Category: Theology

Colossians Remixed 5

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This post is part of my ongoing response to the questions I posted as part of this month’s book discussion on Colossians Remixed by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat over at the Emerging Women blog. (read my other responses – here).

Question #5 –

In Colossians 3:5-17 Paul tells us to put to death the things of our earthly nature (sexual immorality, greed). The authors write, “Why end a list of sexual sins with an economic sin? Because sexual sin is fundamentally a matter of covetousness, an insatiable, self-gratifying greed that has the control and consumption of the other person as its ultimate desire” (p160) and “In our culture, the unrestrained economic greed of global market capitalism pimps sexual promiscuity along with its entertainment products, communications systems, automobiles and running shoes. You see, if the empire is all about economic growth driven by a lifestyle of consumption, then all of life becomes a matter of consumption – including our sexual life. … There is no point in getting all morally absolute about sexual promiscuity if Christians are screwing around with the same consumeristic way of life as everyone else. This text gives us the language to identify what is going on here for what it is: idolatry.” (p162). How do you see sexual immorality as being greed and idolatry? What is the value of the alternatives?

I’ve always been uneasy with views of sex that paint it as evil in and of itself. The views that dichotomize body and soul. That disparage the physical world as evil. That are ashamed of our bodies.

Like it or not or intended or not those are the views that dominate the church’s approach to sex. There is something shameful about our bodies, they are finite, they wear down, they tempt us and are therefore evil. In a culture mesmerized with Platonic conceptions of reality the heresy of dualism finds an easy hold. Sex is evil because it is sex.

Christian women are taught to be ashamed of their bodies. To hide away their physical selves lest they “cause” their brother to stumble. Sex is the quintessential sin to be avoid at all costs. Do not think about it. Do not explore or attempt to understand your physical self. You will be ruined as a person for life if you slip up here. Take pride that you have stripped yourself bare of any desire to partake of that tainted act. But from your wedding night onward you had better be prepared to enjoy sex – creatively and proactively or else you will cause your husband to sin from neglect…

I remember the first time I asked (really asked) “why is sex outside of marriage wrong?” The answers I was given (because it is for pleasure and not procreation and because God says so) didn’t cut it for me. And I discovered that was a question you just didn’t ask. Ever. I wanted to affirm the conclusions but wanted better reasons and I just couldn’t seem to find them.

That’s why I liked the the take presented here. It explores the deeper reasons. It doesn’t turn sin into a concrete object or action that is performed, but sees it as an attitude of the heart that gets lived out in various ways. It allows for sex and the body to be celebrated in and of themselves, but still provides caution and care in their expression. And it gets past the hangup of seeing sexual sins as the only moral issue out there.

Idolatry is whatever causes us to turn away from the image of the invisible God and be consumed with other images. When the structures and mandates of empire usurp our worship. When the materialism of the marketplace captures our imagination. When other image-bearers become commodities for us to use. Then we have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.

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Colossians Remixed 4

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This post is part of my ongoing response to the questions I posted as part of this month’s book discussion on Colossians Remixed by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat over at the Emerging Women blog. (read my other responses – here).

Question #4 –

4. But wait a minute you cry! Aren’t Christians supposed to subject ourselves to the governing authorities and all that? The authors respond – “Rather than read [Romans 13] as providing carte blanche legitimation for any regime, regardless of how idolatrous and oppressive it might be, we suggest that Paul is actually limiting the authority of the state. The state is a servant of God for our good. it has no legitimacy or authority in and of itself, apart from subjection to the rule of God. and when the state clearly abrogates its responsibility to do good, when it acts against the will of God, then the Christian community has a responsibility to call it back to its rightful duty and even to engage in civil disobedience (see Acts 12:6-23). The state has no authority to do evil”. (p185)

I like the balance created here.

I have often heard the “subject yourself to the governing authorities” used as that sort of carte blanche. It is a line used to silence all opposition and dissent. Question the war, the Patriot Act, or No Child Left Behind and you are treated as if you are questioning the existence of God. And labeled a liberal (its hard to tell which is worse)

Then from another camp if I merely attempt to say that the government is in a good position to help make the world a better place and I’m told that I look to the government for my salvation. And that I’m a liberal.

So I like this response. That government thing – it’s there because of God. You know “for by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.” The government is just one more thing that can serve God for his glory. Can it be corrupted by power and swayed by greed? Of course and we have the empires to prove it.

