Remembrance, Nostalgia, and Reinterpretation

I recently heard a good sermon on John’s little postcard of a letter to the church of Ephesus in the book of Revelation. Among the main points of emphasis was the call to remembrance, tied to John’s recording of Jesus’ assertion that the Ephesian church had forsaken their first love, his plea that they remember the heights from which they had fallen, and his own call that they repent and return to an earlier set of practices or behaviors. After reflecting on the passage and the sermon I was struck by the dangerous road Jesus was calling the church in Ephesus, and by extension those of us who follow after them, to travel: the road of remembrance. The passage down this road is definitely necessary for those who would attempt to pursue God. Throughout the Bible you see God calling those who would follow to remember what God had done previously as a means of building their faith. You see God claiming the history of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the deliverance from Egypt, and the maintenance of grass and sparrows as personal works that we should be drawing on as a means of knowing about and relating to the self-gifting God who is revealed through those acts. The call to the church of Ephesus to remember however seems a bit more personal, which is where the danger lies.

They’re not being asked to directly remember God, but to remember their expressions and experiences of their faith in God, which seems to be a variation on this theme of remembrance. To put it another way, they’re not being asked to remember the works of God, but the manner in which they expressed their faith in those works, and what that felt like. Some may see a danger here in the distance between experiential or “subjective” remembrance and historical or “objective” remembrance. While the nature of that danger, and even whether it’s a danger at all, would be an interesting discussion, I see a different danger here, the tension between remembrance and nostalgia. Often when I hear this passage referenced in messages or songs or in conversation the call to return to “the things you did at first” becomes a longing for an idyllic earlier time in a person’s life, or in our collective history. Attached is the notion that if we could only return there in some way then we would be able to re-embrace our first love. I would suggest this is dangerous to our faith in several ways.

First, nostalgia tends to put God in the box replication; that is it assumes that God must do now in our time and context what God did in a previous time and context in the exact same manner God did it in the past. Because it idealizes the past, nostalgia tends to view what occurred there as the norm. Thus any thing which deviates from the normative past in our present context is judged to be wanting. If this were the nature of reality, it would be a great blow to the freedom of God. I would suggest that just because God is “the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow” doesn’t mean the manner in which God chooses to interact with the world is limited to how it’s been done in the past. To see evidence of this one only need look at the difference between the manner in which God interacted with Moses, and the manner in which God interacted with John himself.

Second, nostalgia tends to prioritize our experience of God ahead of our interactive relationship with God. In short, it prizes the sentimental above the unflinching messiness of reality. When we attempt to return to an idyllic past, what we often really want to return to is an experience of closeness with God which often accompanies new faith. We in essence want to re-experience the exhilaration or joy or whatever emotional state marked our conversion because it is to us evidence of God’s existence and embracing of us. Jeremy Begbie writes of this sentimentalist phenomenon that, “The sentimentalist loves and hates, grieves or pities not for the sake of the other but for the sake of enjoying love, hate, grief or pity.” Here nostalgia has a greater interest in a “Deep Warm Sweet Interior Glowing” than in any “other”, be that God or neighbor.

Third, nostalgia tends to prize spiritual immaturity. When we place an inordinate amount of esteem on our early expressions of faith we can tend to devalue and under emphasize our present expressions of faith. I would suggest that as faith matures it expresses itself differently. Philip Yancey in his book “Reaching for the Invisible God” suggests that faith is akin to a muscle that must be exercised in order for it to grow. As alluded to previously, conversion, especially in many Protestant and Evangelical circles, is often accompanied by an emotional surge which fades with time. In that surge, where the converted experiences a strong sense of the presence of God, the muscle of faith isn’t severely taxed. It’s when that sense of God’s presence seems distant or absent that faith is tested and exercised. When we prize the idyllic past we in a sense treasure an immature expression of our faith and devalue the new things the Spirit has done in our lives since then, and has in store for us.

So if Jesus is calling us to a sort of existential remembrance here, how do we read this postcard through those eyes, and not through the eyes of nostalgia? If we assume that nostalgia is a force that can be destructive to faith, then we must assume a non-nostalgic stance when interpreting the call to, “Repent and do the things you did at first.” This would mean that Jesus isn’t calling the church in Ephesus to a rote mimicry of their earlier practices, behaviors, and expressions of faith, but to return to a vital, first love-centric, renewed, and vigorous reinterpretation of their love and faith in their present context, remembering he “who holds the seven stars (the messengers of the churches) in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lamp stands (the seven churches mentioned in the Revelation)”, the one who is both the object of their faith and the template of self-gifting actions. I would suggest this is the road of remembrance and subsequently reinterpretation they’re being called on to travel.

