"There is no wasted bullet": American Christianity's God and Terrorism

This movie should disturb Christian consciences.

Mike Kosper, writing for The Gospel Coalition, is right. Zero Dark Thirty, a gritty, controversial movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, should disturb the Christian conscience. But not in the direction that Kosper seems to be headed. Like most American Christians - like most people, period - Kosper arrives at his ending under the prevailing assumption that violence is a necessary tool used to fight evil. As most American Christians presume, he believes that God wills and desires violence and that Jesus' death on the cross was a satisfactory use of violence to quench God's thirst for violence. A violence that otherwise would overtake the world in its wrath.

 Kosper lets filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow's statement that she is a pacifist stand without question. And then he quotes and agrees with her refutation of that very claim:

Bin Laden wasn't defeated by superheroes zooming down from the sky; he was defeated by ordinary Americans who fought bravely even as they sometimes crossed moral lines, who labored greatly and intently, who gave all of themselves in both victory and defeat, in life and in death, for the defense of this nation.

This is not a statement of pacifism. It is not a statement of someone who believes that war is an active and nihilistic participation in evil and unnecessary violence. It is a statement of triumphalism, of nationalism, of agreement with those who gloat over the death of people. A winning side, a losing side. And so the game continues.

Rather than showing Seal Team Six to be superhuman warriors, surging with testosterone and screaming as they wreak havoc, they're more like a work crew, methodically operating a machinery of death that dismantles the compound and kills their targets with grim efficiency. There is no wasted bullet. No wasted energy or action. It's well coordinated, rational, and absolutely deadly.

The quote here, gruesome in itself even in its cold and methodical aims, reminds me of Calvinist theology - a cornerstone of neo-Reformed The Gospel Coalition. In fact, the Gospel itself is confused for Calvinist theology in TGC (So much so that those who do not agree with Reformed theology are accused of being unorthodox heretics). According to the Reformed doctrine of Limited Atonement, Jesus' blood on the cross was spilt for and only for those who would accept him, for those predestined to be saved. If Jesus died for those who would never accept him, his blood would have been wasted. But this idea is built upon the theological presupposition that each person is evil to the core and that nobody is intrinsically worth saving. It is a theology of violence.

On the other hand, a more open-ended view of Jesus' blood and salvation could lead one to believe that Jesus' blood was spilled not through the work of God, but as a work of violence of the state itself. The same state powers practiced to annihilate Osama bin Laden and kill children in his compound were the same forces used to kill Jesus. 

The same state powers used to dislocate dozens of thousands of black and brown school children in Chicago. The same state powers used to back up corporate and industrial wars of aggression throughout the world. The same state powers that train fascist leaders and their henchmen in Third World nations - that have thrown dissenters in rapid rivers from helicopters, that employ children as soldiers, that kill our prophets.

The same state that overflows prisons and blames murder on bad people, rather than the bad socio-economic systems that it is designed to support.

The same state that says that drones are necessary because the other option is to put troops on the ground.

The same state that assumes that some have to starve for others to live plentifully.

Yet, the neo-Reformed movement, with its intense focus on heavenly rewards and the futility of this life outside a very narrow structure focused on death, also bears a striking resemblance to the the other side of the War on Terror coin - terrorism as a strategy.

Can there be much more terrifying than that cruciform of neo-Reformed texts, Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"? A theology that has as its pretext the fact that God is angry, and this angry God needed to kill - and die - in order to sate his anger (which is still not satisfied) is a theology wrapped in terror and fear.

It seems that American Christians - and particularly the neo-Reformed Christians - need to believe in an evil other, need to believe in the holiness of violence, need to find more and more sacrifices to their terrifying version of God.

And that's terrifying. And torturous.

Odds We Like to Ends

Guestblogging

I got the opportunity to write a guest post for my friend and hero Ian at Broken Telegraph this week. "Narcissistic Stockholm Syndrome: War Machine" is the first in a three part series to be completed within the week at this site.

I'm really grateful for the opportunity to share on someone else's site, especially a friend like Ian's. He first came to my attention by writing an article taking fellow American Christians to task for supporting torture. That's very rare, not just among Evangelicals, but in the US in this particular culture.

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Mission Creepin' in Libya. Yeah...

More than 2,000 U.S. Marines are on the ground in Libya.

WCTI-TV in New Bern reports those Marines, assigned to the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) at Camp Lejuene, are "preserving the sanctity of the city [of Ajdubiyah] and the safety of the civilians within it."

Capt. Timothy Patrick with the 26th MEU told the station: "In Libya right now they are doing exactly what we need them to do. They are doing what they are told, and right now that's protecting Libyan people against Qadhafi forces."

Well, we can say they're doing what they're told to do. But where were they in Sudan, or Bahrain, or Rwanda? What happened

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Fiascoin'

Lupe's "Words I Never Said" - from LASER - checks Limbaugh, "the War on Terror", Media BS, the War on Education, Obama, Militant Islam, Israel, banks, and our own complain-y inaction. It's what CNN should be.

I really think the war on terror is a bunch of bullshit
Just a poor excuse for you to use up all your bullets
How much money does it take to really make a full clip
9/11 building 7 did they really pull it
Uhh, And a bunch of other cover ups
Your childs future was the first to go with budget cuts
If you think that hurts then, wait here comes the uppercut
The school was garbage in the first place, thats on the up and up
Keep you at the bottom but tease you with the uppercrust
You get it then they move you so you never keeping up enough
If you turn on TV all you see’s a bunch of “what the f-cks”
Dude is dating so and so blabbering bout such and such
And that aint Jersey Shore, homie thats the news
And these the same people that supposed to be telling us the truth
Limbaugh is a racist, Glenn Beck is a racist
Gaza strip was getting bombed, Obama didn’t say shit
Thats why I aint vote for him, next one either
I’ma part of the problem, my problem is I’m peaceful
And I believe in the people.

But he's not done yet:

photo © 2008 Vincent & Bella Productions | more info (via: Wylio)

Now you can say it ain't our fault if we never heard it

But if we know better than we probably deserve it
Jihad is not a holy war, wheres that in the worship?
Murdering is not Islam!
And you are not observant
And you are not a Muslim
Israel don’t take my side cause look how far you’ve pushed them
Walk with me into the ghetto, this where all the Kush went
Complain about the liquor store but what you drinking liquor for?
Complain about the gloom but when’d you pick a broom up?
Just listening to Pac aint gone make it stop
A rebel in your thoughts, aint gon make it halt
If you don’t become an actor you’ll never be a factor
Pills with million side effects
Take em when the pains felt
Wash them down with Diet soda!
Killin off your brain cells
Crooked banks around the World
Would gladly give a loan today
So if you ever miss payment
They can take your home away!

