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Moving On From SuperNatural

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:

  1. Jesus didn’t believe in the supernatural (only the miraculous).
  2. The natural/supernatural split has not born good fruit historically.
  3. Creation is a living thing that God loves and that you are a part of.
  4. The church messed up by conceding the ‘natural’ world and taking the leftovers.
  5. 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.

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Z is for Zebra (understanding our opponents)

There is a great danger – especially in 2018 – of not understanding the thought and convictions of those you disagree with.

I was taught to refute evolution. From 5th grade Sunday School, through youth group to Bible college and into my early years of ministry. It was a cornerstone to evangelical apologetics.

I did not understand evolution well, I only learned how to combat it.

Zebras and their stripes were a popular example used to refute evolution (along with the human eye and other things). If the stripes are for camouflaging a herd of zebras from

predators … then the first striped offspring would have actually stood out from the heard and thus been an easy target.

This is an example of getting ahead of oneself without fully entering into the school of thought one is trying to combat.
We saw this same problem with Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron’s banana conversation [watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfucpGCm5hY].

You can’t simply start with where we are and extrapolate backwards from there.

You have to understand the primary concern:
• Science has a commitment to the process.
• Apologetics has a conviction of the conclusions.

We can’t pretend to honestly engage in asking questions if we begin with the assumption of the answers. That will always result in coming out with twisted conclusions.

Admittedly, scientists have been baffled over the zebra’s stripes for a long time. Recently some strong studies1 has have shown that the stripes are not about camouflaging herds from large predators but about flies. {Link here}

The region where zebras dwell has a breed of flies called tsetse that are legendary in their viciousness. Scientists have historically known that flies have an aversion to landing on striped surfaces. The zebra’s striped pattern acts then as a natural deterrent. This leads to greater health with less blood loss and therefore greater vitality which benefits reproduction – passing on those key genetics to offspring.

It turns out that zebras stripes are not about herds camouflaging from large predators but about individuals deterring small pests.

 

This means that the initial zebra ancestor to have that genetic variation would have benefited and thus that attribute would be more likely to be passed on to the next generation.

The apologetics argument I learned is flawed and would not refute the point it is intended to.

That is the first problem with not fully entering into an idea well enough to understand it – there has to be a commitment to the question not just a conviction about the conclusion.

The second problem is that much of the suspicion from creationists about evolutionary thought is based on the hard and cold version of survival of the fittest from a century ago. Many don’t know of newer strains of evolutionary thought that incorporate cooperation, mutuality, and emergence thought (see O is for Open & Relational).

Evolution has evolved in the past 30 years but many creation apologists prefer to takes pot-shots at the straw man caricature of Darwinian schools of the past. They have perfected taking swings at shadows of where the theory used to stand.

As we wrap up the ABC’s series, I wanted to acknowledge that not only has Christian belief evolved and adapted over the centuries but to encourage you to embrace these historic adjustments.

The gospel is itself incarnational and the universe is evolutionary. Those two things go together beautifully. The gospel is good news and is constantly in need to be contextualized to new times and new places. The scriptures are inherently translatable and come into every language and culture. This is one of the unique aspects of the christian religion (K is for Kenosis).

If evolution is true of the universe, Christians should have no need

to avoid or refute it. We can embrace evolutionary thought wholeheartedly.

Christians should, after all, be people who love truth.

If we want to contest certain aspects of the evolutionary theory, we should at least understand its claims thoroughly so that we can do that well.

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This is the final week of the ABC series for Sunday School. See preview here

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Where would energy go?

If same-sex marriage, evolution, end-times, and biblical inerrancy were settled issue – where would your energy go?

I have been thinking about this question for the past year as I returned to an evangelical context from 7 years away. For 7 years I attended a mainline (inter-religious) school and worked at a mainline (liberal) church.

I was struck upon my return to evangelicalism at the amount of energy that goes to LGBTQ discussions, defending creation and biblical authority, and end-times prophecy.

I kept thinking:

“imagine all the good that could be done if our energy didn’t go to this”.

So it has been eye-opening to be appointed to a church this summer where our energy doesn’t go to those issues – it turns out that my suspicion was right! An amazing amount of good does get done when your energy is not being sapped by those controversies.

Those controversies are exhausting and they occupy a disproportionate amount of mental and relational energy for evangelicals.

