Deep Value And Truth From An Odd Source

I have never posted a link to another article before. I am doing it now because this deserves it. I read this and think, with tears at the back of my eyes, "What have I actually accomplished?" Then I realize it's not too late.

We have a world to build, lets actually do it.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/

The Difficult Power Of Love

Here is a special treat. A guest post by my brother Wayland. He is a co-founder of The Charis Project, an officer in the United States Marine Corps, and one of the more spiritually aware people I know. A heads up: he prefers to work in shocking and uncomfortable imagery.

I spend a lot of time working through the choices thrust upon me be the sex and violence of day to day existence. Things like, what do I do now that I know the reason I don't see my students anymore is because they got sold to people who gang raped them? How do I keep the other kids I try to protect from having the same thing happen to them? Or, and this is much more banal, how do I keep the people I'm in charge of from doing something really stupid like marrying the stripper they met this weekend? Or how do I deal with my friend having killed himself after coming back from war? Or how come after doing everything I possibly can for this girl, in the most uncreepy, honest, and open way I could, it still seems like I have to use an ice pick to chisel my way through bitch mountain to get through to her?

We all face hardship and suffering, and for those of you who wish to change the world, you know who you are, the biggest sources of suffering come from the dissonance between the way things should be, which is obviously not the way things are, and the way things actually are. (Just admit it. Sh..y.) Now just try and follow the same path of self sacrifice and selfless giving up of yourself to change this and see how long it takes to, either end up drinking every night and generally feeling depressed, or, and I would argue that in this economy with gas prices the way they are this is the worse choice, becoming super conservative religious and trying to shut out all that pain with yet more small groups, even more volunteering and yet ever more advice from spiritual teachers. Not that there is anything wrong with any of this IN IT'S PROPER CONTEXT. That goes for the drinking every night also by the way. But the reason I, we, engage in these types of self destructive behavior is because we have taken our sacrifice and the love behind it and bent it out of it's proper context. Actually we have taken ourselves out of the proper context because we have fallen into the all too easy and most banally evil path of defining ourselves in opposition to what we oppose and in so doing become less than what we are.

When you really care about something, it gets really easy to define yourself in terms of opposing what is bad for it.

On a scale of twisted to perfect, that leaves us twisted, just like everything else that's wrong, including Lucifer, but I'll get to that at a later and undisclosed point. And don't think for a minute I'm about to say something about just embracing universal love and there is good in all. Find out about the girls you spent your time and effort looking after getting gang raped and see how long it takes for you to come up with new and exciting ways to dismember someone unto death and be absolutely right to feel that way.

I'm actually going to take this in a whole other direction. I'm really more interested in penetrating to the guts of the problem, and splitting it wide open to the point that it turns inside out and becomes something new. In doing so, I had to go looking for inspiration. I still find it strange that such would come from my work, which is really a lot more boring than people give it credit for. There is this concept we have called maneuver warfare, by which we seek not to kill off the enemy, but to destroy the enemy's system in key ways that cause him to collapse with as little real destruction as possible. It turns out God does the same thing.

Which means I'm about to go off in yet another direction. Those of you who know or, better yet, are mothers know what real selfless sacrifice actually is. Consider that God describes himself as a mother. He also calls himself love. Now, that word has been corrupted in the modern context to mean something more along the lines of, I love you, but…

I love you but you need to be more open.
I love you but you need to not not push me away.
I love you, but change or I can't do this anymore.

WEAK.

Or, "I care about poverty/love poor people, but we will always have the poor." Read: "I can't deal with this right now".

(What does that even mean? )

In other words the modern context of love has become hugely self centered and ends up leading us into defining ourselves and what we care about in opposition to what we don't like. Mothers, or at least good ones, know better. I'm not, nor will ever be one, but I am aware enough to see that waking up at all hours of the night to let a screaming, completely self centered little mammal literally suck nutrients out of you demands something else to be going on. Something very unselfish and rather embracing of the way things actually are and addressing them as they are, i.e. a screaming little mammal that needs to be fed.

