Not for the church ladies book club

Marlene Zuk, Sex on Six Legs, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011

I cannot say, reading Marlene Zuk's treatise on insects, Sex on Six Legs, which is more fascinating: the incredible and horrible things insects do or the multitudinous and minute things scientists do in studying them. You will not believe the kinds of behaviors that occur among insects, nor will you believe the lengths to which scientists go in examining them. Zuk explores more studies than even the list of chapter titles would suggest, so I will offer only one example to titillate your interest.

A blister beetle that lives only in the sand dunes of the southwestern United States lays its eggs on purple-flowered plant called a milk vetch. But the larvae can't survive on the plant and instead must develop as parasites in the nests of a solitary bee that also lives in the desert. How do the flightless beetle larvae get from the plant to the bee's nest? Immediately after they hatch, the larvae make their way up to the tip of the plant stem, where they cluster together in a clump of anywhere from 120 to over 2,000 individuals. Viewed collectively, the clump resembles a female of the bee species. They emit a chemical that mimics the sex pheromone of the bee, which attracts a male bee. When the bee lands on the clump and attempts to mate, some of the larvae leap onto its back and are thus carried to his next, more successful encounter. In this attachment the larvae transfer to the female bee and so are carried to the bee's nest. Once there they hop off and feed on the pollen and nectar the bee brings back for her own offspring. Really! (p.172, slightly adapted)

Zuk has absolute faith in evolution as a complete description of how life developed, yet it is clear between the lines that there are more questions that follow from the study of insects than answers. Similar to pursuits in astronomy, the atom, and other scientific fields, the more we learn the more complex things are seen to be and the more questions arise as to just how life and the universe can be what they are. Zuk quotes Ryan Gregory: “The strikingly low number of genes required to construct even the most complex organism represents one of the most surprising findings to emerge from the analysis of complete genome sequences.” (p56) Scientists could do with a bit more humility, but then, so could theologians.

Sex on Six Legs is the scientist's version of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Anne Dillard. If you liked Pilgrim, you will probably enjoy this one (which is why I checked it out).

New thought on Job

I had a new thought toward understanding the book of Job, really new, I think. The thought is: How does the poet view himself (or herself), and what understanding of the human struggle follows from this?

I just finished reading Job again, slowly, in Robert Alter's recently released translation (The Wisdom Books, Norton, 2010). Alter works to let the poetry of the original shine through, and he repeatedly accents how original, marvelous and beautiful it is. He credits the poet with courage and deep insight into the human character, the ways of God, and a challenge to conventional theology, of the poet's day and every era. The book of Job is a masterpiece, not only in the Bible but in all literature. Yet, Alter takes the traditional position regarding God's reply to Job, that it is sarcasm, putting Job in his place, and that Job's response is to repent of his arrogance and accept the limits of his understanding and of his humanity. J. Gerald Janzen (Interpretation Commentary, Knox Press, 1985) proposes that the God speeches are irony, that they show respect for Job's understanding, that they say Job does understand more than he believes, and his “repentance” is to acknowledge that he, Job, can stand in his integrity and not bow. [You have to read Janzen to see how he develops this, but it is convincing.]

Both of these interpretations work with how we can identify with Job, and both are meaningful but leave the issue unresolved: does Job see himself higher or lower than he did before his suffering? The poet, however, surely sees himself in the higher position. His theology is more sophisticated than that of Job's friends. His understanding of God is richer than anyone of his day (like the mystics in their days). And, he conceived the Job character! [You observe that I do not take Job to be a person to whom all this happened but the saga to be a great myth.] So the poet ends standing tall, and tall before God. The poet is not “in dust and ashes” (Janzen translates this as “over dust and ashes, with a very different meaning than the traditional) but is reveling in the wonder of God and the wonder of being a human before God. I do not have the experience of Job, nor the skill of the poet, but I have the humanity of both, and this poet and his story allow me to stand in wonder and awe of God and of myself – and of you.

The technological advantage of print books

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September 2, 2011

From Scroll to Screen

By LEV GROSSMAN

Something very important and very weird is happening to the book right now: It’s shedding its papery corpus and transmigrating into a bodiless digital form, right before our eyes. We’re witnessing the bibliographical equivalent of the rapture. If anything we may be lowballing the weirdness of it all.

The last time a change of this magnitude occurred was circa 1450, when Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type. But if you go back further there’s a more helpful precedent for what’s going on. Starting in the first century A.D., Western readers discarded the scroll in favor of the codex — the bound book as we know it today.

In the classical world, the scroll was the book format of choice and the state of the art in information technology. Essentially it was a long, rolled-up piece of paper or parchment. To read a scroll you gradually unrolled it, exposing a bit of the text at a time; when you were done you had to roll it back up the right way, not unlike that other obsolete medium, the VHS tape. English is still littered with words left over from the scroll age. The first page of a scroll, which listed information about where it was made, was called the “protocol.” The reason books are sometimes called volumes is that the root of “volume” is volvere, to roll: to read a scroll, you revolved it.

