Over the last few years I've noticed an increasingly common criticism of Christianity, a very potent one, that I'd like to reflect on a bit, for my own benefit.  

The criticism is this. We've all seen Christianity behaving badly. In both history and in contemporary society. For example, in history we Christianity used to justify things like slavery. And in contemporary society we saw Christianity used to justify storming the US capital on January 6th. 

When we witness these horrible things, Christians like myself rush to argue that slave-holding Christians or QAnon Christians are "bad" Christians. That is, we argue that these bad actors have distorted or twisted the "true" Christian message. 

The criticism here, one you've likely come across, is that Christianity needs to start owning its whole history, the good, the bad and the ugly. Critics argue that when we rush to judge other Christians as "bad Christians" we're avoiding the work of taking a hard moral inventory, too-quickly absolving ourselves of any blame. Perhaps, the critics argue, those bad Christianities are the real Christianity. 

Obviously, as a Christian, I don't believe that to be the case. But as a Christian, I do want to take this criticism seriously. I think we "good" Christians can be too quick in distancing ourselves from both our history and our badly behaving brothers and sisters. Because if there were something rotten at the heart of the faith I think and honest person would want to face and own that. 

So, some posts reflecting on good versus bad Christianities, and the quest to identify the "real" Christianity. 

200.

A human being is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but we are a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush us: a vapor, a drop of water is enough to kill us. But even if the universe were to crush us, we would still be nobler than our slayer, because we know that we are dying and the advantage the universe has over us. The universe knows nothing of this.

Thus all our dignity consists in thought. It is on thought that we must depend for our recovery, not on space and time, which we could never fill. Let us then strive to think well; that is the basic principle of morality.

///

Given all the posts this week about human subjectivity and consciousness, I thought this a fitting pensée for this Friday. There is a physical frailty to human beings, the coronavirus showed that to us. We are a weak reed, prone to breaking. But we are, curiously, a thinking reed. And that power of thought sets us apart within the created order. 

There's a modern, scientific tendency to displace human being from the center of the cosmos. We're told that we exist in a small, unremarkable part of a vast universe, orbiting a minor star. Point taken. This displacement, though, isn't foreign to Holy Scripture: "What are are human beings that you are mindful of them?"

Still, why not put human being at the center of the cosmos? The universe might be vast, but it is cold and empty. Yet here, in the midst of that vast icy silence, exists a hot, burning flame. You are a candle in the darkness. Incandescent. More mysterious and remarkable than anything revealed by astrophysics. 

True, given the vastness of the universe, there may be other candles burning. But wherever that flame burns why shouldn't that be the center of it all? 

Let us not point to the darkness to shame the light.

Thinking back over my recent posts about science and subjectivity I wanted to just share a brief comment about how to think about neuroscience.

It drives me crazy how people think neuroscience has illuminated anything about human consciousness. So here's my comment:

Don't mistake correlational science for explanatory science.

When it comes to consciousness, neuroscience is wholly correlational. 100% It doesn't explain anything. 

Ponder the basic datum of neuroscientific research: "When we observe brain activation at location X, we observe psychological Y." For example, a classic finding: Aphasia is associated with damage to Broca's area. 

Now notice: That observation is wholly correlational. When we see X, we see Y. X and Y regularly, even lawfully, co-occur. And yet, we have no idea why this location in the brain is associated with language. Nor do we know how neurons in this part of the brain create language problems rather than, say, sensory hallucinations. The mechanics of neuronal transmission are identical across the brain. The laws of chemistry are universal and invariant. And yet, the identical chemical mechanisms of neuronal transmission produce radically different subjective experiences. How? Why? Because those neurons are here rather than there? Give me a break. Neuroscientists have no clue how to answer any of these questions. All we have are correlations, zero explanations. 

And yet, it's a pervasive problem with neuroscience that people mistake correlations for explanations. Because we have brain scans, it's assumed, there's nothing more to explain. The truth is, nothing has been explained. Correlations are not explanations. Yes, such regular and lawful correlations presume some causal explanations. But let's be clear, we don't have that, not even close. The fundamental truth about our lives remains a baffling mystery. 

