I bring you aged a young man’s love
Wendell Berry, “To Tanya on My Sixtieth Birthday,” Given, 6
The love songs of youth remain a joy to list to. For those of us who grew up in the rock era there have been beautiful ballads – “Something” (The Beatles), “Colour My World” (Chicago), “You Are The Sunshine of My Life” (Stevie Wonder), among many, many others. At junior high dances I always hoped to find a partner for The Carpenters “Close To You” or Bread’s “If,” but I was shy and often left standing heartbroken watching others dance.
Love songs could also rock. She was just seventeen… and I saw her standing there (The Beatles), What I like about you, you really know how to dance (The Romantics), et. al. Awhile back I came across a used CD by The Knack a power pop band from my college days whose biggest song was a love song of sorts “My Sharona.” Truth be told there was more lust than love there, but teenage love songs are often a mysterious mixture of affection, sexuality and a desire not to be lonely. I enjoy the love songs, ballads and rockers, of my younger years.
This summer I have also been listening to a different kind of love song, more akin to Wendell Berry’s poem to his wife. John Hiatt released a CD in the last year or so entitled Same Old Man. It is filled with love songs, not the love songs of youth, but of age. Hiatt’s voice is a wonderful instrument to convey such songs.
Even when I was dead inside/You saw something to remind you/of the man I was tryin’ to hide/I just wanna go on with you/All the joy and pain and beauty too. “On With You.” To have lived with someone a long time usually means there will be joy and beauty and pain. That’s life and you want a love that can take it all in.
That’s what love can do/Make you feel brand new….Fire your heart and burn clean through, “What Love Can Do.” The fires of love may burn a little differently over time, but they still burn.
Honey, I’m still the same old man
That you married way back when
A few less brain cells a lot less hair
Honey tell me you still care
I love you more than I ever did…
You start out trying to change everything
You wind up dancing with who you bring
I loved you then and my love still stands
Honey, I’m still the same old man. “Same Old Man”
That’s my favorite, a tribute to a love that lasts, that joins two people over the years, through easy streets and bumpy roads. Such love takes work, but it is work of the best kind. There is also a grace about such love, it is goes beyond the language of “deserving,” at least when one is the recipient of such love, as I have been (Julie and I celebrated our twenty-seventh anniversary in July). I hope I have given as much as I have received.
I will still listen to the songs of my youth, though I am no longer young. I will also celebrate the gift, the joy, the passion of a young man’s love now aged.
With Faith and With Feathers,
David
Friday, August 28, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
15 Books
I confess, I am often reticent to get into some of the many quizzes, contests, suggestions offered through Facebook. Which theologian do you most favor? What city would be your perfect home? What color should you wear when the moon is full? Which great looking star would you most like to play you in the movie of your life? Maybe I dislike that last question because I remember in college when people told me I reminded them of John Ritter (in his Three’s Company days). Now I fear Danny DeVito might come to mind.
Anyway, two friends (Lawrence and Jerad) invited me to share fifteen book titles under the following rules: “Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me because I'm interested in seeing what books my friends choose.” I was intrigued. They got me. I posted my fifteen, with a little bending of the rules and tagged fifteen – o.k. sixteen – friends. Otherwise I kept it brief. Here is the list with explanatory notes.
1. The Bible: How can I say anything else, except this is not simply a nod to profession or piety. Among the first books I remember reading and loving were: Homer Price (and I still have my copy somewhere), Winners Never Quit (a portrait of various athletes who had hit hard times and came back) and The Greatest in Baseball. Love of books and reading came early to me, I guess, and there are certain feeling tones inside even as I type these titles. I came to the Bible most fervently after a born again experience. I asked for a copy of The Way (Living Bible) for my fourteenth birthday. I read the Bible straight through, struggling along the way. There are times when reading the Bible remains a struggle, but other times the words leap from the page into my life. Reading this book shapes the life from which I read. I should also admit that all my other reading shapes how I come back to this book again and again.
2. Writings and Drawings, Bob Dylan. As sometimes happens, a born again experience starts one on a journey that may lead away from the initial theological understandings with which one understood the experience. I remember hearing someone in my Jesus People group telling another person that they should probably not bother reading some certain book, and I remember cringing inside. What was outside this particular understanding of Christian faith? In some ways I think the same Spirit that gave me new birth urged me to think more deeply and broadly. I left that group and began asking all kinds of questions. I had sung a couple of Bob Dylan songs in a Christian small group and liked them. What more was there to this interesting guy with the remarkably distinct voice and gift for putting words together? I bought Greatest Hits I and II. I found Writings and Drawings in the Duluth East High School library. Hey Mr. Tambourine man play a song for me, I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to. Hey Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me in the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following you. And I did.
3. Toward a Psychology of Being, Abraham Maslow. Senior year at East psychology class and I met Abraham Maslow (not literally). Many people know about his hierarchy of needs, but don’t get beyond that. That theory has some validity, but can also be criticized, and rightly so. But the Maslow I met in this book wanted to get beyond thinking simply about self-actualization to considering the transcendent and transpersonal. He wanted, as well, to develop a psychology of evil “one written out of compassion and love for human nature.” I deeply appreciated Maslow’s breadth and depth of learning and his gentle spirit, at least as those came through his writing.
4. Cloud Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown, Alan Watts. As I sought to discover a wider world outside my intense born-again Christian faith, I wanted to learn something about other religious traditions. Alan Watts was my first guide. This book of essays is not as well known as some of his other works, but it provides a nice selection of some of his later writings. I enjoy the title, too.
