The Necessity of Disillusionment

To be deeply bothered is a sign of hope.
Christopher Rice

It seems the great challenge for each generation come of age is – confronted with overwhelming disparity – whether to escape the world it inhabits or encounter the world “as it is.” At worst, the former (escape) becomes an illusion, and the latter (encounter) an overwhelming materialism of inescapable totality. The former requires the resources of religion, opiates, and, licentiousness – the latter, faith.

It is right and good for young people to struggle with the world “as it is.” This facing up to the way things are will require nothing less than for us to become Christian, to receive the gift that only God can give, that is, the mystery of faith. A uniquely Christian faith requires that we stare with eyes wide open into the full force of this world in all its paradox, ambiguity, lies, and pain. Rightly, this requires the young person in today’s world to experience the existential crisis most commonly associated with disillusionment. Rather than understand this despair as the great upheaval and end of faith, the Christian should understand disillusionment as a resource toward a coming of age.

“A time is coming when people will go insane. And when they see someone who is not insane, they will attack that person saying, ‘You are crazy; you are not like us’” (Abba Antony). These words speak a searing critique to those that would discount the necessity of disillusionment. In this way, telling the truth about the world “as it is” becomes a subversive act, an alternative to the willful illusion of the masses. It offends the order and is not welcomed. And yet, the young person who experiences disillusionment is at the same time offered in this very moment of crisis the gift of faith. To encounter the world “as it is” and not escape but act is to become like Christ. It is to participate in the mystery that finds its origin within the heart of the Incarnation itself. There is no other way to continue on truthfully as a Christian outside of a life lived within this most profound mystery of mysteries: that in his great love, God became like us – in the midst of chaos – and burned as the Light, a light to guide a new humanity and expose the powers of darkness.

If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me, and the light around me turn to night,” darkness is not dark to you, O Lord; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike. Psalm 139:10-11

Bonhoeffer in the Present-Tense: Trinitarian Community and Occupy Wall Street

They will tell us we are un-American. But when conservative fundamentalists tell you that America is a Christian nation, remember what Christianity is: the Holy Spirit, the free egalitarian community of believers united by love. We here are the Holy Spirit, while on Wall Street they are pagans worshipping false idols.
(Slavoj Žižek, Occupy Wall Street Open Forum. October 9, 2011)

Along with the recent assassination of Osama bin Laden, no other event in the past year has confronted me more with the social responsiblity of the Church than the Occupy Wall Street movement. While some suggest never to discuss religion, politics, and sex with family or friends,  I am quite convinced that for those of us set on standing for some sort of good in the world - this matrix becomes utterly inescapable. For the Christian, attentiveness to these and other social issues become more than an excercise in theological or philosophical discourse, but rather, a summons to respond in the here, now.

The Christian would do well to listen and count friend self-professed pagans, atheists, skeptics, and nihilists. In his speech addressed to the multitude of protestors gathered in Zuccotti Park, Slavoj Žižek spoke the searing words that open this entry, “…remember what Christianity is: the Holy Spirit, the free egalitarian community of believers united by love. We here are the Holy Spirit, while on Wall Street they are pagans worshipping false idols.”

Žižek’s statement can be taken as nothing less than a word of rebuke for a Church that has removed itself from the world, and therefore, the community of Jesus Christ. Is it not in the place of fragmentation and upheaval, the place where the poor orphan and the widow reside, that the Church should be found? Here is where the great deception lies: that in worship I may confess ”Jesus is Lord” while turning from it in deed. In this way obedience to Jesus Christ becomes untenable if it does not acknowledge the inherently social question that must follow “Who is Jesus?” the second being, “Where is Jesus?”

