Alright already, I’ve joined the Twittery. There is, of course, much more to all this than simply grandiose egos thinking the world wants to know that they are doing or thinking from moment to moment – well, perhaps Ashton Kutcher is the exception. Take that, CNN. Can he punk with 140 characters?
I heard someone the other day say that someone was Tweeting the mass at St. Paul’s (my St. Paul’s). I think something is lost in the experience, something lost in translation, although it could be anything like “Mass for Shut-ins?” Place the babies next to the TV screen. HEAL.
So, I joined. Who the heck cares what I’ve got to say or might conceivably be interested in what I’m doing? Let me answer – No one but my mother! God bless her.
Twitter. Ugh. Yet, for a generation it will be as normal as breathing. And, I can see the enormous potential not yet realized.
Author Archives: blgriffith
Susan Boyle on Britian’s Got Talent
Okay, okay, I know this is the most recent “hype” story, but I’ve watched Susan Boyle over and over and I keep getting goosebumps.
For whatever reason, this YouTube video can’t be imbedded, but go here and watch and be amazed. Seeing Simon Cowell is and the other judges is priceless.
Susan Boyle – Singer – Britian’s Got Talent 2009
“GloboChrist” or is that “RoboChrist”
The following are a couple paragraphs from a review by Christopher Benson entitled, “The Messenger Is the Message: How will you obey the Great Commission today?” of Carl Raschke new book “GloboChrist: The Great Commission Takes a Postmodern Turn,” one of the books in Baker Academic’s series concerning Post-Modernism and the Church. I look forward to read it; although “GloboChrist” in the title? Really?
Obeying the Great Commission in the global cosmopolis does not involve a mission trip to “lost peoples at the margins of civilization”; the margins have become mainstream, while the mainstream has become marginalized. Nor does it involve sophisticated marketing campaigns. We make disciples of all nations as the pre-Constantinian church did in the face of “daunting and promiscuous pluralism”: through incarnational ministry, being “little Christs” to the neighbor; through contextualization of the message, speaking the idiom of the neighbor; and through relevance, hearing the needs of the neighbor. Raschke adds that relevance should not be confused with the prosperity gospel, “seeker-sensitive” ministry, the “hipper than thou” emergent church movement, the social gospel redux, or “bobo” (bohemian bourgeois) culture. Relevance is radical relationality…
GloboChrist ought to be regarded as an essential postscript to Lesslie Newbigin’s The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society. Raschke is at his best when he assumes the prophetic mantle, judging the Western evangelical church for “whoring after the false gods of spiritual and material consumption”; uncovering how the religious left is just “a fun-house mirror of the religious right”; questioning if Islamism is “an understandable reaction against the global overreach of the pax Americana”; chiding fundamentalists for idolatrously substituting an “eighteenth-century propositional rationality for the biblical language of faith”; pleading for the Emergent Village to stop replaying “the modernist-fundamentalist debates of a century ago”; and exhorting postmodern Christians to overcome their passivity and “privatized sentimentality” with a witness that possesses “the ferocity of the jihad and paradoxically also the love for the lost that Jesus demonstrated.” [emphasis mine]
The only thing, I really don’t like the term, “GloboChrist.” It sounds stupid, in my humble opinion. The last line of the quoted paragraphs above, along with the term “GloboChrist,” well, I just keep envisioning “RoboChrist” and I don’t like it. If we aren’t careful, “GloboChrist” will be the next rendition of the “Pax Americana” crusade waged by certain overly aggressive, culturally myopic groups in the form of “RoboChrist.” It will happen, you know, and they will completely miss the point.
It is easier believing in a super-being (RoboChrist) that will force everyone to “do the right thing/believe the right thing,” then to die-to-self in order to do a much more difficult form of ministry that involves incarnational being.
Day of Silence Protest
So, here is what I find funny – American Family Associate protests schools allowing students to remain silent during school, particularly during “instructional time.” Now, I know that AFA is protesting the Day of Silence – they protest anything that might lead to a positive image of anything that smacks of homosexuality. But, read the announcement below.
