Dissonance
While Peters is right, and creatively so, to suggest a reconstructive third reading to Ricouer’s critical second one, and to do so manifestly as a hopeful gesture, one wonders if, in too easily returning to rest and reassurance he has somewhat missed the rigors and possibilities of that troublesome second glance. In finding a strange new shore he seems sometimes to have, like Chesterton’s wandering British sailor, once again discovered London.
“What is needed is a theological method that assumes that both ancient and modern understandings belong to a single and more inclusive tradition-history – to a single story – and that this…will eventually participate in one comprehensive story of humankind on earth” (16). The very sentence might make Hegel stand up and shout for joy, but this is precisely the solution that postmodern consciousness prohibits.
There is no Story. They are only stories, which may indeed be greater than the sum or their parts but which one finds it almost impossible to imagine that they will ever coalesce. What this means for Christianity may indeed be troubling, but one does not get to post-postmodernism by leaping over Derridean wastes and claiming the journey was comprehensive.
The coming of the Kingdom of God is not a super-card that trumps all others on the deck – not because it is or isn’t true but because of our ability or inability to recognize it when it happens.
The cross might seem a transcendent symbol to us because of its Pauline provenance, but what of the legendary account of the island monks who followed Christ’s teachings but because of their isolation failed to hear of his death? Was their faith, would their faith have been, necessarily diminished? Is their story denied a place, bereft of protean power because it must endure with loaves and fishes?
And while the gospel might well be key to understanding reality, as I’m willing to wager, one must recall that we have no gospel but four gospels and non-identical gospels in the mouths of Jesus and of Paul. Surely these need not participate in one comprehensive story to be meaningful or right or Christian. Perhaps we need only to know good news when we hear it, and the gospels are no less gospel for being multiple.
Christian symbols are not magic, nor are any symbols magically Christian; simply, symbols either resonate or they do not. Surely a powerful message could be conveyed by the image of an empty tomb. The Christian symbols that Peters claims to “exist at the inbetween where the ineffable God beyond touches the mundane realm in which we live” are left quite unspecified (28). Perhaps we are all supposed to be thinking of the same things, and perhaps we do.
But if we do not, then we are left in a situation where those with access to Peter’s particular set of symbols become the sole bridge by which we might access God, a troublesome arrangement. What he seems to have gained in reassurance, the rest of us might have lost in doubt. We are put back in the desert, which is indeed hard to endure.
But surely one way to beat the desert of critical doubt is not to place faith in symbols, be they Christian or not, but in the reality of feast and flesh in which God biblically dwells and to claim that faith is the orientation of an entire person rather than reliance on a particular imagination.
Another way might be to realize that there is no escape, that doubt must always accompany faith, as Peters admits, not because of a particularly modern consciousness but because of the eternal impoverishment of words; faith must always accompany doubt as well, or it would simply be disbelief. Doubt and desert are both semi-fictions, they are like bad movies only loosely based on actual events.
The desert is not desert to those who live there; to them it is simply home. With trust in God, water springs from stones; that is the very moral of the story. Here then might lie a better third reading (not that premodern plus post/modern equals transmodern)! but that the very desert of the critical cannot, by its own definition, be absolute.
I gather that Peters in his obvious affinity for postmodern thought must understand this, but by insisting that we “emerge” from the critical consciousness he first said we cannot escape, he denies the full promise of our Christian wager and settles for a mediocre Bavarian painting when we might all have instead done much better.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Consonance: on Peter's 'God, the World's Future'
“Epigenic movement is understood as creative of the new, as self-organizing, as opening up new paths and rendering possible new choices, as creating freedom for the future…” (19).
So Peters articulates the possibilities inherent in our current intellectual climate, a summer not only of warmth but of promises that warmth will globally increase. The postmodern garden does not let ideas slide into calcified autumnal systems but encourages vine to spring from vine.
Gardeners have little to do and are not asked for, because the garden is more than the individual plants seeded in the modern spring. The plants, as they always do, are getting away from us, like the stream that bursts from the ground in Genesis, the one that even God does not ask for.
Now we lay aside our hoes, our plows and let the garden make its rules and exceed our expectations. For while the rules of the garden are entirely its own, they are quite relentless. “The pull of the future,’ is as essential to the life of an organism as the “push of the past…’” Whereas the chief components of the factory lose energy each time they operate and have never in any case overcome this problem, the plants of the garden move from seed to stem to seed because this is what they do.