I sort of get why so many evangelical, charismatic, fundamentalist, and pentecostal  young people walk away from the church in their late teens and early 20’s. I get why so many people are now claiming to be ‘nones’ and ‘dones’. If you were raised conservative and then you settled those issues, your faith might seem spent.

I am in the midst of developing a thing for folks who are thinking about faith again as an adult but who want to begin again with those issues off the table. What would faith look like if those 4 variables were changed to givens? Where would your energy go?

I would love to hear from you:

Where would your energy go?
or if you have settled those issue, what has your energy gone to instead?

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3rd Way not Middle Way: bust the binary

Dualism offers us binary options that must be challenged. Evolution & Creation, Male & Female, Church & World, Jihad & McWorld, East & West, Think & Do etc.
This short video is in response to requests for alternatives to the either/or frame work that we have inherited.

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ABC Final Stretch

I was out of town this week and my friends Micky and Callid took care of S and T over at Homebrewed. You can read their articles linked below.A-Atonement

I wanted to take this opportunity to clarify a couple of things before we make the turn toward the final series of letters.

  • Respond to questions about the Book of Revelation
  • Flesh out my answer in Micky’s video about Salvation
  • Explain why I went with ‘theopoetics’ instead of other (more famous) T words

I will do this in reverse order. Callid (and a few FB friends) were questioning the selection of ‘theopoetics’ over words like trinity, theosis and theodicy. We covered trinitarian matters in P is for Perichoresis. While I love the Eastern notion of theosis (becoming like God), this series is really focused on concepts that we need to engage going forward in the 21st century.

I am a big fan of theosis and love those who embrace/reclaim this ancient notion. They are often paired with both mystic appreciation and a commitment to spiritual disciplines.

Theodicy (the problem of evil) is a big one. After the events of the 20th Century – specifically WWII – there can be no doubt about the centrality of evil and human nature to any theological consideration.

  • Where is god in all of this?
  • Why is our experience so different than the ancients?
  • Is it technology?
  • It is society?
  • Has the world changed?
  • Has God changed?
  • Has our understanding of God changed?
  • Is the world no longer enchanted?

I try to cover this when I talk about The World Come of Age (Bonhoeffer) or what others call The World Transformed (Hunt) or what Kaufman calls The Nuclear Age.

The simple fact is that the 20th Century – between technology and war – changed the world and radically altered what we call society. The reality of living in the 21st century are very different than they were in the 12th – let alone the 2nd. The questions of the 21st century are not answered by repeating inherited answers or by parroting ancient thought.

Farming, hygiene, reading, telephones, banks, travel (airplanes) …. there are thousands of examples of how different our existence is from those in previous centuries. Even the way was imagine our self (identity) and community (belonging) has changed.

So theodicy is a major issue, but I wanted to add something to our theological tool-belt that will help us going forward. Theopoetics is one of the most important ideas – and one of the most vibrant contemporary conversations – that we can engage in. It impacts everything from how we read Genesis and Revelation to how we approach the ancient creeds and how we conceptualize our god-thoughts and convey ourselves in god-talk. That was the thinking behind selecting theopoetics for T.

 

Salvation:  In her post, Micky shared her video. I provide the opening response and folks had several questions about it.

What we are talking about in salvation happens at 3 levels:

  1. The Life of the Ages. Jesus talked about it and unfortunately it gets translated into English as ‘eternal life’ which people think happens after death and then have to try and explains how it impacts life here. Some say it starts here and carries on and is intensified after you die. The whole thing is much clearer and more powerful if you call it ‘the life of the ages.’
  2. Reversal-Restoration-Reconcilation from Eden. The story of Eden shows us three fractures – from God, from each other and from the Earth. Salvation is a process of reconnection and participation in right relationship and the community of creation. Shalom is the word. 
  3. The Jewish notion of Tekkun Olam. This is the restoration of all things. NT Wright has a famous version of this bringing all things to right.

Salvation therefore impacts everyone and everything. It is not only about a tiny part of you (your soul) after it leaves your body. It is about your body and the earth that it comes from … and every other body on that earth.

 

Revelation: Folks liked my take on the book of Revelation … but then wanted to know what to do with it. Here are some suggestions:

  1. Enjoy it. Don’t be scared by it. Look into the 2nd century imagery and learn how apocalyptic works as a genre.
  2. Then take that knowledge and examine Jesus’ statements in the Gospels as well as the second half of Daniel.
  3. Mess with your friends who have been sold a Left Behind version of faith with historical perspective.
  4. Give our artists, poets, film-makers and dreamers permission to create political critiques of the 21st century like the author of Revelation did for first two.