Juno, Culture and Theology

It's been awhile since I posted, and as I'm graduating in 2 weeks, I'll have more time to post more, finally. In the mean time here is a paper I wrote for my Pop Culture and Christian formation class which fits the themes of this blog, so I figured I'd share it. It is a bit specific to the class, but I think works on its own to, even if its a bit dated. Enjoy.

The 2007 film Juno, directed by Jason Reitman, is an odd mix of genres, tones and emotions. It is a teen film, in that its focus is largely on high school students, yet it lacks the genre’s stereotypical raunch. It is a largely apolitical film that tonally achieves both pro-choice and pro-life moments. It is a comedy which is ultimately poignant and moving, perhaps even overtly and overly sweet, yet its sweetness grows out of the characters and story, and is not simply affixed for expediency. In addition to all of these peculiar juxtapositions the film somehow accomplishes the simultaneous engagement of sociological, ethical, and theological narratives surrounding teen pregnancy. What follows is a brief exploration of bits of those narratives, the manner in which they play out in the film, and how that might correspond to the lives of the adolescents who might engage this text.

Sociologically, and psychologically for that matter, Juno, the film’s protagonist, is a relatively typical high school student, though perhaps with a maturity and vocabulary beyond her years which can be overlooked for the sake of the willing suspension of disbelief. She has formed an identity along the fringes of popular culture, built around quirky, punk and alternative music, and slasher films.[1] Because of these chosen associations she experiences a degree of marginalization, which she in reality wears as a badge of honor, though as a result of her pregnancy she experiences an even further marginalization which she is less comfortable with, referring to herself as “the cautionary whale.”[2] In this tension the film recognizes the difference between the manner in which teens and people in general view themselves, the manner in which others view them, and the manner in which the individual either embraces or rejects other’s interpretations of him or her. Here Juno must grapple with what her pregnancy means to her identity. Does it irrevocably alter it, or can it be assimilated into the construct she’s already built? It’s into this social and psychological cauldron of ambiguity that the ethical and theological narratives are stirred, as Juno attempts to decide how to respond to her situation.

Juno’s first instinct upon learning she’s pregnant is to contact a local clinic, found in the Yellow Pages, which offers feminine reproductive services, asking how she might, “procure a hasty abortion.” She sets an appointment over the phone, but as she approaches the clinic there is a single protester outside, Su-Chin, who happens to be a classmate of Juno’s, with a sign shouting to nobody in particular, “All babies want to get borned.” This is the film’s first moment of inserting a theological and ethical narrative into Juno’s personal social and psychological narrative. As Juno walks past Su-Chin on her way to the clinic she is shouted after about her fetus’ development. She is told the fetus inside her has a beating heart, hair and fingernails. The last fact stops her in her tracks as she seems bemused. Upon entering the clinic she attempts light banter with the “emo” girl behind the counter who seems bored disinterested, addressing Juno in a cold, matter of fact tone. As Juno waits for her name to be called she can’t escape the sound of everyone either scratching, or tapping their fingernails, bringing to mind Su-Chin’s admonition. Juno eventually retreats from the clinic, running. As she sprints past Su-Chin, she shouts to Juno, “God appreciates your miracle!” Su-Chin is addressing Juno from her own theological narrative, which evidently sees a connection between God and some form of respect for life, and seems intended to be symbolic of the Christian pro-life position. Su-Chin’s narrative then disrupts Juno’s plans by disrupting Juno’s narrative.

In this theological confrontation, Juno’s latent theological narrative is never explicitly addressed, however the audience does witness her grappling with how these theological claims interact with the ethical decisions she is being forced to make, and how these correlate to her psychological and social contexts. This grappling however does not occur through the production of an easy moral, or even through a high moral tone, but is achieved through the film’s oddities and trivialities which in all reality end up replacing the high moral and correspondingly obvious theological tone with one which seems more akin to everyday experience, even though in Juno’s case this earthy tone is probably a bit wordier than most.[3] It is here in its banter, humor, and subsequent sweetness that the film’s theological engagement isn’t preached but is lived.

Ideally this is the manner in which the arts operate, according to Mattias Caro, inviting its audience, “to live and to examine the tensions life produces. It encourages us to remember there is more than mere political and moral posturing out there.”[4] In dramatically moving through these tensions between formation and ethics, theology and identity, and sociality and morality the film allows the issues to be holistically and incarnationally engaged in a manner which reveals their inherent inter-connectedness. Thus not only do the characters in the film end up engaging in Juno’s lived tensions and the disruption of her own theological narratives, but the film embodies these tensions in such a way that at the very least the audience emotionally engages these tensions as well.

