Morte Christe

During the Good Friday service today, we had a reading that incorporated the text from “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”. Those words aggressively threw me against the wall of nostalgia, since I had sung the song “Morte Christe” with that text in Men’s Glee Club. For the half an hour drive home from church, my car leaked at the seams with old Glee Club repertoire as I relived standing on those creaky risers and hitting those low D’s.

I talked with some friends these last few days, others like me who curse and spit at the mere thought of remembering second semester senior year for their own reasons, those who would have agreed with Eliot that “this is the way the world ends: not with a bang but a whimper.” An ugly stain upon our hearts and minds, we still graduated and moved forward, strewn across the country, chasing our dreams to move on, and moving on to chase our dreams, all the while hoping to forget the unforgettable.

Where are we?

Perhaps my emotions were primed by the Stations of the Cross. I mean, thinking about Jesus dying is a bit of debby downer. I wanted desperately for Sunday to be right now. Right after the line in the bulletin that read, “The service ends in silence,” I wanted the lift, the resolution, the fix. I wanted to know that everything was ok and to bask in the glow of that empty tomb in a garden, with an angel shining like a Thomas Kinkade painting.

But that’s not how it goes. Today, we sit with the reality of death. We will go to bed with it tonight, and wake up with it heavy on our chests, even if the sun sneaks through our shutters. And we will walk with it, make it our own, let it weary our souls until God lifts us up, as he does Jesus on Sunday. But for now, we are Saturday. Neither here nor there, but moving forward like time inevitable.

We'll Shake the Nightmare Free

In a non-Gnostic, purely illustrative way, I think people function with three layers. Superficially, our skin is what we show to the world. It’s this outer garment we cake with makeup and drape with clothes. We carry it when we walk and present it as we wish to be viewed. It is the pride of our youth, and what the simplest forms of beauty call home. But beneath it is our flesh and bones… the blood and truth of our thoughts and emotions. Our skin heals, albeit with scars, but our sinews and tendons are not so easily mended, leaving us with Jacob’s limp that asserts itself every step of the way. It is our flesh and bones that move our feet down a path, and joints and ligaments that bend our fingers in creation or destruction. Being the substance of who we are, there is no ignoring its depth. It's cut with the jagged blade of the fall, and woven together with generational sin. It’s patched with all the wrongs done to us and laced with all the wrongs we have done to others. It is, for most people, the driving winds and currents propelling our lives, in light of or in spite of our awareness. Our flesh and blood is what we attempt to escape from at the edge of sleep, what haunts our dreams in the early hours of morning, and the invasive sharp that pries our eyes awake like light from slotted blinds.

But even further beneath the rolling tumult that animates our breath lays a dark core of stillness… the center of who we are and what we truly know. In those rare moments when our flesh and blood are at ease and our skin is translucent, our soul, what the ancient Jews would call “Nephesh,” can be heard whispering its steadiness and truth.

More eternal than the broken bones and pain of bruises, my nephesh simply says, “Yes, He is worth it. His Kingdom is worth it. Greater than your past and past your future, It is worth it.” Like strings on a sitar, my nephesh resonates when it hears the vibrations of grace. It quells my shaking bones long enough for the flesh to ponder an existence beyond itself, beyond the idolatry of its own hands and mind, beyond the myopic dreams turned sour… long enough to hope that deep in my marrow, I will one day know the truth my nephesh claims.

It will innervate my tissue, forcing out the angry red poison I have known all my life. Flowing through my veins, redeeming all it gives breath to, it will not heed the threat of pain. No longer will my passions be crooked or my heart be broke. No longer will the oscillating waves throb behind my eyes or pummel my mind… my flesh and bone will be moved by the depths of what my nephesh knows. My soul and flesh and skin will align and be an unruly mustang no longer, but with its head bowed low, carry the Lord like humility once did.

Innocuously Insidious

It seems innocuous enough, even laudably romantic, to say that despite others’ opinions, one sees glimpses of some greater beauty in another person. It would make (and probably has made) the skeleton plot of many movies… the person who is patient and suffers all sorts of abuse in the process of bringing out that greater character in the other. After all their hard work and persistence, their faith, hope, love, and an undying belief in never giving up, the other character’s true selves are able to flourish, and everything ends happily ever after.

