Space Invaders: Or What Tribes Do You Belong To?

Recently I've been thinking about how many "tribes" I belong to. Tribes as in discreet associations with others whom I share a common interest or identity with. And as I thought about it I began to realize that the tribal structure expands to, quite literally, the cosmic level, but also back down to the incredibly detailed level of very specific commonalities (or more accurately uncommonalities). In other words, how do we identify ourselves? For instance, I'm a Christian, and an evangelical one at that. Though certainly not your typical one if you ask my closer friends. So that's ONE tribe I associate with. But I'm also Christian in the larger sense, so I would associate myself with other Christians of the great traditions which are historically considered to be Christian, such as Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, and Protestants. So in one sense, while I align with a particular subset withing a tribe, I still associate myself with a larger tribe which encompasses the smaller tribe. Let's consider other tribes I belong to by default. For instance, I'm a white heterosexual male, distinct tribes in their own right, each with their own assumptions and privileges which go with their identities. I'm also a human, one species among millions of others on this little planet we call home. But have any of you watched a good science fiction movie with invading space aliens? What tribe do you suddenly find yourself to be a part? You suddenly see yourself as being an "earthling" over and against "those outsiders" invading "our" space. Sounds eerily familiar, doesn't it? So being an earthling is the definition in this case. But what if even that's not adequate? Try being a carbon based life form. At this point we start to (or already have traveled down the long road) lose what "tribe" even means. And yet we can't help but be tribal. I love my team. And because of that I hate your team. When I see a game turn out "wrong" I have a visceral reaction. My pulse races, my instincts kick in. And there's a reason for that. Are you in any way different than me? Can I accept that?

Cardinal Dolan's Speeches at the RNC and DNC

Cardinal Dolan at the Republican National Convention: Cardinal Dolan at the Democratic National Convention: The two speeches he gives are remarkably similar, but they're not identical. Did Cardinal Dolan serve the church and the gospel well in these two speeches? Did he speak "prophetically" to the two convention halls? Is it appropriate for a religious leader such as himself to do that? In other words, is it appropriate for a Christian leader to speak prophetically to two political conventions? Or is it only appropriate for a Christian leader to speak prophetically to God's covenanted people? Specifically the church. In a related question: Did Cardinal Dolan capitulate to one or another of the two political parties in his words? Was he playing the part of a political partisan under the guise of a religious cloak? I'm not saying he was/is, but it is a legitimate question to consider. In the hyper partisan and polarized political environment we live in these days any pronouncement, whether straight out political, or religious declarations such as these, need to be analyzed and judged as to whether they've spoken God's words after him or have they twisted his words to suit a short term political purpose. Personally, I found his words to be, for the most part, general Christian fare that I can't really disagree with in any major way. In both speeches he spoke of the sanctity of pre-born life, but didn't mention anything specific beyond that concerning abortion. And he also mentioned the importance of protecting the other vulnerable members of society such as the poor, recent immigrants, and the sick and frail. He seems to have crafted his words carefully so as to affirm themes that both parties could say amen to while at the same time including themes that would make both parties squirm. As far as I can tell, he managed to thread that thorny needle fairly well. Lastly, what are your thoughts about the two crowds' reactions to his speeches? Right off the bat it's pretty obvious that the RNC crowd received him more enthusiastically than the DNC crowd. What exactly is the significance of that difference? To my own thinking it's not as straight forward as it would immediately appear to be. More on those two dynamics a bit later...

Exactly

Are you exactly like me? Do we exactly agree? There's a very unfortunate impulse in much of evangelicalism and in almost all of fundamentalism towards this kind of extreme exactitude. But ironically it's not only an impulse we see on the traditional right (of course I only use this term in its narrow modern American context). Every strain of belief has its outliers who are prone to this kind of dichotomous, either/or, us/them, Manichean, concrete thinking and behavior. We see it in the various nationalisms which pop up with disturbing regularity. We see it in the close relative of ethnic allegiances which can, and often do, turn into outright racism. We see it in religious discourse, both between starkly different claims of religious truth, but also, and sometime much more viciously, in internecine battles among folks who largely agree on the basics. See the wars of religion in Europe, all among self professed Christians. And of course nowadays, we're seeing it between the warring sects of Muslim on Muslim violence, which is actually more deadly than Muslim on non Muslim violence. But if some folks feel confident concerning their own superiority regarding this matter, because they're so beyond all of that silly superstition, may I suggest a sobering reality check? What of secular exactitude? What of materialist exactitude which violently discounts any other explanation, not just rhetorically, but historically, including the wholesale slaughter of anyone who didn't fit the new "Soviet" style human? Ask those who lived under this particular materialist paradise what it was like to differ from the party line? That is, if they're still alive... By the way, I'm not being an apologist for any particular ideological system here. I'm being an apologist for an asymmetrical reality which recognizes that differences will ALWAYS exist in our midst. Our systems of governance, and even more importantly, our own thinking must allow that variety will always exist, and, in fact, makes life richer and much more verdant. And lastly, I'm not saying that each and every view is equal. That everyone is equally right and equally wrong in their assessment of reality. There IS truth and yes there ARE lies. Maybe all I'm trying to say, like I've been saying for several years now, is that we ALL see through a glass darkly. But admitting to that is a good clue to having actually seen a deeper light than what most have seen or thought they saw. After all, those with the greatest insights have admitted to their own blindness. My point exactly.

