Six Degrees of Separation

The weekend of the 13th-15th, I was at a graduate philosophy conference in Carbondale, IL (Southern Illinois University) presenting a paper at a conference devoted to "building bridges" between Islam and America. My paper was on Al-Farabi's Religious Pluralism as Prolegomena (isn't that a great word?!) for dialogue between Islam and the West. It wasn't my best paper (actually, it was a paper I wrote for a previous class and just happened to be a great fit for the conference), but every chance to present (and have the promise of the proceedings get published) is good for the resume. The skinny of the paper: Al-Farabi, Medieval Islamic philosopher, had a notion of Religious pluralism/inclusivism that viewed religion as a subcategory of philosophical truth (basically "philosophy for the common people") that viewed any religion as true that could trace its concepts back to the Greek philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. We could debate the problems of such a view (both from a Christian or pluralistic perspective), but my whole point in using his work was to point out the limited number of ways it is relevant to current religio-political discussions between Islam and the West--especially for those Westerners who think Islam is one-dimensional, inherently violent, and exclusionary (ahem, Pat Robertson, among millions of others).

Anyways, like I said, it wasn't my best paper, but the chance to get away and hang out with other graduate students was a blast. Actually, in all honesty, in the past I've felt quite like an outsider at these kinds of things. Perhaps, its because I don't have the cool philosophical look and can't speak all the nice philosophical jargon that everyone else speaks. Who knows, but this one is different. You might toss it up to the fact that SIU is in the middle of nowhere (no exaggeration), but their philosophy department had the best cameraderie of any department I've ever been around. They do everything together, even with some of their professors. On Sundays, for instance, they play flag football together, and two of their 50+ year old professors play with them (and I'm told they hit the hardest!). They even arranged for all the presenters to be picked up at the St. Louis airport (two hours away) and stay with fellow grad students.

What made this trip even more exciting were the people I met that, turns out, I had some commonality with. The second person I met upon arriving on campus, for instance, happened to be a graduate from Cedarville (my undergrad). Now, Cedarville is a small school (3000 students) with tiny philosophy program (there are like 4-5 students a year getting their degree in philosophy). So, for us to meet up well, I guess I'd have to call it providential. We never met at Cedarville (we only overlapped for a semester), but we had so many similar stories and experiences, and a similar theological-philosophical viewpoint to reflect back on them, that we wound up chatting for quite a long time.

Then, as it turned out, one of the other presenters was from Purdue University and knew quite well Justin, an old friend of mine who was in my wedding and now doing philosophy at Loyola-Chicago. He told me some stories about the early years at Purdue and the crazy things he and Justin did, and we got to talking about our faith, the difficulties of being a God-follower while being a philosopher, and various theological topics.

Finally, to top it all off, as I was chatting with my host the last evening I was there, I mentioned a previous paper I had presented at West Chester University. His girlfriend looked at me and said, "Wait, you mean just last January? (yeah) We were there too!" Wow. I live in such a very small world. In my previous life, I lived in a very small conservative baptist world largely in the Midwest. The world I now live in is spread across a much larger part of the country, and there are thousands of people doing philosophy in the U.S., but the contingent of the philosophers I am connected to as a Continental philosopher in the Eastern part of the states may only be slightly larger than the world I've come from. So maybe I'm not a tiny fish in a great big sea. I'm just a tiny fish in a very crowded lake full of much larger fish all vying for the same living space (and jobs!).

Weekends of getting away and having new experiences and meeting new people are so enriching and encouraging. And then I got to come back to see my son so ecstatic to see me after being gone for three days, that he refused to take a nap the rest of the day! There is no hierarchy of "good, better, best" to compare these experiences and opportunities. We cannot place a value on these nuggets of eternity we are given--the laughter of a child, a conversation on faith with a new friend, the experience of camaraderie and hospitality from total strangers. These are the experiences that help mold us and shape us, realize what really matters, and remind us that life is a gift to be taken up and embraced every day. These are the opportunities that show us that each day, each encounter with a new person, can literally change the way we see the world. "This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." What brings you joy? What fills you with life, hope, and appreciation for what you've been given? What helps you remember to make the most of each day?

Live. Love. Laugh.

“Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.” – John Lennon, “Beautiful Boy”

We often live our lives waiting for the future. We make big dreams. We have desires, the plans for our lives, or at least, the way we want our lives to pan out. “Shoot for the moon,” every high school valedictorian honestly (but unfortunately, so tritely) proses, “for even if you miss, you’ll be among the stars.”

We want to be extraordinary (who wants to be ordinary?). We want to reach our fullest potential, to do things with excellence (which, in Christian circles is usually guilt-tripped into you by some goofy proof-texting like “let all things be done decently and in order” [1 Cor. 14:40] or “make the most of every opportunity because the days are evil” [Eph. 5:16]). We are convinced, like everyone else, God wants to use us for something great; or if this is unachieveable, as one cliché proposes, “If you can’t do great things, do small things in a great way.”

