Common Grounds Online 2006 Non-fiction Reading List
http://commongroundsonline.typepad.com/common_grounds_online/2006/05/summer_reading_.html#more
There is definitely some good stuff in here. Charlie Peacock, NT Wright, Wolterstorff...
Happy reading!
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
Resist
Whoever can reconcile this, 'Resist not evil', with 'Resist violence by force', again, 'Give also thy other cheek', with 'Strike again'; also, 'Love thine enemies', with 'Spoil them, make a prey of them, pursue them with fire and the sword', or, 'Pray for those that persecute you, and those that calumniate you', with 'Persecute them by fines, imprisonments and death itself', whoever, I say, can find a means to reconcile these things may be supposed also to have found a way to reconcile God with the Devil, Christ with Antichrist, Light with Darkness, and good with evil. But if this be impossible, as indeed it is impossible, so will also the other be impossible, and men do but deceive both themselves and others, while they boldly adventure to establish such absurd and impossible things.
Robert Barclay, 1678
Ever since I spent time at L'Abri I have been thinking about what it means to be a pacifist. I have always said that I was a pacifist only because I never liked fighting. Maybe its because I'm not very strong so I would just say that I was a pacifist so I would have a reason to not back up my friends in a bar fight. Luckily I have well behaving friends and I never had to show my stripes in that situation.
One might think there would be a lot of pacifists at L'Abri. Surprisingly, there were only a few. I was one of the only people who really spoke up about it. Maybe I should define this better than I am. Pacifism is a tricky word because it denotes (at least to me) an extremely passive, almost non-caring attitude towards violence. I would say that Christian pacifism is more of an active non-violence. I didn't make that up, I think I stole it from Ron Sider's old book Christ & Violence. This is the same book that introduced me to the idea of systematic injustice. It was also the only book in the L'Abri library about nonviolence (in a positive light).
I guess I have always been a Christian pacifist for two reasons (more now, but from the beginning just two.) First, I could never reconcile violence (especially war) with Jesus' words to love our enemies and 'do not resist evil'. This was never well thought out but more of a gut-feeling about how we need to take those things seriously even if it messes up what we want to think about our enemies or violence done to us. Second, I never liked the idea that nonviolence needed to be defended. Violence was always the initial reaction and then we should present a case for nonviolence. It seemed that nonviolence should be the standard and one should try to be convinced of why violence should be allowed. More gut than anything else, but I could never get around those two things.
The other thing about nonviolence and pacifism is that I think it should be carried to its logical conclusion. Just like the idea of 'pro-life' should enlarged to include not only human birth but the environment, marriage, the death penalty, and all forms of life-giving and life-taking, I think that nonviolence should be extended too. Nonviolence in its fullest form should include nonviolence to the earth and its resources, nonviolence to enemies, nonviolence to our bodies, nonviolent words and actions towards our family, nonviolent speech in general. Its kind of like the difference between peace-loving and peace-making. Not just people who want peace, but people who make peace.
I wrote most of that last night. I don't know where I was going...so I'll stop there.
Robert Barclay, 1678
Ever since I spent time at L'Abri I have been thinking about what it means to be a pacifist. I have always said that I was a pacifist only because I never liked fighting. Maybe its because I'm not very strong so I would just say that I was a pacifist so I would have a reason to not back up my friends in a bar fight. Luckily I have well behaving friends and I never had to show my stripes in that situation.
One might think there would be a lot of pacifists at L'Abri. Surprisingly, there were only a few. I was one of the only people who really spoke up about it. Maybe I should define this better than I am. Pacifism is a tricky word because it denotes (at least to me) an extremely passive, almost non-caring attitude towards violence. I would say that Christian pacifism is more of an active non-violence. I didn't make that up, I think I stole it from Ron Sider's old book Christ & Violence. This is the same book that introduced me to the idea of systematic injustice. It was also the only book in the L'Abri library about nonviolence (in a positive light).
I guess I have always been a Christian pacifist for two reasons (more now, but from the beginning just two.) First, I could never reconcile violence (especially war) with Jesus' words to love our enemies and 'do not resist evil'. This was never well thought out but more of a gut-feeling about how we need to take those things seriously even if it messes up what we want to think about our enemies or violence done to us. Second, I never liked the idea that nonviolence needed to be defended. Violence was always the initial reaction and then we should present a case for nonviolence. It seemed that nonviolence should be the standard and one should try to be convinced of why violence should be allowed. More gut than anything else, but I could never get around those two things.
The other thing about nonviolence and pacifism is that I think it should be carried to its logical conclusion. Just like the idea of 'pro-life' should enlarged to include not only human birth but the environment, marriage, the death penalty, and all forms of life-giving and life-taking, I think that nonviolence should be extended too. Nonviolence in its fullest form should include nonviolence to the earth and its resources, nonviolence to enemies, nonviolence to our bodies, nonviolent words and actions towards our family, nonviolent speech in general. Its kind of like the difference between peace-loving and peace-making. Not just people who want peace, but people who make peace.
I wrote most of that last night. I don't know where I was going...so I'll stop there.
Sunday, May 28, 2006
What Remains
I haven't had any good thoughts lately. I've been busy with my new job. It's actually nice to not have to sit in one place all day and just think about stuff. I'm much happier.
This will be another plug for a blog I read. This one should be a keeper. I was reading Matthew's stuff a few years ago (during the same time as Real Live Preacher stuff) and reading his thoughts on his own struggle to go to seminary vs. keeping a comfortable job helped me immensly. He stopped blogging for a while but he is back and I would love it if you guys went over and checked him out regularly. He writes and thinks beautifully about the stuff that matters.
What Remains
Someday, your children’s children’s children will drive by what remains of a Barnes and Noble hulking next door to the blasted remains of a Bed, Bath and Beyond. Across the potholed highway will be their fallen mirror images: the debris of a Borders; a leaning and derelict Linens ‘n’ Things.
Enjoy! Maybe one of these days I'll actually write something.
This will be another plug for a blog I read. This one should be a keeper. I was reading Matthew's stuff a few years ago (during the same time as Real Live Preacher stuff) and reading his thoughts on his own struggle to go to seminary vs. keeping a comfortable job helped me immensly. He stopped blogging for a while but he is back and I would love it if you guys went over and checked him out regularly. He writes and thinks beautifully about the stuff that matters.
What Remains
Someday, your children’s children’s children will drive by what remains of a Barnes and Noble hulking next door to the blasted remains of a Bed, Bath and Beyond. Across the potholed highway will be their fallen mirror images: the debris of a Borders; a leaning and derelict Linens ‘n’ Things.
No one gives any thought to how these things will look a thousand years from now, or even fifty. When Arnolfo di Cambia designed the duomo in Florence–over seven hundred years ago–he knew he was building something that would last. We don’t build things to last, or even to remain for very long. Everything will be abandoned, rebranded, moved along, or quietly disappeared....Read more here
Enjoy! Maybe one of these days I'll actually write something.
Friday, May 26, 2006
Language and the Limits of Imagination
My friend Sarah goes to Duke Divinity School. She is cool. Like, really cool. And really smart. And awesome. Like, really awesome.
