Category: world

Organic theology . . . no, wait, don’t click to another site!

The term ‘organic’ seems to be moving quickly into disfavor among many philosophers and theologians.  The impression I get is that the term is most often evoked with a sense of nostalgia and naivete with respect to how we can best understand and respond to situations (and the co-option of the term for less than desirable purposes cannot help).  Whether this reaction comes from the pushback against ‘localism’ over at AUFS or the apocalyptic theology of Doerge, Kerr, Siggelkow et. al. it seems that ‘organic’ is not the right mode of engagement.  This is a reductionistic preface but a preface that should indicate our ongoing desire to find the next and better mode of inquiry.  That is fine and I am not looking to go back.  I am just setting this up for one simple observation.

I was given a plant.  It is in my office.  This plant seems at once to be both dying and regenerating itself.  At times it has beamed with robust health and at other times it teetered and I have not known what will come of it (though I know what should come of a plant).  More often than not I do not know what to do.  At one point branches were snapping.  The giant leaves seemed too heavy or was it that the branch was too weak or was it that they had simply grown to completion.  I would grow anxious.  Too much or not enough of any number of things can spell the end.  I rushed to the Sunday School supply room and came back with pipe cleaners and popsicle sticks trying to create splints to see if they could heal.  But I had to let them go.  Out of the three only one sprouted a new leaf.

This all reminded me of my childhood on the farm.  I could not farm.  In my bones I despised farming because I would work an already too wet field and see dark clouds roll in from the West miles away on the prairies bringing more rain.  It made me ill.  So I left the farm unconsciously thinking there were places where I could have more control.

And I found these places in regular paychecks and relatively clear job expectations.  But now several times a day I look over at that plant and I do not know its fate.  Again, I am trying to be very conscious of nostalgia or paternalistic tendencies in my thinking.  I suppose the only point I am trying to make is that if someone wishes to move beyond the organic metaphor they should have made sure they sat long enough with it in all its precariousness and anxiety . . . and beauty.

Fear-less . . . that’s just crazy talk

I have for some time, and mostly on the back-burner, tried to understand the 1960s-70s conversation about the social context of mental illness in light of contemporary experience.  The basic tension being whether the determinant role in mental illness can be fixed primarily on biological factors or social factors.  High school was my first encounter with mental illness when a good friend was diagnosed with depression.  I can still remember him talking about ‘chemical imbalances’ and as I recall this was also presented to us in a class.  The basic point of focusing on biology was so that individuals would not equate their experience with their identity or ability.  They could no more ‘create’ or ‘identify’ with their condition as could someone with a cold or flu.  This sort of conversation also placed hope in science as the messianic figure for those in bondage.

I find it unfortunate that the conversation continues to be reduced to the need for a bio-medical cure and that other forms of response are basically the bandage which keeps the individual from completely being bled out.  Now I want to be clear that I am not opposed to medications that respond to mental illness (though I remain supremely frustrated in how they get distributed and the ‘results’ they offer).  What I want to consider is simple.  Regardless of an illness’ origin and manifestation how would a person respond to their symptoms (apathy, melancholy, hallucinations, paranoia, etc.) if they lived in an environment that actively and rigorously rooted out expressions of fear or the factors which most commonly lead people to be afraid.

I don’t really care at the moment about whether or not this possible.  I just want to consider what it would be like for someone to experience symptoms of mental illness (assuming they are somehow of independent origin) without being afraid of them.  What if there was no fear of hearing voices only a need to process what they said.  What if there was no fear of apathy but a space to rest and act without the spectre of productivity.  These ‘services’ are already offered but they stand distinctly under the banner of ‘sick’ (dysfunctional, abnormal, absurd, etc.).  There is a lot of talk about dealing with the ‘stigma’ of mental illness but until we consider that the power to make it an ‘illness’ is held directly within the stigma I don’t see it being taken seriously.  The typical response of dismantling stigma is to handle a person with ‘kid-gloves’ that still perpetuates diminished status.  How then can we nourish lives that can withstand the fearful realities of life or must we ‘flee Babylon’ and created spaces (perhaps like L’Arche or La Borde) where another manner of life is possible?  And what of the church in all this?  I don’t see those addressing a mental illness flocking to my congregation.  And yet there are so many individuals and families struggling under this burden.