Scrolls were the prestige format, used for important works only: sacred texts, legal documents, history, literature. To compile a shopping list or do their algebra, citizens of the ancient world wrote on wax-covered wooden tablets using the pointy end of a stick called a stylus. Tablets were for disposable text — the stylus also had a flat end, which you used to squash and scrape the wax flat when you were done. At some point someone had the very clever idea of stringing a few tablets together in a bundle. Eventually the bundled tablets were replaced with leaves of parchment and thus, probably, was born the codex. But nobody realized what a good idea it was until a very interesting group of people with some very radical ideas adopted it for their own purposes. Nowadays those people are known as Christians, and they used the codex as a way of distributing the Bible.

One reason the early Christians liked the codex was that it helped differentiate them from the Jews, who kept (and still keep) their sacred text in the form of a scroll. But some very alert early Christian must also have recognized that the codex was a powerful form of information technology — compact, highly portable and easily concealable. It was also cheap — you could write on both sides of the pages, which saved paper — and it could hold more words than a scroll. The Bible was a long book.

The codex also came with a fringe benefit: It created a very different reading experience. With a codex, for the first time, you could jump to any point in a text instantly, nonlinearly. You could flip back and forth between two pages and even study them both at once. You could cross-check passages and compare them and bookmark them. You could skim if you were bored, and jump back to reread your favorite parts. It was the paper equivalent of random-access memory, and it must have been almost supernaturally empowering. With a scroll you could only trudge through texts the long way, linearly. (Some ancients found temporary fixes for this bug — Suetonius apparently suggested that Julius Caesar created a proto-notebook by stacking sheets of papyrus one on top of another.)

Over the next few centuries the codex rendered the scroll all but obsolete. In his “Confessions,” which dates from the end of the fourth century, St. Augustine famously hears a voice telling him to “pick up and read.” He interprets this as a command from God to pick up the Bible, open it at random and read the first passage he sees. He does so, the scales fall from his eyes and he becomes a Christian. Then he bookmarks the page. You could never do that with a scroll.

Right now we’re avidly road-testing a new format for the book, just as the early Christians did. Over the first quarter of this year e-book sales were up 160 percent. Print sales — codex sales — were down 9 percent. Those are big numbers. But unlike last time it’s not a clear-cut case of a superior technology displacing an inferior one. It’s more complex than that. It’s more about trade-offs.

On the one hand, the e-book is far more compact and portable than the codex, almost absurdly so. E-books are also searchable, and they’re green, or greenish anyway (if you want to give yourself nightmares, look up the ecological cost of building a single Kindle). On the other hand the codex requires no batteries, and no electronic display has yet matched the elegance, clarity and cool matte comfort of a printed page.

But so far the great e-book debate has barely touched on the most important feature that the codex introduced: the nonlinear reading that so impressed St. Augustine. If the fable of the scroll and codex has a moral, this is it. We usually associate digital technology with nonlinearity, the forking paths that Web surfers beat through the Internet’s underbrush as they click from link to link. But e-books and nonlinearity don’t turn out to be very compatible. Trying to jump from place to place in a long document like a novel is painfully awkward on an e-reader, like trying to play the piano with numb fingers. You either creep through the book incrementally, page by page, or leap wildly from point to point and search term to search term. It’s no wonder that the rise of e-reading has revived two words for classical-era reading technologies: scroll and tablet. That’s the kind of reading you do in an e-book.

The codex is built for nonlinear reading — not the way a Web surfer does it, aimlessly questing from document to document, but the way a deep reader does it, navigating the network of internal connections that exists within a single rich document like a novel. Indeed, the codex isn’t just another format, it’s the one for which the novel is optimized. The contemporary novel’s dense, layered language took root and grew in the codex, and it demands the kind of navigation that only the codex provides. Imagine trying to negotiate the nested, echoing labyrinth of David Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas” if it were transcribed onto a scroll. It couldn’t be done.

God knows, there was great literature before there was the codex, and should it pass away, there will be great literature after it. But if we stop reading on paper, we should keep in mind what we’re sacrificing: that nonlinear experience, which is unique to the codex. You don’t get it from any other medium — not movies, or TV, or music or video games. The codex won out over the scroll because it did what good technologies are supposed to do: It gave readers a power they never had before, power over the flow of their own reading experience. And until I hear God personally say to me, “Boot up and read,” I won’t be giving it up.

Lev Grossman is the author of the novels “The Magicians” and “The Magician King.” He is also the book critic at Time magazine.

Norway demonstrates love & democracy

Responding to Terror Norway-style

August 6, 2011 in Current Comment

How have Norwegians responded to the tragedy of terror that recently shattered the calm in their country?

http://blog.amnestyusa.org/waronterror/norway-democratic-defiance-amid-devastation/
1. Mayor of Oslo: “We shall punish the terrorist, and this will be his punishment: more democracy, more tolerance, more generosity.”

2. Norwegian Prime Minister: “…the answer to violence is even more democracy.”

3. Diplomat Steinar Gil: “Norway will not change. Evil will not prevail.”

4. Norwegian Prime Minister: “With the strongest of all weapons — the free word and democracy — we stake our course for Norway.”

5. Crown Prince of Norway: “Tonight the streets are filled with love. We have chosen to meet hatred with unity. We have chosen to show what we stand for.”

Here is the text of the Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s speech delivered on July 24:

It is nearly two days since Norway was hit by the worst atrocity it has seen since the Second World War. On Utøya, and in Oslo.

