2016-11-27

This Advent perhaps we don't have to be rage monsters after all



Nietzsche once wrote "Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster". It seems that in our culture all sides tend to make those we disagree with into enemies. Then we make our enemies into monsters. And then we become monsters while fighting them, filled with constant rage and indignation and anxiety and blame. And soon, if we do not stop it, we will all reap the consequences of the monsters we have created and become.

2016-11-25

A Meditation on Buddhist ideas of contingency and emptiness in relation to Western Trinitarianism




Today I was doing some reading on Indian philosophy, and in particular on the ideas of the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna who argued powerfully that the ultimate source of the empirical world is "emptiness" which cannot be fully identified with, nor fully distinct from, the chain of causality (or dependent origination) which upholds the empirical world. For Nagarjuna this emptiness cannot be identified with either existence or non-existence, because both of these states of (non)being are contingent on a whole host of other causes. And emptiness as such is ontologically distinct from the entire contingent world of dependent origination, and hence the ultimate emptiness which grounds the world cannot be said to exist or not exist in any meaningful sense. Thus it is erroneous to think of ultimate reality as a "being" that (a) exists, or (b) doesn't exist, or (c) exists and doesn't exist, or as (d) neither existing or not existing. In short, no categories apply meaningfully to describe the ultimate reality that grounds the world, and thus this reality is purely "empty".

2016-11-22

On the use of Nazi in public discourse




Just a quick thought: Calling people Nazis does not make them want to stop acting like Nazis. You know who else was called "Nazi" and yet kept acting like Nazis? Actual Nazis.

Calling someone a Nazi-- like calling someone a Libtard, or a Fascist, or any other derogatory name-- identifies that person or group of people as totally encapsulated in a certain negative identity. It no longer treats them as human. It no longer provides any room for them to repent and change. It demeans them and imprisons them in a shameful label, and tells them that "you are just THIS and can never be any other". And most people, when labeled thus, live into the label. At some level, consciously or unconsciously, they say "OK, if you are going to demean me with that label, I will turn it into a badge of honor, and I will be more [insert label] than you can possibly imagine".

2016-11-21

On Two Kinds of Bible Readers



Two kinds of Bible readers are invincibly ignorant, and have no idea how to understand what the Bible says, because they cannot see past their own ideology. The first kind are those religious fundamentalists who cherry pick the Bible's commands to justify their own ideology. The second kind are secular fundamentalists who cherry pick the Bible's absurdities to justify their own desire for the Bible to say nothing at all. Only those who sit with the Bible, listening as one might listen to a grandparent telling old family stories of joy and woe, are able to discern the deep currents of God at work in the messiness of history and culture. Religious fundamentalists present nice, clean, sanitary, pre-packaged answers to all of life's questions, while secular fundamentalists present self-satisfied, shallow, privileged satire of cultures and texts they will never comprehend. Beyond the mirror image fundamentalisms of left and right is a deeper way of discerning a trajectory in Scripture which leads to life, love, and justice. What Martin Luther King said about history is true of Scripture as well: The moral arc of history is long (and messy), but it trends toward justice.

Beyond Sit Down and Shut Up: On the need for debate and explanation in civil discourse





It seems lately that a bunch of folks from all sides want other folks to accept certain ideas and events as "facts" without explanation or debate. Trump folks want everyone to shut up and accept the election without question or protest. Progressives want folks to accept diversity without question as a social fact, and delegitimize anyone who disagrees as either ignorant or prejudiced or both. Scientists want folks to accept evolution and global climate change as fact and ignore young earth creationists and climate change deniers. Inerrantists want folks to accept a certain read of the Bible as the way Reality works without being questioned by secularism or other religions.

2016-11-02

Hamstrings and Excellence, Law and Grace


For those who do not know me, I push myself hard in many areas of life. I generally like doing "hard things" that trigger the desire to perform within me. From preaching, to teaching, to writing long essays, to lifting heavy weights, I generally delight in doing things that many people find difficult or strenuous. And before I go on, let me make it clear that there are plenty of things I am bad at too. I hate administrative things, paying bills, balancing accounts, making beds in the morning, doing dishes, going to bed at a reasonable hour, waking up early, etc. So suffice it to say, I tend to perform in front of people, and get lazy behind the scenes. So, I've got a lot of growing to do.

But, one of my more effective hobbies is lifting weights. I'm good at it, for my age and build. I pick heavy things up. I put them down. Usually in the solitude of my garage with loud music playing. I don't injure myself often, but when I do, it is memorable. One of those occasions was last night.

2016-08-26

EpiPens, Economic Ethics, and the Health of the Body Politic


Recently Bizarro reposted the 2013 cartoon shown above in response to the 2016 kerfuffle over the price hikes in the EpiPen (access to which can be an actual life or death issue for people with severe allergies). In response, a good friend of mine who is a staunch defender of free market libertarianism sent me this National Review article and asked for my response.

So, I wrote the following response which gave me a chance discuss the moral value of economics. This is something I've been meaning to do for a while. I don't write or teach systematically about the intersection of theology and economics, so this gave me the opportunity to organize some preparatory thoughts from my perspective as a professional pastor, and a very amateur economist.

