as a cog some great machinery.  Rather one does indeed approach the Communion table and share in the elements but when you leave it is as if the Communion table followed you (273).  It is only possible to speak of real presence because there is continuity with the table and with Christ.  “Where he is, there is the Communion table” (273).  The Communion table becomes present not necessarily at the religious site but at the site of reconciliation that is called for prior to sacrifice (Matt 5:23-24).  “The task is to remain at the Communion table when you leave the Communion table” (274).  A sermon should ‘bear witness to him. . . . At the Communion table, however, it is his voice you are to hear” (271).  The point here is simple.  There must be continuity and congruence.  And the perhaps the solution for the church is just as simple, that is, to call individuals to both leave and remain at the Table.

From here is eternity

I have not posted recently on my Kierkegaard reading.  Things continue to progress more or less on target.  I am currently in the middle of Christian Discourses.  I continue to have a mild reception to most of his religious writings.  The first section of CD comes off as firmly okay.  It is essentially an exploration of how living in light of eternity creates a reversal of popular (temporary) understanding.  So wealth and poverty are inverted, gain is loss, strength is weakness, etc.  There is nothing wrong with this approach in itself and there are moments of insight in Kierkegaard’s thinking here.  For instance when Kierkegaard develops the inversion of wealth and poverty he does so by demonstrating the nature of wealth.

Riches are indeed a possession, but actually or essentially to possess something of which the essential feature is losableness or that it can be lost is just as impossible as to sit down and yet walk – at least thought cannot get anything in its head except that this must be a delusion.  If, namely, losability is an essential feature of riches, then it is obvious that no essential change has occurred when it is lost, no essential change occurs in it by being lost.  Therefore, it is essentially the same, but then it is indeed also essentially the same while I possess it – it is lost – because it must indeed be essentially the same at every moment.  Lost, it is essentially the same; possessed, it is essentially the same, is lost; that is, in a deeper sense it cannot be possessed. (28)

A key element of how Kierkegaard energizes this dialectic is the role of eternity.  Eternity for Kierkegaard is a mode or posture of approaching the world.  In one key passage Kierkegaard describes how eternity creates a way of being more present as opposed to a future or spiritualized orientation.  In this section Kierkegaard is referring to self-torment as the next day.

The one who rows a boat turns his back to the goal toward which he is working.  So it is with the next day.  When, with the help of the eternal, a person lives absorbed in today, the decisively he turns his back to the next day; then he does not see it all.  When he turns around, the eternal becomes confused before eyes and becomes the next day.  But when, in order to work toward the goal (eternity) properly, he turns his back, he does not see the next day at all, whereas with the help of the eternal he sees today and its tasks with perfect clarity.  But if the work today is to be done properly, a person must be turned in this way.  It is always delaying and distracting impatiently to want to inspect the goal every moment, to see whether on is coming a little closer, and then again a little closer.  No, be forever and earnestly resolute; then you turn wholeheartedly to the work – and your back to the goal.  This is the way one is turned when one rows a boat, but so also is on positioned when one believes.  One might think that the believer would be most distanced from the eternal, he who has completely turned his back and is living today, whereas the glimpser stands and looks for it.  And yet the believer is closest of all to the eternal, whereas the apocalypt is most distanced from the eternal, then the next day becomes a monstrous confused figure, like that in a fairytale.  Just like those daimons we read about in the book of Genesis who begot children with mortal women, the future is a monstrous daimon the begets the next day. (74)

Obligatory posting of sermon preached on 9/11 – Instruments of grace

Mark 11:22-25

Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.  Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.”

It is a delicate task to speak about mountains being cast into the sea on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.  I choose this passage because its initial impression on me was that it spoke about something powerful, something significant.  As we acknowledge what this day marks we also look forward to what in many ways stands as the beginning of the year for the work of the church. As pastoral staff we decided to develop a series this Fall that would help us face various topics and issues that we shape and that we are shaped by.  Over the weeks we will look at the environment and economics, technology and inter-religious relations.  Squarely facing the pressures that come from these areas can often feel like facing a mountain.  Even more challenging is that in the Mennonite church we attempt to face our mountains without the traditional means of dynamite.  We attempt, whether or not we succeed, to approach the mountain without violence.  We affirm in fact that it is at the mountain that we un-learn violence.  As First Mennonite Church’s vision statement reads we seek to be instruments of God’s grace on earth.  So what of these instruments, these tools?  And what of the mountain before us?