The garden gardens. This occurs not because Garden falls to earth from Eden (there is no going back) nor because there is a Garden toward which all plants, in rising, must converge, (there is no telos) but because all the gardens to which all plants must contribute are always already gardening. There are only gardens which demand to be understood as such; everything else, by imposing, must reduce. There can be no more comprehending of them as particular plants or permutations of the soil.
What then of the gardener, without whom this tangling of vines is naught but wilderness? Little to do is not nothing to do. The garden by definition is not finished. It is growing. That is what gardens do. How is the garden gardening? It is growing toward itself, the vines are intertwining and might choke each other. Is this the true garden, where half its plants are dead? Or is the garden toward which the garden gardens in the imagination of the gardener?
He or she has seen the plan(t)s ahead of time, not in a schematic, but in perhaps a painting by Monet which the gardener does not want to replicate but to inspirate, to breathe in and through. He or she (or he and she) wishes to move the garden toward the garden that has moved them, the garden that this garden always could have been, and could still be, because this promise of a garden is the garden’s truest self, the one that they once planted not in determination but in hope and fear and trembling.
And, in all honesty, in some naivety. Monet never hoed a row in his entire life. His promised garden is a lie; it simply isn’t practical. So the gardeners must ask themselves if they would destroy the garden or the painting, and soon see that the assumptions of the painting cannot hold in a garden or at least not in this one. They might ask themselves if they are good gardeners or maybe even bad gardeners, if they have been wise or foolish with planting and with sun and water but the answers in a way do not matter because answers do not garden or make them better gardeners.
The painting, they decide, was only a beginning (however good it was). But they are not Monet and Monet was not a gardener. They have never seen a garden like Monet’s, however much they like it. Perhaps they despair a while as they realize that a garden in the mind is much different from a garden around the self and there is no necessary link between the two; it is too much to ask, too much to accomplish. The painting will stay a painting; the garden will remain in weeds.
But they should not lose heart! Because they do not have to garden Monet’s garden; they only have to plant the garden Monet inspired in them, and this is a very nearer thing. It is a risk, a peril; they are no longer planting from a drawing. But it is also guarantee, because now the garden growing can shape the growing garden of their minds.
Losing inspiration, they have found it restored twofold, they work from plan and plant in kind. They can stop worrying about their gardening and learn to love the garden, to ask: what does it need to be most beautiful, what can we do for this strange new wonder?
So Peters articulates the possibilities inherent in our current intellectual climate, a summer not only of warmth but of promises that warmth will globally increase. The postmodern garden does not let ideas slide into calcified autumnal systems but encourages vine to spring from vine.
Gardeners have little to do and are not asked for, because the garden is more than the individual plants seeded in the modern spring. The plants, as they always do, are getting away from us, like the stream that bursts from the ground in Genesis, the one that even God does not ask for.
Now we lay aside our hoes, our plows and let the garden make its rules and exceed our expectations. For while the rules of the garden are entirely its own, they are quite relentless. “The pull of the future,’ is as essential to the life of an organism as the “push of the past…’” Whereas the chief components of the factory lose energy each time they operate and have never in any case overcome this problem, the plants of the garden move from seed to stem to seed because this is what they do.
The garden gardens. This occurs not because Garden falls to earth from Eden (there is no going back) nor because there is a Garden toward which all plants, in rising, must converge, (there is no telos) but because all the gardens to which all plants must contribute are always already gardening. There are only gardens which demand to be understood as such; everything else, by imposing, must reduce. There can be no more comprehending of them as particular plants or permutations of the soil.
What then of the gardener, without whom this tangling of vines is naught but wilderness? Little to do is not nothing to do. The garden by definition is not finished. It is growing. That is what gardens do. How is the garden gardening? It is growing toward itself, the vines are intertwining and might choke each other. Is this the true garden, where half its plants are dead? Or is the garden toward which the garden gardens in the imagination of the gardener?
He or she has seen the plan(t)s ahead of time, not in a schematic, but in perhaps a painting by Monet which the gardener does not want to replicate but to inspirate, to breathe in and through. He or she (or he and she) wishes to move the garden toward the garden that has moved them, the garden that this garden always could have been, and could still be, because this promise of a garden is the garden’s truest self, the one that they once planted not in determination but in hope and fear and trembling.
And, in all honesty, in some naivety. Monet never hoed a row in his entire life. His promised garden is a lie; it simply isn’t practical. So the gardeners must ask themselves if they would destroy the garden or the painting, and soon see that the assumptions of the painting cannot hold in a garden or at least not in this one. They might ask themselves if they are good gardeners or maybe even bad gardeners, if they have been wise or foolish with planting and with sun and water but the answers in a way do not matter because answers do not garden or make them better gardeners.