This same pattern of engagement is at play as a second theological narrative is brought to the table, theodicy itself. As with all of the narratives engaged in the film theodicy is engaged with lightness and humor as Juno’s step-mother, Bren, asserts, “Someone’s going to get a special blessing from Jesus in this garbage dump of a situation.” This is theodicy viewed from above, through faith and with a spoonful of levity. Hers is a faith which evidently trusts that any situation can be redeemed as she attempts to make sense of why this difficulty is occurring to and in her family. It is of note that this faith is given to Juno’s step-mother’s character who only inhabits that role because of the dissolution of Juno’s parent’s marriage. Thus she embodies both the need to ask and the impulse to answer the question. But this question is not only asked by her, but in all actuality hangs over the entire movie as film critic D.G.D. Davidson observes, “This is a story of young people who have to find their way through the debris of institutions their elders have destroyed…”[5]

In their negotiation of this systematic brokenness the films characters all tend to attempt to reconstruct the heart of these institutions without resurrecting the institutions themselves, recognizing that sharing blood relations doesn’t necessitate family, but that the family an individual chooses isn’t necessarily dependent upon blood.[6] In this they are engaging theodicy and attempting to overcome it, though again perhaps not in an overtly theological manner. Thus Bren is revealed in some measure to have had a well placed faith as the adoption allows Vanessa, the adoptive mother, to realize her long pursuit of motherhood, and it allows Juno to complete her childhood.[7] Here the question of theodicy is not answered, but if the audience pauses they may be able to experience the mystery at the heart of the answer, which is perhaps all that can really be expected.

[1] Dan Morehead. “Film – Lions for Lambs, Charlie Wilson’s War, Juno.” 1 January 2008. Available at http://americasyoungtheologian.blogspot.com/2008/01/film-lions-for-lambs-charlie-wilsons.html. Internet; accessed 1 April 2009.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Gavin Richardson. “Juno – The Richardson Family Take.” 28 January 2008. Available at http://www.gavoweb.com/hit_the_back_button_to_mo/2008/01/juno-the-richar.html. Internet; accessed 1 April 2009.
[4] Mattias A. Caro. “The Artistic Dialogue of Juno.” 21 February 2008. Available at http://www.ajustsociety.org/press/forum.asp?nav=publications&cjsForumID=1091. Internet; accessed 1 April 2009.
[5] D.G.D. Davidson. “Movie Review – Juno.” 26 January 2008. Available at http://www.scificatholic.com/
2008/01/movie-review-juno.html. Internet; accessed 1 April 2009.
[6] Peter Quinn. “Juno.” 8 February 2008. Available at http://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/
FILM_20080207_2.htm. Internet, accessed 1 April 2009.
[7] Ibid.

The Sound of Music

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted. I hope to become more regular soon, but I’m also working on my Master’s Thesis, which I’m finding to be very time, energy, and imagination consuming. I evidently find it difficult to write several things at once, at least in this instance. At any rate, I’ve had this rattling around in my head for a bit, so I figured I’d share it. At a Bible study going through the book of I Peter a month or two ago we were asked what we were grateful or thankful for in the context of the second chapter of the book. The first thing that popped into my head, though I have an overabundance for which to be thankful, was the ability to participate in music. To put this in context I’ll have to share a little history, so please bear with me.

One thing that has been constant in my life is a deep love for music. I can remember being 5 years old and really paying attention to what I’d hear on the radio, or what my Mom or Dad would play. I remember my mom really liking Barry Manilow and Billy Joel. I still really enjoy Joel’s music… Barry, not so much (sorry Mr. Manilow, it’s nothing personal). I remember taking note of songs on the radio, and have always had favorites. I also remember my dad taking me to see live classical and choral music. He even took me to the opera, which was largely spectacle to my pre-teen eyes. I still remember the record player I received for my 11th or 12th birthday, and the first album I received with it, Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits. The first album I ever actually bought myself was a-ha’s “Hunting High and Low”… and I’m not ashamed of that at all… no, really. Music was escape, therapy, and prayer. I would spend hours in my room just listening to new and old records.