Between slavery and control

Perhaps this imagery goes without saying but I think there is still significant contemporary theo-political content to be developed from the Pentateuch.  Here are some excerpts from last Sunday’s sermon on Leviticus 19,

I think one of the most misunderstood aspects of Leviticus as well as the first five books of the Old Testament in general is the notion that the commandments given represent some sort of static or fixed law.  The center of Old Testament faith is not the following of particular laws.  This may flow out from the center but the center of Old Testament faith is the presence of God.  Everything in Leviticus as well as Exodus and Numbers finds its orientation in relationship with the Holy of Holies, the center of the Tabernacle, which was the Tent of Meeting, around which the Israelites camped as they travelled in the wilderness and when they first settled in Canaan.  And what is at the center of the Holy of Holies?  Inside that space is the Ark of the Covenant.  The Ark is a box covered with a lid sometimes called the Mercy Seat that had two angels, called cherubim, mounted on either side on top.  I view the Ark as a sort of frame.

At the center of other religions at that time there would tend to be a physical idol that would represent who or what was being worshipped.  However, in the Tabernacle there was an empty space between the wings of the cherubim on top of the Ark.  In the book of Exodus God says to Moses, “There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the covenant, I will deliver to you all my commands for the Israelites.”  What is the significance of this image?  God comes to meet with Moses from the place that humanity cannot control and confine, in the space that is left open and empty.  God cannot be directly equated with our conceptions, with our tradition or with our expectations.  So while we have the framework, so to speak, of ethics and tradition that provide some continuity and stability we must always be open to the newness or aliveness that the love of God will speak into situations.

. . .

The Tabernacle by its nature is movable.  The Tabernacle as well as Mt. Sinai exist in a special place in the Old Testament story.  These sites exist between the experience of slavery in Egypt on one side and the experience of slowing taking power and control in Canaan on the other side. The Tabernacle exists in the freedom of reliance and dependence on God between and therefore beyond being enslaved or being in control.  And as the author of the Gospel of John put it so well of Jesus saying literally that “the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.”  We are to learn to be a tabernacling people. . . . We remain a people with history and tradition but can these things be dismantled, stakes pulled up, to set up the site again in a new place?

. . .

And so like the nomadic Hebrew people of the wilderness we must nourish the ability to migrate, gather and frame the possibility of God’s holiness over the spaces between slavery and control.  We gather and walk with one another and with our neighbours seeing how our objects, our actions and our minds relate to one another.  This is the body of Christ that walked the earth 2000 years ago.  He never grasped for political and social control and even when his body was ultimately grasped by these forms of control he never became enslaved to them.  He always held open that space for the love of God which enters the world as the love of our neighbour as our self.  This is to be the body of Christ today, that is the church, it is to spread and wander with eyes attentive to power and bondage and then to stand between them.

Debating whether or not I care

I recently crossed paths with someone heavily involved in an atheists group at the local university.  This person was not of the ‘sort’ I expected.  In any event the encounter spurred me to do a little snooping around on the internet for local atheist blogs and see what was happening.  In the process I ran into The Winnipeg Skeptics.  One of the contributors has his own blog Startled Disbelief.  I started reading various posts and before long I chimed in with a few comments.  Now I have to say I appreciate Gem Newman’s tone at Startled Disbelief and so was quite open to hearing his positions.  After my initial comment Gem directed me to an earlier post which outlined in broader terms his position as a skeptic.  We had a decent little exchange going before I realized that the arc of the conversation was quickly moving into territory I simply had no interest in pursuing.

If you are interested in the full conversation see the last link (I did quite appreciate his overall presentation).  In any event there was one aspect to the conversation that continued to trouble me.  Gem constantly pushed the notion that skepticism was somehow non-political.  Skepticism is simply a method of critically examining claims (as he puts it).  I didn’t think anyone believed in a neutral mode of scientific inquiry anymore.  Gem went on to say that skepticism does not “provide a personal moral framework” and also that “atheism says nothing about politics, economics, or even belief in the supernatural.”  He claimed I was confusing the politics of particular atheists with the politics of atheism (I had earlier proposed that atheism was actually a much more robust approach than skepticism . . . for him atheism is a one-off subject).  Gem claims that he is “a skeptical, liberal, humanistic atheist.”  I suppose it is this combination that clarifies his politics.  However, he continues to maintain a broader skeptical orientation in saying, “I think that everything should be open to question. All conclusions are provisional.”  How is this not political?  How will that not continue to deny participation to decisive and potentially life-threatening postures that need to be taken in response to abusive powers?

