Preaching without a Halo

It would be naïve for me to suppose that I can say much at all about preachers or preaching, so these are merely a few scattered jots from someone without authority. 

Many Sundays passed listening to my dad preach, and little did I know that one day I would do the tremulous thing and stand behind the pulpit too.

I remember thinking when I was a kid that preachers must have some secret knowledge to do what they do with such astounding and awe-inspiring conviction. Some years later, I discovered much to my surprise that preachers are not angelic beings with special knowledge; preachers are regular humans whose knees begin to shake every time they stand behind the pulpit. Preachers are regular folks who sometimes mistake themselves for extraordinary folks. Preachers are like everyone else. Preachers are regular folks who come from the congregation. They are regular folks who beg God for mercy each Saturday night before they must speak to the congregation Sunday morning. Preachers are human like any other.

Why then should they be the ones to speak? I have asked myself this too many times to count as I have ventured through seminary: “Why should I be the one to preach? There are many others far more suited!” If the preacher is simply a topsy-turvy human like any other, then what makes the preacher’s words worth listening to?

The words are powerful not because of the preacher speaking them but because by God’s mercy God would use even those feeble words of the preacher for the proclamation of good news to an aching world. Without the active presence of God working in our midst, preaching devolves into a futile endeavor of public speaking, futile because such preaching will be nothing more than some fanciful rhetoric with no transformative power.

The preacher then does not have a halo nor does the preacher need to pretend to have one, for the preacher’s words are important only because with astounding mercy God patiently uses them.

Where do the preacher’s words come from? It would be easy to say the Bible. However, it may also be said that they come from the Spirit’s workings in the church’s compost pile. And it is for this reason in part why we should not preach, if we are not willing to wash the church dishes or take out the church garbage.

A good preacher is like a referee who does not make any headlines the following day. A good preacher is like a butler whose presence is hardly noticed at the front door. A good preacher is a humble finger pointing to the crucified messiah and to the unsettling and hope-filled reality of God in our midst. 

“New Creation” and the Problem of Hope

In the wake of the many atrocities of the twentieth century and the ones continuing to happen as we speak, how can Christians speak about “new creation” with any integrity without merely relegating what Paul says is “here” to some futuristic individualized pie in the sky?

As many scholars such as Richard Hays and N.T. Wright have emphasized, this new creation is descriptive of a cosmic reality; it is seizing the old and breaking into it. But how can this be? This may seem quite simple to talk about in the context of affluent American churches that associate suffering with undesirable levels of stress. However, such contexts do not take seriously the stark reality of the world’s situation nor do they take seriously the cosmic hope, which Paul seems to be describing.

In the wake of the Holocaust and in the midst of the social rubble of Haiti and the moral cacophony of America and Europe, how can we speak of “new creation” with integrity? In his own day, how could Paul have the audacity to say, “The new has been created”?

This is not only a problem of evil. This is a problem of hope. Many folks who have an ounce or two of theological education may then parrot the cliché, “We live in the ‘now-and-not-yet.’” In other words, we live in between the first fruit – Jesus’ resurrection – and the consummation – the resurrection of the saints and the renewal of all things. However, how can we say that the new is “here” when it seems rather strikingly apparent that it is not “here” nor does there seem to be much hope that it will ever get here unless we are willing to subscribe to nothing more than a fool’s hope. We may very well say we are in between, but it seems as though the vine from which the first fruit sprang has since withered. In other words, where is the resurrection power of God today?

We are all in the business of perceiving the world, and perception seems to be crucial to what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5 about “new creation.” That is not to say that we must simply block bad things from our vision, but it is to say that some how our vision must make sense of the world while professing the belief that new creation has begun and is continuing to happen and will finally come to its fullness by the mercy of God. Some how our vision must be informed by the resurrection in order that whether or not we see “new creation” breaking in, somehow we trust it is. This is the problem of hope. While in the midst of impenetrable darkness and with only a foggy pair of spectacles, we do the foolish thing and continue to hope. 

But is this a flimsy hope like hope that Santa Clause will fill my stocking this Christmas?

Can we point to Christian communities that are an alternative to communities and systems of war, self-indulgent violence, money laundering, hatred based on difference, and power mongering? If we can, then this is a recollection of the empty tomb and a foretaste of a day when there will be no more sorrow.

Can we point to communities where “new creation,” where the resurrection power of God, where reconciliation happens? Can we use our fingers to point to Christian communities where immigrants have a voice? Can we point to communities where abused children are unequivocally protected and nurtured? Can we use our fingers to point to communities where women are not objectified? Can we point to communities where ethnic differences are not muted but are celebrated? Can we point to communities where the concerns of the elderly are heard? Albeit these things may be but a foretaste of things to come when there will be no more death, can we point to communities where these things are fostered in the name of the crucified messiah, Jesus? If not, then “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

What then can we say about where all this is headed?

We may echo the few but sturdy words of Brueggemann and say, “God keeps the future.” 

Uprooted Trees Usually Die

I have little intention of ever pursuing anything remotely akin to a bright and shining scholarly career. With that said, I do appreciate reading the Bible with acute attention to detail and scope. I have no interest in dissecting or for that matter vivisecting the Bible for material about which I may write an article, which may then afford me the opportunity to secure tenure. That is not the business of theology, albeit it may be the business of scholarship. 

It seems too often the case that scholarship – NT scholarship in particular since that is what currently finds itself troubling me to stay awake into the wee hours of the night – strikes me as something not dissimilar from data collection and entry. And upon entering the so-called data into rubrics of suspicion and attestation, we land upon some conjecture that may be deemed worthy by the current guild of allegedly inclusive NT scholarship. 

This bland business of shuffling dusty papers in order to secure a strangely coveted desk job seems far removed from the dangerous landscape of the gospel that finds its embodiment in the turmoil and shenanigans of the motley family gathered by a most shocking election. In other words, what’s the deal with theological scholarship being so far removed from the lifeblood of the church?

