Category: Uncategorized

Keep it to yourself

A number of blogs that I follow push back (most recently here) pretty hard against a type of personal activism that ends up creating a structure a moral evaluation with no sense that effective change is produced or even possible.  What do I mean by this?  I mean simply that personal activism can be a therapeutic response to the guilty conscious of privilege.  There is nothing new in that statement and many of the blogs that I follow outline and develop this a more thorough manner.  However, I though it might be helpful to outline a few simple guidelines for how to discern this reality.

  1. If you believe your action has direct connection to effective change, then outline the network of relationships that demonstrates this, so as to help enable others to participate.  So the personal practices of reducing and recycling are good but I personally do not know of the statistics that relate the basic difference between the personal recycling of material goods and the inherent production of corporate waste in producing our goods and services.  Therefore, in our current structure I do not actually know if increased recycling will actually make a dent in the realities of environmental damage.  So reduce, reuse, and recycle but unless you can articulate a well-informed understanding of how that effects change in the environment in relationship to all the other variables then just do as a base-line practice and nothing more.  The same is true for alternative or ‘guerrilla’ gardening.  These practices can be fun and meaningful but can they address global issues of starvation?  Should they function as anything more than a ‘good habit’?
  2. Be honest that ‘fair-trade’ products represent a sort of premium or ‘luxury’ brand.  They are not bad.  They are simply out of reach for many people to consistently have access to.  The result of creating a morally elevated status for such products is that those who are the most vulnerable in our society will actually have guilt heaped on them (in addition to the prevalent social stigma of being poor).
  3. ‘Symbolic’ gestures are only powerful if they register or gain traction in the face of those in power.  In my Mennonite culture there is an emphasis on ‘simple’ or humble lifestyles.  This basically means that people are not supposed to be ‘flashy’ with their money.  So a family can have a cabin, an RV, snowmobiles, a boat, etc. but if another family occasionally goes out to a fancy restaurant or purchases a piece of ‘abstract’ art they are deemed frivolous or ‘materialistic’.  Simple living is fine, not having flashy things is fine, but there should be no moral scale here.  The only time a particular way of living has symbolic power is if it is actually taken note of by those in power and disrupts the flow of power.  Otherwise, go ahead and do it but drop the implicit or explicit pretense of righteousness.

The result of not following some of these guidelines is, I believe, the very real possibility of insulating ourselves from the possibility of actual change because we are already the change we want to see in the world.  So, again, to repeat there are all manner of good and relatively equivalent (I did not say neutral) ways of living (because in many instances we do not actually know the good or harm we do).  This is not a critique of particular practices as such, rather I am concerned about the moral structure that gets developed around these practices that serve to sanctify and pacify our privileged guilt while condemning those in our midst outside the privileged ability to attain this sort of personal social-piety.  Sure we will condescend to acquit the poor from such guilt but it will be done not from solidarity but from ‘on high’.  And to be clear it is not only those without material means who struggle to attain this sort of personal social-piety but the reality is that it is a lot of work to be consistent in this area.  Many people with mental illness or with children with disabilities or with other significant stress in their life will find it hard attain this piety and will only have more guilt/shame added to their lives as they already have difficulty achieving the other salvation narrative of the ‘American dream’.

So is this another expression that functions to insulate my own position?  I am sure there are elements of self-protection here.  But I do want to offer this as a sort of confession.  For most of my adult life I have lived in the ‘less-desirable’ areas of Canada.  I have, for the most part, quite enjoyed this experience.  I have, however, also held it up as a sort of implicit model of ‘faithfulness’.  And for the most part the practice has been selfish as it has kept me in touch with certain social realities that we tend to ignore.  But functionally there has been no more method in this approach than the baseline hope of being a ‘good neighbour’.  Being a good neighbour will look differently in my neighbourhood than it will in other neighbourhoods but it is also no more righteous (and I am not convinced I have lived up to this in my context in any event).  While I need to take down my lifestyle as a model of personal piety this is different than articulating the manner in which neighbourhoods are formed and maintained (which I have articulated here and here).  This articulation can be a framework in which possibilities for effective or symbolic action can be developed.  This becomes a participatory and collaborative expression rather than a personal posture of living in the ‘hood is more righteous than living in the ‘burbs.  My point in all this is simple.  There are many good things to do in the world but for the most part keep it to yourself.  If it is an effective or truly symbolic act then it will speak for itself.

