tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1192704721002812782024-02-07T11:37:36.076-05:00Not SureFaith isn't sight, and so it can be hard to be sure. In this blog John Suk thinks aloud about the joys, difficulties, uncertainties and ironies of faith in Jesus.
Follow John Suk on Twitter @DrJohnSuk.John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.comBlogger224125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-85971014034471343802023-11-21T18:49:00.002-05:002023-11-21T18:49:35.037-05:00My Favorite Books for 2023: From Ancient Canaan to Galaxies Far Away<p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Here are ten of my favorite reads from 2023. They’ll take you from ancient Canaan to galaxy’s far away and long ago. Five of these books are fiction, and five are non-fiction. There is an emphasis on ancient religion in the latter—but ancient religion is fascinating, especially when many of us claim to still follow its “unchanging” truths in the present. Anyway, here’s my list.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Fiction<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjYWTPN5sDvsPbq2dEo4pJ3Enbk3-lS1wfMhNwgfVAPW_I_qf-6g_v7A5SAHWTrWbrrQrLi5UaUravb0x8owHhpJxmIE6KefSaR-QmN_Ofofdas01U1g8O4T4f2psoKzMScG5gXpr-Sr85bd2n74CkfofLP-ThLpUzCS4KqOiFpZhyphenhyphenpiyWGbk47u1W7RA/s400/60194162.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="264" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjYWTPN5sDvsPbq2dEo4pJ3Enbk3-lS1wfMhNwgfVAPW_I_qf-6g_v7A5SAHWTrWbrrQrLi5UaUravb0x8owHhpJxmIE6KefSaR-QmN_Ofofdas01U1g8O4T4f2psoKzMScG5gXpr-Sr85bd2n74CkfofLP-ThLpUzCS4KqOiFpZhyphenhyphenpiyWGbk47u1W7RA/s320/60194162.jpg" width="211" /></span></a><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><b><i>David Copperfield</i> </b>(Charles Dickens) and <i><b>Demon Copperhead</b></i> (Barbara Kingsolver). Irene and I listened to these two books on our winter drive from Kingston, Ontario to Florida and then California. Demon Copperhead was inspired by Dickens, so we listened to an abridged version of that first. And then Kingsolver’s book. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Both were fantastic. The narrative voice in <i>Demon Copperhead</i>, in particular, is unforgettable. Demon is a character you will fall in love with as he falls in and out of trouble—but never drowns.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i><b>The Promise</b></i> (Damon Gadget). I’ve read several books, both fiction and nonfiction, about South Africa this year, partly because I’m writing my own novel set there (be patient; it’s coming!). </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">This one, full of the rusty sepia tones of my own ethnic and religious upbringing, was remarkable for . . . well, the promise and one person’s insistence that it mattered. Without making it the core of the story, this novel also illuminates the multiple realities of contemporary South Africa.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i><b>Americanah</b></i> (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie). So, you think moving from Nigeria to the West would be just the thing? Why? What really matters in life? Do we have it here? Among the topics Adichie explores are race (especially what it is to discover you’re black), class, education, poverty, corruption, and family. The heroine, Ifemelu, is especially lovely—smart but vulnerable. She’s always in search of love and connection in ways that are universal to us all. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i><b>The Left Hand of Darkness</b></i> (Ursula Le Guin). Published over fifty years ago, this novel is still relevant to and insightful to for today’s sexual mores and politics. It’s especially pertinent when it comes to gender. But it transcends the narrow focus of on “issue,” to embrace many others, especially commitment and friendship. An interesting look at the cultural functions of shame and status as well. It’s a great adventure story as well, set in a far-away, icy world is beautifully described. I’m going to reread more of Le Guin’s books!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFb7vFYEUmAUpcuni8XtELKNIybGkZW3KXo65wWHchjOC1MjCj0fbl7ZRBnePGdR5mq9EkLStCKL1SVwxFlRO4DXCRzy0JIOyGM3dq9S9nPbrvOC2DZ_5Gbhh680Q080CFW02FbN38T7_0SMUNFGw1lUX9DVy4CT0Fa3x4hTaJg9nxLcMhAqa8XlhmRXA/s475/8855321.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="311" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFb7vFYEUmAUpcuni8XtELKNIybGkZW3KXo65wWHchjOC1MjCj0fbl7ZRBnePGdR5mq9EkLStCKL1SVwxFlRO4DXCRzy0JIOyGM3dq9S9nPbrvOC2DZ_5Gbhh680Q080CFW02FbN38T7_0SMUNFGw1lUX9DVy4CT0Fa3x4hTaJg9nxLcMhAqa8XlhmRXA/s320/8855321.jpg" width="210" /></span></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i><b>Leviathan Wakes</b></i> (James Corey, an alias for two other guys). Well, it isn’t great literature; it’s a space opera. Science-fiction is my go-to escape place—I read about a dozen of these a year. This is a really good one. It’s also the basis for the hit television series, “The Expanse.” Corey is especially good at English. It isn’t high art, but it’s coherent and sometimes evocative. The writing is fine, the pacing is about right, and (surprising for lots of sci-fi) the characters jump off the page. This is the first in a series of about a dozen books. I’ve read four this past month!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Non-Fiction<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i><b>Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire</b></i> (Caroline Elkins). I grew up with maps of the British Empire (“our” territory marked in pink) hanging in my classroom. The teacher described the Empire as a noble endeavor, a civilizing force, and a bulwark against pagan religions and “bad” European powers. In fact, the British Empire, like every Empire before or since, was a violent enterprise run for the profit of a very select few, always in the national interest and never in the interest of those ruled. Elkins manages to tell this story without becoming preachy. She has a light touch in spite of the massive amount of material that she covers. Her book is especially good on the Belfour Declaration and the many ways in which Britain played a major role in messing up the Middle East today. The book is worth reading for that reason alone.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i><b>The Origins of Judaism</b></i> (Yonatan Adler). Adler makes the case that some of the characteristic practices of Torah-Judaism should have left archeological and literary evidence in the record if they were practiced. So, for example, if ancient Jews didn’t eat pork, we shouldn’t find pork bones in ancient Jewish settlements. (He did). Besides pork remains, Adler examines ancient Judea’s synagogues, other dietary remains, art, tefillin and so on to determine their history in ancient Israel’s life. He concludes that there is very little evidence in the archeological record for anything like Judaism defined as awareness of and respect for the Torah until the second century BC, during the Hasmonean era. Loved it. Clarity, depth of scholarship, wide research--it's all here.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq04P9o-9DhRuri_bS8W6niAUpyg8WX74zKGXUB7ytxY2uU-LN_VQSzcgh66eLLR6KK7yuBPxLLZEwIa4YVXgCdNqBDaEQBtk2afLKpudDipdTcTjnAyUfzGizE92yNcLb0jdHf1AnwRELQKaUECZkbCMIYE3xWup9MkcQrSyDlbM9PN3RaKm7nkUZa04/s400/54083004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="264" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq04P9o-9DhRuri_bS8W6niAUpyg8WX74zKGXUB7ytxY2uU-LN_VQSzcgh66eLLR6KK7yuBPxLLZEwIa4YVXgCdNqBDaEQBtk2afLKpudDipdTcTjnAyUfzGizE92yNcLb0jdHf1AnwRELQKaUECZkbCMIYE3xWup9MkcQrSyDlbM9PN3RaKm7nkUZa04/s320/54083004.jpg" width="211" /></span></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i><b>Yahweh Before Israel</b></i> (Daniel Fleming) and <i><b>The Origin and Character of God</b></i> (Theodore Lewis). There is a lot of ferment in contemporary studies of the history of ancient Judah, Israel, and Canaan. A lot of it centers on the question, “What is the history of contemporary Judaism’s Yahweh?” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The emerging consensus is that he was a Canaanite god (maybe from the South, maybe from the foothills in the North-East) who was worshipped as one of many such gods. But sometime late in Judah’s monarchy, Yahweh was adopted as Judah’s “special” god (among the many others). And after the exile, this adoption slowly evolved into the monotheistic religions of today. Certainly not the Evangelical take! Companion books to Adler’s (see above). Compelling, probably right, and to the degree it is, the occasion to rethink modern monotheisms, including their plausibility, from the bottom up.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i><b>The Crucible of Faith: The Ancient Revolution that Made Our Modern Religious World</b></i> (Philip Jenkins). Jenkins is almost always gold. This examination of what we used to call the Inter-testamentary era is a fascinating look at the diverse movements, scriptures, and people who made both modern Judaism and Christianity, in all their current and past variants, what they are today. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">A bit dense at the beginning as he lays out his argument and main players, but it gets more and more interesting as the book winds to its end. I wish I had something like this to read while I was in seminary! We’ve come a long way since John Bright.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i><b>How God Becomes Real</b></i> (T.M. Luhrman). In the past, I've written articles for <i>Christian Century</i>, <i>The Banner</i>, and a <i>Christianity Today</i> blog that argued one cannot have a personal relationship with God or Jesus--at least not in the common grammatical sense of such words. We can't share a glass of wine, or phone or email God, and then expect a similar response. We can't go to a church and hear Jesus preach and then ask questions after. We can’t shake hands.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">People responded to these articles not by arguing the logic, but by describing their experiences of a personal relationships with the divine. In this book, Luhrmann explains the social practices, the settings, the psychology, the spiritual kindling and attunement that allows people to put their trust in these experiences regardless of whether or not there really is a god in that relationship. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Whether or not you think you can have a personal relationship with God or Jesus, describing that relationship from below, as Luhrman does, makes any pastor a wiser, more thoughtful spiritual leader.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Bonus Book (for Tweeners and Younger)<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i><b>Space Boy</b></i> (Stephen McCranie). I read this graphic novel aloud with my eight-year-old grandson. It's not anime, though influenced by it, I think. He loved it. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSfIs-bD4rzzNvZjd3lJIZE9smY55Y2i-h6sldFmSF8u6xNmxhZK6uUYl_rygQbcz6Vy8gK_foDIavTABvsUhGLSqX55kjy-Y4JAEp4hfM3k6McZDBBoRhMOFnNl9TpxLSasJqw1U3Ump8xqeDOE7yobZDOdjBdy351fwb8BjeFQb4JDTzeBnWJKjw00U/s400/36682049.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="279" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSfIs-bD4rzzNvZjd3lJIZE9smY55Y2i-h6sldFmSF8u6xNmxhZK6uUYl_rygQbcz6Vy8gK_foDIavTABvsUhGLSqX55kjy-Y4JAEp4hfM3k6McZDBBoRhMOFnNl9TpxLSasJqw1U3Ump8xqeDOE7yobZDOdjBdy351fwb8BjeFQb4JDTzeBnWJKjw00U/s320/36682049.jpg" width="223" /></span></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I appreciated how it wasn't about battles and death. No rough language. It’s a story about a girl's emotions and trials as she tries to fit into earth culture after moving to earth from a galaxy far away. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">She misses her old friends. She is lonely. She wants to fit in. She meets people, makes her way, becomes aware of how her preconceptions about earth culture were wrong. She shows empathy for people who, like her, don't seem to fit in. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The tension in the book is real, keeps you on the edge of your seat, but doesn't overwhelm. It's a great opportunity to talk with about issues of friendship, loneliness, beauty, adventure, and otherness. The drawings are well done--cartoonish with a realistic bent. If you want to talk with your Tween about stuff that matters, try this!</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-12930909764956545132023-08-09T19:25:00.004-04:002023-08-09T21:43:38.663-04:00Nostalgia, Star Wars, and Even a Bit of Church<p> </p><div class="WordSection1" style="page: WordSection1;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> Not long ago, while watching <i>Rise of Skywalker</i>, I wept. Not just a bit around the edges, but big tears rolled down my face. Even though I wasn’t sad, really. Or especially happy. Why?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> Was it the movie? Probably not. No one, even in a galaxy far away, is ever going to tell you that any of the nine <i>Star Wars</i> movies were high art. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> Mind you, <i>Rise of Skywalker </i>had three Oscar nominations: Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects. But besides not actually winning an Oscar, it certainly didn’t get any acting or drama nominations.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in;"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg63BjMR8pETVkFSrD_-EpG0xpvriIRRkAwSIeM9ZbG8RHHQB9agutHtY90P8ZyhqqU7gVb2pjVrgic1INpgGbGi4VRVIBD-ZNdDYV8nS_1ZnlTvRUy66UJOyZVs44kQUPUKKB-41YXyzoMRdtyT7W9xNS3h1I3mKHQYFTHiIdJqN0Ls6yuLJy1kCZ0gAU/s1000/91+vaNNyUxL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="725" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg63BjMR8pETVkFSrD_-EpG0xpvriIRRkAwSIeM9ZbG8RHHQB9agutHtY90P8ZyhqqU7gVb2pjVrgic1INpgGbGi4VRVIBD-ZNdDYV8nS_1ZnlTvRUy66UJOyZVs44kQUPUKKB-41YXyzoMRdtyT7W9xNS3h1I3mKHQYFTHiIdJqN0Ls6yuLJy1kCZ0gAU/w290-h400/91+vaNNyUxL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg" width="290" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rise of Skywalker Poster</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p></div><div class="WordSection2" style="page: WordSection2;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> You probably know <i>Rise of Skywalker</i>’s plot, more or less, even if you didn’t see the movie. It is very nearly the same plot the other eight <i>Star Wars</i> movies had. In brief, the Resistance—the good guys and gals—is once again down on its luck and hiding. The evil Emperor Palpatine is back with a new fleet of planet destroyers. The last and most beautiful Jedi knight, Rey, is the chosen one to save the universe. And after several light sabre duels and gun battles; after jumping from one moving space ship to another and sailing a tiny boat across a raging sea; after dying and rising from the dead; Rey Palpatine—for it turns out that Rey is actually the evil emperor’s granddaughter—Rey Palpatine defeats the evil emperor and decides to change her name to Rey Skywalker (the good). The universe is saved. The end.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in;"><br /></p></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> Was it silly? Yes. Was it cartoonish? Absolutely. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> And yet. I wept.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> Why the tears?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> Nostalgia. It just seized me, there, in front of my TV, and wouldn’t let me go. Nostalgia.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> I saw the first <i>Star Wars </i>movie in the summer of 1977. I was just 20 years old. I went with three other guys, a few days before we all hopped in a car and drove across Canada and back on ten dollars a day. I was so carefree back then. I wasn’t taking my studies seriously. I wasn’t thinking about the future or my dreams. I had a loving family that blessed my wanderlust. Life was good.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> But now, as I watched the last <i>Star Wars</i> movie and remembered the first long ago, I realized that of the four who went on that road trip, one of us—maybe two—has already died. I’ve lost track of them. So right off, sitting before my TV, I’m thinking both about how good life can be, and also about how brief and full of loss it can be. Most of you have been there.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> Nostalgia. It is lovely, but it hurts. Nostalgia is this sense of the past as something both lost and precious that informs our hopes for the future.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> Nostalgia is usually scorned because it is seen as a yearning for something that really never was and contempt for the present. Sort of like President Trump’s notion that America was great, once upon a time, in the long-ago past, but not now—or at least, not unless he is reelected. Nostalgia used to be scorned as a dreamy inability to face up to present reality by romantically inflating the past. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> And there is some truth to this concern with nostalgia, because on the whole, the past was not always as wonderful as we imagine it was. In fact, on the whole, the past was pretty rough.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> Not quite fifty years ago, mortgage rates were 18 percent and unemployment over 13 percent. The Vietnam war raged. Decade after decade, famines raged throughout the world. Not long ago most cancers could not be beaten, the cold war filled us with fear, labour strikes were regular occurrences, and acid rain had killed many of our lakes. Residential schools sundered children from parents and tribes. Looking a bit deeper into the past, infectious diseases were the number one killer, as many as twenty million people were starved to death by the Soviets in Ukraine, there was WWII, the Holocaust, slavery Jim Crow, and we lived, on average, twenty years less than we do now. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> We should not idealize a past that never was.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> And yet, as with many things, there are two sides to this story. In fact, there is also a more personal, more positive aspect to Nostalgia.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> Contemporary Psychologists explain. For them, nostalgia is not a malady, but a powerful stimulant to feel optimistic about the future. What is past, even if lost, can fuel hope for the future. Constantine Sedikides recounts how concentration camp survivors often told stories to each other about past meals and gatherings. “This is what we did,” one survivor said. “We used our memories [of past feasts] to temporarily alter our perception of the state we were in. It was not a solution, but the temporary change in perception allowed you to persevere just a bit longer. And that could be crucial.” Nostalgia need not lead us down a rabbit hole of regret and anger. Nostalgia can encourage perseverance.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: medium;"> Such nostalgia—let’s say, nostalgia around personal experiences, nostalgia at its best—may serve as an emotional anchor chain. Nostalgia may ground tomorrow’s challenging voyage in yesterday’s safe harbour, in good memories, in refuge and shelter, so that we can face what’s coming at us with hope for better times, and the energy to strive for them.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> Nostalgia, then—my tears at the <i>Star Wars</i> movie—need not be a sign of weakness, but a harbinger of tomorrow’s possibilities. Sure, nostalgia marks the loss of a past we can’t truly relive, but it may also serve as fuel for a life lived out of gratitude rather than bitterness; nostalgia is an invitation to more adventures rather than a decision to set down roots in the land of loss. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> As usual, I tend to look at these memorable moments through the lens of my experience as a minister. Churches of every stripe—liberal ones first, though now the evangelicals are following hard on our heels—are struggling with membership decline and all of its attendant troubles. In my last, liberal, congregation, I sometimes heard people describe a Sunday school that years ago had two hundred kids or a sanctuary packed with five hundred adults. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> That must have been nice. Those were the best of times and those kids and adults went on to help make Canada and the world what it is today. Amazing stuff, really. We should be thankful for those memories and those people.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> But what I’ve also heard, once or twice, is a longing for the past not balanced by hope for the future, as if this past is a reproach of the present, a criticism of what we have become. I have heard what I think of as a weaponized past that stands in judgement on what we could be for each other, a "make our churches great again," fighting words refrain.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> But I’m not for the weaponized past. At its best, nostalgia, as I said moments ago, is fuel for a life lived out of gratitude rather than bitterness. Memories that help us navigate the present in order to seize the future. Nostalgia is an invitation to adventure rather than inertia. Nostalgia is an invitation to carry on, hope for—work for—more and better and tomorrow.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> The churches I served were all safe, encouraging, holy places in times of trouble or uncertainty or change. And now, our liberal churches are hidden treasures just waiting to be found and brought into the light again, so that the world will remember that Jesus’ example, courage, and vision are not now merely dim reminiscences, but a roadmap for tomorrow.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"> For us, it’s very exciting. I could almost cry. Which I did. At the last Star Wars movie.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></p>John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-20466477142518099562023-03-22T08:50:00.001-04:002023-03-22T08:50:28.799-04:00Church and Empire: A Deadly Dance<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> I have a theory about one of the important root causes for the church’s amazing decline in the Europe and North America. It doesn’t explain everything, but it is probably a factor. But before I can get to my theory, I need to tell a difficult story that reaches from the far past to the present: the story of the British Empire.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> I've been reading "Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire." It is a sad, Pulitzer-Prize-winning book that lays bare what most of us suspect: the only way to acquire and maintain empire is through extreme violence. Think Babylon, the Aztecs, Rome, and so, on. Empires are created through superior armed conflict and once won, are kept in line through the use of violence by the occupiers.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifpWGxfDDHLqtJaNaGWDH_Cg0IvwCy-_JLGevkGFndN-_X1U19OkVa2qB3C-1f6DQ4CVrmfdffoN63Zb5UMpVqz9cksR5YvqU9Z63D7s4hjUAzGtANszG_dxF8t_5YXYmfNmBWyO6kpLOrd6AI2kRT68CkbRmrZfOpeIUFNLzn3JkoaE3NV29E7pO7/s450/9780307272423.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="308" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifpWGxfDDHLqtJaNaGWDH_Cg0IvwCy-_JLGevkGFndN-_X1U19OkVa2qB3C-1f6DQ4CVrmfdffoN63Zb5UMpVqz9cksR5YvqU9Z63D7s4hjUAzGtANszG_dxF8t_5YXYmfNmBWyO6kpLOrd6AI2kRT68CkbRmrZfOpeIUFNLzn3JkoaE3NV29E7pO7/s320/9780307272423.jpeg" width="219" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> The British Empire was no different, although it tried hard to bury this truth by promoting the myth of itself beneficent guide charged with "civilizing savages." Yet, the empire sucked its conquered lands dry of resources, and killed (through war or famine or other means) millions of people for the profit of rich Britons and their royals. Read the book for endless examples of this inhuman violence.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> Personally, I am most familiar with the British conquest of the independent Boer Republics at the turn of the last century in the so-called “Boer War,” which was actually fought on the backs and what should have been the territory of black Africans. I know of this war first hand since I had a relative (some generations removed!) who died fighting that war. During the Boer War, the British perfected their invention of concentration camps. After first burning their homes to the ground, the English piled Blacks, Boer women, and children onto wagons, brought them to camps, then intentionally starved them in unhygienic conditions. Tens of thousands of Boer women and children and black Africans died in those camps. The Nazis were impressed. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> This war, by the way, was also Canada’s first foreign war. And as brave and patriotic as Canadian soldiers were, it was nevertheless an absolutely unjust war fought solely for the economic gain of the British Empire and especially its ruling class. At root, you see, the Boers, had discovered gold and diamonds in their republics, right next door to British Territory. And so, the British and their allies took it. For profit and because they could.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> I remember, from my primary schooling in Canada, classroom walls festooned with world maps marked by British Empire pink. Such a pretty color to remind us that the empire was benevolent. The Empire was educating its “savage,” and “uncivilized,” and “barbarian,” subjects. They were to be brought up to white, British standards, for which they would one day, so the story went, give the British thanks. Ironically, the British never admitted to actually accomplishing this goal anywhere except in its three white colonies! <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> We Christians, one and all, drank the myth up. The missionary and explorer David Livingston's famous rallying cry, "Christianity, commerce, and civilization," in defense of empire is typical. Think proselytization, residential schools, and the many ways Western culture has been enforced as “the way.” And all the while the rich in Britain benefited most. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> And it continues. This past week, King Charles sent his personal chaplain to the First Nation reservation of Tyendinaga, not far from my home, to celebrate the fact that the Mohawks exiled from the United States found shelter there during the American Revolutionary War (I live in Loyalist Township on Loyalist Parkway!). Even the last surviving student of the residential school that used to be there was on hand for the ceremony—why, I cannot imagine. No mention was made of how the First Nations were drawn into these European settler wars, and then abandoned and discriminated after, for hundreds of years.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> At the ceremony, the chaplain, Rev. Canon Paul Wright, (his official title is “sub-dean of the Chapel Royal” and “Deputy Clerk of the Closet," which sounds as hilariously impressive as his robes looked ostentatious) went on to note that the king would promote “faith, community, commonwealth, and environment.” After nearly two-hundred years, the royals are still echoing David Livingston. Here, the British church is sticking to the sickbed of British Royalty even while the Empire’s sick follow-up, the Commonwealth, is in decline. Mentioning the environment is one of those nice, civilized things that just has to be said in this day and age, I suppose.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> But now the church decline theory. There is not much to it really. I think that the church's complicity with the whole Beneficent Empire myth, even now, is just another brick in the wall for its decline. As the colonies fought their revolutions all around the world; and as British citizens became more and more aware of the violence and coercion and pain that Empire caused, not to mention their own casualties; and as the scale of the church's absolute complicity in the Empire's horrors became more and more clear, people--</span><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;">consciously or not—rejected the church for its complicity. And they left it. After all, they could not leave Britain, unless it was for another “white,” country, probably equally complicit in empire, one way or another.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> The same disgust for national sins with which the churches were complicit contributed to similar church declines in all the major European colonial powers: the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and France come especially to mind. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> Felicité de La Mennais was a French-Revolution-era reformer, philosopher, and one-time priest before he himself left the church. He championed the separation of church and state. In doing so, he once remarked that the French Catholic church had lost three generations of believers because it allied itself with the French monarchy rather than the people. As a result of this alliance, he said, the people rejected the church, just as they violently rejected the monarchy, at least in France. People all around the world have often rightly projected their distaste and anger at the State by rejecting its ally, the church.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> So what do we modern-day Christians take from all this? Well, while it is fair—and important—for Christians, as citizens, to participate in the body politic just like everyone else, the church needs to go to great lengths not to identify itself with the coercive power of the state, and to refrain from drinking from the trough of any state’s (always short-term) approval or support. It’s a self-destructive behaviour.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"><br /></span></p><script src="webkit-masked-url://hidden/" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="webkit-masked-url://hidden/" type="text/javascript"></script>John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-12893459688661876242022-10-15T14:35:00.002-04:002022-10-15T15:26:19.413-04:00Is Yahweh the God Who Never Was?<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob never was. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> That is, Yahweh wasn’t what I was brought up to believe or what I was taught in seminary. In this post I will explain why he never was and I will ask what that might mean for modern faith.