I've been reading through 1 and 2 Samuel. What a mess. The reigns of both Saul and David are just disasters. And right at the start, Samuel predicted they would be, along with all the subsequent kings. 

It seems that the Bible has a very dim view regarding the fusion of faith and politics.

This made me wonder about the aspirations of "Christian nationalism," the utopian belief among many evangelical Christians that if we can just get Christians into political leadership that America will enter into a season of peace, justice, and prosperity. 

Where do people come up with these ideas? Have evangelicals not read the Bible? Just read 1 and 2 Samuel. Human governments have always been disasters, bastions of moral chaos, corruption and oppression. And if this was the case with David, the God-fearing ruler of Israel par excellence, what makes us think any "Christian nation" we might construct would be any better? 

I think it's very clear in the New Testament that Jesus eschews any attempt at establishing a "Christian nation." The devil gives Jesus that option right at the start of the gospels. And Jesus flatly turns the offer down. Evangelicals, listen to that, read the Bible: Jesus flatly turns the devil down. And I think Jesus does so for many of the reasons we see in 1 and 2 Samuel. The reign of God just can't be established via a nation state.

One more reflection continuing with my recent posts on the scientific gaze and nihilism.

The issues regarding science or, more properly, scientism and nihilism are not merely philosophic, they profoundly impact mental health as well.

Again, from my last post, the "scientific gaze," viewing life in wholly materialistic terms, bleaches the world of meaning and value. And as should be obvious, a world devoid of meaning and value is going to negatively affect one's mental health. The scientific gaze causes mental illness. 

This is true. For example, as a progressive Christian blogger who became known as one of those those who welcomed and embraced doubt and deconstruction, I have routinely received over the years emails and requests for conversation from believers who had, on their own journey of doubt and deconstruction, given themselves over to the scientific gaze. They had read so many popular science books and New Atheist books that they had come to view life in wholly materialistic terms, existence reduced to the laws of chemistry and physics. And what these people shared with me, as a result of this journey, were mental health problems. Life now devoid of meaning, they had become depressed and suicidal. Some, in coming to view themselves as a biological machine, came to the conclusion that they didn't have free will and lost a sense of self-agency and self-authorship. As a result, they started to have panic attacks.

As I described in the last post, the scientific gaze had bleached their world of value and meaning, even of their own agency. The world had become a machine, and they became machine within it. And looking into that cold, deterministic clockwork they had become psychologically unmoored. They were no longer human. They became depressed, suicidal, and alienated from themselves, their loved ones, and the world. The scientific gaze had caused mental illness.

I want to revisit the post from last Thursday regarding "the scientific gaze," how when we view life in wholly materialistic terms it bleaches the world of value and meaning. 

In that post I shared how a human person looks in wholly materialistic terms, reducing a human body to its chemical elements. For example, here is a picture of you:

And here's a picture of your mother:

Here's a picture of your spouse:

And here's a picture of your child:

You get the idea. 

Viewing a human life in wholly materialistic terms, reducing someone you love, or anyone for that matter, to their chemical compounds strips their life of all those subjective aspects that makes life a human life. Our loves, hopes, and dreams. Our joys and sorrows. Our regrets. The transcendent values that guide our lives and ground them in something bigger than ourselves. None of this is captured by materialism. The scientific gaze just bleaches it all out. 

Which means that materialism is akin to madness. That is to say, materialism is blind to the most obvious fact about our lives, that they are chockfull of meaning and value, stuffed with meaning and value. Life is a cup full to overflowing with meaning and value. And to be unable to see this is a form of insanity. 

The trouble is that meaning and value are entirely in a subjective register. And the scientific gaze, which can only speak about the objective, factual, empirical aspects of reality, cannot penetrate into this mysterious realm. Which means that when we reduce "truth" and "reality" to the material we effectively ignore that which is most obvious about human life: That life is FULL of meaning and value. 

