April & May Books

Well, overdue as usual, but better late than never. Pardon the typos; I’ll edit later.
1. Paul, Poverty and Survival by Justin J. Meggitt.
Over the last one hundred years, the study of the socioeconomic status of Paul and his churches (including the members therein) have moved from an ‘old consensus’ to a ‘new consensus’. The ‘old consensus’ is represented by the likes of Karl Kautsky and Adolf Deissmann who proposed that Paul and his churches were representatives of a revolutionary community arising from the proletariat — the poor and oppressed masses of the Roman empire. For awhile, this argument gained a great deal of credibility amongst scholars — hence, the language of ‘consensus’.
However, this consensus was challenged more and more as time went on, until scholars like Abraham Malherbe, and (most especially) Gerd Theissen began to gain a wide reading and convinced many that Paul was actually a person with relatively high status and wealth (given his Roman citizenship, his ability to travel, his mention of wealthy supporting patrons or patronesses, and the way in which he is said to have rubbed shoulders with some influential people) and so Paul’s churches were now understood to contain a mix of people — some poor, some rich, some influential, some not. Indeed, even within this mix, it was proposed that the rich and influential few were actually likely the ones responsible for leading and sustaining Paul and his churches. This, then, became a new consensus — one that continues to operate today.
It is this consensus that Meggitt challenges and, in my opinion , actually refutes (scholars like Robert Jewett, Peter Oakes and Neil Elliott have been convinced by Meggitt’s thesis, so I’m in good company here!).
Meggitt convincingly shows the way in which current proponents of the ‘new consensus’ tend to rely upon out-dated arguments that do not factor into consideration our increasing knowledge of the Roman empire, and the socioeconomic milieu of Paul and his churches. Instead seeing Paul as a person with relatively high status and wealth and instead of seeing Paul’s churches as relying upon a wealthy and influential component, Meggitt argues that Paul and his churches were poor — living mostly at or just above or below the subsistence level (i.e. damn poor!) — and devoid of influential members. Consequently, Paul and his churches are able to survive because of their reliance upon a radical and concrete network of economic ‘mutualism’ (most powerfully demonstrated by Paul’s focus upon the Collection).
Of course, all of this has significant implications, not only for how we understand Paul, but for how we might go about following in Paul’s footsteps today. I suspect that these implications are a large part of the reason why Meggitt’s book has been ignored in certain scholarly circles. Just as with other ‘political’ or ‘counter-imperial’ readings of Paul (although all readings of Paul are political!) those who hold power and influence find it easier to ignore Meggitt than to recognize his work and engage him.
2. Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know About Them) by Bart D. Ehrman. New York: HarperOne, 2009.
Many thanks to Mike from The Ooze Viral Bloggers for this review copy!
This is my first time reading a book by Ehrman (although I did reflect upon his debate with N. T. Wright on the theme of suffering [see here]). He is quite articulate and, despite what his (largely Evangelical) critics have to say, he comes across as a gracious dialogue partner.
This book is largely dedicated to explaining (at a popular level) the ways in which an historical-critical reading of the Bible problematizes a good many (popular level ) assumptions about the Bible as a sacred text. Thus, Ehrman highlights matters related (a) historical and theological contradictions between various books in the New Testament; (b) the authorship of the various NT documents; (c) an alternative understanding of the ‘historical Jesus’ (over against C. S. Lewis’ understanding of Jesus as a ‘liar, lunatic, or lord’, Ehrman presents Jesus as an apocalyptic Jewish prophet, who never made any claims to be divine — and whose earliest followers also never understood him as divine); (d) matters related to the formation of the canon; and (e) the influence of latter voices — especially the ‘proto-Orthodox’ church — upon the formation of Christianity and the ways in which the Bible is mis/read.
In all of this, Ehrman isn’t doing anything particularly new — nor does he claim to be doing anything new. Rather, Ehrman is simply following in the footsteps of the Jesus Seminar, and continuing to get that message out.
For the most part, I didn’t find Ehrman’s book to be too troubling (as ‘Conservatives’ might) or too exciting (as ‘Liberals’ might). I have already accepted a lot of what Ehrman is saying — there are contradictions in the Bible, the Christian tradition has always been marked by conflicts and competing views on pretty much everything, and so on and so forth — but, as Ehrman says many times, the acceptance of these things hasn’t really disturbed my faith. Certainly it has problematized my own relationship to my faith tradition(s) and my Scriptures, but my faith was never grounded in any of the things that Ehrman (mostly rightly) wants to deconstruct.
That said, there are some places where Ehrman’s argument is fairly weak. For example, Ehrman argues that contemporary readers should not try to coordinate the different accounts found in the four Gospels. To do so, Ehrman writes, is to create a fifth, completely fabricated, Gospel. Instead, we should simply read each Gospel on its own, and let is say to us, what it wishes to say. Now, I’m all for reading each Gospel on its own in that way, but to read the Gospels together — even to step towards a ‘fifth Gospel’ — isn’t such a bad thing. Indeed, Ehrman does precisely this himself! He, too, engages in some historical reconstruction and speculation, postulating a certain series of events around some of the Gospel stories (like Judas’ betrayal of Jesus). Thus, Ehrman creates his own (historical-critical) fifth Gospel and ends up doing precisely what he urges others not to do.
To pick a second example, we could look at the way in which Ehrman gets around commenting on the miracle stories in the Gospels. Historical criticism, he argues, cannot speak about the so-called miracles because miracles, by definition, fall outside of historical-critical discourse. Now, there is something a little humourous going on here. Ehrman is, in fact, playing a game with definitions. First, he defines historical criticism as the study of past events based upon ‘the relative probability that they occurred’ and then he defines miracles as events that are virtually (if not actually) impossible, and therefore almost never occur. So, if one’s study is based upon the relatively probable, one cannot comment upon the almost impossible. Now that’s a well and good… accept if we employ a different definition of a ‘miracle’! I see no reason why a miracle must be defined by the likelihood of it happening. If we do that, then we can’t so easily skip over the miracle stories.