Recently, a professor who I greatly respect said with a smirk, “the church is often about thirty years behind scholarship.” Upon further reflection, I imagine I would say, “And scholarship is perpetually perplexed by and disconnected from the church.  The church may very well be clueless about current scholarly dialogue, and that may or may not be to the church’s detriment. However, scholarship simply cannot afford to be uprooted from the church. If it is, it will wither entirely.”

It has been said on a variety of occasions that when theology remains nothing more than an academic discipline it is a sort of idolatry. I will not begin using my fingers to point at things as idols, but it does seem that theology will be subverting itself if it is not rooted deeply in the unacademic and perhaps seemingly uninteresting pulsations of the messianic body, namely the topsytervy world of the church.

Perhaps up to this point, I have sounded rather negative. However, one of the invigorating and beautiful things about being at Fuller has been that the same professors who are lecturing to us on Thursday evening are in fact preaching and teaching on Sunday morning. Their lives are imbedded in the life of the church, and this has been an inspiration for doing theology well. There is simply no need to choose scholarship over ministry or vice versa. The two may very well be held together, and along the way we may discover that the two belong together. 

“Theology as a church discipline ought in all its branches to be nothing other than sermon preparation in the broadest sense.” – Karl Barth, Homiletics

“Down to Earth”: an Anthropology

When I told my mom some of the classes I would be taking in my last few quarters at Fuller Seminary, she expressed her delight and then said, “And how are you going to stay down to earth?” I chuckled and jokingly said, “I cannot help but stay down to earth. Both my feet tread the earth every day.” In retrospect I think I should’ve added, “When we soar too close to the sun, our wings melt, so I will be sure to stay nearer to the ground.”

I have fond memories of growing up in rural South Carolina and being able to smell the soil as the dew evaporated in the morning. I miss that smell.

While we live, we may develop the desire to soar to the heights of human achievement, but as soon as we are born, gravity begins pulling us into the grave. This is not my attempt at seeming cynical, but I would like to remain well grounded in recognizing my own finitude, something of which teenagers are prone to be ignorant.

Quite a few folks point out similarities between humans and animals, and I think rightly so. It doesn’t take much imagination to note similarities between humans and animals. Other folks point out the vast differences between humans and animals, and again I think rightly so. Genesis may be considered to be too archaic for providing insights into anthropology, but I think Genesis paints a rather illuminating picture. It plants us firmly on the ground like many of the other animals, and it notes that humans are spirited: we are spirited dirt people. Now what this signifies precisely is the beginning of debate. Perhaps, along with Hamlet we will declare that humans are “the paragon of animals…and yet what is this quintessence of dust?” (2.2).

We Christians, especially in America, don’t know what the heck to do with apocalyptic literature most notably in the canonical witness. Our rather frightful incapacity for reading apocalyptic literature leaves us thinking that we are extraterrestrial creatures visiting the earth only for a short while. This couldn’t be farther from the canonical witness’ portrait of what it means to be human.

Our modern forefathers had a thing or two to say about what it means to be human. That great wizard Pascal spoke wisdom that will continue to echo in our ears for generations to come: “Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, a man would still be more noble than that which kills him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this. All our dignity consists, then, in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill. Let us endeavor, then, to think well; this is the principle of morality” (347).

Recalling the Lisbon earthquake in 1755, Voltaire would probably not have been too far off from echoing Pascal’s conclusion that we are but feeble things, and in light of several recent major disasters, Pascal’s remarks about our frailty have been accentuated further.

Descartes is famous or infamous for declaring, “I think therefore I am.” However, some folks have facetiously pointed out that according to Descartes’ own rationale he cannot even say, “I think therefore I am,” only “thoughts are being thunk.” In any case, I sure hope I am more than merely a thinking thing. Descartes’ reflections, and for that matter Pascal’s, may have been of some worth; however, we would likely do ourselves a disservice by not moving beyond Descartes’ rather limited and dubious conclusions. His conclusions were not quite conversant with Genesis’ anthropological portrait nor were they trying to be.

Wittgenstein has greatly influenced contemporary theological conversations and rightly so. You might say that he has dusted away the cute homunculus from the alleged seat in our skull, and this spring-cleaning has not been to our detriment. In moral discourse, MacIntyre has made an assertion or two, and fortunately for us morality apparently has a body.

Unlike our animal friends, we humans are monomaniacs when it comes to telling stories about ourselves. It might be said that we are walking narratives more concrete, hilarious, grotesque, and subtle than any of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories.  

Whatever fancy descriptions we use for anthropology especially a theological anthropology, we should likely remember to keep things down to earth. After all, we are dirt people. 

"For All have Sinned"?

This is not merely some cute theological abstraction nor is it merely some sort of mystical, metaphysical guilt that inscrutably pertains to the isolated individual. This pertains to our social complicity. We share complicity in our society’s sins, and we continue to do so. It is precisely for that reason that we must find forgiveness at the foot of the cross and live a life of perpetual repentance.

When I was a kid, my mom gave me piece of profound theological and sociological instruction: “when you point your index finger at someone else, you have three fingers pointing back at you.” (By the way, at whom is the thumb pointing?)

I have frequently asked the question, “But where does complicity begin and end? Where or how do we or can we draw a line between when we do and when we do not share complicity in particular sins of a corporation for example?” I have frequently wished that we could draw lines and thereby assuage some guilt, relieve some of the burden. However, I am slowly realizing that I am asking the wrong questions. I am trying to distance myself from any sort of societal culpability. This is probably what many of us want. We want to separate ourselves from those pernicious culprits “over there.” However, (perhaps much to our chagrin) we are woven into the thick fabric of society, and we cannot neatly separate ourselves from other threads that have become noticeably stained. We are connected.

This emphasis is not to evade personal culpability but is to punctuate it and to give it a context.

Previously, I asked the questions about sharing complicity precisely because in practice we separate guilty persons from non-guilty persons, and so I was asking a rather intuitive question.

The righteous one who died for all did precisely what we do not and will not do: he refrained from complicity and thereby accentuated ours. When reading the gospel of Matthew, we may ask, “Who is responsible for the death of Jesus?” It would be easy and quite erroneous to say, “the Jews.” We might then point a finger at the temple regime. We might also point a finger at the crowd, and then we might point a finger at Pilate. But what about those who stood by and did nothing? What about those, like Peter and co, who distanced themselves in order to remain unscathed? It might then be noted that complicity seems to go in all directions.

