Pre-Lenten Devotional

So, apparently I have a blog. I'd forgotten about that for a few weeks. I know, your lives have been quite empty without it.

Anyhow, I thought I'd post the lenten devotional I just wrote for Saint Mark UMC. It's not quite Lent yet, but I feel this actually does coordinate with a lot of what I've been thinking/reading/praying about recently. Besides, when Lent does come, I think I might make the blog a daily devotional activity. Thoughts are strongly invited about this reflection:

1 Corinthians 6:12-20

12"All things are lawful for me," but not all things are beneficial. "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be dominated by anything. 13"Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food," and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. 14And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power. 15Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! 16Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, "The two shall be one flesh." 17But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. 18Shun fornication! Every sin that a person commits is outside the body; but the fornicator sins against the body itself. 19Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.

Lent presents a bit of cognitive dissonance to those of us who celebrate the gracious love of God to be the essence of our faith. Especially at Saint Mark, where so many of us have come to escape words of condemnation and abuse, why would we ever spend 40 days in the desert of penance and lament?

Paul reminds us, as he reminds his fellow Christians in Corinth, that the grace of God does not negate God’s law or God’s judgment—it fulfills it. The very gratuity of our salvation in Christ is only recognized when it stands in contrast to the condemnation under which we all stand as sinful humans. The freedom offered in the grace of Christ does not free us to remain as we were but empowers us to grow in love of neighbor and love of God. So we journey to the desert, not away from God’s love, but fearfully toward it, asking that it the burning light of love my purify our hearts. To be purified, we must see the stain. To rise with Christ on Easter we must journey with him into the tomb by way of the cross.

This means taking time to do the hard work of being honest with ourselves about where we have abused the freedom found in Christ. It means tackling difficult subjects about issues we prefer to ignore—our daily habits, our financial and dietary choices, and, yes, even our sexual ethics. This particular passage is hard for many of us because we have experienced such painful attacks upon our sexuality and our bodies. And yet, the freedom of Christ demands that all aspects of our life be approached with the same responsible love that was given to us by God’s own self-humbling, even to death on a cross.

Prayer: Gracious God, though we never have to earn your gracious love, teach us how to live in accordance with what you have given us. Purify not just our hearts but our whole selves that we may offer our body, mind, and soul as a living sacrifice to you. Amen.

Capitalism and Calvinism...

In lieu of a real post, I'll just quote this great passage from Ernst Troeltsch and see if anyone has a response:

"Above all, the imposing but also terrible expansion of modern capitalism, with its calculating coldness and soullessness, its unscrupulous greed and pitilessness, its turning to gain for gain's sake, to fierce and ruthless competition, its agonising lust of victory, its blatant satisfaction in the tyrannical power of the merchant class, has entirely loosed it from its former ethical foundation; and it has become a power directly opposed to genuine Calvinism and Protestantism." -- Ernst Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress, 1912.

Thoughts?

the inevitable decline...

And so it has happened. What began with auspicious productivity has quickly taken a back seat to the chaos of the semester.

I had hoped to do at least one post a day, even if it was a brief sort of snippet about what I was reading. I find now that I'm just too exhausted or stressed to keep up with it.

So I solicit some thoughts on the value of this whole theo-blog thing. Namely, how important is it for academics to have a public persona? Is it a dereliction of duty to stay up in my ivory tower?

Avatar, language, and the noble savage...

I finally saw Avatar this weekend. I will forego the obligatory deprecation of it as Pocahontas meets Dances with Wolves meets Ferngully meets Dune (I may be the only one referencing Dune, but I did love it when Jake conquered the great worm Shai-hulud! "Pandora was made to train the faithful!"). All this is true: the plot was painfully derivative and predictable. But I must agree with the reviewers that all of that paled in the face of the sheer wonder of the world Cameron created. It was simply stunning and exquisitely detailed.

That said, I do have two conceptual issues..

