church

paul’s dislocated mirror

June 13, 2011 By theloverevolution Leave a Comment

you’re are many members, but one body. – Paul

(soma) – body (which casts a shadow as distinguished from the shadow itself )

(heis) – but one (universal)

(melos) – parts, members (neutered)

In Lacan’s presentation of the mirror stage, the infant experiences his or her body as uncoordinated, vulnerable, and insufficient. This sense of frustration with physical limitations propels the infant toward identification with the (apparently) unified and stable imago of the mirror reflection or of the caregiver.

the whole notion of church predominantly stems from the notion that we all have a participatory role to play. we each have something to both give and gain. something to leave and something to take. in the west, the idea of church is quite heavily driven by identity. for example, some go to charismatic gatherings because this expression seems to fit for them ideologically. others visit in small houses with candles and guitars because they crave intimacy with the divine.

neither one excludes the other, although the manner in which we guard and defend each expression would make others think so. we defend our understanding and ideas over that which might be beneficial to each other as whole. we would rather demonstrate our allegiance to the belief in something that projects itself to be a community at the risk of the greater community.

the jungian notion of the shadow claims that “the shadow or “shadow aspect” is a part of the unconscious mind consisting of repressed weaknesses, shortcomings, and instincts.”* by over-asserting our individualism not only do we deny the idea of what it means to be the body of christ, we deny the very weaknesses we are meant to claim about ourselves. we hide our weaknesses when we seek the ‘perfect’ church. but why do we seek the perfect church if it does not exist? what drives us to seek out the whole self when in reality we are disjointed? we are plural. i think it is in the mis-recongnition of wholeness where the church has been lost for centuries.

wholeness is plurality.

wholeness is disjointed. it is not that one is different from the other or even that one needs the other. the ancient sage wisdom of the ying and the yang does not stand in true form here because individuality is not the opposite of the body, individuality is the very body itself. but when we embrace one over the other we become the ‘body’ we were never meant to be. notice the word paul uses for body and how it is defined. it is a shadow created by something that is not itself. the shadow is the other. the shadow is the defining factor, or in the case lacan’s mirror.

the body is the issue here. the body is the problem not the goal. the body isn’t represented by wholeness, the body hides the reality of dislocation. the body creates another shadow that is not the true nature of what we now call church. the body, remember, is not wholeness it is the facade of wholeness. it is the promise of something that can never come, not because it is impossible, but because as we earlier discovered it is in our disjointedness that we are already whole.

also notice that paul uses a neutered term here when he refers to parts or members. neutered. no gender. christ is a genderless entity. jesus was male. its important to remember in the ancient world that the term christ was used quite widely and wasnt as scarce as we would like to think. many would have used it. jesus’ last name was not christ. it was a title. a description. but the description does not define the gender of the title. christ the title held itself as a genderless descriptor.

this notion flies in the very face of fundamentalist paradigms that claim certain rules either about gender or sexuality. those that spend their time searching through libraries creating perverse theology centered around injunctions seek to engender more meaning to the christ descriptor than itself claims to be aligned with. to be a part of the genderless community is to claim freedom for all of those who might lie within the undefined cracks. i am very hesistant to use the postmodern term ‘other’ here because that would assume that this other resides outside of this disjointed body we claim as whole. and if it is ‘whole’ then it also includes everybody.

notice the next term paul uses here. the word for one. it’s universal. not specific. not tribal. it applies to the whole of not just the audience who would have heard/read this letter, but because of the circulated nature of such a letter it would have included a variegated number of listeners. this ‘specific universality’ i claim is a microcosm for the world in its entirety. to be the church is to include responsibility for each other, including ecosystems, animals, economies, beliefs and etc. but this goes beyond taking care of the poor and other social justice practices, sometimes these practices are the very things keeping us from fully embracing every one that we might not be comfortable with.

i think the redemption of the church lies in: (1) eradicating its current master signifiers and (2) redefining them. for most there are certain ideas that define the church, or communities and what it is centered around and what makes them tick. i think these are all the wrong questions. we need to push them beyond them all and began looking at other possibilities – in the end, the full eradication of any master-signifier (the word/idea that gives ultimate (whole) meaning to ideas) – (ex: the church is meant to be ‘perfect’) should be the goal. for me this is why the death and resurrection is so important. it is the cycle/direction that the church, ideology and even life is meant to take.

the church cannot be self-referential. otherwise it becomes valued only through itself. it must point to a reality beyond itself. this is the ultimate weakness of any master-signifier it can only end in and of itself. the church for centuries has only led to itself. this is why there is an aggressive exclusive kernel that still remains yet attractive even within the rhetoric of the new movements within. because those within it have become institutionalized no matter how much structure they might kick against. to redeem the church is to redeem the world. i think this is why jesus spent so much time talking/critiquing/praying for the church because once it got itself sorted out, the world (which according to paul is the church) would by relationship itself be sorted out.

