When I was at work in the City Relief Society, before the [Chicago] fire, I used to go to a poor sinner with the Bible in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other… My idea was that I could open a poor man's heart by giving him a load of wood or a ton of coal when the winter was coming on, but I soon found out that he wasn't any more interested in the Gospel on that account. Instead of thinking how he could come to Christ, he was thinking how long it would be before he got another load of wood. If I had the Bible in one hand and a loaf [of bread] in the other the people always looked first at the loaf; and that was just contrary to the order laid down in the Gospel.
~ D. L. Moody
I recently had a conversation with a fellow from Latin America who was a part of a revolutionary movement in El Salvador back in the '70s. We got talking about the Canadian Welfare System, and he argued that it was a way of 'paying off the poor.' By that he meant that we give people enough money so that they will stay poor. They not take their fate into their own hands and take (revolutionary) action. Now I don't mean to get into the pros and cons of the Welfare System in this post, but I was struck by a comment he made about the poverty he saw in Latin America. 'Starvation,' he said, 'will remove all restraints, and all moral codes; when a person is starving nothing else matters.'
In this regard I can't help but think of the words penned by Bertolt Brecht:
You gentlemen who think you have a mission
To purge us of the seven deadly sins
Should first sort out the basic food position
Then start your preaching, that’s where it begins
You lot who preach restraint and watch your waist as well
Should learn, for once, the way the world is run
However much you twist or whatever lies that you tell
Food is the first thing, morals follow on
So first make sure that those who are now starving
Get proper helpings when we all start carving
Moody fails to realise three things: (1) the way in which poverty, cold, and starvation will dominate a person's existence; (2) the necessity of engaging in charity for charity's sake, which considers longterm problems and solutions, rather than engaging in momentary charity with ulterior motives; and, in the same vein, (3) the way in which charity and the Gospel go hand-in-hand and cannot be separated into some sort of hierarchical order. The Good News is both a Word we proclaim, and a meal that we share.
Finally, I would suggest a fourth thing that Moody has not recognised: the possibility that those who appear to reject his Gospel have, in actuality, accepted it by accepting him, but I've already written about that (cf. http://poserorprophet.livejournal.com/2004/10/30/).

I've been a little cautious about exploring the notion of beauty as a category within theology because, to be honest, I'm a little skeptical about it all (and I'm not at all well-read on the topic). Granted, there has been a long tradition of connecting the notion of beauty with theology and philosophy, and some exceptional contributions (like those of von Balthasar) but I can't help but wonder about why there has been such a contemporary resurgence on this topic, given that we live in an image-dominated society. It seems so… emergent (in the bad way). Regardless, I got thinking about the topic today and I wanted to write down my scattered thoughts before they drifted away.
(1) Guy Debord has aptly referred to our contemporary society as the Society of the Spectacle. By this he means that our society has become so image-based and image-obsessed that we have come to a place where social relations are mediated by image. Everything that had directly lived has now moved whole-heartedly into the realm of representation and relations between commodities have supplanted relations between people.
(2) Hence, we live in an imaginary society. It is imaginary because it is image-oriented, and it is imaginary because it moves us into the realm of virtuality and of representation, and away from the realm of the Real. An excellent example of this is a website like facebook, wherein people become virtual advertisements of themselves. (In this regard, I am reminded of a recent experience I had at work. A co-worker was telling me about a movie that he had seen and he described it in this way: “It was so facebook. You know, full of fictional characters that you end up falling in love with.”)
(3) The problem here is not that we are disciplined to be made into this or that image (although that is one of the symptoms of the problem). Rather, the problem is that our very identity is rooted in image.
(3) Consequently, it is within this context that Christians need to think about the notion of beauty.
(4) In particular, Christians need to think about beauty as an aspect of embodiment — embodiment divorced from the spectacle.
(5) So should we simply pursue a notion of embodiment that is imageless? I don't think so. We are, after all, told that we have been made in the image of God.
(6) Yet God, who has often been linked to the category of beauty, is unimage-able. God is said to be beautiful, and yet God cannot be seen.
(7) How is an unimage-able form of beauty embodied? How is it made known? Through action. This is how we have come to know God, and to know God as beautiful. We have not seen God but we have experienced God's actions, and we remember how God has acted in the past, and how God has promised to act in the future.
(8) Therefore, the embodiment of beauty that we seek, is one that is connected to action. In particular, it is the actions of the body of Christ — the Church — that reveal the beautiful.
