In Memoriam
Thanks so much to everyone who sent prayers and condolences my way.
I'm going to spend the weekend in San Francisco for the memorial service, so there will be no blogging for a few more days. However, a few days ago I wrote an email to Telford about my friend, which he said was the sort of thing that should be read at the service. I don't think that'll happen, but in lieu of that I'll reprint most of it here:
I've been thinking about the influence John had on my
current "walk." I didn't talk about him a lot to you,
but I think he had a profound influence. There were a
few important Christians in my life before you, and
definitely he was one of the most important.
I met him in 1996, when he arrived as a temp at the
office where I used to work. He had lived in SF for
about a year then, I think -- he grew up in the
Central Valley. He really didn't have any friends
there. Like me, he was pretty slow at socializing. If
you think you're a geek, he was a GEEK. He had a huge
collection of comic books and could tell you all the
ins and outs of the relations between the Federation
and the Klingon Empire. He lacked social skills and
had this weird, affected way of talking (one friend
said he sounded exactly like Roger Thornhill in North
by Northwest). He also suffered from frequent
depression, which I think came at least partly from
his diabetes, which was then undiagnosed.
So he didn't exactly bowl me over on first impression,
but gradually we became friends. He invited me to the
First Covenant Church, which he had been going to
since he moved to SF, and I went to a few services
there. We then got into a protracted series of debates
about Christianity, much like I've been having with
you. This went on for a while until it pretty much
came to a deadlock, and thereafter we dropped the
subject. But we kept seeing each other socially.
One day shortly after this he called me up and
announced, "I'm going to say a bunch of things that
are going to annoy you and make you want to hang up."
"Uh...OK."
This time it wasn't about God, though. He had called
me to tell me he had developed a crush on me. It kind
of vexed him because he had told himself he would only
date Christians, but he wanted to go out with me.
I did go out with him, once. But I had to give him the
whole I-like-you-but-not-in-that-way thing.
After essentially being rejected twice, he would have
been forgiven for not having much to do with me. But
that, you might say, is where the real witnessing
started. He remained an utterly steadfast friend; in
fact I became almost like his virtual girlfriend,
because we did so many things together. One woman we
knew said we seemed like an old married couple, we
were so much on the same wavelength.
Over time, I also saw the effect the church was having
on John. When we met he was new there and didn't know
anyone there well, but the community didn't judge his
weirdness and really embraced him. Slowly he
blossomed, and became a lot less gloomy and more
confident. I was pleased, because for a while his
social life was basically just me, and I knew I was
inadequate...
After I moved to L.A., naturally, we had a lot less
contact. And when he started seeing his girlfriend Ina
about a year ago (they met through an Internet
matching service, of all things), I was no longer the
woman in his life. I think that worsened my
disaffection last year. When he came down last summer
to visit Ina (and me) he saw what a funk I was in and
all but ordered me to spend a weekend in SF with him.
I did that in September. But he just wasn't able to
deal with the magnitude of my troubles.
I think it was partly because of the whole experience
with John that I turned to you, and to CA. I think the
love that the church showed for him, and that he
showed for me, led me to hope that love could be found
there. If it could rescue one screwed-up nerd, why not
another?
It's a shame you never met him, but I know he was
really happy I connected with you and with CA. I think
he was glad you could provide the 'ministry' that he
couldn't, much as I was glad the church provided him
the emotional support that I couldn't. I think if you
do meet on one of the golden streets of the New
Jerusalem, he'll thank you. I like to think we will be
there, because it hurts too much to think anything
else.
Thursday, April 24, 2003
Monday, April 21, 2003
Devastation
Shortly after I posted the last post, I got a call telling me one of my closest friends had died. I don't think I'll be posting a lot in the near future. But those of you who pray (and I know there are at least a few of you!), please think of my friend John and all his family and friends.
Shortly after I posted the last post, I got a call telling me one of my closest friends had died. I don't think I'll be posting a lot in the near future. But those of you who pray (and I know there are at least a few of you!), please think of my friend John and all his family and friends.
Two kingdoms
As I mentioned a while back, for the last few months I've been volunteering for a food giveaway the Christian Assembly does in Watts. I have long wanted to do work for the poor, and this was a good start. But it's only once a month, and I'd like to do more. CA, however, has just been developing its charities in the last few years, and it doesn't have anything else going on locally.
I asked around about programs at other churches I might get into, and one person at Alpha directed me to All Saints. All Saints is a very different animal from the CA; it's an old Episcopal church in downtown Pasadena, known for its liberalism. Telford was actually baptized there as an infant, but his Republican family left after a few years because the clergy was getting into Vietnam War protests. The church is still highly politicized -- if you go to the main page on the website, you'll see a picture of a rector getting arrested while protesting the Iraq war. But the church is also known for its efforts to help the local poor and homeless and so on, which is what the Alpha leader thought would interest me. And Telford, who is nothing if not ecumenical (at least within Christianity) invited me to go to the Good Friday service, which his family attends every year.
The difference between CA and All Saints starts with the architecture. CA is a plain modern building with a modern (and fairly ugly) hexagonal sanctuary; All Saints is a traditional stone church with a vaulted ceiling, stained-glass windows and elaborately carved altar and pulpit. At CA you can take or leave the programs that they hand to you when you come in, because the service is so unstructured. At All Saints you'd better pick one up or you'll be totally lost, because everything is ritualized and scheduled.
The music is also quite different. As I've described before, CA has a rock-type band, and you pick up the songs by ear (though fortunately they project the lyrics on overhead screens). All Saints has two choirs, with the good Anglican names of the Canterbury Choir and the Coventry Choir, and the singalong parts of the program are printed as sheet music in the liturgy. They do a mixture of old hymns, classical devotionals by folks like Bach and Beethoven, modern-classical pieces, and what used to be called Negro spirituals. I was kind of skeptical about the last, because those songs always sound goofy sung in the classical style, especially in dialect. So I was shocked when, about halfway through a song called, "He Never Said a Mumbalin' Word," I had tears in my eyes. Those black spirituals can rip your heart out, even in the middle of a tony Episcopal church.
The mood of the whole thing was appropriately somber, and I liked that. Pentecostals are good at joyfulness, but it can get to be irritating sometimes, especially when you aren't feeling so joyful yourself. Sorrow is part of life, and a church that does it well can be valuable in its own way. CA also doesn't do much of anything meditative or inward, and I had missed that. There's a song the band does occasionally that would make a neat meditation: "Here I am, seeking after you/Listening for your still, small voice..." But whenever they play it everything goes full-throttle before you know it, with people standing and stretching their arms in the air. It always makes me think, can't we scale it back once in a while?
I didn't talk to anyone on staff when I went on Friday, but I noticed on the website that there was to be a "newcomers coffee" on Sunday morning. I decided to go to that and then stick around for the late Easter service.
When I arrived, I asked an usher to direct me to the rector's office for the coffee.
"Actually, I don't think there is a newcomers' coffee this morning," he said.
"It says so on the website," I protested.
"Well, that doesn't mean anything," he said.
And indeed, there wasn't one; everybody was too busy with Easter. So I hung around a while thinking about the fact that churches would really be a lot more seeker-friendly if they actually gave a !@# about their websites. If you look at the CA's site, it's little more than a glorified Yellow Pages listing. I remember one time I wasn't sure when the next Watts visit would be, and my mother said, "Why don't you look it up on the website?" I replied, "You'd think it would be there, wouldn't you?" But it has nothing about that, or about small group activities or any special events. You wouldn't know that the schedule changed for Easter weekend, or that you had to park in a different lot. That information was given out in previous services.
In a way there's something charming about this reliance on old-fashioned communication, but it's pretty unfriendly to anyone who isn't already networked in. I realize CA might just not have enough volunteer geeks to keep the site updated, but All Saints' site is fairly extensive, so I don't know why they'd put up with inaccurate information.
But I digress.
The priest's sermon at the Easter service also magnified the subcultural difference between the two churches. In a way, their makeup isn't that different -- the racial mix is about the, and they're both basically middle-class. But the priest started out his sermon talking about the big Matisse/Picasso exhibit he'd visited while in London recently, and analogized the two artists' different takes on the same subjects to the four Gospels' different takes on the same story. The CA pastor, on the other hand, favors analogies about surfing.
