Cool Words

Vice

If a vice can be defined by the “inner disposition to perform morally wrong acts,” then the question arises, is the instrument (the drug, the behavior, the activity) the vice or is the desire to engage the instrument the vice? Another way to approach this question would be to consider a common addiction and its instrument: alcoholism. Some are quick to vilify alcohol as the problem, or more specifically, the possibility that alcohol possess addictive qualities. Because of this, alcohol is often referred to as a vice. It is also certainly the case that many are prone to fall victim to the consequences of alcohol over-consumption. But is alcohol the problem or are the behaviors attached to alcohol consumption the true source of the vice?

The definition above, proposed by The Pocket Dictionary of Ethics, would suggest that the nature of vice is rooted within the individual and not the instrument. Though this is seemingly contrary to popular opinion, it more closely positions vice in relation to morality and the conventions of modern thought. It’s conceivable then, to imagine how it’s possible to experience shifts in whether or not certain instruments are considered to be vices. Again, consider popular moral opinion concerning alcohol in the United States during the 1930’s verses the 1970’s or today. Given these shifts however, we are left to wonder if there are any underlying commonalities for any vice that stand outside of moral interpretation or thought? In other words, what do all vices hold in common?

Virtue

On the other side of the “inner disposition” coin from vice, sits virtue. Similarly defined by morality, virtue and its quest has been the fascination of ethicists since the earliest Greek philosophers began classifying human behavior. The concept of how humans should be or what they should do is in direct correlation to virtue. Lists of desired virtues are all over the place. The tenets of most religious and cultural traditions include descriptions of virtuous behavior.

It’s interesting that in Nicomachean Ethics, virtues are valued in how they help a person navigate their way in the world, in particular through relationships with other and in the quest to find happiness. Here again we see how the role of the other, like in determining the morality of the day, is integral in determining what is or isn’t virtuous. It could be argued that some virtues, like temperance or justice, can only be understood in relationship with the other. Whereas virtues like wisdom or courage hold a certain presence outside of relationship but the degrees to which they are employed may only be valued in community.

To understand virtue, it’s also important to acknowledge the differences between character and conduct. One’s character is not necessarily readily apparent until one’s conduct is made plain. To hold a particular behavior as virtuous may not matter until said virtue is put to the test, presumably in relationship to the other. For example, if justice is said to be virtuous, then how that justice is exercised towards the other makes manifest the virtue.

What could the Bible do?

by Peter Christ P.A. Christ

There are days, and they grow seemingly more frequent, when the challenge of doing what I do* is totally derailed. While the source of such derailments can be varied, most common among them sits one very curious culprit, the Bible. If this fact offends you, perhaps this posting is not for you (though I think you should read on anyway). If you’re nodding your head in agreement, be careful as you proceed because I’ll most likely offend you at some point along the way. The idea that the Bible can do anything at all is a bit preposterous from the outset but what the bible could do is exactly what I want to explore in this posting.

The Bible, after all, is just a book. It’s a collection of historical writings, thousands of years old, filled with contradictions, antiquated customs and admonitions, overflowing with stories of a time and place that couldn’t feel more disconnected from us here today. Still, the Bible remains one of the most re-printed and re-distributed texts of today, far surpassing the collected works of J.K. Rowling, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien (note to self: change byline to “P.A. Christ”). The Bible serves a lot of functions, unfortunately more often than not as ammunition in a battle, as justification in times of oppression, as a set of blinders in the midst of unsettled and unwanted realities. Yes, the Bible can do lots of things but I want to suggest that it could do one very important set of things. In a world that seems increasingly fragmented and in a time that seems vastly more chaotic than ever before, the Bible could help us face all this disconnection by connecting us to God, to each other and to ourselves.

Put plainly, you should read the bible because it could connect you…

to God!

The Bible is about God. Try to think of something less tangible that we are more desperate to have be tangible. If God is real, if God truly matters, if God should have any place at all in our lives then why wouldn’t we want to be able to see, hear or feel God? The Bible is something very real. We get to hold it in our hands, scroll through its verses on the screen, let its images fill our minds. More importantly, as we listen to the narrative contained within, we discover accounts of people who have seen, first-hand, a God that’s active in this world. As God’s presence shaped their stories, so too God can shape our stories. Perhaps the most important story contained in the bible is the one about Jesus. This is a story about how God has already made the intangible tangible. To know the story of Jesus is to know the story of God. No, the book isn’t God. But, it points to where God is and if we don’t pick it up, we’re making it a whole lot harder on ourselves to reach out and be touched.

to others!