Continue reading “Obligatory posting of sermon preached on 9/11 – Instruments of grace” →

Notes from the Exodus

I would say the most concerted and continuous effort that I made in formal studies was in the area of biblical Hebrew. This is a sort of sad statement given the level of proficiency I have maintained. Recently though I have taken to preach on the OT passages of the Lectionary and, being summer, I find myself with a bit more time to work in the ‘original text’. This Sunday will be Exodus 1:1-2:10. I have greatly appreciated the small (and significant) nuances that have emerged from even a basic walk through the Hebrew.

Many of the observations can be made from the English as well.  The most clear is the precedent of ‘creation’ as a guiding motif in the Moses narrative.  We find Joseph and his brothers dead but the Israelites remained “fruitful and prolific” a common refrain in the creation story.

In light of this expanding foreign race Pharaoh decides to deal ‘shrewdly’ with them so they do not join the enemy.  The word join is a play on the name Joseph (to be added to) a figure of blessing for Egypt who has now been forgotten and his descendents are deemed a threat.

Pharaoh sets slave-drivers over the Israelites in work of ‘mortar and brick’ which is an allusion to the building of the Tower of Babel.

In response to Pharaoh’s increasing pressure on the people (and their increasing expansion) there is an order to kill the male children in child-birth.  Here we find the famous mid-wive’s of civil disobedience who do not follow the law.  What I find interesting is that their names, Shiphrah and Puah, indicate a type of ‘signalling’ of what is coming.  Shiphrah is a feminine form related to the Shophar which is a trumpet that is often used to refer to the coming of the presence of God (Ex 19:16).  Puah, as near as I can figure, is a variation on an onomatopoetic verb used to describe the sounds of a woman in labour, again ushering in the presence of something new.  The women here stand as the vanguard in the revolt creating space for the liberation of their people.

Verse 12 of chapter one contains two interesting expressions.  The NRSV reads,

the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites.

‘Spread’ is a suitable translation but does not have the visceral connotations as the Hebrew does in which there seems to be some implied ‘breach’ of a clear boundary.  When used in the relation to a holy space the word is often translated ‘break’ as in the Lord will ‘break out’ upon you.  ‘Dread’ is also a curious translation.  The word is not used often in the Hebrew Bible.  The term is used in several instances to refer to a sort of naseous sickness over a given situation.  It is the way the people feel after having eaten manna for too long.  It is the way a person can literally feel sick with fear.  Given some of the recent readings on abjection I picture this verse to be saying that the Egyptians tried to crush the Hebrews like a bug and ended up splattering guts all over them.

Thinking about the abject as neither subject (self) nor object (enemy)  also led me to consider another image that was not really illuminated by the Hebrew but important nonetheless.  Verse ten of chapter one reads,

Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.

In this construct the Israelite is neither self nor object.  They form a type of appendage to the Egyptian kingdom.  The abject is a part of what sustains the subject so long as it does not ultimately become the object (or worse become its own subject!).  So long as it does not ‘break out’ of the boundary set by the subject (read: colonialism).

And of course one of the more well known observations is how the ‘vessel’ that Moses is set adrift on is the same word for Ark used in the Flood account.

So anyway, we’ll see if this takes me anywhere closer to a coherent sermon.

Kierkegaard’s privileged individual

I am about halfway through Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits (UDiVS)and I have to say it is one of the least enjoyable reads so far.  Now perhaps the fault is my own and perhaps I should not even bother reading it.  Kierkegaard knew well that his ‘religious’ writings were not interesting and were not intended to be.  Most of them were written with the hope that perhaps an individual who was suffering might read them and through reading find some joy.  This is not my interest or posture in reading.  I am precisely looking for the interesting and innovative.

Now it is becoming clear to me that when Kierkegaard speaks of suffering he means very explicitly existential suffering.  The suffering people experience when they find themselves pulled and torn by paradoxes of life that result from humans being a synthesis of body and spirit.  There is a certain heaviness that hangs over humanity with some experiencing a greater darkness.  This suffering may be due to actual experiences of rejection or injustice but this sort of suffering comes to any who seek eternity in the midst of the temporal.  This is all sort of a paraphrase of how Kierkegaard talks about suffering.

