Happy Easter! Just got back from the sunrise service at Freedom Fellowship. It's my favorite church service of the year. A poem gathering my thoughts from this morning:

The church is dark
as we enter
just a few small flickering candles
dancing on the windowsills
keeping the vigil
so it is hard to see you
huddled, as we are, in what seems the gloaming
which it isn't
because the dawn is coming
with its soft light
accompanied by birdsong
to dance through the open door
(shouldn't every church door stand open
always?)
and fill the long windows with flames
allowing us, now in the Easter light, to see each other
to see you, my sisters, my brothers
as you dance in the aisles
and listen to the story
of the one who has called us here
and given us life, and each other
as we pass the bread of heaven
and share what was split
by the Lamb who was slain
He is risen, you say
and we respond
as the day has now arrived
He is risen indeed

Two years ago a wrote a meditation about the odd Easter ending in the gospel of Mark.

Why is there fear on Easter Sunday?

The oldest gospel we have, the gospel of Mark, ends in the most curious of ways:

When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?”

But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”

Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.

The ending is strange. We've come to associate joy with Easter. Christ is risen! And yet, here in Mark the news of the Risen Lord brings not joy, but fear.

Why?

We find a similar reaction to the first proclamation to the gospel. On Pentecost Peter ends his sermon in Jerusalem with this accusation: "Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah." Finding blood on their hands the people call out, not without some alarm: "What shall we do?"

Why is there fear on Easter Sunday?

There is fear on Easter because according to the moral calculus of our world--"an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth"--after the death of Jesus lives are now in the balance. Vengeance is now the order of the day. Having crucified, abandoned or betrayed Jesus there is fear of retribution. The blood of Jesus, having soaked deep into the soil of Jerusalem, is crying out. Just like the blood of Abel crying out against Cain:

Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

The LORD said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground."

Easter is not Good News for the guilty. It is not Good News to find out that your victim is alive. We know what's coming. We've seen the Hollywood movies where the victim comes back from the dead to seek revenge. So if Jesus is alive, if the victim has come back, we had better hide in fear. Judgment day is coming.

That is how we expect the story to go. As did, it seems, those who first encountered or heard about the resurrection. And we can understand why they jumped to this conclusion. Every story we know works this way. The victim comes back, kills the bad guys and the moral calculus of the Cosmos is balanced again. This is the Hollywood Ending. And we thrill to the violence of the victim. This is justified violence. So we cheer for it. The victim has been wronged so everything the victim does to get even (and those words are telling) is right, good, and justified. In short, everything in human psychology and human moral history--and even the Bible to this point--suggests that Easter shouldn't be Good News for the perpetrators, the ones who betrayed, fled, stood at a distance, washed their hands, or called out for his death. All these, and you and I, are going to face the victim on judgment day. And that isn't going to go well for us. We have blood on our hands.

And yet, in a way we cannot comprehend, which is why we call it grace, this story ends up going in a very different, unprecedented direction. The blood of Jesus doesn't cry out for vengeance. The blood of Jesus is different from the blood of Abel, the archetype of all victims.

In the words of Hebrews 12 the blood of Jesus "speaks a better word than the blood of Abel."

What is this better word? It is this. Where Abel's blood cries "Vengeance!," the blood of Jesus cries "Peace!" Where Abel's blood cries "Guilty!," the blood of Jesus cries "Forgiveness!"

This is not the Judgment Day we were expecting. The victim returns to us and shows us the wounds we inflicted, yet brings to us no hate, blood lust, condemnation, or revenge. Only love, forgiveness, grace, and peace.

The joy of Easter, it seems, requires a first wave of fear. It is a joy of relief. A joy of finding ourselves inexplicably forgiven. And in accepting this forgiveness we step into this new story, this new way of living that is so very, very different from the rounds of victimage and vengeance found in the world. The way of living by the sword and dying by the sword. Swords that are physical, economic, social, verbal and psychological--there are so many ways we have of wounding each other. There are many kinds of swords to live by and die by.

But by stepping into Jesus' story, his way of life, we set those weapons aside. We have a new story. A new way to live. Receiving forgiveness from our victim we learn to forgive each other, shutting down the cycles of violence and hate. The hate stops here, with us. Or more precisely, it stops with Jesus, the primal victim who returned on Easter to start a new story, to inaugurate a New Heaven and a New Earth. And as we forgive others, Jesus says, so will we be forgiven. As Rowan Williams has written about the Easter narratives in the bible:

The preaching of the resurrection, as we have seen, is not addressed to an abstract audience: the victim involved is the victim of the hearers. We are, insistently and relentlessly, in Jerusalem, confronted therefore with a victim who is our victim. When we make victims, when we embark on condemnation, exclusion, violence, the diminution or oppression of anyone, when we set ourselves up as judges, we are exposed to judgment (as Jesus himself asserts in Matt. 7:1-2), and we turn away from salvation. To hear the good news of salvation, to be converted, is to turn back to the condemned and rejected, acknowledging that there is hope nowhere else.

Easter isn't just the shock of being forgiven by our victim. Easter is about living under the blood of Jesus rather than the blood of Abel. Easter is about learning to speak those better words--peace, forgiveness, grace, mercy and love--in a world trapped in reciprocal bouts of violence, from the petty to the genocidal. We learn to forgive as we have been forgiven. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians:

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors...

We are Christ's ambassadors, speaking his better words.

Today is Easter Sunday. Today Christians proclaim that our victim has come back from the dead and is now looking for us. It's news that makes us want to hide in fear or cry out, like they did at Pentecost, "What shall we do!?"

By any human reckoning Easter shouldn't be Good News.

But it is.

Praise be to God.

Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?

For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.

He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.

And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.

Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.

Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Given that tomorrow is Good Friday, we'll do Benedict a day early this week.
 
The life of Benedict's monastery was communistic, similar to the life of the early Christians:

Acts 4.32-35
All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

This mode of life is described in Chapters 33 and 34 of The Rule of St. Benedict. In Chapter 33 private ownership is rejected in favor of communal sharing:

¹Above all, this evil practice must be uprooted and removed from the monastery. ²We mean that without an order from the abbot, no one may presume to give, receive ³or retain anything as his own...⁶All things should be the common possession of all...

In Chapter 34 distribution according to need is discussed:

¹It is written: "Distribution was made to each one as he has need" (Acts 4:35). ²By this we do not imply that there should be favoritism--God forbid--but rather consideration for weaknesses. ³Whoever needs less should thank God and not be distressed, ⁴but whoever needs more should feel humble because of his weakness...

Now you may not be aware of this, but the label "communism" is somewhat controversial in the United States of America. But I led with that label regarding the early church because we are all, in many areas of our lives, communistic. And that's a good thing.

The psychologist Alan Fiske has argued that human relations can be described as one of four types:

1. Communal sharing
2. Equity matching
3. Authority ranking
4. Market Pricing

For most of human history human relationships were dominated by the first three. Market pricing is a relatively recent development, at least in the ubiquitous form we observe today where markets are increasingly the medium though which we relate to each other.