Anyway, she blogs over at Xanga (what does that even mean?) and writes some really cool stuff. Today's post is great. She and I have similar interests in theology (not to mention music, too!) but she writes beautifully. This post is about what it is like to learn theology. I highly recommend it.
Langauge and the Limits of Imagination
so I had a thought today while walking away from my car, which I left in the parking lot with strict instructions to get steaming hot while I was in Hebrew class> I was thinking about how to describe the task of teaching/learning theology. It's about learning a language, eh? Picking up a new vocabulary, getting a feel for its own web of connections and realities, looking along its sightlines until you can move around inside the space it carves out with both freedom and faithfulness....read more here
Sarah's Blog
Enjoy!
Anyway, she blogs over at Xanga (what does that even mean?) and writes some really cool stuff. Today's post is great. She and I have similar interests in theology (not to mention music, too!) but she writes beautifully. This post is about what it is like to learn theology. I highly recommend it.
Langauge and the Limits of Imagination
so I had a thought today while walking away from my car, which I left in the parking lot with strict instructions to get steaming hot while I was in Hebrew class> I was thinking about how to describe the task of teaching/learning theology. It's about learning a language, eh? Picking up a new vocabulary, getting a feel for its own web of connections and realities, looking along its sightlines until you can move around inside the space it carves out with both freedom and faithfulness....read more here
Sarah's Blog
Enjoy!
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Your Guide Toward Meaningful Work
This was in today's Sojomail.
Your guide toward meaningful work
by David Batstone 
Individuals yearn to pour their talents and deepest interests into work that matters. They are tired of being one person at work, another with their family, and possibly yet another in their community or political activity. Sustaining these multiple personalities quickly becomes exhausting and makes us feel spiritually fragmented.
Of course, many people in the world do not have the privilege of choosing work that means something beyond a daily wage. But for the majority of SojoMail readers, that is not the case. Education and economic conditions offer choices.
It's exciting to watch traditional boundaries on work blur. In many cases, the decision whether to join, or launch, a nonprofit organization rather than a for-profit enterprise comes down to personal strategy and circumstance. In other words, your skills alone do not determine your career path. In that respect, I know some very talented managers and business minds who find their niche confronting the problem of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa or designing low-cost housing in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. In like manner, I met some remarkably creative and values-led people at Dell Computer Corporation where I spent last week delivering workshops on ethics and sustainability in a global economy.
Following the publication of my last book, Saving the Corporate Soul, I went on the road for two years visiting all kinds of organizations about significance and purpose at work. I discovered that when individuals explain what motivates them they keep coming back to three basic drivers: purpose, passion, and profit. So I designed a short inventory to identify how individuals take a primary orientation from one of these drivers. I call the tool the Triple P Quiz: Purpose, Passion and Profit- and it's available online.
I like to use the word orientation because we truly operate with a mix of motivations. Nonetheless, I discovered that nearly everyone I interview points to a primary driver that shapes their experience at work.
In designing the tool, I aim not only to help workers learn more about themselves, I want to offer the workplace a language for job engagement and the range of motivations that inspire team members.
It may be helpful to offer here a thumb-nail sketch of each p. Passion-led individuals value inspiring and creative work. No matter how much an organization touts the higher purpose of a job, if they do not feel passionate about the activities the position involves, they are not likely to find the job enticing. In other words, passion-led people shiver at the thought of waking up to a month of Mondays and face a set of tasks that are uninspiring.
I meet purpose-led people most often in the nonprofit and civic sector. Don't get me wrong, these individuals are not disappointed to take on creative tasks. But what inspires them is the larger mission of the enterprise of which they are a part. Purpose people do not fit into a one-size-fits-all box, however. While one person may want to find a cure for cancer, another purpose person finds motivation for designing a new software. You want purpose people to help drive the mission and core values of your organization. They keep the enterprise on course.
Profit-led people are the most rare in the non-profit world. Profit does not solely refer to bottom-line financials. More broadly, profit-led people find meaning in achieving a set of determined deliverables. They are the ones who provide discipline and structure to the organization. If you have ever started your own enterprise, you know the valuable role that profit-led people play, especially once your operation began to scale.
The deeper I engage with organizations, the more I appreciate the range of motivations required to make an organization healthy and successful. Individuals are not all wired the same; they find meaning in very different ways. Unfortunately, we do not always value the differences.
Last week I received a cynical note from an individual who took the Triple P Quiz and proclaimed that passion people are self-indulgent. In short, here's his message: It is well and good to seek inspiration, but get over it, because the world is full of suffering people. This purpose-led individual doubts the sincerity of other people who do not share his own motivation. In my experience, it is always a temptation for purpose-led people to feel that any other motivation for meaning is inferior, if not selling out.
His position reminds me of a dilemma that a CEO presented to me recently. The company was a victim of its own success; it was experiencing wild economic growth. When the company launched over a decade ago, the very passionate founder attracted a first wave of employees who also believed fervently in the products of the company. Once the company passed the $100 million mark in sales, the management team saw the need to bring in profit-led people who could better discipline its operations. The early-generation workers, of course, viewed the intrusion of the profit-led people as a threat to their passion-led corporate culture. The profit-led people felt less than welcomed. For their part, they wondered how such a chaotic, undisciplined crew could have gotten so far in business.
My challenge is to help every member of an organization recognize the value of an orchestra with many instruments. No organization can sustain itself without a strong mission (purpose), a creative and inspired dynamism (passion), and clear set of achievements and deliverables (profit). When any one of these values dominates in such a degree that it squeezes out the comfortable space the others offer, the organization will falter. Those enterprises that value the uniqueness of their personnel, on the other hand, design work environments where productivity thrives.
-------------------
So, are you Passion-driven, Profit-driven, Purpose-driven? Take the test here.
I took the test and I am 81% Passion, 69% Purpose, 50% profit.*
*My first test was taken in a busy room without much thought. I retook the test about 12 hours later and my new results were: 94% Passion, 63% Purpose, and 44% Profit.
Sunday, May 21, 2006
A New Law
I know I'm a little slow, but I just got Derek Webb's new(est) album Mockingbird and I have to say it might be his best yet. I've been listening to Derek for over 10 years now. When I was in high school Caedmon's Call used to play at Metro Bible Study (Houston) before they hit it big. If you are familiar with any of Caedmon's music, you will know that Derek has always stood out from the rest of the band in more ways than just his musical ability. His songs, of course, have always been deeper and more honest--much less praise music and more self/god discovery. On stage he only wears white T-shirts (sometimes accompanied by a jacket). My kind of guy.
OK, the CD. It's called Mockingbird. Apparently--and I have no actual evidence of this besides the music itself--Derek was reading a lot of Stanley Hauerwas (among others) during the writing of these songs. I'm sure that I will love it. Here is what Hauerwas himself says about the CD:
In general, I hate Christian rock music. But now I have heard the songs of Derek Webb. Webb’s songs are free of the pietistic sentimentality that usually characterizes popular Christian music. His music, like the Gospel, is at once hard, edgy, and beautiful.