5. On the Road, Jack Kerouac; Howl, Allen Ginsberg. At a used bookstore in downtown Duluth I bought a copy of Theodore Roszak’s The Making of A Counter Culture and made the connection between Alan Watts and the beat writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. In a college English class on twentieth century American literature, just before we were to read some beat literature, the professor asked if anyone had read Kerouac or Ginsberg. My hand was among the two or three that was raised. I still appreciate the rush of language in these works. They were important beginning points into poetry and literature.
6. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkein. The summer I graduated from college and had no reading assignments or papers to think about, I picked up Tolkein’s trilogy (actually began with The Silmarillion and The Hobbit) and spent a summer escaping when I could into another world. It was magic.
7. Systematic Theology, Paul Tillich. Christian faith never left me, or one might better say the God of Jesus Christ kept after me, and following college I went to seminary to explore this faith that had been so intense, but had, at times come up intellectually short. Why could I not let this go? Why did it not let me go? Tillich was the first theologian I grappled with in seminary and his work remains worth the effort. His definition of sanctification (life under the impact of the Spiritual Presence) as increasing awareness, increasing freedom, increasing relatedness, and increasing transcendence captured my attention and imagination then, and it still does.
8. The Nature and Destiny of Man, Reinhold Niebuhr. During college I began to become more socially aware and politically active. The Christian faith I knew at that time was not terribly socially aware. In seminary, reading Niebuhr, I discovered that faith not only helped answer existential questions, but pushed one into thinking about human social relations, too. There have been at least two or three times since seminary that I have come across articles about “needing Niebuhr” again. I am glad I found him in seminary and have never let him go.
9. Process Theology: an introductory exposition, John Cobb and David Griffin. Tillich and Niebuhr remain rich theological resources for my life and thought, but the most profound discovery in theology in my seminary years was the discovery of process theology. It categories of thought profoundly shape how I think about life, God, Jesus, the Bible - - - God as Creative-Responsive love, power as influence, relatedness as essential to experience.
10. Struggle and Fulfillment, Donald Evans. This book by a relatively little-known religious scholar and ethicist weaves together psychoanalytic psychology, theology, philosophy, ethics and religious studies. Who could ask for anything more?
11. Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman; Poems, Emily Dickinson. How different can two poets be - - - Whitman sounding his barbaric “yawp” and Dickinson asking “are you nobody, too?” Yet both poets touch something deep within. Perhaps within we find both multitudes and singleness, a need to celebrate life and confront death. Perhaps the poets are united in their sense of “divine madness.” One of the first Dickinson poems I remember reading I read on a small paper bag given me by Savran’s Paperback store in the Cedar-Riverside area of Minneapolis. “Much madness is divinest sense to a discerning eye.”
12. The Centaur, John Updike. I began reading Updike when I returned to school to work on my Ph.D. While that work left insufficient time for outside reading, somewhere along the line this book fell into my hands. I appreciate Updike’s language and story-telling. This work weaves myth into the world of a father and a son in Pennsylvania. The best literature expands our ability to experience our experience and Updike helps me do that.
13. Love’s Knowledge, Martha Nussbaum. This was one of the first books of philosophy I read after completing my Ph.D. I had returned to parish ministry so didn’t really need to be reading this kind of work, but something in me is fed by it. Nussbaum writes beautifully, insightfully and intelligently about literature, feeling, ethics and life. This book led me to develop a love for Henry James, as Nussbaum used his work in making a case for a life that is to be lived finely aware and richly responsible.
14. The Dhammapada. In 2006 I read Marjorie Suchocki’s book on religions Divinity and Diversity. In one chapter where she was discussing Buddhism, I realized that it had been a long time since I had read much literature from this tradition, especially non-Zen literature. I am not sure why I felt it might be helpful to explore this tradition more thoroughly, but I began to read. The Dhammapada is filled with insight, insight that I find helpful in developing my own Christian faith and practice.
15. The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker. Last summer I decided to read this book I had owned since college. After being a candidate for bishop and not getting elected, I think I wanted to read something that would engage me deeply, that might cause me to think in some new ways. I had heard some remarkable things about this book, and so I read it. It engaged me deeply heart, mind and soul and I continue to ponder its insights into the human situation. I love how Becker uses insights from the psychoanalytic tradition. I appreciate his finding kinship with Tillich and Niebuhr. Passages in this book sing, though the tune is often haunting. Becker died while the book was moving toward publication.
Anyway, two friends (Lawrence and Jerad) invited me to share fifteen book titles under the following rules: “Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me because I'm interested in seeing what books my friends choose.” I was intrigued. They got me. I posted my fifteen, with a little bending of the rules and tagged fifteen – o.k. sixteen – friends. Otherwise I kept it brief. Here is the list with explanatory notes.
1. The Bible: How can I say anything else, except this is not simply a nod to profession or piety. Among the first books I remember reading and loving were: Homer Price (and I still have my copy somewhere), Winners Never Quit (a portrait of various athletes who had hit hard times and came back) and The Greatest in Baseball. Love of books and reading came early to me, I guess, and there are certain feeling tones inside even as I type these titles. I came to the Bible most fervently after a born again experience. I asked for a copy of The Way (Living Bible) for my fourteenth birthday. I read the Bible straight through, struggling along the way. There are times when reading the Bible remains a struggle, but other times the words leap from the page into my life. Reading this book shapes the life from which I read. I should also admit that all my other reading shapes how I come back to this book again and again.
2. Writings and Drawings, Bob Dylan. As sometimes happens, a born again experience starts one on a journey that may lead away from the initial theological understandings with which one understood the experience. I remember hearing someone in my Jesus People group telling another person that they should probably not bother reading some certain book, and I remember cringing inside. What was outside this particular understanding of Christian faith? In some ways I think the same Spirit that gave me new birth urged me to think more deeply and broadly. I left that group and began asking all kinds of questions. I had sung a couple of Bob Dylan songs in a Christian small group and liked them. What more was there to this interesting guy with the remarkably distinct voice and gift for putting words together? I bought Greatest Hits I and II. I found Writings and Drawings in the Duluth East High School library. Hey Mr. Tambourine man play a song for me, I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to. Hey Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me in the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following you. And I did.