It seems like an eternity.

These have been hours, days and nights filled with shock, despair, anger and weeping.

Today is a day for mourning.
Today, we will allow ourselves to pause.
Remember the dead.
Mourn those who are no longer with us.

92 lives have been lost. Several people are still missing.
Every single death is a tragedy. Together they add up to a national tragedy.

We are still struggling to take in the scale of this tragedy.
Many of us know someone who has been lost. Even more know of someone.

I knew several.

One of them was Monica. She worked on Utøya for 20 years or so. For many of us she was Utøya.
Now she is dead. Shot and killed while providing care and security for young people from all over the country.
Her husband John and daughters Victoria and Helene are in Drammen Church today.
It is so unfair. I want you to know that we are weeping with you.

Another is Tore Eikeland.
Leader of the Labour Youth League in Hordaland and one of our most talented young politicians.
I remember him being met with acclaim by the whole Labour national congress when he gave a stirring speech against the EU Postal Directive, and won the debate.
Now he is dead. Gone for ever. It is incomprehensible.
These are two of those we have lost.

We have lost many more on Utøya and in the government offices.
We will soon have their names and pictures. Then the full extent of this evil act will become apparent in all its horror.
This will be a new ordeal.
But we will get through this too.

Amidst all this tragedy, I am proud to live in a country that has managed to hold its head up high at a critical time.
I have been impressed by the dignity, compassion and resolve I have met.
We are a small country, but a proud people.
We are still shocked by what has happened, but we will never give up our values. Our response is more democracy, more openness, and more humanity. But never naivity.
No one has said it better than the Labour Youth League girl who was interviewed by CNN: “If one man can create that much hate, you can only imagine how much love we as a togetherness can create.”

Finally, I would like to say to the families all over the country who have lost one of their loved ones:
You have my and the whole of Norway’s deepest sympathy for your loss.
Not only that. The whole world shares your sorrow.

I have promised to pass on the condolences of Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, Frederik Reinfeldt, Angela Merkel and many other heads of state and government.
This cannot make good your loss. Nothing can bring your loved ones back.
But we all need support and comfort when life is at its darkest.
Now life is at its darkest for you.
I want you to know that we are there for you.

These words do not need comment.

Copied from http://inaspaciousplace.wordpress.com

July 19, 2011

“So, in my better moments, I want to step down from my puny little pedestal. I want to step aside. I want my heart to open to that 'point or spark which belongs entirely to God'.” So says Christopher Page, quoting Thomas Merton, in his blog response to the issue of fear now dominating the church. What Page says, Merton says, and Cynthia Bourgeault says, in this discussion reflect my own feelings – and let me see a way of hope. The entire post follows.

The Future of Church #5 (with Cynthia Bourgeault)

July 19, 2011

This past spring The Contemplative Society website (http://www.contemplative.org/) posted 12 summary statements about the future of church I gleaned from a Lenten Series I attended, accompanied by a response from Cynthia Bourgeault. With Cynthia’s encouragement, I am reposting the original paragraph, followed by her response, and my response to Cynthia. We hope this may generate some conversation. Cynthia will check in and respond to comments if she feels inspired.

5. The pervasive fear in the church is paralyzing. It inhibits genuine conversation and keeps us fixated on finding solutions, rather than launching into bold new adventures of faith. There is no way to move forward until we come to grips with the reality of fear. Dealing with fear requires deep personal and corporate spiritual practice. Only transformed people will have the ability to be a transformed church.

Cynthia: This is so, so true. If “perfect love casts out fear,” the opposite is sadly but equally true: “perfect fear casts out love.” And it shuts down just about everything else as well.

Fear is always a tip-off that one is living at the egoic level of consciousness (or in the corporate mode, the “we-goic” level): that anxiety-prone hardwiring of the immature human mind that sees everything from its own self-interest and perceives through separation and scarcity.

The only “cure” for fear is spiritual practice, which gradually heals this artificial split in the field of consciousness and restores the direct perception of abundance and connection. All other approaches to fear simply mask the symptoms, generally through reliance on illusory power and control to “fix” the external situation deemed to be broken.

Ironically, this healing of fear is at the very heart of the Jesus message, over which the church claims custodial rights but about which it knows so very little. “Do not be afraid, little flock: it is my Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom,” Jesus assures his followers in those immortal words of Luke 12:32. And throughout his entire ministry, he teaches, models, and ultimately offers himself up in the kenotic (or “letting go”) practice which not only surmounts fear but transforms it.

Imagine what might happen if a whole group of Christians were to simply drop their terrified insistence that the church as we know it must survive and were instead to give themselves to that “deep personal and corporate spiritual practice” that makes it possible to fall through fear into perfect love. What might happen next? Whatever form it might take, it would certainly be REAL: a powerful new unleashing of the Jesus energy, no longer as that “mighty fortress” and “bulwark never ceasing” of times gone by, but as the river itself, ever flowing.

Christopher: We in the church have lived so long in “separation” it is hard to imagine any other way of being.

We have called ourselves “a people set apart,” “resident aliens,” “a peculiar people.” We want to see ourselves as “God’s chosen people,” presumably in distinction from those who are not “chosen.” We take pride in being “in the world, but not of the world.” We want to be special, different, unique. We have built walls around ourselves. Our churches have windows; but they are designed so no one can see in.