The priest also spoke about -- and defended -- the church's anti-war activism. Some say church and politics don't mix, he said, but he believed he could not truly follow Christ and steer clear of involvement. The Prince of Peace had no tolerance for violence.
This was interesting to me because the way Telford first caught my attention (though he didn't realize it) was in a debate last summer about pacifism. (If you didn't see it at the time, start here and keep scrolling up.) Telford also believes Christians should not commit violence, but he does not think they should promote pacifism by way of state power. To do so would confuse the kingdom of God with the earthly kingdoms.
In a way, I sympathize with them both. The whole reason Telford's words so impressed me back then was that they called to an idealism in me that had almost disappeared under layers of armor I had built up against the world. Especially after 9/11, many people turned angry and hateful towards the enemies of the U.S.; and yet the secular peace activists often seemed equally angry and hateful. I was drawn to the hope that there is still room for compassion in this world, despite all the heartbreak.
Is the attitude of All Saints' priest the logical extension of this compassion? In a way it seems so, and yet his case was not airtight. For one thing, he lapsed into that frequent failing of political Christians, speaking outside his area of expertise. Talk soon moved away from the ideals of Christ towards practical ideas of how to deal with the current conflict, through international law and so on, that seem like a matter of policy on whose efficacy people with the same goals can disagree. They should not be confused with religious doctrine. (Leftist Christians are hardly the only guilty parties here; the Assemblies of God, for instance, opines in its doctrine that pornography isn't covered by the First Amendment.)
But the larger problem, I think, was that he often made the anti-war argument through its supposed temporal consequences. War only begets more war, this war will beget more terrorists, etc. But I think any honest discussion of war has to admit that it often works, at least in the sense of achieving its objectives. Sometimes, a whole lot of people really are bettter off for it. That may be the case for this as well. The difficulty of opposing war -- as with many sins -- is not that it fails but that it succeeds.
Lately a lot of warbloggers have been engaged in a utilitarian calculus, weighing the war dead against the benefits to the surviving Iraqis and to us. Such calculations are sensible, but they're also horrible. If you look upon people as more than scoring-marks, you should wonder: isn't there a better way?
In that sense, I think the priest and Telford are on the same page. The priest described three ways to respond to evil: do nothing, fight it violently, and create communities of good within evil. It's the last to which Christians are called, he said; to sit at the table with all comers, even their enemies. I think Telford would agree.
Anywa, there really is a newcomers' coffee next week, so I'll be back.
As I mentioned a while back, for the last few months I've been volunteering for a food giveaway the Christian Assembly does in Watts. I have long wanted to do work for the poor, and this was a good start. But it's only once a month, and I'd like to do more. CA, however, has just been developing its charities in the last few years, and it doesn't have anything else going on locally.
I asked around about programs at other churches I might get into, and one person at Alpha directed me to All Saints. All Saints is a very different animal from the CA; it's an old Episcopal church in downtown Pasadena, known for its liberalism. Telford was actually baptized there as an infant, but his Republican family left after a few years because the clergy was getting into Vietnam War protests. The church is still highly politicized -- if you go to the main page on the website, you'll see a picture of a rector getting arrested while protesting the Iraq war. But the church is also known for its efforts to help the local poor and homeless and so on, which is what the Alpha leader thought would interest me. And Telford, who is nothing if not ecumenical (at least within Christianity) invited me to go to the Good Friday service, which his family attends every year.
The difference between CA and All Saints starts with the architecture. CA is a plain modern building with a modern (and fairly ugly) hexagonal sanctuary; All Saints is a traditional stone church with a vaulted ceiling, stained-glass windows and elaborately carved altar and pulpit. At CA you can take or leave the programs that they hand to you when you come in, because the service is so unstructured. At All Saints you'd better pick one up or you'll be totally lost, because everything is ritualized and scheduled.
The music is also quite different. As I've described before, CA has a rock-type band, and you pick up the songs by ear (though fortunately they project the lyrics on overhead screens). All Saints has two choirs, with the good Anglican names of the Canterbury Choir and the Coventry Choir, and the singalong parts of the program are printed as sheet music in the liturgy. They do a mixture of old hymns, classical devotionals by folks like Bach and Beethoven, modern-classical pieces, and what used to be called Negro spirituals. I was kind of skeptical about the last, because those songs always sound goofy sung in the classical style, especially in dialect. So I was shocked when, about halfway through a song called, "He Never Said a Mumbalin' Word," I had tears in my eyes. Those black spirituals can rip your heart out, even in the middle of a tony Episcopal church.
The mood of the whole thing was appropriately somber, and I liked that. Pentecostals are good at joyfulness, but it can get to be irritating sometimes, especially when you aren't feeling so joyful yourself. Sorrow is part of life, and a church that does it well can be valuable in its own way. CA also doesn't do much of anything meditative or inward, and I had missed that. There's a song the band does occasionally that would make a neat meditation: "Here I am, seeking after you/Listening for your still, small voice..." But whenever they play it everything goes full-throttle before you know it, with people standing and stretching their arms in the air. It always makes me think, can't we scale it back once in a while?
I didn't talk to anyone on staff when I went on Friday, but I noticed on the website that there was to be a "newcomers coffee" on Sunday morning. I decided to go to that and then stick around for the late Easter service.
When I arrived, I asked an usher to direct me to the rector's office for the coffee.
"Actually, I don't think there is a newcomers' coffee this morning," he said.
"It says so on the website," I protested.
"Well, that doesn't mean anything," he said.
And indeed, there wasn't one; everybody was too busy with Easter. So I hung around a while thinking about the fact that churches would really be a lot more seeker-friendly if they actually gave a !@# about their websites. If you look at the CA's site, it's little more than a glorified Yellow Pages listing. I remember one time I wasn't sure when the next Watts visit would be, and my mother said, "Why don't you look it up on the website?" I replied, "You'd think it would be there, wouldn't you?" But it has nothing about that, or about small group activities or any special events. You wouldn't know that the schedule changed for Easter weekend, or that you had to park in a different lot. That information was given out in previous services.
In a way there's something charming about this reliance on old-fashioned communication, but it's pretty unfriendly to anyone who isn't already networked in. I realize CA might just not have enough volunteer geeks to keep the site updated, but All Saints' site is fairly extensive, so I don't know why they'd put up with inaccurate information.
But I digress.
The priest's sermon at the Easter service also magnified the subcultural difference between the two churches. In a way, their makeup isn't that different -- the racial mix is about the, and they're both basically middle-class. But the priest started out his sermon talking about the big Matisse/Picasso exhibit he'd visited while in London recently, and analogized the two artists' different takes on the same subjects to the four Gospels' different takes on the same story. The CA pastor, on the other hand, favors analogies about surfing.
The priest also spoke about -- and defended -- the church's anti-war activism. Some say church and politics don't mix, he said, but he believed he could not truly follow Christ and steer clear of involvement. The Prince of Peace had no tolerance for violence.
This was interesting to me because the way Telford first caught my attention (though he didn't realize it) was in a debate last summer about pacifism. (If you didn't see it at the time, start here and keep scrolling up.) Telford also believes Christians should not commit violence, but he does not think they should promote pacifism by way of state power. To do so would confuse the kingdom of God with the earthly kingdoms.
In a way, I sympathize with them both. The whole reason Telford's words so impressed me back then was that they called to an idealism in me that had almost disappeared under layers of armor I had built up against the world. Especially after 9/11, many people turned angry and hateful towards the enemies of the U.S.; and yet the secular peace activists often seemed equally angry and hateful. I was drawn to the hope that there is still room for compassion in this world, despite all the heartbreak.
Is the attitude of All Saints' priest the logical extension of this compassion? In a way it seems so, and yet his case was not airtight. For one thing, he lapsed into that frequent failing of political Christians, speaking outside his area of expertise. Talk soon moved away from the ideals of Christ towards practical ideas of how to deal with the current conflict, through international law and so on, that seem like a matter of policy on whose efficacy people with the same goals can disagree. They should not be confused with religious doctrine. (Leftist Christians are hardly the only guilty parties here; the Assemblies of God, for instance, opines in its doctrine that pornography isn't covered by the First Amendment.)
But the larger problem, I think, was that he often made the anti-war argument through its supposed temporal consequences. War only begets more war, this war will beget more terrorists, etc. But I think any honest discussion of war has to admit that it often works, at least in the sense of achieving its objectives. Sometimes, a whole lot of people really are bettter off for it. That may be the case for this as well. The difficulty of opposing war -- as with many sins -- is not that it fails but that it succeeds.
