God in His providence often uses people and organizations. This has been one of the scarier things for me to accept about life in the last couple of years. Part of me is still some kind of old school Pentecostal hoping for some ostentatious miracle of provision rather than the mundane acts of flesh and blood people. In certain circles this latter set of provisions are called "ordinary means of grace". Well, I've had the kind of life where I have been doubtful about such ordinary means of grace. In the last two years I haven't really had much of a choice whether or not to accept them.
Years ago I once admitted that I've gone through a good deal of my life with the axiom, "I trust God ... I just don't trust His people." It has dawned on me over time that in my own way this is a paraphrase of Ivan Karamazov's sentiment, which I paraphrase here as, "It's not that I cannot accept God, I cannot accept His world." Over time the previously unrealized overlap in these two sentiments started to get to me. The overlap got to me for two simple reasons. The first was that Ivan's statement was about his unbelief and this made me realize that perhaps I have had more unbelief in my life than I realized. The second was that Christ said "They shall know you are mine by your love for one another" and this got me wondering how much I loved God's people as a measure of my love for God Himself. As a certain saying puts it, he cannot regard God as his Father who does not acknowledge the Church as mother.
But there can be reasons it is good to not necessarily trust God's people, particularly at institutional levels. A lot of churches have done a lot of bad. There are always the tales about Catholic priests molesting children. There are stories about metropolitans caught with young hookers. There are stories about homophobic raging closet case Pentecostal preachers. There are stories about bloodthirsty Lutherans. There are stories about draconian and cravenly political Reformed. There are patent white supremacists, debauched cardinals, scheming patriarchs and the whole line-up. The Church is full of people so bad and mean that even a superhero, if a guy like Batman or Superman were real, would throw up their hands and say, "I give up. There's nothing that can be done to fix this."
Some churches have done a lot of good but depending on where and how you grow up you get told that "those" churches are just into some liberal "Social Gospel" that isn't the real Gospel. Twenty years ago I would have assumed Presbyterians were all of the Social Gospel liberal cloth just because from a Pentecostal perspective they would be labeled the frozen chosen. Not that I was in much of a place to talk like that because I'm not exactly fire breathing myself. I used to joke that I was a Pentecostal holy roller but some of my college friends were astonished by this joke because when they found out that really WAS my background they couldn't believe it. One of my friends said he'd always pegged me as Dutch Reformed. Ha, are there actually any Dutch Reformed in the whole state of Washington? Well, anyway, it would appear that even when I still considered myself Pentecostal a bunch of people figured I was more likely to be Presbyterian. And, well, now I am, so I guess my friends were right about me before I could even have guessed it.
I'm at a stage in life that I know would be enviable to someone in the Third World. I weigh a bit more than I should and I live in a pleasant enough home. I need eye surgery to remove cataracts and, fortunately, I am getting help for that. Yet if a fellow American were to suggest I'm not really poor I'd differ with them. I'm poor. God willing I won't be at some point in the future but there's nothing like having no money and no job to make me realize both of myself and of people around me that when white well-off people talk about "consumerism" most of the time they don't really mean consumerism at all, they just mean that they like to bitch about the purchasing habits of other people so as to feel more righteous about their tastes. People who are into "realistic" fiction can see comic books as unreal and something to look down on. C. S. Lewis used to write that the child who reads about dragons and monsters is less in danger of being lied to about the nature of real life than a kid who reads dramas about borading schools and students who become friends there. There may, in the annals of post 20th century literature be few dangers to dealing with reality than a literary fetish for socialist realism of any kind. That's my take, but I digress as usual.
I'm not homeless and so I can't speak to the "hard life" that other people may have but I have become irritated by the realization that class resentments seem to abound. I'm aggravated when relatively well-off white guys complain about racism from native populations who also complain about class warfare. A college friend of mine once said that he'd hear fellow white guys say "I'm working for the Man" Dude, historically speaking you are the Man! That doesn't require a prophet like Nathan to mention, does it? And the witness of non-white Christians to how many white Christians have conducted themselves doesn't need to get recited ad nauseum yet we do well to remember it.
As Fearsome Tycoon noted over at BHT earlier this year, the Anglo Christians did their missionary work in a way where a lot of the native populations targeted by their work have renounced Christianity and Christendom. And why wouldn't they? It's hard to adopt the religious beliefs of people who attempted to subject you to genocide, right? Cue no true Scotsman to the fiftieth power. Those who think they know history and won't repeat its mistakes are worse off than those who don't know history. It was the Pharisees, after all, who were saying they would not have persecuted the prophets when Jesus told them they were self-deceived.
But the reason it's scary to need help from other people is not exactly because I don't need help and can't accept help. I can ... it's that this is, in its way, a kind of crisis of faith. Is God "only" knowable through the kindness or cruelty of His people? The more the Christian life is integrated into the life of Christian community the more perilous it becomes when you realize how broken and past repair every Christian community truly is. If you haven't found something wrong with the spiritual community you're part of you just haven't looked hard enough. But if you haven't found some spiritual fruit within that sphere of believers from which you can participate, benefit, and grow then you haven't looked hard enough, either.
There is a brand of Christian piety that is not really marked by love. It is impatient, it is cruel, it envies and it boasts of its purity, It dishonors, mocks and belittles others while tacitly promoting itself. It is, by accident of obsession, self-seeking even in its altruism. It is easily angered and keeps an endless list of wrongs for reference at such times as will be appropriate. It may not delight in official evil but can indulge in a bit of schadenfreude now and then when providential suffering is meted out to the right people. It rejoices in the truth so long as that truth conveniently confirms its own worst suspicions about other people or the rightness of one's own cause. It often protests, rarely trusts, snickers at hope, and doubts the use of perserverence. Yet it will still protect, still assume the best, will still hope, and will perservere. It is a paradoxical thing. It is something I see in myself even more than I see in others.
Trusting in the kindness of God's people is difficult because if we are betrayed or let down by God's people we then inevitably feel betrayed or let down by God, too.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Sunday, October 23, 2011
rapid response clarification from Mars Hill about rumors on cease and desist letters
http://blog.marshill.com/2011/10/22/clarification-on-some-rumors-that-have-been-on-some-blogs/
by Mars Hill Church on Saturday, October 22nd, 2011 8:34 pm
At Mars Hill we like to be generous with everything we’ve been given. For over ten years, we’ve made all of our sermons available for free online, invested significant time and money to help raise up thousands of leaders around the globe through theresurgence.com, and given millions of dollars to plant dozens of churches through Acts 29. Recently, this has grown to include such things a free Leadership Coaching and Campaign research to help other churches and ministries grow. We love other churches and ministries, and we love giving generously to serve them.
By God’s grace, our ministry has grown to the place where we’re recognized by people all over the world. With this kind of recognition, we have a responsibility to be good stewards of the influence that God has given us to tell people about Jesus.
Sadly, in addition to giving things away, we’ve also had things taken. We’ve had churches cut and paste our logo, take our website code and copy it completely, had ministry leaders cut and paste documents of ours, put their name on them to then post online as if it were their content, and even seen other pastors fired for preaching our sermons verbatim.
We’re not the only church called Mars Hill, and occasionally there arises confusion between us and other churches that share the “Mars Hill” name, particularly as we now have our churches in four states. This was the case recently when one of our members called us to find out if we had planted Mars Hill churches in the Sacramento, California area. We had not, but when we went to these churches’ websites, it was obvious to us how people could be confused. Each of these three connected churches in the Sacramento region—planted in 2006, 2007, and 2010—bore the “Mars Hill” name and their logo was substantially similar to the logo we’ve used since 1996.
When cases like this arise in the business world, it’s customary for a law office to send a notice asking the other organization to adjust their branding to differentiate it. This is commonly referred to as a cease and desist letter. On September 27, 2011, our legal counsel sent such a letter to these three Mars Hill churches requesting that they change their logo and name. In hindsight, we realize now that the way we went about raising our concerns, while acceptable in the business world, is not the way we should deal with fellow Christians. On Friday we spoke with the pastor of Mars Hill in Sacramento to apologize for the way we went about this. We had a very productive conversation and look forward to continuing that conversation in the days and weeks ahead.
We made a mistake in not calling these churches prior to sending the letter. We should have picked up the phone before sending any other communication.
Unfortunately, rather than hearing from the church in Sacramento, we began hearing that the matter was instead being speculated on by a blogger who did not verify any facts with us and, as a result, provided an inaccurate version of what transpired. This blog post from us is intended to alleviate any confusion.
As a clarification, we have not sued any churches and have no plans to sue any churches.
We have not sent any similar letters to any other “Mars Hill” churches, and we are not planning on asking any church with “Mars Hill” in their name to change their name.
At the speed of the internet clarification has come.
By now I don't anticipate the fans or detractors will have anything new to say they haven't already been saying. What we can establish at this point is that if at any point in the future Mars Hill sues any church over branding issues the whole English-reading/English-speaking internet world has been put on notice that a flip-flop will have happened.
By the way, plagiarism is lame. There are a lot of things that can be said about a guy like Driscoll but his bibliographic citations and attributions have been, on the whole, pretty consistent. He might lift some weak jokes from another pastor's Mother's Day sermon (which I've written about elsewhere on this blog) but for actual bibliographic stuff in his writings he's usually good about, say, referring to Richard Bauckham as a scholarly reference for his 1 & 2 Peter sermon series. His spiritual warfare series includes a reference to the monstrous, door-stop book The Christian in Full Armour by William Gurnall. Give Driscoll credit for at least this much, when an idea isn't really his own he's usually pretty good about giving credit where it's due. It's when he gets goofy ideas like that the Targum Neofiti teaches the Trinity that you can be sure that dumb idea is all Driscoll and not an idea he got from somebody like John Stott or Jim Packer.
by Mars Hill Church on Saturday, October 22nd, 2011 8:34 pm
At Mars Hill we like to be generous with everything we’ve been given. For over ten years, we’ve made all of our sermons available for free online, invested significant time and money to help raise up thousands of leaders around the globe through theresurgence.com, and given millions of dollars to plant dozens of churches through Acts 29. Recently, this has grown to include such things a free Leadership Coaching and Campaign research to help other churches and ministries grow. We love other churches and ministries, and we love giving generously to serve them.
By God’s grace, our ministry has grown to the place where we’re recognized by people all over the world. With this kind of recognition, we have a responsibility to be good stewards of the influence that God has given us to tell people about Jesus.
Sadly, in addition to giving things away, we’ve also had things taken. We’ve had churches cut and paste our logo, take our website code and copy it completely, had ministry leaders cut and paste documents of ours, put their name on them to then post online as if it were their content, and even seen other pastors fired for preaching our sermons verbatim.
We’re not the only church called Mars Hill, and occasionally there arises confusion between us and other churches that share the “Mars Hill” name, particularly as we now have our churches in four states. This was the case recently when one of our members called us to find out if we had planted Mars Hill churches in the Sacramento, California area. We had not, but when we went to these churches’ websites, it was obvious to us how people could be confused. Each of these three connected churches in the Sacramento region—planted in 2006, 2007, and 2010—bore the “Mars Hill” name and their logo was substantially similar to the logo we’ve used since 1996.
When cases like this arise in the business world, it’s customary for a law office to send a notice asking the other organization to adjust their branding to differentiate it. This is commonly referred to as a cease and desist letter. On September 27, 2011, our legal counsel sent such a letter to these three Mars Hill churches requesting that they change their logo and name. In hindsight, we realize now that the way we went about raising our concerns, while acceptable in the business world, is not the way we should deal with fellow Christians. On Friday we spoke with the pastor of Mars Hill in Sacramento to apologize for the way we went about this. We had a very productive conversation and look forward to continuing that conversation in the days and weeks ahead.
We made a mistake in not calling these churches prior to sending the letter. We should have picked up the phone before sending any other communication.
Unfortunately, rather than hearing from the church in Sacramento, we began hearing that the matter was instead being speculated on by a blogger who did not verify any facts with us and, as a result, provided an inaccurate version of what transpired. This blog post from us is intended to alleviate any confusion.
As a clarification, we have not sued any churches and have no plans to sue any churches.
We have not sent any similar letters to any other “Mars Hill” churches, and we are not planning on asking any church with “Mars Hill” in their name to change their name.
At the speed of the internet clarification has come.
By now I don't anticipate the fans or detractors will have anything new to say they haven't already been saying. What we can establish at this point is that if at any point in the future Mars Hill sues any church over branding issues the whole English-reading/English-speaking internet world has been put on notice that a flip-flop will have happened.
By the way, plagiarism is lame. There are a lot of things that can be said about a guy like Driscoll but his bibliographic citations and attributions have been, on the whole, pretty consistent. He might lift some weak jokes from another pastor's Mother's Day sermon (which I've written about elsewhere on this blog) but for actual bibliographic stuff in his writings he's usually good about, say, referring to Richard Bauckham as a scholarly reference for his 1 & 2 Peter sermon series. His spiritual warfare series includes a reference to the monstrous, door-stop book The Christian in Full Armour by William Gurnall. Give Driscoll credit for at least this much, when an idea isn't really his own he's usually pretty good about giving credit where it's due. It's when he gets goofy ideas like that the Targum Neofiti teaches the Trinity that you can be sure that dumb idea is all Driscoll and not an idea he got from somebody like John Stott or Jim Packer.
HT to Brian Auten over at BHT: The Rawest Nerve
http://boarsheadtavern.com/2011/10/23/brandingcelebrity-the-raw-nerve-of-conservative-evangelicalism/
When you bring up the issues of branding (a la Mars Hill) and celebrity in the context of young, restless, Reformed evangelicalism, I’d argue that you are hitting not just a “raw nerve,” but the “rawest nerve.” Yesterday, I organized my notes and links on the “state of the blog conversation” between 2007-2011 re: conservative evangelical celebrity. For those who might be interested, or might find them helpful for your own research, you can find the notes here.
[Addendum -- Thanks to Matthew Johnson for explaining the whole Dropbox thing to me; I'm a technological neanderthal.]
Yep, seens like branding and celebrity is the rawest nerve in the context of young, restless Reformed evangelicalism. In a different sort of way the pitfalls of branding and celebrity were rampant in American Pentecostalism in the 1980s and 1990s. Bakker, Swaggart, and others. We could swap out terms like "annointed", "fresh fire", and "move of God" and replace them with "missional", "community" and "contextualization". Of course the scandals that have erupted in connection to Pentecostals have tended to be about sex and money. The scandals that have erupted in the young, restless Reformed orbit have been about about pride and power.
It is usually said that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. Well, maybe the trouble is that those who do know history (or think they do) are doomed to think they will transcend it. A friend of mine was telling me that the bit with the latest X-Men titles (not that, honestly, I have ever cared about X-men despite being a comics fan) is that "history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes."
Slant rhyme is still rhyming. We'll just have to wait and see how the next few couplets play out in the poem.
When you bring up the issues of branding (a la Mars Hill) and celebrity in the context of young, restless, Reformed evangelicalism, I’d argue that you are hitting not just a “raw nerve,” but the “rawest nerve.” Yesterday, I organized my notes and links on the “state of the blog conversation” between 2007-2011 re: conservative evangelical celebrity. For those who might be interested, or might find them helpful for your own research, you can find the notes here.
[Addendum -- Thanks to Matthew Johnson for explaining the whole Dropbox thing to me; I'm a technological neanderthal.]
Yep, seens like branding and celebrity is the rawest nerve in the context of young, restless Reformed evangelicalism. In a different sort of way the pitfalls of branding and celebrity were rampant in American Pentecostalism in the 1980s and 1990s. Bakker, Swaggart, and others. We could swap out terms like "annointed", "fresh fire", and "move of God" and replace them with "missional", "community" and "contextualization". Of course the scandals that have erupted in connection to Pentecostals have tended to be about sex and money. The scandals that have erupted in the young, restless Reformed orbit have been about about pride and power.
It is usually said that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. Well, maybe the trouble is that those who do know history (or think they do) are doomed to think they will transcend it. A friend of mine was telling me that the bit with the latest X-Men titles (not that, honestly, I have ever cared about X-men despite being a comics fan) is that "history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes."
Slant rhyme is still rhyming. We'll just have to wait and see how the next few couplets play out in the poem.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Mars Hill Church as a trademark, probably another sign it's a denomination/institution/franchise
http://www.civitatedei.com/2011/10/king-of-the-hill/#comments
http://natomaschurch.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/another-argument-on-mars-hill/
A cease and desist order to a church calling itself Mars Hill down in Sacramento suggests any number of things. One is that those people down in Sacramento may have lived in some special bubble world where the internet doesn't exist. Two, those people have also lived in a part of the United States where Mars Hill, whether a Driscoll brand or a Bell brand, hadn't gotten much notice in the last fifteen years.
And brand is exactly what comes up. Mars Hill just turned fifteen years old recently and is no longer just in Seattle. It is present in three states and multiple campuses exist. It is, as I have been saying, a denomination. If Driscoll and the elders at Mars Hill ever wanted to imagine Mars Hill would not become another denomination or institution a cease and desist order to a group of uncreative church planters in Sacramento should put to rest any doubt about the institutional and denominational nature of Mars Hill now. Even as far back as about 2003 when people would ask me what Mars Hill was like I'd say, "Basically Calvinist Baptist without dispensationalism, which I'm okay with." Well, I was at the time, obviously.
Well, if the cease and desist letter is legit then congratuations, Driscoll, Mars Hill is a denomination that can use its branding and trademark as leverage against little start-up churches like the one you planted fifteen years ago. And, legally speaking, this "can" be done, but along the way you have to concede that the little church you planted has become the denominational institution that throws its weight around to make little churches fall into line. It has become the kind of church and institution you used to complain about. Citing trademark to tell a little church in Sacramento to cease and desist is a case where a big megachurch tells a little start-up what it can't do on account of branding and trademark. Doesn't that sound like a big ol' institution telling a sincere little group of godly guys with a vision for missional community that they have to jump through some hoops?
