The Little Friar

Some years ago, I taught our introductory theology course utilizing the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments, much in the tradition of Luther's Catechism .  So I was excited to find Hooker's richly developed biblical theology of the Ten Commandments as a modern call for the Christian moral life.  After his excellent introductory chapter on the significance and background of the "Ten Words" of Moses, he launches into a chapter-length treatment of each of the Commandments from five perspectives:  The ancient near eastern background; the original meaning; the way that commandment was remembered in Israel's history; the New Testament remembering of the particular commandment; and, finally, its contemporary meaning and application.   The concluding chapter offers a theological perspective on the role of these commandments in the contemporary Church.   Rooker, as I said, has given us a rich biblical theology of the Ten Commandments.  He constantly reminds us of...

It's 5.45am.  I've been awake now for 3 hours, after tossing-and-turning the two hours before that.  In all, it's been a restless night.   So many things have my mind racing.  Not the least of which, how to respond to certain situations -- I'll spare everyone the details -- that initially wanted to release my anger.  Now, I'm far more sad.  Responding in anger, I think, is easy.  Anger is the emotive response our culture does well.  We know how to respond in anger to those who abuse or mistreat us, or those we know.  Finding myself emotively angry, even if justifyingly  so in others' eyes, isn't necessarily wrong.  It's all in what we Christians do  with such anger.   Because, let's be honest, anger controls us -- controls me  -- in ways we hardly want to admit.  We are taught that our anger (along with our happiness) are truer, more trustworthy emotions.  I shouldn't deny them, sublimate or control them, be...

Clayton Lockett was convicted in 1999 of the murder of Stephanie Neiman.  Lockett was also convicted of the violent rape of Neiman's friend.  Both of them had disturbed Lockett, who'd broken into Neiman's home in a robbery.  According to the prosecution, Neiman had been buried alive and left to die.   Lockett's "botched" execution in Oklahoma last night has sparked the American debate over the death penalty.  This post is not  about coming down on one side or another of that debate.  Nor is it an attempt to defend Lockett.   Instead, I want to reflect theologically  on the death penalty.  I do intend to present a stark theological account for Christians  against the death penalty.  I opened with the storied facts of Lockett's conviction.  But let's be honest, for we Christians there's no way those facts can cover over the sheer, bloody horror.  I'm not recounting the plot of a novel or some movie.  This isn't CSI...

There are two numbers etched into the American psyche that have forever changed how we think about public policy (foreign and  domestic):  9/11.   In fact, that Tuesday was such an apocalyptic event that Christians in America have never been able to ignore that the only real equivalent in Christian memory is Good Friday.  In the days after 9/11/2001, we were just like the disciples on that Good Friday:  Dazed, confused, disbelieving, grieving, angry.  We were all  afraid of the terror.  The disciples were sure that the Roman terror unleashed on Jesus would be unleashed on them.  And we Christians in America were afraid that the terror of that day would become "business as usual". For the followers of Jesus, there were two days of eclipse then -- resurrection!  An even more apocalyptic event for them than Jesus' crucifixion.  Why? The resurrection of Jesus in the Jewish mindset made them think it was the end-times.  God would no...

Someone asked recently why I chose Bonhoeffer to spend so much of my academic career studying.  To respond is part biography and part theology.  I came to Bonhoeffer through his Discipleship .  But the story of being captivated by Bonhoeffer begins much earlier and in a different place.  It begins as a senior in high school, reading Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil .  Herr Fredrich's account if ethics as the attempt of others to control and lord over the weak explained a good deal of my world, in teen angst.  As Nietzsche maintained, it is only in moving "beyond good and evil" -- beyond the ethics of Kant's "categorical imperative" and Mill's "utilitarian calculus" -- that true human flourishing happens.  In college, then, I discovered the existentialist psychology of Paul Tillich.  Tillich's synthesis of Nietzschean ethic (what he calls "the courage to be") along with a very complex re-reading of Christian theology, made bein...