We cling to our theological formulations relying upon them to define us as “not them.” We point to the evil ways of the world and declare ourselves separate from the darkness of those who do not follow the One True Light. We suffer from an epidemic of separation, all of which, if we are honest, is driven by our desire to enshrine our superiority and the primacy of our religious practices and beliefs over any other spiritual path. It is a curious kind of humility we model in the church.

To make matters worse; the insistence upon our separation from the vast majority of the world has not worked. Isolating ourselves as God’s specially chosen ones has not given us a robust sense of confidence and conviction in the goodness of life. As much as we have struggled to achieve a sense of abundance by affirming the superiority of our version of the religious way, we have ended up again and again falling back into scarcity mode. And any program or strategy that comes from an innate sense of lack is doomed to end up resorting to, guilt, and abuse – the besetting sins of organizational religion.

How do we move from separation to connectivity? How do we shift from scarcity to abundance?

As you point out Cynthia, the starting point is “letting go.” We must lay down our need to be right. We must surrender our determination to reign supreme. We must let go of our identity as God’s special agents whose job it is to introduce God into foreign territory as if there were places God is absent until we come along to introduce the Divine presence into the dark lost world.

In Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton famously wrote,

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us… It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely…I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

True change will only flow from this centre.

I want to know how this works. I want to know how to program this connecting, this beautiful flowing of God’s Spirit. But, Merton sadly reminds me “I have no program for this seeing. It is only given.”

It is too hard to trust the giving. It is too hard to rely on grace. I want to know what the strategy is. What are the steps forward? I want to be able to contain God, trap God, control God. I want to be in charge.

But, I know, it will be a small poor church if I am in charge. So, in my better moments, I want to step down from my puny little pedestal. I want to step aside. I want my heart to open to that “point or spark which belongs entirely to God.” I want to trust that God’s Spirit is at work, not just in my little life, or my little understanding, or my little church, but “in everybody” and every where.

Church exists to “see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.” This is the business for which Jesus calls us together. This is a mission to which it is worth giving our lives.

http://inaspaciousplace.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/the-future-of-church-5-with-cynthia-bourgeault/

A challenge due serious consideration

For the past 50 years the Christian community (or communities) has sought to bring transformation to the culture by a strategy that is “almost wholly mistaken.” The “common view” is that “the way to change the world is to change the thinking of individuals. Then, when enough people with the right thinking, the correct worldview, act strongly enough, culture will be changed.” This view has motivated and directed the styles and actions of Christian churches and groups, of all persuasions, for multiple generations. And this approach has not fulfilled its mission because it fails to work with the forces that do bring change in cultures. This argument is made, persuasively I believe, by James Davison Hunter in To Change the World. The Irony, Tragedy, & Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). In his several books, Hunter, LaBrossse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture, and Social Theory at the University of Virginia, looks at modern American culture and the influence of Christians in it.

Even more strongly, Hunter argues that the strategies used by the majority of Christians and Christian organizations have contributed to the demise of Christian values in the culture. He asks why, if the Common View is valid, have not the strong values and dedication to propagating these of modern Christianity moved the American culture toward its values. The reality is movement in the opposite direction. He points out that “in America today, 86 to 88 percent of the people adhere to some faith commitments (survey results referenced). And yet our culture – business culture, law and government, the academic world, popular entertainment – is intensely materialistic and secular. … If culture is the accumulation of values and the choices made by individuals on the basis of these values, then how is it that American public culture today is so profoundly secular in its character?”

And this is not just the product of rampant secularism which the Christian community resists. “But there is another way in which Christians in America have assimilated the dominant political culture. As I argue in Chapter 2 of this essay, contemporary political culture in America is marked by a ressentiment manifested by a narrative of injury and, in turn, a discourse of negation toward all those they perceive to be to blame. Through each expresses this ressentiment differently, in different degrees and to different ends, it is present in all of these factions (Christian Right, Christian Left; Neo-Anabaptist). It is especially prominent, of course, among Christian conservatives, which may be why they have been so effective over the years in mobilizing their rank and file to political action. Ressentiment is also centrally present among Christian progressives and it is clearly a major source of their new solidarity and the motive behind their recent assertiveness in Democratic party policies. Both the Right and the Left ground their positions in biblical authority and they both appeal to democratic ideals and practices to justify their actions. But the ressentiment that marks the way they operate makes it clear that a crucial part of what motivates them is a will to dominate. The neo-Anabaptists are different in this regard. It is true that they too participate fully in the discourse of negation but domination is not their intent.” (p. 168-'69)

[ressentiment: Fr. resentment, plus anger, envy, hate, rage, and revenge as a motive]

Developing a theory of how cultures change, Hunter proposes, “that cultures are profoundly resistant to intentional change – period. They are certainly resistant to the mere exertion of individual will by ordinary individuals or by a well-organized movement of individuals. … The most profound changes in culture can be seen first as they penetrate into the linguistic and mythic fabric of a social order. …. In this light, we can see that evangelism, politics, social reform, and the creation of artifacts – if effective – all bring about good ends: changed hearts and minds, changed laws, changed social behaviors. But they don't directly influence the moral fabric that makes these changes sustainable over the long term, sustainable precisely because they are implicit and as implicit, they form the presuppositional base of social life.” The forces that influence change in culture are at the centers, and for over 50 years Christians in America have been almost totally absent from these centers. “... the main reason why Christian believers today (from various communities) have not had the influence in the culture to which they have aspired is not that they don't believe enough or try hard enough, or care enough, or think Christianly enough, or have the right worldview, but rather because they have been absent from the arenas in which the greatest influence in the culture is exerted.

