Finally.

An article from a leftist publication that acknowledges the unwillingness of the left to acknowledge the horrors of Iraq. This war is not Vietnam, this war is as just a war as the US has been involved in since Korea (and the last Iraq war). I have leftist ideals about achieving social justice in the world, and I also support the war on Iraq.

In the world of college basketball, a situation arose this week that parallels in many ways issues that are being faced within the church at large. St. Bonaventure University's basketball team came under criticism this week because of violations by the coaching staff and administration. The short version is they school pushed through an illegal junior college transfer, causing St. Bonaventure to forfeit past games and give up participation in post-season tournaments.

That isn't what was criticized, however. The criticism from the media this week has been brutal and swift against the players on the St. Bonaventure team, who decided not to play the rest of their games this season. This article epitomizes my thoughts on this perfectly: something is really out of whack. In my book, the players should be lauded, not scorned. Continuing the season would benefit a corrupt institution and a corrupt coach who screwed a team that worked hard all year.

This situation epitomizes the problems in college basketball. There is massive corruption, because it is a money-making institution for schools, coaches, and administrators. The players are pawns who receive no money but are expected to live up to a Greek mythological standard of athlete that is not applied to anyone else in the institution. The players should revolt. Their coach and college president turned their season into a mockery, and the players are just supposed to go along with it? NO. And again, NO!!!

This is how change comes - when people start to wake up to institutional flim-flam and refuse to go along with it. And the church is going to start experiencing this as well. The avalanche has begun in little ways across the country and the world, whether it is sexual indiscretions within the Catholic Church or denominational power grabs in Protestant circles. People are beginning to reject the church - I can only hope that out of the rubble will arise something beautiful.

I had a brainstorm today on the age-old concept of original sin. Original sin is the xian response to where sin comes from - why is everyone always messing things up? Why can't I ever get it right?

Original sin.

You were born/made that way.

The ancient response of people like Augustine was biological - we receive something from "Adam", i.e. being human, that predisposes us to sin. In contemporary times, that answer has been criticized. For people who still hold onto original sin, there is a different concept of what sin is: broken relationships. I like the idea of sin as broken relationships. It makes more sense of the grays that exist in life. However, both responses ignore the role of nature, the role of the body, etc. in our lives.

But I realized today that there may be more to the response of the ancient church than I've been willing to give credit for. We know today that as people we are little more than a web of relationships between particles, governed and built out of the code (DNA) that operates as a form of relationship itself. Perhaps we are genetically dispossed from true relationship.

So, here's the thing. The classic argument for sin was that with sin came death. Which makes me wonder about the predictions of Ray Kurzweil, or the scientific advances we are pushing towards medically. Science would seem to agree with the original sin arguments: the body isn't really of importance to human life. Think about Kurzweil's predictions: within the next 100 years we will be able to upload our brains and exist entirely on the interent, sans body. I think it's a great idea, but I'm beginning to wonder what happens to sin in that world...

Hmm...

I'm reading a book called The Wounded Heart of God by Andrew Sung Park for my Systematic Theology course right now. We were assigned this book to explore the Asian idea of han (scroll down for the han reference). Han is essentially an understanding of the collective unconscious response to sin in the world. It is the collective guilt, sorrow, and shame of sin lived out and reduplicating itself.

I am finding this concept tremendously useful, and I may have time to think about this longer. But I am really posting about this amazing statement I just read, here quoted in full from the book:

Unless we work through the individual and collective unconsciousness of the patriarchal value system, patriarchal expressions of oppression will continuously emerge in different forms. In the contemporary world, we see these expressions in anti-abortionism, autocratic behavior, and jingoism." (emphasis mine)

I guess this statement needs some background. From what I have seen so far, Park is especially concerned for the hidden ones, the voiceless, unrepresented, and ignored men and women who stand outside of the power structures withing communities. He is deeply troubled by patriarchy, infanticide, capitalism, etc. And yet...

...and yet he thinks that abortion is a good thing? That by opposing abortion myself I am bowing down to the dominant power structure? What is going on here?

I believe that in general, abortion is about power and control. Yes, there are circumstances where this is not the case, but in general, it is about power and control. The one(s) in power attempts to control the one with no voice, no power, no control. I talked some with the reg about this, and while he doesn't share my opinions on abortion, we both agree that there is at least some nuance to the issue.

I guess overall, my stance would be that han exists in abortion and in opposition to abortion. My pastoral experience with women who have had abortions tells me that there is something haunting about abortion. But let's be honest (as reg helpfully pointed out), our culture does not provide a safe place for women to maintain dignity and bring an illegitimate child to term. The moral issues are deep, intense, and cut both ways.

I understand that it is possible for anti-abortion to be patriarchal. But that does not make it universally so. Sometimes, abortion can be patriarchal.