One of the great ironies about Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill in the last fifteen years has been watching Driscoll and his church turn by steps from a little church plant that met in his house into a massive institution, a denomination and a brand. Having spent a few years complaining about how too many pastors only have so many years of sermons in them he spent a good chunk of 2006-2008 recycling material from his 2000-2005 period. Early on he and other pastors talked in 2000-2002 how traditional copyright was outmoded and that open copyright was the way to go and now? Well, a cease and desist letter.
After talking about how denominations were dead institutions that could throw their weight around to make life miserable for little sincere start-up churches Driscoll and company have managed to become that, too. Of course it's possible Driscoll complained about the ways denominations made life tough for little, sincere start-up churches and churches dependent on bigger churches for help because that's what he was chafing at. Nothing quite says "institution" like a letter expressing concern that one's trademark and brand is in danger of being compromised.
Back in 2000-2002 Driscoll was talking about how copyright was outmoded and becoming out of date and suggesting that people go with open copyright. Well, I saw how that was going to turn out, the Mars Hill team was going to have a change of heart once it got big enough and popular enough to worry that its content might get infringed upon or dilluted in some way. Unlike some ideologues I have come across I don't actually object to intellectual property. Mars Hill as an institution may illustrate a short observation Robert Frost made in a poem, he wrote that he chose not to be radical in his youth for fear of becoming conservative when old. The young radical from the 1960s could at lenth become a Reagan Democratic in the 1980s. An upstart group of Christians claiming copyright was outdated in the late 1990s can become older guys who issue cease and desist letters about trademark infringement, it seems, in the 2010's. Christians who want more public recognition of religion in the 1980s in America steadily don't want that recognition of religious practice to be Islam in the 2000's.
Dare I suggest, as a conservative Christian, that the problem with this is that the real nature of the game is being given away? Or perhaps we could consider that Francis Schaeffer pointed out decades ago that Christians must be ready to accept the full implications of engaging in discussion and debate in the marketplace of ideas. We have to grant the possibility that we may fail to make the sales pitch, fail to seal the deal, fail to make the most successful case for our view in light of alternatives. Now a guy like Van Til wouldn't concede that possibility but, of course, I'm not talking Cornelius Van Til and "worldview", I'm talking Francis Schaeffer (not Frank).
A lot can change in fifteen years. Driscoll used to be far more critical of Robert Schuller in 2000 than he was in 2003. Driscoll was more accomodating and less polemical toward egalitarians in 2001 than he has been in 2010 when he can afford to be less considerate now that there's no risk that ticking off egalitarian churches in Seattle might open fewer venues into which Mars Hill could move. Mars Hill is also obviously much less dependent on support and resources from Antioch Bible Church. Perhaps part of institutional growth and institutional memory is a selective forgetting and remembering of where you have come from.
http://natomaschurch.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/another-argument-on-mars-hill/
A cease and desist order to a church calling itself Mars Hill down in Sacramento suggests any number of things. One is that those people down in Sacramento may have lived in some special bubble world where the internet doesn't exist. Two, those people have also lived in a part of the United States where Mars Hill, whether a Driscoll brand or a Bell brand, hadn't gotten much notice in the last fifteen years.
And brand is exactly what comes up. Mars Hill just turned fifteen years old recently and is no longer just in Seattle. It is present in three states and multiple campuses exist. It is, as I have been saying, a denomination. If Driscoll and the elders at Mars Hill ever wanted to imagine Mars Hill would not become another denomination or institution a cease and desist order to a group of uncreative church planters in Sacramento should put to rest any doubt about the institutional and denominational nature of Mars Hill now. Even as far back as about 2003 when people would ask me what Mars Hill was like I'd say, "Basically Calvinist Baptist without dispensationalism, which I'm okay with." Well, I was at the time, obviously.
Well, if the cease and desist letter is legit then congratuations, Driscoll, Mars Hill is a denomination that can use its branding and trademark as leverage against little start-up churches like the one you planted fifteen years ago. And, legally speaking, this "can" be done, but along the way you have to concede that the little church you planted has become the denominational institution that throws its weight around to make little churches fall into line. It has become the kind of church and institution you used to complain about. Citing trademark to tell a little church in Sacramento to cease and desist is a case where a big megachurch tells a little start-up what it can't do on account of branding and trademark. Doesn't that sound like a big ol' institution telling a sincere little group of godly guys with a vision for missional community that they have to jump through some hoops?
One of the great ironies about Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill in the last fifteen years has been watching Driscoll and his church turn by steps from a little church plant that met in his house into a massive institution, a denomination and a brand. Having spent a few years complaining about how too many pastors only have so many years of sermons in them he spent a good chunk of 2006-2008 recycling material from his 2000-2005 period. Early on he and other pastors talked in 2000-2002 how traditional copyright was outmoded and that open copyright was the way to go and now? Well, a cease and desist letter.
After talking about how denominations were dead institutions that could throw their weight around to make life miserable for little sincere start-up churches Driscoll and company have managed to become that, too. Of course it's possible Driscoll complained about the ways denominations made life tough for little, sincere start-up churches and churches dependent on bigger churches for help because that's what he was chafing at. Nothing quite says "institution" like a letter expressing concern that one's trademark and brand is in danger of being compromised.
Back in 2000-2002 Driscoll was talking about how copyright was outmoded and becoming out of date and suggesting that people go with open copyright. Well, I saw how that was going to turn out, the Mars Hill team was going to have a change of heart once it got big enough and popular enough to worry that its content might get infringed upon or dilluted in some way. Unlike some ideologues I have come across I don't actually object to intellectual property. Mars Hill as an institution may illustrate a short observation Robert Frost made in a poem, he wrote that he chose not to be radical in his youth for fear of becoming conservative when old. The young radical from the 1960s could at lenth become a Reagan Democratic in the 1980s. An upstart group of Christians claiming copyright was outdated in the late 1990s can become older guys who issue cease and desist letters about trademark infringement, it seems, in the 2010's. Christians who want more public recognition of religion in the 1980s in America steadily don't want that recognition of religious practice to be Islam in the 2000's.
Dare I suggest, as a conservative Christian, that the problem with this is that the real nature of the game is being given away? Or perhaps we could consider that Francis Schaeffer pointed out decades ago that Christians must be ready to accept the full implications of engaging in discussion and debate in the marketplace of ideas. We have to grant the possibility that we may fail to make the sales pitch, fail to seal the deal, fail to make the most successful case for our view in light of alternatives. Now a guy like Van Til wouldn't concede that possibility but, of course, I'm not talking Cornelius Van Til and "worldview", I'm talking Francis Schaeffer (not Frank).
A lot can change in fifteen years. Driscoll used to be far more critical of Robert Schuller in 2000 than he was in 2003. Driscoll was more accomodating and less polemical toward egalitarians in 2001 than he has been in 2010 when he can afford to be less considerate now that there's no risk that ticking off egalitarian churches in Seattle might open fewer venues into which Mars Hill could move. Mars Hill is also obviously much less dependent on support and resources from Antioch Bible Church. Perhaps part of institutional growth and institutional memory is a selective forgetting and remembering of where you have come from.
Psychology Today: Enemies Enhance the Meaning of Life
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-big-questions/201110/enemies-enhance-the-meaning-life
I suppose pertinent to my recent discussions of how the narrative we create for our lives can guide and shape us without our examining the nature of that narrative, here we are, observations (a bit too general for my taste) about how having enemies gives meaning to life. The enemy may be specific (let's say that Batman has the Joker and Superman has Lex Luthor). Or the enemies may be generic, like al Qaeda, or the Republican or Democratic parties, or maybe laws that restrict marriage to heterosexuals or laws that deal with intellectual property, or maybe a particular religious institution like the Roman Catholic church ... or religion in general or atheism in general.
It is one of the things that has flourished in the wake of things like "worldview" discussions and has helped to catalyze "culture war", whether on behalf of a religious right conception of the just society or the secular left conception of a just society. It's just preferable to not imagine that a just society includes one or the other, depending on what one wishes to imagine. The enemy can be seen to embody opposing values in some way or form and one's opposition can become a way of simplifying the world. I admit that I can see how from the perspective of a secular progressive both a Christian and a Muslim will look pretty much the same in their opposition to a secular state in which religious views are not made the foundation of a just society.
The Christian and the Muslim will not see things this way in many cases. In fact a Christian may be least likely now, if he is a conservative or a neo-conservative, to see the correspondence. But in the midst of the Cold War, particularly during the Reagan years, a Muslim in Afghanistan fighting the Soviets was an ally where as now ... well, the enemy of my enemy is no longer my friend once our common enemy has fallen. As a certain pastor in Idaho once put it, today's political problems are generally the result of yesterday's political solutions. On that much we can certainly agree.
P.S. I know I'm posting just link after link and I'd like to be more productive and coming up with stuff but I've been sick this week. My main priority in writing has had to be cover letters and resumes. If you find you're tired, have slight aches in your joints, feel a bit weak, and occasionally have to cough up green sputum it can really kill the literary impulse. I'm surprised I've gotten as much written this week as I have!
And I feel like a chump because I've stalled (again!) in my esays about Batman for Mockingbird. In my unhappy defense needing eye surgery, having some kind of nasty cold, being unemployed, dealing with medical bills, and attempting to continue the job hunt in the midst of all that does constitute a pretty powerful set of distractions. Still, God willing I can get over this bug sooner rather than later and get back to writing stuff that doesn't involve pleading for kindness from medical billing offices or making a case for why this unemployed broke guy with bad eyes could use cataract removal surgery.
I suppose pertinent to my recent discussions of how the narrative we create for our lives can guide and shape us without our examining the nature of that narrative, here we are, observations (a bit too general for my taste) about how having enemies gives meaning to life. The enemy may be specific (let's say that Batman has the Joker and Superman has Lex Luthor). Or the enemies may be generic, like al Qaeda, or the Republican or Democratic parties, or maybe laws that restrict marriage to heterosexuals or laws that deal with intellectual property, or maybe a particular religious institution like the Roman Catholic church ... or religion in general or atheism in general.
It is one of the things that has flourished in the wake of things like "worldview" discussions and has helped to catalyze "culture war", whether on behalf of a religious right conception of the just society or the secular left conception of a just society. It's just preferable to not imagine that a just society includes one or the other, depending on what one wishes to imagine. The enemy can be seen to embody opposing values in some way or form and one's opposition can become a way of simplifying the world. I admit that I can see how from the perspective of a secular progressive both a Christian and a Muslim will look pretty much the same in their opposition to a secular state in which religious views are not made the foundation of a just society.
The Christian and the Muslim will not see things this way in many cases. In fact a Christian may be least likely now, if he is a conservative or a neo-conservative, to see the correspondence. But in the midst of the Cold War, particularly during the Reagan years, a Muslim in Afghanistan fighting the Soviets was an ally where as now ... well, the enemy of my enemy is no longer my friend once our common enemy has fallen. As a certain pastor in Idaho once put it, today's political problems are generally the result of yesterday's political solutions. On that much we can certainly agree.
P.S. I know I'm posting just link after link and I'd like to be more productive and coming up with stuff but I've been sick this week. My main priority in writing has had to be cover letters and resumes. If you find you're tired, have slight aches in your joints, feel a bit weak, and occasionally have to cough up green sputum it can really kill the literary impulse. I'm surprised I've gotten as much written this week as I have!
And I feel like a chump because I've stalled (again!) in my esays about Batman for Mockingbird. In my unhappy defense needing eye surgery, having some kind of nasty cold, being unemployed, dealing with medical bills, and attempting to continue the job hunt in the midst of all that does constitute a pretty powerful set of distractions. Still, God willing I can get over this bug sooner rather than later and get back to writing stuff that doesn't involve pleading for kindness from medical billing offices or making a case for why this unemployed broke guy with bad eyes could use cataract removal surgery.
Reboot Christianity: Speaker for the Dead [Ed. title--Is "Legacy" how we whitewash the dead?
http://rebootchristianity.blogspot.com/2011/10/speaker-for-dead-jobs-and-davis.html
... What we have today is a tendency when someone dies to elevate them to saintly status and conveniently forget all the nastiness of their lives. It is the antithesis of Antony's speech in Shakespeare; where he once famously said, "The evil men do lives on after them; the good is oft interred in their bones", we find it to be the opposite today. The good is elevated and applauded; the evil is carefully and quietly hidden away. [emphasis added here and throughout]
It is said that this is done for politeness; perhaps so. I think more likely, however, this is done because of the preference by society at large to deny the inherent evilness of mankind and instead tell us that we are all basically so good. Anti-depravity, it would seems, requires that we have short memories about how people live their lives.
At any rate, with the recent deaths of two controversial luminaries, Steve Jobs of Apple and Al Davis of the Raiders, we find this principle of polite forgetfulness writ large. Both completely dominated their industries, literally changing the game fundamentally in their roles. Without them, neither the NFL nor technology looks even remotely the same as it does today. Their visionary influence is hard to overestimate, and they fundamentally shaped much of our world. And that is all that you will read about.
The greatness they do lives on after them; the evil seems to be interred in their bones.
But let us not forget that both were far from universally loved during their lives.
Jobs was famously hostile and spiteful; tales of his management style almost always discuss his dismissiveness, hostility, and fear-inducing leadership. He was near-Orwellian about centralization of power in the company, and was sometimes loudly criticized for the outsourcing of production to Chinese factories whose commitment to fair work practices was questionable at best. Under Jobs, Apple became one of the most aggressive censors of information on any Internet device, squashing a great deal of offensive material ("offensive" also apparently including anything invented by other companies). Further, he even established a sort of internal affairs team to seek out whistleblowers and leakers. A visionary he was; a saint, he was not.
I've never really been a Mac user but none of this stuff above is news to me. Word gets around.
Legacy is a funny thing. It frequently doesn't turn out to be to others what we imagine it should be to ourselves. Most of us don't have a legacy of any note and yet each of us in some way will, understandably, want a legacy. Whether or not Jobs' legacy will be given a more balanced presentation than the mainly laudatory one he's been getting in the weeks since he passed is not something I worry about. Within weeks of Michael Jackson's death any number of people were going on about how the evil pedophile, no-talent pop star should not be mourned, this usually from people who can't find it in themselves to consider a popular entertainer someone to lament in any event. We don't tend to lament the deaths of people who, however we classify them, as kinds of cultural enemies. Mac users may not have great or kind words when Bill Gates passes but the legacy of Bill Gates and his company is surely going to be more than Windows Vista.
... What we have today is a tendency when someone dies to elevate them to saintly status and conveniently forget all the nastiness of their lives. It is the antithesis of Antony's speech in Shakespeare; where he once famously said, "The evil men do lives on after them; the good is oft interred in their bones", we find it to be the opposite today. The good is elevated and applauded; the evil is carefully and quietly hidden away. [emphasis added here and throughout]
It is said that this is done for politeness; perhaps so. I think more likely, however, this is done because of the preference by society at large to deny the inherent evilness of mankind and instead tell us that we are all basically so good. Anti-depravity, it would seems, requires that we have short memories about how people live their lives.
At any rate, with the recent deaths of two controversial luminaries, Steve Jobs of Apple and Al Davis of the Raiders, we find this principle of polite forgetfulness writ large. Both completely dominated their industries, literally changing the game fundamentally in their roles. Without them, neither the NFL nor technology looks even remotely the same as it does today. Their visionary influence is hard to overestimate, and they fundamentally shaped much of our world. And that is all that you will read about.
The greatness they do lives on after them; the evil seems to be interred in their bones.
But let us not forget that both were far from universally loved during their lives.
Jobs was famously hostile and spiteful; tales of his management style almost always discuss his dismissiveness, hostility, and fear-inducing leadership. He was near-Orwellian about centralization of power in the company, and was sometimes loudly criticized for the outsourcing of production to Chinese factories whose commitment to fair work practices was questionable at best. Under Jobs, Apple became one of the most aggressive censors of information on any Internet device, squashing a great deal of offensive material ("offensive" also apparently including anything invented by other companies). Further, he even established a sort of internal affairs team to seek out whistleblowers and leakers. A visionary he was; a saint, he was not.
I've never really been a Mac user but none of this stuff above is news to me. Word gets around.
Legacy is a funny thing. It frequently doesn't turn out to be to others what we imagine it should be to ourselves. Most of us don't have a legacy of any note and yet each of us in some way will, understandably, want a legacy. Whether or not Jobs' legacy will be given a more balanced presentation than the mainly laudatory one he's been getting in the weeks since he passed is not something I worry about. Within weeks of Michael Jackson's death any number of people were going on about how the evil pedophile, no-talent pop star should not be mourned, this usually from people who can't find it in themselves to consider a popular entertainer someone to lament in any event. We don't tend to lament the deaths of people who, however we classify them, as kinds of cultural enemies. Mac users may not have great or kind words when Bill Gates passes but the legacy of Bill Gates and his company is surely going to be more than Windows Vista.
Jared Wilson, Prepare for Later Now--Ecclesiastes 12 and the weakness of the body
http://gospeldrivenchurch.blogspot.com/2011/10/dude-prepare-for-later-now.html
Jared Wilson writes about Ecclesiastes 12 and the fleeting powers of youth. I add merely as a comment that for people who have grown up with disabilities those freedoms of youth have not always been entirely present. Many young men and women live so comfortably within the bounds of their physical forms facing the slow and steady decline of the body is part of the dread of aging. It is, frankly, a dread of aging, to discover the various ways in which your body can fail you, or that you can fail your body. Many people, particularly young men it seems, may not realize that that body they have will one day fail.
Any kid who has ever been called "four eyes" already has some idea of bodily limitation. And a corresponding reality about growing up with a disability of some kind is you don't mind what you've never had most of the time. Still, there are always moments where there may be something you can't do that others can do. If the South Park episode "Gray Dawn" is any indication a lot of old people spend so many decades driving it just doesn't occur to them that they should no longer be driving out of consideration for other drivers. Obviously this is not intended to be a particularly serious or extensive reflection here if I'm ending with reference to a South Park episode.
