faithasawayoflife

a season of waiting

i feel like i'm in a season of waiting and needed spiritual grounding in this space. happily, i've found w. h. vanstone's the stature of waiting. vanstone's story is remarkable and although a good biography has not yet been written, i assume one will be. for now, if you are curious, just get a copy of this book and be drawn into his generous and meditative prose. i'm reading a page or so a day, every day. one could read more, but not much, without rushing too fast past treasures.

anon, and +peace

on martha

i love this little poem by madeleine l'engle in her book the weather of the heart.

martha

now
nobody can ever laugh at me again
i was the one who baked the bread
i pressed the grapes for the wine.

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this poem is solace for anyone who as felt as though they are not meditative enough.

me, for one.

prayer is--at least some of the time--the work of our hands.

anon, and +peace

help me with media questions for my book on U2

on my blog chronicling the journey of writing and publishing my book on U2 buried at the bottom of my post, i asked for help but no one took me up on it. let me ask again here. the marketing people at brazos asked me to write myself 10 questions and then answer them, and this will be sent in the media packet to help potential reviewers know what to ask me!

it cracks me up because it would be like, here, ask me my own question. oh, by the way, you already have my answer!

well, there must be some way to have fun with it. if you are willing, post your questions about U2 and faith here or email them to me and I'll write the answer here as well. you can read the intro of my book by going here and downloading it.

anon, and +peace

crack and the crossing guard

after two years of our kids walking to and from school on a daily basis and being helped safely across the busy street to the school by troy moore, the crossing guard, last thursday he was not there. by friday the news was out. troy had been arrested for selling crack. it turns out he had two prior convictions and had lied on his application in 2003 in order to get the job. articles portrayed appropriate anger that he had lied and rumors swirled about whether he was dealing while on the job. quickly, condemnations came: bad man does bad thing and deserves what he has coming.

yes. he lied. he sold crack. but my first reaction was, "no!" troy was there for our family every day. in the rain, in the cold and snow, paying close attention, stopping traffic, never missing days. one article (only one, and i linked it above) mentioned he passed his drug tests required by probation. he didn't miss work. he wasn't even late. and when i'd drive by on my bike or in my car, he'd notice and always give a wave. bad man? not the one i know. i feel indebted to him for his protection. bad thing? absolutely. crack produces a culture of violence and death. it is crazy to feel the dissonance of this experience. i don't know his story at all except at nearly my age (37) he is in jail for his third drug conviction. isaiah and grace, our kids, don't really understand but wonder what jail is like. i'm going to visit troy and i promised i'd tell them what jail is like. i have a strange fear of going--fear of facing him and wanting to say, why, troy, when i see such good in you? why throw your life away like this? i don't know what i'll say. perhaps just that i and many parents are sad, and want him to know we are grateful for his protection and attentive care at the corner of west rock and edgewood ave.

anon, and + peace

volf-ing emergent, emerging volf (part three)

a recap: thus far i've tried to show some of the beating heart of our recently concluded conference with emergent and my colleague mirosalv volf. it was awesome, deep, and worth pondering, and i'm trying to point to a few of the key ideas that i'll continue to work with as a result of the conversation. post one: 1. so many wonderful, diverse, people willing to embrace and discuss across all kinds of differences. 2. faith seen not primarily as a a set of doctrines but rather as a compelling way of life. post two: 3. being held by the truth, rather than trying to grasp, hold, and possess the truth. now on to the last post.

4. learning passionate relationship with god from the atheists. surely one of the most controversial and dramatic moments was on the second day when mirosalv went off a bit, sounding like john in revelation, critiquing christians for being lukewarm and indifferent to the treasure of faith and relationship with god. he thinks too many christians are lousy embracers, and he finds the indifference of believers towards god more troubling than atheists who are angry with god and thus deny god but in the process are passionately engaged with god. he said one can learn this from neitzche here, but also average people who have dismissed the church and reject god via complaint and lament. our culture in the u.s.a, especially, so drugs us with petty consumer pleasures that we do not take the big claims of life--god, faith, healing of the world--seriously enough. daniel, one of the respondents, said half-jokingly, there goes my evangelism sunday. and miroslav's riposte was 'to the contrary! engage the passion of the rejectors of god! and offend the settled sensibilities of those who have grown lukewarm in their faith!'

