The Rest of the Story...

It has been a little while since I last posted. I've been doing well, but busy. I'm still not entirely sure how school will impact this blog, but I think it's safe to say that I won't be posting quite as much as I have been.

I must confess that I have been tempted to swallow my pride and post the second half of of The Death of Faith, in part because some of you have kindly requested it, and in part because I don't like leaving a story hanging without an ending.

But that story has no ending. Yes, I wrote a couple more pages, and even had to read those pages aloud to some of my fellow students. But those additional pages in no way constitute an ending. My faith journey is far from over.

I am still thoroughly disappointed with the writing of the second half of that piece, but I have finally decided - with the help of some students who found it helpful in processing the narratives of their own lives - to post the rest of what I've written here. Much of it will not be new to those of you who've been visiting here a while.

Here it is, such as it is:

Raging teenage hormones led me back to church. When I was in eighth grade I ran into a girl from the church that I attended every time my mother made me go. I was just starting to really notice girls, and here was a girl worth noticing. She expressed some interest in me, which of course I misidentified, and before I knew it I was in church every Sunday, hoping that she might notice me again.

Over the next year I pursued the affections of this girl, inadvertently absorbing the teachings of that church along the way. The girl never returned by adolescent longing for her, but while I chased her, a longing of a much different sort surfaced.

Just before I turned fifteen, I had a religious experience that still defies description. I could say that I saw the sky open up, but the word “saw” would be misleading, since my eyes never perceived any visible phenomena. I could say that I heard the voice of God, but again, “heard” implies something that did not happen, as no vibrations resonated in my ear, to be transformed into sounds. This experience was ineffable, and every time I’ve tried to describe it, I have always felt, upon seeing or hearing the words I’ve chosen for it, that the language never quite gets the experience right.

I can’t say what happened. I can’t neatly weave that experience into a narrative. In fact, if I am honest, I must admit that I don’t know what happened. But I do know how it impacted my life. For the first time since my grandfather’s death, I felt the presence of God. In that moment God became for me an experiential reality, and my life had to adjust to incorporate that new reality. For the first time since my grandfather’s death, I no longer felt alone, adrift in the universe. My life no longer felt like an exercise in futility, a cosmic experiment somehow gone awry. I found myself, and I found myself in relation to the divine.

I first understood that experience in evangelical terms. In that moment God “saved” me, though I couldn’t say exactly what I had been saved from. In any event, in that moment I felt not only “saved” but “called.” In fact, as I came to understand it, that sense of calling was my salvation, for more than anything else I was saved from meaninglessness. So, understanding myself as someone who had been called by God to a particular mission and for a particular purpose, I began to identify myself as someone with a “vocation for ministry.” I didn’t use those words then, of course. Instead I would say things like, “I think God wants me to be a preacher,” or “I feel God calling me to be an evangelist,” or, “When I group up I want to be a Youth Minister.” Behind those words was a deep desire to both make sense of my relationship with God, and in doing so to somehow make myself useful.

I eventually pursued a career in professional ministry, first as a Youth Minister, working with urban teenagers, and then later as the pastor of my own, small, rural church. It was my job as a pastor that killed any sense of calling that still remained in me.

In June of 2005 I was appointed by the Kentucky Conference of the United Methodist Church to serve as a “supply pastor” to a rural congregation, while going through the United Methodist Candidacy Studies Program and pursuing my theological education at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. When I first visited my new appointment I thought that it might be a strange fit: me, a “hyper-educated,” city dwelling “liberal,” trying to meet the spiritual needs of fundamentalist farmers and their families. But I was so in love with the idea of being a pastor that I quickly swept all concerns from my mind. Focus on doing your job, I told myself, and everything else will take care of itself.

To put it bluntly, it didn’t. Quite literally, a hurricane rained on my parade. When Hurricane Katrina blew through New Orleans, my congregation quickly proclaimed it to be evidence of God’s wrath against all of the sinners down there, Sodom and Gomorrah revisited. So, ignorant of the central role that their theology of the wrath of God played in that congregation, and drunk on my own rhetorical powers of persuasion, I preached a polemical sermon against that theology of a wrathful God. I was quickly and rudely forced out of the church.

In the process of losing my job, I also lost my vocation, and nearly my faith. Since I was a teenager, I identified myself as one called by God to a particular vocation. Who was I, if not a preacher pursuing ordination? That question cast doubt upon the very shape and structure of my life. And, in answering it, I had to open up many questions that I had long since closed up, lest doubt destroy the fabric of my faith.

As I preacher I often preached on faith, saying that faith is not merely believing certain falsifiable propositions, but believing in and especially radically trusting God. To believe in God is not to believe that a God of a certain description exists. Rather, it is to acknowledge that one is radically dependent on God, found in the context of a relationship with God, and to trust God completely. When I left pastoral ministry, I had to explore that concept of faith much, much more deeply.

With my livelihood no longer dependant on my ability to articulate certain “Christian truths,” I reexamined my whole belief system, opening everything up. I gave myself permission to doubt everything that I had ever believed. I poured over volumes of church history and theology, trying to see if I could identify a single “essence” to Christianity, to accept or reject. But what I found is that the Christian faith – despite the constant cries for a single orthodoxy – has always been a pluriform faith. And I found that I could not really say that I knew anything at all concerning the nature of God. But instead of driving me away from faith, this time of doubt drove me toward faith. In giving myself permission to question core doctrines, I came to realize that it is not the propositional content of faith that matters, but rather the experience of God that all metaphorical religious language points to.

In short, in doubt, I reclaimed my faith, by focusing again on my experience of God instead of my beliefs about God. As such, my faith could distance itself both from questions of belief and even from negative circumstances in my life. I was able to focus on how much I depended on my relationship with God to get me through trying times. Times like the death of my grandfather, and the death of my dreams of ordination. And, in those deaths I found a resurrection.

The Death of Faith

For my Growing in the Life of Christian Faith class I have to write a spiritual autobiography. I just finished it, and much of it has, I'm afraid, fallen victim to deadline pressure. What should have been a promising story turns into a series of poorly articulated cliches in the second half. So I refuse on principle to publish here the half that I forced out despite my literary constipation.

