Roger Mugs came up with this little nugget*. It is like an opportunity to give, as the say in the black church, testimony (emphatically as appropriate unlike us white folk). Nick Ditty @ Rightly Dividing tagged me to participate. And so here I go!

The rule:

In an effort to keep it simple, short, and easy to follow, I’d like to challenge you to quote one verse (not one chapter). And then say what the Lord has been teaching you in one sentence (not one paragraph). Then tag 5 peeps (you know the drill).

The Verse
Mark 12:29-31: Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these.’

The Lesson
God has continually been teaching me that Christians are often the worst exemplars of this commandment.

The Tag
I think I am going to tag a few of my Presbyterian brothers and sisters as I think this thought-experiment offers a nice resource to ground people in what is important in the midst of the General Assembly meeting in San Jose, CA (live-blogged here). Adam is also live-blogging it at Pomomusings also linked below.

• Bruce
• Sarah
• Adam
• Ed
• Jim

* I can’t stand using the word “meme” since it gives the concept too much press. I prefer the term “autobiographical widget™” which I coined here.

Chris Tilling has a good thought on Dawkins et. al. here. This started as a comment, then it got too long.

The problem (a problem?) with Dawkins, Hitchens, etc. (I like Eagleton’s name for the two - “Ditchkins“) is that they argue it’s perfectly rational to assume that all religious belief is the same regardless of its social consequences. Overlaying that with a scientism that itself does not have evidentiary bases for belief adds to the absurdity.

I was engaged in an argument on Atheism v. Christianity (one of many of the same which is why I stopped participating) with some atheists regarding the diagnosis of delusion. Delusion is not a belief but a behavior. Psychologists do not evaluate beliefs alone, they evaluate behaviors and (should) triangulate their diagnosis with a few different variables and with a few different opinions - especially in cases where the behavior is more ambiguous. This is called differential diagnosis. Belief in God is not itself a behavior. Hearing an audible voice or seeing an apparition are both behaviors that one can measure. Believing that Nicole Kidman is in love with you can be assessed. Those last can be qualified as delusional. There are of course other types.

In those debates I actually had someone tell me at the end that it is “all subjective” and that it is based on what is normative in society. The latter is indeed true - in part. You cannot separate one’s psychological state from their prevailing environment. But this is not “subjectivity” at work. Saying this discredits the entire scientific basis for the field of abnormal psychology. This is a clear sign that this person is one of many who confuses Dr. Phil with the social scientific discipline of psychology of which studies in abnormal patterns of behavior is a part!

Delusion is classified as a psychotic disorder that is usually associated with a confused sensory apparatus whereby you are experiencing something that is not there with your sensory inputs. Sensing ease, wholeness, a presence of power, etc. or other heightened emotional states are not delusional by definition. Be as it may, this is the place to engage the debate, if there is any. However Ditchkins does not do this. They would rather assume they know how to give a credible differential diagnosis of delusion, and then simply say that the psychological community gives “favoritism” to religion. What is clear is that while religion can be a direct cause for delusional disorders, religion by itself is not a disorder.

However, Ditchkins want to overload criteria for existence with empirical validity. That is to say, the argument that such an overwhelming number of homo sapiens and indeed other primates have not only believed in a “something more” to scientifically substantiated experience, but have often associated this with God of some kind is rejected outright because there is no evidence to Ditchkins that such a reality even exists that satisfies their sense of curiosity. It seems that the history of religions and of religious experience raises the probability that a God of some kind does indeed exist - that there indeed might be this “something more”. But for Ditchkins, this is simply not an interesting curiosity. This is however, not the argument they are making and this is the problem. They are not saying that God is not interesting, they are saying that God is a sign of delusion, of sickness, and the greatest source of human wickedness - and all for something that is not there!

Here’s the funny part about the argument from Ditchkins - they then go on to say “Well psychologists give religion a free pass” as if they have mis-diagnosed “delusion” in the DSM IV! They want delusional behavior to be what it is not, rely on the psychological analyses where convenient, and then disregard them also where convenient. So here’s delusion which is a category of psychological diagnosis, but psychologists are discredited since they give religions a free pass?! What utter tripe.

