Never Again

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders Fields.

President Woodrow Wilson brought the American forces into WWI to help put a stop to the most terrible war the world had ever known. He sought to broker a peace between the old-world super-powers that had thrown absolutely everything into the war effort, shattering Europe, and with it, the social order of the last century. When the armistice was finally signed, the understanding was "Never Again". Never again would countries seek to eradicate each other in total war. Never again would nations sacrifice an entire generation of young men to satisfy the imperial ambitions of that nation's rulers. Never again would entire regions of land be devastated and poisoned by the modern weapons war had created. Never Again.

Twenty years later the world was back at war. The enemies were the same as last time, the weapons were even deadlier, the cost was even higher. This new conflict would be so devastating that the above-mentioned  conflict would no longer be known as the Great War, but would instead be the first of a two-part series, WWI and WWII. When WWII finally ended after years of bloody and total war, humanity had devised a weapon that could destroy all life on earth if used in open combat - the Atom Bomb. As America and the Soviet Union divided up the world into two power-blocs these nuclear weapons proliferated in a policy of Mutually Assured Destruction. The Cold War, as this struggle was named, was fought via a series of proxy wars in Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, various African and South American countries, Afghanistan, and the Gulf War. As America became weary of war, hawkish politicians and generals reminded their citizens that they could not dishonor the memories of those brave young men and women who died in the name of "freedom" during the last conflict (usually WWII) to be in vain. They must not disobey the poet by "breaking faith" with the fallen. 

Thus John McCrae's poem was subverted by the propaganda arm of the military industrial complex. Instead of the clarion call for peace, we have created a state of perpetual war. Instead of picking up the torch of peace from the failing hands of the last generation, we have snuffed it out and buried it. We have not kept the faith with those veterans who fought, sacrificed, and died for the peace and security of their children, and children's children. Instead, we have offered up those children to the gods of war, sacrificed upon the altar of "remembering our heroes". 

Mennonite Central Committee has a peace-making campaign centered around Remembrance Day. Instead of the poppy, they pass out red pins that read "to remember is to work for peace". This encourages people to honour the sacrifice of our armed forces by building a world where they are no longer needed. 

Today I remember all those who have fallen in battles waged by peoples around the world since time began. I weep with the loved ones they left behind. I weep for the things we have asked them to do, for the murder we have asked them to commit, and for the atrocities they have been forced to see and endure. I weep for the veterans who came back to a society that has no room for their PTSD. I weep for the fact that the men and women whom we have shattered in our wars have no place to grieve or heal. I pray "Lord Have Mercy" and "Never Again".

This Remembrance Day, we are a nation at war. I confess and repent of the ways that I have lived that have not been peaceful. I am sorry that this year we have to remember the lives of more soldiers who have died, either by the hands of their enemies or by their own hands in the desperate throes of PTSD. I remember our soldiers today and I grieve. Let us not isolate these men and women further by placing them on the pedestals of heroism where they can neither show pain nor receive healing. 

War is a terrible crime, the victims of which are not just the innocent civilians bombed as "collateral" damage, the victims are not just the enemy soldiers sent into battle in loyalty to their government/religion/leader, but they are also our own soldiers. War is a crime that has no winners, the losers lose everything, the winners win nothing, and the earth bears the wounds to prove it.

This year, let us rekindle the torch of peace. This year, let us not have failing hands. This year, let us keep faith with the fallen by not offering up yet another generation of soldiers dishonour their memory.

Let us never again have war.

Lest we forget.

Black Lives Matter

What does it mean to speak the truth? Quite often, we understand something to be true if it corresponds to reality. The statement "It is raining outside" is true if, and only if, it is actually raining outside. This straightforward correspondence understanding of truth was hammered into my head at the beginning of every philosophy class I ever took.

Lately, I've been watching the Black Lives Matter movement and I have been dismayed and horrified by how many white, Christian, males, are completely missing the point. When Black protesters chant, "Black Lives Matter" and "Hands Up Don't Shoot", white commentators rush to claim the moral high ground by saying, "Well, of course, All Lives Matter". This is true, in an abstract general way, but it is not fitting in light of the particularities of the situation.

