Thursday, July 29, 2010

Orientation

Recently I saw an article about Catholic priests in Italy being caught in gay clubs clearly violating their vow of celibacy. A reporter was apparently trying to illustrate hypocrisy in the church vis-a-vis preists' behavior & this tenet of church doctrine. Score: reporter 1, church 0.

Simultaneous with this I found an online reference to an organization that works with Catholics who have a homosexual orientation, but still desire to follow the Church's call to celibacy in that particular circumstance. The Church teaches that having the orientation is not a sin.. only the insistence on gratifying it is. This organization came to light because a reporter joined the group under false pretenses and then "outed" one of the priests who was trying in good conscience to obey church teaching.

So on one hand, a reporter is trying to expose hypocrisy in the church, and on the other hand a reporter is trying to undermine an attempt to be consistently obedient to church teaching.

With the press, I guess you can't win for losing. But still, I'd like to know: since when does the media have an "orientation" to cause harm instead of to do good? At what point did the primary focus of the media become exposing... instead of reporting? And why there is such a media fascination with homosexuality?

I mean, why is it even a story at all?

Monday, July 26, 2010

Entrepeneurs and bureaucracies

One tries to make things easy for customers, one could care less. Saturday had some of each: a trip to the Farmers' Market, and a trip to the Division of Motor Vehicles.

Care to speculate on which was which? ;)



This is the big one in town (comes complete with instructions...)



Occupies 9 blocks of the downtown (free parking on weekends!),



and a real block party atmosphere: live music, people out with dogs and strollers, even street corner gospel preachers (although it sounded a bit different than the Gospel I'm currently studying..)



But the real focus was produce. Good looking & squeezable.




It was pretty packed, and had the ambience of a street festival.



This place was packed, too, but the ambience was institutional.



And the process? Wait in line for an hour, and then be told you don't have the right documents. "Never mind what the website says... I'm telling you what you need. Come back when you have it." Grrr.... :(





The only nice part of that section of the day was the architectural details of the taxpayer- (read: customer-) funded building. Plaster molds of different kinds of tire tracks, from motorcycles to tractors. Cute.





Well, anyway, I did come away from the day with a connection for locally-raised happy meat (vs. factory meat), samples of which I'll grill up soon, and a mostly pleasant morning (at least the strolling-around-downtown part.) :)

Friday, July 23, 2010

Back to the gym

This week I got my widening body back into the gym in an attempt to hold back the growing effects of inactivity. Not that I've been sedentary, exactly, but I mean stressing the body so that it comes back stronger, leaner.

The company for which I now work has this wellness initiative which reimburses employees (in part) for the cost of wellness activities. Plus, they work with a local chain of facilities to get a discounted price that fits into their reimbursement scheme. So, I joined this week and my net cost for a year of gym membership is gonna be about 17 bucks.

Cool.

They have the brand of equipment I know and like, plus lockers,



and... a cushioned indoor running track. Yay! Now I just have to get back into enough shape to move from the bike to the track. And by that time, maybe it will be Fall and I can move outside to run. In this heat & humidity... I stay indoors every possible moment.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Distributive Justice

In TS505DE, we have discussion board posts as part of our weekly assignments. Normally the prof poses a few questions about that week's readings, we get to choose what to answer, and then engage the other members of the class in replying to postings, etc.

As an example, here's a recent question, and my answer:

Q. Pick one of the understandings of justice from the readings that you find most compelling (retributive, restorative, distributive), and do the following: Explain why you find this so compelling, giving support for your position. Explore some of the most serious objections to your position. What are the grounds for these objections? How would you answer them? In the course of your discussion, explore the implications of your position for your ministry and/or personal life.

A. I'll discuss "distributive" justice from the perspective of an "aha!" moment I had while reading Clark & Rakestraw. I find this concept compelling because I used to find it offensive, and now I think I get it. The idea of distributive justice was offensive to me at one time because I thought that it smacked of collectivism and the Marxist dogma of a forced redistribution of wealth by the state. I also thought that it was a dressed-up means of transferring to the state the rights of the citizen to own private property, under the guise of helping the disadvantaged. I thought that it penalized the productive elements of society in order to support the unproductive ones. In short, it was anti-capitalist, and since capitalism was an integral part of the founding of this great Christian nation (or so I thought), then Capitalism must be a Godly system. And those who oppose a Godly system must by definition be ... ungodly.

