Here’s a conversation I had with three UMC clergy from the Cal-Pac Conference on the upcoming Lectionary scripture.  The verses can be read at the Vanderbilt Divinity Library.  Voices heard are Rev. Krista Givens, Rev. Molly Vetter, Rev. J. Dan Lewis, and me!  This is a ”first-attempt” episode, so if you like it please forward a link to others and comment to let us know!

For those reading this on readers that don’t support media, you can view the original post here.

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Here’s the video of the Nickle Creek song.  It’s groovy.

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Here’s what I wonder – and many others have too.  Why do we call him doubting?  Weren’t all the other disciples equally questionable?  How many of them ran to the tomb to greet the risen Christ?  I’m not saying that Thomas didn’t have a crisis of faith in the moment that the teacher he’d been following for the past three years was arrested and murdered.  He clearly did.  Didn’t the rest of them have that same crisis of faith?

What we forget is that Thomas is the only disciple to assign divinity to Christ.  When he finally saw Jesus for himself, he said:  “My lord and my God!”  Nobody else calls Jesus God.  Nobody.

So did he doubt?  Sure.  And did he come to understand more clearly?  Totally…

I’ve had some ongoing dialogue with an atheist (I’ve also heard the phrase non-theist) friend of mine.  Yesterday he posted on my Facebook page a Daily Beast article quoting Orange County Pastor Wiley Drake who appears to be calling for the deaths of Congress members – and perhaps others – who support health care reform in the United States.

My own views on reform are clear in a post here, and so I wish to be clear that my point with this point is not to reiterate what I’ve already shared.  Instead, I wish to dialogue on dialogue!  I want to highlight this ongoing conversation, because I understand the perception of Christians today and I think the perception must change.

So the link to the article was posted with the comment from my friend: so, um, yeah…

My thoughts:  Wow. Sounds like a real wacko!! [Edit: 'Wacko is, as you know, a technical term.]  This is one of the many who give the Christianity that I affirm a bad name…

At this point, my friend pushed back: But that passage is in the bible, he is simply stating the intent of gods plan as detailed in that book. Are you implying that there are somethings about gods words that can be incorrect? The passage is pretty clear, I don’t think there is alot to interpet there. Is he wacko or is he following true to the un-erroring word of god better than your cult?

That’s when I suddenly had a lot to say.  So I share the following text hoping to further this conversation.  I invite conversation here, knowing that there are many different perspectives.  I differ from Drake in many ways, and one of those is the claim that I am right and everyone else is wrong.  So here are my thoughts, and I look forward to yours:

So, I don’t have much with me right now in terms of study resources. I’m shooting from the hip here. So let’s see what we come up with.

Many of the Psalms were written by King David, but I don’t know whether Psalm 149 (the Psalm Drake quotes) is a Davidic Psalm. It kinda sounds like it, so I’ll roll with that assumption.

So with that in mind the entire sentence in that part of the Psalm (verses 6-9) is, “Let the high praises of God be in their throats and two-edged swords in their hands, to execute vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples, to bind their kings with fetters and their nobles with chains of iron, to execute on them the judgment decreed. This is glory for all his faithful ones.” And to be honest, I’m not sure what it has to do with the healthcare bill. To me it looks like he took something out of context. Again, that’s what many people do that give the Christianity I prefer (or choose) a bad name…. See More

So I argue that the the passage isn’t clear. With that said, let’s continue with the assumption that this is a Psalm written by David. The same David who sent a guy to the front lines of a battle to die ’cause he wanted the guy’s wife. Not always a stand-up character, and something that indicates that he was clearly influenced by the world around him. And what was appropriate in his world? Violence and war, especially for a king.

Even if I took that text to mean what Drake says it means (which I don’t), I would choose instead to look at some of Jesus’ sayings and would put more weight there. Jesus (whether or not you believe in his divinity) had some profound ideas about serving the people around you regardless of their social station. He encouraged hanging out with the social undesirables, the sick, the poor, women and children (who were second-class during that time period), the disabled. And in my mind, passing healthcare reform fits right into that message.

With that in mind, do I claim that the bible is the complete inerrant word of God? Nope. There are contradictions in the bible itself, so how could that be? I do say that there are profound ideas, and I do believe that that the bible was inspired by God; and it was written by the hands of men who were influenced and pressured by the social norms. Then it was translated by people who had their own interpretations!

And finally… Cult? Come on… The faith I affirm is an idea, and it’s an idea that works for me. It’s an idea I share sometimes, but – as I hope you know by now – it’s not one that I say is the end-all-be-all Truth-with-a-capital-T. Is it true for me? Yup. Does that mean it has to be true for everybody? I don’t think so.

And those ideas may get me labeled a heretic. And have, honestly. And to that I say, bring it on!

I’m a little disturbed at how excited I am about the Theology After Google conference that started tonight – ok, last night ’cause this is an early morning post.  The opening session was loaded with prophetic voices including Philip Clayton, John Franke, Monica Coleman, Adam Walker Cleaveland, Callid Keefe-Perry, and Spencer Burke.

And there was the dialogue you’d expect about how to talk about faith in a 21st century tech-laden world. There was the obligatory Jeff Jarvis reference – we are talking about theology after Google!  We acknowledged that “Christians are slow, but we live in a world that’s fast,” and that “theology is not something you consume, but something you produce” (from Clayton).  We even discussed “theosis: the process of becoming God – not becoming Christ but being Christ-like” (Keefe-Perry).

Really amazing stuff.  Truly.  And I’m excited for the rest of the conference.

I wonder though.  Will we take this and do something?  And I don’t mean will we participate in this conference that is – in my opinion – on the leading edge of theology and sociology, and then go back home to tweet and blog to our hearts content.  If we’re here, most of us are doing that already.