Now, tying this back to maneuver warfare, I'm going to have to make an all too tantalizing jump into the mystical world of ideas. Ideas like, love is actually more than an emotion (it is that too, and that's totally fine) it's a choice you make. In fact it's one of those choices you make when confronted with the sex and violence of everyday existence.

This means I'm going to have to get to the point, which is that there is nothing wrong with pouring yourself out in self sacrifice for what, and who, you care about. And to make sure you don't end up being selfish about it you destroy the system that leads to that outcome. I have found the fastest way to totally overcome it all is to decide to be a slut about it. Love everything. The brokeness, the twistedness, the retrograde behavior. Try turning it on yourself if you want to get real kinky. Forgive and love everything about yourself. I know this feels strange at first, but we have to learn to take care of ourselves, you know. This works because love isn't a two way exchange between something or someone you are trying to get something from. It is a one way transformative (read redemptive) force that changes the twisted, broken things to what they, we, were meant to be. Destroy the system by embracing it and thus causing it to adapt to you, to the light that lives in you.

What better way to damage an agenda of damage than by applying a transformative and redemptive force to it. Instead of pushing away that which we are revolted by, and thus bringing it's existence into more clear relief, why don't we get right up next to it, assume that everything we hear about us being bigger, better, and more powerful is true and thus compel the that which is weaker to adapt to that which is stronger. It's a law of biology that the larger organism absorbs the smaller. It seems to work in all of life as well.

This makes dealing with your former students, if you can ever find them again, a lot easier because you can love their brokenness, and thus have any hope of changing it. You can love your friend who killed himself and leave it at that. You can love the people you are in charge of, and for that matter who are in charge of you, do your job and leave it at that. And you can love the passivity and sadness of the girl making you use an ice pick to chisel you way closer to her, which has a dramatic effect on determining how committed you are and how much you really care and actually produces positive changes. At least that is how it all works for me.

As for Lucifer? God loves him.......                                               

Shameless Foundations: Part 2-Humanity

Part 1

So God is shaping the world out of the chaotic lump of cosmic stuff. Making progress, things are taking shape, then he gets to us.

God formed humanity out of the stuff of this earth. We are intrinsically part of this place. We do not belong somewhere else. This is literally our native ground.

Now, how the text talks about the establishment of humanity is important, and a little history is in order. In the cultures around which this story was written there were certain rituals for worship that are pertinent to the meaning of the Biblical story. When it was determined that a new temple was in order the first thing to be done was to plant a sacred grove, a garden if you will, that would demarcate the holy precinct. Then the priests would form the image of the god out of clay, or wood, or metal and would put it in the garden. Then the priests would perform a ceremony in which the breath or spirit of whatever god the image was of would come into the idol and the image would thereby become the very presence of that god in the earth. If you don't know the Biblical story take a look at it in the first two chapters of Genesis. Notice the similarities. The Genesis story was written to people familiar with these forms of worship. Notice how Genesis subverts the story and applies it to humanity. After establishing the the sacred grove, God himself forms the human as an image of himself, he places the human in the garden and puts his breath or spirit into the human and this breath is the thing that makes the human a living being. Let it hit hard: the human is the idol that God himself formed of himself and then put his own Spirit into to make the human the very presence of himself in the world.

By God's decision we are made of the stuff of this world, this is our place, and God has designed us to be his very presence in this world and in the beginning that is what we were. That is what we were intended to be. God also had a purpose for us. He made us for a job, a function, a task and not merely to simply be in some blissed out garden of Eden. First we were to tend the garden, then God gave us our orders. God formed us here and made us his very presence in this world to "go forth and multiply and subdue the earth."