The painting, they decide, was only a beginning (however good it was). But they are not Monet and Monet was not a gardener. They have never seen a garden like Monet’s, however much they like it. Perhaps they despair a while as they realize that a garden in the mind is much different from a garden around the self and there is no necessary link between the two; it is too much to ask, too much to accomplish. The painting will stay a painting; the garden will remain in weeds.
But they should not lose heart! Because they do not have to garden Monet’s garden; they only have to plant the garden Monet inspired in them, and this is a very nearer thing. It is a risk, a peril; they are no longer planting from a drawing. But it is also guarantee, because now the garden growing can shape the growing garden of their minds.
Losing inspiration, they have found it restored twofold, they work from plan and plant in kind. They can stop worrying about their gardening and learn to love the garden, to ask: what does it need to be most beautiful, what can we do for this strange new wonder?
Friday, August 21, 2009
Editorial: A Number of Positions on Homosexuality
Well. No one has ever asked the question of me, thank goodness. And I've tried, personally, to avoid addressing the matter at all, because my curiosity centers much more around the affairs of God than the affairs of church polity. But the buzz about the current Lutheran conference, including the insinuation of some that God sent an F0 tornado down upon the very building the conference is held in (really? F0? Is that all the smiting our God goes in for anymore?) - these events, as well as long brewing in the Episcopal and Methodist churches, have prompted a lot of thinking on my part.
And now, God help us, I finally need to vent.
To wit: when considering the nature of sin and questions of sinfulness, I try always to keep in mind the principle of self-first. That is, to ponder the plank in my own eye before elaborating overmuch on the faults of others - the same principle Dostoevsky captured marvelously in the Brothers Karamazov: "make yourself responsible for all the sins of men...the moment you make yourself sincerely responsible for everything and everyone, you will see at once that it is really so, that it is you who are guilty on behalf of all and for all."
So: While I do, in fact, against the general trend of American Anglican thought, still view homosexual intercourse to be sinful, my first and largest thought is that it simply is a sin toward which I am not prone. It is not much of my affair. I have plenty of others, so many that my first impulse is, rightly or not, not toward judgment. I don't have it in me to condemn. I don't have the ground to stand on, or the heart to do it. It's simply the way I am.
And to the largest degree possible, I believe it is the way which Christians ought to be. If anyone sins, to some very real degree it is our fault and our responsibility, because the line between we and they is anything but solid.
I only believe what I do about homosexuality because, having wrangled with the pertinent scriptures, I cannot see my way clear of their implications. I am not impressed by the counter-interpretations, and cannot imagine that the biblical writers were only thinking of particular homosexual behavioral instances.
The variety and contextuality of the passages are the very things that convince me that homosexual relations are sins in the eyes of God, Old and New Testament alike. Until new evidence comes to light, I do not see how a clear-eyed and pragmatic reading of Scripture can come to any other conclusion, though I understand that many believe differently.
But what I also do not see is where Scripture proclaims what precisely we ought to do about it. Clearly, after Christ we are going to stone no one. Which is not to say that sin now goes unpunished and everyone runs around doing what they want without consequence, but it is to say that the drift of Scripture places judgment less and less into human hands and more and more into the hands of God alone. In fact, it might be said that that was the very mission of Christ: our salvation is our judgment, and both of these are entirely in the hands of Our Lord.
Now of course, every community must engage in gatekeeping, and the church is no exception. Paul rightly urges the early churches to spurn those who threaten the community itself. They must be turned out. But I've heard no one say that homosexuals just by their presence in worship or in the pulpit threaten the integrity of the body of Christ.
But you can go to church with homosexuals. They don't do anything differently than anyone else. They sing the same songs, say the same prayers, preach the same sermons, serve the same Eucharist. If they gossip and backbite and slander, I'm sure they do so not because they're homosexual, but simply because they want to belong. There is nothing noteworthy about them, except, of course, that they are made in the image of God, for which everyone is at least worth mentioning.
You see, no one ever actually deals with homosexuals, anymore than anyone meets with the African American race, or the Universal Hispanic Alliance. One only ever really meets individuals. Those are the people with which you have to deal. You can ignore politics to whatever degree you are able, but you have to deal with Mary and Martin and Joe and Kate - whatever their characters, whatever their affiliations. We are all individuals always meeting, or failing to meet, other individuals. When my Methodist mentor heard about the ordination of Gene Robinson, the gay bishop recently ordained in New Hampshire, and wondered what I thought, I could only say "I hope he's a good bishop."