Such stories make us sigh wistfully, echoing within us the hopes that perseverance pays off, that ugliness succumbs to beauty, that pain will be redeemed, and that love conquers all. Each of those things, in their purest forms, are true in their deepest sense and can be found at the core of our Christian story. Those things are true of our Father and displayed in his son. Even today, we catch reaffirmations of them through his spirit in our lives.

But I wonder what happens when each of those good truths are slightly distorted as we place ourselves at the center of those statements. We try to become the ones who redeem pain. We try to conquer all with our version of love. We want to be the ones to bring out the beauty in others, whether or not it is our rightful place to do so. All the while, we see the entire situation with our convoluted and cracked lenses. We tell ourselves that we are living the Gospel story, loving our neighbors as ourselves, when in fact it is our neediness, brokenness and emptiness that is trying to play God. We want to be the beneficiaries of our own “unconditional” love. We want to be the redeemers of our own pain that we created, and the one who plants, waters, grows and reaps seeds in the lives of others. It is not the Lord’s work in their lives that we are after, but *our* version of the Lord’s work according to *our* ideas of who we want them to be, which inevitably revolve around ourselves. It is our own corruption reading itself into a narrative that desires to be true.

So in the end, though it seems innocuous, we may be playing into the most insidious of sins by stringing together our distorted version of those truths. Namely, we cast ourselves as the role of God, even as we attempt to “love.” Sometime ago, in speaking of relationships, Bonhoeffer says that Christ must mediate our relationships. If Christ bids us to speak or act in love, we speak or act. If Christ bids us to stay silent and still, we rest and hold our tongues. If he calls us to greet and embrace, we do so in his name. But he may also call us to bid adieu and depart, and that too is in his name. Therefore, tenacity and persistence are only values so long as they are in Christ and his will. Love through actions is only God’s love so long as he calls for it. Since in him, there is a season for everything, and love in obedience, even if it is in silence, is far truer to his purposes than a seemingly innocuous romantic story.

A Penny For Your Thoughts: Everything Must Change

I have just finished the book “Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crisis, and a Revolution of Hope” by Brian McLaren. I wish to hear thoughts from those of you who have read the book, but mostly challenges and critiques. However, before I do that, I want to state as honestly as I can the assumptions and biases from which I speak.

I do not function from a position of a socially conservative Evangelical. I fully affirm the ancient creeds about the Trinity, the work of Christ, and hold Scripture to be the word of God. However, I am unapologetically affected by post-modernity and its critiques of old dominating meta-narratives and its recognition of modernist arrogance. In the same vein, I hold loosely the exclusivity and absolutism of the specific strain of Protestantism of which I am a part. I want to recognize the development of theology and thinking in light of a given historical context. As cultural creations, I do not believe that people can view truth objectively, even though Truth exists in the person of Jesus Christ. We look through a glass darkly and await the day we will see clearly, face to face. Given such assumptions, I desire to view my own tradition with humility, knowing that it was not shaped in a vacuum nor bestowed in a pure untainted form from on high. In the same breath, I seek to listen to the voices of those from other Christian traditions with the belief that God is not a tribal God. I am inclined to give a hearing to women and non-Western traditions, because God is not a white Protestant male. I desire to listen to the voices of the poor and oppressed, to see how the Gospel manifests itself among those who do not have money and power behind their words, because these are people God favors. I believe that left unchecked, our cultural waters have and will continue to inform our understanding of our faith more than our faith will change us. I believe in listening to those of different faiths or non-faiths, because God can use whomever he chooses to give a clearer perspective of his realities.

With that said, “Everything Must Change” is built upon the work of post-modernity’s understanding of dominating meta-narratives, a la Foucault. McLaren first establishes and names the narratives that our culture lives by, and then proceeds to discuss why such narratives are fundamentally dysfunctional, referring to people as disparate as Rene Padilla, Jim Wallis, Philip Jenkins, Wendell Berry, Cornel West and our own Dr. Bruce Benson. He then appeals to the scholarship of people like N.T. Wright and Dominic Crossan in the understanding of a Historical Jesus and how the historical Jesus spoke to the dominant (and equally corrupt) narratives of his day. McLaren draws a parallel between what Jesus said and did in the 1st century and what we he says to our global context today. He uses people like MLK, Pope John Paul II, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela to illustrate the true power of what happens when Christians undermine faulty narratives with the [reconstructed] Christian one. He doesn’t hesitate to critique the religious structures in their perpetuation of the fallen narratives, and challenges the church to reform itself according to Jesus’ narrative, one that truly subverts the massive powers and principalities at work in the world.