Filed Under: Culture, The Emergent Conversation Tagged With: 1 corinthians, apostle paul, bible, body, christianity, church, freud, greek, jung, lacan, master signifier, plurality, psychoanalysis, psychology, shadows, soma, universal, wholeness

Vienna Doesn’t Mean That Much To Me…

May 23, 2011 By theloverevolution Leave a Comment

The parallel existence of two concepts of perfection, one strict (“perfection,” as such) and the other loose (“excellence”), has given rise — perhaps since antiquity but certainly since the Renaissance — to a singular paradox: that the greatest perfection is imperfection

so the apostle paul is meeting up some people in the middle of this square called the areopagus in athens. this was a place known by the locals as the place where philosophers went to talk about the latest fad. it was the center of popular beliefs and gossip, even spiritual fads too. one of the known features of this particular geographic was this pantheon or hall of gods. just to be safe these greek followers of zeus placed this one statue right amongst the others and gave it a name: the unknown god.

the god who is a mystery, to the greeks has a name. irony? i think so. in fact, i think this whole episode is dripping with greek irony so much so that shakespeare might have wished he would have written this encounter. because i don’t think paul is attempting to change their beliefs, i also don’t think he is attempting to convert them in any way. i think that view trivializes the apparent sarcasm that is prevalent throughout the narrator’s explanation along with the nuances of this supposed conversation. take for example, when paul over-emphatically proclaims to his audience that they are ‘very religious’ (another translation uses the word superstitious).

i don’t think paul is being a door-to-door salesman here and trying to manipulate them with nice rhetoric, which christians have been blamed for doing in the past. rather i think he is doing something even more subversive, he is taking them to the end of their conclusions. he is sarcastically leading them through their belief system, again, not condemning it, but rather demonstrating the weakness of causality. he is saying: if you are this religious, then this ultimately is where it will lead you. in a sense, i think he is defending their unknown god. the greek word here for unknown is the same word we use for agnosticism.

a tear in the natural order of knowing. a gap. a wound. a scar. a place where we cannot know.

then he starts to quote their philosophers, who in turn were speaking about zeus (EX: …’we live and move and have our being’…) but he uses the term God as we have it recorded to be. but he never once condemns their belief. he simply uses the term/title that he understands god as. his audience would have caught onto this. another reason why i think he was being sarcastic is the undercurrent of greco irony which displaces not only the character (the hall of gods;truth;knowledge – in this narrative) but the idea of fluidity or the militant claim that perfection has only one definition.

and so in this conversation we see paul pushing the boundaries of belief so far that he begins challenging his audience with their own beliefs. which again this wasn’t foreign to the greek philosophers. they would been more than okay with this approach. and so his over-identification of God (saying god has created everything and etc.) although it might be true in theory is more of an ideological catch-22. and in this moment is when the wheels begin turning, because paul is indirectly speaking back into the belief of this unknown god.

paul is speaking of this gap. this unknown.

and for me, this is the centerpiece of his conversation, not the god itself but rather the need for the unknown. for agnosticism. this is why he also says god cant be a statue. god is fluid. god is untouchable (this is different from claiming that god isn’t relatable). this is why ultimately things like theology, doctrine, dogma and etc. don’t work, because taken to the end of our conclusion we are left with nothing more than a system of beliefs and no god left to worship. paul i think is claiming the same thing. that they can believe in all kinds of different things and be into the latest fads (for christians, it might be the emergent church or open theism and so on), but ultimately we don’t know. and the irony that i think he is playing on here is that the unknown is the closest we get to faith. that unbelief is belief. that denial is acceptance. i am not naive enough to think that we can simply get away with absolving ourselves from community. for it is in the evolutionary development of religion that we find beliefs are created to pose a sense of community. i posit we don’t need beliefs to create community, but rather we need each other to create community.

we need to believe in each other to solidify this community. before i get called a heretic. let’s talk about hegel for a second. he once thought that the holy spirit was God emptying his/herself into humanity. the human bond. let’s go with this for this discussion. if hegel was right, then once we create ‘knowns’ we create distance between us and the holy spirit (remember, this is hegels’: human bond) and so ultimately beliefs actually don’t create community, they distance us from community.

they dismantle it.they destroy it. i am not saying we don’t need beliefs, but i am saying that if we truly desire community (some people term this church and etc.) then we must be willing to walk away from beliefs, no matter what side of the fence we’re on….

think about this on a social level…it is our superstitions that keep us from knowing each other. it is those things that create to keep ourselves safe from the unknown – the other stands in the place of the unknown. and represents that thing we fear the most. and so to dissociate ourselves from the other we are forced to betray the notion of loving our neighbour (the other) by including ideological barriers that keep us from connecting with the one we are meant to love. beliefs are violent. they separate us from the object of our desire.

Filed Under: Culture, The Emergent Conversation Tagged With: agnosticism, christian, church, Community, cross, fence, fundamentalism, gnostic, god, hegel, jesis, left, liberals, love, right, Truth

a review on Karen Armstrong’s ‘The Bible: A Biography’ by CharisManglican

April 30, 2010 By theloverevolution 4 Comments

(1) Tell us a bit of your story.

I became a Christian at the age of 12 at a camp run by independent, ‘non-denominational’ evangelical churches. From that time on I was always been in volunteer ministry, whether as a youth coach or a worship leader, and the church of my youth grow from about 80 to 800.

In the late nineties I began to engage postmodernism through popular Christian authors. First came Soul Tsunami by Leonard Sweet. I read Finding Faith by Brian McLaren a bit late. Thus began a seven-year deconstruction of my faith. I self-identified as part of the emerging church. I read voraciously. I started to ‘get’ why me and my friends, all dedicated to Christ, nonetheless were restless and dissatisfied with the churches and the Christianity that we grew up with. In some ways it felt liberating: I didn’t feel alone in my dissatisfaction. I was getting rid of all sorts of ‘bad faith’. In other ways it was intimidating: what would remain at the end of my deconstruction? Because everything I believed was under scrutiny, I had no idea what faith would look like or if it would exist at the end of the journey. I had confidence in what I did NOT believe, but I wasn’t sure of what I DID believe. I had a vague feeling that God wanted me to actually do something. When and how would I fit some ‘construction’ in? When I shared my anxiety with a good friend of mine, he casually quoted Ecclesisastes: “There’s a time to tear down, and a time to build.” It was a relief somehow.