The good news of forgiveness at the foot of the cross: forgiveness is extended to us even when we are clueless about our complicity.

Don Quixote and the Gospel of Christ

What can possibly be said about that knight errant extraordinaire Don Quixote that has not already been said? He is that great knight who took his bidding from the brilliant books of chivalry. After having cleaned his long-forgotten lance, shield, and metal cap he mounted his steed to seek adventure. Don Quixote is that knight who with great determination sought to right wrongs, correct injustices, and rectify abuses. He also just so happens to have been that mad knight who mistook an inn for a castle and who was subsequently humored by a disgruntled innkeeper. Our magnificent Don Quixote read too many adventure books, which consequently so consumed his mind that it left him totally mad, and thus he rode into the sunset of absurdum charging at windmills with his lance mistaking the windmills for monstrous giants. And I suppose every lunatic needs a follower or two, and hence Sancho, a completely inane donkey-rider, followed Don Quixote into every contrivable misadventure imaginable.

Proclaiming and embodying the gospel of Christ in our culture of pop psychology, preemptive-war, and self-obsession may seem as absurd as charging at windmills with a lance, though we might say that the person who charges at windmills is an intriguing case study.

Jesus looks like Don Quixote to our eyes. We, like the innkeeper, seek merely to appease Jesus. We go along with his fanciful babbling until it proves unprofitable and disruptive. We, like the innkeeper, wish for Jesus to leave us alone as soon as possible, and when he finally leaves, we are relieved to see him leave our peaceful town without further ado.

We seek to ensure safety and stability. Jesus did not make those things a priority for himself nor did he for his followers. It is easy to say the gospel is counter-cultural. However, I am beginning to feel the gospel’s foreignness. I am beginning to feel it in my bones. It seems so foreign to us that we don’t know what to do with it, so we make it into something else that we may continue augmenting our own priorities in our own way and according to our own rationality. We continue talking about “carrying our crosses,” but we make it compatible with our wish for safety, which is far more absurd than charging at windmills with a dilapidated lance.   

I imagine if Jesus were to walk down Wall Street or for that matter “Main Street,” he would appear to us to be a ludicrous dreamer, an absent-minded vagabond who has read Isaiah too many times and who knows nothing of honest pragmatism, for he is an alleged king who thinks victory comes through crucifixion. We wouldn’t vote for him; his health plan is too costly.  We do not want to carry a cross and walk a road that leads to bloody crucifixion. We, like Jesus’ disciples, duck for cover.

After spending several weeks eating, sleeping, and breathing the Gospel of Matthew, it struck me as foreign, foreign from the world we have constructed for ourselves. This feeling was accentuated when I watched the latest Batman movie. We simply do not want a king who is killed by his antagonists; we want a hero who protects us and who survives in the process. We want heroes who will keep us safe. None of us want a murdered king as our king. None of us believe that a war can be won without weapons, for believing that a war can be won without weapons would be like mistaking dangerous giants for harmless windmills.

We say it is “just” to kill rather than be killed. And so we kill our enemies and even celebrate their deaths. We murder for “liberty” and call it “justice.” If a person is a domestic murderer, then that person deserves the death penalty. However, this rationality knows nothing of the gospel of Christ, but we prefer doling out death because it is more conducive to our self-obsessed schedule and budget than the dangerous business of peace and restoration. At the foot of the cross, we divide and conquer instead of seeking forgiveness.

The absurdity of the gospel of Christ remains absurd without the vindication of Christ and those who follow him. It remains absurd without resurrection. We wish to make the cross and safety compatible because we have forgotten the last sentence of the Nicene Creed, the Apostle’s Creed, and the last act of the gospels. We have forgotten (or perhaps disbelieved) resurrection. And so the gospel of Christ remains absurd to our eyes. We then content ourselves with mythologizing Jesus, which is conducive to our attempts to live as long as possible at the expense of others. 

“What is Truth?”

We are born, we live, and we die. And somewhere in between we want to know and feel something real, something true. Whether or not we are able to come upon a grand theory of the universe, we want to experience something real. Pilate’s question, “what is truth” is our question, and it the question that has rung in our ears through the centuries.

Henry Thoreau said, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately…and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived” (Walden). This is the visceral horror.

Part of the trouble is that we don’t know precisely what we are looking for, but we hope that when we come across it that it will be apparent: we will know that is it.  However, everywhere we look somebody has claimed truth, but when we look a little closer we think, “No, that’s not it.”

Naming shapes our perception of others, the world, and ourselves: take the word “immigrant” as an example. We name this and that; we label “those” people and ourselves, and in the process we poison the waters and pretend that we haven’t done so. Our troubled perception bespeaks our propensity and incapacity to name things. 

We are in the hunt for something real, but in the process our proclivity for misnaming things sends us south when we should probably go north. And so our troubled perception continues; we continue to shake our heads when we see people claiming to “possess” truth. We all seem to want it, but then maybe it’s not an it that we seek. Have we misnamed it as an object? However, objects are easier to handle, to possess, to manipulate and wield as weapons. We then prefer lies to the truth as long as the lies help us augment our own security. We long for truth. But we opt for cheap imitations, and we name those cheap imitations as “true.”   

We want to cut to “the truth,” and so we use words as swords when they could be used as plowshares. With guns and tanks it would seem easier to take captive truth than to do the precarious thing of letting truth captivate us. I would add, however, that usually we do not have much of a choice; it sneaks upon us without us knowing and so we take up arms fearing that our cheap imitations will be uncovered for what they are. 

For various reasons, Christians are often misled into thinking that Christians possess the truth, albeit “the truth” of which they speak frequently slips into generic affirmations that are safe and superfluous. I would suggest that Christians do not have possession of much at all, but they are to bear witness to truth. And it is with words that Christians bear witness to an incarnated truth they cannot control.