I appreciate McLaren’s willingness to listen to many different voices. Undoubtedly, his association with liberation theologians, left-leaning Evangelicals, economists critical of globalization, Christian pacifists/tree hugging poets and the simple mention of "post-modernity" will turn off a more conservative reader. However, as I’ve stated from the outset, such things do not count against him in my eyes.

I ask for a critique because I am predisposed to accepting what McLaren says. This book was referred to me by a man I respect, its contents contain authors, theologians and philosophers that I tend to agree with, and even the book’s specific contents aren’t so much an exposure to new ideas as it is a clarification, connection, or reframing of certain ideas I’m already open to. I appreciate a good deconstruction and am interested to hear if anyone has other thoughts.

Enough: Where America and McBama Are Wrong

“In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.”

That was a quote from Jimmy Carter in 1979, from what is known as his “Malaise Speech” during the energy crisis. Certainly, that cannot be true? President Bush’s speeches following 9/11 told people to do more shopping. The economy will be remedied, it seems, if people went out and bought more. In fact, there is no ceiling to growth, we must merely strive forward with American ingenuity and creativity, creating more jobs and products, and find more markets to sell to. Is the American market saturated? No problem, let’s export. Let’s take all our surplus, created with fertilizers, hormones and environmentally destructive practices, which is a result of our “more is better” mentality, and dump it at cut throat prices around the world, because, after all, who doesn’t want more for less? (Everyone has our values, right??)Who cares about the national interests of the other countries… once globalization is king, it will all be international interests (for anyone but us, of course). The poor will be uplifted if companies are given more breaks so the wealth “trickles down.” If we simply consume more, we will be a nation of happier people, satisfied and secure in life. I mean, look at us now! We are so content, with our McDonalds and 3 car garages. The world is a happier and more peaceful place because of us, even if we are dehumanized, commercialized, and transformed into a mere source of consumer revenue in the process. How the face of God shines upon this Christian nation, anointed to be the example of justice and prosperity for all the world to see.

This is the American dream, is it not? The right to pursue happiness becomes the right to pursue unlimited growth without an awareness of costs or effects. This is what we have grown up with. This is the air we breathe and the water we swim in. More is simply better, therefore, the consumption and accumulation of more must be the pinnacle of best. “More is better.” This is the fundamental, unquestioned and unquestionable assumption that drives every aspect of this country, especially its politics and economics, and even its religion, when it sleeps in the same bed.

The statistics are damning. Our wealth and lifestyles consume 24% of the world’s energy even though we are merely 5% of the population. I literally laughed out loud when a commercial during the nomination conventions reported the statistic of our energy consumption, yet had the shameless audacity to suggest that we need more. The way that conservatives systematically deny our role in Global Warming is unforgivably callous. In the name of growth, we will continue to destroy not only God’s creation (and lest you don’t believe in a God), the very systems that sustain and give us life. We live as if we are above the wrath of a world that has bared its teeth at us in the forms of increased hurricanes, disease and destruction. And truth be told, most of the white middle class Americans are, for the time being, above the wrath. But the poor and the weak are not (New Orleans, Indonesia, anyone?). It is no secret that the scales of an unbalanced ecosystem are unfairly weighted against those who have the fewest resources to protect themselves. (But it doesn’t matter, since it doesn’t affect us). We don’t even need to get into the astronomical amount of waste we produce or where that goes (which, coincidentally, just happens to be where minorities and those lower on the socio-economic ladder are located). No, there can be no questioning the doctrine of growth and prosperity. Whether or not we say we believe in unlimited growth is irrelevant (because anyone with any sense can tell you, in a closed system that is Earth, there is no such thing as unlimited growth). The truth is that we live like it, raping and destroying whatever needs to be raped and destroyed, with little regard for any long-term consequence. Even for those who recognize the warning signs of impending disaster, I’m confounded by their absurd willingness to do further damage via the savior of Scientific Progress instead of working to curb our consumption (see posted item on Geo-engineering). In the millions of years that this planet has supported life, the two great lies have been, “The day you eat from the tree you will not surely die,” and “We live in a world of unlimited growth where more is better.” (A tip of the hat to Derek Webb.)

And yet, We. Need. More.

