Ok, I know blogs can get this awful confessional tone sometimes. But here goes!
I think at present my most difficult struggle in the Christian life is with other Christians I just don't like personally. Don't worry, there aren't that many of you! The trouble with being a person who works and lives among Christians all the time is that you are bound to encounter these troublesome individuals. Somehow it feels easier to not 'click' with a non-Christian person, doesn't it? Personally, I found my years at theological college (as a student) very difficult spiritually for this reason. There were people there who I just didn't like that much.
I am amazed at the pettiness and jealousy that I so easily feel when I hear of others' success sometimes; or the inward smile at their failures. Usually, it is somehow that they are a threat; or perhaps there is the perception of a personal slight. There is a person who slighted me once in a private email some time ago now - and forgiving that person has been very hard, partly because of the triviality of the incident (I am sure they did it inadvertently). This is how trivial it is: they took a patronising tone with me.
Is there a type of person that I just don't like? I know I find ridiculous and strident dogmatism very hard to bear (believe it or not). Sometimes, if I am honest, a person I don't like has a flaw that I fear in myself: arrogance, or pomposity perhaps. I am always tempted to play down the other person in conversation with others.
How should we deal wisely with this? I think not liking everybody is ok. But we may be called upon to work together in partnership for the gospel - and what then? How do you get to a place where not liking someone doesn't spill over into terrible inner bitterness - or even turns into regard, even perhaps affection?
I have to say that there are some Christians - saintly ones in my view - who never have a bad word to say about anyone. They seem naturally to be able to cope with people's difference in a very God-like way... How did they get there?
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Narrative...
OK, go with me here.
I wrote this in an attempt to get a methodological section going the other day. The question I would like to discuss (if this makes no sense) is: "is narrative the best way to approach theology"?
Or, perhaps:
"Narrative has the capacity to be generative of meaning rather than reducible to a kernel of truth."
What I wrote:
"What we have in narrative is a binding together of word and event: the event is described and given coherence by the application of the shape and categories of narrative. Narrative applies a causal and teleological form to events as we experience them; though this is not altogether arbitrary. The sequentiality of events invites the search for causal links between them. This is something we recognize even in our own bodies: as they change over time, collecting scars and wrinkles, we experience in ourselves the results and effects of our experiences. Our memories, also, tend to make sense of our past by narrating it to us (as we have seen). This is not to say that our narrating of the events of our experience is the final truth about them; or, that every account that we give of events we have experienced is absolutely comprehensive. It is the tracing of a path through a forest as best we can: though we do no see every tree in the forest, and though at times the going is rough, and we lose our bearings, we still are able to make our way. Though there is difficulty, there is not incoherence, necessarily.
The advantage of an emphasis on narrative is the ability that narratives have to present, simply and irreducibly, a complex account of reality. This again accords to human experience and adds to the explanatory power and intrigue of narrative. Narrative has the capacity to be generative of meaning rather than reducible to a kernel of truth. Joseph Conrad’s minor narrator in Heart of Darkness says of the great story-teller Marlow: “…to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze…” We need not, perhaps, be as pessimistic as to speak of a “haze”; but still, this is a good description of how meaning clings to narrative and is generated by it. Readers do not read them well if they attempt to strip away the narrative husk to reveal the meaning lying dormant within."
I wrote this in an attempt to get a methodological section going the other day. The question I would like to discuss (if this makes no sense) is: "is narrative the best way to approach theology"?
Or, perhaps:
"Narrative has the capacity to be generative of meaning rather than reducible to a kernel of truth."
