More Cannon Fodder

I came away with any suspicions that the young earth creationists might be wrong, it came from my developing an appreciation for Biblical interpretation, not from the Biology lab. Secular science didn’t turn my head. I learned that the people waving the Bible around weren’t necessarily treating it with the respect it deserved.

What became clearer to me over my seminary career was that many of my evangelical and fundamentalist brethren were not willing to let the scriptures be what they were or to let them speak their own language.

But Ham assumes that anyone who doesn’t interpret Genesis exactly as he does is rejecting the Bible as truthful.

Making this into a literal and “scientific” description as a condition of inspiration is wrong.

I don’t even need to add anything. Thank you Michael

Sex and Identity

An interesting little conversation took place a while ago. I am certainly late to posting on this, in fact it has been sitting around as a draft for a while. I am certainly in no place to make a judgment, rather I aim to recount all of it and gather facts. Certainly this issue has been perplexing the Church for several years now, specifically the Lutheran and Anglican denominations. There are certainly issues worth highlighting.

“If Christ [i.e. not Freud] is truly the fullness and definition of authentic humanity, we must say categorically that marriage, sex, and parenthood tell us nothing whatsoever of ultimate significance about humanness” – since Jesus himself did not participate in any of these experiences.

The quote within the quote there is the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. And it is an incontrovertible fact. Any Christocentric approach of anthropology must take this line. One can always cease to be Christocentric anthropologically, and I imagine that some have, but one is left to argue why that understanding should be preferred over the authentic and perfect humanity of Christ. I think Barth is right to underscore that our sexuality is a part of our identity, you would have an uphill battle in our times to prove otherwise. Perhaps he was mistaken to imagine that is it the pinnacle or underlying issue of our humanity.

Foucault’s argument shows that we are obsessed not with sex itself (as a physical act), but with “the truth of sex” – with the idea that sex is a revelation of truth.

For myself I find this to be true. The temptation of the act lies not so much in the act itself, but what beyond the act is signified. If sex, and sexuality, is just a red herring for us where might we look?

For one thing, I think Christians ought to take much more seriously the category of friendship, while thinking a good deal more critically about the unbridled theologisation of marriage and the so-called “family unit”

I find the overall statement of the Gospel, as evidenced in the New Testament to be specifically a new family. As I’ve become more keen, thanks to some training, to pick out the civil religion instituted as a part of the United States, I wonder just how much this idea of the family unit is tainted. Surely the thrust of the Gospel message is an entirely new community. More than a single family living detached from every other single family. This intense level of friendship is hard to sustain – that I am sure, on very few occasions I’ve tried.

Marriage, he contends, offers an expression of love and sexuality not realisable in any other human relationship, but it is no more human than any other human task or relationship.

Imagine holding marriage and friendship on the same level of humanness? I’ve never conceived of them that way. I ought to and see what comes of it. Again, if we’re to have a Christocentric approach, what is the epitome of humanity? Self-giving, self-sacrificial love with a goal of God’s will being done in the world. What does that look like in a friendship, in a marriage, in a community of faith? That ought to be what we look towards when we ask ourselves these kinds of questions, is it not?

It may, through the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit be commandeered and become in many and sundry ways a parable of the kingdom, just as many of the trivial aspects of human life are open to God’s interruption and transfiguration. But, insofar as the meaning of authentic human existence, sexuality tells us nothing. Not if we really believe that Jesus defines for us what it means to be be human. And, further to this point, only when we allow sex to be truly and wonderfully insignificant, to be trivial, will it be able to be received as a gift rather than gulpingly grasped in an idolatrous fit of fetishizing.

Sexuality and Lonliness

Wesley Hill has a very moving and truthful story for all of us to hear. He is a homosexual Christian desperately trying to understand his sexuality in light of Christianity.

I know of no more difficult path for a person of integrity to tread. Phillip Yancey

Wesley tells us that his most powerful emotion is loneliness. A disturbing loneliness that goes beyond anything I could imagine. And at times in my life I’ve been very depressed and lonely. I would not dare to put my feelings of loneliness anywhere near his. He has consciously chosen a path which he feels will lead him closer to his Lord, despite that path being the anti-thesis of his being. He does not allow himself the choice of living a non-celibate life. I could not imagine placing that kind of a barrier on my own future, having pre-made a decision that I would never marry and never enjoy another’s life intimately and sexually. Wesley’s choice is the Gospel Choice – it is the highest expression of loyalty to Christ. For that Wesley deserves our praise, compassion, brotherhood, and friendship. He ends with a question that the entire Church needs to answer for themselves.

Will the Church shelter and nourish and humanize those who are deeply lonely and struggling desperately to remain faithful?

Answering no to that is to be anti-Gospel.

Know History

Thank you New Yorker. Thank you Economist. Why isn’t history a fundamental aspect of every single higher degree program – including high school.

Somewhere along the line, education failed to give all of us the facts we need to live in the world. Lest we forget that was the original purpose of university education in which students learned the Bible, Latin, and Ethics. Almost nobody knows latin, or any other classical language, French, Italian, whatever, to read classical literature. Very few people are religiously literate. I’d guess that only half of students who go to college get to take a Intro to Philosophy course, let alone anything past that (I loved my Intro to Phil prof – I hope you are well Jamie, wherever you are).

Hitchen’s Review

Bullying and shallow, God Is Not Great is a haute middlebrow tirade, a stale venting of outrage and ridicule. Beneath his Oxbridge talent at draping glibness in the raiment of erudition, Hitchens proves to be an amateur in philosophy, an illiterate in theology, and a dishonest student of history. Too belligerent to be nimble and too parochial to be generous, the once-captivating Hitchens demonstrates why he has forfeited any claim on our attention.
Commonweal

Ouch

Derek Webb

I’ve been listening to a bunch of songs on You Tube from his new album Stockholm Syndrome. Wow. I am glad he wrote it. I am sad that his production company gave him such a hard time with it. He sings and wears that black eye very well for us. Shame on those who don’t understand that he is stepping in for you and trying to repair what we’ve broken. Now I am going to have to buy this album. I can’t not. Go download the free track.

A little bit

There is a reason that Macleod’s Cube Grenades resonate with me. I don’t agree with every one of them. But I look at the world in much the same way. It does not make sense to me why, generally, people allow themselves to float. I used to float through life. I didn’t like who I was.

Life is different. As the lyrics go “pouring like an avalanche coming down a mountain”. A little part of me dies living any other way. Compromise and capitulation don’t have a place. A drive to experience all that life offers, and a drive to make a difference is what remains. The cube grenades remind me not to let anyone stop get in the way of that.