[The following is a report that I prepared for a church in Sarnia, Ontario, that had been running a “Men’s Mission” — i.e. an overnight low barrier shelter program for men experiencing homelessness — out of their church building.  They had been doing this by receiving a temporary zoning in order to run what is officially designated as a “Men’s Mission” within the Bylaws of this city.  Due to a combination of factors — discriminatory attitudes and unfounded fears expressed by well-to-do neighbours — which were then treated as logical arguments! — not to mention public criticisms made by the Executive Director of the only other shelter in town — which is high barrier and had a vested financial interest in seeing the church-based program closed — the city refused to extend the zoning of the Men’s Mission and ordered the church to stop running the shelter program.  The church then appealed this directive to a higher level of authority — something known as the Ontario Municipal Board [OMB].  This is when I entered the picture and drafted the following document for the church.  As you can see the church has dropped their appeal and will continue to offer a place to stay for men who are experiencing homelessness as a part of their religious rights and freedoms.  Below is the document I prepared regarding all of this.  I am posting it here now that the church has gone public with its decision because it may be of use to any other religious group that goes through a comparable struggle.]

1. Statement of Appeal Withdrawal

The River City Vineyard (RCV) has made the decision to withdraw its pending appeal with the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) regarding the temporary zoning it had received in order to operate a space classified as a “Men’s Mission” within the church at 260 Mitton Street North.

 2. Reason for Withdrawing While Continuing to Offer Sanctuary and Shelter to Those Experiencing Homelessness

The RCV is withdrawing its appeal because it has determined that the building designation for the property at 260 Mitton Street North is all that is needed in order to continue to offer sanctuary and shelter to people who are experiencing homelessness. Therefore, the RCV will continue to offer these services to those who are in need of them, but will not be offering these services as a “Men’s Mission” (zoned UR1-27-T3) but will, instead, will be offering these services based upon its building being designated a “church (place of worship)” (zoned UR1-27).
Continue reading →

“Why do you call yourself ‘Beloved’?”
“In the dark my name is Beloved.”
~Toni Morrison, Beloved.

Having begun with the redundancy of the cross, we arrived at the redundancy of life — life as redundancy.  What are the implications of this?
Well, once we get over our dismay about not being a necessity for anyone or any thing, we can begin to understand that redundancy and superfluity point to excess.  Excess is over-abundance. Over-abundance, far from being worthless, is a gift.  Recognizing our lives as redundant does not lead us to conclude that they are meaningless.  Rather, this recognition enables us to understand that our lives are gifts — crazy, excessive, unnecessary gifts — given to ourselves and to each other.
Living as gifts, and life as a gift, means that who we strive to be and what we strive to do may be entirely removed from the domain of duty — if we are not needed then we are not bound by duty.  Instead, we are free.  Free to be and do what we desire (and not what we “need”) to be and do.  I am free to love my children not because I must (in which case I am not free to love them at all), but because I want to.  I am free to be a gift to others and free to understand that every living redundant moment and deed is a beautiful gift to me as well.
This is the domain of grace.  Dying to ourselves-as-necessities is a dying to any and every rule of law and a resurrection unto the anarchy of grace.  The Law wants us to think of ourselves as necessities — we must be and do this or that, and if we do not be or do this or that, then it is appropriate for us to be disciplined and punished.  As necessities we are enslaved.  Furthermore, the logic maintained by this rule of law then meshes seamlessly with the logic of contemporary capitalism — as workers, we need to earn money in order to consume superfluous items that are sold to us as though they were necessities (You need this credit card to be free, you need this car to have a healthy family, you need this scent to be desired by the other sex, etc.).  This is the central lie in all of it.  We can see through part of it — at the end of the day, we know that we don’t really need a lot of these things — but few of us can see through the whole of it — that we, ourselves, are not needed.
However, when we embrace ourselves as redundant, we are liberated from the law and from wage-slavery (working-to-consume), or from any other imperative.  Instead of obeying, working, and consuming, we are free to love and to be loved.  We are free to be joyful.  We are free to be gifts to one another and to our own selves.  Everything becomes grace.  All the way down.
This is the message of Easter.  As I stated at the end of my Good Friday meditation:

God dies every day for (i.e. because of) the sins of the world.  That is God’s way of being with us.  The crazy message of Easter is that this dying is not futile.  And if the dying of God is meaningful then perhaps our living-unto-death is also meaningful.  Perhaps death is not the last word for us.  Perhaps, like the cross of Christ, we are redundant but not without meaning.

