Waving or Drowning?

The Christmas Song

My annual tradition of posting The Christmas Song seems a little more poignant this year.
Merry Christmas to all, from Toronto.

The Christmas Song
Dave Matthews Band 

She was his girl; he was her boyfriend
She'd be his wife and make him her husband
A surprise on the way, any day, any day
One healthy little giggling dribbling baby boy
The wise men came, three made their way
To shower him with love
While he lay in the hay
Shower him with love love love
Love love love
Love love was all around

Not very much of his childhood was known
Kept his mother Mary worried
Always out on his own
He met another Mary who for a reasonable fee, 
less than reputable was known to be.

His heart full of love love love
Love love love
Love love was all around

When Jesus Christ was nailed to his tree
Said "oh, Daddy-o, I can see how it all soon will be
I came to shed a little light on this darkening scene
Instead I fear I've spilled the blood of our children all around"

The blood of our children all around
The blood of our children's all around

So I'm told, so the story goes
The people he knew were
Less than golden hearted
Gamblers and Robbers
Drinkers and Jokers, also searchers
Like you and me 
Like you and me 

Rumors insisted he soon would be
For his deviations
Taken into custody
By the authorities less informed than he.
Drinkers and Jokers, also searchers
Searching for love love love
Love love love
Love love was all around

Preparations were made
For his celebration day
He said "eat this bread and think of it as me
Drink this wine and dream it will be
The blood of our children all around
The blood of our children's all around
The blood of our children all around

Father up above, why in all this anger do you fill
Me up with love, love, love
Love love love
Love love was all around
Father up above, why in all this hatred do you fill
Me up with love, fill me love love love
Love love love
all you need is love love love
you can't buy me love love love
And the blood of our children's all around
And the blood of our children's all around

One Time on Hollywood Boulevard

Purple Madonna, From Brian Andreas and the beautiful people at Storypeople.com:

One time on Hollywood Boulevard I saw a young girl with a baby. It was a crisp winter morning & her hair shone dark purple in the sun. She was panhandling outside the Holiday Inn & the door clerk came out & told her to be on her way & I wondered if anyone would recognize the Christ child if they happened to meet. I remember thinking it's not like there are any published pictures & purple seemed like a good color for a Madonna so I gave her a dollar just in case.

The Question of the Age

 

Don't ask

God, why didn't you...?

Instead,

God, why didn't we...?

or more to the point,

God, why didn't I...?

 

 

(Inspired by Bruxy Cavey's sermon today.)

Confrontation, Deconstruction, Conversion, Consolation, and Reconstruction

With my thoughts on the Flintstones Fallacy in general, and it's application with the John Piper/"Slaughtering God" episode specifically, I'm trying to open a conversation on how we look at the scriptures through an evolutionary worldview, as people who are continually changing.

Source

In that light, Richard Rohr's comments this week might be the best thinking I have heard on the subject.

As we continue to grow, how do we do this? How do we look at sacred documents that were written a longtime ago by people who were very different then us? What can we expect?

Here's the good Father:

When the Scriptures are used maturely, they proceed in this order:

1. They confront us with a bigger picture than we are used to, “God’s kingdom” that has the potential to “deconstruct” our false and smaller kingdoms. 
2. They then have the power to convert us to an alternative worldview by proclamation, grace, and the sheer attraction of the good, the true, and the beautiful (not by shame, guilt, or fear which are low-level motivations, but which operate more quickly and so churches often resort to them). 
3. They then console us and bring deep healing as they “reconstruct” us in a new place with a new mind and heart.

These three brief points can serve as both a guide and a practical reality check as we move forward, allowing the scriptures to be what they are, and releasing them from the smallness in which we have confined them.

The Bottom Line

A poignant reminder from the Apostle Paul via Hugh MacLeod:

After all the arguments about rights--usually my rights, with little or no mention of the rights of others--Love is what will save us, and save the world.

As Hugh points out, it reminds us of who we are. Or as I'd put it, Who We Already Are. We've just forgotten, and need to remember. Or re-remember.

This is the only thing that will save us.