5. classic popular versions of substitutionary atonement are heresy. brian mclaren stood up at the end of day two, after we had heard miroslav out to some extent regarding his arguments about the atonement. and brian said that at least among evangelicals there is almost a litmus test regarding one's adherence to the "penal substitution" theory of the atonement which portrays god as a wrathful god because of human sin, and requiring sacrifice or punishment for that sin, and that rather than punish humans, jesus was the 'sacrificial lamb' sent in humanity's place, and by his suffering and death he frees all of us from our guilt. the issue, brian said, is 'who was punishing jesus on the cross?' if you look at it as a case of the romans or the religious leaders, then it fits with a sort of interpretation of the powers killing jesus to maintain their own power. god rejects such violence and injustice and the resurrection is a final 'no' to such evil and the first fruits of god's 'yes' to reconciliation and justice. but if you look at it as god punishing jesus because he was angry about our sinfulness, doesn't that make the christian community like a disfunctional family who pretend that the dad is nice all the while that same dad beats his kids in private? it makes for confusing god-relationships, it makes for fearful christians, and it makes of god one whose right it is to make people suffer when they've done wrong. in a powerful response, miroslav said simply that is heresy. there is no 'third party' who is punished on our behalf. the guilt is not 'transferable'. it is god in jesus who takes the evil and sin of the world and by taking it in, then can transform it once for all, and marking the deepest reality of the future glimpsed now--no place for retribution, for suffering, for tears and pain and death. and by our participation in the sufferings of god in christ we also die to such sin and are reborn a new creation, ready to move towards gods future of reconciliation. and he finished his response by saying that the church has never settled on a view of how christ saves (the meaning of the term atonement). while there is not debate about the trinity or the two natures of christ, we have provisional and multiple views of christ's saving work. that does not mean any view is possible--he quite clearly ruled one version out--but it does mean there is not ONLY one view possible of christ's saving work. very helpful discussion.

6. i am made god's by grace and the gospel first, not by the church. towards the end in a passionate plea miroslav distinguished between the church and the gospel in what amounts to a riff on paul in 2 corinthians 4:7. he said more or less that he is saved by grace, by the power of the gospel, and not by the church, even if it was through the broken vessel of the church that the gospel came to him. the church, therefore, is never ultimate. it deserves our energy and commitment not for its own sake, for the priority is on god; rather, there is a priority of the gospel over the church. this is not meant as an encouragement of individualistic spirituality shorn from the discipline of community nor is it meant to offer license to trash-talk the church. it is simply and clearly a marker of priority, of which comes first. here again he drew on martin luther and it offered a means to critique the prosperity churches that say, 'plant a seed if you have a need.' the problem with this is its image of god and the church in relation to god. that model sees the church as broker of blessings between you and god, and if you bless the church, then god will bless you (usually with implications of $$$). rather, miroslav said, god blesses the church, indeed makes the church, with a gift of grace in jesus christ and our task as ones made by that grace is to open our hands, be receptive to that grace, and become channels of that grace to the world god loves. we are, then, made god's by grace for grace, for the sake of a world in need. presumably a different sort of prosperity is thereby gained, of the sort that does not rust or rot but endures in that heavenly place we only know in glimpses.

thanks everyone for coming, if you are reading this as a participant, and i hope this summary of sorts helps those of you who didn't come get some sense of the richness and depth of the conversation. emergent will be podcasting the conversations from their website on a monthly basis. check here for more on that. in the meantime, peace to you.

volfing emergent, emerging volf (part two)

3. being held by the truth. miroslav's chapter on truth in exclusion and embrace, while not convincing everyone that i talked to, was a touchstone for the conversation in part because that issue has been such an important part of emergent's conversation over time especially in its relationship to traditional evangelical and fundamentalist churches. for miroslav, the issue of epistemic humility is intimately tied to the question of embrace and it amounts to the challenge of acting while nonetheless holding an openness to the possiblity that we are wrong. to have such a view, for mv, simply means having an appropriate view of humanity. we are not absolue, and our horizon is limited. thus we cannot fully know and defend without a doubt my view of what right belief and action should be. how then can i act with confidence? in a marvelous moment (one among a handful of times this happened), mv's love of martin luther showed itself. he said quite simply that our confidence comes not from our conviction but from our faith, not from our holding truth but because of our being held by truth. at this point he quoted luther's heidelberg disputation #28: "the love of god does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it. the love of [hu]man[ity] comes into being through that which is please to it."

deeply related to this, as i say above, is the question of embrace. one can hold open space in oneself for the other, even and perhaps especially for the enemy, because of this radical stance of humility before god, and being held by god who at the same time loves the enemy. looking with this sort of vision, mv says, is a sort of double vision. it is looking as we see and at the same time striving to see as god sees so that we might imagine the space and circumstance of the other, and relate to them not on the basis of our own love for them (for as luther says we only love that which pleases us) but instead on the basis of god's love for them.

