Love or the Ax?

Anyone who knows me or who reads my blog with any regularity can tell you that one of my favorite movies is Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis's novel, The Last Temptation of Christ. Actually, it's kind of a joke among my friends that I quote the film more than I quote the Bible.

One particular reason for my fondness of the film is that it captures a single but important tension that I have struggled with now for years. Not long after Jesus is baptized in the film, he is sitting with John the Baptizer discussing the tension between the love of Yahweh and the wrathful judgment of Yahweh:

Later, when Jesus is driven into the desert and is tempted, he comes to the realization that the "tree is rotten to the core," and receives a vision of John, who shows him an ax and an apple tree, which Jesus proceeds to chop down.

Upon returning to the disciples from this period of solitude, Jesus proclaims, "God is inside of us. The devil is outside of us, in the world all around us. We'll pick up an ax, and we'll cut the devil's throat. We'll fight him wherever he is: in the sick, in the rich. Even in the temple. I'll lead you. If you have sheep, give them away. If you have family, leave them. I believed in love. Now I believe in this..." He punctuates his point by brandishing an ax.

To me, almost all Christian belief boils down to the question of what medium we choose to deliver the message. Love? or the Ax?

Jesus? or John the Baptizer?

Oh yeah? Well to Hell with you! Literally!

One of the reasons I appreciate Scorsese's depiction of John the Baptist is that I have a huge fondness for the Hebraic tradition of prophecy. When I was in college I began to study the Minor Prophets, because since we didn't talk about the prophets much in church, my only understanding of them was that they were judgmental and wrathful. They probably wanted to send you to Hell for premarital sex, or cussing too much, or something.

But what I found in the Prophets was the continual painful admission that we live in a despicable world. Consider Amos, who is sent to Israel from Judah to call the rich out for trampling on the poor. Or Hosea, who is told to marry a prostitute, and to give his children names like "Not-My-People," and "Not-To-Be-Pitied," to symbolize Yahweh's estranged relationship with the Jews. Or think of Jeremiah, caught between an angry God and an angry people, sent as a young boy to bring a message of repentance to the Hebrew people—a message which ultimately costs him his life.

Living is painful, and that pain is usually brought on by our own rotten actions, or the rotten actions of those in power—in today's terms, think of banks that foreclose on the homes of the poor, or bankers and CEOs who still receive millions in yearly bonuses while people are starving on the streets of our country's cities. Or, in a more immediate sense, think of the hate or greed in our own hearts, and how that hurts the people around us.

I. am. PISSED. And I feel like God is too, and that God has something to say about it.

However, this can lead to closed-mindedness, fear, and more hatred. People are usually far too anxious to take on the role of prophet, which is why we have Chick tracts and bullhorns.

Jesus: "Trust me, this hurts me way more than it hurts you."

What about love? Is there a way of avoiding calling out the sins of the world, and instead simply trying to live out Christ's teaching to love our enemies? My heart sees the injustice of the world, and is disgusted by it. Do I attack with all my might and risk falling away from the love and humility of Jesus? Or do I practice love and humility instead of getting angry?

The problem is, I want to believe in both. I want to scream at all the injustice of the world. I want to chop the rotten tree down. I want to burn the infested forest until there is nothing but a pile of ash from which we can start over. I want to be a prophet.

But I also want to be like Jesus. I want to love my enemies. I want to practice self-control and discipline. I want to speak intimately with God as a friend. I don't want to worry about what tomorrow will bring. I want to forgive others.

The problem is, Jesus seems pretty conflicted on this whole struggle, himself. It doesn't take an in-depth reading of the gospels to see the things that enrage the Son of Man. Look no further than the so-called "cleansing of the Temple."

So which is it for you? Love? or the Ax?

Feast of St. Clare

A couple years ago I had the fortune to come across a copy of Mark Pryce's Literary Companion to the Festivals, and have enjoyed reading some great literature associated with or inspired by the powerful and moving stories of the Saints. On this Feast of St. Clare of Assisi, the reading is a liturgical letter; a poem that Clare sent to Agnes of Prague in the thirteenth century:

When You have loved, You shall be chaste;
When You have touched, You shall become pure;
When You have accepted, You shall be a virgin.
Who power is stronger,
Whose generosity is more abundant,
Whose appearance more beautiful,
Whose love more tender,
Whose courtesy more gracious.
In Whose embrace You are already caught up;
Who has adorned Your breast with precious stones
And has placed priceless pearls in Your ears
and has surrounded You with sparkling gems
as though blossoms of springtime
and placed on Your head a golden crown
as a sign to all of Your holiness.
      (source—Literary Companion to the Festivals, by Mark Pryce)

Albert Schweitzer on Jesus

In the knowledge that He is the coming Son of Man, [Jesus] lays hold of the wheel of the world to set it moving on that last revolution which is to bring all ordinary history to a close. It refuses to turn, and He throws Himself upon it. Then it does turn; and crushes Him. Instead of bringing in the eschatological conditions, He has destroyed them. The wheel rolls onward, and the mangled body of the one immeasurably great Man, who was strong enough to think of Himself as the spiritual ruler of mankind and to bend history to His purpose, is hanging upon it still. That is His victory and His reign.

—Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus

Wrestling with God

Around Abraham's rackety grandson Jacob are woven several engaging tales of outrageous cheating and deceit, and they culminate in an all-night wrestling match with a mysterious stranger who overcomes Jacob and is able to give him another name, Israel, meaning 'He who strives with God'. Out of that fight in the darkness, with one who revealed the power of God and was God, began the generations of the Children of Israel. Few peoples united by a religion have proclaimed by their very name that they struggle against the one whom they worship. The relationship of God with Israel is intense, personal, conflicted. Those who follow Israel and the religions which spring from his wrestling match that night are being told that even through their harshest and most wretched experiences of fighting with those they love most deeply, they are being given some glimpse of how they relate to God.

—Diarmaid MacCullogh, "Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years" (p. 50)

Bible Problems--A Few Reasons I Don't Believe in Biblical Inerrancy

Hello, fellow revolutionaries!

It is late, and I can't sleep; so I'm passing along some thoughts that have been going through my brain lately on the subject of biblical inerrancy--the belief that the scriptures are free of error/contradiction.

Most of this stemmed from a conversation I've had with some folks over at the iMonk monastery, where they thankfully have a very open and congenial forum for discussing issues like this in a civil manner. Here goes.

I don't believe--and haven't for quite some time--that the Bible is completely inerrant. And while I am a seminary student, a person of faith, a lover of God and of people, and a passionate follower of Jesus, I think that to believe the scriptures are free from all error is asinine; it's the proverbial ostrich putting its proverbial head in the proverbial sand. I present the following instances to support my understanding of the scriptures as writings that are just as flawed as the human men (and women?) who wrote them. It is by no means an exhaustive list, just a few things to get you thinking.

1) In Genesis 1, the author claims that all of life was created in a calculated order, with humanity being the pinnacle of Elohim's Creation. However, in Genesis 2, humanity is pretty much the first thing created, with all of the animals being created last for the purpose of giving Adam a chance to name them. Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are two completely different creation accounts, with different orders and even different understandings of God--the former describes a vast, cosmic, transcendent deity, while the latter describes the kind of God who walks and talks with Adam and Eve in the garden.

2) The narrative of Joshua claims that the conquering of Canaan was swift and complete, in an idealized and miraculous show of military might. However, in the very next book (Judges), the claim is made that the conquering of Canaan was slow and incomplete.

3) In 1 Samuel, we find the old familiar story of David facing down the giant, and we are told that David son of Jesse killed Goliath son of Gath by using a slingshot to hit the dude between the eyes (and then a sword to cut off his head). However, in 2 Samuel, the claim is made that Elhanan son of Jaare-oregim killed Goliath son of Gath.

4) The prophets Isaiah and Micah both describe a time when people will "beat their swords into plowshares," while the prophet Joel explicitly calls his readers to "beat your plowshares into swords." (Admittedly, this could be explained away by the fact that Isaiah and Micah are speaking about a future kingdom, while Joel is giving a command for the present. However, this still serves as an example of how biblical authors used other sources and texts, and even used disagreement and contradiction as literary devices.)

5) Even the gospels have their little eccentricities--for example, Jesus saying both "Whoever is not for me is against me," and "Whoever is not against us is for us," is logically inconsistent. Rather than try to explain away how Jesus means both statements to be equally true, it is simpler (think: Occam's Razor) and more likely to believe that perhaps someone may have copied it down incorrectly. It is not a stretch to think that somewhere in that long game of telephone that eventually gave us the scriptures, someone innocently and accidentally wrote down the wrong thing--the two phrases are certainly easy enough to confuse.

Unless we are to use some extreme linguistic and exegetical gymnastics (or simply read something into the Bible that just isn't there--recently someone tried to explain to me that David and Elhanan could have been the same person), the fact remains that the Bible is full of little errors and contradictions. The difficulty with much of modern apologetics is that apologists often attempt to make the Bible jump through their hoops, rather than letting it speak for itself.

via ASBO Jesus

HOWEVER. When we view the scriptures as monolithic--some call it bibliolatry--we fail to recognize that the Bible was written over centuries--millennia, even--by dozens, if not hundreds, of authors and editors (read: "people liable to screwing up") who disagreed with one another, and had differing ideas of the nature and character of God. But to me, the true narrative of God shines through the scriptures--beautifully, mysteriously, divinely--despite the frailty of the Bible's very human writers.