The Bible is about relationships. Of course God wants a relationship with you but that can only be fully realized in the relationships we have with each other. Our families, our friends, our co-workers, the UPS driver, the kid in the drive-thru window, the person processing your mortgage application, it’s through these relationships that God is able to create, with us, the kind of world where we can thrive. Making meaning of the Bible is only possible when we work on it together. I can’t make sense of it if you don’t help me and I won’t trust how you make sense of it if you don’t include me in your deliberations. If we don’t read the Bible, it’s also harder to make a counter argument when others start to make claims that seem contrary to the sense we’re trying to make of this world. When we read the bible we also become connected to a rich and deep history of others doing the same. Their struggles, their questions, their reactions, all give us more ways to be drawn into the story ourselves. Reading the Bible draws us together in the midst of a world that seems to want to push us apart.

to you!

Finally, the Bible is about you. Let’s be honest, you really need some help and so do I. Reading the stories of the Bible helps us to make sense of our own stories and there’s more than enough that just doesn’t make sense. When we compare our experiences of joy and sadness and certainty and doubt with those chronicled in the Bible, we gain glimpses of the truth and the value and the relevance of our lives. These glimpses help build our imagination for the possible. There are many who think the Bible is some sort of rule book or even a play book on how to live life. I think that really sells it short. Much more than providing us with easy answers, the Bible provides an opportunity to ask better questions. As a result, we’re encouraged to experiment, to try and to fail and then to try again. Each time we take a step forward we have the chance to learn something about ourselves and every new learning moment builds on the last. Sometimes even, the failures build the strongest foundations for the future. If you’re anything like me, you feel pulled in countless directions. Home and family, school and work, friends and play, all have us going every which way. The Bible might just be where it all comes together, the one story that makes the most sense, the place you get to find the real you.

If you’ve gotten this far and you’re still not offended, then I promise I’ll try harder next time. If you did get offended but kept on reading, thanks for sticking with me. Hopefully, even for just this moment, I’ve exposed you to the possible. Yes the Bible can do lots of things, but only if you pick it up is it possible that the Bible could do the most important things of all.

*What do I do? Well to quote from some essay I wrote on my “sense of call:" helping others experience a connection with God.

What I'm supposed to be doing:

Peter’s "Pause, Listen & Learn" Goals for July: (Will posting the here make them any more attainable?)

PLL Operational

1. Listening Team – be an active participant, looking for God and helping others do the same.
2. Field Trip Co-Leader – facilitate fruitful experiences and get to know Becca better.
3. Plan & Facilitate Sharing of Outcomes – be intentional about how we can share all the we experience and learn to our broader constituencies.

On-going Work

1. Facilitate a renegotiated lease at Field that includes a storage solution.
2. Re-structure/energize Sunday morning volunteer recruitment process.
3. Get the signage finished for Longfellow.

Personal

1. Finish all the writings for June classes.
2. Find new ways to support & encourage my staff in MT.
3. Exercise at least 6 days every week.
4. Try yoga at least once.

So I recognize immediately how ambitious this list reads. Already have fallen short of the exercise goal but still feeling good about it. That last one, the one about yoga, well that will be an interesting one to pull off. At the least, I'm sure it will be fodder for another blog entry.

A helpful reminder for the day...

credit

Does God play golf? I think I found his ball(s).

I left Montana on Wednesday afternoon. About two hours after I landed in Minneapolis, my phone started to buzz with pictures of a hail storm that hit Red Lodge. The hail was merciless and soon the pictures started to tell a different story; damaged car roof, broken neon sign, leaking roofs. Three days later, I'm still working the phones trying to do damage control but it's just not working. I'll be getting on a plane Monday to get back so I can lend a hand with the recovery efforts in person.

I'm supposed to be doing some deep discernment of how God is working in my life right now. Instead, I'm being handed nothing but hassles. What is going on? Is there deeper meaning to this challenge? Or is this just the crappy side of life? I'm praying for strength; for me, for my folks and for my amazing staff. Maybe you would too?

Competent? Getting there.

I've been asked to review a set of "educational leadership competencies" that I was first introduced to in the fall of 2008, my first semester at Luther. The competencies are divided into three categories: knowledge, attitude and skill. Each category then is comprised of six defined statements that attempt to articulate how the desired competencies are experienced. Go here if you'd lie to see the full list. Rather than go through the entire list here, I thought I might share a few of the more interesting reflections I have.