The Obsolete Man, Twilight Zone, and What it Means to Be Human

By far the best twilight Zone episode ever aired in my humble opinion. It may sound strange to some, but Rod Serling, the largely agnostic Jew how later became a Unitarian, was just as responsible for me becoming a Christian as Billy Graham, through whom I heard the gospel many times as a child. Their moral universe intersected in such a way as to shape me deeply, both personally and ethically, especially as it regards social issues.

The Strange Mentality of Fundamentalisms, Whether Secular or Religious

For people who treat obscure passages from Leviticus as though they're the controlling passages for how to read the entirety of the Bible, do you read any other book that way? For instance, do you pick out a sentence in chapter two of a twenty chapter science book, or a good mystery novel, or say, a history book, and force the rest of that book to then support that arcane passage? Have they no idea of what it is to read texts as they progress? To read them literarily? To read them critically (in the good sense of that term) as a narrative progression? Oh wait, that's right. It's not about that. It's about scoring cheap points. My bad, please return to your self enclosed safe little bubble. #strawmanfail Strangely enough, this can apply both to certain atheists I know as well as certain fundamentalists. But I repeat myself about their similarities...

I Hate What I Hate Because I Love What I Love

The Trayvon Martin case touches home for me. It's not because I'm black. I'm not. It's not because I'm a teenager. I'm no longer a teenager for many years now. It's not because of the clothes I wear. I don't own a hoodie. It's not for where I live. I live in a very liberal area right now.

But his story, a story I've seen all too often, is us. Because we're HUMAN. Trayvon Martin is us in the deepest sense of what it means to be human. But I KNOW that I will NEVER know what it means to be so different than me. I know I'll NEVER be pulled over for "driving while black" in the "wrong" neighborhood.

Privilege and power are UNSEEN and therefore unacknowledged. And as long as my white Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP) friends refuse to "see" this reality of privilege, we'll continue to see this internal church blindness.

But we are ALL created in the image of God. We ALL possess the imago dei. Ephesians 2 and Revelation 5 both attest to the universal reality of Christ's work.

If I may, let me be a bit poetic:

When I look beyond my ken
I see a people not my kin
they seem different they do
sometimes seeing what is new
and when I see You becoming us
it only leads me to discuss
what it really means to be
you and me, we and us.

Paul Simon, the God Chronicler by Accident

An amazing interview with Paul Simon about the role of religion and especially Christian themes in his music over the years. Thank you Cathleen Falsani for an extraordinary insight into a truly great artist.

Watch Paul Simon on PBS. See more from Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.

An Obscure Birth

I find it beyond strange that here I sit, two millenia later, commemorating the birth of a child in a backwater district of an ancient empire. The person of Jesus of Nazareth is known to us through the canonical writings of the New Testament and not much else. Just yesterday I had a mythicist approach me about whether he (Jesus) even existed. I haven't responded, mostly because I consider that kind of conspiratorial thinking to be rather ridiculous. And most conspiracists are also rather immune to reason and rational argumentation. But this obscure birth, in a backwater part of a vast empire, is intriguing nonetheless. The Jewish New Testament documents tell us about his advent, both through the gospel accounts, as well as the letters of Paul and other later followers. What's interesting in all of this is that the sequence of the New Testament isn't the same as the sequence of the writing of the New Testament writings.

My own evolution of belief has gone from the simple belief come from reading the text "as it is" to reading it through the lens of more recent critical scholarship. But this hasn't lessened my faith as much as refined it. As a child I read the text of scripture "as is" or so I thought. I didn't know back then that I had, in fact, imbibed assumptions which weren't necessarily of scriptural origins. I also didn't know that my own reading of the scriptural text was shaped by my cultural context. In other words, I didn't realize, like so many today, that "my" view isn't the same as unexpurgated "truth." That realization is both humbling and illuminating.

