Notes From Off Center

revised statement of faith

Drew Tatusko — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:18:33 +0000

I was pouring through some documents yesterday and today and realized how much my theology has changed over the years. Fifteen years ago there are several spots in my new claim to faith that I would have thought were heretical! Alas, people change and times change. Not to change is not to be human. So if you were sitting in judgment on a PC(USA) committee, for example, where are the red flags for you?

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I believe in one eternal God, unmade, who existed before the first spark that ignited the expansion of the cosmos, who is among us now, and who will exist even to the end of all that has been created. God revealed God’s own self as the one who orders the world out of chaos, and liberates the captives from slavery into freedom. God revealed this among the Chosen people of Israel in whom God entrusted to lay the foundations of a new Kingdom on Earth, to those whom God chooses as God’s own for eternity. This Kingdom was rejected by many including the very Chosen people of God in the form of idols of their own making for which purpose God sent judges, kings, and prophets to redirect people towards their one Creator, Sustainer, and Savior.

In God’s own mercy, God chose to take on the form of the man Jesus in order to bring the Kingdom of God among humanity. As the fullness of God was in him, Jesus represents the true fulfillment of the human creation. Jesus’ ministry was rebuked by the religious authorities even as Jesus ministered to the poor, outcast, lonely, and sinners while revealing the Kingdom of God. Jesus being fully God and fully human was rejected by the people of God and mocked by imperial powers and religious authorities taking on the ultimate end of all sin which was death as a criminal on the cross. Yet God’s grace nonetheless prevailed when Jesus rose from the dead three days after his gruesome and unjust crucifixion. Before returning to the community of the Triune God, Jesus entrusted those whom he loved to carry on his message of mercy, compassion, service, and justice and on these pillars to continue to reveal the Kingdom of God as his very body on earth. Jesus entrusts the human creation of God to partake and be transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit who connects a frail and limited humanity to a powerful and limitless God.

As Jesus revealed God’s mercy among the poor, lonely, outcast, and oppressed peoples of Israel; and as Jesus demanded transformation among the religious authorities while revealing their religious systems as frail compared to the God they alone were to serve, so Jesus asks the community of faith to strive for justice through love knowing that it is God’s grace through acts of faith that sustain the people of God. With faith in a risen Lord who by the power of the Spirit sustains the order of creation, the people of God share the responsibility of establishing a kingdom of mercy, compassion, service, and justice that exists to glorify God alone.

The church is to pursue the unfolding of this Kingdom, and “is called to undertake this mission even at the risk of losing its life, trusting in God alone as the author and giver of life, sharing the gospel, and doing those deeds in the world that point beyond themselves to the new reality in Christ” (Presbyterian Church USA Book of Order, G-3.0400). Though the people of God continue to reject God, it is God who through mercy and love pursues them nonetheless as witnessed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Through the risen Christ, God's love and forgiveness persists in the presence of the Spirit even for all of those who reject him.

The Scriptures contained in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament bear witness to the relationship of God with God’s people, and the revelation of God’s will for all of the world and humanity in Jesus Christ, the risen Lord. God inspired those who composed the texts in these Scriptures so that future generations may learn of God. It is the through the Scriptures that we learn the most about the mission of Jesus and the early church and its saints. Even as those who wrote and those who later canonized the various books of Scripture lived in cultures alien to our own time, they remain a source of life to be inhabited in the continued revelation of God’s Kingdom in our own nations, communities, and churches today. Although imperfect in many ways, the Scriptures are yet the primary authority to ground the inspiration of the Kingdom of God.

Worship nourishes our faith through the reading and proclamation of the good news of the Gospel in Scripture. It is where we are incorporated into the body of Christ through the sacrament of baptism and participate in the holy mystery of God's salvation by grace in the holy communion. Through worship, we are joined to one another through ritual and there receive new life in Christ. We do this for the sake of God the Father who lives and reigns with Jesus Christ, in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

god is revealed where god is hidden

Drew Tatusko — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:13:13 +0000

Yesterday I had a wonderful conversation with Thomas for the Something Beautiful podcast. Today, a subsequent Twitter conversation and unrelated post by Greg Bolt on the nature of the boundaries of a church body lead me to focus on the same question: where is God revealed and how can we incorporate that into our religious social structures.

