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>Why Flowers are Better than Cars for ‘Soul’

>Often the way we think about something dictates what we think about it. That is why our framing metaphor is so powerful.

A question I love to ask is whether Jesus, if he were teaching today, would use technological examples or if he would still use farming examples. I love to play around with this idea and sometimes I take it one way, sometimes I take it the other.

Today, I want to go in a little bit different direction with it. I got thinking the other day that Jesus never said ‘ the kingdom of heaven is like a chariot’. He never said ‘ if you drink this living water you will become like a Roman aqueduct’. Both of those would have been workable analogies. They were both examples of fine engineering and ingenuity.

Instead he spoke of soil and plants and birds. I have been thinking about the implications of that lately. I love the earth. I am more aware than ever if of the biological nature of my existence and the inter-connection that humans have to nature.

I have also noticed that often when people speak about modern ministry or spirituality they use machine or technology examples. I don’t think that there is anything inherently wrong with that. Often the organizations and structures that we are working in & talking about are human inventions and constructions. So using analogies of inventions and construction fits. If we are talking about institutional change and we want to use an analogy of a house, that may work. That’s not my concern.

My concern is in relation to community and spirituality. I think that organizations are more like organisms than machines. I also see that spirituality is not mechanistic or technological as much as it is organic and dirt-y at the ‘ground’ level.

The word that has got me thinking about this is the word “results”. The question is how do we get different results? Sometimes it comes in this slightly different form of how do we measure success? But that too is results oriented.

In the past month this has shown up in three distinct scenarios. The first was a pastor who wants to make changes in his congregation. The second is a couple who wants to see something different in their marriage. The third is a woman who has a desire for renewed vitality in her spiritual life.

In my conversation with all three of them a discernible pattern emerged. Fundamentally, they wanted to be able to pull out the ‘part’ that wasn’t working and quickly install a replacement part. If a car analogy was used it would be like requesting a new transmission so that ‘we can get back on the road again’. If it was a factory analogy it was so that ‘we can get up and running again’ or ‘get back to business’.

The problem, as if I even needed to say it, is that congregations, marriages and souls are not produced on assembly lines or in factories. And I know that is not what anyone meant to say. It’s just that the analogy was breaking down because the metaphor was not just insufficient but increasingly unhelpful.

So I want to suggest a different metaphor – and old classical: A Plant.

instead of ‘results’ we will talk about flowers or fruit. If you want to bring about different or better flowers there are three other things that you need to be concerned with first: the roots, the stem and the leaves.

Even more important is to realize that this will be a process and that process will take a while. This is why we have seasons. So wisdom is to know which season you are in and to adjust your expectations accordingly.

The roots absorb nutrients and ground the plant for stability. The stem provides structure and strength as well as healthy exchange between the elements. The leaves absorbed sunlight and convert energy.

This analogy works for congregational, relational and spiritual changes.

It helps to verbalize and analyze what our roots are grounded in.

It is essential that we acknowledge the frameworks that hold up the structure, gives shape to us and allow for healthy transfer. This is the conversation about the stem.

When we talk about the leaves we talk about how we are receiving from above (or outside) and how that is being converted to energy.

All three of these conversations happen before we ever address ‘getting different results’. A forth conversation then is ‘what season is it?’ It is time to rest and recharge (winter)? It is time to plow and plant (spring)? Is it time to water and watch (summer)? It is time to prepare for harvest time?

The flower is ultimately a result of health and an expression of life that gives the capacity for more life.

A friend of mine who does marriage counseling told me an interesting story last week. A couple had come in who were just not doing well. In this particular session the husband was being quite vocal about his displeasure with his wife. My friend finally stopped them and said “You have come here because you want me to fix this. Like you take your car to the mechanic, puts it up on the lift and swaps out the part that isn’t working for an identical one ordered from a catalog or that he got from a warehouse, then you pay him and go right back to what you were doing before. But that is not going to happen. You’re wife is sending you signals and trying to tell you that she is not being nourished, she does not feel safe and that she wants a partner who participates in the health of your marriage. You think that the engine is just fine and that everything is running fine — if you just to get a different transmission so that the power transferred back then you could move forward. You want this to be over quickly so that you can get back to business as normal. She is telling you that you are months away from harvest. You need to wake up and figure out what season you are in. There is no sense in acting like it’s close to harvest when you are in winter buddy. Your wife is asking you to turn over soil and plant with her and water your relationship. You want to snap in a new part and be on your way.’

We often pick the analogies, word pictures and metaphors because of how we envision something or what we want to happen. They are revealing. They tell us something.

My only suggestion out of all of this is that when we are talking about something that God made – like the Church and relationships and soul… that we use analogies from things that God made like soil and plants and seasons. They go together so naturally.

to listen to the Podcast of this click [here]

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>The deal with reading the Bible

>Sorry for the giant delay in posting these here. I will be moving all of them over this week so that they are synced with the website. http://www.everydaytheology.net

3 things in this one: how NOT to read it, WHAT you are reading, and HOW to read it

You can’t read it like a contract.

– By His stripes we are healed.
– The Lord is my shepherd , I shall not want
– Every knee will bow and every tongue confess
– If you confess your mouth and believe in your heart- you will be saved.

We live just after a time (Modernity) where language was viewed a certain way and texts were treated accordingly. The problem is that the Bible was not written in that same period or mindset so … when we use that Modern approach there can be a bit of a gap between what it originally meant and how we read it.

Let’s look at Psalm 23 and specifically just the first line. The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. Well, the problem is that believers in every place in all times have been in want. Does that mean that God is not holding up his end of the deal? Is God breaking the contract? No. You can’t read the Bible that way. God is not actually a shepherd and you will not actually never be in want. You can’t read it like a contract.