The posture that has been taken by most Christian organizations is to seek change in the culture through political influence and action. Hunter argues that the trend since the 1960s in America is to politicize everything. And Christian movements have joined the trend and act as if political action is the only way to achieve their goals. In this way Christians have accepted the present political culture, have tried to influence and use it and have, in turn, been used by it. And we have failed. More, we have precipitated a backlash so that “Christian” is a label little respected in the culture and an object of disdain by many, many who are trying to bring change to the culture, change for the good, at least in their eyes.

In a chapter devoted to explaining contemporary political theory and the importance of distinguishing between democracy and the state, the latter holding the more power (read the chapter to follow this), Hunter concludes, “ there are no political solutions to the problems most people care about. …. What the state cannot do is provide fully satisfactory solutions to the problems of values in our society.”

“The irony, of course, is that no group in American society has done more to politicize values over the last half century, and therefore undermine their renewal, than Christians – both on the Right (since the early 1980s) and on the Left (during the 1960s and 1970s). Both sides are implicated and remain implicated today. And he provocatively suggests, “... it would be salutary for the church and its leadership to remain silent for a season until it learns how to engage politics and even talk politics in ways that are non-Nietzschean.” [Christians Nietzschean?!]

Does Hunter have an alternative? Of course, that is why he wrote the book. In place of (exclusively) political action and a hope-against-hope that “ when enough people with the right thinking, the correct worldview, act strongly enough, culture will be changed,” he proposes “faithful presence within.” Faithful presence is to live the incarnation, taking our model from Jesus who in his incarnation became present in the world, to us, to all, being the revelation of God who engages us, as we are. “In respect to God's presence: “we are the 'other'. Though we are irreducibly different from him and , in our sin, irreducibly estranged from him, he does not regard us as either 'danger' or 'darkness'. We neither threaten him nor diminish him in any way. The second point is that though he is all powerful, he pursues us, identifies with us, and offers us life through his sacrifice not because he needs us to do something for him but simply because he loves us and desires intimacy with all his creation. In other words, he does not use his power instrumentally in ways that force us against our will.” In other words, Jesus engages in no politics and uses no force in pursuing change in us and in culture.

The hope for Christian influence in culture is not through doing anything to change culture but by being a changed culture. “Let me finally stress that any good that is generated by Christians is only the net effect of caring for something more than the good created. If there are benevolent consequences of our engagement with the world, in other words, it is precisely because it is not rooted in a desire to change the world for the better but rather because it is an expression of a desire to honor the creator of all goodness and beauty, and truth, a manifestation of our loving obedience to God ,and a fulfillment of God's command to love our neighbor.”

I'm in!

Reading note: Two other books assisted me in these reflections, both by Rodney Stark: The Rise of Christianity, Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1996, and The Victory of Reason. How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism and Western Success, New York: Random House, 2005.

Quo Vadis?

I haven't read the book, and I haven't seen the movie, but when I read the legend, Quo Vadis?, I was moved. Especially in light of two recent “prophetic” messages telling Christians they/we are about to escape the world's troubles or to flee a coming earthquake on the West Coast. The world is deeply troubled, by natural disasters and by human caused calamities. What is the response of followers of Jesus the Christ? To escape? To proclaim judgment? To offer a way out? Or, to enter the world, as Jesus did, love it, serve it, and take whatever comes? I will stay, and each day I try to turn my attention to loving all I meet and to offering whatever service I am able. Usually it is not much, and never (yet) has it brought death.

Here is the legend, taken from The Acts of Peter, "The Apocryphal New Testament" M.R. James-Translation and Notes Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924.

XXXV. And as they considered these things, Xanthippe took knowledge of the counsel of her husband with Agrippa, and sent and showed Peter, that he might depart from Rome. And the rest of the brethren, together with Marcellus, besought him to depart. But Peter said unto them: Shall we be runaways, brethren and they said to him: Nay, but that thou mayest yet be able to serve the Lord. And he obeyed the brethren's voice and went forth alone, saying: Let none of you come forth with me, but I will go forth alone, having changed the fashion of mine apparel.

And as he went forth of the city, he saw the Lord entering into Rome. And when he saw him, he said: Lord, whither goest thou thus (or here) And the Lord said unto him: I go into Rome to be crucified. And Peter said unto him: Lord, art thou (being) crucified again He said unto him: Yea, Peter, I am (being) crucified again. And Peter came to himself: and having beheld the Lord ascending up into heaven, he returned to Rome, rejoicing, and glorifying the Lord, for that he said: I am being crucified: the which was about to befall Peter.