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> What I learned as a child was that God appeared to Moses at a burning bush, and said his name was “Yahweh.” He had showed up earlier in the Bible, of course. But the people of Israel, stuck in slavery, had either forgotten God’s name, or forgotten God altogether. Moses was a new beginning.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTqTDkacFL52bk8CBRSTiUCanwBGU7CV_KLHoXDPT49i-L9TxBOVOV40Anodb7a3MOFa8vdYlix_Yn8EopA5AdXTdHUqgjfmOfZ2Pupiz5kURjqX29VzFpG9p4ZR8IBiBqkHa8b5-ksgdwIG0aJmIzxkmBBXurEkO85AadOnZ_3A-VPww-Ym4hX5p7/s976/p07myhq6.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="549" data-original-width="976" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTqTDkacFL52bk8CBRSTiUCanwBGU7CV_KLHoXDPT49i-L9TxBOVOV40Anodb7a3MOFa8vdYlix_Yn8EopA5AdXTdHUqgjfmOfZ2Pupiz5kURjqX29VzFpG9p4ZR8IBiBqkHa8b5-ksgdwIG0aJmIzxkmBBXurEkO85AadOnZ_3A-VPww-Ym4hX5p7/s320/p07myhq6.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">William Blake: "The Ancient of Days." 1794</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> What I learned in seminary was that there were several strands of oral and/or written tradition in the Old Testament (the JEDP theory) masterfully woven together by an editor or two. Be that as it may, the stories found in the Old Testament—perhaps with the exception of Genesis 1-11—pretty much happened as recorded. This was so because the Bible was thought to be God’s inspired, infallible word.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> What I’ve learned since then is that there are many clues within scripture itself, and some others from archeological studies, that suggest the Old Testament contains very little of what we would call history, and nothing like a straightforward revelation of who Yahweh (or El, one of God’s other many names) is.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> Contemporary scholars believe that for most of Israel’s history, right up to Judah’s exile in 597 BC, Yahweh was one of several God’s worshipped in the temple, albeit he was also conceived of as Israel’s personal, national God. He had a consort, too, the goddess Asherah, whose statue was also found in the temples of Jerusalem and Samaria.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> These same scholars argue about when and how Israel and Judah settled on Yahweh as their national God, an equal to the national Gods of the surrounding nations. Some (perhaps most) think that Yahweh was a tribal God for people in the South—Midianites, Edomites, or Kennites. Others think that Yahweh is the Israelite name given to Israel’s version of Baal, the storm God. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> The view that the Israelites worshipped many Gods for most of their history, but they finally adopted one of them as their favorite “national” God is called monolatry. When both Israel and Judah went into exile, their temples in Samaria and Jerusalem destroyed, religious leaders looked for a way to explain things. The did so by anchoring Israel’s religious beliefs not in a place—the temple—but in a book, the law. The story of how the law came to be is the near final edit of all the Bible’s material--now usually called the Deuteronomist source. This edit shaped much of the Hebrew Bible to agree with the new view, although discerning readers can find many traces of the older, monolatrous views in scripture as well.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> The move of Israel’s religious and ethnic self-understanding to the law allowed the Hebrew Bible’s final editors to argue that it was Israel’s purported refusal to keep the law that resulted in the one and only God Yahweh to use foreigners such as the Babylonians and Assyrians to punish Israel. God could do so because he actually was the one and only and almighty God.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> In this short space I cannot make a detailed defense of these sort of claims. However, at the end of this post, I’ve listed a half dozen great resources that explain this scholarship in depth.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> I think, though, that Evangelicals who hold to the inspiration of scripture, and its basic factual correctness, have to stop dealing with modern scholarship by hiding behind this doctrine as a way of avoiding or rejecting such scholarship. It is shocking how few evangelical journals even review this sort of contemporary scholarship. I think that if Evangelicals want to argue for something like divine inspiration, they will have to show that such inspiration is still plausible given what we now know about both scriptures and Israel’s history.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> The deeper question that all this raises for me, however, is this. Given that we can recreate the story of how Judaism evolved from following many gods to a monolatrous to a monotheistic religion over the course of six or seven hundred years, can we really know anything about who Yahweh really is, if he or she is at all?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> Perhaps not. Perhaps all we can say is what an interesting story this is—like the Atrahasis Epic, or the Gilgamesh Epic, or the Beowulf epic are interesting.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> Or, we might say that what really matters here is how the values and hopes and dreams of Israel shaped the story which in turn still shapes Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These values continue to play a critical role in our present time.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> Or, we might say that whatever the history of how Yahweh came to be the (related but quite different) Gods of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, what really matters is that Yahweh somehow shaped that evolution, so that where the Bible ends up is the picture an actual Yahweh wants us to invest in. Some versions of this view are labeled “progressive revelation.” <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> Personally, on most days, I am a theist. But the truth is, we—or Buddhists or Muslims or Animists—we all get about as much about God as we get about the algorithms that shape our web searches. Whoever or whatever God is, he or she or it is hard to find. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> After all, as Isaiah puts it, “Truly, you are a God who hides himself” (45:15).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn6-d71UcVCgJsYuaMtcbcysK0EvzPivPJlGURhPuabUNKheVrw7ZGIIlV8k1XICYbuuLGDQF9M7N4f6WQcyTw2HmNn1KGNo4kYHxLfDep5zfSueMeTwOg-ROft0hxqGCQmgPXiaGJ4P-USwN53E8gYGsqlDFBcQs2FomSMDCJDKtdvyZCy38ojCVk/s4032/IMG_2447.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn6-d71UcVCgJsYuaMtcbcysK0EvzPivPJlGURhPuabUNKheVrw7ZGIIlV8k1XICYbuuLGDQF9M7N4f6WQcyTw2HmNn1KGNo4kYHxLfDep5zfSueMeTwOg-ROft0hxqGCQmgPXiaGJ4P-USwN53E8gYGsqlDFBcQs2FomSMDCJDKtdvyZCy38ojCVk/w150-h200/IMG_2447.jpeg" width="150" /></a></div><b><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;">Bibliography:</span></b><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"> Robert Bellah, “Religion in Human Evolution.” James Kugel, “The Great Shift: Encountering God in Biblical Times.” Jurgen van Oorschot and Markus Witte (Eds), “The Origins of Yahwism.” Thomas Römer, “The Invention of God;” Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter, “The Making of the Bible: From the First Fragments to Sacred Scripture.” Franceseca Stavrakopoulou, “God: An Anatomy.” Karel Vander Toorn, “Scribal Culture.” <o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont; font-size: 13pt;"><br /></span></p>John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-35147641171958110712022-09-16T12:20:00.001-04:002022-09-16T12:20:43.641-04:00<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Just over two years ago, just before Covid, I found myself weeping in a theatre. The movie, <i>The Rise of Skywalker,</i> was part of the <i>Star Wars</i> franchise. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Why the tears? The movie, was not, after all, high art. It’s a cartoon drawn with live actors and full of especially silly effects.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfoiKHM8QOkVRqQWE-1LdcNB-o0jY7a5kRCqAVTzVvydtzCLknigSuZGpEHP4bd2rDlCQvCp2VO7SX8zSNtFdEXSVBvPWGwwvvg4feIvhkqDyRMEod3SJHNNV98z9ihHbrRaGAhVFteKd3ql8zeg_wMEwU0dg5deWLlJO-aVqw3xKX2TOLEGHV2Ozr/s1600/l-intro-1643473144.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><img border="0" data-original-height="898" data-original-width="1600" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfoiKHM8QOkVRqQWE-1LdcNB-o0jY7a5kRCqAVTzVvydtzCLknigSuZGpEHP4bd2rDlCQvCp2VO7SX8zSNtFdEXSVBvPWGwwvvg4feIvhkqDyRMEod3SJHNNV98z9ihHbrRaGAhVFteKd3ql8zeg_wMEwU0dg5deWLlJO-aVqw3xKX2TOLEGHV2Ozr/w400-h226/l-intro-1643473144.jpg" title="Luke, Leia, and Han!" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: medium;">Luke, Leia, and Han!</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">A bit of background. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>The Rise of Skywalker’s</i> plot is much the same as that of every <i>Star Wars</i> movie. T</span><span style="font-size: large;">he Resistance—good guys and gals—is once again down on its luck and hiding. The evil Emperor Palpatine is back with a new fleet of planet destroyers. The last and most beautiful Jedi knight, Rey, is the chosen one to save the universe. After several light-saber duels and gun battles; after jumping from one moving space ship to another; after sailing a tiny boat across a raging sea; after dying and rising from the dead; Rey Palpatine—for it turns out that she is the evil emperor’s granddaughter—Rey Palpatine defeats the evil emperor and decides to change her name to Rey Skywalker (the good). The universe is saved. The end.</span></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Silly? Yes. Cartoonish? Absolutely. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> And yet. watching a <i>The Rise of Skywalker</i> matinee at Yorkdale theatre in Toronto, I wept. Not just a bit around the edges, but big tears rolled down my face. Why?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> Nostalgia. I saw the first <i>Star Wars</i> movie in the summer of 1977. I was 20. I went with three other guys, days before we all hopped in a car and drove across Canada and back on ten dollars a day. I was so carefree back then. I wasn’t taking my studies seriously. I had an uncomplicated relationship with church and faith that fed me. I wasn’t thinking about the future or my dreams. I had a loving family. Life was good.</span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> But now, as I watched the latest <i>Star Wars</i> movie and remembered the first, I realized that of the four of us who went on that road trip, two have already died untimely deaths. So right off, sitting in that theatre, I’m thinking both about how good life can be, but also how brief and full of loss it can be. You know. Several family members have died. My church and faith life have become hugely problematic. And all of it choked me up.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> We’ve come a way since the Psalmist said we might live to be seventy—or eighty if our strength endured. Many of us will actually live to 90 or even 100. Still, I won’t live forever, and my life, like yours, is now full of cares and concerns, as well as joys and satisfaction, that I could not have imaged when I was 20. Watching <i>Rise of Skywalker </i>triggered memories of my first <i>Star Wars</i> movie and homesickness for carefree times. Those were the days, my friends. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Once, a few years ago, before my tears, I wrote a sermon critical of nostalgia. I said that nostalgia has a sweet aroma, but we too often weaponize it. For example, we may unrealistically remember the past as nothing but a time of surpassing blessing and think less of the present by way of comparison. This sort of nostalgia that inspires slogans like, “Make America Great Again.” But if you think about it, “great” like when? When Ronald Reagan was president? But his campaign slogan was also “Make America Great Again.” So great like when? Like the pre-civil-rights era? Great like the Great Depression? Great like during the slavery or reconstruction eras? Great like when Sir John A. McDonald and other Fathers of Confederation conspired to cultural – and physical -- genocide by setting up Residential Schools and using hunger as a political tool?</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Nostalgia can also be weaponized by using true memories to beat on the present. This happens in churches, a lot. Why don’t we have two hundred kids in Sunday School anymore? Why is church empty compared to thirty years ago? Why is there so much strife and anger in our denomination compared to when I was a kid? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> But nostalgia doesn’t have to be weaponized. As with other human emotions, nostalgia can also build us up. Nostalgia can inform our hopes and dreams for the future, even if we’re in trouble now. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Constantine Sedikides recounts how concentration camp sustained themselves by telling stories about past meals and gatherings, before the Nazis came. “This is what we did,” one survivor said. “We used our memories to temporarily alter our perception of the state we were in. It was not a solution, but the temporary change in perception allowed you to persevere just a bit longer. And that could be crucial.” Nostalgia insists on emotionally monetizing the past, even when it wasn’t perfect.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Nostalgia, then—tears at a <i>Star Wars</i> movie—doesn’t have to be a sign of weakness. On that day nostalgia was mostly a harbinger for tomorrow’s possibilities. There will be more road trips, more friends, more loving family, and more carefree days—along with disappointments, too.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> But I will face these disappointments with gratitude rather than bitterness. Nostalgia’s sweetness—in spite of difficult memories mixed in—is an invitation to new adventures rather than a setting down one’s roots in the land of loss. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> It’s very exciting. I could almost cry. Which I did. At the <i>Star Wars</i> movie.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><br /></p>John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-56247553933867562752022-08-18T16:44:00.010-04:002022-08-19T07:33:38.502-04:00The Invention of Israel's--and Our--Gods<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><span> How many gods have graced human history? Probably many tens of thousands—perhaps even millions. From Marduk to Mars, Thor to Thoth, Bastet to Baal, and El to YHWH, the list is endless. Inventing gods is a uniquely, nearly universal, human activity.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> But why would I include El and YHWH on this list? After all, most Christians, Jews and Muslims would say that thinking of god as an “invention” is blasphemy. We believe our god, the god of Abraham, is the one and only, the compassionate and almighty, eternal and omniscient, and so on and so forth god of the universe and all that is beyond it, too. Really.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span> Still, given the sheer multitude of gods humans have adored (read Neil Gaiman’s novel, </span><i><span>American Gods</span></i><span> </span><span>for a fun take on this, and on what happens to gods who lose their audiences) isn’t it sheer hubris to think that we finally got it right? Did YHWH actually reveal himself to Adam and Noah and Moses? Did scripture objectively capture these theophanies? Did YHWH also reveal himself, later, via dreams and visions, to the prophets? Did the one god of the universe pour himself and his (always his) truth into scripture, and then into a man named Jesus?</span><span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigbY2QfobIOL4WVuidStm2Vi9m_REyDM96b9Y0_iHpaT37Ulz_Y-Wn2pTBIxpbLC3RvumPL5RfxujJCG7Q5TYlY90F-3cvPUKVQZVB2HEd-d0o4RYJxukCtecWWYvwyoLM8BPghFI2-UoNAwIh2EYWIHtdkHwxcUqn6Y5sw3Pn91ET2AQGsPKRv-Bd/s550/council.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="431" data-original-width="550" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigbY2QfobIOL4WVuidStm2Vi9m_REyDM96b9Y0_iHpaT37Ulz_Y-Wn2pTBIxpbLC3RvumPL5RfxujJCG7Q5TYlY90F-3cvPUKVQZVB2HEd-d0o4RYJxukCtecWWYvwyoLM8BPghFI2-UoNAwIh2EYWIHtdkHwxcUqn6Y5sw3Pn91ET2AQGsPKRv-Bd/w400-h314/council.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">YHWH's Divine Council</td></tr></tbody></table><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><span><span>Most people will answer such questions based on what they were taught in Sunday school or hymns they sang in church. For years, I answered such questions based on the narrow but intense education I received in seminary. Scholars who suggested different truths were either ignored or panned. Everyone—whether persons of faith or not—answers questions about who god is based on their presuppositions. Presuppositions, after all, save a lot of time by winnowing and narrowing the evidence one has to consider to answer such questions.</span></span></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> Nevertheless, over time, my presuppositions have been challenged and my theological paradigm has been overturned. I now doubt the Bible is an accurate historical record of anything that happened in the Old Testament. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Well, just for example, what sort of a god would use two bears to kill 42 young boys (or perhaps they were young men), just because they teased a prophet (2 Kings 2:23-25)? Did that really happen? Would you worship such a god if it did happen? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Why did god command Moses to kill 3,000 Israelites for worshipping a golden calf (Exodus 32)? It was, on their part, an honest mistake, given Moses’ absence and Aaron’s leadership. Or why did god send an angel of death to kill 70,000 Israelites just because their king counted the fighting men? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> And these examples don’t even get us to a flood which is supposed to have killed off pretty much the whole human race and 99.9 percent (or more) of earth’s animals too. Where is the justice in such acts of god? The compassion? The kindness? And if such passages are to be explained not as history, but rather, as a bit of imaginative flourish by an unknown author or editor or scribe—well, what does that say about the rest of scripture’s dependability as a historical record? How can orthodox scholars defend this sort of god? <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Why, if god is a spirit, does he so often appear as a human to people in the Old Testament, much as Zeus or Thor are often described? How is it that god is sometimes surrounded by a council of other divine beings (for example, Psalm 82, 89, 1 Kings 22)?<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Why, if the Israelites are god’s chosen people does he allow the Assyrians and Babylonians to destroy them? No freedom of religion for god’s people? But isn’t such freedom a universal human right? Wouldn’t a real god have known that? And, why should the Israelites stick with such a jealous god, anyway?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Is there a better explanation for the Biblical god than that offered by orthodox evangelical scholars? I think so.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Most contemporary (but not evangelical) scholars of ancient Near-Eastern religion believe that ideas about who or what the god of Abraham is all about have a history, and that history is partly visible in the mixed-bag picture of god in the Old Testament. In short, that history goes something like this—although there are scholarly variations on the details. Once upon a time—well over 3,000 years ago—a tribal people who lived south of present-day Israel (or perhaps closer, actually in Palestine) worshipped a storm god who went by the name of (or a variation of the name of) YHWH. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Certain tribes of Palestinian people—what would become Judah and Israel—worshipped this god along with others: Asherah, Baal, El, and so on. Everyone in what would become Judah and Israel worshipped and made images of these gods, putting these idols in high places and temples and even homes. Some of the stories they told each other about these many gods, including YWHW, had broad similarities to the mythic stories of neighboring ancient Near-Eastern peoples. At some point, for reasons that are disputed, the identities of YHWH and EL began to merge, although both names for God still appear in what Christians usually call the Old Testament.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> And, over time the relative importance of YHWH increased, especially in the North, where most of the Old Testament prophets worked. Though he was still seen as one among many gods, YHWH was also seen as a god who had a special place in his heart for Israel. This god also had a consort, Asherah, whose image, along with Baal’s and perhaps others, graced temples in both Jerusalem and Samaria throughout most of their histories.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> After the Assyrian defeat of the Northern kingdom, southern King Josiah undertook a reform of Judahite worship in order to centralize the cult in Jerusalem. He cleared the temple of gods other than YHWH, and perhaps even destroyed images of YHWH at this time. His scribes pulled together the many strands of oral and written myth and legend that existed at that time and began the job of editing it all from a monotheistic point of view. An early version of Deuteronomy, Moses’ farewell speech, was written at this time. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> After Judah was also defeated and exiled, the remaining religious leaders—priests and scribes weeping by Babylon’s rivers—continued to refine the notion of YHWH. He was seen now not only as Israel’s god, but the god of the conquerors too—and by extension, the one and only god of the universe. This one, universal god was said to have used the conquerors to punish Israel for her sins. These religious leaders invented Israelite monotheism more or less as we know it. And the religious leaders of that time bequeathed this new, mono-, almighty god to Israel forever after. And eventually to Christians and Muslims, too.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> So, it turns out that the god of Abraham—the god Christians worship—has a history. This history explains Biblical texts that are mythic or contradictory—such texts come from different strands of memory, and so from different times, when people had different ideas and stories. Historically, the god of post-exile Israel was not always the one and only. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Does this reality undercut the claim that the god of scripture really is the sort of god the monotheistic religions of the world say he (or she) is?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> I think so. Seriously so.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> It has not been easy for me to come to this conclusion. It removes me from easy theological agreement with the Christian communities I love. It disorients me with respect to the shape of my own faith. It erases the easy back and forth I have enjoyed with many of my Christian friends. It makes me question the worth of my years of leadership in both evangelical and liberal denominations.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> So, what’s next for me, faith-wise? I don’t know. I still want to belong to a community of people who search for deeper spiritual and philosophic meaning. I love being part of a community that is focused on meaning and on social justice for neighbours both near and far. But communities that not only allow for, but invite, a wide range of serious religious flavors are rare. I’m searching. Wish me luck or providence, as the case might be, for you! <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> And stay tuned as I explore different possibilitities.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><b>Post Script</b><o:p></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Interested in exploring this history of god more deeply, yourself? Here’s a top-six list of books that have influenced me. Although all of them are specialist books, any dedicated reader can manage them!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Thomas Römer, <i>The Invention of God</i>. Cambridge. Harvard University Press, 2015. (A very readable history of the idea of god in ancient Judah and Israel).<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span>Konrad Schmid and Jens Schröter. Translated by Peter Lewis. <i>The Making of the Bible: From the First Fragments to Sacred Scripture.</i> Cambridge. Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2021. (Great background read on the history of the Bible, which should be read in conjunction with Van Der Toorn’s book, below).</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Karel Van Der Toorn. <i>Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible</i>. Cambridge. Harvard University Press, 2007. (Somebody had to edit the Old Testament to combine the many strands of tradition, oral or written, that existed in Israel five- or six-hundred years before the birth of Jesus. This is their story.)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Robert Bellah. <i>Religion in Human Evolution</i>. <i>From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age</i>. Cambridge. Belknap Press of Harvard UP. 2011. (The notion of an axial age is disputed, even if there was a remarkable convergence of religious developments around the world from about 800 BCE to 200 BCE. Still, Bellah’s summary of what happened in Israel, written as it is by a scholar who is not a specialist in OT history or language, makes it very accessible.) <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">James Kugel & Ellen Geiger. <i>The Great Shift: Encountering God in Biblical Times</i>. New York. Houghten, Miflin, Harcourt. 2017. (Kugel is a great scholar who has had a long career. This is likely his last book, and though he is less radical than Römer and others, it is a great introduction to the literary world of the Old Testament.)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><span>Francesca Stavrakopoulou. <i>God: An Anatomy</i>. New York. Knopf Publishing Group. 2022. (A <i>tour de force</i>. An intense reminder of how our presuppositions about scripture can lead us to miss some of its—and god’s—most obvious features. In this case, it is the fact that throughout the early history of YHWH, he was conceived of as having a body, not unlike Zeus or Thor. The evidence of this permeates the Old Testament.)</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p>John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-15803884718581468402022-07-31T22:04:00.008-04:002022-07-31T22:27:14.287-04:00The Social Gospel Nag<div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br />My wife and I have been searching for a new church in our new city for just over a year. We’ve settled on one, for now. But the search has been disconcerting. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">There are a hundred-and-one reasons. One is my own, slowly, dissolving faith. I keep hoping for a church that will run with my doubts, rather than try to assuage them, or deflect them, or (God forbid) covert me to some sort of orthodoxy.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEippFLBeO4LjkOfndm_xon_6gX7iGsTxxt4O11dzvEHh7C5XadHBhc9hqp_KxSXdPc5PHvNRLzaEpyf-6rApNurp-gTGOeQatDHWXB9fdLr-zu7T3qK_YWz6Ffm4vM5OvJ7yMEU3aXgyj5cxxbE-1XZUvNlb3_dwz9lGLDdPAlwYPeT0v02PQ4O5Giy/s738/the-social-justice-league-ad1602004dd-003-a9746c-1.jpeg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Rise Up, Social justice Warriors!" border="0" data-original-height="681" data-original-width="738" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEippFLBeO4LjkOfndm_xon_6gX7iGsTxxt4O11dzvEHh7C5XadHBhc9hqp_KxSXdPc5PHvNRLzaEpyf-6rApNurp-gTGOeQatDHWXB9fdLr-zu7T3qK_YWz6Ffm4vM5OvJ7yMEU3aXgyj5cxxbE-1XZUvNlb3_dwz9lGLDdPAlwYPeT0v02PQ4O5Giy/w320-h295/the-social-justice-league-ad1602004dd-003-a9746c-1.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Shub Niggurath is a fictional H.P. Lovecraft god. <br />One that can, apparently, inspire preachers to nag.</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The search has also been disconcerting, if I’m totally honest, because many—by far the most—of the churches I’ve visited have been mostly made up of elderly people. They’ve been faithful for long lifetimes. They deserve an opportunity to rest from their labors, to enjoy the next generation take on leadership and choir seats. I remember when—in a different denomination—I preached to churches full of young people, young adults, and young marrieds. It made for better singing, better after-sermon coffee klatches, better bazaars and picnics and volunteers. It’s all gone now—if not in the denomination I used to serve as a minister in—at least it’s very rare in the churches I’ve checked out in my new city.</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">But among all the reasons (I could go on for a while) why mainline churches (and increasingly, Evangelical churches) are failing, the one that irks me the most is this—they are consumed by a form of works righteousness.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>Works righteousness is the idea you have to do something to get in good with God. In Evangelical churches, it manifests itself in the preaching of moral codes, which if you keep (more or less, and as defined by your denomination or minister) you get heaven as a reward. The Trumpization of the Evangelical Church in the USA has put the lie to that. <br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>But in the UCC, we have our own unique kind of social gospel works righteousness. It’s the notion that unless we’re busy doing everything in our power to set the powers that be—government, institutions, systems—to right, we’re falling short. <br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>United Church works righteousness is a never-ending list of “to-do’s.” House the homeless. Challenge Israeli apartheid. Fight racism. Pursue peace. Be LGBTQ-friendly. Change the system. Save the planet. Change your habits. Call your MP. Donate. Plant a forest. Acknowledge our wrongs <i>vis a vis</i> First Nations. And on and on.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>Ironically, there is not a single one of these “to-do’s” that I disagree with. I embrace every one, without qualification. I preached or have written about each one. I have been guilty of what I’m going to rail against in this post.