There is nothing quite like discovering that part of your dreams, when realized, are actually your worst nightmares. Certainly many dreams that come to fruition are quite beautiful and beyond expectation, but every now and then there is some hope, some wish that seems to go horribly wrong. For some folks it is getting the old classic car only to find out that the damn thing breaks down every other block, gets 15 gallons to the mile, and is nearly impossible to find parts for. However, my issue is not a broken car. My dream was going to a great school, studying theology, living in cold weather, and having squirrels try to trip me as I walk down the sidewalk on the way to class. And I got all of this.
Unfortunately, this dream has vacillated back and forth from being a gift to being my worst nightmare. I applied to Duke University Divinity School for a Master of Theology program in New Testament Studies. The school is in North Carolina. So, good school: check. Studying theology: check. Living in amazing weather: check. Getting my walking path sabotaged by squirrels:…well, not really though I am certain they would trip me if they had the chance (In fact, I think they have been plotting on me all semester). Instead they chase each other around the school which is the next best thing for me, so check. I got it all. So what is the problem? What could I possibly bitch about that would make the starving kids in China feel bad for me (Okay, the starving kids in China should NEVER feel bad for someone like me, but you get where I am going with this, right?)?
Much of the dream has been good and I would not complain about it. The weather here is unbeatable, the trees in autumn are gorgeous, and I have learned theological things that are mind-bendingly amazing. Good stuff. All of it. The nightmare side of the dream creeps in and warps the picture as time goes on. It is the cost of the dream that is working me over; the benefits do not seem to outweigh the price being paid. I walked away from a wonder church community, an amazing girlfriend, incredible friends, and my family. And I managed to lose a sense of who I am in the process. I live far away from my “story” and have trouble figuring out where I fit in this new one.
So, go back, right? Well, this is the nightmare part: I do not think I can. The church community I loved fell apart, the girl I loved I drove away by my selfish choices (two words here: remorse and regret), and a couple of friendships that were most important to me have been irreparably damaged for a variety of reasons. I still have other friends and my family (I love you, Mum), by the grace of God, but much of why I would want to come back disintegrated. There is a home I dream of now that is just an unreachable whisper from the past. If I could change it all, I would, but it is too late.
So, am I without hope? I hope not. While I am completely at a loss for vision and perspective lately (you are thinking, “Uh…Yeah! This is the most depressing thing I have read all day”), I still have hope in one reality: the triune God of the Judeo-Christian story. Through every mistake I have ever made, through every bad decision, through every thing that has gone right, this God has been there. This God has a pretty good track record with many people and situations. Out of the ashes of Jerusalem, out of captivity in Babylon, He has rescued those who were completely lost. He resurrected his Son and inaugurated new life and a new reality that will one day overtake this current broken one we are all in. So, if God can help rescue a nation from near-complete cultural devastation and can raise the dead, then I have to believe that He can rescue me too…which should not be too hard to do when the one in need of rescue lives in the most affluent country in the world, has plenty of food to eat, has plenty of clothes, and can actually post stupid things like this on the internet.
So, when is my rescue? Well, theologically speaking, my rescue attempt began well before I was born. It started about two millennia ago and is actually coming upon one of its annual commemoration celebrations, Christmas. God broke into the world then, was born into poverty, and met the world as Jesus. Through his death and resurrection the power of sin and death was broken. Now, as far as when this new reality will sink into my think head and soul and allow me to find a new dream, an identity or a home, that is anyone’s guess. I can be awfully stubborn. Perhaps this Advent season is the perfect time to get my mental and spiritual house in order, though I am convinced I will need a bit of help in this. In fact, I think I will have to contract this job out to the Spirit of God, because I do not have it in me to even begin.
Advent is a time to wait, a time to hope. It marks the time when God’s people waited for the coming of the Messiah to rescue us from ourselves. Since that Messiah came, it also is a time to wait for him to come back and finish what he started. And since I am not sure when that ultimate consummation and restoration will be, I think I will wait and hope, too, for the personal things in life that I worry about. I hope and pray that this Advent season that I can learn a little bit more about what home is, where it is, and how to get there. I want to come home. But in the mean time, I will wait.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
In Memory of Lance Hahn and J Church
Many of you will have no idea who I am talking about, but I learned today that Lance Hahn, the singer for the band J Church died yesterday of complication related to kidney disease; he was 40 years old.
For those of you who know me, music has always been a big, important part of my life. And one of my favorite bands of all time has been J Church, a group found by Lance Hahn, who was formerly in a band called Cringer (I loved Cringer, too; they were one of the bands that played at the first punk show I ever went to.). Throughout the 1990s when punk rock broke and major labels were swooping in to pick up any punk bands they could get their hands onto, Lance Hahn stayed independent even though he was offered various major label deals. He stay true to a different value system in relation to music and people, one that valued art and human beings above money and the commodification of music. He stayed true to these ideals up until the end.
I got to meet and talk with Lance Hahn on numerous occasions over the last 16 years, each time being when the band was coming through Tempe or Phoenix. He never came across as some rock star or arrogant ass (probably because he knew he was not a rock star and never wanted to be one in the sense that the term has come to mean in our culture: a larger than life idol). He was always interesting to talk to, laid back, and completely approachable. And i know that numerous people have had the same experiences throughout the years at J Church shows.
Some might find it interesting that I would be so into Cringer and J Church, given that much of what I am about does not line up with Lance Hahn's worldview. Lance was an moderately outspoken atheist; I am a Christian. Lance was an anarchist with Marxist sympathies; I am not an anarchist nor a Marxist, but a Christian with hope in the Kingdom of God. Despite these and other dissimilarities, what Lance Hahn was saying through J Church still meant a lot to me and here is why. Though our worldviews were different and our ideas of what might be "solutions" of ways of approaching the myriad problems in the world, Lance Hahn was able to express and describe many of the problems, longings, joys, and fears that human beings must endure while on this earth. Even if I didn't always agree with the direction of some of his lyrics, I could almost always relate or empathize with him. Simply put, he could express with words and music what life feels like.
This is a broken world with many problems and many people who both hurt and are hurt by each other. J Church music for me helped describe these problems and helped me--and I am sure many others--see that we are not alone in the clarity. Also, Lance Hahn was a voice that pointed to many injustices in the world that people perpetrate on others and was willing to say quite loudly that such situations and behaviors are not right....and was willing to put his money where his mouth was in the process, not something most preachy bands are willing to do. Again, while we may not have agreed on a worldview or how to approach many different aspects of life, I always appreciated the solidarity in Lance's music that said that this life can be hard, but there are ways to stand up and make it more beautiful.
