The unit was still on lockdown this week. That's three weeks in a row. That's typical, so I hope we can be out there next week.

In the meantime, let me talk about Spanish.

About 30-40% of the men in our study are Hispanic. And many of them struggle with English. Thankfully, you can understand more of a language than you can produce. So the Hispanic men generally track with my classes.

But I've always wanted to connect more with them in Spanish. If I had just one wish I wouldn't ask for a million dollars, I'd make myself bilingual.

Since starting the Bible study at the prison I've tried to teach myself Spanish. Rosetta Stone. Duolingo. It hasn't stuck. I've discovered that I'm really bad at languages. I learned that last summer in Brazil.

But I keep wanting show honor to the Spanish speakers in my Bible class. So here's my latest plan.

I've purchased a bilingual Bible, the New Living Translation parallel with the Nueva Traducción Viviente (NTV). The NTV is the Spanish version of the NLT, the translation I use out at the prison.

My plan is that, during the study, when I'm reading a text, I'll switch over from time to time to the Spanish. Especially for passages with some special theological weight: 

Pues Dios amó tanto al mundo que dio a su único Hijo, para que todo el que crea en él no se pierda, sino que tenga vida eterna.

For gringos like myself, that's John 3:16.

I hope to accomplish three things with this bilingual Bible:

1. Simple honoring. I'm not learning the language very well, but this allows me to insert Spanish into the class.

2. Built in Spanish lessons! As I read, I'm going to make mistakes. The men will correct me. When they do I'll be weaving Spanish lessons into the study. It'll help that I'm not just listening to the word. With the Bible I'll be able to look at the words as the men help me pronounce. I think I'm a language learner that needs to look at the words. I have a bad ear for language.

I also hope that, over time, with a Bible I'll build up my religious vocabulary. Rosetta Stone and Duolingo start you off with words like "bread, "blue," "car" and "shirt." I need a religious vocabulary to use in the study.

3. Flipping the power relations. Liberation theology 101, baby! Related to #2 above, in making mistakes and having the men teach me we're switching social locations, making them the teacher and me the student.

We'll see how it goes. Lift a prayer that the lockdown ends soon.

The Hebrew word that gets translated as "dragon," "sea monster" or "great sea creature" in the Old Testament is tannin. Both Leviathan and Rahab are tannin.

For example:

Genesis 1.21
So God created the great sea monsters [tannin] and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. (NRSV)
...
So God created the great creatures of the sea [tannin] and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. (NIV)

Another example:

Job 7.12
Am I the Sea, or the Dragon [tannin], that you set a guard over me? (NRSV)
...
Am I the sea, or the monster of the deep [tannin], that you put me under guard? (NIV) 

So again, both Leviathan and Rahab are tannin, dragons and monsters of the deep.

And yet, if you look into the word "dragon" in the OT you will stumble upon some confusing translations:

Isaiah 34.13
Thorns shall grow over its strongholds, nettles and thistles in its fortresses. It shall be the haunt of jackals, an abode for ostriches. (NRSV)
...
And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of dragons, and a court for owls. (KJV)


Isaiah 35:7
The burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. (NRSV)
...
And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes. (KJV) 

So how does "dragon" in the King James Version become "jackals" in other translations?

Well, it's because the plural of tannin in the Hebrew (tannim) is the same as the plural for a different animal, jackal. Consequently, when tannim is encountered in the text the translator has to determine which animal--dragon or jackal--is being referred to.

So what do translators do? They tend to look at the ecosystem being described. If the ecosystem is water then the word is translated as "sea monster" or "dragon" (for example: Psalm 74.14). But if the ecosystem is in a desert many translators go with "jackals."

But complicating this picture, and more on this in the next post, is how tannin can also refer to serpents and snakes, animals that are found in deserts.

Regardless, the imagery of tannim--dragons or jackals--in a desolate place is used throughout the OT as imagery for the judgment of God. A "haunt of jackals" or a "habitation of dragons" is a demon-infested place. For example:

Isaiah 13.21-22
But wild animals will lie down there,
and its houses will be full of howling creatures;
there ostriches will live,
and there goat-demons will dance.

Hyenas will cry in its towers,
and jackals [tannim] in the pleasant palaces;
its time is close at hand,
and its days will not be prolonged. (NRSV)
...
But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there.

And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons [tannim] in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged. (KJV)
...
But desert creatures will lie there,
jackals will fill her houses;
there the owls will dwell,
and there the wild goats will leap about.

Hyenas will inhabit her strongholds,
jackals [tannim] her luxurious palaces.
Her time is at hand,
and her days will not be prolonged. (NIV)

I've highlighted in this text where the demonic imagery comes from, beyond the reference to jackals and/or dragons. Again, you'll note some translational differences in Isaiah 13.21: Is it goat-demons, satyrs, or wild goats?

This Hebrew word here--saiyer--can be translated as either "male goat" or "devil." It's a word where the devil gets associated with goat imagery. So translators of Isaiah 13.21-22 have to determine what image is being invoked. Is the reference zoological ("wild goat," NIV), mythological ("satyr," KJV) or demonological ("goat-demon," NRSV)?