The model of Christendom is that God is specially revealed in specific religious structures and social systems – the denominations. This paradigm ignores that God can also be revealed in systems that have nothing or very little to do with traditional religious structures within Christendom. Essentially, if you want to participate in the life of God, receive forgiveness, salvation, etc., you had better get your butt in church. Even though there is a movement away from this notion, that God can only be revealed and received within specific denominational social structures, it is still assumed and perhaps insisted that as long as you are some sort of Christian church or other named social space or community, you are doing the job of revealing God in the right way.

What this does not take into account is that the very source of a church's revelation, the grace of God which we receive by following the way of Jesus, is formed in a ministry that revealed God to all of those outside of the bounds of the normative religious structures, social spaces, and religious social systems of the time. In parable after parable, and confrontation after confrontation with religious and political authorities, Jesus has reveals a clear and common thread: when the Kingdom of God is revealed, it is revealed everywhere to everyone. Jesus reveals a Kingdom, a community and socio-political system, completely radical to all social systems of the time. The only fault of the religious authorities is that they are so bound to the system of revelation that they received, that they do not see God revealed fully in their very presence in Jesus.

I have been asked many times by atheists why I don't believe in unicorns, Zeus, or follow Allah revealed through Muhammad if I cannot actually prove any of it, much less why I specifically believe in Jesus. My answer is that this revelation of God, in Jesus Christ, makes sense to me, it forms a lifeworld I understand, it is a set of traditions that I hold dear because they have made me the person I am, and it offers me a source of spiritual nourishment. If Jesus is the special and unique revelation of God, that makes sense to me. In short, Jesus works.

I believe that every human being is born with a unique sense of the spiritual and is born with a unique ability to receive God. I also believe that God is so beyond our physical limitations – our churches, our traditions, our cultures, and the existence of space and time – that there is no place within the entire set of space and time that was and is out of the reach of God's resurrection in Christ. In Christ space and time were healed from the great rift that space and time create between the human ability to receive God, and the being of God itself.

To say that God can only be received or even fully received within a specific tradition betrays the very ministry through which Jesus reveals to us the Kingdom of God. That the two greatest commandments are love of God and love of neighbor are not limited to the Abrahamic traditions alone is witness to the reality that God is revealed in every corner of the universe, in every hidden place where we delude ourselves and convince ourselves that God cannot possibly be. The narrow gate of Christ is thus a paradox since it rips open all space and all time to show that God invites all into a Kingdom that is being revealed literally everywhere. The beauty we only need to receive it.

my god is a predator

Drew Tatusko — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:46:18 +0000

He has come again, he thought with terror; he is all around me and beneath my feet and above my head….

Bowing his head, he waited. the air was mute, immobile; the light – apparently naive and harmless – played on the wall opposite him, and on the cane lathed ceiling. I won't open my mouth, he decided within himself. I won't breathe a word. Perhaps he will take pity on me and leave.

But as he made this decision, his lips parted and spoke. His voice full of grievance. "Why do you draw my blood? Why are you angry? How long are you going to pursue me?"

He stopped. Bent over, his mouth open, the hairs of his head standing on end and his eyes full of fear, he listened….

At first there was nothing; the air motionless, silent. But then, suddenly, someone above his head was pseaking to him. He cocked his ear and heard – heard, and shook his head violently, continually, as though saying No! No! No!

Finally he too opened his mouth. His voice no longer trembled. "I can't! I'm illiterate, an idler, afraid of everything. I love good food, wine, laughter. I want to marry, to have children…. Leave me alone!"

I went to college, I studied religion. I went to seminary to be a minister. I learned a lot, changed a lot, and found that I was not ready for that kind of life. I tried to be ordained and have a full time job in the "real world" just to complete that process. I failed. And I ran. I did what I desired to do without the specter of God looming above my head like a ghost. I ignored it. Escaped it. I fled it as if God was cordoned off in a place in the universe from which I could run. I denied God's existence, stop caring about God as much as possible, and decided to live my life ethically, but in the bliss of knowing God was finally dead.