Well... maybe not so much. For me, it's been a slow process of the gradual eroding of those views, both by watching in dismay the unchecked excesses of de-regulated Captialism since the Reagan Revolution (which I loved at the time), along with a growing understanding of God's preferential option for the poor, and how it permeates the Scriptures, Old and New Testaments. This latter idea has come from taking classes in Catholicism and learning about Catholic Social Teaching.

So, into this fertile worldview field, broken up and tilled by Wall Street failures and consumer greed, seeds from Catholic Social Teaching and non-Western Theologies got scattered. These took root and grew into shoots of concern for the marginalized of society. Then Lewis Smedes laid out the many aspects of distributive justice: how to distribute not only societal wealth, but legal protections, privileges, rights, responsibilities, taxes, education, health care, etc. Plus, they offered many possibilities for determining who gets what: ability, potential, affluence, need, innocence, age, responsibility, merit, etc. This frank discussion of options, plus Paul Henry's excellent argument of the role justice can play in bridging the divide between power and love, made me much less fearful of the negative political abuses of distributive justice.

The "aha!" moment came when Stephen Mott declared that each person has equal merit before God, and to God the well-being of each is as important as any other. That freed me to see that distributive justice CAN focus on needs, since the assigning of merit is a human construct, not a Biblical one. If I take discussions of merit out of the picture, need then rises toward the top, and is no longer overwhelmed by determinations of ability, potential, affluence, education, etc. There are still arguments to be made about needs vs wants, and a legitimate desire for matching work & reward, but equality of each person before God does take a lot of "noise" out of the discussion. God's unconditional love for each of us can inform our idea of justice, and give us a way of properly putting a check on power, so that political power is only used in support of justice that has been Biblically shaped.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Welcome to the neighborhood...

... said the next door neighbor Sunday afternoon, sarcastically.
Not that she meant any disrespect, it was more like neighborly commiseration.

80mph winds ripped through the area early Sunday morning, shook the house from top to bottom, and left this in the neighbor's yard:



It also ripped out a screen door and dropped a few limbs on my vehicle, which now needs to go to the shop. :(



Could've been worse, though.. could've been like this neighbor a block away. Yikes! That's a sight to wake up to.



Maybe we got off light because it was a church-hunting weekend. :)



I went to St. Theresa's on Saturday. It's pretty close, lovely inside,



and had a reference to JustFaith workshops on the website, which interested me. Mass was okay, but not like St. Rose's was with good old Fr. Fitz. So I'll still check out St. Pius and Holy Trinity the next couple of weeks, and maybe the Newman Center in the campus area.

Then Sunday, after clearing the limbs off my car, we checked out a new urban church (and I use "urban" loosely given where we live..)



that meets downtown in a renovated Art Deco era Masonic Temple,



now used as a fine arts space, with some chic restaurants and coffee places at street level.



Pretty cool place, and neat people, very arts and community focused. It's the highest rated (yes, we have a system) evangelical church so far, with 2-3 more to visit.

So, God... now, about these storms...

Saturday, July 17, 2010

A God of Love... and mosquitos.

I have to admit that, while I understand God to be both authentically personal and perfectly loving, mosquitos are a real fly in that ointment, if you get me.

Whereas, if I acknowledge that God put the world together in essentially the form we know it today, and in doing so God was consistent with His essential loving nature, then God arranged everything we now know according to love, and

Whereas, if I acknowledge that the first few chapters of Genesis are trustworthy, not in terms of science but in terms of a description of God's intent (toward creation generally and humans specifically), then what God caused to occur in creation was for our pleasure and benefit, and

Whereas, if I believe both science and the Scripture in saying that homo sapiens is one of latest (if not the most recent) mammalian species to emerge from the long history of evolution/creation as we know it, and

Whereas, if I understand that the account of Adam and Eve is to some extent descriptive of the initial separation of homo sapiens from God, and that "the Fall" did indeed, as Saint Paul says, subject the whole of creation to frustration and deviation from its initial purpose and design, then,

I am confused. Did God create mosquitos in their current blood-sucking and disease-spreading form, or.. did mosquitos come into their current state as a result of the Fall (and God's subsequent cursing of work, male/female relations and childbirth)? The former does not seem consistent with God's perfectly loving character, and the latter is not consistent with the Biblical notion that God ceased creative activity after God homo sapiens was formed.

Mosquitos are incredibly annoying, both existentially and metaphysically. Grrr...