That said, the first half of the story is pretty good. So, here it is, under the tentative title The Death of Faith:

December 3, 1988. That date, that day, is burned indelibly on my mind. I remember waking up early that morning, too excited to sleep. We were going to King’s Island, an amusement park just outside Cincinnati, Ohio, you see. For WinterFest. At the time I didn’t know what WinterFest was, I just knew that an activity that had once been reserved strictly for the warm, sunny months had now expanded to include even December, the most magical month of the year.

The rest of the day is a series of stills imprinted on my memory, and it is difficult to weave those stills into a coherent narrative. Not because the memory is insufficient to tell as story, but because it is too deep, too pronounced to be reduced to a single story. Rather, it is a string of isolated sense perceptions that I can relive to this day. The hard, cold ice that leapt up to smack me as I fell while skating on the frozen over fountain turned ice rink in the middle of the park. The crisp, clean smell of the winter air all around me. The taste and texture of the sweet junk that masquerades as food at every amusement park and carnival I’ve ever known. Each memory a slide, isolated from all of the others. Each sense perception sharp and pronounced, tinged with melancholy, tainted by irrational guilt.

Why tinged with melancholy? Why tainted by guilt? Because while my brothers and I reveled in WinterFest, sipping hot chocolate and skating on ice, my grandfather was dying alone, in the Toyota pick-up with the 8 track player that would always play Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” for us. “Road Again,” Papaw, “Road Again!” we would squeal in unison. And Road Again! Road Again! he would play, no matter how sick of it he was.

My grandfather was a Southern Baptist pastor, a fierce man of God who taught me both the joy and the fear of the Lord. He represented God to me, and was God for me, and when he died, God died. When I was nine and a half years old I had never heard the word “atheist,” and so surely didn’t know what it meant. Even if I had heard it, I doubt that I would have claimed it as a label for myself. But, whether I would have claimed it or not, when my grandfather died, in my heart I became an atheist, for my God was dead.

My twin brother had more faith than me. When Papaw died he didn’t mourn at first, like the rest of us did. As surely as I knew that God lay slain next to my grandfather’s corpse, my twin brother was convinced that both still lived. Papaw had, after all, always been the merry prankster of our world. He never met a joke he didn’t like, and he never missed an opportunity to pull a leg. This prank, of course, had gone a bit too far, but my brother knew that at the funeral Papaw would jump out of the coffin and scream “Gotcha!”, laughing at us and with us as we celebrated his glorious joke.

But Papaw didn’t jump out of the casket, and when we walked up to it his rubbery skin and his unnatural make-up more than creeped us out. And when they put the body in the ground, I buried my childhood faith. No sign of God would resurface in my life for over five years.

If there is a single symbol that can describe my spiritual journey, it is a symbol that has for too long been misappropriated as a trite, counter-cultural cliché. Long before it came to San Francisco to lose its identity, the yin yang was used in the Taoist/Laoist school of Chinese philosophy to represent the dynamic interaction between two apparent opposites. That dynamic interaction between opposing forces typifies my journey to truly know God apart from any ideas or beliefs about God. When my childhood faith was buried with Papaw’s corpse, against all odds the necessary conditions for resurrection were met. Doubt was working its magic to pave the road for a deeper, more critical and more abiding faith.

Christian Peace Blogger Interview

Michael Westmoreland-White, who started the Christian Peace Bloggers blog-ring, has just published an interview with me on his new Wordpress site (which is replacing his Blogspot site). This should be the beginning of a series of interviews with the various members of the Christian Peace Bloggers blog-ring.

Check it out. It is super cool!

Violence as Communication

In order to combat violence, we must first understand its nature. Of course, a line like that implies that there is a single phenomenon called "violence" with a single, uniform nature. That is, of course, a gross oversimplification. Violence is, like everything else, a complex set of behaviors and events that take on many forms, and are brought about by many different kinds of causes. Even a single violent event participates in "violence" in many different ways, and stems from many different causes.

Some forms of violence are simple expressions of brute power. Violence, after all, is the way that powers hold on to their power. Other forms of violence stem from hatred or fear, from the prejudices that comprise the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat. Such hatreds, such fears, such prejudices are so entrenched in our culture that most of us are almost never aware of them, or how we participate in them.

But, beneath all of that, violence is also interpersonal. With the exception of bombs dropped from the sky and the like, there can be no violence without some kind of a relationship, even if it is the most superficial sort of relationship, and even if that relationship begins only at the moment of violence. But, most acts of violence are not random, they are relational. And, at their core, they can be a form of communication used when all other avenues of communication either break down or are, for some reason, left untried.

While there is a disturbing trend of random violence in our streets - rapes and murders and muggings that have nothing to do whatsoever with the victim, but stem entirely from the malice and anger of the perpetrator - it is still the case that such random acts are very, very rare. So, most acts of violence are relational, and all of my peacemaking experience has dealt with, in one way or another, this kind of violence. Relational violence. Violence as a form of communication.

I want to make it clear here that when I speak of my peacemaking experience I am not holding myself up as a model to follow, some kind of saintly example. It may well be that of all of us who have signed up for the Christian Peace Bloggers blog-ring, I have the least experience actually confronting violence, save perhaps the violence that lurks in my own soul. That is why all of my peacemaking experience has confronted relational violence. In some way or another, all of the violence that I have strived against has concerned persons who were or are in some kind of relationship with me.

As a Youth Pastor I was often called on to help resolve family conflicts. I did this not from a position of authority, as though like some judge I could stand over the conflict, evaluate it, and render some verdict on it, blaming one party and rewarding the other. Rather I did this from a position of being in relationship with each party. As such, I had enough credibility to mediate between parties, encouraging each person to actively listen to each other, without passing judgment. I tried my best to, as I used to put it, translate the languages "teenager" to "parent" and "parent" to "teenager." I did my best to help the Youth that I worked with understand where they parents were coming from, and to help the parents understand how to more effectively communicate with their teenage children.

