Letting God outa' the Box

Sunday, March 30, 2003

 
The Sabbath as Rest
I just returned from an overnight retreat-style class called the NCTI Seminar, Prayer and the Life of the Spirit. The class is open to students from seminaries throughout Chicagoland. Two of our four sessions take place at Mundelein Seminary, where we arrive Friday evening for one lecture, staying overnight, and having two more on Saturday. The theme changes each time the seminar is given; this semester's theme is "Sabbath: What rest allows God to be present".

We began by establishing the notion that we meet God in rest. Moving away from the idea that our actions can secure our salvation (Pelagius' pet heresy), God meets us through the free gift of grace...we just have to notice grace (St. Augustine). However, if we spend our time running around looking for grace, we may never see it...Grace just happens...there is no button or action that we can press to actually get grace. But, we can ask for it in prayer.

I wonder if we treat grace is like fast-food? If we catch (or notice) it on the run and attempt to gobble it down for nourishment, we will just in up with a sort of spiritual indigestion? Sure, we were fed and we have some fuel to continue on, but what is lost in the rapid consumption?

I have often wondered about the 'fast-food' dynamic running implicitely in seminary life. The three years of seminary seem like a sprint. Time in seminary life can be view in two ways: Time reading and Time you should have been reading. The whole under-current of seminary life is rush, rush, rush. What effect does that have on Priestly formation? Does this under-current train us to be sprinters? What happens to a sprinter in a marathon?

This sprinter under-current is not unique to seminary life, our culture abounds with it. One professor touched one of my nerves this weekend when he spoke of this own experience of Sunday Church becoming "duty, obligation, and guilt". Church becomes another entry in the weekly planner or Palm Pilot. This reminds me of a sophomoric rule to avoid alcoholism: 'don't drink is you feel you need or have to drink'. This idea seeks to lead us away from 'using' alcohol. It was not popular with my parents when, at age 15, but I applied this evaluation to church..."I refused to go if I felt I had to" (yep...a rebel at heart). When I returned to church years later, I did so because I wanted to. In that posture, I was open to seeing what grace God was sending. Church became fun and enjoyable. It became a time when I left with more energy than I had come with. Yet, when Church had been a duty, I remember feeling exhausted afterward. The sabbath has became rest.

Can I find the same 'rest' in seminary? in ministry? Do the ideas of 'duty, obligation, and guilt' need to be exorcized from my seminary experience? Not an easy task when years of reinforcement have applied those ideas to the church, to the classroom, to the world. Hmm...time to slow down and keep my eyes (and heart) open to seeing God's grace.

Fr. Bill 8:30 AM

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Friday, March 28, 2003

 
I love the comment opportunities of a blog! In a recent comment, someone asked how I plan to deal with the real world. He was right on the nose. Seminary life becomes insular. A headline from home stated that American Flag sales are up, while 'No War' buttons festoon the clothes of many seminarians. Priestly formation seems to move us away from the cultural world we live in. We spend time in classes discussing and analysing the affects of culture and in so doing become detached. Thanks be to God my Diocese has a curacy program. It may serve as a debriefing time much like the Apollo astronauts went through on their return to earth. Don't get me wrong, seminary life is not that much different. There are petty gripes, power needs and struggles, financial issues, etc. But I spend most of my time within a community of Christian Episcopal believers. The varied range of Episcopalian beliefs seems huge in our microcosm, but it pales in comparison to the communties where we will minister.
Contact with a greater community is why I like blogging. It is kind of a safe foray into the real world where I can post class papers and compare the feedback of seminary and others. Please comment on the papers I have posted and will post in the future especially if you are not a seminarian! I am called to minister in the world not the seminary...you are the world and I need your feedback.
Fr. Bill 8:41 AM

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Monday, March 24, 2003

 
A recent blog comment says "God sucks".

Well, yes...God does suck if our image of God is one, say, of simply judgment. When I limited the Bible to merely a code of rules, I found it easily used to beat me up. Most of us do not live out the Deuteronomic codes to the letter, anyway. Yet, looking at the Bible as a story of human's relationship with God, a different view can emerge. The New Testament describes something new coming from God. A Savior, who is God, brings a message of a new image of God who is not simply a judge assessing our lives against a code of rules, but God who knows our heart. The message delivered is of love.