Yet when I say that God as they understand God is not how many Christians, Jews and Muslims understand God (not to mention other religions with very different views of God like Hindus) I am then at fault for changing the terms! What a crock!

If atheists want to be helpful, try lending a hand with various Christians who are tired of the highjacking of religious belief by vitriolic and dangerous absolutism and fundamentalism that is rampant in a globalized world that favors tribalism. Stop making these absurd arguments that all religious belief is the same when all religious belief clearly does not render the same social consequences. Let’s stop this blind acceptance that Ditchkins’ rather ignorant points about religion are true, when their criticisms of fundamentalism (if they would choose to make that important and obvious distinction) are quite spot on. The problem is that they fail to make that distinction, fail to demonstrate any care of the social aspects of religious behaviors and beliefs, create fallacious conspiracy-laden hypotheses that are not demonstrable with respect to the study of religion or social science, and smile as millions in the world chew on their wake like blind dogs.

Here is a proposition in the much over-emphatic debates and volleys of logical fallacies between atheists and Christians these days. Any Christian claim to the divinity of Jesus will never be satisfactory to an atheists’ conditions for what constitutes truth and reality. I think this little passage from Mark’s Gospel explains it well enough:

‘Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.’ Those who were crucified with him also taunted him.

So again, this is nothing new under the sun.

Doctrine at best is a sacrament - an artifact that serves as a medium to communicate God’s grace through faith. Because it is an artifact, it is permanently negotiable. Once we refuse to negotiate doctrine according to the recognition that we negotiate meaning in Scripture, we become idolaters in the most heinous sense that resulted in the very crucifixion of Christ.

HT: Liberal Pastor in Burnsville on “The Shack“

James has been having a discussion with Larry Moran over the issue of God as a “supernatural being”. (And from Larry’s post I have not the foggiest clue what “If this is the best they can do then theism is in big trouble” means in the slightest.)

Atheists largely appear to have criteria for existence that anything religious or metaphysical simply cannot provide - empirical evidence for the existence of something “living” or “sentient” or any other category we may apply to being.

However, if God exists, God must somehow have an existence that is outside of the set of empirical experience via the five senses or God is just one more cause among every other object without any significant differentiation. Certainly to suggest that God is irreducibly an equal partner in the set of all objects in cause/effect conditions is considered idolatry in the Judaeo/Christian traditions. Since, in such a case, we cannot control for the kind of physical evidence required for something to exist like God, God must not therefore exist or what we call “God” is some amalgamation of physical events and objects in whatever form we desire.

The problem is that we have many experiences in life that transcend the process of observation with the synthetic apparatus of the mind. Love, justice, peace, civility, equality, etc. are all such factors that move civilizations and direct human behavior far more than anything that can be controlled in a petri dish or can be observed through any scientific apparatus. We can scientifically observe the effects of these beliefs, but we cannot observe the beliefs themselves. True, our beliefs are structured according to our experience, but the structure of those beliefs is not empirical. Note: This is not to differentiate between subjective and objective, but between empirical and non-empirical. The difference is not all that subtle.

Objection 1: Even if you say you had an experience with God or a god of some sort, there can be many other naturalistic explanations such as delusion, hallucination, social determinism, etc. So why do you hold to the belief that what you experienced is God especially since the evidence for God’s existence is not forthcoming? The assumption here is that since there is no physical evidence of God, God must not exist therefore you must have experienced something else. The possibility that the experience occurred with a real existent is jettisoned before we can even offer this as a possibility.

Objection 2:  Why this God?  It is just an arbitrary decision!  To ask the question why this God as opposed to Zeus, Mithras, Allah, or Ganesha would be like asking me why I do not like fried cockroaches, speak English, eat pork, believe in the equality of women, and the civil right for gays to marry. Experience is always irreducibly informed and conditioned by our psycho-social development. Even if God has an existence outside of the physical set of possible objects in terms of cause and effect, we must experience God within these conditions. Field theory, game theory, various forms of evolutionary fitness, etc. are used to argue for the rationality of a belief, but that is quite after the fact of the reasons why people believe in certain things. In fact, if this is true, then belief in God is quite good for our evolutionary fitness. But this does not mean therefore, that God is part of the set of cause and effect, or that for God to exist this must be the case. Such would be a post hoc fallacy that is quite obvious.