Communal sharing is what we'd call communism. The guiding idea was articulated by Karl Marx: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." This is the way we relate to each other in family life, a kinship-based relationality adopted by the early church and the Christian monastic movement. Everybody pitches in as they are able and everyone gets what they need depending upon their need. Debits and favors aren't tracked (that's Equity matching, tit-for-tat reciprocity). Orders aren't being given to subordinates or slaves (Authority ranking). We aren't charging for services (Market pricing). If my wife is sick and I nurse her for a few days I don't say "You owe me one" or "That'll be $50." Neither does my wife command me to nurse her. When she or my boys are in need I help. When I am in need they help me. That's communal sharing, communism. 

To be sure, it is impossible to create communal sharing relations among a group of strangers. Lacking a familial bond strangers opt for other forms of relationality: reciprocity norms ("you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours."), command structures, or markets. The observation here is that while these forms of relationality are effective in coordinating strangers they also signal a sort of failure, the dissolution of the family bond. We are not brothers and sisters. We are citizens, subordinates and customers. We respond to orders, exchange favors, or give each other money.

But even within these authority or marketplace structures the deep bedrock of communistic relationality never really goes away. It's always there operating in the background and supporting the web of human sociability and community. This is the argument made by David Graeber in his book Debt. In fact, Graeber argues that a "baseline communism" is even what make capitalism work:

"[C]ommunism" is not some magical utopia, and neither does it have anything to do with ownership of the means of production. It is something that exists right now--that exists, to some degree, in any human society, although there has never been one in which everything has been organized in that way, and it would be difficult to imagine how there could be. All of us act like communists a good deal of the time. None of us acts like a communist consistently. "Communistic society"--in the sense of a society organized exclusively on that single principle--could never exist. But all social systems, even economic systems like capitalism, have always been built on top of a bedrock of actually-existing communism.

Starting, as I say, from the principle of "from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs" allows us to look past the question of individual or private ownership (which is often little more than formal legality anyway) and at much more immediate and practical questions of who has access to what sorts of things and under what conditions. Whenever it is the operative principle, even if it's just two people who are interacting, we can say we are in the presence of this sort of communism.

Almost everyone follows this principle if they are collaborating on some common project...The reason is simple efficiency...if you really care about getting something done, the most efficient way to go about it is obviously to allocate tasks by ability and give people whatever they need to do them. One might even say that it's one of the scandals of capitalism that most capitalist firms, internally, operate communistically...

[I]n the immediate wake of great disasters--a flood, a blackout, or an economic collapse--people tend to behave the same way, reverting to a rough-and-ready communism. However briefly, hierarchies and markets and the like become luxuries that no one can afford. Anyone who has lived through such a moment can speak to their peculiar qualities, the way that strangers become sisters and brothers and human society itself seems to be reborn. This is important, because it shows that we are not simply talking about cooperation. In fact, communism is the foundation of all human sociability. It is what makes society possible...

The point being in all this is that the church, along with Christian monastic communities, is a place where this sort of "baseline communism" is cultivated and enjoyed. A place where family relationality--communal sharing per Fiske or baseline communism per Graeber--is the norm we are striving for. In this sense, we are always striving to be communists.

A heads up that I join Raborn Johnson for another Beyond the Box podcast to talk about Unclean and the psychology of purity in the Christian experience.

You can listen to the podcast at the Beyond the Box website and join the conversation there or on the Beyond the Box Facebook page.

As we move through Holy Week I thought we could take a look back over Lent. What did you do for Lent? And how did that go?

I gave up detours for Lent.

I mentioned this over the weekend during one of my classes at the Tulsa Workshop. I was talking about the Little Way of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. I specifically mentioned this passage from A Story of a Soul:

The Lord, in the Gospel, explains in what His new commandment consists. He says in St. Matthew: "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies...pray for those who persecute you." No doubt, we don't have any enemies in Carmel, but there are feelings. One feels attracted to this Sister, whereas with regard to another, one would make a long detour in order to avoid meeting her. And so, without knowing it, she becomes the subject of persecution. Well, Jesus is telling me that it is this Sister who must be loved...

Thérèse describes in this passage how we often take "detours" around the annoying and unlikable people in our lives. Thérèse goes so far as to describe these detours as forms of persecution. Consequently, a practice of the Little Way involves not taking these detours and seeking out loving interaction with these people in our lives.

So that's one of things I did for Lent. I gave up detours. I tried to welcome everyone in my life. Even when there are...um...feelings.

There's been some illness at the Beck house. The last few weeks Jana and I have been sick. Jana is a teacher's aide at an elementary school and she recently got some Get Well Soon cards made by the 2nd Grade at her school. Some selections of our most favorite cards. And all spellings are preserved:

From Joel:

Let's get this out of you. I hope you get better. Cause we love you.

From Lindsey:

Dear Mrs. Beck,
We all really miss you alot.

Do you like cats? If so, turn to the inside. I hope they cheer you up. Get well soon!

[Inside of card has lots of cat drawings.]

From Savanna:

Hope you get beter soon Mrs. Beck.
Some people do not like sickness. I don't.

From Ashlynn:

Dear Mrs. Beck,
I hope you git beter soon we won't you back so much cose you are funny, fun, and cool.
Love you and like you
The End

From Sara:

Dear Mrs. Beck,
I really, really, really, really, really, really want you to get well soon!

From Sidney:

Get well. Good destroys evil. Evil causes pain and pain is painful.

From Timothy:

You shine.

Thanks kids!

You, most definitely, shine.

Wishing you a blessed Palm Sunday.

Today always reminds me of the Palm Sunday experience I had a couple of years ago with our local Orthodox congregation. From the post reflecting on that day:

A couple of years ago I was doing a lot of research on the theology Eastern Orthodox iconography. That research ultimately led to a class I did at my church, the Highland Church of Christ. Some of that material can be found on my sidebar.

As a part of this class I sought the assistance of Fr. LeMasters, the priest of our local Orthodox church, St. Luke's. Accepting my invitation, Fr. LeMasters came to Highland one Wednesday night to kick off our study. I recall someone coming up to me that night at Highland and saying to me in a low voice, "There is a priest in the atrium. Do you know why a priest is here?" Fr. LeMasters had worn his black clerical clothing with his collar. I just smiled and said, "Oh, that must be Fr. LeMasters! He's here to teach our class tonight on Orthodox iconography."

You just don't hear that kind of stuff at a Church of Christ. But, then again, I tend to break the mold when it comes to our fellowship...

In the classes that followed Fr. LeMasters' class I shared what I had learned about Greek iconography. And then, for the final class, we all went to St. Luke's to hear from the official iconographer of the church. That and to see the icons in their natural habitat. It's one thing to talk about icons. But it's something else to see the icons in a Greek Orthodox church, and to see how the Orthodox interact with them liturgically.

As a part of my preparations for the icon class I had started attending services at St. Luke's. It was sort of like field research. And so it was that I found myself at St. Luke's one Sunday for their Palm Sunday service. I say their Palm Sunday service because the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church celebrate Easter on different days. For more on the history behind this difference see this post of mine on the calendrical craziness associated with the dating of Easter. Needless to say, given that most of us celebrate Easter when the Catholics do, I didn't know it was Palm Sunday when I went to St. Luke's that Sunday.