A lot of people though – have been taught to read it like a contract. We use this Modern sense of language and say that each word and each phrase is an exact representation of it’s greater reality. That it exactly represents what it is talking about.

But this leads to some pretty complicated situations. Like when Paul says ‘God exalted his name – so that at his name every knee with will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord.’ I am not sure that Paul was saying that at some point in history or after human history that every knee will bow. I am not sure that is the point of his writing that. But when we read it like a contract, we say “It says EVERY… in plain black and white – EVERY”. So then we develop elaborate constructs and scenarios where by God can uphold his end of the bargain and live up to his end of the deal. But I am not sure that it works like that.

People do this with Old Testament prophecies and say “It says that by his stripes we ARE healed – not ‘will be’ or ‘might be’ – we ARE.” As if this in an exact 1:1 equation. “God said, I believe it, that settles it”. But I am not sure that it was meant to work like that. And when it doesn’t…. well then we say ‘Maybe it’s you! Maybe you don’t have enough faith or maybe you have unconfessed sin or maybe your just not one of the elect who is meant to get it.’ You can not read the Bible like a constitution.

Like when Paul says ‘if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart you will be saved’. But then there are all these other expectations and other times he says ‘if you hold fast to the faith’ as if it were conditional. A lot of time and energy has been spent to try an explain the formula for salvation. The requirements to fulfill the contract. But I am trying to say that you can’t read the letters of Paul like a contract – dissecting each phrase, parsing each clause of the contract.

Just like we have to be careful with Enlightenment individualism and consumer spirituality , we have careful of this view of language and texts. They need to be interpreted through the lens that they were written in.

What is Hermeneutics ?

The definition is simply the study of different ways that texts are interpreted. It looks at the relationship between the author , the text and the reader. Many christian that I have met and talked to have never heard of this word. That really piqued my interest so I looked into it. It turns out that many Christians do not know that there are different ways of looking at a text. Many believers do not know that they are interpreting. I have been told over and over again “I just read the Bible literally”

I said before [link] that no one reads the Bible literally. Even if they say they do, a simple couple of questions and that gets exposed.

All texts need to be interpreted. Some as Poetry, some as history, some as parable, some as prophecy , some as Apocalypse, etc.

So this is why I wanted to bring it up. If we are all interpreting but we don’t acknowledge that we are interpreting… then it is either happening sub-consciously or we are so comfortable with our interpretive devices that it is happening by default or we are deceiving ourselves insisting that nothing is going on but a plain reading of the text.

You have to factor in TheoPoetics

Sometimes we just need to factor in that there are ways we talk about God. This is just a natural implication of using language to do something as amazing and vast at trying to describe transcendent reality and mystical experience.

It could be something as simple as when a child says ‘Jesus lives in my heart’. That is theopoetics. It’s simply the way we talk about God. It doesn’t need to be critiqued and measured in a exacting way. We know that the resurrected Christ didn’t shrink down and multiply himself then move into each person’s cardiac valve. It is a way of talking about God. It’s how we use language.

When Jesus says ‘on this rock I will build my church’ he was not speaking about a piece of granite nor of building a church building. It is a way of talking. The thing is – and this is important – I am not being dismissive by saying this as if the use of poetics means that things don’t carry weight or that they ultimately don’t mean anything.

Jesus was saying that there is something that is foundational and that he is responsible for the activity and entity that is called the church.

When the child says “Jesus lives in my heart” , just because it doesn’t mean that the actual Jesus doesn’t live in her actual heart, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t mean anything. She is talking about the Spirit of Christ indwelling that central place of passion and purpose. That means something! It’s just that the language in inexact. But this is the nature of language.

Actually – this is not a problem at all. If we give each other space and grace and acknowledge that hermeneutics and theopoetics play a role in our religious life and use of the Bible. The problem comes when we think and demand that language work a different way. When we insist that language be exacting and mathematical (this word = this exact definition) we get frustrated like the Pharisees did with Jesus as they demanded specifics and he told them stories!

“Who is my neighbor – the guy two doors down or three doors down?” he was asked. That reminds me of a story about a Samaritan… “When exactly do you rise up and restore Israel as a King?” he was asked. The Farmer sows seed…

Even when Jesus did use numbers he used them with a certain amount of absurdum or hyperbole. “How may times should I forgive my brother – 3 or 4? I mean I can’t just let him walk all over me and do the same thing over and over.” Jesus could have done the clever Rabbinic thing and added the two together and said 7. And that would have been unimaginable and challenging for them! That would have been surprising and prodigal (extravagant). But he does something incredible – he doesn’t just go up incrementally with addition – he goes exponential with multiplication! 70 times 7 !

This understanding of theopoetics is helpful to me. So that when Jesus says ‘if a part of your body causes you to stumble, cut it off.’ Just because he doesn’t mean ‘CUT IT OFF’ doesn’t mean that he doesn’t mean anything.

Just because a beast with 10 heads does not rise up out of the sea literally – doesn’t mean that the passage doesn’t mean anything!

Just because God isn’t actually a shepherd – doesn’t mean that God isn’t LIKE a shepherd. This is the same for ‘Father’ or ‘Rock’ or that ‘he hinds me under his wings’. These are Theopetics. They are the way that we talk about God. It is not exacting language, it is not mathematical or representative. It is expressive. It is expressing something deeper.

That is why I don’t get to hung up on Jesus saying ‘this is my body and this is my blood’. Like if I hold up a picture and say that ‘this is my wife’. It is not actually my wife. It is not representative – it is reflective. It reflects her. Now by saying this I am not saying that the ‘Lord’s Supper’ , just because the bread is not actually his flesh and the cup does not literally contain his blood, that it does not mean anything. It means something. But that something requires interpretation.

