Provocation on Revisionists, Traditionalists, and Jesus

Revisionists often proclaim Jesus as a radical prophet of the justice of God who overturns Empire, while denying or ignoring Jesus as the Incarnation of God in solidarity with humanity. 

Traditionalists often proclaim Jesus as the Incarnation of God in solidarity with humanity, while denying or ignoring Jesus as a radical prophet of the justice of God who overturns Empire. 

I think the outline of a solution is obvious: Both general trajectories are right in what they affirm and wrong in what they deny. 

Jesus is a radical prophet of the justice of God who overturns Empire BECAUSE Jesus is the Incarnation of God in solidarity with humanity.

A Provocation on Mencken and Saving Humanity

Every so often a cautionary quote about philanthropy makes its rounds, warning us against those who claim to have the best interests of others in mind:

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it." (H.L. Mencken)

Is Love stronger than hate?

The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with loving devotion." (Jeremiah 31.3)

Jesus said: "When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself." (John 12.32)

Some have wondered what will win in the end: God's Love or human sin and hatred. Hate from a finite being is by definition, finite hate. Love from an infinite Being is by definition, infinite Love. The quantitative and qualitative difference between finite and infinite is by definition, infinite. Therefore God’s Love is infinitely more powerful and persuasive than even the greatest amount of finite hate, and that infinite Love will not give up or let down until it has, after ages of ages, transformed all finite hate into infinite Love. 

Arguing for the sake of God

Recently I saw someone post the meme “If only we fought as hard to understand as we do to disagree”. It is a beautiful sentiment. But I’m not sure I fully agree. 

Rabbinic students in Yeshiva are taught to “argue for the sake of God” or even “argue for the glory of God”. Argument— even vociferous argument— is often a means to deeper understanding, as long as it is combined with humility. It is often only by energetically dissecting and deconstructing inadequate ideas that we arrive at better ideas. 

A key Rabbinic text for this comes from Pirke Avot (The Ethics of the Fathers) 5.20: “Any controversy waged in the service of God shall in the end be of lasting worth, but any that is not shall in the end lead to no permanent result.” Indeed. Debate on behalf of that which is intrinsically Good and True and Beautiful will inevitably lead us into communion with God who is Goodness and Truth and Beauty, provided that we act and argue in ways that are good and true and beautiful. 

How do we do this, in the midst of a heated argument, without slipping into evil and deception and ugliness? The difference, it seems to me, is that at Yeshiva the day’s arguments always end in prayer, as every disputant stops to acknowledge their smallness before, and constant dependence on, God. Perhaps if this was where all of our arguments ended, we would have better arguments. 

A Provocation on Individualism

Western individualism, in which the self is essentially divorced from communal interconnections and social responsibility, is nothing more than an advertising ploy: By getting you to focus on your rights, your needs, your pains, your pleasures, your freedoms, your entitlements, your grievances, your opportunities, your gratification, the Market turns you into a cipher, a vacuum, a perfect Void which seeks to ever consume and yet never be filled, so that you become another cog in the Engine that produces endless profit and power for Mammon. The solution, like most solutions which flow from Christ, is paradoxical, because Christ himself is the paradox of full humanity and full divinity united in one person. And this paradoxical solution is solitude and solidarity. On one hand, to recover our true self in Christ, we must retreat from the incessant Engine of consumption into the stillness and silence of solitude. By being able to be alone with Christ we will still the violently aggressive noise of the Market marketing to our hunger for incessant gratification. On the other hand, to recover our true self in Christ, we must also join in solidarity with others in the joys and pains of life together, in the service of their needs and hopes, in the healing of their wounds and sufferings. And through this self-giving dance of solitude and solidarity, we will learn to become fully human and fully alive with the life of God, as incarnations of the Incarnation, uniting humanity and divinity in our self as we find our self in Christ. 

A Provocation on the Constant of Change

The common sense insight that “the only constant is change” may have more going for it philosophically than we give to most platitudes. If change is constant, absolute, and unchanging, then let us take it as such. There has to be an unchanging Reality which is the engine driving all change which itself does not change. Because if change were to change, it would have to change into “not change”, into static unmoving immutability. Which would be to say it would change into nothing: Non-Being. But if beings exist and change, they must be upheld by a Dynamic Being, a Transcendent Life, which keeps all other things in motion around it and alive within it. This eternal constant of Change must therefore give Being to beings that they may exist and have life. This diffusing self giving for the Good of others is what we call Love. The Dynamic of Change is the Love that moves the Stars. Call it Love. Call it Life. Call it the Source. Call it Reality. Call it Change. Call it the Self. Call it God. But whatever you call It, call on it to make Its Self known to you in the depths of your self. 

