I’m up in Grapevine, TX for a couple of days. Grapevine is one of the flourishing burbs of the Dallas metroplex, and for the record, I hate Dallas. I hate driving in Dallas; I hate the concrete jungle; I would rip out my eyeballs if I had to commute this every day. Fortunately, the conference I’m at, the CBF Assembly (Cooperative Baptist Fellowship) is at the same place that I’m staying. I’m bumming a bed off one of my roommates, and skimping on food to make this as cheap a trip as possible. It’s been amazing running into people that I haven’t seen in years, either from my seminary days, or who have travelled the tortuous road of Baptist life and found themselves in a similar place. It’s basically two more days of eating, worshipping with friends…oh, and finding time to study for my French final that I’ll take Saturday.
In an unrelated note, DIE SPAMMERS DIE! I had to delete EIGHT spam messages this morning off the site. Ridiculous. Is nothing sacred?
When I finally lumber across the stage with my doctorate four to five laborious years from now, I am moving to a place where the summer high wades around in the 80s, or at least to a place where humidity hasn’t been yet.
Like upper Montana.
Or Maine.
Or the Erin Islands of Ireland.
Any suggestions? I spilled coffee on my car hood today, and by noon, it had turned into a gelatious substance and baked to the car. This is my fourth Texas summer, and I’m loathing the next four.
**P.S.***
If you get beaten down by the heat, and driven indoors, check out some of the new links, particularly “Ridden Hard”, “I’m Sorry”, and “Fabulae Miribales”. They’re all either total strangers or kindred spirits.
While spinning through a few blogs this morning, I found this one, which contains a number of fair-handed reflections on the most recent Southern Baptist Convention. While never Southern Baptist myself, though having attended both one of their churches and their universities, I still can’t help but think of them as the family that I don’t ever talk about, mostly because I don’t really relate to them that much. We talk about Jesus, and we both believe he’s pretty central to things, but after exploring other branches of the church, I have difficulties applauding everything they do.
I was practically born Methodist. I did a long series about it again, but it was a strange journey through SBC life. Again, I don’t think about it much except when it comes up in conversation, like when two extremely bright and level-headed guys that I know told me they were headed to the convention. I was shocked even. This isn’t to say that intellectual folk can’t be Southern Baptist, but they didn’t fit what I knew of the SBC at all. As far as stereotypes go, it’s more the Presbyterians and the Episcopaelians who love God with their mind, while Baptists take up the heart and leave the mind more or less for the high church peoples. But there they were, two PhD candidates from Baylor’s very own Church/State program, headed for the nexus of Southern Baptist life: the Convention.
So, go read the Reformissionary’s reflections on the SBC convention, particularly the part about blowing a huge shofar and rattling the gates of Hell. Me, I’m going to a different Baptist gathering next week that, I promise, there will be nary a shofar in sight.
**
To boil it down, the approach that the SBC adopts in terms of its dealing with the culture outside the church reminds me of Bonhoeffer’s words, when he says that Scripture is to be taken seriously, and literally, but that Christ came to reconcile us not only to God, but one another. In other words, there is never truly “another culture”, but one culture divided by loyalties.
Ironically, I was reading from Frei’s book (see the right sidebar) this morning, and came across these words:
While there is a real historical world for the modern writers on faith and history, the outlook they generally adopt in behalf of their protagonist, Jesus, is that of a vector perspective upon his real world, so that its reality is genuinely actuated only through his stance towards or his response to it.”
In other words, what happens is an attempt to live in Jesus’ world without being a 1st century Jew. Rather, we should attempt to be Christians in the 21st century, like Bonhoeffer says, taking Jesus’ words seriously, not brushing them away, and realizing that we are part of the ongoing story of the Gospel, and not simply a world to be replaced by ancient Palestine.
Building on the first two parts of this series, having determined that it is difficult to say if there is anything ontologically different between believers and non-believers, we now turn to the question of whether or not the two are ontologically the same. Is there something that Christian tradition testifies to as being the same, regardless of allegiance to Christ?
If one looks to the New Testament, the evidence is scant. The emphasis is on difference–between disciple and crowd, church and world. Beginning with the Gospels, it is impossible to ignore the hard sayings of Christ that seem to place the followers of Christ in a different category, not simply of allegiance or practice, but of being, using language of “born again”, of “darkness/light”. But is it possible that this language relies upon an understanding beyond this of the Old Testament?
Throughout the Old Testament, the emphasis in terms of group relations is one of participation: people belong to the nation of Israel, not only on the basis of birth, but on the basis of belonging, as in the case of Rahab, Ruth, etc., a pattern that continues in the New Testament, as those who were outside become inside, and vice versa. But behind even this is the teaching of creation, that all people, male and female, were created, prior to their social allegiance, as one people.
Prior to the social allegiances created by church, state, or race, is the oneness spoken of in Genesis 1-2, that all people were created by God as a unified humanity, that there is something single about people prior to culture: created-ness. This activity by God gives an interesting understanding of this oneness, however: that the oneness of humanity is one given to us by God, and thus part of our makeup, but not one that is forever a given. The lesson for Christian/non-Christian relations begins here, that we remember that creation was given intitially as a unity, not a division.