But the responses that say “well even if it is doing God’s work we won’t let it or support it” and those that say “well even if it’s doing evil, we have to support it” just don’t make sense to me. To me the government can be used as a tool to advance God’s kingdom (and I so don’t mean this in a theocratic dictatorship sort of way) or it should be called out when it engages in practices contrary to kingdom values.

So to pledge one’s allegiance to the government (or to a party within that government) instead of God (or as it is subtly twisted – in the name of God) misses the point. Our purpose is to serve God and spread God’s love. If the government is on board with that great. If it is working against that mission, then it needs correction.

For another interesting take on this check out this post over at Theolog.

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Colossians Remixed 3

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This post is part of my ongoing response to the questions I posted as part of this month’s book discussion on Colossians Remixed by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat over at the Emerging Women blog. (read my other responses – here).

Question #3 –

Poetry of subversion. The authors explore how the hymn presented in Colossians 1:15-20 is a hymn of subversion of Empire. It takes the language of Empire and proclaims the supremacy of Christ over Caesar – radical, subversive, dangerous. They then contribute a “targum” (an extended translation and expansion that reads our world through the eyes of the text) of this passage. You can read it on p.85 or here. (and a short article on the point they are making here). What is your reaction to the poem? Does this imagination of an alternative to empire make sense?

I love that poem/hymn. We do live in a culture of images vying for our attention, or allegiance, our time and our money. The numbers vary, but it is thought that an individual is generally exposed to around 600 advertisements per day. We pay companies for the right to wear their name brand on our chest or butts.

I watch TV, I buy stuff, I surf the web (a lot). I don’t see any of that stuff as evil in and of itself. In fact most of that stuff has and can be used for good. I see the value in patronage and support and sponsorship. Issues arise though when said images and economic structures dominate our consciousness. When we allow the greed promoted by our economic system to let us forget that Christ is the image we should focus on. As Walsh writes, “this means that the ideology of economic growth is not Lord over our lives. We are not subservient to the imperatives of consumerism, ecological despoliation, technological innovation, and seeking our own self-interested security because we are subjects of another kingdom. We are committed to submitting our lives – including our economic aspirations, consumer habits, ecological practice, political involvement – to the one in whom, through whom and for whom all things are created.”

So this is about being image bearers for Christ rather than for someone else. I personally don’t see this as a polemic against style but an attitude encouragement. And neither is the point to eschew name brands in favor of whatever the cheap brand is. The allure of Walmart is just as seductive as that of Abercrombie – when both challenge the supremacy of Christ’s love by using his children in sweatshops our patronage of either demonstrates our allegiance to an economic system over Christ.

I don’t do a very good job at this. I live in suburbia. So many days I really don’t stop to think if my economic purchases put Christ first. Scratch that, most days it is only about my needs and wants. The poem proclaims –
the church reimagines the world
in the image of the invisible God

I’m trying to figure that out. To see the good in stuff. To not be a slave to systems of greed. To think about if my purchases are just. To be an image bearer.

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Colossians Remixed 2

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This post is part of my ongoing response to the questions I posted as part of this month’s book discussion on Colossians Remixed by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat over at the Emerging Women blog. (read my other responses – here).

So Question #2 –

Empires are defined here as (1) built on systemic centralizations of power, (2) secured by structures of socioeconomic and military control, (3) religiously legitimated by powerful myths and (4) sustained by a proliferation of imperial images that captivate the imagination of the population. In comparing how both the Roman and current Western empires maintain the status quo of privilege and oppression the authors give the examples of “most major corporations use the equivalent of slave labor to produce clothing, toys, tools and some foods. Most of this labor is done by people in Asia, Latin America or Africa. While cash-crops farmers include both men and women, the majority of those who work in sweatshops, on coffee plantations and in the sex trade are women and children. … although our culture does not openly subscribe to an ethos of patriarchy, racism, and classism, the effects of the global economic market create the same kind of societal dynamic that was present in first-century Rome.” (p 59-60). I want to ask the same questions the authors then ask – “In the face of an empire that rules through military and economic control, what is the shape of a community that serves a ruler who brings reconciliation and peace by sacrificial death rather than military might? If the empire elevates economic greed and avarice into civic virtues, while Paul dismisses such a way of life as idolatrous, then how does a Christian community shaped by Paul’s gospel live life in the empire?” (p61).

