Last week, I introduced the co-author of Jesus for President, Shane Claiborne, who is a phenomenon with no equivalent outside of the born-again Christian subculture. He openly and unambiguously opposes capitalism and "empire," and because the source of his politics is the Bible, he has an exploding audience in the American evangelical church -- especially the white, upper-middle class church.
Shane's first book, Irresistible Revolution, is being read at this moment by probably thousands of little Bible study groups around the country. Jesus for President, written with Chris Haw, is already a best seller. Both books are part of a greater mass audience theological trickle-down of 2,000-year-old themes that have been making a come back among Christian intellectuals for sometime.
Jesus for President, is a walk through the Bible using an approach that some call Narrative Theology. From Genesis to Revelation, they apply "God's story" to present-day life under capitalism and the American empire. Today, I want to give you some samples of how they actually do it (page scans below!). My goal is not to convert you, but to show how, if you use your imagination, you might see some sense, beauty and power in this story as they see it.
One of my biggest surprises in getting to know Bible believin' Christians is that they are able to keep their eyes wide open while diving into the ancient texts of the Bible head first. They are asking the hard questions and finding poetic answers though serious scholarly study. Jesus for President is one of the most accessible examples available for non-believers to see how they do it.
In the Bible, God gets angry. He wipes out cities, nations and even the entire human race once. He steps in to save his favorites sometimes, and other times tempts or tortures them just to see what they'll do. And even if you were to write off all the smiting, giants and 900-year-old men as "Old Testament myths" (as a lot of liberal Christians do), the fundamental plot line still seems crazy. As Julia Sweeney says:
Why would a god create people so imperfect then blame them for their own imperfections? Then send his son to be murdered by those imperfect people to make up for how imperfect those people were --- and how imperfect they were inevitably going to be. I mean what a crazy idea!
How in the world do modern Christians who believe in a "kind, unchanging and all-powerful god" think they can answer that?
The answer -- sort of -- is that they don't. "It's a mystery!" they say. Their starting point is a leap of faith that God is up to something in the world that is beyond our comprehension. Even though God could fix humanity with the snap of a finger, he doesn't want that kind of relationship with us. And that's what makes it potentially beautiful: God desires a relationship with humanity -- and desires that it should be interesting. Isn't that wild? I've even heard some preachers say that God created us to be a companion to him. It doesn't mean God never interacts with or intervenes in humanity. On the contrary -- what kind of relationship would that be? The Bible, as read by Claiborne and Haw, is the story of a God who never gives up on humanity, no matter how bad we screw things up down here. Yet it is the story of a God who gives us our independence and expects a lot of us.
That is why, in my experience, many Christians are more "humanist" than people who call themselves "secular humanists." Secular humanists do not believe that humans have special place in the grand scheme of the universe; Christians do.
Here's one place, from the first few pages, where Shane & Chris sum it up:
[Note: the markings (except for a couple check marks in the margins and one scribble further below) are part of the original text. The book is designed like this on every page throughout!]
Many of you will be thinking (and commenting below), "What kind of idiots believe these old stories are actually true!?" There are a couple of things to say about that. I don't know what Shane & Chris personally believe regarding the absolute historical accuracy of the whole Bible. But, for many, deep study of the Bible has caused them to let go of the idea that everything in the Bible accurately represents real history. At the same time, they continue to commit to the Bible as a text that is held communally to be "true" and the sole source of authority.
Is it crazy to do that with a 5,000 year old book of cobbled-together stories and poems? Yes. But, is it any less crazy to believe that the law of supply and demand actually regulates the economy, that anti-depressants actually work, or that human history has been a steady march in the direction of progress? Sure, we can supply all kinds of stories and examples to back up that kind of a worldview. But few will have much grounding in anything that can truly be called fact. More importantly though: those mainstream truths are handed down authoritatively to us by economist priests, doctor priests and academic priests. It is very difficult for a lay person to confidently question a psychiatrists' diagnosis, isn't it?
For Christians like Shane and Chris, on the other hand, truth in the Bible is a communal act, not a set of facts. Every individual in their own community, as in the whole body of the church, is understood to have equal right and inherent ability to wrestle with scripture to produce truth. That doesn't mean everyone can come up with their own truth; that's individualism, not communalism. Scary? Uncomfortable? Yes. But it's communitarian, not authoritarian.
I hope I've brought at least a few skeptical readers to the point where they might consider paying at least an ounce of respect to this Christian biblical idea of communal truth. So let's keep moving: Shane and Chris see the Christian community as bound to this story of the bible; let's see where that story goes after humans' disastrous debut on the stage of history.
You've heard of all those crazy rules in biblical books like Leviticus or Deuteronomy, right? That stuff gets pulled out a lot when someone wants to prove that Christians follow the Bible only selectively. "God hates shrimp!" etc.... But Christians believe that the Mosaic law was intended by God only for humanity at a particular time in our history---and only for a subset of humanity at that.
