For the most part, the wheel of history grinds on as it always has.  Empires rise and fall and power balances shift, but always there are the wealthy and privileged few living off of the broken bodies of the poor and hungry multitudes.  Always there is apathy and injustice and everywhere we look we encounter the triumph of death.  It surrounds us and fills the air we breath like a plague we have lived with for so long that we have forgotten what we are losing and what we have lost.  So we live our lives — we work, we eat, we drink, we fuck — vaguely sensing that something is missing, longing for we don’t know what, and making the best of the only option we feel that we have.
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But perhaps there is another option.  Although we will never stop the wheel of history from grinding on, perhaps we can change its course.  In the end, it comes down to the question of what price we are willing to pay in our pursuit of a history marked not by apathy and injustice, but by love and justice; permeated not by death, but by life.  This, I believe is what Albert Schweitzer saw in Jesus:

[Jesus] lays hold of the wheel of the world to set it moving on that last revolution which is to bring all ordinary history to a close.  It refuses to turn, and he throws himself upon it.  Then it does turn; and crushes him… The wheel rolls onward and the mangled body of [Jesus] is hanging upon it still.  That is his victory.

Perhaps this is what is required of those who claim to follow this person.  Perhaps this is the pearl of great price (cf. Mt 13.45f).

In the same way that religion may be considered the opiate of the masses, the Arts should be considered the opiate of the middle-classes.

Culture is what we do when politics ceases to be an option.

In the penultimate verse of ‘Georgia Lee‘, Tom Waits channels the voice of Georgia and sings the following:

Close your eyes and count to ten
I will go and hide but then
Be sure to find me, I want you to find me
And we’ll play all over
We will play all over again

To me this is the most devastating verse in the song.  To me it speaks of the betrayal of innocence and of godforsakenness.  Why is this?  Because Tom Waits is singing of a little girl who becomes lost and then dies.
But this isn’t just some sort of tragic accident, or some sort of misfortune caused by blind fate.  No, Waits directs his charge to God and the refrain of the song is this:

Why wasn’t God watching?  Why wasn’t God listening?  Why wasn’t God there for Georgia Lee?

This is why, when we come to the penultimate verse, one does not simply think that Georgia is speaking to her parents or her playmates.  Rather, one imagines a small child trusting in God, in the goodness of the world, wanting to run and play, hide and be found.  But God is not trustworthy, the world is not safe, and the child is found much too late.  Here, innocence is not simply lost — it is killed.
I have been thinking a lot about this song over the last few weeks.  Playing with my infant son, I have been reminded of when I used to be innocent — when I used to believe in the fundamental goodness and beauty of the world, when I used to believe that God would come and save us all, and when I used to believe that love conquered all.  Hell, I was even eager to seek out the darkest places I could find because I was so convinced of the truth and efficacy of these things.
Now I don’t know if I believe any of them anymore.  Now, while I am still often overwhelmed by the beauty and goodness of our world, I am also, or perhaps even more often, overwhelmed by the brokenness of our world.  Now, while I am still waiting for God to come and save us, I have grown accustomed to the experience that, for many (perhaps even most of us), God never shows up.  Now, I have seen things that are stronger than love — so while love can conquer all, it only rarely actually does so.  More often, death prevails.
Mostly, then, I think we awaken to the brokenness in our world and in ourselves and discover that we are alone.  We awaken to a world without God or, even if we continue to believe in God (as I do), we awaken to the realization that, when it comes to God, we have all been betrayed; we have all been abandoned.  We are, all of us, Georgia Lee lost and dying in a lonely place, waiting for the God who never comes.  Or who comes too late.
So one can believe in God or not.  In the end, it doesn’t seem to make any meaningful difference.