Philosopher Martin Heidegger, was well aware of this phenomenon—not of bad commencement speeches, but of the way the future shapes our lives. To him, the authentic self does not live in the present but in the future. He looks straight into the eyes of death and takes life by the horns and makes something out of it. Each one of us is thrown into a set of possibilities beyond our personal choice or abilities—the “(un)natural lottery” as some thinkers prefer to call it—and it is from this array of future possibilities that we take ownership of who we are.

But human freedom, nonetheless, and as evident as it is, life often tends to take us by the horns. Our dreams are fettered by impossible obstacles—we do not live in an “equal opportunity” world. Our plans are redirected upon some new, unknown trajectory by a decision here, indecision there, indifference in this aspect of our lives, time that passes by too quickly. Singleness. Divorce. A life-changing accident. Cancer. An unplanned pregnancy. “Life comes at you fast,” one commercial reminds us, but no insurance policy can help us regain an understanding of our own (mis)identity amidst the flurry of activity, events, and even mundane routines that make up our fleeting existence.

A different hand is dealt us than we expected. At first, we become disoriented or angry; we blame God and others for this life that becomes our real life. We get frustrated that our short lives are largely composed of the same boring activities: sleeping, eating, practicing personal hygiene, clothing ourselves, sitting in traffic, buying groceries, doing laundry. And when we realize “each man’s life is but a breath. Man is a mere phantom…” (Ps. 39:5-6), we wish to be a cat with nine lives, or we secretly hope reincarnation is actually true so we can come back and do all the things we missed out on in the next time around.

Then, after this bitter pill goes down, we realize a sweetness in its aftertaste. No matter how lame or boring our lifestyle sounds when we tell it to someone else, we find that it is far better than we had ever anticipated.

We find meaning in the squeal of an infant who is squirming while we change his diaper. The local (and by many comparisons, pretty pathetic) restaurant becomes a storehouse of cherished memories. We feel the beauty in the simplicity of our lives, in a brief lunch break with a friend or a drive through the country at dusk on a cool summer day. We enjoy waking up to a kiss even if it includes bad breath.

We relish in the distinct smell of tomato plant on our hands after working in the garden, or a new book freshly unwrapped, or the genuine leather of a baseball glove, or “the smell of a newborn baby’s head” (thanks U2). We enliven our soul with the taste of watermelon on the 4th of July, a cold beer after a hot summer’s day of work, wassail or hot chocolate when frost outlines our windows, and fresh chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven (good anytime).

We find our history by participating in that same cycle of life—birth, school, puberty, more school, marriage, child-rearing, death, and estate taxes—that has been experienced for thousands of generations. Our routine becomes a rhythm, the heartbeat for our life; the hum of the refridgerator, the buzz of the computer with its dying out fan, the ear-piercing alarm clock, the laughter of summer, the fury in insects’ wings who have made their way into the house, the creek of the long-since oiled screen door, and the bodily noises of an infant become the orchestra for the soundtrack of our lives.

We look at all of this and see that it is incredibly more than we could ever ask for or imagine. We taste and see life and declare it is good, no, very good. Life is Beautiful.

“But everything I had to lose
Came back a thousand times in you
And you fill me up with love
Fill me up with love
And you help me stand
'cause I am a family man…
This is not what I was headed for when I began
This was not my plan
It's so much better than” – Andrew Peterson, “Family Man”

Becoming an Emotionally Mature Adult, Part 2

Part 2 of the Sermon...

Practice the Presence of People
Why is all of this important? Because its absolutely central to framing our relationship with God. Allow me to explain. In the account of the story of Moses who asked to see God's glory, God promises to “cause all my goodness to pass by” (Ex 33:19). But what is God's goodness? Well, in the same verse, God tells us: “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” Moses is engrossed in the goodness of God and it turns out to be mercy and compassion. God's goodness is not an abstract ideal. It is not a feeling that warms us up inside. And it is certainly not something we can control or possess absolutely. God's goodness is active compassion and mercy, a certain kind of disposition towards the Other. While in our desire for the Infinitely Desireable, we are apt to conceive of it as something to be enraptured by, something that causes us to forget everything else in the world. But the humble God of Philippians 2 who “empties himself,” deflects our desire to simply gaze upon the face of God, because what is really near to God's heart is showing compassion and mercy. In our desire for God, God turns our gaze to our neighbor, to consider how we might show compassion and mercy. Indeed, God could not be called good unless he diverted our desire for him into attention to the needs of the Other. True Religion, is to tend to the needs of the fatherless and the widow. Like the God who empties himself, my being/existence is grounded in my dis-interestedness in my own existence, in my “non-being,” in the emptying of myself for the needs and interests of others.