3. Toward a Psychology of Being, Abraham Maslow. Senior year at East psychology class and I met Abraham Maslow (not literally). Many people know about his hierarchy of needs, but don’t get beyond that. That theory has some validity, but can also be criticized, and rightly so. But the Maslow I met in this book wanted to get beyond thinking simply about self-actualization to considering the transcendent and transpersonal. He wanted, as well, to develop a psychology of evil “one written out of compassion and love for human nature.” I deeply appreciated Maslow’s breadth and depth of learning and his gentle spirit, at least as those came through his writing.
4. Cloud Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown, Alan Watts. As I sought to discover a wider world outside my intense born-again Christian faith, I wanted to learn something about other religious traditions. Alan Watts was my first guide. This book of essays is not as well known as some of his other works, but it provides a nice selection of some of his later writings. I enjoy the title, too.
5. On the Road, Jack Kerouac; Howl, Allen Ginsberg. At a used bookstore in downtown Duluth I bought a copy of Theodore Roszak’s The Making of A Counter Culture and made the connection between Alan Watts and the beat writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. In a college English class on twentieth century American literature, just before we were to read some beat literature, the professor asked if anyone had read Kerouac or Ginsberg. My hand was among the two or three that was raised. I still appreciate the rush of language in these works. They were important beginning points into poetry and literature.
6. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkein. The summer I graduated from college and had no reading assignments or papers to think about, I picked up Tolkein’s trilogy (actually began with The Silmarillion and The Hobbit) and spent a summer escaping when I could into another world. It was magic.
7. Systematic Theology, Paul Tillich. Christian faith never left me, or one might better say the God of Jesus Christ kept after me, and following college I went to seminary to explore this faith that had been so intense, but had, at times come up intellectually short. Why could I not let this go? Why did it not let me go? Tillich was the first theologian I grappled with in seminary and his work remains worth the effort. His definition of sanctification (life under the impact of the Spiritual Presence) as increasing awareness, increasing freedom, increasing relatedness, and increasing transcendence captured my attention and imagination then, and it still does.
8. The Nature and Destiny of Man, Reinhold Niebuhr. During college I began to become more socially aware and politically active. The Christian faith I knew at that time was not terribly socially aware. In seminary, reading Niebuhr, I discovered that faith not only helped answer existential questions, but pushed one into thinking about human social relations, too. There have been at least two or three times since seminary that I have come across articles about “needing Niebuhr” again. I am glad I found him in seminary and have never let him go.
9. Process Theology: an introductory exposition, John Cobb and David Griffin. Tillich and Niebuhr remain rich theological resources for my life and thought, but the most profound discovery in theology in my seminary years was the discovery of process theology. It categories of thought profoundly shape how I think about life, God, Jesus, the Bible - - - God as Creative-Responsive love, power as influence, relatedness as essential to experience.
10. Struggle and Fulfillment, Donald Evans. This book by a relatively little-known religious scholar and ethicist weaves together psychoanalytic psychology, theology, philosophy, ethics and religious studies. Who could ask for anything more?
11. Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman; Poems, Emily Dickinson. How different can two poets be - - - Whitman sounding his barbaric “yawp” and Dickinson asking “are you nobody, too?” Yet both poets touch something deep within. Perhaps within we find both multitudes and singleness, a need to celebrate life and confront death. Perhaps the poets are united in their sense of “divine madness.” One of the first Dickinson poems I remember reading I read on a small paper bag given me by Savran’s Paperback store in the Cedar-Riverside area of Minneapolis. “Much madness is divinest sense to a discerning eye.”
12. The Centaur, John Updike. I began reading Updike when I returned to school to work on my Ph.D. While that work left insufficient time for outside reading, somewhere along the line this book fell into my hands. I appreciate Updike’s language and story-telling. This work weaves myth into the world of a father and a son in Pennsylvania. The best literature expands our ability to experience our experience and Updike helps me do that.
13. Love’s Knowledge, Martha Nussbaum. This was one of the first books of philosophy I read after completing my Ph.D. I had returned to parish ministry so didn’t really need to be reading this kind of work, but something in me is fed by it. Nussbaum writes beautifully, insightfully and intelligently about literature, feeling, ethics and life. This book led me to develop a love for Henry James, as Nussbaum used his work in making a case for a life that is to be lived finely aware and richly responsible.
14. The Dhammapada. In 2006 I read Marjorie Suchocki’s book on religions Divinity and Diversity. In one chapter where she was discussing Buddhism, I realized that it had been a long time since I had read much literature from this tradition, especially non-Zen literature. I am not sure why I felt it might be helpful to explore this tradition more thoroughly, but I began to read. The Dhammapada is filled with insight, insight that I find helpful in developing my own Christian faith and practice.
15. The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker. Last summer I decided to read this book I had owned since college. After being a candidate for bishop and not getting elected, I think I wanted to read something that would engage me deeply, that might cause me to think in some new ways. I had heard some remarkable things about this book, and so I read it. It engaged me deeply heart, mind and soul and I continue to ponder its insights into the human situation. I love how Becker uses insights from the psychoanalytic tradition. I appreciate his finding kinship with Tillich and Niebuhr. Passages in this book sing, though the tune is often haunting. Becker died while the book was moving toward publication.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Thinking Through Some Busy Days
If you have been looking for something new here for the past couple of weeks, my apologies. I have been busy with a number of projects. From July 22-31, I was teaching a course in Christian Ethics for the United Methodist Course of Study School. Sponsored by Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, the course was held on the campus of North Central College in Naperville, Illinois – outside of Chicago. Since I last wrote here, I have been either teaching or preparing to teach. In between the first and second weeks, I traveled to Cedar Rapids, Iowa to join members of my church who were engaged in flood recovery work. Teaching was wonderful and our work in Cedar Rapids very worthwhile and meaningful.