The Jesus of history was a Jew who was born and raised in an occupied Israel/Palestine, and who was intimately confronted with an occupying force who forced his people to decide between fidelity to their faith and obedience to a foreign power. He was, as best as what can tell, raised in the environment of being a political and religious refugee. He had a mother who understood herself to have borne into the world a prophet of Israel, possibly the Messiah. His role and identity was always contested, even among his closest followers and family.

This is part of what especially intrigues me in my reading of the New Testament texts. There's a self critical element in the writing that is very different than anything else I've read among the other ANE texts which I've read and translated. As I've mentioned about the Hebrew writings also known as the OT, what I'm struck by is the utter humanity and reality shown in the protagonists behavior. The "heroes" of the Bible are all "very" human. When I read their stories, I read my own. Thus I see truth expressed. Strangely enough, that's why I believe the Bible to be true.

Santa's Little Slave Laborers

When you buy cheap toys, this is where they come from. These are your slaves working for you.

The Butterfly Circus

An extraordinary short film that brings home to me the idea of the Gospel of Misfit Toys that I've seen in a few churches I've been fortunate enough to be a part of over the years. It's not about the hurt, but the healing. But we don't ignore the hurt, but through that hurt, and beyond it, we find true healing.

Penn State and Tribalism as per Ira Socol

My dear friend Ira David Socol has written an extraordinary essay about the absolutely awful story that has come out of Penn State. A state of affairs that has effectively ruined the entire career of Joe Paterno, cost him his job and so much more, as well at the president of the school losing his job. But of course, and much more importantly, the young boys who were violated, and no one till now decided their well being was more important than the reputation of the school and its athletic program.

Ira makes the all too necessary point that we live in a culture of tribalism which elevates our local allegiances to such an extent that we effectively end up deifying them at the expense of what it means to be human. His essay reminds me of one I wrote years ago concerning culpability and complicity. This terrible situation should serve as a sobering reminder to look into the mirror when we're so quick to judge and condemn others for such flagrant abuses of power. In what ways are we just as guilty of "looking the other way" when injustices of any sort are happening before our very eyes? If you want to read a deeply considered response to this terrible situation, please consider reading Ira's important input.

Why The Insurgency Must Be Crushed

We have intelligence from our operatives that an insurgent leader is planning an assault on one of our outposts. I don’t think it’s even necessary to explain why this is such a serious issue. His followers already have a history of terrorist violence against the lawfully established authorities, including suicide attacks. Any person or group willing to engage in such barbarous behavior must be met with an unyielding stance. To give them an inch is to open the door to chaos. We must not let this happen. Our nation is one predicated on law and we must stand fast and firm against these lawless forces who would upend everything the civilized world stands for. Again, I don’t think it’s even necessary to say that we’ve offered a civilizing influence throughout the world, and that every nation we’ve freed has seen a marked increase, not just of commerce, but also of personal freedom. These terrorists would bring us back to a savage past driven by ancient prejudices and apocalyptic madness. Remember, it is for the sake of freedom and peace that we are involved in this great struggle against unreasoning extremism.
Thankfully we have a member of his inner group on our side. In a few days we’ll meet up with his entourage on the outskirts of the city. It’s there that we’ll make the arrest if possible.

(several days later)

Surprisingly enough we were able to make the arrest with only minor resistance from the terrorist group. Good intelligence (and the occasional bribe) is always helpful! Thankfully we were able to separate the leader from the rest of his followers and we were able to take him into custody. We now have him in confinement and have been interrogating him about any information he might have regarding other terrorists or terror plots in the works. The fact that we’ve already disrupted his own terror plot against our outpost is a good sign of the progress we’re making in making our nation safe from our enemies. Remember friends, this group and all those who ally themselves with them see our freedoms and hate us for it.

(the next day)

It seems these apocalyptic fanatics are so mind numbingly convinced of their convictions that no amount of interrogation can break through their deep seated delusions. But at least we were able to get him to admit to treason against the lawful authorities. We also have records of his previous speeches where he spoke of the violence he would visit on those who oppose his rule if he were to attain power. Thank God we were able to get to him before he ever got to the point of garnering popular support on a large scale. In public he’s quite charismatic, but in the cell he’s not so intimidating! The hell he would unleash on civilized society if he were to gain power is something every self respecting member of society would agree is unspeakable. Again, we need to remind ourselves of why we’re fighting this terrible evil. This fanatic is a perfect “exhibit A.”