Now so far as theology goes I would agree that a skeptical atheism comes much closer to biblical faith than many other contemporary theologies do in its rigor for idol-smashing.  However, biblical faith is a decidedly declared position.  That is, biblical faith will always ultimately undermine earthly authorities which abuse power.  This is Christology (as well as good Old Testament theology).  So I put it to Gem saying that I am much more interested in the proposition ‘love everything’ as opposed to his tagline ‘question everything’.  Love maintains a critical posture (because of its love for others) but always orientates the person towards a constructive and engaged posture.  This is where things started coming off the rails in my mind.  Here Gem began ‘applying’ his method.  His defense of and basis for skepticism was simply the apparently self-evident role of the Enlightenment as “proven to have held up.”  This is exactly my criticism he does not address.  The Enlightenment does not hold up because it offered nothing socially or politically substantive to engage the West.  I am then accused of a ‘false dichotomy’ in my opposition of love-or-question everything.  Though, I should add that love under Gem’s definition is some sort of fond cuddling.  When I advanced my view of love (as something restorative) I was accused of having a definition that “seems vague, misleading, needlessly complex, and in some cases probably guilty of equivocation.”  Oh man, I guess Gem has the definition down for love.

It is at this point at the end of the conversation that Gem offers the strange example of giving lectures to teachers on how to teach mathematics.  In this example it would not interest him to consider how to integrate the possibility that some children are unable to learn due to unstable life circumstances.  That sort of clinched it.  I suspect he would say that indeed would care about it but he also says that he has “neither the skills nor the inclination to be a counsellor, and the fact that some of them may need counselling does not make teaching mathematics any less important.”  Who the hell would argue from that example that mathematics are not important?  Yes, fine we are all able and limited in various capacities but to consider one aspect of education as ‘pedagogically pure’ regardless of circumstance seems unhelpful.

Why am I recounting this?  I guess I wanted to process it for myself.  Christian and skeptical/atheistic apologetics are pretty big these days.  I thought it might be a good exercise to understand why I don’t care.  What this has clarified for me is the reality that by and large these expressions (on both sides of the fences, as I have encountered them) have a drastically insufficient or at least dis-integrated view of politics as though they can go about their business because they are a-political.  Its not my responsibility for what others do with the sacred truth I discover.  In any event it seems more like bullshit than before.

Original boredom and solving our financial crisis

While I have not posted on Either / Or the experience of volume 1 for a second go round is better than I expected.  The problem is that it is a ‘popular’ work and so also a dated work.  Can you imagine reading Zizek’s works over 100 years from now trying to piece together the pop-culture illusions?  Either / Or is not that extreme though I am certainly feeling its distance.  One of the pieces is volume 1 begins with a reflection on boredom as the root of evil.  And because of this seeks to eliminate its evil presence.  He takes finance as an example.  Imagine trying to improve the economy by practicing economics!?  How utterly boring and therefore sinful.

The history of this [evil] can be traced from the very beginning of the world.  The gods were bored, and so they created man.  Adam was bored because he was alone, and so Eve was created.  Thus boredom entered the world, and increased in proportion to the increase of population.  Adam was bored alone; then Adam and Eve were bored togethre; then Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were bored en famille; then the population of the world increased, and the peoples were bored en masse.  To divert themselves they conceived the idea of constructing a tower high enough to reach the heavens.  This idea is itself as boring as the tower was high, and constitutes a terrible proof of how boredom gained the upper hand.  The nations were scattered over the earth, just as people now travel abroad, but they continued to be bored.  Consider the consequences of this boredom.  Humanity fell from its lofty height, first because of Eve, and then from the Tower of Babel.  What was it, on the other hand, that delayed the fall of Rome, was it not bread and circuses?  And is anything to be done now?  Is anyone concerned about planning some means of diversion?  Quite the contrary, the impending ruin is being accelerated.  It is proposed to improve the financial condition of the state by practicing economy.  What could be more tiresome?  Instead of increasing the national debt, it is proposed to pay it off.  As I understand the political situation, it would be an easy matter for Denmark to negotiate a loan of fifteen million dollars.  Why not consider this plan?  Every once in a while we hear of a man who is a genius, and therefore neglects to pay his debts – why should not a nation do the same, if we were all agreed?  Let us then borrow fifteen millions, and let us the proceeds, not to pay debts, but for public entertainment.  Let us celebrate the millennium in a riot of merriment.  Let us place boxes everywhere, not, as at present, for the deposit of money, but for the free distribution of money.  Everything would become gratis; theaters gratis, women of easy virtue gratis, one would drive to the park gratis, be buried gratis, one’s eulogy would be gratis; I say gratis, for when one always has money at hand, everything is in a certain sense free.  No one should be permitted to own any property.  Only in my own case would there be an exception.  I reserve to myself securities in the Bank of London to the value of one hundred dollars a day, partly because I cannot do with less, partly because the idea is mine, and finally because I may not be able to hit upon a new idea when the fifteen millions are gone.

