Alas, I have been neglecting my blog. Lots of things going on these days with school, work, and my new non-profit. Hopefully I can start writing more faithfully after the next two weeks are over. I’m writing a paper on narrative criticism, which explains two of the books on my reading this month. I also couldn’t resist the urge to read some fiction. It keeps me sane.
1. The Art of Biblical Narrative by Robert Alter. This is basically the classic work on narrative criticism. Although others like Frei and Auerbach had paved the way this book (published in 1981) was the one the really launched narrative criticism back into the contemporary scene.
2. Reading Biblical Narrative: An Introductory Guide by J.P. Fokkelman. This was the only other book I read cover-to-cover in my research. It’s a pretty basic, and pretty handy guide.
3. Either Or: The Gospel or Neopaganism edited by Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson. A thought-provoking collection of essay from a symposium of scholars. They examine various elements of contemporary culture (neopaganism, the psychological captivity of the church, agenda-setting, etc.) and attempt to formulate a way forward.
4 A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut. Thanks to my old tree-planting foreman I’m developing an increasing appreciation for Vonnegut. This is a semiautobiographical collection of rambling thoughts on everything from politics, marriage, and creative writing. It’s a quick read but thoroughly enjoyable.
5. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. I’ve been reading about Eco all over the place — he pops up in the journals I read fairly regularly and he is also mentioned by literary critics and authors concerned with hermeneutical methodologies. So, I thought I’d pick up his (perhaps) most famous work. I can’t say I loved it, but it was a good read, and I’ll probably continue to work through his writings.
6. The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene. This was definitely my favourite book this month. Greene tells a story about a Latin American priest fleeing from persecution. Too scared to be a martyr and under no illusion that he is a saint (the priest enjoys his alcohol, and also fathered a child), the priest wrestles with the fact that the common people are suffering for sheltering him. He constantly prays that God would provide someone more worthy so that the peoples’ suffering would not be wasted. But, that someone never appears, and the priest is slowly lead down the road of the cross.
So, as usual, my book reviews are horribly insufficient and half-assed. Sorry!
I Don't Wear a Poppy
I don't wear a poppy because I remember who it was that died to make me free. I remember Jesus and his refusal to fight even the enemies of his loved ones.
I don't wear a poppy because I remember that governments cannot make me more or less free, only more or less comfortable.
I don't wear a poppy because I remember that 'the war to end all wars' was followed by another war in which we fire bombed Japanese and German civilians. And I remember the atrocities that our oh so victorious armies have continued to commit around the world.
I don't wear a poppy because I am ashamed of the government of my nation and because I mourn the things which it glorifies.
I don't wear a poppy because a poppy symbolises a false memory and disguises our collective forgetfulness.
Historical Christianity or the Eternal Now?
This is an article I wrote in response to another article written by one of my housemates.
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Historical Christianity or the Eternal Now?
I am writing in response to Audrey's article entitled, “Reality Check: You Have all the Time There Is”. Audrey is a good writer and I enjoy reading her articles; in this article I especially appreciate her point about how we should not confuse how we are doing with what we are doing (or not doing).
However, her quotation from Richard Neuhaus makes me slightly nervous. Neuhaus counsels us to “live in the present moment”, arguing that the future is the “enemy of the present moment”. Indeed, he suggests we come to see the future simply as “the next present moment” lest we end up coming to the end of our lives and discover that our lives have been wasted. As Neuhaus puts it, “Having never stopped to live in the present moment, we one day run out of present moments and discover we have never lived at all.”
What concerns me about this is the way that Richard Neuhaus imagines time. Here it is important to understand that time is not something neutral that we all experience or understand in the same way. Rather various religions, ideologies and worldviews require us to experience and understand time differently. Within Western culture the rise of postmodernism, premised upon the collapse of metanarratives, has deeply impacted our relationship with time. Many people are now living without a story that structures living and makes life meaningful. Without such stories one's living becomes decidedly ahistorical and one lives more and more within the present that becomes the eternal now. We can make no sense of our past and are afraid of the future and so we repress both as we embrace the present. And we encourage others to do the same — there is comfort in discovering we are all in the same boat. After all, those who embrace the past and the future are threatening to those who only have the eternal now. Consequently those who do embrace the past and the future are pejoratively labelled as sentimental or utopian, incapable or living meaningfully in the present.