Here's how Teilhard de Chardin described the situation. The universe has both an outside and an inside. The outside of the universe is the objective and empirical shell of the cosmos, the thin shell, like that of an egg, that science can minutely investigate and describe. But there's also an inside aspect to the universe, the part of the universe that throbs with meaning and value, the yolk of the egg if you will. Science speaks about the shell of the cosmos, the empirical outside. But science cannot speak about the life of the cosmos, the subjective inside where we experience the fullness of meaning and value. 

 412.

Humanity is so inevitably mad that not to be mad would be to give a mad twist to madness.

///

I take Pascal's point here to be that sanity in an insane would would appear to be insane. 

Recently, I read Frank Sheed's book Theology and Sanity. It was the title that got me. For the most part, Christians tend to view the world in moralistic terms, the good and the bad, the saved and the lost. But what if the main division in life was sanity versus madness?

Here's Sheed, from early in his book, wanting to talk less about sanctity than about sanity:

[I]f we see things in existence and do not in the same act see that they are held in existence by God, then equally we are living in a fantastic world, not the real world. Seeing God everywhere and all things upheld by Him is not a matter of sanctity, but of plain sanity, because God is everywhere and all things are upheld by Him. What we do about it may be sanctity; but merely seeing it is sanity. To overlook God's presence is not simply to be irreligious; it is a kind of insanity, like overlooking anything else that is actually there...

God is not only a fact of religion: He is a fact. Not to see Him is to be wrong about everything, which includes being wrong about one's self...

...We live, indeed, in a vast context of things that are, events that have happened, a goal to which all is moving. That we should mentally see this context is a part of mental health. Just knowing that all things are upheld by God is a first step in knowing what we are, so a clear view of the shape of reality is a first step toward knowing where we are. To know where we are and what we are--that would seem to be the very minimum required by our dignity as human beings.

Reflecting a bit on yesterday's quote by Viktor Frankl. 

It might be a bit of stretch to lay the Holocaust at the feet of "nihilistic scientists and philosophers." But I do see the point Frankl is making about a materialistic view of humanity producing nihilism.

If you've gotten a chance to read Hunting Magic Eels you'll know I raise this point in the book. Specifically, at one point in the book I describe the "scientific gaze," where we view life in wholly materialistic terms, as "sociopathic." 

Admittedly, that's strong language, but I think Christians need to recover some courage in the face of science. So some boldness is necessary. As Flannery O'Connor has said:

When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock -- to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.

If you haven't noticed on the blog, I'm starting to shout more and draw larger, more startling figures. This blog used to be cozier. I'm starting to throw more cold water. And to be clear, I'm not describing science as sociopathic. Science is a blessing and a gift. What is sociopathic is "the scientific gaze," what is often described as "scientism." 

Since the publication of Hunting Magic Eels, I've started making this point with my students by describing how "the scientific gaze," reducing life to chemistry and physics, "bleaches" the world of meaning and value. For example, when a human being is viewed in wholly materialistic terms, we get something like this (from Wikipedia):

And while there is a "truth" here to such a description of a person, if this is the sum total of how you view humans, well, that's sociopathic. All that is human in humanity has been bleached out. 

If we present a man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present man as an automaton of reflexes, as a mind-machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drives and reactions, as a mere product of instinct, heredity and environment, we feed the nihilism to which modern man is, in any case, prone.

I became acquainted with the last stage of that corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment...I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some Ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.

--Viktor Frankl

My friend, the late Rachel Held Evans, popularized the Hebrew phrase eshet chayil, from Proverbs 31, translated as "worthy woman" or "woman of valor." In the Jewish tradition it is great praise to call a woman eshet chayil. And because of Rachel, many women began to praise each other with those words. 

As noted in Part 1, it's noteworthy that Ruth, a non-Israelite, is the only woman called eshet chayil in the Bible. And of interest for this post is that Boaz is a described as a match for Ruth. Where Ruth is described as an eshet chayil, a woman of valor, Boaz is described as a gibor hayil.

