Category: Reflections

Is Intellectualism Arrogant?

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One of the talk that surprised me a bit from Matter ’09 was actually the final conversation on Romans 12 between Cassie Faulk and Bill Mallonee. They both explored the voice of the artist – Bill through his story and music and Cassie through a paper on interacting with art as a textual critic. In her paper (or at least what I remember of it) she asserted that in textual criticism one must act in humility towards authors, choosing to love both the author and the audience. She said she had problems with art that was ugly because it didn’t originate with an attitude of respect for the viewer. Similarily she said she dislikes art that is so complex that the average person can’t “get it.” As she put it, if you have to already know stuff in order to understand a work of art then that isn’t appreciation it is merely an affirmation of arrogance – showing off how much you already know. For her all interaction should be done out of humility.

But some of us were uncomfortable with the assertion that to apply one’s intellect or to call others to use their intellect is arrogant. Perhaps, as an academic she intended to only refer to the extremes of art and literature, but in the church world where anti-intellectualism is the norm I find her position dangerous. The treasured mantra in churches these days is that the bible is easy enough for a child to comprehend. While there may be a level in which that statement is true, the way it is used is generally to avoid or ridicule any learned approach to theology or biblical studies. Instead we get bible translations written at 6th grade levels and “bible studies” that are nothing more than copy a verse to fill-in-the-blanks. people get to pretend they actually are “studying’ something when all they are doing is regurgitating words without understanding their meanings in context. In fact this anti-intellectualism has become itself a source of pride, as anyone who tries to push deeper is mocked.

So I have an issue with saying that the need to be intellectually astute in order to understand something is simply arrogance. In my mind it is simply a means of getting at the complexities of the world. I don’t believe, for example, that if a person enjoys the show LOST they do so because they enjoy being arrogant. Yes, to get the show one has to be well read (or at least really good at google searches), but that just makes the show more interesting. I’ve heard people make fun of it and those of us who watch it because it is so complex, and to be thoughtful is in their world something to mock. But I don’t think the solution is so dumb everything down so that no one has to know much of anything as they engage the world around them. I want the news, or my TV shows, or my faith to make me think – to make me push beyond myself and go on that journey of discovery. I want the ah-ha moments when I see how elements of ancient Roman philosophy influence the writing of the epistles, or how ancient Egyptian culture helps LOST makes sense. It is about acknowledging the bigger world we live in, and that all of our stories have roots in each other’s stories. And it is about admitting that our response to the fact that God is big shouldn’t be to mock those that want to explore that complexity. To me it is more humble to admit that there is always more to learn – more ways to deepen the intellect – than to settle believing that one has it figured out enough to stop bothering.

But maybe that’s just arrogant of me…

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Freedom’s Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose

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So a few weeks ago, John O’hara posted this prompt on his facebook status update – “Finish the sentence – Freedom is…” The answers given included everything from “…what christ paid for on the cross” to “…the ability to walk around your house butt-naked without repercussions.” I was feeling random, so I offered up the classic Janis Joplin lyric “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” I’ve never really thought about it, but since posting that, I’ve had to consider how true that lyric often is.

The concept of freedom is of course an emotional issue in the U.S. We are fond of the phrase “freedom isn’t free” and are told to honor the soldiers in Iraq for “ensuring our freedom.” Neither of those phrases in the way they are typically used have anything to do with freedom and usually have more to do with justifying the restriction of freedoms. So needless to say, discussions regarding freedom these days are a bit skewed. In my understanding of the concept, freedom means being free from oppression. That oppression can of course take many forms – including control, enslavement, or even fear. The thing is, no one is ever truly free from all forms of oppression. There is always something controlling us – using fear to keep us where they want us to be. So in light of that, the only people who are truly free are those who just don’t care about what will happen to them if they resist the oppression. In short, the people who have true freedom are those with nothing left to lose.

