Comments Issue

Comments have suddenly stopped working, and I haven't been able to track down the problem yet. If you've tried to post a comment in the past couple of days, my apologies - I hope to have it fixed soon.

UPDATE - The cocomments plugin was doing bad things. All better now - no more cocomments, no more problem!

What's On My Mind

I like to be thinking several topics ahead of what I'm writing; or, more accurately I suppose, I like to let what I'm thinking come together in a sort of cohesive way before I throw it out for public consumption. But I'm breaking my rule, because I had a thought today that I think I like but that I think some other folks won't like at all. So I'm curious about your reaction to the following statement:

The purpose of witness is to make the church intelligible to the world. The purpose of worship is to make the church intelligible to itself.

So Westminster Confession aside - hey, I'm not Reformed, so it's all good - how does this work as a definition of worship? I know it has to raise a few eyebrows somewhere out there. But the more I think about it, the more I like it.

The End is the Beginning: Frustration of Vocation

Previous posts in this series can be found here, here, and here.

When I last picked up this topic, I described my understanding of the image of God in humanity as a vocation to which we are called, specifically that of furthering and completing the creation project begun by God in Genesis 1 by ordering and filling the earth. I also described my understanding of the curse as the distortion of that vocation, reflected in the aspects of the curse that were given to the man and the woman - the man was cursed with enmity between him and the earth, frustrating the task of ordering creation, while the woman was cursed with hardship in childbirth, frustrating the task of filling creation. Further, the man and the woman were set at odds with each other, with man dominating the woman instead of reflecting the joint image-bearing task that was given them in Genesis 1.

Image, you see, is a communal task. It isn't something that you bear and that I bear, but rather something that we, together, bear as we participate with God in his creation project. Or, put differently, you and I are each created in the image of God - but we reflect that image as a whole, as a people, as a community. That is, I think, the lesson of Genesis 1. In contrast to the kings of Babylon and Egypt who were said to be the image of the gods, the Hebrew scriptures describe it as something that we all share and that is distorted when we do not recognize it in one another.

This, however, is exactly what happens in Genesis 4-11. We see humanity caught between image and curse, attempting to order and fill the earth yet harming, enslaving, and killing one another. This is a difficult set of chapters for us to read because the events described clash significantly with our modern sensibilities - and for good reason! They describe what happens when the image of God is frustrated and the divine task is abandoned. The flood story is one of the most troubling texts in the whole of the Christian canon, if we will be honest. But I think what the narrative is meant to portray is the intensity with which God will guard his creation project. I think that what we take away from such a story is that the project is in serious jeopardy. Regardless of how one approaches the question of the sovereignty of God, what is in my view undeniable is that in the narrative God is forced to take drastic action - that's what the logic of the story tells us. Things are devolving quickly.

I think it fascinating that this particular section ends where it does, with the narrative of Babel. It's an odd sort of tale that doesn't strike many chords with contemporary readers - but I think it's a powerful climax that drives home the question of how God will respond. Middleton writes in The Liberating Image that what God is opposing in this story is a sort of proto-Babylonian empire that subjugates other peoples and conscripts them into massive imperial building projects. In his view, the single language of the story isn't some idyllic time when everyone spoke the same language - in fact, chapter 10 describes the various people-groups as developing their own languages as a natural progression of their spreading out and filling the earth. However, it was common for a conquering nation to impose its own language on conquered peoples to facilitate their labor. What the narrative of Genesis 11 represents, then, is the actions of an empire whose intention is to "make a name" for itself in opposition to the purposes of God. It will accomplish this task through oppression and conquest, using means such as forced labor and imposition of a common language to unite the conquered peoples for massive building projects. God's intervention in this project results in the cessation of building, the return to many languages, and the dispersion of people across the land - in short, the return to God's purposes for humanity.

God intervenes numerous times in the first eleven chapters of the story to protect his creation project - but he is about to move in a whole new way. Next, we'll look at Abram's call from the perspective of the divine vocation and the imago dei.