I'm still getting to know the songs, but I wanted to post the lyrics to one of my favorites and include a link to a video.
A New Law
don’t teach me about politics and government
just tell me who to vote for
Enjoy.
The Work of the People is defined by its name. We are a community of artists, storytellers, filmmakers, poets and theologians. Our work is to tell the story we share and to ask poignant questions through film, literature, art and music. We utilize our gifts to create tools for the Church to engage universal spiritual issues through progressive media. We confess that we are created in the image of God and fulfill our calling by creating and recreating to the glory of God
OK, the CD. It's called Mockingbird. Apparently--and I have no actual evidence of this besides the music itself--Derek was reading a lot of Stanley Hauerwas (among others) during the writing of these songs. I'm sure that I will love it. Here is what Hauerwas himself says about the CD:
In general, I hate Christian rock music. But now I have heard the songs of Derek Webb. Webb’s songs are free of the pietistic sentimentality that usually characterizes popular Christian music. His music, like the Gospel, is at once hard, edgy, and beautiful.
I'm still getting to know the songs, but I wanted to post the lyrics to one of my favorites and include a link to a video.
A New Law
don’t teach me about politics and government
just tell me who to vote for
don’t teach me about truth and beauty
just label my music
don’t teach me how to live like a free man
just give me a new law
i don’t wanna know if the answers aren’t easy
so just bring it down from the mountain to me
i want a new law
i want a new law
gimme that new law
don’t teach me about moderation and liberty
i prefer a shot of grape juice
don’t teach me about loving my enemies
don’t teach me how to listen to the Spirit
just give me a new law
i don’t wanna know if the answers aren’t easy
so just bring it down from the mountain to me
i want a new law
i want a new law
gimme that new law
what’s the use in trading a law you can never keep
for one you can that cannot get you anything
do not be afraid
do not be afraid
do not be afraid
Enjoy.
The Work of the People is defined by its name. We are a community of artists, storytellers, filmmakers, poets and theologians. Our work is to tell the story we share and to ask poignant questions through film, literature, art and music. We utilize our gifts to create tools for the Church to engage universal spiritual issues through progressive media. We confess that we are created in the image of God and fulfill our calling by creating and recreating to the glory of God
Friday, May 19, 2006
America Part 1
it’s the dawn of the 21st century
America is still on top
there’s political confusion, social illusion
but its no worse than most folks have got
we read in the papers about the dealers and the rapers
and the wars that are being fought
we see those who are needy
give thanks to the banks that are not
workin’ the 9 to 5
so we can afford our pretty white homes
and if we run out of money buying stuff we don’t need
we can always just apply for a loan
we live in the suburbs with our aunts and our mothers
and our pagers and our cellular phones
and our email, world wide web
so we’re never alone
we give and we give to ourselves
but still we need more
we drink and we drink to our health
pass out on the floor
there is something very wrong with this nation
that we all gladly ignore
rather be ignorant and complacent
than pack our bags and walk out the door
each Sunday the choir fills the churches with such beautiful sounds
then the music trails off
and its back to the noise
of traffic and the smell of downtown
we pass by the whores, the gays, the drunks in the doorways
and we try to keep our eyes on the ground
we snicker at the lost and think,
“man, I’m so glad that I’m found”
we give and we give to ourselves
but still we need more
we drink, yeah, we drink to our health
pass out on the floor
there is something very wrong with this nation
that we all just gladly ignore
rather be ignorant and complacent
than pack our bags and walk out the door
sometimes I find myself asking
“have we come this far?”
if only we could be the country we were
instead of the country we are
except the country we were was built
on the backs of the blacks and the blood of the red
America the beautiful
home for the rich and the graves of the dead
Seth Woods, America Part 1
America is still on top
there’s political confusion, social illusion
but its no worse than most folks have got
we read in the papers about the dealers and the rapers
and the wars that are being fought
we see those who are needy
give thanks to the banks that are not
workin’ the 9 to 5
so we can afford our pretty white homes
and if we run out of money buying stuff we don’t need
we can always just apply for a loan
we live in the suburbs with our aunts and our mothers
and our pagers and our cellular phones
and our email, world wide web
so we’re never alone
we give and we give to ourselves
but still we need more
we drink and we drink to our health
pass out on the floor
there is something very wrong with this nation
that we all gladly ignore
rather be ignorant and complacent
than pack our bags and walk out the door
each Sunday the choir fills the churches with such beautiful sounds
then the music trails off
and its back to the noise
of traffic and the smell of downtown
we pass by the whores, the gays, the drunks in the doorways
and we try to keep our eyes on the ground
we snicker at the lost and think,
“man, I’m so glad that I’m found”
we give and we give to ourselves
but still we need more
we drink, yeah, we drink to our health
pass out on the floor
there is something very wrong with this nation
that we all just gladly ignore
rather be ignorant and complacent
than pack our bags and walk out the door
sometimes I find myself asking
“have we come this far?”
if only we could be the country we were
instead of the country we are
except the country we were was built
on the backs of the blacks and the blood of the red
America the beautiful
home for the rich and the graves of the dead
Seth Woods, America Part 1
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
What's not to like?
The Ongoing Holy War Against Evil, a poem by Wendell Berry
Stop the killing, or
I'll kill you, you
God-damned murderer!
I wonder why more people don't like poetry sometimes.
Stop the killing, or
I'll kill you, you
God-damned murderer!
I wonder why more people don't like poetry sometimes.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Life Together
It is true, of course, that what is an unspeakable gift of God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded and trodden under foot by those who have the gift every day. It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us, that the time that still separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed. Therefore, let him who until now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God's grace from the bottom of his heart. Let him thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
I'm reminded of The Fellows Program and L'Abri. I hope I never forget that fellowship is a gift.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
I'm reminded of The Fellows Program and L'Abri. I hope I never forget that fellowship is a gift.
Beginnings
I'm not at work(corporate accounting job) because I quit. Call me a quitter if you will, I don't mind.
I will be spending the next 3-4 months working with about 15 college students at a local church.
After that, Regent College.
We'll see how my 75 year plan works out...
I will be spending the next 3-4 months working with about 15 college students at a local church.
After that, Regent College.
We'll see how my 75 year plan works out...
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Bono Pics
Thanks to my new friend Edgar for sending me these great pics. Edgar is a true U2/Bono fan. He's the kind of guy who would fly to Hawaii to see them...or Mexico City. I know that because he did. Although Edgar took the shots, I was next to him so I had pretty much the same view...enjoy!
I gave a copy of :the choice campaign: prospectus to the tall man in the back of this picture. He's Bono's personal security guard and said, "I'll see what I can do" when I asked him if he could get it to Bono.
Edgar was rewarded with a signed copy of Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas
I gave a copy of :the choice campaign: prospectus to the tall man in the back of this picture. He's Bono's personal security guard and said, "I'll see what I can do" when I asked him if he could get it to Bono.
Edgar was rewarded with a signed copy of Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Engage!