Lately a lot of warbloggers have been engaged in a utilitarian calculus, weighing the war dead against the benefits to the surviving Iraqis and to us. Such calculations are sensible, but they're also horrible. If you look upon people as more than scoring-marks, you should wonder: isn't there a better way?
In that sense, I think the priest and Telford are on the same page. The priest described three ways to respond to evil: do nothing, fight it violently, and create communities of good within evil. It's the last to which Christians are called, he said; to sit at the table with all comers, even their enemies. I think Telford would agree.
Anywa, there really is a newcomers' coffee next week, so I'll be back.
Sunday, April 20, 2003
Saturday, April 19, 2003
Holy Saturday
Having decided to keep up the date-appropriate U2 quotes, for Holy Saturday I reach back to a relatively obscure early tune called Tomorrow:
Who broke the window,
Who broke down the door,
Who tore the curtain
And who was He for?
Who healed the wounds,
Who heals the scars?
Open the door
Open the door
Won't you come back tomorrow?
Won't you be back tomorrow?
Will you be back tomorrow?
Can I sleep tonight?
Having decided to keep up the date-appropriate U2 quotes, for Holy Saturday I reach back to a relatively obscure early tune called Tomorrow:
Who broke the window,
Who broke down the door,
Who tore the curtain
And who was He for?
Who healed the wounds,
Who heals the scars?
Open the door
Open the door
Won't you come back tomorrow?
Won't you be back tomorrow?
Will you be back tomorrow?
Can I sleep tonight?
Leviticus 1-7
The Book of Law begins with a long and incredibly detailed description of how to perform animal sacrifices. It sounds gross, but actually I was thinking about the meaning of sacrifice after the substitional atonement sermon last weekend. The pastor justified the concept by, among other things, appealing to the long tradition of animal sacrific in the OT. This struck me as a weird tactic: explain a concept from an alien culture by appealing to an even more alien culture! But it got me to thinking about the meaning of animal sacrifice. Like most moderns I tend to think of it as being rather barbaric, designed to propitiate selfish gods who demand a quid pro quo: give this to me and I'll send you rain, or something to that effect. It also implies gods who have strangely fleshly appetites.
I had a feeling there was more to it than that, though, especially in the case of the ancient Hebrews. Fortuitously, Dexter Haven of the Straight Dope just wrote a thorough column on that very subject. In a way it's an even better source than Leviticus, because the Levitical author(s) assumed the readers already knew a lot. It's worth reading the whole thing, but here are some of the major points:
You might say sacrifice in this case is the sacralization of killing -- the necessary killing of animals in order to eat. It does seem more respectful than the practical butchery we subject animals to today, not to mention the horrid industrial abbatoirs most of them go through.
I expect, though I have not researched the topic enough to really know, that human sacrifice often operated in the same way. Not for eating, obvioualy, but as a way of sacralizing the killing of people who would likely be killed anyway (criminals, prisoners of war, infants who couldn't be fed, etc.) by consecrated the deaths to deities. It's harsh, but again, it seems better than cheapening death. Consider the folks today who show up to revel at executions...
The idea of having to do something to expiate an accidental offense sounds strange at first. But certainly the feeling of guilt, or at least taint, from an accident that had serious consequences is familiar to most people.
I do seem to recall Isaiah saying things to the effect of, "You make sacrifices up the wazoo, but does that mean Yahweh is happy with you? Nooo!" Dex goes on to explain that once the Temple at Jerusalem was destroyed, Jewish authorities ruled that sacrifices could no longer be made because they were supposed to happen only at the Temple. But as Dex points out, they could have gone back to the pre-Temple system of local sacrifice. The real issue may have been that the concept itself had fallen out of favor.
All this is rather interesting to think about in connection to the sacrifice of Jesus that we are now commemorating. Although I think it was Paul who first compared the Crucifixion to a "sin offering," the differences were obvious. Sin offerings only covered inadvertant wrongs; the animal's suffering could not really substitute for human punishment. Moreover, it's not like this was sacralizing a functional death, like an animal to be eaten; Jesus' death was completely about inflicting suffering.
Also, by Paul's day the animal-sacrifice idea was apparently already drifting out of favor within Judaism. Dex says that was one of the things that split the Pharisees and the Sadducees, whom we saw arguing back in Acts. The prophets' charge that God really cares about moral conduct rather than ritual seemed to work its way into both Judaism and Christianity. So appealing to animal sacrifice as a metaphor for the Crucifixion seems a little weird.
I do not, however, claim to have the whole sacrific concept nailed down. It's not a tidy thing. My study notes for Leviticus say:
The Book of Law begins with a long and incredibly detailed description of how to perform animal sacrifices. It sounds gross, but actually I was thinking about the meaning of sacrifice after the substitional atonement sermon last weekend. The pastor justified the concept by, among other things, appealing to the long tradition of animal sacrific in the OT. This struck me as a weird tactic: explain a concept from an alien culture by appealing to an even more alien culture! But it got me to thinking about the meaning of animal sacrifice. Like most moderns I tend to think of it as being rather barbaric, designed to propitiate selfish gods who demand a quid pro quo: give this to me and I'll send you rain, or something to that effect. It also implies gods who have strangely fleshly appetites.
I had a feeling there was more to it than that, though, especially in the case of the ancient Hebrews. Fortuitously, Dexter Haven of the Straight Dope just wrote a thorough column on that very subject. In a way it's an even better source than Leviticus, because the Levitical author(s) assumed the readers already knew a lot. It's worth reading the whole thing, but here are some of the major points:
First, a basic feature of the Israelite sacrificial system, as with that of most ancient Near East cultures, was that most of the offerings were eaten by the priests, and sometimes by the donors of the sacrifice. Eating a ritual meal in the presence of God was considered important, and the sacrifice would not be complete without such a meal. It was not "barbaric," except in the sense that slaughter of animals for meat is barbaric.
Biblical historian Richard Friedman says, "Modern readers often think that sacrifice is the unnecessary taking of animal life, or that the person offering the sacrifice was giving up something to compensate for some sin or to win God's favor. But in the biblical world, the most common type of sacrifice was for meals. The apparent rationale was that if people wanted to eat meat, they must recognize that they were taking life. They could not regard this as an ordinary act of daily secular life. It was a sacred act, to be performance in a prescribed manner, by an appointed person (a priest), at an altar."
You might say sacrifice in this case is the sacralization of killing -- the necessary killing of animals in order to eat. It does seem more respectful than the practical butchery we subject animals to today, not to mention the horrid industrial abbatoirs most of them go through.
I expect, though I have not researched the topic enough to really know, that human sacrifice often operated in the same way. Not for eating, obvioualy, but as a way of sacralizing the killing of people who would likely be killed anyway (criminals, prisoners of war, infants who couldn't be fed, etc.) by consecrated the deaths to deities. It's harsh, but again, it seems better than cheapening death. Consider the folks today who show up to revel at executions...
There were various types of sacrifices:
Burnt offerings ('olah) were certain animals or birds that were entirely burnt (except the hide). No portion was eaten.
Grain offerings (min-khah) could be raw or baked into unleavened bread. A token portion was burned on the altar, and the rest was given to the priests for a meal.
Peace offerings (zevakh shelamim) were a sacred meal, with sections of the sacrifice shared by the priest and donors. Only certain fatty portions of the animal were burned on the altar as God's share. The term is better translated as "gift of greetings" or "offering of well-being."
Expiatory sacrifices are what you're asking about. I was going to say that's the "meat of the matter" but thought better of it. They are primarily described in chapters 5 and 6 of Leviticus. The purpose of such sacrifice was to obtain atonement for one's sins and forgiveness from God. They were usually eaten by the priests...
It is important to say that expiatory sacrifices were only efficacious if the offenses were inadvertent or unwitting. Remember that there was no separation of church and state in those days--religious law was also the law of the land. In the case of crimes or deliberate acts, the law dealt directly with the offender, imposing real punishments and trying to prevent recurrences. The Hebrew prophets denounced the idea that ritual sacrifice could atone for intentional deeds.
The idea of having to do something to expiate an accidental offense sounds strange at first. But certainly the feeling of guilt, or at least taint, from an accident that had serious consequences is familiar to most people.