Okay, remember that the garden was a special niche that God had carved out of the larger world which he was making, that is, wresting from chaos and futility. God could very well have fully ordered the whole thing completely but the way he did it is how he in fact decided to do it. In this context God forms us as his image, puts us that carved out garden, makes us into his very presence in the world and then commands us to complete the last bits of making this world. In us, God put himself into this world to finish making it but in such a way that we, this world's native inhabitants, get the huge dignity and honor and responsibility of fully participating in this act of creation.

What I have said here differs somewhat from most standard understandings on many points of this story. One big one is the "image of God." In most models the "image of God" is taken in terms of a reflection in a mirror or a painting. Such understandings work to find links between humans and God in terms of attributes (in the same way a picture is similar to the model that posed for it.) They derive principles of the divine nature from looking at the seemingly higher aspects of humanity: we are creative, God is creative therefore creativity is part of what it is to be the image of God the same with choice making, rationality, etc. What we end up with is a collection of observed human attributes that we project on or link to the divine nature (at least to the degree that we claim to know and understand it as such.) All this "image of God" does is ratify the human as defined by the human as next to the divine in the human's own eyes. What I am proposing is not some formal similarity but an actual presence. This actual presence constitutes the power by which we may accomplish the task for which we were designed--which brings me to the other difference I want to point out. In most models, humans are passive creatures put here kinda to just hang out and be mellow with God and stuff. What I am saying is that humanity is instrumental. God created us to a specific function within this creation. A function that if we don't do doesn't get done.

You are designed by God to be his very presence in this world, filled with his breath, to bring the perfection of this world to completion.

Part 3 
Part 4

You Don't Get To Choose Your Cross: Part 2

Here is Part 1

 And here is where it gets good:

We must neither cower in illusions of perfection nor capitulate to unrighteousness. Rather, continually recognize the contradiction into which we have been thrust, the true intolerable confluence we embody. We must throw ourselves into the struggle for it is in the very midst of this struggle that we are a witness. It is here that the judgement of eternity falls with creative power on the sin of the world. This is living redemption, subversive and creative.

To give an image from parenting: an example of perfection is of no value to our children since they themselves are not angels, as well, capitulation to destruction is a disservice to them since they are alive. Rather, they deserve to see the struggle and learn to fight the fight of a forgiven sinner, of a wounded soldier who will not leave the battle because they are the breath of God in a broken mind, the fiery core in a wayward heart, the very presence of God in a suicidal world.

We live the struggle in full (though through a mirror dimly) view of eternity. That fundamentally alters our current reality. The pain of the struggle becomes not something to be reflexively avoided but rather a powerful elixir to be wisely engaged, like climbing a mountain or giving birth. We embody the brokenness of the world and the light of eternity, birth-pain is inevitable and in it we are born along with the new heavens and the new earth.

God, in his love and wisdom, has placed us in the world, in this intolerable situation. He has however called us to not be of this world. What can this possibly mean? We are sent neck deep into the quagmire in order to be an actual presence here that is not of this place.

What can this subversive redemption be while we remain active if unwilling participants in the brokenness of that which we are sent to redeem?

We embody the contradiction, the intolerable confluence of life and death and it is in and out of this struggle that redemption becomes concrete, that the love of eternity comes into the very dirt of this world.

You Don't Get To Choose Your Cross: Part 1

We have recently been exposed to the shortcomings of Apple and their subcontractor’s treatment of labor. And I am a little surprised that I have seen no commentary from my “social justice” friends (who mostly use Apple products.) So I will let loose on this aspect of “justice” and our situation in the world. Now these revelations are nothing new nor is the situation by any means limited to Apple. It is pervasive. At nearly all levels of production. In this real world no one gets their “stuff” without someone being abused.

We are all inextricably enmeshed in the banal evil of the world, even if we do not kill, steal or commit adultery we remain fundamentally complicit in maintaining oppression, slavery, wholesale murder. By living in the world we unavoidably participate in the systemic sin of the world. If we as Christians do not find this intolerable it is because we have consumed the opiate of religion.