Rather than lead with St. Francis prayer, “seek first to understand, than to be understood,” it saddens me that among the Christians I have had dialogue with, an overwhelming number have responded with negligent apathy or expressed outright disgust at the movement and its goals. While there are any number of warranted critiques one could make toward OWS and its demands (OWS Statement of Purpose), one cannot deny it acting as disruption to the status qua – a status qua under the illusion that maintaining the order “as is” is of greatest virtue. In this way, the disruption of OWS can be understood as a making visible of what is. What “is” is the poor, the suffering, and our fear that keeps us from looking at our own depravity in the mirror. In this regard, I praise the efforts of OWS. The social question at hand – the poor among us - does indeed exist.

I was recently stunned and strangely encouraged while reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s first doctoral dissertation Sanctorum Communio, in that he also was deeply distraught by the negligent apathy and outright disgust toward the workin poor displayed by German Christians in his own day.

I have abstracted the following excerpt from Bonhoeffer’s dissertation entitled, “The Church and the Poor Working Class.” In it, Bonhoeffer offers a challenge not only to the ever-widening gap between rich and poor, with a rebuke to the overwhelming number of wealthy Christians who had become all to ”well-adjusted to injustice” (West), but Bonhoeffer also dares to question the very forms of Church expression that foster separation from the poor.

In my opinion, it cannot be gainsaid that the future and the hope for our bourgeois” church lies in a renewal of its lifeblood, which is only possible if the church succeeds in winning over the poor working classes. If the church does not see this does not see this, then it will spurn a moment of mist serious decision-making. Nor is it hard to see that the churchliness of the modern bourgeoisie is threadbare, and that their living power in the church is at an end. On the other hand, it seems to me as if, despite outward appearance to the contrary in the poor working classes, there is no modern power that is basically more open to the Christian gospel than these poor workers. These avid, poor workers know only one afflication, isolation, and they cry out for one thing, community.

These ideas are, of course entangled and confined in class conciousness. Nevertheless, they are seeking something more intensely than the bourgise ever did. The church dare not let the poor working classes proclaim “human peace” without speaking its own work in this situation. It must not let the socialist youth movements speak of community without calling into their midst the work of santorum communio. It must not shrug off the interest in sport shown by modern youth (not just the poor working classes), but it must recognize that this, too, is a cry for community in discipline and competition, and that here too the word of sanctorum communio could find attentive response. Certainly it will not be heard, and cannot be heard, in the way it often speaks today. For above all the gospel must deal with the present – and that means at this moment the masses of poor workers – in a concrete way, “serving the Lord” (Rom. 12:11).

What God is Not: Renunciation and Discipleship

There is a great deal of confusion in Christian communities today over the reappropriation of Jesus radical teachings on renunciation. Arguably,  the Christian tradition of renunciation has been found all but absent from much contemporary Christian speech and liturgy, and therefore, absent in discipleship. Any remnant of renunciation has since been reduced to “giving up” something i.e. some pet sin “because I guess I should.” This careless approach has resulted in stunted Christian maturity and spineless communities lacking the prophetic vision that have marked Gospel fidelity. Debate over the nature and implications of renunciation is no recent phenomena – Church historians almost unanimously agreeing that the rhetoric of renunciation began to lose its evocative influence as early as the fourth century. Why?  I believe the answer to this question is of paramount importance. I want to suggest that in order to resurrect renunciation as discipleship, the Church must abandon popular notions of renouncement as negative i.e. to merely “give up” something and rather- embrace renouncement as inherently negative/positive in that renunciation creates the necessary space for faithful Christian vision and union with God.

We are not accustomed to speaking of renunciation. We are even less accustomed to speaking of renunciation as discipleship. Defying the odds, one public space has championed renunciation rhetoric in what could be described as therapeutic ritual/liturgy. In our funeral/memorial/congratulatory speeches there is no lack of praise for renunciation given to those Christians who “really gave it all for Christ.” In this case, our praise for renunciation often becomes the illusion of our participation in it. While most renunciation is praised in the faith of the few, the gospels are quite explicit that Jesus assumed renunciation as a prerequisite to all discipleship, “You cannot be my disciple unless…” These renunciations include, but are not limited to, personal possessions, oaths and idle talk, the right to have enemies, worry, making judgements of people God has forgiven, careers, and family expectations.