I wonder if we will take this and build from it something new.  I wonder if we will be transformed by the ideas of our peers and use the energy of our own transformation to do a new thing.

So, will you?  If you’re at TAG10 in Claremont or if you’re streaming, will you take this challenge?  Will you be transformed and do something more than you’re already doing?

I dare you…

I just got home after attending the Clayton v. Dennett debate over at CGU.  I’m still processing, and will likely want to watch the debate again.  If you missed it or need to watch it again, the place to do so is here:

Here are a few thoughts I’d wish to share, and then I’d invite dialogue.  In other words, please comment!  And for those who read this blog on Facebook, please follow the link at the bottom to view the original post and comment there.  Thanks.

Before beginning, I recognize that this post is long.  It’s very long.  So let me summarize here my basic observations:

1. Persons of faith need to do a better job (following the example of science) of openly criticizing extremists who say and do things counter to the majority of a faith tradition.
2. Theology must take place in public.
3. The most interesting people in the world – regardless of their ideas about faith – are those who are open and available to ideas and conversation from outside their norm.
4. All humans must risk being wrong if they want the possibility of being right.

Now.  The debate in more detail.

The first half had to do with pretty detailed philosophy.  It’s like they were testing the waters.  It was almost an intellectual foreplay – to be especially blunt about it.  Clayton and Dennett seemed to be getting a feel for each other’s styles and approaches.  And maybe – thinking of this like a poker game – looking for tells, for vulnerabilities.

And then we got into the dialogue on religion.  I was only a little surprised to hear how much agreement there was between Clayton and Dennett.  I got the sense that Dennett has the biggest problem with those theists who say that their ideas are the only Truths and that anything else is wrong (or anathema or worthy of hellfire & damnation).  That is not, however, the position that Clayton presented.  I would argue in fact that a great number of Christians – counting myself in that number – would say that we are open to the multitude of ways that the Ultimate may be expressed.

Returning to the conversation about extremists in faith communities, the following exchange took place (my transcription isn’t perfect, so bear with me):

Dennett: In every religious tradition there is unpresentable radicalism, fanaticism and it’s everybody’s problem.  And moreover, it should be the particular problem of the people in the same religion…

The irony is, every person who goes out and does good works for whatever their religion is, is providing protective coloration for the bad people in the same faith.  The Mafia would be so clever if they would go out and build a lot of hospitals and things like that because then they would not be so obviously bad guys.

Every time a benign religious group does good works, they cannot help but give succor and cover to the malignant versions of the same religion.

Moderator: How is that different from science?  Isn’t there a lot of bad that gets done in the name of science?

Dennett:  Fortunately the scientific community is forthright in its criticism and its rooting out of that.  I do not see the liberal Christians going out and naming names and calling out the radical fundamentalist christians and saying “you are a disgrace to christianity” which is what the scientists say to the bad scientists.

Clayton argued that many Christians do just that, and it got me thinking.  I think progressive Christians need to do more of that!  I think progressive Christians have more work to do in becoming more vocal, more outspoken.  I think Christians must be bold, not only in calling out those whose voices are out of touch with Christian teachings, but also bold in talking openly and plainly about our theology.

Christians must no longer be relegated to the category of people who believe what they’re told.  We must challenge and explore, we must theorize and evaluate, and we must be relentlessly open to new ideas and new ways to express those ideas.  Science continually reports exponential advancement.  So where are the news articles of new advancements in religion?  This is not to say that progress is left undone; but where is that progress to be seen?

If the progression of religion is to be left in the academic institution, then it is to be left behind.  The forum for progress is in the open – just as in science – to be reviewed and picked over, and to be boldly and constructively criticized.  Let theology be released and renewed in the open.

Clayton and Dennett found common ground discussing what kind of persons they find interesting:

Clayton:  The biggest danger it seems to me is to say that all humans know we know with certainty, and the areas which are speculative or difficult to figure out – the hardest philosophical issues – leave us with no idea how to proceed.  I guess I would argue it belongs somehow to the nature of what it is to be a human person to grapple with those questions that stretch our reason into areas where we go as far as we possibly can go.

Dennett:  I agree completely with that.

It seems that the persons they found most interesting were those who weren’t dogmatic, who don’t claim artificial certainty, and who don’t claim to know the unknowable.  Instead, interesting people are those who are open to the new and the now, whether or not they ascribe to any particular faith.

As the dialogue came to a close, Clayton and Dennett began to discuss their differing views of “ultimate reality.”  Clayton paraphrased both their views saying that Dennett sees the universe as the only ultimate and cannot see what could possibly be beyond that; anything beyond is meaningless.  Clayton says that the universe is a product of – or is contained within – an ultimate reality which is broader and deeper.

Then Dennett asked what I thought was the most important question – and one that I argue we should all ask ourselves.  He asked, “If you changed your mind about that – about what’s ultimate – what difference would it make?  What would the world look like to you then?”

Here is the key to the openness that I think is paramount to the continuing dialogue among theists and non-theists, and also among differing faith traditions.  What if we had to face being wrong?  What if we woke up one morning and found out that everything that we held to be “True” with that capital-T was false?  Can we even imagine that possibility?

And I submit that we must imagine that possibility.  It is not until we face the possibility that we are wrong that we can have the faith that we are right – whether our convictions are theistic or non-theistic.  We must be able to admit that we could be wrong in order to be in fruitful dialogue with one another and to collectively come to greater understanding.  Anything less is inadequate and – I would argue – counter-productive.

And so, open to the possibility that I could be wrong, I invite comments and thoughts, criticisms and opportunities for growth.  Let the conversation continue.