And then our complicity through our silence:

I think that all the silence is worse than all the violence
Fear is such a weak emotion thats why I despise it
We scared of almost everything, afraid to even tell the truth
So scared of what you think of me, I’m scared of even telling you
Sometimes I’m like the only person I feel safe to tell it to
I’m locked inside a cell in me, I know that there’s a jail in you
Consider this your bailing out, so take a breath, inhale a few
My screams is finally getting free, my thoughts is finally yelling through

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God-boxin'

And finally, there's this too awesome picture, from Naked Pastor. I meditated on this this morning -- just so awesome.

LSR: Surprised By Hope: Beyond Hope, Beyond Pity, pt. 1

Robbing Hell Blog-a-thon

N.T. Wright Surprised by Hope:

The word hell conjures up an image gained more from medieval imagery than from the earliest Christian writings. Just as many who were brought up to think of God as a bearded old gentleman sitting on a cloud decided that when they stopped believing in God, so many who were taught to think of hell as a literal underground location full of worms and fire, or for that matter as a kind of torture chamber at the center of God's castle of heavenly delights, decided that when they stopped believing in that, so they stopped believing in hell. The first group decided that because they couldn't believe in childish images of God, they must be atheists. The second decided that because they couldn't believe in childish images of hell, they must be universalists.

There are of course better reasons for becoming a universalist. Many who occupy one off those positions have gone by a much more sophisticated route than the ones I just described. But, at least at a popular level, it is not the serious early Christian doctrine of final judgement that has been rejected but rather one or other gross caricature.

The most common New Testament word sometimes translated by hell is Gehenna. Gehenna was a place, not just an idea: it was the rubbish heap outside the southwest corner of the old city of Jerusalem. There is to this day a valley at that point that bears the name Ge Hinnom... As with [Jesus'] talk about heaven, so with his talk of Gehenna: once Christian readers had been sufficiently removed from original meaning of the words, alternative images would come to mind, generated not by Jesus or the New Testament but by the stock of images, some of them extremely lurid, supplied by ancient and medieval folklore and imagination.

photo © 2007 Nick Perla | more info (via: Wylio)

The point is that when Jesus was warning his hearers about Gehenna, he was not, as a general rule, telling them that unless they repented in this life they would burn in the next one. As with God's kingdom, so with its opposite: it is on earth that things matter, not somewhere else. His message to his contemporaries was stark and (as we would say today) political. Unless they turned back from their hopeless and rebellious dreams of establishing God's kingdom in their own terms, not least through armed revolt against Rome, then the Roman juggernaut would do what large, greedy, and ruthless empires have always done to smaller countries (not least in the Middle East) whose resources they covet or whose strategic location they are anxious to guard. Rome would turn Jerusalmen into a hideous, stinking extension of its own smoldering rubbish heap. When Jesus said, "Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish," that is the primary meaning he had in mind.

It is therefore only by extension, and with difficulty, that we can extrapolate from the many gospel sayings that articulate this urgent, immediate warning to the deeper question of a warning about what may happen after death itself. The two parables that appear to address this question directly are, we should remember, parables, not actual descriptions of the afterlife. They use stock imagery from ancient Judaism, such as "Abraham's bosom," not to teach about what happens after death but to insist on justice and mercy within the present life. This is not to say that Jesus would have dissented from their implied picture of postmortem realities. It is, rather, to point out that to take the scene of Abraham, the Rich Man, and Lazarus literally is about as sensible as trying to find out the name of the Prodigal Son. Jesus simply didn't say very much about the future life; he was, after all, primarily concerned to announce that God's kingdom was coming "on earth as in heaven." He gave (as we have seen) no fresh teaching on the question of the resurrection apart from dark hints that it was going to happen, and happen soon, to one person ahead of everyone else; for the rest, he was content to reinforce the normal Jewish picture. In the same way, he was not concerned to give any fresh instruction on postmoretem judgment apart from the strange hints that it was going to be dramatically and horizontally anticipated in one particular way, in space-time history, within a generation.

photo © 2007 Gareth Saunders | more info (via: Wylio)We cannot therefore look to Jesus's teaching for any fresh detail on whether there really are some who finally reject God and, as it were, have that rejection ratified. All the signs, of course, are that he went along with the normal first-century Jewish perception: there would indeed be such people, with the only surprise being the surprise experienced, by sheep and goats alike, at their fate and at the evidence on which it was based. And the early Christian writers go along with this. Hell, and final judgment, is not a major topic in the letters (though when it comes it is very important, as for instance in Romans 2:1-16); it is not mentioned at all in Acts; and the vivid pictures toward the end of the book of Revelation, while being extremely important, have always proved among the hardest parts of scripture to interpret with any certainty. All this should warn us against the cheerful double dogmatism that has bedeviled discussion of these topics -- the dogmatism, that is, both of the person who knows exactly who is and who isn't "going to hell" and of the universalist who is absolutely certain that there is no such place or that if there is it will, at the last, be empty.

... I remember, in one of my first tutorials in Oxford, being told by my tutor that he and many others believed that "though hell may exist, it will at the last be untenanted" -- in other words, that hell would turn out to be purgatory after all, an unpleasant preparation for eventual bliss. The merest mention of final judgment has been squeezed out of Christian consciousness in several denominations... by the cavalier omission of verses from public biblical reading...

But the worm has turned, theologically speaking, in the last twenty years. The failure of liberal optimism in Western society has been matched by the obvious failure of the equivalent liberal optimism in theology, driven as it was by the spirit of the age. It is a shame to have to rerun the story of nearly a hundred years ago, with Karl Barth furiously rejecting the liberal theology that had created the climate for the First World War, but it does sometimes feel as if that is what has happened. Faced with the Balkans, Rwanda, the Middle East, Darfur, and all kinds of other horrors that enlightened Western thought can neither explain nor alleviate, opinion in many quarters has... come to see that there must be such a thing as judgment.

(cont'd next post)

Some questions:

1. What do you think of Wright's understanding and usage of Gehenna?
2. If you know much of Wright's arguments in this book about the afterlife, how does that differ from how you have been taught that?
3. The next post will continue to deal with the issue of justice, but how can you envision that God's justice may be different than the standard view of hell?

Greg Boyd on Eternal Judgment

Robbing Hell Blog-a-Thon

Pastor and theologian Greg Boyd looks carefully at the verses used to justify the traditional view of hell (a place of eternal torment, where the worm never dies, etc.), and talks about how he envisions the Final Judgment.

Some, unfortunately, have already written off Boyd for some of his non-traditional views (Open Theism, which is not a view that I share. Nor, really, care to look into at this moment). But, first, we should take truth wherever we find it. All truth is God's truth. Second, however, and this is kind of central to my point, just because it's not traditional doesn't mean it isn't true, or that the person who brought up the non-traditional point-of-view is a false prophet and worthy of... well, hell.

photo © 2005 Aslak Raanes | more info (via: Wylio)

So please, take away about forty-five minutes and give it a good listen before dismissing it. Because, as I've come to learn, questions are good. And God is bigger than our questions.