Some will object: If this is true, how then did Jesus ever avoid sinning in his lifetime? This is not an attempt to avoid addressing the sin of this world and what we might do about it, but really question about what is and is not sin. It cannot be "a sin" to unavoidably participate in the systemic sin of the world. Our specific actions have to be sinful, or not, but we cannot be systemically guilty of sin in this way without also indicting our Saviour.

To this I would ask: to what extent did Jesus bear our humanity, to what extent was he one of us, to what extent then are we now in him? To the extent that Jesus was a Jew, he was under sin (Rom. 3:9), to the extent that Jesus was part of everyone he was under sin (Gal. 3:22, yet, nevertheless he is God's redemption from that sin) and more pointedly, 2Cor. 5:21 "God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God." This is not in my mind a conclusive refutation of this concern, rather an observation of a greater complexity at work. The issue remains problematic on many levels. However I do not have this concern. I do not necessarily have a problem with Jesus implicitly participating in a form of sin common to all humanity yet fully obedient to the Father and furthermore declared righteous by the Father and in so doing opening redemption to all of humanity that too is found under sin. I do not depend on getting all of Jesus' "A's" imputed to my report card, rather I hold to the righteousness declared over me by the Father on the basis of Jesus' obedient faithfulness.

Others may question whether we really are inextricably enmeshed in the banal evil of the world.

This is the banality of evil that I mean. I am no Marxist but the capitalist reduction of humans to units of production and consumption is hardly righteous. The purchase of corn or soy products empowers economic and environmental oppression. The purchase of gasoline supports evil regimes and bio-fuels have more than doubled the price of food globally leading to starvation. The vast majority of cotton, chocolate, coffee comes on the back of slavery. The purchase of any commodity that has exploitation in one of it’s production regions supports that exploitation. Our taxes support not only the good of our governments but also the evil.

The situation is much more complex and interesting when you remember that making money, trading food, using gas, etc... all also help people prosper and are significant means with which to treat each other with kindness. We work to be good while unavoidably participating in evil.

Here is Part 2

On The Value Of Beatings

Well, hello again. I will get back to the series I started a while back (part 1, part 2, part 3) as soon I regain the neural capacity. This time I am going with something more apropos the topics of discussion that are trending in my own home.

My wife is working on an extended project having to do with significance and meaning. You can get a taste of the direction it is heading in this post. Add to that the difficulties of getting by on not quite enough money and the struggles of our ongoing (unpaid) work of revolutionizing the care of at-risk children and and my incessant need to make sense of things and nearly pathological desire for significance and you will end up with some thoughts on the desires of God and our quality of life.

Particularly in developed countries there is this notion that following God should make our life nice and easy. This comes out often when we are making decisions about what to do with our life. I have often heard people say things along the lines of, "If God is behind it (whatever "it" is) then it will work." Usually "it working" means "it will be easy" or "things will fall into place." There are all sorts of biblical precedents that indicate that this is crazy talk. So I won't bother talking about this from that direction. The simple observation that there is rape and murder in the world indicates that what God wants does not necessarily actually take place in the real world. How then can we believe that our endeavors will go more smoothly if God is behind them?

What particularly interests me right now is the way we look to heros of the faith for inspiration. When we do this we more or less look strictly at the final hero status and separate that from what led to the status. We look at the end product of the famous person, the recognized hero and actually look up to the recognition and fame rather than the process that led to it, forgetting that no hero ever has heroism handed to them. Salvation is a thing handed to us through the grace of God. Heroism is something we earn. The only way someone becomes a hero is by getting the crap kicked out of them. That beating is absolutely necessary to the end result. It is through enduring the beatings and holding on and pushing through that one ever has the possibility of achieving heroism.

God has plans in this world. God struggles and has to overcome. Look at the true revelation of the living God. God incarnate in his deepest self revelation in the world. Did Jesus need to push through and overcome adversity to effect salvation? I know, stupid question. To be fully conformed to the image of Christ involves heroism. The struggle itself is an integral part of the path.

Go forth and conquer