XXXVI. He went up therefore again unto the brethren, and told them that which had been seen by him: and they lamented in soul, weeping and saying: We beseech thee, Peter, take thought for us that are young. And Peter said unto them: If it be the Lord's will, it cometh to pass, even if we will it not; but for you, the Lord is able to stablish you in his faith, and will found you therein and make you spread abroad, whom he himself hath planted, that ye also may plant others through him. But I, so long as the Lord will that I be in the flesh, resist not; and again if he take me to him I rejoice and am glad.

And while Peter thus spake, and all the brethren wept, behold four soldiers took him and led him unto Agrippa. And he in his madness commanded him to be crucified on an accusation of godlessness.

Recalling old controversies

Recalling old controversies

Remember the alarm in the 60's and 70's that any change in how we understand or interpret the Bible would cause acceptance of its authority to collapse and corrupt believers? And did you see this rise again 4 years ago when the publisher of the New International Version had the audacity to change the language to reflect more inclusivity and be less masculine? Well, the charge isn't new. Consider this remark:

“if one point in the [ ] were in error the entire authority of Holy Scripture would collapse, love and faith would be extinguished, heresies and schisms would abound, blasphemy would be committed against the Holy Spirit, the authority of theologians would be shaken, and indeed the church would be shaken from the foundations.”

About changing some critical doctrine in the Scriptures? About questioning the interpretation of the church? No. This charge was made against Erasmus' plan to translate the New Testament of the Vulgate, the accepted Latin version of the day, into Greek, going back to original sources whenever possible. This was in 1516. Not only do “things not change,” even the arguments don't.

You will notice that I am currently reading a biography of Erasmus, contemporary of Martin Luther, Thomas More and Henry VIII.

SERIOUS QUESTIONS

Controversies in the church over worship styles (oh the battles over hymns versus praise songs), how persons best connect with God (the zeal of Charismatics challenging the quiet confidence of those who live by liturgy), alignment with social-political causes (“moral values” competing with compassion for the needy), and other issues that stirred debate in the past half century in the western Christian world are all mild compared to the controversy coming out now. This is over the very essence of Christianity and it involves debates about fundamental doctrines of the church. A leading voice stirring this debate is Brian McLaren, and the book which most forces the issue is A New Kind of Christianity. Ten Questions That Are Transforming The Faith (HarperOne, 2010). The questions asked in the recent past are about what the church should look like. The questions McLaren and others are asking are about the nature of Christianity, about what believing means. The challenge these folks engage is to the root of the way we think about Christianity. They want to move “from 'right belief to believing in the right way'” (Peter Rollins, in How (Not) to Speak of God, referenced by McLaren), and they are willing to question every established position in the church in order to discover a “new quest, … a quest for new ways to believe and new ways to live and serve faithfully in the way of Jesus, a quest for a new kind of Christianity,” (McLaren, p.18).

Do we need a new kind of Christianity? Not just new kinds of churches, not just new strategies for building churches and doing missions, not just renewal of commitment (meaning working harder at old practices), but a new understanding of the faith we hold? In the present massive upheaval of the social-religious landscape is it the responsibility of pastors and church leaders to beckon or pressure people back into a set of beliefs – and so disconnect them more with life outside the church building – or to engage this social reality as a move of the Spirit of God? Is this a moment like transition moments in the history of the church when social realities brought substantive change at the core of its way of believing and acting? Like the shift to accept “Gentiles” on the same basis as Jews, eventually shifting both location and ethnicity of church leadership? Like the shift from a persecuted minority to the dominant religion of the Roman Empire. with its attendant sources of power? Like the shift of social structures in the Middle Ages that brought into being a middle class, a primary factor in the Reformation?

The questions posed by McLaren, Rollins and others are controversial and are drawing strong attack from established church leaders, but I sense that these questions reflect what is really going in the minds of people in the pews and chairs of churches. These questions may reflect what church goers actually believe, or question, more than church leaders will admit. Do most Christians really believe that hell is a place of eternal torment for those who do not recognize Jesus? Are they doing their own pick-and-chose way of believing the Bible (thus applying a different “doctrine” of authority)? Do they really hold to the family model of one father, one mother and biological children as the final and full image of God-in-society? Is the imminent return of Christ the great hope on which they set their future? Does the presence of such “unbeliefs” among Christians represent a falling away or, possibly, the emergence of “a new kind of Christianity”?

The strength of McLaren's book, for me, is that he is not discarding the doctrines of the church nor tossing over the values of the faith. Nor is he trying to reinterpret forms or language into something “relevant.”He is calling for a different way of thinking about these issues while holding to the importance of fundamentals. He is looking for a truly Christian faith, a Christ-centered faith, and sets the questions on this foundation. On what basis can we see the violent portrayal of God in the Old Testament differently? On what basis can we take the interpretation and authority of the Bible differently? On what basis can we consider a different understanding of the return of Christ? All the doctrines questioned in McLaren's book have been questioned in the past – and usually tossed out by the questioners – but McLaren gives directions toward answers that remain authentic to the God of the Bible and the historic Christian faith. He says, “I do not say our quest is for new things to believe, in contrast to old things, but rather new ways to believe.” This is a quest that ignites enthusiasm and hope in me that we can see, can be, a Christianity that is meaningful in the world, the world that is.