The politicized Religious Right continues to go further and further to the extreme (and the ridiculous) in their attempts to justify their position. They absolutely have a right to believe that homosexuality is sin and will result in the damnation of anyone who “practices” homosexual behavior, but they use the issues surrounding homosexuality and same-sex unions as scapegoats to turn away attention from their own contribution to and culpability for the decline of marriage in the West, and to maintain their political power and money.
They protest the right given to students on this day to remain silent all day. Most teachers and schools would welcome a day when students willingly remain silent. Anway, here is the announcement:
April 7, 2009
Dear Friend,
The Day of Silence, which is sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), fast approaches. This year it will take place in most public schools on April 17. On this day, thousands of public high schools and increasing numbers of middle schools will allow students to remain silent throughout an entire day-even during instructional time-to promote GLSEN’s socio-political goals and its controversial, unproven, and destructive theories on the nature and morality of homosexuality.
Parents must actively oppose this hijacking of the classroom for political purposes. Please join the national effort to restore to public education a proper understanding of the role of government-subsidized schools. You can help de-politicize the learning environment by calling your child out of school if your child’s school allows students to remain silent during instructional time on the Day of Silence.
Parents should no longer passively countenance the political usurpation of public school classrooms through student silence.
If students will be permitted to remain silent, parents can express their opposition most effectively by calling their children out of school on the Day of Silence and sending letters of explanation to their administrators, their children’s teachers, and all school board members. One reason this is effective is that most school districts lose money for each student absence.
School administrators err when they allow the classroom to be disrupted and politicized by granting students permission to remain silent throughout an entire day.
Correction or clarification
I need to say this:
There is a difference between dealing with theological and ecclesiastical issues and dealing with the abuse of people. (And, I know that different people and cultures define “abuse” differently.)
While I may say that the way we’ve been dealing with the issues of homosexuality and inclusion of gay people in the Church has not and is not working and that we need to find a different way forward (perhaps Rowan’s way), that does not for a moment mean that I suggest that the Church should not call out loudly the intentional abuse of people, period. I also know that there is enough hypocrisy and self-serving to go around. Double-standards abound.
Two different, although connected, issues, IMHO.
To be different, in the right way
I’ve said similar things (see below) over the last few years, and I think I’m getting close to figuring out something to do.
I discovered this sermon via Titusonenine and given by the Rev. Dr. Brian K. Jensen on 3-15-09, partially quoted below:
Rick Richardson is a professor at Wheaton College and the author of a book called Evangelism Outside the Box. He tells the story of a pastor named Dan who realized that his preaching was getting stale. So, with the support of his pastoral team, he took a part-time job at a nearby Starbucks coffee shop…
…Much to his surprise, all 21 people he worked with believed in God… They were all very positive toward God and toward spirituality.
Yet Pastor Dan was surprised to discover that while they believed in God and were interested in things “spiritual,†he also discovered that they were NOT interested in Christians, Christianity, or the church. No one wanted to hear Dan’s proofs for God, his invitations to church, or his ideas about salvation. Most of them thought they knew what Christianity was all about and had decided they didn’t want it. They were what some people call “post-Christian.â€
The people with whom Pastor Dan worked were not interested in the church. The biggest thing Dan learned was that if Christians are to have meaningful spiritual conversations with these people, the first thing that must be addressed is the issue of integrity. [emphasis mine]
Dylan Rossi is an ex-Catholic and a native of Massachusetts. He believes he’s typical among his friends. He says, “If religion comes up, everyone at the table will start mocking it. I don’t know anyone religious and hardly anyone spiritual.â€
Yet this one tops them all. Kendall Harmon is an Episcopal priest in South Carolina. He says, “A couple came into my office with a yellow pad of their teenage son’s questions. One of them was, “What is that guy doing hanging up there on the plus sign?†What is that guy doing hanging up there on the plus sign?… Like I said, we’ve got a problem.