A time to build would come.

One of the more dramatic events during this period in my life was that I was excommunicated from the church of my youth. Not only had my paradigm let me down…now I was actually being abandoned by my spiritual family. My skepticism was at an all-time high. I thought I still believed in the church, but I didn’t know where she was. I started to think that God had withdrawn his Spirit from the West. I tried to find another church, but most were pretty much the same. We explored a church with no name that met in a kickboxing studio. We tried home church. We tried staying at home and playing video games. I can think of no better word than ‘grace’ to describe how I avoided total cynicism regarding the church. Instrumental in that grace were these five authors: Brian McLaren, N.T. Wright, John Howard Yoder, William Cavanaugh and Stanley Hauerwas. After about a year of being ‘ecclesially homeless’, my family somehow fell into the liturgical tradition. We are a part of St. Alban’s, a small Episcopal church in Yucaipa, California. I just gave my first sermon as a lay witness.

In studying post-liberalism and the early church, I have come to see non-violent, self-giving, enemy-love at the heart of the gospel. I call myself a Christian anarcho-pacifist as my way of teasing out the implications of this discovery. I’m attempting to live simply and to peacefully participate in giving and receiving in community with all earth’s creatures.

Last year I left my job as a top-producing mortgage consultant to homeschool my kids, work for my wife’s photography business and to begin organic farming. I told my wife once that I now know why Jesus self-identified as ‘the way’ rather than ‘the destination’. He keeps taking me on new adventures.

(2) What has influenced your belief system?

What hasn’t?

I used to make my living as a rock musician. People would ask us what style we were or who were our influences. While I have my favorite music, we were literally influenced by everything. I was influenced by John Steinbeck and by shampoo commercials. Whether I liked it or not, it influenced me. I have come to think of faith that way.

Currently I’m reading a book on home-scale permaculture (Gaia’s Garden). This is heavily influencing me. Last night I watched Michael Moore’s “Sicko”. It’s influencing me. Post-liberalism has caused me to live at peace with my historical contingency, and even revel in it. So while I can critique postmodernism as simply late western modernism, I’m not unaware at how my habits of thought are culturally postmodern. In order to understand, I’m willing to ‘stand under’ a multitude of teachers and let them influence me. Engage critically, but engage.

(3) What book are you reading now, and why that one?

After Virtue, by Alasdair MacIntyre. It’s not an easy read. I’m taking it on because of the influence MacIntyre has had on the five authors that I mentioned earlier (N.T. Wright’s newest book, for example).

Here’s a juicy bit I just read:

“Contemporary moral experience…has a paradoxical character. For each of us is taught to see himself or herself as an autonomous moral agent; but each of us also becomes engaged by modes of practice, aesthetic or bureaucratic, which involve us in manipulative relationships with others. Seeking to protect the autonomy that we have learned to prize, we aspire ourselves not to be manipulated by others; seeking to incarnate our own principles and stand-point in the world of practice, we find no way open to us to do so except by directing others towards those very manipulative modes of relationship which each of us aspires to resist in our own case. The incoherence of our attitudes and our experience arises from the incoherent conceptual scheme which we have inherited.”

He traces the history of this incoherence from contemporary philosophy back to the ancient world. This work is considered one of the most lucid deconstructions of western modernism.

(4) You just read The Bible: A Biography by Karen Armstrong. What in the book would you say agree with?

I’m not sure I have the standing to agree or disagree with Ms. Armstrong. My areas of study have touched on historical criticism, but only in a very limited sense. It might make more sense to say what I liked about the book.

And I did like the book. Karen is obviously a great teacher. I wasn’t prepared for the historical scope. I guess I thought she would address the beginnings of the scriptures among those peculiar nomads in the middle east, but I didn’t know that she’d continue to trace developments all the way through the twentieth century. This is the strength of the book: it is an overview of the compilation and interpretation of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures covering about three thousand years. And she tells it in such a way that is almost like a novel. It’s a page-turner.

(5) What are some areas you might disagree with and why?

My favorite authors give me a sense of their struggle, a sense of their editorial choices. For example, in A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn is very forthright about his editorial choices. In a very different sort of book (A Severe Mercy), C.S. Lewis lays bare the vulnerability of his faith in the face of suffering. The Bible: A Biography may not have been a page-turning overview if Armstrong gave a full account of her historical vision, but I can’t escape the feeling that she’s simply good at teaching other people’s conclusions. I would have liked the book more if it didn’t pretend to objectivity, if it instead revealed the author’s own struggle and choices. I’m left wondering: is Karen Armstrong aware of her own historical contingency?

(6) Do you think Karen Armstrong has something to say to the Church (at large)?

It’s a shame that so many Christians have a ‘magical’ view of the scriptures. (It’s also important to note that this is not always the case in traditional churches; Pope Benedict and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams come to mind as church leaders who publicly engage historical criticism.) If I were teaching an introductory course on the history of the scriptures, I wouldn’t mind using this book.

However, I would want to balance it out with other works that address the theological and philosophical choices we make and why. Why do we think the way we do? History, theology, philosophy and politics were impoverished in the modern age by their isolation as separate disciplines, engaged only by ‘experts’. Zinn has demonstrated that history should be understood politically. Wright says that “Christianity appeals to history, so to history we must go.” Slavoj Zizek the atheist philosopher critically engages John Milbank the social critic…and both do theology.