First, a note on Bizarro comic I posted. What I find interesting-- and why I posted it-- is because these Big Pharma stories are so endemic and systemic. They regularly occur. And even the comic itself was written in 2013. So whatever is going on, we keep coming back to it like Groundhog's day.

2016-05-20

Trinity and Humility


A Plea to All Theological Nerds (like myself) for Trinity Sunday:

I think much of the reason why we don't talk about the Trinity more is due to insider backbiting. Clerics and Scholars who think they have a handle on the Trinity have a habit of being snide, backbiting, and, well, bitchy, toward anyone who does not talk about the Trinity using their preferred formulae, metaphor, analogy, or lack of analogy. If you speak in the language of Eastern Orthodoxy, the Westerns gripe. If you speak in Western Augustinian terminology the Easterns gripe. If you use economic language, you get accused of denying the immanent Trinity. If you use immanent or essentialist language, you get accused of hellenizing and philosophizing the Biblical narrative.

If you use a folksy analogy, people from both sides will find a heresy that they think best fits your analogy, even if that is intentionally not what you tried to imply. And God forbid you should try and reframe the Trinity using any philosophical categories birthed in the Enlightenment or after. And if you describe the Trinity in a way that is long enough and nuanced enough to placate (most) of the Theo-haters, then the 98% of people who are non-specialists will (rightly) complain that your explanation is unnecessarily complex and confusing. And yet, if you don't talk about the Trinity and choose something that most people can relate to, you get called a heretic, Arian, or even worse, Joel Olsteen.

So, perhaps in our efforts to describe and explain the Trinity we should exercise the very thing that God is, the very thing that Christ embodied, namely: Love. While I absolutely believe that some descriptions of the Trinity are closer to The Truth than others, all are necessarily limited, incomplete, and flawed. And when we meet God face to face we will all find out how wrong we are, despite our best attempts to be accurate. So perhaps in humility and Love we could cut each other some theological slack, and gently suggest fuller understandings to those who seem to lack important aspects of Trinitarian understanding.

2015-11-21

FOX NEWS poisoning and CNN syndrome

[A Screengrab from FOX News in the year 2505]

Well, it is about a year away from the 2016 elections, and the political machine is in full swing. I am now "middle aged", and I can say that I weary of the absurdist political theater that the election cycle has become. I'm tired of the demonizing. I'm tired of the lack of solutions. I'm tired of the feeling that the entire thing is a distraction from the real issues at stake.

As an example: Recently, someone close to me sent me the following (somewhat) funny warning about a disease he calls "PIST AWF". As he describes it in his cut-and-pasted email:

2015-11-15

The Devil Inside?


Recently one of my ex-students contacted me about Satanism. This student has never been a big fan of "organized religion", but enjoys reading widely in philosophy and religion. They are now in college, and have found out about Anton Levey's Non-Theistic Satanism, and its philosophy of hedonism and self-fulfillment, and they wanted to know what I thought. So, here is what I shared with them:

2015-11-14

What good does it do to #prayforparis?


Tonight, as the media was broadcasting the terrible news of today's terror attacks in Paris, one of my students emailed me this question:

"As I come back home from a long day...  [I am] watching the news about the shootings and bombings in Paris. NPR, the TV, and all my social media are swarming with the news. Everywhere I am seeing #PrayforParis, and it makes me wonder, does it really matter if we pray for these things? Prayer alone will not mobilize action, and although it is a nice gesture, what is the purpose? Is this because it is more convenient or commonplace  for us to pray about something than to go and send money, or take reactive measures? Surely many more people will know about this news than the amount of people that will do something to actually help the situation."

And so I replied, summarizing some points I made in some previous essays on prayer here and here:

2015-09-27

A Primer on the End of the World


As I write this, there is an epic lunar eclipse and blood moon appearing over my house. Based on this, a prosperity preacher and prophecy guru at a local McMegachurch has predicted that the end of the ages has come upon us (conveniently after his Sunday collection was taken this morning!). With this auspicious sign, I thought it might be worthwhile to publish a primer on prophecy that I created in 2008 for a college group I was pastoring. While some of the material here is in rough shape and not as well explained as I might want, I hope to give the reader a life-giving alternative to understanding Biblical prophecy beyond the crazy end-times fads that constantly sweep across American Christianity.

2015-09-21

1Peter 5.2-3 and the motives of pastoral ministry


1Peter 5:2-3 Tend the flock of God that is in your charge, exercising the oversight, not under compulsion but willingly, as God would have you do it—not for sordid gain but eagerly. Do not lord it over those in your charge, but be examples to the flock. 

This short passage gives some really good advice to elders about how to pastor, and when to get out. If you unpack the three coupled concepts in these two verses, they offer a concise roadmap to the essential motives and methods of pastoral leadership. 
This is a bunch of incoherent babble to make us think hard about our incredible love affair with the God of the universe, our astounding infidelities against God, and God's incredible grace to heal and restore us through Christ. Everything on this site is copyright © 1996-2023 by Nathan L. Bostian so if you use it, please cite me. You can contact me at natebostian [at] gmail [dot] com