I believe that is precisely on the level at which Christ would have made the determination, and perhaps part of the reason Jesus never addressed the topic himself. To some degree, it's a nonsensical question. Homosexuals aren't, so far as I know, part of an institution that hypocritically judges people the way the Pharisees were, or part of an idolatrous and self-congratulatory nation that heaps wealth upon itself at the expense of widows, aliens and orphans the way Israel did. And if "they" are, their sexual behavior likely has nothing to do with it. If there's any issue unlikely to be a good basis of sorting and condemning human beings, it's sexuality, which manifests itself in people so individually, so interiorally, and so varyingly over the course of a lifetime.
I mean, it strikes me that the central question here isn't one of sexuality at all, but one of Docetism. The unspoken question I hear is whether or not we're going to let homosexuals sit in our pews, stand in our wedding chapels, preach from our pulpits, and chair our ecumenical conferences, or whatever it is that bishops do.
Thankfully, the question of church participation has been answered for two thousand years, at least since Augustine. Sinners get to preach. Wretches get to serve the Eucharist. Righteousness is not a condition for participation in the body of Christ, though it is of course something of the purpose.
Whether or not one's sins are publicly visible is only a distracting point. I hear that the number of male pastors, preachers, and priests who habitually view images of naked women over the internet is very much ungodly. Should they remain? Maybe, maybe not. I believe the least we would grant them were their proclivities known is a trial by character, an assessment of an entire person and their work. Were their habits to remain secret, I believe the very least we would offer them would be a lone accounting with their God.
I think we should extend the same two deals to closeted and open homosexuals. I believe it is their right as human beings and creations of our God. I cannot understand how straight people of any stripe could deploy one sin and condemn whole swaths of society because their sins happen to be somewhat more public. Does a homosexual make a worse priest than an embezzler, or an adulterer? Than anyone else equally qualified?
After all, the problem, from a Christian perspective, with the Scarlet Letter was not that she got one, but that everyone didn't. We don't get to treat people differently because we happen to know what their sins are, while ours remain more private.
The issue of repentance is equally distracting. We all know from celebrities, politicians, and athletes the value of public contrition, which is virtually nill. True repentance is ceasing the behavior. We are all unrepentant sinners. If we weren't, we would live in a very different world. Our confessions are as flawed and human and limited and imperfect and sin-stained as the rest of us - and nonetheless by grace we are welcomed into the body and bride of Christ, because Jesus himself welcomes us.
God loves a penitent heart, but are we ourselves not to love every heart?
It is true that, were I to hear a sermon preaching the rightness of homosexual congress, I would view that teaching as in error. But, notwithstanding that I can't imagine any such thing in the church I currently attend, it would only be about the three thousandth sermon preached in America eschewing biblical principles for the idiosyncratic follies of any particular moment. Preachers and bishops are often wrong. But they are never wrong for being who they are, but only what they say and do. Their bare presence is not a political or religious utterance until we or they make it one. Clerics are not statements. They are people, human individuals.
The idea that we cannot countenance any such is the most unbiblical teaching I might imagine. We don't get to deny anyone anything we claim for ourselves; this is the essence of the Golden Rule. If this is marriage, then it is marriage, flawed and sinful as it might be. If this is Eucharist, this is Eucharist, however compromised and imperfect the breaking of the bread. If this is positions of church authority, then it is positions of church authority, even for the sinners in our midst.
We always hear that the laws of this nation are based on a Judeo-Christian ethic, a thought which continually strikes me odd, as the Christian ethic is an entirely non-litigious one, and the lawerly scribes and Pharisees were precisely those that Christ condemned. It was the equation of law and morality that Christ overturned, because the law always fails to address the particularities of the human heart and must condemn people without considering God's own greater judgments, because it cannot know them. So, the ponderings of conferences aside, I think we might at least have a run at eschewing legalized morality within our church.
So what do I propose? I guess I would like to introduce not so much a specific policy as a series of guidelines that I wish Christians would adopt.
First, deal with your own particular sins; when considering others, be slow to judge, swift to forgive, and quicker still to love.
Second, treat in individuals rather than political bodies; love the image of God in each person, because that is the only way you're ever going to see it.
Third, accept the universality of sin and show no preference for private over public unrighteousness; many are invited, but few are chosen. The inviting must come first, and it must be authentic.
And fourth: unless specifically acting to counteract an existing policy, establish no writ concerning homosexuals or their practices one way or the other. Even the Golden Rule isn't good legislation, and polity cannot possibly address the issue of conscience, and might lead to us being similarly judged by God himself.