When a theologian doesn’t understand ‘the history of theology’, or a historian doesn’t understand ‘the philosophy of history’ and so on, error is immanent. That Christians have a ‘magical’ view of the scriptures is not likely to be cured by historical facts, but rather by a wider engagement with other disciplines.

(7) Do you think she represents a scholarly version of the postmodern conversation?

I actually think that Armstrong is vulnerable to postmodern critique. As I said, she seems to speak from objectivity rather than historically contingency. And because ‘the postmodern conversation’ has collapsed the neat boundaries between the disciplines (history, ethics, science, theology, philosophy, the arts), I’m not sure Armstrong’s book has the breadth necessary to be considered scholarly in our context.

In 1996 Jack Miles won a Pulitzer Prize for God: A Biography. To me this symbolized the mainstreaming of a postmodern shift in regards to the scriptures. The prominent questions have become more broad than mere historical accuracy: “What kind of book is this? What does this have to say? Why is this book here?” It’s the difference between studying a frog by dissection and studying a frog by observing it in its natural habitat.

I’ve been participating in a course from The Teaching Company in which Amy Jill Levine teaches the Old Testament as myth, saga and history. I’ve been reading William Cavanaugh’s radical visions of Christianity (ironically not proposing anything very new, but rather born of a deep exploration of Church history). Zizek uses Lacanian Psychoanalysis to discuss how German toilets differ from French and American toilets. MacIntyre published After Virtue in 1981. In comparison to these, Armstrong’s book (published in 2007) seems neither very scholarly nor postmodern. In fact, it seems quite conservative, hearkening back to the time when history, like science, had its own inviolable corner of the truth.

(8) Anything else you would like to add/thoughts/critiques/questions/challenges
Because Armstrong doesn’t make explicit her viewpoint, I couldn’t help but detect what I thought was an implicit bias.

In her last chapter (“Modernity”) she reviews the thought of Michael Fishbane, Professor of Jewish Studies at Chicago University and author of The Notion of a Sacred Text. She quotes a passage from Fishbane where he presents Isaiah’s eschatological vision of all the nations converging on the city of peace, then another pasage where the prophet Micah talks about each nation going forward “each in the name of its own god.” Armstrong says: “It is almost as though Micah foresaw our own time of multiple visions converging on a common truth, which for Israel had been expressed by the idea of their god.” I thought the idea of mankind ‘converging on a common truth’ has been discredited by continental philosophy and postmodern deconstruction.

And what is the ‘common truth’ being offered to us? I can’t tell if Armstrong is quoting Fishbane approvingly or disinterestedly. But I can hazard a guess.

Armstrong seems delighted throughout her book when she writes of Jewish and Christian communities whose exegesis of scripture appears as proto-democratic liberalism. This thread of thought is thoroughly steeped in modernism. What does the Enlightenment mean, after all, but that Western Civilization has the true light…that we represent progress, peace and freedom? In the words of Francis Fukuyama, liberal democratic capitalism is “The End of History.” But what do you do if history refuses to stop?

In regards to Philosophy: The meta-narrative of history as progress and enlightenment has been discredited.

In regards to Theology: The belief that the ancient Jewish prophetic tradition was an appetizer for the prophets of Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson is idolatry. In regards to Politics: This false universality shows no signs of culminating in Isaiah’s eschatological vision. Instead, it has led to violence and empire.

About Joey Aszterbaum, a failed rock star and banking burnout who lives on a small farm in San Jacinto with his wife Jolynne (a wedding photographer) their four children, two other small families. He loves Jesus, non-violence, homeschooling, movies, post-liberal theology and farm-fresh eggs. He blogs over at CharisManglican, check it out: www.Charismanglican.com

Filed Under: The Emergent Conversation Tagged With: anglican, armstrong, author, bible, biography, blogs, book review, california, charismanglican, christian, church, critique, eggs, empire, evangelical, farm, god, jesus, joey, karen, len sweet, liberal, movies, photography, sky park, theology, violence, wedding

meet deborah: gender advocate and human rights advocate

April 12, 2010 By theloverevolution Leave a Comment

deborah is my wife! she is a smart woman who has

a lot of experience in the field of gender rights, and human rights advocacy.

she now has a blog with an awesome first post on the need

for gender equality in society and the church. and how things might need to change. check out here blog here:

http://womanami.blogspot.com

you won’t regret it!

Filed Under: The Emergent Conversation Tagged With: bible, blog, bridger, christianity, church, deborah, equal, gender, human, justice, marrage, rights, society, wife, writer

what does it mean to be a Body?

April 8, 2010 By theloverevolution Leave a Comment

paul used the metaphor of the Church being a body. what is a body? it is something that matures, changes (doesn’t stay the same), challenges itself, and even at time has to divorce itself from the very things it once thought were true. a body is a live, organic and moving. i think we need to find that Church somewhere out there….

Filed Under: The Emergent Conversation Tagged With: body, challenge, change, church, live, mature, moving, organic, Paul, stale

what is church? a few thoughts…

March 31, 2010 By theloverevolution Leave a Comment

this is in response to a current conversation i am in asking the question whether we can exist as a church without mission or if they are intertwined. check it out — Wrecked Article

also church to me is a metaphor for community (i am looking at church from a theopoetic standpoint) and it can include those who might not even believe (jesus doesn’t delineate who is gathering, its just a gathering in his name; and your name in that culture meant who you were and what you stood for; so then, it becomes about when we meet with people who have a similar Christ-ethos they are living out)

maybe the book of acts is a metaphor for how the world was meant to live and work in harmony or as the author of that book says “they were in one accord.” maybe its about the reality that we have to fall off of our horses to find Jesus. that enlightenment and discovering who God is a letting go and sometimes can be hard road that may force to you be blind for a few days before you come to see the ‘light’ (God). maybe that’s what Paul’s story is about. maybe that’s what our story is about….

