APOLARITY

Two Seattle events I’m extremely excited about:

• 19 April: Dr. Wangari Maathai, Kenyan author, activist, founder of the Green Belt Movement, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (2004), will be at Town Hall courtesy of Elliot Bay Books, doing a reading and signing of her new book, The Challenge for Africa .

The Challenge for Africa seeks to dispel many of the stereotypes and assumptions laid out by the western media and, at the same time, casts a strong challenge to African people themselves to redirect their individual and collective destinies.

• 21 May: Tom Robbins (previously) at Elliot Bay, on tour promoting his new book B is for Beer, (Read the first chapter here!)

I haven’t voluntarily read a review of one of my books since 1977, though I’ve had a couple stuck in my face. But in a New York Times review of the one before last, the writer said something like, “Robbins needs to make up his mind between whether he wants to be funny or serious.” And I remember thinking, “I’ll make my mind up when God makes up his.” (sw)

(Image via)

111

“…’Religion and politics are unnecessary to the culture  -or the individual- that has poetry.’

     ‘You really don’t believe in political solutions, do you?’

     ‘I believe in political solutions to political problems. But man’s primary problems aren’t political; they’re philosophical. Until humans can solve their philosophical problems, they’re condemned to solve their political problems over and over and over again. It’s a cruel, repetitious bore.’

     [She] thought she had the old goat this time … ‘Well, then, what are the philosophical solutions?’

     ‘Ha ha ho ho and hee hee. That’s for you to find out.’ She didn’t have him. ‘I’ll say this and no more: there’s got to be poetry. And magic … At every level. If civilization is ever going to be anything but a grandiose pratfall, anything more than a can of deodorizer in the shithouse of existence, then statesman are going to have to concern themselves with magic and poetry. Bankers are going to have to concern themselves with magic and poetry. Time magazine is going to have to write about magic and poetry. Factory workers and housewives are going to have to get their lives entangled in magic and poetry…’

     If [she] failed to comprehend completely, at least she no longer felt confused. Through a pinhole in the peace that dropped like dusk around them, she squeezed one last question. ‘Do you think such a thing can ever happen?’

     ‘If you understood poetry and magic, you’d know that it doesn’t matter.’

     The moon rose.

     The clockworks struck.

     A crane whooped. 

     She understood.

111a

     Poetry is nothing more than an intensification or illumination of common objects and everyday events until they shine with their singular nature, until we can experience their power, until we can follow their steps in the dance, until we can discern what parts they play in the Great Order of Love. How is this done? By fucking around with syntax.”

-Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

When I was young, probably my single favorite movie was 1981′s The Great Muppet Caper. It still holds a very special place in my heart. My favorite scene is the part when the Muppets are planning their scheme to break into the Mallory Gallery and stop the theives from stealing the Baseball Diamond. At one point, all the Muppets are talking at once, advancing their own theories, discussing, bantering, clamoring for attention – the noise gets to a level where Kermit the Frog yells “QUIET!”

Everyone stops talking except Janice (the lead guitar player of Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem), who is caught mid-sentence. “…So I said, ‘Look, mother! It’s my life, oo-kaay? So if I want to live on the beach and walk around naked…’ [She realizes everyone else is staring at her] Oh.”

I finished reading Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches: Five Perspectives Monday night. It was a really enjoyable read, overall. I’ve always liked the “point/counterpoint”-style books, where I get to peek into the minds of various people, and see how people with different worldviews approach a problem. I like the atmosphere of mutual respect, admiration, and “agree-to-disagree” that authors generally provide for one another.

Such was definitely the case with this book. The authors, ranging from “conservative” to “liberal”, mainline to evangelical, and a host of other cultural and spiritual differences (although more than one stated his/her dislike for such labels), found common ground in discussing missional, incarnational theology in a postmodern world, and freely expressed their concerns without chasing rabbit-trails, resorting to ad hominem attacks, mischaracterizations, or bad faith arguments.

This goes for all the authors, that is, except Mark Driscoll. John Burke, Dan Kimball, Doug Pagitt, and Karen Ward seem to be having a really productive exchange – challenging each other, presenting new perspectives, discussing ways of “being” in the world, the role of Christianity and Christians, how to relate to unbelievers and people of different faiths, etc. – and then Mark would come in, guns blazing, blasting someone for not espousing his version of orthodoxy. Mark has always been a big fan of “man’s man” metaphors – I imagine he pictures himself as William Wallace in Braveheart: “I’m going to pick a fight.”