Given my context as an intern with Jacob's Well, a faith community I've been a part of for over two years, I've been challenged in ways I could not have imagined when first addressing these competencies. This community tends to be highly educated yet unfamiliar with the historical and literary traditions of the church. In addition, they are skeptical about much of the language and classic approaches to Christian education. This puts a lot of pressure on the leadership in preparation for preaching and small group curriculum development. As a result, I'm thankful that my own familiarity with the scriptural witness has given me the confidence to engage this community theologically in entirely new arenas. Where I struggle is not being too bound by the traditions I'm familiar with in order to see other learning methods as opportunity for this community. These are my current experiences with the knowledge competencies.

As for the attitude, back in 2008 I assessed each aspect of this competencies as "relatively strong." I don't think anything has necessarily changed here as I continue to be deeply interested in the ways in which to engage the world, find God at its center and frame the challenges of the day in that respect. As for skill, I still have lots of growing and learning to do here, but as I recognized in 2008, this is something that will always be in front of me. I've been enjoying my current context but I'm also curious to see how these skills will continue to develop in alternate settings.

You're doing what?

So... Jacob's Well (the church I currently serve as intern pastor) is doing something that I've never heard of another church doing. Quite honestly, because we've never heard of another church doing it was probably the main motivator in taking the idea serious to begin with. That's what I love about this call. As the tag line goes, Jacob's Well is "church for people who don't like church." I think that's even more true for the leadership. It's a collection of leaders who want to lead a church but fundamentally don't like church. At least not "church" as it's commonly understood and experienced.

Jacob's Well is about to celebrate its 5th anniversary and as an institution that wants to be anything but, that's a frightening thought. As we look around at what we're doing, we can't help but wonder, "is this really the church that God is calling us to be?" So rather than keep doing what we're doing but not knowing, we've decided to push the pause button on the week in and week out activities so we can make some time to listen for God and maybe learn where we're being called to next. And that's what it's called; Pause, Listen & Learn. During the next four weeks of July, we won't be producing our own worship experiences but encouraging our community to engage the world around them and maybe, just maybe, find God speaking in some unexpected places. I, along with a number of others, will be leading "Field Trips" to a variety of other worshiping communities around the Twin Cities. We'll also be intentionally engaging our neighbors in a variety of other settings. To learn more about the whole initiative, go here.

Thought for the day...

Driving

Anne, Bjorn and I left MN about 2pm on Monday afternoon June 27th, headed for MT. Just before hoping behind the wheel I downloaded a few books from Audible.com to listen to on the drive. One title that had been sitting in my wish list for a few months was "Drive" by Daniel Pink and it seemed more than apt for killing a few hours in the car. The subtitle for the book is "The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us" and makes a few interesting arguments. Though I haven't finished listening yet (I nodded off when Anne took over the wheel just east of Bismark) there have been more than a couple examples and citations also mentioned in another book I recently read for my Media & Technology class earlier this month. "Here Comes Everybody" by Clay Shirky also draws heavily upon similar research. Shirky's book was published in 2008 whereas Pink's book came out late last year. In particular, both authors use the same examples of Wikipedia to make comparable points of how social and business relationships are being created. Both authors put forth compelling reasons for how and why social media is changing culture and certainly how relationship are formed and leveraged.

I had this interesting experience, both while reading Shirky's book and listening to Pink's, that could only be described as something akin to multiple personality disorder. My mind would wander between the multiple worlds I live and operate in: restaurant owner, intern pastor, graduate student, parent and spouse. I became easily distracted by the myriad of ways the material applied to the various aspects of my life and after finishing both I have this desire to revisit the material but this time trying to limit the "hat" that I'm wearing while engaging the content. Ah well, perhaps another time...

The Word on the Street

I happened upon a strange sight last night. A group of ten or so 16-25 year-olds were sitting in a circle having a bible study. That's not the strange part. Let it be known, I'm pro-bible study and I'm especially impressed with the ages of the group that was gathered. If anything, that's exactly the age demographic that seems least likely to invest any time gathered in community with an open bible in front of them. Note that it was Saturday night, which seems to underline the uniqueness of this particular bible study of young adults. They could have been at the movies, or bowling or even at watching the Twins win their 5th in a row at Target Field but instead, they're studying the bible. But that's still not the strange part.