There are many sources of conflict embedded in each familial relationship, and if these are not addressed in a way that respects the interests of each party, some form of violence can emerge. But this is true of others sorts of relationship as well, even global, political relationships, relationships between groups of people, relationships of oppression, relationships of domination and submission. Like interpersonal and familial relationships, in these relationships each party also has an interest that must be addressed. And, if that interest is not addressed to each party's satisfaction, violence will emerge as the default form of communication.

I say that to say this: If we care about the cause of peace we must wage peace. And, to wage peace we must in part serve as agents who facilitate communication where it has broken down. Those of us in positions of power must lend our voices to the voiceless, allowing their cries to be heard by the powers that have grown deaf to their screams. Because when communication breaks down, violence is the natural recourse. When the marginalized realize they have no way to make the powers listen, they lash out, screaming with each riot, with each firebomb, "I bet you can hear my NOW!"

Of course, all of this is theoretical, and, as such, without concrete suggestions, is without value. Even if you agree with everything that I've written here - and I doubt that everything here is entirely true, though from my limited vantage point I, of course, need help discerning truth from falsehood in my own ideas - you could still say, "Sure, I buy this, but now what? How can we serve as agents of communication. How can we lend our ears and our voices to the unheard and the voiceless?"

That is found in what Thich Nhat Hanh calls "Deep and Compassionate Listening" and "Loving Speech." But that will have to be the subject of another post.

Is Kung Really Postmodern?

I had a silly argument with a professor today - the kind I really should avoid, I suspect. In my Paradigms of Christian Mission class the professor criticized one of the texts for "failing to interact with or account for postmodernism." It was a valid criticism. However, I interjected with something like this:

"But the author does borrow his paradigm framework from Hans Kung's work, and so at least in that respect interacts with something postmodern."

The professor then replied with something like:

"Hans Kung is decidedly not postmodern. He is a thoroughly modern theologian, and that fact is borne out by his global ethic, which tries - like a Western imperialist - to impose a single global ethic on all peoples regardless of their cultural situation."

Arrogant as I am, I thought that comment didn't reflect a very good understand of Kung, nor much of a knowledge of his work. That the professor then confessed to not having read much Kung irked me more. In fact, she confessed, I almost was almost certainly better acquainted with Kung's work. Nevertheless, she simply couldn't see how I could claim that Kung was postmodern.

After class, like the young fool that I am, I gave her a brief primer in the postmodern aspects of Kung. Thankfully, she is a kind and gracious women, and our conversation was constructive. At the end of it she asked for the titles of some books that she should read to better understand the extent to which Kung's historical and contextual approach to systematic theology can be considered postmodern.

Of course, along with her lack of knowledge of or interest in Kung, the amorphous nature of the word "postmodern" contributed to our disagreement. It is possible that every person who has ever used the term has meant something different by it. It may be appropriate that a world-view that denies the possibility of any non-contextual, over-arching world-view cannot be given a broad definition. After all, if it is anything, postmodernism is the rejection of such broad definitions or grand narratives.

In any event, our conversation got me wondering what exactly we mean when we say that something is "postmodern," and whether or not that term can be properly applied to the work of Hans Kung. I don't think I can answer either of those questions satisfactorily, but in my quest to come up with a halting answer I did get to read a paper that I wrote in an undergraduate Philosophy of Religious course on a section of Hans Kung's Theology for the Third Millennium: An Ecumenical View (first published in German as Theologie im Aufbruch).

When nominating that book for Patrik's Best Contemporary Theology Meme I wrote:

This could be the magnum opus of postmodern Christian theology...

The following paper should make it clear why I - despite my professor's opinion that Kung is more modern than postmodern - would say something like that:

___________________

Hans Küng’s book, Theology for the Third Millennium: An Ecumenical View, outlines his vision for the direction of theology and the Catholic Church (in the truest sense of the word ‘catholic’) in the “postmodern” world. This paper is primarily concerned with part of an introductory section of this book, titled “The Function of Religion in Postmodernity,” in which Küng argues that changes in the way that people view the world, and their place in it, have profound implications for the role of religion in the human experience.

This is, of course, not a novel idea. Religion is a profound part of the human experience. Changes in the human experience ought to have some impact on both the content and role of religion, if religion is to be in any way ‘relevant.’ If, in fact, the human experience is changing, then the human experience of religion, and the role of religion, should be changing as well. And so, Küng outlines his theory on the way that religion (particularly Catholic theology) is changing, and the ways in which it ought to be changing.

Hans Küng is often referred to as a ‘historio-critical’ theologian, which means that his theology is based on, and concerned with, history. As such, the arguments that he builds in his writings can be difficult to follow for someone used to abstract philosophic arguing, because they often depend on historical developments and interpretations of those developments, rather than pure reason and logic. The task here, then, is to pick the main arguments out of his line of historical references, and evaluate them on their own merits. But, before we can do that, we must first discuss an underlying assumption, on which Küng’s entire argument rests.

Hans Küng, writing in 1987, assumes that we are living in a new time, a new age; an age characterized by the “intellectual crisis” of the failure of ‘modernism,’ which became evident after World War I. He, like many others, refers to this age as a ‘postmodern’ age. It is an age which recognizes the limitations of the ‘modern’ world, with its emphasis on human reason, science and technology, and attempts to get past those limitations by approaching problems in a new, more holistic, way.

Küng argues that the ‘modern’ approach to religion is still evident in the writings of “so many pioneering thinkers from Heidegger through Popper to the New Left” which “bracket (italics his) the question of religion.” Instead of this approach to religion, which quarantines religion from the whole of human experience, Küng insists that “we must consider it along with everything else, in a postmodern fashion. (italics his)”

Based on his assumption that we are living in a new time which approaches problems in a new, ‘postmodern’ way, and based on the assumption of that age that all aspects of human experience should be considered more holistically rather than being taken out of their natural environment and analyzed “objectively” and “scientifically” (hallmarks of the ‘modern’ age), Küng makes a number of points which convey his vision for the role of religion in a ‘postmodern’ world.