And the funniest thing happened. In the middle of the service Fr. LeMasters held up a cross and walked down the center aisle toward the main entrance. This, in itself, didn't surprise me. Having been to many a Catholic mass I was used to the priest walking up and down the aisle. But Fr. LeMasters didn't walk up and down the isle. He keep walking and walking...right out of the building. And everyone in the church followed after him.

Now, no one told me this was going to happen or what was going on. All I knew was that the priest just walked out of the building holding a cross aloft with the entire congregation following after him. Quite unexpectedly I found myself alone in the sanctuary. Where had they gone? Where were they going? Were they going to come back? Should I follow?

I quickly looked around and saw that the ladies had left their purses behind. So I figured they would be coming back. Consequently, my first impulse was to shout after the departing crowd, "Y'all just have a good walk wherever you are going! I'll stay here and watch all the valuables! And by the way, does this happen every Sunday!?"

But after a moment of befuddlement and confusion, watching the last person file out of the building, I jumped out of my row and hurried up to the end of the line. I caught up with them about 20 feet past the front door.

Ahead, I could see Fr. LeMasters, in full clerical robes, all white and gold and shimmering in the sunlight, holding the cross aloft and making a circuit around the church parking lot. With the entire congregation following. And me as the caboose.

Now, St. Luke's isn't in a very nice part of town. And some pretty rough looking people were out and about in their front lawns or standing around cars. And there were also kids playing here and there with some riding their bikes past the church. I recall Hip Hop music thumping from some car. And of course everyone looks over at us.

I'm sure we were quite a sight! There was the priest, dressed in full liturgical regalia, holding a golden cross aloft, walking through this impoverished neighborhood. And we, in a line, following this most unlikely of Pied Pipers. And looking around I thought, "You know, maybe someone really should go back and watch all the purses..." The juxtaposition between us and the neighborhood was startling. And unforgettable.

Eventually, Fr. LeMasters made a turn and led us back into the building where the service resumed. It was quite a Palm Sunday. And I'm happy to report that no purses were stolen during our walk through the neighborhood.

I never got a chance to ask Fr. LeMasters about the history of the ritual I had experienced that day, the priest leading the church out of the building on Palm Sunday, but the symbolism of that service has stuck with me. I keep coming back to it over and over again in my mind:

The cross of Jesus leading this flock out of the church building and into the neighborhood, into the world...

That's the kind of Christianity I want to be a part of. And the Orthodox that Palm Sunday helped me see it. An image burned in my heart and mind...

I am a priest following the cross of Jesus out of the church and into the world.

Have a blessed Holy Week.

You might think a chapter in The Rule of St. Benedict entitled "Qualifications of the Monastery Cellarer " would be pretty uninteresting. But I really like this chapter and think it has wide practical value for just about everyone.

The monastery cellarer was someone appointed by the abbot to be in charge of the monastery foodstuffs and function as a general steward. As you might imagine, being put in charge of the food would give you a great deal of power. More, it would expose you to a variety of personal temptations. We can imagine cellarers becoming petty tyrants or acting self-indulgently, availing themselves of the best food in the monastery--good cheese, wine, beer, etc.

I don't think this is much different from what most of us encounter in the workplace. People put in charge, given a little bit of power, become petty tyrants and self-indulgent.

That's easy to point out. What is harder is when we act this way when we are put in charge. So I think this chapter is helpful as it can can be used as a measure of our own behavior in positions of power and authority. 

From The Rule:

Chapter 31
⁶[The Cellarer] should not annoy the brothers. ⁷If any brother happens to make an unreasonable demand of him, he should not reject him with disdain and cause him distress, but reasonably and humbly deny the improper request. ⁸Let him keep watch over his own soul, ever mindful of that saying of the Apostle: "He who serves well secures a good standing for himself" (1 Tim. 3:13). ⁹He must show every care and concern for the sick, children, guests and the poor, knowing for certain that he will be held accountable for all of them on the day of judgment. ¹⁰He will regard all utensils and goods of the monastery as sacred vessels of the altar, ¹¹aware that nothing is to be neglected. ¹²He should not be prone to greed, nor be wasteful and extravagant with the goods of the monastery, but should do everything with moderation and according to the abbot's orders.

¹³Above all, let him be humble. If goods are not available to meet a request, he will offer a kind word in reply...¹⁶He will provide the brothers their allotted amount of food without any pride or delay...

Some general rules here to measure ourselves by:

1. Treat even improper or inappropriate requests with kindness and humility. Say no, but be respectful and kind.
2. Pay attention to the weakest ones under your care or influence.
3. Treat the things of your workplace with care, as if they were your own belongings.
4. Don't use your position to be self-indulgent (e.g., don't grant yourself favors, allowances, or shortcuts you don't allow others to take).
5. Don't act like legitimate requests are a hassle or like you are doing people favors. Don't be a petty tyrant.

Ever since the publication of Unclean I've been wrestling with the missional aspects of holiness.

To recap, in Unclean I argue that a suite of psychological factors related to disgust and purity psychology hijack our notions of holiness prompting social exclusion and withdrawal. Thus, I argue in Unclean that, if we are to become missional people of welcome, we must desire "mercy and not sacrifice" by intentionally overcoming these psychological dynamics.

And yet, is there not a place for holiness and moral purity in all this? And if so, how are we to pursue holiness while avoiding everything I warn about in Unclean?

The basic argument I want to make by way of an answer is that holiness is a means to an end rather than an end in itself. Holiness is a bit of missional equipment, a missional tool. What sort of tool?

I take my cue here from Jesus, how he frames the relationship between holiness and mission in his High Priestly Prayer in John:

John 17.15-19
My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. 

The language of holiness--"sanctify"--and mission--"sent"--intermingle in the text. Jesus prays for his disciples to be sanctified--to be set apart, to be holy. But why? As an end in itself? No, as a means to an end, a missional end, being sent out into the world.

More specifically, holiness is revealed to be a form of protection that equips us to be missional people. In this, holiness doesn't take us out of the world but is the means by which be become radically available to the world.

Let me give a concrete example of what I'm talking about.

Let's talk about sex.

Why should we pursue sexual purity? Why should we be holy when it comes to sex?

The answer that we have tended to hear is that sexual purity is "what God wants." Consequently, the pursuit of sexual purity becomes an end in itself. But what I'm suggesting is that sexual purity should, rather, be seen as a means to a missional end. Specifically, sexual purity is a form of protection that allows you to be radically available to others.

Let me describe what this looks like from my social location as a married man. How can I be radically available to others--women in particular--if I'm not sexually pure, if I'm not holy? Pushing further, let's say God is sending me into very dark places in the world, sexually speaking. Let's say I find myself ministering to sex workers, women in the adult entertainment industry or with women caught up in sex trafficking. How can I be in the midst of these very dark sexual places if I'm not holy?

And the examples don't have to be dramatic. I'm around lots of women at work. I find myself in mentoring relationships with female undergraduate and graduate students. In friendships with female co-workers. How can I be radically available to these people in my life, an agent of grace, if I'm not sexually holy? Think of examples from your own social location.

I hope all this illustrates why I called holiness a form of protection. Holiness is a form of moral protection that equips us to be missional people, a people radically available to the brokenness of the world. Holiness is apostolic in nature, the equipment needed for those sent into the world as God's emissaries of love and grace.