I knew I wanted to be a part of making music because I just felt it so deeply. I figured the easiest and most natural outlet would be singing. I couldn’t play an instrument, and was too lazy to learn. I have a lazy streak, that I fight to this day, that drives me to try things as long as I can master them quickly and without looking awkward in the process. So learning piano, or guitar was out of the question because it just took too much work. I had tried to pick up clarinet in elementary school, and actually flunked out of it (which is really impossible to do). I remember at the elementary school Christmas concert, not really blowing, or knowing what to play because I just never practiced. Something similar happened with singing. To say it didn’t come naturally to me is an understatement; at least that’s what I’m told by those who had to listen to me sing. I sang with conviction and passion, but without actually hitting the correct notes, which unfortunately for me was one of the key elements of singing. So after several debacles in church where I really just embarrassed myself, though I didn’t know it at the time, I decided I had to learn something else music related. I had to be involved in making music somehow… which is when I decided to learn the drums.

I had rhythm, and there were no notes involved, it seemed like the perfect fit. I had seen other drummers play and knew how drums sets were set up, and decided to try to learn by playing with all my records and CD’s in my room, where I spent so much time listening to music. I would arrange pillows on the corner of my bed for toms, and boxes for high hats and snares and would play with CD’s from The Choir, U2, a-ha, R.E.M., Pink Floyd, Deliverance, Barren Cross, Altar Boys, Billy Joel, Tears for Fears, Mr. Mister, everything from swirly rock to pop to alt to metal. I learned single handed to play syncopated beats from Steve Hindalong of The Choir. When I got to college I purchased an old, small Slingerland jazz set for somewhere around $250 and proceeded to play rock music on it with friends and play very loudly. At any rate that’s when my journey as a musician started and being able to play has meant the world to me every step of the way.

Now I understand how self important and melodramatic much of this sounds, and for that I apologize, at least for the negative parts, but if I’m going to be honest with myself there is always a certain amount of self importance in writing something in a blog for public consumption anyway… but that’s a subject for another day. But part of the reason for sharing a bit of my history is to share the roots of my passion, the roots of what I’m experiencing when I hear music, and when I play music.

I’m thankful I have the opportunity to play drums because I get to experience first hand the beauty and transcendence I sense when I listen to music. There are times when I listen to music that I experience God. Often words are insufficient to describe what happens in those encounters. I’ve come to think that these moments may be the purest form of joy I’ve come to encounter. When I play I feel that joy even deeper at times because I get to participate in the music. I’m also thankful I get to play because I love being a part of creating an atmosphere where that encounter or experience may occur for someone else. Perhaps it’s someone else I’m playing with, or someone listening to what we’re playing, but for God to possibly use our encounter (my encounter with God) to possibly encounter another person humbles me when I truly contemplate it. I’m thankful I get to play because playing has become a language that God and I share. It has become a way that I can speak to God, offering my body, my motion, my mind, my heart in this one act. I’m not one to dance or even raise my hands during worship, but my body is free, in fact at its freest in service to God when I’m behind a drum set. I can be pretty self conscious in certain circles, but all of that leaves me when I play. In short playing music and even more specifically drums often becomes for me an ecstatic experience. So this is what is happening at my best moments when I play, so if you see me behaving strangely behind a drum set you now know at least a little of what might causing such odd behavior. It is behavior for which I am ultimately thankful to God for the opportunity to exhibit.

The image above is from: www.superstock.com/.../1491R-1078970

In Vogue

Below is a link to an interesting and disturbing New York Times article regarding a story and photo shoot in the most recent Vogue magazine. Generally I'm not interested in fashion, though I have been known to watch Project Runway with my wife (she makes me watch it, really). I believe it does fall under the rubrick of the arts in that it is a creative constructive endeavor. I'm not looking here to define the arts, just to recognize that fashion is a far flung planet in its solar system. At any rate you should probalby read the article before you read any further so you can be conversant with what will follow...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/01/business/worldbusiness/01vogue.html?no_interstitial

Done? Did the article strike YOU as disturbing. I'm interested in hearing what different people took from the article. I'm intrigued that the director of Vogue India, which I wouldn't have imagined existed not because of any economic status in India, but because Vogue seems to me to be inherently a Western Institution, suggests that those critical of the shoot should "lighten up" given fashion is never meant to be something serious. I can understand his perspective, but speaking for me I'm not troubled by the fashion itself, but by the uncritical and exploitive juxtoposition of such opulence with such abject poverty. It almost seems a bit like a little fashionista insider's joke. By not even identifying those who are modeling these items one almost gets the sense that they might as well be manequins on which these items are placed. In fact since the items are identified and the models are not there is the implicit notion that these items are portrayed as of greater value than the ones wearing them.