One day, while teaching someone in my class asked me about substitutionary atonement, the theological doctrine that Jesus death was a substitute for our own, that in dying on the cross, Jesus paid the penalty for our sinfulness. What did I think of this? Well, the topic has not been central to the discipline of Christian Ethics, but the class was based in discussion and it seemed appropriate to offer a few brief thoughts. I responded by saying that the fundamental Christian affirmation of faith is that Jesus death has some salvific significance for human beings, but that the New Testament, and Christian theological thought through the ages has offered a variety of images, metaphors, perspectives for understanding that significance. We moved on.
Serendipitously, that day at lunch, one of my faculty colleagues, Ty Inbody, who I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time at Course of Study, was talking about his class in systematic theology and his discussion of atonement theory. He mentioned some of his concerns with substitutionary theories of atonement. Since arriving home I dug out my copy of his book The Many Faces of Christology (which I confessed to him I had not yet read) to explore his thought a bit further. To say that he has reservations about substitutionary atonement is to put the matter mildly. The cross means nothing but one more human tragedy apart from the power of the resurrection. God turns human wrongdoing around, and uses it against itself…. We are redeemed by the incarnation, not by the cross…. No one had to pay any price to anyone…. Rather the God of compassion and lovingkindness redeems us through the divine power which undergoes our suffering caused by our sin and raises to new life those who participate in the power of his cross and resurrection. (163)
This conversation got me to thinking more deeply about ethics and theology. The next day in class I told the students that one thing the discipline of ethics offers theology is questions about doctrine. If the adequacy of a theology is measured by the criteria of appropriateness to the Christian witness of faith and credibility to human experience (I learned this from my teacher Schubert Ogden), one dimension of the credibility of a theological proposition is its moral credibility. I went on to say that for many people, penal sustitutionary theories of the atonement lack some moral credibility. I stated this with humble boldness, inviting the students to disagree.
Well this past Saturday, I got up and turned on the television for a bit of news, but surfing by a church service, I stopped. I listened as the pastor, from a Wisconsin Synod Lutheran Church, developed in his sermon the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement. Here is some of what he said.
God is angry with us because of sin. Apparently this anger of God is rather blinding because God does not differentiate between us and murderers, thieves or prostitutes. God is angry about human sin and that sin deeply offends God, and justice demands that a price be paid for this offense of justice. The pastor then discussed substitution, using the example of a volleyball team – substituting a better player when needed in a game. In this case, Jesus becomes the substitute. We have a price to pay for our sin, but Jesus takes our place by dying on the cross. Not only did Jesus die, said the pastor, he was crushed. He asked his listeners to recall what children do to bugs – they squash them, crush them, destroy them – and that’s what God did to Jesus on the cross. But because such crushing was the penalty due for our sin, we can now become children of God. One might legitimately ask, at this point, what that might mean. The pastor has just told us, afterall, how God treated one of his best children – by crushing him like a bug. I think this theological position raises some significant moral questions, and I don’t think I’m alone in that.
In his book The Human Being Walter Wink discusses various theories of the atonement, the significance to human well-being of the death of Jesus. He concludes with these observations: There is truth in most of these atonement theories…. The point is that no religious experience can be made normative for all people. God reaches out to us in love wherever we are and instigates what leads us to wholeness…. The virtue of multiple images of the atonement in the New Testament is that each communicates some aspect of forgiveness and new life, without a single model being elevated as exclusively correct. Atonement theories are need-specific remedies for the spiritual afflictions that assail us. (111)
I am grateful for the multiplicity of ways Christian tradition has grappled with the significance of the death of Jesus for human life. Given the limits of penal substitutionary atonement theology, I am glad it is not the only option. My guess is that there are people outside the church who have trouble with that theory and who would like to hear about Christian faith in a different key. I'd like to talk with them.
With Faith and With Feathers,
David
One day, while teaching someone in my class asked me about substitutionary atonement, the theological doctrine that Jesus death was a substitute for our own, that in dying on the cross, Jesus paid the penalty for our sinfulness. What did I think of this? Well, the topic has not been central to the discipline of Christian Ethics, but the class was based in discussion and it seemed appropriate to offer a few brief thoughts. I responded by saying that the fundamental Christian affirmation of faith is that Jesus death has some salvific significance for human beings, but that the New Testament, and Christian theological thought through the ages has offered a variety of images, metaphors, perspectives for understanding that significance. We moved on.
Serendipitously, that day at lunch, one of my faculty colleagues, Ty Inbody, who I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time at Course of Study, was talking about his class in systematic theology and his discussion of atonement theory. He mentioned some of his concerns with substitutionary theories of atonement. Since arriving home I dug out my copy of his book The Many Faces of Christology (which I confessed to him I had not yet read) to explore his thought a bit further. To say that he has reservations about substitutionary atonement is to put the matter mildly. The cross means nothing but one more human tragedy apart from the power of the resurrection. God turns human wrongdoing around, and uses it against itself…. We are redeemed by the incarnation, not by the cross…. No one had to pay any price to anyone…. Rather the God of compassion and lovingkindness redeems us through the divine power which undergoes our suffering caused by our sin and raises to new life those who participate in the power of his cross and resurrection. (163)
This conversation got me to thinking more deeply about ethics and theology. The next day in class I told the students that one thing the discipline of ethics offers theology is questions about doctrine. If the adequacy of a theology is measured by the criteria of appropriateness to the Christian witness of faith and credibility to human experience (I learned this from my teacher Schubert Ogden), one dimension of the credibility of a theological proposition is its moral credibility. I went on to say that for many people, penal sustitutionary theories of the atonement lack some moral credibility. I stated this with humble boldness, inviting the students to disagree.