A few different things have me thinking about this. First, as I’ve been rereading and rewatching Harry Potter, I am amazed yet again at Rowling’s nuanced presentation of evil and oppression. Evil insinuates itself in that world slowly. It starts with minor restrictions of freedom – a teacher punishing students for telling the truth or the government not letting the newspaper report the real news. Lies are spread, loyalties questioned, and little by little the freedoms disappear, until non-pureblood wizards are being round-up and others are going into hiding. Those who speak out against the oppression face dire consequences – like the kidnapping and torture of their children. In the end it is only Harry Potter, the orphan who has lost nearly everyone he loves, – who truly has nothing left to lose – who has the freedom to stand up to the oppression.

Then this past week I read of the start of trials of protesters in Iran. The New York Times reported, “The Iranian authorities opened an extraordinary mass trial against more than 100 opposition figures on Saturday, accusing them of conspiring with foreign powers to stage a revolution through terrorism, subversion, and a media campaign to discredit last month’s presidential election.” Those that raised their voices for freedom are now bearing the brunt of oppression. Similar thing with the journalists who are now (thankfully) free from their captivity in North Korea. While they were trying to bring truth to the world, they both had a lot to lose in the process. Hearing the story of Euna Lee’s 4 year old daughter who was told during her mother’s captivity that “mommy was at work” broke my heart. I don’t know if I could be willing to risk never seeing my children again in order to fight oppression.

I know that making sacrifices is a basic part of fighting for freedom. If no one was willing to take risks – sacrificing their families and even their own lives, then oppression would simply continue. But those sacrifices are chosen. People have to be willing to pay the price to seek freedom. When oppression can’t demand a price of us, it has no power over us. So either society grants us that freedom or we decide that we don’t care what others may do to us – but either way we are only free when we’ve got nothing left to lose.

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Father’s Day Thoughts

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At a recent wedding I attended, one of the groomsmen toasted the bride saying that she was going to make the perfect wife because she had already demonstrated her ability to be her fiancé’s full time maid and wait on him and his friends hand and foot.  My husband later told me that he sincerely hoped that no one would say something like that about our daughter at her wedding.  As a pastor he knows that any marriage based on such unbalanced submission is on shaky ground.  But more importantly, as a father, he would be heartbroken to see our daughter’s exuberance, inquisitive nature, and passionate love for life reduced to a toast like that.

Granted, our daughter is four, so even the vague thought of a wedding is years away, but now is the time when who she is as a person gets shaped.  When the values we want to impart as her parents compete with all sorts of other messages telling her what little girls should be like.  Now, we have no problem with her playing at princesses and fairies or having a wardrobe of all pink.  The real dangers come with those who want to limit who she is simply because she’s a girl.  Messages that tell her that girls cook and clean in the background while the boys explore and achieve.  That tell her that her worth stems from being physically appealing to boys.  Or that tell her that her voice is offensive or unwanted by God.  And as much as we’d like to believe that such messages are a quaint thing of the past, we continually see them popping up in the most unlikely of places.  From Cinderella’s maxim that to be beautiful is to be good (and to be ugly is to be evil), to Snow White sitting around waiting for her prince to come, to Sunday school lessons that focus exclusively on the male heroes of the Bible, she encounters values that will restrict her sense of self.

While I as a mother can encourage her to pursue her dreams and to not listen to those messages, in today’s world fathers must also play a major role in challenging those limitations.  Daughters need not be told by daddy that they can be whoever they want to be and then witness daddy go watch TV while mommy cooks dinner and does the dishes.  Or overhear daddy tell others that they play soccer well “for a girl.”  Fathers, now more than ever, need to be aware of how they help shape the way girls view themselves as people and in relation to men.

My daughter, like many young girls, is a total daddy’s girl, and constantly seeks his approval and mimics his actions.  This special relationship provides fathers with the chance to encourage their daughters to develop into whole people.  In our home, we do our best to show our daughter that both mommy and daddy work, and cook, and clean, and change diapers, and take time to relax.  My husband plays dress up fairies as well as lightsaber duals with my daughter.  He doesn’t want to push her into the preconceived box of “this is the way girls are”, but encourages her to be herself and use her active imagination.  We are, of course, making many mistakes along the way, but I am grateful my husband is being the type of father my daughter needs in order to grow up not into a set of stereotyped expectations, but into a healthy and whole version of herself.