(9) Thus, beauty falls under the category of doing, not seeing.
(10) In this way, the embodied performance of the beautiful becomes an alternative way of being-in-relation with one another, and counters the way of being (alone?) that is embodied within the Society of the Spectacle.
(11) Finally, this is also why I think that beauty does not exist as an indenpendent category but is a subcategory of love. Beauty is both that which we give to, and that which we discover within, the Beloved.

Marx, in the Grundrisse, discusses the ways in which economic relations of exchange (wherein exchange-value overshadows and replaces use-value) produce equality amongst all those who participate within that system of exchange because all of the participants are reduced to the status of 'exchangers'. In this way, he argues that this system simultaneously masks the social tensions inherent to bourgeois society.
Now what I found particularly interesting is the way in which Marx connects the notion of equality to indifference. He writes:
Since they only exist for one another in exchange in this way [i.e. as exchangers]… they are, as equals, also indifferent to one another; whatever other individual distinction there may be does not concern them; they are indifferent to all their other individual particularities.
These comments continue to be relevant for Christians who are interested in finding their way within our contemporary context, wherein the economic predominates. Of course, one obvious point of application is to note the way in which Marx's comments further explain the deficient and reductionistic anthropology of capitalism. However, much has already been said about these things, and I maintain the the root problem with capitalism is not its anthropology (which is deficient and reductionistic!) but its theology, upon which its anthropology is premised. Indeed, I sometimes wonder if the focus on anthropology that one finds in many Christian responses to capitalism is simply another expression of the anthropocentricism of modern thought. Thus, Christian responses to capitalism that lay their central focus upon anthropology are frequently (but not always!) insufficient in at least two ways: (1) these responses remain caught within a form of thinking that is itself definitive of capitalism; and (2) these responses focus on a symptom rather than a cause.
Points about anthropology aside, what I found especially interesting about the quotation from Marx was the connection he made between inequality and indifference.
Sometime ago, I wrote a post entitled “What Reversal? (Confronting Myths of 'Equality')” (cf. http://poserorprophet.livejournal.com/102416.html), wherein I argued that the myth of equality is actually one of the keys to perpetuating inequality in our day to day living. That is to say, we have been told that we are all equal and this then becomes a way of engaging in victim blaming. If others do not have the happy, healthy life that I have, the obvious conclusion is that this is the case because those others are lazy, or immoral, or whatever. Thus, because we are all equal, we are exonerated from actually treating our neighbours as our equals.
Therefore, what I found intriguing about the quotation from Marx is that, while I was approaching the topic from the angle of the mythic stories told by our society, Marx was approaching the topic from the angle of the technical economic structures of society — and we came to the same conclusion!
This, I think, is a point that has not been sufficiently grasped by Christians who attempt to create social change through the avenues provided by the discourse of freedom, equality, and human rights. In my opinion, what these people (several of whom I consider close friends) tend to miss is the way in which that discourse continues to aid and perpetuate oppression, inequality, and degradation within our contemporary context. This is why it is not sufficient to simply appeal to the way in which such language has a long history within the Christian tradition. Regardless of where that discourse originated, and regardless of how it has been employed, the fact is that it cannot be employed in the same way today.
The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Look at Christians in our society and what do we discover? Those who will defend equality until they are blue in the face, and those who simultaneously do nothing (and generally don't even think to do anything) about the fact that their neighbours are homeless.
Instead of pursuing equality, I suspect it may be better to begin to understand ourselves us douloi Christou, slaves of Christ, and in this way we may learn to share in the passion of God.

While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
~ Eugene V. Debs
This is the issue with which I am confronted: How can one live a contented life in a world that is torn and broken? How can one live joyfully while so many mourn? How can one experience a sense of ‘inner peace’ given the violence of the plotico-economic context in which we live? This, I realised, has been the topic driving my conversations with those near and dear to me, for quite some time now. Because I am not content, let alone joyful, and I am a long way away from experiencing anything akin to ‘inner peace.’