As Robert Alter notes in his commentary of the book, the original meaning of gibor hayil was "warrior of valor." But in the context of the book of Ruth, gibor hayil functions as the masculine equivalent to Ruth's description as a "woman of valor." Thus, Alter translates gibor hayil as "man of valor."

So, eshet chayil is a "woman of valor," and gibor hayil is a "man of valor."

I highlight the parallel because it has become difficult and treacherous, for a variety of reasons, to speak positively and affirmatively about masculinity, about what it might mean to be a "man of valor." In fact, the very descriptions "woman of valor" and "man of valor" will be deemed problematic by some as it reinforces a gender binary.

And yet, women thrill to calling each other eshet chayil. Would it be similarly appropriate, then, for men to call each other gibor hayil when they see a man behaving as we see Boaz acting in the book of Ruth? 

Of course, feminist scholars could do a number on Boaz, describing his benevolent sexism and paternalism. The gender norms of ancient Israel are not our gender norms. And yet, Boaz is a man who places his influence, privilege, and power on the side of the vulnerable. And as fraught and problematic as it might be for me to say, that seems to me to be a good thing. And after the #MeToo movement don't we want to see more men acting like this? And if were to see such a man, or a woman, it seems proper to cry out Eshet chayil! Gibor hayil!

One of the most powerful aspects of the book of Ruth is the opening line:

In the days when the judges ruled...

If you know the book of Judges you know it was a time of moral, social, and political chaos. Read the last few chapters of Judges. It's not a pretty sight.

And there, in the midst of that shitshow, in the days when the judges ruled, we have this moving story of small acts of fidelity, protection, and care. First, we see Ruth taking care of Naomi. Later, Boaz taking care of Ruth. 

This care and protection is beautifully captured in the imagery of God's covering "wings." When Boaz first meets Ruth he says:

"May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.”

Later, Ruth refers back to this imagery of God's protective wings when she asks Boaz to act as the family redeemer:

Boaz said, “Who are you?” And Ruth answered, “I am Ruth, your servant. Spread your wings over your servant, for you are a redeemer.”

I'd like to make two points.

First, most of the time, let's admit it, the world is a shitshow. Just like we see in the book of Judges. We live in a time of moral, social, and political chaos. But that doesn't mean we can't make a meaningful difference. The scale of our action is simply the scale of the action in the book of Ruth. Personal, face to face, direct. We often despair because we're looking at the chaos all around us and taking our eyes off of that vulnerable person within our reach. 

Second, we are the wings of God. Boaz praised Ruth because she sought protection under the wings of Israel's God. And Boaz became those very wings. 

So, be the wings of God. Even in, especially in, the days when the judges rule.

 401.

We desire truth and find in ourselves nothing but uncertainty.

We seek happiness and find only wretchedness and death.

We are incapable of not desiring truth and happiness and incapable of either certainty or happiness.

///

In psychology there's an area of research on what is called "affective forecasting." Fancy name for something we already know. Specifically, when facing decisions we make them by forecasting how we think we'll feel after choosing X. If I choose X will that make me happier? Or not? That is affective forecasting. We make choices by predicting how we'll feel after we make a choice. We try to choose happiness.

The affective forecasting research is interesting because one of its main findings is that we're pretty bad at predicting what will make us happy. We think X will make us happy, but it doesn't. 

A few years ago I was the commencement speaker for my son's High School graduation. During the talk I made a very uncommencment like observation. I said, "During commencement addresses you're supposed to tell the graduates to 'follow your dreams.' But if the research is to be believed, that is bad advice. What we dream for often doesn't make us happy."

I think Pascal would have approved of that sentiment. We are the freest and wealthiest people in the history of the world. And just look at us. As I describe in Hunting Magic Eels, we're lost. Mental illness statistics are skyrocketing. Loneliness is a scourge. We desire both truth and happiness, but are incapable of finding either.

