The Little Friar

I'm beginning to see calls to petition for a return of school prayer.  I think that's the wrong direction for us to go.  Here's why. I was a Lady Gaga fan from the very beginning.  This is my favorite song: I've worked with kids like these in the parish -- as have many of my readers.  "The bad kids."  These kids are social and moral "monsters".  But Gaga deconstructs the label "bad kid" in the song.  These kids are moral monsters not because they are intrinsically evil but because "they don't know right from wrong".  What's more, while on the outside these kids are an objective pain in the ass (that's my professional clinical diagnosis), inside their "heart is pure".  Their deviance is due to more to insecurity ("don't be insecure") than depravity. In short, in this song Gaga is trying to get on the inside of these "monsters", to speak to their brokenness, sadness, lonel...

A few weeks ago, I'd written on the Christus Victor themes of the Lord's Prayer .  Today, I want to focus on the Christus Victor themes of Galatians. We tend to read Paul through the lens of the Reformation and think that Paul's main theological project was to describe how we are saved via "justification by faith" .  In contrast, I think Galatians is better read as a a clear witness to a basic conviction of Paul:  The gospel is not about human movement into blessedness from sin, but about God's liberating invasion of the cosmos . For example, right at the start: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age (Gal 3.1-4, emphasis added).  What we see in this is how the work of Jesus, while involving the forgiveness of sins, was critically about "rescuing us from the present evil age".  Why rescue?  Later in the letter, Paul describes our predicame...

We are, as Aristotle put it , defined by words.  Speech is uniquely human.  Thing is, we find it hard to talk, even with closest friends.  Even more so, with our lover. Take Mr & Mrs Hendy, from Monty Python's Meaning of Life .  We find the retired American couple at a restaurant.  Like many friends and couples, their conversation has all those awkward silences and half-spoken words.  I guess they didn't heed Nietzsche's words, in Human, All-Too-Human :  "When marrying, one should ask oneself this question:  Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this woman into your old age?" To remedy the silence, the couple orders a conversation from the menu:  Philosophy.  "Have you ever wondered ... just why you're here?" asks the waiter to the couple, trying to help them begin.  "Well, we went to Miami last year," replies Mr. Hendy ingenuously, "and California the year before that, and we've" … "No, no, no...

Marriage is more than your love for each other. It has a higher dignity and power, for it is God's holy ordinance, through which he wills to perpetuate the human race till the end of time. In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to his glory, and calls into his kingdom. In your love, you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal—it is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man. As high as God is above man, so high are the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of marriage above the sanctity, the rights, ...

I wrote the other day about how our lack of "good enough" is destructive in our society -- destructive, particularly, of our humanity.  Our drive for excellence actually betrays a delusion anthropology, a false conception of who we are.  Specifically, I argued that our success ethos presumes that we are gods rather than finite creatures.  The success ethos -- believing we are gods -- presumes that we have inexhaustible resources of time, energy and talent that can be leveraged into greater and greater success, improvement, betterment and excellence. But we aren't gods and we don't have inexhaustible resources.  We are finite.  We have limits.  Only so much energy.  Only so many hours in the day. That is one of the lessons of Lent. Today, I want to expand on that idea, and explore how our culture of shame and lack of vulnerability lead us to feelings of worthlessness.  To feeling that we aren't enough. Ours is what Brown calls in...

James Alison's lecture about " Worship in a Violent World " is one of those little appreciated essays for theological reflection.  As a liturgical theologian, I'm often struck by how boring our worship actually is.  When people complain to me that worship is boring, I want to say to them, along with Alison:  "It's supposed to be boring.  Or at least seriously underwhelming.  It's long term education in becoming un-excited". I was struck yesterday afternoon about how exciting our politics is supposed to be.  In fact, there's little to keep it tame.  More often than not, American political rallies look like Nuremburg rallies to me.  Everything around us -- from political debates to advertising to social media -- attempts to whip us into a frenzy.  A frenzy that, more often than not, is directed against others.  Cable news, talk radio and political blogging are basically a Nuremberg rally, an attempt to anger us and excite us...