Tick through other examples beyond sexuality. Think of other "sins" and how each compromises your ability to be radically available to others in particular situations.

In short, holiness isn't a separation from the world. Holiness is what allows us to be radically in and available to the world.

Just as Jesus was radically in and available to the world.

I've been fasting a lot over this last year. Yes, I know, I just broke Jesus's command in Matthew 6.16-18. I'm aware I'm a self-righteous hypocrite.

Still, I wanted to share a psychological observation with you based on my own experience.

If I miss a meal when I'm not fasting my psychological and physiological experience is this: I feel weak and shaky. Feeling this, I think, "I have to eat something to get my blood sugar up."

But when I am fasting, when I'm intentionally skipping a meal, I tend not to feel as shaky or weak or needing to up my blood sugar. I'm not saying that these feelings go completely away, but that it's much, much reduced.

Basically, the mental frame--intentionally versus unintentionally missing a meal--dramatically affects both the psychological and physiological reaction to hunger.

And let me add this. I think there's a mild anxiety reaction when we find that a meal has been missed. If something happens and we don't get time, say, to eat lunch we notice our rumbling tummy or lowered blood sugar and then sort of freak out. "Oh no! I didn't eat lunch! How will I be able to get through the rest of the day!?" Which makes it all worse, both physically and mentally. I think there's an underlying hypervigilance about our bodies in relation to "hunger pains," blood sugar, and caloric intake.

But when you fast you don't have these little panic attacks when your tummy rumbles. The body-monitoring hypervigilance dissipates. Because missing the meal was the plan from the start. And so you just go about your day, not thinking about missing meals or your "energy level." You just calmly carry on.

I recently finished a great little book by Henri Nouwen, The Selfless Way of Christ.

The book contrasts the cultural push for "upward mobility" with Christ's example of "downward mobility." Nouwen's description of the lure of upward mobility and how we work to support its mythology in our culture:

We are taught to conceive of development in terms of an ongoing increase in human potential. Growing up means becoming healthier, stronger, more intelligent, more mature, and more productive. Consequently we hide those who do not affirm this myth of progress, such as the elderly, prisoners, and those with mental disabilities. In our society, we consider the upward move the obvious one while treating the poor cases who cannot keep up as sad misfits, people who have deviated from the normal line of progress.

In contrast to this upward progress, Nouwen points to the downward mobility of Christ:

The story of our salvation stands radically over and against the philosophy of upward mobility. The great paradox which Scripture reveals to us is that real and total freedom is only found through downward mobility. The Word of God came down to us and lived among us as a slave. The divine way is indeed the downward way.

This downward way, thus, marks the path of discipleship and interrupts the mythology of our culture:

The disciple is the one who follows Jesus on his downward path and thus enters with him into new life. The gospel radically subverts the presuppositions of our upwardly mobile society. It is a jarring and unsettling challenge.

Nouwen goes on to discuss the three great temptations of upward mobility:

Three temptations by which we are confronted again and again are the temptation to be relevant, the temptation to be spectacular, and the temptation to be powerful.

Nouwen then reflects on each temptation. Mainly this becomes a discussion about how we form our identities. The desire to be relevant, spectacular or powerful are all attempts to justify our worth and existence before others. In the face of that desire Nouwen asks an unsettling question:

Who am I when nobody pays attention, says thanks, or recognizes my work?

I think that question sits at the root of our spiritual malaise and weakness. We want people to pay attention to us, to recognize us, to give us our due. This is how our identities, worth and significance are grounded. We want to be relevant, spectacular or powerful. So we go through life fishing for such things, a grasping that keeps knocking us off center, spiritually speaking.

I'm mindful here of something St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians (1 Thess 4.11):

Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life.

The juxtaposition here is interesting. Make it your ambition to lead an unambitious life.

One of the most impactful parts of the book is Nouwan's reflection on the temptations of power. As Nouwan observes, "There is almost nothing more difficult to overcome than our desire for power."

Why is that? Because our culture of upward mobility constantly tells us that power is a good thing and that powerlessness is a bad thing:

It seems nearly impossible for us to believe that any good can come from powerlessness. In this country of pioneers and self-made people, in which ambition is praised from the first moment we enter school until we enter the competitive world of free enterprise, we cannot imagine that any good can come from giving up power or not even desiring it. The all-pervasive conviction in our society is that power is a good and that those possessing it can only desire more of it.

And yet, the downward path of Jesus is the way of powerlessness:

Surrounded by so much power, it is very difficult to avoid surrendering to the temptation to seek power like everyone else. But the mystery of our ministry is that we are called to serve not with our power but with our powerlessness. It is through powerlessness that we can enter into solidarity with our fellow human beings, form a community with the weak, and thus reveal the healing, guiding, and sustaining mercy of God. We are called to speak to people not where they have it together but where they are aware of their pain, not where they are in control but where they are trembling and insecure, not where they are self-assured and assertive but where they dare to doubt and raise hard questions; in short, not where they live in the illusion of immortality but where they are ready to face their broken, mortal, and fragile humanity. As followers of Christ, we are sent into the world naked, vulnerable, and weak, and thus we can reach our fellow human beings in their pain and agony and reveal to them the power of God's love and empower them with the power of God's Spirit.

Martyrdom is not gallantly standing before a firing squad...

Usually it is the losing of a job (and so the means to life) because of not taking a loyalty oath, or buying a war bond, or paying a tax. Last month we met a Quaker in Baltimore who had lost a job for refusing to take the loyalty oath required of city employees. Martyrdom is small, hidden, misunderstood. Or if it is a bloody martyrdom, is it the cry in the dark, the terror, the shame, the aloneness, nobody to hear, nobody to suffer with, let alone to save. O, the aloneness of all of us in these days, in all the great moments of our lives, this dying which we do, by little and by little, over a short space of time or over the years.

--Dorothy Day

In Chapters 23-30 of The Rule of St. Benedict we have a variety of chapters regarding discipline, excommunication in particular.

It starts off in Chapter 23:

¹If a brother is found to be stubborn or disobedient or proud, if he grumbles or in any way despises the holy rule and defies the order of his seniors, ²he should be warned twice privately by the seniors in accord with our Lord's injunction (Matt 18:15-16). ³If he does not amend, he must be rebuked publicly in the presence of everyone. ⁴But if even then he does not reform, let him be excommunicated...

Obviously, excommunication is harsh. But what is interesting about Benedict's instructions regarding excommunication are the variety of humanizing aspects he includes. For example, as we note here at the beginning, there are two private warnings and a third public warning. In the next chapter Benedict goes on to talk about degrees of excommunication, from mild to more severe depending upon the issue being addressed.

But here's the most interesting part. After describing how to treat the excommunicated, Benedict goes on to describe in Chapter 27 "The Abbot's Concern For the Excommunicated":

¹The abbot must exercise the utmost care and concern for wayward brothers, because "it is not the healthy who need a physician, but the sick" (Matt 9:12). ²Therefore, he ought to use every skill of a wise physician and send in senpectae, that is, mature and wise brothers ³who, under the cloak of secrecy, may support the wavering brother, urge him to be humble as a way of making satisfaction, and "console him lest he be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow" (2 Cor 2:7). ⁴Rather, as the Apostle also says: "Let love for him be reaffirmed" (2 Cor 2:8), and let all pray for him.