Ever have a really troubled friend, and every time you tried to help, it just made things worse? In the Bible, that's kind of what God has going with humanity. First, he throws us out of the garden for disobeying him once (maybe an overreaction in hindsight?). After that, God keeps trying to help us get back on track in various ways, but we just fall further and further into a downward spiral of murder and greed. So God decides to hit the reset button (the flood), but that doesn't fix anything either.
What's so interesting to me is how, in the Bible, God's methods with us become more and more subtle. For example, he follows the flood by picking out one particular people -- an enslaved people! -- and chooses them to be an example for the rest of the world, set apart from the world and yet living among the world. He will raise them up out of the pitiful mess that humanity has become, and through them redeem all of humanity.
In that context, all the crazy rules can almost make sense: "the law" was designed by God to counter the particular, historical ways in which they were living that were messed up and broken: as slave and slave owner, as land owner and tenant, as murderer and victim, as king and subject. (Yeah, we're still living in those messed up ways, but just wait: God has a different intervention for our time later in his story.)
Ten thousand tenured economists say its OK if 99% of the means of making a living (means of production) fall into the hands of 1% of the people. God says the means of making a living belongs to all the people. Which story do you want to sign on to?
Actually, anthropologists know that periodic redistribution of the means of making a living is in the DNA of our species. Virtually all pre-empire/pre-state agricultural societies did it. Pre-agriculture societies didn't need to do it because your means of making a living were your legs.
What I'm saying is: There is a lot in the Bible that affirms certain truths (like Jubilee) that have been wiped out in many places over the past several thousand years by feudalism, capitalism and modern empire. Do you really think that people all around the world are tenaciously hanging on to religions that are thousands of years old because they're stupid? They are our only surviving link back to values and standards of fairness that go back to the beginning of time. A Bible-based world view isn't about rolling society back to the year 3000, but it is about re-applying, through community, some of those ancient values to the complexity of the present day.
OK, in this installment, I tried to give a quick introduction to how Chris and Shane are interpreting the Bible's Hebrew scripture for their generation. Again, this is part of a much wider movement: Shane and Chris are popularizing serious theological work that has been trickling down from scholars into mainstream Christianity for decades, and they are in the company of many other popular writers and perhaps millions of other ordinary pastors and students of the Bible who are coming to the same conclusions. This is all part of what some have called the Fourth Great Awakening in American Christianity.
In the next installment, I'll get into how Chris and Shane interpret the Greek scripture of the Bible (a.k.a. the "New Testament").
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Muse, I guess I need to use more smiley's :-). I never ill humored through any of this. Sorry! :-) :-))
I was TEASING and trying to be a-MUSING.........................:-)
Muse, When I watched this on PBS I thought of you, I though you may want to look into the artist, and look on your local PBS station for is broadcast, it's really special a moving portrit, Albert Alcalay is an abstract expressionist.
ALBERT ALCALAY: SELF PORTRAITS reflects upon the extraordinary life and engaging personality of former Harvard faculty member Albert Alcalay through a candid first-person look at his development as an artist. Forced into a life of hiding as a Serbian Jew while hunted by Nazis in Fascist Italy during World War II, Alcalay was eventually captured and sent to a concentration camp, where he was inspired by a fellow prisoner to study painting. After the war, he immigrated to the United States, where he has lived and worked in Boston ever since. The documentary examines the ways in which Alcalay's artistic language has been shaped by the American landscape, by memory and by loss. Although well into his 80s and dealing with the effects of macular degeneration (loss of eyesight), the inspirational Alcalay no longer teaches, but he continues to paint vibrant landscapes in which "lament... is transfigured into praise of life."
Just some examples of his work:
http://kantarfinearts.com/gallery/aa-1.asp
Enjoy. Agape.
Karen Armstrong's presentation at the 2008 TED Conference, is well worth the 21minutes.
If you don't know of her, keep in mind she describes herself as agnostic.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/234
Yes it is, I've been thinking how I could be of help to making her dream come true, I was thinking that maybe Rev. Byron Williams should be recomend for the pannel, if he has the time.
Excellent looking out Brother HeevenSteven.
Do I have to stop teasing the agnostics now? LOL!
Agape.
We don't have to stop picking on them, as long as they make it about logic. She uses it , I think, in the sense that she accepts that humans have spiritual needs but can satisfy them without literal theism. I guess one need to look no further than Buddhism to see that's true. She says some prominent monotheists have told her that god doesn't exist in any real sense, but is the most important reality in the world....(Sounds like Zanti, huh?). I've heard and read her say that "belief" and literalism is modern phenomena
I have to read her some more. I've read 2 (History of God, and Great Transformation). I have "The Battle for God" and "A Short History of Myth" in my pile. The "Battle for God" is about the rise of fundamentalism. That should be interesting. As soon as I finish Dennet's "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" (500+ pages) I'll start on her stuff.