Filed Under: The Emergent Conversation Tagged With: article, church, comments, definition, intertwined, love, ministry, state of the union, stodgy, theology, they, true, union, wrecked, wrecked.org

conversations with Ken Silva from Apprising Ministries

March 20, 2010 By theloverevolution 6 Comments

Ken Silva (@ Apprising Ministries: http://apprising.org/) has graciously been dialoguing with me over the past couple months on pertinent issues directly related to the tense relationship between Orthodox Christianity and the offerings within the Emergent Conversation. Here are a few hilights.Raw and unedited. Feel free to share your thoughts!

Note: Here is another conversation in regards to extending an Olive Branch to from those in the emergent conversation to those within Orthodox Christianity, such as Apprising.

George: http://theloverevolution.org.uk/blog/

it seems like this is what it going on in the church. moreso in the space of doctrine, orthodoxy, dogma, church history, practice and theological development to name a few of the big ones. and to be honest, its sad!
we’ve created sides within. we’ve also created sides without. and there shouldn’t be sides period.

Ken: “there shouldn’t be sides period.” That’s not what God says; see 1 Corinthians 11:18-19

George: out of curiosity:

(1) are you saying that it is ‘biblical’ to have dissention within the body of christ?

(2) did god say that or paul? and what is the context within paul is dealing with here? context is key to this passage.

(3) so you would be willing to advocate the very thing christ spoke against (e.g., ‘love your enemies, speak to your brother (matthew 18); give your enemy your cloak; the early church was a good picture of people getting it wrong but still working together — are you against that?)

thanks

Ken: 1) No; it’s biblical to have division in the visible church, you know, wheat and tares.

2) Proper biblical hermeneutics is all Scripture is theopnestos (God-breathed i.e. created); therefore, God is speaking through what Paul writes, and so, God ultimately speaks in Scripture. The context is wheat and tares growing within the church at Corinth; just as they do in the church visible now.

3) Who said I’m anything about not loving enemies, or not working together? And Matthew 18 has zero to do with teachers in the public arena, which is what I deal with at Apprising. I, as all faithful Christians, am against false doctrine; I don’t judge the people themselves, that’s God’s job.

You’re welcome.

George: (1) so loving your enemies has nothing to do with loving those in the church/those who would differe then? i am defining love as agape; dying to our own ego’s/understandings of scripture is included in our ego….
(2) (i would encourage you to ask a rabbinic scholar for this one; if you want to disprove me that is) — the term god-breathed
assumed that scripture was meant to be wrestled with, intepreted/re-interpreted. to make it mean anything else is to strip of its context.
(3) as you can see here, and even among conservative theologians that jesus might not even have said this… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Tares, it might have been placed in by the early church to deal with
issues.
(4) personal question: what is wrong with mother teresa that you would feel like you need to devalue her/her work?

thanks for taking the time to answer

Also… (from George): you say you don’t judge people, but the website seems to call peope heretics or apostates, those are names for people that you use? just out of curiosity, why do you feel the need to do so?

Ken: I don’t judge the motives of these people; I follow e.g. John 7:24 and compare what they say about God to the Word of God. As a pastor-teacher it’s part of my job to defend the faith (Jude 3), correct, rebuke, etc. (2 Timothy 4:2), and refute those who oppose sound doctrine (Titus 1:9).

We also are called to mark out those who cause heresies [factions, division] through their apostate teachings (Romans 16:17). So they must be called according to their teachings; it’s nothing personal, just stating a fact.

Also…(from Ken): 1) Who says I don’t love those I criticize? It’s the most loving thing I can do. That they likely won’t appreciate it is often the case (Gal. 4:16). No, understanding of Scripture is enlightenment from the Holy Spirit; ego has zero to do with it.

2) I am not concerned with what unregenerate rabbis think. 2 Tim 3:16 is likening Scripture to when God breathed life into Adam. God the Holy Spirit is the Author through instruments He steered (2 Peter 1:20-21). He did NOT dictate what was written; He oversaw it so that what the prophets freely wrote ended up being what God wanted said.

3) That text is part of the plenary verbal inspired Scripture whether “conservative” scholars think so or not. Plenty of other scholars would agree with what I just said as well. Bottom line; we humans cannot know for certain who’s been regenerated (which one must be to actually follow the real Jesus), therefore, we are limited in how far we can judge who’s a real believer and who isn’t. That said, we still must do what I said in my other email re. apostates, etc.

4) I don’t devalue her work. I don’t see any indication of her ever being a regenerated believer; Isaiah 64:4-9 and Romans 8:5-14 make it quite clear that there’s nothing we can do in an unregenerated state that actually righteous according to God Who judges us, and because they remain “in the flesh” such as these can never please God.

As I have said many, many times; I do not hate anyone because 1 Corinthians 15:10 makes it very clear that but for the grace of God I’d be those I warn, rebuke and/or call to repentance. Again; it’s not personal, I’m just doing the job Jesus gave me to do.

George: so to help me understand better. how about this:

if i love my kid than i should nag them, call them names (e.g., unregenerate rabbi), and criticize them?
and how does that help again?

how do label help, for example, hitler called the jews cursed, it didn’t help them much at all.

i am just trying to understand your view and justification of criticsm, when even prominent chrstian, conservative psychologists not only say criticism isn’t biblical but also developmentally scarring.

thanks

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Note: This is a current conversation we are both having.