To take a third example, Ehrman claims to be representing scholarly opinion on the matters under discussion, but he seems to be woefully unaware (or deliberately ignorant?) of the ways in which discussion of these matters has developed since, oh, the early nineties. In discussing the Christology of the early disciples, Ehrman seems to present a position that has been, if not refuted, then significantly challenged, by the likes of Larry Hurtado. The same goes for Ehrman’s discussion of the authorship of the Gospels — has he really not heard of Richard Bauckham’s recent book on this subject? Yet, Ehrman simply repeats old arguments without developing them to address new (and rather devastating) challenges. So, while Ehrman claims to be teaching members of the public ‘secrets’ that have been kept from them, it seems like he is keeping a few secrets of his own!
Anyway, all that to say that I enjoyed this book — it was a quick read and it let me see what is going on in other areas of discussion (while also reminding me of some debates that I have mostly avoided) — even if I didn’t always agree with it.
3. Evangelicals and Empire. Christian Alternatives to the Political Status Quo. Edited by Bruce Ellis Benson and Peter Goodwin Heltzel. Forward by Nicholas Wolterstorff. Afterword by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2008.
Many thanks to Robert at Baker Academic for this review copy — I usually stay away from books that are compilations of essays, but I was very keen to read this one!
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s collaborative works on the current empire of global capitalism and the multitude that is (and can) rise up to confront it, are two of the most interesting books I have read over the last few years. Consequently, I was quite excited to discover this collection of essays written in response to Hardt and Negri.
However, as with any collection of essays, the material is rather hit and miss. I was a bit disappointed by the degree to which some authors engaged Hardt and Negril. Jim Wallis, for example, doesn’t engage Hardt and Negri at all, nor does he say anything that differs much from what he has said a thousand times before (was he just included in the collection because he is a big name right now [I noticed that Wallis’ essay is a reprint of a piece first published in 2003]?). I was also a bit disappointed with, um, how dull some of the essays were (notably Corey D. B. Walker’s piece). To write dull responses to Hardt and Negri is surely a betrayal of their project, which is anything but dull! Worst of all, however, was the elitist and dictatorial bullshit penned by John Milbank. His essay is only useful in that it provides us with an illustration of everything that Hardt and Negri stand against (as they should).
There were also some essays that would have excited me quite a bit in the past, but which now seem to be of questionable value. In this regard, the essay by James K. A. Smith stands out the most. What Smith does is argue that Hardt and Negri’s criticisms of empire are insufficient because they are operating with a (libertarian and value free) conception of freedom that is intimately connected to empire. Therefore, Smith proposes that we return to a more Augustinian conception of freedom as teleological and bound to the common good.
Now this is all well and good (apart from Smith’s participation in recent acritical appeals to Augustine… who, it should be noted, wasn’t afraid to wield power in a dictatorial and death-dealing way, regardless of what he wrote about ‘freedom’ and ‘the common good’), but where does this end up leading us? Does Smith’s lovely conception of freedom end up making Smith more free than anybody else? Does it lead Smith to engaging in any sort of concrete liberating activity? Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the answer to both of these questions is ‘no’. Smith, despite his lovely ideological angle on these themes, continues to be just as deeply immersed within the disciplined and disciplining industry of the Academy — he remains rooted in close proximity to places of status and privilege, and continues to perpetuate the structures and systems of a society that is anything but free. Indeed, it seems to me that — even if Negri’s thinking on freedom is flawed — at least he has been far more committed to a liberating praxis (and, it should be noted, has paid a much greater price in his pursuit of both freedom and the common good). So, if the proof is really in the pudding, then there must be a fundamental flaw in Smith’s way of thinking. Either that or Smith doesn’t actually believe what he himself says.
Anyway, these points of criticism aside, there were also half a dozen excellent essays in this collection, most notably those by Mark Lewis Taylor (on empire, ethics and transcendence), Amos Yong and Samuel Zalanga (on empire and multitude in relation to pentacostalism, North America, and Sub-Saharan Africa), and Mario Costa, Catherine Keller and Anna Mercedes (on theopolitics and love in the context of empire). These were fascinating engagements that took Hardt and Negri seriously while also extending or challenging their writings.
All in all, a pretty decent collection of essays.
4. Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism by Alain Badiou.
I found this book to be an absolutely fascinating reading of Paul. Badiou may be misreading Paul on multiple points, but I think that he gets a lot correct and, even more intriguingly, I find that he perfectly accurately describes the reason why I, myself, am a Christian. Apart from the (apocalyptic) Event — which, for Paul, was his encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus — being a Christian doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.
That personal note aside, Badiou reads Paul as a revolutionary anti-philosopher, who sets out to overturn both Greek wisdom and Jewish law (which, by the way, makes Nietzche Paul’s rival not his enemy), and bears witness to the Event, in order to form a new subject that bears both truth and liberating power. This subject then, continues to exist as a revolutionary against all the structures of this world, in order to be an agent of the new.
Now that all sounds rather dry and perhaps a wee bit ho-hum, but the truth is that this is an exceptionally interesting book that deserves to be read not only by those who are interested in contemporary French philosophy, but also by those who are interested in studying the New Testament. (The truth is that this is the last book review I’m writing in this post and I’m too tired to go on about it in detail!)
5. Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard.
In this book, Baudrillard spends quite a bit of time developing and illustrating his thinking regarding society, simulacra, and nihilism. Personally, I found the first and last chapters (‘The Procession of Simulacra’ and ‘On Nihilism’) to be excellent, but the rest was a bit more mixed.
Inhe first essay, Baudrillard develops his thinking on our current post-spectacular society — the society of the simulacra. I refer to this as ‘post-spectacular’ because it seems to me that Baudrillard is drawing on Debord’s thoughts on the society of the spectacle (wherein all relationships are mediated by images) but also pressing beyond Debord in his understanding of all images as simulacra — copies without originals — and all relationships as simulations (wherein one feigns to have what one does not have). Thus, Baudrillard traces the following phases of the image:

it is the reflection of a profound reality;
it masks and denatures a profound reality;
it masks the absence of a profound reality;
it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum.

He then comments on these phases and writes:

In the first case, the image is a good appearance–representation is of the sacramental order. In the second, it is an evil appearance–it is of the order of maleficence. In the third, it plays at being an appearance–it is of the order of sorcery. In the fourth, it is no longer of the order of appearances, but of simulation.

Thus, then, leads to something of a total crisis of representation and the collapse of metaphysics and (access to) meaning. Therefore, we mass produce simulacra — which cannot even be called ‘illusions’ because ‘the real is no longer possible’ — in order to hide the fact that ‘the real never was’. All we have are simulacra and simulation.
No wonder, then, that Baudrillard is left with the embrace of nihilism.
6. Child of God by Cormac McCarthy.
Because I happened to be reading this book at the same time as Sigrid Undset’s trilogy set in medieval Norway (see 7 & 8 below), I was struck by the thought that McCarthy could well be writing contemporary fairy tales. Undset reminded me of how people used to tell stories about evil kings who would live in the mountain and kidnap the daughters of the local farmers, and so on.
I thought of this because McCarthy’s story is about a homeless and not altogether right in the head fellow (‘a child of God much like yourself perhaps’) who lives on abandoned farms and then in a cave (in the American South), and who haunts the locals much like a troll or the old mountain king. I don’t want to say too much so as not to spoil the story, but I continue to be captivated by McCarthy’s narrative voice — quite literally, I find his writing to be entrancing. Just as with The Road, I ended up reading this (small) book from cover-to-cover in a single day.
I would be interested in hearing more of what others think of McCarthy.
7 & 8. The Wreath and The Wife by Sigrid Undset.
These are the first two books in Undset’s trilogy about Kristin Lavransdatter. The are set in Norway in the 14th century, and tell the story of Kristin — from childhood to old age — and all the people around her. Because I am currently reading the third book, I save my remarks about this series until next month (when I should be done).

Problematizing Non-Violence

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?

Review and Discussion of 'The God I Don't Understand': Part 3, The Conquest of Canaan

Review

Within the second major section of The God I Don’t Understand, Christopher Wright focuses upon the Hebrew conquest of Canaan in order to explore issues related to portrayals of divine acts and approval of violence within the Old Testament. He notes that for many ‘the God I don’t understand’ is the violent God of the Old Testament and, given the scale of the violence involved in the conquest of Canaan, it seems that this is an appropriate place to turn to explore this God.

Wright begins with a chapter describing three dead ends – three ways not to approach this issue – and then, in the subsequent chapter, turns to three frameworks that Christians might find helpful when they turn to the conquest.

Beginning with the dead ends, Wright first rejects the position of those who argue that the unpleasant parts of the Old Testament (OT) – notably the parts involved divine acts of mass violence – are rejected and corrected by the New Testament (NT). Wright notes that such a position requires an highly selective reading of both Testaments. It neglects the large amount of OT teachings focused upon God’s love and grace, and it neglects the large amount of NT teachings focused upon God’s wrath and terrifying acts of judgment (indeed, NT expressions of judgment are, according to Wright, even more terrifying that OT acts, for while judgment in the OT is harsh, it is temporal and limited; however, in the NT, the torment of the condemned is made eternal).

The second dead end rejected by Wright is the position taken by those who argue that the Israelites thought that they were doing God’s will but were mistaken. According to Wright, this view fails because the bible never records God correcting this so-called misinterpretation. Indeed, both the OT and the NT consistently affirms the conquest and sees it “placed firmly within the whole unfolding plan of God” (83).

The third dead end rejected by Wright is the view that the conquest is only intended to be read as an allegory for spiritual warfare. Obviously this view does not take any account of the genre of the text at hand, and fails to recognize that the primary form of the recital of the conquest is historical narrative and not allegory.

Having noted these dead ends, Wright then emphasizes that there is really no satisfying solution to our exploration of this issue. However, he goes on to say that, by putting these events into the framework of the whole bible, we can speak of these things in a way that is helpful to the Christian faith (even if it doesn’t resolve the problem).

The first framework Wright employs is the framework of the OT story itself, placed within the context of Ancient Near Eastern culture at a particular moment within history. At this time, holy wars, wherein all the plunder was reserved for the deity, were not unique to Israel. Such wars are not waged for profit, by efficient war-machines wreaking havoc upon their personal enemies. Rather, they presupposed the deity as the one waging the war upon that deity’s enemies, and no plunder is allowed as total destruction is required. Therefore, by waging such a war, Wright wonders if God may have accommodated Godself to the fallen human reality of that day: “In view of [God’s] long-term goal of ultimately bringing blessing to the nations through the people of Israel, the gift of land necessitated this horrific historical action within the fallen world of nations at the time” (89).

However, having said that, Wright quickly notes his own discomfort with this answer, but adds that although he feels uncomfortable with God’s accommodation to any harmful action (divorce, slavery, etc.) real accommodation does seem to be portrayed in the bible.

Thus, Wright seeks comfort in pointing out that, even within the OT, the conquest of Canaan is a limited event – a single event pertaining to a single generation – and it must neither be seen as an archetypal OT war, nor as a model for future generations. Which, Wright goes on to say, is why Jesus can prohibit violence while not condemning the OT stories.

Finally, while still taking into account the Ancient Near Eastern context of the conquest narrative, Wright notes how conventional Ancient Near Eastern rhetoric regularly exceeds reality. Perhaps, he suggests, there is a little comfort to be found in this observation.

The second framework Wright employs for understanding this event is the framework of God’s sovereign international justice. In this regard, Wright objects to the application of the word ‘genocide’ to the event under discussion but the word carries overtones of vicious self-interest, ethnic cleansing, and oppression. According to his narrative portrayal, the conquest is none of these things but is ‘divine punishment operating through human agency’ (92). Specifically, it is the coming to full fruition of God’s judgment upon moral and social degradation. According to Wright, this understanding of the conquest as an expression of God’s sovereign international justice:

does not make [the conquest] less violent. Nor does it suddenly become “nice” or “OK”. But it does make a difference… Punishment changes the moral context of violence… There is a huge moral difference between violence that is arbitrary or selfish and violence that is inflicted under strict control within the moral framework of punishment (93).

Thus, Wright argues, there is a fundamental difference between a spanking a child and abusing a child, or, to switch analogies, between imprisoning a criminal and taking a person hostage. Of course, using violence at all ‘may be problematic’ but we must distinguish between these forms (94).

Therefore, understanding the conquest within this framework, means that it must not be taken as a sign of the Israelites’ righteousness as there is no correlation between triumph and the goodness of the victors. Thus, military success cannot be taken as a sign of God’s favouritism; nor must being defeated in a conquest – even the conquest of Canaan – be confused with what is to come at God’s final judgment.