I began talking with atheists. There I had to capitulate to atheism or defend my very weak and vulnerable faith. I found myself in the midst of people who believed that God is a mass delusion and that people who believe in God should be psychologically treated. God found me there stranded on an island of belief weakened by fear in the middle of a sea of atheists who could not understand why I continued to believe in God at all. I began to believe again not among believers, but through the voices of the most adamant non-believers I had ever encountered. I tried to kill God, but I forgot about the resurrection. I was indeed delusional, but from my disbelief.

Even though God plucked me from my own paradoxical delusion, I still tried to run. Finding escape in music, wine, books, my job, and all things that could keep God as an object to control, I began to feel more alienated from myself. God continued to pursue me knowing that at some point my running would exhaust me. The predator continued to pursue its prey.

When we do not allow ourselves to be absorbed in God's grace and deny our calling, God becomes something not full of hope and nourishment, but a predator that haunts us until we submit. My God is a predator, eager to tear into my flesh for disobedience and irrational fear. The only thing to save me from judgment is grace that transforms that judgment into love. This is a love that hurts. But it is not God who hurts me, it is only myself running from the one thing to complete my already very full life.

I don't want God to call me to do anything. I want to live my life and enjoy it as it is, without some pesky deity ruining what I have. But it is not God who is ruining what I have, it is only me every time I run and every time I try to hide in a selfish attempt to be something I am not. My God is a predator because that is the God I have made for myself. I am Augustine's restless heart. I am Kierkegaard's despair; a self that is not a self until it rests transparently in the power that established it. I am the hunted hopelessly running from the one thing to finish the work that was begun in me. I need to run toward my predator and allow it to kill me so that I may live again.

Just the other day (Mary) had fallen at (her brother-in-law the old rabbi's) feet and complained:

"You heal strangers but you do not want to heal my son."

The rabbi shook his head. "Mary, your boy isn't being tormented by a devil; it's not a devil, it's God – so what can I do?"

"Is there a cure?" the wretched mother asked.

"It's God I tell you. No there is no cure."

"Why does he torment him?"

The old exorcist sighed but did not answer.

"Why does he torment him?" the mother asked again.

"Because he loves him," the old rabbi replied.

May a wise rabbi offer me the wisdom to turn me to my predator that it may become my life giving healer and source of hope.

Quotes from Nikos Kazantzakis – The Last Temptation of Christ

blogging harvey cox: the future of faith

Drew Tatusko — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:26:26 +0000

In the middle of the 20th century Harvey Cox brought the secularization debate that was all the rage in the sociology of religion to a popular audience with his classic The Secular City. Since then, many of the assumptions on which his book were based have been debunked by overwhelming evidence that secularization is not what we once thought it was. So what would Cox say about it now? In his new book The Future of Faith we get to find out what he now thinks about religion in the world and where he thinks it is headed. As any reader of this blog knows, secularization is an area that I have been studying and so, thanks to Tripp Fuller shooting me a copy, I will get to engage the book with many others!

Philip Clayton also has a new book out and he and Cox are taking them out on tour. One of the blog tour stops will be here, but as you can see below they will be making their rounds over the next month until they wrap things up in Montreal at the American Academy of Religion's annual meeting. There they will be joined by an illustrious panel including Eric Gregory, Bruce Sanguin, Serene Jones, Frank Tupper, and Andrew Sung Park to share a 'Big Idea' for the future of the Church. These 'Big Ideas' will be video tapped and shared, so be on the look out for live footage from the last night of the tour.

Philip's new book is Transforming Christian Theology for Church & Society and Harvey's is The Future of Faith. Both are worth checking out at one of the many tour stops. If you can't wait you can listen to them interview each other. Meanwhile, stay tuned to my blog and check out my fellow theobloggers below.