Well this past Saturday, I got up and turned on the television for a bit of news, but surfing by a church service, I stopped. I listened as the pastor, from a Wisconsin Synod Lutheran Church, developed in his sermon the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement. Here is some of what he said.
God is angry with us because of sin. Apparently this anger of God is rather blinding because God does not differentiate between us and murderers, thieves or prostitutes. God is angry about human sin and that sin deeply offends God, and justice demands that a price be paid for this offense of justice. The pastor then discussed substitution, using the example of a volleyball team – substituting a better player when needed in a game. In this case, Jesus becomes the substitute. We have a price to pay for our sin, but Jesus takes our place by dying on the cross. Not only did Jesus die, said the pastor, he was crushed. He asked his listeners to recall what children do to bugs – they squash them, crush them, destroy them – and that’s what God did to Jesus on the cross. But because such crushing was the penalty due for our sin, we can now become children of God. One might legitimately ask, at this point, what that might mean. The pastor has just told us, afterall, how God treated one of his best children – by crushing him like a bug. I think this theological position raises some significant moral questions, and I don’t think I’m alone in that.
In his book The Human Being Walter Wink discusses various theories of the atonement, the significance to human well-being of the death of Jesus. He concludes with these observations: There is truth in most of these atonement theories…. The point is that no religious experience can be made normative for all people. God reaches out to us in love wherever we are and instigates what leads us to wholeness…. The virtue of multiple images of the atonement in the New Testament is that each communicates some aspect of forgiveness and new life, without a single model being elevated as exclusively correct. Atonement theories are need-specific remedies for the spiritual afflictions that assail us. (111)
I am grateful for the multiplicity of ways Christian tradition has grappled with the significance of the death of Jesus for human life. Given the limits of penal substitutionary atonement theology, I am glad it is not the only option. My guess is that there are people outside the church who have trouble with that theory and who would like to hear about Christian faith in a different key. I'd like to talk with them.
With Faith and With Feathers,
David
Friday, July 10, 2009
Just a Job?
In a couple of weeks I will be teaching a course for United Methodist licensed local pastors on Christian Ethics. If you are reading this and don’t know there is a difference between ordained persons appointed as pastors of United Methodist churches and licensed persons appointed as pastors of United Methodist churches - - - well, it is a bit of an explanation and not terribly germane here. One distinction is that licensed local pastors may, in lieu of seminary, take seminary-like courses as a part of a course of study. That’s where I will be doing my teaching.
One of the texts for the course is Rebekah Miles’ The Pastor as Moral Guide, a very good book and one I would recommend to all my colleagues in ministry. Dr. Miles writes well and raises important issues in a thoughtful manner. One need not agree with her on all the issues she presents to benefit from reading her book.
One section of the book I found particularly thought-provoking was her discussion of work. The following passage follows stories shared about persons struggling with various difficulties surrounding work – a family that has little time for each other, a single parent, and person who has lost his job. Miles argues that we struggle with balancing work with other parts of our lives (no big news there!). How might we work toward a better balance?
In addition to renewing the concept of vocation, we need to regain a new realism about work. If the first remedy is to raise the value of work, the second is to lower its value. Work is not only a calling and joy but also toil and vanity. We often value work too highly, expecting too much of it, letting it consume not only our time but also our identities. Love of work can become idolatry. What we need, then, is to lower the value of work. The purpose of work is survival and service. Our larger call is to be Christian. Employment is simply one part of that call…. We need to lower our sights and recognize that all work has limited value. We aren’t called to like it, just to do it. In short, we value work too much and too little. We expect too much of it when we look to it for ultimate meaning or when we forget that it is toil and vanity. Remembering God and the larger purposes of life, we are reminded of works important but secondary role. We need a hopeful realism and a chastened idealism about work. (69)
But does that apply to my work? After all, I am a pastor. I work with ultimate meanings, with people’s relationships to God, to one another, to the earth, to society. Is it ever appropriate to think of my job as, well, just a job?
Maybe it is turning 50, maybe it is a number of other factors converging, but Miles’ words make sense, even for pastors, even for me. Yes, I have the wonderful privilege of touching people’s lives in times of joy and sorrow, chaos, grief, pain, celebration. I get to hold babies and be a part of welcoming them as one of God’s loved children. I get to celebrate the love between people and stand with people when they bid their final good-bye to a loved one. I get to help people think about life in relationship to God and be a part of their spiritual journey. I get to help people work together to form community. These are the kinds of experiences that are a part of my job description that let me know that my job is more than a job, that ultimate meanings are woven within what I do. But I also have paperwork to complete, personnel issues to deal with, days when toil is not too far removed from my experience of being a pastor. Somehow Miles’ words have helped remind me that it is o.k. to remember that even if my job involves ultimate meanings, the job itself does not contain all ultimate meaning. God has called me to be a pastor, but first God called me to be a Christian, a full human being who finds what that means in Jesus. It is o.k., then, to have times when I don’t have to like all that I do, just do it. Sometimes being a pastor is just a job. I am deeply grateful that it is also often so much more.
With Faith and With Feathers,
David
One of the texts for the course is Rebekah Miles’ The Pastor as Moral Guide, a very good book and one I would recommend to all my colleagues in ministry. Dr. Miles writes well and raises important issues in a thoughtful manner. One need not agree with her on all the issues she presents to benefit from reading her book.