Finally, given that we are so unsettled by placing the conquest within this framework, Wright questions if we would be less upset if the conquest had occurred but had not been commanded by God. After all, if God is sovereign over all nations, and if all things happen in some way in accordance with his will then we should not create such a sharp distinction between what God decrees and what God permits.

The third and final framework Wright brings to the matter at hand is the framework of God’s plan of salvation. He stresses that we need to read the conquest as a part of God’s plan – evident in both Testaments – of bringing peace, blessing and salvation to all the nations. In this regard, Wright highlights how the bible sees no contradiction between God’s general plan and his specific actions in Canaan.

In the end, however, Wright returns to the point that none of these frameworks offers a full, adequate or satisfactory resolution to the problems presented by the conquest of Canaan. This, then, leads him to conclude with these words:

I may not understand why it had to be this way. I certainly do not like it. I may deplore the violence and suffering involved… But at some point I have to stand back from my questions, criticism, or complaint and receive the Bible own word on that matter. What the Bible unequivocally tells me is that this was an act of God that took place within an overarching narrative through which the only hope for the world’s salvation was constituted (107).

Response

Throughout this section, Wright rejects the views of those who, in one way or another, appeal to the OT conquest of Canaan in order to engage in acts of conquest and violence today. In particular, he seems to be implicitly refuting contemporary Christians who support the tyrannical use of force exercised by both the United States and by the State of Israel. This is an important point to make – we cannot appeal to the OT in order to engage in violence today, we cannot mistake victory for righteousness or loss for damnation – and I am in complete agreement with Wright on this matter.

Furthermore, while struggling with the conquest narrative, I think that Wright is correct to draw attention to some of the broader frameworks operating within the biblical narrative – this is a key element of any responsible reading of the bible. However, unlike Wright, I do not think that an awareness of these frameworks assists the reader in resolving questions related to stories of divine violence. Far from it, I think that it is these frameworks that create the problem for us in the first place – remembering God’s overarching goals of bringing peace, justice, blessing, and salvation to all is precisely that which makes us question the conquest. After all, if the God of the bible was simply another tribal, nationalistic God, then the conquest would make good sense. It’s only the prior affirmation that God is actually committed to caring for the well-being of all of creation that makes the conquest a problem for Christians. Thus, Wright offers that which creates the problem at hand as (partial) solutions to that problem! No wonder, then, that I found this section to be the most disappointing part of the book.

My disappointment was only further deepened because of the way in which Wright uses the specificity of the conquest of Canaan in order to avoid addressing overarching questions related to biblical portrayals of God as extremely violent. Granted, the conquest of Canaan is just one particular event at one particular moment of history, but the OT is also full of other stories of God approving of violence and even acting violently – from the Flood, to calling the Assyrians and Babylonians to punish Israel, to allowing Elijah to summon bears to devour a street gang, and so on – and while Wright uses NT references to divine acts of violence (particularly, passages related to hell, which Wright seems to understand as a place of eternal torment) in order to blunt the edge of OT descriptions of divine violence, he never addresses the fact that this then leaves us with a God who appears to be brutal, vindictive, and willing to torture people forever. So, while Wright seems to say, “Hey, let’s not get overly focused on this conquest, since it is just one (violent) moment within an overarching plan of salvific love,” he seems to forget that the bible contains many other problematical portrayals of God’s relation to violence.

Indeed, the question of how a supposedly loving God, committed to rescuing creation and all creatures from the violent power of Death, can engage in any sort of violence or death-dealing, lies at the heart of this problem. Wright tries to dance around this issue in a few others ways… all of which I find equally unsatisfactory.

For example, he suggests that the observation that the conquest is performed as a type of punishment for evil and oppressive behaviour “changes the moral context of violence” but I would contest that this is so. First of all, it is impossible to make the case that all of the men, women, children, infants, and animals that were slaughtered in the conquest are actually guilty and deserving of any sort of punishment (let alone a death sentence). Secondly, I am not convinced that violent punishment is fundamentally or morally different than any other violent action. I find Wright’s examples in this regard to be unconvincing. Granted, punishing a child through spanking is a different sort of action than arbitrarily hitting a child, but that does not make spanking a good moral action. In both cases, a child is being struck violently and frequently, from the child’s perspective, there is no discernible difference between the two acts (I write this as a person who was both spanked and physically abused as a child). Allow me to provide a counter-example: consider a man who rapes his partner because his partner was unfaithful to him, and a man who rapes a stranger. In the first case, the violent act is performed as a form of punishment, in the second case it is performed arbitrarily, but in both cases the violent act is morally wrong. The same, I think, goes for hitting children or any form of violence exercised as punishment.

To take a second example, Wright reminds us that the rhetoric involved in the narrative of the conquest is likely over-inflated and exagerated. Now, this is a fine point to make in order to establish a proper reading of the story, but to suggest that this observation somehow blunts the edge of the challenge that this genocide presents to the Christian faith is absurd – it makes no difference if God was involved in slaughtering thousands, rather than tens of thousands, of children. The same fundamental objection remains, and to even make this point within this context suggests to the reader that the author doesn’t really understand the matter at hand.

Now speaking of rhetoric, and having employed the term ‘genocide’ in the last paragraph, it is interesting to note the rhetorical game that Wright plays with that word. As I noted above, Wright admits the technical accuracy of applying the term ‘genocide’ to the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites, but he then chooses to marginalise and not apply the term because of other connotations that it carries within our contemporary context (those of ethnic cleansing, and so on). Now, to me, this looks like a word game employed to try to downplay the gravity of the situation. It seems to be part of a strategy of avoiding a full and honest confrontation with the matter at hand.

Finally, the third and most unsatisfactory way in which Wright dances around this issue is by arguing that God may be constrained to accommodate himself [sic] to some less than ideal short-term goals in order to accomplish his [sic] long-term goals. To once again cite the passage quoted above: “ In view of [God’s] long-term goal of ultimately bringing blessing to the nations through the people of Israel, the gift of land necessitated this horrific historical action within the fallen world of nations at the time”(89; emphasis added). What Wright appears to be arguing here is that there is only one plan of salvation available to God and so God must follow that plan, no matter the cost at any given moment of history. Thus, God’s plan ends up standing over and above God, trapping God within a deterministic framework that requires divine accommodations to (a more pleasant expression than other available terms like ‘compromise’ or ‘complicity with’ or ‘responsibility for’) fallen human realities like divorce, slavery and, in this case, genocide.

