Built Me A Pub...

What do you do if you can't afford beer at the Local, and long to live in a world where there is a charming, homey Pub just down the road (cf. 19th c. Britain)? Build your own!

http://blog.nashotah.edu/blog/2011/11/10/the-cellar-nashotah-houses-very-own-pub/

You're welcome, Nashotah House :)

Turning the tables...again.

So, I remember being rebuffed in theology classes at Wheaton for "allowing anthropology to inform my theology." That is - ascribing to God characteristics that are characteristically human. Bad, young theologian! We got it the wrong way around - what we need is a theological anthropology!

I took the rebuff and have since tried to avoid this error of humanifying the Godhead.

BUT - I just realized the other day as I was reading Ireneaus' robust account of humans-as-Image-bearers (in 'On The Apostolic Preaching') that this table turns on itself. I mean - if we fully allow our understanding of what a human is to be primarily informed by theology - then we claim that we humans bear the very image of what is true about God. That is, something about how we function and what we're made of (e.g. the fact that we have a body and a spirit, etc), is like how God is in godself.†

So - if this is a given (a dogmatic presupposition, of course, but that is the realm of the presenting rebuff i recevied, so, not inappropriate), then we actually can learn what God is like by looking at what is human. In more boring language: if our anthropology is theological, then our theology can be anthropological! So - maybe when the first person of the Godhead is referred to as 'Father', this is not just some metaphoric (or even analogic?, any readers know how S.Thomas parses this one?) ascription of a human concept on to an ineffable 'God-concept', but rather - God made humans in such a way—by having us be born from eachother, to have fathers, each of us, etc.—that it shows us a living example of how the Unseen functions. So when we profess - 'Eternally begotten of the Father' in the creed - it is like, literally, how we know Fathers to relate to Sons - that sons come from fathers, etc. likewise, The Son comes from The Father.

Boom! take that, Wheaton prof's! I intend on reflecting on this idea further - I have a feeling some gems might come of it.

I also like it as a sort of rationale for the lines I find myself thinking along, especially on this here blog.

†Furthermore - when the second person of the trinity assumed humanity in the person of Jesus of Nazareth - even fallen humanity became once and for all brought up into the God-head, and as we are being re-made into the image of righteousness by the Holy Spirit within us, we (who are, at the first and as a base-line, already image-bearers), are being made into the very likeness (a category higher than 'image', as developed by several church fathers, i think Didymus the Blind chiefly among them) of Christ - the second person of the Godhead. That is - we are even closer to looking like God now, thanks to the work of the 2nd and 3rd members of the trinity.

Bright and Vivid

I have seen a handful of YouTube videos in recent months that I realize, upon reflection, are actually visions of the Kingdom. That is - of how life can be now, and how it will be in the Age to Come. So here they are, i don't mean them (the content of the videos) literally per se, only that they are sort of living-parables of that ineffable joy and overflowing goodness that I believe is to be found only in YHWH; brief but vivid glimpses into what we hope for:

- So there's this,

- this (minus the sappy soundtrack. Ok, maybe with the sappy soundtrack :))

- and lastly, an oldie (in internet-time) but a goodie. I know you've seen it before, but watch it again, at least until the weeping-breakdown at 1:05. Gets me everytime.

I heard the phrase "an embarrasment of riches" today - a phrase I had forgotten till I heard it oncemore - and I just love it (the phrase). And i feel like it sums up something of these videos, too.

Uh oh - crazy thought (that also ties several other blog-thoughts together, too)

So, I just picked up this book of sayings of the desert fathers. You know - figured I'd take a gander - see what they have to offer. And - it's CRAZY. These dudes were so severe, and it's all demons and devils and what not. I am tempted to dismiss it out of hand as just the "hallucinations" resulting from weeks with no food and little water and an incessant desert sun. And then somewhere between these thoughts I realized its not really ok for me to think along such lines (of dismissal based on the interpretation of 'hallucinations'). I keep using quote marks around 'hallucinations' because that is just what we neuro-scientists categorize them as, when, on the contrary, the phenomenon presents itself as: In order to be able to see the spiritual realm, you need to fast. Clear and simple with no neuro-schmeuro nonsense. This surface (yet deepest [eidos]) interpretation is also far more compatible with the world the New Testament speaks of. So - all of the sudden I am left dumb-founded that maybe it's all real: all the monks' stories, all the crazy demons and what not. And if this is the case - then I need to re-adjust my life accordingly! For starters - maybe giving fasting a try. (So bloody difficult!) Also - reading classic Christian texts with much more credulity than my skeptical modern eyes usually afford them. But most of all - clinging ever tighter to the Christ who is my savior!