Whatever it is, it's not good. A haunt of tannim is not a good place to be, goat-demons or not.

All this--haunts of dragons, jackals and goat-demons--is imagery that is used in the book of Revelation to describe Babylon:

Revelation 18.2-3
He called out with a mighty voice,

“Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!
It has become a dwelling place of demons,
a haunt of every foul spirit,
a haunt of every foul bird,
a haunt of every foul and hateful beast."

And what's interesting is how this haunt of hateful beasts is described in political and economic terms:

"For all the nations have drunk
of the wine of the wrath of her fornication,
and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her,
and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxury.”

In the last two posts I've said that the great sea dragons Leviathan and Rahab are associated with the New Testament language of principalities and powers.

This is can be seen in the Old Testament in how Rahab is a name for the great sea dragon as well as for nations hostile to the kingdom of God.

For example, in the last post we looked at the three instances in the OT where Rahab describes the great sea monster defeated by YHWH (Job 9.13, 26.12; Ps 89.11). For example:

Psalm 89.8-11
Who is like you, Lord God Almighty?
You, Lord, are mighty, and your faithfulness surrounds you.

You rule over the surging sea;
when its waves mount up, you still them.

You crushed Rahab like one of the slain;
with your strong arm you scattered your enemies.

The heavens are yours, and yours also the earth;
you founded the world and all that is in it.

But Rahab is also used to describe nations hostile to God, Egypt in particular. For example:

Isaiah 30.7
Egypt's help is worthless and empty;
therefore I have called her
“Rahab who sits still.”

Psalm 87.3-4
Glorious things are said of you,
city of God:

“I will record Rahab and Babylon
among those who acknowledge me—
Philistia too, and Tyre, along with Cush—
and will say, ‘This one was born in Zion.’” 

In these texts we see the image of the dragon--Rahab--being use to describe a political entity--Egypt--that is hostile to the rule of God.

And we also see a political vision of the "slaying of the dragon" motif. The dragons are defeated in Psalm 87 when the great political powers of the world--the Leviathans and the Rahabs--are brought into submission to the kingdom of God.

Rahab and Babylon, along with other political dragons, we be among those who acknowledge God.

In Psalm 87, the City of God comes to earth when the dragons are slain. This echos Jesus' victory over the powers:

Colossians 2.15
And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

Again, most Bible readers have come across the great sea monster Leviathan in the pages of Scripture, perhaps noticing this dragon because there are many cultural references to Leviathan outside of the Bible. But there's a second, lesser known sea monster in the Bible as well.

Beyond Leviathan, the other sea dragon in the Bible is Rahab:

Job 26.10-12
He marks out the horizon on the face of the waters
for a boundary between light and darkness.

The pillars of the heavens quake,
aghast at his rebuke.

By his power he churned up the sea;
by his wisdom he cut Rahab to pieces.

Psalm 89.8-11
Who is like you, Lord God Almighty?
You, Lord, are mighty, and your faithfulness surrounds you.

You rule over the surging sea;
when its waves mount up, you still them.

You crushed Rahab like one of the slain;
with your strong arm you scattered your enemies.

The heavens are yours, and yours also the earth;
you founded the world and all that is in it.

Many commentators have contrasted the non-violence of the Jewish creation story in Genesis 1 with the violence of the Babylonian creation myths. For example, in the Enuma Elish Marduk kills the dragoness Tiamat, the primordial goddess of chaos who ruled the oceans. After slaying Tiamat, Marduk uses the parts of her body to create the world.

In the Babylonian myth, creation happens through killing and violence. This violence is missing in Genesis.

And yet, some see hints of the Enuma Elish in the biblical references to Leviathan and Rahab. Creation doesn't happen through violence in the Old Testament. But the chaotic elements of the world, represented in the great sea dragons Leviathan and Rahab, are tamed and subdued. When the Spirit of God moves over the chaotic deep and begins to speak a creative, ordering Word, this is imagined as a victory over the chaos and the deep, the taming and victory over of both Leviathan and Rahab.

I'll have more to say about Rahab in the next post, but just a final observation about slaying dragons and the warfare worldview of the Bible. Again, in the New Testament the Great Dragon becomes associated with Satan. And in calling Satan the Great Dragon the New Testament authors evoke the great dragons of the Old Testament, Leviathan and Rahab, and God's victory over them in rightly ordering the world.

The kingdom of God, creation and new creation, involves a victory over the dragon.

One of the reasons I decided to write Reviving Old Scratch was internalizing the point Greg Boyd makes in his book God at War.

Specifically, Greg argues that we don't appreciate what he calls "the warfare worldview" of the biblical drama.

At the heart of the warfare worldview is the observation that creation resists God's just and benevolent rule. This produces a "war" to establish God's kingdom on earth.

To be sure, we understand this war Christologically. The war we fight is the "war of the Lamb," the victory of love Jesus wins on the cross.

In the book of Revelation this victory is won by defeating "the Dragon," who is identified as Satan:

Revelation 12.7-9
Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

As I describe in Reviving Old Scratch, in the New Testament Satan comes to stand for how the deep structural elements of the cosmos--"the principalities and powers"--resist and rebel against God's invasion to establish His Christ as "Lord of All." This power struggle between Christ and the Dragon is what we witness in Revelation 12:

Revelation 12.4-7
The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter."... 