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Good Travelers

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Travel should open up our horizons.  You know – expose us to different cultures, new foods, alternative rhythms of life, and diverse worldviews.  The good traveler not only seeks out these aspects of other cultures, but takes those cultural elements into herself and lets them speak to her.  She might appropriate new habits or ideas, or simply be forced to shift her own understanding of the world as the multiple truths she encounters are wrestled with.

 

Good travelers like these are the ones who change the world, or more accurately, the ones who formulate the ideas that change the world.  So, for instance, during the Renaissance as war, trade, exploration, and diplomacy took men further away from their homes than their ancestors had ever thought possible to encounter lands none of them had ever dreamed existed, the world, by necessity, had to shift.  New philosophies, sciences, and religious ideas challenged traditional assumptions.  New experiences and knowledge necessarily deconstructs what was previously known.  The experience for these men led to the Enlightenment – a necessary shift to accommodate a larger world.  As the world grows smaller and we travel to other cultures more regularly (whether physically or virtually via the internet), similar shifts occur.  It’s all part of being an observant, thoughtful, traveler.  Or at least it should be.

 

To me, ideally, pluralism expands us and blesses us.  It forces us to constantly examine ourselves and our world, changing our assumptions and developing our worldviews as we grow.  I want to be like that, I want to be the good traveler.  My problem is that I grew up in and exist in a world of Texas tourists.  If you’ve never encountered an actual “Texas tourist” consider yourself lucky.  You can easily spot them when you’re abroad as the fellow travelers who pay almost no attention to the culture they visit.  They ride in tour buses with others just like them, wear tennis shoes, cowboy hats, fanny packs and rhinestone embroidered shirts, stay in American hotels, eat American food, and assert their opinions loudly to whoever they can get to listen.  I cringe when I run into them while traveling (and double cringe when it’s obvious they are from my home state of Texas).  I’ve heard them telling shopkeepers in Mexico how to run their business, yelling at French security guards for not speaking English, complaining that there is no normal food to eat in Spain, and mocking offered hospitality in Russia.  They don’t want to be touched by the other culture. If anything, they simply want to impose their own culture onto others as the only right way to exist.

 

This is the church world I know.  The world where missionaries return from the field and compare the people they are working with to mindless monkeys (I am so not kidding).  Where participating in martial arts is forbidden because of the “Asian” influence.  Or where to participate in certain ministries I had to swear I didn’t dabble in occult practices like yoga.  Where friends don’t celebrate Christmas, Easter, or Halloween because they are too pagan.  Where it is too cosmopolitan and liberal (and therefore suspect) to eat Sushi or Indian food (or Ethiopian, or Persian, but Tex-Mex is of course okay).  Where we were told not to move into certain neighborhoods because they were too Asian, or too Hispanic, or too Black.  (And that’s just cultural issues, nevermind theological or philosophical diversity.) This is the world of Texas tourists – never engaging the world, rejecting and mocking it on occasion, but never letting it speak to them and help them to grow.

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Looking Ahead to 2009

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Perhaps it isn’t such a great idea to be looking ahead to 2009 right after going to see the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still.  Bad acting, plot holes and the end of the world aside, I can’t get the idea of tipping points out of my head.  The film of course proposes (with an implied hat tip to Al Gore) that the earth has reached a tipping point – either our wanton environmental destruction will completely destroy the planet or it must come to an end.  The alien visitors believe that humans are incapable of change and therefore must be exterminated to save the planet, while the humans argue that when faced with a large enough crisis they can actually change (imminent destruction by aliens being that crisis).  I don’t want to spoil the ending, so I’ll leave you hanging on the whole “do humans survive or not” question.