I have now lived 25 years on this earth

And how happy I am for all these years of life. Vis-a-vis this blog - how happy I am to have had these several years of dialogue and friendship with you, Mark, and all ye readers with whom I have likewise enjoyed the rich pleasure of armchair philosophizing.

Also - in recognition of this quarter century, and because of the hundreds of COPD patients I have seen at the medical hospital - I quit smoking! About 36 hrs ago. Didn't sleep a wink this night, but am over the moon about my new status as a non-smoker.

Remember those nights where we would get a bit tipsy, and then in the middle of the night I would stumble awake and throw away our cigarettes? Well I am finally honoring that uninhibited impulse once and for all. :)

I changed my profile pic in recognition of this.

Also, as eager as I am to put this in writing to seal the deal, this shall also be the last you will ever hear of it from me. Nothing more annoying than that guy who always talks about how long he's gone without, etc. How he "used to be one of those" etc. Yuck.

Also, to any of ye readers ever looking to do the same, I highly recommend this book (hat tip: my dear friend Tony Kaehny). Takes all of 20 minutes to read, but is an amazing tool which I am leaning on in these first couple weeks while the physical withdrawals subside.

Psychoanalytic findings as myth-making

On a couple occasions lately I have been speaking with someone who (over)shared some snippet of their past as it relates to their future. Y'all know of what I speak - like, when someone says, "well, I have deep trust issues because when I was 8 my Dad forgot to pick me up from soccer practice". Ok, that's a rather demure example, but that sort of statement. Anyway - while I have no doubt that our current ways of thinking and acting are formed by our experiences in the developmental years, when people pin it down to specific incidents, or specific people that 'wounded' them, I have this gut-sense that the thing they are labeling as the offender and the cause of their problems isn't really the cause of the problem. Rather - the things we latch on to that we use to explain current psychological problems actually are just the myths that we create for ourselves in order to comprehend our own story. That is - in the same way the greek myths help to explain things - even if only in a sort of chthonic, vague way - like, Cupid (romantic attraction) is the child of Eros and Psyche, etc. likewise - identifying and creating a narrative of our own childhood hurts, help us to conceive of our real, deeper hurt. I need to clarify a little: not that the pain-stories we tell (or discover when psychoanalysed) are made-up (although - I reckon they can be, and can still be useful), indeed they can be very real instances of abuse, neglect or false-standards, but when we label these things as the cause, we miss the mark a little. I think these things are not the real root of our pain; but rather - our specific painful memories allow us to point to and to access a deeper, more original pain (original sin?) that we all really do have. That is - there is some deep hole or scar or something in all of us, which we are doomed to live out of regardless of how our childhoods were. The myths we tell then, do allow us to describe the specific form our original-pain has taken as it has unfolded in our lives, but we err if we label the myth itself as the thing.

Secondarily to this - we all know some people who are just totally stuck on the painful elements in their past. Now, if their childhood was one full of trauma - this is entirely understandable, however, I think the problem here is that they have chosen their pain-myths as the most foundational narratives to their identity. This is problematic. Let there be no mistake - it is absolutely necessary to process past trauma, if there is some, with a therapist, and this can of course take years to fully work out, but if - even through the course of therapy (and this is the problem with the pop-version of psychoanalysis that is wide-spread) - these pain-stories are allowed first place in the category of 'stories that define our lives', then we will inevitably be stuck in our pain (and also think that the myths are the real source of it all - rather than something more original, that I was arguing earlier). I think this is where the Christian story has something very real and practical to help we, the hurting (that is - all of us): God has revealed that what is most true about us is that we are made by God, and that we bear God's image, and that this has been restored to us in Christ. That the truest thing about us is the glory we bear. C.S. Lewis comes to this a lot (Weight of Glory, the lessons in the Narnia stories), and he is right. Our pain - the primal, original kind; that is, the ache in all of us, and the specific pains we experienced and that effected our development are a secondary element to our identity.

Anyways, you buy it?

cosmic curiosity

I just don't know what it says about God that in creation we find inter-filament (a filament is a collection of super-clusters of galaxies) voids that are areas of space with NOTHING in them for spans of 500 million light-years! in case you forgot your math - that's 3,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles, WITH NOTHING - NOT EVEN DUST - IN IT!
That's just crazy amounts of space. And for some reason it freaks me out. Such large quantities of absence just don't fit with the character of YHWH as he has revealed himself in specific revelation, no?
Anyways - it troubles me.

Brain-Chemistry is Lame, pt II - an anecdote

As an example of how much better it is to not have the language of brain-chemistry littered in our conversation or understanding, compare this Orwell passage on a cup of tea (1946), with how people these days brashly talk about "caffeine":

First of all, one should use Indian or Ceylonese tea. China tea has virtues which are not to be despised nowadays — it is economical, and one can drink it without milk — but there is not much stimulation in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it. Anyone who has used that comforting phrase 'a nice cup of tea' invariably means Indian tea.