The Patristics understood that things were true not merely as a function of their correspondence with reality, but also because they were fitting and beautiful. Fittingness (often described as coherence in modern truth-theory dialogue), is a useful category to rediscover as it provides us with a moral framework for understanding how to best serve Truth (in a correspondence sense).

Let us accept for now that the general truth "All Lives Matter" is really true, and True in an absolute correspondence sense.  In a situation such as we have in the United States of America, we see a people group that for the last 4 centuries have suffered under slaver, Jim Crow, and the prison industrial complex. The reality for Black Americans is that their lives do not particularly matter, and have never mattered. Because they agree that indeed "All Lives Matter" is really true, they raise their voices in a prophetic corrective to proclaim, "Black Lives Matter".

It would not be good enough for them to say, "Black Lives Matter too", as this softens their prophetic claim to the above-mentioned general truth. They must explicitly say "Black Lives Matter" because for so long it has been implicitly said, "No they don't!" When white people seek to relativize their particular claim that "Black Lives Matter" with the general claim "All Lives Matter" they actually make themselves liars. The context of slavery, segregation, and oppresion put the lie to any notion that "All Lives Matter". General truths are too abstract to mean something in a context that has given the lie to the universality of their claims for too long. Only when the particular truth claim, "Black Lives Matter" has been recognized and actualized can the statement "All Lives Matter" be affirmed.

General, universal truths are real and important, but they become irrelevant and supremely unfitting when said in a context that reveals the lie of the claim. Sometimes, to serve a big, all encompassing truth, what is left to us to actually vocalize is the smaller truth that has been denied by the people who like to pretend that the the larger truth is being honoured.

My Muslim Brothers

"Salaam Alaikum" he said as he spotted me, lost, confused, but surprisingly calm. Idris, the kindly mosque manager, is a short smiley man that is quite possibly the friendliest man I've ever met. As we talked, he must have dashed off almost a dozen times to help a sister or brother, hearing prayer requests and checking to make sure everything was ready for the service. He did not abandon me to myself. A constant stream of people greeted me in peace and invited me onto the prayer floor with them. As the call to prayer went up I found myself being lifted up out of the mosque, carried on the wings of the song to the ears of Allah. Perhaps I didn't go anywhere, perhaps it was God that came down? Anyway, an African man beside me guided me through the prayers and saved me from the humiliation of ignorance. Charity, the kindness of hospitality was sent my way from everyone I met all wrapped up in the request and promise, Salaam Alaikum (peace be with you). After the service, I met Yusuf, a young Irish Canadian who had given a stirring sermon on community and race relations that afternoon. He told me how Islam had saved his life. He had grown up in a nominally Roman Catholic family but had spent most of his time on the streets getting into trouble. "Islam just answered all my questions" he said. I could tell he had found profound peace, and I rejoiced with him.

As I scrolled through Facebook drinking my coffee this morning I saw yet more posts about the ongoing conflict in Syria and Iraq. Yet another list of the horrors committed by ISIS insurgent. Yet another belligerent demand to "talk about Islam honestly". So that's what I want to do. Let's talk about Islam honestly.

How does anybody begin to talk about a global religion, never mind somebody like me; a student of Christian theology that has never encountered anything other than Christian thought? I think there are several ways. You can of course turn to the textual sources, though, as a student of Christian theology, I know that this can be plagued by centuries old interpretive questions. You can turn to experts, though as someone who is foreign to this field of study, I'm not entirely sure which experts are relevant. If I wanted to know about Christianity for example, I would probably get a very different account of the faith from a Mennonite than from a Russian Orthodox priest. In global religions, there are incredible amounts of variance. Finally, you can enter into relationship with people who have been shaped and formed by this religion from birth. Thus, my visit to Winnipeg Central Mosque.