And no one wants that.
And now, God help us, I finally need to vent.
To wit: when considering the nature of sin and questions of sinfulness, I try always to keep in mind the principle of self-first. That is, to ponder the plank in my own eye before elaborating overmuch on the faults of others - the same principle Dostoevsky captured marvelously in the Brothers Karamazov: "make yourself responsible for all the sins of men...the moment you make yourself sincerely responsible for everything and everyone, you will see at once that it is really so, that it is you who are guilty on behalf of all and for all."
So: While I do, in fact, against the general trend of American Anglican thought, still view homosexual intercourse to be sinful, my first and largest thought is that it simply is a sin toward which I am not prone. It is not much of my affair. I have plenty of others, so many that my first impulse is, rightly or not, not toward judgment. I don't have it in me to condemn. I don't have the ground to stand on, or the heart to do it. It's simply the way I am.
And to the largest degree possible, I believe it is the way which Christians ought to be. If anyone sins, to some very real degree it is our fault and our responsibility, because the line between we and they is anything but solid.
I only believe what I do about homosexuality because, having wrangled with the pertinent scriptures, I cannot see my way clear of their implications. I am not impressed by the counter-interpretations, and cannot imagine that the biblical writers were only thinking of particular homosexual behavioral instances.
The variety and contextuality of the passages are the very things that convince me that homosexual relations are sins in the eyes of God, Old and New Testament alike. Until new evidence comes to light, I do not see how a clear-eyed and pragmatic reading of Scripture can come to any other conclusion, though I understand that many believe differently.
But what I also do not see is where Scripture proclaims what precisely we ought to do about it. Clearly, after Christ we are going to stone no one. Which is not to say that sin now goes unpunished and everyone runs around doing what they want without consequence, but it is to say that the drift of Scripture places judgment less and less into human hands and more and more into the hands of God alone. In fact, it might be said that that was the very mission of Christ: our salvation is our judgment, and both of these are entirely in the hands of Our Lord.
Now of course, every community must engage in gatekeeping, and the church is no exception. Paul rightly urges the early churches to spurn those who threaten the community itself. They must be turned out. But I've heard no one say that homosexuals just by their presence in worship or in the pulpit threaten the integrity of the body of Christ.
But you can go to church with homosexuals. They don't do anything differently than anyone else. They sing the same songs, say the same prayers, preach the same sermons, serve the same Eucharist. If they gossip and backbite and slander, I'm sure they do so not because they're homosexual, but simply because they want to belong. There is nothing noteworthy about them, except, of course, that they are made in the image of God, for which everyone is at least worth mentioning.
You see, no one ever actually deals with homosexuals, anymore than anyone meets with the African American race, or the Universal Hispanic Alliance. One only ever really meets individuals. Those are the people with which you have to deal. You can ignore politics to whatever degree you are able, but you have to deal with Mary and Martin and Joe and Kate - whatever their characters, whatever their affiliations. We are all individuals always meeting, or failing to meet, other individuals. When my Methodist mentor heard about the ordination of Gene Robinson, the gay bishop recently ordained in New Hampshire, and wondered what I thought, I could only say "I hope he's a good bishop."
I believe that is precisely on the level at which Christ would have made the determination, and perhaps part of the reason Jesus never addressed the topic himself. To some degree, it's a nonsensical question. Homosexuals aren't, so far as I know, part of an institution that hypocritically judges people the way the Pharisees were, or part of an idolatrous and self-congratulatory nation that heaps wealth upon itself at the expense of widows, aliens and orphans the way Israel did. And if "they" are, their sexual behavior likely has nothing to do with it. If there's any issue unlikely to be a good basis of sorting and condemning human beings, it's sexuality, which manifests itself in people so individually, so interiorally, and so varyingly over the course of a lifetime.
I mean, it strikes me that the central question here isn't one of sexuality at all, but one of Docetism. The unspoken question I hear is whether or not we're going to let homosexuals sit in our pews, stand in our wedding chapels, preach from our pulpits, and chair our ecumenical conferences, or whatever it is that bishops do.
Thankfully, the question of church participation has been answered for two thousand years, at least since Augustine. Sinners get to preach. Wretches get to serve the Eucharist. Righteousness is not a condition for participation in the body of Christ, though it is of course something of the purpose.
Whether or not one's sins are publicly visible is only a distracting point. I hear that the number of male pastors, preachers, and priests who habitually view images of naked women over the internet is very much ungodly. Should they remain? Maybe, maybe not. I believe the least we would grant them were their proclivities known is a trial by character, an assessment of an entire person and their work. Were their habits to remain secret, I believe the very least we would offer them would be a lone accounting with their God.