…It reminded me of a story in Thomas Cahill’s book, How the Irish Saved Civilization. In it he speaks of the Roman Empire and the influence of Ausonius, a poet who rose to wield some political power. Ausonius once wrote, “Doing the expected is the highest value – and the second highest is like it: receiving the appropriate admiration of one’s peers for doing it.â€
Ausonius was a Christian. Yet as Cahill described him, “His Christianity (was) a cloak to be donned and removed as needed.†Did you catch that? “His Christianity (was) a cloak to be donned and removed as needed.†Do Christians today have a similar problem? Many who are disgruntled with the Christian faith today think so. Many believe there is little difference in the behavior of those who claim to be Christian and the behavior of those who do not. In the book unChristian, 84% of the young people surveyed claim to know a Christian personally. Yet get this. Only 15% see the lifestyles of Christians as being different than anyone else. Have we forgotten that Jesus upsets the status quo? Have we forgotten that we are called to be different?
A huge reason that an increasing number of people no longer consider the Church as relevant to their longings or desires is because of us! There are other reasons, I know, but Christianity in this country and perhaps the West has lost integrity, and really we can’t fool people for very long. We’ve done this – we are our worst enemies. Christians liberal and conservative present a profoundly warped and deficient picture of the Christian Life. Why? Because we don’t experience it ourselves. That’s the problem; we’ve lost our birth-right’; we’ve lost the Promise; we look just like the rest of the world.
I want to be different – not just to be different, but because my life is so wrapped up in The One who is utterly different and who promises a life far different than what this current culture provides. But, how to go about recapturing the essence of a faith that changed the 12 so thoroughly that they changed the world.
Four questions we need to ask and answer seriously even to begin the plunge into the formation process, a process done sincerely and with the utmost of intent. Such and endeavor cannot help but transform us. We need desperately transformation. Four questions:
1. What do you seek?
2. Where are you going?
3. Who do you serve? – Serious question!
4. When will you begin? – There must be a sober, identifiable starting point – no more playing around
We must do this differently!
Over at The Country Parson, I was reading through the posts and found one about the Atlantic magazine article on Rowan Williams entitled The Velvet Revolution. It reminded me of comments from many people dissatisfied with Rowan’s conduct as the Archbishop of Canterbury surrounding our troubles over the past 6 or so years. I wrote a response, and here it is:
…Anyway, because Williams is pilloried by both sides, me thinks he is doing what needs to be done. He acts and reacts in “different” ways that satisfied no one in these strange days. We, who sit as armchair Archbishops of Canterbury, often sit with rules dictated by the “Systems-of-this-World” rather than by the principles laid down by the Gospel.
He is acting like an Anglican! We want him to act like a Fundamentalist for the victory of our own “absolutely correct” side of the argument – decisive, cast the stone, make the declaration that “they” are the ignorant bigots or the godless heretics. Thank God we are not like “them!” Thank God Rowan does not act out the worst of our natures.
Within our current American (or perhaps Anglo, Anglo-American, Anglo-Nigerian, etc.) cultural proclivities, we demand action NOW. It doesn’t work that way – not in the Kingdom of God. God will not bend to our will, but will slowly, slowly, every so slowly transform us out of our hubris and sickness-of-soul into our better natures that reflect His will. He lovingly does this for Peter Akinola as much as for Gene Robinson – as much for that bigoted, racist, homophobe sitting in that pew over there as for the gray-matter-spilling-out open-minded henotheist in that pew. Be an Anglican for our cause, not a Fundamentalist for our cause.
If God is this patient with us (with me), if God casts out no one who imperfectly seeks after Him, then how can Rowan do so? How can we do so, unless our goal is nothing more than the imposition of our position and not the hope of seeing the fulfillment of God’s will within even our most hated enemy? Take up the cross…
We have to approach all of this in a different way, because the way we are doing it right now is not working!
Playing the Game
I’m tired of playing the game!