From a blog about Stanley Hauerwas speaking at Theology Live at Yale:
"he didn't like what we were doing because he thought it was 'public theology' or some such thing, which he considers a sort of tired grab for power on the part of the church. as if we ought to be trying to say better things on economics than economists or on medicine than doctors, etc. he said he had no idea how to do that well, and didn't want to anyway. but when he found out that our aim is to help christians to be stronger, deeper, more thoughtful christians not only at church, but more importantly (because of its neglect) in the rest of life, he got excited. that's all i've been trying to do, he said. quoting loosely, he said "people accuse me of trying to withdraw. hell, I want people to engage, but i just want them to engage as christians! if that's what you want to do, great. we need more of that."
- Stanley Hauerwas
Amen, brother!
"he didn't like what we were doing because he thought it was 'public theology' or some such thing, which he considers a sort of tired grab for power on the part of the church. as if we ought to be trying to say better things on economics than economists or on medicine than doctors, etc. he said he had no idea how to do that well, and didn't want to anyway. but when he found out that our aim is to help christians to be stronger, deeper, more thoughtful christians not only at church, but more importantly (because of its neglect) in the rest of life, he got excited. that's all i've been trying to do, he said. quoting loosely, he said "people accuse me of trying to withdraw. hell, I want people to engage, but i just want them to engage as christians! if that's what you want to do, great. we need more of that."
- Stanley Hauerwas
Amen, brother!
The System
From Patrick Ness in the most recent SojoMail, on our generation:
We are encouraged to care, but not question. We are told that individual acts of charity are to be commended, but that systems will never change. The "common good" only applies to those whose accents, skin, neighborhood, and paycheck look like our own. Don't get me wrong - we're not complacent. We simply haven't learned the power of collective action toward lasting social transformation.
I'm reading Walter Wink, The Powers That Be, and in the book he talks about the nature of systems, how they have personalities, and discusses what the New Testament means when it talks about "principalities and powers." It is an interesting idea. I was reading John 10 the other day and in it is the passage about Jesus offering us life to the full:
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. - John 10:8-10
Before even reading the book I had the thought that perhaps "the thief" isn't only an evil, demonic being (which I'm not sure about yet) but perhaps systems and structures that destroy. If Jesus' offer isn't one of isolated, personal salvation, but is actually a message of the formation of a new community of God's people (and more than that, too, but not less) then it would be easy to see that the enemy--thief--could be a system that comes only to kill and destroy.
Just a thought. If the system can be directly opposed to the life that God has planned for us, then as Christians we should recognize the problems and make choices in line with that. It is too easy to say that we will just go into the working world and 'be Christians'.
I am not saying that we should arrange our lives to live out Fight Club or V for Vendetta. Those are stories that perpetuate the myth of redemptive violence. Violence and destruction will not fix anything. But the creation of an alternative community--a community that breaths life to a dead world...that seems to be option I continually come back to. I don't know if that means we shouldn't participate in the 'corporate' world, but as Wendell Berry says:
I don't mean to say, of course, that all corporate executives and stockholders are bad people. I am only saying that all of them are very seriously implicated in a bad economy.
We've go to start there. Not only corporate executives and stockholders, but consumers as well. We need to see just how deeply we are implicated in a system that could potentially be destructive to the earth, communities, and life as was intended by God. Collective action towards lasting social transformation begins when we realize that we can do something! I'm not just talking about boycotting certain consumer products, TV stations, movies, or Wal-Mart--which are all good and noble things to do--but the arrangement of a different way of life where we don't have to boycott Wal-Mart because we don't need anything from them.
As far as the corporate world goes its not that I'm against capitalism or anything, but I just don't think we have to always work for huge, international companies. I say go local. I would love to see lots of people caring about their communities, providing services for the community, consuming things that are from their community, banks that serve the community, etc. This is a place we must use our imaginations because it would look very different than our society looks in the cities today. No more Chili's and Bank of America. What a world it would be....
Collective action towards lasting social transformation begins and ends with the Gospel. Jesus is Lord. That should be enough to change everything if we would just allow it...
We are encouraged to care, but not question. We are told that individual acts of charity are to be commended, but that systems will never change. The "common good" only applies to those whose accents, skin, neighborhood, and paycheck look like our own. Don't get me wrong - we're not complacent. We simply haven't learned the power of collective action toward lasting social transformation.
I'm reading Walter Wink, The Powers That Be, and in the book he talks about the nature of systems, how they have personalities, and discusses what the New Testament means when it talks about "principalities and powers." It is an interesting idea. I was reading John 10 the other day and in it is the passage about Jesus offering us life to the full:
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. - John 10:8-10
Before even reading the book I had the thought that perhaps "the thief" isn't only an evil, demonic being (which I'm not sure about yet) but perhaps systems and structures that destroy. If Jesus' offer isn't one of isolated, personal salvation, but is actually a message of the formation of a new community of God's people (and more than that, too, but not less) then it would be easy to see that the enemy--thief--could be a system that comes only to kill and destroy.
Just a thought. If the system can be directly opposed to the life that God has planned for us, then as Christians we should recognize the problems and make choices in line with that. It is too easy to say that we will just go into the working world and 'be Christians'.
I am not saying that we should arrange our lives to live out Fight Club or V for Vendetta. Those are stories that perpetuate the myth of redemptive violence. Violence and destruction will not fix anything. But the creation of an alternative community--a community that breaths life to a dead world...that seems to be option I continually come back to. I don't know if that means we shouldn't participate in the 'corporate' world, but as Wendell Berry says:
I don't mean to say, of course, that all corporate executives and stockholders are bad people. I am only saying that all of them are very seriously implicated in a bad economy.
We've go to start there. Not only corporate executives and stockholders, but consumers as well. We need to see just how deeply we are implicated in a system that could potentially be destructive to the earth, communities, and life as was intended by God. Collective action towards lasting social transformation begins when we realize that we can do something! I'm not just talking about boycotting certain consumer products, TV stations, movies, or Wal-Mart--which are all good and noble things to do--but the arrangement of a different way of life where we don't have to boycott Wal-Mart because we don't need anything from them.
As far as the corporate world goes its not that I'm against capitalism or anything, but I just don't think we have to always work for huge, international companies. I say go local. I would love to see lots of people caring about their communities, providing services for the community, consuming things that are from their community, banks that serve the community, etc. This is a place we must use our imaginations because it would look very different than our society looks in the cities today. No more Chili's and Bank of America. What a world it would be....
Collective action towards lasting social transformation begins and ends with the Gospel. Jesus is Lord. That should be enough to change everything if we would just allow it...
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Mary Oliver
I've found a new poet that I think I want to start reading more of. Well actually, she's really not new, but only new to me. I love that feeling when you find a writer that you connect with almost immediately...like you have known the person for a long time and only now are beginning to talk about the things that matter. And when they speak (or when I read) my heart jumps because they say the things that I think in ways that I can't say or think. For me that has been Wendell Berry, Walter Brueggemann, Stanley Hauerwas, N.T. Wright, Annie Dillard, Madeline L'Engle...
and now, Mary Oliver...