I think we should extend the same two deals to closeted and open homosexuals. I believe it is their right as human beings and creations of our God. I cannot understand how straight people of any stripe could deploy one sin and condemn whole swaths of society because their sins happen to be somewhat more public. Does a homosexual make a worse priest than an embezzler, or an adulterer? Than anyone else equally qualified?
After all, the problem, from a Christian perspective, with the Scarlet Letter was not that she got one, but that everyone didn't. We don't get to treat people differently because we happen to know what their sins are, while ours remain more private.
The issue of repentance is equally distracting. We all know from celebrities, politicians, and athletes the value of public contrition, which is virtually nill. True repentance is ceasing the behavior. We are all unrepentant sinners. If we weren't, we would live in a very different world. Our confessions are as flawed and human and limited and imperfect and sin-stained as the rest of us - and nonetheless by grace we are welcomed into the body and bride of Christ, because Jesus himself welcomes us.
God loves a penitent heart, but are we ourselves not to love every heart?
It is true that, were I to hear a sermon preaching the rightness of homosexual congress, I would view that teaching as in error. But, notwithstanding that I can't imagine any such thing in the church I currently attend, it would only be about the three thousandth sermon preached in America eschewing biblical principles for the idiosyncratic follies of any particular moment. Preachers and bishops are often wrong. But they are never wrong for being who they are, but only what they say and do. Their bare presence is not a political or religious utterance until we or they make it one. Clerics are not statements. They are people, human individuals.
The idea that we cannot countenance any such is the most unbiblical teaching I might imagine. We don't get to deny anyone anything we claim for ourselves; this is the essence of the Golden Rule. If this is marriage, then it is marriage, flawed and sinful as it might be. If this is Eucharist, this is Eucharist, however compromised and imperfect the breaking of the bread. If this is positions of church authority, then it is positions of church authority, even for the sinners in our midst.
We always hear that the laws of this nation are based on a Judeo-Christian ethic, a thought which continually strikes me odd, as the Christian ethic is an entirely non-litigious one, and the lawerly scribes and Pharisees were precisely those that Christ condemned. It was the equation of law and morality that Christ overturned, because the law always fails to address the particularities of the human heart and must condemn people without considering God's own greater judgments, because it cannot know them. So, the ponderings of conferences aside, I think we might at least have a run at eschewing legalized morality within our church.
So what do I propose? I guess I would like to introduce not so much a specific policy as a series of guidelines that I wish Christians would adopt.
First, deal with your own particular sins; when considering others, be slow to judge, swift to forgive, and quicker still to love.
Second, treat in individuals rather than political bodies; love the image of God in each person, because that is the only way you're ever going to see it.
Third, accept the universality of sin and show no preference for private over public unrighteousness; many are invited, but few are chosen. The inviting must come first, and it must be authentic.
And fourth: unless specifically acting to counteract an existing policy, establish no writ concerning homosexuals or their practices one way or the other. Even the Golden Rule isn't good legislation, and polity cannot possibly address the issue of conscience, and might lead to us being similarly judged by God himself.
And no one wants that.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Notice: Summer Hiatus
Well, people, I've finally cracked. With my transfer from Me University to Luther Seminary well underway, I'm hiatusing this blog to spend the summer focusing on my two friggin' novels and that television script you've never heard about, as well as a probable class on Atonement Theory at the church.
Oh yes, dear readers, I have other interests! I may or may not take the opportunity to share serialized versions of one of those mentioned novels here, as they are in fact religiously-themed works. I'll have to think about how proprietary I actually feel.
Meantime, I wholeheartedly apologize to the spring semester. I did the readings, but never had time to jot down my notes. Perhaps, when I'm taking notes and writing papers for official credit, the posting will come easier.
Oh yes, dear readers, I have other interests! I may or may not take the opportunity to share serialized versions of one of those mentioned novels here, as they are in fact religiously-themed works. I'll have to think about how proprietary I actually feel.
Meantime, I wholeheartedly apologize to the spring semester. I did the readings, but never had time to jot down my notes. Perhaps, when I'm taking notes and writing papers for official credit, the posting will come easier.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
From the Lectionary: The Readings for Sunday, May 17
Acts 10:44-48
44While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. 45The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, 46for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, 47"Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?" 48So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days.
Psalm 98:1-9
1O sing to the Lord a new song,
for he has done marvelous things.
His right hand and his holy arm
have gotten him victory.