Jared Wilson writes about Ecclesiastes 12 and the fleeting powers of youth. I add merely as a comment that for people who have grown up with disabilities those freedoms of youth have not always been entirely present. Many young men and women live so comfortably within the bounds of their physical forms facing the slow and steady decline of the body is part of the dread of aging. It is, frankly, a dread of aging, to discover the various ways in which your body can fail you, or that you can fail your body. Many people, particularly young men it seems, may not realize that that body they have will one day fail.
Any kid who has ever been called "four eyes" already has some idea of bodily limitation. And a corresponding reality about growing up with a disability of some kind is you don't mind what you've never had most of the time. Still, there are always moments where there may be something you can't do that others can do. If the South Park episode "Gray Dawn" is any indication a lot of old people spend so many decades driving it just doesn't occur to them that they should no longer be driving out of consideration for other drivers. Obviously this is not intended to be a particularly serious or extensive reflection here if I'm ending with reference to a South Park episode.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Mark Driscoll asks people to give food to help Port Angeles Salvation Army food bank
http://blog.marshill.com/2011/10/18/help-us-give-a-ton-of-food%e2%80%94literally%e2%80%94to-the-salvation-army-this-sunday/
http://pastormark.tv/2011/10/18/for-i-was-hungry-and-you-fed-me
As long-time readers of this blog well know (all fifteen of you? :)) I have not minced words about concerns I have had about Mark Driscoll's pastoral approach and some of the ways this has plays out in Mars Hill church culture.
However, as I have also said, I am also not interested in purely hatchet job profiles. I leave that to other people and you probably know who those bloggers are already. Driscoll has just asked that Mars Hill step up and donate food to go to the Port Angeles Salvation Army food bank, which was recently subjected to the theft of a literal ton of food.
Driscoll's right, the theft has happened near the end of the fiscal year. I ought to know, I used to work for them in the fundraising department. My job was to help map out the data and code parameters in direct response fundraising strategies for the Salvation Army. You can do the math there, dear readers. Folks who may be tempted to assume Mark lies all the time should keep in mind that this is legit. Times have been rough enough for the local Salvation Army in the last two years that, well, I'd still have my old job if things weren't so rough!
For years I had hoped that Mars Hill would seriously consider collaborating with or partnering with the Salvation Army in some fashion. That never materialized in the past. In fact some Mars Hill attenders and members had the impression the Salvation Army was maybe just a Social Gospel thing and too liberal, or that they had problems because they ordain women. Well, this is one Calvinist/Presbyterian (now) who has absolutely no problem working with egalitarians on issues I care about. Helping the poor can be something where complementarians should not get their undies in a bunch working with egalitarian organizations. I can assure you few organizations do a better job helping the poor than the Salvation Army. It would have been nice if Mars Hill had stepped up to contribute earlier in less high profile ways but I'm biased because for the better part of a decade I was a Mars Hill member and a Salvation Army employee. So, yeah, bias up front there.
Still, better late than never. This, folks, is the kind of thing a celebrity megachurch pastor should throw his reputation behind. My hope is that Mars Hill members go well above and beyond what is needed to help the Salvation Army Port Angeles food bank.
http://pastormark.tv/2011/10/18/for-i-was-hungry-and-you-fed-me
As long-time readers of this blog well know (all fifteen of you? :)) I have not minced words about concerns I have had about Mark Driscoll's pastoral approach and some of the ways this has plays out in Mars Hill church culture.
However, as I have also said, I am also not interested in purely hatchet job profiles. I leave that to other people and you probably know who those bloggers are already. Driscoll has just asked that Mars Hill step up and donate food to go to the Port Angeles Salvation Army food bank, which was recently subjected to the theft of a literal ton of food.
Driscoll's right, the theft has happened near the end of the fiscal year. I ought to know, I used to work for them in the fundraising department. My job was to help map out the data and code parameters in direct response fundraising strategies for the Salvation Army. You can do the math there, dear readers. Folks who may be tempted to assume Mark lies all the time should keep in mind that this is legit. Times have been rough enough for the local Salvation Army in the last two years that, well, I'd still have my old job if things weren't so rough!
For years I had hoped that Mars Hill would seriously consider collaborating with or partnering with the Salvation Army in some fashion. That never materialized in the past. In fact some Mars Hill attenders and members had the impression the Salvation Army was maybe just a Social Gospel thing and too liberal, or that they had problems because they ordain women. Well, this is one Calvinist/Presbyterian (now) who has absolutely no problem working with egalitarians on issues I care about. Helping the poor can be something where complementarians should not get their undies in a bunch working with egalitarian organizations. I can assure you few organizations do a better job helping the poor than the Salvation Army. It would have been nice if Mars Hill had stepped up to contribute earlier in less high profile ways but I'm biased because for the better part of a decade I was a Mars Hill member and a Salvation Army employee. So, yeah, bias up front there.
Still, better late than never. This, folks, is the kind of thing a celebrity megachurch pastor should throw his reputation behind. My hope is that Mars Hill members go well above and beyond what is needed to help the Salvation Army Port Angeles food bank.
HT Mockingbird: Atlantic article--"How zombies and superheroes conquered highbrow fiction"
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/10/how-zombies-and-superheroes-conquered-highbrow-fiction/246847/?single_page=true
The trappings of genre fiction—monsters, masked marvels, gizmos, and gumshoes—are no longer quarantined to the bookstore aisles reserved for popular fiction. Horror, mystery and science-fiction books have spread their genetic code to a foreign habitat: the literature section.
To understand why this is significant, it's important to stress how rare genre interpolations were in late 20th-century fiction. In the 1980s and 1990s, serious writers trafficked in realistic tales, simply told. Led by their patron saint, Raymond Carver, American minimalists like Grace Paley, Amy Hempel, Richard Ford, Anne Beattie, and Tobias Wolff used finely-tuned vernacular to explore the everyday problems of everyday people.
Discounting a few notable (and unclassifiable) isoladoes like Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, and Don Delillo, our literature unfolded in diners, standard-issue automobiles, and the living room. Even those writers who did not subscribe to a Hemingway-influenced minimalist aesthetic—John Updike, Phillip Roth, Jane Smiley—still wrote about modern-day people in believable situations. In the 1990s, a new generation of writers took this tendency one step further, hyper-focusing on the stark realities of lesser-known contemporary subcultures (see Annie Proulx, Chris Offutt, William T. Vollmann, and Denis Johnson).
There is a point where literary realism is not realistic. C. S. Lewis once wrote that it's less dangerous for a child to read a fantasy story with talking animals than some "realistic" story about boarding schools because a child can know that dogs and cats do not normally talk but it becomes harder to dispute the reality of boarding school headmasters and the like. My friend J. S. Bangs has referred to Eve Tushnet's observation that "realism" is for those who consider their view of the world realistic while the rest of us must make do with genre.
Having grown up with a fondness for superheroes I've seen plenty of people rip on superheroes as not realistic. Art Spiegelmann once opined that he wasn't into superheroes because superheroes constitute power fantasies for children while he had adult power fantasies. Having actually spent any time at all with children would surely disabuse Spiegelmann of this wildly inaccurate generalization. For that matter in her sometimes denounced essay on feminism Joan Didion wrote that 1970s era women leaving husbands and children to break the shackles of traditional marriage to find themselves as painters and sculptures in New York were not embracing the realistic, pragmatic worlds of consenting adults. They were,instead, embracing the fantasies of children. Essays and novels and movies about the crushing conformity of suburbia are a dime a dozen and ironically the critique of suburbia itself constitutes an agreement with the trappings of genre fiction.
If I weren't feeling sick as a dog and needing to write cover letters and resumes for the continuing job hunt I'd write more than I realistically know I can write about this subject right now.
The trappings of genre fiction—monsters, masked marvels, gizmos, and gumshoes—are no longer quarantined to the bookstore aisles reserved for popular fiction. Horror, mystery and science-fiction books have spread their genetic code to a foreign habitat: the literature section.
To understand why this is significant, it's important to stress how rare genre interpolations were in late 20th-century fiction. In the 1980s and 1990s, serious writers trafficked in realistic tales, simply told. Led by their patron saint, Raymond Carver, American minimalists like Grace Paley, Amy Hempel, Richard Ford, Anne Beattie, and Tobias Wolff used finely-tuned vernacular to explore the everyday problems of everyday people.
Discounting a few notable (and unclassifiable) isoladoes like Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, and Don Delillo, our literature unfolded in diners, standard-issue automobiles, and the living room. Even those writers who did not subscribe to a Hemingway-influenced minimalist aesthetic—John Updike, Phillip Roth, Jane Smiley—still wrote about modern-day people in believable situations. In the 1990s, a new generation of writers took this tendency one step further, hyper-focusing on the stark realities of lesser-known contemporary subcultures (see Annie Proulx, Chris Offutt, William T. Vollmann, and Denis Johnson).
There is a point where literary realism is not realistic. C. S. Lewis once wrote that it's less dangerous for a child to read a fantasy story with talking animals than some "realistic" story about boarding schools because a child can know that dogs and cats do not normally talk but it becomes harder to dispute the reality of boarding school headmasters and the like. My friend J. S. Bangs has referred to Eve Tushnet's observation that "realism" is for those who consider their view of the world realistic while the rest of us must make do with genre.
Having grown up with a fondness for superheroes I've seen plenty of people rip on superheroes as not realistic. Art Spiegelmann once opined that he wasn't into superheroes because superheroes constitute power fantasies for children while he had adult power fantasies. Having actually spent any time at all with children would surely disabuse Spiegelmann of this wildly inaccurate generalization. For that matter in her sometimes denounced essay on feminism Joan Didion wrote that 1970s era women leaving husbands and children to break the shackles of traditional marriage to find themselves as painters and sculptures in New York were not embracing the realistic, pragmatic worlds of consenting adults. They were,instead, embracing the fantasies of children. Essays and novels and movies about the crushing conformity of suburbia are a dime a dozen and ironically the critique of suburbia itself constitutes an agreement with the trappings of genre fiction.
If I weren't feeling sick as a dog and needing to write cover letters and resumes for the continuing job hunt I'd write more than I realistically know I can write about this subject right now.
Link: Mockingbird: You can't put your arms around a memory, especially a false one
http://www.mbird.com/2011/10/you-cant-put-your-arms-around-a-memory-esp-a-false-one/
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/how-friends-ruin-memory-the-social-conformity-effect/
http://www.mbird.com/tag/mistakes-were-made/
DZ links to a Jonah Lehrer article about false memories.
Humans are storytelling machines. We don’t passively perceive the world – we tell stories about it, translating the helter-skelter of events into tidy narratives. This is often a helpful habit, helping us make sense of mistakes, consider counterfactuals and extract a sense of meaning from the randomness of life.
But our love of stories comes with a serious side-effect: like all good narrators, we tend to forsake the facts when they interfere with the plot. We’re so addicted to the anecdote that we let the truth slip away until, eventually, those stories we tell again and again become exercises in pure fiction. Just the other day I learned that one of my cherished childhood tales – the time my older brother put hot peppers in my Chinese food while I was in the bathroom, thus scorching my young tongue – actually happened to my little sister. I’d stolen her trauma.
One of the things I have spent a good deal of my life thinking about is memory and how it alternately shapes us and is shaped by us. It is in the realm of memory we often refuse to discover for ourselves that the heart is deceitful above all things. I could imagine to myself my memory is formidable but there are limits to it. Conversely, I have been told I have one of the most formidable memories of practically anyone a person has met (and this person had by that time met a lot of people) and that there are still gaps in it.
Joan Didion has written about how the quest for a sensible narrative frequently causes us to falsify our own histories and embrace things that are not really true. Our personal and collective history can often be unwittingly revised and refined, reverse-engineered in light not of what happened or who we are but who we now imagine ourselves to be. We can create the narrative of our lives up until this point in such a way as to justify our emotional and intellectual habits now rather than letting the past be what it was.
Conversion stories both illustrate the power of this capacity and how it can be both helpful and dangerous. A conversion can lead one to describe truthfully how "I used to do X but now I do Y. I used to do A but not I do B." Yet in the annals of American evangelicalism an unexamined emotional script may exist (as Fearsome Tycoon alluded to so simply at the Boar's Head Tavern recently). An American in the throes of evangelicalism who leaves that can construct a conversion story post-conversion in which all it took was some simple thing that flipped a switch. "I used to be evangelical and then I found out evolution is true" is the most common one for the conversion of an evangelical into an atheist or simply someone who's not "evangelical" enough for other evangelicals. "I used to be an unbeliever and then I read book X." Is a common conversion narrative for many Christians. The notion that conversion is actually a process taking years or even decades is easier to skim over.
In the midst of seeking out the singular, transformative experience we can be prompted (yes, I chose that word strategically) by social conformity and an eagerness to please that puts us in a frame of mind and heart where we accept a narrative trope that is not actually true of us. One of the most pernicious yet widespread examples of this was the recovered memory movement from the 1980s and 1990s. It became easy for individuals to remember things that did not happen to them because they were prone to the power of suggestion. It became possible to reconstruct a history that didn't exist through immersion in counseling or a social unit in which it was accepted that cathartic, transformative incidents that happened before your brain developed the capacity to form long-term memories or register their relational and emotional significance. It became possible to remember things that never happened as a magical way to explain why you are who you are now. To the extent that Joan Didion has written about this capacity in humanity I enjoy her work (and for various other reasons).
It has happened at different times over my life I'll remember things that other people don't recall but it has also happened that people have confidently explained things to me that have no connection to what I remember happening. One person said something to me that was dismissive and demeaning and then had no memory of saying such a thing a few years later. Well, of course. :) Another person is positive that they couldn't have said anything on the order of X to person Y because that couldn't have happened. This person can't remember any number of things said to persons A, B, or C but out of a conviction that the person couldn't have said anything upsetting to Y the narrative of self does its work.
In other cases a person may remember a history that does not fit the history other people in a social unit remembers but which makes the most sense to the person telling the story. The most public and conspicuous example of this I have ever seen is Mark Driscoll's cravenly self-exonerating description of why he took up the pen name William Wallace II and how he conducted himself during that period. If you asked him personally or personally brought up the subject of what he wrote as William Wallace II he might cringe a bit and concede that there's whole periods of his ministry he'd like to forget because of how badly things went or how he behaved. But in a book published for thousands or tens of thousands to read? Well ... confidence becomes its own reward. Mistakes were made ... but not by me.
But closer to home I could face the temptation to imagine that I was, in my love of the scriptures, "always" committed to this or that doctrine. Or I could say that I embraced some doctrine I didn't. For maybe half my life I grew up in an Arminian household and was Arminian. It wasn't until I was got into college that I began the process of leaning toward a more Calvinist position and it was a slow and steady process. It was not merely the abstract theological arguments, it was also a process of discussing the dynamics of human behavior with other people and, equally important, simply observing the limits of human control At the risk of overstating things a bit, able-bodied people frequently default to the assumption that so and so is free. Ecclesiastes warns young men to appreciate the days of their youth before the days come in which you say "I have no pleasure in them." This is a warning, possibly, of a formerly able-bodied man to still abled-bodied men.
Yet I could try to look back and imagine that what convinced me of Calvinism was "just the Bible". No, not just the Bible, also observations about scientific research on cognitive development, the formation of memory, and the frequently exasperating capacity of the human mind to be enslaved to its own prejudices and methods of making sense of the world. If you observe anyone with any compulsive or addictive or self-destructive behavior for a while, not least should you ever observe these capacities in yourself, it can inspire you to be cautious about just how certain you are of your personal narrative.
One of the more troubling but necessary discoveries I made about myself in the last two years was about my approach to food. I have not, honestly, given a whole lot of thought to food overall. I have not obsessed about finding the perfect dietary/culinary formula which shall confer upon me optimal health. Because I went through my childhood being the one person in the family who almost never complained about Mom's cooking I thought that I was a simple-minded fellow who didn't invest a whole lot of emotional significance into food itself. Food was just food. There were some foods I liked better than others but food was just something to eat. The idea that I could have emotional eating cycles never entered my mind, they were unexamined.
Then an acquaintence of mine, in early 2010, made the news because she was murdered by a man who had been stalking her for years. I spent time with one of my roommates who generously got me some Asian food and I ate the whole thing in one sitting. It dawned on me that night that without previously realizing it I had gone much of my life having emotional eating cycles. I suddenly realized that night what "comfort food" really meant and how it can be a health risk if it is not examined or restrained. I suppose as far as comfort food goes spicy Korean style pork could be more healthy than, say, a pint of ice cream, but there's still that proverb, "Do you like honey? Don't eat too much of it or it will make you sick."
The story about myself and my approach to food that I had unknowingly told myself was the truth turned out to be false. The heart is deceitful above all things and who can understand it? Well, a mixture of Scripture and science has proven very helpful.
The temptation, however, to revel in a story now about how things were then remains. Fearsome Tycoon sounds like he's tackling an overview of how people have a narrative based on political affiliation that colors their understanding of policy. In other words, Republicans imagine themselves to be backing a party that stands for small government, a lean federal budget, and a lack of intrusion into the lives of citizens. None of this is necessarily true and in the case of, say, Reagan, any number of things can be disproven by reference to policy decisions made during the Reagan years. But party affiliation guides narrative.
As has been famously discussed in American history, if a person is from the South then an entire narrative of the Civil War is embraced which selectively eliminates documents, rhetoric, and views about race as being primary motivators for conflict. The war is even considered the War of Northern Aggression rather than the American Civil War depending on where you live. Conversely, a comparably falsifiable narrative emerges in the North about how altruistic the Union motives were. In an adjacent state Douglas Wilson published Southern Slavery As it Was. I agree with Fearsome Tycoon's jibe that Wilson should write another follow-up volume entitled Jim Crow As it Was.