Where there's smoke...

I often feel like we are in a culture where most people have been systematically desensitized to smelling smoke or seeing fire. And we are in the precarious position of either (a) screaming “Hey! Your house is on fire! Escape now!” Which almost certainly will get ignored as the ravings of insane people. Or (b) being put in the absurd position of saying “Perhaps you might consider that your house *could* be on fire. I mean, I’m no expert on house fires of course. But here are ten common warning signs of being in a house on fire. Oh? You don’t like those because they come from an anti-fire fake news source? Ok. I understand. Here’s a news source that you like which gives five indicators of house fire. Perhaps you might think about it. And, um, if it’s not too much trouble, I dunno, kinda think about leaving your house. Just for a little while. Nothing too drastic of course.” (cf. Buddha’s parable of the children in the burning house)

The Temptation of being too clever

The persistent temptation of intellectual pursuit is that we become satisfied with being clever instead of living life better. The reason we have been gifted with reason and knowledge is that we may learn to better live and love and experience the abundance of the world we inhabit. Through us the universe has become aware of itself, as we consciously harness the powers of creation to strive ever onward into countless forms of Truth and Goodness and Beauty. Through us God experiences every possible form of life, and gives Godself in love to every particular situation and person, suffering in love with all of our pains, and rejoicing in love with all of our joys. For Christians this is embodied in the One who embodied Divine Logic and Reason in the form of a human servant, that we all might be joined to the Divine Life of God. It is a tragic loss to view the mind as an end in itself, and knowledge as a kind of trophy that sets us apart from others as a source of pride. This disconnects us from the very reason we are gifted with Reason in the first place: For connection, for relationship, for Love.

Two Visions of Education

(Click on the chart for a better view of what I am talking about)

Just a quick meditation on what Education is, and why we educate people. What is the purpose of education? Is it transformation or information?

On Dividing and Conquering

A fundamental means of controlling any population is “divide and conquer”. Identify those who are oppressed, abused, and excluded, and then get them to hate one another instead of joining together to overcome those who are oppressing, abusing, and excluding them. Teach them to exclude and diminish other powerless people on the basis of race, culture, religion, origin, citizenship, gender, and sexuality. Then all the powerless will be so busy pointing fingers at each other, they will forget all about those who control the levers of power and shape the system that keeps them in bondage. Give them a scapegoat to hate and they will forget all about those who supplied the scapegoat in the first place. “Us versus them” is the first and foremost way that the powerful keep the powerless under control. Because if the powerless realized their shared cause and common struggle together, no force on Earth could stop them from joining in solidarity to create a more just and compassionate society. United we stand, divided we fall.

A Provocation on the Golden Rule

How a person treats their opponents is how they will treat their friends. 

How a nation treats its enemies is how it will treat its citizens. 

People will do to us as we have done to others. 

Therefore, it is not only in the interest of Divine Love, but also in the interest of self preservation, to do to others as we would want them to do to us. 

A Provocation on Western versus Eastern Theology

In the Western Churches (which include Roman Catholicism as well as all Protestant varieties) we love to debate Soteriology: What it means to be saved, how we are saved, and what are the roles of Divine grace, human free will, faith, and good works in saving us. Throughout History we see Augustinians versus Pelagians, Catholics versus Protestants, Calvinists versus Arminians (as well as Calvinists versus Calvinists versus everyone else). And a thousand variations of similar debates that center around ideas such as whether God’s decrees are Supralapsarian or Infralapsarian or Sublapsarian, or whether prevenient grace entails or merely enables salvation, or the extent and intent of the Atonement. 

A Provocation about Postmodern Thought

Theologian Ted Peters makes a distinction between two trends in postmodernism in his book “God: The World’s Future”. The first trend is toward holistic postmodernism, in which we recognize the immense diversity present in the natural and social worlds we inhabit, and we seek to find an organic unity within which they all inhere, which celebrates all our unique and distinct contributions to the whole, without distorting, denying, or doing violence to any of those distinctions. The second trend is toward deconstructive postmodernism, which disbelieves all metanarratives, distrusts all over-arching structures, and in general denies all absolute and objective claims about Reality. However...

The Rise of Homo Consumerensis

I’ve been pondering a feeling I have but cannot quite put into precise words. But it seems like our culture has less capacity, and desire, to think about and discuss ideas. Everything has turned into a politics of the putdown, and diatribes of denigration. In the late 90's to early 00's, I remember having lively discussions online and in real life about theological and philosophical topics with regular folks: From predestination, to the nature of God, to acceptance of LGBT persons, to capital punishment, to what goes on in the Sacrament.