So, tonight I will listen to some J Church albums, do my homework, say prayers for Lance Hahn's friends and family, and mourn the loss of someone who was able to express things that I felt but was at a loss to know how to say them. R.I.P. Lance Hahn (Feb 15, 1967 to Oct 21, 2007)
For those of you who know me, music has always been a big, important part of my life. And one of my favorite bands of all time has been J Church, a group found by Lance Hahn, who was formerly in a band called Cringer (I loved Cringer, too; they were one of the bands that played at the first punk show I ever went to.). Throughout the 1990s when punk rock broke and major labels were swooping in to pick up any punk bands they could get their hands onto, Lance Hahn stayed independent even though he was offered various major label deals. He stay true to a different value system in relation to music and people, one that valued art and human beings above money and the commodification of music. He stayed true to these ideals up until the end.
I got to meet and talk with Lance Hahn on numerous occasions over the last 16 years, each time being when the band was coming through Tempe or Phoenix. He never came across as some rock star or arrogant ass (probably because he knew he was not a rock star and never wanted to be one in the sense that the term has come to mean in our culture: a larger than life idol). He was always interesting to talk to, laid back, and completely approachable. And i know that numerous people have had the same experiences throughout the years at J Church shows.
Some might find it interesting that I would be so into Cringer and J Church, given that much of what I am about does not line up with Lance Hahn's worldview. Lance was an moderately outspoken atheist; I am a Christian. Lance was an anarchist with Marxist sympathies; I am not an anarchist nor a Marxist, but a Christian with hope in the Kingdom of God. Despite these and other dissimilarities, what Lance Hahn was saying through J Church still meant a lot to me and here is why. Though our worldviews were different and our ideas of what might be "solutions" of ways of approaching the myriad problems in the world, Lance Hahn was able to express and describe many of the problems, longings, joys, and fears that human beings must endure while on this earth. Even if I didn't always agree with the direction of some of his lyrics, I could almost always relate or empathize with him. Simply put, he could express with words and music what life feels like.
This is a broken world with many problems and many people who both hurt and are hurt by each other. J Church music for me helped describe these problems and helped me--and I am sure many others--see that we are not alone in the clarity. Also, Lance Hahn was a voice that pointed to many injustices in the world that people perpetrate on others and was willing to say quite loudly that such situations and behaviors are not right....and was willing to put his money where his mouth was in the process, not something most preachy bands are willing to do. Again, while we may not have agreed on a worldview or how to approach many different aspects of life, I always appreciated the solidarity in Lance's music that said that this life can be hard, but there are ways to stand up and make it more beautiful.
So, tonight I will listen to some J Church albums, do my homework, say prayers for Lance Hahn's friends and family, and mourn the loss of someone who was able to express things that I felt but was at a loss to know how to say them. R.I.P. Lance Hahn (Feb 15, 1967 to Oct 21, 2007)
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Why the Old Testament Matters or A Bible Is Not A Bible Without the Old Testament
Recently I was going through a box of old books trying to decide which ones to get rid of at a rummage sale that my neighbors were having. What will be surprising to no one who grew up in the United States, I found three or four copies of those little pocket-sized New Testaments made by Gideon's International, the organization that ensures that you have a dusty King James Bible in your motel room when you are on vacation. In addition to providing the hospitality industry with free reading materials, the Gideons’ are known for handing out these little New Testaments at all sorts of events.
When I rediscovered these New Testaments that had been in my possession for who knows how long, I found myself annoyed for two different reasons. First, I was bummed out to have so many of them, because there is no way to get rid of them. Being a Christian, I cannot throw them away as they contain the Word of God. And I cannot give them away at a rummage sale, because everyone else already owns three or four of them themselves. The second reason I was bothered by these little pocket sized books--this is actually the issue that I want to deal with in this short essay--is that in their very existence as bound books containing only the New Testament, they represent something very wrong with the thinking of many Protestant Christians and churches. This would be that the Old Testament is not as important as the New because of the advent of Christ and, therefore, it is helpful but not “essential” in conveying the Christian story.(1) I would argue that nothing could be further from the truth.(2)
I do not want to disparage the Gideon's for their wonderful work of providing Bibles to people free of charge through out the world. Nonetheless, I do think that even making stand-alone New Testament's available does believers and non-believers a huge disservice both immediately and in the long run. Here is why in one simple point: when you make or give out only the New Testament, you are only providing the future owner or reader with 1/3 of the Bible (i.e. For math idiots like me, that means that 2/3 of the Bible in these versions is missing). Doing this ends up robbing the Judeo-Christian story of its ultimate sense and intelligibility.
Now, some may think that I am making too big of a deal out this. "Isn't the story of Jesus the most important part,” one might ask. Or, “Isn't it a good thing that people at least have the New Testament?” In short, “No,” and, “No.” Let me answer these two questions respectively in further detail.
The narrative of Jesus and his death and bodily resurrection may be the climax of the Judeo-Christian story and considered the most important part to Christians, BUT it is not the only part of the story (and even if is the most important part, it does not make the other parts unimportant). In fact, the story of Jesus does not make sense and is not meant to make sense without the Old Testament. Just about any statement you can make about Jesus requires some form of reference to the Old Testament implicitly or explicitly. “He is the Messiah.” What the heck is a Messiah? “He died for our sins.” What does sin even mean, and what does death have to do with it? “He is the Son of God.” Which god are you referring to? History has been full of different gods. “Jesus was Jewish.” What is a Jew? To make sense of these statements requires at least some understanding of the Old Testament.
Okay. So one might concede that the Old Testament is helpful for establishing context for the New, but some might still ask, “Does it really have any authority any more, now that Jesus has come and fulfilled the Law himself? Maybe the OT is just some helpful history, but is not valid for us now. If that is the case then perhaps it is okay to be handing out only the valid and authoritative part.” While I understand the line of reasoning in this kind of thinking, I would argue that such conclusions are still faulty.
If you pay attention to what the New Testament itself says, then you have to conclude that the Old Testament is still part of God’s authoritative word for believers.(3) The New Testament cites hundreds of passages from the Old and generally does so to support or validate some sort of claim being made. The assumption in doing so is that the Old Testament is Scripture and has the weight of God’s Word behind it. For example, the Gospel According to Mark begins in chapter one, verse two, saying, “As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way…” The story then introduces John the Baptist. This story in Mark, written down for the Church, uses the Old Testament to prove that John and Jesus are part of the big plan; proof is only meaning as proof if it is accepted as having weight and authority in it. Another similar example is when the apostle Paul makes his case for the bodily resurrection of the Christ in 1 Corinthians 15.3, saying, “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.” Paul is adding credibility to his story by saying that the Old Testament already prefigured these events of Christ’s. Again, credibility can only be established if its source is already considered credible and authoritative. Keep in mind, there is no New Testament yet; it is still in the making. EVERY TIME the New Testament mentions Scripture it is referring to the Old Testament. As Christian writer, Philip Yancey, made very clear in his book, The Bible Jesus Read, Jesus’ Bible was the Old Testament.(4) And as 2 Timothy 3.16 says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” While Christians today use this verse to cover the whole Bible, in its original context it was specifically referring to the Old Testament (Again, the New Testament did not exist yet).