Our living-unto-death is not without significance.  We are redundant but not without meaning.
Hence, the resurrection of Jesus throws open the tomb of the living (which I mentioned at the end of my Holy Saturday post).  The stone is now rolled away and all of us are free.  Free to love.  Free to be loved.  Free to play.  Free to rejoice.  The grave has been thrown open.  It is up to us to choose if we want to follow Jesus out of it.

What, precisely, does it mean to say that our sense of morality and justice is reduced to the language of a business deal?  What does it mean when we reduce moral obligations to debts? … A debt is the obligation to pay a certain sum of money… This allows debts to become simple, cold, and impersonal–which, in turn, allows them to be transferable…
…a topic that will  be explored at length in these pages, is money’s capacity to turn morality into a matter of impersonal arithmetic–and by doing so, to justify things that would otherwise seem outrageous or obscene…
However, when one looks a little closer, one discovers that these two elements–the violence and the quantification–are intimately linked.  In fact it’s almost impossible to find one without the other.
~David Graeber, Debt: The First 500 Years, 13-14.

A particularly fine example of those outrageous or obscene outcomes, intertwining violence and quantification, are substitutionary atonement theories proposed by Christian theologians regarding the crucifixion of Jesus.  From such a perspective, humanity is in infinite debt to God but is incapable of paying that debt.  Therefore, God chooses to pay the debt himself (yes, the male pronoun is appropriate for God in this theory) by sacrificing his son or, from a different angle, by laying down his own life, and his death then abolishes or pays or satisfies  or nullifies this debt and makes possible the forgiveness of sins, reconciliation with God, and so on.  Variations of this go back to the very origins of Christianity — references to Jesus as a sacrificial Passover lamb can be found in the some of the earliest Christian texts found in the New Testament, “substitution” and “satisfaction” atonement theories are heavily favoured by the streams of Christianity that like to refer to themselves as “orthodox” (even if the various “orthodox” parties also have a history of condemning one another as “heretics”).
Sin as debt… owing God… perhaps with the devil acting as the repo man… quantification and violence… justifying obscene actions (like killing one’s own son, like suggesting killing an innocent atones for the sins of many, like suggesting that this is the only way things could play out)… all these things are woven together in such atonement theories.
I can’t say that it makes much or any sense to me.  Does God really have to sacrifice his own son, does Jesus really have to die, in order to restore right relationships with us?  How does that work exactly?  What kind of God would do this?  Who chooses to organize things in this way?  Or did God make some sort of gentleman’s agreement with the devil and this was his (yes, his) only out?  Despite all the suffering and harm that would happen to the world, God kept his end of the deal, but then forced the devil to overplay his hand (causing him to lose his “right” to humanity)?  Really?  Again, what would this say about God?  What kind of God would this be?  Why would the devil by given any “right” to humanity?
For a long time, I tended not to worry about such things because I favoured the Christus Victor atonement theory (which harkens back to the earlier ransom theory of Origen).  From this perspective, the cross of Christ wasn’t so much about satisfying God’s wrath, or abolishing a debt, but was, instead, the moment when God triumphed over all the coordinated powers of Sin and Death (and the devil, too, but I focused mostly on the former two — with Sin being nothing more than the physical and material outworkings of Death in the world).  I was content to leave things at that for several years and not worry too much about it (because, after all, this theory has problems, too: for example, what kind of God would choose to go about winning a victory in this way?  Why wait til then?  Wouldn’t this mean that God had been defeated up until this point?  Why would God permit that?).  To be honest, atonement theories related to Jesus (much like justification theories related to Paul) haven’t captured my interest all that much.  How God saves us hasn’t been an intense area of interest for me, that God saves us — and may save us in the here and now — has captured my attention to a far greater degree.
However, a few things got me rethinking this subject — not least, Graeber’s book, which made me ask: what if I think about this outside of the monetary language of business and commerce? — and asking myself what I actually do believe about all of this.
The truth is that I don’t actually accept any of the standard atonement theories.  They don’t make sense to me (including the moral influence theory which, although it has more going for it than substitutionary theories, still has its problems).  Here’s the catch: I can’t imagine that anything changed — at least as far as God was concerned — on the cross or after the cross.  Instead, what we see in the stories of the cross and resurrection is the way in which God chooses to be when in the company of a world that is broken and marked by Sin and Death.  What we see, if we believe the stories, is the way God has always been from the beginning of creation.  And what is this way?  The way of self-giving love, of solidarity, of kenosis, and the pursuit of the beloved.  What we see is that God is with us and there is no place so low, so terrible, or so godforsaken, that God is not also with us there.  Not only that, but God is with us in order to love us, to make us new, and give us life.  All that the cross of Jesus “does” is provide us with a particularly stark example of this.  Hence, the cross is redundant to the extent that it does not inaugurate this way of God being with us — it just helps some of us to (finally) get the point that this is how God always has been and always will be.  It is an apocalypse, a revelation of that which is, not an event that changes everything that was or will be.
Therefore, from this perspective, Jesus dies for the sins of the world — not because sin used to prevent God from saving us and now longer does so — but because that is what God chooses to do when in relationship with a world defined by Sin and, most especially, Death.  God dies everyday for (i.e. because of) the sins of the world.  That is God’s way of being with us.  The crazy message of Easter is that this dying is not futile.  And if the dying of God is meaningful then perhaps our living-unto-death is also meaningful.  Perhaps death is not the last word for us.  Perhaps, like the cross of Christ, we are redundant but not without meaning.