However, let me be clear about what is at stake here. What I am experiencing is not some sort of crisis about myself personally — I don’t think the problem comes down to me not doing enough, and I don’t think the problem comes down to me having some sort of ‘Messiah complex’ (as has been suggested, and was once the case half a dozen years ago). Indeed, the kicker about all of this is that it really isn’t about me. After all, I’ve got friends, family, and a wife who love me and who would drop everything for me, if that was what I needed. I’ve got a strong sense of being beloved by God, I’m healthy, I seem to be doing okay in school and work, and so on and so forth. I am not unhappy because anything in my life is lacking; I am unhappy because so much is lacking in the lives of others. Similarly, I am not unhappy because I am not doing enough (although one can always do more); I am unhappy because not enough is being done. What is breaking me is the brokenness around me, not any personal experience of brokenness per se.
I believe that the technical term for what I am experiencing right now is ‘vicarious trauma’, wherein one takes on the traumas of others (I reckon that this experience is also largely what many others refer to as ‘burn out’). I am aware of this, but this awareness does not resolve things because I cannot easily brush it aside and conclude that this is an experience I should avoid having. That is to say, I do not know how to love others and not feel this way. If those whom I love are being broken, shouldn’t I, in my love for them, also be broken? Isn’t this the model established by Jesus himself, as the image of the cruciform God who is broken out of his love for this broken world? Perhaps this vicarious trauma is a part of the process of laying down one’s life for those whom God loves; perhaps it is a part of the via dolorosa.
Of course, several people have been quick to tell me that if this is the road I go then I will quickly end up in a position where I am unable to help anybody in anyway because I’ll be so ‘burnt out’… however, like I said before, this really isn’t about me (and the difference that I make or don’t make). If I burn out once and for all, then I burn out once and for all. God doesn’t need me to save the world.
Speaking of God, others have pointed out that it is God who is saving the world, and so I don’t need to take the weight of the world onto my shoulders but can simply be contented with the little that I do on a day-to-day basis. I have mixed feelings about this. I, too, believe that God is saving the world, and will one day heal all of our wounds, wipe all our tears away, and make all things new… but that day has not yet arrived. Until that day brokenness continues. I do not know how to contentedly wait for that day. Certainly I long for it, I place all of my hope in it, but I cannot sit back and wait for it patiently. I want it to come now. I want God to say, “Enough.” Enough of all this bleeding, this killing, this shattering; enough of all this goddamn fucking shit. How much will be enough, Lord? I’ve had enough. Why do you linger, Lord? How long will you damn us with your absence?
This, then, is my final question: how can one find contentment in places of godforsakenness? For those of us who are worn down waiting for God, tired of seeing our friends bleed out, tired of watching The Brokenness settle ever more deeply into our loved ones, what does the notion of contentment offer us? Is such contentment possible? Is it appropriate?
I opened with a quote from Eugene V. Debs, a quote I discovered some year ago. I was first drawn to this quote because it sounded noble and romantic. Now I resonate with the quote on an altogether different level. Now I know that I too am not free. And so I am longing for a liberation that only God can bring.
But God, God is nowhere to be found.
Lord, have mercy.

These prophetic calls to shame [i.e. the 'penitential prayers'] in the context of history are not calls to a paralyzing personal guilt or humiliation. It is a call to recognize the constant failures of living according to the alternative ideals and values—universally identified in the penitential prayers as the Mosaic laws. Shame, therefore, is not a psychology, it is a politics…
Radical nonconformity for the exilic communities means the creation of a radically different identity from that exemplified by the period of the monarchy, and this requires a heightened sense of the shame of acting in other ways….
In the end, shame is a mark of honesty—it is an admission that allows transformation because it offers hope that the new way will not repeat the acknowledged mistakes of the old way.
~ Daniel Smith-Christopher, A Biblical Theology of Exile, 120-22.
We are accustomed to thinking of shame as something to be avoided at all costs. In a twofold sense, shame makes us 'feel bad' — it makes us feel uncomfortable, and it makes us feel as though we, ourselves, are 'bad'. However, in the passage quoted above, Smith-Christopher suggests that shame, when properly employed, can be a very good thing.
In A Biblical Theology of Exile, Smith-Christopher argues that the so-called Deuteronomistic History (Deut-2 Ki) was significantly redacted and rewritten by exilic or postexilic authors, who rejected the power-politics of Israel's monarchy, and presented the kings and leaders of Israel in a negative light so that Israel would be able to discover a more faithful way of following the (sociopolitical) Law that is laid out in Deuteronomy. The past, as well as some present efforts, are presented as shame-full so that a new way of being in the present can be discovered and a new future can become possible.