[NB: this post, more than many I write, is an exercise in thinking aloud.]
It is probable that most of us have been taught to assume that truth is something that is expressed in language or in sentence (I reckon a good many of us began identifying ‘true/false’ statements in quizzes at a fairly young age).  At worst, this assumption is incorrect.  At best, it is deceptive.  Such an assumption makes the fatal mistake of assigning truth to the disembodied realms of semiotics and linguistics, thereby creating a disconnect between truth and being or truth and doing.  It is this disconnect that we must overcome.
In order to do this, we must begin by realizing that language is nothing more than the manipulation of sounds (when it is verbalized) or signs (when it is written) within the framework of previously established rules and limits.  That is to say, any truth value found within language is one that we a priori and arbitrarily assign to it.  In and of itself, language has no meaning and expresses no truth.  Even if we find it convenient to pretend that it is meaningful or truthful, all language is actually tautological.
So, for example, let us imagine the following.  Let us create a language game wherein all objects possessing a certain characteristic (let’s call it ‘X’) also possess a certain other characteristic (let’s call it ‘Y’).  Let us now examine an object (let’s call it object ‘A’).  Let us assume that object A possesses characteristic X.  We can then conclude that object A also possesses characteristic Y.  Within this scenario, we might be tempted to say that our conclusion is ‘true’.  However, this type of truth is then something we have arbitrarily created — based upon the rules of our language game and our manipulation of signs — and this truth consequently has no connection to any reality external to our game.  Truth, in this case, is not stranger than fiction — it is fiction.
Or, to take another example, let us take the statement that ‘1 + 1 = 2’.  Once again, what we have are signs that we have arbitrarily manipulated and slotted into a particular language game (mathematics).  Within that language games those signs have a particular meaning, leading to a statement that produces a supposed truth — but, once again, that truth only has value within the boundaries of that language game and it tells us nothing (true or false) about the world outside of that game.  This truth is also fiction.
Now, I take the time to dwell on these (somewhat dull) examples because we need to understand that a great deal of what goes on in scholarship — in theology, philosophy, social theory, and our so-called quest for truth — is little more than this manipulation of signs and language games in order to create systems that are, perhaps, logically rigorous or aesthetically pleasing, but whose truth values have no relationship to any reality external to the games being played by the scholars.
This is why we must not judge scholars and their scholarly proposals on the logical force or aesthetical appeal of the arguments that they produce.  Instead, we must judge scholars on the basis of how they live their lives.  Therefore, I entirely disagree with Seth who commented on my last post and stated:

If the essay has truth in it but doesn’t necessarily translate to the truth in the author’s life I would not discount the truth of the essay.

The point is that no essay has truth in it.  All essayists are doing is manipulating signs.  Therefore, what matters is not the essay but what the essayist actually does with his or her life.  Unfortunately, Seth’s argument is used to justify the ongoing existence of academicswith high status and comfortable lifestyles who say a lot of things they don’t actually mean or understand (otherwise we would see that meaning genuinely reflected in their lives and actions).  Thus, contemporary structures of power and privilege are perpetuated, regardless of the ‘radicality’ of the argument constructed by these scholars.
Consequently, truth, if it is to be something concrete, or a-thing-that-is, must be sought in being and in doing.  It is the truth that is found in these things that possesses significance and meaning.  The truth that is found in language is ever only fictional — truth that is sought in being and doing is historical and material.

Given that we are so deeply immersed within structures of violence and exploitation and given that our society does not permit us to live non-violently, what are we to make of efforts to practice non-violent resistance?
It seems to me that such efforts end up collapsing in upon themselves — those who will not practice violence against the oppressors end up perpetuating, sustaining, and practicing violence against the oppressed.
What if the choice facing us is not between violence and non-violence, but between two different kinds of violence?  Is it better to ask God’s forgiveness for acting violently against those who crush the poor, or is it better to ask God’s forgiveness for acting violently against the poor?  Really, when we get down to it, is there any other option?

you know, a lot of people have told me that i look like brad pitt in legends of the fall. so this is a very accurate representation of what it looks like as i work on my thesis. in case any of you were wondering.
p.s. i would like to take the time to acknowledge that audrey molina is my intellectual superior. and that it would be wise not to leave myself signed in on my blog on her computer.
[NB: this post was not written by me, Dan, it was written by my friend Audrey, who has hacked into my blog.]