Technorati Tags: narrative, new creation

Living Towards Resurrection

When I last poked my head above the waters, I mentioned that I was working my way through a collection of essays by Stanley Hauerwas called A Better Hope. Hauerwas is nothing if not challenging and thought-provoking, and he's sort of rattled around a few ideas that have been sitting in my head for a while and given them some new life. Most folks who have been reading this little site for any length of time will know that one of my main concerns theologically is to begin to think about how we are to be Christian in suburban America (which is my current context) and what challenges and opportunities such a context presents. Part of that process is to describe where we are in the sense of what forces shape the way we think and act. Economics represent a significant influence in that regard, forming what seems to me to be the predominant sphere of meaning for suburbanites in America. More on this in a moment.

Look underneath the surface of suburban America and I believe that you'll find a simmering anxiety, frustration, despair, and even at times rage. We live in a society that is defined by instant gratification and disposability, an extraordinarily bad combination that creates a situation of lingering discontent. No matter how much we spend or how many things we purchase, we are unable to achieve any sense of lasting enjoyment or even stability. More than that, we are a people who cannot help but spend, because we have lost the means to create or produce anything of value for ourselves.

Stop and think about that for a moment, because it's utterly significant, I think. We are completely dependent on the continued health of our economic system for our very survival. Without the market, we have no food or shelter. It's that simple. Most people in first-world cultures in the twenty first century are completely incapable of self sufficiency when it comes to our food, because we lack the ability to grow crops or raise herds or hunt game. Likewise our housing - without a means of purchasing a home, or at the least the land and materials required to construct a home, we have no place to live. Our two basic necessities, food and shelter, must be purchased with money earned at the workplace. At the most basic level, we sell our services to corporations so that we can in return eat and stay out of the weather. And if a corporation will not buy our services, we do not eat and we sleep in the rain.

It's no wonder that we've become a consumerist society - we don't have a choice. The economy that we've constructed around ourselves won't allow anything else. Even the self-sufficiencies of a generation ago are dying - witness the steady decline of small businesses. The economies of scale that a multinational corporation can achieve makes it nearly impossible for "mom and pop" stores to compete on many levels. We are driven slowly and inexorably into the arms of big businesses.

I find it fascinating that we face a conundrum of choice - we have more choices available to us, for everything from transportation to toilet paper, and yet so little of those choices actually have meaning. We're merely selecting a brand from the multitude that are available. All of our choices seem to revolve around a simple pattern: we are born, we consume, and we pass away. And our value, our worth, our dignity as human beings is tied to that ability to consume - if we cannot generate capital, then we do not have value. We are something less than human. But the reality is that, by linking so strongly our dignity to our ability to consume, we have already devalued ourselves and made each other to be something less than human. We exist merely to serve the whims of the market.

I'm not tearing down capitalism, by the way. I think that capitalism offers much that is good. My concern is that it makes a wonderful servant, but a terrible master - and master it has become. The tragedy is that we do not recognize it for what it is.

I'm not entirely certain of how to go about fixing this mess - I'm simply one small voice stuck in the system along with everyone else. But I can perhaps tell a different story, one that speaks of humans created in the image of God, who possess dignity because of that image and not because they can produce and consume. I can tell a story about a New Creation towards which we hope, one that has already broken into this present age. And I can tell a story about resurrection, about those things which will be incorporated into that New Creation and about our task in living towards that coming resurrection.

Such stories have power, and moreso when they are true. And when we allow them to become true in our own lives, then something is unleashed which cannot be bought or sold, but which just might begin to turn the whole system upside down...

Technorati Tags: economics, image, imago dei, suburbs

Random Musical Goodness

I picked up the new Jimmy Eat World single Big Casino last week and it is fraught with awesome. There's something about it that reminds me of Clarity, which is (imho) their best album. Can't wait for the full album release in Oct.

Technorati Tags: jimmy eat world