Then war broke out in heaven. 

In the Old Testament "dragons" aren't associated with Satan. In the Old Testament the cosmic foundations of creation are described as great sea monsters--dragons--rather than as the principalities and powers. Sea monsters in the Old Testament and the principalities and powers in the New Testament are related concepts, representing creation's deep, structural resistance to the reign of God. When Satan is described as "the Dragon" a bridge is built between God's battles with sea monsters in the Old Testament and God's battles with the Powers in the New.

You're probably familiar with one of these sea monsters. The great multi-headed sea dragon Leviathan is mentioned six times in the Old Testament (Job 3.8, 41.1; Ps. 74.14, 104.26; Is. 27.1).

Foreshadowing the events in Revelation 12, in the OT God is described as becoming a victorious, saving king by defeating the great dragon:

Psalm 74.12-14
But God is my King from long ago;
he brings salvation on the earth.

It was you who split open the sea by your power;
you broke the heads of the monster in the waters.

It was you who crushed the heads of Leviathan
and gave it as food to the creatures of the desert.

Psalm 74 depicts an event that happened in the past. So even more relevant to Revelation 12 is how Isaiah 27.1 gives a future-oriented, eschatological twist to the defeat of Leviathan:

In that day,

the Lord will punish with his sword—
his fierce, great and powerful sword—
Leviathan the gliding serpent,
Leviathan the coiling serpent;
he will slay the monster of the sea.

This event, God's defeat of Leviathan, is pictured above in Gustave Doré's famous engraving "The Destruction of Leviathan."

In the next post I want to write a little bit about a lesser known dragon in the Old Testament.

Not a whole lot for the diary today. The study didn't happen this week because of the "semi-annual shakedown."

Two times a year the prison goes on lockdown for a shakedown. During the shakedown the inmates are confided to their cells. The guards then go from cell to cell to perform a shakedown. A shakedown is a search for contraband. The guards tear the cell apart, looking through everything the inmate owns. Flipping through the pages of every book. Inspecting every container. After the shakedown the inmates pick up the mess and put their cell back together again.

Because surprise is important for the searches, the shakedown is never announced ahead of time. We get no notice. So twice a year we drive out the prison only to be told that the semi-annual shakedown has started. We turn around and go home.

The shakedown takes a few weeks to complete. It's a miserable time for the inmates. Sitting confined in your cell for weeks. Having your cell torn up.

But the shakedown does give us two holidays a year. It's a hard on the inmates, but it's nice to have a few weeks off twice a year to re-charge your batteries and spend a few Mondays in row at home with the family.

There are three things, my brethren, by which faith stands firm, devotion remains constant, and virtue endures. They are prayer, fasting and mercy. Prayer knocks at the door, fasting obtains, mercy receives. Prayer, mercy and fasting: these three are one, and they give life to each other.
Fasting is the soul of prayer, mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. Let no one try to separate them; they cannot be separated. If you have only one of them or not all together, you have nothing. So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. If you do not close your ear to others you open God’s ear to yourself.

When you fast, see the fasting of others. If you want God to know that you are hungry, know that another is hungry. If you hope for mercy, show mercy. If you look for kindness, show kindness. If you want to receive, give. If you ask for yourself what you deny to others, your asking is a mockery.

Let this be the pattern for all men when they practice mercy: show mercy to others in the same way, with the same generosity, with the same promptness, as you want others to show mercy to you.

Therefore, let prayer, mercy and fasting be one single plea to God on our behalf, one speech in our defense, a threefold united prayer in our favor...

Fasting bears no fruit unless it is watered by mercy. Fasting dries up when mercy dries up. Mercy is to fasting as rain is to the earth. However much you may cultivate your heart, clear the soil of your nature, root out vices, sow virtues, if you do not release the springs of mercy, your fasting will bear no fruit.

When you fast, if your mercy is thin your harvest will be thin; when you fast, what you pour out in mercy overflows into your barn. Therefore, do not lose by saving, but gather in by scattering. Give to the poor, and you give to yourself. You will not be allowed to keep what you have refused to give to others.

--St. Peter Chrysologus

For Protestants one of the more obscure parts of the Christian tradition is the Harrowing of Hell.

The word "harrowing" comes from Old English word hergian which means to plunder, seize, or capture.

The Harrowing of Hell refers to Jesus' decent into hell to break down the gates of hell to release humanity from the captivity of the Devil.

The Harrowing of Hell appears to be referred to, if only obliquely,  in a couple of passages.

For example, in his Pentecost sermon in Acts 2 Peter describes Jesus as having gone to "the realm of the dead":

Acts 2.27, 31
because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
you will not let your holy one see decay.

Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his body see decay.

What did Jesus do there in the realm of the dead? Passages in 1 Peter and Ephesians are used to answer this question:

1 Peter 3.18-20a
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago...

1 Peter 4.6
For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to men in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit.

Ephesians 4.8-10
This is why it says:
"When he ascended on high,
he led captives in his train
and gave gifts to men."
(What does "he ascended" mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.)

