(Ir)religiosity

Reading through Jean-François Lyotard‘s The Postmodern Condition yesterday I was immediately struck by this quote.

The relationship of the suppliers and users of knowledge to the knowledge they supply and use is now tending, and will increasingly tend, to assume the form already taken by the relationship of commodity producers and consumers to the commodities the produce and consume — that is, the form of value.  Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorized in a new production:  in both cases, the goal is exchange.  Knowledge ceases to be an end in itself, it loses its “use-value.” (p. 4-5)

This is exactly the temptation of social media, I think.  If used with restraint and discretion social media outlets can be very useful tools to share knowledge and information.  But we must recognize the danger of changing the nature of knowledge by commodifying into something to be consumed rather than something to be internalized or reflected upon.  Then the act of consuming itself becomes the goal and not the use of knowledge or the information.

For example, I find myself following more people on Twitter or subscribing to more blogs not because I believe they are useful and enriching but because I need “more.”  The goal is not quality, but quantity.  More followers, more RSS feeds, more Facebook friends, etc.  I even catch myself doing it the bookstore, it’s not the book itself that I need or want but the act of buying and consuming more.  It is as if there is some sort of jouissance to be found in the act of consuming information and the abstraction of mere quantity.

So I think social media can be a useful and important tool in transmitting and sharing knowledge, but its potential won’t matter much if we allow the very nature of knowledge and information to be destroyed so we can consume more and actually “know” less.

Thoughts?

Today was supposed to be for another Diana Butler Bass post.

But then the gays had to go and cause a tornado in Minnesota.

Like a lot of people yesterday I read John Piper’s outrageous post claiming that God caused a tornado in Minneapolis to send a message to the ELCA:  God doesn’t like gays and doesn’t want them in His (yes, His) church.  And like a lot of people I was angered.

I left this comment on Piper’s post:

It is deeply disappointing to see such a prominent Christian leader yet again contributing to the narrative of fear. You’re peddling a poisonous and toxic theology Mr. Piper. And you join the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson in doing so. Yours is a Christianity that betrays the heart of the gospel. I highly doubt you will, but I pray that you retract your words.

I was in a hurry so here’s a few more thoughts.  (My hope is that more people (people who, unlike me, have voice and influence) will call Piper out on this because the last thing we need is another excuse for people to write off Christians has gay-bashing, fanatical, wing nuts.)

The theology is ridiculous. I’m hesitant to even call this theology because Piper’s cutting and pasting of scripture tells me that he is more interested in justifying his own ideology with religious authority than he is in serious reflection.¹  It is very destructive and obviously raises some disturbing issues when it comes to theodicy and the nature of God.  The burden of proof is on Piper to explain every other natural disaster.  Who is being punished in all the other tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes?  And what kind of God dishes out punishment of that magnitude?  What of grace?  If God is in the business of unleashing holy hell on those God pleases then why does God only seems to care about who is having consensual sex with whom and who is marrying whom?   Aren’t there other issues that might seem at least a bit more pressing, like say, war or starvation or economic exploitation or disease?  If this is God’s way of dealing with things the why hasn’t the United States been wiped off the map for failing to care for its own as the wealthiest nation in the world or for starting bogus wars abroad in order to secure its “interests?”  What kind of hierarchy of sins is this that sex is at the top and other problems that directly affect persons livelihood don’t even seem to register?  Why doesn’t God give a damn about those?

When you push the thought to its inevitable conclusion, Piper’s God begins to look more in more like the mean kid killing insects with a magnifying glass.  God is a sadist who enjoys inflicting cosmic pain on others.  If that is true then I have no interest in God.  And if religion consists of me running scared for the rest of my life hoping that God isn’t out to get me then I’m out on that too.

Christianity is not a religion of fear.  From beginning to end, it’s narrative is one full of hope for the redemption and restoration of all things.  Piper, in his post, is more interested in a narrative of fear that dehumanizes the other, casting God as a cosmic antagonist, the ultimate mob boss who will kill you on a whim if you look at him the wrong way.  This is not the gospel, indeed it betrays the very heart of the gospel by opting for fear and hate instead of hope and love.  “Perfect love casts out fear.” Jesus modeled that perfect love and brought the narrative of hope to its apex.  He had a ton of opportunities to go postal on someone who didn’t get it or deserved to be punished, but he didn’t.  In fact, in the third act of the story Jesus shows us just how absurd the whole system of punishment and fear really is.  Is that not the clearest and most unambiguous embodiment of the very nature of God?

God does not create tornadoes to “send messages.”