To ask for a naturalistic explanation for God that meets certain scientific criteria is therefore a categorical error. It is like trying to argue for the existence of chairs by examining the flight patterns of bees.

Therefore the issue comes to what is compelling evidence and what is interesting evidence for the observer. Arguments that James is encountering are of this ilk. Why continue to beat the notion of supernatural like a dead horse? The alternative is simply not interesting. So I would ask atheists why they hold to their criteria for belief in the first place? What motivates the way you believe is perhaps a more important question than the content of the belief itself. Brow-beating the issue of super-naturalism might perhaps be more honest if atheists would faithfully acknowledge the impact of desire on their preference for a physicalism clothed in the oft indubitable acceptance of a neo-liberalism for which they do not argue the veracity on the same grounds they require for God.

Several Days ago I posted what I thought to be a rather eloquently packed statement of Christian faith by David Bentley Hart here.  Kevin Edgecomb was not quite so fond of the same passage and Nick Norelli agrees.  Read Kevin’s post on it for his points.  Here is my take on each of his points:

1. The reference to κυριος Ιησους is quite so a confession of a certain understanding of Jesus as Christ - an eschatological Lord.  Quite in keeping with the Orthodox understanding of Jesus as Pantokrator.
2. To say that the peace of Christ was an attribute that suffered on the cross would vanquish a kenotic soteriology and seems to ignore the cry of dereliction.  Christ certainly was not at peace then as the Gospels clearly illustrate.
3. I think Vladimir Lossky (1957) can answer this better: “In a certain sense all theology is mystical, inasmuch as it shows forth the divine mystery: the data of revelation.  On the other hand, mysticism is frequently opposed to theology as a realm inaccessible to understanding, as an unutterable mystery, a hidden depth, to be lived rather than known; yielding itself to a specific experience which surpasses our faculties of understanding rather than to any perception of sense or of intelligence” (The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church).  Clearly not “incomprehensible polysyllabic pseudo-postmodern piffle”.  Hart’s “incomprehensibility” is a function of the Eastern focus on mystery through experience it seems.
4. Another perspective: God’s judgment has finally befallen the world and the Cross is the decisive revelation of that judgment to us, but we have not experienced the final judgment “at the end of the age”.  It is a future event with present effects.  I tend to like Bultmann’s expression here and hart does not seem to be outside of that understanding in this passage.  Pannenberg also has an interesting spin on this.  It is a real eschaton that has occurred and “is being revealed” (Rom. 1:17-18) to us.  Kevin might not be coming from this perspective, but I think the evolutionary paradigm for the eschatological event of Christ’s second coming has dome damage to the notion that the victory has been won in order to establish the eschatological Kingdom of God that “is being revealed” rather than one that will simply happen in the future.
5. I understand the sentiment with #5, but to say that the man Jesus was not vindicated in the resurrection of the body seems to miss the point of what Hart is saying here.  Two natures, one substance.  Again, the event of the cross viewed eschatologically, as Hart is doing here, has different meaning than one event in time along a static timeline of history.  History, after all, does not exist in the mind of God unless He wills it.

I think there is a lot going on here in one passage.  If it sparks such a conversation, the rest of the book has quite a bit of potential for the patient of mind.  I think what Hart and Zizoulas have done to bring Eastern Orthodoxy into the conversations following the postmodern debates from the 80’s and 90’s are important to reconstruct those ideas on different bases.  And somehow I think it is a better place from which to work out those ideas to a place that is not utterly devoid of meaning or purpose.

I have begun to participate as a “select blogger” for The Ooze which has started sending me books, often review copies before the books hit the stores. So I will be periodically writing reviews of these books. Thanks to the good folks at The Ooze!

