ideally?

torchie and i were talking about ideas and actions when he made an interesting statement:

knowing something philosophically and experientially are distinct from each other but not mutually exclusive for both are necessary to knowing something fully. (torchie)

hmm... the fullness of knowledge.

does this soundbyte speak of a difference between intellectual ascent and actually living the dream? i love that they cannot be separated from each other and still be true- excluding one while embracing the other is simply hypocrisy is it not?

okay, here's the kick: is all hypocrisy bad, or is hypocrisy sometimes simply indicative of one's faithlessness? i mean, until someone points it out in me, is the log in my eye a bad thing for which i must take responsibility, or is it just blindness... the presence of which being possibly the responsibility of others to identify in me? this is how people discover that they are colour blind, right? the awareness of this 'blindness' is impossible within a relational vacuum because basically perspective gone unchallenged is personal truth. we have no reason to question something from our own point of view because it's our own point of view and we hold to its accuracy... perhaps this is yet another reason establishing the importance of graciously receiving the investments that others make in us as we labour together.

example? the other day i was meeting for breakfast with this 'bob the builder' guy that i haven't hooked up with in a long time. as we spoke of about many things, i started to notice that he had a particular verbal habit. no workaday vocalized pauses like 'um' or 'er' or 'd'Oh!' in fact, he kept inserting the word ideally into the beginning of sentences. after two or three of these i called him on it...

can an ideal ever be attainable?
or is its unattainability that which makes it an ideal?

in other words, is 'ideally' a verbal shock absorber that allows you to say how you wish things could be, but have no faith in the possibility of the realization of this dream?

see, in bob's case, i think that his use of 'ideally' connoted the 'settling for' something less than the best. it was philosophically there, but experiencially non-existant even in his imagination... he had already signed off on the dream, settling instead for something commonplace and ultimately unsatisfying.

so when we speak of spiritual walks and healing journeys and possible differences between what we are envisioning and what we are experiencing, i say hold on and receive these things as they are offered... remembering that the vision of healing is fuel enough to see the realization of this vision. circumstancial and relational realities cannot withstand the restorative vision that God places in one's heart as hope for the future.

it's not ideal- it is simply yet to come.

UFC, dragons and the image of God

"When we place value (the only value) in the overcoming, or transcending, or triumph over these things, (struggles, difficulties, sufferings etc.) we empty them of their positive content and value. When it comes to people then, the victim is valued when they overcome their victimization, the addict is valued when they have triumph over their addiction or when they clean up and the "criminal" has value when they are delivered from their "deviance" and rehabilitated." (hineini)

i think i hear what you are saying, hineini.

last summer, i was in a meeting where somebody made a statement that all they had had to do was pray and they were healed... that their faith had made them whole.

now, i have no problem with feeling this- i mean, it's even biblical.

however, feeling and articulating are two very different things. one must needs be careful with this kind of testimonial because of the message of hopelessness and failure that this kind of announcement indirectly puts out there for someone who is still struggling with and being overcome by something that is completely out of their control. to put it another way, the victim of an infirmity feels devalued as a person because of his or her inability to somehow slay this dragon and bring back a victory report to the crowd.

a friend of mine, an old 'saint' and one of the most faithful followers of Christ i know, had been struggling with major kidney failure and had been doing and receiving from others a heckuvalot of prayer- but was losing the battle. to make this glib 'mind over matter' kind of statement in his presence was to suggest that his faith was somehow not strong enough to overcome this physical ailment. what was intended to be a shout of victory for the encouragement of the masses within their own circumstance probably just rang out as hollow hopelessness for my friend. try to tell someone who has been praying against something for years to no resolution that 'God has no favorite children' and then listen to their side. there is this pervasive 'well why not ME then?' question begging for an answer- although my friend would never say this, i believe i might if i were in his place.

even beyond this, contrast western prosperity theology and all this 'child of the king' talk with war, hunger, starvation, disease, homelessness and natural disaster in any of the three or four worlds and see how well the rhetoric holds up to real life. i remember being rather stuck for an answer when a new friend of mine in sri lanka asked me point blank the first time we met:

"what do i tell the people of my village who have lost everything- family, friends, home, livelihood- to Tsunami? who is this God that i am to share with them?"
(rev david gunasari)

d'uh... good question.

journeys down 'alleyways of strife' have and always will be things of beauty... but not the comfortable, renaissance, dayglo psychadelic or off-in-a-field-somewhere-with-the-archbishop-of-canterbury kind of beauty... the kind of wild, action-painter beauty of jackson pollock paintings, bearing upon them the scars of the creative battle itself; the beauty of jacob's walk after his all-night UFC bout with an angel of God; the beauty of my friend rev david's angry resolve to hold tightly to his faith in an invisible God- the only thing in his life that wasn't destroyed by the disaster that destroyed his village and killed many of his family and friends.

there are very few things as inspiring to me as seeing the faith of one who is fighting an ongoing battle with something and refuses to relent on either the battle or the faith that brings greater strength to contend.

i find great inspiration in the white-knuckling of faith in the face of all manner of opposition. job's refusal to accept the advice of his wife to just 'curse God and die' makes him already victorious- but not in the manner of the 'colonial triumphalism' described above, which seems to be a 'fought the good fight, ran the good race' kinda thing.

in my view, job's 'victory' is an ongoing one of day to day conviction and plain perseverence- not in naivete but in hard-nosed faithfulness. rather than being the opiate of the people, faith for people like job and my friend is adrenaline, enabling them the supernatural strength to somehow do things that they really shouldn't be able to do.

but i don't think that any of this is what hineini is saying.
what i take from hineini's comment above is a challenge...

i am being challenged to find inspiration in the life lived in desperation, struggle and strain; the life lived to ultimate 'failure' in these Victory in Jesus terms; the life lived to bear testimony to the love and lifebreath of God simply because it is a human life, and being such bears the truth, the dignity and the opportunity to enlighten that is the very image of God.

uninformed and unaffected

"I can say for a fact 'the truth sets me free' - in the sense that I see clearly my faults and human weaknesses - and I go through the valley of death/pain - just to get to the point where I accept that truth and then deal with it honestly and sincerely" (societyVS)

so here's the thing. i'm out for breakfast with this guy and he's talking to me about this bible study that he is beginning to attend. the group is studying the book of romans and he is just really loving the time that is being spent in the scriptures and how much he's learning from it all.

after listening for a bit, i ask

'what part of romans do you like the most?'

i know, i know... dumb question. it's a totally heavy book which doesn't really fit into 'like/dislike' thinking. it's full of really strong counsel on how to live life as a follower of Christ.

anyway, he begins to quote romans 12 really really fast...

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.

what makes this all rather tough for me is that there are many aspects of the life being lived that directly contradict this memorized and recited moral soundbyte. we have spoken of so many things, but all i can think of is that once again these scriptural words are being quoted from one whose life continues to exist uninformed and even unaffected by them.

honesty and truth must go together. it's not the loving of truth that bears the fruit of freedom, it's the living of it.

free

"Nothing wrong with the truth
when the truth can set us free"
(societyVS)

hmmm. what if that truth doesn't set us free? what if that truth actually imprisons us in a causality cage where we are sentenced to live in a box with the consequences of our actions/decisions?

how's that truth feel? is that freedom?

a friend of mine is living there now... and yet would argue that he is experiencing the first actual freedom he's had in years. there's something amazingly liberating about no longer having to check over your shoulder; no longer having to run from the facts that may yet overtake you; no longer having to remember the lies you've told to cover up the lies you've told.

mark twain had something to say about the virtue inherent in that of kind of truth.

i don't think that it is truth that is hard to work with in the classic adage (taken from a larger passage on cause, effect, integrity and identity in john 8.31-40 that is a crucial read) alluded to by societyVS...

it's this whole elusive notion of freedom.
***
words from the cell- YOU decide what freedom means:

I have not felt this "alive" for a very long time.
If my wife and closest friends were asked how I am doing
(and by the way, theyre reading this)
I would bet the farm that theyd say
"Torchie has really changed for the better. He went MIA but he has now been found. We have him back again!"
I am enjoying the freedom Jesus meant for me to have over [addictions, indiscretions] and the damning accusations that are associated with these. My freedom is a by-product of the rich satisfaction that comes from knowing and loving God. My knowledge of and love for God has been significantly influenced by a daily diet of Scripture and prayer as well as the encouragement and counsel of my wife and trusted friends.
Listen Everyone:

I DONT EVER WANT TO GO BACK TO WHERE I HAVE COME FROM.
(torchie)
***

i rose above these sterile sheets
a cold sweat left behind
a departure from a living death
delivered just in time
the plot had thickened to the point
where there was little hope to see
the antagonist had raised his fist
no option was open to me

but for a deus ex machina
a god in the machine
an unexpected reversal comes about
like awakening from a bad dream
with the swing of the playwright's pen
life returns to me again
now the show can have a happy ending
by faith, for freedom's haste, the seasons change

it's never too late to whirl around
move the other way
i have seen mornings robbed of light
nights as bright as day
the future is changeable- the past is set
finally i understand
hardest to grasp is that circumstance
is successfully countermand

by deus ex machina
God in the machine
an unexpected reversal comes about
like awakening from a bad dream
with the swing of the playwright's pen
life returns to me again
now the show can have a happy ending
by faith, for freedom's haste, the seasons change

by faith, for freedom's haste, the seasons change

the mask of oz

remembering how at bible school, one prof was notorious for tearing apart the presuppositions that these prairie kids fresh out of youth group and high school ISCF groups brought with them to their study of the scriptures...

by the end of the first term, there were always fewer Christians on campus! ha ha.

although at the time i found this incredibly challenging, i came to understand, over the years that followed, what this guy was doing... he was trying to coax us out of our warm, cozy caccoons where the inside walls were lovingly papered with old sunday-school papers from the 70's and pages from the comic-book version of the bible published by david c. cook in 1973. outside of that happy place was the real world. a place where real people had real questions arising from troubling everyday experiences- a place where a theological bumper-sticker bandaid just wouldn't stop the bleeding.

however, the thing that i still wrestle with today, just like then, is balance. on the one hand, i subscribe to a faith that, because all of the facts are not yet in, does not need to completely reason and qualify all ideas in order to exist; yet on the other hand, i cannot let myself become so accomodating that pretty much anything goes. steve taylor, a singer in the 80's described it well when he said 'you're so open-minded that your brain leaked out.'

i know that i'm not qualified to speak of higher criticism except as an observer. i work hard to qualify the things i teach, sure, but i recognize that this is simply my responsibility as a preacher... it has not been my life'swork. On any theologian's bookshelf there are whole books written by people who can read the ancient languages, who are well-versed in the ancient traditions, and have sat under the teaching of people who have entire wings in seminaries named after them. me? i have books written by people who have read books written by people who attended those seminaries. i understand this.

however, from my acknowledged place as an interactive observer, i have also seen how higher criticism has done much to strip the Bible of its authority among common people and scholars alike... it bothers me that we are so good at talking ourselves out of belief; so ready to be cynical; so eager to take the side of the sceptic rather than the mystic.

why is that? i have an opinion- but it's probably wrong because it oversimplifies things. here goes: i think that most of us are just not interested enough to actively pursue God's truth. it takes too much time and effort. too much reading. too much listening. too much praying. pick any spiritual discipline and you will probably find that it requires too much of us who are kinda comfortable where we are.

so 'when the weight of this world crashes down on you' (mark heard, circa '82) we are ill-equipped to face the barrage- defaulting instead to the sceptic's view, sitting with our face in our drink concluding 'there is no truth.'

actually, there is. the problem is that we are so unfamiliar with his revelation due to our lack of discipline that it is easier to speak of the mask of oz than to seek the face of God.
***

i realize that this post is incomplete-
but that is, after all, the freedom of a whole nother blog...

finding neo

Bigbro said:
Fundamentalism is about 'not needing an explanation.'