In this modern world we are the captains of our own ship. 

Too bad we're so awful at navigation.

I've just read through the book of Ruth in Robert Alter's translation and wanted to gather here a few observations.

As Alter notes in his introduction to the book, the consensus of biblical scholarship is that Ruth was written as a polemic against Ezra and Nehemiah's fierce prohibitions and opposition to intermarriage with Israel's pagan neighbors, the Moabites in particular. It will be recalled that the Moabites were considered to be among the most toxic of Israel's neighbors, a most loathsome and despised people.

In light of that prejudice and the prohibitions against marrying Moabites, the polemical nature of the book of Ruth should be clear: Here's the story of a courageous and loving Moabite woman who is married by an Israelite and who becomes the great-grandmother of king David. 

This much has been noted before, the tension between Ruth and Ezra-Nehemiah. But Alter goes on to make an observation about the particular style in which Ruth makes its argument. Alter observes:

It is remarkable that a story in all likelihood framed for a polemic purpose should be so beguiling. Charm is not a characteristic that one normally associates with biblical narrative, but this idyll is charming from beginning to end, understandably making it one of the most perennially popular biblical books.

As Alter continues, in "[setting] out to make Ruth the Moabite a thoroughly good person" the author of the book makes "his argument for openness to exogamy," marriages between Israelites and Moabites. 

This is an utterly fascinating observation. Polemical arguments need not be raging, harsh, and cutthroat, a winner take all rhetorical combat. We can persuade through charm. We all know the saying, how we can catch more flies with honey rather than vinegar. 

But it's more than just charm. The polemic of Ruth is rooted in her very good character. In the story this Moabite women is described as eshet chayil, a "worthy woman" or a "woman of valor" from Proverbs 31. In fact, Ruth, a Moabite, is the only women named in the Bible as eshet chayil.

Basically, the polemic of Ruth is an argument from character. Legally, reasoning solely from the texts of the Law, Boaz shouldn't marry Ruth. Ezra and Nehemiah have the better biblical argument. But Ruth's character, her being an eshet chayil, argues for her inclusion into the People of God.

Quote from Toni Morrison's novel Paradise:

Let me tell you about love, that silly word you believe is about whether you like somebody or whether somebody likes you or whether you can put up with somebody in order to get something or someplace you want or you believe it has to do with how your body responds to another body like robins or bison...

Love is none of that. There is nothing in nature like it. Not in robins or bison or in the banging tails of your hunting dogs and not in blossoms or suckling foal. Love is divine only and difficult always. If you think it is easy you are a fool. If you think it is natural you are blind. It is a learned application without reason or motive except that it is God. 

You do not deserve love regardless of the suffering you have endured. You do not deserve love because somebody did you wrong. You do not deserve love just because you want it. You can only earn--by practice and careful contemplations--the right to express it and you have to learn how to accept it. Which is to say you have to earn God. You have to practice God. You have to think God--carefully. And if you are a good and diligent student you may secure the right to show love. Love is not a gift. It is a diploma. A diploma conferring certain privileges: the privilege of expressing love and the privilege of receiving it. 

How do you know you have graduated? You don't. What you do know is that you are human and therefore educable, and therefore capable of learning how to learn, and therefore interesting to God, who is interested only in Himself which is to say He is interested only in love. Do you understand me? God is not interested in you. He is interested in love and the bliss it brings to those who understand and share the interest...

Such a bracing, fascinating passage. Of course, there are lines we'll find utterly objectionable. That we don't deserve love. That you have to earn God. That God isn't interested in you. 

The quote comes form a sermon in the novel, so its narrative context has to be taken into consideration. Still, there's a lesson here. The Bible says, "faith without works is dead." The same is true about love. Love is a diploma. Love is not natural and it's hard. Love, as a capacity, has to be earned. You have to practice God. 

I appreciate the quote because we all want love, to give and receive it. But how many of us have put in the work? Few, I think. So while I wouldn't defend every line of this quote, I appreciate the call it is putting on my life. Today I want to practice God.