However, Christians are called to be exactly this type of people. Christianity is deeply historical — it involves a transformed relationship with time and a different experience and understanding of the past, present, and future. Living Christianly means living within the Christian story, which means that our lives in the present are deeply impacted by remembrance and expectation, memory and hope. We remember what God has done in history — from creation, to the exodus, through the story of Israel to the Christ-event and the pouring out of the eschatological Spirit at Pentecost. And anticipate what God will yet do within history — make all things new, dry all tears, heal all wounds, and reconcile all broken relationships. Therefore, our lives in the present are transformed as we embody this story. It is historical living, not the embrace of the eternal now, that gives meaning to what we do moment by moment. Contra Neuhaus this means that if we come to the end of our lives having only lived within a string of present moments we will discover that we have never lived at all.
This is especially important for Christians to realise in light of the increasingly influential metanarrative of liberal democracies, which proclaims (with Francis Fukuyama) that history has ended (reached its telos) under the reign of free-market capitalism. Within this system there is no longer any future just “the next present moment”. Yet this is an essentially anti-Christian imagining of time. Therefore, Christians that embrace the eternal now will be unable to meaningfully resist Fukuyama's proclamation and the idolatry that is so intimately linked to it. History did not end with the fall of the Berlin wall. The end of history was inaugurated in the death and resurrection of Jesus and will be consummated when he returns. It is by re-imagining time that Christians are able to move from the kingdoms of this world and live the radically different lifestyle required of citizens of the kingdom of God. Re-imagining time allows us to move from worshipping false gods to worshipping the true Lord of history.
Anyone here been raped and loves Jesus?
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine.
Et nos amours, faut-il qu’il m’en souvienne?
La joie venait toujours apres la peine.
Vienne la nuit, sonne l’heure,
Les jours s’en vont, je demeure.
~ Guillaume Apollinaire
Voyeuristic impulses are hard to shake in the culture in which we live. Even though I have been undergoing a process of re-sensitisation, a deliberate process of discovering the real humanity found in those we tend to ignore, mock, or despise, I find that these elements still surface within me. Sometimes at work I still catch myself thinking, “I can’t wait to write home with this story!” It saddens me to discover this about myself, and it makes me all the more hesitant to share stories with others who are not involved with the type of people with whom I have the privilege of journeying. If, in the immediate situation, I am still tempted to find something entertaining in the events that transpire then those removed from the situation will almost inevitable experience the event solely as entertainment.
What is equally saddening is the way in which we need to appeal to the voyeur in everyone if we are to attract donors. This holds true for all people including Christians. People want a story that titillates, that entertains, that is oh so tragic. Stories of violence make me shiver and feel alive, stories of prostitution are so romantic, stories of abandoned kids remind me of puppies with sad eyes. And if any of these people end up loving Jesus, well, gosh, I’d pay good money for that. What a satisfying little adventure.
It brings me back to something shouted by an unknown British TV reporter in a crowd of Belgian civilians waiting to be airlifted out of the Belgian Congo c.1960. He looked out on the crowd, knowing what kind of story makes for captivating news, and yelled,
“Anyone here been raped and speaks English?”
Sometimes I feel that Christians are looking for the something similar. Donors come to us asking,
“Anyone here been raped and loves Jesus?”
October Books
Another very slow month as far as cover-to-cover reading is concerned. My reading life continues to be dominated by forms, legal documents, articles, and selected chapters. Sigh.
1. For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy by Alexander Schmemann. In this book Schmemann approaches all of life from the perspective of the Eastern Orthodox liturgy. I read this book a few times because many of its thoughts were quite foreign to me (as a Western Protestant). Schmemann’s take on “original sin” is quite intriguing, and I quite like the way in which he links the eucharist to the Church’s mission. This is an excellent book for those who enjoy the “spiritual” writings of the likes of Foster or Nouwen. There are many things we can learn from the Orthodox Church.
2. Profit Over People: neoliberalism and global order by Noam Chomsky. This book is a revised collection of essays published by Chomsky in the mid to late nineties. Chomsky’s comments on the transfer of power from the public arena merit attention, especially for Christians who seek to engage in dialogue “in the public square.” Chomsky makes me think that the Duke school (folks like Hauerwas, Cavanaugh, and Bell, Jr.) really have the best idea of what it means for the Church to be a public body.
3. Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry, Faith and Order Paper 111, World Council of Churches (WCC). This little encyclical (hardly a book at all) is one of the greatest documents produced by the WCC. I think this was my third time reading it and I am struck by the depth of wisdom and beauty found in this deceptively simple-looking document.
Immortality?
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work… I want to achieve it through not dying.