On the plus side the photography is well done and reveals a beauty in the models, which I believe was not necessarily the intention of it creators. Oddly their humanity is affirmed in spite of the apparent objectification and dehumanization inherent to the shoot. In the process it almost feels like the dehumanization laid upon these models by these juxtopositions is actually reflected back on to Vogue and the authors of the piece. Perhaps that's just me.

At any rate my question in this very short blurb is , quoting the peasant from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a major source of deep thinking, whether there is a violence to humanity that is inherent in our system of advertising, and perhaps even inherent to our economics? I'm not going to attempt to answer that question here because that's a doozy. But I think this gives a unique voice to that question with a clarity that perhaps should be more common.

The photo above comes from the New York Times article.

Truth and Consequences

This blog does not deal directly with politics. It is at its core interested in theological questions found below the title. However there are times where the two overlap and this just happens to be one of those times. A number of weeks ago Evangelical leader/psychologist James Dobson devoted his daily radio program to critique a portion of Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s theological statements made over the course of his campaign, focusing largely on a speech given a bit over a year ago. I’m not interested here in exploring the content of either that criticism or of Mr. Obama’s statements directly, or the politics of either Mr. Dobson or Mr. Obama. I am interested in the theology that might motivate a person to devote a good bit of time and energy developing and crafting a theological critique of a political figure for the purpose of warning those within their theological tradition, and the public at large of the grave political dangers posed by this person’s theology. Granted this is entirely speculation. In reality this will be a jumping off point to think about how we in the Christian community, probably more specifically the Evangelical Protestant community, think about the notion of truth.

Here is the part of the blog where I speculate wildly about Mr. Dobson’s motivations for his criticism. In reality these are only hunches from a member (me) of Mr. Dobson’s theological community who is basing his judgments largely on his intuition, experiences, observations and reason. Let me start by saying that my interest was piqued regarding this dust-up because it was unprovoked by any immediate precipitating episode. Generally speaking this type of rhetoric seems to me to be reserved for urgent incidents of great offense, i.e. a Supreme Court decision, the boycott of a company whose actions have caused an offense, or the actions of a celebrity that cause community outrage etc… To my estimation this lack of impetus indicates that this criticism was deliberate, considered, and earnest. It seems Mr. Dobson made the determined decision to take on Mr. Obama’s theological statements; that this was not done on a whim but was something he took time to craft, consider and communicate, and that it was an accurate representation of beliefs passionately held by Mr. Dobson, convictions I believe he holds as supremely important. Both Mr. Obama’s theological statements and Mr. Dobson’s critical statements are widely available on the internet and given the content of the statements are not my scope of interest I won’t be quoting them here. I will be citing the gist of Mr. Dobson’s complaint as fairly as I can, and offering a few observations about his statements and a certain theology of truth I believe them to be emblematic of, that is that truth, particularly, but not necessarily limited to Biblical truth, lives entirely in the realm of the propositional.

Let me say first that I cut my theological teeth on this notion, and still believe it has some merits in understanding great portions of the Biblical narrative. Especially influential to my understanding in this arena was Francis Schaeffer who I believe is one of the most informed, eloquent and logical voices to lay out the understanding of Biblical truth as propositional truth within the Evangelical world. This understanding draws on a notion that can be traced back to ancient Greek philosophy that suggests that what is true is what corresponds to reality. Truth then is solid, fixed and unchanging, and only that which correctly refers to that solid, fixed unchanging reality is true. I would suggest this is the near consensus understanding of truth among Evangelicals, though it is a large field of ongoing debate within philosophical circles. Any reference to this truth then must be done in the form of propositions, for example, God is good, in order to for it to be understood, or true.

This emphasis on the proposition as almost the sole communicator of truth I would suggest begins to congeal around the ideas of the Enlightenment and Rationalism in the 18th century. There grew a notion that in order for an idea to be true it had to be reasonable, and logical, and must be able to be stated in those terms. Thus truth then must be able to be stated in a reasonable, logical form, and reduced to fit into a series of descriptive sentences. There are definite merits to this construct of describing truth. If a particular proposition can be shown to be unreasonable and illogical one can set it aside, relatively confident that it hasn’t passed the scrutiny test that truth should overcome if it corresponds to reality. Inherent here is the assumption that reality is by its nature rational and logical as the creation of a rational and logical God. This becomes a means by which truth is made manageable, in essence boiling it down in an effort to know through reason what is true and what is false. This of course isn’t unique to the thinkers of the enlightenment, but I would suggest that with them this understanding became the hub around which truth became organized. If truth didn’t pass muster with human reason and logic it could not be truth.