The first real challenge to the sacrifice system came from the Prophets (during the period from 800 to 580 BC). Max Dimont writes, "What they said was remarkable for their time: that ritual and cult in themselves were of no value to God. Humanity, justice, and morality were superior to any cult. They said God did not want rituals; He wanted higher moral standards from mankind. They said that God abhorred sacrifice [without heartfelt repentance], that it was no sin not to offer sacrifice, that the sin was corruption and the perversion of justice. These were fantastic and daring notions in those days when sacrifice and ritual were religion itself."
I do seem to recall Isaiah saying things to the effect of, "You make sacrifices up the wazoo, but does that mean Yahweh is happy with you? Nooo!" Dex goes on to explain that once the Temple at Jerusalem was destroyed, Jewish authorities ruled that sacrifices could no longer be made because they were supposed to happen only at the Temple. But as Dex points out, they could have gone back to the pre-Temple system of local sacrifice. The real issue may have been that the concept itself had fallen out of favor.
All this is rather interesting to think about in connection to the sacrifice of Jesus that we are now commemorating. Although I think it was Paul who first compared the Crucifixion to a "sin offering," the differences were obvious. Sin offerings only covered inadvertant wrongs; the animal's suffering could not really substitute for human punishment. Moreover, it's not like this was sacralizing a functional death, like an animal to be eaten; Jesus' death was completely about inflicting suffering.
Also, by Paul's day the animal-sacrifice idea was apparently already drifting out of favor within Judaism. Dex says that was one of the things that split the Pharisees and the Sadducees, whom we saw arguing back in Acts. The prophets' charge that God really cares about moral conduct rather than ritual seemed to work its way into both Judaism and Christianity. So appealing to animal sacrifice as a metaphor for the Crucifixion seems a little weird.
I do not, however, claim to have the whole sacrific concept nailed down. It's not a tidy thing. My study notes for Leviticus say:
Sacrifice is a flexible symbol that conveys a variety of possible meanings. The quintessential sacrificial act is the transference of proerty from the profane to the sacred realm; in other words, a gift to the deity. That this notion is also basic to Isralite sacrifice is demonstrated by fundametnal sacrificial terms that connote a gift... To date, however, no single theory can encompass the sacrificial system of any society, even the most primitive.... The common denominator of the sacrifices discuessed in these chapters is that they arise to answer to an unpredictable religious or emotional need and are thereby set apart fromt he sacrifices of the public feasts and fasts that are fixed by the calendar.
Friday, April 18, 2003
Good Friday
So last night I blogged a U2 quote about Maundy Thursday, and today I decided to post another one for Good Friday that's a bit less perverse:
I was there when they crucified my Lord
I held the scabbard when the soldier drew his sword
I threw the dice when they pierced his side
But I've seen love conquer the great divide
So last night I blogged a U2 quote about Maundy Thursday, and today I decided to post another one for Good Friday that's a bit less perverse:
I was there when they crucified my Lord
I held the scabbard when the soldier drew his sword
I threw the dice when they pierced his side
But I've seen love conquer the great divide
Thursday, April 17, 2003
Holy Thursday
Hernan Gonzalez quotes J.R.R. Tolkien:
Wow.
Maybe it's the mood I've been in all week, but I've been thinking all day of the U2 song's version of the Last Supper in the snarky voice of Judas: "We ate the food/Drank the wine/Everybody having a good time/Except you -- you were talking about the end of the world."
Hernan Gonzalez quotes J.R.R. Tolkien:
I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament.... There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that: Death, by the divine paradox, that which ends life and demands the surrender of all, and yet, by the taste (or foretaste) of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man's heart desires.
Wow.
Maybe it's the mood I've been in all week, but I've been thinking all day of the U2 song's version of the Last Supper in the snarky voice of Judas: "We ate the food/Drank the wine/Everybody having a good time/Except you -- you were talking about the end of the world."
Applied science
A researcher at U. Chicago is studying why there's always a line at the women's room. She finds restrooms are equal in square footage but not much else:
Her preferred solution strikes me a little funny:
Yeah, I'll bet they do. Women's rooms have become real social spaces -- thus the oft-noted habit of women to go to them in groups. Plus, women's rooms are great places to check over your clothes and make adjustments you wouldn't want to make in public, which I can't imagine little airplane-type stalls would have room for. The "ladies' lounge" model is probably going to stick, although it's true you don't want to go so far with it you don't have enough actual toilets.
(Via Daniel Drezner.)
A researcher at U. Chicago is studying why there's always a line at the women's room. She finds restrooms are equal in square footage but not much else:
But because urinals are smaller than stalls, “men are almost always offered more excreting opportunities than women,” which likely accounts for longer women’s lines—not women simply taking longer. And more of the space in women’s bathrooms, she notes, is filled with vanity tables, fainting couches, and baby stations.
Her preferred solution strikes me a little funny:
Believing the law rarely should distinguish between males and females, she advocates “a model akin to the typical airline toilet,” providing ultimate privacy without segregation (though she’s learned that many women prefer a same-sex environment).
Yeah, I'll bet they do. Women's rooms have become real social spaces -- thus the oft-noted habit of women to go to them in groups. Plus, women's rooms are great places to check over your clothes and make adjustments you wouldn't want to make in public, which I can't imagine little airplane-type stalls would have room for. The "ladies' lounge" model is probably going to stick, although it's true you don't want to go so far with it you don't have enough actual toilets.
(Via Daniel Drezner.)
Acts 27-28
Paul is shipped off to Rome. This is a complicated business in this era; sailing technology is such that it's hardly a straight shot, but a series of hops between ports, with a lot of waiting around for favorable weather. At one stop on the coast of Crete, Paul warns that if they take off right away they'll lose the ship; and of course, he's right.
A storm hits and drives the ship off couse. It loses its cargo and drifts for weeks. Paul, characteristically, ends up running the show, using his clairvoyance to tell everybody what they have to do to survive. At line 33 he tells the crew, "Today is the fourteenth day that you have been in suspense and remaining without food, having eaten nothing. Therefore I urge you to take some food, for it will help you survive; for none of you will lose a hair from your heads." He breaks bread, and they eat.
I'm puzzled as to why they haven't eaten in so long. They'd probably want to stretch their supplies our as long as possible, given the uncertain future, but two weeks is an inordinately long time to go hungry. I'd think everyone would be going crazy, and it's hard to magine there was food that just sat there that long.
The ship finally wrecks on the island of Malta, where they stay for a few months while Paul does healings. Come springtime, they finally hitch a ride on another ship and finally make it to Rome. There Paul preaches to local Jews and meets with a mixed reception, and says again that he'll take the word to gentiles.
And there, abruptly, Acts ends.
I must say, Acts has been more fun the second time around. I think stopping and writing about every chapter (well, almost every chapter) is a good way to do it, because trying to read it straight through you get lost in all the characters and subplots. Luke's narrative style takes some getting used to.
I'm kind of sorry it's over. Especially since the next book is Leviticus.
Paul is shipped off to Rome. This is a complicated business in this era; sailing technology is such that it's hardly a straight shot, but a series of hops between ports, with a lot of waiting around for favorable weather. At one stop on the coast of Crete, Paul warns that if they take off right away they'll lose the ship; and of course, he's right.
A storm hits and drives the ship off couse. It loses its cargo and drifts for weeks. Paul, characteristically, ends up running the show, using his clairvoyance to tell everybody what they have to do to survive. At line 33 he tells the crew, "Today is the fourteenth day that you have been in suspense and remaining without food, having eaten nothing. Therefore I urge you to take some food, for it will help you survive; for none of you will lose a hair from your heads." He breaks bread, and they eat.
I'm puzzled as to why they haven't eaten in so long. They'd probably want to stretch their supplies our as long as possible, given the uncertain future, but two weeks is an inordinately long time to go hungry. I'd think everyone would be going crazy, and it's hard to magine there was food that just sat there that long.
The ship finally wrecks on the island of Malta, where they stay for a few months while Paul does healings. Come springtime, they finally hitch a ride on another ship and finally make it to Rome. There Paul preaches to local Jews and meets with a mixed reception, and says again that he'll take the word to gentiles.
And there, abruptly, Acts ends.
I must say, Acts has been more fun the second time around. I think stopping and writing about every chapter (well, almost every chapter) is a good way to do it, because trying to read it straight through you get lost in all the characters and subplots. Luke's narrative style takes some getting used to.