Progress in an Evolutionary Environment

(This is a slightly edited version of something I put on Facebook yesterday.)

Some thoughts from an early morning bus ride in Xiamen, China:

Every day we should consider the following: Do the beliefs, principles, values, tenets, rights, doctrines, etc., that I endorsed and embraced yesterday still serve me today? Do they reflect who I am today, and, more importantly, do they lead me to who I want to be tomorrow?

This introspective consideration is not optional. If we refuse to do it voluntarily, life has a tragic way of forcing the issue.

We need to do this as individuals.

We need to do this as communities.

We need to do this as nations.

We need to do this as a species.

Every day.

And See Sun

If you can, make time to watch the documentary Beyond (about 45 minutes) from Joey L. and friends. It covers their trip to Varanasi, India to complete his project Holy Men, and the imagery is stunning. If you don't have the time, then jump ahead to 40:45, where Magesh, a Aghori sadhu, sums up his spirituality.

That's what I want to focus on here.

 

 

Here's a partial transcript of Magesh's comments:

And see Sun.
He's a friend of the whole world.
He doesn't say, "I am your enemy, I cannot come to your house."
Even though you are an enemy, you are a friend.
He comes to everyone.
Just like that--we should also be...
Showing brightness to everyone.

I was riveted to my seat as he spoke, because it sounded familiar:

He makes the sun rise on both the evil and the good and sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous.
(Matthew 5:45b, CEB)

This dude had my attention. An Aghori sadhu in Varanasi, India named Magesh, whether he knew it or not, was paraphrasing Jesus. I decided to go back to the context of that line from Jesus.

You have heard that it was said, You must love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who harass you so that you will be acting as children of your Father who is in heaven. He makes the sun rise on both the evil and the good and sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love only those who love you, what reward do you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing? Don’t even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete.
(Matthew 5:43-50, CEB)

And it clicked.

Love your neighbour? Check... I've heard it before.
Love your enemies? Check... I've heard that one too.
He makes the rain fall yada yada yada? Again yes, I've heard it before.

But I'd never really understood the entire passage. I'd never put it all together before.

Friends, neighbours, enemies, righteous, unrighteous; it just doesn't matter. In the big picture--from God's point, as Magesh beautifully put it--we are not seen that way, so, simply put, we are not that way.

Jesus wasn't telling us to make this massive, magnanimous gesture and love even the bad apples. He was saying, I believe, that this is not the way we are. 

We are all the same. Exactly the same. And we are all connected.

Friends, neighbours, righteous folks? They are me. Love them. 
Enemies, unrighteous types? They are me. Love them.
Love everyone, because everyone is me, and I am everyone.

Easier said than done of course, so we better get started.

The Flintstones Fallacy in Action

Source unknown

Usually it's a good thing when you can point to a practical, real-world example of a theory you've been espousing.

Usually.

Unfortunately, we're referring to the Flintstones Fallacy, and this particular example is discouraging, disheartening, and damaging. But, it's also useful as a demonstration, so let's carry on.

First the details. I'll try to make this quick because quite frankly I don't want to dwell on the particulars. Depending on the circles you run in on the internets you may have already seen the reporting of an interview with John Piper back in the summer, and the subsequent firestorm. I have no interest in the discussion, other than to use it as an example of what we've been talking about.

Here is Piper's comment at the heart of the matter:

“It’s right for God to slaughter women and children anytime he pleases. God gives life and he takes life. Everybody who dies, dies because God wills that they die.”

(Peter Enns has done a good job of following the posting, and it's subsequent mysterious disappearance. Piper's comments can still be found in this Christian Post piece.)

Here are two quick theological comments before we get back to the Flintstones Fallacy.

First, Piper's comment is disingenuous. If we set aside the issue of the flood for a moment, I think we can count on one hand the number of people that God directly 'slaughtered' in the Bible. I'm thinking of Lot's wife for example. All of the others were killed by people. God's people, yes, and reportedly on God's orders, but people nonetheless. This is significant, as we shall see.

My second point stems from the first. In the CP article Piper goes on to say the following:

God is taking life every day. He will take 50,000 lives today. Life is in God's hand.