Start calling America an empire and you get in trouble (even if you are the Vice President). Granted I’ve heard dispensational interpretations of Daniel’s vision that insist that Rome never fell so we are therefore still living in that fourth empire waiting for the seventieth week pre-trib rapture and all that, but even then the spin was pro-America.

I agree with Walsh and Keesmaat that America is an empire in the tradition of Rome and I don’t think that’s a good thing. The very raison d’etre of empire is power which directly contradicts the way of service and love preached by Jesus. But the systems and values of empire creep into the lives of its people, even those who ostensibly profess other values. Under the Roman empire the apostles had to combat warped values like it being okay to use people as slaves if it increased your profit or made your life easier; if you didn’t like another people group or wanted resources off their land, you liberated them of such land; sexual promiscuity and gluttony being considered natural indulgences of one’s appetites; and women being seen as mindless sex objects. But of course that’s all different today, right?

What really gets me is the subtle replacement of the values of the cross with the values of empire. The propaganda machines that push the virtues of the state have swayed Christians so that now civic virtues are promoted and Christian virtues questioned. When I can sit in a church and hear sermons in support of capitalism, preemptive war, racial discrimination, and sexism and fail to hear the words of Jesus actually preached, empire has won. When we sing hymns in praise of our country and think that forcing our children to say creeds of allegiance to an idol is a form of Christian witness, empire has won. When it is more important to be patriotic than care about the children we blew up, then empire has won. We have been taken captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.

So how do we live in this empire? How do we love and not fear and yet challenge that which promotes evil? How can we (and I am very much included in this) stop pointing fingers at individual sins and actually think about how we’ve bought into (been indoctrinated into?) the values of empire? Can we stop trying the mesh or replace the values of the Kingdom with the values of the empire? Basically can we take a step back and ask why? Why do I believe/buy/promote this? Is this really a good thing? Does this fit into Jesus’ message? What is Jesus’ message anyway? How do I need to change?

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Colossians Remixed 1

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Over at the Emerging Women blog, I am hosting this month’s book discussion on Colossians Remixed by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat. I read this book about a year ago. At the time it was the first “deeper” book I had read after a year and a half of “mommy brain” syndrome. It helped wake me up and get me passionate about life, faith, theology, and justice again. I had heard Brian Walsh speak at the Emergent convention and knew I wanted to hear more from him. You can read more about the book over at the EW blog. I highly recommend it as a glimpse into how emerging believers interact with scripture (or is it how scripture interacts with us?)

Anyway. I started the discussion over there with a long series of questions. I’ll wait and see how the discussion unfolds over there (who knows if anyone even read the book or wants to participate), but I’m going to answer respond to my own questions more in depth here. So here we go with question #1 –

1.The question of interpretation. What is your reaction to this quote? “Reading is always from somewhere. We always read from a particular historical, cultural and geographical place. The question that we must ask is, how do we “place” ourselves, how do we discern the times and spirits that invariably influence our reading of a text like Colossians? What are the questions, crises and opportunities that we necessarily (and legitimately) bring to this text?” p19

I’ve touched on the issue of Biblical interpretation a lot here. I think by now that it’s fairly obvious that I’m not a literalist and that I do acknowledge that Biblical interpretation does in fact exist. The question is, are we aware of our lenses and biases when it comes to reading this text?

Honestly, until I read Colossians Remixed, I had never given much thought to this particular epistle. It wasn’t a trendy youth group devotional book like Philippians. Nor is its list of household codes (wives submit and all that) as popular as other similar passages. I know I read it. It fit the follow Christ, don’t sin, and women submit pattern I was used to hearing oh, just about everywhere. No big deal. What’s the point. Moving on.

I never stopped to ask what were the people like in Colosse and how am I like them? I ignored the shadow of the Roman Empire that we are so quick to acknowledge in the stories of Christ’s birth and death, but which seems to fade away in our ultra-individualized readings of Paul. And the admonitions to let no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy and to put to death the earthly nature were used as direct challenges not to actually think or engage with this scripture or any scripture at all for that matter – since thinking necessarily involved hollow philosophies and earthly habits. For those same reasons, historical exploration of the original context wasn’t really needed either. God is the same today as he was yesterday and will be tomorrow – so obviously this text will mean exactly the same thing to us 21st century American Christians reading it in English as it did to 1st century believers hearing it read aloud in Greek. End of story.

That is how I had previously encountered Colossians.