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>The problem is one of balance. You see, the only church that can effectively make a dent on these issues is a healthy church. Such churches are multi-generational. They play and are fun. They meet in and out of the sanctuary. They are full of laughter and full of informed care for those in the fellowship who need it. They are full of people who are focused on each other as the closest neighbours at hand, a practical training ground for all our other neighbours. <br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>But preachers who wave their finger, endlessly, at people, telling them what to do, how to do it, why to do it all—they are weighing church goers down and making staying church, or coming for the second or third time, very hard. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />The preacher nag inspires the same sort of negative reactions that mask mandates did. It isn't that the mask mandate was a dumb idea. It is that people don't want to be told, over and over. It infuriates most of us--or exhausts us before we begin.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>The preacher nag, perhaps unintentionally, serves as a constant accusation that we have not measured up. It is imitative, in an odd way, of how newspapers—on TV or the web or even real paper—work. You put the murders first, the car crashes next, and finish with scandal. Op Ed pages are full of negative reads on each and every political decision and economic trend. Good news is either absent or buried. <br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>Our churches are similarly focused on all that’s wrong. We put the latest injustice first, then the worst looming ecological disaster next, and finish with what we better do or else last. Good news?<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>Look. Once again, I’m personally engaged in righting injustices, responding to disasters, and being politically involved. But as much as the church as a public institution and its members as citizens need to address many urgent matters, we should do so because the church has inspired us to gratitude and thanksgiving first. Too much nagging muddies our motivation and saps our energy.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>Let’s preach dreams rooted in hope. I want to hear sermons that celebrate the good—and even the privilege—that so many of us experience; that celebrate starry nights, great music and art, real caring, an ancient tradition, forgiveness, sex, shared meals, and friendship. <br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>Let’s preach out of our gratitude rather than our civic and cultural problems and fears and injustices. Where is the light yoke promised by Jesus? Where is the community in love with each other—not just for Sunday coffee time—but communities that prioritize the knowing and sharing and mutual support that the New Testament so often speaks of? That’s the foundation of our love for all neighbours and strangers.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>I long for the consolations of the gospel. I long for a spirituality that isn’t so much marching orders as it a magical spiritual mystery tour. I long to be inspired instead of commanded.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>Look, the seventy- and eighty-year-olds who fill many United Church pews are true believers in the social gospel. Most of them don’t need to be convinced anymore. They’ve hung around when the UCC was among the first churches in Canada to truly welcome women to leadership. We lost a third or more of our membership making sure that LGBTQ people were not only welcomed, but celebrated, but they stuck with us. Our older members also hung around when we called for an end to apartheid and as we made steps to work out reconciliation with First Nations. The people who still come to our churches have fed the hungry, housed the homeless, donated to the United Church and its favorite causes, and on and on. They don’t need to be nagged to do more.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>And younger people are looking for hope, for inspiration, for meaning amid so many crises—they don’t want to be nagged to do more and more and more either. They’re busy with families and two careers. They’re struggling to make mortgage or rent payments and to hang on to their temporary jobs in a gig economy. Even if we, here in Canada, are living through the materially best of times, most peaceful of times, many young people don’t experience it that way. What do we have to say to them besides “volunteer. Do more. Support. Vote. Go. Go. Go.”?<br /><o:p> <br /><div style="text-align: left;">I’d love to see the United Church commit to some sort of reverse-sabbath pattern when it comes to pulpit nagging. That would be a commitment to limit our nagging to one Sunday in seven. A commitment in the rest of our preaching and lives together to focus on the old, old story (and some new ones!) because the way to change anyone’s heart is through the doorway of the imagination. </div></o:p><o:p> <br /></o:p>I’m not lazy. I do my part. But I’m filled with spiritual yearning. I want meaning. Maybe I'm strange that way. I wake up wondering what it is all about. I feel vulnerable in a world more dangerous than we realize and I want to know whether there is hope. I want my church to have a psychic playground out back, where we can laugh and play together, feed each other and party. Where I can be rejuvenated. <br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>I get that other people might want wildly different things from church than what I want. But if we did a reverse Sabbath, we could use those other six Sundays to explore what other people are curious about when it comes to God and humanity and this planet. Bring it on.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>But, oh. I’m so tired of being told what to do.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p><o:p> </o:p></span></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-19412791924390488592022-07-28T12:05:00.002-04:002022-07-28T12:46:18.146-04:00A Mighty Fortress Is Our God?<p><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFdIANEk5HscVMURTtKDOSNqlL8XAxK1oC2_70a2HNakU9H4Uh4ZEcy27XhM6UC37X5Gb7kbJkrnEzPqppmm64dE12Mn5dTLWYoDRkngSru0J70acnUsmZ5otlNVhuajNZ-2mdt49WNPQ_yPHz8qpzo7uwgR1o_xEAttFxXGh9DVFZF_9LNc-07mQe/s1200/how-big-is-God.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="1200" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFdIANEk5HscVMURTtKDOSNqlL8XAxK1oC2_70a2HNakU9H4Uh4ZEcy27XhM6UC37X5Gb7kbJkrnEzPqppmm64dE12Mn5dTLWYoDRkngSru0J70acnUsmZ5otlNVhuajNZ-2mdt49WNPQ_yPHz8qpzo7uwgR1o_xEAttFxXGh9DVFZF_9LNc-07mQe/s320/how-big-is-God.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><div><span style="font-size: medium;">If you go to church, you’ve probably sung <i>Here I Am to Worship,</i> by Tim Hughes:<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>Immortal, invisible, God only wise,<br />In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,<br />Most blessed, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,<br />Almighty, victorious, they great name we praise.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>I don’t sing this song. Though God has always had an outsize presence in my life, I’m trying to tone it down. An almighty God just doesn’t make much sense to me anymore—though I’m still good with “invisible.” I’ll get back to that, briefly, before the end of this post. But right now, you might well be wondering, “what? Haven’t you read J. B. Phillips’ famous book, <i>Your God Is Too Small</i>?” This was a big bestseller in the fifties and has been continually in print since then. </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />Phillips’ book contains insights. He says we shouldn’t think of God as our resident policeman or as a grand old man or as a managing director, among other things. Phillips’ bottom line is that we must avoid caricatures of God. They often reflect our own wants, needs, or psychoses.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>Ironically, some of these caricatures do make God seem big—though in distorted ways. So, if God really was a cosmic policeman, keeping peace for everyone in the world world, that would be a hugely impressive God. Or, if God was everyone’s (nearly eight billion of us) managing director, serving as everyone's judge and co-pilot, that would be impressive.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>After rejecting these metaphors, Phillips says the best clue we have to the greatness of God is our longing for beauty, good and truth, longing that he says cannot be explained by science. This is odd because biologists, psychologists, and philosophers all have theories about how such longings evolved and why we experience them. <br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>Phillips also suggest that a key truth that magnifies God is that he reconciles himself (always a "him" for Phillips) to us through the god-man Jesus. And while this section of the book mentions several other doctrines Phillips believes make the case for a really big God, I didn’t find it very compelling. In spite of his frequent use of phrases like, “the weight of the evidence,” or “indisputable fact,” he gives too much credit to, and offers too little support for, his own thinking. All in all, Phillips doesn’t so much establish the bigness of God as give a very short course in evangelical theology’s description of a big God.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>Even if Phillips misfired here, it doesn’t necessarily follow that God is small. Orthodox systematic theology includes lists of God’s "divine attributes," each of which makes for a huge God. He’s apparently omniscient (knows everything), infinite (that means really big), omnipresent (everywhere—quite something when you consider the James Webb photos), immutable (unchangeable—though since this seems silly on the face of it, many theologians have tried to reframe this as faithfulness).<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>Scripture makes some big claims about God too, claims on which these attributes are partly based. This matters if you think scripture is the inspired and infallible word of God. Ironically, people who believe this usually pass over, lightly, descriptions of God that they don't like. For example, theologians don't enumerate attributes that could be based on other, less impressive sides to God: killing forty-two children with bears because they teased his prophet for being bald (2 Kings 2:23-25), killing the first-born of Egypt (Exodus 12:29-32), or killing seventy thousand Israelites because their king did a census (2 Samuel 24). Well, and there are more, similar, portrayals of God all through scripture. <br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>The attributes of God that theologians do talk about are deeply rooted in Greek, mostly Platonic, ideals. And they put God, ironically, in a box. They make God so big that God must be responsible for every good or ill thing that happens in the world. Tsunamis. Earthquakes. Volcanoes. But also, on the theory if you can stop a bad thing happening, you should—all human actions, both good and bad pass through the hands of this big God. I recently read a post from a FB friend who wrote, “God is so good,” upon the safe arrival of a few guests from far away. Well, if safety after an eight-hour drive is a gift from God, then so too must car accidents and worse. Only double-predestinarian Calvinists, of course, would admit so gladly. <br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>I don’t like this line of thinking at all. I wonder if there are alternative ways of thinking about God. For example, I remember driving through Bali once, with my spouse Irene, to see Agung volcano.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>The taxi-driver honked his horn incessantly, and it was bugging me. So, I asked him to explain. He said each honk was a way of honoring the Gods of the place he was passing through: the God of the bridge, the God of the great palm, the God of the dangerous corner. Gods, for him, were small and had limited scope. Their power and might was merely local. They were not omniscient, but could hear, so long as you honked loudly enough. <br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>God doesn't have to be big just because that's the sort of God we want. In truth, for most of recorded history, humans have often hewed to smaller-sized gods. Even the mighty Zeus had to share headlines with Hera his spouse, and a host of lesser Gods, many of them his children. For most of his history, the God of Abraham shared top billing with, variously, El, Baal, and Asherah. Judaism only became a mostly monotheistic religion just before, or during, the Babylonian exile. That development was then written back into, and mirrored, in the scribal compilation and editing of Hebrew scriptures. (More about this is coming in a follow-up post).<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>So, humans, including Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as well as King David and nearly all of his descendants—they all, more often than not, worshipped several wee Gods rather than one really big God.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>This is not an argument for paganism. The wee Gods of most Old Testament Israelites were also wee in their morals, often vindictive and violent, as the examples above remind us.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p>But a God with more limited scope would explain all our unanswered prayers. Such a God would not be responsible for Tsunamis because he or she couldn’t cause or prevent them. Such a God would not be choosing to be good to some travelers and not others. Such a God would not be coming to town, making a list, checking it twice, to find out who is naughty or nice.<br /><o:p> <br /></o:p><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">What might such a wee God do? Perhaps haunt us with dreams of beauty, goodness, and truth. Such a God might be praying to us to fulfill all his or her dreams. Such a God’s greatest deed might simply be to come to us with a still, small voice.</span> </span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p>John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-62035666570313370402022-02-07T15:10:00.005-05:002022-02-08T09:11:09.840-05:00God Isn't In the Driver's Seat (or, If Evolution Is True, What Do We Do With God?)<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> I sort of believe in the theory of evolution like I sort of believe in the theory of gravity. Think about it. That means evolution is not up for discussion. But while the theory of gravity bores me, unless I’m falling, the theory of evolution fascinates me.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Here’s why. I went to Toronto District Christian High, in Woodbridge, as a teen. Unlike many Christian schools, at Toronto Christian we were taught about evolution. We were taught, in fact, that evolution was how God probably created the universe. This is called theistic evolution.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> However, there was a single exception. Humans. According to my teachers humans were sinless special creations God made in his image a few thousand years ago. We were not part of the animal kingdom. We did not evolve. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfyytvfq-IePK_bm_6zT1WK8SzEfm6efCsKRiIITP6ftPy3TaVlZwZ3rPQYTT5MQMLEz8tOA8dhu_-E6zq2-4TlZLrjcR59Uew-ngjM6UUKiinT0VDRMd9gmMZUnU7Ovna8uKTxik-CPW7yn-8qL-_4cLKIjeZJ4BM4RL6JhMOeYT1i2Nu4dP0GOli/s1730/Screen Shot 2022-02-07 at 3.13.12 PM.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="982" data-original-width="1730" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfyytvfq-IePK_bm_6zT1WK8SzEfm6efCsKRiIITP6ftPy3TaVlZwZ3rPQYTT5MQMLEz8tOA8dhu_-E6zq2-4TlZLrjcR59Uew-ngjM6UUKiinT0VDRMd9gmMZUnU7Ovna8uKTxik-CPW7yn-8qL-_4cLKIjeZJ4BM4RL6JhMOeYT1i2Nu4dP0GOli/s320/Screen Shot 2022-02-07 at 3.13.12 PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> This was pretty much the line I was taught at seminary, too. After seminary, I spent a year of graduate study digging deeper, comparing the Bible’s several creation stories to similar older creation stories like the Babylonian <i>Enuma Elish, </i>a creation and flood story told by ancient Israel’s neighbors. I learned that the stories in the Bible seemed to be very intentional, shabbat-night-live satiric commentaries on the more ancient creation stories of Israel’s neighbours. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Since then, studying human evolution has become a hobby. And one of the reasons I finally left my previous denomination was because I couldn’t, finally, pretend to play along with my denomination’s official view that the Genesis myths were actually real history.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> More recently, scientists have unraveled the human genome and the DNA within it. Doing so not only allows us to find relatives several generations removed through sites like 23andme’s DNA kits, but unravelling the human genome has helped us find criminals by the DNA they leave behind, and now even cure some diseases rooted in genetic problems. Within that genome, we’ve also discovered the deep evolutionary roots of humankind that ties us to the rest of the animal kingdom. We humans evolved from other earlier hominids, as have the Great Apes and yes, even monkeys. We are also related to other branches of the homo species, like Neanderthals and Denosivans—both now extinct. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> But why am I telling you all this? Because as I’ve studied cosmic and biological evolution, I’ve begun to ask myself, more and more, “so what role does <i>God</i> play in all this?” If everything evolved, and if science can describe that evolutionary process without needing a God, then what use is God?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> And this is what I came up with. It is tentative. It is the best I can do. And I am very, very open to better ideas.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Imagine a car. The car loosely represents the cosmos. And imagine God. God can relate to the car in several ways. For example, perhaps God is the driver.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> That is, God gets behind the wheel. God has the key, turns the ignition, and gets the car going. God as driver is in complete control. God chooses the destination. He’s the driver, after all. God steers the car around every corner. In fact, God even built the car he drives—he’s a cosmic Henry Ford. This is how most conservative Christians think of God—he’s completely in charge of the whole cosmos—starting it, directing it, and so on. It’s why, when someone dies or they get a new job, such Christians will say things like, “well, it was God’s will. That’s God’s plan.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Prayer, then, could be imagined as us asking the driver, God, to steer the car in a certain way, and get us to places we want to go. But <i>God</i> is the driver. God might listen to us, as passengers, but God might not. God is completely in charge of our journeys. Nothing is up to us. In its most extreme of the Calvinist versions of this line of thought, God’s mind is never changed by prayer. God has already decided everything ahead of time. This is called predestination—God decides everything about the destination and our drive there. Humans don’t really have a choice. No free will.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> But many Christians (and people of other faiths) disagree. For example, some Christians imagine that God is not much like a driver, but more like a passenger in a self-driving car, a next-generation Tesla, say, that he (usually) invented and built. In this case, God provides the blueprint, gets things going, comes along for the ride, but doesn’t personally steer the car himself. This is called deism.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Deists have their own favourite analogy. Imagine finding a watch in a field. You pick it up. You wind it up. And the watch ticks and tocks. It keeps time. Perfectly. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> If you found such a watch, you would have to presume that it was made by someone. Watches don’t just appear, by accident, as it were. So, if you found a watch, you would have to believe that there was a skilled watchmaker who designed and manufactured it. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Well, when deists look about the cosmos what they see is something even more wonderfully and fearfully made than that watch. The planets in their circuits, our blood coursing through veins, and all the laws of nature suggested to these ancients that, as with the watch, the cosmos must have a designer and a manufacturer. But once a big bang sets it off, the cosmos runs by itself. God is inventor, creator, but once God is done, God lets the whole mess run itself. Deism. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> I’m more inclined to a deist God than to a driver God who predestines everything. My problem with deism, however, is that modern theories actually can pretty much explain everything—the big bang, the appearance of life, evolution. The physical world doesn’t need an inventor or watchmaker to be properly explained. Which is why Richard Dawkins wrote a book about evolution called, ironically, <i>The Blind Watchmaker. </i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Well, as you can see, if you don’t need God to create the cosmos and just come along for the drive, and if you don’t need God as the creator and driver either, there isn’t much room left for God. So, some Christians—liberal ones, for the most part, have begun to think of God not as the driver, not as a quiet passenger who just set things in motion, but as a backseat driver.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> You see, while science can explain a lot, some people don’t think science can explain morality, our human notions about what is right and wrong. And so, these Christians turn God into a backseat driver who is always telling us what is right and wrong, what direction to take our lives, which pedestrians and hazards to watch out for. This is a nagging God, a pushy God, a “you better get this right,” God. A liberal works-righteousness God who seems, always, to be saying, “Be better. Do more. Divest. Rally. Protest.” This God speaks to us insistently, mostly through theologians and denominational executives and pressure groups who are sure they know exactly what God wants when it comes to a whole list of contemporary issues. And while I often agree with these people, I don’t like the tone, and I don’t like the imagined God behind this tone, very much.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> None of these pictures of God ring true for me. Is there another possibility? I think there is. Perhaps God, in some wild but mysterious way offers guidance when we, alone in the car by ourselves, or together with each other as a community, seek that guidance. That is, instead of nagging us, perhaps God is more like Google Maps or the Waze app. Except those kinds of maps are too directive, too sure. So maybe God is more like the author of an old-fashioned paper map. We can unfold it and turn to it for direction, but we need to read it carefully, parse its options, interpret it, and rely on the corroborating (or not) advice of fellow passengers. Only when we turn to God “The Paper Map,” for direction do we receive it—in part and imperfectly. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> But where might God provide such guidance, in real life? Well, I’d say that scripture is where we often—if not always!—find it; and in the cumulative wisdom we’ve built up about scripture as a community, over thousands of years. Scripture, and our reflection on it, is the divine roadmap we have for arriving (“perhaps,” says John Caputo. “We hope,” I add.) at our desired destination.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> I’m not saying that scripture is dictated by God, or that it is authoritative (so we better listen to it, or else!), or even that it is divinely inspired. But overall, scripture—including the scriptures of other religions and the Testament we received from the Jewish people—scriptures do represent thousands of years of deep listening on the part of humans to a mysterious divine wisdom that seems to permeate the cosmos and sometimes our own deepest selves, as well. God whispers, sometimes we hear, some of those who heard tried to write it down.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">We argue about how to understand scripture, we question some of its odd suggestions that belong to another place and time, but overall, in scripture and in the communities that listen to it we are nudged along. In scripture we may find God gently, kindly, offering direction when we seek it, encouraging us to live full lives that benefit each other and help us find our place in the cosmos.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Scripture in this sense is a lamp that prevents our feet from stumbling when all is otherwise dark (Psalm 119:105). Keep in mind that when scripture is described as a light, it isn’t talking about a modern flashlight or streetlight that reveals all. It is a flickering, uncovered olive-oil lamp with a sputtering wick that threatens to go out at any minute, and gives just enough light so that we don’t trip over what would otherwise be obvious rocks and chasms in the path. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Scripture is this sort of provisional and delicate divine gift. But gifts, to be true gifts, must be given unconditionally. There is no expectation of a return, no nagging about thank-you cards, no obligation to give something of equal or greater value back. If we were given a gift conditional on how we responded to it, it would be merely a financial transaction, a debt to be repaid, rather than a gift. We’d have to interpret it correctly, or else. But no. As a favorite writer of mine once put it: There is <b>nothing</b> you have to do, there is nothing <b>you have</b> to do, and there is nothing you have <b>to do</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> The gift of scripture, written by humans, is an invitation, really, to explore meaning and purpose beyond our everyday matter-of-fact experiences. Science, and theories like evolution, explain a lot—everything, really. And yet, for such a world as this, we also have this one thing more, this ancient gift, this old map, for why and how to live a life—not just for survival, but for the love of all things bright and beautiful.</span><span style="font-family: AppleSystemUIFont;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-53495110543473447732021-01-26T21:28:00.028-05:002021-01-28T23:10:29.091-05:00Understanding the Racist Right’s Affection for Violence<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Nearly twenty years ago I was invited by Brock University to give the annual Christ and Culture lecture sponsored by the chaplains there. I was going to speak about the racist Aryan Nations and, in Canada, Heritage Front. This was one of the subjects of my PhD research. A panel of professors as well as the Canadian chair of the B’nai B’rith would respond. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUhtR1FhGRiD0IGRbWCYt5bhL3t395FpwuEefrgJAvU0F0eD3C2bMnXC3KyUxCKRScGPoHOCGIQeEFfbLP-dB3DGSAIO5iftKPwmR_yU6gZJX_aIfU7mj90-sbVd4ShBxcOu_ViyaAhs0/s600/09242912_aryan1-thumb-640xauto-743138-600x398.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="398" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUhtR1FhGRiD0IGRbWCYt5bhL3t395FpwuEefrgJAvU0F0eD3C2bMnXC3KyUxCKRScGPoHOCGIQeEFfbLP-dB3DGSAIO5iftKPwmR_yU6gZJX_aIfU7mj90-sbVd4ShBxcOu_ViyaAhs0/s320/09242912_aryan1-thumb-640xauto-743138-600x398.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An Aryan Nations Rally</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: medium;"> Just before I began, three men walked in and sat near the front. They wore Nazi-like insignia, Doc Martens, chains and crosses. They were members of Canada’s Heritage Front, a group not unlike the United States’ Aryan Nations. As I began my lecture, I was somewhat intimidated. I stumbled over some of my words. I wondered what was going to happen.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> My talk especially focused on Richard Butler, the racist leader of the Aryan Nations. He espoused a doctrine called Christian Identity, which taught that white, “Aryan,” peoples were the true descendants of Israel and that modern Jews were imposters. Butler made this claim on the basis of a complete—and idiotic—reinterpretation of the Bible. He also taught that Black persons were subhuman descendants of ape-like people who lived before Adam and Eve. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJPxOVmRse3YBLThKqIfNK6T1sOWUzdmD-s9SND2hiNMAGxgpgOfA7RVhNo9lmCdmkDeXwfzST8us_lS_JhdAPc3KmJ0CGYiA7mccTrM_LFOsOw08Hdz5zqneGREYDUT2AY5ERNHhNtKw/s575/loyal+white+knights+and+aryan+nations+in+texas+july+2016+from+vkdotcom_0.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="390" data-original-width="575" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJPxOVmRse3YBLThKqIfNK6T1sOWUzdmD-s9SND2hiNMAGxgpgOfA7RVhNo9lmCdmkDeXwfzST8us_lS_JhdAPc3KmJ0CGYiA7mccTrM_LFOsOw08Hdz5zqneGREYDUT2AY5ERNHhNtKw/s320/loyal+white+knights+and+aryan+nations+in+texas+july+2016+from+vkdotcom_0.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Aryan Nation Members and Their Hate on Display</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> These sort of claims by so-called Christians were not new. Many can be traced back to the <i>Protocols of Zion</i>, a book written by anti-Jewish propogandists during Tsarist Russia. It is a collection of racist myths of that era, and falsely describes a Jewish plot to take over the world through kidnapping and killing Christian children and using their blood to cook with. Today’s QAnon conspiracy theories are deeply influenced by the completely fictional <i>Protocols</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Butler’s sermons constantly goaded his followers to look forward to a time of great violence against all non-Aryans. It would be a race war to rid America—or at least the Pacific Northwest—of anyone who wasn’t white. The movement fell apart after Butler’s death, and after it was successfully sued for all its assets by two First Nations people. They had been badly beaten up by Aryan Nation foot soldiers near their compound in Idaho. However, equally racist Aryan Nation splinter groups still exist and influence the Racist Right to the present. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Do they think they can actually win? Yes. But their strategy isn’t ever going to be a frontal assault against today’s established order. It will be an apocalyptic battle that surprises and amazes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> The worldview—the central story—that motivates the Aryan Nations and others of their ilk is one of extreme lack. They are focused on what is wrong with the world, and especially what is wrong in their own lives, and how little they can do with a deep state in charge to actually change things. Theologian John McClure suggests that with this sort of narrative style: <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 1cm;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;">spiritual warfare is not fought in the sky with human subjects contributing prayers and offerings. It is fought in the arenas of history and human experience, with God contributing self-commitments, promises and priests for the process. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> In other words, the Racist Right’s constant focus on how the whole world conspires against them leads to the notion that divine violence here and now, violence that makes the news, is the only answer. This holy violence will lead—through suffering and sacrifice—to a new world guaranteed and approved by God.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> So, to achieve this new world, the Racist Right wants to light the fuse that will blow the powder keg of racism and spark a spiritual race war. They are dangerous because their spiritual motivation doesn’t depend on success as the world would count it. They look to God to ultimately bless such violence and provide the reward. Their terroristic asymmetrical violence will be the spark that moves God to intervene for white deliverance. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> After the insurrection in Washington on January 6, the press was full of head-scratching—or anger—at Evangelicals who were so visibly involved. There are many reasons why Evangelicals have fallen for QAnon and the Racist Right. But surely one of those reasons has to do with the wide-spread, pre-existing apocalyptic belief in a return of Jesus. This belief is often associated with themes of judgement upon and punishment of today’s world, its culture, and its mores.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> The Racist Right is not uniformly or perhaps even mostly evangelical, of course. But the secular Racist Right—more along the lines of Canada’s now defunct Heritage Front—also tend to a kind of apocalypticism, though of a different sort. They also have a worldview characterized by an emphasis on their lack and suffering and the indignities they endure. They believe that deliverance might come (as it did in Hitler’s day) from a vanguard of people who see the value in making Jews and people of color scapegoats for white ills. Punishing such scapegoats—first through intimidation, then through terror, will in turn, spark its own kind of apocalyptic final judgement, as in Hitler’s final solution. Such violence, properly staged and celebrated will lead to widespread appreciation for White Power among the masses and spark the race war the secular Racist Right also wants. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> In the end, these “spiritual” approaches to getting your historical way, by sparking violent opposition to the powers that be, is no different than Al Qaeda’s use of terror throughout the Middle East and world. The Racist Right is ideologically committed to terrorism as a means to spark something, rather than as the actual means for achieving it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> The Racist Right can, sometimes at least, be stared down. That’s what happened on the day I gave my lecture at Brock. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> As I began, I tried pushing their presence out of my mind. They listened quietly. When the B’nai B’rith president got up to speak, however, they begin whispering ridicule and laughing out of turn. Finally, feeling embarrassed—after all, I had spoken about how we needed courage to confront far-right racism—I turned around, held my finger to my mouth, and shushed them. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> And, for some reason, that shut them up.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> After the lecture, though, I was told by a Brock official that anonymous threats had been received before the lecture. Undercover CSIS agents (Canada’s FBI) were in the audience, just in case. When I left, outside the hall, the police presence was quite visible. Maybe that was the real reason the Heritage Front was so easy to quiet that night.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> I don’t know, for sure. It does seem, to me, though that if we are going to meet the challenge of QAnon and wide-spread Evangelical support for racism and strongmen, we are going to have to do more than walk our talk of faith, hope and love. We are also going to have to understand their talk and where it comes from. And be ready with an answer.</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-13510525005431342452020-12-25T15:55:00.028-05:002020-12-25T21:09:54.562-05:00The Silent Night Within<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US"> <i>Silent Night</i></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-style: italic; text-indent: 36pt;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="text-indent: 36pt;">is a Christmas carol that, if you think about it, is a bit odd. I mean, if Jesus really was born in a stable, with angels singing and cattle lowing and donkeys braying, and shepherds praising, the first Christmas probably really wasn’t that silent.</span></span></div><div style="text-indent: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial; text-indent: 36pt;"> Usually our Christmases are not silent, either. My kids visit, and the grandkids too. Friends come from as far away as Japan and Zimbabwe. My son David will make three times the necessary noise banging around pots and pans while cooking. Grandkids rip open presents with gleeful little screams, then tease each other loudly, and then ask me to read to them.</span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ8zD3QhUqFApAdm2TbN7rsjwDMtg1ctNttBw5s9sl00dOnOjjY5G0N69c5wM98RF486A5Jt88SxVNh_nPC99qpnNiY6VKAClNMD0kygnnKDFMPakrMqO7d0F6zgly1Mj2N3qz9TJ9mg8/s450/892917-bigthumbnail.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="338" data-original-width="450" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ8zD3QhUqFApAdm2TbN7rsjwDMtg1ctNttBw5s9sl00dOnOjjY5G0N69c5wM98RF486A5Jt88SxVNh_nPC99qpnNiY6VKAClNMD0kygnnKDFMPakrMqO7d0F6zgly1Mj2N3qz9TJ9mg8/s320/892917-bigthumbnail.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">Once the kids are in bed, we adults stay up late laughing, shouting, talking politics and religion. The Homepod plays competing song lists.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">But not this year. My house will be silent. Tonight, Irene and I will sit, a little sad, glad for each other’s company, in a living room lit by candles, alone.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">Now, I understand that this year’s quiet, especially at Christmas, is not what any of us wanted. It is a disappointment. For some of us it is worse—what with the worry of infection, and the depression that goes on and on due to isolation or financial stress. All of these ills are ours this Christmas. But for me, there is also another angle, the one suggested by the carol, “Silent Night.”</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">You see, in normal circumstances, I love the silence. I cope with busy commutes by turning off the car radio. I get ready for the day by taking the dog for a long walk. I used to listen to podcasts on those walks. Now I just trudge in silence. No one calls out to me. I daydream. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">I love the silence. Max Picard, a Roman Catholic philosopher, writes in his book, <i>The World of Silence,</i> "Outside the forest, the flowers are like silence that has thawed, and glistens in the sunlight." I like that—“outside . . . the flowers are like silence that has thawed.” One of my favorite Bible texts—an important one for ministers, especially, to take to heart—is Ecclesiastes 6:11. "The more the words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone?"</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">In my heart I'm an introvert. I know how to be with people, how to get my oar in during conversations at a party, how to do a “meet and greet at church.” And I enjoy all that. But I get my energy from being alone and silence is my reward. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">What about you? I know that we can’t all be introverts. We need both extroverts and introverts to make the world go round. But just as introverts need to learn to make their peace with noise, I think extroverts can learn to appreciate the gift of silence.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">Here is why. We all have a secret place of refuge, a sanctuary, in our souls, that most of us don’t visit often enough. It is where we go to ponder the most difficult questions life throws at us. It is where we construct the meaning we spend our lives achieving. This sanctuary in our souls is where we cultivate gratitude for the good others have done for us and nourish the good will we need to love our neighbors.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">And that sanctuary in our souls, since it is ours alone, is a place that can only be entered alone. It is therefore a place of silence: a speechless silence full of awe on account the miracle of the universe; a prayerful silence that yearns for peace on earth; a respectful silence that honors the mysteries of other—other people, other loves, other choices. The silent sanctuary of our souls is a refuge for those tossed to and fro on the violent and unpredictable currents of time and civilization—especially now, during Covid time. The silent sanctuary in our souls is one of the few places we can hear the still, quiet voice of God, if Her voice is to be heard at all.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;"> And in the end, that is how I take the Christmas carol, <i>Silent Night</i>. Not silent because the animals really were, or the angels lost their voice. But the song sings of a silent night because the story of Jesus’ birth takes are dumbfounds us with its suggestion that God is not just notion, not merely the answer to a philosophical puzzle, but God is really here, with us and in us, enlivening us, even now. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;"> And so, we whisper, in response, this year to ourselves alone, “let all the earth keep silence, before him.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></p>John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-355825085533293942020-12-12T21:17:00.028-05:002020-12-13T12:10:38.355-05:00My Ten Favourite Reads from 2020<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /> I find that the annual ten-best and hundred-best book lists are pretty boring. The lists have in common that they’re mostly made up of the same mass market bestsellers. I think there is a direct connection between the amount of marketing dollars the publisher spends and getting on these lists. These books are, by design, intended to have wide appeal, but that means many great “specialist” books and small press books get missed. So here is my very personal list—best books I’ve read in 2020, regardless of when they were published. </span><div><span style="font-size: medium;"> The list has several themes in common across the themes: religion, anthropology, and race(ism). Hope you find something here that you like!</span></div><div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfASOMlTxIbHAJ0WNO03JtPlKtZlH0i6KC6Ty9G90UsmHRwgsZzqmIWau5gvkn6rAD__5efA5XUCNchvaDRyGaBhLcMoWRQPM2wffYUrqxkcCa2vkLfLiKMpCP8jvhTc_efjaBRIQm7y8/s2048/818sIVkG4FL.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1365" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfASOMlTxIbHAJ0WNO03JtPlKtZlH0i6KC6Ty9G90UsmHRwgsZzqmIWau5gvkn6rAD__5efA5XUCNchvaDRyGaBhLcMoWRQPM2wffYUrqxkcCa2vkLfLiKMpCP8jvhTc_efjaBRIQm7y8/s320/818sIVkG4FL.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>NOVELS</b></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />1.</span><span style="font-size: large;"><span> </span><i><b>Exit West</b></i></span><span><span style="font-size: large;">, </span><span style="font-size: medium;">by Mosin Hamid. Such a unique and lovely narrative voice! I mean the writing! A melancholy and romantic book about what binds humanity together and what pulls us apart. Set in the Middle East and California, it follows a few characters who move around the world as doorways beyond the control of central governments makes the whole world’s population mobile. Magical realism here, and it works. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div><i><b>2. <span style="font-size: large;">Homegoing</span></b><span style="font-size: large;">,</span></i><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: medium;">by Yaa Gyasi. Lovely and painful. A narrative dive into the lives of ordinary people who both fail and triumph. Most of the failures are due to hatred—systemic racism—and war and colonialism and ignorance, among other human shortcomings. But the way these people keep the flames of hope and love alive is inspiring and beautiful. The unique structure of the novel is also very interesting, as it follows two joined yet separate families through multiple generations. The writing is simple, pointed, and lovely. Best read of the year.</span></div><div><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>3.</b> </span><i><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The Overstory</b>,</span></i><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: medium;">by Richard Powers. Well, I can find things to criticize here. The book is a bit too preachy; it reads, sometimes, too much like a botany text; and it is really long and could have used a bit of trimming. Still, this is a magnificent book. Powers creates believable characters who do, at turns, lovely and horrible things to save the world’s trees. Powers hears and shares the language of trees so that I can almost hear them.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><b>4. </b></span><i><b><span style="font-size: large;">A Canticle for Leibowitz</span></b></i><span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: medium;">by Walter M. Miller, Jr. I read this postapocalyptic book in high school, again in college, and then not again till now. It is a book worth reading for its humanity, for its sympathetic portrayal of religious people (perhaps a bit too sympathetic) and for its grand historical sweep. I can't say I share all of Miller's Roman Catholic sensitivities, especially in light of so many recent revelations. But as a study of the complex interplay between religious conviction, civilization, and politics, it can’t be beat. </span></span><br /><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><i><b><br /></b></i></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>MEDIA</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b><br /></b></span></div><div><span style="font-size: large;"><i><b>5. Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World</b></i>,</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> by Marryanne Wolf. The great irony that weighs against this book is that those who might gain the most by reading it never will. They’ve abandoned deep reading for the mesmerizing screen. Wolf is a neurologist who explains in great detail the latest research into why reading is becoming harder and harder for most people in our society. A must read for ministers, teachers, and parents too. Wolf’s specialty is child development.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu25xb5nI9dXYzVzeHPola9ZbAB5cj2PuU-DXU25XxgXH8NK2YeGaRmG14XFvt6o9SPff8ZhpamhaFTw2TyONyE9tY5a7VnPk9l-c7-FJY9nIXEBcuArRO0wkSG97FbdDoP2VbV_02lHI/s600/facf79f4a34df6e6643df72a16898d6ac4ee6fb1_grande.jpg.webp" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu25xb5nI9dXYzVzeHPola9ZbAB5cj2PuU-DXU25XxgXH8NK2YeGaRmG14XFvt6o9SPff8ZhpamhaFTw2TyONyE9tY5a7VnPk9l-c7-FJY9nIXEBcuArRO0wkSG97FbdDoP2VbV_02lHI/s320/facf79f4a34df6e6643df72a16898d6ac4ee6fb1_grande.jpg.webp" /></a></div></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"> A fine companion book to <i>Reader, Come Home</i>, is <i><b>Digital Mini-malism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World</b></i>. After reviewing, briefly, much of the same material that Wolf describes in greater detail, and after explaining Silicon Valley’s corporate aims, Cal Newport offers a step-by-step guide to his media detox plan. I’m going to take it this January, when I begin my sabbatical!</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>AUTOBIOGRAPHY</b></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><div><span><i><b><span style="font-size: medium;">6. </span><span style="font-size: large;">Born a Crime: Stories of a South African Childhood</span></b></i><span style="font-size: large;">, </span></span><span style="font-size: medium;">by Trevor Noah. As a regular visitor to South Africa, this book revealed, to me, just how much I've missed. I've been to the townships, both in the city and the countryside. I've visited Soweto, Cape Town, Johannesburg and many other towns. But I was always a tourist and I can see I missed mostly everything.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"> This is a humane insider’s book about people trying to figure out a new thing with old prejudices and problems. They do better than you'd think, but it is quite a trip. Noah himself turns out to be a totally likeable, yet complex person. His mother? Well, she is a character who leaves me both impressed and sad. Read this. Surprises everywhere. Well written, too.</span></div></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY </b></span></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">(or, Doubt and Evil)</span></b></div><div><span><br /><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">7. Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt</span></i><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></b><span style="font-size: medium;">by Alec Ryrie. A well-written, engaging story with many vignettes along the way. Ryrie argues that as impressive as rational arguments for and against the existence of God might be, most people have become unbelievers for emotional reasons. </span></span></div><div><span><span style="font-size: medium;"> Ryrie names two that have ancient historical roots: anger (especially at religious institutions, rather than at God) and anxiety (especially surrounding how one can know this or that, given the many opinions out there). I thought his concluding analysis of our society’s turn away from church a bit weak, but for the most part a well-researched and engaging attempt to listen for faith voices other than those of the scholars.</span><br /><br /><i><b><span style="font-size: medium;">8. </span><span style="font-size: large;">Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil</span></b><span style="font-size: large;">,</span></i><span style="font-size: medium;"> by Hannah Arendt. I made a goal of reading ten classic works this year. Right now, I’m plowing through Dostoevsky’s </span><i style="font-size: large;"><b>Brothers Karamazov</b></i><span style="font-size: medium;">. Arendt’s book, I’m finding, is a fitting companion to Dostoevsky. </span></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBEQO5NkxyZmX-9ve2RP9H0DhbzSyiGicGjqYyruPwscscDJYJDx51R9evKlvKNoRSREltKf5spI8tlN5nwquXk7V2v4qiyWvKlelG3dCq0pZhLMWctk7DngZhZ3uijSb-XEgMpnOAwh0/s2048/P0.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2047" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBEQO5NkxyZmX-9ve2RP9H0DhbzSyiGicGjqYyruPwscscDJYJDx51R9evKlvKNoRSREltKf5spI8tlN5nwquXk7V2v4qiyWvKlelG3dCq0pZhLMWctk7DngZhZ3uijSb-XEgMpnOAwh0/s320/P0.jpg" /></a></div></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"> She examines the life and trial of Adolf Eichmann in order to try and understand what made him send so many Jewish persons, by rail, to their deaths during World War II. Arendt doesn’t think it was the devil. Her portrait of a man unselfconsciously stumbling into evil is disheartening and important—especially now, as nations around the world sees more and more strong men taking power and their sycophants helping smooth the way.<br /></span></div></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>SCIENCES</b></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span><b><span style="font-size: large; font-style: italic;">9. Ancestors in Our Genome: The New Science of Human Evolution,</span> </b><span style="font-size: medium;">by Eugene E. Harris. Human evolution has always been a fascination of mine. I sometimes think that career-wise, my greatest regret is that I didn’t become an evolutionary anthropologist. </span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"> The genomic science is challenging for a lay person like me. But the subject is truly fascinating. We all know how DNA can be used to identify certain illnesses, potential relatives, criminals, and even rapists. DNA is a powerful tool for tracing our relationships to and contacts with others. But the same science and tools can be used to determine our evolutionary relationships too. This book covers when the homo sapiens line diverged from the last common ancestor of our us and our cousins, chimps and bonobos. It covers why we know that humans mostly evolved in Africa, and how we are related to other human species that are now extinct, including Neanderthals, Denisovans, and even earlier humans. I loved it.</span><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"> Runner up in the evolutionary biology category was </span><i style="font-size: large;"><b>Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art,</b> </i><span style="font-size: medium;">by Rebecca Wragg Sykes. The title says it all. A marvellously detailed (perhaps a bit too detailed) look at many Neanderthal archeological sites and what we can learn from them.</span><br /><br /><b style="font-size: large;">10.</b><span style="font-size: medium;"> In a different corner of the anthropological world, I was completely absorbed by </span><span style="font-size: large;"><i><b>At the Bridge; James Teit and an Anthropology of Belonging</b></i>,</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> by Wendy Wickwire. James Teit was an overlooked, turn-of-the-nineteenth century anthropologist who lived with, studied, and advocated for the indigenous peoples of British Columbia and Northwest USA. </span></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"> Wickwire examines Teit’s life, his participant-observer stance among the First Nations, his political engagement with Ottawa and Victoria, and his understanding of the systemic racism First Nations consistently faced. Every page is filled with fascinating stories and insight. <br /><br /></span></div></div></div>John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-7011073262263019632020-11-27T09:13:00.113-05:002020-11-28T22:56:18.325-05:00The Pieta, The Death of Wolfe, and Remembrance.<span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/#" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuR7iD8-vUHjyGAMqW1Qxt8EQ_4UoyAobOowkWdR56DrdDdyy_FLrUez1CX-hkjG_ZSVG_4F6suwfh0_oMUzz8FOnf2MT-WB6nHMaxlprMFGXBHhnfVLhmY7hyphenhyphen9Zbm5PEbty33uw95zqQ/s320/Rott.jpg" /></a></div> Christian theologians and artists have always been in love with Jesus’ mother, Mary, who they named, Theotokos, mother of God. Liturgies, music, and prayers especially focused on her purity and suffering. <br /><br /> One of the suffering moments—not actually mentioned in scripture—was when Mary first held the body of Jesus after it was taken off of the cross. This moment is called The Pieta, which can be translated as “The Pity,” or “The Compassion.” <br /><br /> Here is an early example, the Rottgen Pieta from the fourteenth century. It is graphic and gritty and moves me. Jesus’ wounds still flow. He is emaciated, ugly, broken, just as you would expect a crucified holy man to look. Mary is shocked, on the verge of disbelief.</span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /> The medieval Germans peasants who saw this Pieta in their church knew this kind of suffering for themselves. Medieval life was, as Thomas Hobbes said, “nasty, brutish, and short.” The Rottgen Pieta offered those peasants both a Jesus and a Mary they could identify with.<br /><br /> But there is another, darker side to this and similar devotional sculptures. The sculpture suggests that suffering is holy. Mary and Jesus’ suffering here justifies suffering as a reality of life peasants had to accept. The Rottgen Pieta—and many more like it--was used by the church to teach, nurture—and control—peasant believers.<br /><br /> Not so Michelangelo’s Pietá. It served a very different purpose for a very different audience. This sculpture, found in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, is one of the most admired works of art of all time.<br /><br /> The earthy realism of Rottgen is gone, replaced unearthly Platonic idealism. Mary, even as the mother of a 31-year old man, is still a beautiful virgin, the prototypical perfect woman. And Jesus, even in death, is Adonis-beautiful, too. <br /><br /> The story here is that Michelangelo was hired by the French Cardinal Jean de Bilheres to create this sculpture for two reasons. It was to serve—and for a while, it did—as Bilheres’ tombstone. But more importantly, Bilhere was in Rome as a French ambassador after a disastrous war between France and most of the small Italian Republics. It was a war marked by the brutal sack of Mordano, about 250 kilometers north of Rome. The French army put all its citizens, including women and children, to death. </span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><div class="separator"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/#" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTdyj-smT_HE3RFW4X_DqD57nr1ai6_EdY3rFVEVYa5g-pypHTqTb65RxqA2teXlhoTyWEOtuMkmx-e4OqdHKE0ZFwPACUpOF3hV6WvMT7nztuOX8R8nUV5VKir7_BsyjNczUfFDUtOKA/w400-h300/Pieta+wallpaper.jpg" width="400" /></a></div></span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"> Now, after this inconclusive but brutal war, Bilhere was supposed to help smooth things over. And so, he tasked Michelangelo, an Italian artist, to use a notably French and German theme, The Pieta, to sculpt a work of Italian marble to place in the French chapel of the first St. Peter’s in Rome, Italy. A peace offering that bound the two peoples together.<br /><br /> With Michelangelo’s Pieta, the suffering of Mary and Jesus is a passing whisper—as Bilhere hoped the suffering of Mordano and Italy might be soon forgotten, too. The ugliness of war is here swallowed up by the stunning beauty of national reconciliation symbolized by Jesus’ reconciliation of humans to God, through his death. The Pieta is a stunning piece of political theater.<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://www.blogger.com/#"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCF5Dfl028UGGAL6r9mRx-IeyVo8wzhqQcG6arcU2wtzSqu4ECOUnm08vv5H6N70Cwsv_ADQaGzNHDfK6AxmU_D1CeYQRiHmc4C8tClmM1rB0sqP1WKW5G99bX_AnFGR4c7fujVy_y0ZY/w610-h271/guernica3.jpg" /></a><br /><br /> <br /><br /> Which brings us to a modern pieta, Pablo Picasso's Guernica. You've seen this painting. I don't know how to speak to its beauty--it is striking and compelling and abstract, though.<br /><br /> Here Picasso painted the suffering of the village of Guernica during the Spanish civil war, just before WWII. The Nazi Luftwaffe bombed that little Basque village on a market day. There was no military target. The purpose was simply to sow terror. Two hundred and fifty townspeople died. It was a modern Mordano. <br /><br /> Thus, like Michelangelo’s Pieta, Guernica is very, very political. But instead of trying to smooth over a war, it puts Nazi war crimes front and center, condemning them.<br /><br /> And if you look closely, you will see on the far left, a pieta—Mary holding Jesus in her lap. It’s Rottgenall over, but in Picasso’s cubist style. Do you see it? On the left?<br /><br /><a href="https://www.blogger.com/#" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfJiRqa5rZDhPkjXkTvdh2_EVbvw44rp4G648oKzaqOEesg6gDmWBDz8NtY895v7HZL7NAuyG76u95blskiM9KFbLBwWnPySxqb1gEtksRjY2wmKXURL2dc6Le0XO9BW3sGKNAaTPPTHs/s320/Picasso.jpeg" /></a></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> In case you can't, here is a reproduction, done as a sculpture, by well-known American artist <br />Arthur Lopez, in the Mexican-American Santero style.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;"> I have one more pieta to show you, Benjamin West’s, “The Death of Major-General James Wolfe.”<br /><br /> You remember James Wolfe. He was the commanding British officer during the French-Indian war. The French were besieged at Quebec, and tried to break through British lines with a surprise attack on the Plains of Abraham, that failed. The battle only took an hour, but during it Wolfe was shot and died of his wounds. <br /><br /> The battle led, soon after, to France’s exit from New France. Wolfe has, forever after, been seen as Canada’s first war hero, and the epitome of the British Empire’s fighting spirit and military prowess. <br /><br /><br /><a href="https://www.blogger.com/#"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmBYribeWeTqy3yC9aLVzTuhCp_GYP4UV_YH2su-t-mNzK3qw_-OSguzKd87xMx2aBzfRXNKDIFQTQKV9CQVaHTuMrPvaM6LXLhAlKKTv-v53CFrpz5BLWVMtkWYKhiMf-UQD9HjILUSc/w400-h244/The-Death-of-General-Wolfe-James-Barry-Oil-Painting.jpg" /></a><br /><br /> Wolfe’s painting, of course, is yet another version of The Pieta. West knew Michelangelo’s Pieta well from when he lived in Rome as an art student. Here, West lays out Wolfe as Michelangelo laid out Jesus. General James Wolfe is a sacrificial lamb who died to establish true civilization in the New World jungle. One commentator writes, “This deliberate visual association between the dying General Wolfe and the dead Christ underscores the British officer’s admirable qualities. If Christ was innocent, pure, and died for a worthwhile cause—that is, the salvation of mankind—then Wolfe too was innocent, pure, and died for a worthwhile cause; the advancement of the British position in North America.”<br /><br /> In contrast to other paintings of Wolfe’s death from the same era, West filled his painting not with regular soldiers, but with military dignitaries. In fact, none of these men were actually there. West added them to add dignity to the scene. One of those watching is a First Nations warrior, looking on Wolfe adoringly—in stark contrast to how most First Nations would have felt about these European wars that kept dragging them in.<br /><br /> But West has no time for such objections. He is making myths that justify the violence, greed, and visions of world domination that are at the root of all empires, including the British Empire. West here is an evangelist for wars on behalf of the crown and for territorial expansion.<br /><br /> All of which brings me near to the end of what I want to say this morning. All of these works of art that I’ve shown you this morning served propagandistic ends. In each of them, the story of Mary holding Jesus’ body, a religious theme—was used to score political points.<br /><br /> The Rottgen Pieta served the churches need to tell the story of Jesus to illiterate peasants who needed comfort, assurance—and who needed to be kept in line. It said, “shut up and embrace your suffering, like Mary and Jesus did.”<br /><br /> Michelangelo’s Pieta was meant to paper over war crimes. It was an offer of arm’s length, platonic friendship as a substitute for war.<br /><br /> Picasso’s pieta was exactly the opposite. It served as a condemnation of war by including a very Rottgen-like Pieta that represents the evil of war. <br /><br /> And the question for us, of course, is this. Will we let Remembrance Day, as well as its rituals and music, use us in a similar way? Or will we see through some of the myths to the fact of war’s evil? To the actual pain and suffering of both soldiers and civilians? Will we, perhaps, use Remembrance Day to organize for no more wars?<br /><br /> This week, we ought to remember the heroism of our boys; but we also remember Flanders Fields and the poppies their bodies fed. We remember the WWI sacrifices of Vimy Ridge and the Somme and Passchendaele, but we also now understand that ultimately, these battles were fought for the elites of a British Empire against the elites of a German Empire, rather than for any common good or high moral principle.<br /><br /> We have fought other morally ambivalent wars. The Royal Mounted Police against the Metis. The first overseas deaths of Canadian soldiers in a totally useless Anglo-Boer war that mostly served to make the British Empire richer while brutally erasing Africans. But our boys also died fighting the horrific reality of Nazism in what is sometimes called the twentieth century’s only just war. Our boys liberated extermination camps and liberated my ancestors in Holland. In any case, whether the cause was just or not or just middling—our men were always true and valiant.<br /><br /> And now I wonder, how will history judge our time in Afghanistan, after the Taliban is back in control, as they seem destined to be? Or our material support for Saudi Arabia and its ruthless war in Somalia? <br /><br /> I do not know.<br /><br /> But today, we nevertheless remember the Christ-like suffering of all our military martyrs. In their memory, and to prevent the need for remembering more soldiers in the future, we commit our Remembrance Day not merely to making glorious national myths, but to learning the hard lessons of history, history as objective as we can make it. <br /><br /> Even good wars are hell. We must do all within our power to avoid falling for heroic myths that want to use us, and instead, as a nation, build lasting peace wherever we can lend a hand.<br /><br /> I am not naïve. I know that hating war cannot end war. But I plead with you, as followers of Jesus, who gave his own life as a protest against both religious bigotry and Roman military occupation, I ask you, as followers of Jesus to use your social and political and economic gifts and powers to make peace. <br /><br /> This is the most fitting Remembrance of all.<br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div></div></div>John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com0Toronto, ON, Canada43.653226 -79.383184315.342992163821151 -114.5394343 71.963459836178842 -44.226934299999996tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-30131654967075248442020-05-06T22:22:00.000-04:002020-05-08T09:17:31.730-04:00Is God a Narcissist?<div class="WordSection1" style="page: WordSection1;">