⁵It is the abbot's responsibility to have great concern and to act with all speed, discernment and diligence in order not to lose any of the sheep entrusted to him. ⁶He should realize that he has undertaken care of the sick, not tyranny over the healthy.

What is striking and important here is how the excommunicated are not left alone. In fact, the excommunicated receive special care, supported socially and emotionally by skilled and wise people. During excommunication love is affirmed and reaffirmed. More, in verse 6 we read that the abbot's primary area of care is for these excommunicated. The abbot's primary job isn't ruling over the healthy, but caring for the sick.

I'm struck by this as it's very similar to the argument I made in this meditation on Jesus's instructions to treat erring brothers and sisters "as a tax collector and pagan." The basic idea I argue is that, while on one level there is a social rupture in excommunication, there is engaged, on another level, social connection and embrace.

A third insight that I'd like to share from Gustavo Gutiérrez's book On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent has to do with the relationship between prophecy and worship.

As the subtitle of the Gutiérrez's book indicates, he is looking for ways to properly speak about God in the face of human suffering.

Unsurprisingly, given that he was a founder of liberation theology, Gutiérrez argues that our language about God must be prophetic in nature. Our language should be in solidarity with those who are suffering and align with God's preferential option for the poor and victimized in the world.

Gutiérrez shows that Job himself makes this journey. Though Job is suffering himself as the book continues Job begins to reflect less on his own suffering than upon the sufferings of others, the poor in particular. Even in the midst of his own pain Job's theology becomes other-oriented, focused on the suffering of others. You can see this focus in a passage where Job offers up what is, perhaps, the most stinging prophetic rebuke in the bible of those who exploit the poor:

Job 24.2-14
Evil people steal land by moving the boundary markers.
They steal livestock and put them in their own pastures.
They take the orphan’s donkey
and demand the widow’s ox as security for a loan.
The poor are pushed off the path;
the needy must hide together for safety.
Like wild donkeys in the wilderness,
the poor must spend all their time looking for food,
searching even in the desert for food for their children.
They harvest a field they do not own,
and they glean in the vineyards of the wicked.
All night they lie naked in the cold,
without clothing or covering.
They are soaked by mountain showers,
and they huddle against the rocks for want of a home.

“The wicked snatch a widow’s child from her breast,
taking the baby as security for a loan.
The poor must go about naked, without any clothing.
They harvest food for others while they themselves are starving.
They press out olive oil without being allowed to taste it,
and they tread in the winepress as they suffer from thirst.
The groans of the dying rise from the city,
and the wounded cry for help,
yet God ignores their moaning.

“Wicked people rebel against the light.
They refuse to acknowledge its ways
or stay in its paths.
The murderer rises in the early dawn
to kill the poor and needy;
at night he is a thief.

The indictment of the rich here is searing. This speech is as harsh if not harsher than anything we find the prophets. And in this we see how Job's speech about God--his theology, his God-talk--finds its way forward by becoming properly prophetic, aligned with the plight of the poor and those who are suffering.

That much you'd expect from a liberation theologian. But Gutiérrez goes on to say, and this is the part that interests me, that prophetic speech is not enough. The language of justice is unable to capture all that needs to be captured when we talk about God.

What else is needed?

Gutiérrez argues that we also need the language of contemplation, mystery and worship. We see this in Job at the end of the book when Job, after his encounter with God, moves from prophetic speech to worship. This movement is important as Gutiérrez suggests that the language of justice, if left by itself, becomes vulnerable as speech about God. For two reasons in particular.

First, the language of justice if left alone can slip back into the theology of retribution that Job has been rejecting throughout the dialogues with his friends. To be clear, we need to be careful here. We do want justice. But we need to be careful lest we reduce the Kingdom of God to the bringing of punishment upon evil-doers. Justice alone provides no room for grace, love, and mercy.

And this relates to the second concern about the naked language of justice. Namely, the preferential option for the poor isn't rooted in the virtue of the poor. The poor aren't preferred because they are Righteous Angels of Light. The poor are preferred because of God's love. If this is forgotten the oppressed can come to see themselves as God's divine agents and, in seeking justice and redress, the victims can become the perpetrators.

And yet, we need to be careful here because if the language of worship--the language of God's grace and love--becomes disconnected from the language of prophecy, disconnected from the suffering of others, it becomes ineffectual, pietistic, idolatrous and irrelevant.

So what we have here is a dialectic, with the language of worship keeping the language of prophecy rooted in God's grace and love and the language of prophecy keeping the language of worship connected to the suffering of others.

Gutiérrez writes:

This new awareness in turn showed [Job] that solidarity with the poor was required by his faith in a God who has a special love for the disinherited, the exploited in human history. This preferential love is the basis for what I have been calling the prophetic way of speaking about God.

But the prophetic way is not the only way of drawing near to the mystery of God, nor is it sufficient by itself. Job has just experienced a second shift [after his encounter with God]: from a penal view of history to the world of grace that completely enfolds him and permeates him...[But] in this second stage the issue is not to discover gratuitousness and forget the demands of justice, but to situate justice within the framework of God's gratuitous love...

The world of retribution--and not of temporal retribution only--is not where God dwells; at most God visits it...

The poet's insight continues to be value for us: the gratuitousness of God's love is the framework within which the requirement of practicing justice is to be located.

A second insight I took away from Gustavo Gutiérrez's book On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent has to do with a contrast between two different theological methods. The method of Job versus the method of Job's friends.

After experiencing loss and physical affliction Job is visited by three friends--Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar--who, after sitting with Job for seven days, try to speak words of comfort to him.

These friends are largely unsuccessful in this task. Job eventually calls them "sorry comforters" (16.2) and God eventually condemns their words.

Why did the words of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar go so wrong?

Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar largely engage Job in a theological debate. Perhaps nothing more needs to be said. Is theological debate of any help to those who are suffering? Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar should have continued to sit with Job, silently and in solidarity with him. The minute they open their mouths things start to go wrong.

But what makes it worse is the particular theology the friends try to force upon Job. As noted in yesterday's post, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar believe in the theology of retribution, that God rewards the faithful and punishes the wicked. And given that Job is suffering Job must be wicked. So the friends set about trying to convince Job of his wickedness beseeching him to confess and repent so as to return to God's favor.

Basically, the friends try to blame Job for his suffering. It's all Job's fault. He's brought this upon himself.

No wonder Job calls them "sorry comforters." With friends like these who needs enemies?

How did Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar end up saying such cold, unsympathetic and brutal things? Why are they blaming the victim?

What went wrong?

What went wrong, according to Gutiérrez, is that Job's friends put theology before human experience. The friends begin with an abstract, intellectual theological system--the system of retribution in this instance, but any system is the point here--and then apply that system to human experience. The friends are trying to do theological algebra with human suffering. And this leads to cold, unfeeling, and inhuman words coming from the mouths of Job's friends. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar suffer from what I've called orthodox alexithymia.