I'm kind of sorry it's over. Especially since the next book is Leviticus.
Wednesday, April 16, 2003
Accept no substitutes
I mentioned in my Palm Sunday post that I wasn't having a great day, so I reminisced about last year instead. I'm not going to go into all the troubles with Sunday, but one thing that didn't help was that the sermon that day was all about our old friend, substitutional atonement. The pastor described the theory, emphasized its centrality to Christianity, and got the crowd all roused about how great it was.
After the service, Telford, who knew how I felt about SA theory from this post, sent his wife and kids off to the doughnut shop while he took me aside to do "damage control." He assured me that, despite what the pastor had said, you do not have to believe in SA to be a Christian. There are other ways of interpreting the Atonement.
I told him I wasn't upset, and I wasn't. But that was mainly because I was only half listening to the sermon. Once I realized where it was headed, I sort of tuned out and thought about other things that were preoccupying me. But now that I think about it, that was a rather ominous thing to happen. Tuning out is what I tend to do when things go wrong; before I started going to the church last year, I had gotten so tuned out everything seemed to be in an unhappy, apathetic fog. Whatever I've liked or disliked since then, or agreed with or disagreed with, I have at least been engaged.
I've been thinking again today about exactly what my problem with the theory is. After I wrote the above-linked post Josiah Neeley wrote me an email that I partly reproduced in this post. (Scroll down to the part headed "In loco parentis".) That tells an allegory of a judge whose son is picked up for speeding. The judge finds the young man guilty and orders him to pay a fine. Then he steps off the bench, takes off his robe, and pays the fine himself.
I encountered a slightly different version of this story in a book Telford loaned me, written by a friend of his. In that version, rather than father and son, it was childhood friends who'd gone separate ways in adulthood.
The tale makes a kind of intuitive sense, but it doesn't transfer very well to the Atonement. I mentioned back then that the judge's gesture only makes sense as a one-off -- a kind of warning shot to the wrongdoer. Especially in the father-son version, it seems more like a way of easing a spoiled kid into the real world than like a substitutional atonement.
But the deeper problem, which I only thought of today, is that the story only works because the sentence is relatively light. The state may let you pay someone else's fine, but it won't let you serve someone else's prison term or be executed in someone else's place. The reason is obvious: there's no point to punishment if the innocent get it and the guilty don't. It's not justice, and it's not mercy either: it's cruelty. It's what happens when there's no justice system at all.
Telford tried to describe some other theories of the atonement, but I must admit that if I was only half listening to the sermon I was only about 80% listening to Telford, which is not the way to absorb his rapid-fire pedagogy. He mentioned that the Eastern Orthodox view is that "God became man so that man could become God" -- a view actually expressed by one of Peter Nixon's correspondents back in the January discussion. I'm not sure what to make of it, though, because it doesn't answer my question on what the dying was about. It seems to just be explaining the Incarnation in general.
Anyway, his main point was that you don't have to agree on exactly how the Atonement worked, just on what the outcome was. And actually, I still don't really understand that, and the dying-for-sins debate didn't really clear that up either. But one thing at a time.
I mentioned in my Palm Sunday post that I wasn't having a great day, so I reminisced about last year instead. I'm not going to go into all the troubles with Sunday, but one thing that didn't help was that the sermon that day was all about our old friend, substitutional atonement. The pastor described the theory, emphasized its centrality to Christianity, and got the crowd all roused about how great it was.
After the service, Telford, who knew how I felt about SA theory from this post, sent his wife and kids off to the doughnut shop while he took me aside to do "damage control." He assured me that, despite what the pastor had said, you do not have to believe in SA to be a Christian. There are other ways of interpreting the Atonement.
I told him I wasn't upset, and I wasn't. But that was mainly because I was only half listening to the sermon. Once I realized where it was headed, I sort of tuned out and thought about other things that were preoccupying me. But now that I think about it, that was a rather ominous thing to happen. Tuning out is what I tend to do when things go wrong; before I started going to the church last year, I had gotten so tuned out everything seemed to be in an unhappy, apathetic fog. Whatever I've liked or disliked since then, or agreed with or disagreed with, I have at least been engaged.
I've been thinking again today about exactly what my problem with the theory is. After I wrote the above-linked post Josiah Neeley wrote me an email that I partly reproduced in this post. (Scroll down to the part headed "In loco parentis".) That tells an allegory of a judge whose son is picked up for speeding. The judge finds the young man guilty and orders him to pay a fine. Then he steps off the bench, takes off his robe, and pays the fine himself.
I encountered a slightly different version of this story in a book Telford loaned me, written by a friend of his. In that version, rather than father and son, it was childhood friends who'd gone separate ways in adulthood.
The tale makes a kind of intuitive sense, but it doesn't transfer very well to the Atonement. I mentioned back then that the judge's gesture only makes sense as a one-off -- a kind of warning shot to the wrongdoer. Especially in the father-son version, it seems more like a way of easing a spoiled kid into the real world than like a substitutional atonement.
But the deeper problem, which I only thought of today, is that the story only works because the sentence is relatively light. The state may let you pay someone else's fine, but it won't let you serve someone else's prison term or be executed in someone else's place. The reason is obvious: there's no point to punishment if the innocent get it and the guilty don't. It's not justice, and it's not mercy either: it's cruelty. It's what happens when there's no justice system at all.
Telford tried to describe some other theories of the atonement, but I must admit that if I was only half listening to the sermon I was only about 80% listening to Telford, which is not the way to absorb his rapid-fire pedagogy. He mentioned that the Eastern Orthodox view is that "God became man so that man could become God" -- a view actually expressed by one of Peter Nixon's correspondents back in the January discussion. I'm not sure what to make of it, though, because it doesn't answer my question on what the dying was about. It seems to just be explaining the Incarnation in general.
Anyway, his main point was that you don't have to agree on exactly how the Atonement worked, just on what the outcome was. And actually, I still don't really understand that, and the dying-for-sins debate didn't really clear that up either. But one thing at a time.
From where it's fall...
I looked at Sitemeter this morning and saw an unusal number of hits, and an unusual number of hits from exotic domain names, and soon found that, yes, I got linked by Hernan Gonzalez. He's been reading up on St. Theresa, and sees some connections between her and my posts (the translation here is my own):
He promises more later. This should be interesting.
I looked at Sitemeter this morning and saw an unusal number of hits, and an unusual number of hits from exotic domain names, and soon found that, yes, I got linked by Hernan Gonzalez. He's been reading up on St. Theresa, and sees some connections between her and my posts (the translation here is my own):
One, about justice and mercy (with a link to another blog), and the difficulties of reconciling both ... (Teresa did not feel the need, she could tell herself ... in her personal relations with God, she only saw mercy).
Two, and more notably, this reflection upon an aspect of St. Paul: his insistence on making himself an example:There's a touch of the egotism here that I noticed in Paul's letters: he likes to hold himself up as an example to follow. I think if I knew Paul back then I'd find it kind of irritating. Hey, I came here to know God, not become you, pal!
And so it is. And Teresa would be one of the few saints to repeat this striking -- and supremely legitimate -- trait of Paul's. "Representative sainthood," Urs von Balthasar calls it. And in her case, it's a most paradoxical thing; considering what she said about her "desire to disappear," to "be forgotten."
He promises more later. This should be interesting.
Tuesday, April 15, 2003
Acts 24-26
The imprisoned Paul sloowwwly wends his way through the Roman bureaucracy. First he appeals to the governor of Judea, Felix. Then Felix's successor Festus hears him, along with the king, Herod Agrippa. No one seems to be able to pin down charges against him; the Romans barely seem to understand Jewish affairs anyway. But Paul insists on appealing to the emperor, largely because he feels called to proselytize in Rome. If he goes there as a prisoner, then whatever. He's still there.
It's here that the study notes start to get entertaining, as they dish the dirt on the Roman officals. Felix is apparently known for cruelty and immorality; his wife Drusilla is a femme fatale, daughter of a previous Herod, who dumped her Syrian husband to marry Felix. Herod Agrippa shows up with his sister Bernice, whom he's widely known to be sleeping with.