Tolstoy again

I finally read Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. After my post, Read Tolstoy, a friend encouraged me with the thought that I would like it. I did. While the development of characters is not as thorough as in War and Peace, the beauty and delicacy in his descriptions of events and locations is unsurpassed. One passage on sensing the sublime is a precious insight.

Tolstoy on sensing the sublime: Levin during Kitty's birthing labor.

“All he knew and felt was that what was happening was similar to what had happened the year before in the hotel of the provincial town, on his brother Nicholas's deathbed. But that had been grief – this was joy. But both that grief and this joy alike were outside all the usual circumstances of life; in this ordinary life they were like an opening through which something sublime could be seen. And now as then what was being accomplished came harshly, in agony, and just as incomprehensibly the soul soared aloft in the contemplation of this sublimity to a height it had never even understood before, where reason could no longer keep up with it.”

Hearing the Bible

We are missing something in our reading of the Bible, something basic and beautiful: the literary style of the original. So says Robert Alter in his provocative essay, “The Bible in English and the Heresy of Explanation,” in the introduction to his translation and commentary of Genesis (Norton, 1996), also included in his more recent translation of The Five Books of Moses (Norton, 2008). Poetry is more evident in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament, in Christian terminology) than English translations allow and the prose narratives are more lively than usually portrayed. There is intrigue in the scriptures that our versions fail to show and nuances of meaning that they deny to us because, says Alter, “The unacknowledged heresy underlying most modern English versions of the Bible is the use of translation as a vehicle for explaining the Bible instead of representing it in another language, and in the most egregious instances this amounts to explaining away the Bible.”

Alter, Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, argues that by underplaying the marvelous literary qualities of the Bible and treating it as a textbook for study English, translators have removed fundamental dimensions for discovering meanings in the texts. He says, “modern English versions – especially in their treatment of Hebrew narrative prose – have placed readers at a grotesque distance from the distinctive literary experience of the Bible in its original language.” Considering that the original was meant to be heard more than to be read, the elimination of rhythms in lines, the elaboration of sentences which find their punch in brevity, the attempt to add variety by using synonyms instead of allowing the repetitions which helped original hearers get the point, have the unintended effect of hiding meanings which the authors desired to convey through various literary devices. “Modern translators, in their zeal to uncover the meaning of the biblical text for the instruction of a modern readership, frequently lose sight of how the text intimates its meanings – the distinctive, artfully deployed features of ancient Hebrew prose and poetry that are the instruments for the articulation of all meaning, message, insight, and vision.”

Modern translations have, in the name of clarity with the intent to help readers understand the text, removed some of the literary artist's techniques for communicating meaning and, particularly in scripture. allowing ambiguity. “Literature in general, and the narrative prose of the Hebrew Bible in particular, cultivates certain profound and haunting enigmas, delights in leaving its audiences guessing about motives and connections, and, above all, loves to set ambiguities of word choice and image against one another in an endless interplay that resists neat resolution.”

The literature of the Bible is story, it is poetry, it is music, not an instruction manual. The messages, and there are always multiple messages in scripture, come through more in hearing it as an enthralling story or reading it in a reflective mode than in a studious examination of details. “Finally, the mesmerizing effect of these ancient stories will scarcely be conveyed if they are not rendered in cadenced English prose that at least in some ways corresponds to the powerful cadences of the Hebrew. … The most pervasive aspect of the magic of biblical style that has been neglected by English translators is its beautiful rhythms. An important reason for the magnetic appeal of these stories when you read them in the Hebrew is the rhythmic power of the words that convey the story.”

Some of us love our study Bibles and devote many hours to reading text and notes. Some of us have found in paraphrases rich insights that traditional translation seemed to hide. Some of us welcome the versions prepared “for public reading” because of the smoothness of the language. Yet, in all of these we are missing something integral to the Bible itself: its original voice. I do not mean that we all must learn Hebrew to understand the scriptures, but I join Prof. Alter in acknowledging that the versions we use deny to us something we would do well, very well, to discover. It is in the poetry and music, the un-clarity of the text, that we will hear a message that reading “accurate translations” will not yield. I recommend reading Alter's translations (available for the first five books of the Old Testament and for the Wisdom Books), but even more I recommend hearing the Bible. And, I believe that hearing it in community, in a small group where you can share your responses to the sound and flow of the text (not just your interpretation of it) will open new senses for knowing it.

These comments are about the Old Testament. Kenneth Bailey's commentaries on the Gospels offer similar keys for discovering riches in New Testament texts that are missed by English translations, translations that cannot speak with a Middle Eastern voice.

GETTING POLITICAL

The fear-based claim that “if the federal government can do this, they can also deny other rights” extends back to the beginning of the United States. The first use of the argument came against the proposal to establish a federal bank – in the very first congress. The insidious basis of the argument then should expose the roots of its use in the current debate over federal involvement in health care. Should we not be more concerned about the rights and needs of people than states?

“Tell me if Congress can establish banks, make roads and canals, whether they cannot free all the Slaves in the United States.” Nathaniel Macon, a Virginia Republican leader, during the debate over establishment of the federal bank during the administration of George Washington.

“(James) Madison led the floor fight in the House to block any extension of federal authority over slavery, arguing that the Constitution specifically forbade any congressional limitation on the slave trade for twenty years, and implicitly relegated any and all legislation regarding slavery itself to the state governments.” And where did this policy take us?