First--and this might be a tad picky--I was curious about the linguistic assumptions of the film. Cameron took the time to hire a professional linguist to create the language of the Na'vi. Yet it was the human language that left me wanting more. Why, in the year 2154, is the human language pretty much the same as it is in 2010? I'm an unapologetic Joss Whedon fanboy, so I have to compare Avatar's non-advanced human language to the subtly textured speech of Firefly which incorporates garbled versions of Chinese profanity and random slang to give the space-western a slightly "alien" feel.

On a more philosophically annoying note, I was intrigued by the way in which Jake Sully was instructed to tell his big-bird-dragon-thingy to "fly left" or "bank right." The orgo-cyber link established between Jake and the animal allowed him to communicate to/control it with his thoughts. In early training, he was encouraged to speak his thoughts in order to get the hang of it.

But does this not assume a structuralist or pre-structuralist concept of language in which speech is merely the semiotic manifestation of internal psychic phenomena? This seems especially true if the language of the Na'vi and that of humans is supposed to correspond to the same pre-linguistic thoughts. Perhaps this is just the necessary convention of science fiction. There has to be a modicum of structural parallel in order for communication to take place. Yet, it seemed a giant leap to assume that the different languages corresponded to comparable mental states.

Second, I was a little troubled by the portrayal of the Na'vi. The post-colonial critic in me--(he's there, just way, way down in there)--always balks at the stereotype of the Noble Savage. This Romantic notion came about in opposition to the dehumanizing view of "savages" as, well, savage, less than human, unintelligent, and superstitious (think romans vs. barbarians). However, the "nobleness" of the savage corresponds to a Romantic idealization of the natural state. Ultimately this valorization of the exotic other dehumanizes its object (as object) just as much as classical conquistador conceits.

The Na'vi have such a beautiful, untainted, pristine culture that lives in spiritual harmony with all living things! They are so much better than us! They are pure and wise in ways we could never dream! They lack all of our sophisticated technology--and because of it they are closer to the mother earth! They are so dreamy and precious!

These are no longer people (so to speak). They are manifestations of our own desires and discontents. Of course, in cinema that's exactly the point! Cinema is able to express such things through analogical storytelling. Yet, my fear is that this too closely resembles ways in which American Indians and other "exotic" groups have been (and continue to be) treated both in popular culture and in social practice. The escape into Pandora-world is fine. However, we ought to be more nuanced and cautious when speaking of/with the "other" in the real world.

As a United Methodist, I'm particularly reminded of John Wesley's failed attempt to evangelize the native inhabitants of Georgia. His early journals are filled with his excitement at meeting these pure, untouched savages whose natural spirituality would surely incline them to reception of the Gospel! Wesley quickly found the American Indians to be more than his stereotype had allowed, and he was unable to adapt his mission to coincide with who they really were.

Of course one might easily say that Jake had a preconceived notion of the "savages" that was challenged when he really got to know them on their own terms. But, from a narrative point of view, the story-teller has simply traded one dehumanizing trope for another.

There's a theological point to be made here, I'm sure.

But I'm tired.

That's it. Rant over.

huge UM loss...

There are obviously tons of stories of loss and tragedy coming out of Haiti this week. For UMs, though, the passing of Sam Dixon, the executive director of UMCOR, deserves particular grief:

http://gbgm-umc.org/global_news/full_article.cfm?articleid=5629

I'm reminded of my old pastor, Doug Forrester, who told me one time, "When Jesus comes back, I hope he has trouble finding me. I hope that I'm so busy feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, and comforting the afflicted that he will have to look around a bit--beyond the churches--to find me."

Sam Dixon was such a man, and I offer thanks for his life and for all those who work and volunteer with UMCOR. I love my academic work, but I know it doesn't really mean shit compared to those folk who embody the love of Christ to so many people around the world.

**I am sad now, two days later, to have to edit this post. It would be remiss not to mourn the loss of Clint Rabb alongside Sam Dixon. I mourn this loss not only because he was another amazing servant with GBGM but also because he was the step-father of a dear friend of mine. No words. Just grief and a paralyzing sense of impotence.

Haiti and the chaos of creation...