[I was thinking I could do a monthly feature on my blog: “Ten Questions with Daniel Imburgia” (which would be my way of both exploiting Daniel for my own entertainment and edification and exposing more people to his brilliance) but, well, after sending him the first ten questions it took him a few months to respond.  Then, when he did respond, he seemed to have the impression that I was asking a number of different people these questions… so much for what I had planned — “Ever tried.  Ever failed…”  My thanks to Daniel for sharing these words.]

Dear DanO, well here are my thoughts on the questions you asked. First off I reckon we aught to review your original questions though:

(1) What is meaning?

(2) What is the significance of meaning?

(3) What is the relationship of meaning to ethics?

(4) What is the relationship of meaning to events?

(5) What is the relationship of meaning to actions?

(6) What is the relationship of meaning to desire?

(7) What is the relationship of meaning to language?

(8) What is the relationship of meaning to being?

(9) What is the relationship of one person’s sense of meaning to other senses of meaning?

 (10) What is the relationship of meaning to meaninglessness?

Continue reading →

I made this for my son since his new favourite game at the park is to use his head to plow furrows in the sand.  Yep, a regular chip of the ol’ block that one.

In many areas of education, the instructor needs to be able to demonstrate a certain degree of proficiency in practicing what is being taught.  Dentists teach at dental schools.  A person who practices First Aid, teaches First Aid to others.  A ticketed plumber teaches others how to be plumbers.  A painter teaches others to paint by (amongst other things) demonstrating certain techniques.
However, when one moves to some of the more theory-oriented areas of education, this same point does not always hold true.  Rather, one demonstrates one’s proficiency not in any point of action but by manipulating signs within some sort of game that does not seem to connect directly to one’s life and actions.  Pure mathematics or some realms of physics are probably some of the most obvious examples of this.
The catch here is that some theories are praxis-oriented or praxis-dependent.  That is to say, if one accepts a theory that is like this as “authoritative” or “right” or “true” in some sense, one is also required to act in a certain manner.  This is how one demonstrates both an acceptance and understanding of the theory.  The alternative is that either one rejects this kind of theory (as “non-authoritative” or “wrong” or “untrue”) or simply does not understand the theory (i.e. by claiming to accept it while failing to live into it).
One example of this would be New Testament studies, as performed by those who claim that the New Testament is an authority in their own lives.  It is hard to engage in any sort of sustained study of the New Testament without realizing that the life, actions, and commitments of Jesus — as exemplified particularly well in Phil 2.5-11 — are also to be the model for the life, actions, and commitments of any who wish to follow Jesus or who consider the New Testament to be a sacred text of some sort.  If one teaches Phil 2, or New Testament studies, but does not live into a trajectory of creative solidarity and resistance alongside of those who are being marginalized, oppressed, and deprived of life by the death-dealing Powers of our day, one demonstrates that one has not actually understood or accepted the teachings of the New Testament.  Therefore, to try and teach such material while pursuing tenure in an academic institution (which are clusters of wealth, status and power), or holding some prestigious posting within the institutional church (say, for example, writing a book like Jesus and the Victory of God, while living in the luxury afforded the Bishop of Durham). Is an exercise in missing the point (which also explains why N. T. Wright’s pastoral writings are constantly disappointing, and why he fails to follow through on the implications of his more scholarly works).  It would be like having a non-dentist teach dentistry — sure, they can probably tell you everything, memorize all the approaches and names, problems and solutions, but when it comes down to them showing you how to do a root canal on a patient sitting in a chair, they are going to fuck it up royally.  Which, of course, is part of the reason why we have so many Christian scholars or pastors who can say a lot of nice things about Christianity but don’t have the first clue about what it means to actually live as Christians — those who taught them never showed them.