One section of the book I found particularly thought-provoking was her discussion of work. The following passage follows stories shared about persons struggling with various difficulties surrounding work – a family that has little time for each other, a single parent, and person who has lost his job. Miles argues that we struggle with balancing work with other parts of our lives (no big news there!). How might we work toward a better balance?
In addition to renewing the concept of vocation, we need to regain a new realism about work. If the first remedy is to raise the value of work, the second is to lower its value. Work is not only a calling and joy but also toil and vanity. We often value work too highly, expecting too much of it, letting it consume not only our time but also our identities. Love of work can become idolatry. What we need, then, is to lower the value of work. The purpose of work is survival and service. Our larger call is to be Christian. Employment is simply one part of that call…. We need to lower our sights and recognize that all work has limited value. We aren’t called to like it, just to do it. In short, we value work too much and too little. We expect too much of it when we look to it for ultimate meaning or when we forget that it is toil and vanity. Remembering God and the larger purposes of life, we are reminded of works important but secondary role. We need a hopeful realism and a chastened idealism about work. (69)
But does that apply to my work? After all, I am a pastor. I work with ultimate meanings, with people’s relationships to God, to one another, to the earth, to society. Is it ever appropriate to think of my job as, well, just a job?
Maybe it is turning 50, maybe it is a number of other factors converging, but Miles’ words make sense, even for pastors, even for me. Yes, I have the wonderful privilege of touching people’s lives in times of joy and sorrow, chaos, grief, pain, celebration. I get to hold babies and be a part of welcoming them as one of God’s loved children. I get to celebrate the love between people and stand with people when they bid their final good-bye to a loved one. I get to help people think about life in relationship to God and be a part of their spiritual journey. I get to help people work together to form community. These are the kinds of experiences that are a part of my job description that let me know that my job is more than a job, that ultimate meanings are woven within what I do. But I also have paperwork to complete, personnel issues to deal with, days when toil is not too far removed from my experience of being a pastor. Somehow Miles’ words have helped remind me that it is o.k. to remember that even if my job involves ultimate meanings, the job itself does not contain all ultimate meaning. God has called me to be a pastor, but first God called me to be a Christian, a full human being who finds what that means in Jesus. It is o.k., then, to have times when I don’t have to like all that I do, just do it. Sometimes being a pastor is just a job. I am deeply grateful that it is also often so much more.
With Faith and With Feathers,
David
Monday, June 29, 2009
Turning Fifty
The voice that comes out in writing speaks from the depths of one’s aloneness to the aloneness of others.
Michael Eigen, The Electrified Tightrope, 262
I turned 50 last Wednesday, June 24. I was in Nashville for a meeting of the United Methodist Commission on Theological Education and no one knew it was my fiftieth birthday – and I was o.k. with that. That evening I had a very nice dinner with some members of the commission and it was a nice way to mark the day. Of course, it was also very nice to get home and celebrate this day with my family, which we did Saturday night.
So Wednesday was my birthday. On Thursday afternoon, I was on a treadmill in a hotel in Nashville when the news came on that Michael Jackson died, at age 50. Earlier in the day, the news about Farrah Fawcett’s death was also released – her death at age 62. Growing up I remember the music of The Jackson 5. Thriller was released the year after I graduated from college and I heard it often while working with youth as a seminarian. Whatever strangeness emerged in Michael Jackson’s life, his music touched the world with joy and hope. I also remember Farrah Fawcett from Charlie’s Angels, though truth be told, I had more of a crush on Kate Jackson. Farrah’s type just seemed too unattainable.
On the treadmill, with news of these deaths swirling around, with my fiftieth birthday only a day gone by, these songs came on one after another on my i pod:
Landslide
But time makes you bolder
Children get older
I’m getting older too
Dream On
Everytime that I look in the mirror
All these lines on my face gettin clearer
The past is gone
Sing with me, sing for the years
Sing for the laughter, sing for the tears
Dream on, dream on
Dream yourself a dream come true
Dream on, dream on
Dream until your dream comes true
All these lines on my face are getting clearer. I’m getting older too. I hope time makes me bolder in good ways, and I hope I never stop dreaming – or singing.
With Faith and With Feathers,
David
Michael Eigen, The Electrified Tightrope, 262
I turned 50 last Wednesday, June 24. I was in Nashville for a meeting of the United Methodist Commission on Theological Education and no one knew it was my fiftieth birthday – and I was o.k. with that. That evening I had a very nice dinner with some members of the commission and it was a nice way to mark the day. Of course, it was also very nice to get home and celebrate this day with my family, which we did Saturday night.
So Wednesday was my birthday. On Thursday afternoon, I was on a treadmill in a hotel in Nashville when the news came on that Michael Jackson died, at age 50. Earlier in the day, the news about Farrah Fawcett’s death was also released – her death at age 62. Growing up I remember the music of The Jackson 5. Thriller was released the year after I graduated from college and I heard it often while working with youth as a seminarian. Whatever strangeness emerged in Michael Jackson’s life, his music touched the world with joy and hope. I also remember Farrah Fawcett from Charlie’s Angels, though truth be told, I had more of a crush on Kate Jackson. Farrah’s type just seemed too unattainable.
On the treadmill, with news of these deaths swirling around, with my fiftieth birthday only a day gone by, these songs came on one after another on my i pod:
Landslide
But time makes you bolder
Children get older
I’m getting older too
Dream On
Everytime that I look in the mirror
All these lines on my face gettin clearer
The past is gone
Sing with me, sing for the years
Sing for the laughter, sing for the tears
Dream on, dream on
Dream yourself a dream come true
Dream on, dream on
Dream until your dream comes true
All these lines on my face are getting clearer. I’m getting older too. I hope time makes me bolder in good ways, and I hope I never stop dreaming – or singing.