The first point that Küng makes, then, is that understanding religion, in ‘postmodernity,’ is central to understanding human beings. He says that “without diagnosing and solving the religious (italics his) crisis, no diagnosis and solution of the intellectual situation of our age can be successful” because “the intellectual crisis (italics his) of our time... is decisively co-determined by the religious crisis” evident in the ‘postmodern’ world. This initially seems to be an unargued assumption. He does not defend it philosophically, by building a reasoned argument about the role of religion in individual lives. Instead, per his style and its emphasis on historical developments, he defends this point by bringing up his next point.

Küng insists that “the death of religion expected in late modernity has not taken place (italics his),” but, in fact, contrary to expectations, religion, historically speaking, has become more important to people in recent years. He says, “[n]ot religion, but its dying off, was the grand illusion. Religion is present once more in Western societies and in public too (contrary to all the functionalist theories of the privatization of religion). East and West, North and South, in cultures and subcultures, in scholarly discussions and in the media, in small groups... and in great religious-political movements” religion has become more visible in the ‘postmodern’ age. This is, to Küng, a historical fact which contradicts the modern view of the role of religion in Western/scientific society. “The scientific world picture and the religious orientation to reality, political commitment, and religious faith are,” contrary to the ‘modern’ view of religion, “no longer perceived as incompatible.”

So, according to Küng, religion is essential to understanding the human experience, because religion is vital to the experience of being human. This is demonstrated by the revival of religious expression in postmodernity, a revival which came on the heels of the notion that God, along with religion, is dead. Neither of these points, however, is very profound, and I expect that few people would disagree with them. They are important only for the question that they raise, which is this: what is the role of religion in postmodernity? Or, rather, what direction should religion and the study of religion take in the ‘postmodern’ world?

First, Hans Küng argues that religion should look forward, not backward. It should not take the demise of modernism in society as license to go back to a pre-modern theology, but rather to seriously consider the objections raised by ‘modernism’ and to move past them. He says “[w]e must unhesitatingly resist the global antimodernism, the programmatic Counter-Enlightenment that one sees people today – and not only in the Church – seeking again to promote with every means at their disposal. The theologian will be careful not to take belated revenge for the watchword ‘the death of God’ (now gone out of fashion) with the watchword, ‘the death of modernity.’”

This is an excellent point. While the ‘modern’ view of the world, according to Küng and many others, is no longer sufficient, that it is no longer sufficient does not mean that it was or is entirely wrong. The objections that modernity raised about religion and religious expression are often still valid. Küng’s own theological approach, with its emphasis on history, came out of the modern paradigm, as did biblical criticism. Modernism challenged religion to be, if not exactly ‘reasonable,’ at least not ‘irrational.’ But the modern paradigm did not only criticize the method of religion, it also challenged the results of religion, and that challenge is also still valid. Marx and others were concerned that religion, in their own cultures, served as a means for economic exploitation. That criticism, even after the much ballyhooed “fall of communism” (at least in Europe and the West, if not yet in China), is still a valid one. Religion in general, and Christianity in particular, should not use the demise of the modern view of the world as an excuse to retreat to the pre-modern theology that was so successfully criticized by modernity.

So, how, according to Küng, is religion to move past modernity without moving backward? Simply put, we must treat modernity “as a paradigm that has grown old and that must be built up anew,” To do this, we must evaluate ‘modernism,’ keep what still works, and discard what no longer works. First, we must “preserve the critical power of the Enlightenment” while getting rid of “social exploitation and intellectual obscurantism of every sort.” Then “[w]e must deny... the reductionism of modernity, with respect to the deeper spiritual levels of reality. We must also deny modernity’s superstitious faith in reason, science, and progress, along with the self-destructive forces that this faith has unleashed (including nationalism, colonialism, and imperialism) in the course of history… Finally, we must transcend and move beyond modernity, we must sublate it into a paradigm of postmodernity, in which repressed and stunted dimensions” including religion “aim to produce a new, liberating, enriching effect.”

The first of these three suggestions is obvious, and does not need explanation or defense. It seems obvious (to most) that the “critical power of the Enlightenment” still works. However, the second point is less obvious, and rests on a number of assumptions. Küng calls modernity’s “faith in reason, science, and progress” a “superstition,” not unlike the religious superstitions so soundly criticized by the Enlightenment. But is this faith such an obvious superstition that it can be claimed so without additional argument? I imagine that Küng would argue that the answer to that question is undeniably “yes.” After all, he might argue, there is no reason to suppose that human reason is limitless, or that science and technology are the keys to “progress.” In fact, he could say, our faith in this view has led us into a number of problems. In taking dominion over nature in the name of scientific progress, we have done irreparable damage to our natural environment. In developing technology without limit we have designed, in nuclear weapons, devices that could destroy almost all life on the planet, including ourselves. Human beings have obvious technical limits, in that, contrary to the “superstitious faith” of modernity we cannot design devices to do anything and everything, but we are not just limited by our technological capacities. We are also obviously limited by our lack of vision, and this, Küng could argue, is the greatest evidence of the failure of the “superstitious faith” of modernity. We cannot accurately predict the results of our actions, and so we cannot know that what we call “progress” is really “progress,” in the sense that it is moving in the “right” direction, producing positive rather than negative results.

And so, religion must, along with keeping the criticism of the Enlightenment, deny both the reductionism of modernity, which brackets off the human experience into artificial categories, and the “superstitious faith in reason, science, and progress.” This does not mean that reason or science is entirely invalid, but it does mean that they are not the exclusive determiners of what is true. Rather, they must be governed by something else, be it faith, ethics, spirituality, or whatever, so long as it checks the dangerous and destructive assumptions of modernity.

In picking between what from the modern paradigm works, and what doesn’t work, we are moving “beyond modernity,” incorporating it into a new, postmodern paradigm. Establishing these, Küng can finally lay out the project of his whole book (not the subject of this essay) which is the project he sees for theology in the postmodern world: that is, addressing “classic conflicts” (which are the major theological problems throughout history) gaining “future perspectives” (which entails, in addressing those “classic conflicts,” coming up with new theological perspectives) and moving “toward a theology of the world religions” (which will account for the variety of religious beliefs in the world.) Doing this, according to Küng, will make religion and theology relevant to the postmodern human experience.

