Looking at Early Christianity While visiting my mother, who has a fabulous library, I picked up a book by James H. Charlesworth called "The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and the New Testament." Looking at the roots of Christianity, it is helpful to understand Judaism at the time of Jesus to understand His message and the movements that started up afterwards. I realized, reading the prologue, that I have always thought of the Judaic Church (for lack of a better phrase) as today's Roman Catholic Church: a monolithic control of God power structure. This may be the wrong impression. Charlesworth points out that Judaism promoted diversity, and there wasn't unifying creed, as in Christianity. I will have to look into this.  ¶ 7:20 PM 0 comments

  Heidigger, Heidigger was a boozy beggar... I almost got very angry with Martin Heidigger. I picked up his book "An Introduction to Metaphysics" and almost lost it. Granted, I've been reading Arthur C. Clarke again as well, and Clarke's dismissive and insulting tone towards religion always makes me hypersensitive.
Anyway, Heidigger starts with the foundational question "Why are there things instead of nothing?" This is not the first question chrolonolically, but the foundational question that underlies every other philosophical examination. To quote:

Anyone for whom the Bible is divine revelation and truth has the answer to the question "Why are there essents rather than nothing?" even before it is asked: everything that is, except God himself, has been created by Him. God himself, the increate creator, "is." One who holds to such faith can in a way particiapte in the asking of our question, but he cannot really question without ceasing to be a believer and taking all the consequesnces of such a step. He will only be able to act "as if" ... One the other hand a fatih that does not perpetually expose itself to the possibility of unfaith is not faith but merely a convenience...

As I said, I almost got mad. It seemed to start as dismissive of believers as philosophers, or at least as philosophers who can study metaphysics. But I calmed down when I got to the last line. I don't know about perpetual exposing to the possiblity of unfaith. That seems to me far too extreme for rational or practical thought. I believe in God, and it is a waste of my time to spend all of my time looking for signs that God does not exist. It is also not healthy for my relationship with God. Imagine having a boss who tells you that he trusts you but constantly asks your co-workers what mistakes you've made. That's not a healthy relationship. Imagine spending all of your time at work bitching about the incompetence of your boss. That's not healthy, Dilbert not withstanding.
But does that mean I don't allow any notion that God may not exist to cross my mind, or that I shun them as if they are attacks on my faith? No. That's a false alternative. The opposite of 'always' is not 'never,' but 'not always' meaning 'not all the time' meaning 'often' to 'rarely'.
I do succumb to the materialist nightmare that this world as our eyes perceive it is the only world and death is final. My best defense is instead of being satisfied in the next life, to be satisfied at the end of this life that I have made a positive change on the world.
I think Heidigger's question is interesting, but I also think it's worthless in some way. Clearly we exist. Even if we are an illusion is some other mind, to us time is mostly seamless, existence is continuous. I cannot imagine non existence (hence my occasional materialist nightmare) any more than I can imagine the non existence of God.  ¶ 3:10 PM 3 comments

