Theoprudence

Kurt Willems recently posted a great guide for reading Revelation. His post includes several pointers on how to read the book through new lenses that are somewhat different from the familiar Left Behind approach.

When I talk to people about Revelation, I usually get a negative reaction: It is hard to understand. It is frightening. It isn't like the rest of the New Testament.

A lot of people just avoid the book altogether.

I'm convinced that we struggle with Revelation because we read it from a position of privilege. We live in a powerful country that possesses unprecedented economic and military power, and we are afforded all of the rights of citizenship within that country. This is particularly true of those of us in the middle class. We have no idea what it is like to live with our necks under the boot of the great world empire of our day, helpless, exposed, and with no meaningful civil rights.

The people who wrote (and read) Revelation knew that feeling. They lived in the shadow of Caesar and his vast Empire, which could crush them quickly and unexpectedly at any time and for any reason. They had felt the unfairness of the Imperial tax, which – unlike our modern taxation systems – would not necessarily be used to benefit the local community and its needy. They felt the tension of living in a culture that treated Caesar like a god while proclaiming instead that Jesus, one of Caesar's victims, was the true God.

When Revelation is read from their perspective – from the vulnerable position of the powerless – the central theme can be seen as one of hope -  hope that the current regime will one day face judgment, and that a newer, more just world will emerge in its place.

But when Revelation is read by the privileged, it looks completely different. God, it sounds like, is pronouncing judgment on us - calling those in power to accountability for the way they treat their lesser brothers and sisters in the global community.

It shouldn't be surprising that we find Revelation to be a little unsettling. It isn't written to us as much as it is about us.

We don't like that. We shouldn't. We aren't supposed to like it.

But maybe, just maybe, if we are willing to hear the book for what is is actually saying, it can teach us – as individuals and as a nation – to live more responsibly among those who do not share our place of privilege.

This is the second of three posts that deal with Clayton Crockett's and Jeffrey Robbins' Religion Politics and the Earth: The New Materialism. The first post briefly described the "death of God" theology that is claimed by the book's authors. This one will provide a quick snapshot on the authors' concept of the "new materialism." The third post, which will be a part of a blog tour on the subject, will  focus on how legal process, and more specifically, legal reasoning, might be impacted by the "logic" of the new materialism.

So, first, a quick sketch of what the authors mean by "new materialism."

And the best starting place for that is to have a look at what the "old materilaism" is about. The "old materialism" can be thought of on two levels. One of them is a description of moral failure. The other is a philosophical concept.

"Materialism" is a term that got thrown around a lot during my youth in the 70s and 80s. When "church" people talked about materialism, they were primarily concerned with a personal sin that involved a desire for riches and possessions. If you spent too much time desiring and chasing after "stuff," you were considered to be too "materialistic." Attachment to the physical was not considered to be pious, since our minds and hearts ought to be focused on the "spiritual" (meaning, to most people at that time, "non-physical"). Thus, my first encounter with this concept had more to do with personal piety than with a way of describing the universe.

As a philosophical concept, however, "materialism" is a belief that the physical universe is all there is. There is no separate spiritual realm ("dualism"), nor is there a hidden aspect of the physical universe that cannot be explained by the laws of physics (let's call it "wholism"). Materialism arguably gave us a lot of good things and a lot of bad things (some of which bear a striking relationship to the church-y kind of materialsm that involves moral failure).

Two of the most notable influences on "old" materialists are Marx and Freud. Both critiqued religion for providing a sort-of "substituted sense of satisfaction" within modern society. That is, because people became unfulfilled in a world that was increasingly dominated by capitalists and dismal urban existences, religion jumped in to tell people that they could possess (or defer, and then later possess) a good life through their faith in God. Science and economics were viewed as the things that were "real" and God, theology, religion, etc. were viewed as harmful to the development of humanity.

The materialist ship, however, has been sinking for some time. Developments in various fields of science, not least of which involve cosmology and quantum physics, have turned classical science on its head. And shades of materialism have been found lurking behind some of the most dismal events in that last century of human history.

Crockett and Robbins accept some of the materialist criticism as legitimate. However, they believe that Marx, Freud, and their followers, have made an improper assumption – that all religion is uniform. They believe that, in the place of classic theological models, a new model can be developed which takes seriously the present, physical universe. This way of thinking – this "new materialism" – has broad concerns like other theologies, but ultimately "genuinely takes account of the earth without lapsing into wishful thinking…"

Again, as I said in the last post, I don't think you have to stretch Christian theology to such radical extremes to get into a model similar to new materialism. I think it can be done just as easily by getting rid of some assumptions that have filtered their way into Christian thought during the modern era. However, my purpose here is not to quibble on that issue.