The same, I think, can be said of those who teach and advocate on behalf of Marxist theory in the academy.  I got thinking about this again because of a recent post by Adam Kotsko at AUFS, and the ensuing comments (see here).  Adam concludes his brief post by asking: “Is the self-proclaimed Marxist with no relationship to the worker’s movement any different from someone who claims to have a Buddhist or Kabbalistic outlook on life without practicing Buddhism or Judaism in any serious way?”
I think this is an excellent question and one that academics don’t seem to like to ask themselves all that much (and they often like it even less when others ask them this question)… although they certainly do a pretty fine job of being appropriately critical about other contexts.  Personally, I do not feel that there is any significant difference between the (majority) of self-proclaimed Marxist academics and the so-called Western Buddhist (whom Zizek has often criticized).  Espousing Marxism is supporting a form of theory that has direct implications regarding a person’s lifestyle, trajectory, and the relationships that person chooses to enter into (or not).  I think Marxist anarchists have always understood this much better than Marxists in the academy (where the anarchists are notably absent… for good reason).  Essentially the Marxist professor who chooses to situate him- or herself within a context of privilege, status, and wealth,  wining and dining at conferences in St. Andrew’s, scouting a position at an Ivy League school, and trying to attain tenure is doing nothing different than the New Testament scholar who plays the same game — i.e. betraying the very position he or she claims to espouse.
That those rooted in the Academy tend to avoid any analysis of this is well reflected in the comments of Adam’s post.  Adam suggests that maybe this means the so-called Western Buddhist isn’t all that bad, another person suggests that the Marxist is better simply by being a Marxist (here the claim to be a Marxist is taken at face value), and another person essentially deploys the “stop splitting the Left” argument because, really, we’re all already oppressed enough by capitalism.
However, as always occurs in this kind of conversation, the argument was made by an additional person that detached Marxist professors are worthwhile in that they create a space where some students can be exposed to some important information, and then those students may go on to be “future activists” who go out and “tear things out.”  This is the classic “do as I say, not as I do” line, and I see professors deploy it all the time.  Of course, the proper response to this is to point out that any students who do go out and do engage in solidarity with the workers, or some marginalized population, or whomever else, do so despite the example set by the professor.
The professor is actually one of the largest barriers to the students going out to “tear things up” (just as children will almost always go on to do as their parents do, not as they say).  The professor is constantly showing the students that they can (supposedly) have their cake and eat it too — i.e. be considered “radicals” or even “Marxists” while continuing to deliberately pursue a life that perpetuates the status quo of capitalism and enjoying all the perks of those who embrace this lifestyle.  Further, lacking a decent practical model, the student who does go out and try to live out what he or she learns, may face serious difficulties (like a dental student who was only taught dental theory and never taught to develop the fine motor skills needed to drill teeth).  This often leads to rapid burn-out or disillusionment (“fuck this, I’m sticking to the books!”), not to mention the harm it can do to others.
Of course, this is not to say that “academia is just a black hole of total worthlessness” (as Adam thinks that some “activists” view the situation).  The knowledge gained in studying Marxism (and the various subjects engaged by Marxism) is very important, but it is important to point out that those who claim to be Marxists (or New Testament scholars), while remaining almost exclusively rooted within the Academy are betraying and working against the very thing for which they claim to act as advocates.  So, really, we need to rework Zizek’s well-known statement that “Christians and Marxists should be on the same side of the barricades.”  The truth is that, all to often, they already are on the same side of the barricades — the side of those who choose to barricade themselves from the poor and the oppressed.

My favourite blog commenter, Daniel Imburgia, and I have begun to exchange a series of questions that we will be posting on our blogs.  Daniel has submitted the first post, wherein he asks me about my experience and understanding of the Jewish concept of Tzim Tzum, over at his blog.  Here’s the link, for any who are interested.  I’ll be posting Daniel’s answers to my questions here in the near future (I mean, really, how long does it take to answer ten basic questions?).