(Taken from this excellent essay)

Damn you, Neuroscience!

This will be a brief rant, i promise.

I am just so bloody annoyed at how the claims and lingo of neuroscience have invaded both common speech and journalistic writing!

I feel incensed the way Blake was at the rationalists of his own day: How dare they demean happiness by calling it just dopamine! Do they really think that bliss is explained by seratonin?

I am of course not doubting the observations of the neuroscientists—of course, when we observe someone who is happy we also are able to observe an increase in dopamine. But observing the fact that they happen at the same time does not mean that we have found a sufficient explanation for happiness! Here again, scientists, and the masses who assimilate their ideas, have confused the question of 'how?' (as in, ''how does the brain work?") which is the quest of science, with the existential and spiritual question of 'why?'

I am not very dextrous with Aristotelian terminology, but to rephrase it as such: Science has partially described the material cause of human workings, but it does not—indeed, structurally cannot—touch the other three causes that make up the being of a thing! That is, what it's aim is, what it's orignal source is, etc. (see here for a primer on what I am talking about)

And yet—so many claim (more often tacitly than explicitly) that it does explain the human condition fully.

And I am torn with both pity and anger for all those who speak in such a way. That they think the depths of a human's heart can be encompassed with the names of a few chemicals. And anger - because they seek to demean my own being-in-this-world.

Ok, if i let the anger subside for a moment, I think I can see how this came about. In part because of an ever-increasing materialist outlook which has been devloping since Darwin. In part because of the proliferation of psycho-tropic medication which only imparts a chemical, and yet does effect an emotional change, but both of these things are understood too simply! Regarding meds, they do effect a degree of change in the taker, but unless the taker supplements this temporary boost (for they all of them wear off over time) with the hard-work of an existential quest to find meaning and happiness - they will remain despondent!

(I bet there are studies out there to back me up on this, but i don't know of them off-hand)

Also, I am stunned that people think the observations of neuroscientists are profound! We see some headline of 'when x people experienced y phenomenon, we noticed a difference in z part of their brain!'

Oh, really! you mean there is somthing mechanical happening as a result of actions taken by the will? Ok, that's kind of cool that we can see it, but when people think that the material happening is the explainer of the experience, they are just putting the bloody cart before the horse!

Mock on, mock on, MRI and CT scans.

On Belief

The latest thing that keeps coming up in my mind when I am feeling ponderous is this idea of Scripture being our "norming norm". I have tried to read some stuff on this (Grenz, et al.) and most of it is in pretty abstract theological terms. As in – scripture should be the primary informer of our (the Church's) theology. I.e. the truest theology is biblical theology.

But I am interested in a further application: the world the scriptures inhabit should be a norming world for our own.

Here's one example, that in thinking about I am struck by: The words of Jesus and the letters of Paul are unequivocal in the idea that what is necessary for salvation is belief. Just believe that Jesus is Lord and redeemer, and you are saved! now, evangelicals & fundamentalists have latched on to this and emphasized it (and rightly so, as I am about to argue), but it sounds outrageous to most modern ears. How could laying claim to something in my mind have any bearing on my eternal destination? Taking for granted the johannine theme that all belief should exemplify itself in works, I am thinking of situations like death-bed conversions, the impetus for street-evangelism, etc.

It just doesn't really register. What happens in my mind—witnessed only on a neural level*—surely cannot have consequences in the physical and meta-physical realms.

I think this idea is foundationally present in much of the multi-faith/religious-inclusivity/universalist dialogue—that what counts is what is visible (charitable works, peaceful demeanors, etc), not what is in our brains.

And yet, the bible seems to say clearly otherwise, and so I want to allow this world of the bible—where personal belief; intellectual assent is paramount—to correct the worldview that exists within our culture, and which is my own go-to paradigm.

So, contra "common"-sense, I choose to believe that personal belief is crucially significant.

Moreover, this move then further reforms my understanding of what a self is, in that it places much more weight on what one believes. That is, it opens up a philosophical discussion on the relationship between self and mind, and between what is in us, and what is of consequence in the world of the tangible. In our culture's eyes, the connection is slim, if existent at all (and here of course I can point to the over-travelled road of discourse about the false claims of an isolated cartesian self, etc, etc.); but through the lens of the world as we have it in scripture – what is in your head matters, has substance.

And I like it!

*i am speaking here in the language our culture uses - language I think is deeply problematic; see my next post.