When I heard about the devastating earthquake in Haiti, I was reading Hans Urs von Balthasar's Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus Confessor. It seemed like a cruel joke to turn from news of the natural tragedy to the following line:

"[Maximus'] thinking is dominated by an undiminished optimism with respect to the reasonableness of nature's motion, to its directedness and consequently to its correctness; this is a trust in the essential goodness of nature."

What are we to do with a world that can wreak such death and destruction upon our brothers and sisters? Of course the primary and immediate Christian response to this incident has to be the outpouring of love through physical, tangible aid along with prayerful support. Long-term pragmatic issues would include investigating ways in which we might help support establishing infrastructure to help mitigate future disasters, not only in Haiti but in other parts of the world, especially those lacking the financial and material resources of the US.

But the Christian community also needs theological tools to engage the reality of a natural world that routinely inflicts enormous pain upon us. Much effort has been (rightly) spent in the last few years developing a Christian eco-ethic that values the natural world as God's sacred creation. But a more nuanced view of the nature of nature is needed to make sense of the vicissitudes of this good creation.

Does the standard liberal Christian ecological ethic (which I support) rest upon an assumption that nature is inherently good? And if so, what does this "goodness" mean? Does it mean orderly? Does it mean benevolent? Is it good in the same way the Imago Dei in humanity is "good"? Is its goodness necessarily manifest in relation to humanity?

Classical Christian doctrines of Creation have often had to fight against the tendency to identify the material world as necessarily evil (or, at least, not "good") because of its materiality. This tendency arises from a painful awareness that Christians shared with many Greco-Roman societies: material existence involves change, and change involves decay and death. It is the instability of physical motion that causes anxiety and fear about a transient existence.

Some options that were later deemed insufficient include a radical gnostic anti-materialism or a Manichaean dualism. Both of these options (more or less) posit an utter division between the goodness of intellectual/spiritual/immaterial existence and embodied/carnal/material nature. The key in these systems (again, with brutal generalization) is to transcend the constraints of the material world through diverse ascetic or mystical practices.

Plenty of more traditional Christian practices and theologians have embraced aspects of this cosmology. Most notably, Origen sees material existence itself as constitutive of sin and the result of the primordial fall of immaterial souls from their initial unity with God. The theology of Augustine is often caricatured as dualistic in a gnostic sense, but his polemic against the Manichees encourages a more positive view of created nature as grounded in the supreme ontology of God--and therefore as good--but ultimately disordered due to sin. Materiality per se is not the issue for Augustine; it is, rather, the rebellion of matter against the spirit that ought to rule it, particularly in the human soul and will.

One of the great contributions of Maximus the Confessor is the affirmation of materiality and motion as not merely consequences of the fall and of sin. Pushing against Origenist tendencies, Maximus identifies movement, change, and striving as constitutive elements of created nature. These motions, frightening in their seeming chaos, are ultimately good because they are oriented toward their consummation in the God who is also their origin.

But what are we do with the good motions of nature when they turn to violent quaking? Are we to chalk it up to the mystery of God? Are we to affirm the benevolent providence inherent in all motions of creation? Are we to blame the corrupted human will that knows not how to live in concert with such motions?

Or is it simply the case that shit happens?

I'm ending this post in aporia. I have theological convictions about the relationship between Creation and Creator. I have philosophical speculations about the nature and telos of the natural world. But none of those really make sense of things in Port-au-Prince.

Ultimately, I have to move to the incarnation. Whatever the nature of nature, the incarnation affirms that God has taken all of created nature--in all its messiness and chaos--into God's self out of love for it. With that in mind, I will leave you with more Maximus :

"The world of appearances dies, just as man must, in order to rise again--transformed from old age to youth--in that resurrection which we hope will soon follow death... while God's power radiates over all things its visible and active presence, offering each creature in an individually appropriate way, yet to all through a share in itself, the unbreakable bond of unity for endless ages." -- Mystagogy, ch. 7

Amen.

Wesleyan distinctives...

once more with the fellowship application essays..

3. Outline and briefly discuss the Wesleyan distinctives that you regard as especially important. How are they relevant to current theological issues, trends, etc.?