Joseph Weethee , Jonathan Bartlett, The Church Geek, Jacob’s Cafe, Reverend Mommy, Steve Knight, Todd Littleton, Christina Accornero, John David Ryan, LeAnn Gunter Johns, Chase Andre, Matt Moorman, Gideon Addington, Ryan Dueck, Rachel Marszalek, Amy Moffitt, Josh Wallace, Jonathan Dodson, Stephen Barkley, Monty Galloway, Colin McEnroe, Tad DeLay, David Mullens, Kimberly Roth, Tripp Hudgins, Tripp Fuller, Greg Horton, Andrew Tatum, Drew Tatusko, Sam Andress, Susan Barnes, Jared Enyart, Jake Bouma, Eliacin Rosario-Cruz, Blake Huggins, Lance Green, Scott Lenger, Dan Rose, Thomas Turner, Les Chatwin, Joseph Carson, Brian Brandsmeier, J. D. Allen, Greg Bolt, Tim Snyder, Matthew L. Kelley, Carl McLendon, Carter McNeese, David R. Gillespie, Arthur Stewart, Tim Thompson, Joe Bumbulis, Bob Cornwall

This Tour is Sponsored by Transforming Theology DOT org!

euthanizing the word "unbiblical"

Drew Tatusko — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:12:52 +0000

Tony Jones has been giving a series of posts on euphemisms and words within Christianity that are ridden with assumed values that are more harmful than helpful not only in our discourse, but in our desire to be a community. He also tackles a set of words that have tended to bother me namely, "unbiblical", "unscriptural", "high view of scripture" etc. Some use the the odd phrase "objective reader of scripture" as if there is a clear idea of what that means. This is not new.

What happened, as any reader of American higher education history is aware, is that the Baconian understanding of science began to be pushed out of the emerging university. Science was moving on to new methods and as a result was pushing Baconian science, the humanities, and theology with it out of the mainstream of "useful" studies in colleges and emerging universities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But rather than adapt to these new methods in science and the humanities, traditionalists reinforced Baconian science as an approach to the Bible. This system rejected the idea of a hypothetical construct in favor of sticking only to what presented itself to the senses in an assumed transparency of objectivity. The irony is that as the hypothetical method of theorizing clearly yielded greater and more powerful results leading to the dismissal of Baconian science, those who maintained a "high biblicism" stuck with Bacon and still do!

The Baconian method was nothing more than apprehending what was apparent to the senses, categorizing those things, and then finding cause and effect relationships between them. Some of us have heard the odd phrase "interpret Scripture with Scripture." While it might have some merit in finding out the connections and massive amounts of self referencing that goes on in the Bible (mostly going back to the Torah), it assumes that everything is related in a cause and effect manner. Moreover, it maintains that Scripture is a self-enclosed system that cannot refer to anything outside of itself. This is exactly the way that science was done before hypothesis testing which, by the way, was needed for progress to be made on what Darwin noticed in the fossil record.

The question is why they approached Scripture this way? It was to offer scientific legitimacy to the Bible in a time when people viewed it with less and less cultural and social importance. People were less prone to view its importance in the interests of the development of new knowledge and the development of the academy as something to serve the needs of the commonwealth. This made a lot of sense. If they could show that the Bible was as relevant as ever by using the same methods that were revolutionizing how people were beginning to understand the world, then it would resume its rightful place at the top of the educational and social ladder. Yet when this approach was reinforced and then assumed to be "high" biblicism due to its "objectivity", science had moved on to bigger and better challenges. Locking onto this old scientific approach became evident in the Scopes trial where we can find a pivotal schism in evangelicalism between fundamentalists and moderns who embraced new critical methods to break apart assumptions in the text itself rather than assume "objectivity."

The idea of "Scriptural objectivity" is built on a long since undermined scientific notion of objectivity that even scientists no longer use as a primary method. So-called "high biblicism" is nothing more than an assumed late 19th century understanding of scientific objectivity. Because we no longer give this way of seeing things scientific credibility, much less rational credibility in the arts and in literature to be sure, it remains anachronistic and backward. What once was a way to make the Bible more legitimate in the emerging field of disciplinary knowledge is now a weight that holds a large population of Christians down, and unnecessarily so.

This idea of "high" biblicism is nothing more than an outdated and absurd scientific view that tries to make the Bible more "scientific and objective." It is therefore quite ironic that those who follow this path ignorant of the wondrous depths of scripture beyond a false notion of objectivity bound for failure will adamantly oppose current scientific discourse rooted in the scientific method of hypothesis and theory testing! It is the same old worldview that must reject the revolution of scientific discourse that happened many decades ago. Not to embrace what "high biblicism" actually is, a tired and incomplete scientific world view at best, is merely to invest one's self in ignorance.

we were born to be loved

Drew Tatusko — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:11:36 +0000

In debates over evolution, science, and the nature of human beings one question usually comes up: What makes human being s unique from other species? Some have argued that human language making ability is unique, but that gets complicated by the various ways that gorillas and porpoises communicate among other species. Some argue that it is the human being's ability to adapt to their environment by building environments rather than achieving balance with an environment that already exists. The construction of symbols, the development of culture, the design and use of tools, understanding the world as an object to be examined, etc. All of these are used as characteristics of what is uniquely human. Most of them are interestingly not a matter of unique difference as much as the degree to which humans are able to live into and create realities with these characteristics far more so than other species.