So I am left again wondering why subtle, gentle, and penetrating minds (including my own - minus the subtle, gentle, and penetrating part) are constantly reduced to universal categories. Are we simply incapable of nuanced approaches to life?

A funny thing is happening.

I'm taking Systematic Theology right now, the class that ostensibly relates quite clearly to something I love. And despite the history of bad Systematic Theology courses in seminaries all over the world, this one isn't that bad. I enjoy my professor, the readings are ok, but there's a problem. I can't stand the class.

I've been doing some self-diagnosis, trying to figure out what is going on here. In class, we spend a great deal of time talking about the story of xian faith, and how that relates to the doctrines of xianity. We've talked about the doctrine of God, the trinity, basic theological stuff. And it seems utterly irrelevant. I find nothing of worth in our discussions or readings. I read about the trinity, and I'm left cold. It has no relevance to my faith.

Which makes me wonder about my faith. Is the problem in me, or is it in the old ways? My tendency is to blame everything but myself, but I wonder. Nevertheless, there is a visceral reaction within me against the things we are studying - which is the exact opposite of what is happening in my Post-Nicene Fathers class. I don't know what's going on, but I am beginning to think that there is something not quite right with this class. I'll have to think about it.

In response to my e-mail, Clayton sent me the following link to an article by Wendell Berry.

The article is in line with many things I've been reading lately, with Arianna Huffington at the forefront, about the need to rethink the wisdom of our policies across the board. The article doesn't change my perspective on the war - I probably lean a little more towards the war than Berry does, but our thoughts are very similar. On the other aspects of what Berry is saying, I am in complete agreement. America seems to be in a spiral of moral and political insanity, and it is really confusing to me why we are having such a difficult time reversing this trend.

As Huffington said in a recent article, this seems "blatantly obvious." And it is. So why can't we do anything about it? We have some serious moral and ethical issues that are simply brushed under the carpet. Hopefully, that won't last.

I know I'm not saying anything substantial today. Just read the article.

And on a different note, an e-mail I sent to a friend...

------------------------------
From: Peter Barnes
To: Clayton.H.McClintock
CC:
Date: 02/11/03 02:54 am
Subject: [Fwd: How many people that you know will be killed?]
Attachments:

This idiocy is exactly what I am lukewarm about.

There is absolutely no nuance to this current anti-war shit. To me,
there is a sense in which this is a justified war (Saddam brutalizing
his people and other countries), and there is a sense in which this is
not a justified war (it is a war for oil and political gain). For
crying out loud, why can't these people at least have the capacity to
understand that there is more to this debate than whether or not we will
be "killing thousands of people"

sorry, just ranting.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: How many people that you know will be killed?
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 02:26:12 -0400
From: Kristen Ackley
To: all_drew@drew.edu


Do you think that going to war with Iraq is a horrible idea? Stand up for what you believe in along with the rest of the world at the "World Says No to War" protest on Saturday, February 15 in NYC. The rally will take place at noon on First Avenue stretching north from 49th Street. Bring your friends and take the train in.

We need to make it clear to Bush that we will not go to war and that he needs to develop a plan that will not kill thousands of people.

It is interesting what happens to doctrines when they are read systematically. As the litany of perspectives on the nature of God and the manner/method/mode of divine revelation is discussed, they begin to blur. On my part, I sense a pattern that emerges from the rubble, a pattern that I never really noticed.

It really seems like the Barthian understanding of revelation (well, Brunner/Barthian) is *almost* a condescension of God to human understanding is descriptive of theological approaches to these issues. Barth’s revelation isn’t discussed too much, but I think it is similar to his views on Scripture, namely that the Bible is a witness to revelation. The key point though is that Scripture isn’t a witness by default – the witness occurs because God allows him/herself to be revealed through the Bible. Or, as McGrath describes Brunner’s beliefs: “Truth comes into being as the act of God in time and space” . What is important here is that revelation is personal, uniquely shaped to our individual perspective.

This is important, first because it gives the lie to Feuerbach’s critique of Christianity, namely that God is simply the externalization of human ideals, the eternal expansion of the “experience of the self”. Under my reading of Barth/Brunner, God is like Anselm’s proof of God – greater than we can conceive – but allows us to conceive divinity in personally meaningful ways. This reading makes Feuerbach’s critique (a powerful one, I might add) powerless because Feuerbach is looking at the human expression of revelation, rather than the underlying structure of revelation itself.

What am I saying? This may not be a Barthian argument per se, but basically I stand somewhere between process theology and orthodoxy – God doesn’t change, but our apprehension of God changes. What Aquinas said in the 1200’s holds little relevance for us now (of course he is grossly misrepresented by McGrath), yet still makes sense for some. It is both true and not true. Similarly, a feminist argument for the suffering in God is both true and not true. Does God suffer? I think so. But more importantly, sometimes we need God to suffer, so that revelation can match reality. God is more than a suffering God, but God is also a suffering God. Thus the use of feminine and suffering metaphors in the Old Testament – they point to a truth about God, but they certainly do not encapsulate THE TRUTH about God. I think Keller makes this point most clearly, when she says that “Christianity has always borrowed current cosmologies”. This statement requires a historical, systematic view of theology, but makes sense. A cosmology is a worldview, an understanding of the development and formation of the world. God is greater than our cosmologies, but the cosmologies also help us to make sense of God.