I've met people who have personal histories which have changed in the course of life. I am unable to observe this in myself, though I suspect it has happened. When someone you have known for years describes themselves as having never subscribed to a view ten years ago and simply avoiding objecting to it you cannot help but take notice when this year they talk as though they "always" held that view you remember they always disliked, particularly if you also talked about this subject with other people who know this person. What has happened? Is the person lying in saying that view A, which they never actually endorsed, was the view they always subscribed to before? Well, no, but the "truth" being told is an emotional narrative rather than a focus on factual details.
If a husband insults his wife four years ago and gets a rein on his tongue now then if his wife remarks on an insult now by appealing to a past the husband might say "But I never do that." Well, kind of, but not really. What we tell ourselves must be true about ourselves in the abstract or in the whole lets us overlook all of the details of daily life and how we actually relate to people. This is how a person who is prone to say cutting or dismissive remarks about anyone and everyone on an hourly basis can look back over the week and simply believe that he or she didn't do anything other than speak the truth. The truth was not really spoken, but the judgment of the person who, in hindsight, rationalizes what he or she said by deciding it was the truth. Mistakes were made but not by me. If I made mistakes it was only because I may have over-reacted to mistakes you don't know or don't wish to admit you're making.
One of the roles of prophetic books is to puncture the fraudulent narrative God's people are so easily and so often tempted to believe in. This is vividly shown in Jesus' debate with Jewish experts in John 8. They protest that Abraham is their father and we know where Jesus goes with that. He destroys the narrative they have constructed for themselves by confronting them with an alternative narrative, one that lays bare the real drift of their hearts.When faced with Christ the most dangerous thing we can ever say is "I would never", whether we may be Peter denying that he would ever deny Him, or Pharisees saying they would never have persecuted the prophets.
A great deal of the brokenness in our lives and the brokenness we bring to the lives of others emerges from the "I would never" we continually say while doing exactly those things we tell ourselves (and others) we would never do. But, like Christ, other people can see our "I would never" isn't true, even when we don't. Other people can see that the "I always" or "I didn't" in our imagined pasts didn't happen. Or maybe they can't, because they, too, share a narrative in which the truth of events and words and actions is suppressed for the emotional script of "this is who I am." Sometimes this narrative takes the form of "This is who I am in God/Christ/Jesus." That is, in sum, why we need prophets but about this a great deal more has to be said that must be saved for some other time.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/how-friends-ruin-memory-the-social-conformity-effect/
http://www.mbird.com/tag/mistakes-were-made/
DZ links to a Jonah Lehrer article about false memories.
Humans are storytelling machines. We don’t passively perceive the world – we tell stories about it, translating the helter-skelter of events into tidy narratives. This is often a helpful habit, helping us make sense of mistakes, consider counterfactuals and extract a sense of meaning from the randomness of life.
But our love of stories comes with a serious side-effect: like all good narrators, we tend to forsake the facts when they interfere with the plot. We’re so addicted to the anecdote that we let the truth slip away until, eventually, those stories we tell again and again become exercises in pure fiction. Just the other day I learned that one of my cherished childhood tales – the time my older brother put hot peppers in my Chinese food while I was in the bathroom, thus scorching my young tongue – actually happened to my little sister. I’d stolen her trauma.
One of the things I have spent a good deal of my life thinking about is memory and how it alternately shapes us and is shaped by us. It is in the realm of memory we often refuse to discover for ourselves that the heart is deceitful above all things. I could imagine to myself my memory is formidable but there are limits to it. Conversely, I have been told I have one of the most formidable memories of practically anyone a person has met (and this person had by that time met a lot of people) and that there are still gaps in it.
Joan Didion has written about how the quest for a sensible narrative frequently causes us to falsify our own histories and embrace things that are not really true. Our personal and collective history can often be unwittingly revised and refined, reverse-engineered in light not of what happened or who we are but who we now imagine ourselves to be. We can create the narrative of our lives up until this point in such a way as to justify our emotional and intellectual habits now rather than letting the past be what it was.
Conversion stories both illustrate the power of this capacity and how it can be both helpful and dangerous. A conversion can lead one to describe truthfully how "I used to do X but now I do Y. I used to do A but not I do B." Yet in the annals of American evangelicalism an unexamined emotional script may exist (as Fearsome Tycoon alluded to so simply at the Boar's Head Tavern recently). An American in the throes of evangelicalism who leaves that can construct a conversion story post-conversion in which all it took was some simple thing that flipped a switch. "I used to be evangelical and then I found out evolution is true" is the most common one for the conversion of an evangelical into an atheist or simply someone who's not "evangelical" enough for other evangelicals. "I used to be an unbeliever and then I read book X." Is a common conversion narrative for many Christians. The notion that conversion is actually a process taking years or even decades is easier to skim over.
In the midst of seeking out the singular, transformative experience we can be prompted (yes, I chose that word strategically) by social conformity and an eagerness to please that puts us in a frame of mind and heart where we accept a narrative trope that is not actually true of us. One of the most pernicious yet widespread examples of this was the recovered memory movement from the 1980s and 1990s. It became easy for individuals to remember things that did not happen to them because they were prone to the power of suggestion. It became possible to reconstruct a history that didn't exist through immersion in counseling or a social unit in which it was accepted that cathartic, transformative incidents that happened before your brain developed the capacity to form long-term memories or register their relational and emotional significance. It became possible to remember things that never happened as a magical way to explain why you are who you are now. To the extent that Joan Didion has written about this capacity in humanity I enjoy her work (and for various other reasons).
It has happened at different times over my life I'll remember things that other people don't recall but it has also happened that people have confidently explained things to me that have no connection to what I remember happening. One person said something to me that was dismissive and demeaning and then had no memory of saying such a thing a few years later. Well, of course. :) Another person is positive that they couldn't have said anything on the order of X to person Y because that couldn't have happened. This person can't remember any number of things said to persons A, B, or C but out of a conviction that the person couldn't have said anything upsetting to Y the narrative of self does its work.
In other cases a person may remember a history that does not fit the history other people in a social unit remembers but which makes the most sense to the person telling the story. The most public and conspicuous example of this I have ever seen is Mark Driscoll's cravenly self-exonerating description of why he took up the pen name William Wallace II and how he conducted himself during that period. If you asked him personally or personally brought up the subject of what he wrote as William Wallace II he might cringe a bit and concede that there's whole periods of his ministry he'd like to forget because of how badly things went or how he behaved. But in a book published for thousands or tens of thousands to read? Well ... confidence becomes its own reward. Mistakes were made ... but not by me.
But closer to home I could face the temptation to imagine that I was, in my love of the scriptures, "always" committed to this or that doctrine. Or I could say that I embraced some doctrine I didn't. For maybe half my life I grew up in an Arminian household and was Arminian. It wasn't until I was got into college that I began the process of leaning toward a more Calvinist position and it was a slow and steady process. It was not merely the abstract theological arguments, it was also a process of discussing the dynamics of human behavior with other people and, equally important, simply observing the limits of human control At the risk of overstating things a bit, able-bodied people frequently default to the assumption that so and so is free. Ecclesiastes warns young men to appreciate the days of their youth before the days come in which you say "I have no pleasure in them." This is a warning, possibly, of a formerly able-bodied man to still abled-bodied men.
Yet I could try to look back and imagine that what convinced me of Calvinism was "just the Bible". No, not just the Bible, also observations about scientific research on cognitive development, the formation of memory, and the frequently exasperating capacity of the human mind to be enslaved to its own prejudices and methods of making sense of the world. If you observe anyone with any compulsive or addictive or self-destructive behavior for a while, not least should you ever observe these capacities in yourself, it can inspire you to be cautious about just how certain you are of your personal narrative.
One of the more troubling but necessary discoveries I made about myself in the last two years was about my approach to food. I have not, honestly, given a whole lot of thought to food overall. I have not obsessed about finding the perfect dietary/culinary formula which shall confer upon me optimal health. Because I went through my childhood being the one person in the family who almost never complained about Mom's cooking I thought that I was a simple-minded fellow who didn't invest a whole lot of emotional significance into food itself. Food was just food. There were some foods I liked better than others but food was just something to eat. The idea that I could have emotional eating cycles never entered my mind, they were unexamined.
Then an acquaintence of mine, in early 2010, made the news because she was murdered by a man who had been stalking her for years. I spent time with one of my roommates who generously got me some Asian food and I ate the whole thing in one sitting. It dawned on me that night that without previously realizing it I had gone much of my life having emotional eating cycles. I suddenly realized that night what "comfort food" really meant and how it can be a health risk if it is not examined or restrained. I suppose as far as comfort food goes spicy Korean style pork could be more healthy than, say, a pint of ice cream, but there's still that proverb, "Do you like honey? Don't eat too much of it or it will make you sick."
The story about myself and my approach to food that I had unknowingly told myself was the truth turned out to be false. The heart is deceitful above all things and who can understand it? Well, a mixture of Scripture and science has proven very helpful.
The temptation, however, to revel in a story now about how things were then remains. Fearsome Tycoon sounds like he's tackling an overview of how people have a narrative based on political affiliation that colors their understanding of policy. In other words, Republicans imagine themselves to be backing a party that stands for small government, a lean federal budget, and a lack of intrusion into the lives of citizens. None of this is necessarily true and in the case of, say, Reagan, any number of things can be disproven by reference to policy decisions made during the Reagan years. But party affiliation guides narrative.
As has been famously discussed in American history, if a person is from the South then an entire narrative of the Civil War is embraced which selectively eliminates documents, rhetoric, and views about race as being primary motivators for conflict. The war is even considered the War of Northern Aggression rather than the American Civil War depending on where you live. Conversely, a comparably falsifiable narrative emerges in the North about how altruistic the Union motives were. In an adjacent state Douglas Wilson published Southern Slavery As it Was. I agree with Fearsome Tycoon's jibe that Wilson should write another follow-up volume entitled Jim Crow As it Was.
I've met people who have personal histories which have changed in the course of life. I am unable to observe this in myself, though I suspect it has happened. When someone you have known for years describes themselves as having never subscribed to a view ten years ago and simply avoiding objecting to it you cannot help but take notice when this year they talk as though they "always" held that view you remember they always disliked, particularly if you also talked about this subject with other people who know this person. What has happened? Is the person lying in saying that view A, which they never actually endorsed, was the view they always subscribed to before? Well, no, but the "truth" being told is an emotional narrative rather than a focus on factual details.
If a husband insults his wife four years ago and gets a rein on his tongue now then if his wife remarks on an insult now by appealing to a past the husband might say "But I never do that." Well, kind of, but not really. What we tell ourselves must be true about ourselves in the abstract or in the whole lets us overlook all of the details of daily life and how we actually relate to people. This is how a person who is prone to say cutting or dismissive remarks about anyone and everyone on an hourly basis can look back over the week and simply believe that he or she didn't do anything other than speak the truth. The truth was not really spoken, but the judgment of the person who, in hindsight, rationalizes what he or she said by deciding it was the truth. Mistakes were made but not by me. If I made mistakes it was only because I may have over-reacted to mistakes you don't know or don't wish to admit you're making.
One of the roles of prophetic books is to puncture the fraudulent narrative God's people are so easily and so often tempted to believe in. This is vividly shown in Jesus' debate with Jewish experts in John 8. They protest that Abraham is their father and we know where Jesus goes with that. He destroys the narrative they have constructed for themselves by confronting them with an alternative narrative, one that lays bare the real drift of their hearts.When faced with Christ the most dangerous thing we can ever say is "I would never", whether we may be Peter denying that he would ever deny Him, or Pharisees saying they would never have persecuted the prophets.
A great deal of the brokenness in our lives and the brokenness we bring to the lives of others emerges from the "I would never" we continually say while doing exactly those things we tell ourselves (and others) we would never do. But, like Christ, other people can see our "I would never" isn't true, even when we don't. Other people can see that the "I always" or "I didn't" in our imagined pasts didn't happen. Or maybe they can't, because they, too, share a narrative in which the truth of events and words and actions is suppressed for the emotional script of "this is who I am." Sometimes this narrative takes the form of "This is who I am in God/Christ/Jesus." That is, in sum, why we need prophets but about this a great deal more has to be said that must be saved for some other time.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Feasome Tycoon translates Peter Leithart
http://boarsheadtavern.com/2011/10/18/28508/
http://boarsheadtavern.com/2011/10/19/28522/
Sometimes (or often) it takes a smart-ass Lutheran to cut through the jargon and Christianese of some Christians to show what they mean despite what they say.
http://boarsheadtavern.com/2011/10/19/28522/
Let’s assume that the Eucharist makes a political difference.Let’s assume Republican Presidents create jobs.
And let’s observe that the predominate Christian tradition of the US has been a-Eucharistic.And let’s observe that the current President is not a Republican.
Then we must ask, What political difference has that made?Then we must ask, What difference has that made in the labor market?
Sometimes (or often) it takes a smart-ass Lutheran to cut through the jargon and Christianese of some Christians to show what they mean despite what they say.
Monday, October 17, 2011
I don't remember how long it's been since I linked to something on Slate but ...
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/10/is_the_global_occupy_movement_undermining_democracy_rather_than_.html
I generally enjoy Anne Applebaum's work. A friend was kind enough to pick up her book on the Gulag for me because it was selling for super cheap on a sale day at Half Price books. Now there's yet another book in my too-many-books on my "books I have and ought to read" list.
I generally enjoy Anne Applebaum's work. A friend was kind enough to pick up her book on the Gulag for me because it was selling for super cheap on a sale day at Half Price books. Now there's yet another book in my too-many-books on my "books I have and ought to read" list.
HT. Mockingbird, Dragon Mothers and loving a child who has no future
http://www.mbird.com/2011/10/dragon-mothers-and-the-greatest-love-story-ever-told/
Wow! I just finished my last post and as if magically on cue DZ has posted this blog entry with a link to an article written by a mother who describes what it is like to raise a child you KNOW will not live long enough to have the bright future parents in America normally want for their children. I was writing at the end of the last entry about how love of neighbor is love of neighbor, not merely love of neighbor as a means to an end ... and here DZ posts something about that subject with respect to parenting. Another reminder of why Mockingbird has become one of my favorite blogs ever.
Speaking of which ... I still have a lot more material to write for them!
Wow! I just finished my last post and as if magically on cue DZ has posted this blog entry with a link to an article written by a mother who describes what it is like to raise a child you KNOW will not live long enough to have the bright future parents in America normally want for their children. I was writing at the end of the last entry about how love of neighbor is love of neighbor, not merely love of neighbor as a means to an end ... and here DZ posts something about that subject with respect to parenting. Another reminder of why Mockingbird has become one of my favorite blogs ever.
Speaking of which ... I still have a lot more material to write for them!
Fearsome Tycoon on the problem with Peter Leithart and similar theologians
http://boarsheadtavern.com/2011/10/16/28469/
...
My fundamental problem with Leithart is that he considers political power-brokers to be absolutely the most important people in the Church, and the attainment of political power by Christians (or the conversion of politicians) to be among the most important things that could possibly happen in the spiritual realm. Reading Jesus’ parables and looking at his ministry, I simply cannot in any way avoid the conclusion that if you care one whit more about the conversion of Caesar than the conversion of a hot dog vendor, you’re doing it wrong.
I think the mistake Leithart and other sympathetic theologians are making is that they’re confusing historical importance with theological importance. They don’t really look at what Jesus defines as important, because if you look at Jesus’ life and teaching the degree to which he simply did not care about the activities of the ruling class is shocking if you are a student of history and, if you are seriously religious, disturbing. Everyone from Mohammed to Marx gives their followers a pretty explicit program of social organization. Jesus does not, and the attempt to find one in his teachings has stumped earnest Christians for centuries
I think if you let Jesus define the Church and set its priorities, what you see in the history of the Church after Constantine is a grievous, sorrowing, utter disregard of passages like James 2:1-7. Looking at the way church authorities ultimately couldn’t risk the lure of political power and prestige makes me sad. I don’t see that as the kingdom of God come to life. It’s a restoration of the Herodian vision of the kingdom of God with a new coat of paint. Every time I read anything on the “political implications of the Gospel,” I get the feeling that if they’re right, Jesus really made a huge mistake by not going straight to Herod’s palace and telling him, “The kingdom of God is here, and it starts with you.”
And just to offend anyone I haven’t offended yet, I do indeed believe that Leithart is being as faithful a Calvinist as a Calvinist can be on this matter.
As a Calvinist who has read (and disagreed with) R. L. Dabney I'd say that it's hard to take offense. I have come to disagree with people who embrace "political implications of the Gospel" for either the left or the right. Orthocuban has blogged prolifically about how a Christian who takes Jesus' teaching seriously is not going to systemically land on either the left or the right in contemporary American political discourse--ordoliberal as he has called it in his case.
But I suggest here that some preachers and thinkers who say that we should not attempt to directly engage politicals have a differen way of waging the same campaign under different marketing. Yep, "engage culture" or "move upstream". Not to say that Christians shouldn't participate in society and attempt to influence it for the better but love of neighbor means love of neighbor, doesn't it? Not merely love of neighbor as a means to an end.
P.S. Kent, not that you're necessarily reading this but I think it's pretty obvious that Jesus was saying there would always be poor people but not that there was nothing anyone could do to help the poor. It's implicit in the conversation that Jesus was saying "You can help the poor later, what this woman has done for me can't be done later." It's impossible for me to look at the passage you're asking about and see the binary options you've laid out. There are plenty of poor people Christians can help and plenty of poor people who just won't believe in Jesus.
...
My fundamental problem with Leithart is that he considers political power-brokers to be absolutely the most important people in the Church, and the attainment of political power by Christians (or the conversion of politicians) to be among the most important things that could possibly happen in the spiritual realm. Reading Jesus’ parables and looking at his ministry, I simply cannot in any way avoid the conclusion that if you care one whit more about the conversion of Caesar than the conversion of a hot dog vendor, you’re doing it wrong.