In this chapter, Pete Scazzero suggests that we not only practice the presence of God, as Brother Lawrence long ago coined; rather, we must “practice the presence of people.” He writes:

Loving well is the essence of true spirituality... God invites us to practice his presence in our daily lives. At the same time, he invites us 'to practice the presence of people,' within an awareness of his presence, in our daily relationships. The two are rarely brought together. [179]

Here, Scazzero makes use of the thought of Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber. In his book, I and Thou, Buber points out that most of our lives are spent treating people like objects, like an it. Like freshmen biology students dissecting frogs, we objectify and dehumanize people, we reduce them to what they can do for us. My neighbors exist to mow their yards to increase my house's property value. The cashier exists to hand me my purchase and run my credit card. My professor exists only to give me the information I need to get the grade I want. But in fleeting moments, we encounter a person not as an It but as a Thou. We relate to them, acknowledge them rather than treat them as an object of knowledge. And in that moment, a sacred space is created between us. In that relation, while allowing the Other to be themselves – to be beyond our comprehension – we encounter the Eternal Thou. Buber writes,

“I know nothing of a ‘world’ and a ‘life in the world’ that might separate a man from God. What is thus described is actually life with an alienated world of It, which experiences and uses. He who truly goes out to meet the world goes out also to God.” (95)

The primary way we interact with God is through other people. We might put it thusly: To love your neighbor as yourself is how to love the Lord your God with all your heart. We don't practice God's presence and practice the presence of others as if they are two different disciplines. They are irrevocably connected. To practice the presence of people is to practice the presence of God. If you really believed this fact, how would it revolutionize the way you view the world, view people?

Scripture points us to this reality, but it seems that our sermons have missed it. Jacob, after stealing his older brother's birthright, flees for his life. Only many years later does he come into contact with his brother, Esau. Jacob, feared the worst – that perhaps, Esau would kill him or his family. But when it became evident that Esau was not going to repay evil for evil, that they could live in harmony with one another, Jacob exclaimed: “To see your face is like seeing the face of God” (Gen 33:10).

By our ethical actions toward the Other, we enact God's presence. When we bless those who persecute us, we incarnate the God who has mercy on whom he will have mercy. When we love others and practice hospitality we realize the God who has compassion on whom he will have compassion. When we do everything we can to live at peace with one another, we exhibit the God who is slow to anger and abounding in love. And when we feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and care for the stranger, we care for Christ, who told us that “as much as you've done for the least of these, you've done it for me.”

Respect for Self, Respect for Others
Now, there may not be orphans and widows at your every turn. Too often, when we speak of love, we only think of the Mother Theresas of the world, as if the kind of love God wants us to practice is so grandiose that only a small few can achieve that state. But all of us are called to be an emotionally mature adult, for in each day of our lives there are people we are called to love, to treat as a Thou. For we enact our infinite responsibility even by the most mundane of acts, like holding the door open for someone else. As Victor Hugo said in Les Miserables, “There are many great deeds done in the small struggles of life.”

Throughout the chapter, Scazzero paints a helpful picture of what it looks like to be an emotional infant, child, adolescent, and adult. These characteristics can essentially be divided into two groups: how we view ourselves and how we view others.

Being an emotionally mature adult involves a healthy respect for yourself, appreciating the gifts and abilities God gave you. The one who is emotionally immature is not comfortable in his own skin. As a result, he looks for others to care for things he ought to be able to handle himself—he often lacks the confidence to do so. He has an addictive personality—he's looking for something else to make him complete. He unravels quickly from stress and disappointments. He has difficulty communicating his needs and wants because he doesn't know what they are. He is threatened and alarmed by criticism.

The emotionally mature adult, however, recognizes the significance of being a part of the Body of Christ. This is not just a metaphor. This is reality. Metaphors don't have skin and flesh, but we incarnate God's love to the world by our blood, sweat, and tears. I am my own body. Your body is an extension of who you are. Your body shapes your personhood. This is your body and no one else's. These are your hands and feet for serving others, your gifts for contributing to the church. The body is not an inhibitor but is our vehicle for interacting with God's world. We have to learn to be comfortable in our own skin, comfortable with the shape and size of our body, comfortable with the gifts God has given us if we are to adequately serve others. And together, our bodies make up the body of Christ.

If you want to have a practical list for the emotionally mature adult, just look at the list of behaviors in Romans 12. Loving well is not simply an intellectual pursuit we perform with our minds. Romans 12:1-2 is so often preached upon all by itself as if the “renewing of our minds” is completely detached from the rest of this passage. But Paul tells us that the renewal of our minds is really the renewal of our entire way of being in the world. It has a physical component, an active component. Our flesh and blood are a part of who we are and are a part of our emotionally healthy spirituality.

As a result, the self comfortable in her own skin is in tune with her emotions and can clearly communicate her thoughts and feelings without becoming adversarial. She takes responsibility for her attitudes and actions. She is capable of accurately assessing her strengths and weaknesses – she knows her limits, her personality traits, her emotional makeup.

When we are comfortable in our own skin, we can rightly relate to others. Why is this the case? Because only then are we comfortable enough to disagree with others and to be ourselves. When we are comfortable with our own opinions and views, and with our own spiritual journey, we can be relaxed around those who think differently from us, who are critical of us, whose spiritual journey does not look like our own.