In contrast to the theological method of his friends, Job begins with and stays true to his experience. Human suffering is primary and regulates the quality of theological reflection. And by staying true to his experience--by privileging his suffering--Job is revealed to be the only one who speaks truthfully about God.

Gutiérrez writes:

The speeches of Eliphaz and his companions take certain doctrinal principles as their starting place and try to apply them to Job's case...These men are competent, even if mistaken, theologians; they are convinced of their teaching but they are unaware that it has nothing to say to suffering human beings...

[By contrast] Job likewise feels sure, not of a doctrine but of his own experience of life...There is something out of kilter in the doctrine being expounded to him.

Job is trying to understand how God is just to one who is suffering; he therefore refuses to don the straitjacket of the theology set before him...Over against the abstract theology of his friends he sets his own experience (and, as we shall see later on, the experience of others, especially the poor)...[Job] refuses to believe that the love his Lord has for him must necessarily follow the course outlined in the teaching that his friends have been setting before him with such arrogant assurance, perhaps because they are afraid of being left defenseless in the face of life if this teaching should collapse. 

The ineffectual nature of theology in dealing with suffering is powerfully articulated by Job:

Job 16.2-6
“I have heard many things like these;
you are miserable comforters, all of you!
Will your long-winded speeches never end?
What ails you that you keep on arguing?
I also could speak like you,
if you were in my place;
I could make fine speeches against you
and shake my head at you.
But my mouth would encourage you;
comfort from my lips would bring you relief.

Yet if I speak, my pain is not relieved;
and if I refrain, it does not go away." 

This is, perhaps, the most poignant and powerful statement about the limits of theology in the face of pain: "If I speak, my pain is not relieved; and if I refrain, it does not go away."

Will our long-winded speeches never come to an end?

And what ails us that we keep on arguing?

Gutiérrez concludes:

Job's words are a criticism of every theology that lacks human compassion and contact with reality; the one-directional movement from theological principles to life really goes nowhere...Instead of speaking ill of the God in whom he believes, [Job] challenges the foundations of the prevailing theology...[Job] is convinced that the theological method of his friends leads nowhere but to contempt for human beings and thus to a distorted understanding of God.

"Job's words are a criticism of every theology that lacks human compassion."

May you, like Job, be such a critic.

Part 3

I recently read On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent by Gustavo Gutiérrez, one of the founders of liberation theology. It was a fantastic book, one of the best theology books I've read in the last year.

I'd like to devote three posts this week to three insights I took away from the book. Today's post is about disinterested religion.

A puzzle about the book of Job is the nature of the wager between the satan and God. According to Gutiérrez the wager sets up the basic question behind the Book of Job, what the book is all about.

So what is the wager all about? What is the basic question the Book of Job is trying to ask and answer?

According to Gutiérrez the Book of Job, and the issue behind the wager, is about the possibility of disinterested religion. Gutiérrez writes:

Can human beings have a disinterested faith in God--that is, can they believe in God without looking for rewards and fearing punishments? Even more specifically: Are human beings capable, in the midst of unjust suffering, of continuing to assert their faith in God and speak of God without expecting a return? Satan, and with him all those who have a barter conception of religion, deny the possibility. The author [of Job], on the contrary, believes it to be possible, although he undoubtedly knew the difficulty that human suffering, one's own and that of others, raises against authentic faith in God. Job, whom he makes the vehicle of his own experiences, will be his spokesman.

In the end, God wins the wager. The rebellious but upright Job, in all his suffering and complaints, in his dogged commitment to the poor and his acknowledgement of the Lord's love, shows that his religion is indeed disinterested.

I'm struck here by Gutiérrez's description of an "authentic faith" as I wrote a whole book--The Authenticity of Faith--about that same possibility. What is interesting is how I focused on "sick souls" in that book, of which Job is the prototype. And the root of the issue, according to Gutiérrez, is if faith can be disinterested, a faith that isn't driven and sustained by rewards and punishments, by whips and carrots. And I'd come alongside in agreement and simply note that the psychological experience of that disinterested religion is the experience of the sick soul or the "Winter Christian."

In short, the heart of the satan's accusations about Job is that Job's faith is not "for nothing." Job, the satan points out, has been richly rewarded by God. Of course Job believes in the face of that blessing. But take that blessing away and Job, the satan argues, will turn and curse God. That's the point of the wager, the root question behind the book. Can faith be disinterested? Gutiérrez writes:

It is impossible for the satan to deny that Job is a good and devout man. What he questions is rather the disinterestedness of Job's service of God, his lack of concern for a reward. The satan objects not to Job's works but to their motivation: Job's behavior, he says, is not "for nothing"...In the satan's view, a religious attitude can be explained only by expectation of a reward...

[And so] the satan proposes his wager: "Lay a finger on his possessions: then, I warrant you, he will curse you to your face." Thus the central question of the Book of Job is raised at the outset: the role that reward or disinterestedness plays in faith in God and in its consistent implementation. God believes that Job's uprightness is disinterested, and he therefore accepts the challenge. The author is telling us in this way that utilitarian religion lacks depth and authenticity; in addition, it has something satanic about it...The expectation of rewards that is at the heart of the doctrine of retribution vitiates the entire relationship and plays the demonic role of obstacle on the way to God. In self-seeking religion there is no true encounter with God but rather the construction of an idol...To believe "for nothing," "without payment," is the contrary of a faith based on the doctrine of retribution. This point will be bitterly debated in the subsequent dialogues.

It's debated because the doctrine of retribution--that relationship with God is governed by rewards and punishments--is the theological system that Job's friends will try to defend. God punishes the wicked and rewards the righteous. That is how it works, according to Job's friends. Thus, in the face of Job's suffering, the law of retribution says that Job has to be guilty of some sin. Job refuses to admit any guilt and yet maintains his faith in God. In doing so Job shows his faith to be costly but disinterested. Job's faith in God is revealed to be authentic--it is not motivated by reward--and thus the argument of the book of Job made: Disinterested faith is possible. More, in its eschewing a utilitarian, bartering approach to God Gutiérrez concludes: "disinterested religion alone is true religion."

Part 2

One of the most important findings in social psychology is what is known as the fundamental attribution error. The fundamental attribution error is how we tend to revert to characterological, trait-based, personality-driven, and dispositional factors in explaining behavior. For example, I might look at your work ethic and conclude that you are lazy. The problem is intrinsic to your character. Your personality is flawed and is to blame. You're a bad apple.

Another way of describing the fundamental attribution error is to say that we tend to downplay or ignore the power of situations. When we see bad behavior we don't tend to look at the environmental context, the situational causes and pressures. We tend to go looking for bad apples.

Why do we do this? Because it's easier, quicker and cleaner. It's easier to locate, blame and punish a lone perpetrator than to rethink environments, systems and organizations that produce the "bad" apples. Reimagining and reconfiguring those environments might implicate me, as both cause and solution. I might have to make some changes. And that's no fun. So it's easier to allow the fundamental attribution error to do its work, allowing me to blame people rather than broken environments or toxic systems.

And yet, social psychology has long known that the fundamental attribution error is, well, an error. Time and time again social psychologists have pointed to the power of situational pressures in explaining behavior. One only needs to think of some of the most iconic studies in social psychology--like the Milgram Obedience Studies and the Stanford Prison Study--to see this.