Whether or not Küng’s suggestions for the direction of religion and theology in the postmodern world turn out to be helpful is not the subject of this paper, and, at this point, it is probably impossible to tell. However, it should be clear from this paper that Küng clearly diagnoses some problems with the modern paradigm, and its approach to religion. Insofar as he outlines his vision for a postmodern theology, that vision is very attractive to me and many others. While his arguments do not use pure reason, they are reasonable, and, more importantly given his theological perspective, they are grounded in history.

40 Days: A Lenten Devotional

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, marking (if you will) the advent of Lent. For Lent this year my church, along with Christ Church United Methodist and the Healing Place, has published a book of Lenten devotionals. In it there are 40 readings, one for each of the 40 days of Lent. Each reading was written by someone from one of the three groups (4th Ave UMC, Christ Church UMC, and the Healing Place).

As you can probably guess, I agreed to write one of the devotionals. I had a hard time with it, because I don't usually write anything short, nor do I often write with a devotional focus. Nothing about the daily reading format plays to my strengths. That said, with more than a little bit of fear and trepidation (perfectly appropriate for this season, by the way), here is my devotional piece, 40 Days:

_________________

Scripture Reading: Matthew 4:1-4, Mark 1:12-13, Luke 4: 1-4

After the Spirit (literally Breath) of God descends on Jesus at his baptism in the Jordan, he is immediately sent into the wilderness for forty days. Forty is a significant number in the Bible. After their Exodus from Egypt, the Israelites wander in the wilderness for forty days, living off the bread that rained down from heaven.

In this Gospel story, Jesus symbolically retraces the steps of ancient Israel, being led by God into the wilderness for forty days. Luke states overtly what Matthew and Mark imply, that Jesus “ate nothing at all during those days.” Just before facing his first time of trial, Jesus fasts.

In his fast Jesus, like ancient Israel wandering in the wilderness, depends on God for his food, for his strength. And, while Jesus does not eat anything, he feasts on the presence of God, and that spiritual feast prepares him for his first time of trial.

In Lent we retrace these steps of Jesus, just as he retraced the steps of ancient Israel. We do more than remember the days he spent fasting in the wilderness preparing both for temptation and for his coming mission; we relive them.

This Lenten season, may our fast – whatever form it takes – remind us that we depend totally on God for our nourishment and strength. And, may we, through our fast of preparation, become more like our Christ.

Language and Power in John Edgar Wideman

Yesterday in Resistance and Reconciliation we talked mostly about "power," using the work of Michel Foucault as a lens through which to view an aspect of power and domination; the subjugation of particular knowledges, particular stories. Because the class was mostly discussion, I'm not sure that I can give you a feel for how it was to be in the room. I can say, looking back through my notes after class, that we talked about, in order:

1. Foucault's Two Lectures, especially pertaining to "the insurrection of subjugated knowledges."

2. WEB DuBois' concept of a "veil of consciousness;" that is, the notion that people (and, in the case of DuBois' work, Black people) tend to see themselves the way they are seen.

3. An essay by Laura Stivers titled Resistance to Structural Adjustment Policies, found in the textbook Resistance and Theological Ethics edited by Ronald R. Stone and Robert L. Stivers. We attempted to connect some of Stivers' observations to Foucault's discussion of "capillaries of domination."

4. Part I of Traci C. West's Wounds of the Spirit: Black Women, Violence, and Resistance Ethics. This Part of her book focuses on the stories of black women who have been victimized by all kinds of violence, especially what she calls "intimate violence," a phrase that many of us struggled with because of the oxymoronic distance between the words "intimate" and "violence." The phrase captures all of the immediate potency that the words "rape" and "molestation" have lost.

Anyway, in discussing "subjugated knowledges" - that is, those forms of knowledge that have been subjugated by power, those stories that we don't hear because we are conditioned by our participation in power structures not to hear - and West's stories from black women who have been vicitimized by the power of violence and the violence of power, our discussion at some point shifted organically into a discussion on the relationship between language and power.

There are some stories, some in the class argued, that we perhaps don't hear simply because of the language they are told in. By this they didn't mean that the stories were written or spoken in, say, Mandarin Chinese and we only speak English. Rather, by this they mean that they were spoken or written - told in some fashion - in a "shameful" dialect of English, some bastardized subset of our language that we dismiss as ignorant without ever engaging its content.

Some of us had this experience reading the stories in West's book. They used a kind of dialect that reflects a lack of formal education; and we, as graduate students and/or professors of some stripe or another ("Masters of Divitity students," "Masters of Arts in Religion students," "Masters of Spirituality students," "local pastors," "military chaplains," "Ethics professors," and "Systematic Theology professors" are labels carried by those in the room) value formal education above almost everything else. As such, most of us were subconsciously dismissive of the stories told in a less formally educated English dialect. After all, we have worked hard to master a kind of English - not necessarily our native dialect of the language in most cases - to achieve what success we've achieved. That these women had not done the same kind of work, that they had not mastered our new language, turned us off a little. Made us on some unconscious level judge them as somehow inferior to us, as somehow participating in the violence done to them.

They weren't our kind of people, and they didn't communicate their stories on our kind of language, and so we were less able to hear them. This is part of the relationship between power and language. They mastery of the language of power gives one access to power, allows one to have one's story heard by power. It allows us to participate in power, and hold some power of our own. Failure to master the language of power renders one almost powerless; at least powerless to communicate to power, to be heard by power.

This discussion reminded me of the work I did on John Edgar Wideman's use of language as an undergraduate. I did an independent study on the subject aimed at producing a publishable paper. The end result was almost, but not quite, worthy of inclusion in an academic journal.