Like a child saying ‘Jesus lives in my heart’ – just because it doesn’t mean that literally doesn’t mean that it doesn’t mean anything. It means a lot! It is deep and profound … and that is why we use Theopoetics.

For the Podcast of this click [here]

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>3 old ways to read the Bible

>In Thailand there is a site that is strange to Western eyes. They are called Spirit houses. They look like elaborate birdhouses (sometimes mansions) on the top of tall poles. They are set at the corners of properties. Then small bowls of food will be left at the base to appease the spirits so that they don’t harm the property or the family that lives there.

I bought a book while I was in Thailand that explains some of the cultural differences like this. It was a really insightful moment in the book when it focused on the Spirit House at the Mercedes-Benz dealership. It is quite a contrast between the steel and glass building of the 21st century that house and display creations of luxury and precision, marvels of human design and enlightenment production. While on the corner, There is a remnant of the eleventh century in order to ward off these sometime demonic entities in the spiritual realm.

It is a powerful and intriguing mix of ancient and future. I love these Ancient -Future paradoxes and pictures. ( For more on this see Robert Webber’s series on Ancient Future for the church : here)

I was reminded of this when I was looking into Jon Knox’s study of the last century of Marcion’s 2nd century view of reading the Bible. Marcion was ultimately condemned as a heretic but the problem he was trying to address continues to be a problem and in the end he did push the early church to have a Christian canon that became the New Testament because of this concern.

The main concern & area of contention were these 3 ways to read the Bible.

The predominant way was to read it was Allegorically. It cannot be overstated how pervasive this reading of the Bible was – especially the Old Testament. Because this is out of favor now, and has been really for the last couple of centuries, it is often completely off of people’s radar and frequently left out of the conversation. But this approach had a powerful effect for so many centuries of church history. It has radically impacted the way we read the Bible and the way we talk about God.

Marcion wanted to get away from that way of reading the Bible. But once you do that you run into a very serious problem. What do you do with the seeming discrepancies between the portrayal of God in the Old Testament and the New.

One way was to read it for Dissonance. When one looked at the disparity between testaments, it had to be accounted for. So theories were developed – some illustrated that God had changed. Some thought that Jehovah was not the same God that sent Jesus and whom he called ‘Abba’. Another had God stepping down from Heaven to become Jesus and then returning as a different sort of God. There were lots of theories and many of them were ultimately deemed unacceptable by those who came to power as Bishops in the third and fourth centuries. Which is understandable enough , but it still doesn’t reconcile the differences that even a cursory reading brings to the surface.

If one undertook this, folks like Marcion believed that one would either be left with a Bible you can’t believe or a God you can’t believe in.

This is unacceptable and untenable to most people of faith so we attempt to read for Congruence. This often gets generously labeled as a “literal” reading. The problem is that it requires one to simply ignore the differences that Marcion was addressing. This is what most choose to do and the exact situation that most evangelicals find themselves in trying to reconcile the differences.

People who are really into the Bible often say that they read it literally. But let’s be honest here: no one reads the Bible literally. We are fooling ourselves if we think that we do. It’s not even mostly meant to be read literally. No one actually thinks that a beast with 10 heads will rise up out of the sea. No one thinks that Jesus actually meant to cut off your body parts if they caused you temptation. We all know that there was not actual ‘good Samaritan’ – that story was not a newspaper style account or report, it was a parable. and no one actually thinks that God is a shepherd. It’s imagery – it’s poetry.

No one reads the Bible literally no matter how much they protest and insist that they do. When faced with this somebody might say ‘well, we read the parts literally that are meant to be read literally’. But that is different isn’t it. You can’t say ‘I read it literally’ and by that mean ‘I read half of it literally and the other half as poetry, allegory, prophecy, parable and apocalypse.’ That – by definition – is not literal. No one reads the Bible literally. It is not meant to be read literally. Those who insist that they do are fooling themselves.

So Marcion was dealing with this in the 2nd Century. Then we took it up a notch in the last 3 Centuries in an era called Modernity which introduced a whole new set of concerns and considerations. The past 300 years have seen massive shifts in the way that we read the Bible. This is why I find Ancient-Future so intriguing. It is really helpful where we are.

And now I am even moving on from that and trying to get ready for the next century. I want to participate in the Post-Modern conversation and I want to see what the Bible has to say to it and what it has to say to the Bible.

You can call the approach post-modern or progressive or whatever you want – but my 3 interest are as follows:

3 new Ways to read the Bible.

a) you can’t read it like a contract
b) what is hermeneutics ?
you have to factor in TheoPoetics

That will be our topic in Part 7: Three New Ways to Read the Bible

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>Tribes

>A couple of years ago I had an interesting exchange with a good friend of mine. We were looking at clothing stores and she made some disparaging remark about ‘tribes’. It took me by surprise and so asked for clarification. She explained to me that she – and many people at her conservative bible believing church- was sick of this New Age-y push to get everybody to see themselves as part of a tribe. (We happen to be looking at a store that carried a brand of sportswear called ‘Tribal’.) I listen for a little bit about how this led away from a biblical worldview and toward New Age definitions of community and allegiances that compromised the church and getting our identify from focusing on God – instead, focusing on ourselves and what ‘tribe’ we were a part of.

I thought about it for a bit and then I said to her ‘ ya know, Tribes are not New Age-y but rather ‘Old Age-y’. They’re very ancient – from the Old Age. They are not a New Age invention. In fact, Tribes are quite biblical. The Hebrews were divided in to 12 of them and even the New Testament talks of ‘every tribe and tongue’ (Rev. 5:9). So I would think that God sees us far more in Tribes than as the Enlightenment did as Individuals.”