I think the mistake Leithart and other sympathetic theologians are making is that they’re confusing historical importance with theological importance. They don’t really look at what Jesus defines as important, because if you look at Jesus’ life and teaching the degree to which he simply did not care about the activities of the ruling class is shocking if you are a student of history and, if you are seriously religious, disturbing. Everyone from Mohammed to Marx gives their followers a pretty explicit program of social organization. Jesus does not, and the attempt to find one in his teachings has stumped earnest Christians for centuries
I think if you let Jesus define the Church and set its priorities, what you see in the history of the Church after Constantine is a grievous, sorrowing, utter disregard of passages like James 2:1-7. Looking at the way church authorities ultimately couldn’t risk the lure of political power and prestige makes me sad. I don’t see that as the kingdom of God come to life. It’s a restoration of the Herodian vision of the kingdom of God with a new coat of paint. Every time I read anything on the “political implications of the Gospel,” I get the feeling that if they’re right, Jesus really made a huge mistake by not going straight to Herod’s palace and telling him, “The kingdom of God is here, and it starts with you.”
And just to offend anyone I haven’t offended yet, I do indeed believe that Leithart is being as faithful a Calvinist as a Calvinist can be on this matter.
As a Calvinist who has read (and disagreed with) R. L. Dabney I'd say that it's hard to take offense. I have come to disagree with people who embrace "political implications of the Gospel" for either the left or the right. Orthocuban has blogged prolifically about how a Christian who takes Jesus' teaching seriously is not going to systemically land on either the left or the right in contemporary American political discourse--ordoliberal as he has called it in his case.
But I suggest here that some preachers and thinkers who say that we should not attempt to directly engage politicals have a differen way of waging the same campaign under different marketing. Yep, "engage culture" or "move upstream". Not to say that Christians shouldn't participate in society and attempt to influence it for the better but love of neighbor means love of neighbor, doesn't it? Not merely love of neighbor as a means to an end.
P.S. Kent, not that you're necessarily reading this but I think it's pretty obvious that Jesus was saying there would always be poor people but not that there was nothing anyone could do to help the poor. It's implicit in the conversation that Jesus was saying "You can help the poor later, what this woman has done for me can't be done later." It's impossible for me to look at the passage you're asking about and see the binary options you've laid out. There are plenty of poor people Christians can help and plenty of poor people who just won't believe in Jesus.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Carl Trueman on how defining a celebrity pastor is like defining pornograph (is there a SLAPS test for both?)
http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2011/10/dont-know-much-about-art-but-i.php
Over at the Gospel Coalition, the Rev. Thabiti Anyabwile has a post on definitions. His argument is a thoughtful one and he calls for the abandonment of talk of `celebrity' and 'rock star' pastors because, as he rightly points out, defining these terms is hard. He also sees me as one of the main culprits. So it seems apposite to thank him for his provocative and gently expressed thoughts and to offer a few in return.
I am tempted to say `I don't know how to define art, but I know it when I see it.' Except, other than understanding that Thomas Kinkade is not art, that statement would not be true. I am told Jackson Pollock is art but that, as they say, is clearly above my paygrade.
But let's bring it closer to home: most pastors I know would acknowledge that internet pornography is the number one pastoral problem among men in their congregation. Yet no pastor I have ever spoken to has been able to provide a fully adequate, stable, universally agreed definition of pornography which covers all cases any time any where. By the above logic, we should therefore stop all talk of pornography as a problem. We do not know how to define the term; we should not use it.
The problem is: semantics notwithstanding, pornography is a huge problem; and pastors who cannot define the p word know its a problem, recognise it, and take action to help those struggling with it. Frankly, pastoral time spent debating exactly what it is is pastoral time completely wasted -- time which might otherwise be spent tackling the issue.
Thus, the issue with the celebrity culture surrounding certain pastors and organisations is not ultimately one of linguistic definition or of those who use the term with a certain amount of elasticity or even incompetence. The issue is that there is a real problem -- in fact, many real problems -- to which some are trying to draw attention. There is a problem with the yob aesthetic, the arrogant stage swagger, the stand-up routines, the obsession with talking about sex in sermons which puts some of these conference headlining pastoral role models about as far from Paul's vision of leadership as possible; there is a problem with pastors who tell their people they will only visit them in hospital once they have been placed in a body bag; there is a problem with pastors who make videos which ape the aesthetics of the mainstream media and focus on the pastor, not the pastor's God; there is a problem with churches of thousands of people, few of whom ever get to meet an elder, let alone the pastor; there is a problem with church planting strategy that is so wedded to the cult of the one man that he has to be skyped in to the community; there is a problem when a man has to phone the librarian at Westminster Seminary with a pastoral issue because nobody at his home church of thousands has the time to speak to an ordinary church member about his crisis of faith.
Call it what you like. I call it the culture which grows up around celebrities. Maybe I am hopelessly wrong in my choice of terms. You may certainly choose others which fit better. But like internet pornography, I would rather spend time exposing the problems for what they are than debating semantic qualifications.
In the blog post Anyabwile wrote to which Trueman responds, Anyabwile explains that his training is in social science and education by background. Trueman does not mention his credentials outside being a pastor but his is the far more compelling case. Why? Well, I was a journalism student (which some would say makes me biased). Trueman attempts to address the celebrity pastor in terms that matter more than the domain of social science or education because celebrities and private citizens can end up having to meet different criteria to establish the grounds for a defamation suit!
Trueman's case is more pertinent because he brings up the inherent problem of objecting to a lack of definition in "celebrity pastor", special pleading. A pastor wouldn't say that one has to define pornography specifically before addressing the subject (unless that person is defending, say "Peasant Princess" as being erotic and not pornography, perhaps). I've got a counter-example closer to where I live, just because the Bible does not seem to define "poverty" or "the poor" as generously or strictly as some Christians would like does not mean there is no Christian obligation to help the poor. Trueman's right, just because we can't define "celebrity pastor" on the basis of a scientific method or procedure hardly precludes our being able to speak to the problems of the celebrity pastor.
Coming as I do from an academic background in journalism I don't think Anyabwile can make a viable case that terms can be so steadily or strictly applied for a celebrity pastor. Even his own attempt at defining celebrity pastor fails to come off as a meaningful deviation from the criteria Trueman came up with. It is, in any event, absurd to attempt to impose a scientific procedural definition on Trueman's criteria for celebrity pastor when Trueman's criteria mesh better with laws surrounding the basis for a defmation suit. Even a non "rock star" pastor can still have responsibilities as a public figure. A celebrity pastor is one for whom the grounds for a defamation suit would be even more stringent than that of some pastor no one has heard of. If you're a pastor whose soundbites and public remarks can get blogged about by people in other countries than the one in which you preach and get your paycheck you "might" be a celebrity pastor. If you're a pastor who is known about across the United States by millions of people you "might" be a celebrity pastor. What constitutes a "celebrity blogger" and why do "celebrity pastors" seem to think that there's more wiggle room for them than for the "celebrity blogger" to say stuff off the cuff?
... or do we want to make some potential exemptions for the celebrity pastors who are not modalists?
Over at the Gospel Coalition, the Rev. Thabiti Anyabwile has a post on definitions. His argument is a thoughtful one and he calls for the abandonment of talk of `celebrity' and 'rock star' pastors because, as he rightly points out, defining these terms is hard. He also sees me as one of the main culprits. So it seems apposite to thank him for his provocative and gently expressed thoughts and to offer a few in return.
I am tempted to say `I don't know how to define art, but I know it when I see it.' Except, other than understanding that Thomas Kinkade is not art, that statement would not be true. I am told Jackson Pollock is art but that, as they say, is clearly above my paygrade.
But let's bring it closer to home: most pastors I know would acknowledge that internet pornography is the number one pastoral problem among men in their congregation. Yet no pastor I have ever spoken to has been able to provide a fully adequate, stable, universally agreed definition of pornography which covers all cases any time any where. By the above logic, we should therefore stop all talk of pornography as a problem. We do not know how to define the term; we should not use it.
The problem is: semantics notwithstanding, pornography is a huge problem; and pastors who cannot define the p word know its a problem, recognise it, and take action to help those struggling with it. Frankly, pastoral time spent debating exactly what it is is pastoral time completely wasted -- time which might otherwise be spent tackling the issue.
Thus, the issue with the celebrity culture surrounding certain pastors and organisations is not ultimately one of linguistic definition or of those who use the term with a certain amount of elasticity or even incompetence. The issue is that there is a real problem -- in fact, many real problems -- to which some are trying to draw attention. There is a problem with the yob aesthetic, the arrogant stage swagger, the stand-up routines, the obsession with talking about sex in sermons which puts some of these conference headlining pastoral role models about as far from Paul's vision of leadership as possible; there is a problem with pastors who tell their people they will only visit them in hospital once they have been placed in a body bag; there is a problem with pastors who make videos which ape the aesthetics of the mainstream media and focus on the pastor, not the pastor's God; there is a problem with churches of thousands of people, few of whom ever get to meet an elder, let alone the pastor; there is a problem with church planting strategy that is so wedded to the cult of the one man that he has to be skyped in to the community; there is a problem when a man has to phone the librarian at Westminster Seminary with a pastoral issue because nobody at his home church of thousands has the time to speak to an ordinary church member about his crisis of faith.
Call it what you like. I call it the culture which grows up around celebrities. Maybe I am hopelessly wrong in my choice of terms. You may certainly choose others which fit better. But like internet pornography, I would rather spend time exposing the problems for what they are than debating semantic qualifications.
In the blog post Anyabwile wrote to which Trueman responds, Anyabwile explains that his training is in social science and education by background. Trueman does not mention his credentials outside being a pastor but his is the far more compelling case. Why? Well, I was a journalism student (which some would say makes me biased). Trueman attempts to address the celebrity pastor in terms that matter more than the domain of social science or education because celebrities and private citizens can end up having to meet different criteria to establish the grounds for a defamation suit!
Trueman's case is more pertinent because he brings up the inherent problem of objecting to a lack of definition in "celebrity pastor", special pleading. A pastor wouldn't say that one has to define pornography specifically before addressing the subject (unless that person is defending, say "Peasant Princess" as being erotic and not pornography, perhaps). I've got a counter-example closer to where I live, just because the Bible does not seem to define "poverty" or "the poor" as generously or strictly as some Christians would like does not mean there is no Christian obligation to help the poor. Trueman's right, just because we can't define "celebrity pastor" on the basis of a scientific method or procedure hardly precludes our being able to speak to the problems of the celebrity pastor.
Coming as I do from an academic background in journalism I don't think Anyabwile can make a viable case that terms can be so steadily or strictly applied for a celebrity pastor. Even his own attempt at defining celebrity pastor fails to come off as a meaningful deviation from the criteria Trueman came up with. It is, in any event, absurd to attempt to impose a scientific procedural definition on Trueman's criteria for celebrity pastor when Trueman's criteria mesh better with laws surrounding the basis for a defmation suit. Even a non "rock star" pastor can still have responsibilities as a public figure. A celebrity pastor is one for whom the grounds for a defamation suit would be even more stringent than that of some pastor no one has heard of. If you're a pastor whose soundbites and public remarks can get blogged about by people in other countries than the one in which you preach and get your paycheck you "might" be a celebrity pastor. If you're a pastor who is known about across the United States by millions of people you "might" be a celebrity pastor. What constitutes a "celebrity blogger" and why do "celebrity pastors" seem to think that there's more wiggle room for them than for the "celebrity blogger" to say stuff off the cuff?
... or do we want to make some potential exemptions for the celebrity pastors who are not modalists?
Scotteriology misses the Mark on Mark Driscoll and Westboro Baptist Church
http://scotteriology.wordpress.com/2011/10/14/mark-driscoll-joins-westboro-baptist-church/#comment-10714
Must have seemed like a fun blog title for Scotteriology to say "Mark Driscoll Joins Westboro Baptist Church". Scotteriology mentions a number of things he's fond wrong with Driscoll and writes "Now it seems he is adopting the theology of Westboro Baptist Church."
Scott, being Canadian, just may not have access to the same coverage yours truly has to American coverage of the protest of Mars Hill Church Westboro Baptist Church planned earlier this year. Scott also has a job (something I wish I had) and does not live in Seattle. Just about nothing would make yours truly happier than if I could have had a job so as to have NOT noticed the old news of the Westboro Baptist Church protesting Driscoll and Mars Hill. As a matter of fact the protest was announced and happened ... four months ago:
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/sound/article/Westboro-Baptist-Church-will-picket-at-Mars-1430174.php
http://www.christianpost.com/news/westboro-to-picket-at-mars-hill-megachurch-in-seattle-51281
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2011/06/doughnuts-donuts-westboro-seattle-mark-driscoll/1
The protest turned out to be a few people from Westboro Baptist Church showing up to "protest" by standing in front of a MH campus (they were still being called campuses back then, I think) for a few minutes and then moving on because, apparently, they had other places to protest. None of the protestors actually stayed to attend the service. See, Wenatchee the Hatchet lives in Seattle and word gets around. It looks like Westboro Baptist Church got what they thought was some handy publicity in announcing in advance they would protest Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church for saying God loves most people and then considered their mission accomplished.
So while Scott's certainly entitled to think Driscoll's theology is similar to that of Westboro Baptist Church, this year Westboro Baptist Church made it clear they think the God Driscoll preaches isn't actually hateful enough and they didn't want the donuts Mars Hill staff left for them. Such is life.
Must have seemed like a fun blog title for Scotteriology to say "Mark Driscoll Joins Westboro Baptist Church". Scotteriology mentions a number of things he's fond wrong with Driscoll and writes "Now it seems he is adopting the theology of Westboro Baptist Church."
Scott, being Canadian, just may not have access to the same coverage yours truly has to American coverage of the protest of Mars Hill Church Westboro Baptist Church planned earlier this year. Scott also has a job (something I wish I had) and does not live in Seattle. Just about nothing would make yours truly happier than if I could have had a job so as to have NOT noticed the old news of the Westboro Baptist Church protesting Driscoll and Mars Hill. As a matter of fact the protest was announced and happened ... four months ago:
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/sound/article/Westboro-Baptist-Church-will-picket-at-Mars-1430174.php
http://www.christianpost.com/news/westboro-to-picket-at-mars-hill-megachurch-in-seattle-51281
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2011/06/doughnuts-donuts-westboro-seattle-mark-driscoll/1
The protest turned out to be a few people from Westboro Baptist Church showing up to "protest" by standing in front of a MH campus (they were still being called campuses back then, I think) for a few minutes and then moving on because, apparently, they had other places to protest. None of the protestors actually stayed to attend the service. See, Wenatchee the Hatchet lives in Seattle and word gets around. It looks like Westboro Baptist Church got what they thought was some handy publicity in announcing in advance they would protest Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church for saying God loves most people and then considered their mission accomplished.
So while Scott's certainly entitled to think Driscoll's theology is similar to that of Westboro Baptist Church, this year Westboro Baptist Church made it clear they think the God Driscoll preaches isn't actually hateful enough and they didn't want the donuts Mars Hill staff left for them. Such is life.
Christ at Cana and the absence of wine
http://graceseattle.org/Haralson100211.mp3
Last week I hit the two year anniversary mark of being laid off. I was laid off by a non-profit so I have not been eligible for unemployment. I got what was, all things considered, a very generous severance package and in the months before the lay-off I even considered that if a job at my organization had to be cut it should have been mine. Suffice it to say the day I got laid off I wasn't happy! I also did not want to be so very right in anticipating that if the recession kept having the dire results it was having that my prediction would turn out to be the right one!
This sermon is something I've been mulling over off and on for a few weeks and it's difficult for me to unpack its significance in a way that lends itself to writing. There are some people who are Christians are who are not sure they will continue to call themselves Christians because they are unhappy about the legalism and judgmentalism of other Christians. In some conspicuous cases I have observed as carefully as I can in the last ten years these are people who, it must be said, are themselves remarkably judgmental and callous people. There's a term that could be readily applied to these sorts of people and you probably know what the term is so I don't need to say it, and there may be brothers and sisters reading this blog who don't need that language brought up so I defer to them. The point is that there are points where people find most detestable in others those acrimonious traits in themselves; furthermore, there are some people who have tired of Christian company because Christians tend to act the way these people act.
But there can be a paradoxical other side of struggle within faith. That struggle can be Christian kindness. When God feels absent and seems to not answer your prayers for yourself but blesses others, and you receive kindness from Christians, it can paradoxically feel as though the kindness of Christians is more tangibly real then an abstract notion about the kindness and generosity of God. There are a lot of unbelievers and nominal Christians who choose the Paul McCartney axiom that evil is just the devil if you take the d off the word. Evil can't be transcendent. And per McCartney level thought, god is just what happens if you take an o out of good. This is sloganeering of the sort that McCartney (and Lennon, frankly) excelled at.
There is, however, a time and place when there is some strength to the mundane and obtuse axiom. There are times when the kindness of people does not always seem to indicate that there is a "Christian" let alone a "Christian worldview" motivation. Not that these things don't happen, I've benefited from the generosity of various sorts of people who are various sorts of Christian, but some folks more in the "worldview" camp have doubted the sincerity of those Christians who are "liberal" who, unbeknownst to the worldviewer types, have done far more to help me in tangible ways than they have. I don't wish to name names here but the "liberal" who "may not even be a Christian" gave to me so generously it broke down any sense of personal restraint or dignity I might have tried keeping up. Now I'm not saying conservative Christians haven't been helping me, they have, I'm just sharing that sometimes a crisis about faith in practice comes from seeing actions and outcomes that seem counterintuitive given what people would say about themselves verses those other Christians they judge to not quite be Christians.