Now this is a decidedly odd point to make because it places severe contraints upon God’s sovereignty – an attribute of God that Wright defends at length in this book. If God is constrained to act within history in this way, and in this way only, then I wonder how exactly God can be said to be sovereign.

Speaking of this attribute, Wright makes another odd point when he explicitly relates the conquest narrative to the proclamation of God’s sovereignty. Because he understands God’s sovereignty to mean that he is somehow involved in every single event that occurs in history (permitting everything to occur, working everything into God’s greater plan, and so on), Wright downplays the difference between ‘God’s decretive will’ (when God decrees something – like the conquest of Canaan) and ‘God’s permissive will’ (when God simply permits one nation to conquer another by not intervening or whatever). Of course, even operating within Wright’s understanding of God’s Sovereignty it is easy to see the difference between, on the one hand, how God might limit God’s interaction with the world’s violence out of respect for human freedom and, on the other hand, God actually initiating violence. Yet Wright fails to see any significant difference between these two things – the decretive and the permissive. Therefore, what this point highlights, to me at least, is not that the conquest wasn’t as troubling as we might first imagine (which is the point that Wright is trying to make) but that Wright’s notion of divine sovereignty is terribly problematical.

In this response to Wright I hope that I have simply applied the same standard to Wright’s work that he applies to others who offer us dead-end solutions to these problems being explored. To be honest, given Wright’s commitment to counter superficial and self-serving solutions, I was surprised that a number of the points he made were so facile and easily countered. I cannot help but wonder if Wright’s self-proclaimed pastoral intent (which I mentioned in my initial post in this series) is getting in the way of honest engagement with these issues.

Review and Discussion of 'The God I Don't Understand': Part 2, Evil and Suffering

[Some time back in January, I began a review and discussion of Christopher J. H. Wright’s book, The God I Don’t Understand (see here for Part 1). At that time, I was discussing the book with my brother Judah, who espouses a different faith than I do. Since then, posting has been delayed because of my brother’s schedule which has how, unfortunately, led him to pull out of this discussion. I will, therefore, continue this review on my own. Here is Part 2.]

Summary: What about Evil and Suffering?

After his introductory remarks, Christopher Wright turns to the intertwined topics of evil and suffering and the ways in which these things present a challenge to faith in the Christian God. Once again, as throughout the rest of this book, the humility of Wright’s tone is notable. He rejects easy answers and asserts that there really are no answers, at least for now, to this challenge. Simply stated, one cannot make sense of evil and suffering. However, having affirmed this, Wright goes on to emphasise three things: the mystery, the offence, and the defeat of evil (he devotes a chapter to each).

Beginning with the mystery of evil, Wright explores the question of how evil could have come into existence in light of the biblical narrative and the affirmation that the God of the bible is both loving and sovereign. Ultimately, despite various digressions, he argues that the bible provides us with no answer to questions of evil’s origins. Thus, Wright argues that the bible compels us to accept the mystery of evil.

Yet accepting evil as a mystery is not the same thing as accepting evil. Indeed, Wright implies that labeling evil as a mystery is a way of rejecting evil, for we cannot allow evil to make sense. Thus, he writes:

Evil has no proper place within creation. It has no validity, no truth, no integrity. It does not intrinsically belong to the creation as God will ultimately redeem it. It cannot and must not be integrated into the universe as a rational, legitimated, justified part of reality. Evil is not there to be understood, but to be resisted and ultimately expelled (42).

Further, Wright stresses that, although we may not know anything about the ultimate origins of evil, we do know that the vast majority of evil and suffering is the result of human actions. Consequently, he concludes that ‘the suffering of the human race as a whole is to a large extent attributable to the sin of the human race as a whole’ (32). Therefore, Wright has little patience for those who ‘like to accuse the God they don’t believe in’ of failing to address evil when they themselves are frequently doing nothing about the fact that, for example, thousands of children are dying every minute of preventable diseases (31). Thus, to those who reject God because God appears to be doing nothing about such things, Wright responds by saying, ‘What are you doing about those things?’

However, Wright does not raise this point in order to shut down all protests against God. Far from it, in the second chapter of this section, devoted to exploring the offence of evil, Wright argues that the bible encourages us to respond to evil and suffering with lamentations, protests, and anger. Indeed, this type of response is precisely the sort of reaction we see displayed in the biblical characters who ‘loved and trusted [God] the most’ (51; emphasis removed). Thus, Wright is hoping to see the language of lament and protest restored to its proper place within the church

Wright views this response of grief and anger as one especially suited to our encounters with what he calls ‘natural evil’ – disastrous non-human, natural events, like hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis, that occur and cause great suffering. Further, while exploring ‘natural evil’, Wright emphasizes that there are two answers to this problem that Christians must reject. First, they must reject the notion that such events occur as an ongoing expression of God’s curse on the ground in Gen 3. Wright argues that God’s curse refers to a fundamental functional breakdown in the relationship between humanity and the soil, resulting in toil in labour, and that the curse does not refer to any sort of ontological altering of creation (after all, affirming the perspective of evolutionary science, Wright notes that things like natural disasters, meteors, death and predation, existed in the natural order long before humans did). Second, Wright argues that Christians must reject any understanding of these natural disasters as some sort of divine judgment upon sin – as though those who suffer in these events are being punished by God. Here Wright is adamant that we must refuse to cast this sort of judgment upon others for, even though the bible speaks of some natural disasters as acts of judgment, it does not speak of all disasters in this way, and no one among us has access to a divine perspective that would allow us to make this judgment call about any particular disaster that occurs in our time.