As people who participate not only in the lives of one another, but the life of God, the lesson for Christians is thus: because it was a divine activity that created the fundamental created unity, it is there that we must begin with our relation to those who are not part of the visible church–the place of recognizing that whatever new creation Christ has brought to the church was first begun by God in the beginning.
In French, FYI, the word for “healing” (guire) and the word for “war” (guerre) are one letter apart. Strange stuff. Funny when I translate a passage about a philosopher and wound up saying that he made his living on the art of war, after a whole paragraph about how nice and sedate he was.
This is not at all to mitigate the suck-ness of French, only to note a linguistic funny. So, healing and war, one letter apart.
That is all.
Does anyone else find the social commentary of Tarrantino’s films as sharp as when they first came out? I’m watching Pulp Fiction for the first time in about seven years and am amazed by the opening sequence, where Honey Bunny and her boyfriend are talking about robbing the restaurant, with the rationale that no one will think to rob a diner, because no one really is invested in the diner.
Banks? Too many people, too much security, too much stability invested.
Jewelry stores? Family owned, too much pride and ego.
But the restaurant? No one’s invested in them personally. Not the busboys making minimum wage; not the servers working for tips; not the owners who have insurance. No one really cares outside the fact that this is the place the groceries come from. Do I feel this way about Barnes and Noble? Do I see it as my cash cow, or do I still bristle when someone ignorantly belies the place I’ve called my job for the last two years?
I admit it. I’m invested. I’m connected in some small way to this building and all it does: buying, selling, sweating, brewing. I have, as it were, an investment in what goes on, the people there, and in the fact that Harry Potter is about to bust loose on the world again in less than a month. The places you find yourself knotted up with.
Intesting stuff, this Pulp Fiction brings up.
I do like a tasty burger. Check out the big brain on Brad if you get a chance.
Last night, I went with four friends, partly with great thanks to Zach, to go see one of our generation’s greatest songwriters. Say what you will about his antics or about his demeanor. I’ll get to that in a second, but for the moment, I’d like to say that Ryan Adams, for better or for worse, is one bad mofo who has a way with words and music. He’ll probably be dead before he’s 40, but the music carries itself. If you’re looking for a place to start with the music, I suggest Heartbreaker and Love is Hell to give the full range of his musicianship. He goes from countryfied rock to dirty blues and rock and back again seamlessly.
**
With that disclaimer of my adoration for his music out of the way, all the rumors about his concerts are true: he’s ridiculously talented, assembles a great band, puts on a great performance when he’s playing…and is a completely self-absorbed prick. The doors opened at 8 p.m., at which time, the audience, which had already been waiting at this standing-room-only event for an hour, poured in and crowded the stage…and waited.
And waited. Around 9:45, I was seriously contemplating approaching the management about getting money back. I mean, who keeps an audience standing around for two hours? Despite the aid of a Shiner, I was already put out by the time Mr. Adams and the Cardinals took the stage. To his credit, he DIDN’T have an opener. If after waiting for two hours, we got an opener, the crowd would have turned really ugly. Without apology, he mentioned that a member of Soul Asylum had died that day, and that the show would be played in his honor. And with that, the trainwreck began.
To his credit, when he was playing, he was brilliant. Versions of old songs sounded crisp and redone. His smash “New York, New York” was transformed into a dark blues tune; his early work from Heartbreaker sounded like unreleased tracks. It’s when he wasn’t playing that the trouble started. In between songs, he and audience members took pokes at one another, with Adams unapologetically calling himself a punk. At the end of the first set, he quit in the middle of a song, and told the audience that he knew they’d paid good money for a show, and to call out the folks who were screwing it up for everyone else by being belligerent or just “fuck-ups.” I’ve always wanted singers to do this, so on one level I’m glad he pointed out what everyone knows: that at every concert, there’s a few token people that make total jerks out of themselves and ruin parts of the show for everyone else.
The highlight of the spectacle was halfway through the second half when he jumped off stage, stood on top of the bar, and finished out an acoustic song completely unplugged for a part of the crowd that couldn’t see very well. That, I had to say, was the coolest thing I’d ever seen by a performer, concerned with the crowd. They rolled on until midnight, and then abruptly stopped. No encore, no parting shots–just play it, and get out. The crowd kept clapping for an encore, but I’d seen this one before. Several years before, I went to a Bruce Hornsby show, where he played his last one, took a quick bow, and despite ten minutes of audience claps in unison, never did an encore. Performers with monumental egos are predictible in that way.
**
Is he really that big of an ass? Is he really consumed with himself? He did rant sideways about the media’s criticisms: that he talks too much, that he doesn’t talk enough, that he played hits, that he played obscure stuff, that ultimately, you can’t win with the media. He got into it with people in the crowd; he left the room in shambles from the f-bombs; he called his music “important” in defense of his griping at overly-boisterous members of the crowd. But I suspect, that though he belongs to the long line of neurotic singers, if he ever got his problems straightened out, he’d be a terrible songwriter. I reference Adam Duritz before Prozac, and after. I’d much rather listen to the sad Duritz than the fat and happy one of today.