I am really worried about how we are conceiving of things that allows us to call ‘New’ what is ‘Old’ and ‘un-biblical’ what is clearly Biblical. Sometimes I suspect that we called good what is bad and God what is not- God.

Jared Diamond tells a fascinating story in his book “Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed”. He details the trials of the early settlers to Greenland in the 12th Century.

By using written letters, church records in Europe and archeology he draws a picture of people struggling to live in a place because of how they picture themselves and resisted a new identity for the new land and environment.

By looking at the bones in their settlements it is clear that they did not switch from beef that they ate in Europe to the seal meat that the Inuits in the area survived on. They barely ate the fish that they could catch in the waters of their shores (bones were 1:10 ratio compared to Inuit settlements nearby) and there were almost no bird bones even though Ptarmigan were plentiful. It is a tale of refusing to the adjust to the new place or adopt the practices of the indigenous population.

Writings showed that they treasured the view of themselves first as Europeans, second as Christians and third as settlers (Greenlanders). This shows up in there persistence to raise cattle on soil that was not suitable for it. They insisted on using large boats that they got from Dutch designs instead of switching to the canoes utilized by the Inuit. They also put large amounts of time, money and energy into making stone cathedrals with stain glass imported from Europe and costly & distant wine and wheat that were not Native so that the priest would have communion elements.

Their unwillingness to re-imagine their identity and adapt to the actual surroundings and circumstances allowed the experiment to creep along for two of centuries before eventually failing.

___
This is why I am interested in re-imagining ourselves as the people of God and re-inventing our conceptions and constructs of God: a global God who works for the next century.

I have been talking about God’s relationship to Haiti [link] over a month before the Earthquake.

I will be honest with you, i have no interest in Pat Robertson’s God who causes an earthquake in Haiti in order to warn the rest of the world or punish them for something that someone else did. (Or any of the famous white preachers who said similar things about the Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the Minnesota Tornadoes [link] or the 911 attacks).

That is a concept of God is leftover from when we thought that the world was flat and that heaven was just behind the clouds. That was our conception of the world and of the universe and subsequently how we conceived of God and how ‘he’ worked in the world.

I want to invest in constructs and frameworks (conversations and conceptions) of a Global perspective of God that works in the next century and for the world that we actually live in.

We need a better picture of God. I believe that. I do not think that what we need is to master concepts of God from the centuries past. That is not what we need. We need a Global God for the next century.
That is what I am hoping for here – to concieve together of an Everyday Theology.

Just remember – I am not advocating a new type of Christianity,
I am acknowledging that Christianity is always being made new.

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>Irony in King and Cross

>Summary:
1)If Jesus was being ironic and the Kingdom is actually un-Kingdom and his rule and reign are nothing like a King of his day or the Caesar of his day… how would we know?
2)Does the fact that the two most recognized symbols of Christianity in our culture are icons that represent Mosaic Law and Roman Violence? Does that signal anything about our brand of Christianity? The fact that the 10 Commandments and the Cross are the two most visible signs of Christianity… which ,as stand alone icons, are not the problem but they symbolize a Christianity that is legalistic, legislates morality and employs coercive power structures.
3)If we didn’t learn from Jesus what we were suppose to learn from Jesus then our faith might be more Colonial than Christ, more Caesar than covenant love, more strength than sacrifice and more sword than servant.
__________________
If someone were being ironic, how would we know that?
How did you separate out what they SAID from what I MEANT ?

If I said something outlandish like “ Of course the church should be in charge! Of course we should kill & violently put down those who oppose us. We have to explode the Holy Land and expel those who who occupy it for it is WHERE God lives!”

How did you pick out my sarcasm and absurdum?
It is because you know me? Did you use the way I live as a lens to interpret?

This brings me to my first suggestion:

Maybe when Jesus said ‘Kingdom’ he meant ‘not kingdom’. and when he said ‘I came to bring a sword’ he meant ‘the opposite of a sword’.* Maybe he was being Ironic… riding in on one side of town on a donkey while Rome’s Man rode in on the other side with a full detachment of powerful and armored horses.

We miss Jesus’ irony because we think as Romans (Citizens of Empire) by default.

This is why people think i am doing a semantic flip when I am not.
I actually think that God is weak. I think God loves weakness and I think that God works weakly… through us.

I am not being ironic about that.

Jesus ‘sword’ that ‘divides up families’ does the opposite of what real swords do which is to defend one’s OWN family and countrymen and make people do what YOU want them to.

“What rises up in majesty from the cross is not a show of might but rather forgiveness, not power but a protest against the unjust execution of a just man, a great prophetic “no” to injustice and persecution, a prophetic death rather than a sacrificial exchange that buys a celestial reward. Something unconditional lays claim to us in that weakness – something unconditional but without an exercise of force. He is tried, convicted, tortured, and paraded though the streets in shame on the way to a particularly gruesome public execution, although a common enough display of imperial power in the Roman world.” – John Caputo

I don’t mind Paradox & Mystery – I believe in those things. but I am not going to play that card for an Imperial Lens or Antiquated Construct.

So let me just ask you the question: Do you think that God is really strong and just ‘playing’ weak as “self-limitation” ? So far, this seems to be the line that people are comfortable going to. And I get that. That is the God that I grew up with and preached for 15 years. I know him well. There is built into that ,however, a dichotomy – a binary implication that leads to round and round arguments that last for centuries and show no sign of resolving. ** ( Us – them, either -or, in -out, Calvinist – Arminian, etc.)

I’m not sure that it holds together either philosophically or experientially but – I get it. I get that conception of God and I understand how that God is compatible with our institutions, denominations and structures. I’m not trying to be a ‘stinker’ for the sake of being a stinker. I’m just saying that it makes me nervous that… well. It seems to me as we conceive of God now, that he is far more interested in helping Christians find their keys than he is in stopping child abuse and domestic violence.