Robbing Hell

Well, the kerfuffle in the Evangelical Blahg&Twitter World is huge. And I'm late to the party, of course (and to be honest, I could use the page hits, though probably not the character assassinations), but I want to be careful that I don't just come in swinging (which is usually reserved for my treatment of political figures).

Here, I don't want to talk so much about the controversy of the Rob Bell bruhaha (though I will link to some of the better articles I've read on that topic), but about the controversy behind the controversy: Namely, the idea that anything outside of a view of hell that isn't a literal universal, eternal, burning place of torment for the vast majority of humans is heretical.

Naked Pastor. h/t Jesus Needs New PR

In fact, I think that what the BellHell controversy has opened is the opportunity for dialog as to other orthodoxical views on the afterlife. So, as a public service to you, my faithful readers, I've decided to round-up diverse - and largely Evangelical - voices who are talking about other views of hell besides the standard view. Because what I sense is driving this phenomenon is fear, fear that other perspectives that may be equally biblical and ancient, are really going to land us on the slippery slope of hell. I believe that it's quite the opposite.

As such, I'd like to introduce you to what I'll call The Great Robbing Hell Blog-a-Thon.

Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed: Waiting for Rob Bell is a good primer/introduction to the major various views on hell.

His part two offers up to the fact that the vision of hell in the Bible is a lot more complex and mysterious (and graceful and just) than the typical universalist/traditionalist argument holds:

To talk about wrath apart from this depiction of the grace-consuming God is to put forward a view of God that is not only unbiblical but potentially monstrous. And, to put forward a view of God that is absent of final judgment, yes of wrath, yes of eternal judgment, is to offer a caricature of the Bible’s God.

Ian at The Broken Telegraph: Judgment: The Generous and Scandalous Message of Christ

Is it possible that others can know Jesus while not knowing his name? Can’t they live for him and receive him, know him and be known by him, without taking our version of the proper steps? Are we so sure God’s grace isn’t that generous? Perhaps a person rejects Jesus verbally, because the version they’ve been told about is a false one, but they receive Jesus in their life and respond in their actions. Is it possible that such a scenario is more acceptable to God than the person who receives Jesus verbally while accomplishing all of the churchy stuff, but does so because of selfish reasons like fear or pride?

Dan at Nailing it to the Door: No One Comes to the Father but by Me

Jesus did NOT say "I am starting a new religion with you guys, and this religion is the only way to avoid hell." Hell's not even part of the discussion. Nor did Jesus say "no one can be saved unless he thinks in his mind that I am the son of God and I am dying for his sins." No, Jesus says "I AM the way" directly in the context of his having just told his disciples "you know the way." The life they have lived with Jesus during the past three-plus years of his earthly ministry, the jobs he has set them to do, the miracles they have witnessed, the teaching they have absorbed; all these things wrapped together have taught them "the way" to the Father, which is the person of Jesus himself.

The same blogger, Dan Martin, also has a four part series on Eternal Destiny: Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4.

New Ways Forward argues that we centralize the idea of hell so much where we need to ask: Is Hell the Point of the Story?

When hell defines our story, when we see Jesus primarily as the solution to the problem of hell, when avoiding hell is the very reason why the Gospel is good news - then of course any questioning of that doctrine is going to be deeply threatening.

If that's the Story, then without hell the narrative loses its shape.

Sarah Bessey wrote an essay on this recently, and asked her readers to wrestle with this question: “without hell what is the point?”

It’s a great question, regardless of where you come down on the debate about hell itself. Because hell isn’t the point, not in the Torah, not to Jesus, not to Peter or Paul. That’s not to say it isn’t discussed or real - but it’s not the point of the narrative.

A follow-up: I Believe in Hell:

However, I also believe the way we talk about and picture hell too often has more to do with Dante than Jesus, is too often more a reflection of the baggage we bring to the text than what the text is saying.

Honestly I understand why people want to reject the doctrine of hell, and it’s not always just an unwillingness to stomach a difficult doctrine. Often it’s a sensitivity to the fact that the ways in which we talk about hell, and the overtly central role hell plays in our telling of the story, fits very poorly with the Biblical narrative and who we say God is.

And from this here blogg: Greg Boyd's on Eternal Judgment.

Left Cheek continued the Robbing Hell with our part one on New Testament scholar, pastor, theologian NT Wright's views on hell and a few questions: LSR: Surprised By Hope: Beyond Hope, Beyond Pity, pt. 1

The point is that when Jesus was warning his hearers about Gehenna, he was not, as a general rule, telling them that unless they repented in this life they would burn in the next one. As with God's kingdom, so with its opposite: it is on earth that things matter, not somewhere else. His message to his contemporaries was stark and (as we would say today) political. Unless they turned back from their hopeless and rebellious dreams of establishing God's kingdom in their own terms, not least through armed revolt against Rome, then the Roman juggernaut would do what large, greedy, and ruthless empires have always done to smaller countries (not least in the Middle East) whose resources they covet or whose strategic location they are anxious to guard. Rome would turn Jerusalmen into a hideous, stinking extension of its own smoldering rubbish heap. When Jesus said, "Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish," that is the primary meaning he had in mind.

Part two (also with questions):

God is utterly committed to set the world right in the end. This doctrine, like that of resurrection itself, is held firmly in place by the belief in God as creator, on the one side, and the belief in his goodness, on the other. And that setting right must necessarily involve the elimination of all that distorts God's good and lovely creation and in particular of all that defaces his image-bearing human creatures. Not to put too fine a point on it, there will be no barbed wire in the kingdom of God. And those whose whole being has become dependent upon barbed wire will have no place there either.

Tony Jones (Theoblogy) has a link to Keith deRose on Christian universalism - which, must be noted, has a lot more nuance than generally allowed by its critics (even NT Wright seems to prop up a straw man argument in the aforementioned posts) - in The Post You NEED to Read about Universalism:

As I’ll use it, “universalism” refers to the position that eventually all human beings will be saved and will enjoy everlasting life with Christ. This is compatible with the view that God will punish many people after death, and many universalists accept that there will be divine retribution, although some may not. What universalism does commit one to is that such punishment won’t last forever. Universalism is also incompatible with various views according to which some will be annihilated (after or without first receiving punishment). These views can agree with universalism in that, according to them, punishment isn’t everlasting, but they diverge from universalism in that they believe some will be denied everlasting life... In short, then, it’s the position that every human being will, eventually at least, make it to the party.

I will have a few more posts of my own coming later this week, and I would love to add others to this list, as you hear or write them, please leave yours in the comments.

Sometimes It Just Takes a While

Having a Palestinian Christian speak at my church earlier this week caused me to revisit my old views once again. Growing up in the Evangelical/Fundamentalist church, I was led to believe that Jesus was going to come to Earth again in a cloud of glory, take all of his people home to be with him and melt down the world. The state of Israel - and its relationship to its heathen neighbors - was key to this apocalyptic event.

To us, Israel was the chosen nation. Although most every Jew now rejects Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior, at this future date, 144,000 (give or take a few) of them will magically accept him as the incarnate YWHW.