In his encountering with others, the emotionally immature adult uses others as a means to an end and can hardly see the world from the perspective of others. Because he is not confident about his own beliefs and opinions, he is easily hurt, often interprets disagreements as personal offenses, and is apt to go on the defensive. He keeps an account of the things he does for others and expects them to pay him back. He is critical and judgmental of the spiritual journey of others, comparing his journey theirs.

The emotionally mature adult not only healthily disagrees and communicates well with others, she respects others without feeling the need to change them. She appreciates others for who they are, accepting the good and the bad about them. She can resolve conflict maturely and gives people the space to make mistakes. Rather than ignoring conflict, she pursues true peace as much as is possible and sees the potential good in conflict. She is a good listener. She gives people the benefit of the doubt and is careful not to hold tightly onto assumptions about others. She clearly communicates the expectations she has for others.

There is a lot to think about here. What would it look like to be a church full of emotionally mature adults? Each of us probably need to reflect specifically on some of these characteristics and ask ourselves how we are still emotionally immature.

Allow me to end with this: In 1914, the newly appointed Pope Benedict XV called Catholics “to appease dissension and strive” in order that “no one should consider himself entitled to affix on those who merely do not agree with his ideas the stigma of disloyalty to faith.” Do we treat others with honor and respect, giving them the benefit of the doubt, or do we use our faith journeys as the litmus tests for everyone else?

Why Write in Third Person?

For those who read my previous blog post regarding the "25 things about me" and noticed that I wrote the whole thing in third person, well here's my philosophical explanation for the supposed "creepiness" (here's hoping this makes sense to those who aren't in to philosophy!):

It begins with an analysis of time. We often perceive time as a series of sequential moments happening one right after another. Time is dissectible, one millisecond is completely distinguishable from the next millisecond. This commonsensical notion of time is a bit problematic, and does not accurately depict how we engage time in lived experience, for if each moment in time were completely separate from one another, if each present was an entity unto itself, we'd have no idea how to string a series of events together into a complete whole.

Take this sentence you're reading right now: if each moment in time were completely distinguishable, if each word you read were a completely new experience, you'd have a lot of difficulty making any sense out of what you read. In comes Edmund Husserl. Husserl formulated a way to speak about time to solve this "problem," basically stating that every present, every now, is "thick," containing what Husserl called "retention" and "protention." "Retention" is our ability to retain what has just preceded the now, while "protention" is our ability to anticipate what is going to happen in the immediate future. In other words, in every present moment, the immediate past and future are indistinguishable from the present. This is absolutely necessary or we'd have an incredible difficulty knowing how to comprehend the combination of syllables (which occur in different moments in time) into words, words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, and so forth.

Enter Jacques Derrida. Derrida studied this notion of retention and the now, how the living present is "always folding the recent past back into itself" [Lawlor]. In a sense, this now and this retention are indistinguishable, but they must also be differentiated - memory is different than perception. Thus, in every moment, there is difference, there is a momentary gap that occurs in the blink of an eye.

What does this have to do with my previous blog? Well think about when you talk to yourself, think to yourself, or even, the fact that when you read something (like this sentence) you are also saying the words "in your head." In these moments, you become both the subject and object of the action simultaneously. When you speak to yourself, you speak as if you are another person, you objectify yourself. "In other words," Leonard Lawlor states, "in the very moment, when silently I speak to myself, it must be the case that there is a miniscule hiatus differentiating me into the speaker and the hearer." When you talk to yourself, there is a kind of differentiation what goes on, a brief instant in which your brain distinguishes between you (the current thinking agent) and you (the thought being thought). You are yourself and someone else at the same time!

If this hasn't made any sense to you thus far, think about what often happens when you reflect on your past experiences or a past time period in your life. This happened to me recently as I was cleaning off my bookshelves and I was trying to find anything that could be cleaned out and recycled. I started going through the shelves and shelves of notes from classes in college, notebooks full of sermon notes, the original notes of songs I wrote (and other songs I started writing that the world is better off for never having heard!), prayer journals, and so forth. As I read who I was then, I was taking a step back, imagining someone else (my previous/past self) writing down those things, thinking those thoughts that were written on the page. And while taking this step back, while objectifying myself, I could say, "That's not me, that's somebody else!" (i.e., that's not who I am today). This is precisely how autobiographies are written (and how they are so easily embellished!) - the individual reflects back on who they were as if they were somebody else.

Translation - we do the exact same thing nearly every second of our lives as we talk to ourselves, think to ourselves, or even read something on a page and at the same time are telling ourselves what we're reading.

So, my "third person" blog was basically an experiment of this truth, to point out that when I wrote down 25 things about me, I was, in effect saying, "Hey Brock! Yeah you, you like this. You like this thing about you. You had this thing happen to you - what did/do you think about it? You prefer this. You are like..."

So now, the question is: How can we ever achieve an objective standpoint from which we view our subjective selves?