The one aspect that rarely comes into the picture is the need for love. As species exhibit greater intelligence no matter by what measure, the need for community and love increases. Sponges in coral reefs only need what the environment gives them. Yet as we travel up the chain of intelligence the need for community, for social connectedness, increases. It is a strange paradox that those creatures that have the most faculties to survive alone are also those that have the greatest need for social connectedness. Monkeys and dogs, and yes even cats, would perish without some form of social connectedness. In fact the ability to be socially connected is one crucial variable in determining whether or not a person has a psychological problem.

If we all can agree then that human beings are the most intelligent of all species on the planet, the one species that has the power to completely destroy itself and the world, then it is also human beings that are the most in need of social connectedness to be happy and healthy. This also means that human beings are the most vulnerable to lose their sense of self through the events of life that create social dislocation and separation. Without social connectedness all of the other faculties that make humans unique fall like a house of cards. Our sense of social connectedness makes us fragile and vulnerable to attack. There is no doubt why complete isolation in "the hole" in prisons is an horrific threat for even the worst criminals.

When Jesus tells us to love our neighbor, he is getting at the core of what it means to be human – the inherent neeed to be loved by another. Love is the deepest form of human connectedness. Love is a social function of what it means to be human. It is so deep that it is not we who define love in our relationships, but it is the love that binds our relationships together that forms us and gives us life. Loving our neighbor is not just an ethical mandate. It is to name the core of our being. It is to identify that for which human beings are born: to love, and be loved by another. It is as Paul says, that without love we are literally nothing. Without love we are not as human as we can be.

Love is what makes us the image of God. It is not the flesh, nor the power of our brains, it is the need for love that can be fully expressed only in our human communities. It is love that defines us. If God is love, then God working in that which defines the core of our humanity is what makes us truly human. For the Triune God is a community bonded inextricably through love. The same love that binds the three persons of God into one is the same love that binds us together. This is our religion. It is not doctrine, but love that binds us together. If we are not bound together by love, we are no longer in the image of what God intended and less human that we were created to be.

May we bind ourselves in love one day at a time even if the addiction to selfish disconnectedness continues to have power over us. Love your neighbor today for today is all we have right now.

standing at the precipice of reason

Drew Tatusko — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 21:14:11 +0000

It's hard to get rid of the reason/faith distinction that proliferates in the these late modern debates over religion and its place in the societies of the world. From the atheist or agnostic view faith has no place in relation to reason. Faith is a sign of something completely irrational, or something non-rational at best. Reason, being that faculty of the human mind that can control the variables of experience with material evidence, is the end of humankind and the greatest good. For out of reason springs the good. On the other hand, for the religious faith is at the heart of what it means to be human for only faith is what leads to God. If God is the highest good and faith is the means to receive the revelation of God, then faith itself is a perfectly rational means to a perfectly rational end.

Often what I have seen is that for those who argue for reason alone, the notion that unconscious judgments and non-rational decisions are made in the service of empirical and material ends that seem rational seems to be a worthless claim. An example of this is the basis of placing reason on such a high plane of cognition that other forms of thinking, believing, and doing are of less value, less important, or not worth basing something as vital as a society in which human beings flourish. That societies flourished long before this Enlightenment understanding of reason is often seen as irrelevant. Thus there is a certain kind of non-rational judgment here that this particular form of rationality is a preferred one for what are largely preferential ends.

On the other hand, many who observe the "faith alone" perspective come at it with the idea that reason is a failed and sinful practice that deserves attention only inso far as it is redeemed by faith itself. Reason is useful only in terms of such activities as supporting the truth of Scripture, crafting apologetic arguments for faith, or rooting out the inconsistencies of reason when applied to faith and religious traditions. The various arguments from creationism, doctrinal debates, and even the core assertions of biblical literalism all employ reason for their specific ends of disproving the validity of a secular reason itself.