So, if the Old Testament was considered sacred and authoritative Scripture by Jesus, by the early Church, and by the other writers of the New Testament, and if the New Testament relays on the Old Testament stories to help it make sense, then why is it considered an acceptable and good practice to hand out only 1/3 of the Bible to unbelievers and new believers? In handing out only the New Testament—whether we recognize it or not—we are communicating something very untrue about the Christian faith to the person receiving it. We are saying that the Old Testament is less important or somehow “second-class” in relation to the New. The Bible IS the WHOLE Bible, not part of the Bible. Ignoring or minimizing the Old Testament is to dismiss or rob a very valuable resource from the Christian community, without which people get an incomplete picture of God, of his story, and they lose the comfort, support, and intelligibility that the whole Scripture provides.
To end I will borrow an analogy that Duke Divinity School Church history, David Steinmetz used.(5) In some ways it is useful to think about the Bible in a similar way to a mystery novel. In a mystery story, it is usually the last chapter or two that wraps up and makes sense out of all of the previous chapters and solves the mystery. The last chapter is the most important part in making sense of the whole story, but a mystery novel is no mystery if all you read or even have is the last chapter. In fact, is there any book company that only publishes the last chapters of each Sherlock Holmes story and tries to sell those? Of course not. Why ruin a Sherlock Holmes story. Better yet, why ruin the Bible in the same way. So, please, spend the extra money and print the whole book. It’s a better read that way.
FOOTNOTES:
(1) The reader will note that I refer to the first 39 books in the Christian Bible as the “Old Testament.” In many academic circles this term has fallen out of favor. It is argued by many that “Old Testament” as a term is implicitly loaded with value judgments about the value of these 27 books as compared with those in the New Testament. Others are concerned that the term is offensive to people of Jewish faith because to call something the “Old Testament” in its very terminology demands a “New Testament.” Instead, many people use the terms, “Hebrew Bible,” or “Tanak (an acronym that describes the three main parts of the Jewish Scriptures, Torah/Law, Nev’im/Prophets, and /Ketuv-im/Writings).
I have decided to stick with using the term, “Old Testament.” I do think that in interfaith dialogue that it makes sense to adopt “Hebrew Bible” or ‘Tanak” as they are titles that can have a functionality for both Jews and Christians. However, as a Christian, I think the term “Old Testament” still has value and legitimacy. First, it is the term that most people, Jews, Christians, and non-Christians alike recognize and know what is being referred to, even if they do not care for the title. In this way it has some value in its familiarity. Second, within Christian circles, “Old Testament” does make a particular theological claim that believers in Christ would affirm, namely that the work of Christ has wrought something new and has changed things. So, while “Old Testament” would be a theologically inaccurate way of expressing what Jews believe, it remains accurate for what Christians do, even if it sounds a bit clumsy. People have proposed such sayings as, “First Covenant and Second Covenant” or “First Covenant and New Covenant.” The problem, however, with “first” and “second” is that within the Christian understanding it is not a full enough of an explanative title. “Second” is accurate, but it is not complete enough in that it does not express that something new has happened in Christ. Using “First Covenant and New Covenant” would work fine theologically, but it has the disadvantage of being completely unfamiliar to nearly all people and is not what has been used by the Church for most of its history. Such a switch would be fine by me, but would require an huge ad campaign or something to get the word out on the new terms. The third reason I stick with using “Old Testament” in public discourse is related to the second reason. Even though it is a bit clumsy and does risk being offensive to our Jewish brothers and sisters, it still conveys the Christian story and Christian claims in its own way. We do believe in a first covenant, which became “old” once Christ established his “new” covenant.
Again, I can see why in an interfaith discussion one would want to use Tanak or Hebrew Bible, but in general, I think the Church should continue with its historic terminology because it simply represents “truth in advertising” in regards to how the Church understands its own story theologically. Of course, there is always the huge danger that people will hear in “Old Testament” the notion of “less valuable” or “obsolete” which are two ideas about the OT that I am completely arguing against in this essay.
(2) For the sticklers for details, these New Testaments do contain two books from the Old Testament: Psalms and Proverbs. That these two OT books are included does not point to the value of the OT, but actually inadvertently enforces the point that I am trying to make in this essay: the OT is seen by some church traditions as being of secondary importance to the NT. That believers can simply “choose” two particular OT books because of their popular use and appeal, and exclude all of the rest bespeaks a scriptural hierarchy of importance in some segments of the body of Christ.
(3) I do want to clarify here that I recognize that the Old Testament in its continuing scriptural authority is not read, applied, or understood by Christians in the same manner that it would have been by Israel prior to the coming of Christ. Jesus’ entrance onto the scene and his death and resurrection does change things for believers (e.g. Law-keeping is no longer the sign of being God’s people or means of maintaining the covenant with God. Christ’s faithfulness in his death and resurrection and the gift of allowing us to be in him is what makes us the people of God. So, eat bacon and feel free to not cut off your foreskin or that of your baby boy’s…though I am not sure why anyone would want to have a foreskin…if you have one, I am just kidding…sort of ; ). However, even with the changes that come with Christ’s fulfillment of the Law, that does not mean that it is no longer God’s Word. It’s role seems to change, but it remains Scripture. One of my NT profs’, Peter Gosnell, used to say, “Law is contract is void. Law as Scripture, though, is still valid.” What that all means and how that plays out in detail is something for another essay.
(4) Yancey, Philip. The Bible Jesus Read, New Edition. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002.
(5) Steinmetz, David. “Uncovering a Second Narrative: Detective Fiction and the Historical Method,” in The Art of Reading Scripture. Eds, Ellen David and Richard Hays. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003. Pp.54-65.
When I rediscovered these New Testaments that had been in my possession for who knows how long, I found myself annoyed for two different reasons. First, I was bummed out to have so many of them, because there is no way to get rid of them. Being a Christian, I cannot throw them away as they contain the Word of God. And I cannot give them away at a rummage sale, because everyone else already owns three or four of them themselves. The second reason I was bothered by these little pocket sized books--this is actually the issue that I want to deal with in this short essay--is that in their very existence as bound books containing only the New Testament, they represent something very wrong with the thinking of many Protestant Christians and churches. This would be that the Old Testament is not as important as the New because of the advent of Christ and, therefore, it is helpful but not “essential” in conveying the Christian story.(1) I would argue that nothing could be further from the truth.(2)
I do not want to disparage the Gideon's for their wonderful work of providing Bibles to people free of charge through out the world. Nonetheless, I do think that even making stand-alone New Testament's available does believers and non-believers a huge disservice both immediately and in the long run. Here is why in one simple point: when you make or give out only the New Testament, you are only providing the future owner or reader with 1/3 of the Bible (i.e. For math idiots like me, that means that 2/3 of the Bible in these versions is missing). Doing this ends up robbing the Judeo-Christian story of its ultimate sense and intelligibility.
