(Ir)religiosity

I ran across this in Walter Kaufmann‘s prologue to his translation of Martin Buber‘s I and Thou (an introduction which stands as an excellent piece writing in its own right).

[W]hy use religious terms?  Indeed, it might be better not to use them because they are always misunderstood. But what other terms are there?  We need a new language, and new poets to create it, and new ears to listen to it. Meanwhile, if we shut our ears to the old prophets who still speak more or less in the old tongues, using ancient words, occasionally in new ways, we shall have very little music. We are not so rich that we can do without tradition. Let [those who have] ears listen to it in a new way.

Jesus’ phrase “let those who have ears hear” is perhaps one of the most fascinating and enigmatic expressions in the entire New Testament.  It is so pregnant with meaning and life.  Too often I am afraid we try to force old readings into new wine-skins and end up hurting or even destroying both.  I am convinced that is why Jesus often spoke in parables — because such a medium inherently resists a static, colonizing hermeneutic.  Parables simply cannot be reduced to simple, “in a nutshell” type meanings.  They are complex, multi-faceted, life-giving narratives that invite the reader to participate in birthing meaning, in doing truth.  Like prisms, parables — if we have ears to hear — channel divine dynamism in multiple ways depending upon one’s vantage point or angle.  They abduct us, catching us off guard if we let them, and rupture our usual, predictable mode existence with divine excess and presence (or is it absence?).  I find that it is in the parables that we learn to see the face of the Other thereby see ourselves as (an)other.

But we must have ears to hear.

I’ve been learning to do just that.  And I’m finding that it is not easy and often demands that I forsake my familiar and comfortable reading for something that is unknown — something that makes me uneasy and uncomfortable.

In the process I rediscovered some old friends and have fallen in love with them all over again:  Augustine and Kierkegaard being chief among them.

Who are you rediscovering and re-reading?  Who have you met again with new ears to listen?

The following is a parable a wrote some time ago.  I am re-posting it here in its original form without revision.

There was once a very poor man, an addict in fact, who made his home on the streets of a very large affluent city.  Indeed, he lived off the leftovers of the rich.  All his life this man had never darkened the doors of a church, nor heard the message of the gospel, though many monolithic churches abounded in the city.

As it happens on a particular Sunday, for no particular reason, this man decided to attend a church service.  He chose a very ordinary looking church, one with red brick, a full parking lot, and a tall, white steeple rising high into the air, almost as if to reach the heavens.

The man arrived as the sermon was already in progress, he seated himself in a near empty pew in the back of the sanctuary and began to listen. He was quite surprised, indeed startled to hear the preacher angrily delivering a message of judgment and condemnation.  He sat petrified in disgust and even fear as the preacher began to bellow louder and louder about the in inherent wickedness of humanity and the impending damnation that awaited all persons in eternal torment.  The man began to wonder why he was put on this earth in the first place.

As the message of sin and death wore on and became more explicit, the poor addiction ridden man, who no doubt came to seek comfort and alleviation from his pain among these Christians, grew even more distraught and disenfranchised than before.  Having heard quite enough of this “good news,” the man stood up while the preacher was still pontificating and exited the church.

He walked away from the building and toward the outskirts of the city.  He approached a bridge spanning a massive river below.  He walked to the middle of the bridge and climbed outside the guardrail to the very edge.  He looked over the edge at the water below, waited a moment, and then stepped off falling to his death.

Are we brokering a gospel of restoration or one of death?

I finally got around to picking up a copy of N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope and I’m almost done.  His deconstruction of the typical concept of heaven as something “up there,” or, as I’ve said, an orgy of eternal bliss, really resonates with me.  Instead of some sort of physical place that persons are transported to after death, heaven, according to Wright, is the ultimate culmination of God’s process of restoration and recreation, a process that began with the Resurrection.  I like that.

I am a little unsure about the cosmological implications of his argument and how some of these things work practically, especially viz. his assertion of actual, physical, bodily resurrection.  He makes it clear that everything, at least in his opinion, hinges upon this.  I’m not so sure.  But that does not at all negate the usefulness of his questioning and reformulating some traditional Christians ideals.  Personally, I think the questioning and re-appropriating can be done without insisting on some of the supposition that he does.  But that’s a different post.

Like I said, the case that Wright makes boldly denounces some of the themes and elements that the Christian Right has latched onto over the last 20-30 years, things like the rapture, the second coming (though Wright plays with that a bit, rather than simply rejecting it), dispensationalism — all those sort of Left Behind Type things.  This is great and I think it needs to be done.  In many ways I’m willing to go even further than Wright does by jettisoning some of these concepts altogether. Read the rest of this entry »

Yep.  You know I’m busy when this happens.  I wrote this one for my class a few weeks ago.  (Don’t forget to check out the other two here and here.)

“There was once a very poor man, an addict in fact, who made his home on the streets of a very large affluent city. Indeed, he lived off the leftovers of the rich. All his life this man had never darkened the doors of a church, nor heard the message of the gospel, though many monolithic churches abounded in the city.

As it happens on a particular Sunday, for no particular reason, this man decided to attend a church service. He chose a very ordinary looking church, one with red brick, a full parking lot, and a tall, white steeple rising high into the air, almost as if to reach the heavens. 

The man arrived as the sermon was already in progress, he seated himself in a near empty pew in the back of the sanctuary and began to listen. He was quite surprised, indeed startled to hear the preacher angrily delivering a message of judgment and condemnation. He sat petrified in disgust and even fear as the preacher began to bellow louder and louder about the in inherent wickedness of humanity and the impending damnation that awaited all persons in eternal torment. The man began to wonder why he was put on this earth in the first place.

As the message of sin and death wore on and became more explicit, the poor addiction ridden man, who no doubt came to seek comfort and inclusion among these “Christians,” grew even more distraught and disenfranchised than before. Having heard quite enough of this “good news,” the man stood up while the preacher was still pontificating and exited the church.

He walked away from the building and toward the outskirts of the city. He approached a bridge spanning a massive river below. He walked to the middle of the bridge and climbed outside the guardrail to the very edge. He looked over the edge at the water below, waited a moment, and then stepped off falling to his death.”  

I’ve been pretty swamped this week and haven’t had time to write anything with quality content. So, here’s another parable I wrote for my class:

“The network of God is like a latent computer virus that infects a mainframe and spreads throughout the entire system, slowly hijacking every machine from the inside out.”

~bh ><>

So, I’m taking this class on the parables of Jesus and one of our assignments is to write six original parables using the same sort of literary devices and role reversals that the historical Jesus did. Early on, I remember thinking this wouldn’t be too big of a deal, but when I actually sat down to write I discovered it’s much harder. But, I was able to squeeze one out. So here you go, the parable of the dandelion:

“The ecosystem of God is like a dandelion that a child plucks and blows, scattering its seeds along the ground for none to see, but for all to find.”

Thoughts?

~bh ><>