George: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-elerick/sin-isnt-the-problem-with_b_503978.html

Ken: I think you’ve misunderstood the mission of the church George, which is summed up in Scripture this way; Jesus tells us to preach His Gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of sins in His Name (see-Luke 24:44-47) because He said He “came to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:10), and also says to us – “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21). So this is what genuine Christians do.

George: interestingly enough, all the verses that talk about sin and repentance aren’t directed at ‘the world’ but the religious and the religious systems.

Ken: Then you’re not paying attention to Scripture when you read it. “Sin” is to miss the mark, fall short of the glory of God, to transgress His Law as summed up in “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (see—Mark 12:30-31).

The moment we take a breath we sin because that standard is impossible for human beings; it took the monogenes Son of God—the God-Man—Christ Jesus to do it for us. In other words, every human being sins by missing that perfect mark, not just religious leaders.

Consider also what Jesus tells us about the heart (inner man) of all human beings:

“What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’ For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean.’ ” (Mark 7:20-23)

He’s simply following up on what He told us earlier in Genesis 8:21 — “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.”

And God tells us this again through His inspired vessel Paul here:

As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” …

We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin… I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature… What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. (Romans 3:10-12; 7:14, 18, 24-25)

If I were you George, I’d ditch those emerging boyz because they’ve been lying to you about verses concerning sin being simply about the religious and religious systems. Those last verses were written by a regenerated Christian, and they describe all of us; even you bro.

George: jesus was a jew right? can we agree on this at least.

if he was, there is more historical documented evidence proving that there was a better chance than not of him speaking aramaic and ‘maybe’ other languages as well. but aramaic was his ‘street’ language. in the aramaic/hebrew the word sin isn’t just about ‘missing the mark’ (which is greek); in the hebrew it is about personal potential, about who we are and are becoming. a journey, not a word that is static.

also interestingly enough in my pauline studies, when paul is talking to the ‘church’ (this is key) he is talking to the church not to the world, he isn’t being universal. like joseph campbell once said ‘we have mistook the ethnic for the universal’…and even conservative theologians/professors have even agreed with that. and just because paul was confessing something, does that mean we need to confess it too? he wasn’t god, or perfect. also, to the hebrew mind (the guys who wrote the bible) — perfection wasnt static it was perpetual.

by the way i love this dialogue. and out of curiosity, did i ever say i was emergent?

Ken: In human nature Jesus was a Jewish man but He never ceased being God as well; and God does not change.

Yeah, I heard your speculations re. Aramaic, etc. on the podcast link you sent me. Your problem is that the text God inspired, right down to the tenses of the verbs, etc., is in Greek. And I also explained to you in simple terms what sin is: Anytime we do anything less than the Perfect Life Jesus Christ lived. Sinless perfection is God’s standard, everything else is sin.

Not all Bible writers were Hebrew e.g. Luke, and Joesph Campbell was unregenerate and had no way to understand the Scriptures so I couldn’t care less what he said. George, you’re free to try and play with the concept of sin but sinful human beings have only two choices.

1) They have the free will to choose whatever sinful activities they’ll be involved with; or 2) come to God for the repentance and forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ, be born again, and become a doulos (slave) of Christ. Slave to sin or slave to God. And no amount of word-juggling and/or speculations of men will ever change that truth.

“did i ever say i was emergent?” Did I ever say you did?

George: God changes. Scripture even proves this. ‘God changed his mind’. You can call people unregenerate, it doesn’t make what they say any less valuable or true. What if the authors came to you in a dream and told you that they intended to make a ‘car manual’ approach to scripture? here’s the thing i see, it seems to me that you are willing to see things ‘your’ way (or what you might perceive to be the generalized christian view, am i wrong?) a lot of the theology I grew up is nowhere in the scriptures, nowhere — ex: original sin (the phrase never shows up anywhere; there is documented evidence that people like st. augustine inspired that ideology). so wh espouse yourself to something like the above, and then use it as a plumbline for others, especially when the verses were directed at churches and those who believed in God? we can’t get away from that reality.

if you spoke german and i translated it from the german, to french than english, it will naturally get lost in translation, especially if it is a deeply layered language. as much as you say we have the greek scriptures, we still can’t get away from the fact that they were still ‘speaking’ and originally wrote in aramaic. it would be like me trying to get back to the german meaning of your words. the original intent, the power behind the layering. there is nothing wrong that, and i think what makes a lot of people uncomfortable with it is because it challenges a lot of incorrect theological assumptions we have had for centuries.

i thought it was interesting you separated jesus’s humanity from his godhead (not sure i agree with this; where my journey is taking me at the moment) — but the eastern origin of judeo-christian thought doesnt separate it, they thought everything was spiritual. everyone was connected with the divine, sorry, a long story to ask this question — why do you see the need to separate the two??

(would love to share some of this on a blog, but want to ask you first, either way, intrigued by it. — thanks!)

and yes here is the emergent assumption — If I were you George, I’d ditch those emerging boyz because they’ve been lying to you about verses concerning sin being simply about the religious and religious systems. Those last verses were written by a regenerated Christian, and they describe all of us; even you bro.

Ken: George,

I appreciate your asking first, and I don’t mind if you want to “share some of this on a blog”. If you do, please shoot me the link so I can check it out too, k. You said: “here’s the thing i see, it seems to me that you are willing to see things ‘your’ way (or what you might perceive to be the generalized christian view, am i wrong?)”

