Reading the Bible through a progressive lens is so much fun! I recorded a video about what we have been learning by reading through the Gospel of Mark.
Join us this Wednesday at 7pm for a lively (and irreverent) time of reading the gospel.
In a recent podcast of the Peacing It All Together Book Discussion Group, a question was asked about moving on from a the concept of the supernatural to a more integrated or indigenous perspective.
From minute 7 to 14 there is a nice discussion about different ways of moving on from this poorly manufactured thought construct.
I come from an evangelical-charismatic perspective in my past where the supernatural was just assumed. It was almost like a second language that not fluent but fairly versed in. It has taken my 12 years of incremental work to move out of that language and worldview in order to make room for a more wholistic and (possibly indigenous) perspective.
Here is the steps that I took to (re)orient myself.
1) Jesus did not believe in the supernatural. There is no Jewish concept like ‘spiritual’. It just wasn’t a category for them like it is for us . That division starts for Christianity in the Greco-Roman world (think of Plato’s philosophy) but comes to its height in the European Enlightenment. It is helpful to simply realize that the Bible does not have this word.
2) It has not born good fruit for the past 500 years. This dualism between natural & supernatural have had devastating consequences in the colonial, then industrial, then technological eras. Jesus said that you will know a tree by its fruit and this is bad fruit. Many of the problems we face today are rooted in this kind of binary (either/or) thinking. The church has been complicit in some pretty horrific stuff – partly because it was participating in this natural/supernatural split.
3) See the living world as a revelation of God. It is a valid loci for theological reflection. I am not separate from creation but very much a part of it. I am a narrative mammal – complete with nipples and a belly-button. I both need creation and am called to care for creation because I am a part of creation – from dust I came and dust I shall return.
4) The church messed up by conceding the ‘natural’ to science because the more that science can explain the less we need God. God has gotten smaller and smaller over the past couple centuries. ‘He’ is less powerful than ever before and at this point all ‘He’ can do is give us goosebumps during worship, get us a good parking spot at the mall (?), and speak to our heart when we are feeling bad about ourselves. How it that ‘super’ natural?
We messed up in the western worldview when we conceded the rules of the game to science and said that we would take everything that science or reason can’t explain and call that ‘super’natural. Everything else is natural? That is why we must re-claim proclaim that …
5) God’s work is the most natural thing in the world. We have made God into an idol – a ‘being’ who is a lot like us but just different kind if not degree. This is the danger of personification (anthropomorphism) when it goes from being fluid (theo-poetics) and it hardens to become more concrete in doctrinal statements and foundationalism.
The problem is that there is no ‘there’ there. This view is god is both unsatisfying and ultimately impotent. God is not ‘a being’ like we are a being – god is divine being. When we reference God ‘speaking’ is not by pushing air over vocal chords. When we talk about the hand of god we are not being literal. It is a poetic way envisioning or imagining the way in which the divine presence influences and animates all of creation.
I have tried to move toward a more integrated worldview that is holistic and interdependent.
So want to invite you to begin to or continue to deconstruct this terrible thought construct that we have inherited by looking out the window to creation and saying out loud:
“There is no such thing as the supernatural. God’s work is the most natural thing in the world”.
Please don’t think that this is merely semantics or a rhetorical device. It is a completely different worldview – complete with different ontology, cosmology, and metaphysic. I am not being clever or tricky when I say this stuff. It really is a different way of believing and participating in the world.
So in summary:
Jesus didn’t believe in the supernatural (only the miraculous).
The natural/supernatural split has not born good fruit historically.
Creation is a living thing that God loves and that you are a part of.
The church messed up by conceding the ‘natural’ world and taking the leftovers.
We profess and confess that God’s work is the most natural thing in the world.
Please let me know your thoughts and your questions. I would love to be helpful in your migration to a more integrated and wholistic worldview. I hope that this model helps.
Somebody asked about miracles!
Miraculous is when the result is greater than you would expect from the ‘sum of its parts’. It is an event (in philosophy).
So we say ‘the miracle of child birth’ or ‘the miracle on the Hudson’ when Sully landed that plane.