Gifts and Awards

Well, this weekend was quite eventful for Amber and I. Actually, we're still pretty tired from all the eventfulness even after sleeping in today and taking a nap this afternoon! On Friday after class, I drove to West Chester, PA (about 4.5 hrs from Pittsburgh. ) for a philosophy conference I was scheduled to present at on Saturday at the University. I was set to stay with a friend of mine's in-laws, as he was also scheduled to present. So, after a long trek on the Turnpike, a brief drive through Lancaster (which, consequently is a much bigger city than I had ever imagined), seeing three Amish buggies (with flashing lights on the back!), and getting lost once, I was there. Unfortunately, I got there a couple hours before my friend, Greg and his wife. Not that his in-laws were scary or unfriendly or anything like that. Its just that there's only so much Bill O'Reilly I can take.

Anyways, on Saturday, I presented at the conference a paper which happened to be a further development of two blog posts I had written (see the posts "What is Hospitality?). In other words, this was not a paper I had written for a class but one on a topic that I was simply passionate about and decided I might as well try and turn it in as a submission for a conference. Well, needless to say, it went over extremely well. During the session in which I presented (if you don't know, philosophy papers are usually presented in groups of three, 20 minutes to present and 10 min of Q&A for each presenter), of which I was the first to go, the room was absolutely packed - which is saying something for a philosophy conference to begin with! There were even a handful of professors from the university sitting in. Now, let me point out that in all my other experiences of presenting at a conference this is, indeed, not what happens. In fact, the last time I presented, I think there were maybe eight other people in the room, three of which I personally knew.

So, I presented the paper. Yup, at philosophy conferences you just sit and listen to people read papers. However, I've realized that my previous experiences of preaching and speaking to people gives me the added benefit of knowing that projecting my voice, using hand gestures, and making eye contact are enough to turn a simple reading into a good presentation (afterwards, my friend Greg said, "wow, that was actually moving." Who knew a philosophy paper could be that!?). Even the Q&A time was quite different than my previous experiences. At the end of my paper, numerous hands shot up, all the questions were extremely relevant, and there was a lively discussion afterwards. But what was really odd was that after my Q&A was done, more than half the audience left before the next speaker got up. They all came to listen to me? I totally wasn't expecting that.

After the other presentations during my session, we went to a different building for lunch and the plenary session. Before the main speaker was introduced, they were set to announce an award for the best philosophy paper at the conference. While we were in line, I jokingly said to Greg, "Well, it would be nice if I win the award and the $100 that comes with it because I need the cash to pay the Turnpike so I can get home!" And well, twenty minutes later, they announced my name for the "Distinguished Philosophy Paper" at the conference. To be honest - I know this sounds ridiculous, perhaps even bizarre, but I actually had a feeling that my paper would be the one awarded. Perhaps it was the fact that several people came up to me and said that I really liked the paper or that several professors showed up for it...who knows... Nevertheless, it was nice to have enough money to get home (you should have seen the lady at the toll booth when I paid with a Ben Franklin in my beat up 95 Honda at 11:15pm)!

I guess the moral of the story is, write and do what you're passionate about not necessarily just what is asked of you or you're supposed to do in order to get a grade. Not that doing what you desire to do will translate into awards or that that should even be your motivation (although it is nice to get some affirmation every now and then that confirms that you're doing what you ought to be doing in life), but its a whole lot easier to be who you are and not someone else. And you'll probably do it better to boot. I, for instance, know that there are a whole lot of people a whole lot smarter than me, people who can talk about calculus and generative metaphysics and use symbols from logic to explain their work. On the other hand, I know I'm too intellectual for the common person or for what the stereotypical church expects from their pastor. So... I'm not sure where that leaves me or what that will lead me, but at least I'm enjoying it while I get there.

On the other side of things, Amber was thrown a baby shower at our church on Saturday. Yeah, she wasn't too happy my conference was the same day (I swear I told her the date!), but marriage is full of miscommunication (so you learn to be forgiving) and winning the award seemed to make things better. Anyways, she got a carload of baby stuff - clothes, baby toiletries, toys, and so forth. No diapers though, which we could definitely still use (and from what I've heard, LOTS of them). Our baby room is getting more and more ready by the day, but now we've got a bunch of stuff that we're not quite sure what to do with. Looks like we might have to finally purchase a real piece of furniture to store all this crap. So I'll have to post some pics in an upcoming blog of the baby room.

Life Update

So I have resigned myself to the fact that I'm not going to properly blog the events of our Mexico trip, now that it has been over two weeks since our return, and decided to resort to an update as to what's going on in our lives.

This semester, I'm taking three extremely crucial classes in understanding philosophy over the last century: Husserl's Ideas, Heidegger's Being and Time, and the works of Emmanuel Levinas. They are what can be considered representative of the three stages of Phenomenology which makes up a large portion of Continental thought. I admit that I am not well versed in these prominent figures (aside from my reading of Otherwise than Being by Levinas last summer and my introduction to him through various works of Derrida), so it is going to be quite a difficult semester of studying. Perhaps, Husserl can be seen as the last great philosopher of the modern era (still believing in objective, universal truth), while Heidegger is the one who began the critique of Western/Greek philosophy (Heidegger had great influence on many thinkers including Sartre and Derrida). Levinas continues this critique of Western Philosophy, although with a Jewish flair (he was an Orthodox Jew), reveals ways in which Heidegger does not fully get away from Western philosophy's commitment to metaphysics, and ushers in a shift in philosophical thinking of nonfoundationalism (aka... the rumblings of postmodern thought). But enough of that...

