The problem with trying to be honest with others is that I first need to learn to be honest with myself. And that… well, that usually takes a lot of time.
But I think I'm finally there. I'm finally ready to speak honestly with others because I have finally spoken honestly with myself.

In his monolithic work, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy, Walter Brueggemann continually argues that the Old Testament resembles a law court. Within the metaphor of a trial Brueggemann picks up on the role of a witness and says this:
The witness allegedly had access to [the] actual event, was there, saw it and experienced it, and so is qualified to give testimony.
Now if Christians seek to be witnesses [Gk: martyrion] to Jesus Christ they should have access to Jesus, they should have experience of (and with) Jesus. It is intimacy that qualifies Christians to give testimony about Jesus.
The contemporary lack of witnesses (exhibited especially in the lack of martyrs — martyrs understood in the more radical sense) suggests that there are relatively few who have actually encountered Jesus. The testimony of Christians today garners little credibility because it is generally a false testimony — it is people speaking of something they have not experienced and, therefore, something they know nothing about (for knowing God as a mental construct is quite different than knowing God as a person). Perhaps the largest way that this is exhibited is the fact that, as Brueggemann points out elsewhere in Theology of the Old Testament, the God in the Old Testament is primarily known for acting with transformative power in the midst of history. This God was known for his mighty deeds (cf. Gerhard von Rad). Yet most contemporary Western Christians live with little reliance upon God breaking into history. We have become much too engrossed in God's Being as opposed to God's doing. Which is why I am increasingly echoing the words that Karl Rahner used to say to his theology students: I do not know the God that you are speaking of.
All this brings me back, once again, to another Rahner quote: future Christians will either be mystics or they will cease to exist as Christians. By this he meant that Christians will have a genuine experience of (and with) God or they will (post-Christendom) have no reason to be Christians.
And, of course, the first step to knowing God is admitting how little we know God.

“We have gotten used to regarding as valor only valor in war (or the kind that's needed for flying in outer space), the kind which jingle-jangles with medals. We have forgotten another concept of valor — civil valor. And that's all our society needs, just that, just that, just that! That's all we need and that's exactly what we haven't got.”
“When, in 1960, Gennady Smelov, a nonpolitical offender, declared a lengthy hunger strike in the Leningrad prison, the prosecutor went to his cell for some reason (perhaps he was making his regular rounds) and asked him: 'Why are you torturing yourself?'
And Smelov replied: 'Justice is more precious to me than life.'
This phrase so astonished the prosecutor with its irrelevance that the very next day Smelov was taken to the Leningrad Special Hospital (i.e. the insane asylum) for prisoners. And the doctor there told him:
'We suspect you may be a schizophrenic.'”
~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Although Solzhenitsyn does not explicitly link these two passages (they are ten pages apart) it is necessary to note that civil valor will be accompanied by a movement that others will perceive to be a movement into irrelevance. It is a desperate grasping for relevance that continually compromises the church [insert rant about Relevant Magazine here]. Such a movement is antithetical to following in the footsteps of Jesus. Looking at Paul's “master narrative” (Michael Gorman's term) in Philippians 2.6-11 this becomes clear. Because Jesus existed in the form of God he did not regard equality with God thing to be grasped, but emptied himself taking the form of a slave and becoming humble to the point of death on a cross. No, living Christianly means that the disciples of Jesus will be labeled irrelevant.
Paul has a few words for those who have pursued such relevance in Corinth. He says:
For, I think, God has exhibited us apostles last of all, as men condemned to death; because we have become a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are prudent in Christ; we are weak, but you are strong; your are distinguished, but we are without honor. To this present hour we are both hungry and thirsty, and are poorly clothed, and are roughly treated, and are homeless; and we toil, working with our own hands; when we are reviled, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure; when we are slandered, we try to conciliate; we have become as the scum of the world, as the dregs of all things, even until now.
Because we are hopeful we will be called utopian.
Because we affirm the new creation of all things we will be called idealists.
Because we believe in one God we will be called exclusive and sectarian.
Because we believe we are the image of that one God we will be called arrogant.
Because we love with the oppressed we will be called romantics.
Because we rejoice in suffering we will be called masochists.
Because we embody forgiveness we will be called unjust.
Because we are committed to peace we will be called unloving and unrealistic.
Because we eagerly anticipate the return of our Lord we will be called fools.

It's a wonderful life.
If you can find it.
If you can find it.
If you can find it.
~ Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Pink walls and children laughing in the backyard. Leaning on my desk not thinking anything. Looking at the phone in my hand…
Well, never mind.
Too sad to shift the responsibility off of my shoulders.
Too scared to be angry.
Fighting to stay honest.
Never mind.