The Ephesians text is ambiguous. Perhaps descending to the "lower, earthy regions" is simply a reference to the Incarnation and not the Harrowing of Hell. But 1 Peter seems to describe Jesus preaching the gospel to the dead, to "spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago."

I'd like to take a moment to reflect on the import of the Harrowing of Hell in these texts for theologies of universal reconciliation.

Specifically, in many doctrinal systems death is believed to end your moral and spiritual biography with God. Your status--Saved versus Lost--is set and fixed at death. After death your relationship with God is set in concrete, never to be changed.

But the Harrowing of Hell, one of the oldest doctrines of the church, suggests otherwise. Death did not end the moral biography of the "spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago." Death did not permanently fix an eternal fate. Christ's salvific pursuit of sinners continued after death.

For many theologies of universal reconciliation this is a key point of dispute with those who endorse eternal conscious torment, and even annihilationism. Is your relationship with God eternally fixed at the moment of death? Does God's salvific pursuit of sinners continue after death?

According to the Harrowing of Hell God pursues us, even after death.

I've written about how I've become a huge fan of Hank Williams' gospel recordings.

One of my favorite songs isn't a Hank Williams original but a cover, though Williams' cover is what brought the song to the awareness of a larger listening public.

That song is "A Tramp on the Street." When Williams recorded it the song had been bouncing around for some time among gospel and country artists, the song's exact origin of some debate among them. The cover of this song that caught Hank Williams' attention was done by Molly O'Day.

"A Tramp on the Street" was written by Grady and Hazel Cole. Starting with an image from The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus from Luke 16 the lyrics of Hank's cover go like this:

Only a tramp was Lazarus' sad fate,
He who lay down at the rich man’s gate.
He begged for the crumbs from the rich man to eat.
He was only a tramp found dead on the street.

He was some mother’s darling, he was some mother’s son.
Once he was fair and once he was young.
And some mother rocked him, her darling to sleep.
But they left him to die like a tramp on the street.

Jesus who died on Calvary’s tree,
He shed his life’s blood for you and for me.
They pierced his side, his hands and his feet.
Then they left him to die like a tramp on the street.

He was Mary’s own darling, he was God’s chosen son.
Once he was fair and once he was young.
Mary, she rocked him, her darling to sleep.
But they left him to die like a tramp on the street

If Jesus should come and knock on your door
For a place to come in or bread from your store
Would you welcome him in or turn him away?
Then God would deny you on that great Judgment Day.

You can hear Hank Williams sing the song here.

Rod Dreher's book The Benedict Option is now out with lots of reviews and commentary appearing online.

As regular readers know I've made the argument on this blog that progressive Christians need their own version of the BenOp. In fact, progressive Christians already have a rich history with the BenOp, witness the Catholic Worker and the New Monastic movements.

That the BenOp is as important for progressive Christians as it is for conservatives, though for different goals and reasons, is highlighted in Ross Douthat's review of Dreher's book:

And [the BenOp is for] not only conservative churches. The basic model could be applied just as easily to non-Christian faiths, and it could be embraced by the progressive Christians who find Dreher’s vision — and Chaput’s, and Esolen’s, and Russell Moore’s — too dogmatic and rigid and anti-modern.

Being a bit of a dogmatist myself, I’m skeptical that a robust institutional Christianity can be built on the premises of contemporary liberal theology and the cultural shifts that it accommodates. But that’s all the more reason for liberal Christians to set out to prove the conservatives wrong, to show that monasteries and missionaries can come forth from progressive fields, to effectively out-Benedict Option the reactionaries and force us to concede that we misjudged them.

In doing so they wouldn’t be abandoning political engagement, but they would be laying a foundation for faith’s endurance when political activism fails. As fail it so often does, as both progressive and conservative Christians have learned at different times across the last few decades — and may soon learn again. 

That's exactly the point I've been making about progressive Christianity's need for a BenOp, how our imagination for resistance has been captured by statism.

But as Kaya Oakes points out in her review of Dreher's book, there will be big differences between conservative and progressive versions of the BenOp.

Specifically, Oakes highlights the point I've made, that a progressive BenOp will live into Jesus' practices of radical hospitality. This, I've argued, combats the temptations toward phariseeism in conservative calls for the BenOp, the same temptation that Jesus battled in his debates with the Pharisees concerning their rival visions of the BenOp in the gospels. To highlight this difference I've called the progressive vision of the BenOp the Franciscan Option, as the early Franciscans were an intentional monastic community who specialized in living among and caring for lepers.

Basically, a progressive BenOp will look the same way Jesus' BenOp looked to the Pharisees: A community that embraces the unclean, privileges empathy over piety, isn't overly pious, and is the friend of sinners.

Again, read my summary post highlighting why progressive Christians need a BenOp and how a progressive BenOp differs from the conservative version.

But for this post I'd like to simplify and distill the contrast.

The basic contrast between a progressive and conservative version of the BenOp is this: cruciformity over culture.

Whenever you hear Dreher and other conservative Christians talk about the BenOp the focus is on preserving and investing in Christian culture. The focus is on doctrine, orthodoxy, values, moral codes, spiritual practices, Christian institutions, and liturgy. The conservative vision of the BenOp is focused upon creating a group of Christians who are appropriately orthodox and pious.