The Good News is that God gives a hoot about us...and when that message is internalized, hopefully we will start giving a hoot about ourselves, our families, friends and neighbors and maybe even the rest of creation. A prof of mine noted that in the Genesis story, it was Adam and Eve who turned away from God, not God turning away from them. Jesus can be viewed as the new Adam who is guiding us to turn back to God. My life changed when I began to believe that God gave a hoot about me. As I turned toward God, the hoot began to even look like love. For me, letting God out of the box, means opening up my own view of God because the image of God I used to have in my box did suck.
Fr. Bill 9:16 AM

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Sunday, March 23, 2003

 
A reflection on a Tripp comment:

Crystal words, that hang so fine
But none will stop us falling
Pulling faster all the time
Powerless to warnings

If you feel the hand of God
Can you guide it holy man?
But you are only flesh and blood
Waiting too for judgement.

Still saying!
Daddy don't weep, Momma don't cry
Everybody gets their time
Don't be sad, don't be blue -
Pray for me, I'll do the same for you

Split the Father and the Son
Hand words to ease them
In the other is a gun-baptized by fear, and

If you have the hand of God
Can you heal us, holy man?
But you are only flesh and blood
Waiting too for judgement.

Still saying!
Hang on tight, hang on strong
How much longer can this go on -
But don't be sad, don't be blue -
It's one more thing sent to confuse -

Daddy don't weep, Momma don't cry
Everybody get their time
Don't be sad, don't be blue -
Pray for me, I'll do the same for you

Can you bring the hand of God?
Can you stop the killing?
Get us back to hope and love -
Never more been needed-

Still saying!
Bloods gone bad, bad to worse
Worse to bad and back again-
But don't be sad, don't be blue -
It's one more thing sent to confuse -

Daddy don't weep, Momma don't cry
Every fear must have its time
Don't be sad, don't be blue -
Pray for me, I'll do the same for you


Can You Heal Us (Holy Man)
by Paul Weller on Wild Wood

Fr. Bill 2:20 PM

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Caught up in the dualism?

      Yesterday, Susan and I were on the L (Chicago's subway) coming home from a premarital counseling session. On the train were people from the two groups who protested at the Federal Building as well as many who were just going about their lives. Tension and dis-ease seemed to fill the train. There was energy coming from people in the two group whose adrenaline had been pumping as they shouted their views on the war. But, the tension seemed to emanate from those of us that has not chosen a side.


      I find myself in these tense situation more and more often. Last year in my seminary classes, we joked with two of our professors, AKM and Frank, about their use of "it is more complicated than that" and "there is some tension here" in our discussions of New Testament and Hebrew scripture. For me these to sayings have climbed out of their little boxes of association with scripture and crept into the my view of the world. I know the war is more complicated than the blurbs that the media applies to it as well as the one-line statements quoting world leaders. It is more complicated than anti-war or pro-USA slogans. I feel a challenge to chose one side or the other but I also feel a call to live in the tension of not choosing.


      In today's lectionary reading for the Episcopal Church, Pauls Letter to the Romans 7:13-25 is assigned.

Did what is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, working death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.


For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.

Talk about living in the tension! Paul gives a wonderful view of the dualism he sees in his own life. In studying Paul, I have found that he focuses on the unity of the Christian communities he is addressing. From a psycological perspective, I wonder if Paul seeks to instill others what he desires most, unity over dualism. Through my own journey in counseling, I have learned that I share this perspective. Yet, this perspective seems to be in tension with today's Gospel reading, John 2:13-22, of Jesus turning over the tables of the money changers


      Talk about your acts of protest. I think Jesus expressed his opinion concerning the commercial activities in the temple. I wonder if Jesus faced the same tension as Paul describes? Theologians tell us Jesus was without sin. I have often wondered about the systematic effects of that assumption in tension with the assertion that Jesus was fully human. Well, here is what I have come up with: Jesus was without sin because he acted in accordance with God's will, yet he was tempted by sin like all humans...part of his greatness was his not acting on the temptation. We do not always have the direct line to God that Jesus had, so the assurance that we are chosing to act in accordance with God's will becomes "more complicated". This is what I think Paul is describing; the tension of discerning God's will, the spiritual, while living in a world of the law and sin.


      From my point of view, this is what makes being a Christian hard. Oh were it my childhood Bible Belt dreams, that Baptism would make it easy or even simple. Don't get me wrong, Baptism is great, it is an initiation into a new life in which Christ is with us in our journey. Yet looking at the life of Christ in the Gospel, living with him is not shown as easy or simple. Living with Christ seems to mean taking on the challenges he faced: living in accordance with God's will in a world of temptation. For me, currently, that means not making quick choices that simply remove me from the tension of the situation.