(two days later)

Today we had the trial, fair by international standards (though some bleeding hearts quibbled). We had numerous witnesses, both from within his own terrorist group, and among those who personally heard him speak of his plans for terrorist violence. The cowardice of his own group abandoning him for their own skins speaks volumes about the immoral basis for their base desires. We saw a few besotted souls speak out for his apocalyptic vision who also hate our freedoms, but they were in the extreme minority. The public, who generally knows better, knew that we were doing the right thing in putting this dangerous malefactor to death. The sooner people recognize that the better off we all are. There’s nothing to worry about my Lord. He’s just another rebel that’s been dealt with.

Your faithful servant to my Lord and Savior Caesar,

Pontius Pilate

Caesar Is Not Lord.

Vengeance is mine sayeth the imperialist, and the current iteration of that deadly reality is American. In reading international news sources, which I've done since childhood, I'm struck at how military intervention for "national interests" has become nearly ubiquitous across the planet. It seems every empire has arrogated unto itself the prerogative that belongs only to God when it comes to final judgement, life or death.

This is not a uniquely American behavior by the way, it's been true of every great empire across human history. But these last hundred years have seen US being the military top of the hill. And like every other empire, we gladly fabricate an appropriate mythology to fit our place in the political pantheon seemingly sensing that we are somehow uniquely immortal, unlike every other empire which has passed before us.

Caesar is not Lord.

The Christian as Insider and Outsider

The Christian is always the insider on the outside and the outsider on the inside.

The Christian is the insider on the outside because they are always engaged in the affairs of this world, since they are called by Christ to be in the world, and yet not of it. For a Christian to be involved in the intimate details of our common life, both private and public, yet without succumbing to the ever present idolatrous temptations from all sides, means they must have a concrete reference point from which to judge rightly the circumstances they find themselves in. And the concrete reference point is the very life and ministry of Christ Jesus.

It isn't some objective principle above and beyond the vagaries of history, as though that could give us any insight into what to do in the here and now. No. The Christian is guided in what they can and must do by the radical particularity of Christ's ministry to those directly in his midst. His kingdom spread as far, and only as far, as the sound of his voice and the touch of his hand. This is why he told his disciples the kingdom of God was in their midst.

The Christian is also never fully identified with the environment they find themselves in. The Christian is always a dual citizen, a citizen of whatever earthly city they are a part of, but also a citizen, indeed their primary citizenship, of a heavenly city called forth by God himself founded on Christ as the Cornerstone of a heavenly temple being built in the gritty details of our life here on earth.

The Christian is also always the outsider on the inside, because, while they are indeed residents of a heavenly city, they are also flesh and bone, blood and sweat, living breathing wounds and sins. The Christian recognizes within themselves every impulse, every desire, every hope and fear, of every person in their midst within earshot, eyesight, and physical touch. And again this understanding must be held, not by relying on some theoretical understanding of their corporate and individual creatureliness and fallenness, but with a tangible, indeed visceral SENSE of how this exists and is played out in their own day to day life.

And likewise the concrete reference point for the Christian to be able to get an accurate sense of this reality comes to them through the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. The Christian sees and begins to understand the reality of their own beauty, sorrow, wounds, sins in their majestic broken tapestry only by looking upon the particular hands, feet, eyes, limbs, minds, pulses of those directly touched by Christ the Lord. Thus the Christian sees each wound, each cry, each laugh, each hidden sigh as uniquely belonging to the one owning these experiences as they do themselves, knowing that Christ's word and touch heals and reproves each according to their need.

As Christ has done for us, we are called to do for one another.

Dragonflies and 9/11

Early this Sunday afternoon I went for a walk on campus. I went to the top of the hill behind our building and sat on a bench and read for a few minutes as the sun shone down. I put my head down and laid there for a few more minutes, all the while listening to the sounds of nature buzz around me. I sat back up and noticed an aircraft flying overhead. I was reminded that ten years ago in the days following 9/11 I saw and heard no aircraft flying anywhere since they had all been grounded from coast to coast. The sight and sound of an aircraft has become normal again these ten years later. It was an odd feeling to realize that.

I got up from the bench and walked on the grass looking at the dragonflies darting around my feet. These supremely beautiful creatures used to scare me so much as a small child, partly because of their name, and partly because of their fearsome look. But now as I spy them from mere feet or even inches away I notice that these amazingly aerodynamic creatures with their nearly transparent wings flit from blade of grass to blade of grass nibbling away as they survey the vast expanse of a field so seemingly small to me.