The mockery of careful planning

I have always been a little uneasy with Jesus’ parable of ‘planning’ (Luke 14:28-31).  Jesus asks whether the people would not plan ahead of time to make sure they had sufficient materials to complete a tower and sufficient soldiers for victory.  The ‘moral of story’ as I have received it is that of the wise stewardship of resources.  I could not quite put my finger on why this bugged me other than the fact that it seemed to propagate good, bland suburbanites.  I’m not sure why I didn’t see it but the two images obviously have strong connections to the Old Testament in the Tower of Babel and David’s census taking.  Both of these acts reflect careful planning.  They are also both sins.  Who has the materials to finish building a tower? The answer is no one,  because a tower is never finished.  Who has the man-power to win a war? The answer is no one, because a war is never over.

The parable drives this home in a way that should have made it clear.  The parable  is book-ended first by the command that one cannot follow if they do not first hate their family. And at the end of the parable Jesus offers a re-articulation that states that you cannot become a disciple if you do not give up all your possessions (i.e. ending the production of tower-building and war-making).  The internal space of these commands is the mockery of ‘careful planning’.

I am a feel good story; Or, What would Zizek do?

Yesterday I swung by the University of Winnipeg to pick up a copy of Zizek’s The Parallax View.  On my way back to the car I noticed a flash of colour standing out against the dirty white snow on the curb.  Lying there, as though nestled on some heavenly cloud was a bundle of cash.  There before me lay $1oo dollars staring up at me with no indication of ownership.  I suddenly found myself in some sort of poorly contrived morality sketch.  What should I do?  Some of thoughts that ran through my head;

  1. Write a note with my contact information where I found the money so that the person could tell me the amount and denomination.
  2. Donate it to some worthy cause.
  3. Go back into the University and donate it to the hippies with a booth promoting sustainable agriculture.
  4. Leave it in the snow bank.
  5. Keep it.

I waited for a few moments in the car to see if anyone was frantically running around.  I did not like any of my responses.  1-3 seemed like some ‘noble’ redemption of this sullied money . . . no good.  5 just felt wrong and right at the same time.  4 may have actually be the best option because I felt that certainly no one else would give such thoughtful consideration to finding money as I will and they would proceed immediately to 5.  In the end I decided to go in the nearest building which was the athletic building.  I went up to the front desk and told the girl what I found.  Recognizing the torn envelope she responded, “That must be Tim’s . . . I mean that was what Tim was supposed to deposit” as she pointed to their deposit box.  Hey, if she lied, good on her for the presence of mind.  In any event, as I was leaving I heard her say, “You’re so honest.”  Ahhhh, I slept well that night.

So money implies dishonesty.  As soon as money is detached from any recognizable or enforceable relationship immediate ownership upon discovery is assumed.  And why not?  Money shows no allegiance.  It does not bear the marks of enduring long-term relationship.  It is built for pure mobility.  I have to say that I am glad it seemed to return the place where it would cause some undergrad the least amount of grief.  But I can’t help but think . . . what would Zizek do?

Getting what you ask for – Egypt Update

I am developing a basic framework for a ‘visitation team’ at my church.  This team will help connect with those in the congregation who are physically unable to regularly participate in church.  This morning I was looking through a few resources that I could use to help equip this team with some basic approaches to care and visiting.  A while back I bought a cheap copy of Carl Rogers’ classic On Becoming a Person in which he outlines his client-centered model which is based on the belief that each person has the inherent ability to change and that particular relationships can help facilitate that change.

I have strongly mixed feelings about this approach.  It is very easy to critique this book on its optimism about the possibility of becoming an ‘autonomous individual’.  However, I am respectful of the sort of posture Rogers wishes to nurture.  I am constantly bewildered expressions from those who reject an individualist approach to contemporary issues and those who want to address systemic issues.  It almost invariably seems as though the people wanting to address systemic issues must, must, heap scorn upon actual individuals (particularly if they do not agree with a particular view of systems).  In any event, as I was working through a few his very readable chapters what troubled me more than the dichotomy between systems and individuals is the notion of what positive change could look like.