I still believe in the miracle of healing. It is not predictable or formulaic or even reliable … it is always surprising. BUT it does happen. Medicine can be a part of it, diet is a part of it, rest is a part of it, and prayer can be a part of it.
I can believe in the miraculous without the addition of another super-natural ‘realm’ beyond this one. The super-natural split just comes with so much extra (and unnecessary) baggage.
Keep in mind that the Gospel of John calles them ‘signs & wonders’ … which is much healthier and more helpful.
A sign (in this way of thinking) is a symbol that participates in the reality that it points to. Miracles are signs of the inbreaking Kin-dom.
Communion can be like this for us! It is a symbol (the bread and cup) that participates in the reality that it points to – we all gather around the table as the body of christ – but the bread and cup are not supernatural.
Something a little different today: here is a reflection that I wrote and below is the video of me trying to present it on the live-stream Sunday morning (with limited success).
I would love to hear your thoughts.
There is a wonderful and often quoted passage in Galatians chpt 3 that I wanted to flesh out a little today.
26 So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
It is important to understand what Paul is saying here and what the possible implications are for us in the 21st century – since this verse has sometimes been used in a harmful way.
In the first century that Paul was writing in, there were 3 divisions of identity (if you will) and this passage addresses them all.
Political
Personal
Religious
Paul is saying that in Christ these divisions are ruptured or transcended. In the political realm, slave and free would have had very different lives. In the personal (gendered) realm, males and females would have completely different rights and obligations. Life would have looked very different. In the religious realm, Jews and Greeks were vastly different categories – especially under Roman religion regulations.
What Paul is saying is that in Christ those categories are complicated, called into question, and transgressed.
It is not that those categories ceased to be or ceased to be important. It is that they no longer were totalizing. They lost their power to be ultimately determinative. They did not completely define or confine you.
This is an amazing implication of the gospel – the good news of life in Christ. You were not the categories that you were born into and that society placed upon you. There was now something else about that transcended those external categories and transformed who you are in the world.
You might be able to say in our day: there is no republican or democrat, no gay and straight, no citizen and immigrant.
This is a very transgressive thing to say! It violates the very categories that we have set up for sorting out who is us and who is them.
Now here is the important part: those categories still exist. It is just that they don’t define us, limit us, contain us, and restrain us.
Transgressive issues can be very powerful. They call into question the entire structure of the inherited system and undermine (or subvert) the very way that we categorize society.
This is why I prefer to talk about transform instead of reform. It is not enough to us and we need to transcend these limitations in divisions. The danger is that we will come in times of great tension and social upheaval, redress when we should transgress.
Those are my words for the day:
Transform
Transcend
Transgress
I have been fascinated over the last several years to watch and listen to the heated debate around bathrooms and who gets to use which bathroom. As somebody who lives between two established communities having been raised Evangelical but now operating in Progressive circles, I have been astounded at the amount of attention and contention that issues of Trans people has received.
In the LGBTQAI+ formulation the T is only 1/8 of the signifier. It is notable that when looking at the millions of people who would identify by this series of signifiers that percentage wise trans people are a microscopic percentage. Not even one percent – a fraction of one percent. And yet, in the social imagination, their presence has drawn overwhelming amount of attention.
This is the power of the transgressive category. The presence of the ‘other’ calls into question the entire system, the whole configuration. It is one thing to be gay or straight, male or female– That’s contentious or confusing is the debate surrounding those to be –it is another thing to call the entire concept of genderization into question.
We live in very contentious times where any issue can you become instantly aggravated an divisive. I have been amazed at the outsized amount of attention that this issues who can use which bathroom has received in both my current liberal circles and in the evangelical circles that I get to visit. There is something very telling about the disproportionate amount of attention that this issue has drawn.
It is telling. And it is a good thing because it questions or interrogates the entire structure. And the structure needs to be examined!
I became aware of how big of a problem our gendered categories were when I moved to LA and I inadvertently picked up some new hand motions. Apparently they were a little too feminine for a large man to be using and people would point it out to me. When someone would say that they were not very manly, I would protest by saying, “no. I am a man who uses these hand motions–that makes them manly”.