So what am I missing in my thinking or on my list?

Difficult to discard

The following quote by Craig Keen was recently posted on Facebook,

The mystery before which I am to give up all my intellectual possessions is the mystery of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

My initial (and internal) response to the quote was to call bullshit.  The quote is written by an academic whose bread is buttered by an institution of intellectual possessions, posted on Facebook by an academic and will be read by those looking to secure such possessions.  I admit that I became a little reactionary in my response and Craig did respond to some of my comments.  The parallel he offered was that he was speaking to ‘thinkers’ in the manner that Jesus might have spoken of the wealth of the Rich Young Ruler.  This parallel further begged the question for me.  What might it look like to actually give away your intellectual possessions?

It seems to me that this sort of translation renders Jesus’ call overly subjective.  There is no quantitative measure to evaluate the response.  And of course the subjective is important, at least in my estimation.  It is, however, not what should be figured into this particular appropriation of Jesus’ words.  The reason Jesus’ words had impact was because of the evaluative position it put the Rich Young Ruler into.  There is a time to speak of the method of living after such a decisive choice, but not before.  So again, this leads me to ask whether there is any traction in claiming a parallel from Jesus’ words to the idea of giving up ‘intellectual’ possessions.

Sitting with this question for a time I began to reflect on my own trajectory in the past couple of years.  In those years I was confronted by the question of whether my view of the world reflected a type of ‘pious theology’ that actually insulated me from the sort of engagement with the world that my theology apparently called me to.  In other words, was the way I expressed or articulated my theology actually more significant then how my theology (intellectual possessions?) engaged the world?  I came to the conclusion that in many ways this was true.  I was more interested in preserving a theological form than engaging the world theologically.  And so, at times explicitly and at time implicitly, I set about ‘giving up’ many of my theological possessions.

What has been the result of this dispossession?  It has resulted in many theological statements (including the one above) coming across as more and more foreign or unintelligible.  These statements required the now discarded theological lenses to have meaning for me.

I of course do not claim to now have a privileged perspective on the situation and I do continue to hold on to intellectual possessions.  What is pressing remains the second half of the quote.  Is my dispossession occurring before the mystery of the crucifixion?  How would I know?

What has guided the last couple of years is the idea that the body of Christ is that which is gathered and formed in the spaces between the powers of death and those that suffer that power.  I would call my approach a mixture of liberation/anabaptist/natural/existential theologies.  So in many ways I would say that yes my approach has indeed been before the mystery of the crucifixion (though I may not always call it a mystery . . . sometimes it is far too blunt and pointed).  So why do I continue to find this great rub with other active theological voices in the blogosphere (though more often on Facebook now) that articulate an ‘apocalyptic’ posture towards the crucifixion?

Reflecting on how some earlier exchanges occurred there appears to be a fundamental difference in theological resources (again, possessions?).  I have discarded the primacy of orthodox doctrines (note I said discarded their primacy).  In place I hope to have a much more reflexive or affected approach to theology.  The claim of ‘natural theology’ has been leveled against this approach, and I suppose it is true as far as the label can go.  However, it is the only method I currently have that has any integrity or congruence.   And in this respect I do have a sense of and could articulate what it looks like for me to have discarded intellectual/theological possessions (and some days it is more than a little unnerving).  But it draws me back to my initial question.  How do one, particularly within a broadly ‘barthian’ posture, discard their intellectual possessions?  How do they know when they are encountering the ‘mystery of the crucifixion’ if not for at least a taint of natural theology.