Oh, sure, there are those weekly explanations of a particular scripture that is pretty much explained the same way it was explained the last time the subject came up, but that's merely repetitiveness. Rote helps one not forget a lesson so as that lesson never changes regardless of the century in progress.

It all comes down to not needing an explanation. Not having to muddle about with explanations makes it all that much easier for everyone involved. Kind of like going to a Halloween party where no one wears masks

well, i'm afraid that i have to beg to differ with a couple different things here. i don't think that fundamentalism is as much about not needing an explanation as it is about presuming that a literal interpretation of scripture is the only explanation worth considering. this is probably why there is this whole problem with the weekly 'explanations' being all the same. it would be hard to take anything non-literal to fundamentalist masses without someone crying 'foul!'

i also disagree with the idea that not having to muddle about with explanations makes it all that much easier for everyone involved. it is the ethnocentric presumption that no one has to explain anything or be somehow intellectually and spiritually accountable to anyone or anything else that results in so much really bad theology. people make wild logical leaps from idea to idea, like neo in the matrix- as if denying the fact that there is gravity and believing that it has no hold upon him will, in fact, release him from its causal grip. arguing that spirituality need not be in any way connected to the physical world causes me to ask 'why do we have to bother with physical existence then?'

the 'merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream' approach to the interrelation of our spiritual and physical existences is probably only easy on those who subscribe to it. it drives a lot of other people crazy on both sides of the line drawn by Jesus in the sand. it is as much a source of frustration to those who, although holding to a faith in the same means of approaching God, differ from its spin on conclusive evidence, as it is to those who do not hold to this faith at all.

nobody likes being judged, or having their faith relationship (or non-relationship for that matter) with God through Christ presumed about, and a hardline of faith against a really fuzzy line of logic or reason can blur many things that are worth talking about in favour of details that become huge arguments for general disbelief. since we discovered in the garden, figuratively or literally, that to truly understand the difference between good and evil we simply needed to experience a little bit of evil first hand (and thus seperate ourselves from the holy realm, driving a necessary chasm between the temporal physical and the eternal spiritual forever) and then deal with the consequences of our decision-making, we've wrestled with the apparent disparity between our intellectual capacity for reason and the whole of existence which appears to be not only very very big but, at times, very unreasonable as well.

where it goes all wrong for me is when there are rectifiable differences that are stubbornly ignored. you find a neo in the most surprising places, often wearing some very familiar faces.

a bunch of us were all grappling with an entirely different issue the other day when a dear friend of mine surprised me by launching some SCUD missile logic into an otherwise really engaging round-the-table discussion. he said 'i have trouble with people who say that they believe the bible as long as it agrees with science... i believe science as long as it agrees with the bible, no further.' from here he shared his belief that the whole carbon-dating process is an atheist conspirator's distraction and that the earth is only six thousand years old and so on.

now, this guy is awesome and i love him dearly, but because i knew that we'd just get into an argument that would go round and round and take over the meeting from there on, i left it alone in spite of the fact that i vehemently disagreed with his position. what made me uncomfortable was the feeling in me that, because i was silent, those around the table would think i agreed. easier for everyone else? maybe, but that collective ease came at the price of my own personal peace.

you see, recently i posted a bit on 'five things i don't get.' this was one that almost made my top 5 list:
why people see creation theories and evolution theories as diametrically opposed and in all ways contradictory. a theory can't prove or disprove God. it can only strengthen your faith in its hypothesis.

but here's where the "darwin/TRUTH" picture above comes in. i very strongly agree with this image, but not in the way my friend thinks, judging from my silence that day. you see, i think truth is a way bigger fish than any one theory, and that, if we are to cut open the TRUTH fish, we'll probably find the partially digested remains of the darwin fish inside its entrails. some of the theory will have made truth stronger, and some of it will have already become deep-sea excrement.

once again, the challenge for me is to be able to tell the difference, being careful to clean the fish thoroughly before i throw it onto my barBQ wrapped in foil to be cooked and served to my friends as a the maincourse of a well-balanced meal.
***

disclaimer: i know that it sounds like i'm doing a lot of judging of my own here... please forgive me for this. i have not yet found a way to articulate objections objectively.