Fast forward to the present context, and I believe Evangelicals have adopted much of this framework for truth into their belief systems, perhaps uncritically, and often unknowingly in that often this is taught in Sunday Schools and from pulpits as Biblical thinking. God is a God of order and reason, the universe is set up to follow the laws of nature and of God, and because of this, through reason we can come to know much about God, hence the Psalmist writes, “The heavens declare the glory of God and Earth proclaims God’s handiwork.” This is the understanding of the world that gave birth to the scientific revolution according to Schaeffer. Many don’t understand that this framework is a synthesis of the bible’s truth claims with the Enlightenment’s definition and understanding of truth. I believe this is the foundation of truth from which Dobson speaks when he criticizes Obama’s theological statements. I do not assume to speak for Dobson on this, but I suspect, based on the theological teachings that come directly from him, particularly on his radio show, and the teaching that is generated by the organization he is responsible for, Focus on the Family, that he would generally agree with a good portion of the understanding of truth laid out above.

With this general framework of truth established, I think it’s important to glance at a few of the particular truths Dobson wants to defend, not for the purpose of endorsing, or criticizing them, but in order to further examine the manner in which they are defended as a means to provide further incite into some ways this understanding of propositional truth can manifest itself in to the church and the world. This list is by no means exhaustive, but will draw on a few concepts that illustrate this framework in action. First, Dobson would suggest the Bible is the absolutely true, Holy Spirit inspired word of God, and so is supreme in its authority in not only the Christian’s life, but in everyone’s lives because it is God’s directed communication to all of humanity. Second, he would suggest humanity is separated from God collectively and individually because of sin, and cannot be reconciled by their own doing given they were the ones that initiated the separation. Third, the second person of the Trinity came to Earth to become Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ in order to restore that broken relationship with God through his own perfect life, and sacrificial death, taking in his body the punishment for the sins of all who would place their faith in that action, and rising from the dead as evidence of its accomplishment.

Any observer can see that these are matters of epic, even eternal importance. Because of this Dobson’s passion and sense of urgency are understandable. If people are not reconciled to God here within this framework they will be forever separated from God after this life is over. Dobson’s aggressive criticism of Obama needs to be put within this framework of someone convinced of the truth, who believes that other’s understanding of the truth of which he is convinced will determine their eternity. Again I am not examining these beliefs themselves, much of which incidentally I hold as true, but the manner in which they are communicated, reduced to propositions in which one must place ones faith. Within this framework, if a person doesn’t assent intellectually to the inspiration of scripture, the absolute sinfulness of humanity, and the substitutionary atonement by Jesus, believing first and foremost that they are true, one cannot be a Christian and consequently remains separated from God. Again, I don’t presume to speak for Dobson, though I suspect there isn’t much with which he would disagree with the framework laid out above, and I don’t intend to criticize him as an individual, or “call him out”, rather I’m intending to use his criticism to illuminate a problem. I would suggest the framework in which these beliefs are placed create unintentional problems for those who embrace it which ripple out into their speech, actions and organizations.

The first issue that arises with this understanding of truth is that it tends to absolutize and thus confuses the individual’s understanding of truth with the truth itself. In other words truth becomes subjugated to reason and logic, and the doctrine obtained through reason becomes the only valid interpretation of scripture. When this happens reason has been made the hub around which truth must orbit, thus making truth a satellite of reason. If one must assent that a particular statement, proposition or notion is true before one places one’s faith in that statement, proposition or notion, then reason has been placed before faith, both chronologically, and necessarily.

It must be granted here that reason is a necessary relative of faith, and that ideally reason must at some point enter into the decisions made to place trust or faith in something or someone, however in this construct reason has been made necessary, excluding any faith decisions made without an intellectual surrender to propositional facts. This is a faith based on the correct facts and information; therefore if the facts and information are distorted, rearranged, or muddied one can never be sure if one is placing ones faith in the correct propositions. This is a faith that is dependent upon human reason which if it places faith in an incorrect proposition concerning God has doomed itself to be separated from God because it is a misplaced faith. With knowledge placed necessarily and chronologically before faith, any malicious person can destroy any possibility of a true faith simply by distorting, and that only slightly, the facts upon which that knowledge is based. This leads to such an emphasis on factual correctness that faith ends up more about factuality than about truth. Defending the faith becomes simply a rallying around those facts upon which the faith is based.