In other news, Amber and I bought a new computer last week - should arrive tomorrow. It was what requested from both sets of parents for Christmas so we're pretty excited to get something that's actually current for once (the desktop we presently use is from 2001!!!!).

At the Open Door, the subject of becoming "Covenant Partners" (a better term for "church member") is being talked about during our Sunday evening services. We are definitely interested in coming on board even if we are in Pittsburgh for only another year and a half. We have enjoyed those in the church we have gotten to know, the community and participation in God that it fosters, and its appreciation for a variety of Christian heritages in its worship. We have been able to get more involved recently by co-leading a small group on Tuesday nights on the book of Malachi (a very interesting, though often ignored prophet of the OT) and are helping to serve/make coffee drinks on Sunday evenings before the service.

Over Christmas break, I had the opportunity to read a plethora of books all of which I highly recommend:
- Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling - A great intro to Christian existentialism and a work that continues to influence philosophers and theologians. Kierkegaard raises a swarm of ethical issues surrounding the biblical story of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac and calls into question the immense focus of universality over the individual/singularity in ethics.
- John Caputo's What would Jesus Deconstruct? - If you need a basic introduction to deconstruction, this is it. Perhaps one of the top scholars of Derria, Caputo (who might be labeled a liberal catholic) explains the positive attributes of deconstruction and what benefits it can offer to the church (particularly to the audience he is shooting for, the religious right).
- Jacques Derrida's The Gift of Death - One of Derrida's most explicit works on religion, Derrida takes up many of the themes mentioned in Fear and Trembling (and workds by Levinas) but with his own twist. Anyone who has been told that deconstruction is nihilistic, relativistic, or atheistic needs to read this book and see some of the many contributions Derrida offers to the philosophy of religion and postmodern ethics.
- G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday - One of Chesterton's most famous novels, this "nightmare" (as he calls it) is more topsy-turvy than Alice in Wonderland and the Catholic king of paradox will leave you rethinking your notions of God and reality.

Currently, aside from my school studies, I'm reading Most Moved Mover by Clark Pinnock. Not that I necessarily ascribe to the Open Theist viewpoint (as of yet), I am finding the read quite enjoyable, very scriptural, and having many parallels with the critique of Western Philosophy made by Levinas and Heidegger. Pinnock points out the many ways our view of God are derived not from the Bible but from Greek Philosophy (Plato, Plotinus, Aristotle, etc) - such as immutability, impassibility, unconditionality, and aseity. None of these terms can be found in the Bible and yet they take great prominence in the works of theologians Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and even Luther. Much more could be said here but perhaps you should just go research it yourself.

Aside from these things, work is going well. I spend about 16 hours a week working at Duquesne as an assistant in the graduate office and am working one day every other week at a local coffee shop. Amber continues to interpret Sign Language throughout the Pittsburgh area at local businesses and schools.

Jacques Would Be Proud

As I prepare to go to a conference entitled "What Would Jesus Deconstruct?," I've been reading up on Jacques Derrida and trying to understand the nature of deconstruction. Though much could be said about this philosophical notion, one of Derrida's chief concern was justice - particularly for the outsider, those on the margins, the Other.

Although deconstruction has been labeled many things - many of which it is not - one thing it calls for is hospitality. The call of deconstruction is the call of hospitality, of justice, of making room for the Other, of creating space for those who are not like ourselves without forcing them to conform to us.

Philosopher James K.A. Smith writes, "Justice, for Derrida, is hospitality: welcoming the other. Thus, he is most interested in those institutions which are called to be paradigmatic sites of welcome but which, in their current configurations... have become systems of closure, shutting down hospitality by shutting out the other. Thus [Derrida] has shown a particular interest in questions of immigration and international law, heightened no doubt by disturbing tendencies in France... which have given rise to new justifications of xenophobia and shutting down borders in order to protect against the threat of... 'French identity.' (Jacques Derrida Live Theory, 68).

How timely this is for us in America as Congress currently wrestles with immigration policy, the Bush adminsitration fluctuates its stance, and the destiny of millions of resident aliens is in flux. If Derrida were here today, he would have called for what he did in 1996. Then, he spoke for the International Parliament of Writers - an organization that provides aid to authors being silenced by their home nations - as they focused on developing "Cities of Asylum," places writers could find freedom from the oppression of their home nations. Here, the IPW and Derrida were drawing from the Old Testament notion of "cities of refuge" (Numb 35:9-32) [Cf. Life Theory, 68-69).