We also categorize colors by gender. It is interesting to know that 100 years ago pink and blue were used in the exact opposite way for baby boys and girls as they are now. In fact both the yellow and purple were acceptable. It was not until the first color addition of the Sears Roebuck catalog in the early 1920s that our current pink and blue category was formalized.
I recently read a story that my friend posted on social media about being confronted by somebody because her male dog had a purple harness.
Listen, if hand motions and colors and dog harnesses can be gendered then the entire enterprise needs to be called into question.
Our gender categories are too overly determined and totalized.
So that brings us back to our text. It is not that there is no such thing as a male and female, Republican and Democrat, citizen and immigrant… it’s that there is a category which transcends, transforms, and transgresses our understanding inherited categories.
I might say to you today that in Christ your identity it’s so much bigger then any of those external signifiers that society places upon you. It doesn’t mean that we are no longer males or females, that we are not Black and white and Asian And Native American, that we are neither gay nor straight–we continue to be all of those things. It’s that they are not final or total in their capacities to define us and divide us.
There is something much bigger about Life in Christ (the gospel) that subverts, undermines, and interrogates the ways that the world has been divided up for us and changes the ways that we are called to participate in the world.
Several years ago I was part of a leadership development cohort of young people and on the final day before they sent us back to the places that we came from all over the globe the leader encourage us to stop working on our weaknesses.
It really caught my attention because up to that point I been under the impression that my primary job was to become a well-rounded person and leader into bring up my weakest areas so it would’ve matched everything else. He said “no, put almost all of your energy into you area of strength – the thing that makes you unique only work on your weakness to the degree that it would disqualify you from ministry or cripple your leadership take away your credibility”.
Don’t work on your weakness – put all your energy into your strength – only work on your weakness enough that it does not cripple you or disqualify you from leadership.
I’ve always thought that was an interesting idea and I logged it in the back of my head carrying around all of these years and once in a while I see something and I think this calls for that I was recently out of the news cycle in the political arena for several weeks due to illness and then work stuff and then caring for family and so I was out of the loop and coming back into it has been rough.
It has been really eye-opening and I’ve noticed that when people are cynical or critical that sometimes they have an internal message that the cynical suspicion is something negative to be resisted.
I want to consider today that it might actually be the perfect time to be cynical.
A couple of years ago my friend Tad DeLay wrote a book called “The Cynic and the Fool”and I was in conversation with him around that time. I’ve noticed that it is not healthy to define yourself by what you’re not! There’s no fruit in that. There’s nothing nourishing about defining yourself in contrast to somebody else or some other group
What I am saying is that because of how we participate in our society – especially in the media age (the Society of Spectacle is one of my favorite books) – that we are conditioned, trained, and well-practiced at being cynical. It helps us not be so vulnerable and susceptible to the stunts and lies that are constantly put in front of us.
Embrace the cynicism to the degree that it compels you toward action.
So that’s my encouragement for today that that maybe this isn’t something to be resisted and that maybe it’s entirely appropriate for our moment and that it’s not a negative thing.
Maybe a little cynicism isn’t the worst thing in the world – especially if Zizek is right and the light at the end of the tunnel is another oncoming train.
My plan is to pair the chapter in the book with a different book, school of thought, or historical movement. Some of these include The Argument Culture by Deborah Tannen, The Peaceable Kingdom by Stanley Hauerwas, and the Anabaptist tradition.
Here are the 7 conversations that I hope will come up in the next 3 months:
The church is supposed to be an alternative way of life – a prophetic and subversive witness to the world – that critiques the ways of the world and provides an alternative way of being in the world. She works best as a minority position within the larger culture and is not designed to be in charge or in control of culture.
Neither the Republican or Democratic party can fix the problem of society. The Democrat and Republican parties are two sides of the same flawed coin. They are not the solution to the problem – they are manifestations of the problem.
The church is not a middle way between these two camps (compromise) but it supposed to be a third way (alternative) to their ways. What we call ‘the church’ is so saturated with both Empire and consumerism that it is completely impotent to confront the ‘powers-that-be’ – which crucified the Prince of Peace (as a scapegoat) – and these powers continue to make life worse for most of humanity.