At first, this made me really mad (see, for example, my earlier post) – I wanted to yell at Mark for being unfair, for using logical fallacies, for nitpicking abstract theological “issues” (penal substitutionary atonement, eternal literal hell, plenary biblical infallibility) and ignoring the real substance of the other authors’ statements about collaborative theology, the importance of community, incarnational ministry, and the realities of living in a post-Christian, pluralistic society. After continuing to read it, though, I stopped being mad/offended. I realized the dynamic of what was going on in this discussion: Mark Driscoll was simply not having the same conversation that everyone else was. He wasn’t absorbing what the others were saying in order to respond thoughtfully; he was in full battle mode, looking for errors to expose. It stopped being a tragedy, and turned into a farce. Any admission by him of missional living, or of the centrality of praxis in the life of a church/Christian, was absolutely tangential to “theology” in the abstract. He made it abundantly clear that that was his topic, and he wasn’t going to be sidetracked by what anyone else was saying.

As the book went on, I took him less and less seriously. He was so far afield from the conversation everyone else was having, he may as well have been saying “…So I said, ‘Look, mother! It’s my life, oo-kaay? So if I want to live on the beach and walk around naked…’ ”

Mark Driscoll as Janice the Muppet.

“Gonzo, Divine King of the Muppets, Most Benevolent, Guardian of the Blue, Patron of Frilly Head-Antennae” – oh my…
(BTW, it doesn’t work in Firefox – IE Tab that sucker).

I picked up a copy of Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches: Five Perspectives at the library recently. It’s one of those point/counterpoint books, in which five church leaders (Mark Driscoll, John Burke, Dan Kimball, Doug Pagitt, and Karen Ward) each write a chapter on what they believe about the church’s role, and the other four authors all make a short response/rebuttal.

The first chapter, called “The Emerging Church and Biblicist Theology”, is by Seattle’s own Mark Driscoll – pastor of the Calvinist hipster megachurch Mars Hill Church, blogger at TheResurgence, and all-around bad-boy of the conservative evangelical subculture (Donald Miller’s famously referred to him in Blue Like Jazz as “Mark the cussing pastor”). Mark’s main objective in his chapter, as evidenced by the 700 (!) Scripture verses he references in the endnotes, is “to defend the traditional Protestant doctrines of scriptural authority, the Trinitarian nature of God, and the substitutionary atonement” (p.16, from the introduction by Robert Webber).

Mark represents a passionate adherence to the particulars of a Reformed evangelical theology, and in that sense, is not typically emerging. He is a theological traditionalist leading a cutting-edge church that ministers primarily to the new emerging generation. (ibid.)

I think that his perspective is valid, and I understand the concern of [some] theological “conservatives” that some doctrinal essentials are being overlooked or ignored [by some] in the “emerging conversation”. With that said, however, I think that Mark setting himself up as the arbiter of truth is a bit disingenuous. “This chapter is my attempt to address three of the hottest theological issues in our day and to correct emerging error with biblical orthodoxy” (p.21). I get the impression that he thinks that he’s the only one that does theology; that if everyone else would just read the Bible and take it seriously, they would come to the same conclusions that he has.

The following lengthy quote is from pages 34-35. It’s the climax of his chapter, in which he defines and defends his position on hell:

The following Old Testament truths about hell are worthy of note:

• Hell is unending, conscious, loathsome torment.¹⁵⁹
• Heaven and hell will have people in them forever.¹⁶⁰

Also, Jesus had much to say about hell, including the following:

• The pain in hell will be excruciating, causing “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”¹⁶¹
• The torture in hell comes from Jesus.¹⁶²
• Jesus is coming to throw people into the fiery furnace of hell.¹⁶³
• The physical pain of hell is like being burned in a fire.¹⁶⁴
• Unrepentant sinners will be thrown into a fiery hell.¹⁶⁵
• Hypocrites will be butchered and spend eternity in pain.¹⁶⁶
• God will send unbelievers to the same fate as Satan and demons.¹⁶⁷
• Jesus said the eternal torment of Isaiah 66:22-24 is literally coming.¹⁶⁸
• The punishment of hell is like a painful beating.¹⁶⁹
• Hell is a place of unending torment.¹⁷⁰

Lastly, the apostles also speak of hell in the following terms:

• Jesus will repay unrepentant sinners with everlasting destruction.¹⁷¹
• Jesus today holds the unrighteous in punishment.¹⁷²
• Jesus will rule over hell as well as heaven.¹⁷³
• Hell is like spending eternity in a fiery lake of burning sulfur.¹⁷⁴