Anyway, much of my work focused on the relationship between race, power, and language. Part of my thesis was that Wideman - a black author - had to "unlearn" the language of his native Homewood, PA, and learn the more "white" language of academia that he encountered at Penn and Oxford. His success in his chosen profession - and, more broadly, his success in life - depended on subverting his native language and conforming to the language of power. What follows is a small chunk of that paper:

_________________________

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Wideman’s use of, and comments on language. While Hoop Roots represents a major step for Wideman’s use of language, language, and its connection to race and cultural upbringing is not a new topic for him. It is, in fact, one of the running themes of one of his earlier works, Brothers and Keepers. Brothers and Keepers is a memoir of his interactions with his incarcerated brother. These interactions take place both in physical reality and in his imagination, and interactions in both realms are significant. It is often, in fact, difficult to tell which interactions actually took place, and which interactions are merely descriptions of what he wished that he had said or heard. Wideman often meditates on the alternating distance and intimacy with his brother. This leads him to discuss many obstacles in their relationship; obstacles which include education and language. He says:

Your words and gestures belong to a language I was teaching myself to unlearn. When we spoke, I was conscious of a third party short-circuiting our conversations. What I’d say to you came from the mouth of a translator who always talked down or up to you, who didn’t know you or me but pretended he knew everything.

Was I as much a stranger to you as you seemed to me? …I’d made choices. I was running away from Pittsburgh, from poverty, from blackness. To get ahead, to make something of myself, college had seemed a logical, necessary step; my exile, my flight from home began with good grades, with good English… (Wideman Brothers and Keepers 26)

Here it is not his use of language which is interesting, but his comments on language. Language, the white language of “good English” has become a form of alienation, both from his brother as well as himself. In adopting the language and values of the dominant culture which educated him, both at Penn and Oxford, Wideman can no longer relate to his natural culture, the culture which he shared with his brother and his family.

But, now as he is writing this book, he has gained some distance both from his original culture and the culture of his education. He is able to articulate a critique of his own thoughts and actions, and of the impact that his education and the dominant language of that education had on him. When he speaks of the third party short-circuiting the conversation, or the translator, or the know-it-all, he is speaking of both himself and the culture which educated him. He is, of course, mocking the tendency of young, well-educated men to bluff others with their new vocabulary. He is also mocking the tendency of educated people to over-value their education and gloss over that which they don’t know. He is mocking the way in which one culture judges another culture by its own values rather than looking at the internal values of that culture. And he is mocking the way in which older brothers, far removed from home, distance themselves from the struggles of the younger brothers left behind.

But, it would be a mistake to overlook the role language in this passage. Language may be the most significant alienating factor. Wideman has given up the language structure of his youth, of his family, of his home. He has exchanged it for his ideas of success. It may be a necessary and even helpful exchange, but it is not a cheap one. His brother speaks the language that he is teaching himself to unlearn. Whereas language was once one of many common bonds between them, it is now an obstacle.

Is it possible, I wonder, to use the language of the dominant culture, and not, through the use of that language, appear to be talking down to someone who uses language differently? Is it possible for someone within the language structure of the dominant culture to encounter a different language structure, notice that it is different, and yet pass no judgment on it? Is it possible to move from one language structure to another without passing some form of judgment on the now abandoned language? Wideman did not move from one language structure to another because he thought that both language structures were equally valid and useful. Rather, he moved from the language of Homewood to “good English” because he was taught that the English he was learning was, in fact, good. He adopted the language of the dominant culture in order to succeed. With that there must be some form of evaluation of the language structure that he discarded. It is, if not quite inferior, at least not as useful.

_____________________

There's more to the story, as you might guess. The rest of the paper explores how Wideman's views on and use of language change over time, as he goes through the process of "unlearning" and "relearning" the language of Homewood. It explores the role that language plays in his "alienation" from both his culture and the culture of "white" academia. It also looks at how he uses language on the "other side" of success.

I suspect as we explore these issues in Resistance and Reconciliation, I will publish other excerpts from my study of Wideman. But this is more than enough for today.

Theodicy in the Priestly Creation Myth?

One of the ideas I've been kicking around for my eventual MA Thesis is a continuation of some of my ideas here about theodicy. That is, perhaps my Thesis would look at the moral and religious implications of theodicy, while also perhaps expanding the concept of theodicy to include other kinds of religious attempts to wrestle with the problem of evil. Evil, suffering, pain, and the like are, after all, not just philosophic, theological, and especially logical problems for a particular brand of theism that asserts God's unlimited perfection and goodness. They are experiential problems for all persons.

For my Intro to Judaism class I'm currently reading The Divine Symphony: The Bible's Many Voices, by Israel Knohl, a professor of Bible at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In it he notes the problem that evil poses for all forms of monotheistic religion, not just the philosophic theism that sticks to a strict concept of divine omnipotence, omniscience, and benevolence:

The most crucial problem facing monotheistic religion is the source of evil. In polytheistic religions, evil can be blamed on wicked divinities. But if there is only one God and God is perceived as good and merciful, how can we explain the existence of evil in the world?

This question, Knohl asserts, was burning in the minds of the Priestly editors of the Torah. It can even be seen beneath the text of the first Creation Myth of Ancient Israel, found in Genesis 1:1-2:4a. That myth, in Source Theory, is traditionally attributed to the Priestly Source, a source that is seen by many scholars as a later voice from the post-exhilic period, but is seen by Knohl as a pre-exhilic voice. In fact, Knohl argues quite convincingly that the what he calls the "Priestly Torah" can best be dated to "the period between the building of Solomon's Temple (tenth century B.C.E.) and the time of King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah (second half of the eight century B.C.E.)."

This is important for him, because he argues that the Priestly Torah was a response on the part of the "elite priests in Jerusalem" to a crisis in the social and religious climate of Ancient Israel - a crisis spoken to by the great prophets of that time.

That there was a socio-religious crisis in Ancient Israel at that time is beyond dispute: the texts of Amos, Isaiah and Micah all speak to it. Knohl succinctly describes the crisis in a single sentence:

People thought that they might acquire sanctity by meticulous performance of the cultic laws, ignoring at the same time the social-moral commandments.

