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Kempis on Suffering

“Jesus has many lovers of His heavenly kingdom, but few bearers of his cross. He has many seekers of consolation, but few of tribulation. He finds many companions at His feasting, but few at his fasting. All desire to rejoice in him; few are willing to endure anything for him. Many follow Jesus as far as the breaking of bread, but few to the drinking of the cup of his passion. Many reverence his miracles, but few will follow the shame of his cross. Many love Jesus as long as no adversaries befall them. Many praise and bless him so long as they receive some consolation from him. But if Jesus hide himself and leave them but for a brief time, they begin to complain or become overly despondent in mind.”

Thomas a’ Kempis

Fish Get's it Right

Stanley Fish's article God-talk helps me to think through some of what has been bantered about on this blog and in some off-line discussions over the past few weeks. As always, it takes someone much more eloquent than I to make sense of what I'm thinking. I don't agree with everything he's saying, but I like general line of advance. Thanks to Nate Jackson for sending me a link to this great article. If you are brave, read part 2 as well. A few noteworthy quotes:

“Ditchkins,” Eagleton observes, cannot ground his belief “in the value of individual freedom” in scientific observation. It is for him an article of faith, and once in place, it generates facts and reasons and judgments of right and wrong. “Faith and knowledge,” Eagleton concludes, are not antithetical but “interwoven.” You can’t have one without the other, despite the Satanic claim that you can go it alone by applying your own independent intellect to an unmediated reality: “All reasoning is conducted within the ambit of some sort of faith, attraction, inclination, orientation, predisposition, or prior commitment.” Meaning, value and truth are not “reducible to the facts themselves, in the sense of being ineluctably motivated by a bare account of them.” Which is to say that there is no such thing as a bare account of them. (Here, as many have noted, is where religion and postmodernism meet.)"

“A society of packaged fulfillment, administered desire, managerialized politics and consumerist economics is unlikely to cut to the depth where theological questions can ever be properly raised.”

"Eagleton punctures the complacency of these questions when he turns the tables and applies the label of “superstition” to the idea of progress. It is a superstition — an idol or “a belief not logically related to a course of events” (American Heritage Dictionary) — because it is blind to what is now done in its name: “The language of enlightenment has been hijacked in the name of corporate greed, the police state, a politically compromised science, and a permanent war economy,” all in the service, Eagleton contends, of an empty suburbanism that produces ever more things without any care as to whether or not the things produced have true value."

From a comment someone writes: "I challenge anyone to construct an argument proving reason's legitimacy without presupposing it."

Secrets in the Dark

“Humanly speaking, if we have any chance to survive, I suspect that it is men and women who act out of that deep impulse (which is best described with words like tolerance, compassion, sanity, hope, justice, love & self-sacrifice) who are our chance. By no means will they themselves bring about the Kingdom of God. It is God alone who brings about his Kingdom…We cannot make the Kingdom of God happen, but we can put out palm leaves as it draws near. We can be kind to each other. We can be kind to ourselves. We can drive back the darkness a little. We can make green places within ourselves and among ourselves where God can make his Kingdom happen.”

- Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark

Christianity and the Social Crisis

"A man's sympathy is a more decisive fact in his activity than his judgment." p.9

Philosophy

I had a friend throw Colossians 2:8 at me the other day. We were having a conversation and he was trying to correct what he thought was a flaw in my current spiritual path. He saw me as too open to the post-modern philosophies of the day and that this was allowing me to let too much “doubt” in and made my categories of truth too fluid – not so black and white. He wanted to talk about truth and knowing, concepts he seemed to have a great deal at stake with. As he tried to reckon with me he would accuse me of “not knowing my own mind” and other equally dualistic things. Several times he attempted to make philosophy the whipping boy and explain to me why my current trajectory seemed dangerous to him, and what the truth, and how I’m going astray… I appreciate him as a friend and I am truly certain that what he was saying to me was out of genuine love.

Colossians 2:8 says, “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ,” which on the surface seems to bolster his claim. But there is more to this than meets the eye. First of all – who memorizes this verse and then whips it out in a conversation about epistemology? It’s important to allow the scripture to shape us and form us into the image of Christ. It’s also important not to shape the scripture into what we want it to be and then use it as a blunt instrument to beat others into submission.

The passage warns us to not let anyone take us captive through philosophy. English gets us into all kinds of trouble here because what my friend was doing is saying essentially, “post-modernity is just the philosophy of the day and you are too into it – it’s making you fuzzy on what truth is, what knowledge is,” which makes sense if you read the text from a black and white framework and don’t know Greek. But the word philosophy in the Greek is the word “philo-sophia.” Philo is love, Sophia is wisdom. Literally the word means love of wisdom. Obviously we need to research more to understand the context. In this context, the lectionaries I consulted taught me this means, “used either of zeal for or skill in any art or science, any branch of knowledge.”

The verse isn’t warning against use of modern/post-modern or any other philosophical system. The verse is actually saying, “Don’t let anyone take you captive through love of knowledge – or love of their knowledge system.” It’s warning us against people who want to divide the field by saying, “I’m right and you are wrong…you need to capitulate or I’m leaving.”

So I feel a little better after having worked through Colossians 2:8 with an open mind. It gives us a really great warning. When you feel right (and feel superior because you think you are right), and then you divide the field because of your right-ness, you are being held captive by a belief system which has nothing to do with love, peace, and joy – it has nothing to do with faith. Post-modernity isn’t evil, it’s not God & it’s not faith, but it’s just a way of working with the world we live in. We can take it or leave it. We can learn to understand it and allow it to help us know God better – but we don’t follow it, we follow Jesus. By the same token – those who attack it with modernist epistemologies must be careful not to be held captive by modernity. More insidious is that they must not be held captive by dualistic thought. Jesus was not a dualistic thinker. He always destroyed dualisms and healed them when he could.

Here’s hoping that God heals my friend. Here’s hoping that he will one day grow beyond the dualisms and the knowledge-system based need to divide the field. Here’s hoping that we can all, with Jesus, transcend our own belief systems and experience truth, hope, peace…and maybe even love.

Truth is a person

As I've been reflecting on this week's lectionary passage for Sunday, and upon last weeks passage and sermon, I'm still enthralled with the concept of truth in the scriptures. Today's lectionary reading fed the fire as well. These are the two passages that stoked my imagination and just a couple of thoughts.

1 John 5
20And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. 21Little children, keep yourselves from idols.

[It's interesting that the writer asserts the goal is understanding, not simply knowledge. Truth is not construed as a concept, but a person, "him who is true."]

1 John 3
18Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. 19And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him 20whenever our hearts condemn us;

[truth here is connected to an action, a via, a way of being, v.18. And that as persons we can know we are from the truth and can be reassured before him who is truth.]