Cruelty is invariably accompanied by sentimentality. It is the law of complementaries [sic].
~ Arnold Susi (quoted by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
And this, my mother, is what I think of most of our acts of charity. Mere sentimentality that offsets (and masks) our inherent violence and cruelty.
The fact that we (as gentle, well-intentioned folk) engage in such acts only highlights our ignorance.
Certainly God is able to brings some good out of these acts but let us not forget that God brought good out of crucifixion. That does not mean we are to continue to crucify others. No, we are to “take the crucified people down from the cross” (as the Liberation Theologians suggest). Or, better yet, we are to join the crucified people on the cross. To allow ourselves to be crucified is the only road that will liberate us from our sentimentality — and from our cruelty.

Everybody knows you were trying to be discrete
There were just so many people you had to meet
Without your clothes
Everybody knows
~Leonard Cohen
If I had of known how much I was going to exactly replicate the lyrics of “Self-Esteem” (when I was in Bible college!) I wonder how much I would have liked the song when it first came out…
And maybe it’s the fact that I’ve been up all night and I’m a long way away from Toronto and those memories but I can’t help but smile now as I listen to it.
Damn, I am not the person I thought I would be. Hell, I’m hardly the person I think I am.
I shaved every place where you’ve been boy
I shaved every place where you’ve been
~ Tori Amos

Whether God exists or not, we still face the [problem] of idols. By “idols” we mean historical realities that do exist, and that promise salvation and demand worship and orthodoxy. Their existence, and the worship they demand, are decisively verified by the victims they inevitably produce. There must be many idols in our time, because their victims are millions of human beings.
~ Jon Sobrino
This is the essential difference between Christianity and idolatry. While idols will always produce victims, Christians will refuse to make victims of any other but will choose to become victims — in order to overcome cycles of victimisation.
While the idols' existence is manifest in the production of victims, the Christian God is revealed when Christians choose to take the victimisation onto themselves.
Jesus, the fullest revelation of the Christian God, makes this point painfully clear. Refusing to victimise any other person he goes the way of the cross. This is the character of God. God is not a sovereign Lord who victimises that which he creates. Rather, God is one who takes the pain, the sorrow, the wounds of victimisation upon himself, refusing to lash out lest he too ends up engaging in idol worship.
The fact that we see so many victims today suggests to me that we have all made gods of ourselves instead of following in the footsteps of Jesus who
because he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped but emptied himself taking the form of a slave, being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross.
~ Philippians 2.6-8

Only utopianism and hope will enable us to believe, and give us strength to try — together with all the world's poor and oppressed people — to reverse history, to subvert it, and to move it in a different direction.
~ Ignacio Ellacuria (from an address given ten days before he was assassinated).
One is either an idealist or one is hopeless. Those who possess hope will always be labeled idealistic, utopian, and unrealistic by those too wounded, too fearful, too comfortable, or too knowledgeable to hope for anything more than what they already have.
I suspect that R.R. Niebuhr and those who follow in the footsteps of “Christian realism” miss this point because they never really understood the nature of Christian hope. And I suspect that they neglected hope because they misunderstood the nature of suffering love. And, here I tread with some trepidation, I suspect that they misunderstood the nature of suffering love because they misunderstood Jesus. Without hope Christianity is neither “Christian” nor “realistic.”

In his address entitled “Learning in War Time” C.S. Lewis says this about WWII:
I believe our cause to be, as human causes go, very righteous, and I therefore believe it to be a duty to participate in this war. And every duty is a religious duty, and our obligation to perform every duty is therefore absolute.
Lewis then goes on to liken the duty to go to war to the duty to rescue drowning people if we live on a dangerous coast. In fact, in such a situation, it may even be our duty to lose our own lives in order to save another. Thus, such duties are duties that are worth dying for — but not worth living for. As Lewis says,
A man may have to die for our country but no man must, in the exclusive sense, live for his country. He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claim of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself.
While I agree with many of Lewis' points about the role of learning in war time, and the things that war reveals to us about day to day life, I most emphatically disagree with Lewis' conclusion that participating in war (any war after Jesus) is a righteous activity.
Lewis' analogy about saving drowning men* is fundamentally flawed because Lewis does not consider seriously enough that war not only calls us to save lives but also calls us to take lives. The duty of a soldier is to kill. Yet such a duty moves from laying down one's life for another and instead lays down another's life for oneself (and one's loved ones). By choosing to kill others I have decided to live for my country instead of die for my country and this is exactly what Lewis speaks against. War is the choice to lay down the lives of other's instead of our own lives — and this is a choice that Christians can never make.
_________
* Yes, Lewis wrote before the application of gender neutral language. Indeed, Lewis was a vocal supporter of male dominance over women. However (to be fair), he did love and treat the women that he knew personally with the utmost dignity, humility, and respect.