What I wrote:
"What we have in narrative is a binding together of word and event: the event is described and given coherence by the application of the shape and categories of narrative. Narrative applies a causal and teleological form to events as we experience them; though this is not altogether arbitrary. The sequentiality of events invites the search for causal links between them. This is something we recognize even in our own bodies: as they change over time, collecting scars and wrinkles, we experience in ourselves the results and effects of our experiences. Our memories, also, tend to make sense of our past by narrating it to us (as we have seen). This is not to say that our narrating of the events of our experience is the final truth about them; or, that every account that we give of events we have experienced is absolutely comprehensive. It is the tracing of a path through a forest as best we can: though we do no see every tree in the forest, and though at times the going is rough, and we lose our bearings, we still are able to make our way. Though there is difficulty, there is not incoherence, necessarily.
The advantage of an emphasis on narrative is the ability that narratives have to present, simply and irreducibly, a complex account of reality. This again accords to human experience and adds to the explanatory power and intrigue of narrative. Narrative has the capacity to be generative of meaning rather than reducible to a kernel of truth. Joseph Conrad’s minor narrator in Heart of Darkness says of the great story-teller Marlow: “…to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze…” We need not, perhaps, be as pessimistic as to speak of a “haze”; but still, this is a good description of how meaning clings to narrative and is generated by it. Readers do not read them well if they attempt to strip away the narrative husk to reveal the meaning lying dormant within."
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Patriotism
can a Christian be patriotic?
I am a proud Aussie: however, my recent study has given my cause to rethink this nationalistic pride.
Is nationalism and patriotism really something that the followers of Jesus have any truck with?
Isn't patriotism one of the uglier things we see around?
Example: why should you buy Australian or British given that the citizens of other countries are my neighbours also?
I am a proud Aussie: however, my recent study has given my cause to rethink this nationalistic pride.
Is nationalism and patriotism really something that the followers of Jesus have any truck with?
Isn't patriotism one of the uglier things we see around?
Example: why should you buy Australian or British given that the citizens of other countries are my neighbours also?
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
sacraments
Karen wrote asking about the sacraments: so some thoughts!
Part of the heritage of living in a society where the Protestant-Catholic divide used to be more prominent in our consciousness than it now is is an extreme jitteriness about the sacraments. In evangelical Anglican churches, we have been so afraid of appearing Catholic, or of appearing to say that the sacraments actually do something, that we have denuded the sacraments of any significance in our church life entirely. It was also part of a reductionistic and rationalistic turn in Sydney Anglican theology (in my opinion) of which Broughton Knox was the father.
This was an unfortunate and unnecessary overreaction which has robbed a generation of hearing the power of the Word of God preached in this way. The sacraments are powerful precisely because they are the enacted word of God - and the word of God is powerful indeed! It is a shame, because by focussing on controversy, we became afraid of doing something wrong and so missed out on something that is so very good. Of course you don't have to be baptised, if it is understood as a work that achieves your salvation. But you do have to do it as a command of the Lord Jesus. The logic here is the same as saying "you don't need to have sex to be married - sex is only the symbolic physical enactment of your marriage, and we are beyond it and also, people often mistake the symbolic physical enactment for the real thing so we should avoid confusion by making sure we never even appear to have sex."
I think there is an important principle BEHIND the issue for evangelicals however. Do we do only that which is ordained in the Bible? Or, given that the Bible does not speak about many matters, do we listen to and give heed to tradition in its stead? For example, the Bible tells us not very much about how the Lord's Supper was celebrated. But since the earliest times (and I mean the very earliest times) it has been celebrated in a particular form. Isn't that worth something? I am not saying that it has an absolute authority, but surely it allows that this was the way in which early Christians understood this matter and so we would not be wrong to do the same.
Part of the heritage of living in a society where the Protestant-Catholic divide used to be more prominent in our consciousness than it now is is an extreme jitteriness about the sacraments. In evangelical Anglican churches, we have been so afraid of appearing Catholic, or of appearing to say that the sacraments actually do something, that we have denuded the sacraments of any significance in our church life entirely. It was also part of a reductionistic and rationalistic turn in Sydney Anglican theology (in my opinion) of which Broughton Knox was the father.