Now, some may think that I am making too big of a deal out this. "Isn't the story of Jesus the most important part,” one might ask. Or, “Isn't it a good thing that people at least have the New Testament?” In short, “No,” and, “No.” Let me answer these two questions respectively in further detail.
The narrative of Jesus and his death and bodily resurrection may be the climax of the Judeo-Christian story and considered the most important part to Christians, BUT it is not the only part of the story (and even if is the most important part, it does not make the other parts unimportant). In fact, the story of Jesus does not make sense and is not meant to make sense without the Old Testament. Just about any statement you can make about Jesus requires some form of reference to the Old Testament implicitly or explicitly. “He is the Messiah.” What the heck is a Messiah? “He died for our sins.” What does sin even mean, and what does death have to do with it? “He is the Son of God.” Which god are you referring to? History has been full of different gods. “Jesus was Jewish.” What is a Jew? To make sense of these statements requires at least some understanding of the Old Testament.
Okay. So one might concede that the Old Testament is helpful for establishing context for the New, but some might still ask, “Does it really have any authority any more, now that Jesus has come and fulfilled the Law himself? Maybe the OT is just some helpful history, but is not valid for us now. If that is the case then perhaps it is okay to be handing out only the valid and authoritative part.” While I understand the line of reasoning in this kind of thinking, I would argue that such conclusions are still faulty.
If you pay attention to what the New Testament itself says, then you have to conclude that the Old Testament is still part of God’s authoritative word for believers.(3) The New Testament cites hundreds of passages from the Old and generally does so to support or validate some sort of claim being made. The assumption in doing so is that the Old Testament is Scripture and has the weight of God’s Word behind it. For example, the Gospel According to Mark begins in chapter one, verse two, saying, “As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way…” The story then introduces John the Baptist. This story in Mark, written down for the Church, uses the Old Testament to prove that John and Jesus are part of the big plan; proof is only meaning as proof if it is accepted as having weight and authority in it. Another similar example is when the apostle Paul makes his case for the bodily resurrection of the Christ in 1 Corinthians 15.3, saying, “For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.” Paul is adding credibility to his story by saying that the Old Testament already prefigured these events of Christ’s. Again, credibility can only be established if its source is already considered credible and authoritative. Keep in mind, there is no New Testament yet; it is still in the making. EVERY TIME the New Testament mentions Scripture it is referring to the Old Testament. As Christian writer, Philip Yancey, made very clear in his book, The Bible Jesus Read, Jesus’ Bible was the Old Testament.(4) And as 2 Timothy 3.16 says, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” While Christians today use this verse to cover the whole Bible, in its original context it was specifically referring to the Old Testament (Again, the New Testament did not exist yet).
So, if the Old Testament was considered sacred and authoritative Scripture by Jesus, by the early Church, and by the other writers of the New Testament, and if the New Testament relays on the Old Testament stories to help it make sense, then why is it considered an acceptable and good practice to hand out only 1/3 of the Bible to unbelievers and new believers? In handing out only the New Testament—whether we recognize it or not—we are communicating something very untrue about the Christian faith to the person receiving it. We are saying that the Old Testament is less important or somehow “second-class” in relation to the New. The Bible IS the WHOLE Bible, not part of the Bible. Ignoring or minimizing the Old Testament is to dismiss or rob a very valuable resource from the Christian community, without which people get an incomplete picture of God, of his story, and they lose the comfort, support, and intelligibility that the whole Scripture provides.
To end I will borrow an analogy that Duke Divinity School Church history, David Steinmetz used.(5) In some ways it is useful to think about the Bible in a similar way to a mystery novel. In a mystery story, it is usually the last chapter or two that wraps up and makes sense out of all of the previous chapters and solves the mystery. The last chapter is the most important part in making sense of the whole story, but a mystery novel is no mystery if all you read or even have is the last chapter. In fact, is there any book company that only publishes the last chapters of each Sherlock Holmes story and tries to sell those? Of course not. Why ruin a Sherlock Holmes story. Better yet, why ruin the Bible in the same way. So, please, spend the extra money and print the whole book. It’s a better read that way.
FOOTNOTES:
(1) The reader will note that I refer to the first 39 books in the Christian Bible as the “Old Testament.” In many academic circles this term has fallen out of favor. It is argued by many that “Old Testament” as a term is implicitly loaded with value judgments about the value of these 27 books as compared with those in the New Testament. Others are concerned that the term is offensive to people of Jewish faith because to call something the “Old Testament” in its very terminology demands a “New Testament.” Instead, many people use the terms, “Hebrew Bible,” or “Tanak (an acronym that describes the three main parts of the Jewish Scriptures, Torah/Law, Nev’im/Prophets, and /Ketuv-im/Writings).
I have decided to stick with using the term, “Old Testament.” I do think that in interfaith dialogue that it makes sense to adopt “Hebrew Bible” or ‘Tanak” as they are titles that can have a functionality for both Jews and Christians. However, as a Christian, I think the term “Old Testament” still has value and legitimacy. First, it is the term that most people, Jews, Christians, and non-Christians alike recognize and know what is being referred to, even if they do not care for the title. In this way it has some value in its familiarity. Second, within Christian circles, “Old Testament” does make a particular theological claim that believers in Christ would affirm, namely that the work of Christ has wrought something new and has changed things. So, while “Old Testament” would be a theologically inaccurate way of expressing what Jews believe, it remains accurate for what Christians do, even if it sounds a bit clumsy. People have proposed such sayings as, “First Covenant and Second Covenant” or “First Covenant and New Covenant.” The problem, however, with “first” and “second” is that within the Christian understanding it is not a full enough of an explanative title. “Second” is accurate, but it is not complete enough in that it does not express that something new has happened in Christ. Using “First Covenant and New Covenant” would work fine theologically, but it has the disadvantage of being completely unfamiliar to nearly all people and is not what has been used by the Church for most of its history. Such a switch would be fine by me, but would require an huge ad campaign or something to get the word out on the new terms. The third reason I stick with using “Old Testament” in public discourse is related to the second reason. Even though it is a bit clumsy and does risk being offensive to our Jewish brothers and sisters, it still conveys the Christian story and Christian claims in its own way. We do believe in a first covenant, which became “old” once Christ established his “new” covenant.