“What is truth?” This question may seem to be an easy question to ask if it is held at a distance as if it does not have dire implications for the one holding it at a distance. How truth is named is of special importance because what we perceive as “true” will be according to our naming of it. To our horror, we may awake to learn that not only have we not lived, but also we have intentionally misnamed life in order to name death as “life,” which is perhaps the life we would rather live as “good” and “true.”  

Images of Horror and Hope

I do not know many people who cook over poop, and I doubt it takes much argument to conclude that the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel was a strange person. Cooking over poop was on his to do list among other unconventional things. He enacted theology in the weirdest ways imaginable in order to grab people’s attention and to unsettle them with truths about their situation.

Stanley Hauerwas has said that description is everything. He has said, “If I say, ‘World War I, World War II, what comes to mind? Now if I say, ‘World Slaughter I, World Slaughter II, what comes to mind?’ Description is everything” (Lecture at Fuller, Spring 2011).

In each generation, it is the task of pastors and theologians to communicate good news as actual good news with fresh and vibrant imagery that captures the imagination.

I doubt, however, if I would ever recommend following Ezekiel’s procedures for creating theological imagery. However, it may prove helpful to take note of the fact that vivid images can potentially speak to us on a visceral level. We may understand what the imagery is seeking to communicate, albeit we may remain unable to articulate why it resonates with us and how it is we understand. It’s been said we don’t always need to know how we know (which may be in part due to do our inability to articulate how it is we know something; it’s then perhaps a matter more of an incapacity to articulate than much of anything else).

In short, images and for that matter stories do what discourse often fails to do. Images can capture a person’s imagination and facilitate inroads for comprehension on a rather basic level. This may be in part why metaphors and vivid imagery are indeed so necessary for theology. We understand ideas with metaphors, and we speak of human affairs in relation to God metaphorically because metaphors are what we have linguistically to describe the significance of God’s conspicuous and inconspicuous sublime ubiquity. Strange and perhaps even horrifying metaphors may very well awake us to the uncomfortable and yet hope-filled truth of God’s reality in our midst.

For as long as I can remember, my mom has told my dad to involve more stories in his sermons. This is not merely for purposes of entertainment; this is for purposes of communication.

Imagery has of course done much for philosophy. The metaphors of buildings and webs have done much to frame philosophical endeavors. Similarly, imagery has done much for theology. There is no need, however, to limn the hosts of theological imagery here.

In part truth as we know it is a description of reality, and in part theology is symbolized reality that seeks to articulate reality’s significance. This was the business of Ezekiel, and this is the business of pastors and theologians today. It may be said that Ezekiel was an excellent theologian because he sought to vivify the reality of human affairs in relation to God, and he did so quite provocatively.

Sometimes I wonder if we have grown so diffident about the business of theology that we have morphed it into a timid academic discipline writing with abstract wisps of air in the clouds completely unrelated to our earthy, gritty somatic existence. 

Learning to Lie

When I was young, my mom paid me to read books. She would pay me by the page, and so I tended to pick either thick books or mounds of thin books. On one particular occasion, I piled up a stack of books and proceeded to negotiate with her for a new mountain bike. We came to an agreement, and I began reading through the rather tall stack of books. It was slow going, slower than I would have liked. That new mountain bike remained at the forefront of my mind the entire time. After making some progress through the mountain of books, I came upon an idea, a simple idea with a high reward. I decided to lie. I decided to wait another week or two and then to tell my mom I had finished reading all the books.

My plan worked smoothly and without a single flaw or suspicion. I had my new mountain bike and nobody was the wiser. Everything about the bike was perfect. It had the gears, breaks, and shocks I wanted. I rode it all over the place, and one day a friend and I raced on the country road between my house and our church. The road was about a mile long and was really rough. It was mostly just tar and gravel. We raced down the first big hill and kept going faster and faster, and we continued peddling as hard as we could down the next hill.

Then a fateful thing happened. My right foot slipped off the pedal and into the spokes of the front wheel. The front wheel came to a lurching halt. I was sent hurtling over the handlebars, and I imagine my legs were flailing as my body flipped in the air. I landed face first onto the knife-like gravel and tar road. I blacked out, and I barely remember any of it. When I regained consciousness and began to get up, I couldn’t feel my lower lip. I turned to my friend and asked, “Am I bleeding? Is my lip still there?” I panicked and began scanning the road for my lower lip. I didn’t see my lip on the road, so I got back on my bike and pedaled as hard as I could back up the big hill and back home.

I burst into the front door, and I am sure blood was dripping everywhere though I do not remember much about it. I went to the bathroom to look in the mirror to check my lip, to see if it was still there. My mom came in wondering what was going on. She saw blood everywhere and the imprint of the road on my forehead. I had a split from my bottom lip down to my chin, not to mention numerous other cuts all over my face.

My mom began to bandage me, and I felt guilty. My stomach was in knots, and I felt a lump in my throat. It was difficult to get around the lump in my throat, but I managed. I cleared my throat, and I told her everything, though there was not much to tell. I told her I had lied about finishing the books. I had read about half of them and lied about the rest.

It was the perfect opportunity for my mom to teach me about the consequences of lying. It was my first new bike, and though I do not have that bike anymore I still have a scar right below my lower lip.

A Jewish rabbi whose name currently evades me said, “Bad guys don’t get away with what they do. We all pay for what we do with one currency or another.”

Les Miserables: “the immense”

Like War and Peace, Les Miserables is a book that many people reference but few people read. Both books each seem longer than Webster’s dictionary, which is reason enough for people to avoid them. To compare them would perhaps be a temptation, but they are as different as they are long.

In recent weeks, I have trekked through the fields and allies of Les Miserables, and I am beginning to think that even if people begin to read it they will not finish it simply because Hugo spends so many pages providing “back stories” for the characters. This, however, does not detract from the narrative; in my opinion, it adds layers to the story.

It would seem that the twentieth century would have us believe that there is one way to go about writing a novel: showing the story that the reader might eavesdrop. Hugo, however, has reminded me that there is a real art and beauty in telling a story. Layer after layer, Les Miserables unfolds divulging events from various persons’ lives that converge into conflict, terror, and redemption. It’s a five-act play with all the drama and irony Shakespeare could imagine.  