I bring up the fundamental attribution error to make an observation about how people talk about the poor in capitalistic economies. Specifically, the poor are often blamed for their lot. They are lazy, undisciplined, and lacking in work ethic. "Work ethic" here is a dispositional and characterological trait. A thing intrinsic to the person.

But if social psychology is to be believed things like work ethic, thrift, self-control and motivation might be better viewed as environmentally driven. And if that is so then attending to environments, rather than blaming people, is critical in effecting change in the world.

It's too easy to blame individuals. In fact, it's a mistake that psychologists have a name for: the fundamental attribution error.

Chapter 22 of The Rule of St. Benedict is about "The Sleeping Arrangements of the Monks." Here Benedict instructs that the monks are to "sleep in separate beds" but "all are to sleep in one place," if at all possible. The monks are also to have a night light, which I think is nice: "a lamp must be kept burning in the room until morning."

Given that the monks rise at night for prayers, they are to sleep with their clothes on: "They sleep clothed, and girded with belts or cords." But there is one important caveat to this instruction: "they should remove their knives, lest they accidentally cut themselves in their sleep."

Excellent point. And you shouldn't bathe with a toaster oven. 

When the signal is given to wake up the monks should get up "without delay" and "hasten to arrive at the Work of God before the others, yet with all dignity and decorum."

Because, really people, it's not a race.

All that sounds delicious to morning people. But what to do with those struggling to get out of bed? Benedict instructs:

⁸On arising for the Work of God, they will quietly encourage each other, for the sleepy like to make excuses.

Tell me about it. The sleepy also like to make excuses in my eight o'clock classes.

Incidentally, I like how Benedict instructs us to quietly encourage the sleepy to rise. As Proverbs instructs us:

Proverbs 27:14
If a man loudly blesses his neighbor early in the morning, it will be taken as a curse.

Morning people, take heed.

I start trembling before church starts. I'm coming down with a fever.

I felt it coming on as I picked people up in the church van. I'm driving instead of Bob tonight.

Mary sees me shaking and asks if I'm okay. I tell her that I think I'm coming down with a fever. She comes over and anoints my forehead with the oil that she carries. She prays over me. Because Mary is beautiful like that.

As the praise band warms up I go into the prayer room and kneel on the kneeler. I shake through my prayers.

Church starts and I run the PowerPoint slides for Michael and the band. I sit, like I always do, with Anthony. We talk before and after church. I often have trouble following Anthony's train of thought, and he speaks almost in a whisper. But he is kind and sweet and peaceful. Which is why I like being with him. He still carries the prayer beads I gave him at Christmas.

Church ends and I'm still shaking. I'm late getting out to the van as Herb wants to ask if we might do a foot washing for the inmates in our prison bible study. I agree. It's a great idea. We'll do it three weeks from now.

I get out to the van and everyone is clustered next to the door. I pop the locks. That's a mistake on my part as everyone pushes. We pay for our inconsideration when Doyle bumps Crystal's daughter as he tries to get in. Crystal starts yelling. Doyle goes into a shell and won't recognize Crystal's compliant. This makes her scream louder. I try to get her to calm down and tell me what happened. Doyle reaches his limit and starts yelling back. I clear the van.

Crystal isn't calming down. To help I try to let her know that her protective instincts are exactly what a caring mother should have. I'm a father of two boys, I say, I get why she is upset. She's still very agitated and angry. Too angry to get back on the van. So we go inside to find her another ride home. After a long time, Crystal begins to calm. I take her hand and say goodbye. Mary, beautiful Mary, volunteers to take Crystal and her girls home.

I go out to the van tired and agitated and shaking with fever. We head out and start dropping people off. First, Mr. John who might be living, I'm told, in a crack house. Many years ago Mr. John's wife died. When we take him to lunch every few weeks he tells us the story of being called at work with that bad news. He tells us this story every time we go to lunch. I don't know if he remembers that he's told us before. Regardless, he needs to tell it. So we listen. And he always cries. Like it happened yesterday.

As we drive to drop off Robert and Judy Tony begins to sing a gospel song in the back of the van. I listen.

Tony's got a good voice. I tell him so. He sings louder. And we all quiet.

My fever rages but my heart stills.

Tony sings about Jesus as we drive through the night.

If you are a long time reader you know that one of the distinctive theological moves I tend to make is to conflate soteriology with theodicy, seeing the problem of salvation as being entwined with the problem of pain and suffering. I call this move "distinctive" as it's not typical. But there are a few theologians who make this move. One of favorite examples of this is Marilyn McCord Adams book Christ and Horrors, a book I interacted with many years ago.

According to Adams, horror, rather than sin, is our fundamental predicament. Thus, salvation is less about forgiveness than the defeat of horrors. Adams writes:

[T]aking my cue from the book of Job rather than stories of Adam's fall. I want to explore what shape Christology takes if the Savior's job is to rescue us, not fundamentally from sin, but from horrors!

What are horrors? They are all sorts of extreme human suffering, and Adams focuses upon their existential impact, how horror radically disrupts our ability to make meaning from our lives:  

[H]orrors as evils the participation in (the doing or suffering of) which constitutes prima facie reason to doubt whether the participant's life could (given their inclusion in it) have positive meaning for him/her on the whole...

Paradigm horrors include the rape of a woman and axing off her arms, psychological torture whose ultimate goal is the disintegration of personality, schizophrenia, severe clinical depression, cannibalizing one's own offspring, child abuse the sort described by Ivan Karamazov, parental incest, participation in the Nazi death camps, the explosion of nuclear bombs over populated areas, being the accidental and/or unwitting agent in the disfigurement or death of those one loves best.

Again, these experience disrupt us existentially, they render life meaningless and empty life of any positive value:

[Horrors create] reason to doubt whether the participant's life can be worth living, because it engulfs the positive value of his/her life and penetrates into his/her meaning-making structures seemingly to defeat and degrade his/her value as a person...the heart of the horrendous, what makes horrors so pernicious, is their life-ruining potential.

While it true that few of us experience this psychological, physical and existential damage, Adams goes on to point out that we are all complicit in horrors. If not victims we are perpetrators or, at the very least, we are the beneficiaries of horror perpetration:

Virtually every human being is complicit in actual horrors merely by living in his/her nation or society. Few individuals would deliberately starve a child into mental retardation. But this happens even in the United States, because of the economic and social systems we collectively allow to persist and from which most of us profit. Likewise complicit in actual horrors are all those who live in societies that defend the interests of warfare and so accept horror-perpetration as a chosen means to or a side effect of its military aims. Human being in this world is thus radically vulnerable to, or at least collectively an inevitable participant in, horrors.

To return to the key point that Adams makes, horror overwhelms our capacity to make meaning of our lives. Horror ruins our ability to name life as "good" and "worth living." A part of his is how horror destroys our volitional capacities, our ability to make positive choices and decisions:

By definition, horrors stump our meaning-making capacities. Individual (as opposed to merely collective) horror-participation can break our capacity to make positive sense of our lives, can so fragment our sense of self and so damage our agency as to make authentic choice impossible.