With Faith and With Feathers,
David
Father's Day
Father’s Day was a week ago and I spent only a part of the day with my three children – David, Beth and Sarah.
Beth I did not see at all. She is completing her first year of medical school at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and was in the Twin Cities studying for her final exams of this first year. She sent me a text and called me.
David was out working on a political campaign. He is the campaign manager for a candidate running for an at-large city council seat in Duluth. He has spent most Sunday afternoons distributing literature or knocking on doors for his candidate. That afternoon, our daughter Sarah went with him to help. They were home for dinner at which time we (Julie - my wife, David, Sarah and I) marked Father’s Day.
While I enjoy all the time I spend with my children, and if there is a lack of time together my schedule is often the culprit, I am not sure I could have had a better Father’s Day. To see my children as caring, concerned, compassionate adults – or on their way there, to see them working hard for things they believe in and things that will make the world a little better, is very special. To have them tell me that I have been of help along the way – there is no better Father’s Day gift than that.
With Faith and With Feathers,
David
Beth I did not see at all. She is completing her first year of medical school at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and was in the Twin Cities studying for her final exams of this first year. She sent me a text and called me.
David was out working on a political campaign. He is the campaign manager for a candidate running for an at-large city council seat in Duluth. He has spent most Sunday afternoons distributing literature or knocking on doors for his candidate. That afternoon, our daughter Sarah went with him to help. They were home for dinner at which time we (Julie - my wife, David, Sarah and I) marked Father’s Day.
While I enjoy all the time I spend with my children, and if there is a lack of time together my schedule is often the culprit, I am not sure I could have had a better Father’s Day. To see my children as caring, concerned, compassionate adults – or on their way there, to see them working hard for things they believe in and things that will make the world a little better, is very special. To have them tell me that I have been of help along the way – there is no better Father’s Day gift than that.
With Faith and With Feathers,
David
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Parker Palmer
Writing last week I made a case for the importance of including Huston Smith in the company of Christians, though some might not want to do so because of his definition of what it means to be a Christian, and the way his own faith journey has incorporated Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. Huston Smith is an important Christian companion for the way he stretches me.
Another Christian who some might consider at the edge of Christian faith is Parker Palmer – and I would want him in my community of faith for the way he stretches me, for the way he challenges me to think more deeply about faith and life.
A men’s group at my church is currently reading Palmer’s most recent book, A Hidden Wholeness and grappling with its discussion of bringing soul more fully into our lives. While this is his most recent book, since its publication, Palmer has reissued an earlier work (The Promise of Paradox), and the new introduction to that work written for the reissue is quite fascinating for the light it sheds on Palmer’s Christian faith.
Palmer’s first book was written from a more explicitly Christian perspective than more recent work, but in the new introduction he claims this faith. “I still understand myself as a Christian, and many traditional Christian understandings still shape my life” (xxi). He goes on to say: “I would be lost in the dark without the light Christianity sheds on my life, the light I find in truths like incarnation, grace, sacrament, forgiveness, blessing, and the paradoxical dance of death and resurrection.” Yet Palmer also says that his “relationship to Christianity has changed” (xiv). He finds using Christian language problematic.
In 2008, I find it hard to name my beliefs using traditional Christian language because that vocabulary has been taken hostage by theological terrorists and tortured beyond recognition (xxi). Strong words – words I may not use, but they cause me to pay close attention. What problems does Palmer see?
When Christians claim that their light is the only light and that anyone who does not share their understanding of it is doomed to eternal damnation, things get very dark for me. I want to run screaming out into the so-called secular world – which is, I believe, better-named the wide, wild world of God – where I can recover my God-given mind. (xxii) Palmer is disturbed by the lack of humility he sees in too many Christians, their “theological arrogance” (xxiv), their failure to acknowledge that we are earthen vessels. These earthen vessels – the containers that hold and convey the mysteries of faith – include every word in our scriptures and theologies, every doctrine in our creeds, every structure that holds up the institutional church…. All of them are clay pots, prone to crack and leak, crumble and break. And that’s a good thing because it reminds us we are embedded in a truth so vast that our mental constructs can never comprehend it; because it cultivates the humility required to look at that mystery through other people’s eyes, giving us a chance to learn more about it; because it keeps us from becoming theological fascists. (xxvi)
If humility is one problem currently plaguing the Christian community, or at least some parts of the public face of it, Palmer also believes the way some describe the Christian doctrine of atonement is troubling. What kind of God is it who demands blood – the blood of God’s own son – for atonement?... I don’t want a God to whom I can feel morally superior. And I don’t want a theology that advocates blood sacrifice as a way of setting things right. There’s way too much of that going around these days. (xxiv) Such a statement would mean that some Christians would exclude Palmer from genuine Christian faith, much as they might Huston Smith. Palmer does view the death of Jesus as redemptive. Jesus died on the cross because he got crosswise with the powers that be…. For me, his death is redemptive not because it fulfills the puppet master’s plan or works some kind of cosmic sleight of hand but because it represents God’s willingness to suffer with us in every moment of our lives, not least when we are willing to speak truth to power. (xxv) I appreciate the way Palmer pushes me to think more deeply about the significance of the death of Jesus. In a violent world, where religion has often encouraged violence, we should be uneasy with a doctrine that seems to justify sacred violence.