God sent the best message God could 2000 years ago and the message is this: love, not hate wins; hope, not fear, has the final say.

You, John Piper, are on the wrong side of history.  Homosexuals pose no threat to the church nor does God hate, despise, or want to punish them.  We should be welcoming them with open arms to join us in participating in the restoration and renewal of all things.  Justice demands it.

1. To be sure, we’re all guilty of this to some extent, but there are good interpretations and bad interpretations. [↩]

I’m going to take a bit of blogging and social media break.  For a few reasons.

First, I’ll be leaving early tomorrow morning for a canoeing/fishing trip at the Boundary Waters.  I’ll be gone for about a week.  No computer.  No cell phone.  No iPod.  No technology.  It will be refreshing.  And it couldn’t come at a better time.

Which leads me to a second reason.  I’ve become increasingly irritated and disappointed at the lack of substance and content in the “social media world” lately (blogging, twittering, etc.).  That is not to say that good, engaging and original content isn’t out there, it is.  But it’s getting drowned out by all the crap and the noise.  It makes me tried and cranky.  I’m sick of reading banal blog posts and my twitter feed being dominated by spymaster games or reports on someone’s workout routine.  For me, these are useful tools to share information and float new, creative thoughts or ideas.  But there seems to be a lot of rehashing going on and the endless noise both drowns out the things worth paying attention to and dilutes the larger conversation.

The lack of originality and the dominance of pure junk and noise has affected me and my creativity more than I realize.  A lot of what I blog about comes from inspiration from either what I’m reading offline or what I’m reading online.  Lately I just haven’t been inspired by the latter.  Again, that is not to say good stuff isn’t being written or shared.  It’s just being overshadowed and marginalized.

So I’m going to take a much needed break for a least a few weeks.  And when I get back and I may seriously cut back on my media intake by purging my feed reader and twitter.

Hey, I might even toss out thoughts and ideas the old-fashioned way and have some real conversations.  Imagine that.

I had an interesting discussion with some friends on Facebook the other day over this comic.  It’s a depiction of a quote from Neil Postman‘s important book Amusing Ourselves to Death. Here’s the full quote from the forward:

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions”. In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.

Postman goes on to argue, very convincingly, that Huxley was indeed right and that our preoccupation with entertainment and excess of information has negated our ability to determine what is important, relevant, and true.  The book is a must read for anyone, especially people involved in social media.

The conversation I had revolved around the question of whether Postman was completely right.  In the book he argues that Huxley’s prophecy has come to pass (more or less) and Orwell’s has not.  I tend to think that there are elements of both in our culture and at our worst we oscillate between the two.  Which may turn out to be more dangerous than one or the other by itself.

Which do you believe is more present in our culture today? Or is it some mixture of both?

I have written a post on this day the last two years.  My feelings on the subject haven’t changed much.  Frankly, I’m tried of saying that same thing over and over, yet I feel compelled to do so nonetheless.

I find it very difficult to celebrate the founding of a nation that is now the world’s largest imperialist power and has all but abandoned the principles upon which it was founded.  To commemorate nationalism, consumerism, capitalism, sexism, racism, militarism, and exceptionalism all on the same day and have the audacity to call it patriotism is a little much for me.  Even the fact that we still declare ourselves “Independent” every year on this day reeks of a dangerous type of collective ignorance and amnesia that is all too common in the good ‘ole USA.  We are not independent.  We haven’t been for a long time.  We are very much dependent on the rest of the world — “they” are the lifeblood of our now failing economy.  And we’ve mortgaged their well-being, their ability to live “the American dream” — to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness on their own terms — in order to secure our own position of privilege.

But of course we’re not spending gross amounts of money on fireworks and firing up the grills to celebrate our current situation.  No, the whole point is to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence and as Howard Zinn points out:

The Declaration of Independence is the fundamental document of democracy. It says governments are artificial creations, established by the people, “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and charged by the people to ensure the equal right of all to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Furthermore, as the Declaration says, “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.” It is the country that is primary–the people, the ideals of the sanctity of human life and the promotion of liberty.

If that is true I wonder if we really realize what we are celebrating. Why don’t we take this stuff seriously instead of allowing our minds to be colonized by the status quo?  Why do we assume that global capitalism is here to stay and reject any alternative wholesale?  Why do we assume that the way in which we organize ourselves is the best or even the most effective way to do so?  Why are we afraid to try something different, to open ourselves up to a Derridean “democracy to come?” Here I find it quite ironic that many white liberals who have been on the side of dissent in this fashion for the last 8 years or so are suddenly quiet now that a new regime is in place and a new face represents the empire.  I like Obama, to be sure, and I voted for him.  But I am kidding myself if I believe that there will be any real, deep change.  There will be changes, but they will be cosmetic and like any well-oiled machine it will be just enough to blow off the steam and excess heat that is needed for things to keep moving.  Any system needs a good vent;  I’m afraid that too often our dissent only serves that purpose, thereby fulfilling an important requirement in maintaining the status quo.  We shouldn’t settle for a change in cosmetics and verbiage, we should demand a radical rethinking of our conceptual framework.