Why I Wake Early
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety--
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light--
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
Work, Sometimes
I was sad all day, and why not. There i was, books piled
on both sides of the table, paper stacked up, words
falling off my tongue.
The robins had been a long time singing, and now it
was beginning to rain.
What are we sure of? Happiness isn't a town on a map,
or and early arrival, or a job well done, but good work
ongoing. Which is not likely to be trifling around
with a poem.
Then it began raining hard, and the flowers in the yard
were full of lively fragrance.
You have had days like this, no doubt. And wasn't it
wonderful, finally, to leave the room? Ah, what a
moment!
As for myself, I swung the door open. And there was
the wordless, singing world. And I ran for my life.
and now, Mary Oliver...
Why I Wake Early
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety--
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light--
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
Work, Sometimes
I was sad all day, and why not. There i was, books piled
on both sides of the table, paper stacked up, words
falling off my tongue.
The robins had been a long time singing, and now it
was beginning to rain.
What are we sure of? Happiness isn't a town on a map,
or and early arrival, or a job well done, but good work
ongoing. Which is not likely to be trifling around
with a poem.
Then it began raining hard, and the flowers in the yard
were full of lively fragrance.
You have had days like this, no doubt. And wasn't it
wonderful, finally, to leave the room? Ah, what a
moment!
As for myself, I swung the door open. And there was
the wordless, singing world. And I ran for my life.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Psalm 23 v. 2.0
Thanks to Common Grounds Online and fellow Houstonians Ben Young and Glen Lucke for posting this.
From Ben Young's book Out of Control:
Technology is my shepherd; I shall not want.
It makes me lie down in front of the high-definition screen.
It leads me with incessant noise.
It makes me feel significant.
Though I walk through the valley of no cell-phone coverage,
(Can you hear me now?) you are with me.
My Blackberry, my laptop, they comfort me.
You set wireless access before me in the presence of my family.
You anoint my head with Blue Tooth; my e-mail overflows.
Surely Microsoft and Verizon will follow me all the days of my life
And I will dwell in the database forever…
Ben goes on to ask the questions, "Has more and more technology really made our lives easier, as it promises to do? Sure, there are many wonderful ways technology has enhanced the quality of life in the Western world, but what have we sacrificed for it?"
Good questions that I don't think we can ignore. So what do you think? What have we sacrificed for our 'enhanced quality of life'?
From Ben Young's book Out of Control:
Technology is my shepherd; I shall not want.
It makes me lie down in front of the high-definition screen.
It leads me with incessant noise.
It makes me feel significant.
Though I walk through the valley of no cell-phone coverage,
(Can you hear me now?) you are with me.
My Blackberry, my laptop, they comfort me.
You set wireless access before me in the presence of my family.
You anoint my head with Blue Tooth; my e-mail overflows.
Surely Microsoft and Verizon will follow me all the days of my life
And I will dwell in the database forever…
Ben goes on to ask the questions, "Has more and more technology really made our lives easier, as it promises to do? Sure, there are many wonderful ways technology has enhanced the quality of life in the Western world, but what have we sacrificed for it?"
Good questions that I don't think we can ignore. So what do you think? What have we sacrificed for our 'enhanced quality of life'?
The Good Work of Praise
The Good Work of Praise
Strange Lord, who would rule your creation with the crucified Son of a carpenter, make us workers in your kingdom. We want to work, but so often our work turns out to be nothing but busyness. We think that if we are busy we must be doing something that you can use. At least being busy hides our boredom. Yet we know you would not have us busy, having given us the good work of prayer. Help us, in our busyness, learn to pray—so that all our work, all that is our lives, may glorify you. In a world that for so many seems devoid of purpose, we praise you for giving us the good work of praise. Hallelujah and Amen.
From Prayers Plainly Spoken, by Stanley Hauerwas
Strange Lord, who would rule your creation with the crucified Son of a carpenter, make us workers in your kingdom. We want to work, but so often our work turns out to be nothing but busyness. We think that if we are busy we must be doing something that you can use. At least being busy hides our boredom. Yet we know you would not have us busy, having given us the good work of prayer. Help us, in our busyness, learn to pray—so that all our work, all that is our lives, may glorify you. In a world that for so many seems devoid of purpose, we praise you for giving us the good work of praise. Hallelujah and Amen.
From Prayers Plainly Spoken, by Stanley Hauerwas
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Bono Speaks...The Dude Listens
So, I'm back from Dallas and the big Bono event. I must say, I love Bono. But who doesn't? He's funny, smart, prophetic, cool...just a nice guy. On and off the stage. I didn't get to meet him although my friend Todd did. He said he was just a regular guy, like us. The closest I got was when he showed up in his Suburban and got out to greet a few of us fans who were waiting around. This was my first experience with groupies and I can't say that I recommend it. Lots of girls screaming, yelling, pushing and grabbing. Angry, single girls, who were in love with Bono.
Ok, so after my friend Todd's dad introduced Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, she spoke for about 7 minutes about Bono. Pretty boring, senatorial bullshit. It was easy to see that she had probably never talked to him for more than 2 minutes. But it went by fast and the crowd was ready for Bono.
He got up to the podium waited while the crowd gave him a 5 minute standing ovation. He was wearing a black jacket, black shirt, gold tie, trademark sunglasses.
"I don't wear ties for politicians, but i wear them for the people of texas."
For the most part much of his speech was an echo of his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. He addressed the problems in Africa: The spread of Aids, the astonishing number of orphans, malaria, malnutrition, ridiculous amounts of debt, the systematic genocide happening in Darfur. It was a plea by one of the richest, most famous people in the world on behalf of some of the most insignifcant, poor people in the world.
There were also traces of U2:
Where you live should not decide whether you live or whether you die.
Would you deny for others what you demand for yourself?
He said history will remember our generation according to what we do or don't do about Africa. I think he's right.
He also said he's not a rock star fighting for a 'cause'. Africa is not a 'cause'--it's an emergency. Good to remember. This isn't just something we should consider getting on board with, I would say that it is an imperative for Christians to get involved in whatever way we can--maybe also in ways we don't think we can, but actually can. (you know what i'm saying?)
-Every day in Africa, 6,600 people die and another 8,500 contract the HIV virus - 1,400 of whom are newborn babies infected during childbirth or by their mothers' milk. Africa is home to 25 million people with HIV - 64% of global infections.
-Over 120,000 people die every month, the same as the tsunami in southeast Asia...EVERY MONTH.
-More than 300 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa—nearly half the population—live on less than $1 a day
-The developing world now spends $13 on debt repayment for every $1 it receives in grants.
I really admire what Bono is doing. Check out www.one.org or www.data.org to get involved in what is going on. It's not about money, it's about a voice for the voiceless.
I would recommend reading Bono's speech from the National Prayer Breakfast if you are really interested in what he said in Dallas. Besides a few 'y'alls' it is pretty much the same.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Bono in Dallas
Tomorrow is an exciting day for me.
1) I will get to take a day off from work*
2) I will be seeing some of my best friends in the world, Jeff & Julie and Matthew & Erica (and maybe more that I don't know about!)