The original meaning of the word renuntiare is found in the latin root to ’protest against’ or to ‘announce’. Understood in this way, Christian discipleship as renunciation is twofold: first,  it names what is not of God (the negative) and secondly, it announces participation in the Kingdom as union with God (the positive) through the way of the cross.

Thomas Aquinas begins the 13th chapter of his Summa Theologica with the following radical proposal:  in order to know God one must give attention to naming what “God is not.” This is to say – to participate in the Kingdom of God as union with God, a community must first learn to see the world as God would see it. As a result of acquiring this vision, the rhetoric of renunciation becomes the language by which the Christian community makes ‘protest against’ what is not God and not of God, and therefore, creates the space to ‘announce’ the God who is. While renunciation does create the necessary space for faithful Christian vision it is also inextricably connected to union with God. John Howard Yoder makes this point when he writes “people who bear crosses are working with the grain of the universe.” Yoder means to communicate that renunciation is inherently negative/positive.  Without renunciation and cross-bearing, discipleship simply does not exist. Without discipleship, there is no union with God. Without union with God, humanity is lost. It is through the renunciation of disordered human loves that the God of the universe made the wisdom of the world foolish in Christ. “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18).

The Christian Witness to Nationalism, Tribalism and its Various Forms

It seems to me that the presence of the Christian community – as a communion without national boarders – is an extremely relevant and powerful witness toward the solidarity of the human race amidst the extreme tribalism that now plagues the international community. However true, it would be incredibly naive to concede that Christians throughout history have been exempt from various forms of tribalism and their adverse effects. I want to suggest that in order to maintain a faithful presence toward international solidarity, Christians must begin to see their tribalistic tendencies as nothing less than idolatrous, an impediment on the witness of the worldwide Church and of Jesus Christ as the Lord and arbiter of its true citizenry.

In his essay entitled “The Liturgies of Church and State”, William Cavanaugh addresses this when he writes:

The Christian liturgy unfolds a different imagination of space and time than the liturgies of the nation. With regard to space, the liturgies of nationalism truncate the imagined community at the boarders of the nation. With regard to space, the liturgies of nationalism truncate the imagined community at the borders of the nation-state; one’s fellow citizens are other Americans or French or Chinese. The nationalist seeks to exempt his or her nation from being bound by transnational bodies or statutes, thus establishing a permanent “state of nature” between and among nation-states. The Christian liturgy, by contrast, transgresses the borders of the nation-state and of the world through the participation of the worshiper in the transnational body of Christ both on earth and in heaven. In the liturgy, the imagined community exempts no one in principle, and stretches even to our fellow-citizens in heaven (Phil. 3:10).

If Cavanaugh is right and “the Christian liturgy…transgresses the borders of the nation-state” this challenges the assumption that the Christian-citizens primary allegences are to be found in congruence with the rhetoric of national interest and politics of the nation-state. Rather, Christians around the world would be first and foremost aligned with the interests and politics of its Lord, Jesus Christ concerning  the interests of his kingdom – the Kingdom of God.

Carolyn Marvin, distinguished  professor at The Annenberg School for Communication says, “Nationalism is the most powerful religion in the United States.” It is here that the Christian-American must draw the sharp line of departure from Nationalism: in the ultimate ends of each “religion” – be that Christianity or Nationalism -  and also the means by which these ends are met. If the means by which the Christian community is marked are the communal practice(s) of repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation, how then can the Christian sin against the “other” and participate in national interests marked by communal practice(s) of deception, retribution, and division?

On the Bifurcation of Faith and Works: a Christian Reflection on Heschel

The dichotomy of faith and works which presented such an important problem in Christian theology was never a problem in Judaism. To us, the basic problem is neither what is the right action nor what is the right intention. The basic problem is: what is right living? And life is indivisible. The inner sphere is never isolated from outward activities (God in Search of Man, 296).