To be clear I am not saying such discarding does not happen.  I am just not clear on what that could look like within the particular theological method I tend to encounter online.  I have noticed that Halden has shifted away from a particular ecclesiology.  I take it his theology was challenged at some point but what provides the criteria for a position to be ‘discarded’?  How is one persuaded or, again, how does one recognize encountering the mystery of the crucifixion?

Initial thoughts on the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8

The Ethiopian eunuch is biding his time.  Well, his time . . . I guess I am not sure.  Our time remains marked by a language that demands his masculinity, his balls, in any event.  It is not his time, as time now possesses <strike>him</strike> the eunuch.  Perhaps it is better to say the eunuch waits.  But waiting is a terrible term.  It gives the illusion of passivity and detachment.  What does the eunuch do?  The eunuch reads,

Like a sheep he was led to slaughter,
and like a lamb silent before its shearer,
so he does not open his mouth.

In his humiliation justice was denied him.
Who can describe his generation?
For his life is taken away from the earth.

The eunuch reads the words of his own silence.  There is silence but there are alsosilenced words.  These words remain internal or are ignored as foreign or corrupt.  So the eunuch pronounces his silence.

How does one become a eunuch and what does it mean?  I have read just a little.  The eunuch in many traditions is close to power, either human or divine.  The eunuch can be a priest.  The eunuch can be a royal official.  The eunuch is close to power but does not draw close to this power.  Rather the eunuch is positioned close to power.  The eunuch is allowed next to power because power has been stripped from the eunuch.  The eunuch is a place holder.

As the eunuch recites the eunuch’s silenced words for his life is taken away from the earth he remembers his encounter with a teacher of the law on his visit to Jerusalem.  The scribe tells him of the corruption in the Greek text that he is reading.  The prophecy is of one who is cut off from the land of living.  This, this must be a castrated one.  What else could such an expression mean?  The eunuch feels something welling up within him but as yet there is no release, no outlet for his urge and desire.

The eunuch’s tradition positions him next to power by stripping him of life.  What sort of power could this be?  It is the power of death.  But what of this foreign religion?  This religion that in its founding traditions denies a eunuch from even gathering in worship.  He again recalls the scribe who looked on him with pity reciting the blunt prohibition from Deuteronomy,

No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the LORD.

The God of Israel does not gather passive servants (eunuchs) to minister in the Temple.  The God Israel does not even allow them to gather in worship. But what of this castrated one who was silenced and humiliated as I was?  Does the prophet speak of himself or someone else?

The difference of Jesus: A sermon on Acts 3:12-19

Those of us in the church business often hear about recovering ‘the Acts church’ or even more specifically the ‘Acts 2 church’.  ‘Acts 2’ of course refers to the second chapter and the inspiring scene at Pentecost as well as the believers gathered daily in worship, sharing their lives and material resources together.  In these short verses we find an image of unity and wholeness; a certain sense that things are as they should be.

Rarely, however, do we find much reflection on the very next chapter.  I don’t recall hearing about the ‘Acts 3 church’.

Continue reading “The difference of Jesus: A sermon on Acts 3:12-19” →

There are two ways

There are two ways of reading a biblical verse. One consists in appealing to the tradition, in giving it the value of the premise in one’s conclusions, without distrusting and without even taking account of the presuppositions of that tradition. . . . The second reading consists not in contesting straightaway, philosophically, but rather translating and accepting the suggestions of a thinking which, once translated, can be justified by what manifests itself.
. . .
Of course, I try to enter first into the language of the nonphilosophical tradition which is attached to the religious understanding of Jewish writings; I adopt it, but this adoption is the not the philosophical moment of my effort. There I am simply a believer. A believer can search out, behind the adopted intelligibility, an intelligibility which is objectively communicable. A philosophical truth cannot be based on the authority of a verse. The verse must be phenomenologically justified. But the verse can allow for the search for a reason. . . . I illustrate with the verse, yes, but I do not prove by means of the verse.