Then I discovered a whole new set of lenses. What if we thought about what these people faced as oppressed citizens of an empire? What if we explored how the language in this letter directly challenges the common language of empire? And what if we opened our eyes and saw the empire that we are living under?

That woke me up and changed my reading of Colossians. As I engage with the rest of the questions, I will explore some of the points that stood out to me as I looked at Colossians from a fresh perspective.

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[Grid::Blog::Via Crucis 2007] – Easter Morning

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John 20
The Empty Tomb
1Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

3So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. 8Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9(They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)

I am not one to get up early. If I had my way I would sleep late everyday. I like sleep. I try to sleep as much as I can. But then there are those nights when the world just seems so wrong, so off, so empty that sleep seems far away. How can one sleep when everything has gone wrong? When all of one’s hopes, dreams, and plans have come to an abrupt end? Why sleep when you have to wake up to that slow sad realization that everything has changed – your life has fallen apart?

It was nights like those that came to mind as I read the Resurrection passage here. Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb.. I picture her unable to sleep since the crucifixion – unwilling to accept the horror and get on with life by succumbing to such an everyday habit of life as sleep. So while it is still dark she goes to the tomb.

The experience of the past few days cannot be processed. How could she ever come to terms with what happened? He had promised a new Kingdom and a new and more glorious way of life. He had challenged what was wrong with the world and offered hope to the suffering. He had encouraged her as a woman to follow him. How could he let this happen? How could it all just be over?

I picture Mary going to the tomb because there was no where else she felt she could possibly be. Anointing spices were a good reason, but like so many others across time, she had to return to that which she had lost. The life, the promises, the man. Life cannot go forward, she can’t get back what had been lost. The grieving process has hardly begun and so all she can think to do is go to the tomb. Be as close as she can to that which was lost.

To find that the stone had been moved.

Anger, rage, confusion, fear. How does one handle the torrent of emotions? How does one respond to this new affront? At this point how can there be any hope of a happy ending?

Easter for us is a time of joy. It is the symbol of hope and of life. The first day of the week is a time of celebration, time to express our joy. But I wonder what extremities of emotion those who discovered the empty tomb experienced before the truth was fully revealed.

I pray for a blessed Easter for all who read this. And I pray that the joy and celebration will not just be a veneer on the realities of life. I pray that the trappings and the traditions will not just be perfunctory elements this year, but instead be personal and transformative. May the message of Jesus and the hope of the Resurrection permeate your life and meet you in the midst of whatever you are dealing with. May Christ be celebrated for conquering death, setting captives free, and healing the brokenhearted.

He is Risen.

May we be able to answer with all that we are – He is Risen Indeed!

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Faith Like a Child

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I love praying with Emma. Granted, she is still grasping the whole concept of God, but she seems to understand that God takes care of things and that we say “thank you” to God. When we pray (or sing songs like “He’s Got the Whole World in his Hands”), we get to go through the list of everything Emma can think of to pray for. We thank God for and ask God to care for mommy, daddy, her friends, her animals, her toys, her car, her house, the birds… (you get the picture). She also has to pray for her favorite TV characters – Elmo, Dora, and Swiper. Yes, Swiper. (for those of you unfamiliar with the world of Dora the Explorer, Swiper is a fox that swipes stuff. The bad guy.) So Emma prays that God will take care of Swiper. I love that. She doesn’t pray that God will change Swiper, make him repent of his swipiness, and make him a moral fox. She just prays that God will take care of Swiper. That’s the grace and love I wish I had. Where I could truly love my enemies no matter what. Where I had no problem with God loving them either. Where I didn’t insist on God’s love and blessing for just for myself or grudgingly extend it to others when they become like me. Where I loved because that is what I am called to do.

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Moral vs Social Reform

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This past week I was involved in a very interesting conversation with a man who emailed me regarding the emerging church. More specifically he was genuinely curious about the movement and was hoping to find an answer to a question that he hadn’t really seen addressed. He wanted to know what was emergent’s stance on abortion. For privacy’s sake, I won’t quote his email, just my responses, but I should say it was a nice (not extreme or overly emotional) dialogue. Although, I am not exactly in a position to speak for Emergent (but this is an open an organic conversation, right?), here’s the main part of my initial response.