---

Footnotes:
¹⁵⁹ Is 66.22-24
¹⁶⁰ Dn 12.1-2
¹⁶¹ Mt 8.11-12; 13.40-42, 49-50; 22.13; 24.50-51; 25.30; Lk 13.27-28
¹⁶² Mt 8.29; Mk 1.24; 5.7
¹⁶³ Mt 13.40-42, 49-50; 22.13; 25.30
¹⁶⁴ Mt 13.49-50; 18.8-9; 25.41; Mk 9.43-48; Lk 16.19-31
¹⁶⁵ Mt 18.8-9; Mk 9.43-48
¹⁶⁶ Mt 24.50-51
¹⁶⁷ Mt 25.41
¹⁶⁸ Mk 9.43-48
¹⁶⁹ Lk 12.46-48
¹⁷⁰ Lk 16.19-31
¹⁷¹ 2Th 1.6-9
¹⁷² 2Pt 2.9
¹⁷³ Rv 14.9-11
¹⁷⁴ Rv 19.20; 20.10-15; 21.8

Honestly, this section has me fuming. To my reading, Mark’s tone seems to be giddy to “correct [this] emerging error”. I can understand and respect that people hold to the traditional doctrine of hell as “eternal, conscious torment”, but I just can’t deal with the smugness, superiority and presumption that he exudes here.

Additionally, I think that his over-eagerness to stand up for orthodoxy causes him to overstate his arguments. I didn’t have the time or energy to investigate all the verses he cited, but two of the claims struck me as preposterous, if not disgusting – and here I find his exegesis dubious at best:

• The torture in hell comes from Jesus
  Mt 8.29 – “What do you want with us, Son of God?” they shouted. “Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time?”
  Mk 1.24 – “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – the Holy One of God!”
  Mk 5.7 – He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won’t torture me!”
  So, some demons ask Jesus not to torture them, and Mark sees this as saying that Jesus does torture? That’s just wrong – not to mention that even if it were a valid argument, the passages in question are about demons, not people.
• Jesus is coming to throw people into the fiery furnace of hell
  Mt 13.40-42, 49-50; 22.13; 25.30 – all variations on The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
  Quite simply, these verses do not say what Driscoll says they say.

I’m done. If anyone wants to evaluate the rest of his claims, that’s fine; I think I’m going to wash my hands of this whole thing. It’s neither useful nor helpful in living an authentic, spiritual life – rather, it seems to be only concerned with defining the boundary markers of acceptable belief, in order to decide who’s in and who’s out. I’m tired of it.

Assayas, Michka. “Bono: Grace over Karma.” Excerpted from Bono in Conversation with Michka Assayas.

Palmer, Martin. The Jesus Sutras: Rediscovering the Lost Scrolls of Taoist Christianity.

The former is an article I read just tonight; the latter, a book I have been digesting for the last month or so. The article caught my eye with a quote about Karma:

Bono: You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It’s clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I’m absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that “as you reap, so you will sow” stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.

Assayas: I’d be interested to hear that.

Bono: That’s between me and God. But I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I’d be in deep shit. It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace. I’m holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don’t have to depend on my own religiosity.

This quote brought me back and finally gave me incentive to write about The Jesus Sutras. It is an historical account of the first Christian mission to China (led by the monk Alouben) in 635, a piecing together of various strands of evidence: a long-lost Christian monastery now used as a Buddhist temple (with Christian statues in the eighth-century pagoda), a sutra (holy writing) of stone in a stone library, and “The Jesus Sutras,” a collection of scrolls found hidden in a secret library that was sealed around 1005.

From these fragments, the author pieces together a framework for what these early Christians believed, how they acted and interacted with the myriad of cultures and religions around them. The result is a fascinating depiction of a Christianity that is adaptive, hospitable, and relevant.

These early Chinese Christians drew upon imagery from their understanding of the Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Jainism and Shamanism of Tang Dynasty China, which allowed them to present a radical image of Christ as the Dharma King, sending “your raft of salvation to save us from the burning streams” – even saving us from karma and reincarnation.

It struck me as an amazing way to interact and dialogue with the Chinese culture, to come at it with such an intimate knowledge of the people’s beliefs, fears, and understandings of life and the afterlife. Our modern Western Evangelical Protestant understanding of the gospel always tends to hinge on the sacrificial death of Christ as atonement for our sins, relying on the legal metaphor of God as judge, accepting some and damning others (for a real kick in the head, check out The Last Word and the Word After That by Brian McLaren). But how would we make ourselves understood to a culture that doesn’t understand the afterlife in those terms, but rather see them as endless karmic reincarnations, i.e. we are doomed to be forever reincarnated until we get it right here on earth?