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"> Once upon a time</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;">, a pretty nymph by the name of Echo spotted a hunter, Narcissus, in the woods. Now, if Echo was pretty, Narcissus was gorgeous—a handsome, beautiful man. He was so sculpted and so fine, in fact, that just to look at Narcissus was to fall in love with him. And that is what happened to Echo.<br /><br /> However, Narcissus was having nothing of it. He rejected Echo. She was devasted—so much so, in fact, that Echo melted away to almost nothing, until all that was left of her was a stuttering susurration in the wind. <br /><br /> Nemesis, another Greek God, looked on infuriated and decided to punish Narcissus for rejecting Echo. So, Nemesis led Narcissus to a pool. When Narcissus saw his reflection in the pool, he immediately fell in love with himself, just as Echo had, before. All Narcissus could do was bow down, like this flower, and gaze upon himself in wonder and awe with worshipful abandon—so long, and so intensely, that he was never able to leave that pool again, until he finally died of hunger. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> In any case, ever since, narcissism has wound its way through Western literature. Consider, for example, fairy tales such as Snow White or Cinderella. Both feature wicked step mothers who cannot abide the thought that someone besides themselves should be the most beautiful, or beloved, or have the most attention from the king. Both Snow White and Cinderella are exiled so that the narcissistic stepmother can have all the praise and glory.<br /><br /> Well, and it isn’t just Western literature. Politicians might be narcissistic. One in particular claims to be the smartest man in the world. He says, “in his great and unmatched wisdom,” that he is a “very stable genius.” His critics are, “enemies of the people,” and his congressional opponents should be, “arrested for treason.” Of the current world crisis, he says, “I alone can fix it.”<br /><br /> Narcissism. According the DSM-V, the standard diagnostic tool of psychologists and psychiatrists, narcissism is “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy.” <br /><br /> And doesn’t that describe God, too—or at least, how God usually shows up in scripture? There, God (or his scribes) describes himself, rather grandiosely, as “creator of heaven and earth.” He demands that we should admire and worship him and him alone, so that there be no other Gods before him. God—rather unempathetically, I’d say—even sends all of Israel into foreign exile after tens of thousands of them die in sieges. According to scripture, God does this mostly because they were practicing freedom of religion and living a bit high on the hog. <br /><br /> Doesn’t this God sometimes seem narcissistic, to you? As when, for example, Jesus says that the first and greatest command of God is that, you ought to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind?” Isn’t this just over the top? What drives this divine need to be the centre of our attention—even of our adoration?<br /><br /> I’ve struggled with this self-centered, jealous God—jealous—another Biblical word for what God is like, by the way. And I eventually concluded that this picture of God must be flawed. What would the God of the universe gain, if there be such a God, by my groveling? So now I think that though the ancient writers tried to explain who God was, it was as if they were staring into too bright a light, with too much anxiety, and therefore ultimately offered a mistaken view of God. <br /><br /> It’s a common mistake. Humans have long bowed and scraped before their gods, hoping thereby to gain their favour, just as politicians and lobbyists bow and scrape to gain the favor of presidents or emperors. Humans have long thought that if they adored God and worshipped God in the right way, wore appropriate vestments, waved censors with incense or chanted Latin, and sang songs of praise—Jews and Christians and many from other religions have long believed that God could be bent to do their bidding, and answer their prayers or (at a minimum) give them a passing grade on the way to a heavenly promotion. <br /><br /> We Christians have long believed, deep in our hearts, that God the narcissist craved this adoration and attention and that we better deliver, or else.<br /><br /> But now I think this picture—and even milder forms of it—is all wrong. Remember that Jesus once said that if we saw him then we have seen God? I think that is a better clue to God’s real nature. Thus, as his preaching ministry drew to an end, we see Jesus set his face for Jerusalem, where he sacrificed his life in an act of defiance against rulers who would be worshipped, and in an act of solidarity with the least and last who lived under the thumbs of their High Priests and Kings and Procurators. <br /><br /> Explaining himself, Jesus said, more or less, that yes, the first great commandment is that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind. But, the second commandment, which is like it, is this: you should love your neighbour as yourself. <br /><br /> Because, you see, Jesus had figured out that the only way to actually obey the first commandment is by keeping the second. God never wanted formal worship—even if some writers of scripture thought so. Jesus corrected that notion by suggesting that worship is any act of love on behalf of our neighbours.<br /><br /> If Jesus was right, then God is no narcissist who demands our burnt offering and calves a year old or thousands of rams or rivers of oil. Not at all. He (or she or they!) has told us what is really good, what he really requires of us. It is to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with God, by bowing before and serving our neighbours.<br /><br /> Not narcissism, but neighbours. No falling on our knees before a jealous God, but rather, rolling up our sleeves for each other. This is our true worship.</span><br />
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John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-10274671473065805182020-03-09T07:15:00.000-04:002020-03-09T21:53:48.159-04:00Living in Dangerous Times: COVID-19 and Our Mortality<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> Every few years, Canadians collectively raise our eyebrows and notice that something quite out of the ordinary is happening, and . . . it might not be good. Do you remember, for example, the Y2K scare? The stock market crash of 2008 and 2009? Or SARS?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> When the Y2K scare happened, Irene and I, as well as our friends Nick and Nandy and our kids, loaded a large picnic cooler with mementoes of our lives—tapes and a tape player, articles we had written for journals, pictures, newspapers, awards and even a coin collection—we loaded it all into the cooler, wrapped the cooler up in multiple layers of plastic, and on New Year’s Eve, before a roaring bonfire, we buried it, at midnight. We left maps for our grandkids to find it back and open it in the year 2050. It was our way of thumbing our noses at Y2K.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> And yet, given our raised eyebrows, we also socked away several jugs of water and a few weeks’ worth of canned food, rice and beans at home. You can’t be too careful.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> When the stock market crash happened, in 2008, we again did as all the experts suggested. Nothing, this time. We didn’t panic. We didn’t buy gold or sell our stock portfolio. You can’t be too careful.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> And now we are all collectively raising our eyebrows again, this time on account of the COVID-19 virus. We don’t know how serious this epidemic will be, compared to, say, the 2003 SARS outbreak. It spreads more easily but fortunately the COVID-19 virus is less dangerous than SARS, if you catch it. The vast majority of people who catch COVID-19 will be fine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> So, we are now washing our hands more often and bumping elbows in church and wondering about whether or not we should travel. Irene and I have cancelled a vacation to Baja, Mexico. We were supposed to fly out March 18. But you can’t be too careful. We’ll have a staycation, instead. Our dog, Jex, will thank us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> Still, if we’re honest, our eyebrows are raised and it is all a bit unsettling. What can I say? I’m not a doctor. I see guidelines for washing-hands everywhere. We ought to be religious about following them!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> The elephant in the room when it comes to COVID-19, of course, the thing we’ve all thought about more than a few times, even if only briefly, is death. I read a nice little story about death this week. It goes like this:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> Once some tourists from Canada were visiting Poland. They had heard about the famous Polish rabbi Hafez Hayyim and managed to receive an invitation to visit him in his home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> When the tourists arrived, they were surprised to see that the rabbi’s home was only one simple room filled with books. His only furniture was a table and a bench.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> “Rabbi, where is your furniture?” they asked.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> “Where is yours?” replied the rabbi.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> “But we are only visitors here,” answered the tourists.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> “So am I,” said the rabbi.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> When it comes to life—and death—we are all tourists. That is why as a minister in a United Church I have made a point about preaching sermons about death regularly over the years. But preaching about death is challenging for me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> In part, it is challenging because the members of the church I serve hold to a variety of views about what happens when we die. For example, some of my parishioners have beautiful traditional beliefs. They hope that when they die they will go to heaven. They are with the Apostle Paul when he writes, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us,” And, “We wait for the redemption of our bodies,” he adds, in case we were not sure what he was talking about.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> But other members of my congregation are much less certain about all that life-after-death stuff, or maybe don’t even believe in God at all, or believe in some very different kind of God, as “post-theists.” These members of my congregation take what Paul says about life after death with a large grain of salt. They are more with the Psalmist who says, “In death there is no remembrance of Yahweh; in Sheol, [the afterlife], who can give you praise?” These parishioners believe that death is simply the end of the road. And there are many, many positions in between.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> What do I think? Well, I am okay with the uncertainty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> Many Christians, and for that matter, many Hindus and Buddhists and Muslims and Pagans have come up with 101 detailed explanations for what happens when we die. In Christianity, for example, we talk of intermediate states, and resurrection and judgments, of New Earths coming down out of heaven and meeting Jesus in the sky. Who knows? Maybe one group of Christians or Pagans or Hindus actually got the post-life map exactly right. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> But what is more interesting and alluring to me than the details different religions differ on is the near universal sense that most humans have always had that there is more to this life than just this life. That seems important to me—and mildly hopeful. Whatever the ultimate truth about death is, I like the title of Julian Barnes’ beautiful book, <i>nothing to be frightened of.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> But when people try to put me on the spot about life after death, I answer, “I hope so. When I die, I hope that I will awake to a grand adventure. I really like that idea. But, if not, when I die, I will get my best night’s sleep ever.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> What strikes me as more important than “I’m not sure,” however, is that <i>following Jesus is for the living and not the dead</i>. Remember that story I told you a few minutes ago, about being tourists? The rabbi’s name was Hafez Hayyim, which means, “responsible caretaker of life.” In the spirit of that insight I offer two pieces of advice for anyone who has thought of death since the COVID-19 epidemic began.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> First, and most responsible of all, make sure your affairs are always in order enough so that in case you do die those who survive you know what to do next. As a minister I have too often seen family grief compounded when the persons who died refused to plan for that eventuality. Most importantly, have a will and an advanced care plan or directive. Married or not, make sure that your bank accounts and credit cards and mortgages and insurance are all in order. Leave a file behind, where it can be easily located, with your will and on your computer—a file entitled, “In case of death.” Fill that file with the practical information people will need to tie up your affairs in a gracious manner that does credit to you. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> Doing these sort of things isn’t merely responsible; it is also spiritual, because doing them is kind and loving.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> But there is one more, more inspirational piece of advice I also have for those of us, who as Bruce Cockburn once sang, live in dangerous times.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> It is this. No matter what your age or risk category, though perhaps especially if you are elderly, remember: now is always the right time to do wonderful and beautiful things with your life. We are called to be responsible stewards of our lives; but not merely responsible. If we are tourists, it is because we wish to take delight in the journey and with our companions, just as Jesus did with his disciples. So, now is the right time to do wonderful and beautiful things with your life! Now is the time to say that you are sorry. To give a gift to someone who is beloved or to donate to a cause that matters to you. Now is always the time to embrace a child or grandchild or an elderly parent and to be truly present to them, even if it takes time and energy. The apostle John writes, "My children, our love should not be just words and talk; it must be true love, which shows itself in action." </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> In the end, before the end, be responsible and love no matter what what the flu season does or does not bring.</span></div>
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John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-11958188970343198202020-02-04T11:18:00.003-05:002020-02-04T11:24:53.437-05:00Two War Stories--1917 and Ehud the Benjaminite <br />
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(If you would like to read the scripture where you can find the Ehud story, go to Judges 3:12-30. I'm going to be posting more of my sermons that deal with contemporary issues here, on the advice of my communication team. This is a sermon on this year's Oscar nominees, preached against the Judges story for comparison and contrast.)</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Before we read today’s scripture, I invited the children to leave for Sunday School. You see, our scripture for today was a war story, a particularly violent war story. I didn’t want to have to explain it to the children or apologize to the parents.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> And the movie that I’m going to review today, <i>1917, </i>was rated “R.” That means anyone under the age of 17 who wants to see the movie has to be accompanied by an adult. <i>1917 </i>is very violent<i>.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Why do we like these stories? Why are we such suckers for violence, murder and mayhem?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> So, first, the story of Ehud and Eglon. Not only is it violent, but ironically, this story is also supposed to be a divine comedy. Unfortunately, most of the humor gets lost in translation. I'll try to give you a taste of it, though. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Ehud is a Benjaminite, which means, in Hebrew, "son of my right hand." But we are also told that Ehud is a left-handed “son of my right hand.” Right off, the audience wants to know how the left-handed son of a right-handed people will take advantage of this confusion. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> What is more, the obese King Eglon's name sounds like the Hebrew word for "fatted calf." So, now Hebrews are asking themselves how a left-handed son of my right hand is going to slaughter the fatted calf. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> As it happens, after Ehud delivers Israel’s war tax, or tribute, to King Eglon, Ehud manages to trick the King’s retainers into leaving, so that Ehud is alone with the King. Then Ehud grabs his sword, successfully hidden on the wrong-right side of his body and buries it in Eglon’s belly. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Ehud then dumps the dead King in a bathroom, shuts the door, and runs. In Hebrew what follows literally reads: "The servants came and saw, <b>look</b>, the doors of the upper room are locked, and they said he must be relieving himself. They waited a long time and <b>look</b>, he's not opening the doors of his room, and they took the keys and opened them, and <b>look</b>, their lord is sprawled on the floor, dead.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Next, the Israelites take on the Moabite army. The Moabite soldiers are said to be “vigourous and strong,” though the word used can also mean "fat." So, in a neat little parallel to the fate of their master, all the "fat" Moabite soldiers are struck down too. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> This story, whenever it was read, had Israelites rolling on the floor with mirth and laughter. When they finally quieted down, one of them would only have to say, "he was relieving himself," or "they were all vigorously fat soldiers" or “look,” and everyone would break out in laughter all over again. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> The Oscar nominated <i>1917, </i>on the other hand, isn’t funny. Not at all. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> In brief, two British soldiers, Schofield and Blake, have to cross no-man’s land to warn 1600 isolated British troops to call off a doomed attack.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> It’s a death trip, underlined by images of burial, bottomless pits, and a hellish inferno.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> At one point, a German airplane crashes, Lucifer like, out of the sky. After rescuing the German pilot, the pilot plugs a knife deep into Blake’s belly and kills him—an echo of Ehud and Eglon. Only Schofield is left. So, we all pray, with Jean Valjean, “Bring him home. Bring him peace. He is only a boy.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> And that morning, after navigating Hades and bullets, Schofield gets to the 1600 isolated troops. And some of them survive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> So why do we throng to see <i>1917</i>? Why are we such suckers for this violence, murder and mayhem? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> You are probably thinking, “well, we like these stories because they have deeper meaning, a moral.” Maybe. But just because a story has a meaning, is it the right one? Consider Ehud and Eglon again. It is quite clear that this story is told—as are all the stories in <i>Judges</i>—to convince the Israelites to worship <i>Yahweh</i>, and <i>Yahweh</i> alone. If they do so, God will give them health, wealth, and peace. If they do not worship Yahweh, however, God will abandon them, and they will be conquered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> The problem, of course, is that this isn’t true. Whether or not the Jewish people have been faithful over the past twenty-five-hundred years, their history has almost always been, regardless of their piety, one of suffering, persecution, exiles, pogroms and holocausts. Even now, anti-Semitism is on the rise, and most of the nations surrounding Israel want the Jewish state quashed. It is ugly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Meanwhile, sadly, the State of Israel has responded with military occupation and illegal settlement and confiscation of conquered Palestinian territory, a universally recognized war crime and not peace at all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> So, it isn’t true that when Israel walks with the Lord, in the light of his word, what a glory he sheds on their way; it isn’t true that while Israel does his good will, he abides with them still, and with all who will trust and obey.” We used to sing such meaning for ourselves too, but that is not how the world turns. Sometimes, often even, evil nations, like evil people, prosper. And nations trying to do the right thing, fail.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b> </b>And what is the moral or meaning of <i>1917</i>? That heroes triumph over adversity? That something as hellish as war cannot stop brave men? That to do one’s duty is the main thing? That today is a good day to die? I don’t know. For all of its macabre beauty <i>1917</i> left me feeling depressed about the human prospect. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b> </b>So why do we throng to see it? Why are we suckers for violence, murder and mayhem? Well, maybe such stories excite our basest, most ancient fight or flight instincts, without actually putting us in danger. Plus, there must be 101 reasons philosophers could give for the appeal of violence as an artistic subject. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> But here’s the thing. If nothing else, both of these stories reinforce something that we all know but all too rarely focus on. War is hell. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> I do not mean to say that when we are up against some final wall, and it is a matter of war or death camps, or basic freedoms—I do not mean to suggest we should never fight back. I am, at best, a half-baked pacifist. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> But I am saying that those who live by war, countries that make war a habit, that find provocations easily, who cannot refrain from using violence to further what they think of as being in their national interest—those who live by the sword will die by the sword. This is another Biblical meaning than the one in Eglon and Ehud’s story, a very different one, and it is, I think, much closer to the truth. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> I sometimes fear that here in Canada, as a neighbour of the USA and a partner with NATO, we are at risk of forgetting that war is hell, that it is not the answer, and we have begun to buy into the myth that might makes right, and anyways the West will never lose.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> We live in an era where, for meaning, we are inundated with half-truths and excuses and propaganda and fake news. I invite you to remember that even the Bible—as in the story of Eglon and Ehud—even the Bible gets meaning wrong sometimes. Think critically. Especially about military affairs and war.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> We live in an era where our neighbour to the South, the United States—a country of which I am a citizen—has intervened militarily in the affairs of its neighbours to its South, in Central and South America, over 80 times in 100 years, mostly in the name of democracy. Well, then, Central and South America should be among the most democratic places the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> We live in an era where our neighbour to the South, the United States, has been at war in the middle East continually since 2003—a good part of that time with our Canadian help. For all such violent interventions, this is still one of the most dangerous places in the world. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> I don’t know how to fix these geopolitical matters. You don’t either. But, at the very least, when it comes to our prayers, we need to be with Maya Angelou, who prays, “Father, Mother, God, you, the borderless sea of substance, we ask you to give all the world that which we need the most: peace.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Except that we must pray this prayer having learned from Ehud and the Israelites that ultimately God chooses to answer our prayers for peace only by making us humans responsible to make it so. It’s our job and ours alone. There is no “trust and obey God” path that guarantees peace, no “but we’re a Christian nation,” narrative that secures our superiority. We should try to learn, instead, how, by our voting and investing, in our politics and locker-room conversations, in our schools and churches—we could learn how, not merely to pray for peace, but to wage peace, ourselves. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> You know. What Jesus wanted.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-49126711855881736002019-12-16T13:25:00.000-05:002019-12-16T13:33:37.446-05:00My 2019 Ten-Best (Maybe More) Books<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> The first book I read this year was titled, </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";"><b>She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity</b>, </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";">by Carl Zimmer. The best part of the book was its title. And a few nights ago I finished Carl Jung’s </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";"><b>Modern Man in Search of a Soul</b>. </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";">It’s been on my “must read” list for about forty years. Jung’s book is interesting in that it is both wrong on many counts, as new scientific developments have surpassed him; but irresistibly wise too, about the invisible currents that move us and shape our lives. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> I read a book-a-week this year. It's what I do to unwind. I also have the habit of once starting a book, always finishing it. So I read some books this past year that didn't much impress me (Marcus Borg's <b><i>Putting Away Childish Things</i> </b>was a theology book disguised as a novel. One Goodreads.com star.) What follows here, though, are some of my favourite reads from the past year. They are all five-star worthy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontbold";">Science Fiction<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> <b>One</b>: I found Margaret Atwood’s </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";"><b>The Testaments</b></span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> to be both a page turner and a wise, hopeful take on how we as humans might overcome some of our darker religious impulses. It was gripping, and a fitting conclusion to her </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";"><b>Handmaid’s Tale</b>. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> <b>Two</b>: I also read a trilogy of books—Chris Beckett’s </span><i style="font-weight: bold;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";">Dark Eden, Daughter of Ede</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"><b>n, </b>and<b> </b></span><i style="font-weight: bold;"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";">Mother of Eden</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";">—about a human settlement on a planet with no sun, whose heat was all derived from a thermal core deep inside. It was a lovely exercise in world building. But the trilogy was an even more fascinating exploration of religion building, of class structure, and of sexual ethics. Science fiction is usually what I read for fun and escapism. However, all of these books—and Adrian Tchaikovsky’s </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";"><b>Children of Time</b>—</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";">also </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";">demanded serious reflection about our society and introspection about myself and my priorities.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> <b>Three</b>: A review in the </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";">New York Times </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";">led me to </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";"><b>Silver, Sword and Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story</b>. </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";">Author Marie Arana discusses how commerce, military conquest, and religion have shaped South and Central American society and culture. The picture she paints is not pretty. But her story telling is superb, and it is definitely a story privileged white people like me need to hear. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> <b>Four</b>: I read several books about Canada’s First Nations. The first was </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";">Toronto Star</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> writer Tanya Talaga’s </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";"><b>Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City</b></span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";">. This book explored the suspicious deaths of several First Nation kids who attended high school far from their homes, in Thunder Bay, Ontario. The structural racism these kids faced by being forced to live so far from home to attend school, in a city where they were clearly seen as troublesome and expendable, in a school system that was much too short of resources for no good reason other than racism bears reading. Talaga tells her stories with compassion and flair, which makes this hard read also strangely satisfying and worthwhile.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> Jesse Thistle’s </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";"><b>From the Ashes: My Story of Being Métis, Homeless, and Finding My Way</b></span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"><b> </b>tells a more hopeful story about how, in spite of beginning his life with many deficits, Jesse nevertheless somehow succeeded. A big part of the story here concerns the faithfulness of families, friends, and lovers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> <b>Five</b>: Tara Westover’s </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";"><b>Educated</b></span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> is an amazing memoir about growing up in a Mormon family. Her parents are abusive, neglectful, and into survivalism. Tara is home schooled--barely. But she manages to make it to college and graduate school. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> <b>Six</b>: I walked into Toronto’s best bookstore during the early fall—Ben Mcnally’s, on Bay Street near City Hall. Tragically, the store is being forced to relocate in order for its space to be redeveloped. But it’s a treasure of trove of books not necessarily best sellers, but all very fine. The book I found on my last trip there was Andrew Pettegree’s </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";"><b>The Bookshop of the World: Making and Trading Books in the Dutch Golden Age</b></span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";">. Given my academic interest in literacy this book about the Dutch book trade during its Golden Age was fabulous. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> And since I’m of Dutch extraction, two other books were very interesting to me. </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";"><b>Max Havelaar </b></span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";">by Multatuli is a nineteenth century exposé of the horrors of Dutch colonialism in Indonesia that left the Dutch without excuse when it came to another hundred years of their racist and violent exploitation of that country. And </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";"><b>Blacks in the Dutch World</b> </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";">by Allison Blakely was an interesting account of the slow but growing presence of Blacks in the Netherlands from the fifteenth century on. The book covers the sickening role of Dutch slave traders in some detail as well. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> <b>Seven: </b>Perhaps the most fascinating book I read, at least from a professional perspective as a preacher and theologian, was Ronald Hendel’s </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";"><b>How Old Is the Hebrew Bible: A Linguistic, Textual, and Historical Study</b>.</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> I’ve read a number of books about ancient Jewish religion of late, and though this one was a bit technical when it came to Hebrew grammar, I could follow it pretty well. It was especially interesting when it discussed the evolution of Yahweh from a minor tribal god, to Israel’s chief god, to the idea that Yahweh was the one and only God—monotheism. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> <b>Eight</b>: Another </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";">New York Times </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";">book review led me to Cara Wall’s </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";"><b>The Dearly Beloved</b>. </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";">How could I not love this book about two clergy families? Two young ministers, one a social activist and the other an intellectual pilgrim, arrive together at a New York church as co-pastors. They struggle through the upheavals of the sixties to forge a close relationship in spite of very different spouses, beliefs, and family challenges. It’s about faith, the realities of being a minister, and the inner lives of people facing huge challenges. Beautifully written, too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOsmneuVu5rqrlyscMv1MgznUlN1U5Mpnp0fTQPiyfyIXb0ZpPBAbY4NpMPRD5STADG5rYhazPNWpyheEu78untXA_TLMO2mxBFMDhmxvRkdJ9q4Bp1xr8IddQJd_wMFo7qTnLC0eF2lw/s1600/40864854._SY475_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="310" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOsmneuVu5rqrlyscMv1MgznUlN1U5Mpnp0fTQPiyfyIXb0ZpPBAbY4NpMPRD5STADG5rYhazPNWpyheEu78untXA_TLMO2mxBFMDhmxvRkdJ9q4Bp1xr8IddQJd_wMFo7qTnLC0eF2lw/s320/40864854._SY475_.jpg" width="208" /></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> <b>Nine</b>: A young woman who used to be my neighbour, Mariama Lockington, wrote a challenging, sad, but ultimately hopeful book for teens entitled </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";"><b>For Black Girls Like Me</b>. </span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";">The book has received a lot of recognition and many awards. Although the setting is the United States, it is well worth reading by Canadians dedicated to making our multi-cultural society work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> <b>Ten</b>: Esi Edugyan’s </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";"><b>Washington Black</b></span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> is a strange book touched by just a bit of magical realism. It is about a slave boy who escapes his destiny in a balloon, finds himself by passing through both the arctic and deserts, and has an abiding love of sea life. He escapes slavery, falls in love, and finds himself. What could be better than that? This book also offers many insights into racism, slavery, and trauma along the way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> <b>Eleven</b>: The strangest but most lyrical book I read this year was another one touched by magical realism—in this case a lot of it. It’s </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";"><b>Murmur of Bees</b></span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> by Sofia Segovia. Set in and just after Mexico’s civil war, this is a story about how a foundling saved a man from living a meaningless life. He—the foundling—had a thing for bees too, or rather, the bees had a thing for him. Lovely. It led me to read a non-fiction book about bees that was pretty interesting too, Thor Hanson’s </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifontitalic";"><b>The Nature and Necessity of Bees</b>. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-82507803491832431872019-12-09T10:25:00.001-05:002019-12-09T10:29:00.645-05:00The War on Christmas (or, Tired of Muscular Christianity)<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Let’s be honest. If our children or grandchildren thought that three wise men visited Baby Jesus on Rudolph, the red-nosed camel, we would smile but hardly be surprised. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Or, if the kids thought that angels serenaded shepherds in the field with jingle bells, we would smile, but hardly be surprised.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Christmas, the religious celebration of Jesus’ birth, is pretty much history. The Grinch has stolen it, big retail has monopolized it, and now Santa delivers it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Starbucks knows this. A few years ago, they began celebrating the season by serving its Ventis in red cups. Some sippers were outraged, claiming that this—failing to mention Christmas on the cups—amounted to war on Christmas.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Donald Trump addressed the cup controversy on the campaign trail. “Maybe we should boycott Starbucks,” he said. “If I become president we’re all going to be saying Merry Christmas again, that I can tell you.” Maybe. Maybe not. But this year Starbucks cups say, “Merry Coffee.”</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I liked the Hipster manger controversy even better. As soon as Irene, my spouse, saw it, she had to have it. Mary has a Starbucks in her hand. The Wise Men bring baby Jesus Amazon packages on Segways and Joseph is taking a selfie with his iPhone.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Casey Wright, who created this product, told CNBC about how people react. “It’s usually, ‘This is hilarious. I need one.’ Or ‘This is sacrilegious, I hope you burn in hell,’ and almost nothing between those two extremes. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> How do you feel about the commercialization of Christmas? We could fight it. This Christmas we could be muscular Christians ready for a fight.</span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> But personally, I am not interested in a Christianity forever offering its theological biceps to be felt, thumping its “holier than thou” breast, thanking heaven that it will, ultimately, with an inquisition or two, finally enforce religious uniformity and make North America great again. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Similarly, I am not interested in a Herod-type Christianity that insists every wise guy must worship at his alter, in obedience to Fundamentalist pressure politics. I am not interested in a Gilead-type Christianity, as described in Margaret Atwood’s <i>Handmaid’s Tale</i> and <i>The Testaments</i>, where what you sing, and how you dress and what you are allowed to think is decided by politicians merely pretending to be religious. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I’ll be blunt here. Religious power corrupts and absolute religious power that coerces people either by law or social pressure corrupts absolutely. Too much power for religion looks like residential schools training First Nations kids to pass for white. Too much power for religion looks like social mores that force LGBTQ people or atheists into their closets. And absolute power for religion looks like crusades and pogroms and prison for unbelievers and nonconformists.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> No. we should not defend any attempt to officially put Jesus back into Christmas. There is a reason, according to our stories, that Jesus was born in a barn and laid in a manger. There is a reason he had, according to Isaiah, no form or majesty that we should desire him. There is a reason Jesus chose to be despised and rejected, a man of sorrows, who suffered and died rather than submit to the power of the priests or Romans. There is a reason Jesus fled to Egypt when Herod roared, instead of calling F-18s with angel pilots to blast him away.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> You see, the very character of Christianity is that its persuasiveness never lies in power as Herod or Franklin Graham or Justin Trudeau might conceive of it—the power of a lobby or a union or a corporation to coerce.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> No, Christians choose to sing Advent songs in a minor key. Christian persuasiveness turns on a voice crying in the wilderness. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> The Christian way, when it comes to the war on Christmas, is to do as Jesus did, to turn the other cheek while clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, and providing good-paying jobs in vineyards. Christians choose to let their care and concern turn heads, if there are heads to be turned.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US"> </span>Christianity is no longer the religion of the mostest for the apparently holiest. Our faith is being marched out of the public square. But that’s okay. We don’t need to be a politically or culturally powerful religion to change the world. Christians are invited, rather, to imitate Jesus, wherever and whenever we can—to bring Christ’s values to our families, workplaces, corporations and politics. With kindness for the leastest and lastest left over.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> So never mind about the war on Christmas. It isn’t a battle Jesus would fight. In fact, I’d say that if you can stand it, you may as well try to enjoy a month’s worth of “Frosty the Snowman” and “Rudolph the Red-nosed Camel.” In fact, go shop till you drop and open gifts on Christmas morning. Why not enter into the general frivolity and generosity of the most secular season at its best? Tis the season to have fun and family and festivity and who could argue with that?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Just do it all with the attitude of Christ in your heart rather than with a “Jesus is the reason for the season” chip on you shoulder.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-54736125528253489912019-11-23T21:07:00.004-05:002019-11-27T18:42:47.947-05:00Beware: Community Ministry or Focus Won't Save Your Church.<br />
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<span lang="EN-US"> I have been to half-a-dozen “denominational-visioning” meetings over the past few years. My own congregation organized one, a few years ago, on church amalgamation. A month or two ago it was a meeting about “innovative” ideas for ministry. This morning it was a gathering to consider what to do with our valuable but decaying Toronto church buildings. We are all property rich but cash poor. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> And at all these meetings, participants usually talk about doing ministry for and in their local communities as the long-term basis upon which the survival of their congregations depends.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-US"> They are wrong. It is actually the other way around. Only churches that survive—and thrive—can do great ministry in their local communities.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> So first, a caveat. I love how, in the United Church of Canada, I am continually bathed in excitement to do local neighborhood ministry. We do soup kitchens and ESL, host the homeless and offer incubator space for startups; we house schools, provide community space for AA and ratepayer meetings, and we sponsor foodbanks and cafes. We send our members out to lobby for the homeless, protest US immigration policy, attend Gay-Pride parades and make space available for community gardens. And on and on and I love it all. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Food Bank at East End United Church, <br />
Toronto</td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-US"> But meanwhile, many of the churches that these activities are sponsored by are shrinking and dying. Community ministry is a necessary component of any church’s ministry. But—with perhaps the rarest of exceptions—<b>doing community ministry cannot sustain a church.</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> Why not? Well, the reasons are myriad, but there are a few key ones. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><b> <span style="font-size: x-large;">First</span></b>, churches are much emptier than they used to be because many fewer Canadians go to church. As late as 1965 more than half of Canadians could be found in a church on Sunday morning. Now, less than fifty years later, probably less than ten percent, not more than thirteen, might be found in church. Community churches like mine, “Lawrence Park Community Church,” used to fill with neighborhood people who walked to church. But now, with only one fifth of the Canadians going to church compared to fifty years ago, it is as if four out of five of those local homes people used to come to church from are empty. What's more, the remaining houses have far fewer people in them due to demographic trends such as people having fewer children now compared to fifty years ago.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Can this congregation survive? Do ministry? Change?</td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-US"> <b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Second</span></b>, <b>this means that no Toronto neighbourhood has enough people to support a church that draws its membership solely from that neighbourhood, or especially from the even smaller number of people the church ministers to in that neighbourhood.</b> Besides, every neighbourhood also has churches from different denominations—or synagogues or temples or mosques—vying for the same dwindling population of religious adherents. It’s a church-eat-church jungle out there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> You might wonder, of course, if some newer high-density neighbourhoods are different. With many more people per square kilometer, perhaps neighbourhood churches are possible in such communities. Maybe. But these high-density neighbourhoods, such as Toronto's hip Liberty Village, also tend to be full of younger people whose church attendance is even lower than among older Canadians.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> <b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Third</span></b>, with increased immigration, the ethnic makeup of many neighbourhoods is also changing. Two of the larger ethnic groups in my church’s neighborhood are Iranians and Chinese. Many are well-to-do. They are wonderful people whose wide range of experiences and cultural capital are a gift to Canada. However, very few of them are Christian. And, if they are, they tend to go to ethnic-enclave churches. There isn’t much opportunity for growth there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> <b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Fourth</span></b>, local ministry often and rightly means ministry to marginalized Canadians—the poor, the homeless, the distressed, and recent arrivals trying to fit in. This is as it should be. But these same people should not be mistaken for the people who can financially sustain a church, even in large numbers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> <b><span style="font-size: x-large;">Fifth</span></b>, property redevelopment is not a panacea either. At the meeting I went to today, we discussed the possibilities. The idea is that some churches may be able to both improve their worship space and maintain their local ministries by working with developers to transform their old church into new condos or office buildings or schools or retail space.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">How about condos in an old church, including <br />
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<span lang="EN-US"> This could be all well and good, except that by the time churches choose for such options, they are already tiny, tired, and full of members thinking of moving out of the GTA to retire in Collingwood or Cobourg. And, a lawyer who works with developers told us, most redevelopment plans take ten years from start to finish. In such cases will anyone be left in the redeveloped church to turn the lights on for the first time?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> So where are we at? I have a few thoughts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> <span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>A.</b> </span>Churches that survive—whether they are Fundamentalist, or Evangelical, or Mainline—draw their adherents from far beyond their local neighbourhood. These “destination churches” offer people good reasons for travelling some distance in order to attend and belong. And usually, these “good reasons,” are very intentional and well thought out. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> Not always, of course. Some destination churches draw people from longer distances almost by accident, as it were. Ethnic churches, for example. The Christian Reformed Church—a church made up largely of Dutch immigrants—will attract people from a distance because ethnicity is its strongest glue. A very few churches will have that one-in-a-million preacher that people travel far and wide to hear. Very conservative churches may use theological guilt memes about hell or shunning to continue to draw people from a distance, after they have moved away. But ultimately, if congregations want to stay strong, they are going to have to be very smart and very intentional about drawing people from far away into membership and mission. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> <b><span style="font-size: x-large;">B. </span></b>Destination churches do local ministry because they are healthy churches. But they do many other kinds of ministry too. They give to national and international causes. They reach out not only to the marginalized, but also to those who are not. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> A key ministry healthy churches engage in is the ministry of giving meaning and purpose to people who are looking for it to use in their workplaces, their distant neighbourhoods, and when they sit in front of TVs to watch the news. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> Does our relentless focus on community engagement distract us from other important ministries? Such as offering people “meaning?” When Jesus saw the crowds that followed him around the lake, he had compassion on them. But what did he do next? The text is clear—he taught them. Only after that did he (according to the story) feed them. Today, people are hungering for meaning, for insight about how to morally apply the levers of power that they have their hands on, for how to make sense of tragedy and loss, for how to raise children or fight the racism (or sexism or LGBTQ hatred) they feel is directed against them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> To me this is one of the more important truths we need to hang onto. Ministry is not just doing—our ministries need to cover heart and mind and hands. And for all the priority we place on hands “doing” sort of ministry, we should not forget that however we now frame it, the church was founded as a locus of good news that transformed the hopes and dreams of people. We need both Martha and a Mary sides to our ministry and it even appears that Jesus prioritized the Mary-teaching side (though I recognize that this is a favourite area for scholarly debate). Churches must be incredibly intentional about sharing this “gospel.” What churches have on offer must speak to the longings and confusions of our current society in a compelling way that keeps people on the edge of their seats. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, years ago, “If a man can write a better book or preach a better sermon, or build a better mousetrap than his neighbour, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> I am not, by the way, here arguing for nothing but traditional sermons. There are other ways to share the gospel, from discussion on Sunday mornings to classes on Wednesday nights. And I am not arguing for an old-fashioned orthodoxy either. Meaning is not singular. It isn’t just one sanctioned teaching and no other that I care about. Meaning is something we make together as congregations on the way, with the insights—scriptural or not—that we all bring to the process. No one would ever mistake me for orthodox when it comes to Christianity’s old creeds! But Jesus' story is the good news deep in my bones that inspires my hands to get to work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> <span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>C.</b> </span>Similarly, worship matters. There are 101 United congregations doing variations of Anglican-light liturgy and music and vestments and litanies and rituals. Fine. We need all that to be a part of our denominational mix. But Anglican light is not the language of a majority of the people of Toronto. Indeed, it may be impenetrable to people who rarely go to church. So, what are you or your congregation doing about that? How will you change the worship in your congregation without falling into worship wars? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> <span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>D.</b> </span>Destination churches invest in getting out the word about their preaching, their worship, and their ministry opportunities for involvement. They experiment with new forms of bringing good news to people far and near. And when, through amalgamation or endowment they end up with a pot of new money, they don’t sit on it, or use it to fix their buildings (a renovated building never brought in a new adherent)—healthy destination churches use these resources to become more relevant, more engaging, more focused on sharing their take on the good news, instead. </span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"> All healthy churches engage in evangelism. In our mainline setting, this won't be evangelism based on the idea of getting people to choose for heaven (or not). It will be evangelism based on offering good news for people who are looking for meaning, understanding, a supportive community, healing, and all the other things our tradition has to offer. </span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"> <span style="font-size: x-large;"> <b>E.</b> </span>As long as we have one or two United Churches in every city neighbourhood, we simply have far too many churches to expect that more than a tiny handful will ultimately survive and thrive. And until they die, in most of these neighbourhoods, these United Churches will be in competition with each other for the same neighbourhood members. They will all struggle with diminished resources at just that time they need more to offer robust reasons for new members to join. </span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"> So, many, many city churches must now amalgamate before they enter into almost absolutely irreversible death spirals. They must amalgamate while they still have imagination and people energy and financial resources to do D, above.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> We all know that the prognosis for people who have had CPR resuscitation to restart their hearts is never going to be as good as it is for people who haven’t had a health emergency. But the same applies to churches. We must take up healthy amalgamations long before churches need CPR to survive. Our world and neighbourhoods, our transportation systems and culture, our resources and preoccupations are way different now compared to 100 years ago when walking or a tram were the only ways to get to church. </span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US"> Still, in spite of all the societal and city change, we too often expect the worship and architecture and music and locations of the past to still work seamlessly in this new setting. None of it will, however. So among all the other things we ought to do, we must cut back on the number of churches we have. We must amalgamate them to focus our resources—and the best locations—on taking on today's challenges instead of early-twentieth-century challenges. There are many models for healthy amalgamation: multi-campus, multiple-point, satellite locations, shared staff, re-launch, and so on. The trick is that they all work in inverse proportion to how soon two or more congregations get busy with such amalgamations. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> <span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>F.</b> </span>If people are going to attend destination churches rather than a church they can walk to, they must have parking, and lots of it. Because when you attend a church you can’t walk to--a destination church that has figured out it needs to reach beyond its immediate neighbourhood--when you attend such a church you will usually drive. Transit may be an option for some, but people coming in from the further suburbs don’t always have great access to quick transit out there. Too many of our churches have no parking, or little parking, or force their aging adherents to walk ever longer distances to find street parking. This is not sustainable, and such churches will eventually close, no matter how much great neighbourhood ministry they do!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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for those coming from the suburbs.</td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-US"> This means that one of our best options might be deciding to build a new amalgamated-church building in order to locate somewhere where both parking and transit are available. This relocation might not be to a church. Perhaps a former retail or industrial site? A mall that is closing (most are, for some of the same reasons churches are). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> There is more to be said. And, I admit, this has taken the form of a Jeremiad—a sermon that is basically a rant. I sound like I know it all. The truth is, in my later ministry, some of this is just starting to dawn on me, and some of these actions are just in the experimental stage. Still, it now seems to me that these are the sort of things we need to talk about, whether my diagnosis is right or wrong. Because doing more local neighbourhood ministry with smaller, older groups of people is not a solution to the troubles we face.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-90344266956871559832019-11-18T21:09:00.000-05:002019-11-18T21:09:41.328-05:00Evolution Is the Solution (to One of Preaching's Biggest Problems).<br />