Contemporary Christians must also recover this positive use of shame in relation to their past and some of their present efforts. Here two things must be avoided. First of all, rather than attempting to disassociate themselves from the history of Christianity — and Christendom, in particular — Christians must choose to carry the shame that comes with that name. Thus, for example, rather than eschewing the name 'Christian', those who acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus (and depend on the fellowship of those in Christ) must choose to identify themselves as such, fully aware of the baggage that comes with that language.
Secondly, rather than romanticising past Christian involvement in power-politics, Christians must begin to look for a new way forward, embodied in an embrace of an exilic existence in the present. Of course, even in Israel's exile there were those who longed for a restoration of power. This is the position that is prominently displayed in 1 Maccabees, and in the various Jewish nationalistic revolutionary movements found in Palestine at the time of Jesus. 1 Maccabees, and many of the Jewish rebel movements refused exile as a state of existence, and sought a return to sociopolitical power. However, although this option was open to Jesus (let us not forget the presence of revolutionaries in his inner circle), he ends up rejecting it, and the Church, and contemporary Christians, must do the same.
Here, Jeremiah's counsel, 'the word of the Lord', to the exile's in Babylon is especially relevant:
Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens and eat their produce… Seek the peace of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf (cf. Jer 29).
This passage is commonly quoted — but by those who exhibit a nostalgia for Christendom. It is usually quoted by those who seek to justify Christian involvement in power-politics, in corporate business, and so on and so forth. However, that is not the point that Jeremiah is trying to make. Rather, what Jeremiah is doing is telling the people to declare an armistice and cease fighting (violently) with the Babylonians. To build homes, and plant gardens, requires the people of Israel to 'beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks' (cf. Is 2.4; Mic 4.3). Thus, rather than seeing this passage from Jer 29 as a justification for Christian involvement in violent structures of power, it is better understood as an appeal to the people of God to abandon all aspirations to power, as that power is understood by the political and corporate structures of this world.
This, then, is what the politics of shame requires of us: it requires us to remember our shame-full past, and to confess our connection to that past, thereby ensuring that we do not repeat that past. Rather than longing for a return to power, we must embrace our status as a pilgrim people, sojourning in exile until the day when God descends to earth and welcomes us into the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem, our true home.
The same approach applies not only to Christian attachments to power, but also to our attachments to wealth, comfort, and privilege. Given God's solidarity with the poor, and given the requirement to share all things with 'the least of these', I believe that we must, once again, be confronted with the shamefulness of our wealth, comfort, and privilege. Yes, when we have so much in a world where so many have so little, we should feel ashamed — especially if we profess to follow the God of the bible.
I am reminded of a conversation I once had with an undergraduate student about these things. When speaking in a class at a Bible College about God's preferential option for the poor, and the need for solidarity with the crucified people of today, a student raised his hand and, after noting that he was not very involved in such things, asked me 'should I feel guilty?' (cf. http://poserorprophet.livejournal.com/101527.html). Were I to answer that question today, I think I would say the following: “I don't know if you should feel 'guilty', but I do think you should feel ashamed.”
This, I think, is a part of what it means to follow in the footsteps of those like Saint Francis — those who proclaimed peace with penance. Peace is not possible apart from penance, and penance is not possible without shame. Here, I am reminded of the words of Dorothy Day:
Everyone of us who was attracted to the poor had a sense of guilt, of responsibility, a feeling that in some way we were living on the labour of others… Many left the work… because of their own shame. But enduring the shame is part of our penance (The Long Loneliness, 204, 216).
Yet how can we bear all this shame? Once we realise the extent of it all, it is so easy to become overwhelmed by it. Indeed, I think that we frequently do not embrace our shame, but rather run from it, precisely because it is so overwhelming.
It is the prior knowledge and experience of ourselves as God's beloved that allows us to carry our shame. Just as forgiveness enables repentance, so our being accepted by God enables us to confront our own shamefulness. Thus, rather than immediately removing all of our shame from us, God's embrace allows us to fully carry our shame for the first time. We rejoice because we are forgiven sinners, but we remember that we are forgiven sinners.
Furthermore, not only are we now enabled to carry our shame, but in this way our shame is carried away as we begin to discover new ways of sharing life together as members of a whole created order that groans under exilic conditions as it eagerly awaits the 'glorious freedom of the children of God' (cf. Ro 8). Thus, our shame is not, as Smith-Christopher says, a paralysing sense of personal guilt. Rather, our shame becomes an avenue to our own liberation, and the liberation of those around us.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Amen.