It’s no secret that I enjoy reading novels and that Dostoevsky is my favorite novelist. It would likely make sense then that I make a smattering of comments contrasting Hugo’s Les Miserables with bits of Dostoevsky’s corpus. First, however, a few notes of similarity are in order. Both seem to focus on the underbelly of society, and this focus sets a variety of trajectories that color the complexions of their respective narratives. In this bleak context of criminality and moral ambiguity, both paint poignant pictures of abuse, neglect, and deliverance of women – consider for a moment the tragic stories of Fantine in Les Miserables and Sonya in Crime and Punishment. This is especially appropriate considering it is most often women’s abuse that is ignored. There are numerous other similarities, but that will suffice for the moment.

Their respective anthropologies are no doubt a point of departure. For Hugo, it would seem that people are basically good and that it is society that grinds people into the sort of corrupt people that would commit abominable crimes. This would almost seem to be the case in Crime and Punishment, but Dostoevsky does not quite give us the luxury. Because the protagonist of Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov, is a destitute student at the end of his rope who then commits murder, we might be inclined to deduce that like Hugo Dostoevsky shows Raskolnikov to be a product of a system that failed him. However, as the story builds, Dostoevsky shows Raskolnikov’s motives for crime to be sundry and inscrutable (in a letter to a friend, Dostoevsky admits that even he does not know why Raskolnikov committed the murder). Unlike Hugo, for Dostoevsky humans are not basically good. For Dostoevsky, rich and poor alike are prone to crime and/or immorality. Dostoevsky’s anthropology of rather cynical ambiguity and depravity seems to be at a different point of the spectrum from Hugo’s. It may prove illuminating for future considerations if Hugo’s focus on systemic complicity and Dostoevsky’s focus on personal complicity are held together.

This then sets the stage for another point of difference: the path to redemption. Because Hugo is in the business of disparaging the corrupt justice system, it is precisely the corrupt system that must break down before Jean Valjean can be free. For Jean Valjean good deeds, escape, and the cessation of the system’s pursuit shall pave the road to redemption. However, Jean Valjean still battles with his conscience even when he evades the justice system. In contrast, it is the justice system that paves the road to redemption for Raskolnikov; for Raskolnikov confession and prison shall be the road to redemption. In my judgment, it seems that the breakdown of corrupt systems and confession could beneficially be held together. For both Hugo and Dostoevsky, conscience is a major player in the lives of their protagonists, albeit the justice system is portrayed variously.

Intertwined with their respective anthropologies and their notions of redemption are their exemplar humans or Christ figures. Setup as the exemplar in Les Miserables is the Christ-like bishop who rides on a donkey and who quite literally cares for the poor and disenfranchised. This seems to focus on Jesus’ acts towards the poor – e.g. see the gospel of Luke: the gospel is for the poor. And by the end of Les Miserables, Jean Valjean the convict has evolved into an angel and Christ-figure from the seed that the bishop planted at the beginning of the novel. In The Idiot the Christ figure is a protagonist who basically lacks common sense not because the protagonist is stupid but because the protagonist has not been corrupted by the “common sense” of the world; for example, the protagonist is completely naïve in regards to relations with women. This seems to focus on Jesus’ sinlessness. It seems that their Christ figures bespeak their differing anthropologies: while Hugo focuses on acts of justice, Dostoevsky focuses on innocence.

There are numerous other comparisons that could be mentioned, but these are merely a few considerations that kept cropping up in my mind as I meandered through the shadowy cobblestone streets, dank sewers, and battlefields of Les Miserables.

Les Miserables is a touching story of abuse and healing, and it is no surprise that quite a few movies have been “based” on this story. It’s a story about the evolution of a galley slave becoming an angel, a convict becoming a christ. It’s one of the most memorable stories in world literature. I would like to recommend this novel. However, considering that we live in an age of sound bytes, I suspect almost nobody would be too keen on having such an immense adventure.

Competition: Making Enemies and Friends

“Comparison is the hidden worm that consumes in secret and does not die at least not until it takes the life out of love” (SK, Works of Love).  

Participating in recent soccer intramurals in seminary has reminded me of something Flannery O’Connor said, “Extreme situations reveal what we are essentially” (my paraphrase). The context of athletic competition was not at all what O’Connor had in mind. However, perhaps it is not too far fetched to connect her statement with soccer intramurals because in the heat of the game we discover much about ourselves and others as tempers flare and voices grow edgier. In some cases new friends are made, and in other cases new enemies are made.

In competition we may discover that we are monsters.  

Over the years I have done a pretty good job of competing poorly in so far as I have frequently let my tongue get the best of me. While I was in junior high and high school, ping-pong was a major area of competition between my dad, my brother, and me. On several particular occasions, I remember my brother and me growing so heated and angry at each other that we had to stop playing. In fact we stopped playing each other all together for a long time. From my childhood, I could provide many similar examples particularly from my years playing soccer.

But of course athletic competition is merely one of many sorts of competition. There is competition in academics, reality TV, employment, and dare I say politics. The upcoming presidential election is a sort of competition. And not least among various sorts of competition is that strange leviathan we call capitalism. I do not intend to broaden our understanding of competition to such a degree that it is a useless word, but I would like to point out the propensity for competition in human relations in general.

Competition is something many people enjoy. However, many other people seek to avoid it because either they simply do not have a taste for it or they see how divisive it can be. Obviously, there are usually winners and losers in competition. Winning can be exhilarating, and even losing can be edifying. Some winners, however, do not merely get some sort of trophy at the end; they usurp the place and even the dignity and potential for life of the loser. To make matters worse, some of these losers were not even aware of the competition until they had already been born into the losing team – let your imagination run wild with regard to global politics. What then shall the winning side do to the losing side?

Perhaps, there are some things about which competition is potentially appropriate and healthy, while there are other things about which competition is simply inappropriate.  

A theology that says something about competition is needed lest we continue walking a vague tightrope between the borders of love and hate, morality and immorality.