Re-Formation
Formation, formation… is transformation. There are a lot of things that “form” us from the very beginning. The most pronounced aspect of our formation is our national culture (“national” being of the people, not of the “State,” although the State certainly contributes to the process of enculturation). We are enculturated; we cannot get away from it. We are formed by our culture and the culture within which we grow up shades our entire perception of the world and ourselves and how we understand our place.
Enculturation carries with it both the negative and the positive. Our current cultural construct is in flux and is moving ever more quickly from a form of Christendom to Post-Christendom. What this means for those who decide to follow the Way of Christ (assuming that Calvin and his followers were at least misguided), well, there must be (must! be) a recognition of those aspects of the current culture that work contrary to the good will of God. There must be the sober recognition and then the determination not to remain under their bondage. The question of “How?” always is present and problematic.
Worldly Systems of our own creating (all systems from Democracy and Capitalism to Communism and Socialism) are not the Way of Christ, even though there may be reflections of the reality of God’s Way within them all. Our profound mistake is to believe so much in our own Systems that we equate the Gospel with them. Our mistake is our pride and arrogance, our vainglory. Our current mistake is to assume that we are so smart, now, today, this decade, this century, that we know enough to make eternal declarative statements – in either the realm of science or metaphysics.
So many of the battles we fight these days, for example between Creationism vs. Evolution or whether gay people are intrinsically disordered sinners or a result of God’s natural order (and the examples go on and on) are nothing more than debilitating distractions to the grand vision of God presented to us through the Scriptures, the Tradition, and our own god-enabled Reason. We have always been distracted so, because people think their own or group’s limited, finite vision is equated with God’s limitless vision for the well being of humanity and the Creation.
We are enculturated in these days. “Christian Formation” is inviting the individual to see beyond our myopic and limited present-culture (no matter how enlightened we think we are). The invitation is to recognize the shortcomings of the Worldly Systems, to realize that the manner in which we see ourselves and those around us is deformed when compared to God’s call to us – to recognize that every person who accepts the call of Christ needs to be re-formed. For the Christian to be as God intends, we must give ourselves to be re-formed.
Radical invitation is opened to all people without exception! However, to be welcomed into the fold (the process of re-formation) means that we must give up our lives completely, all pretense of correctness, all thoughts of superiority, all notions of rightness. Few are willing to do such a thing. To gain life, we must lose it.
This is the failure of current notions of “Radical Welcome,” I think, because we cheapen the self-sacrifice made by Jesus and give to the newly welcomed a warped understanding of what it means to enter into the process of re-formation. We tell people that they can remain fully in their own understanding (remain within the Systems of this World) and be of God’s world at the same time. We cannot be of both at the same time – be in the world, but not of it (also a Sufi saying). We cannot love God and “mammon” at the same time. They work against each other, and if we attempt to meld the two (or three or four), then the end result is a deficient experience of the Christian faith.
A problem we witness in hindsight, of course, is that Christians fall into the trap of enculturation all the time (from both the greater culture and the specific sub-culture). We begin demanding, whether consciously or unconsciously, that our own created “Christian System” is of God. Oh, we know so much these days! With the best of our gloriously self-righteous hypocrisy (no less glorious that the best the World has to offer), we place ourselves in God’s stead. Will we ever learn? Will we ever truly enter into Formation? Age old problem. Persistent problem. Nothing new under the sun. Yet, all are not equal. How do we discern the best from the inferior? Such decisions must be made, properly.
What is the solution? What is love? 1 Corinthians 13:3-10, is what love is. What is required of us? Micah 6:8. We don’t want this – it seems too wimpy and ineffectual. It demands way too much of us. See how we have succumbed to the prevailing culture? See how we avoid the difficult decision, the very call of God? You want a “masculine” Christianity? Love your enemy! Profoundly difficult, embarrassing, and effacing. We may actually lose everything! Don’t want to be a part of that! Gimme that old-time religion.
The call is to be re-formed out of our understandable and normal enculturation and into a new way of knowing, experiencing, encountering, expecting, loving, and a new way of recognizing our own self… learning how to love ourselves so that we can honestly love our neighbor – and loving our neighbor is the priority, not loving ourselves.