I believe this is why Dobson in his radio show concerning Obama is so concerned that he is “intentionally distorting scripture”. Because a valid faith in this framework is based on the proper proposition, or information, Dobson must undercut the incorrect information and inform people of the correct information, lest they be led into placing their faiths in invalid propositions. You can almost feel the weight of responsibility he feels to correct the bad information in the public arena as one who has access to both the correct information and the public airwaves. This leads to a second issue with this understanding: that it translates into at best a perceived proud, condescending attitude, if not actually reflecting one.

There is a sense in which this framework of knowledge, which depends on faith in accurate propositions, creates an inequitable relationship between the holder of the true knowledge and those who lack that knowledge, including those who profess a Christian faith. In other words truth becomes a commodity that ideally must be given away, but is still something its holder owns and others need. Thus it creates a qualitative separation between the two groups, and creates a gulf between “us” and “them”, which can be seen in much of Dobson’s basic cultural assumptions and rhetoric.

The assumption is the “us” who have the knowledge are either good because of it or the faith it produces, or are on the side of good because of it, and those who don’t possess this true knowledge are by default inherently bad, or on the side of evil or at least immorality. This manifests itself in Dobson’s attempt to correct Obama’s bad information, attempting to replace his “false” propositions with “true” propositions. Placed within a rhetorical and polemic framework of concern that people not be deceived this tends to come across as an over confident, possibly self important religious figure throwing information scattershot to and at what he apparently believes to be an untrained, uninformed audience who need this information in order to construct the correct propositions necessary to arrange their cloth of faith. The mode the argument takes comes across as both holier and smarter than thou, and seems to indicate a low estimation of the audience’s ability to weigh these statements themselves, not to mention the ability of the Holy Spirit to work in their lives. Simply put there exists at least an apparent lack of humility and possible evidence for the Proverb that knowledge puffs up.

There are other issues that could be addressed, but this will suffice for this arena (this is a blog, not a book). Speaking positively, there are a few points I believe it’s important to note in attempting to frame an alternative to what is in essence a supernatural rationalism. First, according to Hebrews, faith is, “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (NIV). There’s a sense here in which faith is a source of knowledge. In other words there are certain things one can only know through faith, hence the author of Hebrews emphasis on surety and certainty. Through faith in Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit one gains access into the sphere of truth that exists in God, the Three-in-One. This is knowledge unavailable to those who have yet to kneel before the crucified and resurrected One and is a knowledge graced through the Holy Spirit. I don’t doubt that Dobson would acknowledge these suggestions; however the framework of knowledge that has been discussed at least in action seems to undermine this understanding of knowledge birthed by faith.

If sure knowledge of the proper proposition comes necessarily before faith, then where is there room for the growth of knowledge? Granted there is a difference between factual knowledge and experienced knowledge, which is part of the point. There are large portions of the active relationship with a living God that can’t be captured in a proposition, and thus the original propositions one believed when one came to the faith grow and possibly even change over time. If one comes to grow in a belief which changes over time, does the person lose a valid faith in valid propositions, or was the original faith invalid because it was placed in an invalid proposition?

The second point I would like to note has already been mentioned in the first point, and that is that because this framework of knowledge attempts to “boil down” truth to its essence, making it manageable and understandable it often actually distorts that truth. The one reducing it may be able capture its essence, but you lose its context and proportions. You’re able to manage the truth, deciding what is true and what isn’t, but are unable to manage its depth and breadth. What is worse is that often these constructed propositions are confused with the truth itself. Instead of understanding that they are human constructs toward understanding a fuller truth, windows toward that end, we treat them as the truth itself, and limit ourselves to the playpen of the propositional, when the truth bound up in the Being of God lives and breathes in the wide world around us outside of what we've built to contain that truth. To quote a old T-Shirt of mine (because everyone knows the best theology comes from a good T-Shirt), “God is bigger than your box”. I would suggest the same can be said of truth.

This is a short and limited critique, and I’m sure riddled with holes in logic. The largest point here is that truth, both in and of itself, and our management of it is more than our expressions of it, and greater than our understanding of it. When we say that, “God is good”, or “God is love” or “Jesus died for your sins”, we are speaking the truth, however none of those propositions captures the whole truth behind the statement. Paraphrasing Elizabeth Johnson, theology, and for our purposes propositional truth, is simply a finger pointing to God.

Blessed With Work

Yes, the unthinkable has occurred, I am a father. I’m close to 6 weeks into this new fatherhood thing and I’ll tell you, it’s not for the feint of heart. Not that it’s bad mind you, but it is a lot of work caring for someone who can do almost absolutely nothing for himself. But before I explore my experience of fatherhood here to fore, let me share Erika’s and my experience getting to this place starting Friday May 16, Erika’s last scheduled say at work before her maternity leave.