Again, I can see why in an interfaith discussion one would want to use Tanak or Hebrew Bible, but in general, I think the Church should continue with its historic terminology because it simply represents “truth in advertising” in regards to how the Church understands its own story theologically. Of course, there is always the huge danger that people will hear in “Old Testament” the notion of “less valuable” or “obsolete” which are two ideas about the OT that I am completely arguing against in this essay.
(2) For the sticklers for details, these New Testaments do contain two books from the Old Testament: Psalms and Proverbs. That these two OT books are included does not point to the value of the OT, but actually inadvertently enforces the point that I am trying to make in this essay: the OT is seen by some church traditions as being of secondary importance to the NT. That believers can simply “choose” two particular OT books because of their popular use and appeal, and exclude all of the rest bespeaks a scriptural hierarchy of importance in some segments of the body of Christ.
(3) I do want to clarify here that I recognize that the Old Testament in its continuing scriptural authority is not read, applied, or understood by Christians in the same manner that it would have been by Israel prior to the coming of Christ. Jesus’ entrance onto the scene and his death and resurrection does change things for believers (e.g. Law-keeping is no longer the sign of being God’s people or means of maintaining the covenant with God. Christ’s faithfulness in his death and resurrection and the gift of allowing us to be in him is what makes us the people of God. So, eat bacon and feel free to not cut off your foreskin or that of your baby boy’s…though I am not sure why anyone would want to have a foreskin…if you have one, I am just kidding…sort of ; ). However, even with the changes that come with Christ’s fulfillment of the Law, that does not mean that it is no longer God’s Word. It’s role seems to change, but it remains Scripture. One of my NT profs’, Peter Gosnell, used to say, “Law is contract is void. Law as Scripture, though, is still valid.” What that all means and how that plays out in detail is something for another essay.
(4) Yancey, Philip. The Bible Jesus Read, New Edition. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002.
(5) Steinmetz, David. “Uncovering a Second Narrative: Detective Fiction and the Historical Method,” in The Art of Reading Scripture. Eds, Ellen David and Richard Hays. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003. Pp.54-65.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
One R, Two Ms', and a B: Why All Belief Systems Are (R)eligious and Why (M)ormons and (M)uslims Do Not "(B)rainwash"
Recently I had a conversation with someone about a Mormon friend who was starting to question his own faith. The reason for his doubts was not related to points of theology or history, but rather stemmed from a burgeoning suspicion of religion in general. Interestingly, this Latter Day Saint (LDS) had been watching a lot of Fox News lately and was seeing numerous reports about kids in Islamic nations being raised from early childhood to hate Westerners and chant things about how they would be honored to die as suicide bombers. Our Mormon friend started to conclude that these little Muslim kids were being “brainwashed” and then started asking himself if his repetitious stating of beliefs in the LDS church growing up was fundamentally brainwashing as well. Basically, he is at a point of almost believing that religions are tools to control people and is wondering about his Mormon upbringing.
As someone who respects Mormons but heavily disagrees with LDS theology and historical claims, you might think that I would be relieved to hear that my friend is questioning his Mormon faith. But I am not. While I think that in many cases it is a good thing for one to question one’s own faith, it concerns me when the reason for the questioning is rooted in a growing suspicion of the notion of religion itself. In this essay I would like to make two connected arguments: 1) It is not fair to dismiss the notion of religion in general as non-sensical and ultimately unintelligible, and 2) Using the term “brainwashing” to refer to the ways in which Mormons, Muslims, Evangelical Christians, or any other group teaches their own people is unintelligible, unhelpful, and unfair (I openly admit that the people that seem to love the word “brainwashing” are the people in my own camp—Christians—and I find this troubling).
Dismissing Religion in General
Many people who walk away from so-called “organized religions” tend to walk toward a belief that what is deemed “secular” or non-religious ways of thinking and reasoning are what is “real” and what is “objective.” Such people—who may still consider themselves “spiritual”—may say that religion is fine for the private sphere of a person's life, but in public relationships and interactions religion is inappropriate and secularism is appropriate or at least neutral ground (This view is actually held by many, many people in organized religions in the West as well).
While I wholly acknowledge that it is difficult to figure out how to talk about religion in a society full of different faiths, I would argue that a suspicion of religion in general and the relegation of faith to some “private sphere” of life actually does not make much sense. Christian theologian, Paul Tillich (whom I tend to disagree with on nearly everything), defined religion as any system of belief or thought that deals with "ultimate concern"(See Footnote 1). In other words, any definition or explanation of the ultimate meaning of life or ultimate concerns in life qualifies as religion. By this understanding an atheist’s "faith" in the belief that there is no god and that science and human progress represent the highest good qualifies as religion because it is a belief about how things ultimately or actually are. Any story that tries to explain how life "actually is" is a religious statement. Again, “religion” deals with ultimate meanings and purposes. Tillich states, "You cannot reject religion with ultimate seriousness, because ultimate seriousness, or the state of being ultimately concerned, is itself religion"(See Footnote 2).
With this in mind, a person could become suspicious of Islam, Mormons, Evangelical Christians, or any other traditional religion(s), but where ever this person stands intellectually is already in a place of "religion." That religion might be secularism, science, Americanism, democraticism (yes, I am making this word up), communism, or whatever. "Religion" is simply inescapable. One does not escape the dangers of traditional religions by rejecting or being suspicious of religion in general. Such a person still has all of the same dangers of religion, but has simply traded one system of religious thought for another; this danger is inescapable in this life.
Brainwashing
In regards to the term or notion of brainwashing, I do not find the term to be terribly helpful, fair, or useful when considering the beliefs of groups outside of one’s own. While one can become suspicious of this religious group or that religious group--whether Muslim, Mormon, or Evangelical--one cannot really escape being involved in something that, at root, is similar. One can say that the Muslims are brainwashing their children or that the Mormons are brainwashing their children, but when one uses "brainwashing" language one is assuming that there is a "normative" baseline of thought and reasoning that universally applies to all human beings and that these groups and their brainwashing are deviating from it. I would argue that that is simply a statement that cannot be made. What would be "normative?" Democracy? Science? Capitalism? Communism? Individualism? (Of course I think it is horrible and atrocious that certain Islamist groups would actually teach their children that it is okay to kill other human beings. My point here is simply that "brainwashing" is not technically the appropriate word to use to describe such horrendous, evil teachings.) (See Footnote 3 for instances in which I think "brainwashing" language can be intelligible.)