The American ‘church’ is in bed with the systems of this world that reinforce racism, sexism, poverty, and militarism – 3 of those 4 things Martin Luther King Jr. called the ‘triplets of evil’.
There is a way of living, which Jesus modeled for us and taught about, that leads out of the muck-and-mire we find ourselves in and opens up the hopes and potential of a different way of being in the world. That is the good news of the gospel (evangel).
The church has the potential (capacity) to be the most beautiful and profound vehicle (venue) for unleashing human flourishing and peace. She does this by resisting evil, acting in love, and advocating for those who are vulnerable or on the margins.
The kingdom (or kin-dom) of God is actually within reach but the church has compromised and been corrupted by being in alliance with Empire and the systems of this world. What we call ‘church’ is a shadow of what is supposed to be. Us vs. Them thinking is a symptom of that disease.
Here is a quick video (5 min) to introduce the topics:
Let me know your thoughts, questions, and concerns.
Yesterday I addressed the ‘danger’ of deconstructing faith: that you never get back what you gave up. You and the thing (text, concept, tradition) are never the same.
Deconstruction is neither destruction / demolition nor is it reconstruction, reformation, repair, or the recovering of some initial or earlier understanding.
Why is deconstruction so difficult? I have figured out how to introduce this topic in 60 seconds (like a postmodern elevator pitch)
The 20th century saw the height and culmination of something called ‘structuralism’ which examined the nature of things and their order. This was done in many fields, such as science, but in language/literature it starts like this:
Sounds are re/presented by symbols.
These symbols are letters in the alphabet.
Letters are put together to form words.
Words are put together to form sentences.
Sentences are put together to form paragraphs.
Paragraphs are put together to form chapters.
Chapters are put together to form books.
Books are put together to form libraries.
That is the structure of literature and a certain kind of knowledge.
Post-structuralism came along as said, “well yes … but no word completely contains the meaning of the actual thing is represents, and to be honest, it doesn’t even contain its own meaning. In fact, these symbols appear to be somewhat random and maybe even arbitrary.”
Deconstruction begins here.
Deconstruction then begins to ‘play’ with the text to see if there is any give in it. Is it pliable? Does it ever move or change? What is assumed about the text and by the text? Is the text aware of its assumptions? Do we know that author meant that? Is that the only the thing that the text can mean? Are there gaps, contradictions, blind spots, double meanings, or obstacles in the text? Has it grown rigid and brittle over time?
Deconstruction has fun with reading the text. It is often playful and whimsical, sometimes frisky and mischievous – sometimes it can be irreverent.
Most people who are open-minded are still ok up to this point. Where it becomes objectionable to many is when deconstruction inevitably takes on a posture or tone of criticism, sarcasm, accusation, transgression, or even mocking.
Deconstruction does not have a built in stop-gap or safety-valve. It has no logical end. It can feel like a free-fall or a bottomless pit. Deconstruction is intentionally disorienting and challenging.
This is all within the original area of literature and literary theory.
Now take that same impulse or permission and adapt it to spiritual or religious matters.
Take that above set of questions and begin to apply to:
Beliefs
Doctrines
Creeds
Traditions
Sacraments
Scriptures
Gatherings
Congregations
Denominations
Religions
You can see where people who are deeply invested in those arenas begin to bristle at the whimsical, critical, irreverent, subversive, or ironic movement of deconstruction.
This is the difficulty with deconstruction. It has no natural end. It can seem like an endless loop. It seems to get power (get drunk?) from its own activity. It is an omnivore that threatens to devour all it sees … and maybe even itself.
As my friend Jez Bayes pointed out, “deconstruction does seem to end up negative where it’s used … without careful limits or communal shared purpose.
That means that when people start deconstructing they aren’t able to stop, and it ends with unnecessary destruction of faith outside of any coherent community.”
For those of you who are new to my approach, I want to show my cards here:
The only thing I like less than the past is people who want to take us back there.
I felt like I needed to tell you that before I show you my feeble attempt at the deconstructive voice. This is a thing that I wrote several years ago but shows my entry into the discursive process.