This was, as ridiculous as it may seem, how we viewed the world. We weren't trying to be offensive or cloistered from the world and reality. We figured it was the real reality. We thought we were following the Word of God. So if we were offensive, well, so was Jesus, right? Right? right?

Immediately after high school, I worked for a conservative Evangelical Christian school. Much of what I was taught about the Bible - including our end-times theology - was reinforced and given academic clothes at this school. But it was also there, while working my first days for a paycheck, that I first encountered a real, live Palestinian Christian.

I didn't think he was an enemy. Nor that his existence was in God's way - at least not initially. But when he told us that Zionism (the belief that the land of Israel belongs solely to the Jews) is false prophecy, I just thought he was just wrong. I couldn't grasp the idea that there were other ways of taking the Bible seriously that didn't coincide with my views.* When he shared that his people and he are living as refugees throughout the Arab and Muslim world, I thought that wasn't such a bad thing. After all, the important thing is that Jerusalem and the ancient promised land of the Bible was finally back into the hands of God's chosen people.

It would be another ten years before I really started considering other theological views. It would be some time after that the evils of mass displacement would really sink in. It would be some time after that wherein I felt burdened by the plight of Palestinians as a result of Zionism, as well as the plight of Arabs as a result of fear-mongering and shallow American jingoism. As I was slowly able to distance myself from my old worldviews and to see the resulting hardships that we Evangelicals pass on and exacerbate to those outside of our bubble, I end up apologizing quite a bit. And trying to forcibly change my friends' and family members' views on some of these subjects. Much to their chagrin.

All of this goes to say, it takes time to make a change in people's hearts - especially if they're convinced that their worldview is fundamentally correct. It takes a while to foster trust, to share not only our stories, but the stories of others who are likewise affected. It takes villages. It takes miles. It takes a lot to humble ourselves and hear what others are really trying to say. So why am I surprised, since I - of all people - am still learning?

*Whether that's as a result of teen-aged narcissism or fundamentalist thinking, I'm not sure that there's much of a difference, to be honest. Fundamentalism is, at its heart, a willingness to subject yourself to an extremely self-centered view of the world. The difference is that teenagers tend to think that they're self-defined (although their viewpoints are at the least informed by their cultural and familial contexts) and largely buck against authority. Fundamentalists are told what and how to believe and act and fall in line accordingly. There are figures who are trusted with immense and otherworldly authority in their sphere - it's just that those figures have to be within their sphere. Everybody else is treated with suspicion. So in that way, Fundamentalists are anti-authoritarian.

Sunday Readings: The Biblical Picture of Christian Hope

The Christian hope is not simply for' going to heaven when we die,' but for 'new heavens and new earth, integrated together.'...

What are the results of construing the Christian hope in this way? It gives us a view of creation which emphasizes the goodness of God's world, and God's intention to renew it. It gives us, therefore, every possible incentive, or at least every Christian incentive, to work for the renewal of God's creation and for justice within God's creation. Not that we are building the kingdom by our own efforts. Let us not lapse into that. Rather, what we are doing here and now is building for God's kingdom. It is what Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 3.10-15: there is continuity between our present work and God's future kingdom, even though the former will have to pass through fire to attain the latter. It is also clearly implied in 1 Corinthians 15.58: the conclusion of Paul's enormous exposition of the resurrection is not an outburst of joy at the glorious life to come, but a sober exhortation to work for the kingdom in the present, because we know that our work here and now is not in vain in the Lord. In other words, belief in the resurrection, the other side, if need be, of a period of disembodied life in the Lord (cf Cor 15.29), validates and so encourages present Christian life, work and witness.

A suspicious reader might, perhaps, think that this is sliding down the hill towards some kind of naturalism or even pantheism. That would be quite wrong. This same theology, precisely because it speaks of a renewed heaven and earth, rules out any sort of pantheism such as (for instance) you find in New Age theology at the moment. It emphasizes that creation is good, but in need of renewal and restoration by a mighty act of God, parallel to the resurrection of Jesus. We cannot divinize nature as she stands; were we to do so, we would be locking ourselves in the cabin of a ship that is going down, since nature as she stands is subject to the long, slow (to our eyes) process of decay. 'Change and decay in all around I see'; but that does not mean that the cosmos is evil, merely that it is not divine.

The Christian hope cannot, therefore, collapse into individualism ('me and my salvation'). If we allowed it to, we might be making a similar mistake in our theological context to that of first century Israel in her theological context. We would imagine that God's whole purpose focused on us and us alone, instead of seeing grace as summoning us to be God's agents in mission to and for the whole world. (This, I suggest, is the way to a proper construal of being in the image of God-not simply that we as humans are somehow like God, a rather impressive thing to be, but that we as God's image are to reflect his saving, healing love into the rest of God's creation.)

As for the use of language, therefore, I suggest that it is all right to use the word 'heaven,' so long as we remember that it refers to God's dimension of present-to-hand reality. If we talk about' going to heaven,' we strictly speaking should remember that that means' going to be with God, with Christ, until the time when God makes new heavens and new earth and gives humans new bodies appropriate for citizens of this realm.' The language of 'going to heaven' is so ingrained in us that I sometimes despair of correcting the false impressions that are thereby given; but I think the attempt must be made. Another example from a popular hymn, 'Sun of my soul, thou saviour dear'; after a devout and humble sequence of prayer, the last verse suddenly turns from Christianity to Buddhism:

Come near and bless us when we wake,
Ere through the world our way we take;
Till in the ocean of thy love
We lose ourselves in heaven above.

One suspects that many devout Western Christians are blithely unaware of the way in which that thought, of the soul leaving the physical world and becoming lost, a drop in the ocean of disembodied reality, manages at a stroke to deconstruct the New Testament picture of the future life.

Should we continue, then, to speak of 'souls' at all? I see no problem with the word in principle (as Lewis Carroll suggested, you can use words how- I ever you like as long as you pay them extra on Thursdays); you can say 'soul,' as long as you are committed to meaning by that 'a whole human being living in the presence of God.' Soul-language, within a Christian context, is a shorthand for telling a story of that sort, a story about the way in which human beings as wholes are irreducibly open to God. It is not, within Christian theology, a shorthand for a story in which a partitioned human being has a soul in one compartment, a body in another, and quite possibly all sorts of other bits and pieces equally divided up. We can then continue to (use the word 'soul' with fully Christian meaning; but we should be careful, l because the language has had a chequered history, and may betray us.

The language of 'soul' is telling a story; the trouble with shorthands is that they can become absolutized. The story is of a person as a person living with God and towards God, , departing and being with Christ.' I prefer not to push beyond where Scripture takes us on such things; Paul does not speculate as to what more precisely happens when one has thus' departed.' In 2 Corinthians 5.1-5 he is stressing that the eventual goal is a totally renewed vi' body, not a disembodied spirit. It is natural for us to use the language of separation of body and soul, in order that we then have a word available to talk about the person who is still alive in the presence of God while the body is obviously decomposing, But we should not think of the soul as a part of the person that was always, so to speak, waiting to be separated off, like the curds from the whey.