Of the tens of thousands who will die on this planet in the next 24 hours, many will succumb to violence, preventable diseases, and hunger. These calamities have human causes, and some--perhaps many--could be avoided if you, me, and John Piper cared enough to pay the price of changing the way the world is. We are responsible, not God. The chess-board theology that says otherwise relieves us of the responsibility of changing the way things are, and renders much of Jesus' teaching irrelevant. 

Back to the Fallacy.

As I've said before the Bible is a collection of documents written for and by a certain people situated in a certain time. To be sure it is more than that, but it is as least that. 

Here's an example of the slaughtering that Piper is referring to, with the added proviso, as already stated, that the Israelites actually did the killing:

Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt.  Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass. (1 Samuel 15:2-3 KJV)

This was not about land, or food, or other resources, but pure revenge. Genocide for the sake of revenge.

At this point let me make a necessary statement: I do not believe that God issued those instructions. Not in that way, not in that manner, not for that purpose. The God who would advocate that kind of violence is not the God I know. 

When we make the assumption that this episode took place exactly as recorded in documents written thousands of years ago, we succumb to the Flintstones Fallacy. Do I think that those who kept the record of this time believed it was accurate? As much as I can have a personal opinion on this, I would say yes. In that sense it is true. This was reality as perceived by the people of that time and place. As we have already suggested, they simply did not perceive the world and the divine as we do. As a temporary aside, this is my problem with the question of Biblical inerrancy; I don't take the opposite side of the argument, it's simply not applicable.

Additionally, there's been some interesting work done which indicates that ancient peoples struggled with an underdeveloped sense of self. "Much of the early literature represents a struggle to find a deeper sense of subjective selfhood, but for the most part the characters simply do not refer to themselves in any kind of way that suggests internal reflection." (Carter Phipps, Evolutionaries: Unlocking the Spiritual and Cultural Potential of Science's Greatest Idea) As a result, ideas that arose were often attributed to the whispers of various gods as opposed to thoughts internally generated. Unable to internalize their own instinctual impulses within the context of a personal structure, they externalized them as outside influences. In other words, "God made me do it." This concept will require more consideration, but regardless, I offer it not as an indictment of the Israelites, but a defence. As I've said previously they were doing the best the could with the human operating system of the day. If this theory is accurate you can see what it does to the inerrancy argument.

Now to the present day.

It would be one thing to simply believe that the historical record of a violent God is accurate. But evolution rolls on, and there are damaging implications of this fallacy.

Humanity continues to evolve, and as a species, slowly but surely, we grow increasingly intolerant of the behaviour attributed to God in some of the 'slaughter passages' of the Old Testament. If we cling to an inerrant, literal, Flintstone fallacy-infused view of scripture then we are left trying to explain, if not defend, the actions of a God who could be loving and merciful one minute and display the characteristics of a homicidal maniac the next. "His ways are not our ways" just isn't going to cut it any longer.

This does not serve the Kingdom of God, but works against it.

This does not attract those looking for purpose and meaning, but repels them.

It's time to repent - to change our minds, which in this case would be to recognize that our minds change. Otherwise the gap between an increasingly empathetic human race and an archaic, static religion will continue to grow. One wonders how much stretch there is left in that elastic.

Laments and Dust

la·ment [luh-ment]

verb (used with object)

1. to feel or express sorrow or regret for: to lament his absence. 
2. to mourn for or over. 

verb (used without object)

1. to feel, show, or express grief, sorrow, or regret. 
2. to mourn deeply. 

noun

1. an expression of grief or sorrow. 
2. a formal expression of sorrow or mourning, especially in verse or song; an elegy or dirge.

The lament is a lost art in Christianity. Perhaps lost is the wrong word; abandoned may be more accurate. To lament is to admit that it's not always sunny on the Jesus side of the street. To lament is to express frustration. To lament is to complain to and about God, and that is not cool, at least in the western Evangelical church of which I am most familiar. So lock your troubles in the car, put on your best parking-lot smile, and get to church, brother, because to lament is to demonstrate a lack of faith, and is a betrayal of the Gospel. 