Once you are relieved of the notion that Revelation is about the future, you can get down to the series task of examining, critiquing and challenging  the existing structures and systems of our day. Tripp and I chat about this stuff for the last 20 min of this week’s TNT.

I would love your thoughts about any or all of these subjects.

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Noah: Inhabiting A ReEnchanted World

In Aronovsky’s movie, Noah inhabits an enchanted world. kinopoisk.ru

From the first rain drop that mystically/magically replaces a plucked flower, we know that Noah is walking in a world that is enchanted is way we are not used to seeing.

The rules are a little different. Things work in slightly different ways from the world that we inhabit.

From the suspension of certain laws of physics to the wondrous seed of Eden and on to the healing blessing of a barren womb, the world is undoubtedly enchanted.

It is about that enchanted world that I want to propose a problem and a promise.

Problem

In a post-enlightenment world, we no longer have access to that level of enchantment – except in cinema. That is the importance of movies. Most of us no longer sit around the fire and hear the stories and mythic tales of the ancient generations.

Movies open up a world to us that seems closed in the ancient past. Cinema releases us from the confines of our limited imagination and allows us to imagine the world (in) a different way.

Movies spark our creativity and open us up to the possibility that the world can, and maybe should, be a different way. Movies like Avatar or Star Wars are not meant to be exegeted or examined for their exacting possibilities. That would be to miss the point.

Noah should be enjoyed in the same way. A movie like this should not be measured and weighed in an attempt to map its realistic representation. That would be to close down the possibilities. Aronofsky’s vision is to open up our imaginative creativity and invite a greater possibility.

Promise 

David Ray Griffin has ambitiously tackled this problem in his massive (and heady) tome Reenchantment Without Supernaturalism. You can read Bevery Clack’s excellent review here.

Clack explains:

the naturalism that underpins this model is

  • prehensive (highlighting the conscious or unconscious grasp of something)
  • panentheistic (god’s presence is in all)
  • panexperientialist (meaning that experience is not limited only to the sensory)

 

I don’t want to get bogged down in big words but that tri-framing opens up an important insight that Griffin lays out.

 First, as long as the scientific and religious communities regard each other with suspicion and hostility, it will be difficult for them to cooperate wholeheartedly to overcome the problems threatening civilization today, such as the global ecological crisis.

Second, religion that has not taken account of the truths revealed by science can be very dangerous.

Third, the development of a “scientific worldview” that does not incorporate the truths revealed by religious experience has led … to the view that the universe provides no normative values to guide the future course of civilization.

It is passages like the above that bring me back to the enchanted world of Noah. We love the idea of that world. It is partly why the epic-mythical-primal storytelling of those early accounts capture us at so many levels.

The unfortunate thing is that we have no access to that world anymore. This is where cinema comes in. Movies like Noah release us from the confines of our disenchanted and mundane existence and open up our imaginations to the possibilities of an enchanted world. The unfortunate reality is, however, that cinema is the only access most of have to a world like that.

We can’t go back. We could try but we would never make it. The better option is to live wholly into this world that we actually inhabit in a way that recognizes what is already (re)enchanted and allows us to participate with integrity in the world as it is.

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Noah: Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative

It has been a busy month for me but I have 4 things that I would love to hear your thoughts on in the next 24 hours.

I got a sneak peak of the new movie Noah and got to be a part of a roundtable with the director and screenwriter. You can listen to the HomeBrewed  review of the movie and interview here. 

Today I want to put up my two posts on Noah and see what y’all thought of it (if you got to see it this weekend).

______________________

The new Noah movie is a masterful work of biblical imagination and creativity. Noah

There are two aspects of the movie that audiences will notice up-front:

  1. one is related to epic-mythic-primal narrative
  2. the other addresses physics and logistics

The latter is significant for the former. Through a creative move to put the animals into hibernation, all of the questions about how you would feed that many animals, keep them from killing each other, and shoveling manure are instantly relieved. Those who are concerned about such logistical matter can then relax and settle into the narrative.

This is important because for many viewers, the story of Noah is either a) a children’s tale or b) a physics/apologetics problem.