The language of immortality itself, then, has to be held within the whole sweep of thought from creation to new creation. Some churches, I have noticed, have stopped saying merely, of the departed, 'may they rest in peace,' and have added 'and rise in glory.' That, it seems to me, is a thoroughly proper thing to say of those who have gone on ahead of us...

Christian hope, therefore, is for a full, recreated life in the presence and love of God, a totally renewed creation, an integrated new heavens and new earth, and a complete humanness complete not in and for itself as an isolated entity, but complete in worship and love for God, complete in love for one another as humans, complete in stewardship over God's world, and so, and only in that complete context, a full humanness in itself.

Of course, the most glorious feature of the whole renewed creation, the new heavens and the new earth, will be the personal presence of Jesus himself. 'When he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is' (1 John 3.2). Or, as another hymn puts it, 'And our eyes at last shall see him/ Through his own redeeming love' (though the hymn then spoils it somewhat by implying that this seeing will be in 'heaven above,' rather than in God's complete new-heaven-and-newearth new creation.) Since the Greek word for 'presence,' particularly for 'royal presence,' is parousia, it seems to me that that word is misunderstood if we think of it as simply' coming.' Jesus will indeed 'come again,' from the perspective of those still labouring here in the present earth; but I believe it is more appropriate, and more biblical, to see Jesus' personal presence, within the glorious renewed cosmos, as the ultimate feature of Christian hope. But that is another subject, for another occasion.

-NT Wright
from his talk The Biblical Picture of Christian Hope

ReMix: Weapons of Our Warfare: Sarcasm

It's certainly not the only weapon, nor the best to fend off the maddening screams of chaos and control. Kind words are often more effective and certainly help to defuse a tense situation.

Sarcasm and its twins only shorten the fuse.

But there are times when one needs to cut the wick low, when the shock bomb needs to go off just so that the listeners can be broken free from the sadistic chains of manipulation. It is only then that they are able to see the bigger picture and envision a brighter hope. Sarcasm is a weapon, and there are times when it is the most appropriate one to use. It's the hammer that hits heavy, the hand grenade lofted into the enemy's space, the incisive knife of the surgeon. It works in a way where kind words or actions do not.

And, importantly for Christians like myself, it's deeply biblical.

The lone Hebrew prophet Elijah taunting his multitudinous contemporaries, wondering aloud if their gods were taking a tinkle. The otherwise unknown prophet Nathan flipping the story of the thieving, murderous landowner on King David. Jesus illustrating the corruption of the debtor system with his rude imagining of a stark naked quasi-slave.

In each of the biblical stories listed above, it was the little man, the outsider, the powerless countering the onslaught and injustice of the mighty. In some cases it worked immediately on the target (luckily for Nathan). Although the priests never seemed to convert to Elijah's God, we can imagine that the audience was stumped and even broken by the prophet's mockings. Jesus' illustration made his impoverished and often deeply-in-debt hearers laugh and feel a bit empowered. But since the two-line story from Matthew 5 may be lost on the modern ear, allow me the chance to update it a bit.

If we were to make a trip a few miles west of my house, next to the innumerable empty lots you may also notice the absence of traditional banking venues (large, community, or the increasingly popular credit unions). "That's only sensible," you suggest. "Banks aren't out of reach, they're just not in this area, and for good cause. There are few businesses in this blighted area, and the neighborhood most likely doesn't have enough cash flow to maintain such a costly venue, let alone allow it to turn a profit."

I won't argue that, but I will point you to the institutions that have filled the monetary void, specifically the title and paycheck loan businesses, not to mention their ancient cousin, the pawn shops. Used car salesmen will say that they offer credit for any borrower, but the APR - as it is with the other lender businesses mentioned - is exorbitantly high; 500% APR is typical, if not many times more so (They've also been taking advantage - if that's the word we want to use - of the microfinancing boom). As long as there have been poor people there have always been businesses who abuse them for profit at every turn, going back even before Jesus' day.

Fortunately, there were a few laws and customs in ancient Judea to at least moderately protect the debtors from total annihilation (besides, what kind of foolish economic system would completely obliterate their profit-base?). In Jesus' time and place, the lender sues the borrower that has not paid up on his debt. The court will often decree that the indebted give up his outer garment for the duration of the day. This was a type of protection for both parties, a kind of guarantee that the debt will be repaid and a way to keep the humiliation minimal for the payee.

Which is to say that the payee is supposed to be humiliated. Triply so, actually. First, that he needs to borrow money in the first place just in order to make ends meet for a couple more days, probably until he finds work. Then he's embarrassed that he isn't able to pay his debts off as immediately as he planned. But now he walks around town with half his clothes off, a sign of his triple-shame.

The type of permanent serfdom that such situations lead to (where the borrower is always *just out of means* of fully repaying and therefore always indebted somewhat to the loaner) is basically a hidden slave system, a way of using the law to the advantage of the usurer and to the disadvantage of the majority poor and penniless.

But Jesus, in his ingenious way, reverts the shame back to the creditors. "If a man asks for your tunic, give him your robe as well." In a two-robe society, the person who follows this advice is stark naked. And in a society in which the person who looks upon the other person's nakedness is ashamed, the shame belongs to the loan officers and their court allies. It's a small victory, to be sure, but it looms large as the poor and oppressed villagers parade around town, happy that the usurers have been upended, even if just for a moment.

There are many, many other examples and the Bible is rife with satire of one form or another. According to Douglas Wilson's A Serrated Edge: A Brief Defense of Biblical Satire, the entire book of Amos is satire, as is Jesus' woes to the hypocritical religious leaders of his time. Check out this translation of Matthew 23 and tell me the text isn't dripping and oozing of unhinged Juvenal sarcasm:

Snakes! Reptilian sneaks! Do you think you can worm your way out of this? Never have to pay the piper? It's on account of people like you that I send prophets and wise guides and scholars generation after generation—and generation after generation you treat them like dirt, greeting them with lynch mobs, hounding them with abuse. (The Message)

The Bible is rife with such analogies: an indiscreet woman is like a gold ring on a pig's snout (Proverbs); hypocrites accusingly point to the splinters on others' eyes while overlooking the barks in their own (Jesus); then there's the sacred cow slaughter in Amos 4:

Listen to this, you cows of Bashan
grazing on the slopes of Samaria.
You women! Mean to the poor,
cruel to the down-and-out!
Indolent and pampered, you demand of your husbands,
'Bring us a tall, cool drink!'

This is serious—I, God, have sworn by my holiness!
Be well warned: Judgment Day is coming!
They're going to rope you up and haul you off,
keep the stragglers in line with cattle prods.
They'll drag you through the ruined city walls,
forcing you out single file,
And kick you to kingdom come.
- God's Decree.