Baring-Gould, pt. II

I just have to share this awesomeness.
I feel I have found in Sabine a real kindred spirit in history:

An account of the Eucharist in the first three centuries
A collection of Fairy Tales
Legends of the Patriarchs and Prophets
An old English Home and its dependencies [a collection of origin-stories of elements of village life]
Strange Surivials [a collection of origin-stories of the basic elements of survival]
A collection of folk-ballads in the English oral tadition

I'll say it again: What. A. Man.
Also - Thank you, book digitizing projects! (Google, Gutenberg, et al.)

Two W.H.'s on Indian Spirituality

"I think there should be holy war against yoga classes. It detours us from real thinking. It's just this kind of...feeling and floating and meditation and whatever. It's as tourism in religions. People all of a sudden becoming Buddhist here in Los Angeles" --Werner Herzog (in a great GQ interview)

"[the] deplorable spectacle of a grown man occupied with the mumbo-jumbo of magic and the nonsense of India." --Wystan Hugh Auden (on Yeats' poetry)

Even as one who has enjoyed the relaxing effects of yoga, I am inclined to agree!

also, for the definitive scholarly take-down of the "ancient yoga" mythos:

http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/living/not-as-old-as-you-think

This is the first, and last post about Aliens

So, I was talking with this dude the other day, and he played the familiar card of, 'The universe is so big, there has got to be life on other planets.'

Man, I hate this one!

and I think it can totally be taken down by placing it in a larger crypto-zoological discussion.

What i mean is: Aliens fall into the same category as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, etc. and also their antecedants: abundant human-killing wolves, etc.

In this way: Whenever we humans encounter big, dark, abyssal spaces, they evoke a primal terror in us. In such spaces—forests, the ocean, mountain ranges—there is just an overwhelming quantity of opaque 'unknown-ness'. The foe that evokes this fear is too large and faceless to be wrestled with, and so we mythologize and create (often anthropomorphic) monsters that embody and represent the fear of the unknown. Giving it a face allows it to be a foe that can be faced down, and also then provides the fodder for folk tales. And so: Mountains::Yeti, Oceans::Sea-Monsters (except there actually are sea-monsters, so void that one), Forests::Wolves, Caves::trolls, etc.

In like manner, with the gargantuan blackness of space, we have constructed humanoid aliens. done! case-closed! there are no such thing as aliens! it's just modern man's version of the big-bad-wolf.

***

In thinking about this, I realized there is one other area where a similiar psychological 'face-making' takes place: Computers! And the myth is the Terminator! (as in - the films). Computers present us with a complexity and quantity of data that i think we register it in the same emotional category as a dark forest. I mean, think about why a film like 'Terminator' was made? what is it's source? I mean - self-aware, impossibly tough techno-monsters? not a feasible reality - it's mythic!

***

Lastly - regarding the form aliens so often 'have' - I just came across the most mind-blowing idea! that an 'alien face' is actually similiar to the way a mother's face looks when one is just an infant and cannot focus one's eyes properly, and is developing a visual memory. I.e. the most profound image we can imagine! for a proper explanation see this article (although, their take is that the mothers-face is an image 'pre-wired' into an infants brain, a la evolutionary psychology—also feasible):
http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/close-encounters-of-the-facial-kind/


Insane! Blows my mind!

also - for the record - that alien image scares the shit out of me.

ok. never again will i post on such garbage.

This is the best blog on the Internet—

or at least, what grips him almost always grips me, and he draws from awesome wells.

http://crashinglybeautiful.tumblr.com/

A G.K. quote sent to me by Giles (a professed agnostic):

“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.”

- G.K. Chesterton

"I don’t understand why they’re not greedy for what’s inside them. The heart has the ability to experience so much—and we don’t have much time."

Zac reminded me of this line the other day, one of many inspirations to be found in this interview with Jack Gilbert.

Also, this line summarizes some of the sadness and discontent I have sometimes felt at my chaplaincy internship - how few are those who have taken matters of the heart seriously.

'Tis a pity.

A note to our Readers—

So, the readership of this blog has expanded a little bit since we first began.

I have gathered that among our regulars here are the other members of Harcout-Brace-JovanaBitch: Rachel Thompson, & Zac; then there's also Tim Davis, my Dad and brother Tim, and Steph Lee (who ps. did I hear you became Orthodox?); and then a little while back upon request I opened the space up to Lisbeth, Tony, Brian, Decort, and Travis K. who may take a gander, and then Trent, Rachel Primrose and my Mom know of it, but i don't know if they ever peruse. Mark– I know that you have brought Dayna into the circle, and Kevin Walker, and Bondy, too? Feel free to share with others.

Anyways, just because Internet anonymity is no fun, I figured i'd put that out there, and also:

Dear readers! guests in this digital living-room of armchair philosophico-theologizing, Feel free to chime in! Either with comments on posts, or, if you have some ideas of your own that you'd love to share in just such a setting - email them to me and I would love to post them!
Some dialogue would be fun, no?
well, if 'no', no problem, Mark and I shall continue to blab unprompted :)

—Ben

ps. any regulars that I forgot?