Finally, in the third chapter of this section, Wright speaks of the defeat of evil and notes that ‘theologians try to explain evil, while God’s plan is to destroy it’ (56). Thus, rather than dealing with evil and suffering as an intellectual puzzle, Christians are called to rejoice in the coming total victory of God over evil, while holding onto three key affirmations: (1) the utter evilness of evil; (2) the utter goodness of God; and (3) the utter sovereignty of God. Of course, it is here that we arrive at the crux of the challenge of evil – how can we affirm all three of these statements without, in some way or another, comprising one or more of them? Wright argues that it is the cross, and the understanding of Jesus as both the slain lamb and the Lord of history, that points the way forward. Drawing on a study of Revelation 4-7 (which he sees as describing constant realities of human life – war, famine, sickness, death, etc. – and not some sort of ‘end times’ cataclysm), Wright argues that Jesus is sovereign over all of these powers but the ‘absolutely pivotal, vital point to grasp’ is that ‘Christ’s power to control these evil forces is the same power as he exercised on the cross’ (67). Specifically, God’s sovereignty over evil is shown in God’s ability to simultaneously absorb and defeat it, or, as Wright says, ‘[t]he cross shows us that God can take the worst possible evil and through it accomplish the greatest possible good – the destruction of evil itself’ (69). Thus, we live now with hope and joyful expectation.

Response

Once again, there is much that I appreciated about how Wright approaches the topic at hand. I appreciated his tone, his honesty regarding a lack of understanding, and his ability to see through many of the false alternatives that have been offered by Christians in their efforts to cling to certainty. I also appreciated Wright’s emphasis upon protest and lament and his desire to see these things retored to the church Further, I found Wright’s argument that evil cannot make sense because it cuts so deeply against the grain of the universe to be both useful and interesting – a suggestion I don’t remember encountering before.

However, without going overboard (as this is, in my opinion, the most significant challenge to faith in the Christian God), there are a few things that I would like to respond to in a little more detail. First, I wish that Wright had continued his thinking regarding the greatest cause of suffering – human actions – and pressed the same point in his chapter on the defeat of evil. If it is human activity that causes the great majority of suffering in our world, then surely it is human activity that also has the greatest potential to bring about healing, reconciliation, and peace in our world. Furthermore, I found it odd that Wright so strongly emphasises that God will defeat evil, while neglecting the Christian belief that, because evil has already been defeated at the cross of Jesus, it can now continue to be defeated in the human actions taken by (amongst others) those in the Christian community. So, while Wright talks about God’s triumph over evil at the cross, he neglects to mention how the community of those who follow a crucified Lord can proleptically embody the defeat of evil in the present moment… until the day when death and hell are finally destroyed once and for all.

Secondly, I’m not entirely sure what to make of Wright’s impatience with atheists or agnostics who scorn the Christian God because of the presence of evil and suffering in the world. On the one hand, this impatience makes sense if those who claim the moral high ground over against a seemingly inactive or apathetic God, do not then go on to actively address evil and suffering. However, on the other hand, Wright’s impatience, even in this regard, doesn’t have to make sense or be reasonable to those who do not adopt a Christian paradigm. For people with other paradigms, it might be perfectly consistent to scorn God and ignore the suffering of strangers, or even scorn God and further the suffering of others, or whatever. Furthermore, Wright uses this particular focus (those who scorn God but who are also inactive) to handily sidestep addressing the fact that many of those who reject the Christian God are precisely those who are actively working to address issues related to justice and suffering within our world. Consequently, Wright seems to miss the point that evil and suffering are actually a very, very good reason to reject the affirmation of any God who is said to be both good and sovereign. Indeed, I myself would probably reject faith in God for precisely this reason… were it not for experiences that I believe to be experiences of God in Jesus Christ. Thus, my basis for faith is entirely experiential and, although this may dismay a good many Christian apologist, I tend to think that experience is the only valid basis for faith (at least it’s the only valid basis I’ve found). In other words, while encounters with the massive presence of evil and suffering might compel me to not believe in any sort of loving and powerful God, other encounters do not allow me to not believe. So it goes.

Finally, the aspect of Wright’s argument that strikes me as the most difficult to understand (or, perhaps, accept) is in his assertion that all the evil forces in history are still subject to God’s sovereignty and are only able to act with God’s express permission (and even assistance!). Now, to be clear, I do agree with what Wright says about God being able to absorb and conquer evil (by even creating new life out of events that would otherwise have simply been death-dealing), but I think that one can affirm this without pressing this point as far as Wright does. It seems to me that Wright’s argument ends up making God too complicit with evil (although he himself argues that we cannot view God in this way). In essence, it seems to me that Wright tries to say too much on this point and oversteps his initial acknowledgment regarding the mystery of evil. Granted, I believe that the cruciform life and death of Jesus point us towards some sort of resolution of the interaction between God’s goodness and sovereignty, and the evilness of evil, but I don’t think we can go so far as to say that Jesus, as the risen Lord, is now directing and arming the powers of pestilence, war, and famine in our world (which is what Wright says in his exegesis of Rev 4-7). In my opinion, it is better to say nothing than to affirm this suggestion.

legends of the fall: the alternate title of my thesis

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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.]

Book Giveaway — Philosophy

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.

Paul and the Uprising of the Dead

[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

1. Introduction

Paul and the Anastasis of the Dead

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.

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.

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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1Cf. Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World (New and Completely Revised Edition; translated by Lionel R. M. Strachan; Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1978 [1910]); Karl Kautsky, Foundations of Christianity (Translated by Henry F. Mins; New York: S. A. Russell, 1953 [1908]). Of course, Deissmann is not a ‘Marxist’ scholar, but his conclusions fit well with Marxist analysis and objectives.

2Cf. Neil Elliott, Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1994), 3-24.

3I am indebted to Alain Badiou for translating anastasis not simply as ‘resurrection’ but also as ‘uprising’ and using this with intentionally political overtones (cf. St. Paul: The Foundations of Universalism. Trans. by Ray Brassier. Cultural Memory in the Present [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003], 68). However, what Badiou does not realize is that this translation of anastasis precisely captures the way in which eschatology and politics are intertwined, both in Paul’s writings and in the ideologies of empires (as we shall see in what follows).

