December 2006 Archives

Farewell to President Ford.

I am a big fan of Clarence Jordan -- not just for his stuff on the Sermon on the Mount, but also for his clever translations. Thanks to iMonk.

Here's a blog series -- I'm linking to the site -- that is a "virtual book" on how to read the Bible. Good one, Ken.

1. This beach was big enough for us -- partly because I sat up yonder under a palm tree's gentle, breezy shades!
2. A review of my Mary book that reflects the spirit of Mary herself -- thanks Greg. Ted Gossard is now finished reviewing Embracing Grace -- thanks Ted for such a thoughtful and thorough series.
3. Here's a good listing of outrageous fees we are sometimes asked to pay.
4. The Best Quotes of the Year.
5. Rob, we too drive through the neighborhoods to see the lights. If you ever get to Freeport Illinois at Christmas, make sure you see the "cherry tree"!
6. What would you do differently? Besides listen to Jim Martin's short reflection, I'd learn to use gadgets the way Jim can.
7. We haven't seen the movie yet, but here's a nice story about what happened.
8. A good place to start with Mark Roberts' reflections on Dickens. I read the book every Christmas, and have done so for more than a decade.
9. We might ponder 2007 with this clear reminder from Michael Kruse.
10. A good friend has had a good year!
11. I'm not sure we needed to know this.

Somewhere between the "sun and New York City" this was seen:

Nonsense of the Year.

There are two uses of memory according to the 5th chp of Miroslav Volf's The End of Memory. There is literal memory and exemplary memory. What we do with our memories is what matters most -- do we "do" literal or exemplary with our memory?

Literal memory constructs a plausible (even truthful) narrative of injustice in order to create personal well-being. Exemplary memory constructs a narrative of injustice in order to create justice in this world; it finds "lessons."

How, for instance, do we remember the churches we grew up in? Do we remember them literally -- to prove ourselves right -- or in an exemplary fashion -- to help establish an even better church?

Volf observes that it is not simple: even if we are committed to exemplary memory, do we abuse the memory in order to create a reactive reality? We tend to blur the victim and the victimizer and we at times find it difficult to know which lesson to draw from our memory.

Here's a big, big point: exemplary memory only works when memory is saturated into a larger narrative so that we can develop a principled opposition to injustice, so that the exemplary lesson is a just lesson.

How to do this? There are four elements in an exemplary memory, and he draws these from the Jewish and Christian practice of remembering the Exodus and the Lord's Supper.

1. Identity: Exodus and Cross memories shape identity.
2. Community: Exodus and Cross emerge from and shape a community.
3. Future: Exodus and Cross are not only memory but they frame the future.
4. God: Exodus and Cross are not just social events, but God's intervention and promise.

Volf has now led us to this: for memories to be redemptive, they have to be memories that -- like Exodus and Cross -- are memories shaped by a larger Jewish or Christian narrative that gives shape to how we learn to remember injustices.

Next week: no Friday is for Friends. We remain friends, of course, but we'll be in transit from Ixtapa to Chicago. I'll resume in two weeks.

Where do we get our morals? Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, chps. 6-7, dedicates much ink to spilling out his theory of morals. He is bound to do two things: demonstrate that morals are an evolutionary deposit in humans (through natural selection) and prove that religious morals are madness.

In essence, Dawkins draws upon his famous book, The Selfish Gene, to demonstrate that morals are the result of natural selection. Species that survive are altruistic -- disinterested concern for others -- in that they:

1. favor their own genetic kin,
2. they have a reciprocal "concern" for others,
3. they act in a way that protects their reputation, and
4. they act in ways that promotes dominance.

He posits -- he cannot prove -- that natural selection programmed our brains to have altruistic urges.

He attempts to answer the question of why be good if there is no God? He remonstrates with those who think they are only good because they want to live before God. Do we really need policing from God to be good?, he asks. He favors utilitarianism (Bentham, James and J.S. Mill) -- for it clearly favors a natural explanation of morals. He does not think morals have to be absolute to be morals.

Chp 7 is a display of acid. What it is is two things: a long diatribe against the morality of the Old Testament and the New Testament, and at the same time a contentious (but unproven) line that our morals today are not based on the Bible but on other factors. I say unproven because (1) he does not show the origins of the morals of those who call themselves Christians and (2) he does not show that Christians root their morals in non-biblical factors.

He sketches elements of the Bible that he finds morally objectionable, not dealing adequately or fairly with those elements that are the sole basis for the enlightened morality he holds dear. His survey is heated, though: he excoriates the God of Genesis and Judges and Exodus and Numbers... "The Bible," he says, "may be an arresting and poetic work of fiction, but it is not the sort of book you should give your children to form their morals" (247). "What makes my jaw drop is that people today shold base their lives on such an appalling role model as Yahweh" (248).