Anecdote from the Radio—

Driving home from a wonderful weekend in the Chi/Wheaton, I was listening to RadioLab on the radio, and heard this story:

So, apparantly, Xenophon was set for battle against the Persians (who greatly outnumbered them), and the day before battle he was speaking with the Captain of the army about where they should fight—where would give them the greatest tactical advantage, etc. Xenophon said that they must take their stand on the very edge of the cliff. That is, the Greeks would have their backs to the cliff's drop-off, and fight forwards. The Captain objected: "But then there is no way for a retreat if we begin to lose!", "Exactly" replied Xenophon, who foresaw that if his fellow soldiers had no other option than to fight to the death, then it would charge them all the more to make sure it was their enemies' death and not their own. Furthermore, the Persians would see this situation, and the steeled resolve of the Greeks would no doubt be a source of intimidation. "Embrace the Cliff." was Xenophon's conclusion.

I think they won the fight.

Man does this story stir my courage! and the RadioLab producers didn't overlook its potency. Indeed, it introduced the episode's topic:

Commitment. Arranging it so that you cannot compromise.

mmmMMMmm!

I dub this guy the patron saint of this blog and our collective interests

Sabine Baring-Gould. What a man!
A priest who:
-Collected one of the most impressive anthologies of English folk music
-Wrote a 16-volume 'Lives of the Saints'
AND -Has a book titled 'Curious Myths of the Middle Ages'!

What work! What a man!

addenda:

- nothing more fun than victorian 'scholarship'

- I just ordered a copy of 'Curious Myths of the Middle Ages'

Some Influential Lines —

Whenever anyone comments on Nature, these lines of Henry Sutton always come to mind:

'Man'

Man doth usurp all space,
Stares thee, in rock, bush, river, in the face,
Never yet thine eyes behold a tree;
‘Tis no sea thou seést in the sea,
‘Tis but a disguised humanity.
To avoid thy fellow, vain thy plan;
All that interests a man, is man.

Wheaton never mentioned this about C.S. Lewis!!

apparantly he smoked 60 cigarettes a day! between pipes! hahahahhaa. This tops even the Bonhoeffer habit we have harped on on this here blog.
from the ever-interesting Writer's Alamanac, Mar 29th:
On this day in 2004, the Republic of Ireland became the first country to completely ban cigarette smoking from the workplace. Great Britain soon followed, instituting a ban to be phased in gradually over the next four years, which prompted author and columnist A.N. Wilson to remark in the Telegraph: "Sitting with my drink in such now-empty bars, my mind has turned to the great smokers of the past — to C.S. Lewis, who smoked 60 cigarettes a day between pipes with his friends Charles Williams (cigarette smoker) and Tolkien (pipe-smoker); to Thomas Carlyle, whose wife made him smoke in the kitchen of their house in Cheyne Row, but who is unimaginable without tobacco, to Robert Browning, who quickly adapted to the new cigarette craze, to the great John Cowper Powys, who continued to smoke cigarettes, and to produce fascinating novels, into his nineties ... This attack on basic liberty, which was allowed through without any significant protest, might mark the end not merely of smoking, but of literature."
Although I think A.N. Wilson might be slightly over-stating the case, and the public health-benefits to smoking bans are unquestionable, there is a little something that has been lost...

Magic?

In 2011 I wrote a post about being anti-sacraments. How ashamed I am of those words now. To speak so callously of my Lord and His Church, and his sacred body and blood.

I have erased the post as a formal revocare, just in case at some time in the future anyone dug this up.

For the record:

it IS his body -- because HE said so.

Ben+

7.18.19

2 more of my cents on Classic Controversies, pt II

Homosexuality!

Aaagghh!

Ok. So, far too much has been said by christians on this 'topic' (What?! it's PEOPLE!), but I do have one thought that I want to share.

First off - the reason i have been thinking a little bit about it is because, as some of you may know - I am likely headed off to seminary next year. Specifically, an episcopal seminary. But not an ordinairy episcopal seminary, but one where the rift of TEC (The Episcopal Church USA) and ACNA (the counter-TEC, re-aligned polity) is quite present-in-dialogue, AND where, if I am to attend (and maybe even one-day be ordained?!) I need to first get confirmed, which means I need to make a choice as to which 'denomination' to be confirmed in.

And this is where the 'issue' of homosexuality has arisen - since it is one of the prominent points of division between TEC and ACNA, and I have been investigating in my mind whose declarations on the 'issue' I think are more truthful. On the one hand I do feel like many priests and bishops in TEC patently ignore the fact that the Bible does seem to do the opposite of affirm homosexual practice qua homosexual practice (rather than as 'loving relationship' as the dialogue is often re-framed as within TEC). On the otherhand - the fact that ACNA is intentionally in communion with many provinces in the global south who are at least tacitly complicit with the very hateful, homophobic statements of the govenments alongside which they preside (I.e. Uganda, Nigeria, etc.)