Personally, I rest my case. Zack thanks for the blog and the thread it just worked out perfectly. Bean me up Scotty.
Come back Shane!
Predestination has no room for ego.All are sinners,and none are deserving of salvation ( no matter how good they seem to be).This leaves us to rest on God's righteousness,and judgement and mercy,not ours.It leaves us with the understanding we are all equal in our sinfulness.None is better than any other,only God is perfect.but intellectually understanding that is not enough,God must save you.
As for an eternal God existing..to me that's a no brainer.There must be a God.Nothingness exploding from nowhere and then evolving..that's impossible.
We need to stop trying to make God what we want him to be and accept him for who he is and who we are.Then we can apply his gospel to life in modern times and in the future...instead of worshipping that Golden calf so many of us have.Exo 32:22 And Aaron said, Let not the anger of my lord wax hot: thou knowest the people, that they are set on mischief.
Exo 32:23 For they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before us: for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.
Exo 32:24 And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off. So they gave it me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this calf.
"t has often and confidently been asserted, that man's origin can never be known: Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." --Charles Darwin.
I agree, let's stop trying to make god what we want him to be; but Predestination is a complete abdication of responsibility and reason, as well as being a wholly human philosophical construct. It is the antithesis of seeing things as they are, the true nature of anything.
There you go again.
And, what's wrong with human constructs? I thought that was your particular ballywick. Human constructs.
Anyway, I just drop by to say hello. And to say that other artist's work doesn't come close. The Muse is not "moving over." I'm not a Fundie either.
(Hell hath no fury like a Muse who's pissed off.)
By the way, at the recommendation of a friend, I've interrupted other reading to read "The Life of Pi." Thought of you, HS.
Agape, of course,
Muse
A philosophical human construct ?
When you didn't yet exist,did you choose to exist ? Somehow I think no.Out of the millions of little sperm and eggs that have existed in time and place ,in billions of people throughout history.One sperm and one egg,from 2 people out of all that have ever existed,came together at just the right second,in time and place in history..to contribute to who you were to be,and the same goes for any of us.Then all the other circumstance that led you to think like you do,and at some point read what I wrote,and respond in the way you did,so that I would read and respond the way I am,so that some unknown purpose is accomplished. That's reason.
It is not an abdication of responsibilty and reason.In fact,it's the opposite.We are our brothers keeper.We are all to obey as best we can ( though we always fall short)of the gospel.
That command is not only for those who believe,but for all mankind whether they deny there is a God or not.The difference being that those who know God exist obey because God tells them to.Others obey the laws not giving respect to the lawmaker.Whether we obey or disobey though,we are always still sinners.
Rom 6:1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
Rom 6:2 God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?
Religions are a great excuse to exclude, mock, kill, torture, maim, lie, fight and generally be complete dickheads to one another.
Like we need another excuse? We've killed each other since we stood upright, and for what? Rights to the watering-hole, a pasture, or a trade route...you name it. Wars have been fought (ostensibly) over soccer games, a bucket, and in at least one case, a glass of water thrown in someone's face. Wars have dragged on because no one could face the "dishonor" of losing...tell me, what the hell is "honor," that so many have died for it?
Like much else of our popular wisdom, the idea that mankind would live in paradise if we just stopped believing in gods is a big, fat lie.
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"Like much else of our popular wisdom, the idea that mankind would live in paradise if we just stopped believing in gods is a big, fat lie."
Well done RumiSouth, you've framed questions that dichotomize into a paradox, and a claim to a simple truth for all to see. Which, in fact, is a false conclusion.
Whether by intent to rationalize, or because you are parroting a commonly accepted logic fallacy does not really matter, it is without merit, and has no standing with regard to the truth or a proper conclusion by critical reasoning.
The emotional part of your argument with regard to honor, has no real weight, it is a self serving statement that is in fact true and has standing alone, but no place within this argument, in other words, it is misleading, as are most of the questions you pose. And please not to take this personally, because, this is an old argument, you are far from the first to bring it to the table with regard to the God model.
jfor
I think you're confusing religion with second grade.
Me thinks, you are confusing sophomoric attacks with wit. Second graders don't seem to be having much of a problem with life, at least not until Adults start laying all their antiquated emotional baggage on them.
In the Bible, God gets angry. He wipes out cities, nations and even the entire human race once. He steps in to save his favorites sometimes, and other times tempts or tortures them just to see what they'll do. And even if you were to write off all the smiting, giants and 900-year-old men as "Old Testament myths" (as a lot of liberal Christians do), the fundamental plot line still seems crazy. As Julia Sweeney says:
Let me point out a problem as I see it here. The fact that God allowed Job to be tortured..is not to see what he would do,as if he didn't know .He already knew..but Job and satan did not.