On Being a Father: Grace upon Grace

Today my son Charles is four months old. This is him:
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He has been a colicy baby, so my wife and I have had little sleep and have spent most of our time either entertaining him or trying to soothe him.
But that’s quite alright. This was the sort of thing I expected when people told us that everything in life was going to change.
What I didn’t expect, was a very different change that Charles has created in me. In fact, this change was so unexpected, so unlooked for, that it took me a good couple of weeks to figure out what was different. I knew something radical had happened inside of me but I was unable to name it.
You see, for the last seven or eight years, I have felt like I was slowly shattering. I felt like my journey into broken places was slowly breaking me — breaking my heart, my strength, my spirit. With each new death, each new kid lost to drugs or mental illness or violence, each new rape, I felt like another piece inside of me broke off.
In recent years, I have felt that there were so many cracks and fissures running through me that I often wondered how long I would be able to hold myself together.
And then Charlie was born. And the first time I held him I felt as though all of my broken pieces fused back together again. That’s why it took me so long to figure out what I was feeling — I hadn’t felt that way in so many years. So it’s no wonder that it hit me like a ton of bricks a few weeks later when I finally realized what it was that I was feeling: “My God. I feel whole!” What a miraculous gift my son has given to me.
My wife and I weren’t planning on having a child when we did. Charlie came into our lives unexpectedly. But the timing ended up being perfect — far better than we could ever have known. He has been a gift from God to us. I look at him sleeping beside me and think, “Amazing grace!”
Of course, as I suggested in my opening paragraph, there is nothing ‘cheap’ about this grace. It is costly; it demands a lot of us. But all of that — the sleepless nights, the exhaustion, the sacrifice of other things — is immediately forgotten the minute Charlie smiles from ear to ear and giggles at me.
I reckon this is often how things stand with God’s gifts of grace — something unexpected, something unexpectedly wonderful, something life-transforming.
I also hope to participate in this economy of grace. I hope to give gifts to my son. In particular, I hope to give him a gift that I have never experienced — I hope to be a loving father to him.
My own father was often violent when I was young, and my childhood was dominated by feelings of fear. Even now, my father continues his efforts to emotionally manipulate and abuse the people close to him. So I have never known what it was like to have a loving father. This is not to say that my dad has never felt warm fuzzy feelings when he has thought of me; rather, it is simply to observe that his words and actions towards me (and his other sons) have usually been anything but loving.
Therefore, by committing to love my son, I am hoping to give him a gift that I have never received. It blows my mind to think that I can offer Charles a life so different than my own. It blows my mind to think that he will never have to know what it is like to have a father who is incapable of loving his children. It amazes me that I can give him an experience so far from anything I have ever known.
This, surely, is a glimpse of the abundant life we find in the company of God. This, surely, is the giving of grace upon grace.
Charles, my boy, I’ve never been so in love. May you ever only know the economics of grace and the giving and receiving of gifts.

Abandoning Certitude: Walking Humbly with God

As far as I can tell, being honest with ourselves requires us to confess that we now live in a world where it is impossible to recognize any infallible, completely trustworthy authorities. Or, even if we grant the existence of any such authority (as I actually do), we must confess that we have no unmediated access to that authority. What access we have is always mediated by that which is inevitably fallible and not completely trustworthy. Thus, we are all in the same boat, whether or not we affirm the existence of any infallible, completely trustworthy authorities.
So, for example, although I believe in a God who is, in my opinion, infallible and trustworthy (I’m willing to give God the benefit of the doubt!), I can never claim direct access to God, or knowledge of God, or God’s will, or whatever else. Access to God is always, in some way, mediated. Thus, things like Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience all function as mediators — but neither Scripture, nor tradition, nor reason, nor experience is completely infallible or completely trustworthy.
Let us explore this point.
Although Scripture functions as an authority for Christians, it cannot be treated in an overly simplistic or naive manner. Sometimes Scripture is inscrutable, sometimes it is contradictory, and sometimes it’s a crap shoot as to how we are to relate to the two or four thousand year old events contained therein. Besides, God didn’t write Scripture — people, with all of their foibles and limitations did, and no matter how fancy your exegetical footwork (Scripture in its original [but now lost] form was perfect, God actually dictated the original [but now lost] biblical texts to the authors verbatim, etc.) the point remains that, Scripture as we know it, cannot be treated as infallible. This does not mean we must then go on to refuse to recognize Scripture as an authority. Far from it, Christians can recognize Scripture as an authority — but it is an authority we must engage critically.
I think that the complexities involved in both understanding and applying Scripture are becoming increasingly obvious, even to those who have tried to remain rooted within premodern views of Scripture. This, in my opinion, partially explains why Evangelicals who previously had fairly loose ecclesiologies and little regard for Church history are now becoming increasingly fascinated with Roman Catholicism and the Christian Tradition (just note all of the contemporary Evangelicals who have taken to calling themselves ‘Augustinian’!). Thus, for various Christians, Tradition (capitalized and in the singular) is treated as an infallible and completely trustworthy authority. However, it is worth questioning if this is really the case. When we ask this question, it quickly becomes apparent that it is difficult to see how this could be true. First of all, an honest look at Christian history requires us to note that there is no single authoritative ‘Tradition’; rather, there are many different, often competing and contradictory, traditions. Consequently, any who propose a single authoritative ‘Tradition’ are engaging in a highly selective reading of history that ends up being (intentionally or not) rather dishonest.
However, the case could be made that, despite differences, there are some elements of Christianity that appear consistently throughout history. Therefore, one might wish to argue that these elements are the part of the Christian traditions that is authoritative and infallible. However, this cannot be the case as, for example, the oppressive use of power (in order to abuse, marginalize and oppress women, children, people with disabilities, and other minority populations) is a fairly consistent thread running through many Christian traditions over the last two thousand years. We cannot simply appeal to majority views, as majorities (yes, even majorities within the Church, and over the course of Church history) are often mistaken. Futhermore, the Bible itself teaches us that the majority of those who call themselves ‘the people of God’ have often lost their way. Thus, there are constantly minority movements arising to correct the majority (for example, schools of prophets in the Old Testament and the Jesus Movement in the New Testament).
However, this does not mean that majorities are always wrong and that minorities are always right. Indeed, I believe that the Spirit of God can move in such a way that a majority of people can — independently of one another — come to the same appropriate conclusion for any given situation. It also doesn’t mean that minorities are always right. Often minorities fracture off of groups and spiral into self- and other-destructive behavior.
Therefore, we are once again required to critically engage with the Christian traditions. What we cannot do is simply accept ‘Tradition’ as a single, infallible, completely trustworthy source.
This then leaves us with reason and experience. But neither of these can be treated as infallible, completely trustworthy authorities.
Reason, in my opinion, is the least trustworthy of all. More than any of the other authorities mentioned here, ‘reason’ is an almost entirely amorphous cultural construct. Simply stated, what is ‘reasonable’ is only reasonable to particular people, at a particular place, during a particular moment in history. At different places, in different moments of history, it was completely reasonable to think of the earth as flat, as created in seven days, or as existing on the back of a turtle. Nowadays, many people consider this sort of thinking unreasonable and find it reasonable to think of the earth as round, as coming into being over a very long amount of time, and as existing in time/space (which it is now reasonable to think of as a single ‘thing’).
Of course, by highlighting this I am not suggesting that we abandon reason as an authority. To do so would be next to impossible, given that all of us are culturally-conditioned people, and will remain culturally-conditioned, in one way or another, regardless of our best efforts. ‘Reason’ ends up being an authority, whether we like it or not. However, this line of thought does require us to critically engage reason (which, by the way, is what Wittgenstein does when he encourages us to talk non-sense).
We are then left with experience which, in my opinion, actually exists in something of a privileged place, especially when it comes to how we relate to God as an authority. After all, one may read about the God of the Scriptures, one may learn about the God revealed in the Christian traditions, and one may come to some positive conclusions about God based upon reason, but if one has no experience of God, then all of that reading, learning, and thinking, will likely be for naught. So, by saying experience exists in a ‘privileged place’ I am not saying that it is more authoritative than these other sources; rather, I am saying that it needs to be recognized as authoritative (at least in some way) before any of the other sources can be meaningfully engaged as authoritative.
However, just as with the other authorities mentioned above, experience cannot be treated as an infallible, completely trustworthy authority. No matter how dramatic (or traumatic!) our experiences of God, we must critically engage every experience. What if we are mistaking something for God that is not God? What if we are being emotionally manipulated by our environment? What if we are mentally ill (I’ve worked with many schizophrenic people who refused to take their medication because ‘God stopped talking’ when they were on the medication — but refusing to take the medication also led these people to be trapped in cycles of poverty, homelessness and violence)? What if we are just using ‘God’s still small voice’ to justify our preconceived notions or to allow us to indulge in harmful or selfish desires? And so on and so forth. Thus, although experience is an authority, it cannot be considered infallible.
Consequently, we remain stuck in the state I described at the opening of this post. We must confess that we no longer have any infallible authorities, and even if God is recognized as just that kind of authoritiy, we must confess that we have no infallible, unmediated access to God.
What then is the result of this? The loss of certitude. An honest confrontation with our situation requires us to confess that we can no longer be certain… about anything. Maybe we are eisegeting the Scriptures. Maybe we are highlighting the wrong parts of the Christian traditions. Maybe our reason is fatally flawed. Maybe we have misunderstood ourselves and our experiences. Maybe that which we have taken to be God, is not God at all. We must confess that any and all of the above is possible.
So we must abandon certainty, and we must flee from anyone who promises us certitude lest we become lured into false comforts and a world of illusions.
This, I think, is what it means for a person to ‘walk humbly with God’ (cf. Mic 6.8). Walking humbly with God means confessing that, hey, maybe we’ve got it all wrong. Maybe, instead of being part of the solution, we’re part of the problem. Maybe we’re just making one giant mess of everything. So we pray: ‘Lord, have mercy’.
Finally, I have recently come to the conclusion that this movement into uncertainty is actually an expression of one’s maturation in one’s faith. This goes against what I was led to believe about faith when I was growing up. When I was younger, I though that uncertainty was a sign of ‘spiritual immaturity’ and that ‘spiritual maturity’ would be expressed in an increasing sense of certainty. Indeed, I think many Christians were led to believe that this is how ‘spiritual maturity’ is expressed. I no longer believe this. I now believe that it takes a great deal of maturity to confess that one is uncertain (about everything), and the reason why we have difficulty confessing this is because we remain in places of immaturity. This, at least, has been my own (neither infallible nor completely trustworthy!) experience: the more deeply rooted I have become in my faith, the more I have been able to abandon certitude in order to walk humbly with God — and with my neighbours as we, together, strive to do justice and love mercy (Mic 6.8, again).