while mv was pressed about the issue of homosexuality because so many churches are struggling with where to come down on the issue, he instead turned to this process and said he though his work had more to say about process than content, that is, how we regard the other and remain open to an embrace regardless of the content of who they are, knowing that any judgment of them related to any fact about them is only partial and has to be held lightly, humbly, and with the intention of seeking out reconciled relationship with them. he returned at a number of points to say that christians have perhaps been too focused on the content of their belief, and therefore to defensive about hard boundaries between who is in, right, saved, and who is out, wrong, damned. he spoke of how modernity has had a drive towards the liberated self, but that can't be taken too far, as it is sometimes today, for with no boundaries we only have chaos. but as well, modernity has constituted itself at times by a terrible civilizing drive that has made others into beasts or savages to be hunted and eliminated. he said, in a remarkable moment, that the healing of the nations may depend on our learning to tend good boundaries, porous boundaries that shape individual and group identity while remaining open to the other. this view was the heart of his friendly dispute with the work of his friend stanley hauerwas, and you can find his most articulate exposition of it in his article titled "soft difference."

miroslav meets the postmodern negro (aka anthony smith) while tony jones looks on

[to be continued in the in the next post--anon and +peace]

volf-ing emergent, emerging volf (part one)

we just finished an amazing event and I want to share a bit about it for those who were not here, but as well for those who were. Emergent national coordinator tony jones and I planned the 2006 emergent theological conversation here at Yale with our mutual friend miroslav volf who is director of the YCFC and a professor of theology at Yale Divinity School.

What was amazing? As Larry Mullin, the drummer for U2 would put it, God walked through the room. The event definitely had an anointing and while we prepared as best we could, the anointing was a gift beyond what anyone expected and stood out head and shoulders above the mundane list of “things we could do differently to improve the event.” More on that in the zoomerang survey to follow up--let me here mention some of the aspects of what felt to me like the beating heart of the event.

1. so many wonderful people. but it wasn't JUST numbers. When tony and I were planning the event we set the limit at 100 hoping to get that but not sure given the 60-70 at past theological conversation events. We had 300+ and the chapel at Yale Divinity School (the biggest space we have) was packed—no seats left on the floor, and people standing, sitting up in what used to be the “altar area,” people up in the balcony, wow.

but it wasn't just that people came. it was that they came having read two long and hard books of theology and offered the hospitality of their focused attention to one of the world's leading theologians. not for an hour, but for six. six hours let us get deeper than sound bites, deeper even than polished lectures or finished books. we got into the places where we're all struggling, where we're seeking--all of us--for a way forward that is true to the God we know in Jesus Christ.

but it wasn't just that people came to talk about theology. it was that women and men, evangelical and mainline and catholic, black and hispanic and asian and white, younger and older, and we found a means to talk together. it was, as one person put it near the end, the practice of ecumenism that we in the church rarely experience. it was not the 'lowest common denominator' or 'we're all really the same deep down' but rather: can we build a space where our process of talking with one another is as important as the deeply held convictions we've staked our lives upon? this, as rudy carrasco said in the hallway, was an amazing part of this meeting and exceed the diversity and the hospitality of past gatherings. he thought it was the work of the spirit through the topics of miroslav's work--embrace, giving, forgiving. it set a context for the conversation and shaped our dispositions coming into the time together.

2. faith as a way of life. monday night miroslav talked about what for him is most engaging, difficult, and needed--theology that serves a way of life. this, to my mind, is a major overlap between mv's theology and emergent. it was that vision that caused me to leave the ministry in a church setting to come and work with him at the center. and it is this vision that animates my daily work and, increasingly this year, my writing (along with the pastors who are part of the faith as a way of life project, i'm writing a book called faith matters: pastoral leadership for faith as a way of life due out in a year or so from eerdmans)

primary research and theological systems are of some use, and one needs to think about how various commitments regarding one doctrine (say, one's view of christology) impacts the others (say, one's view of ecclesiology) and so on. but if theology is not also and primarily an integrated whole and grounded in practices that make up a way of life, then it misses its most important purpose. to make his point, he quoted his mentor, jurgen moltmann, who says "theology has become marginalized because theologians are afraid to deal with the difficulties of real life."