What is missed in both the children’s story and the apologetics arguments is that we are dealing with an epic-mythic-primal narrative. It is not a newspaper account of the flood.

The danger of reducing epic-mythic-primal narrative down to newspaper reports is that too much is lost in the reductive move. The sad part is that often those who are the most series about the biblical account – and who may be upset about the creative flourishes in this movie – have often fallen victim to a debilitating loss of wonder and possibility.

 This is a ‘Failure of Imagination’.

When the Biblical Narrative is reduced down to a newspaper report,  the account lacks the appropriate level of animation.

Aronofsky illustrates how a story should inspire us. This is how we should entertain and engage a Biblical narrative – not by simplifying it down to a flannel board representation – but by breathing more life into it to see what emerges.

In the interview you will hear Aronofsky and Ari Handel say that they wanted to ‘humanize and dramatize’ this work of ‘primal story telling’. My mind went immediately to the work of Hans Frei – specifically The Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative. Frei was both concerned about and critical of the shifts that happened in recent centuries of biblical criticism. We had clearly moved out of the pre-modern (pre-critical) way of addressing a sacred text and into (via the enlightenment) a flood of critical thought and scholarly criticism.

Both the fundamentalist retreat to historical facts and the liberal abandonment of historical concerns are a failure to Frei. This is not about extracting universals or proving ‘facts.’ That is an exercise in missing the point.

Frie’s proposal related to fitting our world into the world of the Bible.  While I don’t subscribe to Frie’s system wholesale, I think that he would be very impressed by Aranofsky’s vision for the Noah story.

The director lets us inhabit the enchanted world of Noah and tries to find elements of our world within it. This is the beautiful opportunity provided for us through film. We breath creativity and imagination into the text and let it come alive.*

The next post will look at ReEnchanting the world the Noah inhabited. 

*It is important to note that Aronofsky and Handel took great pride in not contradicting a single detail in the biblical account. They admittedly added and embellished other aspects of the story.

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HomeGrown Christianity Begins Today

I am very excited to announce that 2014 has brought a new Eco-Theology series called “HomeBrewed Grown Christianity” all about-earth care and lovin’ God. It has grown into an 8 part series including a TNT follow-up to the initial run of interviews that begin today.HomegrownLogo_green_rev1

Episode 1: Leah Kostamo Planted: A Story of Creation, Calling, and Community   Kindle ($9.99) Paperback ($17.99)  Listen HERE

Episode 2: Matthew Sleeth Serve God Save The Planet , The Gospel According to the Earth & 24/6 about Sabbath. (Kindle $2.99)

Episode 3: Jennifer Butler is part of the new Christian Earthkeeping emphasis at George Fox Seminary. She is co-author of the upcoming book On Earth As In Heaven due out in November.

Episode 4: Randy Woodley with  Shalom and the Community of Creation: an Indigenous Vision  

Episode 5: John Cobb rang the alarm bell back in 1972 and has recently returned to the theme with Spiritual Bankruptcy: a prophetic call to action.

Episode 6: is a special surprise from new Elder Micky Jones and friend.

Episode 7: is specifically food related. How do get food on the table? What issues are related to feeding a family? 

Episode 8: at the the end of each episode, we ask our guest the same 5 questions. Tripp and I are dedicating a TNT to interacting with their answers to the those 5 questions. It will be in the same format that we did the Brueggemann-Fretheim Bible Bash.  

You may also want to pick up Colonialism, Han, and the Transformative Spirit by Grace Ji-Sun Kim. Her HBC interview with Callid was so good that I sort of wish it had been a part of this series!  I hope to return to Dr. Kim’s thoughts to close this initial run.

I attended part of planning meeting yesterday related to next year’s big Whitehead conference. The theme is “Seizing An Alternative: Toward An Ecological Civilization” based on a new essay by John Cobb.  I am greatly inspired about this HomeGrown series and am very aware of the intensity of the situation we are facing.

I hope that you will join us on this audiological journey and that you will chime in on the blogs as they roll out over the next 40 days. 

I want to thank Jesse Turri for the collection of logos for the series. If you have not heard Jesse’s work on the Unfolded podcast (with collaborator Matt Barlow)  you really need to check it out!