I am also becoming more convinced that Kierkegaard probably really did suffer whether in some form of a clinical depression or just basic anxiety over life.  I read his ‘upbuilding’ discourses, like many of his other writings, as his own processing of belief and experience.  Faith speaks both of joy and suffering.  What could that mean?  This is the content of much of UDiVS.  Part of my increasing trouble with these discourses is the manner in which they are not interested and in fact reject any primacy in effecting change in external conditions.  So for instance,

Thus is one who is born a slave, in compliance with Apostle’s heartfelt admonition (for Christ did not come in order to abolish slavery, although this will follow and be a result of His coming), he is not concerned about it, and merely chooses freedom if it is offered: then he bears the heavy burden lightly.  How heavy this burden is, the unhappy slave knows best, and human sympathy understands it with him.  If he groans under the burden, as humanity groans with him, then he bears the burden heavily.  If he patiently submits to his fate, and patiently hopes for freedom, then he still does bear the burden lightly.  But the meek, who has had the courage really to believe in spiritual freedom, bear the heavy burden lightly: he neither relinquishes the hope of freedom, nor does he expect it (The Gospel of Suffering, 37).

What I can appreciate is that there may be a way of living in the midst of suffering that can actually alleviate the experience of suffering (that is, without changing conditions).  What I do not understand is why this can only be attained through the posture of resignation.  Isn’t the image of Christ one of resolute orientation (setting his face towards Jerusalem to encounter the crux of powers) towards the possibility of freedom?

So what I wonder about is the extent to which Kierkegaard’s message in his upbuilding discourses would offer comfort to those who already have a level of freedom and need to deal only with existential suffering or whether this message could actually help bring joy to someone in the midst of material and social bondage.  And if it did bring joy would this joy actually be an illusion?  For instance, would it teach the wife suffering domestic abuse to bear her burden with joy and patience?  Or would it create a strong base of individuality (that is a presence of being differentiated from the abuser) that could actually see the possibility of freedom that is before her and empower her to take it?  If the latter is not the case then I think Kierkegaard’s notion of the individual in these expressions needs further development.  I sense that the ‘individual’ is still a privileged individual who can be a ‘slave’ or ‘depressed’ (not to diminish these states) but who still carries a basic ‘ontological’ sense of their individuality as universal and valid.  Kierkegaard’s individual in these discourses still strikes me as basically a privileged individual.  And this would be in keeping with his biography as one who certainly suffered (internally and externally) but was always able to function with a certain autonomy and social power.

I don’t see this observation so much rejecting Kierkegaard’s overall aims but, as it is increasingly customary these days, it may be necessary to read Kierkegaard against himself and expose his ‘individual’ as not so much standing alone before God but as standing with a sort of minimum social power by which one is able to endure a level of psychological anguish.  The shift must be in making explicit the seizing of freedom that is available as the person enters into differentiated and empowered individuality.

And so with a great number of other readers I would have to say that Kierkegaard’s religious writings are certainly not among my favourite.

Notes on Theology of Money

This Fall I plan on leading a few adult education sessions on a theological understanding of contemporary economics.  This is far out of my field but something that is continually being impressed on me as crucial for the church to better understand and engage.  In preparation I am working through Philip Goodchild’s Theology of Money.  I am about half-way through book and I am coming to realize that I should probably summarize or re-orient myself to what I have already read.

ToM is no simple theological gloss over the woes of the economy.  The heart of the work is a sustained (relentless?) conceptual framework for understanding money.  Here are a few points of orientation from the Introduction.

It is possible to consider money as mode of transcendent social/metaphysical orientation for life as other local cults and global religions have performed in the past.  One significant difference is that as an object money does not call attention to itself and therefore has alluded close scrutiny into the nature of its power.

Christianity has also largely evaded any scrutiny of the money’s power by internalizing the question of piety so as to remove it from the presence and effects of money.

The founding of the Bank of England can be viewed as a helpful image in the founding of modern capitalist economy.  As such it can be observed that from the very beginning this system functioned to create wealth in excess of itself . . . the creation of debt and interest.  With this model in place “production for the sake of profit rather than use became the dominant motivation for social activity and interaction” (11).