Of all people I think Christians should be on the cutting edge of this type of revolutionary imagination.  Jesus himself was executed by the state for preaching a message about an anarchic kingdom that existed under the nose of the status quo.  But still we continue to be co-opted by the forces of jingoistic nationalism.  So, though I disagree with him on some major points, I think Stanley Hauerwas is on to something when he brazenly claims:

I assume most of you are here because you think you are Christians, but it is not all clear to me that the Christianity that has made you Christians is Christianity. For example: How many of you worship in a church with an American flag? I am sorry to tell you that your salvation is in doubt. How many of you worship in a church in which the fourth of July is celebrated? I am sorry to tell you that your salvation is in doubt.

The kingdom of God respects no nation knows no boundary.  This is why I think there is a truly subversive kernel to Christianity, a kernel that, if redeemed, can serve as a catalyst for revolution and evolution of thought.  But that cannot happen unless we shake free from all our various forms of dogmatism, be them religious, national or political.

And that’s why I find it increasingly difficult to celebrate holidays like the Fourth of July.  Not only because we have forgotten who we really are, but because the commemoration itself represents our penchant to complacently hide behind dogmatism writ large rather than allowing the creative imagination to conceptualize something beyond what we already know.

There is a war going on for your mind. If you are thinking, you are winning.

There is a really interesting post over at the Church Postmodern Culture blog contesting Peter Rollins’s claim that Slavoj Žižek is a “dialectical materialist theologian.”  Geoffrey Holsclaw suggests that to call Žižek a theologian is to “misunderstand Žižek’s project” as an atheist (albeit a certain type of atheist which should be carefully distinguished from the new atheist fundamentalists a la “Ditchkins“) and to “seriously downgrade theology.”

Interesting. And strong.

Which raises the question: what does it take to be a theologian?  What are the qualifications, prerequisites, and prior philosophical convictions to which one must assent in order to claim the title theologian?

In the case of Žižek, I find it a bit odd to dismiss him as theologian purely on his being an atheist and possibly tainting theology.  First, such a stance supposes an unvarying notion of atheism.  Žižek is not your normal (modern) atheist and would undoubtedly detest the idea of being grouped together with the likes of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens in the same way that progressive Christians dislike being painted with the same brush as Christian fundamentalists.  So I think that charge lacks the proper nuance and care.  Furthermore, aren’t we all atheists of some sort?  Don’t we all reject certain gods?

Second, the accusation that naming Žižek as a theologian does the theological enterprise itself a disservice supposes a very rigid definition of theology and may give Žižek more credit than is due.  As far as I can tell, Žižek rejects any notion of transcendence, a tenet that Holsclaw believes to be central to the aim of theology.  He writes:

If theology is merely the sociology or anthropology of religion run through the Lacanian registers of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real, then I might as well become a stock broker.  If theology is merely explication of the immanent infinitude of human subjectivity, the void of the cosmos, the height and depth of reality, then let’s own up to that (which I believe Žižek has).

Why should these things be off the table?  I for one would like to keep the channels of conversation open here rather than demanding that all theologizing acceptance some idea of transcendence.    Here is a question:  does a theologian need to choose between the two, between transcendence and immanence?  Is one acceptable and the other out of bounds?  Does one need to accept a certain definition of God and ultimate reality before being allowed a place at the table that is theology?

Setting Žižek aside, I’d like to go back to that original question.  What does it take to be a theologian? Who qualifies?  At the superficial level, I’m tempted to say that everyone is a theologian whether he or she realizes it or not.  Our mode of being in the world will always already be emblematic of our belief(s) about God and ultimate reality whether we overtly confess that belief or not.   But I understand the need to zero in on something more precise.  I just wonder if placing superfluous limitations on what it means to be a theologian is more of a reflection on our own notions about God, religion, and divinity than the larger enterprise itself.  I become deeply suspicious once we start taking things off the table for questioning.

I’m interesting in your thoughts on this.  How would you define a theologian?  What does it take to be one?

Marika Rose’s latest post over at Open Table Theology (a fine new community blog you should all subscribe to, by the way) got me to thinking about my love-hate relationship with systematic theology.