Paul doesn't mention any of this directly, but he does seem to disturb their consciences. We are told that when Felix hears Paul speak of justice, self-control and the coming judgement, he has Paul taken out of his sight and leaves him in the clink until he leaves office two years later. When Paul appeals to Agrippa -- not actually a Roman, but a local -- he asks if he believes in the prophets. Agrippa responds by asking, "Are you so quickly persuading me to become Christian?"
Whether he's actually wavering, or being sarcastic ("You trying to convert me, big guy?") isn't clear. Paul's answer is also rather peculiar: "Whether quickly or not, I pray to God that not only you but also all who are listening to me today might become such as I am—except for these chains."
There's a touch of the egotism here that I noticed in Paul's letters: he likes to hold himself up as an example to follow. I think if I knew Paul back then I'd find it kind of irritating. Hey, I came here to know God, not become you, pal! The fact that already some Christians have criticized him back in Acts 21 suggests maybe he didn't rub everybody the right way. He may not have rubbed James the right way either. But then again, it always seems to take these outsized personalities to get a movement going. Paul had already been locked up for years and flogged at least once, and he still thought he knew exactly what he was doing. God? Ego? Both? I don't know, but it sure changed the course of world history.
The imprisoned Paul sloowwwly wends his way through the Roman bureaucracy. First he appeals to the governor of Judea, Felix. Then Felix's successor Festus hears him, along with the king, Herod Agrippa. No one seems to be able to pin down charges against him; the Romans barely seem to understand Jewish affairs anyway. But Paul insists on appealing to the emperor, largely because he feels called to proselytize in Rome. If he goes there as a prisoner, then whatever. He's still there.
It's here that the study notes start to get entertaining, as they dish the dirt on the Roman officals. Felix is apparently known for cruelty and immorality; his wife Drusilla is a femme fatale, daughter of a previous Herod, who dumped her Syrian husband to marry Felix. Herod Agrippa shows up with his sister Bernice, whom he's widely known to be sleeping with.
Paul doesn't mention any of this directly, but he does seem to disturb their consciences. We are told that when Felix hears Paul speak of justice, self-control and the coming judgement, he has Paul taken out of his sight and leaves him in the clink until he leaves office two years later. When Paul appeals to Agrippa -- not actually a Roman, but a local -- he asks if he believes in the prophets. Agrippa responds by asking, "Are you so quickly persuading me to become Christian?"
Whether he's actually wavering, or being sarcastic ("You trying to convert me, big guy?") isn't clear. Paul's answer is also rather peculiar: "Whether quickly or not, I pray to God that not only you but also all who are listening to me today might become such as I am—except for these chains."
There's a touch of the egotism here that I noticed in Paul's letters: he likes to hold himself up as an example to follow. I think if I knew Paul back then I'd find it kind of irritating. Hey, I came here to know God, not become you, pal! The fact that already some Christians have criticized him back in Acts 21 suggests maybe he didn't rub everybody the right way. He may not have rubbed James the right way either. But then again, it always seems to take these outsized personalities to get a movement going. Paul had already been locked up for years and flogged at least once, and he still thought he knew exactly what he was doing. God? Ego? Both? I don't know, but it sure changed the course of world history.
57
Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu.
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save where you are how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love that in your will,
Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.
--William Shakespeare
Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu.
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save where you are how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love that in your will,
Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.
--William Shakespeare
Monday, April 14, 2003
Acts 22-23
Here we leave off the episodic narrative of Acts so far and launch into a longer story. Paul is arrested in Jerusalem, accused of teaching against the Jewish law and of bringing Gentiles into the holy Temple. He wards off attack by saying he's a Roman citizen, which I guess means he has to go through Roman law before he can be executed. The tribune calls a meeting of the chief priests to hear Paul's case. When Paul says he's preaching the hope of resurrection of the dead, he sets off an argument between Pharisees and Sadducees on the council. Luke helpfully explains: "The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, or angel, or spirit; but the Pharisees acknowledge all three" (23:8).
I have heard conflicting things from Jews about the afterlife, and I guess that was true 2000 years ago too. Some Jews (even observant ones) don't seem to believe in it at all; the recent First Things article by a rabbi described a system of reward and punishment in the afterlife, but pointed out that Judaism focuses much more on this world than the next.
The afterlife looms much larger in the Christian imagination, of course. At the last Alpha course, which was last week, I remarked that one thing that seemed to be missing from the course was any discussion of the afterlife. That seems like a very large omission; resurrection was clearly an important subject already to Paul and his friends, and has remained so ever since. Moreover, the picture of the afterlife has gotten so incredibly detailed in the centuries since, with the help of Dante and Hieronymous Bosch and the whole crew, that it's probably one of the first things most people think of when the think of Christianity. And it's certainly one of the most contentious subjects also -- certainly the concept of eternal hell appalls a lot of non-Christians, including me.
The trouble is, the Bible as whole doesn't tell us much about it. There's Revelation, but that was taken as early as St. Augustine to be allegorical. (Obviously the literalist interpretations never stopped, though.) Almost all the popular imagery of the afterlife came after the Bible. At Alpha, some took this lack of attention in the Bible to mean that we shouldn't pay a lot of attention to it either. But of course people want to know this stuff. It's about their eternal destiny after all; and ultimately it's about the mind of God.
Apparently the council that was trying Paul felt just as passionately about it, because their debate gets so heated the tribune stops it for fear of violence. Well, I hope that doesn't happen at Alpha...
Here we leave off the episodic narrative of Acts so far and launch into a longer story. Paul is arrested in Jerusalem, accused of teaching against the Jewish law and of bringing Gentiles into the holy Temple. He wards off attack by saying he's a Roman citizen, which I guess means he has to go through Roman law before he can be executed. The tribune calls a meeting of the chief priests to hear Paul's case. When Paul says he's preaching the hope of resurrection of the dead, he sets off an argument between Pharisees and Sadducees on the council. Luke helpfully explains: "The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, or angel, or spirit; but the Pharisees acknowledge all three" (23:8).
I have heard conflicting things from Jews about the afterlife, and I guess that was true 2000 years ago too. Some Jews (even observant ones) don't seem to believe in it at all; the recent First Things article by a rabbi described a system of reward and punishment in the afterlife, but pointed out that Judaism focuses much more on this world than the next.
The afterlife looms much larger in the Christian imagination, of course. At the last Alpha course, which was last week, I remarked that one thing that seemed to be missing from the course was any discussion of the afterlife. That seems like a very large omission; resurrection was clearly an important subject already to Paul and his friends, and has remained so ever since. Moreover, the picture of the afterlife has gotten so incredibly detailed in the centuries since, with the help of Dante and Hieronymous Bosch and the whole crew, that it's probably one of the first things most people think of when the think of Christianity. And it's certainly one of the most contentious subjects also -- certainly the concept of eternal hell appalls a lot of non-Christians, including me.
The trouble is, the Bible as whole doesn't tell us much about it. There's Revelation, but that was taken as early as St. Augustine to be allegorical. (Obviously the literalist interpretations never stopped, though.) Almost all the popular imagery of the afterlife came after the Bible. At Alpha, some took this lack of attention in the Bible to mean that we shouldn't pay a lot of attention to it either. But of course people want to know this stuff. It's about their eternal destiny after all; and ultimately it's about the mind of God.
Apparently the council that was trying Paul felt just as passionately about it, because their debate gets so heated the tribune stops it for fear of violence. Well, I hope that doesn't happen at Alpha...
Sunday, April 13, 2003
Palm Sunday
My day ... well, my day hasn't been great, but I've been thinking about Palm Sunday of last year. I didn't have a blog and wasn't going to church then, but I did end up in church on Palm Sunday. But I get ahead of myself.
On that Saturday a friend in San Francisco threw a housewarming party, so I used that as an excuse to spend the weekend there. I told my friend who goes to the Evangelical Covenant church in SF, and he invited me to go to the Palm Sunday service and have lunch with him afterwards. It was an ad hoc trip, with me throwing a few things into my backpack and taking off. I went to the party at my friend's flat in the lovely Sunset District, chatting with strangers and eating vodka jello, and then drove to my aunt's house in the East Bay, let myself in, and went to bed.