(ooh, ooh, wait.. I know! The Garden of Eden contained plants (now extinct) that naturally produced a DEET-like substance which repelled mosquitos, so when Adam & Eve were banished from the Garden, viola! Open season on human flesh!

Ha! God proven to be just once again...)

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Theological Thematics

Usually when graduating from Seminary one has to submit a doctrinal statement which outlines one's theology. Fortunately, Bethel has recently changed its policy on this and requires an Integrative Portfolio instead. The IP is made up of papers from certain of the core classes which, together, are meant to deal with the major themes usually addressed in a doctrinal statement.

I'm glad of this change, as I'd rather not go through what seems to be a lifeless exercise of historical formality. However, from time to time, I do think about what unifying theme may bring together these disparate papers I've written, and lend some coherence to my IP. That's what this post is.. a place to pull my thoughts together and hold them for future review and use, maybe. So I suppose I'm writing to myself. :)

One of my Systematic Theology profs and many of the authors of readings for my classes are Christo-centric in their theology, seeing all of salvation history and theology past, present and future, as anchored in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus: the atoning sacrifice that reconciles us to God. I guess I am less Christocentric in my theology than I am Theocentric, and less systematic than relational.

Relational theocentric theology is summed up, at least to me, in the idea that God wants to have fellowship with people, and live among them. I see the whole of salvation history as being a progression in God's reaching out to take a people for Himself with whom He can dwell. This progression is marred at every turn by the failure of humankind - failure to fully commit to God, and failure to represent God well to the world.

After a variety of attempts at this, finally God simply had to take matters into His own hands and do what we would/could not. God became one of us and, in the person of Jesus, was humanly speaking fully committed to God, representing God well to the world. Jesus is the culmination of that salvation history, but not the totality of it. The incarnation is as important as the atonement; the Old Testament that preceded Jesus matters as much as the New that followed.

My view of theology is also less juridicial and more relational (and, as such, also dynamic and fluid). It's Kingdom-centric, I guess - all about the Kingdom (read: the influencing presence of God in the world. This is not synonymous with the Church or with Christianity, as the restorative influence of God in the world preceded both and is wider than both), and about relationships related to the Kingdom.

For now I care much less about WHO God is, or about God's nature (like the structure of the Godhead, the persons of the Trinity, things like homeostasis and homoousios, etc.), and much more about who we are in relation to God and to the world God gave us to inhabit (including toward others like us).

Since history's beginnings, God has been relentlessly looking to call a people to be His own, and dwell with them in that fulfilling peace we know as Shalom. Humankind has consistently rebuffed God in the process. But God has always preserved a remnant, and through them shown a way for humankind to return from their self-selected exile to a fulfilling relationship with Him.

That relentless pursuit of us by God, and His continual willingness to forgive our spurning of Him and restore the relationship, is what anchors my theology. The details can be left for others who have a bent toward hairsplitting. I'm content to focus on the big picture, the meta-narrative of God wanting to dwell among us, full of grace and truth... if only we will have Him.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Out.. and in again.

First it all got loaded (I'm always thankful it doesn't take TWO of these things!)



then it all got unloaded.



It's all the same stuff, yet somehow it looks different, as if you could say to your furniture: "um.. did you do something to your hair? lose weight? new wardrobe? cosmetic surgery?"

You'd think that by the 16th move, this would be easy. Nope.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Christian Ethics - where to begin?

In my TS505DE readings so far, a wide variety of theological and ethical perspectives have been brought forward. And I'm always puzzled by the ones that talk about Christian Ethics as needing to be deeply rooted in the Bible because (they say) for Christians, the foundation for all ethics must be the inspired Word of God as revealed in the Scriptures.

First off, by using "the Scriptures", these authors explicitly bring in the Old Testament, or the Hebrew Bible, including the Mosaic Law. In the era when the New Testament was being written there was much controversy around what the role of the Mosaic Law was to the Gentile believer in Christ. In their zeal to stand squarely on the whole Bible and still be explicitly Christian, these authors gloss over the interpretive issues that exist between the teachings of Jesus & Paul and the teachings of Moses & the Prophets. In some cases, Moses was upheld by Jesus, and in others not; similarly for Paul, who often went back BEFORE MOSES to find an ethical principle to apply.

Secondly, for ethics to be "Christian", does that mean they must be drawn directly from the teachings of Jesus? Or Jesus and His Apostles? Or Jesus and His Apostles' successors? Or Jesus and teachings of theologians in the church He founded, including historic and present-day Christian communities of faith? Jesus didn't explicitly speak to DNA testing, stem cell research, and genetic manipulation of farm crops and in animal breeding. But, the church has. So… what exactly are the definitive sources we go to for "Christian" ethics?