Come along to Bethel and sin!
And then to Gilgal and sin some more!
Bring your sacrifices for morning worship.
Every third day bring your tithe.
Burn pure sacrifices—thank offerings.
Speak up—announce freewill offerings!
That's the sort of religious show you Israelites just love. (The Message)

Sarcasm has the ability to illuminate, to make truth blindingly bright. It does so by dragging its hearers through truth's dark undertow, and leaving them panting for breath at the shores.
Of course, the majority of times that isn't a proper way of treating even an enemy. Leaving someone traipsing in the dark after punching them in the guts is not a way to have a non-sadist return.

The Elder James (one of Jesus' brothers) warns against using the tongue in a negative or easy manner (James 3). That's for good reason: sarcasm is a double-edged sword that needs to be wielded rarely and carefully.

Sarcasm is the odd man out. It cuts deep and leaves shards all over the friggin' place, but then there are times when nothing else will work, when you need to cut it open or blow it up (depending on which of my many mixed metaphors you want to bandy about). The rest of the time, it's probably not so cool to run around with a live little bomb in your hands.

The Rap-Sures (pt. 3): Matthew 24

Tonight we'll be studying the famous Matthew passage on the "end of these things". I don't have everything together on this passage, but here's a few thoughts:

• There's nothing in this passage to support the theology of the rapture. Verse 31 speaks about "gathering the elect from the four corners." But there's nothing in there to express a disappearance from the earth, or a raising, even. (My initial thought is that it has to do with a type of reverse exodus based on my reading of the corresponding Zechariah passage). Verses 41 and 42 are where the phrase "Left Behind" (of those horrific 'thrillers') are taken from. But a closer look at the immediate context reveals that it's not those who are left behind who are unfortunate, but the other way around.

As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left. (NIV)

• The chapter begins with Jesus' disciples proclaiming wonderment at the Temple area. Jesus foresees its destruction. Much argument arises out of what the disciples meant and how Jesus interprets their question, "Tell us, when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?" (NIV) I have a hard time believing that the rest of the passage is all about the period ending in 70 AD with the siege and fall of Jerusalem. But this period of Great Tribulation is of that period. Here's a few clues: 1) In the phrase, "This generation will not pass until these things happen," the word "generation" means what it has always meant: generation. Not all of humanity. Not race. Age. Contemporaries; 2) "Let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains." Not "those who are in the cities," nor, "those who are in the valley." Specifically, those in Judea; 3) "Abomination of desolation" means that, once again, a gentile ruler will enter the holy Temple and do unspeakable things (in this case, utterly destroy it); 4) The language used in this chapter is fairly similar to the language that the Jewish historian (who was in the campaign to lay siege against the rebels) Josephus uses to describe that period and; 4) In the corresponding passages (in Mark 12 and Luke 21), the disciples are asking specifically and only about the fall of the temple.
• However, much is made about whether everything in the Matthew passage refers to AD 70. It seems to me that Jesus is mixing in his vindication (the coming and judging on the clouds is from Daniel 7) with his parousia.
• But probably the most important thing is to watch and pray, watch and pray, as evidenced by this passage and the next chapter (and, for contrast, the chapter preceding it).

The Rap-Sures (pt. 1)

I'm writing this in anticipation, to be quite honest, of a Bible study on Matthew 24. But in order to get to that, I thought I would need to hit this heavy (at least in the States) topic: the rapture.

Lemme just be honest and upfront. I don't believe in the rapture. I don't believe that living Christians should expect Jesus to come down from the sky (wherever in the sky that may be) and then get whisked away with him when we literally fly up to meet him half way (is he coming or going? are we? where at in space?). Furthermore and more importantly, I don't believe that we're all going off to some luxury resort in the sky when Jesus comes back.

However (just in case my secular reader/colleagues thought I might finally be approaching some sense of sanity), I DO believe in a literal resurrection. I do believe in this literal place called heaven. I do believe that this guy sometime around the time of CE/AD 30 this Jewish teacher/rebel/Son of God named Jesus violently died for humanity and then was raised back from the dead three days later. I affirm the ancient Creeds, including the virgin birth and the judgment of both the quick and the terribly slow (yes, zombie joke).

But I also believe that we misread a lot of the Bible because it wasn't written specifically for us. The case of the rapture is a major misunderstanding that affects how we treat the world around us as well as our neighbors and, thus, needs major correcting. I don't think that I could possibly reverse the ball even in my court, but I think that I could do my part to raise consciousness of the erroneous thinking in concerning this theology.

I'm going to borrow steal very generously from both the New Living Translation and Bishop NT Wright's Surprised by Hope (buy it, borrow it, loan it).

Paul's letters are full of the future coming or appearing of Jesus (parousia) [128]... Parousia is... one of those terms in which Paul is able to say that Jesus is the reality of which Caesar is the parody. Paul's theology of the second coming is part of his political theology of Jesus as Lord [Jesus is Lord. Caesar isn't. He's a pretender to the true throne]. In other words, we have the language of parousia, of royal presence, sitting in a typically Pauline juxtaposition with the language of Jewish apocalyptic. This would not... have presented many problems for Paul's first hearers. It certainly has for subsequent readers, not least in the last century or so.

This is so especially when we read I Thessalonians 4:16-17:

For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. First, the Christians who have died will rise from their graves. Then, together with them, we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Then we will be with the Lord forever.

The point to notice above all about these tricky verses is that they are not to be taken as a literal description of what Paul thinks will happen. They are simply a different way of saying what he is saying in I Corinthians 15:23-27 and in Philippians 3:20-21:

I Corinthians 15
But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of a great harvest of all who have died. So you see, just as death came into the world through a man, now the resurrection from the dead has begun through another man... But there is an order to this resurrection: Christ was raised as the first of the harvest; then all who belong to Christ will be raised when he comes back. After that the end will come, when he will turn the Kingdom over to God the Father, having destroyed every ruler and authority and power.For Christ must reign until he humbles all his enemies beneath his feet. And the last enemy to be destroyed is death...
But let me reveal to you a wonderful secret. We will not all die, but we will all be transformed! It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever. And we who are living will also be transformed. For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies.

Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this Scripture will be fulfilled:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?

Philippians 3
We are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior. He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control.

... In I Cor 15:23-27 Paul speaks of the parousia of the Messiah as the time of the resurrection of the dead, the time when the present but secret rule will become manifest in the conquest of the last enemies, especially death. Then in verses 51-54 he speaks of what will happen to those who, at Jesus's coming, are not yet dead. They will be changed, transformed. This is clearly the same event he is speaking of in I Thess 4; we have the trumpet in both, and the resurrection of the dead in both; but whereas in I Thess he speaks of those presently alive being "snatched up in the air," in I Cor he speaks of them being "transformed." So too in Phil 3:21, where the context is quite explicitly ranging Jesus over against Caesar, Paul speaks of the transformation of the present lowly body to be like Jesus' glorious body, as a result of his all-conquering power.