poetic license

john (http://penseethoughts.blogspot.com/) said:
"The relationship between poetry and truth is key but it seems power resides with poetry when, as Christ puts it 'the people are hungry' whereas power resides with truth when people are being fed meat and potatoes."

i like the notion that poetry is sometimes the only means by which the truth can get in.

language is like digital sampling. the greater the bitrate, the truer the sample is to the sonic essence of the original sound. poetic language contains not only the factual information, but the emotive colour of the factual information as well- in many ways it is a more complete 'sample' of an idea. not only this but metaphors are so much more participative, inviting thoughtful interpretation which takes so much more involvement than simply accepting or rejecting an idea does.

Jesus' use of metaphor seems to go intentionally in one of two directions: obscuring truth to invite greater hunger for it and greater satisfaction upon its discovery; and fleshing truth out in order to make it palpable for willy lowman.

i debated this idea at length with a friend of mine once. he was a seminarian, and was in love with his books (as can happen when you spend so much quality time with them!) the idea that we were attempting to find middle ground on was this: the bible is written in ancient aramaic (old testament) and greek (new testament) with odds and sods of linguistic hybrids thrown in here and there... therefore one needs to have experience with the ancient languages in order to properly handle scripture- in order to divine truth from the words.

obviously, not knowing a stitch of any of the languages in question, i disagreed on the grounds that God's word is truth and truth is timeless and unchanging. the trick for us today is to be able to discern the difference between timeless truth and culturally specific traditions. truth or tradition: how can we tell the difference if we don't know squat about ancient peoples? well that's probably a whole nother blog, but the way i tried to make my point was using poetry...

i asked a bunch of questions which basically underscored the richness of our shared cultural experiences:
both born in the same country in the same basic time period
both speaking the same mother tongue
both raised in traditional nuclear families
both schooled in the same language
both religiously raised and trained in the same denomination
both pursued secular employment before heading into ministry

alright enough already... so the point?
easy. i asked him what i meant when i wrote these lyrics:

circumstances change but the needs are still the same
people still need love and people still love to complain
everybody dances but no one wants to stay behind to pay the band
at the foot of the cross we gape at our loss
holding bloody hammers in our hands
its the moment of choosing between life and simply living alone

well that's hardly fair. i held all the cards. no matter what he said i could have said he was wrong... but i didn't because that would have nullified anything of value that i was trying to say. he gave the perfect answer anyway...

"i don't know- i can tell you what it says to me, though."

bingo. now obviously my stuff is pretty skimpy on truth, and helplessly incompatible with scripture, but the idea that, with poetry, many lessons can be learned from the same passage is a good one. every time i pick up my bible i try to discover something new in it that i've never seen before. the search for a new idea amidst ancient words is staggeringly humbling, because of all the defaults that we have to undo, but it is also incredibly rewarding because we grow in the process.

(note- VERY important: upon arriving at a 'new spin,' the next task is, of course, to run it through the gauntlet: there are things that are very hard to prove, but very easy to disprove. what can you find that disagrees? on what grounds do the disagreements stand? is this consistent with the deep water issues of scripture? all that. otherwise, a creative person can arrive at some pretty weird conclusions if studying the bible in a vacuum! i love the ongoing theological dialogue between frankie dunn and his priest in 'million dollar baby'... take your local preacher or scriptural authority out and bounce ideas around- benefit from HIS/HER years of study to further enrich your relationship with the God of the scriptures.)

however, i'm not getting the 'power of meat and potatoes' bit of john's post. what i take from it is that when people are accustomed to logical and factual discourse, there's not a lot of power in linguistic colourature. i certainly have friends that would agree with a memo more readily than they would agree with a sonnet.

me? i believe that while some books pontificate, other books sing-
yet both can contain truth.

“Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge… there is a great deal I do NOT want to know… even the bravest of us rarely has the courage for what he really knows…”
(Nietzsche- Twilight of the Idols)

"What is truth?" Pilate asked. (John 18.38)