A Provocation on missing the point of the Prophets

It has been years since I have read through the Hebrew prophets continuously. On this read through it strikes me that the “standard” American interpretation of these texts is almost perfectly engineered to get people to miss the point of the prophets. (Engineered by whom or what? This is a great question!) This “standard” interpretation is to treat the prophets as some cryptic road map to a mythic future “end times” scenario. This places our attention in the future, rather than God’s action, and our responsibility, in the present. 

A Provocation on the Humanist God

At this stage in history I feel the need to qualify the statement “I believe in God” with what KIND of God I believe in. It is no longer enough to consider God as merely the singular Divine Source and Destiny of all worlds, the Ultimate Reality in which all beings inhere, and Supreme Value toward which all beings are drawn. Because that template of God is used to support radically different visions of God’s character. For many God is at worst hateful and meddling (as in the God of so many Brands of angry Fundamentalism), and at best apathetic and neglectful (as in so many rehashed versions of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism). 

Rather, I see God in and through Jesus Christ, and ONLY in and through Jesus Christ. And the God I see in Jesus is a thoroughly HUMANISTIC God, because God became thoroughly HUMAN in Jesus. Jesus reveals God’s chief concern is humans, or more precisely, persons made in God’s image (since these are the only fully sentient, metacognitive, communicative persons we find on this particular planet). God wants persons, each and every one of them, to not only survive, but thrive, and have the opportunity to grow into the fullness of the Divine Potential embodied in them. 

Full human flourishing for every human life: This is what God wants for us, and what God has shown us, in Jesus Christ. Full freedom. Full capacity. Full healing. Full knowledge. Full bellies. Full minds. Full hearts. Abundant life for all humanity. As Irenaeus said: "The Glory of God is humanity fully alive!" This is the goal of the Humanist God, because Jesus is God incarnate in a Human life. We may need to widen this thesis to include other persons, once we discover or create other kinds of persons, who are also made in God’s image (whether Aliens or Artificial Intelligences or Genetically engineered beings). But for the last 10,000 years, it seems we are having a hard enough time grasping how much God loves all of humanity. So for now, let us start with humanity, and focus our attention on Jesus Christ, the Humanist God. 

A Provocation on Polytheism

I used to think polytheism was ludicrous. But if I didn't know better, I would think that old gods with names like Mars and Mammon, Eros and Eris, Thanatos and Dionysios, are actually orchestrating events in our society. What is more, it seems like they are all perfectly willing to dress up as Jesus of Nazareth, so long as we worship and sacrifice to the values they embody.

A Provocation on socio-economics and mental health

In our society we systematically deny the social aspect of psychological health primarily because of our economic system. The engine that runs our society is profit. Profit is driven by consumption. Consumption is driven by demand. And demand is driven by human cravings. So we have to develop a system that maximizes existing cravings (through greed, anger, fear, hedonism, addiction) while also creating new cravings for new products (think smart phones, social media, virtual reality... none of which existed 15 years ago). A society of people that deeply engaged in insatiable craving will necessarily be sick sick sick (ask Jesus and Buddha: They agree on this!). So, if we raise social awareness, we would heal people of social sickness, which would drive down craving, driving down demand, driving down consumption, driving down profit. And so the best way to keep the machine running is to deny the socio-economic aspect of mental health problems altogether, and create a myth that everything is the result of individual sickness and individual responsibility (this also drives up demand for pharmaceuticals to medicate and placate, thus creating profits for those corporations). And that is precisely the society we live in. This myth is the very essence of libertarian political and economic thought. 

A provocation on Spiritual Liberation

“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Freedom” (2Corinthians 3.17). This is a manifesto of Liberation. The Spirit liberates us from bondage to death so that we may be free to actualize our full potential in life. Thus the hallmark of the Spirit’s presence is precisely Liberation to Love, that is freedom to give ourselves for the abundant life of all. We are set free from selfishness and self concern and self serving, so we can engage with the life of the Other. Cf. Jacques Ellul, The Subversion of Christianity. Page 13. 

A provocation on Technology

“Any sufficiently advanced technology must be regarded as magic [or miracle]” (Arthur C. Clarke). Technology is miracle explained and magic democratized. Technology— the capacity to act and effect change— is unconditionally good in the same way as Creation is unconditionally good (cf. Genesis 1). But, like Creation— which is the environment upon which and within which we act technologically— Technology can be used for good (the giving of life and fulfilling of potential) or abused for evil (the taking of life and destruction of potential).