I came across this very interesting take on Job by David Burrell. It's a contrast between speaking to versus speaking about, the difference between explaining versus seeking a relationship.

Here's Burrell making the contrast between Job and his friends:

Speaking about something veers toward explaining, while speaking to someone can engage both in a relationship of exchange open to yet other forms of understanding. Indeed, what is most telling, structurally, in the book of Job is that the creator-God does not answer Job's extended complaints. Yet those looking for an explanation will find themselves scrutinizing what the voice from the whirlwinds says, while the dynamic of the unfolding relationship should lead us to what is most startling of all: that God responded to him.

All through the book Job's friends speak about God, from an intellectual remove, offering explanations for Job's suffering. Job, by contrast, keeps speaking to God, addressing God directly, seeking a face to face encounter.

And in the end, that's what Job gets in the whirlwind. No explanation, but the encounter. Job doesn't get a theory, doesn't get a theological answer, a satisfactory theodicy. Job receives what he asks for, God Himself. Job gets the relationship.

As I've shared, after a long absence due to COVID, chaplain volunteers have recently been allowed back to the unit on Sundays to participate and preach in the prison worship services.

I preached in two services yesterday. In one of the services, we had a moment where the men could come forward for prayer. Three men came to me and we shared in a time of prayer.

The request that struck me was from Robert. Robert was heavily tattooed, even on his eyelids. Obviously, an intimidating appearance. But as Robert shared his prayer request, tears started to fill his eyes.

Robert was a stutterer. And he wanted prayers for his speech. When he's anxious or emotional, he can't express himself. What he carries on the inside cannot make it to the outside. In fact, Robert shared that the reason for all his tattoos is that they communicate the important things that he cannot. He has etched his heart on his skin.

I prayed. For the healing of Robert's speech, but mostly for his pain, his frustration, his embarrassment, his shame. 

I left the unit thinking about Robert. We're all carrying on the inside some fragile thing, our external facades masking some shame or deep frustration. Looking at Robert, you wouldn't know the pain he carried. When we gaze at each other we can't see what is hidden on the inside. Like Robert, we're all carrying, even hiding, some private fragile thing. 

869.

To make a man a saint, grace is certainly needed, and anyone who doubts this does not know what a saint, or a man, really is.

///

I lament here the gender-specific language of "man." I couldn't figure out a way to make it more inclusive without it sounding a bit off.

Regardless, by "man" we mean "human being." It takes grace to be a human being. 

I can't recall who once shared shared this with me, but I was speaking at a church and visiting with my host in his kitchen. He was talking about his relationship with his father. That relationship hadn't been very good in the early years. But late in life, in his final years, the father had undergone a change. He'd softened. Become more vulnerable. More gentle. Kinder. 

And in describing this, my host shared, "It takes a lifetime to become a human being."

I've never forgotten that line. It takes a lifetime to become a human being. 

Doesn't it? And even then, many of us don't get very far on this journey. 

Much of this journey, in my estimation, goes to what Pascal notes above, the role of grace. Our need to give grace, to ourselves and others, and how we can't become human without relying upon grace. Grace is the only power that humbles us, breaks us, heals us, and reconciles us. Grace is the Great Mending of all that we've broken and torn.

Lord...

I only say I trust You. My actions prove that the one I trust is myself — and that I am still afraid of You.

Take my life into Your hands, at last, and do what ever You want with it. I give myself to Your love and mean to keep on giving myself to Your love — rejecting neither the hard things nor the pleasant things You have arranged for me. It is enough for me that You have glory. Everything You have planned is good. It is all love.

The way You have laid open before me is an easy way, compared with the hard way of my own will which leads back to Egypt, and to bricks without straw. 

If you allow people to praise me, I shall not worry. If you allow them to blame me, I shall worry even less, but be glad. If You send me work I shall embrace it with joy and it will be rest to me, because it is Your will. And if You send me rest, I will rest in You.