When I started to write this blog, I intended it to be focused on particular sorts of competition, namely those which are in controlled environments, but as I reflected a bit more I realized that it was terribly insufficient. My brother and I had a scuffle over ping-pong, but that is quite trivial when compared to global politics.  

What then should be a trajectory-setter for thinking about appropriate competition and appropriate participation?

Could love be the standard for good and bad competition? Oh, but what a lofty standard! How could that ever be practiced in competition? Shall we concede to Ivan Karamazov who says, “It’s possible to love one’s neighbor abstractly, even occasionally from a distance, but hardly ever close up”?

“Love your enemies.” I imagine this probably means something akin to not trampling the other into the ground when such an opportunity arises.   

There are many sides and dimensions to the pervading issue of competition that I have not touched, many of which I have intentionally omitted for lack of space and many of which I have not yet considered. Not least among my omissions is my lack of reference to the canonical witness. Consequently, here I am merely welcoming us to think about competition theologically because there is such a desperate need for us to do so considering we are living in a world so entrenched with competition. It is in the very air we breathe, and we need to be aware of it lest it annihilate any hope of building “ecumenical,” hospitable communities characterized by love.

A few concluding comments are in order to tie together this smattering. First, competition is not inherently good or bad, albeit it may be used for good or ill by those involved. Second, folks who like to think that they have righteously avoided competition should probably reexamine themselves and recognize their potential complicity in bad sorts of competition. Third, something as risky as competition requires a large degree of candid accountability from all sides; no one should be exempt from such accountability.

There is of course much more to say, but this shall suffice for a start, however small a start this may be.

Old People and Big Books

In America we often sweep our parents off to the side and out of the way, lest they slow us down. It seems that we forget that old people have lived life and know a thing or two. We forget that they have already climbed life’s tallest mountains and explored life’s deepest and darkest caves.

In America we like aphoristic books with pretty covers, though they don’t say much of anything. They merely give us equivocal anthems to post on our bathroom mirror or on our status update. There’s no substantial content, just a wisp of ephemeral air tantamount to a fart.

Old people and big books are alike in some ways. They are like treasure chests frequently teeming with wit and wisdom. Unfortunately for us, we in America seem to dislike old people and big books. We prefer young people with enthusiasm, and we prefer thin books with clever titles. Neither young people nor thin books generally have much wisdom to offer.

Old people belong in the mainstream of culture, and big books should be the thrones on which they sit. They should be our philosopher kings, but alas we prefer anarchy as long as the anarchy is shiny, bright, and young.

Of course, I’m being a bit facetious. But this past Sunday after church I had lunch with several older gentlemen from church, and it was fascinating and amusing to hear them talk about all sorts of things not least among their stories were their misadventures in China. Listening to them talk made me think it odd that we younger people don’t do more listening.

In a culture infatuated with prolonging youth, we shouldn’t forget that older folks have stories to tell, and we younger folks may do well to sit and listen.

The Sophisticated Audacity of Atheism and Dostoevsky

The "masses" believe in God. In fact so much so, that the masses develop all sorts of quasi-theistic superstitions founded on their vaguely theistic beliefs. It is little surprise then that various flavors of atheists consider themselves rather sophisticated for moving beyond the folk religion of the masses, for they, atheists of various sorts, are countercultural and thereby must know something or have come to some sort of realization, which is superior to that of the masses. Some atheists may then see themselves as brave heroes daring to lay siege on the seemingly imperturbable fortress of ignorance. However, this confidence exudes the modern stench of progress, which is nothing more than a disappointing fairytale like the belief in Santa Clause, albeit it is a fairytale that many of our American politicians still pretend has some credence. Such confidence is like that of a scuba diver deciding to take off his oxygen mask at the bottom of the ocean if for no other reason than the possibility of discovering the needlessness of the oxygen mask. However, first it might not hurt to scan the bottom of the ocean and to see the many skeletons that decorate the dark craters of the ocean’s gloomy landscape.

Today’s “new atheism” has all the newness of yesterday.

It is hardly uncommon for "new atheists" of various sorts to find fault with religious institutions. There have been and will be abuses within various religious institutions. It may be more illuminating, however, to find fault with humanity. But that is what religion often does, and far be it from an atheist to fault humanity in general.       

Dostoevsky went to great lengths to illustrate the bankruptcy of the modern atheism that was pervading his Russia, and I think he did well by not showing it to be merely insipid intellectually but by showing it to be rather inhumane. His rival Turgenev sought to portray atheism as a sort of liberation of humanity as do many atheists today. In response, Dostoevsky showed that what Turgenev considered to be liberation was actually a path leading to lunacy and death (e.g. Ivan and Smerdyakov in The Brothers Karamazov). For Dostoevsky, atheism was not only bankrupt it was poisonous. This ethos surfaces throughout his novels perhaps most notably in Demons (otherwise entitled Devils and The Possessed depending on your translation). At the beginning of the novel is Luke 8:32-36, a reference to swine being possessed by demons and drowning. This sets the complexion of the novel and adumbrates its dénouement. Dostoevsky was caustic towards the atheism that was spreading across his Russia not because he was insular but because he saw and felt its danger. The structures of life were being threatened by all sorts of atheistic isms (sundry ideologies ending with “ism”), and the structures of life were not being replaced by anything other than vague and arbitrary autonomy that critiqued its very own foundations. For Dostoevsky the vision of the isms was shortsighted and was a short road leading only to death.  

Annoying People

It is impossible to be both prophetic and politically correct. The prophet is by nature countercultural and provocative. But of course it goes without saying that mere provocation of any sort is not necessarily prophetic, though the prophetic is necessarily provocative.  If the prophet’s job were to encourage the culture to continue on its current path, which is what a false prophet does, then his job would be superfluous because the culture needs no aid to continue on its current path. In this way, it is precisely the prophet’s job to step on people’s toes, knock their heads together, and poke their eyes. The prophet belongs to a class of unpopular annoying people: the prophet is like a person’s conscience. It might then be said that, yes, that gadfly Socrates was a bit of prophet.