So why does Paul speak in this particular way in the I Thess about the Lord descending and the living saints being snatched up in the air? I suggest that he is finding richly metaphorical ways of alluding to three other stories that his is deliberately bringing together...

We must remind ourselves... that all Christian language about the future is a set of signposts pointing into a mist. Signposts don't normally provide you with advance photographs of what you'll find at the end of the road, but that doesn't mean they aren't pointing in the right direction...

The three stories Paul is here bringing together start with the story of Moses coming down the mountain. The trumpet sounds, a loud voice is heard, and after a long wait Moses appears and descends from the mountain to see what's been going on in his absence.

Then there is the story of Daniel 7, in which the persecuted people of God are vindicated over their pagan enemy by being raised up on the clouds to sit with God in glory. This "raising up on the clouds," which Jesus applies to himself in the gospels, is now applied by Paul to the Christians who are presently suffering persecution.

(Catch that? Being raised up on the clouds isn't literal. But it is important.)

Putting these two stories together... enables Paul to bring in the third story... When the emperor visited a colony or province, the citizens of the country would go to meet him at some distance from the city. It would be disrespectful to have him actually arrive at the gates as though his subjects couldn't be bothered to greet him properly. When they met him, they wouldn't then stay out in the open country; they would escort him royally into the city itself. When Paul speaks of "meeting" the Lord "in the air," the point is precisely not... that the saved believers would then stay up in the air somewhere, away from earth. The point is that, having gone out to meet their returning Lord, they will escort him royally into his domain, that is, back to the place they have come from. Even when we realize that this is a highly charged metaphor, not literal description, the meaning is the same as in the parallel in Phil 3:20. Being citizens of heaven, as the Philippians would know, doesn't mean that one is expecting to go back to the mother city but rather that one is expecting the emperor to come from the mother city to give the colony its full dignity, to rescue it if need be, to subdue local enemies and put everything to rights. [Pages 131-133]

And for those that were really hoping to hear from Terry Taylor's children's "rap" music project from the early 80's, here you go.

Evangelicals, Markers and the World

We evangelicals are a people obsessed with badges and identifiers. It's a way to tell, in a quick overview, if the new couple in the church are really saved, if we can hang with Sally and Joe even though they go to a different church. It's a way of checking out, of making sure that they are us, but also of making sure that 'us' are exclusive and, thus, special. In some ways, it's a leftover from the high tide of Fundamentalism's knee-jerk reaction to Liberalism (yes, I'm using Capital Letters like some Nutwing...).

Essentially, it's supposed to be a way of making sure that Christians are not of the "world" - that we are not "worldly." We are set apart, we are special, we are God's own for God's use.

This phenomenon can be dated back to the Reformation and the ensuing Counter-Reformation. And then back to the Church Fathers, even predating Emperor Constantine's meddling in the affairs of the church. In fact, it can be seen most prominently in the actions of the Pharisees and in their laws.

Of course, identifying each other through markers and labels is not just limited to the religious community. People groups have always found protection of one sort or another in labeling. Often the labeling is completely unnecessary (it never takes away from one group to have another group have the same rights and privileges as the first) and the categories and degrees of separation dangerous (think of the hierarchies inherent in your typical middle school or of the sub-human designation given to slaves, lower caste members, non-natives or, more specifically, black-skinned people in the US and South Africa) and therein lies the problem with such reductive measures.

In the loose affiliation that my childhood's independent Bible church belonged to, there is a list of sixteen doctrinal points that they pride themselves on and consider key to their identity, each with several sub-points. Many of the points and sub-points are, at best, of secondary or tertiary importance, un-historical (eg, Dispensationalism), or down-right divisive (cessation of the gifts of the Spirit, separationism). As if those did not cause enough division, they outright call out four "movements" as being "Contrary to Faith" - apparently meaning apostate or heretical. Among those movements are Neo-Evangelicalism (as in, Billy Graham, Christianity Today, Philip Yancey, Chuck Colson, most other Evangelicals...) and, oddly enough, NeoOrthodoxy (is that even a movement anymore?).

This type of 'holiness' (in the case of separatists like the aforementioned affiliation, they do not associate with those who associate with those they consider apostate) is not just limited to fundamentalists either. In typical evangelical fashion, we do it in our everyday mundane.

What type of church do you belong to?

Who do you read?

What kind of music do you listen to?

Are you Calvinist or Armenian?

Pentecostal or Cessationist?

Where you with the Promise Keepers?

Do you attend a megachurch?

Do you listen to such-and-such's podcasts?

How should clergy/lay leaders dress for church?

How old is the world?*

There are other questions, of course - some unasked like: Do you drink alcohol? How much/how often? Are you politically conservative or liberal? Did you really vote for ol' crazy face?

Further complicating the issue, some of these markers are synonymous with sin issues, or at the very least of being separate with "the world." A common scene when we encounter new friends is the 'beer in the fridge' syndrome. In this scenario, we try to get our toes wet in regards to finding out if they are ok with drinking. Which sounds absolutely bizarre and bewildering to anyone outside of the Evangelical fold, I know. But because of our Fundamentalist tendencies and some rather arbitrary picking and choosing, conservative evangelicals had largely shunned any sort of alcoholic drinking as if it would automatically lead to debauchery, orgies, and wife-beatings. This is considered a marker, how a pastor or sister in the Lord would know if one needed deliverance from the world. Furthermore, one shouldn't go to a bar at any time, nor play pool (up until the 1990's it was a rule at the college I worked at through college), nor smoke or play face cards (also because it was associated with gambling). These are related markers, of course, because proximity to a bottle is not enough to establish holiness but is apparently enough to drag yer alcoholics-lovin' self to hell.

Some of these identifiers can be readily and easily addressed - they're just plain legalism. Dancing, associations, alcohol consumption, music - these may affect some people in regards to their own spiritual walk, but that cannot be extended to all. Others are varied attempts at Christian acculturation. Business attire is standard wear in typical older churches on Sunday morning; one common argument being that it's less distracting than informal wear, another that we should dress up for God - as if all the time it takes preparing or buying 'non-distracting' clothes doesn't distract from trying to get in a proper mood, or as if God pays more attention to white collar people than for blue collar.

The ancient church also faced the same problems. The first gentile Christians were told that they had to accept a Jewish signifier (odd as it were, since circumcision isn't instantly identified - I would guess at least...). But the primary and first missionary to the gentiles got pretty upset at these troubled purists. In the fifth chapter of the book of Galatians, St. Paul writes:

When we place our faith in Christ Jesus, there is no benefit in being circumcised or being uncircumcised... You were running the race so well. Who has held you back from following the truth? It certainly isn’t God, for he is the one who called you to freedom. This false teaching is like a little yeast that spreads through the whole batch of dough!** I am trusting the Lord to keep you from believing false teachings... I just wish that those troublemakers who want to mutilate you by circumcision would mutilate themselves.