Money has continued to advance its place in society to the point of becoming the primary ritual activity that orients the social order in how it mediates the basic desires, values and beliefs of the people.

In order to study money it is important to acknowledge its dual nature.  It is both fixed and in motion.  And so, rejecting a basic Cartesian model of understanding Goodchild proposes 1) an ecology of money that traces its concrete relations 2) a politics of money the observes its effects over time 3) a theology of money that exposes its basic need for obligation and belief in order to function.

Hopefully more to come . . .

One of those little known passages

Having a recent post from Adam Kotsko in the back of mind a verse in Genesis 35 stood out as though in bold print.  The context is an account of Rachel’s giving birth to the last of the twelve sons of Israel.  Verse 18 reads,

As her soul was departing (for she died), she named him Ben-Oni [Son of my Sorrow]; but his father called him Benjamin [Son of the right hand/strength].

The voice of sorrow dies with the mother and symbol of power arises with the father.  Thank God this perversion is at least recorded.  Oh and a couple of verses later the first born Reuben sleeps with Bilhah mother of Dan and Napthtali.

Kierkegaard on the present age

It has been wonderful to cover a couple of Kierkegaard’s shorter volumes.  Given my last post on my readings I was surprised at how social this volume was.  This volume is actually an extended review of a contemporary piece of fiction entitled Two Ages.  The two ages are the age of (the French) revolution and the present age.  While the opening sections do deal directly with the content of the novel it is the longer third section that gets the most attention as it is Kierkegaard’s own appropriation of the novel for his context.

Continue reading “Kierkegaard on the present age” →

The super and sub human

So if you are interested in pondering the absurd then have a look at what a local 54 year old grandfather just accomplished.  Just a few highlights;

1. Cycled 6,055 km in 13 days, nine hours and change.  This stands as the fastest coast-to-coast cycling across Canada.

2. Breaking this record included an injury part way through (which required a 15 hr break!).

3. His pace demanded cycling a minimum of 20 hours a day.

These facts do not compute in my brain.  Through the medium of long distance cycling Arvid has raised over 1.5 million dollars.  His charity of choice is an organization that works with street kids in Kenya.  So why I am about to transition to some critical comments related to this story?  First a couple of qualifications.  No criticism is intended towards Arvid.  The fact that he found an expression that allows him to generate this type of support for what I will assume is a great cause can only be commended.  I also assume that other perspectives than the following could be taken (such the need of extreme behaviour to draw attention to extreme situations),  I want, however, to take a step back and ask one question and make one observation.

Why can herculean feats raise this type of money?  Is there not something bizzare or even perverse about the need for someone to perform at super-human levels to draw funds for those living in sub-human conditions?  I will go out on an unsubstantiated limb and venture a guess in saying that the vast majority of Arvid’s support comes from the corporate sector in which donors can only ‘win’ from their association with Arvid.  Arvid becomes the super-hero logo on their chest which invigorates the public imagination.  While Arvid remains out of the average person’s reach the corporation gives the public access to this imagination by acquiring their brand while also associating the average person with helping ‘the poor’ (this is the power of the corporation not Arvid) on the other side of the world.  This leads to my observation;

The owners of Palliser Furniture in Winnipeg created some ‘incentive’ for Arvid saying that if he broke the record they would present him with a check for $50,000 at the finish line.  Now I will also venture a guess in saying that Palliser would have donated the money regardless.  However, the scenario again focuses on some implicit value in this herculean accomplishment.  The money is not worth donating directly to street kids in Kenya, that is, bringing the conditions of a group of people’s life up to a minimally acceptable level.  Or to put it another way, the money is not worth donating to someone who simply demonstrates the need and effectiveness of the situation and organization represented.  Instead the money is worth wagering on the possibility of achieving the never before achieved.  When given the choice between bringing others up to a minimum level on the one hand or extending our reach beyond the maximum the choice is clear (though we are supposed to believe that the two work together).

To again be clear.  I have nothing but respect for Arvid’s accomplishments.  To have inspiring figures in various fields and expressions is part of the beauty of human nature.  What I am drawing attention to is the structure around extreme expressions like Arvid’s.  The amount of global economic resources that could be available from the world’s most wealthy is staggering.  And yet it is the folks without such resources that are required to enter the super-human before investors find enough ‘value’ to throw their tax-deductible donations at so they can still receive a return on investment.