Praying Psalm 87 for Jerusalem

With the ongoing unrest in Jerusalem between Israelis and Palestinians, I have struggled to find a prayer to pray for them. Both sides are wrong. Both sides are right. Both sides have performed atrocities. Both sides deserve a safe and prosperous place to live. But how to pray through this on any given day is extremely difficult.

So, over the last few years I have found myself praying Psalm 87. It is a beautiful vision of Jerusalem (i.e. Zion in this Psalm), in which the City is the epicenter of God's blessing upon all peoples. Zion is elected by God as the chosen City, that it may draw all peoples into those blessings and bring them a genuine relationship with the Living God. God's election is never an election to privilege, but an election to use one's privilege to share God's blessings with all.

Ascension and Graduation

Jesus said "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." When he had said this, as the disciples were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. [Acts 1.8-10]

May 10 is the Feast of the Ascension. As a chaplain, this is an incredibly appropriate feast for the end of the school year, since this was Jesus’ graduation. He passed the final exam of the crucifixion with the perfect score of the resurrection. He graduates summa cum laude and immediately climbs the ladder to the highest position in the universe, sitting at the right hand of the Father to direct the work of his Body, the Community of Disciples, and empower them with his Spirit. 

Remembering James Cone

A Poem upon reading James Cone 

It’s always “too soon” to talk about oppression and liberation

The conservative assumption that things should be as they were

During the "good old days" that were so bad for so many

Combines with the liberal assumption that we should not rock the boat

And instead allow change to occur by a million tiny increments

Until we postpone any real change indefinitely into the future of God

So that real change always recedes from before our eyes

Like a cloud

Like a sunset

Like the infinitely deferred hope of the Second Coming

And perhaps not “like”

Perhaps it “is”

It is the infinitely deferred hope of the Second Coming

Infinitely deferred 

By our complicity with death and destruction

By our complicity with oppression and apathy

By our complicity with the Cross and the Lynching Tree. 

How to read the Whole Bible

2022 Update: Based on the material found here, I have created an updated plan to read through the whole Bible. Click here to try this Weekly World Scripture Reader.

This year I have student graduating who I have known since he was a precocious 6th grader. He is a young man who has always been skeptical, hovering somewhere between faith and ridicule, atheism and theism, during his entire time at our school. This young man of considerable intellect and intense curiosity recently asked me:

"I am really determined to read the entire bible cover to cover during my summer vacation. However, there seem to be so many choices of translation and I don't know which is better for my purposes. I want a Bible that is closest to the original translation but also full of helpful footnotes explaining things. Do you have any suggestions regarding a good bible? Also, feel free to recommend any companion books to go with it."

And so, this essay was born:

A Meditation on the Lives of the Greats

To truly change the world
One must have bedrock faith
That you are right
(whether as individual or collective)
And everyone else is wrong
That you have insight
And others live an illusion
That you have the cure
For a sick and dying world

This certainty 
Is an irresistible temptation 
(If wrong)
Or an unbearable burden
(If right)
Or in reality
Some inseparable admixture
Of both

So that is why so many of us
(Myself included)
Are content to merely critique the world 
Instead of changing it
So we can register our dissatisfaction
And cast our blame
Without paying the Price
Of change. 

On the Boundaries and Tasks of Ideology and Philosophy

I'm fleshing out some ideas for teaching philosophy next year, and at the beginning of the class I take students through an "Ideological Toolbox", meant to introduce them to the basic tasks and subjects within philosophy. So, below are some notes from me "thinking out loud".

Ideology refers to the symbolic maps we use, as individuals and as a society, to navigate reality and lead us to the realization of our ultimate values. Note that an ideology can come in many forms. Ideology can appeal to a transcendent source, and thus be a form of “Theology”. Or ideology can claim to stay proscribed within empirical reality and present itself as a form of science or psychology or sociology or political philosophy or economics or cultural critique. 

Why I think #deletefacebook is a scam

I think #deletefacebook is a scam. A lot of the motivation and funding and systematized "outrage" for the delete facebook movement in the wake of Facebook's data “breaches” apparently comes from other social media companies who are trying to gain market share, ad traffic, and profit from Facebook users SO THEY CAN DO THE EXACT SAME THINGS WITH YOUR DATA that Facebook is doing. And of course traditional media companies are piling on because news stories about outrage gain market share and ad revenue for them too.

The Cosmic Christ

In the restless sleep of the flu, I was awakened with this running through my mind...

God, Gender, and Washington Episcopalians

Recently the Episcopal Diocese of Washington passed a resolution about gendered language and God, and the internet, predictably, went crazy.

This issue touches on a number of issues Biblically, Theologically, Ethically, and Aesthetically. None of these issues are particularly complex in and of themselves, but taken together it creates an issue where people absolutely lose their minds. Before commenting, let's read what the resolution actually says: They urge the Episcopal Church to "utilize expansive language for God from the rich sources of feminine, masculine, and non-binary imagery for God found in Scripture and tradition and, when possible, to avoid the use of gendered pronouns for God." That's it. That's all of the language of the resolution. There is no attempt to prohibit male images, titles, and pronouns for God, but to balance them with images, titles, and pronouns drawn from Scripture and Tradition which reflect other aspects of God as well. 

The Lombardi Trophy and American Civil Religion

This Sunday I was fascinated by the presentation of the Lombardi Trophy at the Super Bowl, and how it becomes the final sacrament at one of the High Holy Days of American Civil Religion. As a scholar of religion, it was a particularly vivid example of how American Values can be concretized into a set of rituals and even in a central sacramental object. As a Christian pastor, it also kinda horrified me as an act of explicit idol worship. As many have pointed out, sports have become a functional form of religion in our culture, even if they may lack an explicit religious hierarchy or creed.