Wesley was intrinsically a pastoral theologian, and his concern for practical divinity means that his most salient insights regard the life of faith rather than abstract theological premises. In particular, the most key Wesleyan distinctives have to do with his construal of the ordo salutis and the Christian’s experience of justification and sanctification. In particular, I believe his understanding of Christian perfection, the reality of sin in believers, and the means of grace are the most significant aspects of his thought for contemporary theological issues.

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Wesley’s theology is his unwavering affirmation of Christian perfection as the telos of Christian living within this life. Often misunderstood, Wesley’s understanding of perfection does not entail the overcoming of created, material limitations of corruption. Thus, the individual Christian will still be subject to sickness in the body and to error in the mind. Thus a perfected Christian may in fact do wrong. The perfection of the Christian in this life is a perfection in love whereby the human heart is brought into complete conformity with the will of God. Thus, though a perfected Christian may do wrong from mental error, such wrong will always flow from a loving heart seeking the good of the neighbor in light of God’s love.

This Wesleyan emphasis takes a strong stand against antinomianism by affirming that the Christian is not only reckoned righteous but is in fact made righteous through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This is a significant theological affirmation that I fear is often lost in UM preaching when we succumb to a generic “Protestant” identity. In many ways, Wesley’s understanding of salvation is closer to Tridentine Catholicism than to prototypical Lutheran or Calvinist Protestantism. Wesley’s concept of grace is more robust than mere imputation; grace is something that effects a change within the heart of the believer to the point of perfection in love.

This notion of perfection also has significant implications for Christian ethics. If we take seriously the juxtaposition of a perfected heart with a still enfeebled mind, then any sort of ethics that is ultimately teleological or deontological is proscribed. A deontological ethic does not meet the demands of love and presumes a transcendent awareness of universal laws that the created mind simply cannot grasp. A teleological ethic, though appealing because it seems to adapt the demands of love to the particular circumstance of a given situation, ultimately fails because of the impossibility of perfect knowledge of any given situation and of probable outcomes. Only an aretic ethic, focused on the virtue of the agent, can guide human moral actions. Certainly teleological concerns must be considered, but the standard for Christian moral actions has to rest in the love that motivates any given action. Only by admitting the limitations of our knowledge and agreeing on a shared virtue of love can we have legitimate conversation about how that love might be enacted in the world, both at the corporate and individual levels.

Of course for Wesley this belief in perfection is balanced by a serious appreciation of the reality of sin in believers. The place this crisis has in Wesley’s own biography is well documented, and in many ways the language of “backsliding” and constant repentance has become well ingrained in modern Protestant theology. Yet the implications of this for contemporary religious dialogue have not always been appreciated. The Christian life is, in many ways, a juxtaposition of humility and confidence. The reality of sin within the believing life is the reality that, no matter how far we progress toward perfection, no matter how assured we are of God’s love of us, we are still finite and fallible beings who are liable to turn again from the heart of God. It is with this balance of humility and confidence that we ought to enter into both ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue.

Within our communities of faith, however, this juxtaposition must lead us to a passionate embrace of the means of grace. In particular, Wesley’s strong advocacy of constant communion arises from these two poles of sin and perfection between which the converted Christian finds herself. The life of faith is not stagnant but a constant celebration of the grace of God, grace that is particularly accessible through the sacraments, prayer, and good works. The Spirit that is given to us works within us through our cooperation. The development of habits of virtue and love necessitate our active engagement of the sources of grace that Jesus ordained for us.

An appreciation of the role of the Means of Grace in transforming the heart allows us to engage in fruitful theological dialogue. In Wesleyan theology we see an anticipation of the cultural-linguistic model of doctrine espoused by post-liberals as well as the liturgical renewal trends that accompany emergent Church and Radical Orthodox movements. In recent theological work there is great interest in the way in which liturgy and practice shapes a community’s self-understanding and identity. Wesleyan communities have particularly rich theological tools for engaging this discussion since grace-infusing practices have been central to our identity from the beginning.