2The Lord has made known his victory;
he has revealed his vindication in the sight of the nations.
3He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness
to the house of Israel.
All the ends of the earth have seen
the victory of our God.
4Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth;
break forth into joyous song and sing praises.
5Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre,
with the lyre and the sound of melody.
6With trumpets and the sound of the horn
make a joyful noise before the King, the Lord.
7Let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
the world and those who live in it.
8Let the floods clap their hands;
let the hills sing together for joy
9at the presence of the Lord, for he is coming
to judge the earth.
He will judge the world with righteousness,
and the peoples with equity.
1 John 5:1-6
1Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. 2By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. 3For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, 4for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. 5Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
6This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth.
John 15:9-17
9As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.10If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. 11I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
12"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another."
44While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. 45The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, 46for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, 47"Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?" 48So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days.
Psalm 98:1-9
1O sing to the Lord a new song,
for he has done marvelous things.
His right hand and his holy arm
have gotten him victory.
2The Lord has made known his victory;
he has revealed his vindication in the sight of the nations.
3He has remembered his steadfast love and faithfulness
to the house of Israel.
All the ends of the earth have seen
the victory of our God.
4Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth;
break forth into joyous song and sing praises.
5Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre,
with the lyre and the sound of melody.
6With trumpets and the sound of the horn
make a joyful noise before the King, the Lord.
7Let the sea roar, and all that fills it;
the world and those who live in it.
8Let the floods clap their hands;
let the hills sing together for joy
9at the presence of the Lord, for he is coming
to judge the earth.
He will judge the world with righteousness,
and the peoples with equity.
1 John 5:1-6
1Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. 2By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. 3For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, 4for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. 5Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
6This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth.
John 15:9-17
9As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.10If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. 11I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.
12"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another."
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Crisis: An Aging Population
Crisis: In 2001 the average age of retirement hit a minimum of 63, and the bottom of a fifty year decline. Since Reagan's social security forms have taken effect, it has risen and is scheduled to continue to rise. Within the next fifty years, experts predict that a significant number of people will never retire, but will remain productive and active workers until their deaths. The number of elderly in the developed world will continue to increase both absolutely and proportionately for the foreseeable future. Despite these trends, and despite their considerable political power, elderly people remain on the fringes of mainstream society.
This is going to change. Not only is the average human life span continuing to increase, medical advances can and will allow elderly people to remain active and successful far longer than at any time in history. The current generation will live 5-10 percent longer than their parents. Even if 120 years represent a firm ceiling to human lifespan, and even if no medical breakthroughs contain or eliminate serious diseases, these trends will occur simply as existing sanitation, nutrition, and health education and genetic knowledge spread around the world. The generation of baby-boomers will be the most active and youthful-appearing elders the human race has ever seen.
Their retirement and that of following generations will take place later in life, with less of a break in relationship to ordinary work, and with the assumption that people will continue work in some form. Retirement will put few people out to pasture, but will be a time for people to use their experience, intelligence, and success to create new lives for themselves. (Thirty years of doing the crossword is going to seem a bit much for anyone.)
This cannot happen without broader effects on society. People who expect to live longer have babies later. The birthrate will hold, but the next population explosion will be of old people. Organizations, the competitive ones, at least, will embrace the wealth of experience, adaptability, and world-wisdom that only older people can accumulate. (22 percent of job growth since 1995 has been people over 55, already). Older workers who aren't about to retire represent less of a risk (and, statistically, less of an average health-care cost than young families) in any marketplace, and they will integrate into the mainstream - just as information economies start requiring less physical stamina anyway.
Knowledge workers today will be hired for up to six different careers throughout their lives, and two or more of them will come after age 55. (The fastest growing population of Internet users? the over 50 crowd). Social security will not be a pension, but a stipend. This will of course loom large in a world of increasing health-care costs and mounting differences between rich and poor. Yet, everyone's health will be better, because health technologies decline in price the same way technologies do - think of laser eye surgery. It's not that poor people's medical care will get worse, it's that expensive medical care will get so much better so quickly.
*bonus crisis: 6.5 million American people, mostly older black men, are about to be released from long-term prison sentences begun in the mid-1980's, having been arrested almost entirely for drug activity. They are poorly educated, tied to impoverished communities if any, have poor work histories, will be too old to return to crime, are for the most part ineligible for social security, and are unprepared and untrained for life outside of prison. Their releases will start in a wave in 2010. Some American cities are about to be inundated by aging former felons. They will have few if any prospects. What on Earth are these people going to do?