How to make a paracord Prayer Rope

The above video is a brief description of how to make a (nearly) indestructible Prayer Rope out of nylon paracord. A Prayer Rope is a version of Prayer Beads or a Rosary, and is used for repetitive, meditative prayers. Since I made mine, lots of people have asked me how to make it in person, over email, and by text. So, I decided to share how to make it with everyone. If it helps you on your spiritual journey, feel free to use it.

CHART: What Happens after death? Three Christian Views

The following is a chart I developed for teaching the three basic hypotheses that Christians have held for what happens in the "intermediate state" between Earthly life and final resurrection. Please note that the distinctly Christian Hope is NOT that we live in Heaven forever after we die. The distinctively Christian Hope is that in the End we are raised to share in embodied eternal life with Jesus Christ, whose resurrection is the Pattern for our final destiny. As the Apostle John says: "Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure." (1John 3.2-3)

Religion and Incarnation, Exclusivism and Inclusivism

In this short essay, I would like to fill out a few aspects of what it means to have an inclusivist vision of religions in relation to Jesus Christ, rather than an exclusivist or pluralist vision of religions. If these terms are new to you, or you wonder how I mean these terms, I have a helpful chart here. As our starting point to dive in, I want to begin with one of the unique and central images of Christian Faith: The idea that Christians make up "The Body of Christ".

Monism and Dualism, Metaphysics and Ethics

Contrary to persistent misperceptions: 

Metaphysical dualism implies Ethical monism. 

Metaphysical monism implies Ethical dualism. 

A Theology of Jesus and Aliens

I recently got into a discussion with someone about the growing evidence that our planet has been visited by Extraterrestrial Beings for some time now. My friend speculated that perhaps God and Jesus and Muhammad and Buddha could have been aliens. He ended his statement with "one thing is certain, Earth isn't special enough to be the only planet that has life. Not even close."

I have written bits and pieces about this in other places, speculating about how aliens could be tied into Christian Theology and World Religions (if aliens exist at all). I have speculated about how alien life could tie into an overall framework to understand why God made the world, as well as how alien life might be part of the evidence for God's existence. But I have never written a full description of why I think aliens probably exist, and how we might understand their possible visitation to our planet. That is what I would like to do here.

Redemptive Hell and Universal Restoration in Christ

Hieronymus Bosch, Garden of Earthly Delights. A standard picture of hell and judgement for many.

I frequently write and speak about the hope of universal restoration through the work of Jesus Christ. I often teach about how what God did in Christ is for every person who ever lived, and that Christ will not give up until Christ has reached every person who has ever lived. And yet, I also teach about the reality of Divine Judgment on our sin of denying God's Love and destroying God's children in big and small ways. I believe that hell is real, and we experience the judgment of hell in the sufferings and addictions of this life, and if we persist in selfish sin, we will experience it in the next life as well.

An Eagle Scout Prayer

Today I was honored to pray at another Eagle Scout ceremony. In 18 years of full time Church ministry, I have had at least one Eagle Scout per year from my Church or School (and sometimes as many as a half dozen per year). It is a phenomenal program to form young persons as servant leaders who embody the character of Christ. If it helps you, here is an invocation I use for Eagle Scout ceremonies which includes the Scout Oath and Scout Law. Feel free to use or adapt it if you are asked to pray at a Scouting ceremony. 

A CHART: Two Ways of Interpreting Torah

Many times each year, both in the classroom and online, I get into discussions about how to interpret and apply Biblical laws, especially those that are found in the Hebrew Torah (the first five books of the "Old Testament": Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). I do not have the time or space here to get into a complete theology of how to interpret the Old Testament from a Christian point of view. I have written elsewhere that Scriptural difficulties are worked out when we see Scripture as a process of Developmental Revelation, which is on a trajectory that is fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. In this understanding, to use words spoken by Martin Luther King Jr.: The Moral Arc of History (and Scripture) is long, but it trends toward Justice. This view has been shaped by voices as diverse as CS Lewis (in terms of overall narrative development of History), Walter Brueggemann (in terms of looking at the Hebrew Bible through the lens of the Prophets), NT Wright (in terms of looking at the Old Testament from the perspective of the New Testament), Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (in his work on confronting violence in the Torah), and Roy Heller (my Hebrew Bible prof in Seminary). 

On Physics, Possibility, and Resurrection

Recently I was in a discussion about the Resurrection of Christ in which someone posted that "classical theism allows for the possibility of such contravention of the ordinary laws of physics". This raises the most commonly voiced objection I hear to the Resurrection, which was popularized by philosopher David Hume: The resurrection cannot occur because it is a miracle, and miracles are violations of natural laws, and since natural laws are universal, then we know a priori that miracles cannot violate them. For Hume, physical laws govern causality and what can, and cannot, happen to matter and energy within spacetime. This is further complicated by Hume's insistence that we can never "prove" causality, we can only note a correlation between two events. So for Hume, physical laws govern causality, while at the same time causality is a mental inference and not objectively part of the universe.

On subtle whoring and Kierkegaard

A few weeks ago, my wife and I were listening to an 80's station, when they played an awful song from the 80's that I had never heard before. Except, it was not "turn-the-station" awful, but rather "a-trainwreck-you-can't-not-look-at" awful. That song is the immortal "I've never been to me" by the singer Charlene.