What we find is that both reason from the materialist perspective and faith from the supposedly non-rational perspective both have elements of faith and reason embedded in the assumptions inherenet to them. While the distinction works on some levels, it falls apart when we look to both perspectives' first principles. Both have value laden ends that drive their purposes and ways of talking about the world. Reason is used for those judgments of faith and faith is used for those judgments of reason.

While reason was mixed with a kind of Victorian idea of human progress and perfection in the 19th century, there was also an enhanced sense of beauty that was non-rational and subjective. One had to live in beauty even if truth was a rational end. But even here it is as if truth cannot be an end or a component of beauty.

So what is a Christian who abides by that old belief of Anselm of Canterbury that faith seeks understanding? For this faith comes before one can understand the meaning of God and truth. Here belief precedes reason and without faith in God first, reason is empty. But perhaps in this day and age where reason has scooped up the highest stock price in the marketplace of knowledge, we would do better to follow Kierkegaard and flip this idea around. For Kierkegaard reason was not an empty prospect for truth and one could engage the world with reason alone and get along just fine. However, the ultimate meaning of life was something that escaped reason's limits. This was not for him a conclusion like Kant where at the edge of reason nothing was to be known. For him at the edge of reason lay the font of ultimate truth which was found in nothing other than the God-man, Jesus Christ. Standing at the precipice of all that reason can accomplish is the paradoxical wisdom of the ineffable God to become human so that we may become more like God. Faith is at the edge of reason's limits and completes any end of reason that is even suggestive of the meaning of life and the end of humankind to seek the good, which is found only it its Source.

May our reason not suffer at the hands of faith, but may faith complete the end to which our rational activity points.

stop giving money for the afflicted

Drew Tatusko — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:14:45 +0000

What is probably more puzzling is that the idea of not giving money to help the afflicted is more offensive than the fact that those who are offended have assumed that money is the solution the the problem. Giving money does not address the first principle of charity which is the direct investment of labor for the sake of the afflicted.

The most expensive commodity in the world is labor. It costs more to pay for the work people do than any other expense, at least in theory. The most efficient way to increase profits is by cutting labor costs and cutting the number of full time employees one retains in order to increase the margin between credits and debits. If a company can export labor to cut costs, not only does it usually give low paying jobs to poor people in another often foreign location, but it also cuts costs for the corporation. Cost cutting is then transferred into a new account of exploitation. The World Bank will actually loan money to poor countries which allows them to invest in corporations to create industries and "jobs."

So what does it mean to get a paycheck for labor performed? A paycheck is a note that symbolizes the transfer of labor into a government issued note. It is a way of telling the employee that this is what their labor is worth to the employer and nothing more. When we selflessly donate these funds received through this transaction to a charity, we are simply converting our labor into dollars, thereby transferring our labor to another entity for some other purpose. We transfer our labor through the media of money.

The problem is that in transferring the value of our labor from one place to another we are contributing to a larger problem. This problem is the need for charity labor itself. If labor is the most expensive and thus the most valuable commodity for any organization, the amount that we give in dollars is only there to support someone else's labor to meet a certain outcome such as helping the poor. Our tax dollars go to various welfare programs, section 8 housing, medicaid, etc. in the same kind of transaction. As with any transaction, as the commodity exchanges through each hand, it's value degrades over time. It does so with various administration costs to support someone else's labor, management, fundraising itself, etc. Thus, the labor that you produced for one employer actually begins to lose value as it transfers into government notes that then transfers to other places like charities.

In developed nations like the United States, we have long assumed that if we donate to charity that the value of our labor in dollars will then be transferred elsewhere for a "good purpose." This makes us feel good and look good. To be sure, giving money does have its place especially when one cannot directly work for a specific charity. However, it is not the most effective way of lifting the afflicted out of their state of degradation. Thus the single most effective way to donate to a "cause" is by investing in charity not with dollars, but with labor itself.