I've used David deSilva's Honor, Patronage, Purity, Kinship and Purity in an exegesis course and his Introduction to the New Testament in an introductory course.  So I have a deep admiration for his work. Imagine my surprise when I found these videos on the Book of Revelation.  Well worth the viewing. Lecture 1: Dr. David deSilva Lecture I from Educational Opportunities Tours on Vimeo . Lecture 2: Dr. David deSilva Lecture II from Educational Opportunities Tours on Vimeo . Lecture 3: Dr. David deSilva Lecture III from Educational Opportunities Tours on Vimeo . Lecture 4:  Dr. David deSilva Lecture IV from Educational Opportunities Tours on Vimeo . Lecture 5: Dr. David deSilva Lecture V from Educational Opportunities Tours on Vimeo . Lecture 6: Dr. David deSilva Lecture VI from Educational Opportunities Tours on Vimeo .

In a Facebook debate over the past few days with an intelligent interlocutor over my disagreements with the claims of the Jesus Mythicists , I was yet again accused as an "irresponsible and unreasonable (not to mention immoral and questionable)" debater.  The attacks were sustained throughout our exchange in a variety of barbs. Of particular interest to me, once he defined what he meant by this term, was that I was guilty of "special pleading" (in the sense of ignoring counterevidence).  At that time, I was accused of laying vague claims against the Christ mythers without offering substantial argument against their claims, betraying the fact that I hadn't read and understood their argument. Most of our debate was my interlocutor's attempt to justify those claims.   I found his overblown rhetoric offensive, so I didn't mind calling him on it.  I don't want to devote more attention to an exchange of wits, because that's not a genuine debate....

In the language of Barry Schwartz , I tend to be a satisficer rather than maximizer when it comes to getting things done.  That is, I tend to aim for "good enough" rather than "excellence" or "the best". This tendency of mine sets me at odds with the zeitgeist of our age -- particularly in the world of corporate America -- the pursuit of excellence, being the best or, at the very least, the best you can be. Pushing back against this impulse, I think you shouldn't try to be the best you can be.  I argue that you should settle for being average and good enough rather than for excellence. In fact, I argue we should embrace being a failure. Why would I make that argument?  Consider this my Lenten revelation for today.  It stems from anxiety I've been harboring for several months now about certain aspects of my life.  I now think the pursuit of excellence is sitting atop a lie, a fear-driven lie. The root of this lie is that excellence -- ...

A few days ago, I'd written on the toxicity of purity when it comes to Christian spirituality.  Today, I want to explore this from a bit different angle:  The question of hospitality. Holiness is driven by a purity psychology that, given the features of that psychology, undermines lives of welcome and compassion.  But a concern is raised that if welcome and compassion are privileged -- or perhaps over privileged -- where does spiritual formation take place?  Where are Christian virtues modeled, practiced, and acquired?  Where is saintliness and sanctity promoted, even expected ? So, where does holiness fit in? I think these are deep questions that deserve some real thinking. The people I tend to hold up as hospitality exemplars -- people who showed radical compassion -- are very often people of great holiness and sanctity.  People of worship, prayer, moral discipline, and religious observance.  I'm thinking here of people like Doroth...

Not so long ago, I entered into a debate with someone on Facebook.  (I know, big shock, right?)  The debate centered around a complex of issues that went something like this:  He'd claimed that Jesus' command to "love your neighbors" was an exclusive claim.  Specifically, that the likes of Westboro Baptist represented far better what Jesus actually meant than my type of "namby-pamby, liberal love fest".  I attempted to illustrate then -- though largely in a dissatisfactory way, since he dismissed my argument in appeal to Paul -- that that was furthest from what the New Testament actually had in mind. True, we Christians bang on about love.  God is love, some say .  Practice loving-kindness, others commend .  And my interlocutor found it hard to know what sense to make of these sentiments.  I'll openly admit they do so easily lose weight and meaning in a thousand repetitions.  Or there's the claim that love reveals and is the fundam...

Hanging over his desk, Karl Barth kept a painting of the Isenheim Alterpiece.  I remember well his comment from Church Dogmatics : One might recall John the Baptist in Grunewald's Crucifixion , especially his prodigious index finger.  Could anyone point away from himself more impressively and completely? As we walk into the first Sunday during Lent -- on which we remember Jesus' temptation in the wilderness -- I'm struck by how seldom we talk about discipleship as diminishing ourselves .  In the Gospel of Mark, in what is perhaps one of the most remarkable sequences in the New Testament, we have a picture of what this might mean that's so easily glossed over.  Since it's Lent, I want to walk through that text. It begins with Peter's confession in 8.29, "You are the Messiah".  But Peter doesn't understand what this means.  Jesus immediately describes what "Messiah" will look like (8.31):  "He then began to teach them tha...

