Search

Bo Sanders: Public Theology

updating & innovating for today

Open Search
Tag

spirituality

Embracing Cynicism

It may be time to embrace cynicism.

Our cultural moment may be calling for it.

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.

3

Silent Saturday

This is one of my favorite days of the years. Partly for its awkwardness and partly for its symbolic possibilities.

I grew up evangelical so we never really knew what to do with the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday except to get ready to get ready for the Sunday festivities. Our Catholic neighbors seemed to take the same approach.

Then I was a pastor in Saratoga Springs, NY and we had church on Saturday night. This was wonderful because, like the disciples in the story, we went back to business-as–usual with the full knowledge that it was anything but.

As a Mainline pastor you kind of hold your breath because you have been busy since Ash Wednesday and Lent has worn you down (especially if you gave up something fun) but you still have the biggest service or services of the year to get ready for.

I love Silent Saturday because as much as we declare that we are ‘an Easter People’ and as fond of substitutionary atonement as our worship choruses are, we live primarily on Silent Saturday.

I have been reading a lot in the last couple of years about the spirituality of everyday life.  It is a fascinating subset of thought.

Everyday has the possibility of being transformative and building up an accumulation of goodness. Think of what you could do if you did something 365 times in a row!

Unfortunately in the modern world, it too often becomes the repetition of monotony, boredom, and routine. We have been lulled into the quiet resignation of drudgery and the malaise of channel surfing and binge watching.

The amazing possibilities of the everyday has been drowned out by the dull droning and endless offerings of clickbait and online sales.

This is where our faith should make the biggest difference! Unfortunately something vital has been conceded and many are suffering for it in an impotent existence and unfruitful faith.

My friend put it this way:

” I think we killed belief in the resurrection with historical critical scholarship. When we did that (last century), we killed belief in a God who does anything in general…and the effects are trickling down. We sucked the life out of our tradition. Thing is, the scholarship adds up. It is right. We just need to find something to believe in again if we want our churches to invigorate. It just can’t be the harmonized, naive reading of the gospels. So…we’ve got work to do.”

We have work to do.

It is one of the reasons that I am excited to head back into the pulpit this summer.  This year of being a seminary professor has been a fascinating and eye-opening experience. I am professing at an Evangelical seminary on the heals of pastoring at a Mainline church.  I’m not sure that anything could have illustrated the profound and pronounced differences more than this. Continue reading “Silent Saturday” →

0

Sex Isn’t Simple

I’m back on the blog and have several posts coming in the next 48 hours to get caught up

Sexuality and spirituality were on my mind ahead of last month’s Level Ground Film Festival.

I am very aware of the cultural conversation that continues to circle around marriage equality and issues related to legal matters. As a pastor and theologian, my concern is more specifically focused on people’s understanding and engagement of sexuality and spirituality. [1]

If someone were to ask me what was the single biggest thing that would make a difference in how we approach matters of sexuality and spirituality … I would have to say that the reductive impulse to simplify sexuality is the main problem.

Sex and sexuality are not simple. [2]

When we attempt to reduce sex and sexuality down to single thing or try to squeeze it into a simplified category we make a massive error.

Sex, sexuality and spirituality are all inherently complicated and complex. [3]

How one is embodied in one’s own skin, how one conceptualizes of that in-carnation, who one is attracted to, and how one participates in that attraction are at least 4 separate issues. It gets more complicated from there.

Sexuality and spirituality are two areas where complexity and diversity are actually a good thing!

It is a fallacy of misplaced concreteness when we attempt a reductive move to simplify sex/uality down to one thing – especially if that one thing is the biological.

The unfortunate thing is that those attempting the reductive move too often attempt to reduce the purpose of sex down to procreation.

Sex is about so much more than procreation. [4]

Sex is about intimacy, expression, sensation, exploration, and experience/experimentation.

Sometimes it results in pro-creation … but, more times than not, it doesn’t.

Sexuality has an aspect that is emotional.complexity

And one that is physical.

Then there is the aspect that is psychological.

There is one that is social.

And one that is spiritual.

Sexuality is personal … and private … and (to a certain degree) public.

Not to mention the part of it that is political.

Our sexuality involves all of who we are and em-bodies so much of our identity.

It even entails part of our capacity to engage the world around us and the social constructs that we are caught up in and by which we are acted upon daily. [5]

In one sense everything is sexual, even how much money we make … in the same sense that is it political. This is why our inherited enlightenment categories do not work anymore. The reductive impulse is failing us. Things need to be recognized as complicated and part of the emergent reality.

Sex/uality is never about one thing.

We do a great disservice to all that Creator god intended for us when we reduce sexuality down to pro-creation.

We ignore all that the evolutionary process has encoded us with (and for) when we boil our sexuality down to a single act with a single purpose.

The more I have studied and listened and considered the challenge for the church in the matter of sex and sexuality in the 21st century, the more I am convinced that it is the reductive move that hampers and limits our capacity to explore and engage the issue in a way that would lead to life and health.

I would want to confess 3 things:

  • Sexuality is a gift of God and is a good thing.
  • Any view of sex that begins with secrecy or shame should be viewed with suspicion and interrogated accordingly.
  • Reducing sex and sexuality down to a single aspect is both misguided and dangerous.

Sex/uality is complex combination and collaboration of elements including (but not limited to) the physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, social, private, personal, communal, and political.

One way that the church could bless the culture in the decades to come is to resist the temptation of the reductive explanation and to instead provide an understanding that is complex (even complicated). The more diverse the areas being engaged (and examined) the better!

We need sex/uality to be more – not less. The temptation to reduce and simplify is a false construct. The reality is that human identity is inherently complex – and that is a good thing.

Sex, sexuality and spirituality are but 3 aspects of that rich complexity.

We need more spiritually minded exploration and even theological examination of our humanity … not less.[5]

Sex and sexuality are not simple – any spirituality that attempts to make it so is both limited and, in the end, false.

I’m looking forward to tonight’s conversation and the followup when we release the podcast audio tomorrow.

________________

[1] We have wonderful snapshots of different historical takes on the role and purpose of sex in Biblical passages like Genesis, the Song of Solomon and some of the New Testament epistles.

[2] I am saying that things are complicated as a straight, middle-class, white, cis-gendered male in a Western culture. It doesn’t take much listening to figure out that if even one of those elements was different, let alone two, things becomes increasingly layered.

[3] In full disclosure, for those who prefer letters, I am a big fan of the Q in LGBTQ. Just FYI.

[4] As someone who has been married for 21 years and is childless, I have an admittedly different angle on that whole line of ‘reasoning’.

[5] I have found great help in those reflecting on the work of [link] Marcella Althaus-Reid’s ‘indecent theology’.

2

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