Derrida is not here, but thankfully, someone is picking up the baton. Mayor Robert Patten (a Republican, mind you) of Highstown, NJ has made Highstown a "sanctuary city" for illegal immigrants. The Washington Post article states, "Joining a growing list of cities enacting a no-questions-asked policy on immigration status, Hightstown now allows its undocumented residents to officially interact with local police and access city services without fear of being reported to federal authorities." Patten speaks for himself in the article stating:

"Most of us know this town would have a heck of a time trying to run itself these days without the immigrants. They're working at the grocery stores, the fast-food places, they're opening businesses and keeping this town alive and young. We're just being practical by telling them, 'Look, we want you in our community, and we want you to feel like you belong.' "

Patten makes a point that raises a thought-provoking question: if these illegal immigrants practically run the big businesses that lobby so hard in Washington, why hasn't anything been changed? Where are the CEOs that look into the cameras and say they care so much for their employees?

Some may argue, "But these immigrants have broken the law! They ought to be sent back to Mexico where they all belong!" To this, I respond: Could it be that it is not the people that need changing but the law? Could it be that we as a nation, at the risk of preserving our "American identity" [which is, uh... what??] have strayed mightily far from the words coined by Emma Lazarus that preach from the foundation of our Statue of Liberty:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

To those who want to send them home [and thus destroy our economy while they're at it], I suggest they answer to one other figure: the original master of deconstruction himself. The one who often suspended the law in the name of justice himself - picking grain on the Sabbath, preventing an adulterer from being punished, fellowshipping with outcasts, touching the unclean, and readily permiting a human sacrifice - might have a thing or two to say about the immigrants, the Other, the least of these, the last who will be first.

Which begs the question: why has it taken a philospher who would rightly pass for an atheist and a mayor of a little town of about 6,000 people to bring to pass what Christians should have been doing all along?

I fear we have sunk so deeply into the entrapments of our narcissistic culture that we have kept the cold cup of water for ourselves.

Book Review: The Weakness of God by John D. Caputo

The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event (Indiana University Press, 2006) is the most recent work by John Caputo, the well-known postmodern philosopher and scholar of the French Deconstructionist, Jacques Derrida. It is a book not for the faint of heart, and yet it is a well-crafted work that seeks interplay between philosophical and theological concepts that usually aren’t given much attention in a genre more known for asking questions like, “Could God create a rock so big he couldn’t move it?”

Caputo’s main argument is that the Christian religion is one prefaced on weakness and that all our attempts at describing God as a metaphysical light and power show we might find on a Hollywood digital effects screen is more of a Nietzschean “will to power” than accurate theology. More specifically, our descriptions of God as sovereign and omnipotent really stem from our own fanciful desires for dictatorial power, my-god-is-bigger-than-your-god mentality, and continued commitment to the world’s economy based on hierarchy and pay-back. By looking at God as an event, or rather, unleashing the event which is housed in his name (a concept I can’t begin to explain), we find a “second order act” (9), or a theology for the weak, the powerless, the full of doubt, those looking to be wooed and called by God rather than forced as a mere pawn.

There are many things I like about this book, and though at times I sense Caputo goes to extremes (and often falls into a modernistic form of liberalism), he offers a fresh reading on texts we often glaze over. What Caputo understands well is at the heart of the message of Jesus is exactly what his disciples never would have expected. They were looking for a Messiah to overthrow the Roman government and return Israel back to the glory days of Solomon and David. Instead, they got a child born in “straw poverty” (as Bono likes to put it) who told his followers to turn the other cheek, forgive until they were blue in the face, love their enemies, and be sure to invite the most oppressed and disenfranchised to all their parties. Truly, the kingdom of the heavens is a kingdom of reversals where the first are last, the greatest are the servants, the exemplary disciples are little children, and justice is brought to the least of these. As Caputo states about this “sacred anarchy”:

“The kingdom of God obeys the law of reversals in virtue of which whatever is first is last, whatever is out is in, whatever is lost is saved, where even death has a certain power over the living, all of which confounds the dynamics of strong forces…The kingdom of God is the rule of weak forces like patience and forgiveness, which, instead of forcibly exacting payments for an offense, release and let go. The kingdom is found whenever war and aggression are met with an offer of peace… The kingdom reigns wherever the least and most undesirable are favored while the best and most powerful are put on the defensive” (14-15).

This is precisely the message of Jesus that puzzled so many who heard him – and continues to do so today. In a world in which we are constantly compelled to “one-up” the person next to us, climb the ladder so that we can stare down at all those below, and like the disciples, always ask “Who is the greatest?,” Jesus words come as a shock. This is a message Caputo describes well and needs to be proclaimed more often.