Prophets get put in jail and do not have mega churches. Think of Jeremiah. He was imprisoned because people did not like what he had to say, among other things, and at the beginning of his career God told him that his career would not be a success. Not to mention, the prophet Nathan had the uncanny audacity to rebuke a king. In America we would say, “the life of a prophet is a bad career choice.”

I wonder what would happen to churches if pastors spoke a bit more like the prophets. Many people would probably leave and go to a different church.

It has been said, “prophets comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” (my paraphrase).

Worship: American “High Places”

A few months ago, I nearly posted a blog entitled, “Worship and Amusement Parks.” You can probably guess the contents. The essence of the blog pertained to church worship, which ought to be aimed at affirming God as God; that same worship, however, frequently devolves into entertainment for the congregation and follows the capricious tastes of that particular church’s target audience. I never posted the blog, and in fact I forgot that I wrote it until recently.  

Last week in a Reformed Worship class our professor said, “When the congregation becomes an audience, the worship has become idolatrous.” His accusation was twofold. First, such worship is idolatrous because the worship is aimed at entertaining the congregation instead of being aimed at affirming God as God. Second, such worship is idolatrous because the congregation ceases to participate in affirming God as God. His simple statement shakes the very foundations of many American churches’ worship, though like most earthquakes in California it shall go largely unnoticed.

Entertainment is a common flavor in American “Christian” worship, and it is poisonous.

References to “high places” are not uncommon in the Old Testament; they were places of worship. Some folks today may suppose that these high places were places of idolatry. Perhaps, in many cases they were, and it is likely that many high places were used for worship of local deities. It was also not uncommon, however, for worshippers of the Lord to worship the Lord at “high places.” In either case, high places were places for worship. In some instances, the Israelites were instructed to destroy the high places because they were being used to worship local deities instead of the Most High God.

In America, we too have built many “high places.” Perhaps similar to the high places in the ancient world, our high places are indeed places used to worship local deities instead of the Most High God. 

The Lame

Some moments in the course of an ordinary worship service at church are too special to pass up. Recently, several ladies became members of the church.  They were asked to go to the front and answer a few basic questions in front of the rest of the congregation. Both of the ladies are older, and one of the ladies has particular trouble with one of her knees. She says that it usually takes her a few moments to get it going again. As she sought to return to her seat, an elder of the church who is also older assisted her, and he made an unassuming comment, which probably most of the congregation could hear, “It’s the lame helping the lame.” It was true, and Esther and I chuckled to ourselves. A few days later, we reflected on this, and Esther made the remark that it’s similar to Christian service in general: it’s the lame helping the lame. It’s also been put, “It’s one beggar telling another where to find bread” (my paraphrase). It probably wouldn’t hurt for Christians of all flavors and persuasions to remember this. Where is there room for arrogance? It’s the lame helping the lame.

In a similar vein: “No pastor rises much higher than being a butler.” – William H. Willimon.

Sticky Relationships

Lifelong relationships have a glue that is mysterious to us in America (“America” may be a generalization, but it is a helpful generalization denoting American pop culture). When we see couples who have been married sixty years, we stand in awe and view them as otherworldly creatures. When we see couples who have been married forty years, we do much the same thing. When we see couples who have been married twenty-five years, we’re impressed, and when we see couples who have been married five years, we may wonder how much longer it will last. Lifelong marriages are growing increasingly foreign to American culture. But it doesn’t end there. In America friendships are similar, for the self usurps the priority of the relationship.

Commitment is not an American value. We are far too sophisticated for such things. Short-term relationships are much more convenient and entertaining for the self – entertainment after all is a core American value (Cf. Either/Or vol. 1, “Rotation of Crops”). We enjoy the use of prenuptial agreements. When the going gets tough, we opt out. There is no reason to stay in a difficult relationship, for “it is much more important that I be true to myself than true to any relationship.” Not surprisingly, we have probably all heard some version of this statement from Hollywood celebrities. It seems that we in America have forgone the glue for relationships and have opted for a whimsical game of pin the tail on the donkey with as many turns as we so desire. 

This debacle with commitment isn’t foreign to the church. I’ve heard far too many pastors lament the high numbers of divorce, but church bodies seem to splinter as much as marriages do. Churches will have a difficult time avoiding hypocrisy when it comes to talking about commitment. 

It seems then that we don’t know the first thing about covenant, albeit the church ought to know all about it.

Is “covenant” just a word we Reformed desire to tack on to our theological emphases in order to baptize them as truly Reformed?

This rambling blog is in some ways a convergence of a lot of things that have been on my mind as of late. In early church history class, our professor has emphasized the centrality of the early church’s yearning for unity, often at great cost. In Pentateuch class, I have encountered a refreshed understanding of covenant, i.e. God’s incorrigible loyalty to Israel. In some recent stories, I have felt the hurt and anguish that commitment in relationships sometimes incurs. And in my own denomination, I have watched as people have opted out of the denomination for one reason or another.

I am not saying that separation is never an appropriate course of action. Sometimes it is – OT teachings on the subject seem to presuppose that relationships break down. But it seems that we in America have begun using various types of separation as devices of convenience that have the self as the sole standard. Relationships are hard, and making a relationship sticky seems in many ways inscrutable. I basically don’t know what I am talking about, considering I am only twenty-four and have been married only a few years. But my naïveté on the matter doesn’t change our need to recover the value of commitment and a robust notion of covenant relationship that necessarily excludes prenuptial agreements and easy ways out.   

Korean Drama and Jesus

This title makes me chuckle. Last night Esther and I finished watching a Korean love story. First of all I should admit, I was slow in being drawn into the story. I missed most of the first few episodes because it seemed terribly uninteresting. However, somewhere along the line, I found myself transfixed and unequivocally invested in the story.