In response to the attack on the Temple cult that followed the prophetic articulation of this crisis, Knohl argues that the priests made public stories and traditions that they had long guarded, and the result was the formation of the Torah text. This, of course, was an ongoing process - they didn't just publish a single, definitive manuscript. But, at its heart, according to Knohl, the Priestly Torah - that is, the parts of the Torah that are attributable to the Priestly Source - are a response by the priests to this socio-religious crisis.

Anyway, the first creation myth in Genesis is part of what Knohl calls the Priestly Torah. In addition to responding to the contemporary crisis that Knohl sees as responsible for the Priestly Torah, Knohl argues that this myth is also in part a response to the problem of evil as it might have been understood at the time.

The problem of evil is, after all, not exactly a new problem. In previous posts we have discussed this a little, when looking at one of Augustine's theodicies from the 4th century CE. However, it wasn't a new problem in Augustine's day, some 1650 or so years ago. In fact, it was an ancient problem even in antiquity; perhaps as old as monotheism, or even old. Human beings have, as best as we can tell, been wrestling with the experience of pain and suffering for as long as there have been both human beings and pain and suffering. And, at some point, every religion must account for the origins of this experience, which we label "evil."

So it should come as no surprise that the Priestly Torah, in its creation myth, struggles with the nature of evil; particularly since, as Knohl notes, in Judaism as with all other monotheistic religions, there is no evil deity for the problem to fall back on.

After providing us with a reading of Genesis 1:1-3, and a brief discussion of the syntax, Knohl writes:

The most striking conclusion that follows from this observation of syntax is that before the formation of light, which was the first act of God as Creator, there were already entities that predated God's creation. These primordial materials consisted of unformed and void earth (tohu v'vohu), darkness (hoshekh), and deep waters (tehom). Thus we do not have in Genesis 1 a claim for creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihlo).

Before we go any further I should note, for those of you who may feel threatened by the idea that there is no Biblical support for creation ex nihlo, that Knohl is an Orthodox Jewish rabbi who takes the Biblical text very, very seriously. In other words, he is not some radical like me who seeks to overturn the religious apple cart. His work is his attempt to come to terms with the text of his Bible, a text in which he sees the Word of God. This reading, then, is one that comes out of the Biblical text itself, and not a radical reading that somehow manipulates the text. In fact, this reading is much, much more faithful to the Biblical text than any reading that would see creation ex nihlo in this story. Creation ex nihlo is an extra-Biblical concept that has been read back into the Bible by those who sought to see the Greek philosopher's God in the God of Ancient Israel. That it has become "orthodox" in the Christian tradition demonstrates that even the most "orthodox" of Christians have sought to re-interpret their scriptures in light of their cultural setting, just like we "liberals" do today.

But, the question before us is not one of "orthodoxy" v. "heresy" in the contemporary Christian context. Rather, it is one of what Knohl makes of these three pre-existing primordial entities, and how they relate to the problem of evil as understood by the priestly editors of the Torah.

We cannot interpret tohu v'vohu as a designation for formless matter, as it is often interpreted; rather, it is a reference to some primordial entity that preceded divine creation and that was used in that process. Elsewhere in the Bible, the word tohu means "desert," "waste," "devastation," and this is also the meaning here. God begins Creation assuming the presence of this primordial tohu. On the first day, God created light as a contrast to the preexisting darkness. On the second day, God separated the preexisting water by forming the expanse of heaven. On the third day, God gathered the original waters that were left under the expanse, and distinguished the earth from the seas.

We see here a progressing process of ordering, making distinctions, and building up from preexisting substances. This movement from chaos to order in the myth is important, because it presents us with a both progressive and ongoing picture of Creation. Creation is not a one time event in the past, in which God made everything ex nihlo. Rather, it is an ongoing story that takes place in time, in which God shapes that which already existed, while adding to it, ordering it, and making important distinctions between "light" and "darkness," water "above" and water "below," and between "sea" and "land." These distinctions correspond to the three primordial materials that Knohl translates as "darkness," "deep waters," and "unformed and void earth."

In positing these primordial substances, in overtly saying that "some elements of the universe were not created by God," Knohl sees the priestly editors as both attempting to explain the existence of evil and as placing "limits" on "God's force and authority as Creator." He argues, in fact, that this aspect of the creation myth is an overt attempt to solve the fundamental problem of evil:

The primeval elements tohu, hoshekh, and tehom all belong to the evil sphere. Hence, the Priestly claim that these entities predated God's Creation is really a claim about primordial evil. The three elements comprising the preexistant cosmic substance are the roots (put another way, the substance) of evil in the world. At the conclusion of the Priestly account of Creation, it is written: "And God saw all that He had made, and found it very good" (Gen. 1:31). All that God had made was very good. Evil was not made by God. It predated Creation in Genesis 1!

This reading presents us with a much more religiously and morally satisfying kind of theodicy. In it God, rather than explaining evil away, takes the preexistant substance of evil and shapes it into something good.

This is very similar to the way in which Process Theology in the Christian tradition looks at the relationship between God and evil. In both accounts God is somewhat limited, in that there are things beyond God's creative power. And, in both cases God actively works, in an ongoing process, to address the problem of evil. This divine activity demands our participation, calling us to co-create with God; that is, to work with God to help alleviate suffering by shaping evil into good.

Praying the Psalms

One of my courses, a Christian Education class called Growing in the Life of Christian Faith, requires each student to covenant to pray a Psalm each week, and to keep a journal to reflect on the experience.

Each night, after I finish my journal entry for the day, I ask Sami to read it. It is my way of sharing my interior life with her. She often asks me, when we finally see each other, "How was your day?" Most of the time I simply can't come up with an answer. So much happens during the course of a day; some things that I would label "good," others that I would label "bad." By the end of the day I've given up trying to apply labels to my experiences, and so I often can't find a coherent narrative lens through which to view the events of my day, much less communicate them to her.

So now I read to her from my prayer journal. It helps give her a glimpse of my interior life, which is what she's really asking about when she inquires of my day.