Today, one of the most significant misunderstandings within the Christian community is that faith and works are or should be bifurcated. This theological construct allows a form of ”Christianity” to propagate a gospel that grants a false ”assurance of salvation” while allowing individuals and communities to maintain their bodily alligences to earthen gods of other kingdoms i.e. individuailsm, materialism, consumerism, nationalism, and denominationalism. The problem with this notion is that Christian discipleship then becomes mere cognitive abstraction that ultimately fails to see Christian formation as an initiaion to a way of life that makes claims on our daily existence. I want to suggest that Christian discipleship is marked by an ordered way of life shared by creative communities whereby they become Chrisitianly and thus visible through concrete practice.

Renowned Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel once said : “By living as Jews we attain our faith as Jews. We do not have faith because of deeds; we attain faith through sacred deeds” (GSM, 282). Christians would be wise to heed Heschel’s insight: to become a people of faith is to participate in the “sacred deeds” which are marked by a living faith. Seen in this way faith itself is given as a gift of God mediated through the grace of God in and through a way of life lived in sole alligence to the Teacher and the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. Therefore, Christian discipleship is found only where communion with the living Christ is found. And to be in communion with the living Christ is to participate in a kingdom not of this world but of another  – the Kingdom of God – a new community marked by its living faith.

Kierkegaard: Hearing and Responding

“Half kills me.”

These are simple but provocative words from the diary of Thomas Merton days before giving up everything to enter a Trappist monastery in the rolling hill country of Kentucky. For Merton “half” of him would not suffice in the Christian life for the desire he had to respond to being found and loved by God overwhelmed his entire person. For Merton, to give up everything was to give up the modern American dream that promised prosperity, a time much like our own when the American dream looked to similar to American “Christianity”. Merton simply responded to the gospels call as if he was the rich young ruler Jesus addressed two millenia before him.

Merton’s witness echos the writings of another young man who became quite famous for his distinct and pointed form of truth-telling. To Soren Kierkegaard “half” in the Christian life was not only an impediment on the truthfulness of Christianity as it was also the very type of Christianity propigated by the Danish plutarchy:

“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.”*

A question I have continued to ponder throughout the past year seems to be quite congruent with Kierkegaard’s observation: What is at stake if week- after-week we hear from the Word in worship but fail to authenticate the call of the gospel by responding with concrete acts of obedience? My simple response: everything. When the local church fails to hear the Word and respond we feel the effects in subsequent generations. This is when piety becomes dangerous: as the words of our mouths are heard by the young and have no groundedness in reality.

A challenge to us all.

*Moore, Charles. Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard. (Marynoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002).

Praying the Pslams: Prayer and Being with Brueggemann

What shall I do? I thought. Where can I find a person who will explain this mystery to me? I will go to the various churches where there are good preachers and perhaps I will obtain an explanation from them. And so I went. I heard many good homilies on prayer, but no one spoke of ways to succeed in prayer. I did hear a sermon on interior prayer and ceaseless prayer but nothing about attaining a form of prayer. Inasmuch as listening to public sermons had not given me any satisfaction, I stopped attending them and decided, with the grace of God, to look for an experienced and learned person who would satisfy my ardent desire and explain ceaseless prayer to me.*

Whether we know we know it or not,  or do or do not want to admit it – we all long to be in communion with the Otherness that not only makes sense of our experience but embraces us as person(s). G.K. Chesterton pointed this out with such wit when he said “every man who knocks at the door of a brothel is looking for God.” In our common struggle for love and embrace, human desire and emotion does not so much serve as something which separates us from God as it is the very vehicle by which the Creator God and creation meet in a personal way.

By praying the Psalter one becomes well acquainted with the kind of relationship that affirms the complexities of personhood. Like the anonymous narrator of The Way of the Pilgrim, Walter Bruggemann joins us within the Psalms as not only a ”school of prayer” but also a “school of life” in his book: Praying the Psalms: Engaging Scripture and the Life of the Spirit.