this will, i think, be viewed as a key component of emerging church theology. here is brian mclaren writing a couple of years ago in the journal leadership: "if christianity isn't the quest for (or defense of) the perfect belief system ('the church of the last detail'), then what's left? In the emerging culture, I believe it will be 'christianity as a way of life,' or 'christianity as a path of spiritual formation.' miroslav's work with us on monday night, including his comments about our faith as a way of life project's struggle to think theologically in just this way, will add fuel to the fire of this emerging direction in theology. to make progress in this area, miroslav challenged the church, and especially its pastoral leadership, to preach the gospel and not a second-hand warmed over psychology or sociology. when preaching does this it betrays a lack of trust in the power of the gospel story. if theologians and pastoral leaders are about faith, and really faith, as a way of life, then the gospel has to be the center of our task.

(more in the next post--anon and +peace!)

addicted to oil

president bush claimed in his state of the union speech monday night that the united states is 'addicted to oil.' wow! i never thought i would hear him say that because i see him as a pro-oil president who for family and business reasons is a friend to the oil industry. i don't, as some people do, read the whole invasion of iraq as a consequence of our desire to secure its oil reserves for our use. but i didn't see him as so strongly stating this obvious blind spot we have in the united states regarding the fantasy that we can have cheap oil at no consequence either in geopolitical or environmental terms. in the speech president bush announced the 'advanced energy initiative' that will increase research spending focused on two major areas: how we power our homes and offices, and how we power our automobiles. on the former, he highlighted zero-emission coal plants and alternative energy sources like solar, wind, and (in my opinion an oxymoronic phrase) 'clean safe nuclear energy.' on the latter, he pushed both for better hybrid and full electric, as well as hydrogen powered cars as well as better means of producing ethanol.

this at the same time that various climate change stories are circulating in part because of british prime minister tony blair's introduction to a newly published book titled *avoiding dangerous climate change*. in the forward , he writes: "Climate change is the world’s greatest environmental challenge. It is now plain that the emission of greenhouse gases, associated with industrialisation and economic growth from a world population that has increased six-fold in 200 years, is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable. That is why I set climate change as one of the top priorities for the UK’s Presidency of the G8 and the European Union in 2005. Early in the year, to enhance understanding and appreciation of the science of climate change, we hosted an international meeting at the Hadley Centre in Exeter to address the big questions on which we need to pool the best available answers: 'What level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is self-evidently too much?' And 'What options do we have to avoid such levels?' It is clear from the work presented that the risks of climate change may well be greater than we thought. At the same time it showed there is much that can be done to avoid the worse effects of climate change."

frankly, while blair seems to be facing reality on climate change and is willing to commit the uk to internationally agreed means to achieve change, bush (and americans) seem generally slower to accept reality and even slower to commit to international goals, usually claiming that it will be bad for economic growth. let me tell you, if the greenland ice sheet melts or if the global ocean circulation system collapses it will be bad for economic growth as well.

i have in the past blogged about biking as a question of how i think about discipleship in relation to the stewardship of creation. i would push the question ron sider and others have raised, that is, what would jesus drive, and say the question is, would jesus drive? well, of course it is not that easy, but the point is, as president bush puts it, our culture (and increasingly others, too) are simply impossible to imagine without oil-driven (literally) means of production, transportation, and livelihood. but i feel called and i think christians ought to feel called--out of gratitude and joy, and not moral duty--to find ways to honor god's creation by limiting our impact. i do this in part by trying to have a life in which i can often walk or ride bikes with our kids to their neighborhood school and commute 15 minutes to work. we chose where to live partly on this basis. i don't think many others do this, however, even in new haven where one might expect more bike commuters. this was confirmed for me a couple weeks ago when our bikes were stolen out of our garage and i was faced with shopping for a new bike for the first time in a decade. when i bought my trusted gt i didn't know about commuter bikes (bikes that, like those in europe, are made to ride daily).

but with a bit of internet searching i quickly learned about breezer bikes which are exactly that. they are made with 'transportation features' like a fully integrated light system, kick stand, fixed fenders with mud guards, an oversized carrier on the rear, and the like. I thought 'great'. but no one carries them because they don't sell! who commutes to work?" one dealer asked me. i finally found one that was a year-old model that was on sale for 30% off, a good thing for me but the reason did not make me happy. here it is, in its full glory, and despite what vice president cheney said in an energy policy speech, may personal virtue become an inspiration for social policy. how about a commuter bike tax break? how about real street reform to add bike lanes? lots more could be said here but I'll step off my soap box.

anon, and peace