This was an unfortunate and unnecessary overreaction which has robbed a generation of hearing the power of the Word of God preached in this way. The sacraments are powerful precisely because they are the enacted word of God - and the word of God is powerful indeed! It is a shame, because by focussing on controversy, we became afraid of doing something wrong and so missed out on something that is so very good. Of course you don't have to be baptised, if it is understood as a work that achieves your salvation. But you do have to do it as a command of the Lord Jesus. The logic here is the same as saying "you don't need to have sex to be married - sex is only the symbolic physical enactment of your marriage, and we are beyond it and also, people often mistake the symbolic physical enactment for the real thing so we should avoid confusion by making sure we never even appear to have sex."
I think there is an important principle BEHIND the issue for evangelicals however. Do we do only that which is ordained in the Bible? Or, given that the Bible does not speak about many matters, do we listen to and give heed to tradition in its stead? For example, the Bible tells us not very much about how the Lord's Supper was celebrated. But since the earliest times (and I mean the very earliest times) it has been celebrated in a particular form. Isn't that worth something? I am not saying that it has an absolute authority, but surely it allows that this was the way in which early Christians understood this matter and so we would not be wrong to do the same.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
The Third Temptation
In Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, Thomas is visited by four mysterious "tempters". Each has a different path to offer him.
The first offers to him the path of sensuality and the good life.
The second points out to Thomas the possibilities of political power that lay before him in returning to the king’s side – even the good he may do by means of this power. After all, as he puts it: ‘Power is present. Holiness hereafter.’
The third Tempter, though similarly a tempter to power, conversely offers him the chance of an allegiance of church authority with the barons, in the name of the people and true patriotism, in open defiance of the king.
It is this third temptation that interests me today.
It is a nice alternative to the violent death of the martyr, isn't it? It is the possibility of a neat power-sharing arrangement. And it is possible to rationalise it, too, because the church can in this temptation (apparently) remain the church and be itself but do so in coalition with earthly powers in a revolution. Think what good could be achieved by this mighty conjoining of the two! Think what new possibilities emerge from the uniting of the temporal and the spiritual!
Thomas of course renounces this path on his way to martyr's death. Which leads to a question: How exactly is it that martyrdom is found in renouncing a patriotic and possibily democratic sharing of power? Why is the martyr's path different to this one?
Thomas' answer is a good one:
If the Archbishop cannot trust the Throne,
He has good cause to trust none but God alone.
In other words, though the monarch may be corrupt and monarchy as a system of power undesireable, there is no alternative type of human political system to which a Christian may give absolute trust. Democracy, for example, for all its virtues, is not to be trusted any more than monarchy is; if you can't trust Sadam, how can you trust those who work for his undoing? (we might say). (an interesting question to put to Dietrich Bonhoeffer perhaps?) I think sometimes that US rhetoric about democracy posits democracy as an absolute and rational good, negelecting the nature of practices of government as embedded historically in a people-group or nation. That is to say, you can't make Iraq a democracy by declaring it so: it has no tradition of democracy.
The martyr witnesses to the power and trustworthiness of God alone. He or she does not court open rebellion against the ruling authority, or seek to engineer regime-change in the idealistic hope that the alternative government will be any better. The martyr is not swayed by nationalist fervour.
That is not to say that martyrdom does not bring about regime-change, or radically alter the shape of governments. The Constantinian revolution - perhaps the most remarkable transformation of a political landscape history has ever seen - was the great victory of the army of martyrs, who fought against the Emperor while remaining loyal to him as God's ordained ruler. This they did by dying in the arenas. They publically witnessed to a greater power than the absolute power of Rome itself - can you imagine it? - and in doing so exposed the facade of Rome's power.
The first offers to him the path of sensuality and the good life.
The second points out to Thomas the possibilities of political power that lay before him in returning to the king’s side – even the good he may do by means of this power. After all, as he puts it: ‘Power is present. Holiness hereafter.’