      I find the simplest guideline by which to measure God's will in my life is: 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like this: 'You shall love your neighbor as youself.' On these two commandment hang all the law and prophets. (Matthew 22:37-40) My big caveat is that I found I must first learn to love myself! In learning to accept God's love for me, I can begin to love back. It is in the loving God back that Christianity loses a degree of difficulty. Living in the tension become a little easier. It is in the returning love to God that I begin to see God's love for others, my neighbors, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, antheist, pro-US and anti-war. But, it is not easy. It is living in the tension of the L train and not quickly choosing sides just to ease that tension. I guest that is why I am attracted to the Anglican and Episcopal denomination of Christian faith. Living in the tension of the dualism, ever discerning God's will through the tensions of tradition, scripture and reason...avoiding the quick answers of fundamental assumptions of scripture, but asserting a living God still active in creation.
Fr. Bill 9:13 AM

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Friday, March 21, 2003

 
      I share my brother Jeff's befuddlement over last night's protest march in Chicago. It seemed to lose its meaning some where. Stopping traffic on Lake Shore Drive and Michigan Avenue did get the attention they wanted, but a concise message did not seem to resonate. I, too, wonder if it did not become a "party" to blow of steam and energy associated with the nervousness and uncertainty of US action and possible retaliation.

      I do not know exactly why the US is in the war. As banners last night declared "no blood for oil", I wonder if that is the true motivation. Yet the latest message from Bush and Blair suggest motivation of fear. Fear that Hussien will grow in power and one day lash out. It reminds of the way we take guns away from kids at school, out of fear they will use them to kill some one else rather than protection. Is this suggested motivation bull?

      I reflect on the reaction of my classmates when we read about Pinochet's rule over Chile. The majority were fired up and wondered why no body did anything to stop him. What about the church, what about the US? Well...we seem to be doing some thing about Hussein, but it is not being greeted with support.

      Does it all boil down to fear? Does fear rule the hearts and minds of our leaders, of Hussein? Tripp suggested the movie "Bowling for Columbine" as a portrait of the rule of fear in our lives. I have got to see it. Is fear the original sin in the fall of man? Did the eating of the fruit give birth to fear in the human race? Fear seems to be the opposite of love or a least producing an environment without love.

      Yet, in Christian environment we continue to use fear. Some say we are called to Fear God as well as Love God. I find that hard to truly love under the rule of fear. I like the translation of Bible that uses 'Awe' rather that fear. Loving God within a sense of awe. Awe directs us to opening up our view of God to a level of understanding that God is more than I ever thought and possible more than I can ever imagine. Fear seems to relegate God to a great disciplinarian; God becomes the parent who spanks us when we do wrong who says it is for our own good and says it hurt them more that us.

      Would our protests be better served if we send a message to ourselves? If we believe oil is the cause of this war, let us deliver a message to ourselves to grow away from our oil dependance..."Drive a GEO not a Suburban"..."We want electric cars". If we follow Bush and Blair, then "Free Iraq" ... "Christians and Muslims are both children of Abraham" ... "End domination by Fear". To bad "make love not war" is all too often read as a hedonistic directive.

      As Jeff Tweedy of Wilco sings: It's a war on war...our love is all we have!
Fr. Bill 8:46 AM

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Thursday, March 20, 2003

 
War On War
by Wilco

it's a war on war
it's a war on war
it's a war on war
it's a war on war
it's a war on war
it's a war on war
there's a war on
you're gonna lose
you have to lose
you have to learn how to die

let's watch the miles fly by
let's watch the miles fly by
you are not my typewriter
but you could be my demon
moving forward through flaming doors
you have to lose
you have to lose
you have to learn how to die
if you wanna wanna be alive

o.k.

you have to lose
you have to lose
you have to learn how to die
if you wanna wanna be alive

you have to lose
you have to lose
you have to learn how to die
if you wanna wanna be alive





Jesus, etc.
by Wilco

Jesus, don't cry
you can rely on me honey
you can combine anything you want
I'll be around
your were right about the stars
each one is a setting sun

tall buildings shake
voices escape singing sad songs
tuned chords strung down your cheeks
bitter melodies turning your orbit around

don't cry
you can rely on me honey
you can combine anything you want
I'll be around
your were right about the stars
each one is a setting sun

tall buildings shake
voices escape singing sad songs
tuned chords strung down your cheeks
bitter melodies turning your orbit around

voices whine
skyscrapers are scraping together
your voice is smoking
last cigerettes are all you get
turning your orbit around

our love
our love
our love is all we have
our love
our love is all of God's money
everyone is a burning sun





Fr. Bill 12:19 PM

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Wednesday, March 19, 2003

 
Comments section hopefully on the way!
Fr. Bill 6:09 PM

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Blessed Assurance?