Which leads me to my second suggestion:

There seems to be a fascination in Christianity with restoring the order that is symbolized by the 10 Commandments. This is ironic because they represent Mosaic Law and if anyone has read one of the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the letter to the Galatians, the Hebrews or the Epistle of James you will know that, for the Christian, the Law is … well – to say it kindly – not the fullest expression of God’s desire for his New Covenant community.
The other dominant icon seems to the be the Cross. This is ironic because it is a sign of Roman violence and coercive power and domination. I’m not sure that those who wear gold plated – jewel encrusted icon around their neck have thought of this.

But you have to think: it is more that intriguing that the two universally recognized symbols of Christianity in our age are representative of Mosaic Law and Roman Violence. And while someone my protest and say that I am making too a big of deal our of nothing, the diagnostic seems pretty clear.

Is our expression of Christianity rules based and does it participate in militarized force? Or does is legislate & legalize morality and does it baptize violence in the Name of God?

When people think that the Ten Commandments have anything to do with Christianity… and when they think that the cross is just a means to an end…
it is no wonder to me why they refuse to even engage the Weakness of God.

Here is my suspicion:

If we didn’t learn from Jesus what we were suppose to learn from Jesus then our faith might be more Colonial than Christ, more Caesar than covenant love, more strength than sacrifice and more sword than servant.

So what would I suggest in it’s place? Well, I think that one should be The Bowl & Towel. This represents washing feet and a servant attitude. The second is a hole in the ground. It could represent the hole that was dug in the earth for the cross to be dropped in, the hole in his hands and feet and even the Virgin womb that says ‘may it be unto me as you have said’. It represents receptivity and participation.

I know that they may not be as impressive as the classic icons but neither is our gospel as concern with being impressive as the Imperial view of power that it is replacing.

“The kingdom of God is the rule of weak forces like patience and forgiveness, which, instead of forcibly exacting payment for an offense, release and let go. The kingdom is found whenever war and aggression are met with an offer of peace. The kingdom is a way of living, not in eternity, but in time, a way of living without why, living for the day, like the lilies of the field – figures of weak forces – as opposed to mastering and programming time, calculating the future, containing and managing risk. The kingdom reigns wherever the least and most undesirable are favored while the best and most powerful are put on the defensive. The powerless power of the kingdom prevails whenever the one is preferred to the ninety-nine, whenever one loves one’s enemies and hates one’s father and mother while the world, which believes in power, counsels us to fend off our enemies and keep the circle of kin and kind, of family and friends, fortified and tightly drawn.” – Caputo

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>Is God Weak or Strong ?

>Is God strong or weak?
People generally seem to think that if there is a God then that being is very ‘God like’ and encapsulates all of the things we generally hope and assume that God is. “My God is so Big so strong and so mighty – there’s nothing my God can not do” seems to be the predominant thought on this. Most people, I think, are under the impression that God is strong. So I am not going to spend a lot of time on that. I think that people know that construct well.

I want to put forward a different theory. I believe that God is weak, that God works weakly and that we have to partner with that God in order for it work.
Here is my theory in the form of a word picture (Someday I will make it into a narrative or parable): it’s as if God broadcasts a signal weakly into the world. Picture a radio tower sending signals out into the surrounding area. There are three conditions or scenarios involved in this.

We have the right ‘equipment’ and often we have to learn to dial it in. You have be tuned into the right signal. This is often made easier by being around somebody who it ‘tuned’ in – or for that matter, who is not just receiving but relaying the signal ( a reflecting dish that radiates the signal)

The second component is that the signal is faint enough that some people don’t think that the signal even exists and others explain away or attribute it to something else. The signal is weak enough that some people don’t even think that there is a signal.

The third is that the signal is weak enough that you also have turn down other competing signals and sources of noise, in order to really tune in. Even those who want to tune in, often have to tune out competing signals or technologies.

Now I know that this is a radically new concept to some and it does not get the best reaction at first. People often want to quote passages from the Old Testament in order to reinforce the conception that God is strong. But I sort of feel like saying “You have heard it said that God is strong, but I tell you that what we see in Jesus is weak”

Two passages of scripture here just to think about how God works :
1 Corinthians 1: 22 Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles…For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.
Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.

2 Corinthians 12:9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me

I think that Jesus is the best gift that humanity has ever received- better than life itself for this gift transcends life. What we see in Christ is the ‘Weakness of God’ (as John Caputo calls it) and it is counter to everything that this world upholds a praiseworthy and worthy of glory.

When most people talk to me about God it seems as if they are describing Zeus from Mt. Olympus, Thor from Valhalla, Ra of Egypt, Baal of the Cannanites, Dagon of the Assyrians, or Apsu and Tiamat of the Babylonians. When people talk to me about God I rarely hear them talk of the manger, the foot washing model of servant leadership, the shame of the cross, the questions around the resurrection or the small crowd of the ascension. All these are understated, off the beaten path, out of the spotlight … weak.

It’s almost as if we have the ancient ways that people talked about God, like Zeus. Then (as it appears chronologically to us) God revealed the fullest expression of the divine nature in Christ. We love what Jesus did for us. Then we went on talking about God in Caesar terms. Almost as if Jesus is a hiatus of weakness from the regularly scheduled program of Zeus and Caesar – sandwiched between the two.

Just think about the incarnation – the humility of the birth story.
Think about the foot-washing at the last supper.
Think about the non-violent response to the arrest.
Think about the cross.
Think about the events surrounding the resurrection (on this side of the stone) and how understated and gentle it was.
Think about Pentecost – this powerful redistribution of God’s spirit – and how it was interpreted as something else.