The third Tempter, though similarly a tempter to power, conversely offers him the chance of an allegiance of church authority with the barons, in the name of the people and true patriotism, in open defiance of the king.
It is this third temptation that interests me today.
It is a nice alternative to the violent death of the martyr, isn't it? It is the possibility of a neat power-sharing arrangement. And it is possible to rationalise it, too, because the church can in this temptation (apparently) remain the church and be itself but do so in coalition with earthly powers in a revolution. Think what good could be achieved by this mighty conjoining of the two! Think what new possibilities emerge from the uniting of the temporal and the spiritual!
Thomas of course renounces this path on his way to martyr's death. Which leads to a question: How exactly is it that martyrdom is found in renouncing a patriotic and possibily democratic sharing of power? Why is the martyr's path different to this one?
Thomas' answer is a good one:
If the Archbishop cannot trust the Throne,
He has good cause to trust none but God alone.
In other words, though the monarch may be corrupt and monarchy as a system of power undesireable, there is no alternative type of human political system to which a Christian may give absolute trust. Democracy, for example, for all its virtues, is not to be trusted any more than monarchy is; if you can't trust Sadam, how can you trust those who work for his undoing? (we might say). (an interesting question to put to Dietrich Bonhoeffer perhaps?) I think sometimes that US rhetoric about democracy posits democracy as an absolute and rational good, negelecting the nature of practices of government as embedded historically in a people-group or nation. That is to say, you can't make Iraq a democracy by declaring it so: it has no tradition of democracy.
The martyr witnesses to the power and trustworthiness of God alone. He or she does not court open rebellion against the ruling authority, or seek to engineer regime-change in the idealistic hope that the alternative government will be any better. The martyr is not swayed by nationalist fervour.
That is not to say that martyrdom does not bring about regime-change, or radically alter the shape of governments. The Constantinian revolution - perhaps the most remarkable transformation of a political landscape history has ever seen - was the great victory of the army of martyrs, who fought against the Emperor while remaining loyal to him as God's ordained ruler. This they did by dying in the arenas. They publically witnessed to a greater power than the absolute power of Rome itself - can you imagine it? - and in doing so exposed the facade of Rome's power.
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
inner/outer
Well, and I thought the anonymity issue would spark off some real HEAT...
I watch a lot of bad tv. It is an addiction I am trying to break. HOWEVER, one observation I make of a lot of what I call "makeover shows" is that they assume a particular relationship between an inner self and an outer self.
What inevitable happens is that they get you a new outer self - wardrobe, weightloss, plastic surgery, makeover, organise your house, whatever - and then make all these claims about the inner self having changed. "I am a totally new person" - because I have had a haircut.
Now, at first I laughed at this. How silly. Of course the inner self is the same self - changing the outer is merely window-dressing, merely surface level change that doesn't effect the "real" me.
But then, I thought, "actually, there is something true about this. The outer self is not a lesser self or merely a means by which we experience the world. It IS ourself in the world. So change it, and there are at least inner effects...."
or something like that...
I watch a lot of bad tv. It is an addiction I am trying to break. HOWEVER, one observation I make of a lot of what I call "makeover shows" is that they assume a particular relationship between an inner self and an outer self.
What inevitable happens is that they get you a new outer self - wardrobe, weightloss, plastic surgery, makeover, organise your house, whatever - and then make all these claims about the inner self having changed. "I am a totally new person" - because I have had a haircut.
Now, at first I laughed at this. How silly. Of course the inner self is the same self - changing the outer is merely window-dressing, merely surface level change that doesn't effect the "real" me.
But then, I thought, "actually, there is something true about this. The outer self is not a lesser self or merely a means by which we experience the world. It IS ourself in the world. So change it, and there are at least inner effects...."
or something like that...
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Anonymity
Well here's an issue:
It strikes me that the web affords you the possibility of acting in an entirely anonymous way in all sorts of areas. I have had several experiences of people on message boards speaking anonymously in a way that is extremely offensive and would be unacceptable if they were a face and/or a name. Check out "ship of fools" if you want to see what I mean.