For Simone Weil, affliction is not just a physical or psychological state of depression, anxiety, oppression, etc. It is the state when one's ability to receive what is good has been so crushed largely by social forces, that one ceases to have the spark of humanity itself left in him or her. It is absolute alienation and degradation of the human self so that the person is worth nothing more than a pebble. It is not possible for the afflicted to raise their self up out of their condition. Rather, it is human obligation to one's neighbor that makes recreation of the afflicted possible. It requires humanity to reach deep into the void of affliction to give the good to the afflicted. This requires that humanity be willing to sacrifice itself for the sake of the other even as Christ sacrifices himself to reveal the Kingdom of God for humankind.

The exchange of labor through money may be an indirect means that may recreate the humanity of the afflicted. But it does not resolve the first principle here. The first principle of the afflicted is a loss of human connectedness. It is the utter failure of others to love their neighbor. Love cannot be transferred through government bank notes. Love requires the direct intervention of people to give the good to those who are unable to receive it. In this way human obligation bridges the void between the afflicted and God. While giving money to the afflicted may have its place, it does not absolve us from love which requires the direct investment of our labor for the sake of the afflicted. While the protest of "This is too unrealistic and I don't have time" seems reasonable, it does not divest humanity that direct investment of labor for the sake of the afflicted is precisely what Christ commands us all to do.

naming the powerless

Drew Tatusko — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 23:48:39 +0000

If you are of any kind of evangelical persuasion, you have heard the phrase "Call on the name of Jesus" or "There's power in the Name" and other riffs on the theme. There is power to names. It might not be a power that we in our modern cultures and technopolies understand as did those before us in a different land, but names have inherent power anyway.

Matthew Paul Turner has a fantastic post on sex and anonymity that I encourage you to read. As I was reading it, my mind went in the opposite direction. Where he discusses the power of being anonymous, as a means to enact one's libtertarian "id"-like desire, I thought of the ways that names are signs of power from outside of one's self.

Chad Ochocinco (yes that is his real name now), or Prince (remember the unpronounceable symbol?) notwithstanding, names are given to us by someone else. In the Hebrew bible one is associated as a son or daughter of a parent. It is not about Drew Tatusko, it is about "Drew son of Joseph of the Tatuskos." The former focuses on me. The latter shows that I am a product of my heritage and nothing more. Individual identity among most people in history has always been tied up with the tribe. You are who you are only in relation to your tribe. Apart from your tribe you are nobody; an identity-free stranger who has no legitimacy anywhere. It's like the family is the universal ID card to get you a drink at the bar. It's all about who you know and whose blood you have pumping in your veins, not who you are as an "individual."

Names used to work kind of like little magic amulets.

In the Genesis God has no name. Yet God names things and gives human power to name things – except for God.

It is about control. You name your children and your pets, even a rock if you still have one.

It is about androcentrism. The family name is a sign of the sperm that goes from the man's testicles into the woman – literally impregnating her with his family inheritance and identity.

Naming is an activity of control because it forces you to define and categorize which is a really innocuous way of saying that you are judging things where they stand. The power of having a name, title, race, ethnicity defined for you from the social constructs in which you are forced to develop and grow during the most indelibly foundational stages of life is assumed until you can see your name as an object outside of yourself. Then you can claim your own name and make your own judgments about the world. You can even judge yourself and give yourself a new name if you wish. Of course that sometimes means simply re-branding one's self to fully mesh within the structures of corporatism and government as Max Barry imagines in the book Jennifer Government (or as Chad Ochocinco did as a symbol of his football jersey number). Such is the reinforcement of autonomy which the West so highly prizes as an ideal for happiness.

But the fetters of oppression and taboo force naming among the nameless underground. A sort of self-repression in order to feel free. As Matthew writes:

In regards to online pornography, anonymous is a rather powerful tool.

In most online situations–whether it's making comments on blogs or stalking people or checking in on old boyfriends or girlfriends or enemies, or engaging a sexual fetish of our choosing–Anonymous is a state of being that offers us the ability to "be" without the ramifications or the aftermath.

When it's over and we've had our fill of whatever it is that fancies our minds and bodies, we can simply disappear and go back to our "realities."

Here a name is both a sign of liberation and oppression. Anonymity is liberation from the oppression of one social system. It is the exercise of autonomy to give one's self a new name to escape one reality and inhabit a new construction. Why is being nameless a sign of oppression?