A person cannot say that particular religions are objectively bad because they continually reinforce what to think about what life means, who god is, about what ultimately matters, etc. ALL systems of thought do this. When you send a kid to public school in this country they are indoctrinated beginning at day one. They say the pledge of allegiance to the flag every single day for years and years. This is indoctrination just as much as making a kid say their prayers every day before bedtime or at the dinner table. Having to take history classes that tell you how America threw off its evil oppressive British overlords for the sake of freedom and hearing this story ALL OF THE TIME in school is a way of getting kids to see history, the world, and "ultimate meaning" as an American. This is fundamentally no different than telling a kid that Moses liberated the Hebrews from the Egyptians or that Brigham Young led the persecuted out West to escape oppression. Whether "secular" American history or religious stories that you are raised to believe are true, they are ALL "brainwashing." "Brainwashing" is inescapable; it is everywhere and in every thought, which is why it is functionally useless and meaningless. The details of the stories and what they encourage may be different—behavior in Islam is different than behavior in Mormonism, which is different than behavior in capitalism or Americanism—but the reality-creating aspect of these systems with their teaching by repetition is the same.
So, one can watch stories on Fox News or CNN about look at Muslim and declare that they are brainwashed, but "brainwashed" only means something in relation to the story that one has in one’s own head about what is "normal" or about how things "really are." Now, quite frankly, I do have "faith" in what I think is the "normative" story for how things really are and that is the orthodox Christian story of the meaning, purpose, and nature of life. I do not know with scientific certainty that this faith is actually how things are--but there is philosophically no such thing as scientific certainty, there are only various degrees of faith--but I have FAITH that this story is true and I try to live according to it. That is all I can do. And I will choose this Christian faith any day over the faith of secular Americanism. If I ever do have kids I will absolutely "brainwash" them with my Christianity, because I would rather do that than "brainwash" them with some secular patriotic story that says that the government or nation or business or democracy are what provide ultimate meaning; I don't believe they do.
So, to end at the beginning, while I would normally think it is healthy for a person to question and/or think critically about their own faith, in the case of my Mormon friend--who is doing so in the particular context that I mentioned--it makes me nervous for him because I think his reasons for walking away from it are actually dangerous and unhealthy in the end. I disagree with Mormonism not because I think they brainwash their kids (they do what every religion on the planet does, they teach their kids their beliefs constantly), but because I do not think their teachings and beliefs about history accurately reflect the nature of how things actually are. I believe that orthodox Christianity does. As it currently stands if my friend walks away from Mormonism because of a suspicion of religion in general, what he will in fact end up doing is replacing it with another "religious" system, whether it is some privatized new age-y belief in god or it is a belief in Reason. My fear is ultimately that becoming suspicious of religion in general can lead to its own form of oppression for all people of traditional faiths There have been several books that have come out by folks that are being called “the new atheists” that have attacked religion aggressively as being bad for humanity. Biologist, Richard Dawkins, in his book, The God Delusion, actually argues that raising children with any religious beliefs at all should be considered child abuse (See Footnote 4). In his theoretical picture of how life should be, governments should discourage religion entirely. Imagine saying that religion is child abuse. Dawkins never stops to think that his viewpoint itself is "religious" and that atheistic regimes have been the most brutal in the 20th century ( i.e. Communist countries). My fear is that my Mormon friend will not only turn on Muslims and his own Mormon background, but that he will ultimately turn on orthodox Christianity, Judaism, Hindus, and any other faith in such away that would wish to change American policy that would harm us all….and that, ironically, he would be doing so from the vantage point of the Western-rooted secular humanism “religion” in which no god is safe, but the god of science and human self-worship.
FOOTNOTES:
1. Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), pp.7-8.
2. Ibid., 8.
3. I will concede that the term “brainwashing” can have meaning within a particular group. An Evangelical Christian might say to another Evangelical Christian that if a Christian person were lead away from Christianity by a non-Christian group that such a person was being “brainwashed.” The word “brainwashing” in this context of discussion about a Christian between two Christians can be intelligible because all three of these Evangelicals have started out assuming that the Christian story is the “normative” baseline. However, if an Evangelical Christian starts talking to another Christian about a non-Christian person being raised with non-Christian ideas, then “brainwashing” as a term makes little sense; the non-Christian in this context never started out with a non-brainwashed brain to then become brainwashed. Likewise, it makes little sense for a Christian to talk to a non-Christian about another non-Christian group being brainwashed because the Christian talking to the non-Christian person do not even share the same baseline view of what a non-brainwashed brain looks like.
4. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), Chapter Nine. It should be noted that Dawkins' specialization area and training is neither in philosophy or theology, but in biology.
As someone who respects Mormons but heavily disagrees with LDS theology and historical claims, you might think that I would be relieved to hear that my friend is questioning his Mormon faith. But I am not. While I think that in many cases it is a good thing for one to question one’s own faith, it concerns me when the reason for the questioning is rooted in a growing suspicion of the notion of religion itself. In this essay I would like to make two connected arguments: 1) It is not fair to dismiss the notion of religion in general as non-sensical and ultimately unintelligible, and 2) Using the term “brainwashing” to refer to the ways in which Mormons, Muslims, Evangelical Christians, or any other group teaches their own people is unintelligible, unhelpful, and unfair (I openly admit that the people that seem to love the word “brainwashing” are the people in my own camp—Christians—and I find this troubling).
Dismissing Religion in General
Many people who walk away from so-called “organized religions” tend to walk toward a belief that what is deemed “secular” or non-religious ways of thinking and reasoning are what is “real” and what is “objective.” Such people—who may still consider themselves “spiritual”—may say that religion is fine for the private sphere of a person's life, but in public relationships and interactions religion is inappropriate and secularism is appropriate or at least neutral ground (This view is actually held by many, many people in organized religions in the West as well).
While I wholly acknowledge that it is difficult to figure out how to talk about religion in a society full of different faiths, I would argue that a suspicion of religion in general and the relegation of faith to some “private sphere” of life actually does not make much sense. Christian theologian, Paul Tillich (whom I tend to disagree with on nearly everything), defined religion as any system of belief or thought that deals with "ultimate concern"(See Footnote 1). In other words, any definition or explanation of the ultimate meaning of life or ultimate concerns in life qualifies as religion. By this understanding an atheist’s "faith" in the belief that there is no god and that science and human progress represent the highest good qualifies as religion because it is a belief about how things ultimately or actually are. Any story that tries to explain how life "actually is" is a religious statement. Again, “religion” deals with ultimate meanings and purposes. Tillich states, "You cannot reject religion with ultimate seriousness, because ultimate seriousness, or the state of being ultimately concerned, is itself religion"(See Footnote 2).
With this in mind, a person could become suspicious of Islam, Mormons, Evangelical Christians, or any other traditional religion(s), but where ever this person stands intellectually is already in a place of "religion." That religion might be secularism, science, Americanism, democraticism (yes, I am making this word up), communism, or whatever. "Religion" is simply inescapable. One does not escape the dangers of traditional religions by rejecting or being suspicious of religion in general. Such a person still has all of the same dangers of religion, but has simply traded one system of religious thought for another; this danger is inescapable in this life.