With the retirement of the Pope , not a few of my friends again expressed vitriol of the Catholic Church and Benedict for the sex abuse scandals that current rock the faithful (for better than a decade now!).  Yes, Benedict has overseen the Church during some of its leanest times (at least in modern memory).  Yes, the abuse of children -- whether sexual or physical or mental -- is criminal and deserves redress.  Yes, the Pope seems to have colluded with other leaders in the Church to make that redress impossible.  Yes, the Pope and these leaders should be held to account -- morally and legally -- for their failures in protecting the smallest and most vulnerable of God's people.  (If I were a conspiracy nut, and wanted to believe that the Pope's resignation was nefarious , I'd be even more vitriolic, but I don't believe the conspiracy so that's a non-starter here.) I've grown tired of the memes that circulate around the Pope that depict him as an evil force....

I'm constantly struck by how Jesus' imperative to "love your enemies" is a message that hasn't quite sank in for we Christians in America.  It is, after all, a rather inconvenient truth that the Gospel calls for as much.  In a time and place where "standing up for Jesus" means being confrontational (at least) and violent (at most), the humility of the Gospel seems a far cry from the passions of most of us Christians. Instead, we have bumper stickers that read, "Love your enemies ... it pisses them off" or "Love your enemies ... nothing annoys them so much".  Sure, they're funny.  But they actually diminish what Jesus said on the subject.  Those bumper stickers aim for a love of enemy whose goal is something quite negative.  Because Jesus went immediately from "love your enemies" to "do good", "bless" and "pray for" them (Luke 6.27-28).  Yeah, it'll astonish your enemies, but that'...

If you follow any of the blogs I do, you'll already be aware of the tempest brewing in the evangelical teapot over its "purity culture".  I'm not going to rehash most of that. I'm a man, after all, so what I would have to say about it theologically would be asymmetrical.  I don't experience this pressure as much as do women.  That's because the shame associated with the evangelical purity culture is immense for women, not men.  As a man it's not my place to tell that story, or unpack that shame and damage.  So let me suggest the powerful "I am Damaged Goods" by Sarah Bessey and "Virginity: New and Improved!" by Elizabeth Esther. What I can add to this conversation -- and bring to the attention of those who counsel young men and women for "sexual purity" in the Church -- is just how toxic all this talk is.  I can point out that we, as a Church, should let go of this very spiritually toxic language.  And that's ...

I am drawn, most of my readers will already know, to the Christus Victor model of Christology and salvation.  (In fact, I think this model makes the most sense of the biblical material in the NT, but that's for another day.)  Right now, I want to focus on the Christus Victor and the Lord's Prayer. This prayer is, after all, the "model" prayer that most of us know.  We pray it regularly in our liturgies.  It's shaped so much of how I personally know to pray.  And most of us are more familiar with the version found in Matthew 6 than the one found in Luke 6, so I'll focus my attention on the Matthean version here.  In particular, for today, I want to focus on verse 13: NIV:  "And lead us not into temptation, / but deliver us from the evil one ." KJV:  "And lead us not into temptation, / but deliver us from evil ..." ESV:  "And lead us not into temptation, / but deliver us from evil ." ASV:  "And bring us not into t...

Ever since Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics became affordable (about 2004), more folks have asked whether they should try to tackle it. Why? Well, for starters, it's Barth.  He's been called the 20th century's equivalent of a "church father".  So when you have the chance to read Barth, there's always a previous question:  " Should I read Barth?" It is, after all, just over 10,000 pages of small print.  The answer of course is, "Yes".  I think everyone should read some Barth.  (As influential as Barth was on the culture -- he was featured in Time magazine in 1962, after all -- the kind editors at Encyclopedia Brittannica agree with me, and included his The Word of God and the Word of Man in their "Great Books of the Western World", second series, in Volume 55 .) So, I'm often asked how best to read Barth.  This is my advice. 1.  Get the overview. Because the Church Dogmatics   is such a massive work, it hel...