Certain groups of people believe that if we separate and live a “pure” form of the “faith once delivered” then we will have it down pat! Oh glorious existence. Oh, how wonderful we are. Other groups believe if we simply allow everyone to fully be whatever they want to be, if we simply impose our own new-order, if we enable others to feel good about themselves, then all will be well – utopia found. How enlightened and sophisticated we are, how incredibly clever we are! There have been none like us. Fallacy… willful deception… vainglory. We are warned not to place ourselves in the place of God – to judge when God has reserved that right for Himself. Romans 2.
Enter into re-formation, which is nothing more than ancient Catechesis. The Tradition leads us, Scripture informs us, and the Holy Spirit woos and enables us.
Be transformed by the renewing of your mind! Romans 12:2. This is a life-long process. There are plenty of disruptions, missteps, and pitfalls along the way – the reason why we can be nothing less than humble concerning our own understanding, perception, and knowledge at any point along the way. Judge not, yet we are to maintain Truth. We can only maintain such a thing by giving up ourselves, our lives. We gain life.
These verses often seem cliché, but do we heed their lessons?
1 Corinthians 13:3-10 (NIV)
If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.
Micah 6:6-8 (NIV)
With what shall I come before the LORD and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?
Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
Romans 12:1-2 (TNIV)
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is true worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Romans 2:1-3 (ESV)
Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God?
Google Street View, Morality, and consequences of Post-Christendom
The effects of technological advances upon society, our sense of group, and our sense of the individual self often has unintentional and/or unexpected consequences. Technological advances do something to us, not as if a particular technology itself acts upon us (although some technologies do), but that technological advances prompt in us or cause within us… something.
I love to play with new technology. In my previous life as a techno-geek taking care of the technology needs of an academic unit at Kent State University, I would get all excited when we got in the newest and greatest pieces of technology. The secretaries fondly laughed at me. It was great! I marvel at the advances we see now and particularly that are just around the corner.
Just like most everything in life, there are good ramifications of technological advancement and there are bad. Those who observe and foresee, it can be exhilarating and disheartening.
As our society moves more fully into a Post-Christian disposition and understanding of itself and as technology changes, there will be some interesting and perhaps unexpected results. Do we recognize even the seemingly insignificant connections between the development of social structures and systems and our perceptions of normality as many of our foundational social precepts change? The Rule of Unintended Consequences. Hindsight, again.
So, a recent commentary by Frank Skinner in the TimesOnline (UK) about Google Earth is both humorous and poignant. What I really like about the article is the author’s take on being observed and the unease that it causes many people. He says that in a culture that no longer has a common grounding in the Christian faith, where we understand that God is always watching over us, the experience of “Street View” on Google Maps can inadvertently show someone caught in an act that s/he believes embarrassing or was believed to be covert, but now can be seen by anyone with a Internet connection. Street View as social commentary. He then comments on morality and what sometimes compels us to act in moral ways that we might not, otherwise. Great connection!
I think this ever-growing hysteria about the invasion of privacy in Great Britain might be a direct result of the secularisation of our society. As a Roman Catholic, I’ve spent my whole life believing that my every move is being monitored. God, after all, is the ultimate CCTV. There have been many occasions when this sense of being watched has led me to do the right thing rather than the easier or more pleasurable wrong one. We hate those intermittent yellow boxes on modern roads but they do, generally speaking, cause us to drive more safely.
Maybe, now that God doesn’t feature in most people’s lives, society need things like Street View and surveillance cameras to make people behave better. I don’t suppose the citizens whose sins were exposed by Google fear they’ll end up sizzling on Satan’s griddle as a result but all this fuss about images of drunkenness, crime and lust does suggest a certain sense of shame.
Another picture that got removed was a naked toddler playing in a park. A few years back such an image would have been seen as a symbol of joyous innocence. Now it just reminds us of another social evil we’d rather not think about. Maybe Street View is the mirror that society doesn’t want to look into.
Via: Titusonenine