It feels kinda wrong to me. I just think that you should be accountable for your words as well as your actions. And online, you aren't a character in a story - you are a real actor, no matter how virtual your identity. Your words and deeds still attach to you in some way (I believe). There isn't a suspension of the ethical in the virtual realm - or is there?
There are of course people who use pseudonyms more like nicknames, and their identities are easily traceable if anyone should care.
So, what ethical parameters could there be for using anonymity? If any?
(a thought: virtual interaction has the same moral temptation as overseas travel - if you go somewhere where no-one knows you, then you can behave in a way that those who know you wouldn't recognise as true to you as they know you... it feels like a place without consequences.)
It strikes me that the web affords you the possibility of acting in an entirely anonymous way in all sorts of areas. I have had several experiences of people on message boards speaking anonymously in a way that is extremely offensive and would be unacceptable if they were a face and/or a name. Check out "ship of fools" if you want to see what I mean.
It feels kinda wrong to me. I just think that you should be accountable for your words as well as your actions. And online, you aren't a character in a story - you are a real actor, no matter how virtual your identity. Your words and deeds still attach to you in some way (I believe). There isn't a suspension of the ethical in the virtual realm - or is there?
There are of course people who use pseudonyms more like nicknames, and their identities are easily traceable if anyone should care.
So, what ethical parameters could there be for using anonymity? If any?
(a thought: virtual interaction has the same moral temptation as overseas travel - if you go somewhere where no-one knows you, then you can behave in a way that those who know you wouldn't recognise as true to you as they know you... it feels like a place without consequences.)
Pragmatism
Here's a ministry issue.
It's particularly relevant to the diocese of Sydney, where I am from, but also to evangelicalism around the world.
It seems that the attitude of "whatever works" (to promote the gospel of course) is prevalent in our churches. That is, we have a principled end, but are entirely pragmatic about the means to get there.
So, whatever structural or political means are necessary to achieve the ends we will do. We will concede everything to our culture in order to get them into church: marketing the church and even Jesus like a product, making Christianity fit with the lifestyle of our suburb, and so on.
It takes different forms wherever you go. Sydney Anglicans for example will treat the political process of the denomination as a means to an end and do whatever it takes no matter how tough it seems, because of the ends in view.
TS Eliot says:
This last temptation is the greatest treason
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.
I think we tend to do the opposite: The wrong deed for the right reason...
In my view, pragmatism is a vile creeping poison. But what do others think?
It's particularly relevant to the diocese of Sydney, where I am from, but also to evangelicalism around the world.
It seems that the attitude of "whatever works" (to promote the gospel of course) is prevalent in our churches. That is, we have a principled end, but are entirely pragmatic about the means to get there.
So, whatever structural or political means are necessary to achieve the ends we will do. We will concede everything to our culture in order to get them into church: marketing the church and even Jesus like a product, making Christianity fit with the lifestyle of our suburb, and so on.
It takes different forms wherever you go. Sydney Anglicans for example will treat the political process of the denomination as a means to an end and do whatever it takes no matter how tough it seems, because of the ends in view.
TS Eliot says:
This last temptation is the greatest treason
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.
I think we tend to do the opposite: The wrong deed for the right reason...
In my view, pragmatism is a vile creeping poison. But what do others think?
The Art of Blogging
Ok, I have just realised some things about blogging.
Firstly, you have to keep your entries SHORT in order that people can have a quick look and get something. Fair enough!
Second, you have to be regular in adding to your blog, or regular users give up looking.
Third, you have to keep monitoring and engaging with discussions.
Have I got it?
Firstly, you have to keep your entries SHORT in order that people can have a quick look and get something. Fair enough!
Second, you have to be regular in adding to your blog, or regular users give up looking.
Third, you have to keep monitoring and engaging with discussions.
Have I got it?
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