Brainwashing
In regards to the term or notion of brainwashing, I do not find the term to be terribly helpful, fair, or useful when considering the beliefs of groups outside of one’s own. While one can become suspicious of this religious group or that religious group--whether Muslim, Mormon, or Evangelical--one cannot really escape being involved in something that, at root, is similar. One can say that the Muslims are brainwashing their children or that the Mormons are brainwashing their children, but when one uses "brainwashing" language one is assuming that there is a "normative" baseline of thought and reasoning that universally applies to all human beings and that these groups and their brainwashing are deviating from it. I would argue that that is simply a statement that cannot be made. What would be "normative?" Democracy? Science? Capitalism? Communism? Individualism? (Of course I think it is horrible and atrocious that certain Islamist groups would actually teach their children that it is okay to kill other human beings. My point here is simply that "brainwashing" is not technically the appropriate word to use to describe such horrendous, evil teachings.) (See Footnote 3 for instances in which I think "brainwashing" language can be intelligible.)
A person cannot say that particular religions are objectively bad because they continually reinforce what to think about what life means, who god is, about what ultimately matters, etc. ALL systems of thought do this. When you send a kid to public school in this country they are indoctrinated beginning at day one. They say the pledge of allegiance to the flag every single day for years and years. This is indoctrination just as much as making a kid say their prayers every day before bedtime or at the dinner table. Having to take history classes that tell you how America threw off its evil oppressive British overlords for the sake of freedom and hearing this story ALL OF THE TIME in school is a way of getting kids to see history, the world, and "ultimate meaning" as an American. This is fundamentally no different than telling a kid that Moses liberated the Hebrews from the Egyptians or that Brigham Young led the persecuted out West to escape oppression. Whether "secular" American history or religious stories that you are raised to believe are true, they are ALL "brainwashing." "Brainwashing" is inescapable; it is everywhere and in every thought, which is why it is functionally useless and meaningless. The details of the stories and what they encourage may be different—behavior in Islam is different than behavior in Mormonism, which is different than behavior in capitalism or Americanism—but the reality-creating aspect of these systems with their teaching by repetition is the same.
So, one can watch stories on Fox News or CNN about look at Muslim and declare that they are brainwashed, but "brainwashed" only means something in relation to the story that one has in one’s own head about what is "normal" or about how things "really are." Now, quite frankly, I do have "faith" in what I think is the "normative" story for how things really are and that is the orthodox Christian story of the meaning, purpose, and nature of life. I do not know with scientific certainty that this faith is actually how things are--but there is philosophically no such thing as scientific certainty, there are only various degrees of faith--but I have FAITH that this story is true and I try to live according to it. That is all I can do. And I will choose this Christian faith any day over the faith of secular Americanism. If I ever do have kids I will absolutely "brainwash" them with my Christianity, because I would rather do that than "brainwash" them with some secular patriotic story that says that the government or nation or business or democracy are what provide ultimate meaning; I don't believe they do.
So, to end at the beginning, while I would normally think it is healthy for a person to question and/or think critically about their own faith, in the case of my Mormon friend--who is doing so in the particular context that I mentioned--it makes me nervous for him because I think his reasons for walking away from it are actually dangerous and unhealthy in the end. I disagree with Mormonism not because I think they brainwash their kids (they do what every religion on the planet does, they teach their kids their beliefs constantly), but because I do not think their teachings and beliefs about history accurately reflect the nature of how things actually are. I believe that orthodox Christianity does. As it currently stands if my friend walks away from Mormonism because of a suspicion of religion in general, what he will in fact end up doing is replacing it with another "religious" system, whether it is some privatized new age-y belief in god or it is a belief in Reason. My fear is ultimately that becoming suspicious of religion in general can lead to its own form of oppression for all people of traditional faiths There have been several books that have come out by folks that are being called “the new atheists” that have attacked religion aggressively as being bad for humanity. Biologist, Richard Dawkins, in his book, The God Delusion, actually argues that raising children with any religious beliefs at all should be considered child abuse (See Footnote 4). In his theoretical picture of how life should be, governments should discourage religion entirely. Imagine saying that religion is child abuse. Dawkins never stops to think that his viewpoint itself is "religious" and that atheistic regimes have been the most brutal in the 20th century ( i.e. Communist countries). My fear is that my Mormon friend will not only turn on Muslims and his own Mormon background, but that he will ultimately turn on orthodox Christianity, Judaism, Hindus, and any other faith in such away that would wish to change American policy that would harm us all….and that, ironically, he would be doing so from the vantage point of the Western-rooted secular humanism “religion” in which no god is safe, but the god of science and human self-worship.
FOOTNOTES:
1. Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), pp.7-8.
2. Ibid., 8.
3. I will concede that the term “brainwashing” can have meaning within a particular group. An Evangelical Christian might say to another Evangelical Christian that if a Christian person were lead away from Christianity by a non-Christian group that such a person was being “brainwashed.” The word “brainwashing” in this context of discussion about a Christian between two Christians can be intelligible because all three of these Evangelicals have started out assuming that the Christian story is the “normative” baseline. However, if an Evangelical Christian starts talking to another Christian about a non-Christian person being raised with non-Christian ideas, then “brainwashing” as a term makes little sense; the non-Christian in this context never started out with a non-brainwashed brain to then become brainwashed. Likewise, it makes little sense for a Christian to talk to a non-Christian about another non-Christian group being brainwashed because the Christian talking to the non-Christian person do not even share the same baseline view of what a non-brainwashed brain looks like.
4. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), Chapter Nine. It should be noted that Dawkins' specialization area and training is neither in philosophy or theology, but in biology.
Friday, April 06, 2007
A Hymn to God the Father
which is my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive those sins through which I run,
and do run still, though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
for I have more.
Wilt thou forgive that sin, by which I won
others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
a year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
for I have more.
I have a sin of fear that when I've spun
my last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore.
And having done that, thou hast done,
I fear no more.
by John Donne (1572-1673)
Monday, February 05, 2007
Breakfast with Christ and Grandpa: The Pain and Beauty of the Past
Having left my home state of 29 years recently to go away to grad school, I find myself in a strange place and looking back to the past quite often. Certain memories make me smile or even laugh, either because they were good, funny, or completely ridiculous. And like all people, there are other events I would prefer to forget (unfortunately my brain usually chooses not to cooperate on that front). Ironically enough, the thing that good memories and bad ones have in common is that they are both tinged with sadness, the bad ones because they are…well…bad, and the good ones because they are now only reachable in the mind. With all of this, I began to wonder the other day what the ultimate value of memories as a phenomenon really is. After all, with each day we get further and further away from the events that given memories point to. Intuitively I know they matter, but why? The following is what I came up with.