It all just seems like people try too hard to force the Bible to fit together perfectly, when in reality, it does not. It's complicated--just like life and history are complicated. And I would argue that that's the beauty of it all. It's simply a fallacy to believe that just because the Genesis accounts contradict one another, or the fact that Esther, Job, and Jonah are very likely fictional accounts, means that God doesn't love us, that Jesus didn't have something to teach us, and that there is an ultimate plan for this whole ball of wax we call earth. The scriptures include letters, fiction, history, hagiography, poetry, songs, fables, melodramas, and allegories, and it is the most expansive collection of writings available to us that deal with the subject of who God is. We can't afford to take it too seriously.

To recognize that the scriptures are not infallible is to recognize their frailty, and make both the Bible and ourselves vulnerable. But vulnerability is exactly what Jesus was about--relying on God and on each other rather than our own understanding. And as a wise man once said, All instruction is but a finger pointing to the moon; Now, dear student, do not confuse the finger with the moon.

Review of "Divine Rebels," by Deena Guzder

This is a review I wrote on "Divine Rebels," by Deena Guzder, for the Englewood Review of Books. You can read the original post here.

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There’s a famous scene in Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee’s 1970 play,The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail, in which Henry David Thoreau—a noted author, environmentalist, transcendentalist, and anarchist—sits alone in a moonlit prison, listening to the cry of a loon outside his window. Thoreau, imprisoned for a night in Concord, Massachusetts, in July of 1846, refused to pay taxes for fear of the money being used to subsidize the Mexican-American War. In the play, upon hearing of Thoreau’s incarceration, his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson rushes to the prison in the night. Peering in through the bars from outside the jail, he asks, “Henry, what are you doing in there?” to which a composed Thoreau replies, “Waldo, what are you doing out there?”

Like Thoreau, the activists Deena Guzder describes in Divine Rebels have had enough of the established paradigm, opting instead to stand in the way of injustice, placing their reputations, financial well-being, and even their lives on the line for the sake of their Christian morals. Though Divine Rebels is nonfiction, it flows with an interwoven narrative, connecting the individual stories of “holy mischief-makers,” highlighting Guzder’s superior skills as both a journalist and a story-teller.

Though the book focuses primarily on Christian social activists of the last fifty years (and, regrettably, mostly male figures—what happened to Dorothy Day?), the subjects of Divine Rebels run the gamut of passionate causes—from proponents of racial equality and anti-nuclear-proliferation movements to war tax resisters and ecojustice advocates.

These peaceful revolutionaries are my heroes; As a child, I grew up idolizing folk heroes like Paul Bunyan and Joe Magarac—larger-than-life figures whose roots reach deep into the American psyche of rugged individualism and determination. Later I drew inspiration from historical figures of great power and influence—Harry Truman and J.F.K. Now, I find that the people I admire most are those committed to living lives committed to their strong Christian ethics of hospitality (such as Jim Corbett, the “accidental” advocate of illegal immigrants and the founder of the Sanctuary Movement), peacemaking (like Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll Roman Catholic priest and crusader for the closing of the School of the Americas at Fort Benning) and compassion for the poor (author, activist, and member of the new monastic movement, Shane Claiborne). These spiritual giants are living, breathing proof that Christians with social consciences still exist, and are courageous enough to stand up to the law—at times even willingly breaking it.

Guzder’s book reminds us that we—our churches, our culture—need people like Robin Harper, Daniel Berrigan, and Jim Zweig. It clears away some of the dust that has settled on our mild-mannered, middle-class American Christianity, and recalls the radical core of our faith—women and men who take Christ’s call to love and serve the world quite literally, and at great personal expense.

There are, however, occasional glaring holes in Guzder’s support of these activists. For instance, much is made of Quaker peacemaker Robin Harper’s transference of war tax dollars to nonprofit organizations that promote peacemaking programs, but a defense of his actions in light of Jesus’ teachings is conspicuously absent. What of his critics, who claim that Jesus specifically commanded his followers to “render to Caesar what is Caesar’s” (Matthew 22:21)? In fact, Guzder frequently avoids any discussion of scriptural reasoning for the actions of her subjects, which some may feel detracts from the validity of their cause. In addition, Divine Rebels sports a liberal bias that even the most free-thinking might find off-putting, often attributing the motives of her subjects to commitment to progressive values or leftist pride and politics.

Divine Rebels resounds loudly and pervasively with the activist’s maxim, If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention. Guzder’s essays describe women and men who radically napalmed draft records, snuck onto military bases to play Oscar Romero speeches over loudspeakers, camped out in redwood trees, and even smeared their own blood over weapons of mass destruction in a symbolic act of peaceful resistance. However, it might be beneficial to us to remember that Thoreau also once said, “A man can beat so loudly on the eardrums that nobody hears what he is trying to say.” Though we need radical saints and activists to remind us that we must press forward beyond injustice and oppression, there are times when the medium drowns the message. And while I wait expectantly for the day I have the opportunity to be arrested for my own convictions as a Christian, it is fairly safe to say that I will not be splashing my blood over fighter jets or hammering on nuclear warhead nosecones any time soon.

The "Other Side" of Sustainable Living

My granddad sent me this today in an email. Hope you get a chuckle out of it.