Richard Foster, and I suppose others, locate 6 great streams of tradition within Christianity, each offering an important perspective: Contemplative, Holiness, Charismatic, Social Justice, Evangelical, and Incarnational. He argues that for holistic spiritual development, we must be aware and seek to develop in all of the 6 areas. As I’ve argued in the past, our theology heavily influences the way that those 6 streams merge in our lives, if at all. If one has a dualistic view, then Evangelism comes into conflict with Social Justice. If we don’t have a healthy understanding of the affirmations of the Incarnation, then the world is simply for us to abuse at will.

I do not believe that the pervasive, assumed and unquestioned ethics of unlimited growth and “more-is-better” is a Christian ethic. What I do see in Scripture is a model in which those with more bless those who have none. I see an ethic that demands a love toward our neighbor that is equal to the love we have towards ourselves. Both in Jesus’ words and in Paul’s example, I see an emphasis on not worrying about our material needs but having a contentment that comes with less or plenty. In Scripture, I see a heavy emphasis on the poor, the aliens and strangers, the widows and fatherless, those ostracized by the status quo, which are our neighbors around the world who support our decadence and wastefulness with their blood and sweat. In fact, in the early churches, I see an extreme subversion of empire and status, so much so that believers were seen as a threat worthy of capital punishment, not a co-option by the government’s political machinery. What seems much more in line with the Biblical witness is an ethic of “enough,” as seen in Proverbs 30:8-9:

“Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Where is the Lord?’ or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.”

There is no universal line that states, this is “enough.” Such ambiguity has never rested comfortably with legalists. It is true that many do not have enough, in this country and around the world. However, having been saturated with “more is better,” what is truly enough is probably drastically less than what we assume we need. I cannot, and do not need to detail all the reasons why “enough” is biblically and more practically feasible than “more is better.” There are plenty of authors who vocalize the arguments of simplicity far more articulately than I (Richard Foster, Wendell Berry, Cecile Andrews, and Henri Nouwen being a few of them). But it cannot be understated that our current lifestyles are unarguably globally unsustainable and a flagrant disregard for our neighbor. For some, more will indeed be better, since they do not enough. But for the vast majority of us living in this country, the rest cannot have enough if we simply have more. To make it all the worse, America, with its flippancy towards consequences and blind pursuit of growth, is the model towards which so many struggling countries strive.

This election, unfortunately, has shown me that despite the rampant rhetoric on change, the foundation by which they make their appeals are still grounded in the concepts of unlimited growth and “more is better.” Though one party seems to care more about some issues (McCain didn’t mention the poor once in his speech, not to mention the fact that his running mate doesn’t “believe” in global warming), I will, at the end of the day be voting for the lesser of two evils.

In the book “Ishmael” by Daniel Quinn, the author likens societies to “flying machines.” We sit in these flying machines and take off from a cliff. We are in the air, and are paddling with all our might trying to soar to new heights, yet still find ourselves falling. On the way down, we see the ruins of other flying machines, and think, “Surely, we are better than those flying machines, if we only paddle harder.” We think, “Yes, we will make it, because look at us, we are still in the air!” But the reality is that we too will end up like those other flying machines; all too abruptly, all too painfully, and without any further recourse once we’ve crashed.

If we continue in this direction, the question is not whether we are falling, but how fast we are falling and how much longer before we plow into the ground. It will not simply be a question of the War or outsourcing. The potential problems will make us wish we were simply living the good ol’ days of $5 gas and a housing crisis.

By the way, after Jimmy Carter made that speech in ’79, his ratings plummeted. When it is popularity that buys one’s path into office, how can a prophet speak with integrity?

[I’m not a political analyst. I didn’t major in international relations and I’m not an economist. I’m not a sociologist, I’m not a theologian or philosopher, or a scientist, or even a psychologist (yet). I’m 22 years old, what do I know, right? I don’t intend to talk as if I have mastered each of those fields, as if they could be “mastered”. However, by definition of being a living breathing human being who interacts with the world around me, I am all of those things, in the lowest common denominator of those terms. Undoubtedly, many of you who have been trained in the above are far more knowledgeable than I. Your arguments will be more sensitive to information I’m sorely unaware of, and your experience will direct you to have a more nuanced understanding of said issues. You will undoubtedly find my sentiments crass and unrefined, over-generalized and perhaps simultaneously too theoretical and anti-theoretical at the same time. However, I will not be dissuaded from wrestling with such things simply because I’m a layperson. By living in this world, we have a responsibility to be as faithful as possible with the knowledge that we have, no matter how limited it is. I write, unquestionably and unapologetically, as a Christian with a bias towards my understanding of Scripture and worldview. I welcome your thoughts and comments.]