Post-structuralist and deconstructive writers use lots of slashes, dashes, and parentheses.
__________
So why are so many Christian projects, programs, and theologies framed as past-oriented endeavors?
Perhaps this is why so many (re)ligious organizations and people (re)sort to (re)clamation projects in (re)action to the perceived problems that (re)sult from our denial or failure to (re)cognize that we have indeed entered into a new and different era – a place that we have never been before.
The impulse to (re)ach back into the imagined past and attempt to salvage some measure of order or to (re)orient ourselves to this new landscape in understandable. The danger, however, is (re)sounding as we endeavor to become (what the fantastic book title labels) ‘The Way We Never Were’.[2]
It is notable how many contemporary religious/spiritual projects employ a motive that begins with the prefix ‘Re’. Admittedly, there some important words in scripture that begin with ‘Re’. Words like redemption, reconciliation, and restoration are indispensable examples. Two other powerful words that would complete that constellation would be repentance and reparations.[3]
Unfortunately, these five ‘Re-’ words are not the ones that show up the most in Christian circles or are found the most in spiritual literature. While ‘revelation’ and ‘religion’ may be the most prominent offerings, they are not the only ones. Many religious projects are framed with words such as:
Revisit
Reclaim
Restore
Return
Renew
Reform
Renovate
Reframe
Redefine
Remember
Recall
Re-imagine
Re-present
Reinforce
Revive
Reexamine
Redeem
React
Respond
Retreat
The above group of ‘Re-’ words may have a comforting and comfortable ring to them,
but they are insufficient for the challenges that we are up against. One of the major challenges of this past-oriented thinking is that it places the vital energy in the past – like a sort of big bang or a pool cue striking the cue ball and sending it crashing into the group – the initial energy is dissipated and we are slowing losing steam (and power) to atrophy.
I would argue that the nature of Christianity is incarnational – so the past is not the sole determining factor for our present or future expression. We have access to an untapped reservoir of power for the present. We are being compelled or called (lured) by the possibilities of the future. We can never re-turn to the past. The nature of time and reality do not allow us to revisit but only to remember.
Deconstruction is loving the past enough to not simply conserve or preserve it.
__________
The danger of deconstruction is that you never get back what you gave up.
The difficulty of deconstruction is that there is no end to the process.
[1] I have a whole big program that includes a 125-page masters thesis on contextual theology and a 11 year web archive dedicated to innovating and updating for today.
[2] Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (BasicBooks, 1992).
[3]More could be said on exploring those five Biblical concepts for the 21st century. The primary problem with the past may be that it is too easy to romanticize some notion or concept in isolation without addressing the larger structures of injustice and exclusion that it was embedded in or birthed out of.
I am often asked about ‘casting out demons’ in the past and how I reconcile that now. This is one of my favorite things to talk about, but it does require a little set-up so I will be a concise as possible and then get to it.
I am convinced that the church has made a major mistake in adopting the language of the super-natural. Since the epic flub with Galileo and Copernicus the church has allowed science to have the natural (things that make sense) and has been relegated to watching over things that increasingly don’t make sense and retreating into words like ‘mystery’ and ‘faith’ as cover for that which is just not reasonable.
I do not believe in a realm (the natural) that is without God. As a Christian, I believe that God’s work is the most natural thing in the world. I am unwilling to concede the natural-spiritual split and then leave less and less room for God as science is able to explain more and more. The church is foolish to accept the dualism (natural-supernatural) and then superintend only the spiritual part.
I would prefer to reclaim the language of the ‘miraculous’ (surprising to us or unexpected) and ‘signs’ from the Gospel of John (that point to a greater reality).
SO inside that expectation, what do you do with demons and the devil?
I no longer believe that demons are ancient fallen creatures that work for some cosmic bad army in unseen realms and attached themselves to people’s souls… or something.
I believe that demons are the ‘shadows’ that result from injury, brokeness, and scar tissue in a fractured psyche (or spirit or soul). Those ‘dark’ elements or places can manifest in the exact ways that we used to describe ‘spiritual oppression’.