~ Woody Allen
One of the advantages of living in a Christian community house is what I find stuck to the fridge. Not too long ago one of my housemates ripped and ad out of a Christian mag and posted it. It is an ad for a Christian school of leadership development and it features a picture of a young woman with her hands folded in prayer looking pensively(?) at the camera. The background is dark but a charcoal coloured cross is clearly visible in the centre. In large letters at the top the ad asks, What are you willing to die for? Then, in a smaller font at the side (beside the young woman) it says this, “My life matters and it won't be wasted. I will leave my mark on this world even if I have to die in the process.”
So, we all had a good laugh (the program is also explicitly for single men and women) but the ad got me thinking. You see, when it comes down to it, I think this ad has a lot more to do with paganism than it has to do with Christianity. The emphasis of the ad is on doing something that leaves a mark on the world. Doing something so lasting that it's worth dying for. Yet this essentially buys into a pagan understanding of immortality. We gain immortality through what we do, we do something that means we are never forgotten, we live forever through the impact of what we've done and in the memories of others. But Christianity asserts that we approach things from a fundamentally different perspective. As Christians our primary focus is not on making a difference in the world. Our primary focus is on being faithful to Jesus (of course if we are faithful we will make a difference but this is secondary and may not even by recognisable to us). That's why I began with the Woody Allen quote. Christians also should have little interest in gaining immortality through our work. Yet, unlike Woody, we are not afraid of dying but are granted the promise of new life rooted in Jesus' resurrection. Because of this assurance we are not afraid to live faithfully no matter how worthless, wrong-headed, and inconsequential such a lifestyle may appear to be.
Personalising Creation: Marduk and Citigroup
Within Old Testament Ethics for the People of God, Christopher Wright argues that ancient Israel's approach to creation was fundamentally different than the nations that existed around Israel. The Canaanite fertility cults were rejected because Israel had been taught that the LORD was the source of nature's abundance; and the astral deities of Babylon were rejected because the astral bodies were revealed to be objects created by the LORD's power.
What is especially interesting in Wright's discussion around this topic is the distinction he makes between personalising and personifying nature. Within the Old Testament nature is regularly personified — i.e. nature is spoken about “as if it were a person.” Yet this is a rhetorical device that does not ascribe personhood or personal capacity to nature or natural forces in themselves. In fact, Wright argues, to personalise nature (“to attribute ontological personal status to nature itself”), results in both depersonalising God and demoralising the relationship between humanity and God. Wright argues that this is so because to give creation a status due only to God and (derivatively) to humans who bear God's image is actually a form of idolatry.
I find Wright's comments to be especially intriguing in light of fairly recent developments within American law (cf. “The Ultimate Weapon” in Profit Over People: neoliberalism and the global order by Noam Chomsky). Gradually corporations and businesses have been granted human rights (speech, freedom from search and seizure, the right to buy elections, etc.). To use Christopher Wright's language, corporations have been legally personalised. Consequently, these corporate entities have attained the rights of immortal persons — the rights they have now go far beyond what real persons are granted. This is not only because corporations have become so powerful but also because (post-NAFTA) corporations have been able to do such things as sue governments and have thereby been granted the rights of nation-states. Once creation is personalised it does not take long for that personalised creation to become a god in possession of a kingdom. Although we may not have been aware of the implications American law has given birth to idolatry. The corporate divinities are the gods of the Western nation-states. The Canaanites had Baal. We have General Electric and Talisman Energy. The Babylonians had Marduk. We have Citigroup and the Royal Bank of Canada.
One of the great tragedies in all of this is the fact that Western Christians are oblivious to the fact that they have been worshiping idols. But, as Christopher Wright argues in his section on the land, “the economic sphere is like a thermometer that reveals both the temperature of the theological relationship between God and Israel… and also the extent to which Israel was conforming to the social shape required of them in consistency with their status as God's redeemed people.” The LORD is not content to merely be a God of history and festivals. The LORD is God of the land and everything that goes with it. And when the people of God succumb to the same economic evils as the people around them, they have ceased to function as a “light to the nations” — no matter how faithfully the can expound upon the four spiritual laws (of course, the fact that these “laws” are the ones labeled “spiritual” reveals how oblivious we are of our own idolatry).
Gratitude and Joy: The Playful Ethics of a Delight-Full People
It is possible that in playing we can anticipate our liberation and with laughing rid ourselves of the bonds which alienate us from real life.