He affirms Jesus -- evidently thinking that when Jesus says things he likes they must no longer be fiction -- but ridicules atonement and original sin and the use of the cross as a religious symbol. Atonement is vicious, sado-masochistic, repellent, barking mad and viciously unpleasant. He sums it up with this: "Jesus had himself tortured and executed, in vicarious punishment for a symbolic sin committed by a non-existent individual [Adam]" (253).

He thinks the love our neighbor command, and here he depends on John Hartung, is "in-group morality" that involves "out-group hostility" (254ff).

By trotting out these examples, Dawkins thinks he is doing two things: first, he is ridiculing the morals of the Bible and, second, showing that our morals today are not derived from the Bible. But, he makes a logical mistake of the first order: not only does he narrow his biblical concerns to what he objects to, but he does not develop the foundational and always developing moral statements of the Old and New Testaments -- even forgetting their ongoing development in the Church -- that form the basis for contemporary morality. In other words, by narrowing his sights, he fails to see that the morals he advocates are in fact biblical! How so?
Here are his rough and ready list of universal morals:

1. Do to others what you have them do to you.
2. Strive to cause no harm.
3. Treat everything with love, honesty, faithfulness, and respect.
4. Do not shrink from justice, but be ready to forgive.
5. Live with joy and wonder.
6. Seek to learn something new.
7. Test all things against the facts.
8. Respect dissent.
9. Form independent opinions by reason and experience.
10. Question everything.
11. Enjoy your sex life; don't worry about the sex life of others.
12. No discrimination on the basis of sex, race or species.
13. Do not indoctrinate your children.
14. Value the future on a timescale longer than your own.

RJS:

In Ch. 7 Dawkins’ wit and venom is directed primarily against Christianity and against Judaism as the precursor of Christianity. The Old Testament is ridiculed through emphasis of extreme examples in the Pentateuch and Judges. It is interesting in this discussion that Dawkins takes a tenacious hold on the fundamentalist view that the OT is either 100% literal or 100% untrustworthy. He denies the possibility that myth or story could comprise part of the inspiration of scripture as it undermines his position that the moral authority of the OT must be dismissed. With respect to the NT, I find it interesting that the principle points singled out by Dawkins’ for ridicule are (1) the doctrine of the atonement and (2) the book of Revelation. The moral teaching of the majority of the NT is unacknowledged - or explained away as extrabiblical, although, as Scot has pointed out, his morals are largely biblical.

Dawkins finishes the chapter with a discussion of the rapidly changing moral Zeitgeist of the twentieth and now twenty-first centuries. Expressions and attitudes that seemed reasonable to Martin Luther, that were commonplace in the 1800’s or even the 1950’s are unthinkable by today’s standards. Books from the 30’s or even 50’s are appallingly racist or sexist. Dawkins doesn’t note this example - but upon rereading even several of the books from the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis are troublesome by current standards. Dawkins’ view is that this trend is a positive evolution reflecting the loosening hold of traditional religion - which is, by its nature, invested in the preservation of “in-group loyalty” and “out-group hostility.”

But is not this evolution in fact part and parcel of New Testament theology? Consistent with the redemptive trend and universal inclusiveness of the Gospel - and by this I don’t mean universalism; I mean that the NT Gospel has no “in-group” or “out-group” defined by anything other than faith in Christ. It is inclusive of all who care to embrace it irrespective of race, ethnicity, social standing, or class. As an interesting aside Dawkins notes the Orthodox and Conservative Jewish prayer as an example of the divisiveness inherent in religion “Blessed are you for not making me a Gentile. Blessed are you for not making me a woman. Blessed are you for not making me a slave.” (p. 259) Compare this with Galatians 3:28 “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” What do you think of Dawkins’ contention that the evolution toward equality of persons in western civilization reflects an increase in education and the weakened credibility of religion in general and Christian belief or the Church in particular?

"It was good for me that I was humbled, so that I might learn Your laws" (119:71). Abraham learned this in Egypt; Moses learned this in the wilderness; neither Saul nor Solomon evidently did; David sure did. Josiah learned it well and he learned it young. Both Peter and Paul learned it -- both the hard way.

Neither you nor I know specifically what the psalmist means specifically; and neither would most know what we meant by such references if we were to write down a few psalms of our own.

Maybe he learned this from the sufferings inflicted from those opposed to God's ways. It seems he did.

If we focus our attention on the sufferings and humiliations of the psalmist, though, we'd miss the point. Had he wanted us to know what he suffered he would have told us. Instead, his whole point has direction: "so that I mgith learn Your laws." He learned to do what God said -- that is his point. He prayed to learn, and learn he did.

Those who learn from their mistakes the way God intends will focus a lot less on their mistakes and a lot more on what they learn: obedience, trust, love.

When some of you read this today Kris and I, with kids and spouses, will be en route to Ixtapa, Mexico. We'll send some pictures this year from the beach we love. We left our home in good hands.