The Power of Love

If I were to use this blog to lament and ridicule the hurtful and stupid things Christians say I would be both overworked and, ultimately, self-defeating. Besides, theology -- if we can be generous enough to attach that label to some of the stuff on this blog -- is done rightly as a joyous, imaginative and creative work. Of course that doesn't mean we don't have to say "Nein!" from time to time, but only by way of underlining the "Ja!".

One such "No" goes to Douglas Wilson, who wrote the following some years ago (which was quoted with appreciation on a blog by Jared Wilson and with anger and lament on a blog by Rachel Held Evans):

When we quarrel with the way the world is, we find that the world has ways of getting back at us. In other words, however we try, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.This is of course offensive to all egalitarians, and so our culture has rebelled against the concept of authority and submission in marriage. This means that we have sought to suppress the concepts of authority and submission as they relate to the marriage bed.

I think that qualifies as both hurtful and stupid, though I'm sure I know some people who'd be interested to hear more about this "egalitarian pleasuring party". Where? When? Should they bring anything?

Anyway, what interested me about Rachel Held Evans's response was her conclusion: this is about power. Not sex. Power.

I disagree. I think it's very much about sex. Of course we can't reduce everything to the outworking of some Freudian libido or Nietzschean will to power. So I suppose it is really more a "both/and". (It's razor sharp analysis like this that keeps people coming back for more.)

The same holds true for rape. Is rape about power? Absolutely. And it is also about sex. It is about a particular body that has been formed to derive pleasure from a violent, sexual act. The rapist has to be aroused. Not by an abstract entity called "power", but by the act, by the situation, by the body of the particular victim.

The separation of agape and eros has been a theological blunder of epic proportions in Western theology. I think it's a similar mistake to separate dynamis/exousia and eros, especially when we consider that God's power is never anything but desire, love.

Milbank on Self-Sacrifice

Giving food to the hungry is good; sharing a meal with them is better.

So, if attention to the other is central for a sense of the ethical, it would appear that convivial enjoyment of another is more important than suffering on his behalf. Moreover, if a person can only be known as other via communication, then I cannot remove myself as a participant in this situation. The German Roman Catholic philosopher Robert Spaemann has expressed this point very well: giving food to those in need, he observes, can occur as a one-way gift from those who have to those who have not, or it can occur in a feast, where all eat together. In the feast egotism is mitigated, since here one eats only if one eats along with others; and yet at the same time one does eat, and so selfhood is not eradicated. This image of the feast suggests for Spaemann that what is supremely good is the ecstatic-not in the sense of departing from life, but in the sense of living life as departing from oneself while in this very departing receiving oneself back again. In other words, beyond the ancient Greek quest for happiness in security, he proposes living convivially through generosity to the other and through receiving back again from the other.

Favourite Sports Stars

Me and some friends were compiling lists of our three favourite sports stars. Here's mine:

Juan Carlos Valeron

Ronnie O'Sullivan

Colm "The Gooch" Cooper

Yours?

The Violence of Conversion

Without wanting to turn into a poor man's Pete Rollins, there is a sentence at the end of a long and brilliant Zizek quote that I posted a few months back that resurfaced in a conversation with my sister.

... the “subject of free choice” (in the Western “tolerant” multicultural sense) can only emerge as the result of an extremely violent process of being torn away from one’s particular lifeworld, of being cut off from one’s roots.

To paraphrase my sister's question, Is that not what conversion is? A violent process of uprooting?

Historically, conversion has been explicitly violent, with the threat of the sword awaiting those who refused the evangelism of the conquistadores, for example. But what about the kind of conversion that might have happened at a Billy Graham crusade, or through the efforts of a door-to-door evangelist? Is this violence of a different sort?

One could argue that the latter has New Testament precedent, with Jesus walking around Galilee calling some fishermen to drop their nets, leave their families, and follow him. Indeed one could argue that the mission of Paul was to tear people away from the normal lifeworld of Roman citizens, and to place them within the new lifeworld called "church".  Can we characterise this activity as "violent" in the way meant by Zizek?

I don't think so, though I'm not sure that makes things better or worse! For Jesus and Paul, evangelism was concerned not with free choice, but with calling. I can never call myself a Calvinist, but the debate over how a Calvinist can rightly engage in evangelism is not a debate fuelled by Scripture, but by the enlightenment project of violently creating subjects of free choice. In many ways, the biblically astute question should be, How can a non-Calvinist rightly engage in evangelism? Perhaps in this light, modern evangelism is quite akin to the "extremely violent process" that Zizek describes, for it assumes, if not creates, this independent, choosing subject.

Ultimately, what makes evangelism and conversion non-violent is that the one who calls is non-violent, and he calls us to follow him as agents of healing and peacemaking. The Christian way of evangelising must reflect this, in its practice and in its language. Efficacy, therefore, is neither a sufficient nor a necessary justification for a method. Since Christians are ways and means people as opposed to ends people, it matters not only that you become a disciple of Jesus, but how you become a disciple of Jesus.

One of the Most Beautiful Pieces of Music Created For Film

Ice Spy

My friend -- and more importantly, one-time guest blogger on this very site -- Dan has gone to one of those parts of Canada that has no people in it. Well not quite, but he is very much in the Arctic, on a sociological/ ecclesiological expedition. I may be wrong, but as far as I can gather his mission is to convince a sufficient number of Eskimos that if they part with a suitable portion of their wealth, then he can guarantee their safe passage -- and that of their huskies -- into eternal bliss.