What I like most about this view of revelation is that it releases Christianity somewhat from the bonds of philosophy. McGrath spends a great deal of time talking about the philosophy that undergirds so much of Christian thought about God, but in its own unique way, philosophy narrows the scope of theological discussion. For 2000 years, theology has been responding to philosophical concerns, rather than addressing theological concerns. These philosophical concerns (Plato, Aristotle, Berkeley, Wittgenstein, Derrida) are relevant, but their focus is on the shadows of God’s reality. Jesus is the logos, but he is also so much more than that. But personal existential revelation is not concerned with the sum of all sums of revelation, just the one that makes God a living reality for me, and my church, and my faith community.

I spent this week reading Frederick Buechner's Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale. I've always like Buechner stuff - he was formative in helping me to develop a nuanced faith that lives and breathes in the world. But some of his later material was just dull - too cute and too established to be relevant. But in the older material like Telling the Truth Buechner's passion for life and God jumps off the page.

The power in Telling the Truth comes from Buechner's awareness of the foundational connection between life and faith. I think it is easy to lose sight of this - life can become too busy, or faith can become too structured. In the middle of the tragedies of life, during the awareness of the unbelievable comedy of trying to make sense of things, the true fairy tale that is faith has meaning, and provides meaning.

I think it is the fairy tale that most connects with me, and not surprisingly with the culture at large. The best fairy tales have always been true, have always required a leap of faith, have always brought forth tears and laughter, heartache and wonder. When my faith loses these things, it becomes irrelevant. Without the romance, my faith is something I do, rather than something I am.

Telling the Truth is Buechner's attempt to reawaken the emotions that came with faith. And for me, it works.

I started re-reading an old favorite last night. James Loder wrote a book in the 80's called The Transforming Moment. This book begins with the story of Loder's personal transformational moment, a near-death experience on the New York Thruway in the 70's. It then moves into a philosophical, theological, and psychological justification of these transformational experiences in spiritual renewal.

As I read last night, I had mixed emotions. For Loder, this transformational moment changed his perspective on life. All of the silly constructions that we make to justify our existence were swept away for him, and his life gained new purpose. This seems exciting, this seems to be where it is at. I don't want to care about the unimportant things in my life...

But I don't know. I don't know if this is a relic from my more conservative past, or a reminder of the way things are meant to be. I guess I'll just have to revisit this down the road.

I don't know what it is, but my obsessions seem to be taking over my life. In a good way.

Decided to get off my butt and design a fan website for Iron & Wine. So I did. Did I mention I designed a website, which I have decided to call Muddy Hymnal, that is about Iron & Wine?

Hmm... I guess you'll just have to check it out...

Ah, the layoff is over.

I have something new to obsess about. Iron & Wine is a new band (on the Subpop label) that I am really, really enjoying right now. Sam Beam is the man behind the scenes here, and it could be that I just like him for his beard. Who knows.

There isn't a fan site that I can find, so I might try to throw something together. I'll let you know if it happens.

The unfortunate thing is that while the album The Creek Drank the Cradle is quite good, my favorite song of theirs, "Sea and the Rhythm" isn't published, as far as I can tell. Thank goodness for filesharing.

If nothing else, my obsession with Iron & Wine, the Mountain Goats, and Ryan Adams has started me to think about writing and playing music again. I feel like it should be so easy, but its amazing how much easier poetry is than music lyrics. Let's see if I can keep the obsession up long enough to actually get stuff done.

I'm no activist - at least not yet - but I can't help but cringe when I read about the oil spill off the coast of Spain, or see pictures from the wreckage like this one (yes, that is a bird).

What are we doing to ourselves? At a party on Saturday, I met a young man going into graduate school to work on alternative fuel sources, mainly hydrogen fuel power. Granted, the technology isn't quite there yet, but let's get there. How can xians not care about this?

I'm psyched and saddened. Researching for the paper I am writing on negative theology, I came across the name of a man I have been trying to remember for a long, long time.

When I was in Oxford, I had the privilege of sharing several pints of Guiness with him at The Bear , one of if not the oldest pub in Oxford. We talked politics, Aquinas, and we talked about this book: God Matters.

Herbert McCabe was a member of the Blackfriars, but died in 2001. One of my dreams had been to return to Oxford to study under him, but that won't happen.

I have never met anyone like him. He was an amazing man.

Well, I just read an article that I agree with completely. It's about marriage.

Dust and Forgiveness