What to do?!

Ultimately - a combination of factors (other theological problems with TEC, like, the de-emphasizing of a historical Resurrection, etc; the fact that if I chose my local TEC diocese, the bishop wouldn't let me attend Nashotah House (the seminary I hope to attend)) pushed me into ACNA, but along the way I had this thought, following the scattered fragments I have learned along the way (Foucault?) about the development of 'homosexuality' as an identity, as opposed to just a practice which one could partake in, even if one had a wife, family, etc (like it was in Rome):

If you take away from an understanding of the humans, of the self, the notion that we are created beings, that we are caused beings, and that - and now we move into the realm of the Christian - we bear the image of God, and are of such worth that God willingly died to re-unite with us (all of which were indeed stripped from the what-we-now-call anthropology held by the average western man during the great secularization that began in the mid 19th century.), what is the next-deepest level of experience? That is, if a meta-physical understanding is pulled, what then remains as the most powerful, primal thing we experience? why - our desires of course?! All humans experience the overwhelming power of our primal desires: to eat, to reproduce, etc, and these forces do verily shape a large portion of the societies that we observe and construct. Here then is a foundation. And so it makes sense that when variations of desire are present - that is, the fact that around 1 in 10 people feel sexual attraction to the same sex - the desires are already in the realm of 'Identity', and so it add's up, quite logically, that in today's world we don't conceive of humans with homosexual desires, but rather - homosexuals, as a noun, since Identity is grounded and explained by our desires.

Right? I guess I just mean - the math of it makes sense.

As far as right/wrong, can-you-be-gay-and-a-bishop-as-well, etc. I am very reticent to weigh in since any public words cannot be used for good, i don't reckon. That said, this is a 'living room', and not a forum, and so I shall say just this: When I imagine living on the New Earth, with a resurrected body, I don't imagine my friends that in this life 'are' gay (quotation marks - not because it is a choice or any of those other foolish evangelical postulations, merely that 'are' is a form of 'is' which is an ontological statement, which, considering my previous argument's is only how we talk about homosexuality (as Identity) in the last 150 years, and I want to leave that part of it open to debate) will still be so in the next life. Now, obviously it is very dangerous to make declarative statements about today based on speculations of a supra-physical future (!), indeed, sexual desire may be entirely absorbed into other forms of love in the New Jerusalem, but since it is the case that our pre-lapsarian bodies had genitals and sexual differentiation, it may be the case that it still exists somehow (although - maybe not? since we will neither 'marry nor be given in marriage', which would definitely have conjugal consequences) in the hereafter. Oh man. I realize that my intial idea here (gay people won't be gay in heaven) might be a bit more problematic than i realized. shoot.

Ok, but my first point still stands - that homosexuality as identity is both new and understandable.

Ok, I don't know if i have actually contributed anything at all? Have I already mis-spoken so quickly and in so doing injured the hearts of my gay brothers and sisters? Lord have mercy, I hope not.

05/16/11 UPDATE: apparantly some other people are musing along similiar lines: http://tgcreviews.com/reviews/the-end-of-sexual-identity/

2 more of my cents on Classic Controversies, pt I

Evolution!

AAgghh!

But seriously - Here are 2 beefs that I have been chewing on re a scientific understanding of the universe (i.e. Big Bang, planet formation, origin of life, species evolution, etc):

I am struck by an apparant glaring problem of scale. What i mean is: serious study (because come on: this does NOT count) of the natural world has been taking place for what, 400 years? at best? and the pretty-much-agreed-upon age of the universe is, what, 13.75 billion years? Now, I'm not saying the Universe isn't that old, indeed it jolly well might be, but what I am saying is how on earth can we speak even close to definitively about what has happened in this gargantuan time-period when we've only been even looking at it for 400 years! By comparison (I did the math), it would be like watching Einstein in action for the last 1 min and 13 seconds of his life (and having never heard of him or met him before), and deducing from it that he was a Nobel Physicist, a patent clerk, an agnostic Jew, the discoverer of General Relativity, and wore a blue checkered shirt on the day before his 7th birthday.

There's no way you could hazard anything more than a guess at such things! when you have only observed for 1/10^-8 of the time-frame!

Rather - with a tad more humility about the observational prowess of homo sapiens, I side with a Wendell Berry Poem I just read:

“On the Theory of the Big Bang as the Origin of the Universe” **

I.

What banged?

II.

Before banging

how did it get there?

III.

When it got there

where was it?