My Beautiful Idol is an autobiographical tale in which Pete Gall takes us through his rather flawed, or at least self-delusional journey from advertizing whiz, to “poor fat white guy” in the inner city, to the unresolved questions of the misdirected journey of a failed “hero for Christ”. The metaphor for Pete is a collector crab. This is a shellfish that, like other crabs, lives off of the dregs and excrement of the glorious creatures’ that grace the currents above. But it also has one talent: “The collector crab, or decorator crab, as it’s also called, attaches to his shell bits of what it finds on the sea floor…(T)he idea is to protect itself by becoming invisible to its natural enemy, the squid” (p. 18).

Pete starts off in a cab in Chicago talking about his profession with the cabbie, revealing that the entire job of advertising is to sell people back their beliefs and translate those beliefs into needs that people can no longer do without. It is the grand feedback loop of plucking people of their whims and even latent desires and packaging them into something that dazzles and amuses long enough to make desire conform to the shape of an object that will earn a company profit.

Pete wants more than this in his life. He wants a deeper connection with people and with God that goes beyond the normative structures of the church or the casual relationships he encounters along the way. So he leaves everything behind to pursue this depth. Whether it is working with people down on their luck at an organization called Turnaround, the mentally challenged, or with convicts at a housewares startup business, we learn that Pete himself is the embodiment of all those with whom he finds himself in the role of the minister. You see, Pete does not just grab those things of his environment to conceal or protect him, he holds onto an idealistic image of God and what his relationship with God should be rather than what it actually is.

What we learn with Pete is that all of those tactics he would use to convince people that they need something that they really do not have imploded on his very sense of self in a feedback loop that does everything but rest in God even though he tries so hard to find that rest. But the rest he seeks is on his own terms and rooted in the stuff of not only his environments, but in his very image of who God is, and the person he believes he should be before God. Clinging so desperately to the idol of this version of Pete and this version of God, leads Pete into despair - over and over again.

So what’s Pete’s problem? I share his wife’s sentiment who “said, ‘You know, you were kind of a butt’” (p. 9). Pete frustrates me because he is so irreducibly wrapped in his own self-created and self-delusional tension of masochistic victimization and the audacity of self-importance. I want to slap Pete around a bit, tell him to get over himself, and stop creating the idol that is this ideation of Pete Gall. He has constructed this image of himself and has convinced himself that this is who he ought to be. As he tells us, the reason why he left Five Points Christian Church was, “because it was too hard being there, too unimportant, too low-profile, and playing the role of outsider was wearing thin. It made me a poor fit for the simple work the church needed me to do” (p. 172). And that’s the rub.

The tale somewhat concludes with an interesting dialogue that can perhaps be better summed up with a line from Kierkegaard at the opening of The Sickness Unto Death which in large part gives us a framework for why Pete is often so miserable in this fraction of his life:

The formula that describes the state of the self when despair is completely rooted out is this: in relating itself to itself and in willing to be itself, the self rests transparently in the power that established it.

Pete can’t find St. Augustine’s “rest in God” because the only source he truly has to rest in is this image - this idol - of himself. This is like “Diary of a Seducer”, only Pete seduces himself.  He is not Hamlet pondering his existential crisis in the eclipse of his father’s legacy. He is not the prodigal son who wishes his father dead in order to carouse only to come back. True his father offers a moment similar to the father in this parable in Luke. But Pete is really none of these. His character is Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman who said, “The man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want.” Pete and Willy suffer from the same problem - they want to be well-liked and they want the world to find favor with them. For Pete, God is one more part of that world. For Willy Loman there was no resurrection and no great legacy. But it seems that from Pete’s point of view now, that killing off this idol of himself is the only way that he can truly rest in the grace of God.

These stories are not ones that I tend to read looking to find someone like me in them. But stories of failures and loves lost remind us at how fragile we are and how culpable before God we are of committing the same transgressions that killed Christ. And this is something we do over and over again. What Pete shows us is how we take this one step further by deluding ourselves into believing that we do not behave or believe this way. And sometimes we can only see that we all do these things by resonating with the travail of someone else. Then we have a choice to be hypocrites, or penitents. Our tendency is to be the former. The purpose of our created existence is to be the latter. And that is why you should read Pete’s book.