McJesus

Satan: "Welcome to McChurch, home of the Status Quo. How can I help you?"
Dehumanized Consumer: "Hi uh... I'll have a prosperity Gospel with some good feelings, hold the sin and justice. Also, I'll take a side of bad theology and a large cup of dualism please."
S: "Anything else?"
DC: "Yea.. umm.. mix me up some national and cultural arrogance. Put that on top of my globalization."
S: "Your total cost comes out to be Orthodoxy and True Life. Others will help you pay too. Come around to the pickup window."

Matthew 26

The irony of Matthew 26 slapped me in the face. Here were the Pharisees, people who had dedicated their lives to serving and worshipping the God of Israel, packed into the Sanhedrin with a bunch of rabble-rousers making a mockery of justice by trying to accuse Jesus. These people, who knew the stories of their fathers and waited anxiously for their Deliverer struck and spat at Him when He finally arrived. Here was their God they had been anxiously awaiting. Instead of embracing Him, they accused their own God of blasphemy because He did not conform to their expectations.

I wonder how blind we are sometimes. We spend our time in the temple saying we want to see God and that we want Him to move, when so often, He is right in front of us, doing things His way, on His own terms. It is we who are unwilling to see Him as He is. Are we really that different from the Pharisees?

Ponderings on the Trail

I believe love, by definition, is an act of vulnerability. In essence, love is taking all the frailty, brokenness, goodness, and darkness out of our own hands and placing it in the hands of another, giving them access to the core of our very personhood. In giving them this access, you have also given them an extraordinary amount of power in your life, to discover places that others cannot reach and to speak into the depths of your being. However, with this vulnerability comes the potential of an equally deep damage that comes when those whom you have given yourself to swing their words a bit too carelessly or tread a bit too roughly. In the narrow and hidden corridors of flesh that wind about in the heart, the scars etched in the walls remain long after the damage is done.

When we say that we love God, we are allowing Him into the darkest catacombs that support the structures and facades we show the world. In faith and vulnerability, we allow Light to scatter the darkness in ourselves, and give Him the authority and power to tear down and rebuild as He sees fit, oftentimes causing the buildings on the surface to come crumbling down. The vulnerability of loving God is felt in every intentional cut of His refining blade, as well as the words He speaks of life and restoration.

In truly loving someone else, we are also giving them the same access into our depths. Oftentimes, the Spirit guides people into those corridors to act on His behalf, whether they know it or not. At times, they are the ones who do the breaking down in His name, are the voice to His words, and His arms that embrace.

Bonhoeffer says that true love for a person is always first and foremost mediated by and through Christ. He says that it is easy for us to believe our love for a person is genuine when in fact it is really a distorted version that is tainted with our own brokenness and neediness. Because of the oftentimes more tangible and immediate results of our limited human love, what we give is often laced with subtle forms of manipulation, and reflects our insecurities more than the love given by God.

Nouwen reminds us that we are unable to truly love others freely until we allow ourselves to be loved by God. Until we internalize the unchanging truth of our status as beloved children of God, we will continue to look for the approval and affirmation of others when they cannot ultimately provide it. Our actions will not come from a desire to bless or to love, but will arise from the deep insecurities that come from the unhealed dark places in our being.

We cannot give to others that which we have not received. We cannot learn to love properly unless we accept the love from God. It is hard for us to be healers if we have not known hurt and healing. Until we embrace ourselves in the name and by the grace of the Lord, it will be difficult for us to embrace a friend, let alone a stranger or an enemy. “Those who fall upon the Rock will be shattered, but those whom the Rock falls upon will be crushed (Matt 21:44).” As we are shattered, may He become both the new bedrock and the new architect, and may our attempts to love others be empowered by and submitted to Him.

4/6/08

"I want to say that this was a mistake... The hurt of right now wants to blame everything on mistakes.. on foolishness.. on selfishness... but I know I shouldn’t be so hard on myself... I really did try the best that I could, even if they were mistakes. I have to keep telling myself that it’s not so wrong to hurt so much, that this is part of the process of things, and that the Lord has taught me a lot. And I have to hold on to the fact that there will be a better day... one in which I am not so broken... one in which I will be able to smile. It’s really hard believing that, especially since I’m so uncertain about the things that I used to be so sure about... things that I looked forward to, my motivation for pressing on.