The Saint Paul may have a history of mixing phrases (which would confuse gentiles not as familiar with his world and theology much later in time), but never of mincing words.

The over-arching problem - I strongly suggest - is that we are choosing the wrong markers:

They will know you are Christians by your love.

From the same passage as quoted above:

So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law... What is important is faith expressing itself in love...For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

And this, in turn, should change everything.

Everything.

*A large percentage of American Evangelicals believe that it is questioning of God's creation and revealed truth that the world would be much older than 6,000 years. This is actually a modernist reading of the Bible that believes that if the bible records it, it must be literally true. But more on this phenomenon later.

** I can't be the only person somewhat amused by the massive irony that separationists quote from this verse when it's they who are yeasting up the bread, when it's they who've got the knife on the foreskin?

Questioning Evangelicals: Corporate Sin

"Corporations and nations don't kill people. Individual bad persons kill people. Individually. Sometimes with guns."


That line of logic is prevalent in my own Evangelical movement. Evangelicals do not recognize corporate sin, this concept that a group of people can be responsible for the sins of the entire group, even if they did not individually sin. Which is odd, to say the least.

First, Christians believe that all of humanity is cursed with the consequences of sin because of the follies of a couple representative members (Adam & Eve). Second, Christians believe that when sin entered the world, it ruined not just them and their offspring, but the whole world. Which includes not just nature, not just hurricanes and tsunamais and earthquakes and other "Acts of God." Every social interaction, every attempt at brotherhood (see Cain and Abel) and community (see Babel) is tainted beyond simple matters of 'me' and 'you'.

But let's look at an example, shall we?

"You shall not murder."
"If someone strikes you on the one cheek, offer him your other cheek."

How are these rather straight-forward Biblical imperatives reconciled in the minds of Evangelical Christians in the light of our constant drumming of war triumphalism? How does a Christian live a moral life and participate as a soldier - if the primary function (not necessarily purpose) of a soldier is to kill?*

A friend tried to help with this disconnect once, using common logic from the EV fray:

"Suppose you're called to the military by your country. You operate in obedience to your country. You fight because you have to. You shoot because you have to. That other person on the other side may, just like you, have a family - kids and a wife. But it's your duty to shoot, to defend your country. You can rest assured that you are not personally responsible for that person's death. The responsibility for the death is on the government's head."

At this juncture, it seems important to note that there are a few meteoritic holes in this argument (like, How come many of the same people who say we have to obey our government in times of war will openly disavow obeying the government in something so paltry as paying taxes? Or, Is it more important to be obedient to my government or to my conscience?), but let's take this example at face value, shall we? What we are told to do here is remove individual guilt and place it on a corporate entity.**

Which is one of the few periods when Evangelicals recognize any sort of corporate sin in any form. Evangelicals are so centered on individual sins (lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life as committed by each person) that the idea that companies, corporations, local governments, nations (or at least non-Axis-of-Evil ones), industries, markets and their directors and/or members can be held guilty for their actions is foreign to them. The meltdown at Enron, for example, can be blamed on a few reckless people - not a reckless corporate atmosphere of rapid growth and immense competition that precluded false financial reports meant to buff up their image yet accomplishing a wide-scale gang-raping of jobs and safety.

However, if one were to point out the evils rampant in, say, the police force, she will be told that it is the work of a few bad apples.
Likewise, the housing collapse was the work of individual predatory lenders (or, for the less compassionate, individual poor people who should have known better).
The related banking collapse.
Classism.
Homelessness.
Sexism.
Racism.
Homophobia.
The sex slave trade.

These are all the works of isolated individuals, not systemic problems. They just need some Jesus and those problems will be taken care of. Right?

And then there's more massive problems, not so easily deflected to individuals:
Global poverty.
Slavery in general (which is bigger than ever).
Terrorism.

Often looking into the abyss of these problems, many fellow Evangelicals would rather not face the 'Why' of these dilemmas (or if they do they turn to overly-simplistic or even racist answers). Instead, they work on trying to serve the people caught in the problems (or, in the "Axis of Evil" example, advocate for war. Again...). Which is beneficial to a point, but severely limited. It only allows us to rescue a few hand-picked individuals and only for a short period of time. Further, the good vibes associated with the rescuing allow us a reprieve from the guilt associated with our comfortable life and all the riches; they allow us to continue to feed into the machines that entrap people. Rather than tearing down the prisons and allowing the prisoners to go free, we're content with sending in a check every once in a while. Rather than confronting our luxurious and wasteful nation. Rather than challenging banking and insurance policies and practices that are clearly unethical. Rather than calling the gods of war and their connections to account for the blood they shed. Rather than picking up our cross daily for the sins of our generation.

We'll just continue to blame individual sin and find a scapegoat here and there. As long as we don't have to be personally responsible for others' sins...

* I do not indict soldiers in this argument. I am merely bringing in a moral argument.
**Except, for many on the Evangelical Right, the sins of the government in declaring war on "our enemies" (currently, Brown People and Muslims) are absolved.

Some more thoughts on postmodernism/deconstructionalism

I'm not sure if I'm postmodern. In fact, I rather doubt it.

But I also wouldn't consider myself to be modern, nor pre-modern (for example, I don't doubt much of technology, nor do I believe that rats are made out of rotting meat left in the corner of my hut).

So, what my arch-nemesis Stanley Fish is talking about in the article I linked to yesterday (with key lucid phrases encapsulated as such: "Richard Rorty... declared, 'where there are no sentences, there is no truth … the world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not.' Descriptions of the world are made by us, and we, in turn, are made by the categories of description that are the content of our perception. These are not categories we choose — were they not already installed there would be nothing that could do the choosing; it would make more sense [but not perfect sense] to say that they have chosen or colonized us. Both the 'I' and the world it would know are functions of language. Or in Derrida’s famous and often vilified words: There is nothing outside the text. [More accurately, there is no outside-the-text.]") can be, for me, better summed up in a couple sentences from one of the posts in Scot McKnight's ongoing review of Roger Olsen's Reformed and Always Reforming.

[P]omo (postmodernity/postmoderns) is skepticism about grand narratives so that everything is local and particular. Some pomo folks, hard postmodernity, is deconstructive as it unmasks the power behind truth claims.

The softer kind — that which is picked up in some, if not most, postconservatives — is that all truth claims emerge from a narrative context. And here’s a very important point, and one that the critics of both emerging and postconservatism fail to appreciate and opt instead for a bludgeoning instrument:

“knowledge may be relative even if truth is not” (127). “This is not relativism but recognition of the relativity of perspective inherent in all human thinking.” “Truth may be objective, but knowledge never is.”

As I'm reading bits and pieces of this series, I completely see myself within the realm of the postconservative (not to be confused with neo-conservative) Christian - as well as the Emerging (esp. emerging-from-conservative-evangelicalism) Movement.

Just a heads-up. I should probably change my masthead descriptor of myself, eh?