Palmer’s thinking about Christian faith is not simply critical, it is also constructive. “Above all God wants us to be alive: life, after all, is God’s original gift to us” (xxviii) Palmer argues for a spiritual life that is found in the midst of life, with all its messiness. We will find our spiritual lives in that mess itself, in its earthly realities, unpredictable challenges, surprising resources, creative dynamics…. We [need to] add a new prayer to the well-known short list of “Thanks!” and “Help!” The new one is equally simple: “Bless this mess!” (xxviii)
In order to live life more fully, to deepen one’s spiritual life, one must embrace paradox. The capacity to embrace true paradoxes is more than an intellectual skill for holding complex thoughts. It is a life skill for holding complex experiences. (xxx) Palmer writes insightfully about that in A Hidden Wholeness. The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings. If we refuse to hold them in hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain, we also find ourselves living without faith, hope, and love. (82-83) As I approach 50, the truth of these words has become clearer to me.
Above all, God wants us to be alive. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). I believe that those words, written to describe Jesus, name what all are called to do, wrap our whole selves around the truth given to us and live it out in our embodied lives. (xxxi) In reading Palmer, especially on the necessity of paradox for being fully alive, I am reminded of these lines from William Blake:
Twofold Always. May God us keep
From single vision and Newton’s sleep.
Parker Palmer, like William Blake, is a deep poet of the soul, and a deeply Christian one.
With Faith and With Feathers,
David
Another Christian who some might consider at the edge of Christian faith is Parker Palmer – and I would want him in my community of faith for the way he stretches me, for the way he challenges me to think more deeply about faith and life.
A men’s group at my church is currently reading Palmer’s most recent book, A Hidden Wholeness and grappling with its discussion of bringing soul more fully into our lives. While this is his most recent book, since its publication, Palmer has reissued an earlier work (The Promise of Paradox), and the new introduction to that work written for the reissue is quite fascinating for the light it sheds on Palmer’s Christian faith.
Palmer’s first book was written from a more explicitly Christian perspective than more recent work, but in the new introduction he claims this faith. “I still understand myself as a Christian, and many traditional Christian understandings still shape my life” (xxi). He goes on to say: “I would be lost in the dark without the light Christianity sheds on my life, the light I find in truths like incarnation, grace, sacrament, forgiveness, blessing, and the paradoxical dance of death and resurrection.” Yet Palmer also says that his “relationship to Christianity has changed” (xiv). He finds using Christian language problematic.
In 2008, I find it hard to name my beliefs using traditional Christian language because that vocabulary has been taken hostage by theological terrorists and tortured beyond recognition (xxi). Strong words – words I may not use, but they cause me to pay close attention. What problems does Palmer see?
When Christians claim that their light is the only light and that anyone who does not share their understanding of it is doomed to eternal damnation, things get very dark for me. I want to run screaming out into the so-called secular world – which is, I believe, better-named the wide, wild world of God – where I can recover my God-given mind. (xxii) Palmer is disturbed by the lack of humility he sees in too many Christians, their “theological arrogance” (xxiv), their failure to acknowledge that we are earthen vessels. These earthen vessels – the containers that hold and convey the mysteries of faith – include every word in our scriptures and theologies, every doctrine in our creeds, every structure that holds up the institutional church…. All of them are clay pots, prone to crack and leak, crumble and break. And that’s a good thing because it reminds us we are embedded in a truth so vast that our mental constructs can never comprehend it; because it cultivates the humility required to look at that mystery through other people’s eyes, giving us a chance to learn more about it; because it keeps us from becoming theological fascists. (xxvi)
If humility is one problem currently plaguing the Christian community, or at least some parts of the public face of it, Palmer also believes the way some describe the Christian doctrine of atonement is troubling. What kind of God is it who demands blood – the blood of God’s own son – for atonement?... I don’t want a God to whom I can feel morally superior. And I don’t want a theology that advocates blood sacrifice as a way of setting things right. There’s way too much of that going around these days. (xxiv) Such a statement would mean that some Christians would exclude Palmer from genuine Christian faith, much as they might Huston Smith. Palmer does view the death of Jesus as redemptive. Jesus died on the cross because he got crosswise with the powers that be…. For me, his death is redemptive not because it fulfills the puppet master’s plan or works some kind of cosmic sleight of hand but because it represents God’s willingness to suffer with us in every moment of our lives, not least when we are willing to speak truth to power. (xxv) I appreciate the way Palmer pushes me to think more deeply about the significance of the death of Jesus. In a violent world, where religion has often encouraged violence, we should be uneasy with a doctrine that seems to justify sacred violence.
Palmer’s thinking about Christian faith is not simply critical, it is also constructive. “Above all God wants us to be alive: life, after all, is God’s original gift to us” (xxviii) Palmer argues for a spiritual life that is found in the midst of life, with all its messiness. We will find our spiritual lives in that mess itself, in its earthly realities, unpredictable challenges, surprising resources, creative dynamics…. We [need to] add a new prayer to the well-known short list of “Thanks!” and “Help!” The new one is equally simple: “Bless this mess!” (xxviii)
In order to live life more fully, to deepen one’s spiritual life, one must embrace paradox. The capacity to embrace true paradoxes is more than an intellectual skill for holding complex thoughts. It is a life skill for holding complex experiences. (xxx) Palmer writes insightfully about that in A Hidden Wholeness. The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings. If we refuse to hold them in hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain, we also find ourselves living without faith, hope, and love. (82-83) As I approach 50, the truth of these words has become clearer to me.
Above all, God wants us to be alive. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). I believe that those words, written to describe Jesus, name what all are called to do, wrap our whole selves around the truth given to us and live it out in our embodied lives. (xxxi) In reading Palmer, especially on the necessity of paradox for being fully alive, I am reminded of these lines from William Blake:
Twofold Always. May God us keep
From single vision and Newton’s sleep.
Parker Palmer, like William Blake, is a deep poet of the soul, and a deeply Christian one.
With Faith and With Feathers,
David
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