When one has no name in human society, one has no power at all. It is like the exact opposite of the God of the Hebrew scriptures whose lack of name is a sign of power and mystery. The nameless in our world are not vigilantes in a comic book saving people from behind the scenes that we can watch with delight. The nameless are those who have no property, are unattractive, the depressed, hungry, shy, abused, foreign, uneducated. They are those who serve you in a restaurant, clean up your spray and plunge your shit in a public restroom, pick up your trash, sew up that shirt you are now wearing. You may know them only as "Inspected by 31" yet what you wear is the product of the sweat of countless nameless people who will get up before dawn and work well into the night to do it all over again.

The power of names is paradoxical. It is a sign that someone still has or once had power over you that you have claimed for yourself or your peer group has claimed for you in a nickname. It is also a symbol of nothingness not in the sense of the almighty God whose "name" is the likeness of Voldemort, but in the sense of those who are not worthy of a name at all. In all names are signs of power. They are given, taken, refused, something even impossible to assign to others. They are not neutral. They are constructive, meaningful, and deconstructive. Names build identity and they tear it down.

If there is any Christian duty it is to seek out the nameless for they are the ignored, the abused, the used, and the oppressed. Jesus called them sons and daughters and made them well. It is the Christian duty not to give them a name, but to help them find a name for their selves as members of a community trying to find redemption as sons and daughters of Christ. God knows the nameless. Do you?

go where god is, not where you believe god ought to be.

Drew Tatusko — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:04:46 +0000

The church, no matter what community you find, packages God into something that can be controlled for human use and whim. This sort of package is not all evil or disreputable – all of the time. God has been a source of divine legitimation for human power that people have used to kill and torture people under the despotic rule of fear and oppression. Still, the social packaging of God that is the church can be a source of grace for people which is also true. Regardless, as H.R. Niebuhr argued in 1929, the church is a human social creation that ought to be given life by God. All religious and church structures conceal and distort the presence of God even as they work to be so many media to reveal the reality of God.

However, as Jesus said, the presence of God is simply in a community which does not have to be formed by doctrine, polity, law, and God forbid property. God is not just in the Tabernacle, God is everywhere.

Perhaps our faith has been distracted by our religious institutions and we fight so hard to maintain those institutions, that we forget how frail, tentative, and distorting they are to the very presence of God. The medium of the church itself has to be transformed from the inside out if it is to transform the hearts and minds to do the basic things that Jesus commanded: love God, love neighbor, heal the sick. When we fail to do these basic things and instead begin to love the institutions that are nothing but media to accomplish this task, we may as well craft a golden calf since this is exactly the function the church then serves.

Why is your church worth saving if God is indeed everywhere? What profit do we gain to preserve the media of human invention if that media is no longer a source of revelation people are currently receiving through other means? This is no longer a question of people being "spiritual but not religious." Rather it is the offspring of those "spiritual" baby boomers who are asking: I want to be religious, but it is hard to find the God that has been revealed to me in the churches where my parents worshiped when they were children.

For this and other reasons, I often find God in my backyard, in a conversation with my wife, in the giggle of my sons, the cool fall breeze, a note from someone expressing care for me or someone I love, my dog running through the snow, the smile of an elderly person who is lonely most of her life, gratitude for healing in sickness and in death, and a song. I find God in these places more often than in a pew. After seminary, I had to leave church for a while to find God again. I continue to ask where I see God. The clarity I receive in return is this: Go where God is, not where you believe God ought to be.

After years in and out of church, and now even as an elder in the Presbyterian Church (USA), the lyrics and aggression of the song below continues to capture my feelings about religion and the church, and I find God speaking to me through it every time I hear it.

Run (1996)
by King's X

Yeah she told me, that if I wasn't good
He would get me, make me pay for
everything I did, and she said
that everybody bad would burn in Hell
I did what she told me and I became
someone else.

I had to run
I had to hide
In the world outside
A better chance, out there
If God is everywhere.

I wait for nothing, take my chances let it ride
maybe there's an answer but it's buried by the lies
Somebody told me that it's just a waste of my time.
But I can't get rid of all those bags I left behind.

I had to run
I had to hide
In the world outside
A better chance, out there
If God is everywhere.