Hebrews chapter 12 1-14 offers a clue as well.
another point ..Gold tried in the fire raises up impurities.
"Do you really think that people all around the world are tenaciously hanging on to religions that are thousands of years old because they're stupid?"
No Zack. Not stupid, but ignorant and fearful. Some through no fault of their own, some deliberate. It's difficult to overcome childhood indoctrination, and it's difficult to go against your family and community. Skillful persuasion and coercion are hallmarks of many successful religions.
"Have you ever heard of the "Many Worlds" theory of Quantum Mechanics?"
and "Today, Many Worlds is seen as a viable mainstream theory"- JacobSinger Posted 08:28 AM on 04/04/2008
FACT "IS" it is not even a viable hypothesis, let alone a scientific theory.
Quantum Mechanics, is very strange, especially when much of it is not even possible in the natural universe, because the only place the temperatures needed to create such phenomena can only be produced outside of nature as we know it in a lab, making it a very remote possibility to be or become a part of a theory of everything.
You Jacob are correct about one thing, you don't know, and are far from having a remote clue to what's going on in this field. Yet you attempt to use it in argument, please give it a rest.
Hey Dap, I see ya ya got your hands full with another one of those fundamentalist christians trying to pass himself off, so he can spew vitriol. Fun how clueless they are, and don't understand the difference between a scientific "hypothesis" and "theory" or when to use the term theoretical.
Then he speaks to QM and does not understand what Bose - Einstein condensate is, or that the deepest recesses of space are quite warm at 3 degrees above absolute zero, not even cold enough to turn helium atoms into a superfluid.
Well, good luck with that. Keep up the the good work weeding'em out.
Must be all those Intelligent Design classes lol.
Jeez, you are so incredibly obnoxious. If you would get your self-congratulatory head out of your ass you just might realize that I was referring to current theoretical trends in astrophysics and cosmology.
You should try to understand the concept that the science that you happen to be aware of or can dredge up in 15 second google search doesn"t set the confining boundaries for what is taken seriously, or considered to be a reasonable hypothesis simply because a better option hasn"t yet made itself available [and for all anyone knows, we"ll always be left with variables outside of what we can observe or test, i.e. the "unknowable"].
I you weren"t so simple-mindedly set on defining me and what I believe and understand as being inferior, you just might be able to comprehend my intentions with bringing up the fact that MWI is indeed very popular in astrophysics and cosmology [and you might have noticed my disclaimer].
To take any portion of QM from a micro level and apply it to the macro level of astrophysics and cosmology flies in the face of the traditional interpretation of wave function collapse [Copenhagen]. But had the observation/collapse concept been nice and neat, then I suspect Everett"s MWI wouldn"t have been put forth as an alternative solution.
And your statement about QM functioning in the real world is patently absurd.
Your arrogance and half-baked attempts at one-upmanship confirms my original pronouncement of you as a FOOL.
LOOKY HERE WHAT I FOUND
Philosophy of Religion web-site:
http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/manyworldshypothesis.html
1) Arguments for the existence of God.
[what did I find there] 1a) "The Many Worlds Hypothesis"
Look what else I've found: MWI (Many-Worlds Interpretation) Proponents argue that MWI reconciles how we can perceive non-deterministic events *(such as the random decay of a radioactive atom)* with the deterministic equations of quantum physics.
Imagine that, People that would be trying to undue carbon 14 data, trying to spin science Hummmmmmm? Now who would be trying to make that argument? Intelligent Design freaks maybe?
The decay of the carbon 14 atom (the parent nuclide) is well establish, this science deals with the "daughter nuclide" (which is a nitrogen 14 atom) break down which is non-deterministic, it has nothing to due with carbon 14 dating being a proper technique. This is an attempt to use sophistry in the science to create doubt, don't fall for it.
Someone around here has been quite a Pinocchio.
Good catch!
Yeah, plausible and viable or not the same thing. As far as string theory goes, see Lee Smolin's "The Trouble With Physics."
Wait until ya see what else I found, if they put the post up HS.
"That is why, in my experience, many Christians are more "humanist" than people who call themselves "secular humanists." Secular humanists do not believe that humans have special place in the grand scheme of the universe; Christians do."
I finally got some time to read the main post. The two sentences above are meaningless. So what if some Christians are more humanist than some humanists. What does that mean? I know many, many, Christians that are too selfish to give a crap about anything but their OWN salvation. That fact means no more than yours.
What does it mean that Christians think they have a special place in the universe?? That makes them more Humanist? Respectfully, that's ridiculous. That kind of thinking leads to terrible hubris IMO.
I know the democrats need people of faith to vote for them, and to that end I guess that's what your up to. But Sophistry is sophistry.
Posted April 1, 2008 | 02:32 PM (EST)