The next morning I wasn't actually hung over (since I had to drive, after all, I wasn't going to get that inebriated), but I was pretty tired. I got up and discovered some things I'd forgotten to pack: an extra pair of underwear, and a jacket for the chillier northern clime. The underwear I decided to do without (I don't know if it's sacreligious to attend Palm Sunday service with no underwear, but I wasn't sweating the details at this point), but the jacket I definitely needed, since I just had a T-shirt to wear with my jeans. So I asked my aunt if I could borrow something. She rummaged through the closet and pulled out a distinctly '70s-looking denim overshirt, which she gave to me remarking, "If you look in the pockets, you'll probably find ticket stubs to some good concerts."
So I went to the church in this curious ensemble, with post-party fatigue and no makeup, and watched in the pew while my friend sang in the choir. After the musical part was over he came and sat next to me. Leaning over, he whispered, "You look great!"
I thought he was crazy, but then I thought, God bless men. They're always exploding female expectations. If he says I look great, then I'll believe him.
My day ... well, my day hasn't been great, but I've been thinking about Palm Sunday of last year. I didn't have a blog and wasn't going to church then, but I did end up in church on Palm Sunday. But I get ahead of myself.
On that Saturday a friend in San Francisco threw a housewarming party, so I used that as an excuse to spend the weekend there. I told my friend who goes to the Evangelical Covenant church in SF, and he invited me to go to the Palm Sunday service and have lunch with him afterwards. It was an ad hoc trip, with me throwing a few things into my backpack and taking off. I went to the party at my friend's flat in the lovely Sunset District, chatting with strangers and eating vodka jello, and then drove to my aunt's house in the East Bay, let myself in, and went to bed.
The next morning I wasn't actually hung over (since I had to drive, after all, I wasn't going to get that inebriated), but I was pretty tired. I got up and discovered some things I'd forgotten to pack: an extra pair of underwear, and a jacket for the chillier northern clime. The underwear I decided to do without (I don't know if it's sacreligious to attend Palm Sunday service with no underwear, but I wasn't sweating the details at this point), but the jacket I definitely needed, since I just had a T-shirt to wear with my jeans. So I asked my aunt if I could borrow something. She rummaged through the closet and pulled out a distinctly '70s-looking denim overshirt, which she gave to me remarking, "If you look in the pockets, you'll probably find ticket stubs to some good concerts."
So I went to the church in this curious ensemble, with post-party fatigue and no makeup, and watched in the pew while my friend sang in the choir. After the musical part was over he came and sat next to me. Leaning over, he whispered, "You look great!"
I thought he was crazy, but then I thought, God bless men. They're always exploding female expectations. If he says I look great, then I'll believe him.
Friday, April 11, 2003
Acts 21
Paul returns to Jerusalem and is greeted warmly, but told that some unnamed members of the church had accused him of teaching "all the Jews living among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, and that you tell them not to circumcise thier children or observe the customs" (21). They recommend he go through the Nazarite vow (an ancient Jewish purification ritual, evidently), and tell him of the contents of the letter mentioned in Acts 15 regarding the rules for Gentiles.
Why are people accusing Paul of this? Telford mentioned this back in the same post I linked to at Acts 15:
Possibly it does, making it even stranger that Jesus just trusted that everybody would figure out what Jewish rules applied to Gentile converts. Makes my skeptical mind wonder if Jesus even knew that there would be Gentile converts, but that would be extra problematic...
Paul returns to Jerusalem and is greeted warmly, but told that some unnamed members of the church had accused him of teaching "all the Jews living among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, and that you tell them not to circumcise thier children or observe the customs" (21). They recommend he go through the Nazarite vow (an ancient Jewish purification ritual, evidently), and tell him of the contents of the letter mentioned in Acts 15 regarding the rules for Gentiles.
Why are people accusing Paul of this? Telford mentioned this back in the same post I linked to at Acts 15:
Paul seems to take this conclusion as still too conservative, for he moves beyond Jerusalem's sphere of influence, concentrates his mission farther westward, and never mentions James' letter. Even when he mentions the council of Jerusalem's conclusion that circumcision of Gentiles is unwarranted (Gal. 2:1-10), he fails to mention these guidelines (unless Gal. 2:10's "remembber the poor" is some kind of extreme gloss). The Didache might reflect the council's guidelines, but only very vaguely: "As regards diet, keep the rules so far as you are able; only be careful to refuse anything that has been offered to an idol, for that is the worship of dead gods" (chapter 6). There is definitely variety in early Christian attitudes on these matters, and maybe even persistent tension. Weirdly, Acts 21:17-26 shows James receiving Paul and informing him of the letter as if Paul has not seen it before! (This might have something to do with Luke's use of a different source for that section of Acts, but I wonder whether in the final narrative it shows us relations that are still a little strained.)
Possibly it does, making it even stranger that Jesus just trusted that everybody would figure out what Jewish rules applied to Gentile converts. Makes my skeptical mind wonder if Jesus even knew that there would be Gentile converts, but that would be extra problematic...
On the suckage of eyewitness testimony
I'm finally getting around to responding to Telford's comment to my post last week on the trustworthiness of Christian witness. I wrote:
Telford responded:
I haven't gone over precisely the evidence that Telford is probably thinking of, but I feel I should establish where I'm coming from here. The witnesses to Christ's life, death and re-life may be as credible as anybody can be from an account that old, but the point is, that's not saying much. When I said eyewitness testimony sucks, I wasn't kidding. There's been a lot of attention and research given to this subject over the years, though mostly in regard to criminal justice rather than religion. For instance, a January 2001 article in the New Yorker began as follows:
This isn't the only type of experiment to cast doubt on eyewitness testimony. One researcher interviewed witnesses to the London blitz shortly after the event, and then again decades later, and found they told completely different stories. Elizabeth Loftus, one of the foremost researchers on memory, has demonstrated more than once that you can "plant" a childhood memory in someone that never even happened. The new DNA findings of how many innocent people are in jail has renewed interest in this, and a good roundup of the research is here.
Witnessing the Resurrection isn't exactly the same as these experiments, but some basic principles emerge. People can be well-meaning, sober, and extremely sure of their memories and still be wrong. Moreover, having multiple witnesses doesn't necessarily prove anything -- if they're friends and they have a common interest in seeing it a certain way, as the disciples did, they can easily influence each other's memories.
So, getting back to Telford's point: what's "too much" credulity, and "too much" incredulity? What are our standards here? What's "reasonable"? As I said before, it seems reasonable to think that something extraordinary happened back then, but I don't see how we can believe any of it to the point of faith. Anything that gets processed through human beings stands a very strong chance of getting messed up; with all due respect to my Catholic readers, taking anybody to be infallible seems dangerously close to idolatry to me. At best, we can play a version of Pascal's wager with it: if the probability is great enough that it happened, maybe it's worth betting on it. But I don't see how it is, and anyway, that's not faith.
I'm finally getting around to responding to Telford's comment to my post last week on the trustworthiness of Christian witness. I wrote:
Personally, I can't imagine placing that much faith in anyone else's credibility. People are fallible. Their credibility may be fine for ordinary matters, but this is no ordinary matter and no ordinary degree of belief. How can I believe a second-hand account, no matter how sincere it is, to the point of placing my life in it? It doesn't help matters that a number of psychological experiments indicate that eyewitness testimony basically sucks.
Telford responded:
As to the credibility of the witnesses to Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, it is not a matter of "blind trust" to count them credible. I think one can approach them with a reasonable level of criticism and come away satisfied. Of course there are some who approach them with too much credulity, and others with too much incredulity. But to the responsible middle, both Jesus and his disciples offered signs to confirm his identity.
I haven't gone over precisely the evidence that Telford is probably thinking of, but I feel I should establish where I'm coming from here. The witnesses to Christ's life, death and re-life may be as credible as anybody can be from an account that old, but the point is, that's not saying much. When I said eyewitness testimony sucks, I wasn't kidding. There's been a lot of attention and research given to this subject over the years, though mostly in regard to criminal justice rather than religion. For instance, a January 2001 article in the New Yorker began as follows:
In 1901, a professor of criminal law at the University of Berlin was lecturing to his class when a student suddenly shouted an objection to his line of argument. Another student countered angrily, and the two exchanged insults. First were clenched, threats made: "If you say another word ..." The the first student drew a gun, the second rushed at him, and the professor recklessly interposed himself between them. A struggle, a blast -- then pandemonium.