It’s not that I reject systematic theology wholesale.  I understand that at its best it is very important for a robust understanding of the Christian tradition and I utilize it myself and often rely on key systematic figures in my own thought.  But still, there’s something about it that doesn’t quite set right with me.

My main objection is that systematic theology is largely a modern enterprise, meaning a couple of things.  First, it is beholden to a rational,  and sometimes positivist, worldview which tends to treat the divine as some sort of scientific object to observed and dissected from a distance rather than a reality to be participated in.  Hence the expression that theology is the “queen of the sciences.”  To suggest that theology is a science at all, let alone the superior one, is already to posit a certain type of form and method that is always chasing objectivity.  Naturally, the need to delineate and taxonomize things into neat little air tight systems comes next.  So theology is fractured into all sorts of sub-genres and compartmentalized into different categories and groupings.  Again, I don’t want to categorically reject the categories.  They aren’t inherently bad.  At their best they help to point us in the right direction, but I think they more often than not tend to serve as conceptual idols, as do our systems.

And I guess that’s my biggest beef.  That systematic theology, as good and as helpful as it may be, is prone to creating conceptual idols and constructing impenetrable systems that resist any contribution from someone not perceived to be an “expert” by an esoteric — and often parochial — community.  And if we agree that all theology is political then I think we will most definitely find that systematic theology is often used to reinforce the status quo at the center rather than identifying with those on the margins; and as Leonard Sweet has said, “a move to the center is a move away from Jesus.”  So at its worst systematic theology serves as a handmaiden to the political status quo.  In that respect I think Walter Brueggmann was really on to something when he wrote that “empires prefer systematic theologians” in the first edition of his The Prophetic Imagination (interestingly, that line was removed in the second edition; I’m in the process of trying to figure out why).  Augustine’s early development of just war theory in the fourth century as the church was beginning to gain rapport with the Roman Empire would be a prime example.

Again, I don’t say any of this to negate the worth and usefulness of systematic theology.  I affirm that.  But I’m still suspicious.  Suspicious that when we create systems and taxonomies we tend to hold them much too tightly as if they themselves are without error.  But all our models are fallible.  Period.  The temptation is to construct an appealing system and then cram God into it.  I think it should be the other way around.  What I see God doing in Jesus is rupturing every human system and every finite construction with an un-tamable type of dynamism and vitality.  Those systems are, I think, only useful insofar as they point us toward the divine, but too often we mistake the systems themselves for the divine.  When it’s all said and done we have to be able to say along with Thomas Aquinas (who was the first systematic theologian and wrote perhaps the most epic systematic theology ever) that our systems, constructions, and taxonomies are “all straw” in comparison to the great mystery and paradox that is this ultimate reality in which we all share.

So I wonder, if systematic theology in its current state is in fact hopelessly beholden to a modern worldview as I suspect it is, what might a postmodern systematic theology look like?  Or is that even possible?  What think you?

(ht)

I agree with N.T. Wright:

“It really is high time we developed a Christian ethic of blogging. Bad temper is bad temper even in the apparent privacy of your own hard drive, and harsh and unjust words, when released into the wild, rampage around and do real damage. And as for the practice of saying mean an unjust things behind a pseudonym – well if I get a letter like that it goes straight in the bin. But the cyberspace equivalents of road rage don’t happen by accident. People who type vicious, angry, slanderous and inaccurate accusations do so because they feel their worldview to be under attack.” (ht)

I couldn’t agree more.  Blogging is at the same time both great and dangerous.  It brings out the best and the worst in us.  I am grateful for the many friends that I have made through this platform but I get really put out with the slander and hateful words that are put forth under the auspices of speaking the truth or defending the faith, or whatever else.  As Christians we have a great opportunity to have rich and robust conversation and to model what charitable dialogue and respectful disagreement might look like.  At our best we do that well, but sometimes we blow it.

I’m here because I want to do that well.  I blow it sometimes too, but I hope to create space for kind discussion and participate generous conversation with others.

The last sentence of the above quote is spot on I think.  People tend to really lash out when they perceive their particular worldview to be under attack (which is all the more interesting when you consider that Christianity does not offer a single worldview).  And the detached, abstract nature of commenting on blog without the dynamics of a face to face encounter are enough to make some people brave enough to type something they otherwise probably wouldn’t say directly to another’s face.

Maybe that’s a good way of approaching it — in the same way you would a face to face conversation.  Either way, I think there is always room for improvement.  We’ve got to be better at treating one another like children of God in our blogging and especially in our commenting.

…especially after this.