But ignoring the sci-fi melodrama, the film’s message bothered me.  I understand why crises can prompt people to alter habits, but does it always have to be that way?  I don’t want to believe that the only reason people choose to do good is to avoid negative consequences.  Granted this is a common equation in our culture.  We exercise and eat right to avoid heart disease.  We study for a test so we won’t fail the class.  We even accept Jesus so we can avoid the flames of hell.  Sometimes it seems like life is just one big crisis aversion scheme.  We avoid expending energy and doing anything until it becomes apparent that not doing anything personally hurts us more than actually doing something.  So we act to save our own butts.

Depressing, isn’t it?  It’s what I see all the time, but I’d like to believe it isn’t true.  The idealist in me wishes that sometimes people did the right thing because it is the right thing.  You know, like taking care of the planet because we genuinely want to care for God’s creation and not because aliens are threatening us with extermination.  To reach that tipping point and base our decision on whatever is loving, right, and just instead of that which is self-serving.  To actually do that whole “each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others” thing we Christians like to quote so much.

So while I am not anticipating any alien invasions in 2009, I do believe our world is at a tipping point.  In addition to environmental destruction, injustice and oppression abound.  Too often our response is to do nothing.  We make excuses about how seeking justice and loving others takes too much time, energy, or money.  We are encouraged, for example, to only buy organic foods when not to do so presents us with a personal health risk.  So we buy organic apples to avoid the personal pesticide exposure, but don’t bother with bananas because their pesticide usage only affects the farmworkers and the environment.  Other times it benefits us more to allow injustices to continue – so we can spend less we buy the sweatshop jeans or the slave-grown chocolate.  We look to our own interests and not the interests of others.  And so the balance keeps tipping away from whatever is true, noble, and right.

But the outcome isn’t inevitable.  Selfishness doesn’t have to win.  Perhaps change can occur without impending doom.  Maybe we can all do good simply for the same of doing good.  We forget that it is within our power to make that choice.  It is my hope that 2009 will be a year when we decide to declare ourselves in that regard.  A year when the tipping point must be dealt with.  A year when we stop doing nothing and take a stand for good regardless of whether it benefits us or not.

And I really don’t care if that sounds about as melodramatic as a cheezy sci-fi flick; it’s what needs to happen.

So I look forward in hope to a year of action.  To a year of doing something.  To tipping the balance towards justice in 2009.

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Accepting Reality

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Elections can often bring out the worst in people. I’m already sick of the Obama/Hitler rise to power comparisons (come on, can’t you at least be creative) and the litany of Gospel additions we have suffered through (i.e. to be a Christian you must vote this way…). Hopefully that will all subside soon, but what sticks around after these cycles are the undercurrents of prejudice. After the intensity of candidates and propositions is over, people stop fighting and succumb to the “pissed they exist mentality.”

Try as some might to make certain sorts of people illegal, what most people seem to want is hide the very existence of the other. I’m not talking about wishing child molesters or rapists didn’t exist (and working to make it so), but the mentality that gets upset that they (or especially their children) must breathe the same air as say a LGBT person, or a Muslim, or an Atheist, or a Christian. These are the people who would rather ban all extracurricular activities in a school than allow a group of THEM to gather together. Or the parents who launch campaigns against libraries to remove books that talk about someone having two mommies from the shelves. Or the Atheists who freak out if a Christian social worker is profiled in a “secular” magazine. I understand engaging in disagreement, but am appalled at this desire to pretend reality just doesn’t exist.

I’ve seen this pattern occur all too often within the Christian world especially. A few years ago I was working on a screening committee for a magazine to decide which submitted articles to publish. One very well written article told the story of a girl’s date rape and subsequent silencing at a Christian college. While the committee thought it was a good article, it wasn’t published because “our readers don’t want to hear about stuff like that.” Or the public safety officer at Wheaton College who had been told not to look for drugs on campus because it was better to pretend they don’t exist than taint the college’s reputation. Then there are the bans on religious symbols (headscarves, jewelry) in schools and workplaces. And the numerous people I encounter who just don’t want to hear about justice issues because it might upset them too much.