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<i>I'm also trying to figure out evolution, and how it informs my faith. This blogpost is one such effort, shared with my congregation, and based, in part, on my reflections on Psalm 8, and the lofty (evolved?) status that humans are given there.</i></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Baskerville Old Face", serif;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> An eighteen-wheeler semitruck has, well, eighteen wheels. Each one is important. If you ever find yourself driving down the highway in a semi you wouldn’t want any of those tires to go flat. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> But, perhaps more than any of the others, you want the semi’s two front two tires to stay on track. If one of those blows it will be very hard, perhaps impossible, to steer. Blow one of your front tires and you may have an emergency on your hands.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> That is how it is for me too. I have at least eighteen interests: family, literature, birds, sailing, theology, and more. I like them all. If I had to drop any one of them, I’d be sad. But two of my interests have steered me, as a minister, more than the others. One is a hobby—evolution. The other is a passion—preaching.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> So first, evolution. Evolution is the slow process by which genetic mutations have transformed ape-like creatures that lived millions of years ago into modern humans. It’s a theory, of course, like gravity is a theory.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">My Australapithicus Sebida tie!</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"> </span></span><span style="color: #222222;">I have always been fascinated by evolution. One of the highlights of my sabbatical, five years ago, was the opportunity to visit the Cradle of Humankind, near Pretoria in South Africa. Many ancient human fossils have been found in these limestone caves. I crawled through them, deep underground, where archeologists were still working.</span><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I also picked up the skeleton tie I’m wearing today at the Cradle of Humankind museum. It shows the skeleton of an individual from a species known as Australapithicus Sebida. This person lived about two million years ago, walked on two feet and used stone tools. We can’t be sure whether or not Sebida was a direct ancestor to humans, but if it wasn’t, Sebida was a first cousin. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;"> </span><span style="color: #222222;">This next picture is of a Homo Rudolfensis individual, who lived at about the same time, but in East Africa. The pictures I’m showing today are facial reconstructions based on the shape of the bones and marks left by ligaments. It’s a process much like that police use to reconstruct the faces of people whose bones have been found but can’t be identified. Scientists are pretty sure that our species, Homo Sapiens, is descended from Homo Rudolfensis.</span><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Rudolfensis, like Sebida, used stone tools—scrapers, knives, and axes. The shape of their teeth suggests they ate meat, but it was likely raw because there is no evidence they used fire. It doesn’t sound like great cuisine, but then, you know, some people still eat sushi. According to Psalm 8, humans are “a little lower than God.” Sebida and Rudolfensis were, perhaps, on the way—but they certainly did not yet have the “dominion” (v. 6) over creation the Psalmist claimed for us.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> The next picture is of Homo Naledi, a human species discovered in the Cradle of Humanity not long after I visited there. We are not descended from Naledi. They are another cousin species, like Sebida. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> This person lived about 350,000 years ago, and compared to us, had a much smaller brain. A large number of individuals were found buried in a cave far underground, suggesting that they were deposited there ritually. And, they must have had portable fire to get so far below, in the dark. That would have been an impressive technological development. But, like Sebida and Rudophensis, Naledi is extinct. Human species do go extinct. Many already have. Think about that. Extinction is in the realm of human possibility because it has already happened—a few times.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> The last picture is of a Homo Neanderthal individual. Neanderthals are our kissing cousins because we Homo Sapiens sporadically interbred with them. Most humans outside of Africa have some Neanderthal genes. Neanderthals showed up in Europe about seven or eight hundred thousand years ago, and went extinct about 35,000 years ago, just a few thousand years after Homo Sapiens arrived in Europe. That means that Neanderthals were in Europe fourteen times longer than we Homo Sapiens have been in Europe!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> While Neanderthals look odd to us due to their huge nose and eyebrow bones, they used fire, managed to live in cold climates by sewing together clothes, had complex tools, and took care of their aged and wounded even when they could no longer work. Because they buried their dead with rituals and plants, Neanderthals probably had beliefs about an afterlife. They made jewelry and flutes. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> However, as far as we can tell, Neanderthals never managed to domesticate and other beasts of the field, a feat the Psalmist does claim for us (vv 6,7). <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> “Us” are, in this case, a human species called Homo Sapiens—which means, ironically, translated from the Latin, “wise humans.” Not only do we control fire, we split atoms. We have perfected the technology of healing human bones, reading them for ancient DNA, or replacing them when they wear out. We live in unimaginable comfort and ease compared to Neanderthals. And, for better or worse, we do have dominion over all the earth and everything in it, and we do have god-like powers with respect to the earth, just as the writer of Psalm 8 observed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Unfortunately, we have also been implicated in the extinction of countless species of birds of the air and fish of the sea—never mind plants of the earth. We are changing the climate of the planet, perfected racism and genocide and nuclear annihilation as political tools, threatening ourselves with extinction. We can feed everyone on our planet, but don’t. We have the capacity to <i>think morally</i>, about what is right and wrong, but often refuse to do so in the search for short term gain.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> I said we have the capacity to <i>think morally</i>. That brings me to the second wheel that steers my semi. It’s preaching. My PhD is in Speech Communication. I’ve taught preaching in seminary and continue to think a lot about it. And one of the most irritating problems I face as a preacher has always been the problem of nagging. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> You see, I am convinced that Jesus is a model for human morality. But that means when I get into the pulpit, I’m also tempted to tell my congregation what to do: imitate Jesus, be courageous like Jesus, heal like Jesus, love like Jesus, fight injustice like Jesus, treat the poor like Jesus. Every Sunday I’m off to the races and encourage Christians to go, go, go. But if that is my message, week in and out, I am going to sound like a noisy gong or clanging cymbal—a nag. And my congregation is going to feel inadequate because no matter what I say, they know they can’t do it all, always, as well as Jesus did, or Jesus told us to do, or I am tempted to nag them to do. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222;"> So, using my first interest, evolution, I want to suggest a way of thinking about my second interest, preaching, that will help get at solving the nagging problem. It’s called the </span>Butterfly effect. Two science-fiction writers, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, put it this way in a recent book, <i>Good Omens. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><em><span style="color: #262626;">It used to be thought that the events that changed the world were things like big bombs, maniac politicians, huge earthquakes, or vast population movements, but it has now been realized that this is a very old-fashioned view held by people totally out of touch with modern thought. The things that change the world, according to Chaos theory, are the tiny things. A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe.</span></em><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #262626;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> The butterfly effect is obviously much more complex than described here. But it has also received a lot of attention recently, especially by both social and hard scientists. Basically, the theory recognizes that small, unpredictable events often have a huge impact down the road. What if, as related by Victor Hugo, Napoleon’s cuirassiers at the Battle of Waterloo had not plunged into the little hidden ravine between them and the English on the Road of Ohain? Hugo thinks Napoleon would have won. What if a Viking fisherman, five hundred years before Columbus, in Newfoundland, had passed on European diseases to First Nations back then? Would that mean that resistance to Western diseases might have been widespread by the time Columbus arrived? Would the Incan civilization not then have succumbed to Western diseases recently introduced by the Spanish? Would Spain have then been unable to commit their centuries of cultural rape and genocide in the names of God and King? The history of the world turns on many similar, otherwise unremarkable, events.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> There is an ancient proverb that gets at this mystery. It is about the nail that fastens a horseshoe to a hoof. It goes like this:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For want of a nail the shoe was lost.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For want of a shoe the horse was lost.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For want of a horse the rider was lost.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For want of a rider the message was lost.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For want of a message the battle was lost.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> In an analogous way, the accumulation of small, evolutionary changes—but perhaps more importantly, the accumulation of daily events in our ancestors’ lives, has made humans—both with our good traits and our bad ones—what we are today. We are who we are, in part, because of a million, billion butterfly wing flaps by countless nameless saints through the millennia. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> And now, when it comes to the planet, to how we act at work, to how we educate our children, to how we spend our cash—our small and unpredictable actions are also what the future of the human race will rest upon and be determined by. Never let anyone tell you that you can’t make a difference. Don’t let anyone try to convince you that your contribution has to be heroic, or it won’t make a difference. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> Wrong. The accumulation of our simple actions, over the course of our lives and magnified by many other actions by many other people over thousands of generations changes the world we live in, often in unpredictable, but also potentially beautiful ways. And our challenge, our adventure in life, is to do good, moral things that can yet nudge us to fulfil all our potential, the potential the Psalmist bragged about—perhaps a bit prematurely.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> We face huge challenges. We are overwhelmed, individually, by climate change and racism, by our new social media habits and fake news, by homelessness in the streets and plastic in the ocean—and even by the knowledge that other human races have failed and are no longer with us. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> And yet, the lesson of human biological and cultural evolution is that bit by bit both we and our environment change. And cumulatively, we transform the human prospect together, may even keep our rig on the road, by trying to be like Jesus in the small things first. Perhaps, over time, our culture and we as humans will not only get the dominion, but do so for beauty of the earth. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"> So, don’t lose heart if preachers nag you too much, at least occasionally. Don’t imagine that you really have to be the hero who does it all by yourself. Just try to follow Jesus today. In the small things. Those are the actions that will help determine the future of our world.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-5711720226473712872019-10-28T18:16:00.000-04:002019-10-28T18:16:21.772-04:00When Is a Church Not a Church?<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face", serif;">When is church not a church? When it is SoulTable.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face", serif;"> First some background<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face", serif;"> This morning I read yet another article in the <i>Washington Post</i> about how Millennials mostly don’t like church, leave churches, and don’t go back (</span><span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face", serif;"><a href="http://tinyurl.com/y6j6sfhq" style="color: #954f72;"><span style="color: windowtext;">http://tinyurl.com/y6j6sfhq</span></a></span><span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face", serif;">). This trend is even more pronounced in Canada, which has always been a more secular country than the USA (“Canada to lose 9,000 churches over the next Ten Years” <a href="http://tinyurl.com/y2rrguzt" style="color: #954f72;"><span style="color: windowtext;">http://tinyurl.com/y2rrguzt</span></a>).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face", serif;"> Of course, not a few of these articles note that the trend is not quite as pronounced among Evangelicals. This isn’t saying much, since Evangelicals are also sticking by President Trump, which doesn’t suggest a high level of spiritual discernment or cultural insight among this group. It’s an old Christian mistake. Align yourself with power, because that makes you powerful! But when that power turns out to be oppressive and evil, the church will get painted by the same brush. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face", serif;"> So, churches are dying, everywhere. Or setting themselves up for a massive comeuppance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face", serif;"> Does this matter? Well, I suppose your answer will depend on whether you go or not. I go. In fact, I am a Christian minister in a liberal church (our motto: United, Unorthodox, Unlimited). The members of my church certainly lament the aging of our congregation, the small Sunday School and Youth Groups. I love traditional church music (even if I rarely agree with the theology), and the warmth of my congregation. Though aging, it is slowly growing too. I love the good things my church and its members do in the community and the way the children of this congregation have been taught to be responsible, caring citizens. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face", serif;"> Beyond my personal feelings about church, there certainly are greater cultural losses as the church declines: loss of community in an increasingly lonely society, loss of cultural depth when it comes to understanding how Christianity has shaped the literature, philosophy, and values of the West, for example. Imagine reading Margaret Atwood’s <i>Madadam </i>trilogy, or <i>The Handmaid’s Tale</i> or her new <i>Testaments</i> without a good grasp of scripture. You’ll miss a lot. In fact, lots of readers miss most of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face", serif;"> On a more positive note, the waning of the church also means that it is being stripped of the coercive power that has embarrassed it so often in the past. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face", serif;"> Sure, the church has done good things too, but it has also been a dependable champion of those in power, of the status quo, of sexual repression, of sexual exploitation, a supporter of residential schools, a racist institution that happily relegated non-whites to ghettoes and prisons, and so on. And all that is just in the past 100 years. Dig a bit deeper and you get Crusades and Inquisitions and Indulgences and pogroms and moral justification for any empire the church ever found itself in. The American Empire is merely the latest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face", serif;"> But the same critique that I just made with respect to the church could be made for just about any powerful historical institution of the past few thousand years. Whether political regimes or banks, corporations or guilds or invading hordes of Steppe Tribesmen, when humans work together they tend to do both good things and bad. The church is not different. Which is a disappointment of historic proportions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face", serif;"> Still. There is the gospel! There is the good news! If you can believe it. The church’s (as, perhaps, opposed to the Bible’s) singular focus on salvation and life eternal has more often served as an other-worldly reward than motivation to redeem this world. I love the moral exemplar that Jesus is, especially considering his context. I am inspired by it. But I will make no claims about virgin births or children raised from the dead or resurrections or Trinities. (Not anymore, that is. There was a day.) Millennials, for the most part, find this sort of stuff unbelievable too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face", serif;"> At Lawrence Park Community Church we’ve watched all this happen with some sorrow, some regret, but also count ourselves as part of the resistance. We want our church to grow, to make a difference in the city of Toronto, to inspire people to be good neighbours, to act on climate change. We want to inspire people to be more like Jesus.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Baskerville Old Face, serif;"> So, SoulTable. I’ve written about it before, and promised an update. SoulTable is a weekly gathering in our church’s large community hall. We launched on September 22. The format is meal/contemporary secular music (with a spiritual angle)/and a TEDx type speaker on a topic that we hope will accomplish our goals. We serve wine and beer, devote a good amount of time to discussion, and don’t pray much or read scripture much (not that we’re against it, but there is a lot of other good stuff to reflect on out there too).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face", serif;"> On Sept 22 we launched with 160 people in attendance. They were there to hear Neil Pasricha, author of <i>The Book of Awesome. </i>Attendance has ranged, since then, from 35 (Thanksgiving weekend) to about 80 or so. On Sunday we listened to spoken word artist Micah Bournes (from LA) riffing on race, justice and freedom. Next week Gretta Vosper (the United Church of Canada's atheist minister) will speak about how she approaches death and dying, funerals, and families all over the faith map.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face", serif;"> SoulTable is not really church. It’s an event built around Biblical themes, with music, striving to be community, and encouraging people to love like Jesus did. Or is that church?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face", serif;"> It’s radical. It’s different. Naysayers will laugh or complain that we’ve caved to culture, that we don't treat scripture as authoritative or infallible or inerrant. We don't. Millennials, of course, just say “no” and leave the naysayer churches. Anyway, we’re investing our church's endowment into this. We’re trying to be relevant and inspirational. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Baskerville Old Face", serif;"> Check us out 5pm, every Sunday, at Lawrence Park Community Church, 2180 Bayview, in Toronto. We’re just south of Lawrence, and across the street from Glendon College and Sunnybrook Hospital. We have (Sunday only) free parking across the street. We’re trying something different, and so far, it seems to be working!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com42180 Bayview Ave, North York, ON M4N 3K7, Canada43.724984200000009 -79.38047670000003143.724267200000007 -79.381737200000032 43.72570120000001 -79.37921620000003tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-48734260044117634412019-09-11T09:39:00.000-04:002019-09-12T08:13:33.458-04:00From Climate Change to Nukes to Plagues: The Coming End of the World as We Know It<br />
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The end of all things has become a secular fascination.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Consider, for example, just Margaret Atwood, all by herself. She’s written <i>The Handmaid’s Tale</i>—now an award-winning TV show on Hulu, and <i>The Testaments, </i>a Booker Prize short-listed sequel. Atwood has also written the <i>MadAdam </i>trilogy about a world destroyed by climate change, genetic engineering, and pharmaceutical malpractice.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Post-apocalyptic, end-of-the-world fiction is all the rage. There’s Cormac McCarthy’s <i>On the Road </i>and the <i>Hunger Games </i>trilogy and <i>Station Eleven </i>and all of Hugh Howey and Stephen King and movies like <i>World War Z </i>and <i>Resident Evil </i>with their zombies and the <i>Mad Max </i>franchise, <i>Deep Impact </i>and <i>Armageddon</i>, TVs <i>Walking Dead </i>and on and on. <o:p></o:p></div>
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And now post-apocalypticism is an academic discipline too. So, for example, this week I read Bryan Walsh’s <i>End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World</i>, a summary of the existential angst that scientists are expressing. He writes:<o:p></o:p></div>
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The end could be an asteroid. This has happened before. About 66 million years ago, an asteroid of about six miles across slammed into the earth. That explosion was 6500 times more powerful than the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Dinosaurs that had ruled the earth for 180 million years went extinct. Meanwhile, thousands of asteroids continue to orbit the sun. NASA is tracking them, and we think we’re okay for the next few years, but nobody is saying it can’t happen again.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Or, the world as we know it could end with a super volcano blowing its stack. One such volcano, Toba, blew its top about seventy-five thousand years ago. Global temperatures fell by about twenty or thirty degrees for several years after, bringing humans to the brink of extinction. Perhaps as few as three or four thousand survived, in Southern Africa, our ancestors. There are still about twenty active super volcanoes today. On average one erupts every 25,000 or 50,000 years. We’re due. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Third, Bryan Walsh also suggests that we could end the world as we know it by nuclear war. We thought that the end of the cold war reduced this threat. But now Putin and Trump have cancelled the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and things are looking rather dicier. And there are the other nuclear powers chomping at the bit: India and Pakistan have gone to war six times in the last 70 years. Israel has nukes. North Korea has nukes and threatens to use them every week. Iran wants nukes. This week Turkey threatened to go nuclear too. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Fourth, we could also end the world as we know it via climate change. The five hottest years in recorded history have all been in the past ten years. We are seeing more horrific tropical hurricanes like Dorian. We are going to see massive movements of people from areas in the world too hot to live, too flooded to live, or too arid to live, and, they all love to come here. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The end of the world could be a pandemic. It has happened before. Justinian’s plague in fifth century killed half the world’s population. The Black Death killed 200 million people. New diseases caused by animal infections jumping to humans, as in SARS or Ebola, are an annual event now. Eventually, one is going to be really deadly. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Bryan Walsh isn’t finished. He writes further long chapters about the dangers of bioengineered pathogens and terrorism, as in the <i>MadAdam </i>trilogy. He writes about Artificial Intelligence about which no less an expert than Stephen Hawking said, “could spell the end of the human race.” And he writes, only half-seriously now, about antagonistic aliens invading earth. Thankfully, he doesn’t mention vampires or zombies.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So, how does all this gloom and doom make you feel?<o:p></o:p></div>
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I find it fascinating that at the end of the book, Walsh says that he nevertheless has hope we’ll somehow make it, anyway. They thing is, Walsh doesn’t anchor his hope. He doesn’t give readers any good reasons for hope. Walsh just hangs hope out there, unsupported, as unlikely as a baby managing to hold onto a helium balloon on a windy day.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In fact, Bryan Walsh actually gives us a reason for abandoning all hope. It is called scope neglect. Scope neglect describes how humans deal with tragedy—or rather, refuse to. When personal, as in the death of a loved one, tragedy may overwhelm us and even break us. But when larger and more extensive tragedies are distant—as is the case with the Bahamas, this week, for example—we tend to mostly ignore that tragedy, and carry on as if it never happened.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Scope neglect. Paul Slovic, a Psychologist, found that our “sympathy can begin to fade as soon as we’re presented with two needy people, rather than one.” This counterintuitive arithmetic of compassion makes it hard for us to empathize with or prepare for huge natural disasters. Our brains do their best to push such thoughts away. “Instead of our worry increasing as the size of the consequence increases, it degrades. Our attention is scarce, and so is our ability to worry.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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So, Joseph Stalin is reputed to have said, after starving nearly four million Ukrainians to death: “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths just a statistic.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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And that is how it is when it comes to the end of the world. Scope neglect. We can’t get our heads around oceans rising, nuclear weapons falling or pandemics, even though the risks are very real. The scope of such disasters is just too large for us to think about. So, our brains ignore or actively deny such risks. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Even those we pay to look after the bigger picture, our politicians, seem totally paralyzed. Scope neglect, you see, also means their re-election depends on giving you what you want rather than all of us what the world most needs.<o:p></o:p></div>
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One more thing, stands out for me, in Walsh’s book, something that is ironically hopeful. He discusses the prepper phenomenon. Preppers are people who prepare for the end of the world by provisioning themselves with food and survival gear, guns and more guns, hidden shelters and caches full of fuel and more food and even more guns. Preppers plan to survive the end of the world by hiding from it while living on in their shelters with their families, killing everyone who comes near. Preppers. It’s a big thing in the USA.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But it was Walsh’s analysis of Prepper strategy that got my attention. He writes that, “Sociologists who study post-catastrophe societies report that communities often grow tighter, like scar tissue that forms following a wound, even as they endure what seems unendurable.” What is remarkable about all the past disasters that almost drove humans to extinction is that it was human cooperation that saved them, human kindness for their neighbours, human struggling to carry each other’s loads that got humans through these crises. It was the village that survived, rather than the individual prepper; the community that created the conditions for survival, not hidden caches of food.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Which brings me to one of Jesus’ (several) failed predictions about the coming apocalypse. In making one of those predictions, in Mark 8, Jesus said, in the same breath, “if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Jesus added, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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The point worth remembering here is that as Jesus faced the end of the world as he knew it, Jesus turned his back on scope neglect by picking up a cross on behalf of his neighbours to save their lives rather than his own. And he invites us to do the same, to save other lives, rather than our own.<o:p></o:p></div>