When I arrived, there was a camera crew from one of the many story hungry outlets in town. There had been talk that day of the discovery that one of the ISIS extremists had ties to the Winnipeg area and they wanted a reaction from the leaders at the mosque. When the cameras left, Idris turned exhaustedly to me and said, "They come like this so often, and there is nothing I can do to explain that we are not in any way connected to ISIS. Islam is a religion of peace, why are we being held accountable for the actions of these barbarous heretics?" We talked for a couple more hours and he graciously answered even my most naive questions. I began to see that Islam, like Christianity, has bred many different schools of interpretation. It is far too simplistic to find a proof text in the Qu'aran that we find objectionable and then derive a normative ethics for this global (for the most part peaceful) religion. The actions of Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, and ISIS are condemned by the mainstream of Islamic orthodoxy. In the same way the Christian Church condemns the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch trials and Westboro Baptist church, so the Islamic community condemns its radical elements as well.

Islam has given the world many great gifts, beautiful architecture, stunning literature and art, advanced science and philosophy, and above all, a people who are formed by the practice of giving and receiving peace to one another on a daily basis. Jesus taught us that by people's fruit you would know who they really are, and in the hospitality and love that I discovered at Winnipeg Central mosque, I saw the face of Christ.

Let's have an honest talk about Islam. But if we're going to do that, we should probably invite Muslims to the table with us.

Salaam Alaikum.

The Pneuma of Postmodernity

Postmodernity; the harbinger of destruction for Christian faith, or a timely ally? It seems fair to suggest that many Christians are split in opinion over what implications the advent of postmodern thought has for Christian faith. Allow me to humbly suggest my own analysis of the situation.

In some ways, postmodernity does spell the death of Christianity, or at least, a certain brand of Christianity that is thoroughly wedded to the modernist project. With the success of reason and science, the Church sought to use the tools of modernity to defend its claims, creating both fundamentalism and higher text criticism in its attempt to "scientifically" defend/prove the faith. These Christians continue to be rather violently opposed to postmodernity in its attempt to demonstrate that their project cannot succeed. The problem that occurs whenever Christianity becomes too closely tied to a spirit of a particular age is that when that age dies, the faith is left with no legs to stand on.

The work of Lyotard and Derrida have demonstrated quite thoroughly that modern epistemology falters. The blind faith in Rationality that the Enlightenment promoted has been rather discredited by repeated instances of "self-evident" claims being found to be rather subjective. Lyotard points out that there are no meta-narratives, rather, each group holds to a series of narratives that help make sense of the world. Putting Derrida into conversation with Lyotard shows us that the world is a text that we are constantly interpreting, and while some interpretations may be better than others, we have an increasingly difficult time legitimizing various interpretations over others.

We see this most clearly in the area of moral or ethical discourse, as opposing groups push forward their various claims and are driven farther and farther apart in conflict as there is no good way to arbitrate between claims. What then are we to think? Are we doomed to a hopeless relativism where anything goes? Has the Neitzschean reality been actualized wherein those with power create truth?

Perhaps. What does that mean for Christianity? Well, the first thing we must NOT do is attempt to - by the use of coercive force or power - impose our narrative over and above competing narratives. For at the heart of the Christian narrative is the story of the one who, being the holder of all power and authority, chooses to die rather than use any of that power in a coercive manner. Thus through the cross comes ultimate victory.

What the postmodern turn has done is flattened the epistemological landscape, enabling competing narratives to be heard on an equal footing. Everyone now has a seat at the table, no longer can science delegitimize other ways of knowing. Whereas, in Modernity, other forms of knowing were rejected prima facie, all voices can now be heard. I am not saying that all voices are true, only that now, they each get a equal turn to be heard, it's quite democratic really. Christians are now able to bear faithful witness to their narrative. We must resist the attempt to again pick up the myth of modernity in an attempt to put forward Christianity as a rationally self-evident system.

It is time to do what the Church has always been called to do; that is, be a faithful witness to the crucified Lord, Jesus Christ. The Spirit will do the work of convincing hearts and minds of the correspondent veracity of our narrative. For it is the Spirit that is here working diligently in creation to convict the world of sin and righteousness. All Christians would do well to develop a strong pneumatology that enables God to enact out the Missio Dei. Postmodernity thus becomes a catalyst for Christians to create a robust pneumatology that can support the continued missional reality of the Church.