I think that this is how God works and I think that this is how God is.

Just to be clear: I do not believe that God is really strong and just pretending to weak (self limitation) and I am not playing semantics by redefining ‘strong’ as ‘weak’ in a theological flip-a-roosky or switch-a-roosky. (those are official Theological terms by the way and even if the weren’t real, they ARE actual things that I have been accused of).

I actually think that God is weak. It explains so much. It explains why He didn’t stop the atrocities of the Second World War (or any war for that matter). It explains why rape and child abuse are allowed to go on. It’s not that god, who is said to be ‘all knowing’, knows and doesn’t care. It is that God is weak. God is not outside of time watching things unfold and picking and choosing which situations to intervene in. God is here with us – in the moment – and God works through us. That is the weakness.

Sure, people long ago conceived of God in Kingly way. The Scholastic Theologians of church history had to answer the question ‘If God is all Powerful and God is all Loving, then how can He abide evil.’ The problem is called Theodicy, but it is predicated on the assumption that God is all Powerful (omnipotent).

I think that it is a conversation worth having and a concept worth revisiting. I am willing to redefine it but I know that others are quite apprehensive about making any changes to the old formula.

The truth is that I am really nervous. I am nervous that when people talk about God they are really talking about expectations of Caesar. That modern christianity is far more Rome than christ, far more Empire than kingdom.

I know that people react to the notion that is God is weak. We want a God who is strong. But I fear that what we really want is a Caesar, Zeus, Thor, Ra and not a Christ at all.

If you want to read a paper on John Caputo’s ‘The Weakness of God’ [HERE]

I will close with a quote from that.

“ The kingdom of God is the rule of weak forces like patience and forgiveness, which, instead of forcibly exacting payment for an offense, release and let go. The kingdom is found whenever war and aggression are met with an offer of peace. The kingdom is a way of living, not in eternity, but in time, a way of living without why, living for the day, like the lilies of the field – figures of weak forces – as opposed to mastering and programming time, calculating the future, containing and managing risk. The kingdom reigns wherever the least and most undesirable are favored while the best and most powerful are put on the defensive. The powerless power of the kingdom prevails whenever the one is preferred to the ninety-nine, whenever one loves one’s enemies and hates one’s father and mother while the world, which believes in power, counsels us to fend off our enemies and keep the circle of kin and kind, of family and friends, fortified and tightly drawn.”

P.S. A great book to read is “What would Jesus deconstruct” which is Caputo’s interaction with “In His Steps” by Charles Sheldon.

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>God isn’t who we thought

>God isn’t who we thought- 3 problems with the Big 5 God:

1.When we make God too big and too pure and too heavenly – the Incarnation becomes impossible. It just doesn’t make sense how God could have bridged that gap. Maybe it’s not that we’ve made good too big but that we have over emphasized the gap between Spirit & Matter, Heaven and Earth, God & the Creation.

2.If that God is all powerful then he is not all loving. And if he is all loving then he is not all powerful – and no amount talk bout ‘mystery’ or ‘tension’ is going to cut it. Sunday school answers about just ‘trusting that He knows what is best’ don’t work in the face of the atrocities that we saw in the 20th century. Either we outgrew that god, or he died or he isn’t who we thought he was.

3.Even if we do believe in that old concept of God (and keep in mind – I am not talking bout the God of the Bible. I am talking about the God that emerged in the first three centuries around Christ and continued to evolve throughout church history). If we do stick with that God then we have to address the the obvious question: where did he go? He hasn’t done much in a while. Maybe after Jesus and the writing of the Bible his work was done and now it is up to us to figure it out. Maybe technology, education and civilization steal his powers and he can only work where those things are not.

Now of course – and I hope that this is obvious – I don’t believe that. I believe in God and God’s present work in the world. But this concept of God is incoherent and irrational as well as impractical in the modern world. I don’t mind taking things by faith. I am a person of faith. But I am not going to use the ‘Faith’ card on something that is nothing more that a poorly conceived construct.

The thing that I want tell you, in the way of good news, is that Deconstruction is not Destruction or Demolition. It is simple admitting that we need a new model and getting about the business at hand.

And I think that maybe a good place to start is making sure that the one we call ‘God’ is that one that Jesus called ‘Abba’.

Next time… we go for it: let’s just have it out and tackle the question – is God strong or weak? and then we get on with it.

OK – so there it is in the new format. Short and sweet. I jammed it into a couple of short paragraphs!

If you want to stick around for Overtime -I will unpack it a little bit and flesh it out. But there you have the seed here and the framework.
___________________________

Overtime: the old style big Essay (or just go to post a comment at the bottom)

I know that it is a new year so I hate to start it with a negative but I have some unfinished business from the past year. So…

I want to start this year with a confession.
I don’t believe in this configuration of God: Omni-potent, Omni-present, Omniscient, Impassable, Immovable.
It doesn’t matter whether you call him the God of the Creeds, the God of Church History, the God of Orthodoxy or of ‘Classic Christianity’. It’s just not who I pray to, who I sing about or who I participate with… not when it’s configured like that.
And here is why. Here are my 3 big problems with the Big 5 God.

The Incarnation becomes an Impossibility.
When we focus too much on God’s transcendence, try to make God too big and too ‘Other’ we paint ourselves into a corner and it actually become logistically impossible for Jesus to have come in the flesh! When we talk about God in too grandiose terms we often borrow for Gnostic language and say that ‘God can nothing to do with this sinful world’ and then someone says ‘what about jesus ? If he was fully God and fully man, how did he bridge this massive gap that you have set up?’ And the answer that is given rings hollow. “It is a Mystery.” Now listen , I am ALL about mystery and the mystical and the supernatural… but I object to using ‘mystery’ to defend our illogical and incongruent conceptions of God.