Rather, I want to get to the reason that Crockett, Robbins, and I all agree that it is important for theology to take the "real world" very seriously. And that reason is this:

We are rapidly approaching a point in history where we will almost certainly face a dramatic, global crisis. As Crockett and Robbins put it, Western capitalism, which dominates the landscape of the first world, is based on the philosophy that indefinite economic growth is possible. However, the resources of our planet are finite, and, eventually, growth is going to slow, or even reverse. If we get to that point, the global economy is going to descend into chaos. Furthermore, as we get closer and closer to those limits, we are experiencing economic and ecological instability, and the systems of constitutional republics, which also dominate the first world, are incapable of dealing with the problem, because they are functionally controlled by corporate interests.

There is a time where these sorts-of claims were only held by the "lunatic fringe." But no more. In many academic circles, and among certain economists, it is now more of an assumption than one of several possibilities.

We either begin to deal with the problem now on every level (political, religious, philosophical, etc.), or we hand over an unimaginable mess to our children. The choice is that simple.

Where the authors of the book and I agree is this: theologians generally, and Christianity more specifically, must come to grips with this reality, and begin to speak to it.

I first encountered Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan’s The Last Week about 6 years ago. I have this very clear recollection of sitting in a camping chair beside the river at the HEB Foundation Camp in Central Texas and being transfixed as the story of the last 8 days of Jesus’ life was laid out in a way that I had never heard.

Yes, I knew that Borg and Crossan were skeptical about miracles, even about the resurrection – you can read about their skepticism for yourself in the last chapter. Yet within their account of these last 8 days, I began to see something I hadn’t before – something that was there all along, but that I, and those who had told the story to me all of those years, had missed.

When he came into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and throughout the rest of the week, Jesus was making a decidedly political statement.

That word: “political.” It is unnerving for most of us. Politics and religion – they are supposed to be separate, aren’t they? And look at what has happened, especially recently, when the two have gotten mixed up: we’ve ended up with a lot of partisan arguing over abortion, and sexuality, and “taking God out of the schools” and such. When “God” and “politics” come up in the same sentence, we get restless.

But there is no question about it. Jesus, who had spent most of his time ministering to poor people in the back-woods of his nation, the small towns with people who just barely get by, and who spent the majority of their lives under the boots of the people who were under the boots of Rome. That Jesus is now marching into Jerusalem in exactly the same way a ruling King would, to the applause of all of those back-woods folks and moving straight toward the temple where, on the next day, he is going to openly defy the authority of those who are in charge of the temple. He is going to call them robbers and thieves, because that is exactly what they were. He is going to teach against them. He is going to predict their demise.

Then, they are going to kill him.

This is no accident. Its not Jesus simply being Jesus and inadvertently stumbling into a hornet’s nest. Nope. As Jesus has long been telling his followers, his plan was to go into Jerusalem, to provoke, to step right over the line, and to submit to his trial and execution.

I had heard this story all my life, yet it was as if I was hearing it for the first time. Why hadn’t it been told this way before?

The story I had always heard went something like this: God, knowing that humanity was sinful and unable to help itself, decided to allow his only son, Jesus to be killed in Jerusalem. So he told Jesus to go to Jerusalem to his death. Jesus obeyed. Then, a lot of things that were just Supposed to Happen took place. They arrested Jesus, they flogged him, and they crucified him. All of this was just the way God willed it. Not much talk about why people were angry with him, or why they would kill him. It just happened because it had to happen that way for God’s sacrifice to be made.

This way of telling the story, the one that had always been told to me, is one that focuses on atonement. It is a story about how a righteous God comes to Earth and saves a sinful people. It is a theological story, rather than a political one.

I later learned that these two stories tend to get pitted against each other. Those who tell the theological story like to dismiss the political story as ultimately impotent and meaningless – “Jesus didn’t just die to make a point about oppression!” they complain. Those who tell the political story mock the tendency of the theological storytellers to slip into “fairy tales” that have nothing to do with the history of the day or the actual accounts of these events that are told in scripture.

Arguing about which story is best seems to me to be the wrong approach. Rather, I believe that these are two stories that desperately need each other.
A purely theological story may be intellectually satisfying to people who wrestle with concepts about God’s holiness and the human need for reconciliation, but it ultimately has no grounding in reality. A purely political story may ring very true and authentic, but in the end it will never be capable of answering the big questions about the purpose of Jesus (or our own purposes) on this planet.