Reality check please. Pretending that reality doesn’t exist just because you don’t want it too is unhealthy. Perhaps it’s time to engage a slightly less unbalanced tactic in how you deal with the world.

Please.

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Living in Tension

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A few conversations this past weekend at our church retreat got me thinking about the tension between pride and servanthood. Of course, such things generally seem to be more of opposites than things to be held in tension. But in discussing the struggles we face in our spiritual journeys I saw that a balanced tension between the two can be needed.

What I’m thinking about here is the tension between the desire to accomplish something great with one’s life and the call to serve God wherever one finds oneself. I know that following God means being willing to serve where one is at. One cannot wait for the ideal circumstances to arise in order to serve and a certain level of being content where God has placed you is needed in order to serve well. But I also see the danger of settling for whatever is easy and never stepping out in faith to serve. That stepping out, while focused on God, requires a basic level of self-pride. A sense that one is “important” enough to do great things for the Kingdom. While it might not be self-centered pride, it is a measure of confidence that pushes one beyond where one is at onto greater things.

I’ve always understood the line from Lord of the Rings that Eowyn answers to Aragon’s question of ‘What do you fear my lady?’ She replies, ‘A cage. To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valor has gone beyond beyond recall or desire.’ To me that isn’t about my need to accomplish great things in my life, but the awareness that I shouldn’t be afraid to actually try. I think I fear complacency masquerading as contentment or “accepting my place in life” more than I fear excessive pride. But sometimes finding the right balance is hard.

I can get too caught up in desiring to “do great things” that I miss out on the opportunities I have right before me. It is this tension of accepting and grasping hold of such opportunities while not ignoring the whispers of the call pushing me out in faith that is the ongoing struggle. It isn’t a bad struggle necessarily, but one that keeps me aware who I am and what I am being called towards.

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Rethinking Discipline

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Thinking out loud here on the topic of discipline. I know that there are different meanings of the word depending on one’s intent and purposes, but I sometimes wonder if we restrict what we mean by the term too much in certain circumstances.

The etymology of “discipline” takes us to the Latin terms referring to the instruction given to a disciple. Instruction/discipline was necessary in order to shape a disciple. So Jesus instructing his disciples is discipline. Yet over time the emphasis shifted from shaping a follower to dictating the manner or rules by which the disciple should live. Later the term evolved to refer to punishments inflicted if said rules were not followed.

The two areas I most commonly hear the term used are in reference to child rearing and spiritual disciplines. In both areas, I think we often focus so much on the later meanings of the term that we fail to remember its roots. Instead of shaping disciples (ourselves spiritually or our children) we dwell on legalism and rules. We have checklists for how to be a good Christian and are often punished personally by guilt or corporately through ridicule and ostracism if those rules aren’t followed. We don’t go to church, do our quiet time, appear engaged in worship and we suffer the consequences. And of course we all know the arbitrary rules and punishments we inflict upon our kids all the time. But I wonder if we are effectively making disciples? Are we instructing them and helping shape them (and ourselves) into disciples who choose to follow a certain path? Or have we just created good systems of rules and punishments that keep some people in bounds some of the time?

I’m not saying get rid of rules, just wondering if we limit our understanding of discipline to our detriment.

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The Power of Paradox

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So come lose your life for a carpenter’s son
For a madman who died for a dream
And you’ll have the faith His first followers had
And you’ll feel the weight of the beam
So surrender the hunger to say you must know
Have the courage to say I believe
For the power of paradox opens your eyes
And blinds those who say they can see
So we follow God’s own Fool
For only the foolish can tell
Believe the unbelievable,
And come be a fool as well 

from Michael Card’s God’s Own Fool

I listened to that song a lot back in college when I was going through the whole postmodern crisis of faith thing. Before that I think I would have scoffed at the whole idea just like I’ve had people scoff at me when I have voiced similar ideas. Be a fool? Follow a fool? Choose to be stupid? Why would anyone do that?