Which brings me to my second point…

Theodicy – “a response to the problem of evil in the world that attempts logically, relevantly and consistently to defend God as simultaneously omnipotent, all loving and just despite the reality of evil.”
In the past this has been a real problem. If God is all powerful and God is loving and he’s just then why is he evil allowed to persist? And this IS a real problem. I just have two quick thoughts about this:
The 20th century was brutal for God. Not only did he take a beating in the classroom (and sometimes in the courtroom) but he was often nowhere to be found outside of evangelical and Pentecostal worship services. But in a very real sense we saw a what evils people were capable of in the name of God. In movements like the the Nazis of Germany, the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia, the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia ( Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia) and the god-soaked language of African atrocities in Darfure a(not to mention the cults of Jonestown and the Brach Davidians among countless others) we saw little difference from the godless regimes of Communist Russia, the Fascist, the Totalitarians and the Utopians. God was seemed to make little difference is how we treated enemies, combatants
We have much better ways to think about this now! Ya know – we are not limited to the way is that they thought about God in the second and third centuries. We are not limited to the constructs of the plagues any crusades of the 1100’s. we aren’t not limited to the constraints in thought of the 16th and 17th century. This is a new day. And there are much better options now for thinking about how the universe is constructed and how reality functions, how history progresses and where humanity participates.

Theodicy is a problem of constructs and conceptions of the past. when you beef God up too much and over-inflate your portrayal of your conception, you have to come back and defendant at construct when things don’t go well. We have concepts and frameworks now that incorporate the evils of things like the second world war and the atrocities of the 20th century into a working configuration that integrates the presence of evil with the way of the world actually works and the belief in a loving God. We are not limited by the way people have thought about and talked about God in the past. There is a progressive, emerging, innovative and thoughtful way to approach this.

The old God is nowhere to be found.
This is perhaps my biggest problem with the old big 5 God. He hasn’t done anything in a while. Either he did some really cool stuff in the Bible and then he retired, or he is a regional deity that can do cool things with the weather and some miraculous things in a very small locations with small groups of people.
People who voraciously defend the literalness of the Bible run into a problem if they do not have those kind of experiences to detail of biblical proportion. If you want to say that the kind of things that we read about in the Bible literally happen, that’s fine. But there had better be a self validating expression and experience that coincides with it. It does no one any good to have a passionate defense of the literalness of the biblical account if there are no self validating evidences in the community. Some people split history into dispensations and say well that was then and this is now, and that really happened then but it’s not going to happen now. So that’s kind of a dead-end. Apparently the big five God changed. After he did his big impressive stuff he retired into some recess of the universe — having written a bestseller with the Bible he had enough to live on for the rest of history. but these people usually come back and say “God never changes – he is the same yesterday today and forever” so that gets confusing. because while God never changes apparently his interaction with the world does. He doesn’t change but the times do. So the fact is hard to figure out.
Other people say that everything we read about in the book of acts is available to us today. But the really awkward question quickly surfaces. Why do so many of this god’s miracles seem to happen in places of poverty, no electricity and little education. Is it that he prefers these out-of-the-way places where people haven’t figured out not to believe in God yet or is it that way electricity & education show up his power diminishes.

I’m not trying to be a jerk here. I believe in God. I believe in the miraculous. I believe in Jesus and the Gospel of grace. I am a believer. What I am saying is that our conceptions of God from the third century the 11th century and the 16th century may not work for us in the modern era. We live in “ a world come of age” and our conception of God has to grow up too. we live in a world that is progressing and changing and evolving into something that it has never been before. Our faith has the capacity to speak to, interact with and to learn from that world in a way that is mutually edifying and empowering. But that will not happen if we insist on remaining and reinforcing these constructs and conceptions of God of centuries past.

Here’s my bottom line: it hasn’t worked to bring about either the world we hope for or the one that we promised in our message. We have, up with lots of ways to explain it away – most of these focus on human sinfulness,the fallenness of mankind or the work of the devil.

The only thing that I can tell you in the way of good news is that Deconstruction is not Destruction or Demolition. It is simple admitting that we need a new model and getting about the business at hand.

And I think that maybe a good place to start is making sure that the one we call ‘God’ is that one that Jesus called ‘Abba’.

OK – I just needed to get that off my chest. and now I can move on and get down to the task at hand!!

Next time we go for it: let’s just have it out and tackle the question – is God strong or weak? and then we get on with it.

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>God’s Weakness in Haiti

>This is a conversation that I was having at the Website with Dan

Dan:
I find the conversation here at Everyday Theology very helpful and incredibly interesting.  Before I ask my questions though, let me say, as gently as possible:  God is not the author of death.  He is not sending anyone a message through the earthquake in Haiti.  If there is a spiritual component to this horrible event it originated in Hell, not Heaven.  Don’t worry, the Pat Robertson’s of the world will continue to marginalize themselves by saying anti-Christian things like his latest, until no one is listening to him anymore.

I do however have a couple of unresolved questions.  ET says that this disaster was caused by shifting tectonic plates and unresolved poverty.  Yes, this is the vehicle through which death was delivered.  But I do believe that there is a spiritual component to this event.  I am not sure what it is, but I suspect it has something to do with Satan’s desire to kill, steal and destroy and my failure as a follower of Jesus to bring redemption to the people of Haiti.  Is there a spiritual component to this disaster?

Second question:  While Jesus displayed a glaring lack of human power he did display an incredible amount of heaven’s power (healing sick, feeding the hungry, raising the dead and so forth).  While the weakness of Jesus has got me thinking about what the Gospel really is and how it is totally and utterly opposed to empire, I still see a power offered to his disciples that inserted the impossible into human tragedy.  Where does this authority over sickness and death fit in this emerging theology?