Well, congrats to Gideon who won the last draw.  This time around I’ll be giving away a set of books related to philosophy.  There are some pretty big shooters in this round so don’t miss out.  As usual, all you need to do is leave a comment expressing interest and I’ll randomly draw a winner.  Also as usual, you need to want all the books (and some or all of the books are used).  Here are the books:
1. A Kierkegaard Anthology edited by Robert Bretall;
2. Derrida and Religion: Other Testaments edited by Yvonne Sherwood & Kevin Hart;
3. Wittgenstein by G. H. von Wright;
4. Philosophical Writings of Peirce edited by Justus Buchler;
5. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn;
6. Science of Knowledge by J. G. Fichte.

[Well, what little time I get to write these days has been devoted to working on my thesis.  However, for those who might be interested, I thought I would provide a glimpse of what I’ve been working on.]

Paul and the Uprising of the Dead: Eschatology, Ethics, and Empires

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1. Introduction

Paul and the Anastasis of the Dead

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Of all the voices found within the Christian Scriptures, Paul’s is, perhaps, the most contested. Therefore, despite the observation that the presentation of Paul as a ‘Conservative’ and ‘Spiritual’ voice was dominant in much of Western scholarship for the latter two-thirds of the 20^th century, this understanding of Paul has always been challenged and is increasingly called into question today. Indeed, this recent emphasis upon Paul as ‘Conservative’ and ‘Spiritual’ was, in part, a reaction to Pauline scholarship in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, which presented influential Marxist readings of Paul (which, in turn, were reacting against the reading of Paul that became dominant in post-Reformation Protestantism and Roman Catholicism).¹ Thus, over the last one hundred years, the pendulum has swung from viewing Paul as a leader of the revolutionary proletariat, to viewing Paul as the Apostle of bourgeois morals and respectability. Today, however, the pendulum is swinging back from a ‘Conservative’ extreme, and a presentation of Paul as an Apostle who embodied the proclamation of a counter-imperial and subversive way of structuring life together (under the ever watchful eye of the Empire) is gaining increasing prominence.

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Interestingly, and perhaps not coincidentally, the ‘Conservative’ understanding of Paul was dominant while Christianity itself was a dominant (and Conservative – despite a brief popular flirtation with Marxism) political force in the West. However, now that the sociopolitical influence of Christianity has waned (as in most of Western Europe) or is rapidly waning (as in North America) it is interesting to note that Paul is being reread in more ‘counter-cultural’ ways. The question then is this: are we continually allowing our understanding of Paul to be shaped by our own sociopolitical contexts, or are we just now becoming resensitized to elements of Paul’s writings that we have previously overlooked, due to our rootedness within places of power and dominance? The answer, I suspect, contains at least a bit of both, although the emphasis of what follows will fall on the latter.

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In this work, I will explore some of the diverse and contradictory ways in which Paul’s theopolitical actions and writings have been understood, and I will assert that Paul presents us with a particularly creative and subversive combination of eschatology and political ethics — one that explodes the eschatology and political ethics favoured by empires, both then and now. I believe that it is crucial to engage in a detailed exploration of Paul in this way, both because Paul is a valuable resource for countering the oppressive imperial ideologies of our day, and because Paul himself has so often been co-opted by these imperial ideologies. Too often Paul has been appropriated by oppressive Powers who have placed him, and his message, in the service of Death.² Therefore, I am hoping to contribute to the recovery of the Paul who anticipated the resurrection (Gk: anastasis) of the dead, and did so by leading an uprising (Gk: anastasis) amongst those who were left for dead within the society of his day.³ Paul is the Apostle of Jesus – the crucified Lord who has triumphed over Death – and Paul spreads the good news of Jesus by developing communities of new life, whose corporate existence reveals that Death in all of its socioeconomic, political, and imperial manifestations, no longer holds sway. Behold, the dead are rising, Death is being swallowed up in victory, and the new creation of all things has begun – even here, even now!

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