Rogers cites a study which explores the implication of various parenting styles.  The best model in his estimation is the ‘acceptant-democratic’.  Here is his description the children,

Children of these parents with their warm and equalitarian attitudes showed an accelerated intellectual development (an increasing I.Q.), more originality, more emotional security and control, less excitability than children from other types of homes.  Though somewhat slow initially in social development, they were, by the time they reached school age, popular, friendly, non-aggressive leaders (41-42).

I tried to imagine what these kids looked like and it was not hard.  These are the children of upper-middle class families who excel in school and have enough restraint and insight so as to manipulate passive-aggressive acts for the purpose and maintenance of social dominance.  I also expect that these are the families that nod assent to the value of church and social responsibility but don’t give a shit about making any significant change for those values because they have already arrived.  And they are also afraid of those who ‘unstable’, that is, not like them.

This is just a guess.  But if it is correct then Carl Rogers has unfortunately succeeded because there seems to be a whole glut of these families.

** Update – Perhaps it is with a Rogerian sort of unconditional acceptance that Senator Clinton has approached the Mubarak family.

Christ, Who Fills Everything in Every Way

This past Sunday I preached on Ephesians 4:4-16.  I wanted to draw attention to two themes in the book.  First is the abundance of language about abundance.  Believers are filled with riches, power and wealth.  Second, this is set within the context of the body of Christ which (who) fills all things.  A broad theme in my recent reading is on the notion of capitalism as that body which currently (and rapidly) seeks to fill everything.  From last Sunday’s sermon,

The basis of economic growth is of course to make more money.  This requires more resources to make products and more markets in which to sell them, and ideally cheaper labour by which to make the products.  Consider how coorporations scour the entire globe in search of resources and labour.  Consider the manner in which resources that arguably should be public are increasingly coming under the umbrella of private coorporations.  The issue of access to water comes readily to mind; the patenting of seeds for agriculture is another.  Think of ever expanding marketing we face.  Children are marketed, lifestyles are marketed, environmentalism is marketed, health and beauty, relationships, status; the list could go on forever.  The public space for gathering is now the food court surrounded by the constant refrain of the mall to consume.  High-interest money-lenders are popping up everywhere taking more money (and security) than they will ever give.  The market of money knows no limit to its desire to bring everything under its control.

Borrowing heavily from Philip Goodchild I then went on talk about how the financial crisis exposes both the power and the fragility of contemporary capitalism.  Even governments submit to its whims.  Though the ‘limits’ of contemporary capitalism are also becoming more apparent (increase in material costs).  In this way capitalism forms a mocking portrayal of an expanding and universal body which we participate in.

Also, borrowing heavily on Goodchild, I turned to the role of attention as a primary indicator of piety (whether ‘secular’ piety of religious).  To what then does the body of Christ call our attention to?  Here I returned to the Ephesians text and drew attention to what had seemed like a strange insertion for me.

[E]ach of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it is said, “When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people.”  (When it says, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions of the earth? He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.) Eph 4:7-10

Here I drew attention to Christ’s descent.  The primary movement for the body of Christ is one of descent.  It is after this movement that ascension occurs, captivity is held captive and gifts are released.  Therefore our attention is turned to the descent.  I described this as attention to suffering and vulnerability.

This is the paradox of the body of Christ.  That in turning our attention to the vulnerability and suffering within and around us we enter in the joy of God’s grace; in feeling bound and helpless by the scope of suffering Christ binds bondage and frees us with his gifts of grace.  We are called to draw near to that strange place where we face each other, where crying and laughing become almost indistinguishable. [I thought of the description of the Cairo protests as by one participant as a ‘wedding feast’]

I had a relatively strong reaction to this sermon both positive and negative.  I ran into one group after the service vigorously discussing the implications of the sermon.  I also ran into other individuals who felt that the message was too ambiguous and loosely connected.  This sermon was part of a small series on ‘lay’ leadership.  In this way I suppose I could (or should) have been a little more ‘practical’.  However, I could not shake the notion that practicality in the church has typically meant ‘plugging into’ existing programs that are often ‘unplugged’ from pressing issues.  While the Mennonite church may have a slightly better track-record in this regard my hope is that ‘abstract’ sermons like this one can eventually build a new framework for church expression.