Perhaps the minority community of slaves and midwives [in Moses' Israel] was able to affirm the freedom of God just because there was no other legitimated way to stand over against static triumphal religion, for every other less-free God had already been co-opted. Perhaps the minority community of slaves is able to affirm the politics of justice and compassion because there is no other social vision in which to stand in protest against the oppression of the situation. As George Mendenhall has urged, the social purpose of a really transcendent God is to have a court of appeal against the highest courts and orders of society around us. Thus a truly free God is essential to marginal people if they are to have a legitimate standing ground against the oppressive orders of the day. But then it follows that for those who regulate and benefit from the order of the day a truly free God is not necessary, desirable, or perhaps even possible.
Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, pg. 22-23
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
Prophetic Energizing
In Exodus 11:7 there is a wonderous statement of a new reality that surely must energize: "But against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, not a dog shall growl; that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between the Egyptians and Israel." In our scholarly ways we may miss the power here. It is too terrible to be contained in a "doctrine of election." It occurs not in a doctrine but in a narrative and an unproven memory that we must let stand in all its audacity. It is not reflective theology but news just for this moment and just for this community. The God who will decide is not the comfortable god of the empire, so fat and well fed as to be neutral and inattentive. Rather, it is the God who is alert to the realities, who does not flinch from taking sides, who sits in the divine council on the edge of his seat and is attentive to his special interests. It is the way of the unifying gods of the empire not to take sides and, by being tolerant, to cast eternal votes for the way things are.
...in his passion and energy Moses takes sides with losers and powerless marginal people; he has not yet grown cynical with the "double speak" of imperial talk and so dares to speak before that data are in and dares to affront more subtle thinking. The affirmation whispered in the barracks is that Moses is "up front" about his commitments, and Pharaoh is not going to like it.
Seen at a distance, this bald statement is high theology. It is the gospel; God is for us. In an empire no god is for anyone...For Moses and Israel, energizing comes not out of sociological strategy or hunches about social dynamic, but out of the freedom of God. and so the urging I make to those who would be prophets is that we not neglect to do our work about who God is and that we know our discernment of God is at the breaking points in human community.
-Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, pgs. 15-16
...in his passion and energy Moses takes sides with losers and powerless marginal people; he has not yet grown cynical with the "double speak" of imperial talk and so dares to speak before that data are in and dares to affront more subtle thinking. The affirmation whispered in the barracks is that Moses is "up front" about his commitments, and Pharaoh is not going to like it.
Seen at a distance, this bald statement is high theology. It is the gospel; God is for us. In an empire no god is for anyone...For Moses and Israel, energizing comes not out of sociological strategy or hunches about social dynamic, but out of the freedom of God. and so the urging I make to those who would be prophets is that we not neglect to do our work about who God is and that we know our discernment of God is at the breaking points in human community.
-Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, pgs. 15-16
Real Prophetic Criticism
Criticism is not carping and denouncing. It is asserting that false claims to authority and power cannot keep their promises...real criticism begins in the capacity to grieve because that is the most visceral announcement that things are not right.
-Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, pg. 11
-Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, pg. 11
Freedom of God, and Alternative Community
The liberal tendency has been to care about the politics of justice and compassion but to be largely uninterested in the freedom of God. Indeed, it has been hard for liberals to imagine that theology mattered, for all of that seemed irrelevant. and it was thought that the question of God could be safely left to others who still worried about such matters. As a result, social radicalism has been like a cut flower without nourishment, without any sanctions deeper than human courage and good intentions. Conversely, it has been the tendency in other quarters to care intensely about God, but uncritically, so that the God of well-being and good order is not understood to be precisely the source of social oppression Indeed, a case can be made that unprophetic conservatives did not take God seriously enough to see that our discernment of God has remarkable sociological implications. And between liberals who imagine God to be irrelevant o sociology and conservatives who unwittingly use a notion of God for social reasons because they do not see how the two belong together there is little to chose.
The point that prophetic imagination must ponder is that there is no freedom of God without the politics of justice and compassion, and there is no politics of justice and compassion without a religion of the freedom of God.