Please Jesus, keep my eyes on You... even if all my other ideas and constructs fall, never let me go, because I’m terrified of where that leads... Please be my rock. If You strip me of all I have, please remain the rock upon which I am broken. May every one of my tears fall on you..."

The Beauty of Easter Lilies

I came home with some Easter Lilies today. I couldn't bring myself to keep them in my room.

A friend sent this to me yesterday:

The Fortieth Day: Holy Saturday

MARK 15:47
"Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid."

Stone Cold. And the stone is closed. Where do I go from here? Nowhere. Back to the city. Which is a nowhere now. The Master isn't there. The Master is not. Everywhere is nowhere. There's nowhere to go.

What do I do? I don't know what to do. Nothing. The Sabbath has started. So what? So, if I pray I'll be mouthing the sounds. Nothing. And if I pray a vain repetition, what then? Will Heaven be offended? Well, Heaven has offended me!

Joseph's stone is like the period that stops the sentence. Boom! - the story's done. And when the story's over, the very air is empty. No place for me. No home for my soul. Silence. Why do I keep standing here? It's dark. It's midnight. Everyone's gone home. Except me. Abandoned. Nothing.

Why can't I leave the tombs?
Because the whole world is a graveyard. Because this is the one that has my Lord.
Jesus! Jesus! Without you I am a nothing in a nowhere!
You are dead.
My world is annihilated.
And still - I love you.

Mary, do this:
Even in your despair, observe the rituals. It is the Sabbath; then let it be the Sabbath after all. Pray your prayers. However hollow and unsatisfying they may feel, God can fill them. God is God, who made the world from nothing- and God as God can still astonish you. He can make of your mouthings a prayer-and of your groanings a hymn. Observe the ritual. Prepare your spices. Return on Sunday, even to this scene of your sorrow, expecting nothing but a corpse, planning nothing but to sigh once more and to pay respects.

One story is done indeed, my Magdalene. You're right. You've entered the dark night of the soul.

But another story- one you cannot conceive of (it's God who conceives it!) - starts at sunrise. And the empty time between, while sadly you prepare the spices, is in fact preparing you! Soon you will change. Soon you will become that holy conundrum which must baffle and antagonize the world: a saint. Saint Mary Magdalene. "As dying, and behold we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things" - that host of contradictions, the beauty of Spirit, the puzzle of all who know him not, the character of the Saints!

Come again on Sunday, Mary, and see how it is that God makes saints.
Come, follow.

from Reliving the Passion by Walter Wangerin Jr.

A word from Dr. Robinson in response:

"And this is the wonder that is Easter, but the dark night must come first. Then and only then--God, amazing us with that other story out there that we could not conceive of!

But through our dark nights, when as with Mary going to the tomb, or Jonah in the belly of the whale, we still love, we still follow."

Amen.

Meditations on a Good Friday

More so than any other day, the humanity in the suffering of Jesus should speak volumes to us today. The death of the divine Christ was to reconcile us to God, His blood paving the way to the throne of God. The church teaches this well.

But the suffering... the angst laced with blood that soaked the dirt of the garden, as much as the church stresses the divinity of Christ (and rightfully so), that was the blood of a man crushed by the will of the Father. Here was a man who wished his friends to at least keep him company as he struggled to stand underneath the burden. Here was a man who wished desperately to drink from a less painful cup.

And so Jesus, the Son of God, yet in every sense of the word, the Son of (hu)Man(ity), bones of my bones and flesh of my flesh, suffered. He hungered, he wept, he ran his fingers through children's hair, felt the coolness of wine run down his throat, reclined and treasured the presence of his friends, and here, his sympathetic nervous system threw itself into high gear knowing that every second brought him further suffering.

The humanity of Jesus suffered. Like us, he suffered. In Scripture, the Passion happens in a few chapters. It is read within the matter of minutes. In the reality of time and space, it took hours. Days.

And for three days, God himself was silent in the grave, giving no answers to those who wept or those who now huddled themselves, locked with fear and confusion as their companions. They themselves must have cried, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani??"

If God did not spare his son... then... how about us?

It is the divinity of Christ that validates and vindicates suffering of his humanity. It is the status of "Son" that reminds the rest of his very human adopted brothers and sisters that silence and darkness in a grave is not a sin, but the path taken by Christ himself. From the smiles that creased the corners of his eyes, to the unrestrained sobs at Lazarus' grave, our broken humanity was vindicated by God himself.