3) I will be sitting in Section SS, Row O, Seat 3 to hear Bono speak at the Dallas World Affairs Council!!!
If Bono's speech is anything like the one he gave at the National Prayer Breakfast, then we are in for a treat. Hopefully I'll write more when I get back....
Tomorrow may be an important day for The Choice Campaign. Never heard of it? You're not alone. Last year for our Fellows project, Meghan--a fellow fellow--and I developed an advertising campaign with the purpose of looking at the daily consumer choices in the west and contrasting them with statistics about the state of the 2/3rds world. Inspired by Bono's ONE Campaign, our aim is to increase awareness of global injustice and help people get involved on whatever level they can. Ideally, the ONE Campaign will want to use our ads for their purposes, which are our purposes.
Tomorrow, if things happen and my connections come through, Bono may have a copy of The Choice Campaign in his hands. That is the very best we can hope for. If you are the praying type, I ask that you would pray for a miracle.
*Its actually not that big of a deal for me to get a day off from work since my official last day is a week from tomorrow and ever since I submitted my resignation I haven't really done much.
peace!
1) I will get to take a day off from work*
2) I will be seeing some of my best friends in the world, Jeff & Julie and Matthew & Erica (and maybe more that I don't know about!)
3) I will be sitting in Section SS, Row O, Seat 3 to hear Bono speak at the Dallas World Affairs Council!!!
If Bono's speech is anything like the one he gave at the National Prayer Breakfast, then we are in for a treat. Hopefully I'll write more when I get back....
Tomorrow may be an important day for The Choice Campaign. Never heard of it? You're not alone. Last year for our Fellows project, Meghan--a fellow fellow--and I developed an advertising campaign with the purpose of looking at the daily consumer choices in the west and contrasting them with statistics about the state of the 2/3rds world. Inspired by Bono's ONE Campaign, our aim is to increase awareness of global injustice and help people get involved on whatever level they can. Ideally, the ONE Campaign will want to use our ads for their purposes, which are our purposes.
Tomorrow, if things happen and my connections come through, Bono may have a copy of The Choice Campaign in his hands. That is the very best we can hope for. If you are the praying type, I ask that you would pray for a miracle.
*Its actually not that big of a deal for me to get a day off from work since my official last day is a week from tomorrow and ever since I submitted my resignation I haven't really done much.
peace!
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
What are you working on today?
Good work finds the way between pride and despair.
It graces with health. It heals with grace.
It preserves the given so that it remains a gift
By it, we lose loneliness:
we clasp the hands of those who go before us, and the hands of those who come after us;
we enter the little circle of each other's arms,
and the larger circle of lovers whose hands are joined in a dance,
and the larger circle of all creatures, passing in and out of life, who move also in a dance, to a music so subtle and vast that no ear hears it except in fragments.
--Wendell Berry
It graces with health. It heals with grace.
It preserves the given so that it remains a gift
By it, we lose loneliness:
we clasp the hands of those who go before us, and the hands of those who come after us;
we enter the little circle of each other's arms,
and the larger circle of lovers whose hands are joined in a dance,
and the larger circle of all creatures, passing in and out of life, who move also in a dance, to a music so subtle and vast that no ear hears it except in fragments.
--Wendell Berry
Monday, May 01, 2006
Three Thoughts on the Bible
In the last 2 days, I have had three converging ideas from three different sources. The big-picture point is about the bible, I think. On their own, they stem off from one big stream, or perhaps, they merge from three different streams. Either way, there is much to think about.
First, the sources:
1) Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America - Stanley Hauerwas
2) Passion and Perspective: Two Dimensions of Education in the Bible - Walter Brueggemann
3) Dear RLP - Real Live Preacher
From Hauerwas' Unleashing the Scripture, Part I: The Politics of the Bible: Sola Scriptura as Heresy?, Chapter 1: Taking the Bible Away from North American Christians. (What great titles!)
"Most North American Christians assume that they have a right, if not an obligation, to read the Bible. I challenge that assumption. No task is more important than for the Church to take the Bible out of the hands of individual Christians in North America. Let us no longer give the Bible to all children when they enter the third grade or whenever their assumed rise to Christian Maturity is marked, such as eighth-grade commencements. Let us rather tell them and their parents that they are possessed by habits far too corrupt for them to be encouraged to read the Bible on their own.
North American Christians are trained to believe that they are capable of reading the Bible without spiritual and moral transformation. They read the Bible not as Christians, not as a people set apart, but as democratic citizens who think their "common sense" is sufficient for "understanding" the Scripture. They feel no need to stand under the authority of a truthful community to be told how to read. Instead they assume that they have all the "religious experience" necessary to know what the Bible is about. As a result the Bible inherently becomes the ideology for a politics quite different from the politics of the Church."
Now number 2, from a Brueggemann article:
"Perhaps the primary issue in education, in relation to the Bible, is to break the grip on church education which tends to be privatistic, idealist, and spiritual. The crucial question before us is whether, for the difficult decades to come, we shall have men and women in public life who have a passion for justice and a perspective of mystery, awe, and amazement.
IN 1918, Max Weber made the following statement: "Politics is a strong slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth-that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible." There are clues here for understanding important dimensions of education, biblically understood.
Education in ancient Israel is education in a quite concrete passion. Education consists in the older generation communicating its concrete passions to the younger generation and, hopefully, having that younger generation appropriate them with zeal and imagination.
The texts that mark the beginning point of our discussion (Ex. 12:26, 13:8, 13:14; Deut. 6:20-21; Josh. 4:6, 21) are those that show the parents inculcating the young into what is foundational for the community. In one form or another, all of these texts anticipate a time to come when there will be learning readiness and the child will ask the questions of the community: What does it mean to be Israel? Why do we live the way we live and do what we do? The answer, in various castings, is to tell the story of this community, the long deep memory which started with nobodies who were surprised by transformation and became a community through the historical process (cf. Deut. 10:22). This community has a distinct identity that is in considerable tension with the values and the presuppositions of the dominant community. That distinct identity is the primary subject matter of education in passion.
Education in passion, in the Bible, is nurture into a distinct community that knows itself to be at odds with dominant assumptions. Torah education is an insistence on being fully covenanted Israel who has been chosen, summoned, commanded, and promised. This nurture in passion is concrete and specific, as indeed passion must always be. While Torah acknowledges that "others" are there and struggles with how Israel is to relate to and be understood in the midst of the others (cf. Gen. 12:1-3; Deut. 7:6-11, 23:3-8), it is nurture in particularity that is the main focus, a nurture that produces adults who know so well who they are and what is commanded that they value and celebrate their oddity in the face of every seductive and powerful imperial alternative."
OK, and now number 3 from Real Live Preacher:
Dear RLP,
I have been really confused lately, so I wanted to see if you can help me out at all. This may be a really big question, but why is the Bible important? I am a Christian, and I have heard other Christians say that the Bible is God's word, but I don't know how they are so sure of this. Other Christians say that the Bible is inerrant, which I can't accept just based on my own reading of it.
So here is the problem. How can anyone know that the Bible is divinely inspired? And if it's not, then why does it have any authority? I'm really confused about this.