Anyway, after reading her tonight's entry, she asked if I might consider posting things more like what I write in my prayer journal - she can relate to the content there much more than she can relate to the speculative or argumentative nonsense that fills these virtual pages. So, in the interests of sharing my reflections on a new spiritual journey, and in the hopes that those reflections somehow lead others to a deeper understanding of faith, I'm posting a few things from this week's prayer journal.

This week I - along with the rest of my class - have been praying Psalm 1. While most of the class has been using the New Revised Standard Version, most of the time I've been using the JPS Tanakh translation. It reads:

Happy is the man who has not followed the
counsel of the wicked,
or taken the path of sinners,
or joined the company of the insolent;
rather, the teaching of the LORD is his delight,
and he studies that teaching day and night.
He is like a tree planted beside streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season,
whose foliage never fades,
and whatever it produces thrives.

Not so the wicked;
rather, they are like chaff that wind blows away.
Therefore the wicked will not survive judgment,
nor will sinners, in the assembly of the
righteous.
For the LORD cherished the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked is doomed.

Now here are three entries from this week, including tonight's:

Tues., Feb. 13, 2007

I was most struck by the faith that the Psalm exhibits in God's justice. The Psalm assumes that good befalls the righteous, and evil befalls the wicked. This goes against our general experience of the world, which has us often wondering why the good falter while the evil prosper.

Perhaps this faith in God's justice is rooted in the word "Happy." There is, I suspect, a connection between one's adherence to virtue and one's happiness. I know that I have experienced this, and not just in the form of residual guilt for sins. To do good, to treat others kindly, to forgive those who've wronged you, to let go of the hurts you bottle inside, to act in compassionate and altruistic ways - these all have tangible emotional benefits that we experience these benefits both personally and intersubjectively can help us have faith in God's judgment, because we can experience that judgment in the here and now.

Today I meditated on this understanding of judgment, and how it both impacts my faith in the God who has ordered the universe with at least a degree of justice; and impacts my behavior, as one who, in the words of the Psalm, "survive[s] the judgment" (or at least hopes to) and sits "in the assembly of the righteous."

Wed., Feb. 14, 2007

There is an image in the Psalm that strikes me: the image of the righteous as a tree planted by streams of water. The tree "yields its fruit in season" and "whatever it produces thrives."

Today has been a cold, cold day. It rained earlier this week, and so when the cold front came in there was standing water on the ground. That water froze. Looking out the window I can see pools of frozen water surrounding the trees in the park across the street from my house. Likewise, on the way to pick my son up from preschool I could see trees standing beside frozen ponds.

I wonder if this isn't a good metaphor for my prayer life. My experience of God has frozen over. But perhaps this is just a season; perhaps if the cold doesn't kill me I'll still be able to produce fruit in a later season.

Thurs., Feb. 16, 2007

What struck me today was the phrase:

"... but their delight is in the law of the LORD..." (NRSV)

or

"... the teaching of the LORD is his delight..." (JPS)

I can relate to someone who studies the Torah day and night ("torah" is the word used here for "law" or "teaching") but I can't always relate to someone who takes delight in such study.

Since I was a teenager I have obsessively studied philosophy and theology. I'm sure that at one point that study came out of a deep relationship with God, a profound experience of the sacred. I'm sure that at one point it was even a great joy to me, something that I delighted in.

But though I once described pondering the mysteries of the sacred as a kind of mystical joy, that joy is no longer a tangible part of my daily experience. Today I study like I breathe: mindlessly, joylessly. I can't live without it, but I never notice it.

Today I ate some exquisite chocolate truffles. Yesterday was Valentine's Day, so Sami surprised me with a variety of dark chocolates from Godiva. I ate them slowly, feeling the rich cream tingle my taste buds. Each morsel was a delight that I nursed slowly, milking each pleasureous moment.

My study of the wisdom of our religious tradition should be like that, but too often it is like eating a thin, flavorless gruel.

I miss delighting in the teaching, the law, the "torah" of the LORD.

... or we could do it the hard way...

The Christian Science Monitor's Eoin O'Carrol is reporting that Sir Richard Branson of Virgin fame is offering a cool $25 million to anyone who "can come up with a way to scrub at least 1 billion tons of CO2 a year from Earth's atmosphere." The aim would be to help slow or even arrest global warming, caused by the 25 billion tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere annually by the burning of fossil fuels.

While some criticism of this plan has focused on Mr. Branson's apparent hypocrisy, noting, among other things, that he owns a commercial airline that consumes colossal amounts of fossil fuels and also promotes private, commercial space-travel. Good points, but perhaps a better criticism would focus on the merits and demerits of the project itself, rather than on any apparent hypocrisy on the part of the brain and money behind it.

I don't see any actual hypocrisy on the part of someone who realizes that their economic interests depend not only on the consumption of fossil fuels, but also on the ability of the Earth to survive said consumption more or less intact. After all, an ecological disaster that rendered large parts of the planet uninhabitable would be very bad indeed for business.

I also see no necessary hypocrisy on the part of ecological advocates - such as Al Gore, Jim Hansen, James Lovelock and the like - who participate in a project created by a man whose fortune has been built in part on the back of the ecosystem. If we really care about our habitat we have to build alliances with anyone willing to do any work to help preserve it; even alliances with big business.

The only problems I have are these:

1.) The goal isn't big enough. Even if we can somehow find a way to scrub 1 million tons of CO2 from the air each and every year, that still leaves us with a gap of 24 million tons and climbing each year, relative to the amount of CO2 released by the burning of fossil fuels annually.

2.) I am somewhat suspicious of any plan to help preserve the natural environment by acting upon it. That is, we create a great deal of harm to the environment by treating it as an object to be acted upon, manipulated, interfered with. Of course, we are also able to accomplish some goods through this. But we should still be suspicious of any plan to undo the damage we've done by acting upon the environment, as there may be untold future damage done by each new action.

That isn't to say that we shouldn't do anything - it is instead to say that the many somethings we should do involve limiting the ways in which we act upon the environment, rather than adding to them.

That said, I hope this plan works. It is limited, and possibly even shortsighted, but it is something.

And now I've got to go to my second round of classes.