Some of those details may be a little off, so feel free to read what the man himself has to say over at his appropriately named blog polarposts, where his pictures are called polar-oids. Eh!?

Closure?

In the Christianity that reared me, the closing of eyes was a bodily habit that formed a central part of our expression of the faith. In prayer, heads were typically bowed and/or eyes were closed. In singing, the closing of eyes was a visible expression of union with God, or at least longing for that union. As with most things that one is given, I came around to questioning it.

It struck me as indicative of our introspection and individualism. We close our eyes to shut out everyone else in the room, to look within and there to find God. It can be almost a form of Christian solipsism, a period of time during which we inhabit only our minds because nothing outside of this inner life is truly real, nor does it truly matter. It is at this point that the word "distractions" might be used as motivation. But in the gathering of the people of God, this is a signifier of gross theological error. 

First, the people of God are not a distraction to our worship or our prayer. They are our partners, our fellow participants, members of the one body to which we all have been joined. If the visible, present, local church has become an obstacle to our relationship with God, then we have serious questions to ask ourselves.

Second, when we view the world around us as "distraction", we are in danger of diminishing our lived understanding of God as Creator. To see and hear creation is not a disturbance to our faith; it is to see and hear an expression of God that "pours forth speech". Our prayer and worship together must incorporate, in a very literal sense. Closing our eyes can thus be a distraction to the real nature of faith.

But of course none of that was or is the final word. The upshot is certainly not "Eyes wide open at all times." Upon further reflection...

Closing our eyes for prayer and singing can be used as a time to train our eyes so that when we re-open them we can see things afresh....We close our eyes in order to learn what it means really to see the world as redeemed by Jesus....Sometimes, though not all the time, we must stop our seeing so that we can adjust our sight and begin again to see things properly.

In short, we close our eyes so that they can be opened, in every sense of the phrase.

And because it makes things less awkward some times.

Have Mercy On Me

A modern city bench. You might even say "postmodern", just because. But this is not just a bench. This is a political and legal device. It is a very particular and intentional part of the furniture of a contemporary urban environment; a product placed to "design out" another particular part of the furniture of a contemporary urban environment - the homeless.

My friend and graduate from a degree in Law wrote his final year thesis on begging - specifically, the legal response to it in a UK city. This bench represents one such response, designed as an "anti-sleep" bench and thus functioning to eliminate the homeless/beggars by forcing them to lay there heads elsewhere. The hope for this displacement is that either the homeless will leave the city, or they will pursue criminal activity to compensate for the loss of revenue gained in prime locations, thus giving the police the chance to incarcerate them for a significant period of time.

But why beggars? Are they dangerous, and thus necessary targets of the law? Not exactly.

The reasons beggars are unwanted in cities are far more, shall we say, capitalistic. The first is aesthetics. Cities seeking capital investment and tourist revenue need a pristine image to portray for their potential investors. Beggars are a blight on that image. They do not meet the desired aesthetic demands, and are therefore seen as a hindrance to the economic growth of the city.

My friend briefly mentions the case of graffiti to highlight the aesthetic sensibilities of the law. "He is no Banksy" was a prosecutor's case against one particular graffiti artist, who faces jail time on account of his graffiti being seen as "vandalism" as compared to Banksy's "art". The law, it seems, is far from blind when it comes to taste.

The second reason beggars are targeted is because they are "flawed consumers," or even "non-consumers". The city centre is first and foremost a place for consumption. Beggars work right against this ethos - they actually take money from consumers, money that could be spent in one of the nearby shops. There is an opportunity cost when one gives one's pocket change to beggars, and the authorities are determined for you not to miss out on an opportunity. Beggars are also just plain bad for business, with people less likely to enter a shop that has a beggar sitting in front of it. In fairness, given the society we have created for ourselves, what could be more punishable than anti-consumerism? (This reminds me of the Roman Empire's issue with monks, and Eisenhower's declaration that "It is the duty of every American to consume".)

There is much more that could be said. The thesis is both simple and fascinating to read, written with clarity and with a passion that has taken on far greater forms than the academic, but which translates well into this 10,000 word piece that is at once easy and uneasy reading. If you want me to send you a pdf copy just let me know.

The Finiteness of the Infinite

It's posts like this one from Peter J. Leithart that justify Al Gore's invention of blogging. That we get to read paragraphs like the following in between a game of Helicopter and a search for the latest news on Riquelme's departure from Boca Juniors is one of the internet's great wonders:

Applying his understanding of the Creator-creature distinction to Christology, Muller says that the infinite God “graciously grasps the finite” and thus “shattered the Kantian barrier from his side.” But I don’t believe in a Kantian barrier, so I see nothing of that sort to shatter. God doesn’t dwell in a noumenal realm, nor are we limited to the phenomena. I’m with Barth on this point: The incarnation is no contradiction of God’s infinity; it’s the climactic expression of that infinity. God is so boundless that He can take flesh and live a human life from conception to grave and beyond without denying Himself, without ceasing in any way to be the infinite God that He is.