Andrew
Excerpts of RLP's response:
"If I understand you correctly, you'd like to know why Christians think the Bible is inspired by God and therefore authoritative for Christian life. You would like to know how people came to believe that the teachings in the Bible have a connection to the will and desire of God....
As for me, I know that an ancient tradition and many testimonies of human experience stand behind the New Testament. These are the writings that have nurtured our mothers and fathers in faith across the ages. For that reason alone, I have deep respect for the Bible. My own careful study of the gospels over the years leaves me continually astounded by their depth and by the way they continue to speak powerfully to people of all cultures, all ages, and all levels of education. So I join myself with the larger Christian community in affirming these writings as scripture and using them to guide my life. The New Testament provides me with a baseline or measurement that keeps my own spiritual journey connected to the original teachings of Jesus and his friends.
My trust in the New Testament is an act of faith on my part. It is my own offering to a movement that stretches back to Jesus himself. I faithfully offer my life and belief with a full knowledge of what I am doing and why I am doing it."
OK, sorry for the long quotes...
How do we reconcile these three things? I posted a while back about my thoughts on 'inerrancy', and you can read those here. That was in response to several conversations I had overheard (read: eavesdropping) and was getting pretty frustrated with both the tone of the questions and the responses. Now the Bible is back and I think these guys raise some really interesting questions ands points.
What is the Bible for us--the church--and how on earth do we 'use' it? How are we supposed to read it?
I think the answer to that is we must be taught how to read it; we must be shown how to 'use' it.
Maybe that isn't always the answer, but in this culture, with the mindset that we tend to have, I think it is essential. I don't think I'm ready to be interpreting scripture, but there are some key ideas that have helped me see what is going on in the Bible. Themes such as Kingdom, creation, fall, redemption, community, covenant, etc.--which were all taught to me--have helped shape my worldview and given me a new lens in which to read the Bible.
Its absurd to think that we can open the Bible, read it and understand what is going on apart from the community that the Bible has shaped. To think that we can begin to understand God apart from the People whom God has trusted his identity to doesn't make much sense to me. What we get, as many before have noted, the Bible becomes a tool for us to justify our current lives. It becomes an authority for the status quo which, I believe, it was meant to constantly destroy.
Brueggemann makes an interesting point here about education in ancient Israel: Education consists in the older generation communicating its concrete passions to the younger generation and, hopefully, having that younger generation appropriate them with zeal and imagination. My friends and I talk about the lack of this truth in our Churches today. There is such a division between the older members and the young. And there tend to be no 18-35 year olds in churches with active youth and rich adults. You find the 18-35 year olds at emerging churches or mega churches where they can join a singles group, or a young married couples group, or a young parents group--whatever group happens to meet their description at the time.
This seems to cause a division in the church. The old are no longer involved in the lives of the young. The adults who have struggled with meaning and purpose, love and hate, worked through hard relationships, seen war, been in war...they have no connection to the young people who are struggling to come to terms with their identity, what is meaningful, what does it mean to love, etc. The college kids have no connection to the high school kids. The 20-somethings have no connection to the college kids. Wisdom becomes exclusive to whatever group you happen to be in.
How then does the older generation teach the younger generation? I'm not really sure. I think that it probably involves the creation of a community that doesn't look the rest of the world, to start. And then maybe something like this could be said: This book that we order our lives around, the Bible, it is not like other books. It is the story of the people of God, people like us, through history. This book is not easy to understand and although most people seem to think otherwise, you are not ready to read it on your own yet. But we will teach you to read it. We will give you the tools to be able to understand it and the world around you so that you can continue the stories in your own lives as we have in ours.
Lastly, there are so many people who have questions about the authority of Scripture, or the inerrancy of the Bible...I wonder if those exist because there is a community, namely the church, that does not have any authority in people's lives (for many reasons, probably) and then that community goes around saying things like this about the Bible. Why should anyone care and why should it make sense? It can't make sense apart from a community that actually believes it and lives it out.
This blog is too long, so I'll end it here. I should have let the texts speak for themselves...oh well. A few questions that I'm left to wrestle with:
1) How does the church equip its members to read the Bible?
2) How does the church exercise authority over the lives of the members?
3) What does 'authority' look like, subversively speaking, in this power-suspicious culture?
4) How do we help create new, good habits for Christians in the chespeciallycially in terms of reading the Bible and interpreting it?
5) How do we create a community in which the older generation is teaching the younger? How might this change youth ministry?
Perhaps the primary issue in education, in relation to the Bible, is to break the grip on church education which tends to be privatistic, idealistic, and spiritual. The crucial question before us is whether, for the difficult decades to come, we shall have men and women in public life who have a passion for justice and a perspective of mystery, awe, and amazement. Without such passion and perspective, we are left with the worst forms of pragmatism, technical reason, and utilitarianism which uncritically practice self-interest of a brutal kind. Israel's alternative education insists that life in this world requires glad obedience to the coming Kingdom in which the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news preached to them (Luke 7:22). Without this education in passionate impossibility, the blind, lame, lepers, dead, and poor go unnoticed, and all the others are fated then to live in anxiety and despair until we destroy each other. Without this education in a perspective on the possible, there will be no concrete context for the impossible. (Brueggemann)
First, the sources:
1) Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America - Stanley Hauerwas
2) Passion and Perspective: Two Dimensions of Education in the Bible - Walter Brueggemann
3) Dear RLP - Real Live Preacher
From Hauerwas' Unleashing the Scripture, Part I: The Politics of the Bible: Sola Scriptura as Heresy?, Chapter 1: Taking the Bible Away from North American Christians. (What great titles!)
"Most North American Christians assume that they have a right, if not an obligation, to read the Bible. I challenge that assumption. No task is more important than for the Church to take the Bible out of the hands of individual Christians in North America. Let us no longer give the Bible to all children when they enter the third grade or whenever their assumed rise to Christian Maturity is marked, such as eighth-grade commencements. Let us rather tell them and their parents that they are possessed by habits far too corrupt for them to be encouraged to read the Bible on their own.
North American Christians are trained to believe that they are capable of reading the Bible without spiritual and moral transformation. They read the Bible not as Christians, not as a people set apart, but as democratic citizens who think their "common sense" is sufficient for "understanding" the Scripture. They feel no need to stand under the authority of a truthful community to be told how to read. Instead they assume that they have all the "religious experience" necessary to know what the Bible is about. As a result the Bible inherently becomes the ideology for a politics quite different from the politics of the Church."
Now number 2, from a Brueggemann article:
"Perhaps the primary issue in education, in relation to the Bible, is to break the grip on church education which tends to be privatistic, idealist, and spiritual. The crucial question before us is whether, for the difficult decades to come, we shall have men and women in public life who have a passion for justice and a perspective of mystery, awe, and amazement.
IN 1918, Max Weber made the following statement: "Politics is a strong slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth-that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible." There are clues here for understanding important dimensions of education, biblically understood.