Me: – wow. you have quickly gotten to the heart of the matter. I really like what you said in your first paragraph. Powerful statements.

First question: I can only tell you what I think. I think that the tectonic plates are ‘natural’ in origin. I think that the systemic poverty is ‘human’ in origin. and I think that IF there is anything ‘spiritual’ that it is people’s response to tragedy and hurt. Christ’s body reaching out, holding the hurting, healing wounds and reaching into the wound.

second question – this is a tough one. I want to believe. I do not want to be a cynic. If we have the power to raise people from the dead and heal the sick, why are we not flying ‘miracle teams’ over there to raise the dead and heal the sick? IF EVER we were going to step up into an ACTS like authority and take ‘dominion’ (as someone else has said) then THIS would certainly be the time do that!! The world is watching – it would be publicized on GLOBAL TV. The world would SEE and BELIEVE.

please understand me. I have seen miracles. I believe. I just don’t know that it is predictable enough to ‘go public’ with it. I think that we:
1) show up
2) love without condition or judgment
3) serve
4) pray and see what happens.
That really is the best I have right now. I mean, if you feel called to get on an airplane and fly down … or better yet – just pray from where you are that the dead in Haiti will get up and start to tell of God and his power, you can do that right now.

I am just saying that I do not think that is that way it works. I think that God is weak. I think that God loves weakness. I think that God works in our weakness. That is why I think we go (in weakness) and serve (in our weakness) and embrace others weakness and that is how God is made manifest, in our weakness.

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>Tribes

>A couple of years ago I had an interesting exchange with a good friend of mine. We were looking at clothing stores and she mad some disparaging remark about ‘tribes’. It took me by surprise and so asked for clarification. She explained to me that she – and many people at her conservative bible believing church- was sick of this New Age-y push to get everybody to see themselves as part of a tribe. (We happen to be looking at a store that carried a brand of sportswear called ‘Tribal’.) I listen for a little bit about how this led away from a biblical worldview and toward New Age definitions of community and allegiances that compromised the church and getting our identify from focusing on God – instead, focusing on ourselves and what ‘tribe’ we were a part of.

I thought about it for a bit and then I said to her ‘ ya know, Tribes are not New Age-y but rather ‘Old Age-y’. They’re very ancient – from the Old Age. They are not a New Age invention. In fact, Tribes are quite biblical. The Hebrews were divided in to 12 of them and even the New Testament talks of ‘every tribe and tongue’ (Rev. 5:9). So I would think that God sees us far more in Tribes than as the Enlightenment did as Individuals.”

I am really worried about how we are conceiving of things that allows us to call ‘New’ what is ‘Old’ and ‘un-biblical’ what is clearly Biblical. Sometimes I suspect that we called good what is bad and God what is not- God.

Jared Diamond tells a fascinating story in his book “Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed”. He details the trials of the early settlers to Greenland in the 12th Century.

By using written letters, church records in Europe and archeology he draws a picture of people struggling to live in a place because of how they picture themselves and resisted a new identity for the new land and environment.

By looking at the bones in their settlements it is clear that they did not switch from beef that they ate in Europe to the seal meat that the Inuits in the area survived on. They barely ate the fish that they could catch in the waters of their shores (bones were 1:10 ratio compared to Inuit settlements nearby) and there were almost no bird bones even though Ptarmigan were plentiful. It is a tale of refusing to the adjust to the new place or adopt the practices of the indigenous population.

Writings showed that they treasured the view of themselves first as Europeans, second as Christians and third as settlers (Greenlanders). This shows up in there persistence to raise cattle on soil that was not suitable for it. They insisted on using large boats that they got from Dutch designs instead of switching to the canoes utilized by the Inuit. They also put large amounts of time, money and energy into making stone cathedrals with stain glass imported from Europe and costly & distant wine and wheat that were not Native so that the priest would have communion elements.

Their unwillingness to re-imagine their identity and adapt to the actual surroundings and circumstances allowed the experiment to creep along for two of centuries before eventually failing.

___
This is why I am interested in re-imagining ourselves as the people of God and re-inventing our conceptions and constructs of God: a global God who works for the next century.

I have been talking about God’s relationship to Haiti [link] over a month before the Earthquake.

I will be honest with you, i have no interest in Pat Robertson’s God who causes an earthquake in Haiti in order to warn the rest of the world or punish them for something that someone else did. (Or any of the famous white preachers who said similar things about the Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the Minnesota Tornadoes [link] or the 911 attacks).

That is a concept of God is leftover from when we thought that the world was flat and that heaven was just behind the clouds. That was our conception of the world and of the universe and subsequently how we conceived of God and how ‘he’ worked in the world.

I want to invest in constructs and frameworks (conversations and conceptions) of a Global perspective of God that works in the next century and for the world that we actually live in.

We need a better picture of God. I believe that. I do not think that what we need is to master concepts of God from the centuries past. That is not what we need. We need a Global God for the next century.
That is what I am hoping for here – to concieve together of an Everyday Theology.

remember – I am not advocating a new type of Christianity,
I am acknowledging that Christianity is always being made new.

The world does not work the way that people use to THINK that it did. That is what I am saying. That something fundamentally shifted in the New Covenant.

At minimum – we should agree that Jeremiah 31 says that in the New Cov. that people will not die for what their forefathers did ( v. 30) That is what Pat Robertson says this is from – a curse of the 19th Century.

Heather, we need to grow out of our elementary ways of thinking and move into the real world and stop talking about ‘deals with the Devil’ and the ‘end of the world’. We need to talk of tectonic plates and systemic poverty

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