By contrast, a progressive BenOp is focused upon cruciformity, people who are spiritually formed to exhibit the self-donating love of Jesus--for enemies, lepers and the sinners of the world.

As we all know, orthodoxy does not produce cruciformity.

Neither does piety.

Neither does liturgy.

A progressive Christian BenOp isn't interested in preserving Christendom or medieval monasticism. A progressive Christian BenOp is interested in forming Christ-followers who care for the least of these, a people who locally practice the works of mercy.

From a progressive Christian perspective, then, preserving Christian culture, in and of itself, is pointless. Worse, it's Pharisaical. Jesus wasn't all that interested in orthodoxy, piety or liturgy. The Pharisees were, but Jesus wasn't.

So why do progressives need the BenOp?

Progressives need the BenOp because you don't fall out of bed loving the way Jesus loved. Cruciformity requires practice, discipline, intentionality and communal accountability.

More, to cut off a conservative objection, cruciformity also requires holiness, as holiness, in the progressive imagination, makes us increasingly other-oriented and available to each other. (My deeper exploration of the connection between holiness and love is in Chapter 12 of Reviving Old Scratch). For progressive Christians holiness is kenosis.

Progressive Christians need a BenOp because social justice, while vital and important, isn't the same as cruciformity. Progressive Christians need a BenOp because being a Democrat isn't the same as cruciformity. (Similar to how, for conservative Christians, piety, liturgy and orthodoxy aren't the same as cruciformity.)

Progressive Christians need a BenOp because you can be right on all the political issues, but unless you're sharing life in a local leper colony, an abandoned outpost of empire, practicing the works of mercy, you're not living into the cruciform life of Jesus.

We need a BenOp because a worshiping community caring on the edges of empire is vital in forming cruciformity. And here I agree with the the work of James Smith, but with a crucial difference. (For more on this point this is my progressive twist on Smith's "you are what you love".) Witness the hospitality of the Benedictines and Franciscans, along with the Catholic Workers, the New Monastics and Jean Vanier's L'Arche communities. These expressions of radical hospitality flow out of shared community and a culture rooted in gratitude, promise-keeping, truth-telling, and hospitality.

And on that distinction, creating a Christian culture as a means toward forming cruicformity versus preserving a Christian culture as a pious and orthodox end in itself, is the contrast between a conservative and a progressive BenOp.

I'm fascinated by the prison economy.

Money isn't allowed in the prison. Families can deposit money into an inmate's account which can be used in the prison commissary, the place where inmates can buy things.The products purchased from the commissary then become used in the prison economy.

Without actual money the paper money used in the prison are stamps.

What's intrigued me about stamps, as I've asked questions about the prison economy, is how their value might be inflated or deflated. How much is a stamp worth?

While it's been hard to nail the specifics down from the guys in the Monday night Bible study, it does appear that the basic laws of supply and demand affect the value of stamps. To explore this more see this essay written by a Texas inmate, "In Prison, Stamps Are the Currency That Binds Everyone."

I'd like to make you aware that I'll be teaching a class on hospitality this August for Fuller Theological Seminary's DMin program.

Anyone interested in either auditing the course or Fuller's DMin program will need a theological Master's degree and can contact Debi Yu, the Admissions and Student Affairs Advisor, for more information.  Debi can be contacted at dmin@fuller.edu or (626) 584-5315.

The class I'm teaching is a week-long intensive class entitled "The Call to Hospitality." The course description and learning outcomes can be read here.

As can be seen from the description and outcomes, the class will attempt to connect hospitality to spiritual formation.

Why?

Well, hospitality is hard and hospitality, welcoming and neighboring initiatives often flounder. True, a few passionate souls throw themselves into these efforts, but welcoming the stranger often fails to become infectious and contagious. People welcoming on the margins often feel lonely and abandoned, wondering when the rest of the church is going to show up. I know I feel like this a lot of the time.

In short, you can't just tell people to be more hospitable. Nor can you preach a church into becoming more hospitable. Hospitality has to be cultivated through practices of spiritual formation. Hospitality is a capacity that must be trained and practiced. That's the big focus of my Fuller class.

But if you can't attend the class don't worry, I do hospitality equipping for churches all the time. Just give me a call.

Praying during the Lenten season with the Liturgy of the Hours (the Catholic version of The Book of Common Prayer) you frequently encounter this Antiphon and Responsory:

God himself will me free from the hunter's snare.

The image comes from places like Psalm 124:

“If the Lord had not been on our side”—
let Israel say this!—

if the Lord had not been on our side,
when men attacked us,

they would have swallowed us alive,
when their anger raged against us.

The water would have overpowered us;
the current would have overwhelmed us.

The raging water
would have overwhelmed us.

The Lord deserves praise,
for he did not hand us over as prey to their teeth.

We escaped with our lives, like a bird from a hunter’s snare.
The snare broke, and we escaped.

Our deliverer is the Lord,
the Creator of heaven and earth.

This is wonderful Christus Victor imagery for the Lenten season. Salvation here isn't about avoiding the punishment of a wrathful God. Our saving God is, rather, wholly benevolent and kind, the One who finds us terrified, helpless and trapped in the hunter's snare. Salvation is God untangling us and setting us free. Emancipation. Liberation.