The program of Moses is not the freeing of a little band of slaves as an escape from the empire, though that is important enough, especially if you happen to be in that little band. Rather, his work is nothing less than an assault on the consciousness of the empire, aimed at nothing less than the dismantling of the empire both in its social practices and in its mythic pretensions. Note the significance of Martin Luther King Jr.'s leadership in integrating a lunch counter or a local bus line! Israel emerged not by Moses' hand--although not without Moses' hand--as a genuine alternative community. The prophetic tradition knows that it bears a genuine alternative to a theology of God's enslavement and a sociology of human enslavement. That genuine alternative, entrusted to us who bear that calling, is rooted not in social theory or in righteous indignation or in altruism but in the genuine alternative that Yahweh is. Yahweh makes possible and requires an alternative theology and an alternative sociology. Prophecy begins in discerning how genuinely alternative he is.
-Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, pgs. 8-9
Prophetic Ministry
The prophet is called to be a child of the tradition, one who has taken it seriously in the shaping of his or her own field of perception and system of language, who is so at home in that memory that the points of contact and incongruity with the situation of the church in culture can be discerned and articulated with proper urgency.
The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us. Thus I suggest that prophetic ministry has to do not primarily with addressing specific public crises but with addressing, in season and out of season, the dominant crisis that is enduring and resilient, of having our alternative vocation co-opted and domesticated. It may be, of course, that this enduring crisis manifests itself in any given time around concrete issues, but it concerns the enduring crisis that runs from concrete issue to concrete issue. That point is particularly important to ad hoc liberals who run from issue to issue without discerning the enduring domestication of vision in all of them.
The alternative conciseness to be nurtured, on the one hand, serves to criticize in dismantling the dominant consciousness. To that extent, it attempts to do what the liberal tendency has done; engage in a rejection and delegitimizing of the present ordering of things. On the other hand, that alternative consciousness to be nurtured serves to energize persons and communities by its promise of another time and situation toward which the community of faith my move. To that extent it attempts to do what the conservative tendency has done, to live in fervent anticipation of the newness that God has promised and will surely give.
The functional qualifiers, critical and energizing, are important. I suggest that the dominant culture, now and in every time, is grossly uncritical, cannot tolerate serious and fundamental criticism, and will go to great lengths to stop it. Conversely, the dominant culture is a wearied culture, nearly unable to be seriously energized to new promises from God. We know, of course, that none of us relishes criticism, but we may also recognize that none of us much relishes energizing either, for that would demand something of us. The task of prophetic ministry is to hold together criticism and energizing, for I should urge that either by itself is not faithful to our best tradition.
Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, pg 2-4
The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us. Thus I suggest that prophetic ministry has to do not primarily with addressing specific public crises but with addressing, in season and out of season, the dominant crisis that is enduring and resilient, of having our alternative vocation co-opted and domesticated. It may be, of course, that this enduring crisis manifests itself in any given time around concrete issues, but it concerns the enduring crisis that runs from concrete issue to concrete issue. That point is particularly important to ad hoc liberals who run from issue to issue without discerning the enduring domestication of vision in all of them.
The alternative conciseness to be nurtured, on the one hand, serves to criticize in dismantling the dominant consciousness. To that extent, it attempts to do what the liberal tendency has done; engage in a rejection and delegitimizing of the present ordering of things. On the other hand, that alternative consciousness to be nurtured serves to energize persons and communities by its promise of another time and situation toward which the community of faith my move. To that extent it attempts to do what the conservative tendency has done, to live in fervent anticipation of the newness that God has promised and will surely give.
The functional qualifiers, critical and energizing, are important. I suggest that the dominant culture, now and in every time, is grossly uncritical, cannot tolerate serious and fundamental criticism, and will go to great lengths to stop it. Conversely, the dominant culture is a wearied culture, nearly unable to be seriously energized to new promises from God. We know, of course, that none of us relishes criticism, but we may also recognize that none of us much relishes energizing either, for that would demand something of us. The task of prophetic ministry is to hold together criticism and energizing, for I should urge that either by itself is not faithful to our best tradition.
Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, pg 2-4
Needs, and Liking Your Mom
People're a nestful of needs. Dull needs, sharp needs, bottomless-pit needs, flash-in-the-pan needs, needs for things you can't hold, needs for things you can. Adverts know this. Shops know this...I've got what you want! I've got what you want! I've got what you want! But walking...this afternoon, I noticed a new need that's normally so close-up you n ever know it's there. You and your mum need to like each other. Not love, but like.
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 194
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 194
Perspectives On Bullies and Bullying and Being Bullied.
Contrary to popular wisdom, bullies are rarely cowards.
Bullies come in various shapes and sizes. Observe yours. Gather intelligence.
Shunning one hopeless battle is not an act of cowardice.
Hankering for security or popularity makes you weak and vulnerable.
Which is worse: Scorn earned by informers? Misery endured by victims?
The brutal may have been molded by a brutality you cannot exceed.
Let guile be your ally.
Respect earned by integrity cannot be lost without your consent.
Don't laugh at what you don't find funny.
Don't support an opinion you don't hold.
The independent befriend the independent.
Adolescence dies in its fourth year. You live to be eighty.
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 212-213
Bullies come in various shapes and sizes. Observe yours. Gather intelligence.
Shunning one hopeless battle is not an act of cowardice.
Hankering for security or popularity makes you weak and vulnerable.
Which is worse: Scorn earned by informers? Misery endured by victims?
The brutal may have been molded by a brutality you cannot exceed.
Let guile be your ally.
Respect earned by integrity cannot be lost without your consent.
Don't laugh at what you don't find funny.
Don't support an opinion you don't hold.
The independent befriend the independent.
Adolescence dies in its fourth year. You live to be eighty.
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 212-213
Hate
Dogs hate foxes. Nazis hate Jews. Hate doesn't need a why. Who or even what is ample.
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 198
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 198
On Poetry
Once a poem's left home it doesn't care about you.
- - -
"Beautiful words ruin your poetry. A touch of beauty enhances a dish, but you throw a hill of it into the pot! No, the palate becomes nauseous. You beleif a poem must be beautiful, or it can have no excellence. Am I right?"
"Sort of"
"Your 'sort of' is annoying. A yes or a not, or a qualification, please. 'Sort of' is an idle loubard, and ignorant vandale. 'Sort of' says 'I am ashamed by clarify and precision.' So we try again. You belief a poem must be beautiful, or it is not a poem. I am right?"
"Yes."
"Yes. Idiots labor in this misconception. Beauty is not excellence. Beauty is distraction, beauty is cosmetics, beauty is ultimately fatigue."
- - -
...the poem is a raid on the inarticulate...Poems who are not written yet, or not written ever, exists here. The realm of the inarticulate. Art fabricated of the inarticulate is beauty. Even if its themes is ugly. Silver moons, thundering seas, cliches of cheese, poison beauty. The amateur thinks his words, his paints, his notes, makes the beauty. But the master knows his words is just the vehicle in who beauty sits. The master knows he does not know what beauty is.
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 146-147.
- - -
"Beautiful words ruin your poetry. A touch of beauty enhances a dish, but you throw a hill of it into the pot! No, the palate becomes nauseous. You beleif a poem must be beautiful, or it can have no excellence. Am I right?"
"Sort of"
"Your 'sort of' is annoying. A yes or a not, or a qualification, please. 'Sort of' is an idle loubard, and ignorant vandale. 'Sort of' says 'I am ashamed by clarify and precision.' So we try again. You belief a poem must be beautiful, or it is not a poem. I am right?"
"Yes."
"Yes. Idiots labor in this misconception. Beauty is not excellence. Beauty is distraction, beauty is cosmetics, beauty is ultimately fatigue."
- - -
...the poem is a raid on the inarticulate...Poems who are not written yet, or not written ever, exists here. The realm of the inarticulate. Art fabricated of the inarticulate is beauty. Even if its themes is ugly. Silver moons, thundering seas, cliches of cheese, poison beauty. The amateur thinks his words, his paints, his notes, makes the beauty. But the master knows his words is just the vehicle in who beauty sits. The master knows he does not know what beauty is.