First, I should make it clear that the emerging church is not a denomination with a set of beliefs or doctrines. It is a conversation that is very ecumenical in nature. There are churches that self identify as emerging but which are also part of various denominations and so abide by the beliefs of those groups. There are groups like Emergent Village or Emerging Women that exist to serve those involved in the conversation but who don’t promote a particular set of beliefs. For example, at our upcoming Emerging Women gathering we have women from at least 15 different denominations attending. Many of us involved in this conversation hold tightly to certain sets of beliefs, and some people even publish books under the label emerging or Emergent that detail their particular beliefs. This of course causes disagreements and discussion, but people are not excluded from the conversation because of a particular belief. It makes some people uneasy to discover that there is no central emerging denomination with a concrete set of beliefs. They want to know exactly what THE emerging church thinks about ___________ issue (abortion, homosexuality, predestination, tongues, Eucharist, …). But the reality is that there are a number of opinions on those issues and all of those are expressed in the emerging church conversation.

At my church (which identifies with the emerging conversation), we agree to disagree on issues. These are not issues of salvation, but part of what comes with the journey of the Christian faith. So all people, whatever their opinions, are welcome. I would say most of us are opposed to abortion, one guy I know insists that abortion doctors should receive the death penalty. Others support abortion in various forms and there are women there who have had abortions. I will of course promote my beliefs on the issue, but not in a way that hurts or excludes those who think differently.

All that said, I think there is a lot of work being done by those who call themselves emerging to help stop abortions. Many emerging Christians support universal healthcare so that women don’t have to fear a life of debt and extreme medical bills if they keep their child. Welfare reform, raising the minimum wage, and support systems for single moms are also topics of concern. Gender equality is another major cause so that in countries where women are currently considered inferior they will no longer be aborted for failing to be male. Also teaching equality so that women are respected by men and not just viewed as sex objects to be used or pawns that must submit is a way to address the underlying causes of abortion. Those who support life want to do so throughout a person’s life – in the womb and out of it. They realize that loud protests that condemn abortion are ineffective in actually lowering the number of abortions. They want to come alongside the women contemplating abortion and help them have that child. That means addressing social issues like poverty and healthcare, being there as incarnations of Christ’s love to those women, and helping fix a broken system. Those aren’t loud newsworthy ways to address the abortion issue and they take way more time and effort, but I see a lot of it happening in the emerging church and I applaud those who care about following Christ that much.

I hope this helps answer some of your questions.

Shalom

In his response to what I wrote there, he pointed out that the things I mentioned had to do with social reform. He wondered what the emergent church was doing about moral reform relating to the dignity of life. I responded –

Thanks for the reply. I have a couple of thoughts on your question.

I do hear a lot of talk in emerging church circles about the dignity of life. This is a moral issue that relates to abortion as well as other issues like war, the death penalty, poverty, AIDS, sex trafficking, fair trade, and immigration. So the conversation is broader than just abortion even though that is obviously a major part of it. We are all children of God – made in his image – born or unborn, male or female, young or old, Iraqi or American. All life is precious and worth defending. This is a constant point of conversation in the emerging church.

But I think you would confuse most emerging church people by trying to draw a distinction between moral and social reform. Most emergents see social reform as a moral issue – it is how our words, theology, and ideas gets fleshed out. There is of course room for discussion of ideas (sometimes too much of this in my opinion), but its meaningless unless we give it feet and put our words into action (faith without works is dead and all that). So to impose a moral judgement on a person (abortion is wrong) without being there to help her have a dignified life is hypocritical. Morality is way more complicated than that. These are real people in real situations that need help. Most of them know abortion is wrong, many of them know sex before marriage is wrong, but they don’t see a way out of the system. So changing the system, showing love, and doing all that social reform stuff is how moral reform gets done for most emergents.

I’m sure other would answer this differently, but this has been my experience and exposure in this area.

This whole distinction (or lack thereof) between moral and social reform has been bugging me the last few days. I keep wondering, is it even possible to have moral reform without social reform? Doesn’t living out our faith necessitate action? I too often do live the life of the mind and don’t put action to my words as often as I should. So I’m thinking through what this looks like – any thoughts?

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Book Review – Sex God by Rob Bell

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So I recently finished reading Rob Bell’s new book Sex God and I have mixed feelings about it. I’m not a fan of his “write-like-I-talk” style (although I love his preaching, he is in fact the only person I can stand to listen to recorded), but that’s a hurdle I dealt with with Velvet Elvis. I’m not going to give a complete summary or review of the book here, I’ll join everyone and direct you to Ben Witherington for that. I liked this book, but at the same time it disappointed me. For all of its expanding the boxes of how evangelical Christians usually approach the sex topic, it still avoided the complexities of the big picture.