Who is the True Neigbour? Discussing Sexuality with Evangelicals

In all my time within the GLBTQ community, I have never once felt rejected or discriminated against because of my (hetero)sexual orientation or my (Christian) religious beliefs. Even though most members of the GLBTQ community have had extremely negative, oppressive, or hurtful encounters with people who are (most often) straight, male Christians, I have never felt judged or discriminated against because of how others who look like me have acted. Far from it — I have always felt welcomed by members of the GLBTQ community, and have always felt as though I was respected for believing what I do.
Perhaps this was most evident during the time when I was volunteering at a drop-in centre for male and transgendered sex workers. In the ten year history of this centre, I was the only straight male volunteer and the only Christian volunteer as well. This was not because the centre discrimated against straight males or against Christians — far from it, many of the sex workers who came to the drop-in were both straight and Christian, and I was embraced with open arms by the other volunteers — rather, I suspect that this was because Christians tend to keep the hell away from the GLBTQ community in general, and from male and transgendered prostitutes in particular (because, you know, helping female prostitutes lets Christian men feel like macho/noble knights in shining armour and all that, whereas male prostitutes are just a bunch of ‘faggots’ or something like that).
In sum, even though I have my origins in an oppressive group that has deeply and personally wounded many people within the GLBTQ community, I have still been treated with respect, greeted with openness, and welcomed with love.
In contrast, when I have spoken of my respect for members of the GLBTQ community, and of my faith that these expressions of human sexuality are a part of God’s wonderful and ongoing creative activity within the world, I have been treated very differently by many who claim to be followers of Jesus. Far from being treated with any respect, I have had my words twisted beyond recognition, I have been called everything from a ‘heretic’ and a ‘schismatic’ to a ‘bully’ and a ‘dog’, and I have listened as those who have stated these things have compared my gay friends to pedophiles, murderers, rapists, and people who have sex with animals. There has been little to no respect shown here. No openness. No embrace. No love.
In all of this, recalling Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, it has become pretty obvious to me as to which group in my life has acted as a true neighbour to me. Members of the GLBTQ community are those who have acted as the ‘Good Samaritan’ — a person from an oppressed minority who shows Christlike love, even for a member of the oppressive majority. Unfortunately, members of Conservative Evangelicalism have acted, at best, like the Priest and Levite who pass by the wounded and, at worst, like the robbers who beat others and leave them for dead.