Education in ancient Israel is education in a quite concrete passion. Education consists in the older generation communicating its concrete passions to the younger generation and, hopefully, having that younger generation appropriate them with zeal and imagination.
The texts that mark the beginning point of our discussion (Ex. 12:26, 13:8, 13:14; Deut. 6:20-21; Josh. 4:6, 21) are those that show the parents inculcating the young into what is foundational for the community. In one form or another, all of these texts anticipate a time to come when there will be learning readiness and the child will ask the questions of the community: What does it mean to be Israel? Why do we live the way we live and do what we do? The answer, in various castings, is to tell the story of this community, the long deep memory which started with nobodies who were surprised by transformation and became a community through the historical process (cf. Deut. 10:22). This community has a distinct identity that is in considerable tension with the values and the presuppositions of the dominant community. That distinct identity is the primary subject matter of education in passion.
Education in passion, in the Bible, is nurture into a distinct community that knows itself to be at odds with dominant assumptions. Torah education is an insistence on being fully covenanted Israel who has been chosen, summoned, commanded, and promised. This nurture in passion is concrete and specific, as indeed passion must always be. While Torah acknowledges that "others" are there and struggles with how Israel is to relate to and be understood in the midst of the others (cf. Gen. 12:1-3; Deut. 7:6-11, 23:3-8), it is nurture in particularity that is the main focus, a nurture that produces adults who know so well who they are and what is commanded that they value and celebrate their oddity in the face of every seductive and powerful imperial alternative."
OK, and now number 3 from Real Live Preacher:
Dear RLP,
I have been really confused lately, so I wanted to see if you can help me out at all. This may be a really big question, but why is the Bible important? I am a Christian, and I have heard other Christians say that the Bible is God's word, but I don't know how they are so sure of this. Other Christians say that the Bible is inerrant, which I can't accept just based on my own reading of it.
So here is the problem. How can anyone know that the Bible is divinely inspired? And if it's not, then why does it have any authority? I'm really confused about this.
Andrew
Excerpts of RLP's response:
"If I understand you correctly, you'd like to know why Christians think the Bible is inspired by God and therefore authoritative for Christian life. You would like to know how people came to believe that the teachings in the Bible have a connection to the will and desire of God....
As for me, I know that an ancient tradition and many testimonies of human experience stand behind the New Testament. These are the writings that have nurtured our mothers and fathers in faith across the ages. For that reason alone, I have deep respect for the Bible. My own careful study of the gospels over the years leaves me continually astounded by their depth and by the way they continue to speak powerfully to people of all cultures, all ages, and all levels of education. So I join myself with the larger Christian community in affirming these writings as scripture and using them to guide my life. The New Testament provides me with a baseline or measurement that keeps my own spiritual journey connected to the original teachings of Jesus and his friends.
My trust in the New Testament is an act of faith on my part. It is my own offering to a movement that stretches back to Jesus himself. I faithfully offer my life and belief with a full knowledge of what I am doing and why I am doing it."
OK, sorry for the long quotes...
How do we reconcile these three things? I posted a while back about my thoughts on 'inerrancy', and you can read those here. That was in response to several conversations I had overheard (read: eavesdropping) and was getting pretty frustrated with both the tone of the questions and the responses. Now the Bible is back and I think these guys raise some really interesting questions ands points.
What is the Bible for us--the church--and how on earth do we 'use' it? How are we supposed to read it?
I think the answer to that is we must be taught how to read it; we must be shown how to 'use' it.
Maybe that isn't always the answer, but in this culture, with the mindset that we tend to have, I think it is essential. I don't think I'm ready to be interpreting scripture, but there are some key ideas that have helped me see what is going on in the Bible. Themes such as Kingdom, creation, fall, redemption, community, covenant, etc.--which were all taught to me--have helped shape my worldview and given me a new lens in which to read the Bible.
Its absurd to think that we can open the Bible, read it and understand what is going on apart from the community that the Bible has shaped. To think that we can begin to understand God apart from the People whom God has trusted his identity to doesn't make much sense to me. What we get, as many before have noted, the Bible becomes a tool for us to justify our current lives. It becomes an authority for the status quo which, I believe, it was meant to constantly destroy.
Brueggemann makes an interesting point here about education in ancient Israel: Education consists in the older generation communicating its concrete passions to the younger generation and, hopefully, having that younger generation appropriate them with zeal and imagination. My friends and I talk about the lack of this truth in our Churches today. There is such a division between the older members and the young. And there tend to be no 18-35 year olds in churches with active youth and rich adults. You find the 18-35 year olds at emerging churches or mega churches where they can join a singles group, or a young married couples group, or a young parents group--whatever group happens to meet their description at the time.
This seems to cause a division in the church. The old are no longer involved in the lives of the young. The adults who have struggled with meaning and purpose, love and hate, worked through hard relationships, seen war, been in war...they have no connection to the young people who are struggling to come to terms with their identity, what is meaningful, what does it mean to love, etc. The college kids have no connection to the high school kids. The 20-somethings have no connection to the college kids. Wisdom becomes exclusive to whatever group you happen to be in.
How then does the older generation teach the younger generation? I'm not really sure. I think that it probably involves the creation of a community that doesn't look the rest of the world, to start. And then maybe something like this could be said: This book that we order our lives around, the Bible, it is not like other books. It is the story of the people of God, people like us, through history. This book is not easy to understand and although most people seem to think otherwise, you are not ready to read it on your own yet. But we will teach you to read it. We will give you the tools to be able to understand it and the world around you so that you can continue the stories in your own lives as we have in ours.
Lastly, there are so many people who have questions about the authority of Scripture, or the inerrancy of the Bible...I wonder if those exist because there is a community, namely the church, that does not have any authority in people's lives (for many reasons, probably) and then that community goes around saying things like this about the Bible. Why should anyone care and why should it make sense? It can't make sense apart from a community that actually believes it and lives it out.
This blog is too long, so I'll end it here. I should have let the texts speak for themselves...oh well. A few questions that I'm left to wrestle with:
1) How does the church equip its members to read the Bible?
2) How does the church exercise authority over the lives of the members?
3) What does 'authority' look like, subversively speaking, in this power-suspicious culture?
4) How do we help create new, good habits for Christians in the chespeciallycially in terms of reading the Bible and interpreting it?
5) How do we create a community in which the older generation is teaching the younger? How might this change youth ministry?
Perhaps the primary issue in education, in relation to the Bible, is to break the grip on church education which tends to be privatistic, idealistic, and spiritual. The crucial question before us is whether, for the difficult decades to come, we shall have men and women in public life who have a passion for justice and a perspective of mystery, awe, and amazement. Without such passion and perspective, we are left with the worst forms of pragmatism, technical reason, and utilitarianism which uncritically practice self-interest of a brutal kind. Israel's alternative education insists that life in this world requires glad obedience to the coming Kingdom in which the blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news preached to them (Luke 7:22). Without this education in passionate impossibility, the blind, lame, lepers, dead, and poor go unnoticed, and all the others are fated then to live in anxiety and despair until we destroy each other. Without this education in a perspective on the possible, there will be no concrete context for the impossible. (Brueggemann)
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