Beef #2:

I just realized the other day just to what degree 'science' (and by this i mean the body of knowledge thus far 'discovered' via the scientific method: empirical observation, hypotheses testing, etc) fit's the bill of being a religion. That is, when we look, sociologically, at the role a religion has in a given society, we see, among other things, that it is a body of knowledge and/or narratives that the adherent relies upon to explain the so-called 'big questions' of life. Namely, Where did the world come from, why does it exist, what is my role in it, etc. Science is happy to offer an answer to these questions, and like many religions offers itself as a foundation in which to ground all understanding and experience. Now, whereas a strict evolutionary stance does - as many christian apologists from Lewis on have noted - restrict consciousness to only being a tool to aid species survival, and not - as many scientific philosophers seem to negelct - an ability to truly apprehend the fundamental nature of the universe (itself an onto-theological claim), would seemingly lead all those who adhere to science qua a religion into a sisyphean worldview at best, the advancement of the medical sciences and tele-communication have allowed most scientific believers to re-adopt ('re' because this belief crashed and burned the first time around. cf. WWI) a science-is-making-the-world-better as their existential telos.

sorry, that sentence is impossibly multi-clausal. what can I do.

Anyway - what i am getting at, is NOT that science is just one religion among others. Because, of course, the claims it makes are indeed a wee bit more helpful than some of the claims of other religions. BUT I just think it would be helpful to realize the similarities between how our culture treats science, and how other cultures treat religion. Simply so that we don't swallow it all hook-line and sinker.

'cause, following that metaphor - you get caught and die.

**Hat tip to Zac Chastain for the Berry poem.

A description I aspire to:

T.S. Eliot on Blaise Pascal -

"A man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world."

words, words, words.

It's 1 am and i'm a little dreary. But here's a thought -

Well, to get to the point quickest, how about a little stage setting:

In a 2005 interview, Eugene Peterson says this:

"It's very dangerous to use the language of the culture to interpret the gospel. Our vocabulary has to be chastened and tested by revelation, by the Scriptures. We've got a pretty good vocabulary and syntax, and we'd better start paying attention to it because the way we grab words here and there to appeal to unbelievers is not very good."

In that vein - I was thinking about the word 'saved', as in 'salvation', and the array of other meanings this word has elsewhere in our western culture. Following the idea that the meaning we attach to any word as we hear or read it comes directly from our amalgamation of all the previous times we have heard that word used, I think we might need to re-think the use of this word as it pertains to God's actions towards us, his children, because I reckon his works have very little in common with the way we 'save' a document on a computer, save something by keeping it in the fridge, a goal-keeper saving a shot, or my savings account at my bank. I fear the polysemous nature of the word might detract from the meaning it is supposed to have when used in evangelism. Especially if the audience is unfamiliar with 'church language'.

So, for clarity's sake, i reckon we should probably replace it with something closer to the target. Like 'rescued' or 'restored', or better yet - a good, long story about what God has done and is doing through his son and through his people in the world.

I am certain dozens of theologians have already banged a very similiar drum, but this specific instance of how different the meanings of 'saved' are struck me the other day.

Ok, off to bed.

some thoughts on empathies/theodicy

So, I have been (once again) intellectually crushing on NT Wright. Found a great collection of his lectures online (here), and was listening to this one the other day, in which Tom's debate partner, Bart Ehrman (a Wheaton grad, interestingly) takes the familiar stance of 'look at all the suffering in the world: all the starving children, all the people killed by natural disasters, &c. There simply cannot be a God who is both all-loving and all-powerful, and so - since these qualities are essential to God qua God - it is doubtful that there is a God in any real sense at all.'

This problem of suffering - a derivative of the problem of evil (aka -theodicy) - is almost always posed by mentioning the large-scale sufferings around the world (hunger, disease, the holocaust &c.) - these are what cause so much upset to Dr. Ehrman, and I reckon have likewise pushed many people into agnosticism.

The trouble is - I don't buy it.

Their empathy I mean. Their sense of despair regarding all of the 'horrifying' 'tragedies' that befall so many others around the world. That is the reason they can't believe in God? No way.