Our vulnerability here is rooted in the fact that our meaning-making capacities are so tightly tethered to our material bodies, bodies radically susceptible to damage and decay:

There is a metaphysical mismatch within human nature: tying psyche to biology and personality to a developmental life cycle exposes human personhood to dangers to which angels (as naturally incorruptible pure spirits) are immune...[this] makes our meaning-making capacities easy to twist, even ready to break, when inept caretakers and hostile surroundings force us to cope with problems off the syllabus and out of pedagogical order. Likewise, biology--by building both an instinct for life and the seeds of death into animal nature--makes human persons naturally biodegradable. Human psyche is so connected to biology that biochemistry can skew our mental states (as in schizophrenia and clinical depression) and cause mind-degenerating and personality-distorting diseases (such as Alzheimer's and some forms of Parkinson's), which make a mockery of Aristotelian ideals of building character and dying in a virtuous old age.

In the face of all this, what is salvation supposed to look like and accomplish? What is Christ--as Savior--supposed to do?

Well, if our predicament is our inability to, in the face of horrors, make positive meaning of our lives, to judge life as "good" and "worth living," then the work of the Christ must be involved in some sort of existential rehabilitation. Christ must stand in the place of horror victims and from there begin a process of existential reconstruction. Adams borrows from Julian of Norwich and calls this process "mothering."

And the key aspect of this "mothering," according to Adams, is that God's healing and grace is extended universally to everyone. We must not think that God will create and perpetuate more horror by torturing people forever and ever. As Adams notes, this earth is hell enough.

In short, if God is to defeat horrors God's love will necessarily be universal in scope:

Traditional doctrines of hell err again by supposing either that God does not get what God wants with every human being ("God wills all humans to be saved" by God's antecedent will) or that God deliberately creates some for ruin. To be sure, many human beings have conducted their ante-mortem lives in such a way as to become anti-social persons. Almost none of us dies with all the virtues needed to be fit for heaven. Traditional doctrines of hell suppose that God lacks the will or the patience or the resourcefulness to civilize each and all of us, to rear each and all of us up into the household of God. They conclude that God is left with the option of merely human penal systems--viz., liquidation or quarantine!

Traditional doctrines of hell go beyond failure to hatred and cruelty by imagining a God Who not only acquiesces in creaturely rebellion and dysfunction but either directly organizes or intentionally "outsources" a concentration camp (of which Auschwitz and Soviet gulags are pale imitations) to make sure some creatures' lives are permanently deprived of positive meaning.

My own view is that ante-mortem horror-participation is hell enough. Horrors constitute the prima facie destruction of the positive meaning of our lives; a destruction that we lack knowledge, power, or worth enough to defeat; a destruction that reasonably drives many to despair. For God to succeed, God has to defeat horrors for everyone. We have all been to hell by being tainted by horrors ante-mortem. We all meet the horror of death at the end. For some, life has been one horror after another between the dawn of personhood and the grave. In millions of cases, these horrors have been spawned by the systemic evils of human societies. To be good-to us, God will have to establish and fit us for wholesome society, not establish institutions to guarantee that horrors last forever in the world to come!

I recently came across this quote by Christian Wiman from the chapter "Notes on Poetry and Religion" in his book Ambition and Survival: Becoming a Poet:

To have faith in a religion, any religion, is to accept at some primary level that its particular language of words and symbols says something true about reality. This doesn't mean that the words and symbols are reality (that's fundamentalism), nor that you will ever master those words and symbols well enough to regard reality as some fixed thing. What it does mean, though, is that you can 'no more be religious in general than [you] can speak language in general' (George Lindbeck), and that the only way to deepen your knowledge and experience of ultimate divinity is to deepen your knowledge and experience of the all-too-temporal symbols and language of a particular religion. Lindbeck would go so far as to say that your religion of origin has such a bone-deep hold on you that, as with a native language, it's your only hope for true religious fluency. I wouldn't go that far, but I would say that one has to submit to symbols and language that may be inadequate in order to have those inadequacies transcended. 

This quote struck me as I've basically reached the same conclusion.

To paraphrase and restate Wiman: I think religion is trying to say something true about reality, about human experience. And I also agree that the words and symbols aren't reality. Reality is sitting behind or beyond the words and the symbols. And I also agree that an important way--and perhaps the only way for many of us--to gain increasing mastery of these symbols, and thus approach and increasingly articulate the reality behind it all, is to settle into--really settle into--our religion of origin, our native religious language. This is our best hope for true religious fluency. And the path in attaining that fluency is to submit to the symbols, inadequate as they are, so that those inadequacies might be transcended.

People often ask me, "Why are you a Christian?" What I summarize above is a large part of that answer. I am submitting to the symbols--mastering them and letting them master me--so that something true, beautiful and real is increasingly experienced in my life.

The bible is always surprising me. The other day I came across this amazing text in the book of Wisdom. In the passage the wicked are complaining about God's "righteous one." With its messianic overtones, Christians obviously apply the text to Jesus:

Wisdom 2.12-15
Let us lie in wait for the righteous one, because he is annoying to us;
he opposes our actions,
Reproaches us for transgressions of the law
and charges us with violations of our training.

He professes to have knowledge of God
and styles himself a child of the LORD.

To us he is the censure of our thoughts;
merely to see him is a hardship for us,
Because his life is not like that of others,
and different are his ways.

So much poetry in this text, making it a great Lenten meditation. Simeon prophesied over the baby Jesus that he would become a "sign of contradiction." Jesus is also a "stone of stumbling," a "scandal," an "offense." To these familiar NT descriptions I can now add the language of Wisdom 2.

Jesus, the Righteous One, is annoying to us, because he opposes our actions. Jesus is the Censure of Our Thoughts.

Because his life is not like our life, and different are his ways.

In Chapter 21 of The Rule of St. Benedict Benedict discusses the appointment of Deans. In large monasteries the abbot cannot manage the spiritual direction of the brothers all by himself. So Benedict instructs for the appointment of Deans. These are brothers who are known to be of "good repute and holy living." They are to be selected because of their "virtuous living and wise teaching." These Deans then work with groups of ten monks, overseeing their work and providing spiritual direction.

Many large churches try to do something similar. A handful of ministry staff, pastors and elders can't provide spiritual care and direction for everyone in very large congregations. So Dean-like positions are created where wise, virtuous and skilled teachers within the congregation are asked to minister to and lead smaller groups within the church (bible studies, accountability groups, small groups meeting in homes, etc.)

The potential trouble with many of these teaching and accountability structures is that they can become heavy-handed and abusive. Some people don't do well when given power over others, even a tiny bit of power. And maybe it's not even power over but simply having the role of coordinator. Just because you are hosting and running a meeting to facilitate coordination doesn't mean you're the boss of everyone. And yet some people start acting that way.

Benedict, shrewdly judging human nature here, recognizes this temptation and quickly goes on to say:

⁵If perhaps one of these deans is found to be puffed up with any pride, and so deserving of censure, he is to be reproved once, twice, and even a third time. Should he refuse to amend, he must be removed from office ⁶and replaced by another who is worthy.

The other thing to note here, and this is a distinctive aspect as we'll come to see about Benedict, is how he tries to bring grace into the correction and discipline. The prideful dean is given three chances to amend his ways.