I would very much like to recap the entire story here. However, that would take a series of blogs, and in that case you might as well just watch the show. Let me suffice it to say: two friends, a young girl and a boy grow up together in meager circumstances in rural Korea. She needs heart surgery, if she has any chance of living. The boy’s father is a scoundrel and steals the money for her surgery. The mother of the girl then searches for the boy’s father in Seoul that she might recover the money for her daughter’s surgery. In the process, the mother is hit by a car and dies. To make matters worse, the boy’s father abandons him. The young boy cares dearly for the young girl, but he doesn’t know what to do because they are penniless. He attempts to steal a lady’s purse, but he is immediately caught. As it turns out, he looks strikingly similar to a wealthy couple’s recently deceased son. The wife is suicidal after losing her son, so the husband tells the young boy that he will pay for the young girl’s surgery if he, the young boy, agrees to become their son. The young boy agrees, but they take him away before he is able to find out if the surgery was a success. They tell him the young girl died during the surgery. However, fifteen years later, he discovers that she didn’t die at all. The story continues with a feeble seed of hope.

I do not want to diminish the magnitude of laying down one’s life for another – “no one demonstrates greater love than this.” Dickens captures this notion well in A Tale of Two Cities. In fact, I imagine that there are many stories that have utilized the notion of dying for the sake of another. However, I think there is something to be said about living a whole life of sacrifice, and I do not mean merely being subservient in rhetoric and disposition. I mean trading in one’s own life and identity that another might live, like the young boy trading in all that he was that the young girl might have a chance at life. For me this was the most striking aspect of the story: that the young boy would give his whole life over to strangers that the young girl might have some hope of life.

Before I go a step further, let it be said that I do not go about baptizing movies and TV shows, and I do not like pretending that this and that movie have biblical analogs (many people have done that with The Lord of the Rings, which to my understanding is in direct conflict with Tolkien).

That said, after finishing the show last night, I found myself naturally wandering into the land of the Gospels. The Son came and dwelt among us as Jesus of Nazareth. I am fully aware of the many Christological heresies that would ensnare me, if I were to draw direct parallels between the young boy in the Korean drama and Jesus. I have no intention of attempting to draw consistent parallels between the Gospels and the Korean drama as a whole. But in a sense, the Son sacrificially traded in his identity that humanity might be drawn into life, perhaps similar to the young boy allowing himself to be essentially kidnapped that the young girl might have the life-saving surgery. When we think of the Son’s sacrifice, we often think of Jesus’ death, but I think we would do well to take heed of Jesus’ earthly life as a whole that we might then be drawn into the Son’s overwhelming and rather incomprehensible life-long sacrifice.

I wonder if this might also shed light on Christian life.

Suffering and the Presence of God

I remember when the phone range and my mom answered it. It was the doctor. There was silence. She hung up and walked into the living room. I remember standing, waiting for an explanation. She told us that she had been diagnosed with cancer. It felt like the world had imploded, but strangely it hadn’t. It felt like life had ended, but strangely we woke up the next morning the same as before. When my mom was diagnosed with cancer, I felt like my world had come crashing down, perhaps analogous to what many people felt on 9/11. For many long and excruciating weeks, my mom endured chemotherapy. I remember sometimes going with her to treatments and sitting with her on the bed. I didn’t have much to say, and there wasn’t much I could do. Most of the time, I just sat there with her.

I shall not build a theodicy. That is for someone else to do. But I will say that if a theodicy begins and ends “on paper,” then it isn’t a theodicy at all. Formulas, theorems, and syllogisms do no service for a mother who loses her daughter or for a son who loses his father or for a wife who loses her husband.

In The Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard sheds light on what may be a potentially redeeming quality of suffering. He says, “When life begins to quake, then it is immediately apparent that despair was what was lying beneath” (Penguin Classic, 74-75). It seems then that tragedy can potentially serve as a trigger to realize one’s despair and one’s need for deliverance. However, these words would seem cold and insensitive to anyone who is enduring tragedy and suffering.

Years later, my mom said that during those long weeks and months of cancer and chemotherapy she experienced a closer presence of God than she had ever before. She said, “I felt sorry for everyone else who had to be bustling about.” God was present with her in the midst of her cancer.

When it comes to dwelling in the presence of God, lying in bed with cancer is rather different than vogues in Christian circles that blur the boundaries of entertainment and the holy. I’m not suggesting we adopt a sort of Christian asceticism. But perhaps when it comes to dwelling in the presence of God, we are a bit off kilter and even upside down. Perhaps, we have forgotten to take off our shoes and childish desires. Instead, we have “satisfied” ourselves with sugarcoated experiences. It seems that we often associate God’s presence with health and surplus, and we play hot potato with suffering. It’s little surprise then that we in America don’t know what to do or say about the presence of God in the midst of suffering. But the testimonies of many around the world, including my mom, ought to teach us that God is present with those who are suffering, and perhaps they recognize God’s presence better than we who are “bustling about.”

Seminary is a Cemetery

“Did I just see you guys at the café?” A generic looking Caucasian man said to me as I stood in line at a restaurant with Esther.

“Maybe so…we were just there,” I trailed off and turned my attention to the menu hoping to avoid a conversation.

He began to aim words in my direction again…

…aimless chatter…

“So what are you doing in Pasadena?”

“Going to seminary,” I said. I did not want to disclose the name of the seminary, lest I be obliged to defend myself.

“Cemetery?” His inflection seemed to indicate confusion.

“Seminary,” I corrected.

“Yeah, I heard you. I know exactly what that is.” His all-knowing pretentious tone spoke volumes.

I felt a combination of amusement and annoyance. I looked at him with what I hoped would be an unassuming smile, though I don’t know precisely how I came across. “Oh, ok.”

“I know all about seminary…” His voice was loud and seemed to permeate all the corners of the room.

…the conversation continued for a minute or two, and he concluded by wishing me good luck, which I thought just added to the oddity of the peculiar conversation.

I will not waste breath defending a theological education because I will likely be either “preaching to the choir” or pouring words onto deaf ears. However, I must say that it struck me as rather odd that a complete stranger would say something like that to me. After some informal research, which involved nothing more than turning to Esther and asking who in the world that was who spoke such tactless words to me, I learned that he was involved at a local church (I will not disclose which denomination or “nondenomination”). And I thought to myself, “We’re so bored and have lost any remnant of direction that we must fight amongst ourselves.”