Thirdly, why should they be particularly Christian in the first place? The new convert to the Christian faith in 40 AD had no access to Christian Scriptures, yet needed an ethical framework to navigate life. So did the God-fearing Jew living in 10 BC (prior to the incarnation). So, too, the worshipper making sacrifices according to the Mosaic law in the temple of Solomon in 1000 BC. Not to mention the descendent of Jacob making bricks under harsh masters in Egypt (before Moses was born). What about a descendant of Esau whose offspring later followed the prophet Muhammad? And did not Abraham's father and grandfather need an ethical framework for living, prior to Abraham's call by God to leave Haran? Didn't Noah's sons need an ethical framework to repopulate the earth after the flood? Didn't Methuselah and Enoch face moral choices? Didn't Cain?

You get my point, I hope. First, we are human beings. All human beings face moral decisions and need an ethical framework in which to make them. Those of us human beings who are montheistic and follow in the faith traditions of Abraham, generally agree that God is responsible for this world in which we live, and that we are made in His image and bear his likeness. This informs our particular ethical framework. But to be more granular than that in our scheme of ethics serves only to narrow down our frame of reference to the point where our decisions become incomprehensible to those around us who do not share our particular Christian doctrine.

We need to be careful not to be so overtly New Testament and doctrinaire in our ethical framework that we forget about the thousands of years of human history before Christ where people, made in God's image and living in the midst of God's creation, made moral decisions every day without the benefit of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount or Paul's letters to the Corinthians. How did they do it? How did they walk before God in peace of heart? How did they recognize a mistake?

There is first and foremost a "human" ethic. Once we figure that out, we can then see how faith in Christ informs it. Otherwise, we risk falling into the trap of Modernity which presupposes that people who lived in generations past were by definition more primitive and less informed than we are, and so were deprived of the enlightenment we possess. Taking this approach to Christianity results in the thinking that all those who lived before the Cross were lacking in revelation and deficient in their understanding of God.

There's a lot to be said for "ancient wisdom". We would do well to remember that Wisdom was personified in the Proverbs of 1000 BC, and that the Logos of God was at work long before the Incarnation. Ethics has been around a lot longer than the New Testament has.

This is what the LORD says:
"Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls. "
----- Jer. 6:16

Friday, July 09, 2010

FroYo, baby. Sweet.

Coming to a phone near me in August!

Just saw that the operating system for the Motorola Droid (Google's Android OS) is getting upgraded. This article in Gizmodo's blog calls it a big step forward. And just in time for my new-every-two promotion with Verizon. My current phone is great, but dying, and it's time for me to get with the program and move up to a smart phone.

Looks like it'll be one of the best on the street, too, by the time I get it in a month. Almost feels like a birthday present. 'Cept my birthday isn't August 9th. Hm. Maybe I'll be celebrating someone else's birthday and don't even know it! Anybody out there celebrating a birthday on 8/9/10? Sort of has a progressive feel to it.. sequential digits and all. There's only three more dates like it this century!

Might as well celebrate with a new phone, whoever's birthday it is.

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

Spring floods.. in Summer?

Gettin' a little dicey near the downtown.


The Corps of Engineers is letting water out of the reservoir upstream in "controlled releases" to avoid an uncontrolled spillover at the dam and serious damage as a result. So far, I think they have it pegged pretty close to right.

A guy at work told me about an outdoor concert venue downtown - an outdoor amphitheater along the riverbank, where you just sit down on the grass and listen while you overlook the river. Um... not today!



I doubt the performers would want to perform from a raft lashed to the submerged stage, either. Yikes! So many things to learn about a new community...

Sunday, July 04, 2010

fireworks

.


independence day
celebrate revolution
setting things on fire


.

Friday, July 02, 2010

Music Festival Weekend!

Hm. Not so bad, I guess. I mean, it's not Summerfest, but...

Spoon, Modest Mouse, Yo La Tengo... could be worse. Not that I'm going to see any of them this weekend - other things are on the agenda, like furniture shopping. :) When you're in the midst of a move, certain pleasures take a back seat to the needs of the moment.

But it's nice to know that some decent talent is coming through here. Now, to find some jazz.. there must be a club around here someplace where you can eat, drink and listen. Maybe that can be a project for this long, hot holiday weekend!
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