Couldn’t I also say the same thing about you; you are willing to see things “your way.” What I’ve been sharing with you is the historic, orthodox Christian position regarding what sin is. I’d be the first to tell you that you’re free to ignore it but it is what the Church has taught even before Augustine.

You say: “original sin (the phrase never shows up anywhere;…” No, it doesn’t; however, what does show up is the doctrine of human depravity, which I shared with you in an earlier email. Your analogy re. language translation breaks down because the verbal plenary inspiration of Scripture teaches God Himself made sure in the original autographs the writers recorded what He wanted recorded in the language He wanted it recorded in (e.g. see—2 Peter 1:20-21).

And textual criticism shows we have those originals very preserved quite accurately. I’ve been in the ministry fields of apologetics, Comparative Religion, and evangelizing non-Christian cults for some 21+ years now, which requires much study into the origin of the Bible, the languages, textual criticism, and church history. I have both the textus receptus and the newer Nestle-Auland texts; so I can very easily evaluate translations of the Bible myself by checking them against these texts.

I’m not at all afraid of questions, challenges, and/or examining theological differences; I’ve been doing it for years with people from all kinds of Christian persuasions and other religions. You also said: “you separated jesus’s humanity from his godhead”. We have a bit of a misunderstanding here Geroge as that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m talking about the hypostatic union where Jesus is the only, unique, (monogenes) Son of God: At the same fully God and fully Man.

This might help you with where I’m coming from: JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES, THE DEITY OF CHRIST, AND PHILIPPIANS 2:5-6

And finally, concerning your prior email where you asked: “did i ever say i was emergent?” Remember, I then asked you: Did I ever say you did? So now you said: “and yes here is the emergent assumption” and quote me: If I were you George, I’d ditch those emerging boyz…” I’ve never postulated that you say you’re emergent, which is what you asked. That’s why I asked you where did I ever say you claimed to be emergent, because I’ve never said you do. My comment has to do with your blog roll that contains emerging guys, and they are lying–though not necessarily intentionally–in much of their speculations concerning Christianity.

The conversation thus far…(will post more if Ken is comfortable with it). Greatful to him for the conversation and willingness to share with you here. Hope it has been enjoyable.

Filed Under: The Emergent Conversation Tagged With: apprising, bible, blog, christian, church, dialogue, doctrine, dogma, emergent, history, jesus, ken silva, orthodox, though, Truth

an olive branch to the orthodox christians…

February 26, 2010 By theloverevolution 2 Comments

sometimes when businesses are looking to partner with individuals or others businesses they create what is called a ‘trust matrix’. it is a risk assessment tool to figure out who or what is trustrworthy enough to actually take the risk on. it is a plumbline to help make a decision without knowing all of the ‘facts’ or key players involved. it seems like a prudent things to do. except that it doesn’t leave much room for mystery or the ‘x’ factor that we are so repulsively attracted to.

just a personal note, this whole fight over absolute truth and relative truth. can we agree that it could be both? rather than making one the enemy of the other. maybe it could be absolutely relative or relatively absolute.

it seems like this is what it going on in the church. moreso in the space of doctrine, orthodoxy, dogma, church history, practice and theological development to name a few of the big ones. and to be honest, its sad!

we’ve created sides within. we’ve also created sides without. and there shouldn’t be sides period. this need to label someone emergent or orthodox (i have failed in this; and probably will continue to do so) has created more unnecessary division within the ranks that shouldn’t be. there was this author who was a church leader who used the metaphor of the body as a word-picture (not as a piece of theology mind you) to say that yes we may not get along all the time (e.g., if eyes don’t work, then it impairs other parts of the body) but that working together should be something we all should strive for. but, we’re not. we’re fighting, name-calling, shouting out our frustrations. and some need to be voiced. let’s be honest, we could be bringing our ‘a-game’ when all we’ve been doing is borrowing a lot of our answers from those before us, don’t get me wrong they said some good things, but most of it isn’t relevant to now. even some of what paul said just doesn’t mix well with the times, and it isn’t about cheapening the bible — it is more about engaging with this important book as a narrative we are still writing for those ahead of us. but to turn it into a manual cheapens the power of experience within its pages. there is power in experience. most people are changed by experience not doctrine. most people meet with the divine on a street somewhere not in 5-points of Calvin. but, that is neither here nor there. Jesus talked a lot about love. more than sin, more than death. he spent so much energy talking about how we need to care for the other. this was his message, and not just his, buddhism, sufism, hinduism, and other religions seem to espouse a similar desire spurred on by a similar ethos. but this is about us in the here and now who say we follow jesus. fighting each other is a waste of time! if we fight anything, let’s fight the need for labels, the need to be right, the need to claim our version of god as the best. if we continue down this path, we will implode. and that is only a matter of time if we continue to cling to our views as being the best. sorry, hate to break to you (and me), there is no ‘best’ view. well, not at least in the colonial/neo-colonial sense of the word. we can’t afford to say we believe in a big god and then judge others when their view of god is outside of our view of his bigness. not only is that unfair, it isn’t right. if we fight anything else, let it be arrogance. or any pressupositions that our doctrine holds more weight than another. can we do something radical here, can we just get rid of doctrine. yep, i am suggesting we throw it out the window. we don’t need it. we need god. we need to let go of this diametrical approach to discovering the divine. doing so cheapens the overall of God. and i know it scares the hell out of most people to talk like this, and i don’t want to invalidate your experience. but we can’t afford to say we follow after jesus than sling mud. and that isn’t to say we won’t get it wrong, i might be getting it wrong right now, and that is fine. but let’s be honest about our pimples and scars. noen of us have it right. none of us. and for one group of people to assert that they do is nothing short of some sort of doctrinal holocaust and the victims are ourselves and those we interact with. but, this is just an opinion. maybe there is no value here. i could be completely wrong. but as one who doesn’t profess traditional orthodox views, i am extending a hand of grace, and an olive branch to anyone who is fed up with unecessary bloodshed within. the body of christ wasn’t meant to be torn apart,it was meant to be a body.