I wander towards the edge of the hill to a group of trees and find them clapping their leaves as the breeze flutters through. What they were applauding I don't know, except to say that they seemed happy as the bees and bugs and birds all intertwined in the majesty of nature right before my eyes. A bumblebee, seemingly clumsy, navigated a spiders web and flew effortlessly through an opening in the web from one flower to the next. A nest of wasps or hornets crawled out from under an overhang on a concrete pillar on the hill as they make ready for cooler weather so close at hand.

Each of these beautiful creatures make their way whether as flora, fauna, insect, bird, human, all bound together in a much larger web of intertwined life. The quietness of this respite from the rampant noisiness I far too often give myself over to reminds me that there are sounds and sights that transcend us. But these sights and sounds are also a part of us at our core. The breeze blows and dragonflies take flight from blade of grass to blade of grass and feed on the field before them. As it rested on a blade of grass I could see the blades beneath it through its shimmery wings. I can hear the breeze as well and wonder where it will carry me to next.

The King Jesus Gospel

Scot McKnight is one of my favorite Christian teachers out there right now. His blog, Jesus Creed, is one I visit almost daily, where he's posting about theology, science, popular culture, or whatever. His Anabaptist ethical impulse is one I share deeply and he's not afraid to ask the difficult questions of faith. I look forward to reading his newest book.

Evolution Vs. Creationism Song

hat tip to Steve Douglas via G+

Tisha B'av and Ritualizing Loss

Today commemorates the destruction of the first and second temples in Jerusalem as well as other severe losses in Jewish history, most notably of course the shoah or European holocaust. During the service of Tisha B'av, the rabbi reads through the book of Lamentations in Hebrew, and if you're in a non orthodox synagogue, he'll (or she'll) also read through it in English. Tisha B'av is a holy day that isn't "celebrated" just as Yom Kippur isn't "celebrated" since both are considered deeply solemn days. In other words, you don't say to a Jew "happy Tisha B'av" or "happy Yom Kippur" since these days aren't meant to be happy but painful and necessary reminders of our sinfulness before a holy God and of a deeply broken world in desperate need of God's shalom.

As a Christian Tisha B'av is also personally important to me, since I experienced my own deep loss and sorrow 13 years ago last month with the unexpected death of a woman I loved very much and who also loved me. And then two weeks later I attended the Tisha B'av service with her family at their synagogue. Listening to the rabbi read through Lamentations as the prophet wails over the destruction of his beloved city and holy temple struck home with all of us that day as we too wailed over a much closer tragic loss of one so beloved.

Any religion or spirituality worth its salt so to speak knows how to ritualize loss and pain. To be human is to, at some point in your life, experience unexpected loss or pain. And even when it's expected, that doesn't make it any less painful; just a differently experienced pain. Judaism has Tisha B'av, Christianity has Lent and Good Friday, and I'm sure many of the other world religions have their ritualizations of loss as well. And that's how it should be. As an evangelical Christian in America, I often wonder at the total lack of a serious sense of this part of our spiritual and physical reality in American evangelical circles. I consider myself very fortunate to have discovered the book of Job as a child as well as Ecclesiastes. Having grown up in a pretty disfunctional family environment these dark but honest books of the bible gave me a voice I didn't always have for myself in my own words. It asked the questions I could only murmur. It also had the honesty to not answer those questions to my satisfaction. Any god who offers up a happy clappy or neat little theodicy isn't a god I want to deal with. As unsatisfying as not getting a clear answer is, I'll take that over an all too easy answer that I know instinctively isn't true.

In the days and weeks (and yes, even years) after my deep loss and sorrow, my only word to God was "why?" I still don't have an answer to that question that satisfies me, and I hope I never get it. But I am glad that there is a God who honors that question by including it in his word, thus giving me the freedom to ask it with a brutal honesty knowing that God's big enough to take it and even absorb it into himself. I want a God who understands grief and sorrow and pain and anger at wrongful loss. I want a God who knows what it is to ask in a dying breathe "Why have you forsaken me?" This is a God who I can understand, even if only dimly, because I know that this God can understand me.

In Memory of Senator Mark Hatfield

A wonderful testimony of the impact of Senator Mark Hatfield's life and ministry as a public servant. He exemplifies what it truly means to be a Christian statesman. He made being a "politician" something to be an honor and not a term of reprobation. We desperately need more leaders like him today, now more than ever.

International Corporatism Vs Being Human

The more I read the more I realize we've entered an era of International Corporatism. The largest corporations are larger and much more powerful than most if not all nation states. What is your citizenship? To whom or to what do you belong? Are you a human being or a product, being bought and sold?

Here's an appropriate piece about seeing beyond the old left/right dichotomy.

And here's another piece about Breaking the Spell of Money.