Kyrie Eleison

Freedom through the Law (Preached at Rossburn Alliance Church, February 23, 2014)

“Blessed are those whose way is pure, who walk in the law of the Lord,” writes the psalmist. And thus begins psalm 119, a very lengthy praise of the beauty of the Law of Moses. I must admit, as beautiful as the poetry is, I am baffled by how much somebody can enjoy writing about a very long list of rules! Think of our modern Canadian law code, I’m not sure how that could possibly inspire anyone of us to write something even remotely close to this rapturous poetry we find flowing from the pen of the psalmist.

 

In many Christian circles today, talk of “The Law” is not all that popular. The Law is complicated, obscure, uncomfortable, and often just downright offensive. Have you ever tried to read through Leviticus? Not exactly a page turner. We don’t like the idea of Law because it implies judgment, and as good Canadians, we know that it isn’t good to judge. The Law is just a bunch of “Thou shalt not’s…” isn’t it? Nobody likes being told what not to do! So that brings us back to our first predicament, how can the psalmist say such beautiful things about the Law? What does he know that we don’t?

 

Let’s take another look at our text from Deuteronomy (Read v. 15-16)

What might stand out to you immediately here is how Moses compares obedience to the Law with the way of Life. Perhaps the Law was never meant to be oppressive at all? Maybe, the Law points us to freedom. The Old Testament goes on to sketch out the history of the children of Israel and their abject failure in keeping to the Law. Their disobedience ultimately lands them in exile and it is from this point of brokenness that the people begin to see the purpose of the law and rediscover the life that is there. That is the place where we get famous passages like Micah 6:8 “To act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God”. In the brokenness of exile, the prophets come to help the people reclaim the Law.

 

A Musician and theologian from Cambridge named Jeremy Begbie pointed out that in music, when composers stuck with the “laws” or rules of music theory in their compositions, they were able to write all of the brilliant and famous classical pieces we know and love today. When composers decided to chuck the rules in the 20^th century, they ended up becoming tightly bound to other systems and producing quite horrible sounding pieces in many instances. There seems to be a freedom that comes when operating within the bounds of certain laws.  I think Moses is getting at something similar here in his suggestion that if the people follow the law, they will experience the benefits of life and covenant blessing.

 

So why do I keep going on and on about the Law? Because Jesus does! “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For Truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” In some translations it refers to a jot, or an iota, from the Hebrew letter, yod which is the smallest little marking in the Hebrew alphabet. Nothing of the law is going to pass away.

 

There is a rather unfortunate tendency I’ve run into in many Christian circles, where whenever there is an uncomfortable passage in the Old Testament somebody is quick to say, “Oh, but that’s Old Testament, so it doesn’t matter”. Excuse me? …the Lord of the new covenant did not deride the old covenant. Some Christians in the early centuries of the church did. They wanted to do away with the Old Testament and reject the God of the Jews. The church, however, declared their views heretical – for Jesus had said that he came not to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them” (Shinn, 34). That’s right folks, blowing off the Old Testament is actually an ancient heresy called Marcionism. Basically, this fellow Marcion didn’t like the God of the OT because he was too repulsive, so he cut out the entire OT and large sections of the NT until he was left with a Bible that didn’t offend him anymore. We should probably try to avoid doing that given today’s reading!

 

So why is Jesus so insistent that no part of the Law shall pass away? Well we have to imagine ourselves in his context. Jesus had been causing a bit of a ruckus in his ministry so far. In first century Judaism there was the Torah (the Law) and the Torah was protected by the Talmud (the fence around the Torah). A large part of the Talmud was the Mishnah, a series of laws that made sure that Jews could not get anywhere near breaking the actual Torah. We are all familiar with tales of Jesus making fools of the legalistic Pharisees. The thing is, Jesus always kept the Torah, it was the Mishnah that he took exception to. He didn’t like the surface righteousness it created in people, he wanted serious devotion to holiness in every fiber of a person’s being.