Quotes in American Creation. Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic, Joseph J. Ellis, New York: Knopf, 2007, p. 175-176. Ellis shows how the choice of political power and expediency over compassion and full extension of rights to all, to slaves and native Americans, led to desperate tragedies in the United States.

I also recommend Founding Brothers by Ellis, the author's telling of the story of the founding of the United States in terms of “what it looked and felt like for the eight most prominent political leaders in the early republic”: Abigail and John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and George Washington. You may be surprised at how familiar the battles look.

What About the Soul?

“Thus, if the immortality of the soul and, hence, dualism are essential to Christian thought, then the church should be bracing for an encounter with science far overshadowing debates about creation and evolution.”

So says Lawson G. Stone, Professor of Old Testament, Asbury Theological Seminary, in What About the Soul? Neuroscience and Christian Anthropology, Joel B. Green, ed. Present day studies and theories in neurobiology and neuropsychology are thinning the boundary between soul and body and locating personhood fully integrated in, not separate from, the physical body. Traditional Christian definitions of personhood and “in the image of God” seem to require a separate, immortal soul. If this is not maintained, then what happens to our concepts of evangelism and missions, spiritual-emotional healing, the state of a person after death, bodily resurrection and eternal life. At lot is at stake. But, the authors in this book argue that Christian orthodoxy and biblical faith do not require a two-part person. Have so many of us been very wrong for so long? Yet, what grand possibilities of understanding and hope emerge from a deeper reading of the biblical narrative (Stone's study of Genesis 2 & 3 will transform your way of reading not only these texts but much of scripture.)

And, the Christian community is being driven to more honest perceptions of its own theology by modern science! Instead of defending viewpoints “because the Bible says so”, we should be looking deeper at what the Bible really says, and how it allows us to continue to develop the understanding of ourselves and our ways of representing God in the world – and maybe move out of the popular opinion of Christians as obscurantists.

Read Tolstoy

I know no author who explores and develops the complexity of personality like Tolstoy. What I value in his novels is how he lets a character grow, go off, come back and emerge (or not) into the self he sees in the person from the beginning. This helps me accept and honor the complexity in real people – and in myself – and carry an expectation of good for each, and carry this for years. Tolstoy's character development also helps me interpret biblical characters. Biblical writers do not delve into as much depth with a character as does Tolstoy (this is not their purpose), but from the insights I see in a Tolstoy novel I am able to fill out a biblical character and relate to him or her more fully. When I imagine Peter the Apostle in a Tolstoy novel I see him less outsized and predictable and more a real man, a man like me – and so, I am a man like Peter. Reading Tolstoy makes reading the Bible more interesting.

I just finished War and Peace again, and kept copying out quotes, even whole chapters (copied off a website, not typed out). There are segments that describe me better than I can do so myself, and reading them I know myself more deeply.

As a sample, here is Tolstoy's description of Princess Maria upon seeing Nikolai, Rostov the man she loves, enter the room.

From the moment she set eyes on that dear, loved face, some new vital force took possession of her and compelled her to speak and act irrespective of her own volition. From the time Rostov entered the room her face was transformed. Just as when a light is lit inside a carved and painted lantern, suddenly revealing in unexpected, breath-taking beauty of detail the fine, intricate tracery of its panels, which till then had seemed coarse, dark and meaningless, so was Princess Maria’s face suddenly transfigured. For the first time all the pure, spiritual, inward travail in which she had lived till then came out into the open. All her inner searchings of spirit, her sufferings, her striving after goodness, her resignation, her love and self-sacrifice – all this now shone forth in those radiant eyes, in her sweet smile, in every feature of her tender face.

Confession. I have not read (or seen) Anna Karenina. I have not yet wanted to look into the aspects of human personality that he exposes there. This certainly says something about how I protect myself, but that is part of the complexity of me.

REFLECTIONS ON READING

This is the first blog post in my series, Reflections on Reading. This does not mean that the book reviewed tops all others in my recommendations; it just means that this is where I am starting. Your reflections posted in response to this and future posts are welcome.

Every Book Its Reader. The Power of the Printed Word to Stir the World, by Nicholas A. Basbanes,

Who besides a bibliophile would pick up such a title I cannot imagine, but since I am one, I did. I have stubbornly believed in the power of books, of reading actually, to impact life and the world, and this book gives me evidence for this belief, and hope for the continued impact.

Basbanes shows the influence of books on famous people and ordinary folks. The chapter that motivated this blog is his review of the reading habits of American Presidents. It is impressive! I was particularly moved by a quote from one of John Adams' letters to his family: “I must study politics and war that my sons might have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study paintings, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”

While I would not try to get everyone to read the whole book, I would urge every American to read chapter 6. (Try your local library.)

A link in the epilogue made this book personal to me. Basbanes closes his paean to books with a reference to an exhibition in the British Library (my favorite site to visit in London) of the Lindisfarne Gospels. I chanced to see this exhibition and on a later visit to England was able to visit Lindisfarne. Ah, a book is a beautiful thing!

I won't stick to the expectation that it be a printed book that one must read, but I do encourage all to be readers.