Only save me from myself. Save me from my own, private, poisonous urge to change everything, to act without reason, to move for movement’s sake, to unsettle everything You have ordained.

Let me rest in Your will and be silent. Then the light of Your joy will warm my life. Its fire will burn in my heart and shine for your glory. This is what I live for. Amen, amen.

--Thomas Merton

In theology there is a debate that roils regarding what is called God's divine impassibility. Divine impassibility is rooted in the belief that God cannot be acted upon. This is a metaphysical claim that nothing in creation can cause or trigger God to do, think, or feel anything. So, God cannot suffer emotions as we suffer emotions. God is impassive.

(For theological nerds the argument here is basically this. If God can be acted upon God becomes a part of the furniture of the universe, an agent among agents. God, in that instance, would no longer be God but a Supreme Being within the universe. This God cannot be, for, as the Ground of Being, God cannot be "within" the universe as a being among beings.)

Of course, the pushback here is that a God that doesn't suffer with us isn't the God we find in Jesus. God isn't impassive but emotionally invested. 

I don't want to rehash this debate. Use Google to go down this rabbit hole if you'd like. What I want to do is revisit a post of mine from 2018.

Specifically, in that post I argued that divine impassibility has a branding problem. When we think of God being "impassive" we think of God being emotionally blank, flat, or indifferent. And, of course, we recoil at this vision of a cold, impassive God. 

But as I argued in 2018, that's not who God is. God is love. And it's this love that is sturdy, fixed, unwavering, and unchanging. God is "impassive" in the sense that God's love doesn't ebb or flow, rise or fall, come and go. God's love isn't triggered into existence only to fade back into indifference. God's love is like the sun, always burning and constant, and never changing in the face of human action. 

Yes, it is true, that the word "impassive" doesn't conjure up this image, which is why I said the doctrine of divine impassibility has a branding problem. It's just a poor word choice. But if we're careful to define "impassive" as unchanging rather than unemotional, then we have a better chance of understanding what the doctrine is trying to teach us.

Anyway, I wrote that post in 2018 but was recently pleased to come across an essay by David Bentley Hart that makes this exact same argument. 

As Hart shares, the word used to argue for divine impassibility was apatheia, a word borrowed from the Greeks:

Apatheia entered Christian thought [as a term] borrowed primarily from the Stoics, for whom it signified chiefly a kind of absolute equanimity, an impassive serenity so fortified by prudent self-restraint against any excesses of either joy or sorrow as to be virtually indistinguishable from indifference.

This is another branding problem, as apatheia is the word where we get "apathy" from, and that's just not the word we want to ascribe to God. But as Hart goes on to observe, Christian thought radically rethought apatheia, connecting it not to stoical indifference but to agape. As Hart writes,

When Christians adopted the term [apatheia], however, it became something much more. According to Clement of Alexandria, for instance, true apatheia consists of the cultivation of understanding and charity, and as we are drawn to God in Christ, we are being conformed to a God who is without pathe--devoid of pain, free from wrath, without anxious desire, and so on--not as a result of having mastered the passions within himself, but from his essence, which is the fulness of all good things; and ultimately the Christian who has so advanced in understanding as to be purged of emotions is one who has become entirely love: a single inexorable motion of utter agape. Far from being mere Stoic detachment, then, apatheia is in fact a condition of radical attachment. 

Now the question that will get asked here is this, "Isn't love an emotion?" To which Hart responds:

To state the matter simply--no: love is not primordially a reaction, but the possibility of every action, the transcendent act that makes all else actual; it is purely positive, sufficient in itself, without the need of any galvanism of the negative to be fully active, vital, and creative. This is so because the ultimate truth of love is God himself...And this is why love, when it is seen in its truly divine depth is called apatheia. If this seems an odd claim to us now, it is largely because we are so accustomed to thinking of love as one of the emotions, one of the passions, one of those spontaneous or reactive forces that rise up in us and spend themselves on various objects of impermanent fascination; and of course, for us "love" often is just this. But, theologically speaking, at least according to the dominant tradition, love is not, in its essence, an emotion--a pathos--at all; it is life, being, truth, our only true well-being, and the very ground of our nature and existence. 