Thus far, I've been articulating an understanding of the powers and principalities that hopes to reclaim living humanly as the heart of the NT vision.  What drives my theology is theodicy -- the problem of suffering, the problem of death.  Living Christianly, I've been trying to say, is nothing more than living humanly in the midst of death.  If Americans are dehumanized by the violence of babel and brutalized in the social chaos wrought by the demonic powers and principalities, how can a person live?   How can a person live?   How can a person live in the midst of death, in the face of demonic, dehumanizing forces? The answer, I think, comes in resistance to evil .  Resistance toward death is the only human way to live.  Resistance is what gives us hope.  The biblical response -- again, an answer which also has empirical authority -- is that hope is known only in the midst of coping with death.  It is a person's involvement in that crisis...

My last post tried to lay out my notion that America is Revelation's Babylon.  For Dr King -- and for me -- any adequate biblical understanding of America must take seriously that America is a political incarnation of the New Testament's "principalities and powers".  If want to further that argument by offering its biblical contrast.  As America is Babylon, I want to articulate Dr King's "Dream" -- an incarnational theology that centers on Jesus and is expressed in a sacramental ethic.  Let me be clear from the start:   I'm a biblical realist .  There's  no other place actually known to human beings, except this world as it is -- the place where life is at once being lived; there are no other places for which to search or yearn or hope -- no utopia, no paradise, no otherworldly afterlife; and no limbo either. What Dr King expressed wasn't some "pie in the sky" pipe dream.  Dr King was a preacher.  And his criticism of America came ...

This afternoon, I've been thinking about a question someone posed in regards to a particular situation (I'll spare you the details):  "Was it adultery for me to kiss a man on New Years at a party who isn't my husband?" Now, on the surface the question seems odd.  While demonstrating any sexual intimacy with a person is  adultery, a kiss isn't necessarily so.  The problem with kissing is that our culture reserves it largely for sexual purposes.  But that isn't entirely true.  I can offer my friends a "kiss of peace", much as Meditteranean cultures do.  So, I'm left with a question:   What is there to say Christianly  about adultery ? We all know the old -- and simple -- injunction from Exodus 20:  "Do not commit adultery".  But we often forget the way in which Jesus expands adultery in Matthew 5.27-32.  "Whoever looks with lust on another has committed adultery already in the heart".  The Bible is full of references about h...

The church's new year begins on the First Sunday of Advent.  The church year, as many of you know, is structured around following Jesus through life as his disciples.  So, every three years we cycle through the Gospels.  This year is the year of Matthew.   In beginning the Gospel where few of us do -- with the "back story" of Israel's story the culminates in Jesus the Messiah -- Matthew 1 has an interesting beginning that brings into question our notions of where God might actually begin his story:  In scandal.   Let's take a closer look at the  genealogy of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew 1.1-17: A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham: Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahsh...

I don't celebrate Veteran's Day.  And each year I'm asked why.  So, in advance of the day, let me lay out my thinking here.  Veteran's Day in the US has its roots in Armistace Day.  Armistace Day was remembered on the 11th day of the 11th month each year, as a reminder of those who died in the violent Great War (World War I).  The idea in Armistace Day wasn't to glorify the dead, but to mourn them.  The idea of Armistace Day was to reject that "old lie; Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" (to quote Wildred Owen's poem that quotes Horace:  "It is sweet and right to die for your country").   It is  a lie, of course, for Christians.  Because Veteran's Day is predicated not on mourning dead and praying for peace.  It is the lie that the dead we mourn sacrificed themselves for peace.  For Christians, there is only one sacrifice that brings peace, through the forgiveness of sins like violence -- that's the sacrifice of Jesus. ...

As a minister and college prof, I've often been asked advice on drinking.   And I sometimes am put in a tough position in responding.  For example, A few  years ago I was on a panel discussing "good decisions" out in front of Spring Break.  Alcohol was a major topic.  At the time, according to the Student Handbook, no student, even those of legal drinking age, was allowed to drink alcohol, on or off campus.  Obviously, there was no way to enforce this policy.  Yet we knew that plenty of students would be drinking over Spring Break.  Hence the need for the panel.  But how were we to address this reality?  Because if we openly admitted the reality of students' drinking this admission would seem to condone violating the code of conduct in the Student Handbook.  That is, if you said, "Hey, we know many of you are going to drink, so if you do here's some advice ..." you would be seen as encouraging rule-breaking, or at least going easy o...