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You see, cross carrying, Jesus’ crucifixion, was a subversive political act by one for the many, in the face of injustice, theological incompetence, and the painful suffering of his compatriots. Cross carrying is the invention of nonviolent resistance of the sort that Martin Luther King or Gandhi engaged in. Jesus’ cross was his refusal to be cowed by scope neglect and his insistence on doing something, even if it was costly to him personally, for the sake of all. Jesus’ cross was his way of saying we can make a stand when the odds seem impossible, and our stand can make a difference, if not now, then in a generation or two or maybe even a thousand years. Jesus’ crucifixion laid the groundwork for a new kind of morality that would eventually subvert Rome’s oppression by prioritizing neighbours.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Scope neglect is people who refuse to think more deeply about the world than the taxes they must pay or the pleasures they do not wish to forgo. But humans are not bound by that approach. We can, for the sake of the world, carry each other’s—the world’s—crosses, doing whatever it takes artistically or business-wise, politically or at our service clubs, doing whatever it takes religiously or in our schools or labs or by donating or volunteering or in our FB posting--doing whatever it takes to see to not only our comfort but the world’s survival.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Look. I don’t have a blueprint for where your area of skill or opportunity is. Discovering it will take your own act of imagination. Making your contribution might well involve a change of priorities or habits or generosity.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But go for it. Pick up a cross and do your small but costly part to save the world.<o:p></o:p></div>
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John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-19469075358082729522019-06-03T21:08:00.000-04:002019-06-03T21:26:43.464-04:00Reflections on the Tabling of a Report on the "Genocide" of First Nations<br />
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<span class="text"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;">Just over two months ago, I spent two winter weeks at a friend’s home in Florida, all alone. I never turned on the TV. I didn’t answer work emails. The neighbours were gone. I didn’t know anyone, anyway. I didn’t say more than ten words to anyone. My solitude was complete.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="text"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;">I loved it--staring at the Atlantic ocean waves; watching for birds I never see at home, in Toronto; hiking alone through scrub where everything was unfamiliar. Solitude.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mistaking the Solitudes. Where are the First Nations?</td></tr>
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<span class="text"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;">But I have to be honest. What makes my personal solitude so delicious, so attractive, so healing is my partner, Irene. You see, when I’ve had my fill of solitude, Irene is always ready to take me back. When I come home from the cottage, we fall into each other’s arms; we kiss and hug. We sit on the porch and make small talk. Later, we might visit friends, go to church, or drop by our families. I love solitude, but what makes solitude safe and desirable is that it is rare, a sometimes treat, a chosen respite, and not how I have to live. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="text"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;">You see, when solitude is the only option, or when solitude is fueled by resentment or anger or fear, it is usually a cancer. Historically, American isolationism leads to naval-gazing, Smoot-Hawley-style tariffs and economic ruin. North Korean isolation has led to unspeakable violence and decades of human rights violations. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="text"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;">But Canada also has problems with unhealthy solitude--two solitudes, actually, usually described as English-speaking and French-speaking Canada.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="text"><span lang="EN-US">Hugh MacLennan came up with that turn of phrase—two solitudes—in a novel by the same name. I have not read it in many years, since I was in college. </span></span><span lang="EN-US">I remember it as a huge rambling thing, covering generations of Canadians, both English and French-speaking, who are mutually antagonistic towards each other. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;">The English in Quebec are portrayed as people building a nation on the backs of the French who are bitter. The French resent becoming a minority in a country they considered their own. They seethe because they have been made subject to a people who had conquered and humiliated them.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span lang="EN-US">And so, writes MacLennan, Canadians are, “Two solitudes in the infinite waste of loneliness under the sun.” Two solitudes: <span class="text">from the Plains of Abraham to two referendums on Quebec’s separation from Canada; two solitudes, from the WWII Conscription Crisis to FLQ terrorism to the Notwithstanding Clause. Two unhappy solitudes warily circling each other rather than falling into each other’s arms. Not like my wife and I at all.</span></span><span class="text"><span lang="EN-US" style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="text"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;">And yet, this picture is tragically incomplete and out of balance. Could it really be that French-Canadians, as Hugh MacLennan suggested, or perhaps English-Canadians, or perhaps both of them together are “the only real Canadians?” <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="text"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;">Who after all, welcomed both the French and English to North America? Who brought them beaver pelts to get rich on, who showed the French and English the rivers and carrying places and mountain passes to get from Bonavista to Vancouver Island? Which confederacy demonstrated and lived a constitutional democracy to invaders still mired in monarchial dictatorships in Europe? Who made treaties trusting that those who spoke English and French would keep them? Who are the real, or at least first, Canadians? On whose backs did both the French and the English ultimately both grow rich on by conquering and humiliating them? <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="text"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;">If there are two enduring solitudes in Canada, it is actually the First Nations on the one hand and everyone else on the other. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="text"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;">In Canada, we have inherited a political and cultural system for keeping First Nations trapped in the solitude of reservations where there are no jobs, or trapped in inner-city ghettos where there are no jobs, or the solitude of jails, where they are vastly overrepresented compared to us. We have figured out how to relegate First Nations to the sort of solitude where, in living memory, just to leave for the city, a First-Nation person needed the signed permission of a white man to go. This Canadian system was used by South African whites as a model for their apartheid pass-laws. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="text"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;">Perhaps you think this is <i>just </i>ancient history. Perhaps if so . . . then so is confederation, all of 150 years ago, or the battle on the Plains of Abraham, 268 years ago. But, as these events remind us, history does matter, and wants to be celebrated or atoned for. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="text"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;">And yet, Canada’s First Nation children have been isolated in schools where they could not speak their own language or understand the new one their teachers spoke; schools where they were too often preyed on, physically, sexually, and culturally. They are still forced to go to schools that are grossly underfunded compared to our comfy suburban schools. They have been cheated of lands that by treaty-right were theirs or which they never ceded. They have been promised water treatment plants and social workers and health workers, jobs, self-government, and housing . . . but well, if you follow the headlines, you know how that has turned out for them. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="text"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"> And today, the report of the Canadian inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women was finally released. According to Marion Buller, the chief commissioner of the inquiry, it uncovered a cycle of violence that has claimed untold thousands of Indigenous women. “This report is about deliberate race, identity and gender-based genocide,” she said. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="text"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"> Genocide. By Canadians. By us. Something that is still happening under our noses. Our white, mostly Northern European, French- and English-speaking solitude’s approach to the First Nations.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="text"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"> Genocide. I hate that word. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is treading water, carefully, with respect to that word. He has been supportive of the inquiry but is wary of how the word “genocide” will play, even among his supporters. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="text"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"> Genocide. A word that is harder to swallow, even, than “white privilege.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="text"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"> So, what level of cultural annihilation or ethnic cleansing or Anglo-Quebecois criminal negligence or murder would be required to make the word “genocide” stick?<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="text"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"> I’ve been thinking about that. And ultimately, I don’t think it matters. Canada is mostly English because of a victory won on the Plains of Abraham, and power has been shared between French and English since at least confederation. That’s old history we live with today.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="text"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"> And the rest of the story, our history, is all about how we’ve killed, neglected, broken faith with, stolen land from, kidnapped kids, loaded our prisons with, underfunded social services for Canada’s First Nations. It is ongoing sin. It is evil and its stench is with us now.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="text"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-size: large;"> And if Canada is to become one nation rather than its two real solitudes—if First Nations and the rest of us are ever to fall into each other's arms—we better get busy with serious repentance, which involves atonement for what we’ve done and ongoing sanctification—that is, personal lives and a political culture dedicated to doing better.</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-30433435207823136542019-04-15T13:22:00.002-04:002019-04-15T22:44:02.467-04:00The Scandal of the Church Weighs on Me.<br />
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<span lang="EN-US"> What weighs on me more and more, as I get on in years and consider my faith, is the historic, never-ending, and dramatic failure of the visible church. I wonder how I can hang on to Jesus when the rap sheet of his followers is a never-ending story.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> The cultural genocide of Canada’s First Nations that Canadian churches helped organize and lead, the ongoing revelations of clergy abuse especially by Roman Catholic priests and bishops—though Protestants are not guiltless in this either--</span>and the ugly turn to Trumpism by America’s evangelicals are three current realities that weigh on me.</div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> But historically, there is much, much more. Shall I list all the ways the church has failed? Impossible—there is too much. But consider this brief list of just ten notable historic abuses: 1) Scapegoating Jews (centuries of it, mind you, around dinner table, as well as in villages tiny and empires great). 2) Happy participation in genocides not only of Jews, but of First Nations all around the world. 3) Blessing the slave trade and slave ownership. 4) The Roman Catholic Inquisition. </span><br />
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5) Crusades. 6) Centuries worth of religious wars in Europe. 7) Blessing and promotion of British imperialism for pride, profit, and pink maps (or Dutch imperialism, or Nazism, or Napoleon, or medieval monarchies, or the Roman Empire after Constantine). 8) Anti-science views from Galileo to today’s defenders of creationism and deniers of climate change. 9) A focus on personal salvation in the by-and-by instead of saving the world, now. 10) From at least the time of Constantine, its adulterous affair with the status quo rather than social justice for the last, least, and most marginalized. </div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> Most of these tragedies are global or national. But local congregations and leaders and individual members participated in all of these failures. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> I am no great exception to the rule. When I look back on my own career as a minister and denominational leader, I see many missed opportunities to do the right thing, to take a stand against the status quo, to be more prophetic, to take risks, to be more like Jesus. But I’ll pass on my personal list of ten-most-notable John Suk failures.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> The thing is, how can such an ongoing avalanche of evils inspire faith? Or, perhaps better yet, how can churches (denominations and congregations, members and related non-profits, etc., etc.) have the gall to proselytize, to suggest joining (or staying) might be a good thing, in view of its record? It would be like putting our trust in Volkswagen’s mileage claims or Donald Trump’s claims he didn’t commit adultery. Why doesn’t “once bitten, twice shy” seem to apply to the church? Especially when the church has been prowling about like a carnivore for thousands of years?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> There are traditional approaches to dealing with the scandal of the church. One is to argue that the only church that really matters is the invisible one, holy, Catholic church which is different than the many scattered, sorry, excuses for a church that are written up in history books and located on street corners. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> But such a focus on the eschatological church (if you even believe in a second coming and all that) is like a magician’s trick, pulling something pretty and fluffy out of a hat after you first stuffed a dirty rag in. It’s sleight of hand. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> This eschatological approach makes a mockery of Jesus’ teaching for the nascent church of “now,” as represented by the disciples: “A new command I give you. Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Do we really think Jesus didn’t mean this, didn’t expect such love, here and now, from his followers? Are all of the New Testament's pleas to be perfect, or to give one another the kiss of peace, or to serve one another, or care for one another, or to love neighbours or turn the other cheek there just to mock us?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> Another approach is to weigh the good against the bad, and say, “on balance, the church is great!” But, “on balance,” doesn’t cut it with me. It’s like suggesting that German engineering prowess or philosophical depth or music or strudel somehow justifies or minimizes the horror of what the Nazis did in Germany.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> Others say that, "of course the church will be a failure. We’re all sinners. The church is for sinners, just as it will be besmirched and spoiled by sinners. But at least we are striving to follow Jesus, to climb the ladder of sanctification." But this is merely a poor excuse for a grade of F. "Johny tried, poor kid. He really did. That's good enough." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> I love my local congregation. I love the people who go to church there. I am, to be truthful, much more frustrated by regional, national, international, institutional, hierarchal, synodical, confessional, creedal, educational manifestations of the church than I am with my local congregation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> I don’t see a way around my frustrations either. Go back to calling ourselves “The Way?” Seek a Chuxit for my congregation? Quietism? Withdrawal from the world of politics and institutions and power games and bureaucracies? If I or my congregation tried, we would just have to reinvent a lot of what we left behind if we wanted to carry on or grow or make an impact.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> I don’t know. I guess blog posts don’t always have to have all the answers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> This week is Easter. I’m going to preach on Jesus’ words, “unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies it produces many seeds.” I wonder if there is something here, in Jesus' way of choosing death that might be a way forward towards an ecclesial resurrection. Anyone remember Morris West's novel "The Shoes of the Fisherman"? It had some of that "choosing death" in it. It was hokey, too. But still. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> I don’t know what that would look like here and now. I don’t know what it would mean for the people I love and who love others in my local congregation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> I don’t know. But it weighs on me more and more.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-119270472100281278.post-53411544337737841542019-02-25T19:46:00.001-05:002019-02-28T12:56:19.271-05:00Evolution Is a Theory Like Gravity Is a Theory. But What About God?<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> I sort of believe in the theory of evolution like I sort of believe in the theory of gravity. Think about it. That means evolution is not up for discussion. But while the theory of gravity bores me, unless I’m falling, the theory of evolution fascinates me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> Here’s why. I went to Toronto District Christian High, in Woodbridge, as a teen. Unlike many Christian schools, at Toronto Christian we were taught about evolution. We were taught, in fact, that evolution was likely how God created the universe. This is called theistic evolution.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> However, there was a single exception. Humans. According to my teachers humans were sinless special creations God made in his image. We were not part of the animal kingdom. We did not evolve. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> This was pretty much the line I was taught at seminary, too. After seminary, I spent a year of graduate study digging deeper, comparing the Bible’s several creation stories to similar older creation stories told by ancient Israel’s neighbours. I learned that the stories in the Bible were very intentional, shabbat-night-live satiric commentaries on the more ancient creation stories of Israel’s neighbours. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> Since then, studying human evolution has become a hobby. And one of the reasons I finally left my previous denomination was because I couldn’t, finally, pretend to play along with my denomination’s official view on human evolution.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> More recently, scientists have unraveled the human genome and the DNA within it. Doing so not only allows us to find relatives several generations removed through sites like 23andme’s DNA kits, but unravelling the human genome has helped us find criminals by the DNA they leave behind, and now even cure some diseases rooted in genetic problems. Within that genome, we’ve also discovered the deep evolutionary roots of humankind that ties us to the rest of the animal kingdom. We humans evolved from other earlier hominids, as have the Great Apes and yes, even monkeys. We are also related to other branches of the homo species, like Neanderthals and Denosivans—both now extinct. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> But why review all this? Because as I’ve studied cosmic and biological evolution, I’ve begun to ask myself, more and more, “so what role <i>does </i>God play in all this?” If everything evolved, and if science can describe that evolutionary process without needing a God, then what use is God?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> And this is what I came up with. It is tentative. It is the best I can do. And I am very, very open to better ideas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> Imagine a car. The car loosely represents the cosmos. And imagine God. God can relate to the car in several ways. For example, perhaps God is the driver.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> That is, God gets behind the wheel. God has the key, turns the ignition, and gets the car going. God as driver is in complete control. God chooses the destination. He’s the driver, after all. God steers the car around every corner. In fact, God even built the car he drives—he’s a cosmic Henry Ford. This is how most conservative Christians think of God—he’s completely in charge of the whole cosmos—starting it, directing it, and so on. It’s why, when someone dies or they get a new job, such Christians will say things like, “well, it was God’s will. That’s God’s plan.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> Prayer, then, could be imagined as us asking the driver, God, to steer the car in a certain way, and get us to places we want to go. But <i>God </i>is the driver. God might listen to us, as passengers, but God might not. God is completely in charge of our journeys. Nothing is up to us. In its most extreme of the Calvinist versions of this line of thought, God’s mind is never changed by prayer. God has already decided everything ahead of time. This is called predestination—God decides everything about the destination and our drive there. Humans don’t really have a choice. No free will.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> But many Christians (and people of other faiths) disagree. For example, some Christians imagine that God is not much like a driver, but more like a passenger in a self-driving car, a next-generation Tesla, say, that he invented and built. In this case, God provides the blueprint, gets things going, comes along for the ride, but doesn’t personally steer the car himself. This is called deism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> Deists have their own favourite analogy. Imagine finding a watch in a field. You pick it up. You wind it up. And the watch ticks and tocks. It keeps time. Perfectly. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> If you found such a watch, you would have to presume that it was made by someone. Watches don’t just appear, by accident, as it were. So, if you found a watch, you would have to believe that there was a skilled watchmaker who designed and manufactured it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> Well, when deists look about the cosmos what they see is something even more wonderfully and fearfully made than that watch. The planets in their circuits, our blood coursing through veins, and all the laws of nature suggested to these ancients that, as with the watch, the cosmos must have a designer and a manufacturer. But once a big bang sets it off, the cosmos runs by itself. God is inventor, creator, but once God is done, God lets the whole mess run itself. Deism. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> I’m more inclined to a deist view of God myself, than to a driver God who predestines everything. My problem with deism, however, is that actually, modern scientific theories <i>can </i>pretty much explain everything—the big bang, the appearance of life, evolution. The physical world doesn’t need an inventor or watchmaker to be properly explained. Which is why Richard Dawkins wrote a book about evolution called, ironically, <i>The Blind Watchmaker. </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> Well, as you can see, if you don’t need God to create the cosmos and just come along for the drive, and if you don’t need God as the creator and driver either, there isn’t much room left for God. So, some Christians—liberal ones, for the most part, have begun to think of God not as the driver, not as a quiet passenger who just set things in motion, but as a backseat driver.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> You see, while science can explain a lot, some people don’t think science can explain morality, our human notions about what is right and wrong. And so, these Christians turn God into a backseat driver who is always telling us what is right and wrong, what direction to take our lives, which pedestrians and hazards to watch out for. This is a nagging God, a pushy God, a “you better get this right,” God. A liberal works-righteousness God who seems, always, to be saying, “Be better. Do more. Divest. Rally. Protest.” This God speaks to us insistently, mostly through theologians and denominational executives and pressure groups who are sure they know exactly what God wants when it comes to a whole list of contemporary issues. And while I often agree with these people, I don’t like the tone, and I don’t like the imagined God behind this tone, very much.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> None of these pictures of God ring true for me. Is there another possibility? I think there is. Perhaps God, in some wild but mysterious way offers guidance when we, alone in the car by ourselves, or together with each other as a community, <i>seek </i>that guidance. That is, instead of nagging us, perhaps God is more like Google Maps or the Waze app. Except those kinds of maps are too directive, too sure. So maybe God is more like the author of an old-fashioned paper map. We can turn to it for direction, but we need to read it carefully, parse its options, interpret it, and rely on the corroborating (or not) advice of fellow passengers. Only when we turn to God “The Paper Map,” for direction do we receive it—in part and imperfectly. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> </span><span style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> </span><span style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";">But where might God provide such guidance, in real life? Well, I’d say that scripture is where we find it; and in the cumulative wisdom we’ve built up about scripture as a community, over thousands of years. Scripture, and our reflection on it, is the divine roadmap we have for arriving ("Perhaps," says John Caputo. “We hope,” I add.) at our desired destination.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> I’m not saying that scripture is dictated by God, or that is divinely authoritative (so we better listen to it!), or that every word is inspired. I don’t think so. But overall, scripture—including the scriptures of other religions and the Testament we received from the Jewish people—scriptures do represent thousands of years of deep listening on the part of humans to a mysterious divine wisdom that permeates the cosmos and is deeply rooted in our own selves, as well. We argue about how to understand scripture, we question some of its odd suggestions that belong to another place and time, but overall, in scripture and in the communities that listen to it and truly seek guidance in it, we usually find God gently, kindly, offering direction when we seek it, encouraging us to live full lives that benefit each other and help us find our place in the cosmos.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> Scripture in this sense is a lamp that prevents our feet from stumbling when all is otherwise dark (Psalm 119:105). Keep in mind that when scripture is described as a light, it isn’t talking about a modern flashlight or streetlight that reveals all. It is a flickering, uncovered olive lamp with a sputtering wick that threatens to go out at any minute, and gives just enough light so that we don’t trip over what would otherwise be obvious rocks and chasms in the path. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> Scripture is a divine gift. But gifts, to be true gifts, must be given unconditionally. There is no expectation of a return, no nagging about thank-you cards, no obligation to give something of equal or greater value back. If we were given a gift conditional on how we responded to it, it would be merely a financial transaction, a debt to be repaid, rather than a gift. We’d have to interpret it correctly, or else. But no. As a favourite writer once put it: There is <b>nothing </b>you have to do, there is nothing <b>you have </b>to do, and there is nothing you have <b>to do</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "applesystemuifont";"> The divine gift of scripture is an invitation, really, to explore meaning and purpose beyond the facts. Science, and theories like evolution, explain a lot—everything, really. And yet, for such a world as this, we also have this one thing more, this divine gift, the divine (but often obscure!) map, for why and how to live a life—not just for survival, but for the love of all things bright and beautiful.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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John Sukhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14257475843355209416noreply@blogger.com2