Phrased simply, love isn't a feeling, love is ontology.

In 2015 I wrote a post entitled "The Purity Culture of Progressive Christianity." That was only six years ago, but it now seems like ages.

As the author of Unclean, in that post I was one of the first bloggers to notice that a purity psychology was at work in progressive spaces. This was a few years before worries about "Woke mobs" and "cancel culture" became commonplace. 

There was predictable pushback in 2015 toward my post. As longtime readers will recall, I was criticized for being a white male, though I don't know what that had to do with my analysis. I was also called "satan" on Twitter. Reactions which, somewhat ironically, illustrated the exact point I was making in the post. 

Anyway, I had a self-congratulatory moment the other day reflecting back on that post. Since 2015 you've likely read so many analyses that have made the exact same observation and argument, that a purity psychology is at work in progressive spaces. Three examples. How complicit in oppression does a Founding Father have to be to warrant canceling and erasure? How many racist or sexist Tweets are you allowed to share in high school to warrant your cancelation and erasure as an adult? How many friendships are you allowed to have with a deplorable?

Basically, how many sins or associations are you allowed before being erased or canceled? The answer appears to be zero. And can anyone ever be forgiven? The answer seems to be no.

The lines in the progressive sand are very puritanical.   

Now, as a progressive, to even raise such issues about your own team is itself a violation of the purity code. That's how you get called satanic. But I continue to believe that purity psychology is toxic, in both evangelical and progressive Christian spaces. You should want your team to be better, to be more self-critical, humane, merciful, and tolerant. Hell, I'll say it: more Christlike. And pushing back against the purity psychology at work in your heart, mind, and social space is a good place to start. 

Biblically, you can make a good argument that idolatry is our primary spiritual struggle. Israel's Shema and the first of Christianity's Greatest Commandments underline the point: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. 

And yet, idolatry is hard for us modern people to get our head's around. We don't bow down to idols in our houses. So we shift the focus to our affections, values, and investments. What do we love or care about more than God? What are we putting, by way of priorities, before God? Such questions are a staple of preaching. 

But such a listing--an inventory of all the things we put before God--is descriptive, not explanatory. Why exactly are we loving the things on this list more than God? How and why does that happen?

In my book The Slavery of Death I attempt one answer. We become idolators, I argue, because of self-esteem and shame. 

Specifically, our lives are captured and governed by what Ernest Becker calls a "hero system," a pathway toward meaning, significance, and recognition, a route toward self-esteem. The things we come to worship before God tend to be the metrics by which we are achieving and building a sense of worth. Look at the things in your life that make you "matter," the things that set you a little bit above others on some scale of value, and you'll discover your idols.

The other thing you'll discover from this list is that many of your metrics of self-esteem are widely shared. This is why Becker describes the hero system as a cultural hero system. We're born into a value system, a widely shared consensus about what makes a good life. The rules of the self-esteem game existed before we were born. So we're stepping into a game that's already in full swing, like joining a poker table at a casino. The dealer of life starts us off with some chips, deals us our hand, and we start to play. Then we spend the rest of our lives trying to win the game, or at least break even.

And this is where shame comes in. If we attempt to reject the idols of the cultural hero system we find ourselves stepping out of the value system that governs the world. We walk away from the poker table and exit the casino. We begin to pursue other alternative and, therefore, strange and peculiar goods. In the eyes of our onlooking family, peers, and co-workers we start making inexplicable choices with our careers, finances, families, time, energy, and relationships. To step away from the cultural hero system--to reject the idols--is to start playing the game of life very differently, a difference that creates a clear, social contrast. Our lives become signs of contradiction.

And as should be obvious, to live a strange and peculiar life, to live as a contraction to society, is to face a great wall of social stigma and shaming. Loving God, therefore, demands shame-resiliency. 

In sum, we become idolators because of self-esteem and shame.