I am convinced that these are not two stories, but one. I don’t know all of the reasons why. I can’t give you a precise explanation that perfectly reconciles everything that is told in one of those stories with everything that is told in the other.

The story of Jesus’ last week, the story of his challenge to the temple authorities and his teachings against them, the story of the Passover meal, the Passion, his death… it is all a great mystery. There is no question in my mind that it is a story of open, political defiance against injustice and domination. Yet, something else –something more – is going on as well. Along with millions of Christians before me, I believe that it is transcendental in nature. It was what it was, but it also has something to do with where the world came from, where it is going, and even what is happening here and now, in our time and place.

The death of Christ did something that goes beyond words, atonement theologies, and simple answers.

And now, again, the time has come to enter into the mystery of that story.

Rachel Held Evans is in the middle of a great series of posts on the book Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays Versus Christians Debate. In today's post, she summarizes Justin Lee's chapter on "why people are gay."

Four possibilities are apparently suggested by Justin, none of which are entirely satisfying to him (or to Rachel, or to me).

The first possibility listed is the one that I have always found to be really bizarre. It is the suggestion that people "choose" to be gay.

I don't really have a reference point to reflect on some of the other causes. I didn't grow up in a particularly dysfunctional home. I never had the experience of being "tricked" into being gay. And if there is a "gay" biology, I don't have it. However, even as a heterosexual, I can speak to the issue of whether sexuality is "chosen."

The short answer is: no, I never chose to be heterosexual. Or, to put it the other way, I never felt like I could have -  but did not – exercise an option be be "gay" at some critical juncture in my life.

If we all have to make a choice to be gay (or straight, or bi-sexual), and if gay people are simply the ones who made the "bad" choice, I never experienced it.

As I became an adolescent, I found that I liked girls. I didn't choose to like girls. I just found that I became a stammering, awkward, hormone-producing machine every time I was around girls that I thought were attractive.

I didn't make the choice to be heterosexual. I simply was heterosexual. And throughout my life I've never reached a point where I thought I could choose to be different. "Straight" is what I am, not what I chose.

Why would I think the experience would be any different for those who have same-sex attractions?

I also think that, in reality, sexuality is much more complex than the gay/straight binary suggests. Even among those who are straight, the notions of what is attractive can vary wildly. I am no psychologist, but those experts whom I respect say that sex-attraction is a product many things – genetics, culture, environment, experiences. All of those factors, and others, can lead to vastly different types/"shades" of sexuality.

Not only do we need to get away from the notion that people "choose" sexuality. We also need to get away from the notion that it is some binary either/or proposition.

None of this is intended, by the way, to be a comment on the morality of sex-attraction. I am only suggesting that we need to have a more nuanced appreciation for the whole concept of sexuality when we have these discussions.

Scot McKnight is linking to a Harvard Business Review article which encourages women to be more "disruptive" in order to break into upper management of Fortune 500 companies. The all-too-familiar statistics are repeated early in the article: women comprise over 50% of all middle management positions, but only about 4.2% of the Fortune 500 CEO positions are occupied by women.

What is going on here? The article suggests that women just need to be better at being mavericks (my term, not the authors'). The suggestions are to challenge authority, color outside the lines, promote yourself (and your agendas) aggressively, and stop trying to be liked by everyone – go for respect, not popularity!

Its probably reasoanble advice, and there is nothing more I'd like to see than the 4.2% number rise dramatically in the coming years. However, I also think its important not to ignore a more fundamental problem that won't be resolved by a simple shift in womens' approach to their careers.

The problem may well be that women don't make "good" psychopaths. Here is what I mean: there is evidence that the same traits that make-up the cocktail that is psychopathy also make for great CEOs: lack of empathy, lack of remorse, lack of a sense of loving kindness, etc. In short, the ideal 21st-Century CEO is someone who is willing to coldly, ruthlessly even, serve the bottom line of the corporation, without giving a second thought to the human costs that are involved. Even if someone isn't, clinically speaking, a psychopath, the system is still going to reward someone who leans in that direction.

Women can be psychopaths, too, but there are less of them and – if I understand the academic research correctly – they aren't generally quite as effective at externalizing the effects of the disorder the way male psychopaths do. So they can be unstable, but not (usually) in a way that feeds the corporate beast as effectively.

I hope that the HBR article proves helpful to women who are trying to break the glass ceiling, but moreso hope for changes in corporate culture that value some of the things that mentally stable people – both men and women – can bring to the table: compassion, a desire for justice, and a creative mind that serves the human condition as well as the quest or profit.