And on the road into Jerusalem upon a donkey, to the road he stumbled through towards Golgotha, to the road headed towards Emmaus, both his divinity and his humanity remind us that we are to live our lives as journeys, never static, never certain of what praise, suffering, or surprises might meet us along the way.

But one thing we know. Jesus, the one who has both suffered and rejoiced, walks beside us. And as he runs or crawls with us, he reminds us that though three days of silence and darkness felt like a lifetime, a Good Sunday is on its way.

Random Inflammatory Thoughts on a Sunny Thursday Morning

China is a product of its own propaganda... it has yet to see that the roots of their problems might actually be their own actions.

Is Rev. Wright really that outrageous? I seem to agree with most the things he says. The comments sound racist mostly because many white Americans have the privilege of being oblivious to the reality of those who are not like them, until it smacks them across the face, and it sounds foreign to their ears. Wrights sermons are not foreign to those whose legitimate anger and experiences have been ignored for so long. They are actually borderline prophetic.

I would really like a president with humility, honesty, and integrity like Obama, someone who recognizes limitations, values dialog, and holds personal conviction even at the the possible cost of his image.

America really needs to get its head out of its ass and get over itself. Stop thinking we're hot shit and start realizing that we've pissed a lot of people off, everywhere. Blind paternalistic patriotism that associates a certain ethnocentric lifestyle with "the right way" really has "brought the chickens home to roost."

I'm deeply grateful for professors who understand that mental and spiritual damage control is more important than studying for a test. Mercy is like a drink of cold water to a parched soul. Too bad it's seldom found in the "real world."

Good Friday and Easter Sunday. *I* should probably get my head out of my ass and get over myself.

Jesus, my Opiate.

“We may even discover that much of our image of God, and even our reasons for coming to religious faith, have psychological roots. To discover such things creates a great deal of anxiety and can even shake one’s faith. A faith unexamined, however, always runs the risk of being a faith in idols rather than a faith in God.” –Dr. Michael Mangis

We have lived under auspices of modernity and Fundamentalism for so long that most of us have grown up with this need to be “objective” and absolute with our faith. Our churches, the tracts we hand out, the apologetic books we read exist to solidify certainty in our minds, that our faith is logical and worth believing apart from our own needs, able to stand empirically against the “demons” of post-modernity, evolution, and moral decay. We defend our faith against statements like, “Religion is the opiate of the masses,” because it paints us as needy people, and we sure as hell don’t want to be viewed as weak by the world.

The more honest I am with myself, the more I realize I am not objective. Everything I think, say, and do is affected by my experiences, culture, and upbringing. It’s about time that the myth of objectivity lies down to die.

We are so fond of saying, “There’s a God-shaped hole inside of everyone.” Is it so scary to admit that the God-shaped hole might be partly psychological in nature? Is it so wrong to admit that we are indeed weak, and that God is simultaneously our Lord and opiate? Why does it offend our sense of competency to confess that we could not breath without Him? (After all, don’t all things hold together in Christ?) Does our brokenness and need for love and community necessarily make God any less real? The more I know about myself, the more I must confess that I am not strong, but that it is only His grace that is sufficient. It is His strength in my weakness. Actually, I believe that we are all weak. Some of us merely choose to acknowledge it.

In attempting to reconcile the “hermeneutic of suspicion” (recognizing that we are not capable of objectivity) with some Christian absolute truth, Dr. Mangis says the following: “A Christian hermeneutic of humility and confidence, therefore, will answer yes to the first question- there is an authoritative heart of truth- but will answer no to the second- we cannot know that truth with objectivity.” We then, as Christians, are in the pursuit of that truth, but cannot know it absolutely until we see Him face to face, since, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (1 Cor 13:12). We live in the process of coming to know the truth.

In the end, the person and work of Jesus Christ is whom we hang onto. It is the one thing that I know. As Paul said, “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”

A quote from my journal:

“I’m so glad for Jesus. He keeps my feet grounded and my heart floating. He calls me to stay away from dwelling long in self-pity or anger. He calls me to lift my eyes beyond myself and shows me that there is more to this world than me. His love anchors me when my emotions throw me about. He is unchanging, yet our dynamic relationship is never stale. He is my Lord, for whom I am thankful.”