The Devil is a poetic-literary device for when corporate evil is so big and bad that we outsource it (personify it) to an anthropomorphic bad guy envisioned as some overlord type.
[now, I have done this enough to know that two pushbacks are coming, so let me just say: A) Don’t quote Job. The ‘hasatan’ or the satan is not the New Testament ‘Devil’. Plus you have to read Job as the ancient play that it was (it is more like a manuscript than a newspaper report). B) The temptation of Jesus plays an important role in the gospels. stick with me, it will make a lot more sense if you don’t read the devil as ‘an ancient fallen being now terrorizing the earth’. The temptation of Christ was about identity. Not if he was Messiah, but what kind he would be. ]
When we kick demons out of people (through deliverance, exorcism, or guided prayer) we use something called “Open Doors & Broken Windows”. We invite God’s Spirit to walk them through their ‘house’ – every area of their life – and look for places that the ‘enemy’ could have gained access. Doors are opened from the inside (you have the lock & key to your own heart). Windows are broken from the outside. That is our imagery.
Open Doors are decisions that you make (sin, weakness, participation, etc.) that leave you vulnerable and susceptible.
Broken Windows are injuries from others (abuse, neglect, violence, etc.).
Sometimes we do this topically (verbally go from room to room) sometimes we do it chronologically (starting from when you were young). Once we have find something, we take back the authority that has been given away (renounce sin) or we invite the Spirit into that place of injury to repair what has been broken and fractured.
Within Deliverance circles that are two primary schools: Authority (or power) and Truth. I am a Truth guy. I simply speak truth into that place of hurt or brokeness. The words of Christ are very powerful for healing and release. Within the Authority school there are two groups: a group who talks to (interviews) the demons; one that doesn’t but simply ‘takes authority’ over them. The theory is that you have to figure out how they got in in order to take away that root of their power. I never liked that, demons lie – they work for ‘the Liar and Father of Lies’. I even thought that back then …
How do I process this now? I still do deliverances but much prefer ‘guided prayer times’ without the deliverance element. The only time I will do it is if the person is convinced that there is a demon present. If this person grew up in an environment where this was taught, or has bought into a place where this is the religious teaching – I never introduce the idea, but if that is what they are being tormented by, then I help them out and meet them where they are at.
I believe that demons are the ‘shadows’ that result from injury, brokeness, and scar tissue in a fractured psyche (or spirit or soul). Those ‘dark’ elements or places can manifest in the exact ways that we used to describe ‘spiritual oppression’.
This can affect every thing from internal dialogue, to relationship, to social behavior. Gone far enough, it can even look like possession. Two important things:
As Christians, we believe in the presence of God’s Holy Spirit in the world.
The deliverance style prayer works just as well on shadows in fractured souls.
When someone walks into my office and they are convinced that they are being a tormented by a demon, I’m not sure that is the best time to explain to them how the ancients viewed the 3-tiered universe and the metaphysics behind it that allowed for demons. It is a time to care for that person and just translate for them.* What they have been taught to call a demon is a personification with anthropomorphic characteristics. When we have injuries, there can emerge shadows from the fractures and scar tissue. Pastors do all sorts of counseling and this can be a way of caring for a hurting person who is really struggling inside.
I can still do 80% of what I used to do and operate in integrity. I can:
invite the Holy Spirit’s presence
walk with the person through their life
speak the words of Christ into that place of hurt
help them renounce the origin, impact and collateral damage
take authority over that situation and for themselves
confess trust in God and the power to live differently in the future
celebrate the freedom that is in Christ and in Christ’s work
I would love to hear your thoughts, concerns, comments and questions. This has been long journey for me and though I no longer believe in ‘the boogie man’, I understand that this language of demons is powerful in some traditions so I work with people where they are at – I don’t need to first convince them of my perspective.
* I have at times said to the person “What if I told you that there is no such thing as a demon and that what you are experiencing is something else?” Just to test the waters. About 50% of the time the person is open and was simply told by someone else (usually the person who referred them to me) that it was a demon – which terrified them. Some times they insist, so I just go with it.
Bo Sanders: Public Theology 