All that is sort of a rambling preamble to discussing this sermon. In the last two years I have become familiar with lacking things. I have lacked money, and I have lacked income. I have also lacked the gain of continued employment I can live off of. I have ended up on food stamps and that because I relented when everyone in my family urged me to go on them. I have lacked the financial stability to consider the continuing education that some of have urged me to. I have lacked the marital status that would be needed to qualify for most of the worker re-education programs that are available, just as I have discovered that because I got a B.A. I lack the qualifications needed to be eligible for the few programs that fund worker retraining for people who aren't married. I have in the last few months discovered that I have a cataract growing in my left eye that has brought some new, unhappy impairments in my vision. I also lack the money or resources to obtain cataract removal surgery. Being unemployed, without money, and having a disability, these are all substantial lacks. Depending on which circle of Christians we're talking about I am also single and in my later 30s, which means I lack in other ways, particularly by way of what is considered "God's design". :)
The family that put on the wedding at Cana lacked wine. The social failure of this moment could be difficult to fully articulate. The groom's family and the groom were the ones to fund the wedding celebration, which usually lasted for days. The wedding was also a town-wide affair and in smaller villages people from adjacent villages were invited to participate. To run out of wine in such a setting would be a huge disgrace and not just on the level of "party foul" here in the West. This would not signal that the guests ate all the food you spent your money on because people eat a lot. No, this would signal shame and disgrace at being unable to pull off the kick-off party of one's own wedding. This would permanently mar your standing in society and signal to your in-laws that you were an abject failure.
In Western cultures the bride's family covers the wedding and this is not necessarily how it works in Eastern settings, either in the ancient near east nor in the far east but I don't want to digress into too many nerdy points about how these cultural expectations play into ancient Near Eastern or Asian story-telling. Yet I believe it would be useful to provide a case study from a pop culture tale from Japan to help unpack a basic difference between East and West here. There's a fun, low-key but momentous moment in a Rumiko Takahashi comic book (Maison Ikkoku, very far in the series' run) in which a man opens up his balance book to show a woman he loves that he's, in that culture's idiom, proposing marriage to her but showing that he's worked out the budgetary concerns of pulling off a wedding. Anyone who knows the series knows that Kozue accepts the proposal but I'll try to save any discussion of Takahashi comic books for some other time. Suffice it to say that in an Eastern setting it's a big, big deal if the man and his family can't pull off the wedding celebration because they lack the funds. In some Eastern settings demonstrating that the groom and his family can handle the expense is considered something necessary to share as part of the marriage proposal itself. See, my readers, it's not entirely useless to know trivia about Japanese culture from manga!
So when the wine runs out at Cana I don't think that it's possible to overstate the shame of that lack to a Westerner. "Party foul" doesn't even begin to cover the significance of this. This might as well have been a public, unintentional announcement on the part of the groom and his family saying "We don't cut it, we're failures." It's not necessarily material whether the guests drank too much or the groom was a poor planner the result ended up being the same. And that is, to some degree, the thing about how a lot of people can think about poverty. It doesn't matter why someone thinks you're poor. They could decide you're poor because your stupid or evil. They could decide you're poor because society is evil. They could decide any number of things but the lack remains the same either way.
I've certainly gotten the feeling I don't cut it. Two years of having no job and being ineligible for unemployment because I got laid off by a non-profit is no fun. In the last two years I've had one acquaintence die of cancer, another got murdered by her stalker, one of my cousins died of skin cancer, one of my uncles died of a diabetic coma that he (in his hermitic existence) didn't get help for in time, another of my associates finally succumbed to decades of battling brain tumors, and in the last few months I learned I have a cataract that needs to be removed from my left eye. I have not managed to sell anyone to hire me for a job in these two years and the non-profit I worked for had a set of proprietary systems that aren't full of the most obviously transferrable skill sets for either for-profit or non-profit work. There's a lot that sucks about my life at this point.
However, a lot of people have shown me kindness. I think that in the sense that followers of Christ show kindness that can be a kind of unsettling moment because when Jesus said "They will know you are mine by your love for one another" this invites the question of how many people, really, know we belong to Jesus by how we love one another.
I have managed to just barely obtain even four digits of income in either of the two years I have been unemployed. I have come across some fellow Christians who, surprisingly, have been willing to say I'm not really poor. I beg to differ ... well I don't beg to differ, I've got food stamps. ;) I've managed to adapt in a few ways, like learning how to cook a whole slew of meals I never thought to cook at home in my employed days. And friends and family and church have stepped in to support me in all sorts of ways for which I am grateful. In that respect Jesus' fills a lack in my life in that Christians inspired by Jesus' teaching have helped me. I can't hope to return the favor that has been shown me but I hope one day to display similar kindness to others who may need help. When I worked at the Salvation Army for nine years I certainly felt that in my own small way I could say that I was part of a Christian organization dedicated to helping meet people in their need.
So when friends give me food left over from a speaking engagement they were attending they were able to collect for me I'm grateful, very grateful. When friends and family run jobs leads by me I'm grateful even when the job turns out to be something I'm not able to get. I'm grateful for roommates who help me keep a roof over my head. I do have a lot to be grateful for despite my circumstances but that does not mitigate that I need a lot of help and lack a lot of things.
I used to be the person to get groceries for my disabled friend who couldn't get out of the house. I'd ask him what he needed for the month and go get that for him. I even picked up food for his cat while I was at it. As long-time readers of this blog will remember I don't have great vision. I had a macular detachment in my good eye (fixed up years ago thanks to a surgeon) and now have a cataract in my bad eye. I was calling my disabled friend about an item on his grocery list and then had a thought I couldn't help but share, I told my friend that I just realized that a partly blind guy grocery shopping for a cripple and playing phone tag about how to find items was actually pretty funny. We both chuckled but I did find what my friend needed.
I admit that being on the needing side of that equation feels a lot different than being on the helping side of that equation but not in the way I expected. I don't mind receiving help when I'm sure I need it I just wish I didn't have to say I need help as often as I have needed to. I don't know if I'd say that it's because I feel like a bad person for needing help, it's more like I wish I could be better than I am because I would like to be able to live up to the level of generosity I have received. Maybe that's a problem? There's a certain type of pious imagination that would tell me that that's pride. I have no use for that type of pious imagination (maybe I do and don't consciously realize it but that's not for me to work out at this stage in my life). Apparently to go by how Mary approached Jesus she didn't have that kind of pious imagination either.
Last week I hit the two year anniversary mark of being laid off. I was laid off by a non-profit so I have not been eligible for unemployment. I got what was, all things considered, a very generous severance package and in the months before the lay-off I even considered that if a job at my organization had to be cut it should have been mine. Suffice it to say the day I got laid off I wasn't happy! I also did not want to be so very right in anticipating that if the recession kept having the dire results it was having that my prediction would turn out to be the right one!
This sermon is something I've been mulling over off and on for a few weeks and it's difficult for me to unpack its significance in a way that lends itself to writing. There are some people who are Christians are who are not sure they will continue to call themselves Christians because they are unhappy about the legalism and judgmentalism of other Christians. In some conspicuous cases I have observed as carefully as I can in the last ten years these are people who, it must be said, are themselves remarkably judgmental and callous people. There's a term that could be readily applied to these sorts of people and you probably know what the term is so I don't need to say it, and there may be brothers and sisters reading this blog who don't need that language brought up so I defer to them. The point is that there are points where people find most detestable in others those acrimonious traits in themselves; furthermore, there are some people who have tired of Christian company because Christians tend to act the way these people act.
But there can be a paradoxical other side of struggle within faith. That struggle can be Christian kindness. When God feels absent and seems to not answer your prayers for yourself but blesses others, and you receive kindness from Christians, it can paradoxically feel as though the kindness of Christians is more tangibly real then an abstract notion about the kindness and generosity of God. There are a lot of unbelievers and nominal Christians who choose the Paul McCartney axiom that evil is just the devil if you take the d off the word. Evil can't be transcendent. And per McCartney level thought, god is just what happens if you take an o out of good. This is sloganeering of the sort that McCartney (and Lennon, frankly) excelled at.
There is, however, a time and place when there is some strength to the mundane and obtuse axiom. There are times when the kindness of people does not always seem to indicate that there is a "Christian" let alone a "Christian worldview" motivation. Not that these things don't happen, I've benefited from the generosity of various sorts of people who are various sorts of Christian, but some folks more in the "worldview" camp have doubted the sincerity of those Christians who are "liberal" who, unbeknownst to the worldviewer types, have done far more to help me in tangible ways than they have. I don't wish to name names here but the "liberal" who "may not even be a Christian" gave to me so generously it broke down any sense of personal restraint or dignity I might have tried keeping up. Now I'm not saying conservative Christians haven't been helping me, they have, I'm just sharing that sometimes a crisis about faith in practice comes from seeing actions and outcomes that seem counterintuitive given what people would say about themselves verses those other Christians they judge to not quite be Christians.
All that is sort of a rambling preamble to discussing this sermon. In the last two years I have become familiar with lacking things. I have lacked money, and I have lacked income. I have also lacked the gain of continued employment I can live off of. I have ended up on food stamps and that because I relented when everyone in my family urged me to go on them. I have lacked the financial stability to consider the continuing education that some of have urged me to. I have lacked the marital status that would be needed to qualify for most of the worker re-education programs that are available, just as I have discovered that because I got a B.A. I lack the qualifications needed to be eligible for the few programs that fund worker retraining for people who aren't married. I have in the last few months discovered that I have a cataract growing in my left eye that has brought some new, unhappy impairments in my vision. I also lack the money or resources to obtain cataract removal surgery. Being unemployed, without money, and having a disability, these are all substantial lacks. Depending on which circle of Christians we're talking about I am also single and in my later 30s, which means I lack in other ways, particularly by way of what is considered "God's design". :)
The family that put on the wedding at Cana lacked wine. The social failure of this moment could be difficult to fully articulate. The groom's family and the groom were the ones to fund the wedding celebration, which usually lasted for days. The wedding was also a town-wide affair and in smaller villages people from adjacent villages were invited to participate. To run out of wine in such a setting would be a huge disgrace and not just on the level of "party foul" here in the West. This would not signal that the guests ate all the food you spent your money on because people eat a lot. No, this would signal shame and disgrace at being unable to pull off the kick-off party of one's own wedding. This would permanently mar your standing in society and signal to your in-laws that you were an abject failure.
In Western cultures the bride's family covers the wedding and this is not necessarily how it works in Eastern settings, either in the ancient near east nor in the far east but I don't want to digress into too many nerdy points about how these cultural expectations play into ancient Near Eastern or Asian story-telling. Yet I believe it would be useful to provide a case study from a pop culture tale from Japan to help unpack a basic difference between East and West here. There's a fun, low-key but momentous moment in a Rumiko Takahashi comic book (Maison Ikkoku, very far in the series' run) in which a man opens up his balance book to show a woman he loves that he's, in that culture's idiom, proposing marriage to her but showing that he's worked out the budgetary concerns of pulling off a wedding. Anyone who knows the series knows that Kozue accepts the proposal but I'll try to save any discussion of Takahashi comic books for some other time. Suffice it to say that in an Eastern setting it's a big, big deal if the man and his family can't pull off the wedding celebration because they lack the funds. In some Eastern settings demonstrating that the groom and his family can handle the expense is considered something necessary to share as part of the marriage proposal itself. See, my readers, it's not entirely useless to know trivia about Japanese culture from manga!
So when the wine runs out at Cana I don't think that it's possible to overstate the shame of that lack to a Westerner. "Party foul" doesn't even begin to cover the significance of this. This might as well have been a public, unintentional announcement on the part of the groom and his family saying "We don't cut it, we're failures." It's not necessarily material whether the guests drank too much or the groom was a poor planner the result ended up being the same. And that is, to some degree, the thing about how a lot of people can think about poverty. It doesn't matter why someone thinks you're poor. They could decide you're poor because your stupid or evil. They could decide you're poor because society is evil. They could decide any number of things but the lack remains the same either way.
I've certainly gotten the feeling I don't cut it. Two years of having no job and being ineligible for unemployment because I got laid off by a non-profit is no fun. In the last two years I've had one acquaintence die of cancer, another got murdered by her stalker, one of my cousins died of skin cancer, one of my uncles died of a diabetic coma that he (in his hermitic existence) didn't get help for in time, another of my associates finally succumbed to decades of battling brain tumors, and in the last few months I learned I have a cataract that needs to be removed from my left eye. I have not managed to sell anyone to hire me for a job in these two years and the non-profit I worked for had a set of proprietary systems that aren't full of the most obviously transferrable skill sets for either for-profit or non-profit work. There's a lot that sucks about my life at this point.
However, a lot of people have shown me kindness. I think that in the sense that followers of Christ show kindness that can be a kind of unsettling moment because when Jesus said "They will know you are mine by your love for one another" this invites the question of how many people, really, know we belong to Jesus by how we love one another.
I have managed to just barely obtain even four digits of income in either of the two years I have been unemployed. I have come across some fellow Christians who, surprisingly, have been willing to say I'm not really poor. I beg to differ ... well I don't beg to differ, I've got food stamps. ;) I've managed to adapt in a few ways, like learning how to cook a whole slew of meals I never thought to cook at home in my employed days. And friends and family and church have stepped in to support me in all sorts of ways for which I am grateful. In that respect Jesus' fills a lack in my life in that Christians inspired by Jesus' teaching have helped me. I can't hope to return the favor that has been shown me but I hope one day to display similar kindness to others who may need help. When I worked at the Salvation Army for nine years I certainly felt that in my own small way I could say that I was part of a Christian organization dedicated to helping meet people in their need.
So when friends give me food left over from a speaking engagement they were attending they were able to collect for me I'm grateful, very grateful. When friends and family run jobs leads by me I'm grateful even when the job turns out to be something I'm not able to get. I'm grateful for roommates who help me keep a roof over my head. I do have a lot to be grateful for despite my circumstances but that does not mitigate that I need a lot of help and lack a lot of things.
I used to be the person to get groceries for my disabled friend who couldn't get out of the house. I'd ask him what he needed for the month and go get that for him. I even picked up food for his cat while I was at it. As long-time readers of this blog will remember I don't have great vision. I had a macular detachment in my good eye (fixed up years ago thanks to a surgeon) and now have a cataract in my bad eye. I was calling my disabled friend about an item on his grocery list and then had a thought I couldn't help but share, I told my friend that I just realized that a partly blind guy grocery shopping for a cripple and playing phone tag about how to find items was actually pretty funny. We both chuckled but I did find what my friend needed.
I admit that being on the needing side of that equation feels a lot different than being on the helping side of that equation but not in the way I expected. I don't mind receiving help when I'm sure I need it I just wish I didn't have to say I need help as often as I have needed to. I don't know if I'd say that it's because I feel like a bad person for needing help, it's more like I wish I could be better than I am because I would like to be able to live up to the level of generosity I have received. Maybe that's a problem? There's a certain type of pious imagination that would tell me that that's pride. I have no use for that type of pious imagination (maybe I do and don't consciously realize it but that's not for me to work out at this stage in my life). Apparently to go by how Mary approached Jesus she didn't have that kind of pious imagination either.
Friday, October 14, 2011
I just had to post this comment from Bill MacKinnon at BHT
http://boarsheadtavern.com/2011/10/14/28428/
Lutherans are mythical creatures in my area, so I don’t have any first hand experience with them, but I have to agree with Bob’s assessment of this situation.
Sorry, I know it's goofy and trivial but it made me laugh a lot. Some kinds of Christians really don't appear that often. Back in my Mars Hill days a friend of mine felt obliged to tell another fellow (who is now a pastor at MH) that I was not, in fact, a heretic for being an amillenial partial preterist. Even at a church like Mars Hill where lots of people care about doctrine 98% of Mars Hillians had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. I have myself been a sort of mythical creature in some parts of American conservative Protestantism for my views on eschatology. Seminarians get it, and sometimes chuckle, but most lay people have no idea what I'm talking about. Christian love often means not even attempting to explain it to them.
Lutherans are mythical creatures in my area, so I don’t have any first hand experience with them, but I have to agree with Bob’s assessment of this situation.
Sorry, I know it's goofy and trivial but it made me laugh a lot. Some kinds of Christians really don't appear that often. Back in my Mars Hill days a friend of mine felt obliged to tell another fellow (who is now a pastor at MH) that I was not, in fact, a heretic for being an amillenial partial preterist. Even at a church like Mars Hill where lots of people care about doctrine 98% of Mars Hillians had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. I have myself been a sort of mythical creature in some parts of American conservative Protestantism for my views on eschatology. Seminarians get it, and sometimes chuckle, but most lay people have no idea what I'm talking about. Christian love often means not even attempting to explain it to them.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
differences between 18 year old poets and 28 year old poets,an utter ramble
There are benefits to aging and there are benefits to establishing a context. One of the things I look back on in my teens, not that I'm moving through the late 30s, is I remember how many high school poets seemed obsessed with writing about the anonymous person who commits suicide. Well, there are people who write about anonymous suicides at much later ages but I'm not going to list Brian Eno as a poet as such. The anonymous person who commits suicide is one of those cliches that I hope is dispensed from poetry altogether at some point. The trouble is that the dead person, usually nameless, becomes a cipher for the poet's righteous indignation, or often self-righteous indignation.
In teenagers this is especially apparent. There's a moral outrage at the indifference toward which the world at large, however small that world may be, has toward the person who dies. The anonymity makes the death all the more tragic (the naive poet thinks) for being so mundane. The person does not even have a name and the cruel world cares not for the death. But that is the failure of the poet's imagination. The most memorable poem anyone wrote about a suicide in the English language is Richard Cory for the simple reason that Richard Cory has a name. Richard Cory was the envy of everyone, so the poem tells us, and then one day the man just kills himself. We are not given reasons why within the poem itself and are left to speculate. What ambitious and outraged teen poets fail to grasp is that by making their various suicides anonymous they, too, participate in the indifference of thosse societies that do not even have names for the deceased.