Bump, the name given to Orion by Erika’s mom before he was born because we wouldn’t reveal his name to anyone, was due Tuesday, May 20th, the day arbitrarily assigned by the Dr. based on the size of the baby in utero and the conception date estimation at the time of the early exams. This of course is not a schedule, and we were prepared for the baby to be late given this was Erika’s first. Friday after we left work (we work together) we got some dinner and went to see Prince Caspian. We figured it was the last movie we’d be able to see in the theater for a while. We were right. The next day, Saturday, Erika began having erratic contractions during our yard sale, and into the afternoon. I was scheduled to go see Phil Keaggy in concert in Joppa MD, and Erika’s parents and some friends of the family were coming over to play games at our place. I was planning on putting my concert plans on hold, but her contractions stopped, and she said I should go. So I went, but called every hour or so to see how she was doing. I got back around midnight and found her parents in our living room with her timing her contractions, which were about 10 to 15 minutes apart. We decided to try to sleep (as if she could sleep through contractions), and her parents stayed on our sleeper sofa. When the contractions got to about 5 minutes apart at around 6 in the morning we decided to call Erika’s doula and head to the hospital. We got there around 7, were escorted to our room, and began dealing in earnest with Erika’s contractions.

The hospital was amazing. I’m inserting heaps of praise here for the nurses and doctors at Calvert Memorial Hospital (although I could never figure out what the hospital was in memorial of, unless it was Lord Baltimore himself, but I digress). Heaps of praise should also be piled upon Cheryl, Erika’s doula who was an amazing coach for Erika. Erika wanted to try to have the baby all natural, no drugs or epidurals. She also wanted to be ambulatory while in labor, which means being free for long periods of time from the tethers of the fetal baby monitor. Because they baby was doing well, they allowed that freedom, tethering her only for brief stints every couple of hours. After a roller coaster ride of ups and downs in the delivery room the baby was birthed into the world at 4:43 PM on May 18th. Cheryl later commented that the time of birth made it seem like a normal day at the office. Erika’s mom and dad were in the room, and her mom actually cut the cord, because I couldn’t bring myself to do it. My Dad and his girlfriend, and my Mom and Step Dad were also in the hospital and we all celebrated by getting Italian food and eating it in the delivery room afterward, which in retrospect seems kind of creepy and weird, but it didn’t at the time, and neither Erika nor I had eaten all day and were famished. We settled down that night and had the best night of sleep that I suspect we’ll experience for the next couple of years.

That brings us to today, almost weeks into young Orion’s life, and close to 6 weeks into our endeavor into parenthood. It has been different from what I thought it would be. I was expecting something as trying as the Mali trip, but long term. I was expecting to have to confront my selfishness, impatience, and inflexibility, and I have had to confront them from time to time, but I’ve been surprised that my sense of dread was unjustified. After the initial shock of being responsible for this utterly defenseless child who can’t even control his own limbs wore off, I found myself enjoying him, and enjoying the role of watching him so Erika can get a extra 20 minutes of sleep, or reading to him, though he can’t understand or see the pictures, or providing him with a pacifier to disperse all of that sucking energy, or even changing diapers (though enjoy probably isn’t the right word for that). I could probably think of some great theological insights in all of this, but I think I’ll just leave the theological insight at that, the joy of fatherhood.

There’s a great line in the movie “Return to Me”, probably one of the sappiest chick flick movies ever created, but as unlikely as the story is, it is a movie grounded in a nice reality (largely influenced I think by the Catholicism of Bonnie Hunt, its writer/director, but I digress). The grandfather of our ingénue in the story is cleaning up at the restaurant he owns when the granddaughter offers to help. He refuses her help and tells her, “I’ve been blessed with work”. I kind of feel that way. Orion adds a lot of work into our lives, especially Erika’s at this point, but it’s a work I don’t seem to mind as much. To quote Erika, it is “pain with a purpose”. And so far, and I imagine it will be this way down the road, it’s been very much worth it.

The Face of the Earth

This will serve as a confirmation that I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth. I will be posting some reflections on here soon about becoming a father, which happened 5/18/08 when Orion Connor Fallin was born, which of course has taken up a lot of time and mental capacity. At any rate that will follow soon, and no I haven't abandoned my blog. Thanks for anyone's patience who reads any of these. I appreciate your interest. Stick with me and more will flow out soon.