 

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is calling his peers to take the Law seriously. Now of course, the Pharisees took the law very seriously, for like I said, they’d created a whole bunch of other laws to protect them from even coming close to breaking the Law. But Jesus says that actually the law demands more. God wants every part of us, not just the externals that any given law code can regulate, but our deepest thoughts and emotions must belong to him as well. Instead of don’t murder, don’t even hate, instead of no adultery, don’t even lust. (PAUSE) Good luck with that!

 

Where we stopped our gospel reading today “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect!” seems like a burden that is too heavy to bear. How can we become perfect?

 

Now, the overly harsh face reading of this text has caused a lot of Christians over the years to go to some very interesting lengths to interpret this passage in a satisfactory way. Like Mark Twain said, “I’m more afraid of the passages in the Bible I understand perfectly than the passages that I don’t understand at all!” The mere words of the sermon itself leave us as readers in a rather hopeless place. Different groups have attempted to interpret the Sermon in different ways. The early ascetics (radical Christians in the first few centuries who would beat their flesh into submission) latched on to the self-mutilation bits, very few other people since then have chosen to take that part very seriously. (Talk about the guy in John’s church). A lot of the Reformers, and especially the group of Lutherans who eventually became known as “Pietists” often interpreted the Sermon in a highly spiritualized manner that demanded no actual action. A more contemporary individual who summed up this view in a famous quote was the Reformed Theologian, Karl Barth when he proclaimed, “It would be sheer Folly to interpret the imperatives of the Sermon on the Mount as if we should bestir ourselves to actualize these pictures.”

 

The radical reformation (think of Anabaptist groups like the Mennonites) have interpreted these words fairly literally and seek to live peacefully, though the attempts at radical purity often forced these faith communities into segregated colonies where they could practice their perfection. That has changed quite a bit in recent years however. Us here today in the Alliance Church are also affected by this text in that our denomination rises out of what is known as the Holiness Tradition. Inspired by the likes of John Wesley, this idea that a form of Christian perfection could be attained, and in fact was the mark of salvation itself, finds its theological roots in this sermon.

 

As you can see the attempts to handle this text for better or worse is a perennial problem throughout Church history. As Pinchas Lapide writes, “In fact, the history of the impact of the Sermon on the Mount can largely be described in terms of an attempt to domesticate everything in it that is shocking, demanding, and uncompromising, and render it harmless.” Did I mention that Pinchas Lapide was an Orthodox Jew? He understands I think better than we, what Jesus is doing with this Sermon, and time after time, Christians through the ages have missed it.

 

Earlier, I mentioned that Moses presented the Law to the people as a source of Life. That’s because, the Law is meant to show us the way to Grace! How does it do that? Well, as my preaching instructor always used to say, “Context, context, context!” When reading the sermon on the mount, we can’t be too overwhelmed with the crazy demands Jesus places on us because we remember who it is that is presenting us with this sermon. Jesus! As John Doberstein put it, “The Sermon on the Mount can never be understood, indeed will always be misunderstood, if even for a moment we forget the Preacher of the Sermon. For apart from the person and work of Jesus Christ these marvelous words are the most radical and devastating distillation of God’s claims that it is possible to conceive; they leave us in utter, hopeless dismay. Only ‘in Christ’ do these words of the law become the glorious gospel that promises that for every man ‘life can begin again’”

 

Christ presents us with the Law. To the legalist he points out that our attempts at righteousness will always come up short. And we should be very careful to not use the Sermon on the Mount to create a new legalism. For those who use his words to condemn others find his words condemning themselves of the same guilt.  (Shinn, 38)

 

Picketers at Vancouver Missions Fest…

 

On the flip side to those who would disregard the law and the way of holiness he proclaims a strong “by no means!” The Law of God is something that Jesus wants us to take seriously. He wants us to strive after it with every bit of our being and be slowly transformed more and more into the way of holiness.