Let me suggest something else. In fact, let me suggest exactly the opposite.

To lament is not a betrayal of the Gospel, but is actually the purest form of worship I can think of. 

To lament is to grieve with God the way things are. This is only possible because we have had a glimpse of the way things could be, the way things should be, the way things were meant to be, the way things will be. 

Just not today.

In the community I was once a part of we had a practice built around the lament which we called The Holy WTF. It was serious stuff, and it was always cathartic.

The lament is something we need to re-remember.

Now let me tell you what prompted these thoughts.

It started with Peter Banks and his review of the British band Hope & Social. Peter's review is thoughtful and intelligent, the kind you can only get from an insider. Interest sufficiently peaked, I started clicking links. After previewing a couple of different songs on their latest disk All Our Dancing Days I ran headlong, at full speed, into the song Dust.

The raw emotion in this song is electrifying. It's a lament in every sense of the word. It doesn't take us on a journey and then leave us on a happy note. It's raw, grieving, frustrated emotion, put to poetry and accompanied by a haunting melody.

Hopeless? No. When we point to what is wrong, we are always referring back to what is right. Darkness is an absence of light, but it's about the light. Goodness is the white space in the image.

Dust (Hope & Social)

There's dust in every shop in every town in every county we've counted
There's space in every bar in every pub in every place that we've been
And I see some notice that business is closing on Kirkstall Road
The country's complexion is shifting and changing, how no-one knows

There's mould in every house in every home that we've been to
There's rust on every slide in every park in every place that we've seen
And I see some girl with her mind unfurled out on Water Lane
While I'm reading the plans of a public-school man who says we're to blame
What a shame

There's truth in every lie in every line in every speech that is written
Maybe there is good in all the bile and the blood that they're spitting
But we cannot give time to fight cancer or crime when there's bills to pay
It's simple arithmetic, the ins and the outs of it will not change
They're shifting account now the money's run out, it's such a shame
What a shame

All creation is groaning, particularly loudly these days, and it's OK for us to join in when we feel the need. 

Ten Years On: Our God Isn't An Awesome god

Here's another one from the archives. Admittedly, having been originally posted on June 14, 2010, it's not that old, but it's a good preface for some more thinking and writing on this subject I want to do.

Creation of the Sun and Moon (face detail), Michelangelo Buonarroti

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Our God Isn't An Awesome god
In fact, I don’t think our God is a god at all

Well, you’re still reading, which is a good sign… although it might just be me and you and my mother at this point (and even she’s a little nervous with where I might be going with this). But, either way, thanks for giving me the chance to explain myself.

We are a people who generally love boxes. Want to know my politics? Here’s the box. My faith? I’ve got a box for that too. And I’ve got you placed firmly in a box too, thank you very much. There are several problems with life in a box though. Boxes don’t allow much room for flexibility, for individuality. Often what’s not in the box becomes more important than what is. In other words, the box itself, as a border, as a barrier, as a divider between what I like and don’t like, who I am and who I am not, becomes more important than the contents of the box. Ever witness one of those YouTube moments where the kid on Christmas morning falls in love with the box and ignores the gift that came in it? We’re a lot like that I think.

OK, I know what you’re asking. “What does any of this have to do with the potentially heretical (but not blasphemous, in my opinion) statement above?”

I’ve been very slowly reading and rereading my way through our friend Brian McLaren’s latest A New Kind of Christianity. On p. 104 he asked a question that jarred me, as it resonated with something I’ve been thinking about for a while now.

“What if people who live in the second-grade world of polytheism [The Old Testament world where everyone had a god] need to learn about one God as superior to others before they can handle the idea of God as uniquely real?”

Let me unpack that thought a little and show you where it takes me.

It seems to me that by labeling God as, well… God, we’ve placed him (this God is almost always male) in a box of our own creation. Not that I don’t appreciate how it all started. Brian hints at it above. God chose to reveal Godself in a world overpopulated with gods. It made sense at the time. People understood the concept of gods, they just didn’t know the one true God. But I wonder if we’ve locked God into that mold—picture the old man with the long flowing beard; I’m thinking of Flannel Graph God, or God on The Simpsons —and have been incapable of truly letting God be more of who God is.