Set free from the hunter's snare.

(BTW. you need a hunter for this image to work. So if you don't know who the hunter is, may I suggest a book to read?)

A powerful lesson from the jail ministry at my church, the Highland Church of Christ. I'm so grateful for Joe Almanza and everything he does in our city jails.

As regular readers know, my day job, what I do to pay the rent, doesn't show up much on this blog or in my books. As an experimental psychologist I spend most of my days teaching statistics (undergraduate and graduate) and supervising graduate thesis research.

Though it's hard work, I love chairing thesis research. This year I have a bunch of students. Here's what we've been researching this semester:

Jusiah's thesis is looking at the role racial socialization plays in reducing distress among African Americans in the face of microaggressions.

Craig is looking at the impact of parental mental illness upon children, resiliency in particular.

Pablo is assessing the effectiveness of a sleep education intervention upon sleep quality among college students.

Kelsey is researching the impact of parental control upon ruminative exploration among college students. (An example of ruminative exploration is never begin able to settle upon a major or career focus.)

Brianna is examining perceptions of female competency as a function of workplace attire.

Finally, Amanda just started with me and she's looking at how empathy affects pain tolerance: Can you endure more pain if you're suffering it for others?

This is my life away from the blog.

It's fun and fascinating.

On Monday out at the prison we finished the movie Hacksaw Ridge and had a great conversation afterwards.

The movie accomplished what I hoped it would, it helped us struggle with the issue of violence. Many of the men were moved and convicted by the witness of Desmond Doss. After the study was over, last week and this week, I had a line of men wanting to talk afterwards about how addicted they'd become to violence and how the movie interrupted them. The movie had morally shaken them in ways I never could have.

Theologically, this is what the movie helped them with. To borrow from Stanley Hauerwas, the movie gave the Men in White an imagination for peace. Before the movie the only imagination the Men in White had for courage was violence. That's what courage meant, meeting violence with violence. What Hacksaw Ridge did was expand their imagination for what courage could look like. Courage could look non-violent. Until last night, that association was unimaginable for the Men in White. And lacking that imagination violence was the only option. You had to "stand up" and meet violence with violence.

But now, with Desmond Doss in their minds, the Men in White have another vision of courage, a vision that makes non-violence possible.

Non-violence isn't weakness, it is courageous, noble and heroic. This creates a new moral imagination, making new choices available, and giving peace a toehold in the jungle.

As regular readers know, my dear friends Mark and Ali lead the Crescimento Limpo ministry in Brazil providing housing for the homeless, treatment for those dealing with addiction and dignified work for those trying to reintegrate back into society. You can read and see more about Crescimento Limpo by clicking on the link on my blog header or here.

This week Mark sent me a video about a CL effort to help Washington, one of the residents of CL, raise funds for a prosthetic leg. I had the honor of talking with and breaking bread with Washington last summer. I'm excited about the possibilities for Washington should he get his prostheses.

Washington's story and dream:



If you'd like to help Washington walk the links to the CL Paypal account and their contact information can be found here.

I'll keep you updated about Washington and you can follow CL yourself at their Facebook page.

What does Christian political resistance look like in the age of Trump?

Mark Lilla in his book The Stillborn God describes Christendom as an "accidental empire." Of the three Abrahamic faiths, both Judaism and Islam articulate their theology in explicitly political terms, as the governance of a theocratic nation.

Christianity, by contrast, acquired its empire accidentally with the conversion of Constantine. The tenets of the Christian faith were articulated and lived out while Christians lived as a tiny, marginalized group within an empire. Thus the political theology of the early Christians basically reduced to respect the government, pray for the Emperor, pay your taxes, and keep your head down.

But what happens when the Emperor becomes a Christian? How is the Christian virtue of agape to be worked out from the place of political power?

The New Testament doesn't give a lot of answers to these questions.

In our day, the question is less about Constantinianism than about how a Christian should act within a representative democracy. Still, the New Testament doesn't give us a lot of answers to these questions.

And yet, for many progressive Christians this has become an urgent and pressing question. What does Christian resistance look like in the age of Trump?

Due to the New Testament's social location within empire, New Testament political theology focuses upon the local church. According to the New Testament, resistance to empire is sharing life with and caring for a local fellowship of believers who welcome, serve and share with "the least of these." See Acts 2 and 4. That's how the early church, given her social location, defined resistance to empire.

Today, as members of a representative democracy, American Christians are in a different social location. We have access to the levers of power through our votes and voices. So the questions present themselves:

Should Christians use their political power to bring the state into greater alignment with the kingdom of God?

Or should Christians ignore the state, like the early Christians, and keep to the work of resisting empire through the local community of believers?

The answer, I think, is that this isn't an either/or. We should do both.

But with that said, if I had to choose I'd have to pick the witness and practices of the early church. Resistance to empire is rooted in a local community of believers who confess Jesus as Lord and who welcome and care for "the least of these."

Lose that and you've lost touch with a Christian vision of political resistance.

Yesterday I wrote about visiting the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Little Flower, the Catholic Basilica devoted to St. Thérèse of Lisieux in San Antonio.