Filed Under: The Emergent Conversation Tagged With: 23, 3, absolute, adulterer, agape, an, atheism, attracted, beck, being, bible, big, buddhist, can, christians, church, crazy, dance, do, dove, everyone, exclusion, future, glen, god, going, grace, hebrew, how, inside, jesus, jewish, koran, like, love, morality, morals, moreso, nazareth, need, new, now, olive, on, outside, past, path, Paul, peace, present, psychology, rabbi, really, remake, repulse, romans, seems, shalom, should, side, sign, sin, sing, speak, stop, the, then, this, to, together, tonight, Truth, u2, ultimate, video, work, world

is the future of atonement theology waning….

December 18, 2009 By theloverevolution Leave a Comment

i get these weekly questions and answers from bishop jack spong and thought this was a good one that deal with the future of atonement theology and the eucharist…

Bishop Spong’s Q&A

Tom Weller of Panama City, Florida, writes: In your recent response about Darwin (in which you suggested the atonement theology will no longer be an adequate way to interpret the Jesus story) you said, “The traditional meaning of the Eucharist will have to be revised.” Looking at the Eucharistic prayers of various denominations, including the United Church of Christ, I find them all focused on sacrificial death and atonement, all including the “words of institution.” Is there a Eucharistic prayer that is not so focused that you are aware of or that you like? Or, perhaps, have you drafted a proposal of your own that we could see?

Dear Tom,

I have run into many Eucharistic prayers that are almost a denial of sacrificial thinking; the Church is certainly moving in that direction. I have never tried to write one, since liturgy has never been my talent. I do believe that Darwin’s thinking will finally force the Christian Church to alter the way it talks about God, Jesus, salvation and human life. When that insight finally dawns on the Christian consciousness, the result will be a reformation so total that it will put the Reformation of the 16th century into the category of an afternoon tea party.

We will have to recognize first that we cannot define God; we can only experience the sense of transcendence, wonder and awe. When we talk about God, we are not talking about an external being, we are talking about a human perception and, as such, God is ever changing. When we talk about human life, we are not talking about a fallen sinner, but about an incompletely evolved creature that cracked the boundary into self-consciousness and needs to be empowered to become whole, something more than a survival-oriented creature. When we talk about Jesus, we are not talking about an external savior who came to rescue us, but a life in whom and through whom transcendence has broken into history. Jesus does not save us from a fall that never happened or restore us to a status that we have never had. He empowers us to be more deeply and fully human and to enter higher and higher levels of consciousness where we finally discover that we live in God and God lives in us. The Eucharist then becomes a celebration of who we are and a call to walk more deeply into the meaning of humanity.

It was my work trying to understand life after death that drew me in this direction. I think we are headed for the most exciting century in Christian history. I anticipate that most of what we call religion today will die in the next century. Rigor mortis has already set in. Out of that death, however, will come a new beginning. I am glad that I have lived to see the birth pangs. Hard labor is ahead but a new creation is being born and in that new creation God will be newly experienced and newly discovered — not as a Being who lives above the sky, but as the presence that is revealed in the heart of the human.

Take these thoughts to your next Eucharist…

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: atonement, bishop, church, eucharis, god, jesus, next, spong, take, theology, Truth

heuristic movements, rather than churches.

December 10, 2009 By theloverevolution Leave a Comment

in child development, heuristics is the process of allowing the child to discover how to work with their natural environment rather than, for example, playing with toys or other age-relevant store bought objects. it is the opportunity for children to use only ‘household’ items and for the parent to sit and watch rather than the typical role of direct interaction. it is more about discovery and less about forced-development on the part of the parent. it is using the natural environment and elements that surround and allow a safe space for self-development and discovery.

i wonder if we could develop churches into heuristic movements? rather than one person teaching every, create a forum where everyone can play an important part in their self-development along with participating in the communal development of those who choose to follow in the way of jesus. it does seem the ‘old ways’ of doing church have become outdated and archaic in light of a postmodern shift that is still occurring.

so maybe we can seek viable relevant ways to shift from becoming a weekly club that meets to discuss ‘safe’ methodologies and sometimes outmoded ways of communicating a worldview that is much bigger than meeting in a cafe or a building with a cross.

if we can see the ‘church’ as a heuristic movement than we can be a group of cultural mavens who find ways to engage with the current climate and seek relevant ways to meet people at the point of their need. some people think that we are all connected with the divine, that we are all part of the divine. this was not a foreign concept in ancient theology, even amongst the writers of the Old Testament. this was a heretical idea. we are all part of the divine. and this makes what we do drip with a symbiotic gravitas that only leaves us to continue moving forward.

churches should be less about teaching and more about living. churches should be about development in all ways, not instructing. a movement of people do not get together to discuss how to be a movement, they just move in their natural environment discovering as they go along how to become a cultural force to be reckoned with. this is why there is a benefit in transforming and facilitating room from becoming a building club that meets to talk to a people who embrace a constant shift in formational living. this is what it means to create heuristic movement.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: about, becom, benefit, church, club, Culture, develop, discover, embrace, formational, god, heuristic, instruct, jesus, living, meet, movement, natural, people, transform