The strange part is not who was studying the bible or when they were studying the bible. The strange part was where they were studying the bible. They were seated right on the sidewalk in downtown Minneapolis, just outside the doors of Dream Girls, a night club that features female strippers and table dancers. Even stranger was that the Twins game had just gotten over and there were crowds of people filing past, first the velvet ropes of the entryway to the strip club, then the cross-legged bible studiers. I'm guessing that the circle of young folks was very intentional about the when and the where of their bible study. Perhaps it was some form of non-violent protest or maybe they had just gotten kicked out of the pizza place on the corner and needed a place to continue their study. I didn't stop and ask but maybe I should have. Honestly, the whole thing made me feel uncomfortable and a little sad.

"Your Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." Psalm 119

I need to ask my kids what they thought of the whole scene. I wonder what they found to be more weird, people lining up to watch naked people dance or people sitting in the middle of a sidewalk reading the bible. The culture that was present last night probably thought the bible study was the more "unusual" of the two. I would probably be on that side too. It's not that I think the Word should be kept in particular places. The Word can speak to much more than we tend to allow it space for. The strangeness of the sidewalk bible-study suggests to me how some prefer to "use" the bible in contrast to culture rather than have the Word speak directly to culture.

The Word will shine its light onto many things; good, bad and, from time to time, strange.

Back at it...

I'm taking a few courses on campus this summer, in between interning at Jacob's Well and flying back and forth to Red Lodge to keep an eye on Bridge Creek. I actually had my first class last weekend: Media & Technology in Religious Education. I was glad to have a chance to finally take a class from Mary Hess. She's been a fresh voice for some time at Luther and though she's a Roman Catholic, she holds her own in this very Lutheran setting. I find myself drawn to the non-Lutheran faculty I've encountered and I wonder if they are held to a higher standard of theological rigor and teaching ability than their Lutheran colleagues. Either way, it must be a difficult setting to be non-Lutheran.

The 12 hours of class time last weekend condensed 18 hours of material over 1.5 days. I was impressed with the collection of resources that Mary drew upon in her presentations and did a great job facilitating the discussions from a fairly diverse student body. In particular, I was impressed with thoughts on the power of social media in Here Comes Everybody, a book by NYU Professor Clay Shirky. It should be no surprise that one of the assignments for this class is to do some blogging and I'll be posting a few comments about Shirky's book as well as thoughts on the other topics the class covered.

So congratulations dear readers, Mary has gotten me back to work on my blog. You can blame her for all that is to come in the days ahead.

Help Desk

Salvation: Part B

Rob Bell has written a new book, Love Wins, and its release has not been without a fair amount of controversy. As I see it, most of this controversy is not new and the publishing of this book has allowed for an opportunity for others desperate for Bell-like notoriety to get a little attention. The loudest voices of objection are coming from the almost predictably conservative Evangelical Christian front. But, the good news about such a controversy is that every fight needs opposing armies and Bell is not without his supporters too. Here’s Richard Mouw, President of Fuller Theological Seminary:

I told the USA TODAY reporter that Rob Bell’s newly released Love Wins is a fine book and that I basically agree with his theology. I knew that the book was being widely criticized for having crossed the theological bridge from evangelical orthodoxy into universalism. Not true, I told the reporter. Rob Bell is calling us away from a stingy orthodoxy to a generous orthodoxy.

Let me say it clearly: I am not a universalist. I believe hell as a condition in the afterlife is real, and that it will be occupied. I think Rob believes that too. But he is a creative communicator who likes to prod, and even tease us a bit theologically. Suppose, he likes to say, we go up to someone and tell them that God loves them and sent Jesus to die for their sins. Accept Jesus right now, we say, because if ten minutes from now you die without accepting this offer God will punish you forever in the fires of hell. What kind of God are we presenting to the person? Suppose we told someone that their human father has a wonderful gift for them, offered out of love for them-and then we add that, by the way, if they reject the gift that same father will torment them as long as they live. What would we think of such a father?

Mouw’s question is a good one. It seems to get at the heart of what I long for in my own theology of salvation. God’s love is the driving force, not God’s wrath. Time and energy spent scarring people with the threat of damnation seems counter-productive and very counter-intuitive if a God of unconditional love lies behind our salvation. And, the kind of love this father has for me makes a huge difference for today, not just for tomorrow.

I have a t-shirt that says, “Love Conquers Hate.” I wish I could wear it every day. It’s how I feel and may be a helpful slogan for those who cling to the omnipotence of God. God will judge us and God will ultimately decide the future. But for now, for today, love wins.