In the opening preface of the book, Brueggemann makes a point to expresses his experience as both teacher and fellow student (for over 50 years) has mirrored scripture’s “prayer book”: ”I have come to see that my responsibility is to evoke honest, passionate, serious dialogue in the pedagogical process. Thus I am even more convinced that face-to-faceness with the text and with tradition matter decisively for the emancepatory experience that is at the heart of education…If the teaching-learning enterprise is thus face-to-face dialogue, then such a model for instruction grows out of prayer.” For Brueggemann, the Psalter’s prayers mirror the truthful human-God experience “since my study of and life in prayer is never far removed from my attempt to live in the world.”

Letting Experience Touch the Psalter

In the next couple of weeks I will attempt to recapture the essence of Brueggemann’s reflections on Letting Experience Touch the Psalter by subdividing his thoughts and then quoting him on various key themes.  The following is a short reflection that will help guide my next post on the book:

The Psalms, with few exceptions, are not the voice of God addressing us. They are rather the voice of our common humanity – gathered over a long period of time, but a voice that continues to have amazing authenticity and contemporanity. It (the Psalter) speaks about life the way it really is, for in those deep human dimensions the same issues and possibilities persist. And so when we turn to the Psalms it means we enter into the midst of that voice of humanity and decide to take our stand with that voice. We are prepared to speak among them and with them and for them, to express our solidarity in this anguished, joyous human pilgrimage. We add a voice to the common elation, shared grief, and communal rage that besets us all.**

*Anonymous author. The Way of the Pilgrim and a Pilgrim Continues on His Way. (Boston, Massachusetts: Shambhala Publications, 2001), 1, 2.
**Brueggemann, Walter. Praying the Psalms: Engaging Scripture and the Life of the Spirit. (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2007), 1, 2.

Santos and Smith on Christian Practices

I give significant credit to the work of James K.A. Smith for opening my eyes to a much richer and costly form of pedagogical formation/education. For far to long the catecumate process (in preparation for baptism/confirmation/the mysteries of the sacraments) - sadly, rarely found in parish life – and even the continued discipleship of the “mature” in Christ, has been characterized by the dissemination of information. Discipleship as dissemination of information alone embraces the belief that if we teach Christian people who a Christian is supposed to be they will indeed become “Christian”.

Smith and Santos (who you will become familiar with in the short clips below) are adamantly convinced that this approach toward becoming Christian is “blatantly Platonic” and flawed at best. Juxtaposed to discipleship as dissemination is their belief that if people give themselves over to Christian practices they will become concretely Christian – Christians “on earth as it is in heaven.” The most clarity that I can bring to their theory (shared by many educational theorists through history) is describing this process as discipleship as invitation.

Smith writes the following in his book on Christian formation using his context in the university as a one of many unique places for “full-bodied formation”:

One of the most crucial things to appreciate about formation is that it happens over time. It is not fostered by events or experiences; real formation cannot be effected by actions that are merely episodic. There must be a rhythm and regularity to formative practices in order for them to sink in – in order for them to seep into our kardia and begin to be effectively inscribed in who we are, directing our passion to the kingdom of God and thus disposing us to action that reflects such a desire. Sunday morning worship is crucial but insufficient in this regard; thus we noted that what is required are daily Christian practices, including liturgical practices of communal worship. But here even a half house of chapel each day, while crucial and formative, seems a bare minimum. What if we say the wider environment of the university as also a space for fostering Christian practices, including liturgical practices? The unique nature of  residential higher education provides an oppurtunity to create intentional communities within the dorms that not only gather for Bible study and prayer but also engage in a range of full-bodied Christian practices, including liturgical practices such as prayerful observance of the Daily Office or “Divine Hours.” Such intentional community could also include commitments to common meals, Sabbath observance, works of mercy in the neighborhood; weekly acts of hospitality for students, faculty, or those outside the university community; fasting together once a week; worship together at a local parish; a yearly service project; and more. Together these practices would constitute a rich fabric of formation that would nourish the imagination and prime the community for thinking Christianly in their learning and scholarship.*

As we can see, Smith and Santos are  proposing that everyday practice intimately binds a community together in a way of being that permeates all of life. This demands a surrendered heart toward that long paradoxical process of total life surrender in joy and sorrow - a long walk of obedience in the same direction. Eating, drinking, conversing, tilling, sleeping, etc.