What's fascinating about Thérèse is that when she died at the age of 24, one of the Carmelite sisters, who had lived with Thérèse in the monastery for years, expressed concern that there wouldn't be anything to say or share at Thérèse's funeral.

That's how ordinary and unremarkable Thérèse's life had been to those who observed it. Nothing to see here.

And yet there you are, standing in a Basilica dedicated to her life, memory and devotion.

How do you square the two? Nothing to say at your funeral, your life was so boring, versus worldwide devotion and basilicas named in your honor?

It makes you face the question: Are there spiritual giants walking among us appearing as boring, ordinary and unremarkable people?

That's one of the great legacies of Thérèse of Lisieux and her Little Way, what Dorothy Day called "the democratization of holiness."

Anyone can be a radical follower of Jesus, even in the most mundane and ordinary of lives. You don't need an impressive story or testimony or life to be a spiritual giant. Look at Thérèse of Lisieux.

At your death your resume can be pretty thin, but cathedrals are built to remember you.

If I've ever come to your church, to talk or do equipping sessions about the practices of hospitality, you've heard me talk about St. Thérèse of Lisieux and her "Little Way."

Regular readers of the blog also know how important Thérèse has been to me since the series I wrote about her in 2012.

(If you don't know Thérèse, you can read my four part series about her starting here. Or see the sidebar on the main page of the blog.)

All that to say, I've been a huge fan of Thérèse for a few years now. So it came as a pleasant surprise to me to discover that there is a Basilica dedicated to Thérèse in San Antonio, a city I visit all the time.

On a recent trip to San Antonio I finally got to visit the The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Little Flower for the very first time. A bit about the Basilica:

The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Little Flower, the first National Shrine in the United States dedicated to St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the "Little Flower," was completed in San Antonio in 1931. When it was designated a basilica, it was the only basilica outside of Lisieux, France, dedicated to St. Thérèse...The Basilica attracts pilgrims dedicated to St. Thérèse all over the United States and throughout the world...

Perhaps the most treasured work of art at the basilica is a painting of St. Thérèse created by the saint's own blood sister, Céline Martin (Sr. Geneviève of the Holy Face). This 7 by 10 foot painting was part of the procession at the saint's canonization in Rome in 1927. It is located in the baptistery in the vestibule of the church. The Basilica is home to three first class relics of the Little Flower. Two are contained within the tomb chapel of St. St. Thérèse.

Obviously, I was totally geeking out during my visit. A whole church dedicated to Thérèse! With a gift shop!

I was particularly excited to see the large (over seven feet tall) painting done by Thérèse's sister  Céline. It's pictured here.

The spirituality out at the prison tends toward the revivalistic rather than the ethical. Jesus is the one who died to forgive us our sins. And when your sins involve things like murder this message has a particular resonance.

This message isn't all bad. The Men in White carry crippling loads of shame and guilt. So I don't mind a revivalistic message of grace.

But our conversation tends to get stuck in this place, grace for our sins. I struggle to move the conversation toward the ethical. Some of this is because I lack a certain moral authority. I'm hesitant to insist that the men obey Jesus because I live in the free world and they live in a very dark and brutal place. I don't face the moral hazards they face.

The hardest thing to talk about is violence. If you refuse or are unable to use violence to protect yourself the physical and sexual degradations you will face are harrowing. Because of this we spend a lot of time dancing around the subject of violence. It's too hard to talk about.

But I don't feel like I'm doing my job if I completely leave it alone. Which is why I was eager to get the movie Hacksaw Ridge out to the prison. I knew the movie would help us talk about violence and non-violence from a Christian perspective. I might lack moral authority, but Desmond Doss does not.

On Monday we watched the first half of the movie, right up to the start of the battle scenes. We had a good conversation afterward about violence. It was hard, uncomfortable and awkward at times, but the movie helped us talk about issues that we've tended to dance around. Some amazing testimonies were shared.

We'll finish the movie next week.

Since I took a whack at Trump yesterday ("The Bullshit of the Trump Administration") I thought it would be good Lenten practice to focus some self-reflection upon my own progressive Christian tribe.

I have struggled with how to respond to Donald Trump. Like many of you, I woke up the day after the election with a weird, surreal feeling. I felt I no longer recognized my country. How was it possible that Donald Trump was the President of the United States? I still have trouble wrapping my head around that fact.

But I am trying to wrap my head around what happened and how. And a lot of my reflection has been about how the left, progressive Christians among them, might have contributed to the climate that allowed for the rise of Trump. Along these lines I recently read this very good essay in Salon by Willie Davis, Outgrowing the cosmetic left: A liberal plea for fake liberalism to grow up. In the article Davis describes how liberals are just as guilty as conservatives for the rise of Trump, progressive Christians, I'd add, just as guilty as evangelicals.

You might want to push back on that. Feel free. But even if we disagree I'd like to share four things that have concerned me about progressive Christianity over the last ten years, four things that I think caused us to aid and abet the rise of Trump:

1. We've Lost Our Voice on Poverty and Class
I understand the progressive Christian focus on gender, race and sexuality. But by and large, over the last ten years, progressive Christianity has lost its voice on poverty and class. Progressive Christianity just doesn't have a lot to say to the poor, especially in rural communities, or about issues of concern to the poor. (For example, see my recent series on addiction.)