I am dubious for two reasons:

1) No one cares that much about the suffering of others. I personally take pains to maintain a sensitivity to others around me. I don't watch violent or extreme movies, I read the news, I study history and I try and keep a tender heart towards the world. I have never received feedback from others that I am unusually callous toward my fellow human, In fact - the opposite. And yet when I hear about all these large-scale tragedies (and I have heard about them - I would be surprised if there exists a large-scale suffering in the world that I haven't heard of), I barely bat an eye-lid. On the contrary, when tragedy (which so far in life has primarily taken the form of untimely deaths) hits close to home, I am devastated emotionally. Crying and upset for weeks on end - often very angry and confused with God - but for some reason they have never pushed me to doubt God's presence, character and workings, and the agnostics in question likewise seem to use personal examples very seldomly. Now, with regards to empathy for global-scale pain, it very well may be the case that there is a degree of maturity that I have not yet reached, wherein a sense of the existence (and subsequently - the suffering) of others is deeper and more visceral. If this is so, then this post here is moot, but if not (and I am banking on it being 'not'), then i proffer the following explanation:

2) People who are fixated on the world's problems are projecting the anxiety they feel about their own inner-state onto the world at-large. Thus, their empathy is not genuine, and cannot be the ground for a real theodicy problem. Two objections to this idea raise themselves in my mind off the bat, but I think both can be fairly dismissed:

objection one: This is just pop-Freudian nonsense.

retort: I have seen this in several patients who admit to having mental health issues at the hospital i work at. They will identify that they have a lot of emotional tumult, and will also admit that they think about the atrocities of the world frequently throughout the day. I myself did this very thing when I was in an emotionally 'tough season' in college. In as much as 'logic' can be used when speaking of an unconscious mind, there is some 'logic' to such a projection: Like any defense mechanism, it allows the will to focus on something other than the pain at hand, while at the same time, since the issues relate by analogy, one can address one's own suffering indirectly by examining the suffering of others. Furthermore, unlike interior suffering, which is often very inarticulateable and shifting - the suffering of the world bears a more concrete and statistical character - rendering it more open to concrete helping-actions, unlike the hard-to-help crisis going on inside.

objection two: Even if it is the case that those who speak of global suffering are merely engaging in an act of psychological projection, so what? attention is still being brought to issues in the world that genuinely need help, and moreover - what external claim doesn't have it's roots in some internal pre-occupation?

retort: this objection is entirely valid. In and of itself the issue of presenting the World's suffering needs no psychological explanation, but in this argument I am examining the issue of the World's suffering as it serves in the role of a stumbling block to those who would have otherwise believed in a God. To the one who points it out as such, I think it is more worthwhile to dismiss the problem of Evil as not the person's real beef with God, but as an intellectual distraction, and instead look to more personal reasons for their reticence.

This idea of a more 'personal' hesitation as the real source for unbelief is grounded by the fact that the people who actually suffer in the great tragedies (who were around for the Rwandan genocide, who were there when the earthquake killed half the town, etc) seem to turn to religion in droves, not away from it. The developing world (which is structurally less immune to disease, disaster and tyrants) has the highest percentage of Christians and christian conversion on the planet.

Furthermore, the problem of Evil is so often presented by wealthy, white intellectuals, and I think part of the 'more personal' reasons that this is the case is the latent guilt we have inherited along with all of our money. Deep down, we realize that the nightmares that happen on an annual basis somewhere in the developing world are caused in part by the legacy of colonialism, from which our wallets are padded. When i imagine a professor like Bart Ehrman 'selling all he has and giving to the poor', for some reason I imagine his personal theodicy problems disappearing along with his Franklins. No?

Now - after having said all this about why I am dubious of the empathy of others (as I remember the Chesterton quote - 'it is one of the meanest things for a human to doubt the sentiment of another human', and this, in the Victorian era of puffery!) - two final thoughts on the still-very-real problem of Evil/Suffering:

Firstly - I think a helpful division can be made between suffering brought about by more natural causes (earthquakes, storms, etc) and suffering caused by more human institutions. By making this split I reckon a fair amount of suffering can be accounted for without having to blame God:

In the first - natural disasters - i think it is helpful to re-frame ourselves as fellow animals on this Earth. If a cow was caught in an unforeseen mud-slide and was killed, would there be a moral problem? no - it would merely be a part of how nature has always done it's thing. Likewise if we humans happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time - why is God to blame? In the second - malicious rulers and oppressive societal structures - we can see the clear connection between one person's suffering and the oppressor who caused it. Thus, a bad human, or bad society is directly responsible, not God.

Of course there is and will always be a (larger or smaller) remainder of suffering yet unaccounted for, and like any honest human/Christian, in the face of such suffering I would not propound an explanation as a source of meaning, but would rather seek comfort and healing for the wounded. But this is a pastoral thought, separate from the intellectual contention I have maintained thus far.

Thoughts?

Endnote -

My favorite anecdote vis-a-vis the theodicy problem:

My friend Zac was riding in a car with some friends of his, late at night, and they were mockingly posing 'deep' questions to each other: "what is happiness?" etc. Zac threw into the mix "Why do bad things happen to good people?" with an air of faux-self-seriousness, and his friend Jesse, who had been driving and looking straight ahead looked right at him with a face flat and serious, obviously dropping all of the pretensions of the game and said sincerely: "what good people?" ...