I wonder if Randall Balmer chose the title of his book Blessed Assurance with the hymn, “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine” in mind. By his title, is he insinuating a sense of ownership Americans seem to claim on Christianity? Balmer begins his work by establishing that America has been “shaped” by religion (1). He points to John Winthrop and the Puritan ideology of the “Ciity upon a Hill” as continuous theme of “American attitude”(12). He looks at the vital role that Protestant Christianity played and continues to play in formation of America as a nation. He tracks the growth of the nation and the central role of Protestant Christianity, especial Evangelicalism, in the nation’s history. He also focuses on the evolution of Evangelicalism as it seeks to continue to live the Puritan vision of America as the New Jerusalem. He shows that not only has Evangelicalism shaped America but America has also shape Evangelicalism and Christianity. Balmer seems to suggest that current American Christianity has been infused with American culture and to find more orthodox Christianity, we need to extract the cultural influences lest our blessed assurance become a false sense of security.

Balmer chooses to look at Evangelicalism because he sees it as “America’s folk religion” (9). Evangelicalism in North America “derives from the fusion of two strains of Protestantism, Puritanism and Pietism”(14). He notes that Pietism has influenced American by it disposition to “avoid the ‘routine of religion’, preferring instead a vibrant, experiential spiritual life” (29). Other characteristics of “Continental Pietism, New England Puritanism and the Great Awakening” are still visible in current American Evangelicalism such as: “exacting standards of morality; suspicion of liturgical formalism, theological scholasticism, and ecclesiastical structures; an insistent call for conversion juxtaposed with warnings about the torments of hell; and a willingness to cross ethnic and ecclesiastical boundaries” (29-30). The ideas of the colonist as the initiators of both new Christian religious groups as well as a new nation continue to affect the still evolving American culture.

As American began to form itself into a nation, freedom of religion became a major concern. The establishment of freedom of religion in the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States allows the opportunity for religious growth in “innovative and experimental” ways as well as the formation of into a “free market of religion” (5). Balmer sees Thomas Jefferson as “recognizing the dangers that religious interests and factions posed to the political order” (34). Jefferson was a staunch believer “that religious beliefs were a private affair [and] that religious coercion violated natural rights”(33). In order that the religion not “disrupt the political stability”, Balmer asserts that Jefferson helped design the separation of church and state like a “line in the dust, continually drawn and redrawn” (34). He also thinks that Jefferson’s separation of church and state has had a two-fold effect: “I believe that the cornucopia of the religious options – and the liberality with which Americans avail themselves of them – has contributed to the America’s political stability by providing an alternative to political dissent (39). Therefore, the state maintains religious freedom and religious freedom maintains the state.

While the separation of church and state as well as religious freedom can be seen in positive results, not all influences are clearly so. A free market of religion lends to viewing religions in capitalistic ways, such as meeting the needs of the people to attract them. As Balmer suggests, church leaders have recognized the free market nature of religion and responded by “catering – even pandering – to the tastes of their various constituencies” (6). He further suggests that “Popular religion in American bends with the prevailing winds. Whereas once religion explained the vagaries of the natural world, advances in science have relegated religion more and more to issues of person well-being. During the last half century, the more popular religious groups have often adapted to this change in circumstance by offering a cornucopia of special-interest and support groups catering to the personal needs of the congregants. Religion in this narrowed text becomes a form of therapy and a vehicle for self-improvement” (7).

Because of the wide diversity allowed in America, religion has become “the arena for popular discourse and the expression of discontent” rather than politics (37). Through the establishment of the separation, the church and the state have evolved into complementary institutions. The church has grown in to a support institution for the state. Christian theologies have bent to also included state supportive philosophies especially when tainted with the attitude of viewing the United State as a Christian nation. Balmer suggests that still “American religiosity feeds the sense that America occupies a special place in the divine plan” demonstrating that the Puritan ideology of American as the City on the Hill, the New Jerusalem is still alive (11). This seems to lead to a slippery slope of claiming that anything America and American do or believe is aligned with God’s will for us.