 

That being said however, there is no actual way for us to do that on our own. People are right to be afraid of the Law, it is an incredibly heavy burden, and not one of us can handle it. Yet Christ tells us that his burden is light. The law, in a way, points us to the cross. We must pick up our cross, and in the same way, pick up obedience to the Law. The cross is the place of brokenness. People’s lives are shattered by this cruelest of instruments. “But God loves the brokenhearted and the poor in spirit who have no illusions about their own wretchedness as they stand before the face of God. As long as you have not met God as one who opposes you, you haven’t met him at all” (Thielicke, 40).

 

The Law helps us realize our own limits, our own failings and shortcomings, and ultimately forces us to rely on the grace of God. I don’t want you to hear this as a completely hopeless thing. It might be tempting to just not even bother trying to strive after righteousness if we are just doomed to fail anyways. For it is in our weakness that God is strong. In our brokenness we see the face of Christ. In our failures we experience the grace of God. When we can’t go the distance, Jesus sends us his Spirit to carry us the rest of the way. We are to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, but we can only do that by the Grace of God, being empowered by the Holy Spirit. May we all learn to sing with psalmist, “Blessed are those whose way is pure, who walk in the law of the Lord.”

 

Amen

Say What?

Remember that one time that God did that thing where he gave super specific instructions to a bunch of shepherds who were wandering around in a desert? He even set it down in stone so there would be absolutely no doubt as to what was supposed to go down. But even then, people still didn't seem to know what in the world to do and so they spent 40 years wondering and wandering in a big circle.

Flash forward a few millennia - God kind of gave up on the whole setting things in stone idea; it was a tragic fail the first time, and has caused all sorts of strange things since, best not risk that tactic again. So instead, we get to sit around scratching our heads trying to navigate the world of "calling" and "vocation" and "purpose". Making "goals" and doing "strategic planning". Trying to "keep doors open" and "make room for God's will in our lives". Great...

Forgive the sarcasm, but does nobody else see the absolute vanity of this jargon? Is this really the best way Christians have for talking about how to figure out what to do with our lives? Lived experience doesn't really seem to line up with these patronizing answers (big surprise).

So, how can we go about figuring out how to live lives that line up with Christ's will for our lives? I really have no idea, it probably looks differently for everyone.

Honestly the only answer that makes sense is so clichéd and christiany that it hurts to type it, but I think praying about it is the only thing we can do. This sucks for someone like me who never could get the hang of praying, but maybe that's the reason so many of us are wandering and wondering, we simply aren't really praying.

That being said, the prayer that Jesus taught us doesn't guarantee us answers to our question of "So what's next Lord?" To that he says, "Give us THIS day our daily bread"... hmmm sneaky Jesus.

So once again I find myself back to where I started with this whole thinking, living, and being a Christian thing. "And these three remain, Faith, Hope, and Love". I'll have faith that by asking for my daily bread in constant prayer and petition, the hopes that I have will be transformed to the way of Love and in some way I'll find myself accidentally following Jesus.

Here's to putting our hope in things unseen! (cf. 2 Cor. 4:18)

What is Theology and who does it?

This spring I graduated from Providence University College with a Bachelor of Arts in Biblical and Theological studies. I know without a shadow of a doubt that I will be pursuing further education and theological training throughout my life but unfortunately for me, that means alienation from most members of my home faith community. Theology as a discipline is misunderstood, doubted, and ultimately dismissed - and the practitioners of such a discipline are looked at askance as being at risk of losing their faith. Roger Olson has recently written a series of posts exploring this which I have included links to below. I found that, while I have not reached the PhD level in this field, I am already beset by the attitudes and prejudices he describes. Theology is the lifeblood of healthy churches, the worst thing Christians can do (so of course it is the very thing we do), is remove it from our church life. If I could make a tentative gesture towards what I believe my vocational calling is in life, it would be to work towards rectifying this theologically and therefore spiritually bankrupt position the church has landed itself in. I hope these posts of Olson's challenge and encourage you.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3
(*To the list of theologians at the end of Part 3, I think a must add would be Stanley Hauerwas.)