When I was a late teenager myself I began to have doubts about how touching or confrontational this trope of the anonymous suicide really was. It would make "me" feel good to notice what supposedly no one else noticed, and surely it made the poets feel good in their own perversely unaware way but the truth was none of us cared. And the truth is that deaths in society matter because they effect other people. Consider that Steve Jobs has been remembered as changing a lot of people's lives. He has. I've never been a committed Mac user and Macs seem absurdly expensive and not as diverse in software options as PC's. Yeah, I know the argumetns that Macs are more stable and have more robust antivirus protections and better warranties and if you're willing to pay two to three times as much money for a system that is reliable at the expense of versatility that's all right. I'm not a programmer or anything but I can appreciate a relatively recent xkcd.
http://xkcd.com/934/
You know it's true, folks. :)
Oh, where was I?
Yes, well, when someone important enough to effect millions of lives dies that's considered more important than an anonymous suicide. We can pretend that it's stilly to mourn the loss of a Steve Jobs or a Michael Jackson or people like that. But it could be as silly to mourn the loss of a John Stott or a Billy Graham or remember the dead at all. It can be easy to think you're too cool for school in feeling bad that someone you haven't met has died but it can be easy to think you're too cool for school in being angry that someone you haven't met has died, too. So it's not inappropriate to consider that Steve Jobs is dead. Many poets have celebrated dead people who accomplished big things.
And here I wish to piggyback on something Fearsome Tycoon wrote over at the Boar's Head Tavern. Steve Jobs did not kill tons of people in battle like many celebrated heroes of old. Jobs made stuff, stuff that has made the lives of various people more convenient. Even though I'm not exactly a user or loyal user of Mac/Apple products I can appreciate this point. Even though I was far happier that Finale becamse useable on a PC than I ever was that it was first available on Mac products I can grant that Mac users are happy with their products. And I also note that the following comic strip is an amusing assessment of how some folks are about brand loyalty.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apple
Where was I again? Yes, well, my teen years were some twenty years ago but here I'm just ruminating on random stuff. Ergo links to both xkcd and The Oatmeal when initially I was discussing teenagers writing poems about anonymous suicides and then thinking about Steve Jobs. I guess it all holds together as a succint, logical sequence
We'll just call it an obligatory free-writing session in blog form.
In teenagers this is especially apparent. There's a moral outrage at the indifference toward which the world at large, however small that world may be, has toward the person who dies. The anonymity makes the death all the more tragic (the naive poet thinks) for being so mundane. The person does not even have a name and the cruel world cares not for the death. But that is the failure of the poet's imagination. The most memorable poem anyone wrote about a suicide in the English language is Richard Cory for the simple reason that Richard Cory has a name. Richard Cory was the envy of everyone, so the poem tells us, and then one day the man just kills himself. We are not given reasons why within the poem itself and are left to speculate. What ambitious and outraged teen poets fail to grasp is that by making their various suicides anonymous they, too, participate in the indifference of thosse societies that do not even have names for the deceased.
When I was a late teenager myself I began to have doubts about how touching or confrontational this trope of the anonymous suicide really was. It would make "me" feel good to notice what supposedly no one else noticed, and surely it made the poets feel good in their own perversely unaware way but the truth was none of us cared. And the truth is that deaths in society matter because they effect other people. Consider that Steve Jobs has been remembered as changing a lot of people's lives. He has. I've never been a committed Mac user and Macs seem absurdly expensive and not as diverse in software options as PC's. Yeah, I know the argumetns that Macs are more stable and have more robust antivirus protections and better warranties and if you're willing to pay two to three times as much money for a system that is reliable at the expense of versatility that's all right. I'm not a programmer or anything but I can appreciate a relatively recent xkcd.
http://xkcd.com/934/
You know it's true, folks. :)
Oh, where was I?
Yes, well, when someone important enough to effect millions of lives dies that's considered more important than an anonymous suicide. We can pretend that it's stilly to mourn the loss of a Steve Jobs or a Michael Jackson or people like that. But it could be as silly to mourn the loss of a John Stott or a Billy Graham or remember the dead at all. It can be easy to think you're too cool for school in feeling bad that someone you haven't met has died but it can be easy to think you're too cool for school in being angry that someone you haven't met has died, too. So it's not inappropriate to consider that Steve Jobs is dead. Many poets have celebrated dead people who accomplished big things.
And here I wish to piggyback on something Fearsome Tycoon wrote over at the Boar's Head Tavern. Steve Jobs did not kill tons of people in battle like many celebrated heroes of old. Jobs made stuff, stuff that has made the lives of various people more convenient. Even though I'm not exactly a user or loyal user of Mac/Apple products I can appreciate this point. Even though I was far happier that Finale becamse useable on a PC than I ever was that it was first available on Mac products I can grant that Mac users are happy with their products. And I also note that the following comic strip is an amusing assessment of how some folks are about brand loyalty.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apple
Where was I again? Yes, well, my teen years were some twenty years ago but here I'm just ruminating on random stuff. Ergo links to both xkcd and The Oatmeal when initially I was discussing teenagers writing poems about anonymous suicides and then thinking about Steve Jobs. I guess it all holds together as a succint, logical sequence
We'll just call it an obligatory free-writing session in blog form.
Monday, October 10, 2011
new guest series is up at From Bitter Waters to Sweet
http://frombitterwaterstosweet.blogspot.com/2011/10/wth-on-driscolls-sos-intro-pt-1.html
http://frombitterwaterstosweet.blogspot.com/2011/10/wth-on-driscolls-sos-parts-2-3.html
http://frombitterwaterstosweet.blogspot.com/2011/10/wth-on-driscolls-sos-part-4a.html
http://frombitterwaterstosweet.blogspot.com/2011/10/wth-on-driscolls-sos-part-4b.html
I have written a guest series about Mark Driscoll's handling of Song of Songs for the Mara Reid at her blog From Bitter Waters to Sweet. This year when I saw Driscoll saying in a video interview that some pastors are using sex too much I just hit my limit. Three months of Driscoll talking about sex at his own church and then his Scotland discourse is enough, especially since he's displayed the moxy to claim that Ed Young Jr. overdid sex from the pulpit in his interview with Rhoades earlier this year.
I believe there are four related issues in Driscoll's handling of Song of Songs in the last eleven years that speak to weaknesses he has as a biblical scholar, theologian, and as a pastor. I don't say that lightly. After nine years at Mars Hill and having once served on the Theology Response Team I am one of the last people who could say that lightly. I once fielded theological questions on behalf of Driscoll and the other pastors because I was recruited to serve in that ministry.
I do think there are areas where Driscoll does a good job in discussing Scripture. He's done some strong preaching in 1 Corinthians which is ironically where he has been most self-critical. His series (there were a couple of them) on Ecclesiastes were pretty decent. Though I think he failed to make an entirely persuasive case against what he calls the "seed of Chucky" reading of Genesis 6 there were quite a few things in his Genesis series that were good. When his fans don't pick the most scabrous soundbites on his behalf he's done some teaching from Luke that has been very good. So in case you think I'm just ranting about Driscoll without knowing what I'm talking about I've got a decade of the man's sermons jostling in my head. You probably don't. I write what I write in an attempt to provide constructive, informed criticism of weaknesses. My pen name may be Wenatchee the Hatchet but a hatchet job is not the goal.
Now permit me (since it's my blog) to explain some things in advance, in case it is necessary. I am not defending an "allegory only" approach to Song of Songs. I believe that even an allegorical reading of Song of Songs must be predicated on the straightforward romantic/erotic/conjugal theme of the text. At the same time I can't help but note that Driscoll reveals that he's trying to have things both ways about the Puritans. He loves to share the same old story about Puritans who excommunicated a man who wasn't having sex with his wife as much as she wanted. But he skips over how the Puritans actually tended to handle Song of Songs, like, Matthew Henry for example. For a preacher like Driscoll who can hold up a Bible and say "It's all about Jesus" his approach to Song of Songs reveals the exception--Song of Songs can't be about Jesus or Jesus is taking Mark Driscoll from behind and he doesn't want to imagine that. Dude, a metaphor is a metaphor. You know Jesus says that in the resurrection no one will be married, not even Jesus. The wedding supper of the lamb is a metaphor, buddy. It's not literally going to occur.
Yet if everywhere else in the Bible the conjugal metaphor is used to describe God and His people why reject it only in Song of Songs, even if things get racy? Driscoll's okay with pinning his approach on the fanciful notion that Abishag and Solomon were carving their initials on a tree somewhere and going for the plainest reading of Song of Songs as a celebration of sex. Any innuendo he can find he goes for in Song of Songs.
Having listened to about a decade of Driscoll sermons I believe is is important to stress a potential pastoral implication in Driscoll's rejection of even a typological association of husband and bride with God and His people in Song of Songs. Driscoll, historically, has only really seemed to know how to get revved up in telling God's people their sin put Jesus on the Cross. Yeah, there's all that "Death By Love" stuff but that book was a rehash of material he preached in 2005. In other words it's recycled material from some time ago. "Christus exemplar" was, to be sure, the finest sermon I think I've ever heard Driscoll preach and it's because he got out of his comfort zone.
If the Church is the Bride of Christ the sermon Driscoll knows how to preach best to her is "You're a stupid spoiled whore and your sins put Jesus on the cross so you better repent." Yeah, there's that stuff in the Bible, but Driscoll has famously stunk at the other side, which is that Christ loves you enough to gladly bear the cross and your sins to reconcile you to Himself. If Piper and Mahaney, by Driscoll's account, have said he stinks at expressing the love of God for His people then Driscoll has conceded this point.
Another point to note here is that some Christians defending Driscoll have said that (and will say) there is a distinction to be made between what is truly pornographic and what is erotica. Driscoll is preaching Song of Songs, which is canonized erotica is firmly on the erotica side of things. "Frank without being crass" as Driscoll puts it.
Well, okay, then, so Driscoll is preaching Song of Songs and the biblical book is not about Jesus and is erotica. So there is now a canonically justified basis for Christians writing erotica, then? There must be since a whole book of erotica made it into the Bible. What, exactly, is the line of demarcation between pornography and erotica? Is erotica okay when it is strictly verbal or written? Erotica is definitely okay for public consumption on feast days in religious observance then. Okay so, uh, let me see if I can work this out, there's this whole genre of Christian literature I've never heard of before called Christian erotica and it's right and good for Christians to enjoy it if they're married.
Can someone explain whether or not there are actually examples of this genre of sanctified erotica outside the Bible? Maybe such stuff exists and this single guy does not really need to know authors, titles, publication dates or ISBN numbers (and, seriously, I don't). I just have this sneaking suspicion that this defense of Driscoll as preaching Song of Songs as sanctified erotica could begin to look curiously like special pleading if a Christian were to read erotica that isn't in the Bible. After all, if the Holy Spirit inspired the Song of Songs as sacred erotica and I have the Holy Spirit dwelling within me then I can read or write sacred erotica, too, right? I mean, not me personally, mind you, because I'm a single guy who's never been on a date and wouldn't know how that stuff works, but other people could write Christian erotica. But what, then, of all those pastors speaking against romance novels and Christian romance novels?
There are plenty of positive things I can say about Driscoll. He's a capable speaker, he's entertaining. He finds ways to make the Bible accessible to people. It's just too bad that he can often be irresponsible, sloganeering, and downright inventive in claiming that what he teaches from the text is actually in the biblical text. Song of Songs is a case where he is particularly enamored of his highly personalized take on a book of the Bible. I think that in the long run his apparent capacity to only address the Bride of Christ as though she were a whore needing to change her ways and not as the Bride Christ loves extravagantly will continue to be a problem in his pastoral work. This is not as simple as proposing that Driscoll is speaking the truth when he says God hates you if you don't believe in Jesus. Big deal, so it goes.
Where the rubber meets the road is when Driscoll makes jokes such as that congregational leadership is like asking the inmates to run the asylum. Here he is talking about church members who share the Spirit and who are in Christ. These he has referred to as mentally deficient people in an asylum who should not be allowed to run things. When Driscoll writes about ranked numbering categories for which friends and family are most valuable for fellowship this is where his ... unique view of the Bride can shine. I know some of the people Driscoll used to call "good friend" and they haven't seen him in years. They will probably never see him again. Driscoll has often said you must take stock on the people who are wasting your time and cut them loose.
At a purely pragmatic level, yes, such people exist, but in the scope of eternity could not Christ Himself be accused of wasting His time by permitting the universe to exist and calling us "brothers" and "friends"? We cannot give anything to Christ that is of value to Him, we have nothing He needs. Even if we give ourselves what have we given Him that He does not already rightfully posssess? There is a very real level at which Christian friendship means sharing life together with someone even when there is nothing you can gain from it. Driscoll has seemed to choose or reject friendships based on who will help him build his legacy for Jesus. We know that it's his legacy he's concerned about because in his own way he keeps talking about it.
Part of Driscoll's legacy is how his handling of Song of Songs reveals some problems in his theology and his approach to the scriptures and his approach to the Church. In the long run if you can only think of the Bride of Christ as a spotless bride in the future who is still just a stupid, spoiled whore now (because nowhere else in the Bible is the Bride described as already being loved as though she were flawless) it's not surprising you end up with the kind of pastoral approach Driscoll seems to have. It's too bad, though. I guess the more he sticks to NT literature the less likely he is to traffic in this? Only time will tell.
http://frombitterwaterstosweet.blogspot.com/2011/10/wth-on-driscolls-sos-parts-2-3.html
http://frombitterwaterstosweet.blogspot.com/2011/10/wth-on-driscolls-sos-part-4a.html
http://frombitterwaterstosweet.blogspot.com/2011/10/wth-on-driscolls-sos-part-4b.html
I have written a guest series about Mark Driscoll's handling of Song of Songs for the Mara Reid at her blog From Bitter Waters to Sweet. This year when I saw Driscoll saying in a video interview that some pastors are using sex too much I just hit my limit. Three months of Driscoll talking about sex at his own church and then his Scotland discourse is enough, especially since he's displayed the moxy to claim that Ed Young Jr. overdid sex from the pulpit in his interview with Rhoades earlier this year.
I believe there are four related issues in Driscoll's handling of Song of Songs in the last eleven years that speak to weaknesses he has as a biblical scholar, theologian, and as a pastor. I don't say that lightly. After nine years at Mars Hill and having once served on the Theology Response Team I am one of the last people who could say that lightly. I once fielded theological questions on behalf of Driscoll and the other pastors because I was recruited to serve in that ministry.
I do think there are areas where Driscoll does a good job in discussing Scripture. He's done some strong preaching in 1 Corinthians which is ironically where he has been most self-critical. His series (there were a couple of them) on Ecclesiastes were pretty decent. Though I think he failed to make an entirely persuasive case against what he calls the "seed of Chucky" reading of Genesis 6 there were quite a few things in his Genesis series that were good. When his fans don't pick the most scabrous soundbites on his behalf he's done some teaching from Luke that has been very good. So in case you think I'm just ranting about Driscoll without knowing what I'm talking about I've got a decade of the man's sermons jostling in my head. You probably don't. I write what I write in an attempt to provide constructive, informed criticism of weaknesses. My pen name may be Wenatchee the Hatchet but a hatchet job is not the goal.
Now permit me (since it's my blog) to explain some things in advance, in case it is necessary. I am not defending an "allegory only" approach to Song of Songs. I believe that even an allegorical reading of Song of Songs must be predicated on the straightforward romantic/erotic/conjugal theme of the text. At the same time I can't help but note that Driscoll reveals that he's trying to have things both ways about the Puritans. He loves to share the same old story about Puritans who excommunicated a man who wasn't having sex with his wife as much as she wanted. But he skips over how the Puritans actually tended to handle Song of Songs, like, Matthew Henry for example. For a preacher like Driscoll who can hold up a Bible and say "It's all about Jesus" his approach to Song of Songs reveals the exception--Song of Songs can't be about Jesus or Jesus is taking Mark Driscoll from behind and he doesn't want to imagine that. Dude, a metaphor is a metaphor. You know Jesus says that in the resurrection no one will be married, not even Jesus. The wedding supper of the lamb is a metaphor, buddy. It's not literally going to occur.
Yet if everywhere else in the Bible the conjugal metaphor is used to describe God and His people why reject it only in Song of Songs, even if things get racy? Driscoll's okay with pinning his approach on the fanciful notion that Abishag and Solomon were carving their initials on a tree somewhere and going for the plainest reading of Song of Songs as a celebration of sex. Any innuendo he can find he goes for in Song of Songs.
Having listened to about a decade of Driscoll sermons I believe is is important to stress a potential pastoral implication in Driscoll's rejection of even a typological association of husband and bride with God and His people in Song of Songs. Driscoll, historically, has only really seemed to know how to get revved up in telling God's people their sin put Jesus on the Cross. Yeah, there's all that "Death By Love" stuff but that book was a rehash of material he preached in 2005. In other words it's recycled material from some time ago. "Christus exemplar" was, to be sure, the finest sermon I think I've ever heard Driscoll preach and it's because he got out of his comfort zone.
If the Church is the Bride of Christ the sermon Driscoll knows how to preach best to her is "You're a stupid spoiled whore and your sins put Jesus on the cross so you better repent." Yeah, there's that stuff in the Bible, but Driscoll has famously stunk at the other side, which is that Christ loves you enough to gladly bear the cross and your sins to reconcile you to Himself. If Piper and Mahaney, by Driscoll's account, have said he stinks at expressing the love of God for His people then Driscoll has conceded this point.
Another point to note here is that some Christians defending Driscoll have said that (and will say) there is a distinction to be made between what is truly pornographic and what is erotica. Driscoll is preaching Song of Songs, which is canonized erotica is firmly on the erotica side of things. "Frank without being crass" as Driscoll puts it.