Balmer points out that “contemporary prosperity propagandists (as for seventeenth century Puritans), affluence is a sure sign of God’s Blessing” (11). The idea of prosperity gives God’s blessing to the capitalism foundation of America. He points to the “correlation between Reaganism and prosperity theology” as “yet another parallel between evangelicalism and the public arena, namely the relative absence of the ideological ballast” (60). Movement to the position that lacks ideological ballast comes from the adoption of Arminian theology, which emphasizes “the ability of individuals to control their own religious destinies” (58).

As Balmer points out, Arminian theology is very attractive to ”a people who had only recently taken up arms to achieve political independence” (58). “Where as the Great Awakening to the 1730’s and 1740’s had been Calvinist, emphasizing the terrors of judgment in reclaiming the elect, the Second Great Awakening, at the turnoff the nineteenth century – after the American Revolution – was Arminian, that is, it was grounded in an alternative Protestant theology which insists that individuals can initiate the salvation process, that they needn’t wait for the call of God” (9). Arminian theology encouraged not only men but also women to be come involved in their own salvation process.

With the growth on industry, men move away from the home, working outside the home, women “succumbed to the ‘cult of domesticity’” and took on the religious leadership in the family. The leadership role in religion often lead women to take on more leadership roles in the family as well as in the community. Balmer states that the feminist movement surprised many Evangelicals (80). He suggests that Evangelicalism had “a particular kind of idealization of women” and that for Evangelical women “their identity is tied almost exclusively to motherhood” (72). The women’s movement seems to be a mark of separation of American culture from Evangelical culture.

Balmer notes Evangelical groups such as Promise Keepers and the Religious Right as rising up in response to the separation that occurred. Evangelicals seem to want to return to the good old days of the nineteenth century when the ideologies of American culture and Evangelicalism were more closely aligned. Balmer points to the use of demonology. American has a habit of being against something, something that is opposed to the American and Evangelical ideologies. Early struggles focus on religious oppression, slavery, and communism as the demons that adversely affected the City on the Hill. As those demons moved away, Evangelical began to look inward and find new demons that prevented the perfection of America. Balmer points out that no group ‘feels the burden of complexity more acutely than American evangelicals, who have long been accustomed to viewing the world in Manichean, dualistic terms – good verses evil, white verses black, freedom verses Communism” (96). Balmer goes on to point out that “bereft of a credible foreign enemy, Americans – led by spokesmen for the Religious Right – were forced to focus upon the enemy within” (98)

Balmer does question why Evangelicals such as the Religious Right have turned away from “maintaining the wall of separation between church and state” (100). He suggests that they feel that they can no longer “compete in the free marketplace of religion” and are “overwhelmed “ by the diversity; crossing the line of church and state, he feels, the Religious Right are seeking “some kind of advantage” (101). This explains the resurgence of Evangelicalism in our current time as well as the high visibility of Evangelical beliefs.
As Balmer points out, the beliefs of modern Evangelical groups sound very similar to beliefs of all American Christian groups because the foundations of the Puritans and Peitists in both America as a nation and American Evangelicalism. Freedom of religion has allowed for both innovative and experimental forms of religion to flourish in America. The free market of religion has also allowed Christianity to grow in to a form that conforms to the needs of Americans. Holding on to the foundational idea of America as the New Jerusalem has also allowed us to see our brand of Christianity as God’s will. In doing so, we allow ourselves to live in a sense of Blessed Assurance that we are doing God’s will and that Jesus is ours. In order to see Christianity and Jesus as belonging to all, we need to be aware of the cultural affects and pressures on the our Christian faith. We need to be every diligent in discerning these affects so that we do not live in a false sense of blessed assurance.









Balmer, Randall Blessed Assurance: A History of Evangelism in America Beacon Press: Boston, 1999.

Fr. Bill 7:53 AM

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Tuesday, March 18, 2003

 
My initial title, Letting God outa the Box, reflects the need I see to open up our images of God. A challenge to expand God from Simpsonish images of an old man in the clouds. Does God remain trapped in the box of our childhood imaginations? Can we let God out of our boxes and be amazed how much more God can be?
Fr. Bill 6:33 PM

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