This is going to change. Not only is the average human life span continuing to increase, medical advances can and will allow elderly people to remain active and successful far longer than at any time in history. The current generation will live 5-10 percent longer than their parents. Even if 120 years represent a firm ceiling to human lifespan, and even if no medical breakthroughs contain or eliminate serious diseases, these trends will occur simply as existing sanitation, nutrition, and health education and genetic knowledge spread around the world. The generation of baby-boomers will be the most active and youthful-appearing elders the human race has ever seen.
Their retirement and that of following generations will take place later in life, with less of a break in relationship to ordinary work, and with the assumption that people will continue work in some form. Retirement will put few people out to pasture, but will be a time for people to use their experience, intelligence, and success to create new lives for themselves. (Thirty years of doing the crossword is going to seem a bit much for anyone.)
This cannot happen without broader effects on society. People who expect to live longer have babies later. The birthrate will hold, but the next population explosion will be of old people. Organizations, the competitive ones, at least, will embrace the wealth of experience, adaptability, and world-wisdom that only older people can accumulate. (22 percent of job growth since 1995 has been people over 55, already). Older workers who aren't about to retire represent less of a risk (and, statistically, less of an average health-care cost than young families) in any marketplace, and they will integrate into the mainstream - just as information economies start requiring less physical stamina anyway.
Knowledge workers today will be hired for up to six different careers throughout their lives, and two or more of them will come after age 55. (The fastest growing population of Internet users? the over 50 crowd). Social security will not be a pension, but a stipend. This will of course loom large in a world of increasing health-care costs and mounting differences between rich and poor. Yet, everyone's health will be better, because health technologies decline in price the same way technologies do - think of laser eye surgery. It's not that poor people's medical care will get worse, it's that expensive medical care will get so much better so quickly.
*bonus crisis: 6.5 million American people, mostly older black men, are about to be released from long-term prison sentences begun in the mid-1980's, having been arrested almost entirely for drug activity. They are poorly educated, tied to impoverished communities if any, have poor work histories, will be too old to return to crime, are for the most part ineligible for social security, and are unprepared and untrained for life outside of prison. Their releases will start in a wave in 2010. Some American cities are about to be inundated by aging former felons. They will have few if any prospects. What on Earth are these people going to do?
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
From the Lectionary: The Readings for Sunday, May 10
Acts 8:26-40
8:26 Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." (This is a wilderness road.) 8:27 So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship 8:28 and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah.
8:29 Then the Spirit said to Philip, "Go over to this chariot and join it." 8:30 So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" 8:31 He replied, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him.
8:32 Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: "Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. 8:33 In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth." 8:34 The eunuch asked Philip, "About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?" 8:35 Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.
8:36 As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, "Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?" 8:38 He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. 8:39 When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. 8:40 But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.
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Psalm 22:25-31
22:25 From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
22:26 The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the LORD. May your hearts live forever!
22:27 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.
22:28 For dominion belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations.
22:29 To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him.
22:30 Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord,
22:31 and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.
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1 John 4:7-21
4:7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 4:8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 4:9 God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 4:10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 4:11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.
4:12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. 4:13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 4:14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. 4:15 God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. 4:16 So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
4:17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. 4:18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. 4:19 We love because he first loved us.4:20 Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.
4:21 The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
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John 15:1-8
15:1 "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. 15:2 He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. 15:3 You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. 15:4 Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 15:5 I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. 15:6 Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 15:7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 15:8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.
8:26 Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza." (This is a wilderness road.) 8:27 So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship 8:28 and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah.
8:29 Then the Spirit said to Philip, "Go over to this chariot and join it." 8:30 So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" 8:31 He replied, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him.
8:32 Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: "Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. 8:33 In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth." 8:34 The eunuch asked Philip, "About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?" 8:35 Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.
8:36 As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, "Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?" 8:38 He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. 8:39 When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. 8:40 But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.
[Return to top]
Psalm 22:25-31
22:25 From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
22:26 The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the LORD. May your hearts live forever!
22:27 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.
22:28 For dominion belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations.
22:29 To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him.
22:30 Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord,
22:31 and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.
[Return to top]
1 John 4:7-21
4:7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 4:8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 4:9 God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 4:10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 4:11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.
4:12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. 4:13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 4:14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. 4:15 God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. 4:16 So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
4:17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. 4:18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. 4:19 We love because he first loved us.4:20 Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.
4:21 The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
[Return to top]
John 15:1-8
15:1 "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. 15:2 He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. 15:3 You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. 15:4 Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 15:5 I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. 15:6 Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 15:7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 15:8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.
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