Reflective, deep, and truthful Christianity has always been characterized by this journey. Enjoy the following vids from Jason Brian Santos via a lecture he gave at Princeton Theological Seminary - I hope his thoughts both challenge and inspire!

*Smith, James K.A. Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), 226.

New Release – Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality

For those of you who are interested in patristic studies and the development of early Christian spirituality a new series by Baker Academic should prove to be an invaluable resource. Louis, my good friend and and academic buyer at Baker Book House (Grand Rapids, MI) knew I would be interested in this new series edited by Hans Boersma and Matthew Levering: Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality.

To my knowledge only one book of the series has been released so far, the first covering the contribution and theological development of the Early Church Father – Athanasius.

“This erudite volume offers fresh consideration of the work of famous fourth-century church father Athanasius, giving specific attention to his use of Scripture, his deployment of metaphysical categories, and the intersection between the two. Peter Leithart not only introduces Athanasius and his biblical theology but also puts Athanasius into dialogue with contemporary theologians. The book draws on Athanasius’s theology to shed light on contemporary theological debates and defends him against contemporary criticisms of “classical theism.”

Athanasius launches the Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality series. This series is based on the conviction that retrieval of the church fathers is essential to contemporary flourishing and further development in Christian theology; that patristic spiritual interpretation continues to hold out prospects for theology; and that participation in the divine was an important underlying conviction for Nicene Christianity on which we should continue to build today. The series contributes to the growing area of theological interpretation and will appeal to both Protestant and Catholic readers.”

Peter J. Leithart (PhD, University of Cambridge) is senior fellow of theology at New Saint Andrews College and serves as the organizing pastor of Trinity Reformed Church in Moscow, Idaho. He is the author of numerous books, including 1 & 2 Kings in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible, A House for My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament, and a forthcoming commentary on 2 Peter. He is also a contributing editor for Touchstone.

*

Contemplation “on earth as it is in heaven”

The contemplative Christian is no new phenomenon, no recent discovery. It merely gives word to characterize what has always been: individuals and communities seeking to more fully receive, see, and live in union with and in God. It is noteworthy that the contemplative life - not unique to Christianity – is something cultivated through a deep awareness of the sacredness of all things. Many religious traditions - including Christianity believe that to in order to grow in this way of seeing  one must surrender to a process of transformation through particular disciplines or practices.

My current reading of Taize: Brother Roger and his Community has once again served to remind me as to what end is the relationship between prayer and work, worship and study. Prayer, meditation, scripture reading, and silence all serve an important role in our lives insomuch as they remind us to live just as attentively to God in all of life. So we see here that a uniquely Christian contemplation is very much “on earth as it is in heaven”.

The following is a reflection on the roll and purposes of silence and contemplation from a long time volunteer at the community of Taize:

“We believe that what we mean by contemplation must not be limited to prayer times. These moments of silence are like bridgeheads for us; we are trying to fill out day-to-day lives with what we experience in silence. Contemplation is a way towards a new dimension in our lives. It is like living in the same house for several years, and suddenly uncovering a door in the house and beyond the door new spaces that you had never known were there. It is in these new spaces that we are rediscovering ourselves. Within us we are discovering new sources of joy, unsuspected possibilities for commitment, resources for imagination for starting out afresh. We are rediscovering a simplicity which helps us to be really true. Further, we are discovering within us a poverty and a vulnerability. We can see tha we are not what we seem to be, that our hands are empty and not full. At the same time, contemplation means a meeting with Christ, and the discovery of his traits in ourselves beings us closer to him. We find contemplation to be less a goal than a starting-point for giving our lives.”

Brico, Rex. Taize: Brother Roger and his Community. (London, Great Britain: William Collins Sons & Co., 1978), 101.