Emmanuel Levinas, Is it Righteous to Be, 61-62.

I put this quote up on Facebook as a stand alone.  It initially spoke to me of, or validated for me, how the biblical text can be used beyond confessional ‘logics’.  Immediately after reading this, however, Levinas went on to describe how confessional and philosophical readings acted like separate disciplines for him.  He even mentioned having separate publishers for these works.  Levinas continues this distinction maintaining that we need both Greek and biblical thought; one of reason and the other of sociality.  This troubles me because I simply do not know how to exercise these distinctions in practice.  I can understand how the distinct disciplines of politics and geology separately ‘read’ the land.  But if I understand Levinas correctly I cannot, as of yet at least, make his distinction in practice.

The context I am thinking of in particular is preaching.  When I approach the Bible as an ordained minister I do not know what it means to read it ‘simply as a believer’ as Levinas puts it.  The Bible continues to come to me as strange and I will literally take anything (philosophy, art, literature, psychology, observations, etc.) that will give me some point of orientation or manner of conversing with the text.  In the same way I cannot bracket some of my devotional postures of prayer when I try and gain congruence and coherence in my thinking.  Something other than reason wanders through my thoughts that I could not and would not want to exorcise from my ideas.  There is the matter of trust (I find that is a better term than ‘faith’ in most cases) that continues to inform and shape my reasoning.

In any event I look forward to working through my first full text of Levinas.  And I suspect in as much as he himself embodies both processes he may not adhere to strict divisions all the way through.  But what I am left wondering about is to what extent the sheer discipline of distinction would actually benefit both my faith and thought (or are those categories already too reductive)?

Confessing the resurrection

[Easter Sunday sermon preached at First Mennonite Church, Winnipeg.]

I confess that I have not struggled this much writing a sermon as I have in a while.  I confess that for most of the week I felt like I was staring blankly and confused into the face of this reality we call resurrection.  I confess that I followed numerous lines of thought trying to develop something insightful or meaningful.  I confess that I failed.  I confess that I would have preferred preaching on the Gospel of Mark which ends with the women terrified at the news that Jesus is not in the tomb and keeping silent out of fear.  That strikes me as the most reasonable response to facing the reality of the resurrection.  It is unintelligible, and perhaps fearfully so.  We have no real framework for this reality other than through examples that seem to pale in comparison to the force of this event.  But Paul nevertheless reminds the church in Corinth that the message of Jesus death, burial, and resurrection forms the message, the good news, by which we are saved.

Continue reading “Confessing the resurrection” →

Philosophy as immaturity

I am learning to take the long-view on certain aspects of my development.  I am developing reading and writing goals that stretch out over a number of years (subject to change of course).  I am becoming less anxious over having to read or address something in the moment being at relative peace that there may or may not be time for that in future.  And as of late I am beginning to see potential shifts in the basic genres of my reading.  I am currently quite fixated on philosophy.  This is, I think, a partial reaction to a latent desire from high school that was never given an institutional framework to express itself.  So I am making up for all my thwarted young adulthood that was wasted on way too much (though not exclusively) bad theology, or worse, unnecessarily pious devotional material.  So now I cut to the chase and read the dense works that I can’t understand.  But there is a sense that I will turn eventually to an immersion or baptism of literature (again not that it is entirely absent now) and perhaps even ultimately a rapture of poetry.  But I sense that I am still too immature for that (whatever that might mean).  I feel like I still need to cultivate skills in ‘grammar school’ (which I am not complaining about).  Or to use the metaphor that is foreign to myself but seemingly so common elsewhere; I need to practice the scales in preparation for jazz performance.

I could be entirely mistaken about all of this but what I value now is the sense of purposeful toil in a vineyard that may not even bear fruit in my lifetime and that is okay.