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.