The audacity of claiming the label “fool” when so many are quick to use it in derision confuses those that harp on truth and evidence. In a world where scientific certainty reigns and forensics has replaced mystery, to assert the power of paradox and affirm the foolishness of belief just doesn’t make sense. It isn’t the cultural norm, it doesn’t fit the dominant paradigm, it leads to ridicule and dismissal. You know the list. It’s what causes the atheists to point their fingers and laugh and the Christians to burn you at the stake as a heretic.

But all of that misses the point. I’ve been down this road of modern vs. postmodern epistemology before here on this blog and as fascinating as arguments about truth and certainty are they are often a red herring that distracts from the real issues. I’ve also admitted to not being afraid of postmodernism and do so for just this reason. I like the shift in postmodern philosophy (especially in Levinas) toward Ethics (as opposed to Epistemology) as first philosophy. So people can get their panties all in a bunch in their rush to call me postmodern relativist for not thinking that how we know things is of primary importance, but they are really missing the whole point – that of justice and how we interact with the Other as being more basic and central than any theory of knowledge. And it is that emphasis on interaction with the Other that has me proudly accepting the label of fool.

Faith is not about knowledge – what we know or how we know it, it is about following in the footsteps of a fool. Jesus was a fool in the eyes of the world. He has been accredited with ushering in an upside-down kingdom – where the first shall be last and the last shall be first. He cared for those whom society cast aside, he instructed us to love our enemies, he called the underdogs blessed. By anyone’s standards he was a fool. And he called us to follow him. As many have stated recently, this isn’t about affirming a secret set of knowledge but about entering into a way of life. It is about following the fool, being content in mystery, affirm the power of paradox, and turning the world upside-down.

Following the fool and choosing the foolish way isn’t about stupidity vs. knowledge. Those things don’t matter, or at least matter much less than the values of the Kingdom. Loving others and living subversively are foolish in the eyes of the world and so we follow God’s own fool and choose to be fools as well.

Find more contributions to this month’s Synchroblog on God’s use of fools at –

Phil Wyman at Square No More
Fools Rush In by Sonja Andrews
That Darn Ego by Jonathan Brink
Won’t Get Fooled Again by Alan Knox
Strength on the Margins by Igneous Quill
Foolish Heart by Erin Word
A Fool’s Choice by Cindy Harvey
Quiet Now, God’s Calling by Jenelle D’Alessandro
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right… By Mike Bursell
Ship of Fools by David Fisher
Hut Burning for God by Father Gregory
God Used This Fool by Cobus van Wyngaard
Fool if you think its over by Paul Walker
Blessed are the foolish — foolish are the blessed by Steve Hayes
What A Fool I’ve Been by Reba Baskett
The foolishness of God and the foolishness of Christians. by KW
My Foolish Calling by Lisa Borden
What a Fool Believes by Sue at Discombobula
God Uses Foolish Things by Sally

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Advent – Song of Hope

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As the theme of Advent this week is hope, I wanted to share the lyrics to one of my favorite songs that celebrates that hope. I have always found David Wilcox’s songs to hold truth in their very self-awarely simple and folksy way. The album this song is from, Into the Mystery, didn’t leave my cd player for about a year after it was released as I let the songs seep in. I keep coming back to this song though because of how beautifully it captures the hope of the incarnation. Enjoy.

If it Wasn’t for the Night

If it wasn’t for the night
So cold this time of year
The stars would never shine so bright
So beautiful and clear

I have walked this road alone
My thin coat against the chill
When the light in me was gone
And my winter house was stilled

When I grieved for all I’d made
Out of all I had to give
On the eve of Christmas day
With no reason left to live

Even then somehow in the bitter wind and cold
Impossibly strong I know
Even then a bloom as tender as a rose
Was breaking through the snow
In the dark night of the soul
In the dark night of the soul

If it wasn’t for the babe
Lying helpless on the straw
There would be no Christmas day
And the night would just go on

When it seem that death has won
Buried deep beneath the snow
Where the summer leaves have gone
The seed of hope will grow

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