Hey All,

So, what’ s the first image that comes to mind when you hear the phrase “Christian Missionary Activity”? In many ways this is a loaded term and you probably have a lot of thoughts come to mind ranging from images of colonization to some more benign images of rich North American’s going overseas for a stint of Gospel proclamation to the “lost”. It should be clear that most of these images show the “Christian” in control of mission — in other words, the mission of ‘mission’ is decided and even pre-determined by those in the church. However, what if mission could be conceived differently? Alain Epp Weaver’s States of Exile has a great passage which describes a far more radical conception of the church in mission:

“The church in diaspora [exile] is a church in mission. Jesus sends the church out into the world to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt 28:19). Exile is the site of mission, the name for the innumerable places to which the church is sent by her Lord. However, a peculiar thing happens as the church embarks on this exilic mission. As Christians in mission learn new languages, become immersed in new thought worlds, we discover that the Spirit of the God incarnate in Jesus has preceded us. While we thought we were going out to share information about Jesus with others, we gradually realize, as we seek to confess our faith in Jesus in ever-new situations, that we do not possess or control our proclamation of Jesus but that our prior expectations and certainties about Jesus’ identity are subverted. The church in exile is “not in charge” politically, but even more so, it is not in charge theologically: exile is thus not only the site of mission but also a style of mission.” p.67

What might our history of “Christian” colonization both in the past and as it still occurs today have looked/look like if we would understand mission in this sense?

So, I’m spending some time with some Sauvignon Blanc and watching an interview with theologian Stanley Hauerwas and I came upon this gem @ 37:40 of the interview:

Question Posed to Hauerwas: “How should we pray?”

Hauerwas’s Response: “The way porcupines screw: very carefully.”

Gotta love it!

Hey All,

So this morning I was thinking (always a potentially problematic thing to do in the morning!)…about my little boy…and about Children in general. To be specific, I was thinking about the way in which they are so utterly driven by the aesthetic sense of life (touch, taste, etc.). In many ways, we look at this aspect of children as, while being cute and normal for children, ultimately something we anticipate them to grow out of. The tragedy is that sometimes our desire to see them grow out of this can (perhaps and in some cases) produce a kind of unhealthy discipline — a denial of the goodness of play and sense, a denial in other words of the aesthetic enjoyment of life. In many ways, I think our desire to limit or discipline children into aesthetic-limited habits, while at times positive and healthy (ie. some sense of schedule, limiting enjoyment to healthy levels), can negatively shape their view of the world as a world created for the enjoyment of it (ie. “if you ever want to “get” anywhere in the world, you need to know how to reject the enjoyment of “now” to get it all later”.)

Furthermore, I began to think about how our images of God tend to be primarily parental images. We think of God (primarily) as Father and if you are lucky, you have some services or liturgies that (rightly) honor God also as Mother. However, I do not think that I ever recall hearing God described as Child. “God is Father” and so we think of God as the absolute source of discipline and protection. “God is Mother” and so we think of God as supreme nurturer and comforter. But “God is Child”? This we do not really know how to respond to.

However, it might be surprising that some of the earliest Christian creeds, at least according to my interpretation, present God as childish. In particular, the Christian doctrine of Creation has always said that God created all that is out of NO NECESSITY. I translate this as: God created all things for the “fun” of it all. This makes sense when you look outside in the extreme variety and excess of all that exists…and it makes sense when you look into the eyes of your own child inventing, playing, and laughing as he/she sees what he/she has done. Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart puts this in a more exquisite way than I can:

“The Bible…depicts creation at once as a kind of deliberative invention (“Let us make…”) and, consequently, as a kind of play, a kind of artistry for the sake of artistry. This is expressed with exquisite delicacy by the figure of Wisdom in the book of Proverbs, at play like a small child before the eyes of God, as his delight in all his works; and expressed equally gracefully by the image of the stars singing and the angels rejoicing at creation in the book of Job.” p.251 The Beauty of the Infininte: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth

So, today I will continue to ponder the “Childishness of God”. Will you?

Hey All,

So…what do you think about attempting to defend the existence of God by means of reason and logic? Is this a self-defeating enterprise? Is it so even if the goal is not “proof” but “probability”? In order to work through this thought even more, read Kim’s post on this very topic! I think he’s got some great things to say, at least as it pertains to the Christian belief in an eternal God.

Hey All,

When you have 10 minutes (I know, it’s not very “blogger-like” to take 10 minutes on a blog), listen to this song and read Psalm 51 along with it. There are two parts to it. It is powerful. It was originally composed by Gregorio Allegri in the late 1700’s. Anecdotally, Mozart apparently heard this song only once or twice and was able to transcribe it from memory!

I’ve been listening to Joe Pug’s “A Thousand Men” as of late and can’t help but reflect on what I see as a call to a Moral Sense of Knowledge being articulated in this song. What is the significance of ‘the idea’ if it is not grounded in some sense of the truth about reality (what is the good life, what is justice, what is ‘the good’) as opposed to our capacity to simply instrumentalize reality according to our own instrumental ends disassociated from any sense of how they serve the good? Reflect and Respond please.

Z

Hey All,

We haven`t posted our episode from last night yet, but as you will find out when you listen to it, we got into a discussion about technology and whether or not technology presents a threat to an understanding of ourselves as human in relationship with the rest of nature or whether technology represents a legitimate human mode of living in the world. One of the discussions surrounded an appreciation of heat. On the one hand, without the aids of “higher” technology, we humans have to go out, cut wood, and start a fire. On the other hand, we go to work, make money, pay the bills and therefore have heat in our house. Listen to the podcast to see where the discussion went, but to whet your appetite, here is a quote from the author I mentioned throughout the podcast that I think will help our further reflection:

“There is…a difference between a participatory technology which lets the human meaning of a subject’s act stand out and the automated technology which conceals it, creating the illusion of autonomous functioning. Heating with one’s own wood may be no more “authentic” than central heating, but it offers a far clearer metaphor. Heating with wood is very much a participatory activity. In the year-long cycle, from flagging trees for culling to the rich glow of oak cinders of a winter’s night, the subject is constantly present and nature is directly present to him, both in the hardness and in the caressing softness of its reality. Felling, limbing, skidding, bucking, splitting, stacking, kindling and building a fire are all primordially, directly subject acts and experienced as such. There is nothing anonymous about the glow of the stove: its heat can be experienced primordially as a gift of the forest and of a person’s labor. Cleaning the chimneys and trimming the wicks, filling the lamps and kindling a light in the darkness, those are no less evidently a person’s acts, a person making light. In such a context, the place of the human in the cosmos stands out in unobscured clarity: the love which gives meaning to labor and the labor which makes love actual.

That love and that labor are no less present in an automatically lit and heated urban apartment. Here, no less than in a forest clearing, light and warmth of a winter’s night are not automatic. They, too, are the gifts of love and labor. Their sense, however, does not stand out: too many intermediate links intervene. An urban parent may tell his child with equal justification that he goes to work to give her warmth and light, but when that work is not splitting wood or trimming a wick, the claim, however justified, will remain abstract and theoretical, lacking all experiential force.”

Erazim Kohak, The Embers and the Stars: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Moral Sense of Nature, pg. 25