  Sin, etc. Tonight at Church we discussed sin, which leads to a whole host of other topics: evil, grace, confession, absolution. We didn't talk about redemption or repentance because we're Episcopalians and we don't talk like that. This post may ramble because I am more inspired than organized right now.
We couldn't really talk about sin and grace until we had working definitions of them, and the first definition of sin (breaking one of the Ten Commandments) wasn't enough. The Book of Common Prayer describes sin as asserting our personal will in preference to God's will, thus damaging our relationship with God, each other, and creation. We took a more general and expanded definition of sin: Sin is anything that damages our relationship with God, our neighbors, creation, or ourselves.
Then it was a matter of understanding the relationship between Evil and Sin. Note the capitalization; I'm now talking abstractly. Is Evil the same thing as Sin? Some thought that they were the same, but I think Evil is a subset of Sin. Evil has an intentional quality to it that Sin does not have. It is possible to commit a sin and not realize it, but it is impossible to commit an act of evil and be oblivious. Fine, many sin-obsessed list makers ask, but what acts are Evil and which acts are Sinful? There is no distinction. The act of aiming a gun at another person and pulling the trigger is not always evil, and not always sinful. It is evil when the intention of the act is to kill the other person. It is a sin if you are not aware of the person standing there, or you are an actor on stage and the gun is not loading with a blasting cap like it is supposed to be, etc. At this point I've made a specific example, and I'm not sure I would say that the actor who shoots another actor, thinkging it is safe, but kills them, is not morally responsible for the act. On the other hand, I'm nor sure if I would generalize that into a rule.
Anyway, once I decided for myself this distinction and definition of Evil and Sin, then Grace came up. What is Grace? If Sin is anything that diminishes these relationships, then Grace, if it is the opposite of Sin, is anything that enhances or improves or grows these relationships. I'm sure there's a better word for it but I can't think of it. To be Sinful, therefore, is to fail to act Gracefully. We have to mean that 'Gracefully' means 'God's Grace' and not the gracefulness of a ballerina skipping across a stage and leaping around and making it look easy. This is another great question: Does God have a monopoly on Grace? Is it merely a distinction between capital-G Grace and grace? When we are graceous, are we doing more than (or something different than) extending the grace of God amongst ourselves? I'd like to think so, but does that mean I'm dismissing the graceful acts of non-believers? Well, if we can sin unknowingly, then we can spread God's grace unknowingly. Part of Faith in God is seeing the world as God's, so even if someone else's act of kindness towards me comes from them for their own entirely different reason, my decision to see it as an extension of God's Grace is an act of Faith on my part. I cannot be completely responsible for their worldview.
So Grace is sorted out, but Sin is the topic of this post, so what else can I say about sin? What does it mean to be free from sin? Christ frees us from our sins, but what does that look like? I don't think it means that once we accept Jesus as Christ we are incapable of sinning. I've met people like that, but they are very few in number and, in my opinion, evil. I think what it means, and I quote the Right Reverend Steven Charleston, is that we (Progressive Christians) are not obsessed with sin. We don't feel the need to purge ourselves from sin with a mania. We sin, and we have to live honestly to recognize our sins, but we don't put effort into protecting ourselves from falling into sin. That sounds wierd, but what I mean is this: we don't not drink for fear of alcoholism or being dangerous when drunk. We don't avoid certain books for fear that they will turn us against God. We don't censor someone because we think they are false prophets. We do trust God and our own strengths to hold us through the rough spots. We fearlessly read Harry Potter without worrying that we will drop God and take up wizarding and witching. That is only half the battle.
To say that I am free of Sin is, or at least should be, stating that I am living in Grace. More than simply living in the absense of Sin, I am living a life that promotes my relationships. I do not want the life of a person who runs from sinful things, afraid of temptation. I want to life the life of a person who is a light for others to see. I want to live the life of a person whose every action reflects the Grace of God. I think that every Christian will agree with that.  ¶ 9:46 PM 0 comments

  Passport to Peer Pressure Last night I listened to a radio program promoting the "Passport to Purity" program. I was prepared to be offended, as I usually am by 'Christian Radio', but in the end I didn't have the chance. This program involves a retreat with a father and son or mother and daughter, and very little details of the program were given. The big evil, it sounded like, was peer pressure teens face to have sex. They didn't even say what the goal of the weekend was, but the implication was that it was to scare the crap out of kids to make them swear an oath to God not to have sex until they were married. They even implied that hugging, kissings, and dating, all have 'Biblical' purposes but they didn't say what those purposes were. It was very American. If kissing is such an evil thing, I can imagine it will be hard to bring this into Europe, where kissing people hello and goodbye can be common.
The funny thing about the program was that peer pressure was the great evil pushing teens to have sex, but the whole point of the program was to use peer pressure to get the audience to sign up for the P2P program. I've watched informercials that gave away more content. Applying peer pressure to fight peer pressure? What is going on here?
For the record, I have no problem with teaching abstinence before marriage. I think it's a good thing for psychological, social, medical, and theological reasons. Note that my theological reasons are near the bottom of the list in importance. I have a big problem implying that dating is bad, or should be limited in scope. I have even bigger problems with the notion that hugging and kissing are bad. I hug friends. I have a few friends whom I kiss on occasion, even if my wife is in the room. I tried to get more information about the program from their website, maybe find out what the evils of dating, hugging, and kissing are, or at least find their 'Biblical' nature. The web site is so poorly done that it crashes every one of my browsers when I try to load the page, so I haven't provided a link.  ¶ 1:00 PM 1 comments