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 146-147.
Being Right
"...not hurting people is ten...thousand time more...important than being right."
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 118
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 118
On War
War may be an auction for countries. For soldiers it's a lottery.
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 109
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 109
Listening to the Earth
The earth's a door, if you press your ear against it.
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 91
-David Mitchell, Black Swan Green, pg. 91
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
One True Church and Christian Exclusivity
Each of the enduring religions is a mediator of "the absolute," but not the absolute itself. Applying this understanding to being Christian, the point is not to believe in Christianity as the only absolute and adequate revelation of God. Rather, the point is to live within the Christian tradition as a sacrament of the sacred, a mediator of the absolute, whom we name "God" and who for us is known decisively in Jesus. Christianity is not absolute, but points to and mediates the absolute.
Within this framework, what happens to the passages in the New Testament that proclaim Jesus to be "the only way"? We should remember that they are relatively few. Moreover, passages in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament suggest a larger view of God's presence and accessibility. But the "only way" passages are there, most famously John 14:6: "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to God except through me." Also well known is Acts 4:12, which says about Jesus, "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved." We can understand these as expressions of both truth and devotion.
Truth: the path seen in Jesus is the way--the path of death and resurrection, that path of dying to an old identity and way of being and being born into a new identity and way of being that lies at the heart of Christianity and the other religions. This is "the way" expressed in Christian form. For us as Christians, Jesus is the way, even though not the only expression of the way.
Devotion: to say Jesus is the "only way" is also the language of devotion. It is the language of gratitude and love. It is like language used by lovers, as when we say to our beloved, "You're the most beautiful person in the world." Literally? Most beautiful? Really? Such language is "the poetry of devotion and the hyperbole of the heart." Poetry can express the truth of the heart, but it is not doctrine. And such language, when not hardened into doctrine can continue to express Christian devotion. To echo Krister Stendahl again, we can sing our love songs to Jesus with wild abandon without needing to demean other religions.
When a Christian seeker asked the Dalai Lama whether she should become a Buddhist, his response, which I paraphrase was: "No, become more deeply Christian; live more deeply into your own tradition." Huston Smith makes the same point with the metaphor of digging a well: if what you're looking for is water, better to dig one well sixty feet deep than to dig six wells ten feet deep. By living more deeply into our own tradition as a sacrament of the sacred, we become more centered in the one to who the tradition points an in whom we live and move an have our being."
-Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pg. 215
Within this framework, what happens to the passages in the New Testament that proclaim Jesus to be "the only way"? We should remember that they are relatively few. Moreover, passages in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament suggest a larger view of God's presence and accessibility. But the "only way" passages are there, most famously John 14:6: "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to God except through me." Also well known is Acts 4:12, which says about Jesus, "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved." We can understand these as expressions of both truth and devotion.
Truth: the path seen in Jesus is the way--the path of death and resurrection, that path of dying to an old identity and way of being and being born into a new identity and way of being that lies at the heart of Christianity and the other religions. This is "the way" expressed in Christian form. For us as Christians, Jesus is the way, even though not the only expression of the way.
Devotion: to say Jesus is the "only way" is also the language of devotion. It is the language of gratitude and love. It is like language used by lovers, as when we say to our beloved, "You're the most beautiful person in the world." Literally? Most beautiful? Really? Such language is "the poetry of devotion and the hyperbole of the heart." Poetry can express the truth of the heart, but it is not doctrine. And such language, when not hardened into doctrine can continue to express Christian devotion. To echo Krister Stendahl again, we can sing our love songs to Jesus with wild abandon without needing to demean other religions.
When a Christian seeker asked the Dalai Lama whether she should become a Buddhist, his response, which I paraphrase was: "No, become more deeply Christian; live more deeply into your own tradition." Huston Smith makes the same point with the metaphor of digging a well: if what you're looking for is water, better to dig one well sixty feet deep than to dig six wells ten feet deep. By living more deeply into our own tradition as a sacrament of the sacred, we become more centered in the one to who the tradition points an in whom we live and move an have our being."
-Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pg. 215
Saint or Communist
To paraphrase Roman Catholic bishop Dom Helder Camara from Brazil: "When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint; when I asked why there were so many poor, they called me a communist."
-Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pg.201
Faith and Works
We are saved by "faith," not "works." To many Protestants, practices sound like "works." But the point of practice is not to earn one's salvation by accumulating merit by "works." Rather, practice is about paying attention to God.
Christian practice is about walking with God, becoming kind, and doing justice. It is not about believing in God and being a good person; it is about how one becomes a good person through the practice of loving God.
-Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pg. 188, 205
Christian practice is about walking with God, becoming kind, and doing justice. It is not about believing in God and being a good person; it is about how one becomes a good person through the practice of loving God.
-Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pg. 188, 205
Eternal Life Now
Though [John's gospel] affirms life after death, his phrase "eternal life" does not mean primarily that. The English phrase translates to a Greek phrase that in turn expresses a Jewish notion: "the life of the age to come." "Eternal life" means "the life of the age to come." Thus, for example, John 3:16 could be translated
[Importantly] in John, "eternal life" is often spoken of in the present tense. "The life of the age to come" has come. It is here. Eternal life does not refer to the unending time beyond death, but to something that can be known now. "This is eternal life," John affirms, and then adds, "to Know God." To know God in the present is to experience the life of the age to come. It is a present reality for John, even as it also involves a future destiny. We can know it now, experience it now. The point is that even John's language about "eternal life" has a strong present dimension.
-Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pg. 175
For God so loved the world that God gave God's only begotten Son; whoever believes in him shall not perish, but shall have the life of the age to come.
[Importantly] in John, "eternal life" is often spoken of in the present tense. "The life of the age to come" has come. It is here. Eternal life does not refer to the unending time beyond death, but to something that can be known now. "This is eternal life," John affirms, and then adds, "to Know God." To know God in the present is to experience the life of the age to come. It is a present reality for John, even as it also involves a future destiny. We can know it now, experience it now. The point is that even John's language about "eternal life" has a strong present dimension.
-Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pg. 175
Spending time in "thin places"
The Christian life is about the "hatching of the heart," the opening of the self to the Spirit of God by spending time in "thin places"--those places and practices through which we become open to and nourished by the Mystery in whom we live and move and have our being.
-Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pg. 161
-Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pg. 161
In Defense of Drone Prayer
When we pray the Lord's Prayer together, the point is not to "think hard" about the meanings of the words and to mean them. As a child, I remember being told that it was important not simply to say the Lord's prayer, but to pray the Lord's Prayer--that is, to really mean it. So my attention became focused on thinking hard about the words. I no longer say or pray the Lord's Prayer in such an effortful manner. Rather, the point is to let the drone of these words that we know by heart become a think place. For Simone Weil, one of the twentieth century's remarkable Western spiritual figures, saying Lord's Prayer consistently brought her into a thin place, and not because she was paying attention to the meaning of the words.
-Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pg. 159
-Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pg. 159
Monday, April 25, 2016
Worship as a "Thin Place"
Worship can become a thin place. Indeed, this is one of its primary purposes. Of course, worship is about praising God. but worship is not about God needing praise. I recall hearing a radio preacher talking about how "God just loves to be praised." He made God sound like a narcissist. Rather, worship has the power to draw us out of ourselves. Worship is directed to God, but is in an important sense, for us.
-Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pg. 157
-Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pg. 157
God's Justice vs. God's Mercy?
[One reason we have overlooked God's passion for justice] is because of a common misunderstanding of "God's Justice." Theologically, we have often seen its opposite as "God's mercy." "God's justice" is understood as God's deserved punishment of us for our sins, "God's mercy" as God's loving forgiveness of us in spite of our guilt. Given this choice, we would all prefer God's mercy and hope to escape God's justice. But seeing the opposite of justice as mercy distorts what the Bible means by justice. Most often in the bible, the opposite of God's justice is not God's mercy, but human injustice. The issue is the shape of our life together as societies, not whether the mercy of God will supersede the justice of God in the final judgement."
-Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pg. 127
-Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, pg. 127
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