I’ve rambled enough, you tell me what you think…

Beyond knowing, beyond words
You are the truth, steadfast for all time.
Compassionate Father, Radiant Son,
Pure Wind King – three in one…

Supreme King, Will of Ages,
Compassionate Joyous Lamb
Loving all who suffer
Fearless as You strive for us
Free us of the karma of our lives,
Bring us back to our original nature
Delivered from all danger.

Sutra of Praise to the Three Powers, A.D. ca. 780-790
(see page 203)

Donna Minkowitz, Ferocious Romance: What my Encounters with the Right Taught me About Sex, God, and Fury.

This book caught my eye at the library. Once I picked it up, I devoured it very quickly. It was challenging, offensive, disturbing, but mostly thought-provoking. It is a memoir of a radical lesbian activist in her attempts to understand the religious right. She cuts through the rhetoric and the “culture wars” and manages to see good in the people she hates.

Donna goes undercover to such far-right groups as the Promise Keepers (dressed as a teenage boy) and a women’s evangelistic/makeover (yeah, totally scary) service. She feels drawn; she feels welcomed; she feels accepted in a way that she had only experienced before in her sexuality/activism.

In the end, while not changing in her politics or spiritual beliefs, she changes. She begins to see the similarities between her own movement and the religious right. When visiting the Focus on the Family headquarters, she “resisted the compulsion … to remove my wig and reveal the butch haircut underneath, crying…, ‘Homosexuals are angelic,’ and another strong temptation to fall on my knees, confess my sins, and join the happy Focus family. Infiltration, hiding, disguise, the constant danger of conversion and the inescapable desire for it are dominant metaphors for both us and them, the religious right and the gay movement. And they’re the burning core of our fantasies about each other, too” (82).

She also learns about herself – sex changes for her, from being something to be praised only when in excess or in applauding “all that is ‘evil’ and ‘transgressive’ in sex” (front cover), she states, “I am still trying to learn to have enough. The prig in me is the same being as the one who thinks that only sex is holy, that I am worthless and filthy without the purifying sacred fire. The one who holds back is the same girl who explodes” (171).

She views herself as being in a “new land” or a “garden.”

I could see that there was no redeemer. No enslaver. Only other people.
I approached them with great joy.
When I learned that nothing could save me, I discovered nothing could damn me, either.
The subject of this book has been the Other … – the enemy, the beloved, and everything in our own lives that we would like to externalize … Everything I had fled from was a part of me…
I discovered there were other reasons for seeking out the Other than to substitute for a debt that can never be paid or deliver me (174-175).

I appreciated her tone, overall, because while at times she was vitriolic, biting, and sarcastic, she approached her subjects with respect and was penetrating of what was going on internally. She was as critical of her own movement as she was of the religious right, and came to understand that neither could bring ultimate fulfilment.

Ferocious Romance was a challenge… and a pleasure.

A reflection on The Post Evangelical, pages 76-77 and 78-79.

He’s right, you know. This is my world, and this is, in a nutshell, why I don’t feel comfortable with much of the evangelical church any more. I’m sick of people telling me the “right” behaviors (or rather, a list of things not to do). For faith to work for me, it needs to be experiential, authentic, progressive (making me a better person). I do crave spiritual direction, but I want it to look like mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, influencing me by lifestyle and immersion how to live a life of fulness and make (my own) wise decisions – not like a lecturer or a boss telling me what to do.

Jesus didn’t really tell people what their actions should look like. He changed their worldview, their perception of reality, and the actions inevitably followed. Thus the word “repent” – in the Greek it means “to change one’s mind.” So Jesus called people to repentance, but not (directly) to a change of actions, but to a change of mindset.

I really enjoy George Orwell. I have read 1984 and am just starting Animal Farm. Here is a link to a political essay he wrote about the English language in 1946. He was definately a clear thinker, a free thinker when it comes to politics. In a way it is scary to read his work, because he foresaw where the world was headed. The essay I have linked to is about writing. Every writer should read it, because he points out how confusing and unintentionally deceptive people can make the English language. All we have to do is succomb to writing like someone else, to using a tired cliche or overused metaphor and we think we have somehow “beefed up” our writing. Orwell especially decries political writing, because its euphemism and unclarity makes for a use of the language that is meaningless. Politicians devise ways of saying things that can be interpreted any number of ways, with the result being that the masses are pleased, yet in fact they believe nothing. The propaganda and slogans fills their minds to the point that they think they are educated, yet have not thought. Thinking – actually considering what something means, pondering before regurgitating – it is a lost art.
Politics and the English Language