2. We've Demonized Half of America
By and large, progressive Christianity has demonized half of America. According to many progressive Christians half of Americans are racist, homophobic, misogynistic agents of Satan.

Listen, I'll admit it's really hard to thread the needle here. How do you stand up to white supremacy or the patriarchy without demonizing people? I don't know. But what I do know is that a lot of progressive Christian activity on social media isn't even trying.

3. Nothing Distinctively Christian About Progressive Christianity
I've written about this before, and I have another post about this coming out next week, but there's nothing particularly, uniquely or distinctly Christian about the political resistance of progressive Christians. There is zero daylight between many progressive Christians and the Democratic party. Consequently, progressive Christianity functions as the Democratic version of evangelical Christianity, a voting block in our two party electoral system, one half of the yin and yang that created the polarizing, demonizing political gestalt that allowed for the rise of Donald Trump.

4. Progressive Christianity Is Too Parasitical Upon Evangelical Christianity
Progressive Christianity is the moon to the evangelical sun. If evangelical Christianity didn't exist--from purity culture to complementarian gender roles to 81% of evangelicals voting for Trump--progressive Christianity wouldn't have anything to write about. Social media commentary from progressive Christians is devoted almost wholly to the bad behavior of evangelicals. From John Piper to Franklin Graham to Mark Driscoll to the Gospel Coalition to whatever that guy on Duck Dynasty said. If evangelical Christianity disappeared so would huge swaths of progressive Christian writing and Tweeting on social media. Progressive Christian books, blogs and Twitter accounts would vanish completely, or be left completely unrecognizable. Progressive Christianity is far too dependent, parasitical even, upon evangelicalism.

Ten years ago, in the early days of this blog, I spent some time writing about Harry Frankfurt's essay On Bullshit.

In 2005 Harry Frankfurt, a Princeton philosopher, republished his 1986 essay entitled On Bullshit as a stand-alone book. Published by Princeton University Press the little book became a media sensation and spent 26 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

Putting policy issues aside, I've grown increasingly alarmed by President Trump and his administration's apathy toward the truth. Non-existent massacres in Bowling Green, one of the greatest electoral wins in history when, in fact, it was one of the worst, false claims about crime and the economy, calling factual reporting "fake news." On and on. This is an administration that traffics in bullshit. You can keep track of it all here.

This bullshit prone administration is perfectly suited to a post-truth, fake news culture. We no longer care about the truth, and in that milieu bullshit thrives.

Here's how Frankfurt opens On Bullshit, words that seem prescient in light of our current political climate:

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry.

In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, we have no theory... (p. 1)

So, what do we mean by bullshit? And why is there so much of it?

The main analytic tool Frankfurt uses is the comparison of lying with bullshit. The two concepts seem related and yet distinct. We instinctively feel that both lying and bullshitting have some relation/application to truth or, more precisely, the lack of truth. That is, when we call a speech act a "lie" or "bullshit" we are stating that we are unsatisfied with what we have just heard. Specifically, we don't think we have been spoken to truthfully.

But it is more complex than that. Lying and bullshitting seem distinct as well. We know that when someone is bullshitting us they might not be, technically, lying. Further, when someone tells us a boldface lie our response isn't to say "That's bullshit!" but "You're a liar!" Finally, Frankfurt notes that, sociologically, we treat bullshit and lying differently. We are intolerant of lies but we appear to tolerate a huge amount of bullshit in our lives and public discourse. Why the difference?

In sum, lying and bullshit seem both related and distinct and Frankfurt sets about clarifying the relationship.

Summarizing greatly, Frankfurt's analysis is this. Lies and liars are very concerned with truth insofar as they are trying to hide the truth from us. In fact, a necessary condition of a lie is a knowledge of "how things stand" in relation to the truth.

But bullshit, according to Frankfurt, is a speech act that is indifferent to truth. A bullshitter asks us to treat their speech as a legitimate transmission of information, but in reality the bullshitter neither knows of what they speak nor is concerned to "get things right." Quoting Frankfurt:

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may pertain to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose. (pp. 55-56)

I do think Trump tells outright lies, but I think a lot of what Trump says is best classified as bullshit. For example, I don't think Trump knew about or cared about the historical place of his electoral college win. He was indifferent to that truth. Trump wasn't lying but bullshitting about his electoral college win.

In Frankfurt's words, Trump's interest when he boasts, brags and blusters is in "getting away with what he says." Trump "does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose."

This indifference-to-truth is so pernicious Frankfurt makes the following claim:

[The bullshitter] does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are. (p. 61)

I agree. The bullshitter is the greatest enemy of the truth.

And yet, it's hard to put all the blame on Trump. Trump's bullshit thrives because we, collectively, have become indifferent to the truth. Fake news thrives because there's a market for it, willing consumers of bullshit. We believe any claim that suits our purposes. And when we're confronted by inconvenient facts we treat them suspiciously and dismiss them as fake.

Truth has become politicized. We'll say and believe whatever helps us win.