I began reading this book full of uncertainty and caution. Why? Because most Christian books on sex leave me nauseated. They dwell in the realm of stereotypes and promote repression for the sake of repression. They hold the complexities of sex hostage to the anti-homosexual agenda – leaving us with a seriously problematic “sex is only for procreation” answer. They talk as if physicality is a taboo thing to be ashamed of and that it must be translated into spiritual terms in order to be baptized as appropriate for Christians to discuss or engage in. So I must say that compared to most of those sort of books, Sex God is a refreshing alternative.

I liked how the book addresses the heresy of dualism. We are not separate in body and soul, but integrated in all ways. As Rob puts it, we are neither animals or angels. Too often the message gets sent in Christian circles that to avoid all of the horrible evils of physicality one must deny that one is a sexual being and pretend to be an angel. Much has been written on how badly this messes up people’s (mainly women’s) experience and conception of sex down the road, but it’s still the message that gets taught (especially to youth groups). So the affirmation of body and soul needs to be made – a lot. We need to affirm that sex is good but that we aren’t slaves to our physicality. We also need to affirm that sex is about deeper intimacy and connection. What I didn’t like about his treatment of this typical dichotomy is his assumption that people who have sex outside of the intimacy of marriage do so because they are just animals. Yes, some sex is just sex for the sheer physical pleasure of sex, but its a tad naive to label it all that way. Just because people may not have gone through a ceremony does not mean that their lives, relationships, and sex are devoid of intimacy and connection. Bell’s quick division of good vs. bad sex (in the moral sense, of course) is too simplistic for me.

I liked the discussions of unconditional love and how love is the giving up of control and the need to manipulate the other. This was a great introduction to that concept, although I preferred Peter Rollins treatment of the same in How (not) to Speak of God. Those concepts go beyond marriage relationships to all relationships involving love. I am reminded of the themes proposed by unconditional parenting advocates that encourage parents to stop manipulating their children (through rewards, punishment, praise and disappointment) to get them to do what the parents want or as conditions for the parents showing love to them. I also liked Bell’s discussion on sacrifice and submission. I think that particular discussion is bigger than he made it out to be, but he gave some much needed correction to traditional pop interpretations of those ideas.

What I didn’t like the most was the limiting of sex to one purpose. I have always been disappointed with theories that limit sex to being just for procreation or just for pleasure. According to Sex God, sex is just for connecting. Connecting intimately with one’s spouse and connecting with God (and of course there will be no sex in the world to come because we will all already by intimately connected). This imho, fails back into the trap of dichotomizing body and soul. All it really does is disparage the body as being less important that the soul – because connection happens on the spiritual level. And it ignores other purposes for sex – like procreation and pleasure. I know Bell is trying to make a much needed point about connection, but he does so at the expense of the big picture.

On the whole, Sex God is a good read. It includes many great stories to illustrate the concepts of intimacy and connection (and no, not those sort of stories…). I appreciated the exploration of what goes into a healthy relationship. It is a simple, straightforward book that addresses the issue in refreshing ways. I just wished it had admitted the complexities and the nuances of sexuality and been willing to expand its scope.

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Creation Care

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I recently came across a short article by N.T. Wright that explores why Christians should care for God’s creation. Read it here.

I like how he acknowledges that how we view the environment is often wrapt up in our eschatology. Of course political and economic leanings play a big role as well, but its easier to trash the world if the point is to leave it for the pie in the sky when we die. But Wright questions that excuse by comparing it to a view of sin. He says, “If I said, well, I find it difficult to struggle against sin – but one day God will save me and make me totally his, so why bother in the present? – if I said something like that, every pastor worth their salt would tell me that what God intends to do with me in the future must be anticipated, as best I can in the power of the Spirit, by me in the present.”

As was stated over and over again at the recent Academy Awards, caring for the environment – caring for God’s creation – is a moral, not political, issue. It is an act of worship to God, a way to show our love to him. That’s why I really don’t get the people who accuse (and hence write off) environmentalists of loving the creation more than the creator. Showing love for the creation is a way of loving the creator. Do we accuse Mother Teresa of loving the poor more than she loved God and therefore say what she did was wrong?

When our theology (be it opinions about end times or the date of creation), or politics, or our consumerism become an excuse to hurt God and his creation there is something seriously wrong.

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