~ Jurgen Moltmann
I have recently been revisiting many of my thoughts about suffering, lamenting, and journeying with those in exile. Having been put off by the dominant self-indulgent and trite approaches that Christians (and the rest of society) tend to take toward suffering I fear that I have been missing a crucial part of journeying with the godforsaken. I have focused on genuinely empathising with such people, sharing in their cry, their pain, and their abandonment. And I still continue to do that… but that's only one part of the picture. The other bit, the bit that I've been missing, is how we go about doing this. If we are the Shekinah that goes forth to be with exiled people then we really do transform tears into laughter, isolation into solidarity, and death into new life.
This means — and this is the key of what I'm getting at — that even as we journey with those in exile, we will be known as delight-full people. This is so for two reasons. The first is because we remember. We remember the goodness of what God has done for us, especially in Christ. Therefore, the corollary of remembrance is gratitude. And this is what I've been missing. I had realised that God's goodness towards me required that I exhibit this goodness towards “the needy” but I was missing the fact that this action is performed fundamentally as an expression of gratitude. It was Christopher Wright's comments in Old Testament Ethics for the People of God that blew this door open in my mind. In my focus on lament I had focused on reminding God of the plight of the abandoned — lest he forget his covenant (yes, there is prophetic precedence for this). But what I was missing was the fact that my lack of gratitude revealed that it was I who had forgotten what God had already done. And, as C. Wright goes on to argue, without gratitude we lose the ethical implications of our own history and end up undergoing a moral decline that leads to outright disobedience.
The second reason why we are a delight-full people is because of our expectation. Not only do we remember what God has done, but we remember God's promises, and what God will do. Therefore (especially since we have already received the first-fruits of this in the coming of the Holy Spirit), we live as a people filled with joy. It is my recent research on the Lord's Supper that really has me thinking about this. Because we are assured that God is making all things new we can operate joyfully even in the midst of brokenness. The anticipatory and eucharistic aspects of the Lord's Supper make joy an unavoidable part of Christian living. This is not because we are cold-hearted or refuse to enter in the pain of others. We will still mourn with those who mourn for as long as they mourn, but sorrow will not have the last word. It is the root of joy that we have in the assurance of our hope that enables us to stay in those broken places. And it is the joy that we exhibit even in mourning that makes our mourning transformative.
Therefore, this allows us to operate with a much more playful ethic. Here Moltmann's comments in The Church in the Power of the Spirit become significant — especially in light of my own personal biases. Moltmann argues that a Western focus upon Jesus' Lordship has caused our ethic to be one that follows the structure of command and obedience. However, when one comes to appreciate the aesthetic side of Jesus' reign (that is to say, Jesus is the Lord of the cosmos but also the Lord of glory) our response can be much more festive. Having encountered the Father who runs out on the road to meet his prodigal children how can we not overflow with joy? As Moltmann also says in Theology and Joy, “Only the innocent, namely children, or those liberated from guilt, namely the beloved, are able to play.” It's as though we move into the margins and join the songs of lament only to discover that somehow along the way those songs have gained new strains and turned into songs of wonder and of praise. It's as though we join those dancing because their hearts are broken and somehow the dance transitions into a dance performed by overflowing hearts. And soon everybody is dancing, and laughing, and we realise that right here, right now, we are participating in the wedding banquet of the Lamb.
Isaiah 40.1-2
For you, there'll be no more crying,
For you, the sun will be shining,
And I feel that when I'm with you,
It's alright, I know it's right.
~Fleetwood Mac
This is the sort of people that we should be if we genuinely do believe that there will come a day when Christ will return and make all things new. For we are those who do affirm that one day there will be no more crying, one day all wounds will be healed, one day the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. If we believe this then this should be clear in our interactions. We should journey with those who are crying and those who are in darkness so that they too may glimpse this assurance. So that when we are with them they will know all will be right.
And the songbirds keep singing,
Like they know the score,
And I love you, I love you, I love you,
Like never before.
~ Fleetwood Mac
Remembrance and Expectation
Over against the contemporary emphasis upon “being in the moment” and living within the “Eternal Now,” Christians are to be a people marked by remembrance and expectation.
The most definitive stages of history are the past and the future. The past is definitive because of the death and resurrection of Jesus and the out-pouring of the eschatological Spirit; and the future is (even more) definitive because it is in the future that all of history will be consummated and all creation will be made new.
This is not to say that Christian avoid the present through cheap sentimentality or utopian dreams. What is does mean is that Christians live within the present very much shaped by the past and the future — we do what we do now because we remember and we expect.
People with no memory or hope are trapped within the “Eternal Now” where they are unsure about what to do, or why they do what they do.
Slowly I am learning how to live with memory and hope. I firmly believe that understanding ourselves historically is essential to living transformatively.