As we’ve said though, it made sense at the time. Check out this famous “name” passage from scripture:

Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?"
God said to Moses, "I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.'"
God also said to Moses, "Say to the Israelites, 'The LORD, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.' This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation. (Exodus 3:13-15)

“I am who I am.”

I love that response. I’m tempted to translate it like this: “Moses, you wouldn’t understand it if I told you, so lets not go there.” Yes, the label “the God of your fathers” was used, but I see that as more of a continuity thing, tying in to the already established Jewish story that Moses would have been intimately familiar with.

In a polytheistic world the shelf space for deities was crowded, and gods needed names to distinguish themselves from the competition, so our god, the one true God, became the LORD, or Yahweh, so the people could be clear about who the object of their worship was. Made sense.

Still, it’s a box.

Our friend Tim King likes to use the term the Unnameable, among others, and that works well for what I’m trying to say here.

When we place the Unnameable in the god-box, we’ve signed him up (remember the box comes with a gender preference) for a theistic cage match.

“My God is better than your god.”

“Your god is false, but my God is real.” Which leads us right to, “Your religion is false, but my religion is real.”

It becomes a beauty contest. We lower the Unnameable to the level of all the other gods, and then we are left to argue that our God is the only real god.

But what if, instead, the Unnameable is wholly other (or even Holy Other)? Not the One True God on a crowded playing field of false gods, but the creator of everything, who is above everything, who cannot be explained, or grasped, not by the title “God”, or even “The Very Best God”.

If the Unnameable is not a god, not even a God, and if aligning your life with the mission of the Unameable is not a religion but is instead the purpose of all life, well, that can cause problems too. This kind of thinking will not be popular with those who are in the God and religion business.

I’ve made no secret of the influence our friend Bruxy Cavey has had on my thinking in this regard. I’m in agreement with Bruxy when he says that Jesus came to teach us how to live and to shut down religion. (Of course I’m using the word religion in the negative sense, defining it, as Bruxy does, as any system of rules, rituals or regulations that we use to try and “get right” with God.) To me a natural consequence of discarding the religion box is the notion that the god box cannot be far behind. A deity requires a context within which the deity is situated, understood, and worshipped. In other words, a deity requires a religion. Get rid of the notion of religion, and our understanding of God must change. Perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that without the restrictions of religion our understanding of God is free to change, to evolve. I’m not sure Bruxy would go this far, but hey… he’s the one who got me started on this path! Is this heresy? Most definitely. Blasphemy? I don’t believe so.

As humanity continues to evolve, our understanding of the Unnameable must evolve to.

In her book The Great Emergence, Phyllis Tickle talks about the church having a rummage sale every 500 years or so, and I agree completely. The thing is, I think it’s our view of the Unnameable, and not just our idea of church, that is changing at these points of inflection, and causing such turmoil.

When you start to think this way, examples appear all over, including in scripture.

Jonah is one of my favorite biblical prophets. We could spend a lot of time looking at his story—I happen to think he was a wonderfully flawed, bigoted son of a gun—but I want to make another point here. What if the Jonah story was meant, among many other things, to mark that God could no longer be contained in the box that said God only cared about the Jews?

Fast forward to Jesus. What if Jesus was God busting out of the box that said to follow God was to keep the Law? “You have heard it said… But I say…” Sounds like a major point of change to me.

Reality Check Time: As much as I’d like to think that we have broken the Unnameable out of the box, I can’t. As I said earlier, our understanding of God is undergoing evolution, which is an ongoing process. At best what we are doing is moving the Unnameable from one box into another. But if the new box is bigger than the old, we are moving in the right direction, and our understanding of God can continue to expand.

In a polytheistic world the Unnameable had to present as a god—yes, the One True God—but a god nonetheless. I wonder if we are still stuck in that place.

I also wonder how the Unnameable would choose to unveil in an atheistic world.

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Also from the Archives:

Ten Years On: You Have No Fear Anymore (orig. August 10, 2006)