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I could not be less reductive: love, sex and faith

It has become quite clear over the past several years that the source of many arguments in my life and in our culture originate with a desire to reduce things down to their simplest components or lowest common denominator. Over the past decade I have really embraced a complexity model of things. I can illustrate it with two examples:

  •  The foundational thinking of Josh McDowell and Ravi Zacharias – the apologetics school I had been groomed in – began to ring hollow in a number of areas. Through that process, I came to see the advantage of conceptualizing reality as a web, anchored in several locations, rather than a building resting on one key foundation.

The foundationalist approach is scary in a shifting culture. What used to seem rock solid is in danger of falling like a house of cards if even one element is moved or compromised.

  •  I moved from a magical ex nihilo understanding of 6 day creation (it was not the theologically sophisticated one you might be familiar with) but could not buy the cold darwinian evolution that had been so demonized in my camps.  Turns out that both a fairly reductive. It wasn’t until I discovered emergence thought and the interplay of elements that I was able to move beyond the simple either-or option of creation vs. evolution.

 This move away from the reductive becomes important in three key conversations: love, sex, and faith. 

 Love – when I talk with other youth pastors or teens from other youth groups, I am frequently surprised with just how often a reductive approach is taken on the topic love. “Is love an action or an emotion?” Sometime a third option will be given: “or a decision”. 

Its not that the answer to the question is that consequential. That is easy enough to deal with. It is the thinking behind the question that is so dangerous! Of course love is an action, it comes with feelings and creates more feelings and we make decisions about that at every step along the way. Its easy enough to side step the either/or trap … what concerns me is why something as grand and essential complex as love has to be reduced down to a single element? What is the driving influence there?  It is bigger than just getting christian teens to not ‘give into their emotions’ or to show their love for God and the world by putting it into ‘action’ whether they feel like it or not.  There is something else behind that reductive move.

Sex – I am truly shocked by how often a reductive maneuver is employed by those who are a little more conservative than me when the topic of sex comes up. “While sex may be pleasurable – in the end, it is primarily about procreation” my debate partner will say. “In fact, God probably made it pleasurable so that we would want to do it more.”

I object to this live of reasoning strenuously!  Sex is about a whole myriad of things.

Our sexuality is about pleasure, connection, expression, intimacy, power, procreation and drive.  It certainly is not about just one thing.

Look, I know a heterosexual couple that can’t procreate. They have a very healthy sex life. I know another couple who did procreate (twice) and are finding that it is significantly impeding their sex life.

Sex in the 21st century is not just or even primarily about procreation. Even heterosexual couples who can procreate have sex that does not result in pregnancy.

 Faith – I have heard voices as disparate as Slavo Zizek and Martin Luther pull a reductive move when it comes to faith. Zizek has said on more than one occasion that he would like to see good deeds done for no other reason than that they the right thing to do – good on their own merit – and not because the one who does it gets anything out (like an altruistic sense of satisfaction) or believes that she will be rewarded for it in the next life. This reminds of Luther’s early wrestling with loving God (If I only love God for saving me then I have loved God for the wrong reason and it is not love worthy of God … etc.)

 I don’t get this at all!  It seems to me that whether you believe in a God (I do) or whether you subscribe to a social construction theory of morality (that as social mammals it benefits us to benefit others in a series of non-zero and reciprocal relationships) that both are best understood as essentially complex webs of meaning and relationship.

Let’s take the God road for a minute. If there is a God who wants me to do good things, then it stands to reason that I may be made in such a way that I both enjoy doing that good and benefit from it. That does not take away from the goodness itself, it is just distributed to several factors of befit. Why is it only truly a good deed if I get nothing – not even satisfaction – out of it. Even if I do something anonymously for which there can be no reciprocal or social benefit, I’m not allowed that simple satisfaction of knowing I did something good?  So the only truly good deed is done with emotional distance and internal steel?  That is bogus! It seems to me that even without God in the equation, that reductive move is limiting and harmful, even self-defeating.

A far better approach would be embrace the social locatedness of human existence and to recognize the collective pot of goodness to which we both benefit from and contribute to. A pot of common-wealth that is both relational and substantial that has made us who we are – we have been molded, shaped and groomed by it – and to which we participate that can benefit others as well as be rewarding for us.

Doing good is complex and it is essentially complicated. We don’t need to break that down and diagnose it as much as we need to embrace it and pour ourselves into it.

In the end, I see this impulse toward the reductive to be not only limiting to thought but detrimental to joy. I think we are missing out by not embracing the multifaceted and layered complexity of love, sex and faith.

-Bo Sanders 

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