Is he really a jerk? I suspect that there’s a deep love of music that runs there, that makes a man crazy when people spit on it. And for that, I’ll still listen to his prolific output while it lasts. But if you want a completely bizarre performance, thanks–I’ll catch Letterman instead.
If you’re so inclined, I’ve begun the thinning process, selling off some books that I wo’nt be needing any time soon. Check out my listings here and if you see something you like, help a brother out. If you’re not a member of Half.com already, it’s the sister company of Ebay, where you list for what you’re willing to sell and wait for the buyer to come to you. I feel like a hack selling off my own library, but in the most recent house cleaning, I had to chuck a trashed-out bookshelf, and, well, I frankly don’t know when I was going to read Servant Leadership by Greenleaf again.
Continuing with the first post, today we turn to the cliffhanger of Part 1: are people, i.e. Christians and non-Christians, essentially different or essentially the same? Again, I use that term “essentially” to refer to some part of the self that is beyond touching, the ‘essence’ of what it means to be Christian. It’s good to note that a lot of Christian theology rests on this concept of the essence, whether one is talking about the nature of the trinity, or simply the human nature. If we do away with the concept of essences altogether, we find ourselves at odds with centuries of Christian tradition that has posited that there is something of substance that is related to action, both in God and in ourselves.
Traditionally, essences have been understood in the following way in relation to God: God is one substance/essence, and three persons. That is to say, that God is essentially unified, though present in three distinct persons (Father, Son, Spirit). How this is understood by Christians varies, but the main point to take away here is that behind the persons of the Trinity, there is a unity that is at work. As such, God, having created humanity, created a unified creation: a single variety of humanity, differentiated into male and female, but of one kind.
It is in this that discrimination runs into a brick wall: if people are created, by a unified God, as in their core being, unified people, we are at a loss to explain how Christians are somehow, beyond the reaches of time, different. It could be explained that by sinning, we become less of who we are, that is, we reject our core being–that as a creation of God–and attempt to construct something from the ground up, and that in Christ, that core is once again reunited with God. But this doesn’t answer the problem that we run into in the New Testament when we find that, as the church relating to the world, we are to treat those that are not named Christian better than we would our own family.
Jesus is forever inviting and eating with those that are percieved to be on the outside; Paul admonishes the churches to deal peaceably with those that are not of the community and to live their lives in such a way that despite abuses, the surrounding world will see something different. In short, the call of the church is to see the surrounding world as having no different origin or no different core than themselves. Both church and world are in the position of needing a relation to God; the difference is that the church, in its practices, reflect that origin. Or should.
So what has changed about those called Christian? If the same Creator God has created those called Christian and not, is there human about being Christian? Is it a different state of being, or a different practice, with different origin and terminus? Can there be one without the other? And if there is something different in the core state of being of those called Christian, how does that alone make a difference? This is meant to be a jumping-off point for discussion, not a final note.
French rolls on. Or, as they say it, le Francais continue.
We’ve moved into the translation portion of this month-long intensive class, which means that for 30-40 minutes a day, we’re given time to work on our major project, an academic article that we’re translating from French into workable English. Sound like a great way to spend a morning? Yeah, me too.
As far as the class goes, this actually is one of the more enjoyable parts of it, because it’s where we get a little more license to work with language, the slippery beast that it is. Translation is treason, after all, particularly when you’re trying to give an English speaker the full grasp of a cultural construct in a few words. But none the less, I’ll take joy in my little article about the christology of St. Clement, and count myself blessed.
Except for one detail: my French professor talks during this time. If I were going to France, that’d be one thing. I’d go back in time and tell the lady at the car rental center in Carhaix that, no, I don’t want her bloody insurance, and yes, it was Melissa’s fault that the car has a dent in the fender and you can put it on HER credit card, and not mine.
It’s not bad enough that the other section of this class gets out two hours earlier to go work on their translations wherever they want, and that we’re stuck gritting our teeth until late morning, long after the coffee has faded. The one morsel of joy in the class, snatched from the jaws of victory by incessant chatter.
I can’t blame it on him entirely. It’s a cultural thing, and by that, I mean, Western culture. As a culture, we’re are entirely too afraid of silence and possessed with the need to cram too many extraneous thoughts into one conversation or one time period. Unsure when the next time we’ll talk is, or when the opportunity will come up, we cram needless words into perfectly contented silence, and ruin both the information and the quiet. Information overwhelms us, throttles us with its necessity, and chokes out any chance to know what is prudent for the given time. There’s a great application for the manner in which evangelistic practice is conducted, but I’ll leave that for another time. Suffice it to say, if I wanted to know what Mitterand was in charge of the latest Louvre building project, I’ll find Mitterand and ask him about it.
Next time I’m in France, that is….wait a minute. I won’t be going to France because this is a reading course and not a speaking course…which means that I probably won’t need to learn how to speak…and that I won’t need the cultural…hmmm…