Caputo goes to great lengths to defend his theology of weakness by calling into question creatio ex nihilo, that most metaphysical heyday in which God best displayed his sheer power and brute strength by creating the world out of nothing. Leaning largely on Catherine Kellor’s Face of the Deep, Caputo exegetes the Genesis creation account essentially to point out that the wild land (tohu wa-bohu) and the see (tehom) were already in existence before God’s first spoken word (1:2-3). In short, then, God is more of an artist than a all-powerful creator, one who takes clay and molds and fashions and forms and transforms (metanoia). Caputo states:

“In the beginning, they are there, wind and waters and land, barren and lifeless, the wind sweeping over the deep, everywhere darkness…Then Elohim was moved to speak to them, and by addressing them to bring them to life, to awaken life in them…He calls them into life; he does not bring them into being, for the whole point is that they were there all along… Genesis is not about being, but about life.” (58)

I am intrigued by Caputo’s argument and agree that the Genesis account of creation has far more to offer than (what some believe) a proof that Darwin is wrong (considering Genesis was written several thousand years before Darwin came along, I hardly believe evolution was the author’s primary concern). However, Caputo’s argument isn’t enough for me to simply punt on my belief in the sovereignty of God (although it may need to be redefined). It is here Caputo makes a huge leap in thought, concluding, that by pulling the rug out of those who hold to creatio ex nihilo he has single-handedly brought down the entire construct of viewing God as “a strong force, a power of this world” (90). This not only has a kind of foundationalist feel, but Caputo also fails to take into account the vast amount of other passages of scripture that speak of God as powerful, sovereign, and as ruler. Even if we accept his rendering of Genesis 1 and that the Jews didn’t believe in creatio ex nihilo (since this metaphysical idea didn’t come around until the second century CE), any God who can call human beings and all that exists in the world “into life” certainly still has quite an astonishing ability.

Caputo’s theological lens becomes clear when articulates disbelief in Jesus’ miraculous raising of Lazarus from the dead, for it would have been too powerful of an act for his weakness theology (cf. chapter 11). This is not to get into an argument as to whether all the miracles of the Bible actually did occur (and even if they did, the time periods in which they did are in such small proportion to the rest of redemptive history). It just seems easier to believe the narrative as it is written than to conjure up the “real story” and try to reinterpret all the texts of scripture that don’t seem to fit into the theological framework one would like to create. Again, here Caputo smacks of modernism by forcing his theology of weakness upon the text and makes them fit (and at times, he simply throws out passages he doesn’t like).

Though Caputo addresses many other issues and topics (his exegesis of 1 Corinthians 1, which is central to his theology of weakness, is well worth the read), it all comes to a head with the problem of suffering and evil. Although this long-time question of philosophical theology is not the heading of any chapter in the book, it becomes quickly obvious that the main reason Caputo is arguing for a theology of weakness is to attempt an explanation of the problem of evil. Here, I will let Caputo speak for himself:

“Omnipotence leaves God holding the bag and forces us to offer lame excuses for God to the effect that evil is a little nothing that has leaked into being and that God is only responsible for the being, not the leak, while we, wicked things that we are, are almost all leak, so that a flood is a fitting way to end it all.” (76).

“If you think of God in terms of power, you will be regularly, systematically confounded by … the unevenness of God’s record on behalf of the poor and the oppressed… it is in the end an outright blasphemy to say that God has some mysterious divine purpose when an innocent child is abducted, raped, and murdered...” (90-91).

“God does not steer hurricanes away from the mainland and out to sea, anymore than God has a favorite in the Super Bowl, the NCAA Final Four, or the World Soccer Cup tournaments. God is not a powerful but invisible hand who magically bends natural or historical forces to divine purposes so that in the end things turn out just the way God has planned…” (178-179).

“For the believer, Auschwitz – every Auschwitz… – is an inexplicable and unjustifiable violence against life, against Elohim’s creation… And if sometimes some good somewhere comes out of it, it would be an obscenity to suggest that that is either an explanation or a justification.” (181)

Caputo’s point is well-taken. Amidst the “irreparable losses” (243) of Auschwitz, the Cambodian Killing Fields, Rwanda, Darfur, and every other atrocity in history, it seems trivial and downright blasphemous to hear the president of an NFL team say it was God’s will and blessing that they win the Super Bowl. Really, is God so concerned with his name being glorified on a football field that he fails to notice the 6600 dying of AIDS each day in Africa?

To try to rationalize the senseless death of millions is to be greatly insensitive to those who suffer. However, I’m not sure Caputo’s view is any more consoling. And even more, it is this one issue that seems to steer Caputo’s entire theology, as if because he cannot figure God out and because the circumstances are so deplorable, he must arrive at certain conclusions about God (a kind of a tail wagging the dog scenario, it seems).

For sure, the “strong theologies” of Augustine, Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards do not provide adequate or satisfying answers to the problem of evil, but I’m not sure by veering over to the other extreme will leave us in a better position. Here again, I sense a bit of modernistic either/or, black/white in Caputo. God cannot be strong, so he must be weak to him. Why can’t he be both? This, of course, is what we find in scripture. Jesus is both the Lamb and the Lion. He is the most humble being in the world and yet also holds the world up by his hands. He is the eternal who took on temporal flesh (which is what most confounded the Apostle John).

All in all, Caputo’s work is a worthwhile read. Again, though I sense an unswerving allegiance to modern liberalism (as well as to the genius of Jacques Derrida), the issues Caputo raises are worthy of contemplating and his arguments challenging. Caputo calls into question the status quo interpretations of the scriptures, providing a fresh read that lays bare many of our philosophical presuppositions we often unconsciously bring to the table of biblical interpretation.