Whereupon the two putative antagonists disengaged and returned to their seats. The professor swiftly restored order, explaining to his students that the incident had been staged, and for a purpose. He asked the students, as eyewitnesses, to describe exactly what they had seen. Some were to write down their account on the spot, some a day or a week later; a few even had to depose their observations under cross-examination. The results were dismal. The most accurate witness got twenty-six per cent of the significant details wrong; others up to eighty per cent. Words were put in people's mouths. Actions were described that had never taken place. Events that had taken place disappeared from memory.
In the century since, professors around the world have reenacted the experiment, in one form or another, thousands of times; the findings have been recounted in legal texts, courtrooms, and popular crime books. The trick has even been played on audiences of judges.
This isn't the only type of experiment to cast doubt on eyewitness testimony. One researcher interviewed witnesses to the London blitz shortly after the event, and then again decades later, and found they told completely different stories. Elizabeth Loftus, one of the foremost researchers on memory, has demonstrated more than once that you can "plant" a childhood memory in someone that never even happened. The new DNA findings of how many innocent people are in jail has renewed interest in this, and a good roundup of the research is here.
Witnessing the Resurrection isn't exactly the same as these experiments, but some basic principles emerge. People can be well-meaning, sober, and extremely sure of their memories and still be wrong. Moreover, having multiple witnesses doesn't necessarily prove anything -- if they're friends and they have a common interest in seeing it a certain way, as the disciples did, they can easily influence each other's memories.
So, getting back to Telford's point: what's "too much" credulity, and "too much" incredulity? What are our standards here? What's "reasonable"? As I said before, it seems reasonable to think that something extraordinary happened back then, but I don't see how we can believe any of it to the point of faith. Anything that gets processed through human beings stands a very strong chance of getting messed up; with all due respect to my Catholic readers, taking anybody to be infallible seems dangerously close to idolatry to me. At best, we can play a version of Pascal's wager with it: if the probability is great enough that it happened, maybe it's worth betting on it. But I don't see how it is, and anyway, that's not faith.
Nature and nurture
Kevin Drum posted recently on the nature/nurture debate -- a subject of great interest to me -- and concluded:
For one thing, there's the question of what we can change. If you believe that, say, intelligence and scholastic achievement are largely genetically determined, then forming educational policies aimed at leveling the differences is going to be an exercise in futility. My mother, a former English teacher who's now a professor of education, has run up against this problem: she's been hearing calls all her life to turn us into "a nation of readers," but from her actual experience with kids has gotten the feeling that a lot of people were not born to enjoy reading and probably never will. I think this affects people's moral values to the extent that a morality based on the impossible is simply unworkable.
Connected with this is the question of what will ultimately lead to the greatest happiness for most people. If you believe that, say, women are naturally less ambitious and intellectual than men and more inherently able and child-rearing, organizing society around a traditional gender division of labor makes sense. But if you believe them to be of roughly the same capabilities as men, keeping them in the home starts to look oppressive. If your morality has anything to do with human happiness, this will affect your views also.
Finally, there's the question of how much a given behavior might be "catching." This is especially the case with homosexuality -- the example Kevin was particularly talking about here. Probably most Americans are fine with letting gay people do what they want in their private lives, but a lot of argument comes out of the issue of whether going public about it "promotes" it. If you think homosexuality is entirely genetic, it doesn't matter how much people talk about it or fail to disapprove of it -- no one is going to become gay who wouldn't have been otherwise. If you see it as environmental, however, then publicity is going to make a world of difference.
I should point out that, while a lot of secular types see Christianity as a classic example of moral values "falling from the sky," it's become apparent to me as I've studied it that it, too, bases its values on a theory of human nature. At one recent Alpha lecture, the speaker quoted somebody -- I'm too flaky to look it up now -- as saying that he "became Christian in order to become fully human." I have heard this concept expressed many times in many ways -- that following the law is becoming what God meant you to be, while sin, however appealing it may be in the short term, is a corruption of your true self. I'm not totally convinced of this (in regard to sexuality in particular, I wrote about this at length here). But all this is to say, your conception of innate human nature does indeed affect what you think is right for people.
Kevin Drum posted recently on the nature/nurture debate -- a subject of great interest to me -- and concluded:
And what's even worse is that, as with most of the ideology tied up in nature/nurture arguments, this whole question is wildly misplaced. Whether homosexuality is innate or not, the only real question is whether it's behavior that we approve of. If it's not, then who cares if it's innate? If there were genes for murder, we still wouldn't approve of murder. Likewise, if we do approve of it, then who cares if it's mostly a matter of upbringing?I can't agree with that, because he acts like "what we approve of" simply falls out of the sky with no connection to our conception of the human being. But it seems to me that these things are deeply connected.
For one thing, there's the question of what we can change. If you believe that, say, intelligence and scholastic achievement are largely genetically determined, then forming educational policies aimed at leveling the differences is going to be an exercise in futility. My mother, a former English teacher who's now a professor of education, has run up against this problem: she's been hearing calls all her life to turn us into "a nation of readers," but from her actual experience with kids has gotten the feeling that a lot of people were not born to enjoy reading and probably never will. I think this affects people's moral values to the extent that a morality based on the impossible is simply unworkable.
Connected with this is the question of what will ultimately lead to the greatest happiness for most people. If you believe that, say, women are naturally less ambitious and intellectual than men and more inherently able and child-rearing, organizing society around a traditional gender division of labor makes sense. But if you believe them to be of roughly the same capabilities as men, keeping them in the home starts to look oppressive. If your morality has anything to do with human happiness, this will affect your views also.
Finally, there's the question of how much a given behavior might be "catching." This is especially the case with homosexuality -- the example Kevin was particularly talking about here. Probably most Americans are fine with letting gay people do what they want in their private lives, but a lot of argument comes out of the issue of whether going public about it "promotes" it. If you think homosexuality is entirely genetic, it doesn't matter how much people talk about it or fail to disapprove of it -- no one is going to become gay who wouldn't have been otherwise. If you see it as environmental, however, then publicity is going to make a world of difference.
I should point out that, while a lot of secular types see Christianity as a classic example of moral values "falling from the sky," it's become apparent to me as I've studied it that it, too, bases its values on a theory of human nature. At one recent Alpha lecture, the speaker quoted somebody -- I'm too flaky to look it up now -- as saying that he "became Christian in order to become fully human." I have heard this concept expressed many times in many ways -- that following the law is becoming what God meant you to be, while sin, however appealing it may be in the short term, is a corruption of your true self. I'm not totally convinced of this (in regard to sexuality in particular, I wrote about this at length here). But all this is to say, your conception of innate human nature does indeed affect what you think is right for people.
Acts 20
The Paul posse spends a week in Troas. On the last night Paul gives a long speech, during which a young man named Eutychus falls asleep and topples out the window, apparently to his death. Paul goes down and takes him in his arms, saying, "Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him." He goes back upstairs, and the young man lives.
It's not clear if this is a miracle or not. There was actually one ressurection in Acts that I didn't mention, back in 9 when Peter raises a disciple called Tabitha. But though Luke writes that Eutychus "was picked up dead," it's certainly possible he was merely thought to be dead. Paul's words sound more like superior perception than some act of miracle-working.
What's the point of the story? My study notes point to Paul's line later in the chapter: "Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease day or night to warn everyone with tears." This comes in the middle of Paul's goodbye speech to the Ephesians, in which he warns that he will be persecuted and "savage wolves will come among you." So everybody be on guard. Don't fall asleep at the switch.
Or maybe it's just a warning against falling asleep in church. Fortunately, in the Christian Assembly I think that's impossible.
The Paul posse spends a week in Troas. On the last night Paul gives a long speech, during which a young man named Eutychus falls asleep and topples out the window, apparently to his death. Paul goes down and takes him in his arms, saying, "Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him." He goes back upstairs, and the young man lives.
It's not clear if this is a miracle or not. There was actually one ressurection in Acts that I didn't mention, back in 9 when Peter raises a disciple called Tabitha. But though Luke writes that Eutychus "was picked up dead," it's certainly possible he was merely thought to be dead. Paul's words sound more like superior perception than some act of miracle-working.
What's the point of the story? My study notes point to Paul's line later in the chapter: "Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease day or night to warn everyone with tears." This comes in the middle of Paul's goodbye speech to the Ephesians, in which he warns that he will be persecuted and "savage wolves will come among you." So everybody be on guard. Don't fall asleep at the switch.
Or maybe it's just a warning against falling asleep in church. Fortunately, in the Christian Assembly I think that's impossible.
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