Well, okay, then, so Driscoll is preaching Song of Songs and the biblical book is not about Jesus and is erotica. So there is now a canonically justified basis for Christians writing erotica, then? There must be since a whole book of erotica made it into the Bible. What, exactly, is the line of demarcation between pornography and erotica? Is erotica okay when it is strictly verbal or written? Erotica is definitely okay for public consumption on feast days in religious observance then. Okay so, uh, let me see if I can work this out, there's this whole genre of Christian literature I've never heard of before called Christian erotica and it's right and good for Christians to enjoy it if they're married.
Can someone explain whether or not there are actually examples of this genre of sanctified erotica outside the Bible? Maybe such stuff exists and this single guy does not really need to know authors, titles, publication dates or ISBN numbers (and, seriously, I don't). I just have this sneaking suspicion that this defense of Driscoll as preaching Song of Songs as sanctified erotica could begin to look curiously like special pleading if a Christian were to read erotica that isn't in the Bible. After all, if the Holy Spirit inspired the Song of Songs as sacred erotica and I have the Holy Spirit dwelling within me then I can read or write sacred erotica, too, right? I mean, not me personally, mind you, because I'm a single guy who's never been on a date and wouldn't know how that stuff works, but other people could write Christian erotica. But what, then, of all those pastors speaking against romance novels and Christian romance novels?
There are plenty of positive things I can say about Driscoll. He's a capable speaker, he's entertaining. He finds ways to make the Bible accessible to people. It's just too bad that he can often be irresponsible, sloganeering, and downright inventive in claiming that what he teaches from the text is actually in the biblical text. Song of Songs is a case where he is particularly enamored of his highly personalized take on a book of the Bible. I think that in the long run his apparent capacity to only address the Bride of Christ as though she were a whore needing to change her ways and not as the Bride Christ loves extravagantly will continue to be a problem in his pastoral work. This is not as simple as proposing that Driscoll is speaking the truth when he says God hates you if you don't believe in Jesus. Big deal, so it goes.
Where the rubber meets the road is when Driscoll makes jokes such as that congregational leadership is like asking the inmates to run the asylum. Here he is talking about church members who share the Spirit and who are in Christ. These he has referred to as mentally deficient people in an asylum who should not be allowed to run things. When Driscoll writes about ranked numbering categories for which friends and family are most valuable for fellowship this is where his ... unique view of the Bride can shine. I know some of the people Driscoll used to call "good friend" and they haven't seen him in years. They will probably never see him again. Driscoll has often said you must take stock on the people who are wasting your time and cut them loose.
At a purely pragmatic level, yes, such people exist, but in the scope of eternity could not Christ Himself be accused of wasting His time by permitting the universe to exist and calling us "brothers" and "friends"? We cannot give anything to Christ that is of value to Him, we have nothing He needs. Even if we give ourselves what have we given Him that He does not already rightfully posssess? There is a very real level at which Christian friendship means sharing life together with someone even when there is nothing you can gain from it. Driscoll has seemed to choose or reject friendships based on who will help him build his legacy for Jesus. We know that it's his legacy he's concerned about because in his own way he keeps talking about it.
Part of Driscoll's legacy is how his handling of Song of Songs reveals some problems in his theology and his approach to the scriptures and his approach to the Church. In the long run if you can only think of the Bride of Christ as a spotless bride in the future who is still just a stupid, spoiled whore now (because nowhere else in the Bible is the Bride described as already being loved as though she were flawless) it's not surprising you end up with the kind of pastoral approach Driscoll seems to have. It's too bad, though. I guess the more he sticks to NT literature the less likely he is to traffic in this? Only time will tell.
MacArthur is to Elvis what Driscoll and MacDonald are to Lennon & McCartney: polemics among the rock star pastors
http://jamesmacdonald.com/blog/?p=9209#more-9209
I was at a 9Marks conference recently and was shocked to hear one of the panelists include me, and another preacher on the platform, as “rock star” pastors. I guess somewhere on the edge of my mental radar I had heard the term before, but it had never occurred to me that “I” might be one. As I listened, it became clear that the qualification for such a pejorative term was gained by extending my preaching ministry by video to places I did not go in person, and then including those reached locally as part of our church organizationally. I later discovered that by doing this we have evidenced an ego out of control and are inducing idolatry. Really?
My first celebrity pastor was John MacArthur. In the early 1980′s (before video), my home church substituted John MacArthur Jr. for our Sunday night preacher and showed his series on the family. ...
Now I'm going to go on record (again) and say I have never had one positive impression about James MacDonald. He's still not on my list of favorites. But you know what? I agree with his basic contention that John MacArthur was a celebrity pastor before a lot of the celebrity pastors MacArthur doesn't approve of hit the scene. As blogger Fearsome Tycoon put it over on the Boar's Head Tavern, a guy who has a study Bible named after him should not be complaining too loudly about a cult of personality surrounding another pastor. John MacArthur is as much a rock star pastor for his generation as Mark Driscoll is a rock star pastor for his. This is, in fact, a point I've been making for some time now to no effect because I am not a rock star blogger or a celebrity blogger. That's good and may it stay that way. The downside of being a real nobody trying to tell everybody about something (as opposed to the posture and franchise line purporting that) is that because you're nobody ... nobody pays attention to you. But I digress. Here's some more from MacDonald that provides a sense of what a rock star pastor this guy was even two decades ago.
When he came in 1985 to preach at our denominational convention, I lined up outside the door with a throng of eager hearers, then raced in to find a front seat, so I could soak up every word. My hands trembled as I stood in line to shake his hand. God had gifted him wonderfully, and he was extending that gift to as many people in as many places as possible. At the time I never dreamt that John MacArthur would be someone who came to speak at my church, as he has done numerous times, or that I would be invited to speak at his college and Seminary. Getting to golf with Dr. MacArthur several times I saw firsthand his generosity and uncommon graciousness. I was thankful through the years to have that testimony ready when colleagues in ministry took shots at him and attacked some of the stands he took on controversial issues. I not always agreed with his actions, but I have never doubted his fidelity to Scripture or his sincere desire to hold others to the same. I praise God for John MacArthur’s ‘celebrity,’ and how it has impacted my life. The issue is not celebrity, but how one arrives there and how they steward that influence. I realize that he, like all of us, will account to Christ for how he allows his influence to be used and how he treats every minister of the gospel, every Christian, and every person outside God’s family.
The time has come to model publicly, a gracious biblical method for how to disagree. Obviously our manner depends on who we are disagreeing with and what issues are at stake, but it must be:
• An approach that neither compromises truth nor fails to exhibit grace.
• A method that models correcting a brother in serious error and, if possible, protecting the relationship.
• An approach to dealing with serious doctrinal error that moves beyond a social “burning at the stake,” but refuses to back down or sing kumbaya when the gospel is on the line.
Hmm, well, Mr. MacDonald, those bullet points didn't seem on prominent display when you kept cutting off Mark Dever in a discussion about multi-site churches. Those bullet points didn't seem particularly prominent in bromides and proof-texting against congregational polity, either. That Jakes is even in a state of invitation to the Elephant Room doesn't fill me with optimism any more than any association with a tool like Furtick whose church is now nationally known for how it treated a person with a physical and mental disability.
But I'm in an unusually generous mood today and the MacArthur orbit and his fanboys haven't put together that MacArthur is a grand old man among rock star pastors. So I'm grateful that James MacDonald has helped to spell things out for me. You know, folks, if a pastor like John MacArthur inspires Steve Camp to write, in his well-tested "Here's my Christian book report" tradition, a song called "The Gospel According to Jesus" we might be talking rock star pastor category here. Yeah, I know that Steve Camp doesn't rock as hard as Kansas or Yes or Springstein but he rocks harder than Air Supply about half the time. Did I telegraph that I don't enjoy his music? Well, I admit as much but I respect his committment to the faith even when I don't land anywhere near the same places he does on a few things. And the amount of humble pie he ate in admitting that he overdid his crusade against Driscoll is something some of the other MacArthur fans might benefit from. Rock star pastors don't always look the same in each generation.
I'm not backing down on my disagreements with MacDonald on the few things I cared to learn about of his writings and words. I still think he's a self-regarding proof-texting tool just for how he dealt with Mark Dever. But I'm a nobody who doesn't matter, which is as it should be. Still, I'm going to throw MacDonald a proverbial bone because I have been saying for a while that a common denominator with some of the rock star shock jock pastors is that they have paid homage in various ways to MacArthur.
There's a sense in which MacArthur and his fan club have to consider what they have wrought. It'd be one thing if MacArthur inspired a whole series of folks who were not strident polemicists. For instance, I could look at Michael Card's musical career and then look at the life of scholar William Lane as I got to know him in the early 1990s and I could draw a remarkably straight line between the Christian teacher and the influence he had on Card. When I look at MacArthur and Camp I see a similar line of influence. MacArthur can't go on too much about rock star pastors because the line between rock and Christian pop isn't that huge in the end. When Driscoll has said (and he's said it a few times) that MacArthur was a huge formative influence on him I'm in a position to know because I got it from the man himself. We were never close, but we were in enough proximity that I can vouch for his repeated mention of MacArthur being an important early influence.
The trouble with legacies is that you die and you never know what those legacies are ultimately going to be. Even while you live you don't know what your legacy and influence will open doors for. Elvis paved the way for Lennon & McCartney. By analogy, John MacArthur could be taken as a late 20th century Elvis among rock star/celebrity pastors and he has paved the way for the rock star/celebrity pastoral team of Mark Driscoll and James MacDonald. It's not that the Elvis impersonators aren't entertaining or providing a useful service, it's that the nature of the rock star/celebrity pastor changes. The influence of MacArthur may paradoxically be stronger in American Christianity through the rock star pastors who basked in his cultural shadow, that he feels obliged to rebuke now, than through his more hand-picked proteges.
Paul urging the Christians in Corinth to not get caught up in loyalties to individual teachers has never lost its relevance and one of the continuing and sad paradoxes of the faith is that many people who would tell us to heed those words of Paul are guilty of breaking the spirit of their intent in the process of trying to make that point. Thus we get Elvis impersonators lining up around Elvis to make a case for why Lennon & McCartney are a downgrade.
I was at a 9Marks conference recently and was shocked to hear one of the panelists include me, and another preacher on the platform, as “rock star” pastors. I guess somewhere on the edge of my mental radar I had heard the term before, but it had never occurred to me that “I” might be one. As I listened, it became clear that the qualification for such a pejorative term was gained by extending my preaching ministry by video to places I did not go in person, and then including those reached locally as part of our church organizationally. I later discovered that by doing this we have evidenced an ego out of control and are inducing idolatry. Really?
My first celebrity pastor was John MacArthur. In the early 1980′s (before video), my home church substituted John MacArthur Jr. for our Sunday night preacher and showed his series on the family. ...
Now I'm going to go on record (again) and say I have never had one positive impression about James MacDonald. He's still not on my list of favorites. But you know what? I agree with his basic contention that John MacArthur was a celebrity pastor before a lot of the celebrity pastors MacArthur doesn't approve of hit the scene. As blogger Fearsome Tycoon put it over on the Boar's Head Tavern, a guy who has a study Bible named after him should not be complaining too loudly about a cult of personality surrounding another pastor. John MacArthur is as much a rock star pastor for his generation as Mark Driscoll is a rock star pastor for his. This is, in fact, a point I've been making for some time now to no effect because I am not a rock star blogger or a celebrity blogger. That's good and may it stay that way. The downside of being a real nobody trying to tell everybody about something (as opposed to the posture and franchise line purporting that) is that because you're nobody ... nobody pays attention to you. But I digress. Here's some more from MacDonald that provides a sense of what a rock star pastor this guy was even two decades ago.
When he came in 1985 to preach at our denominational convention, I lined up outside the door with a throng of eager hearers, then raced in to find a front seat, so I could soak up every word. My hands trembled as I stood in line to shake his hand. God had gifted him wonderfully, and he was extending that gift to as many people in as many places as possible. At the time I never dreamt that John MacArthur would be someone who came to speak at my church, as he has done numerous times, or that I would be invited to speak at his college and Seminary. Getting to golf with Dr. MacArthur several times I saw firsthand his generosity and uncommon graciousness. I was thankful through the years to have that testimony ready when colleagues in ministry took shots at him and attacked some of the stands he took on controversial issues. I not always agreed with his actions, but I have never doubted his fidelity to Scripture or his sincere desire to hold others to the same. I praise God for John MacArthur’s ‘celebrity,’ and how it has impacted my life. The issue is not celebrity, but how one arrives there and how they steward that influence. I realize that he, like all of us, will account to Christ for how he allows his influence to be used and how he treats every minister of the gospel, every Christian, and every person outside God’s family.
The time has come to model publicly, a gracious biblical method for how to disagree. Obviously our manner depends on who we are disagreeing with and what issues are at stake, but it must be:
• An approach that neither compromises truth nor fails to exhibit grace.
• A method that models correcting a brother in serious error and, if possible, protecting the relationship.
• An approach to dealing with serious doctrinal error that moves beyond a social “burning at the stake,” but refuses to back down or sing kumbaya when the gospel is on the line.
Hmm, well, Mr. MacDonald, those bullet points didn't seem on prominent display when you kept cutting off Mark Dever in a discussion about multi-site churches. Those bullet points didn't seem particularly prominent in bromides and proof-texting against congregational polity, either. That Jakes is even in a state of invitation to the Elephant Room doesn't fill me with optimism any more than any association with a tool like Furtick whose church is now nationally known for how it treated a person with a physical and mental disability.
But I'm in an unusually generous mood today and the MacArthur orbit and his fanboys haven't put together that MacArthur is a grand old man among rock star pastors. So I'm grateful that James MacDonald has helped to spell things out for me. You know, folks, if a pastor like John MacArthur inspires Steve Camp to write, in his well-tested "Here's my Christian book report" tradition, a song called "The Gospel According to Jesus" we might be talking rock star pastor category here. Yeah, I know that Steve Camp doesn't rock as hard as Kansas or Yes or Springstein but he rocks harder than Air Supply about half the time. Did I telegraph that I don't enjoy his music? Well, I admit as much but I respect his committment to the faith even when I don't land anywhere near the same places he does on a few things. And the amount of humble pie he ate in admitting that he overdid his crusade against Driscoll is something some of the other MacArthur fans might benefit from. Rock star pastors don't always look the same in each generation.
I'm not backing down on my disagreements with MacDonald on the few things I cared to learn about of his writings and words. I still think he's a self-regarding proof-texting tool just for how he dealt with Mark Dever. But I'm a nobody who doesn't matter, which is as it should be. Still, I'm going to throw MacDonald a proverbial bone because I have been saying for a while that a common denominator with some of the rock star shock jock pastors is that they have paid homage in various ways to MacArthur.
There's a sense in which MacArthur and his fan club have to consider what they have wrought. It'd be one thing if MacArthur inspired a whole series of folks who were not strident polemicists. For instance, I could look at Michael Card's musical career and then look at the life of scholar William Lane as I got to know him in the early 1990s and I could draw a remarkably straight line between the Christian teacher and the influence he had on Card. When I look at MacArthur and Camp I see a similar line of influence. MacArthur can't go on too much about rock star pastors because the line between rock and Christian pop isn't that huge in the end. When Driscoll has said (and he's said it a few times) that MacArthur was a huge formative influence on him I'm in a position to know because I got it from the man himself. We were never close, but we were in enough proximity that I can vouch for his repeated mention of MacArthur being an important early influence.
The trouble with legacies is that you die and you never know what those legacies are ultimately going to be. Even while you live you don't know what your legacy and influence will open doors for. Elvis paved the way for Lennon & McCartney. By analogy, John MacArthur could be taken as a late 20th century Elvis among rock star/celebrity pastors and he has paved the way for the rock star/celebrity pastoral team of Mark Driscoll and James MacDonald. It's not that the Elvis impersonators aren't entertaining or providing a useful service, it's that the nature of the rock star/celebrity pastor changes. The influence of MacArthur may paradoxically be stronger in American Christianity through the rock star pastors who basked in his cultural shadow, that he feels obliged to rebuke now, than through his more hand-picked proteges.
Paul urging the Christians in Corinth to not get caught up in loyalties to individual teachers has never lost its relevance and one of the continuing and sad paradoxes of the faith is that many people who would tell us to heed those words of Paul are guilty of breaking the spirit of their intent in the process of trying to make that point. Thus we get Elvis impersonators lining up around Elvis to make a case for why Lennon & McCartney are a downgrade.
Sunday, October 09, 2011
Joel Osteen as bigot, Joel Osteen as progressive prosperity gospel heretic
http://scotteriology.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/joel-osteen-im-still-a-bigot/
Conservatives have lambasted Joel Osteen for a prosperity theology false gospel and liberals consider Joel Osteen a bigot for refusing to get behind homosexual marriage. Now in the past I've heard it said by a preacher that the way to know if you're on the right path is if you annoy the liberals for being too conservative and if you annoy the fundamentalists for being too liberal. There was a more idealistic time in my life when I took that metric seriously. I no longer do.
And, surely, now that Joel Osteen has managed to pulled off this hat trick of being too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for liberals, too, it seems that this proposed metric of angering both liberals and fundamentalists or conservatives can be done by just about anyone. I mean if Joel Osteen can pull off this hat trick then the metric of ticking off both sides has no value at all, does it? Well, I suppose if he passed children through fire as a Moloch offering ... .
Conservatives have lambasted Joel Osteen for a prosperity theology false gospel and liberals consider Joel Osteen a bigot for refusing to get behind homosexual marriage. Now in the past I've heard it said by a preacher that the way to know if you're on the right path is if you annoy the liberals for being too conservative and if you annoy the fundamentalists for being too liberal. There was a more idealistic time in my life when I took that metric seriously. I no longer do.
And, surely, now that Joel Osteen has managed to pulled off this hat trick of being too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for liberals, too, it seems that this proposed metric of angering both liberals and fundamentalists or conservatives can be done by just about anyone. I mean if Joel Osteen can pull off this hat trick then the metric of ticking off both sides has no value at all, does it? Well, I suppose if he passed children through fire as a Moloch offering ... .
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