You can’t really talk about memories without thinking about time. Time and memory are inextricably related. Time passes with the events that it carries and memories and circumstantial evidence is what is left. There is no way to stop it or to pause it; time keeps going on. Sometimes I have a really hard time with that idea. After all, there are moments and seasons I wish I could get back to and such a feeling gets elicited by remembering moments long gone. This most recently hit me when I went home for Christmas this past December. One morning I met up with a friend and her two little kids and went to a McDonald’s for their pancake breakfasts (Breakfast snobs, please hold your disgust at bay. The ultimate point here is not about fine cuisine.) While eating and watching the kids eat, I had one of those TV-movie-of-the-week style flashbacks to a memory of my grandfather taking my older brother and I to McDonald’s for breakfast. I don’t remember exactly when or what the circumstances were, but we were little and quite excited about pancakes and sausage (as kids we rarely went to McDonald’s for breakfast). Fast forward to December 2006 and I am 32 years old and having McDonald’s breakfast with two excited little kids. At that moment I wanted to go back in time so badly and have breakfast with my grandfather again. What am I to do with that memory and the sweetness and pain that it evokes.
While I can’t claim to know what all of God’s intentions are for the notion of memories, I think some of them became clear to me. While they are not always fun or pleasant, memories serve an important and powerful function in our lives. They orient us within the story of our lives in a way that helps us understand who we are and why we are who we are. Each of our stories is interwoven in such a way that our past touches both the present and the future. For instance, my maternal great-grandparents and their life stories have shaped my life, helped me understand who our family is, and yet I never met them. They died before I was born. Nevertheless, I was raised by and heard my great-grandparents stories from the children and grandchildren that they had. Their story is connected to mine and, in a way, lives on. For those of us who are Christians, we learn through remembering what God did through Israel and Christ that we are all a part of a larger story. It is “THE” story that has priority and precedence over all other stories.
This mentioning of the God of Israel’s story relates to one of the other values that memories hold when properly recognized: memories act as witness. They witness not only to others when we recount them, but they witness to us as well. This brings me back to my McDonald’s story of when I was little and having breakfast with my grandfather. The actual event of my grandpa taking us to breakfast and all of the happiness and excitement wrapped up in that moment was a glimpse and a manifestation of the Kingdom of God. That single moment back in the early 1980s said that God was real, alive, and active on the earth; it was Christ at breakfast. As I remember that breakfast it acts as a witness to me that while I wait for the Kingdom of God to be completed at Christ’s return, the presence of his authority and his Kingdom is already here. While I absolutely need the witness of the Bible to God’s plan and glory—Scripture is that witness that provides the lens through which to see and understand all other witnesses—I also need my childhood memories, both good and bad. They show me that God is good, that God takes care of all of us, that God loves us, and that God shows up at McDonald’s breakfasts’.
God’s goodness and providence in our pasts gives us reason to hope in his future goodness. Sometimes I am not sure where I am at—both figuratively and literally in this new town I am in—or where I am heading. I am definitely not always at peace with life and its many uncertainties. But in my memories I try to remember that I am in Christ, that my grandfather is in Christ, and that though, “we all must endure our going whence,” we shall all rise again in Christ sometime. I know that is true, in part, because of a breakfast at McDonald’s I had with my grandfather a long time ago.
You can’t really talk about memories without thinking about time. Time and memory are inextricably related. Time passes with the events that it carries and memories and circumstantial evidence is what is left. There is no way to stop it or to pause it; time keeps going on. Sometimes I have a really hard time with that idea. After all, there are moments and seasons I wish I could get back to and such a feeling gets elicited by remembering moments long gone. This most recently hit me when I went home for Christmas this past December. One morning I met up with a friend and her two little kids and went to a McDonald’s for their pancake breakfasts (Breakfast snobs, please hold your disgust at bay. The ultimate point here is not about fine cuisine.) While eating and watching the kids eat, I had one of those TV-movie-of-the-week style flashbacks to a memory of my grandfather taking my older brother and I to McDonald’s for breakfast. I don’t remember exactly when or what the circumstances were, but we were little and quite excited about pancakes and sausage (as kids we rarely went to McDonald’s for breakfast). Fast forward to December 2006 and I am 32 years old and having McDonald’s breakfast with two excited little kids. At that moment I wanted to go back in time so badly and have breakfast with my grandfather again. What am I to do with that memory and the sweetness and pain that it evokes.
While I can’t claim to know what all of God’s intentions are for the notion of memories, I think some of them became clear to me. While they are not always fun or pleasant, memories serve an important and powerful function in our lives. They orient us within the story of our lives in a way that helps us understand who we are and why we are who we are. Each of our stories is interwoven in such a way that our past touches both the present and the future. For instance, my maternal great-grandparents and their life stories have shaped my life, helped me understand who our family is, and yet I never met them. They died before I was born. Nevertheless, I was raised by and heard my great-grandparents stories from the children and grandchildren that they had. Their story is connected to mine and, in a way, lives on. For those of us who are Christians, we learn through remembering what God did through Israel and Christ that we are all a part of a larger story. It is “THE” story that has priority and precedence over all other stories.
This mentioning of the God of Israel’s story relates to one of the other values that memories hold when properly recognized: memories act as witness. They witness not only to others when we recount them, but they witness to us as well. This brings me back to my McDonald’s story of when I was little and having breakfast with my grandfather. The actual event of my grandpa taking us to breakfast and all of the happiness and excitement wrapped up in that moment was a glimpse and a manifestation of the Kingdom of God. That single moment back in the early 1980s said that God was real, alive, and active on the earth; it was Christ at breakfast. As I remember that breakfast it acts as a witness to me that while I wait for the Kingdom of God to be completed at Christ’s return, the presence of his authority and his Kingdom is already here. While I absolutely need the witness of the Bible to God’s plan and glory—Scripture is that witness that provides the lens through which to see and understand all other witnesses—I also need my childhood memories, both good and bad. They show me that God is good, that God takes care of all of us, that God loves us, and that God shows up at McDonald’s breakfasts’.
God’s goodness and providence in our pasts gives us reason to hope in his future goodness. Sometimes I am not sure where I am at—both figuratively and literally in this new town I am in—or where I am heading. I am definitely not always at peace with life and its many uncertainties. But in my memories I try to remember that I am in Christ, that my grandfather is in Christ, and that though, “we all must endure our going whence,” we shall all rise again in Christ sometime. I know that is true, in part, because of a breakfast at McDonald’s I had with my grandfather a long time ago.
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