WJGTTBG? (Would Jesus Go To The Braves Game?)

Standing in line for an 8 dollar hot dog, paying the exorbitance to the minimum-wage earning thirty-something who seems (and looks) like he's seen better days, feeling unsatisfied after finishing the food for which I had emptied my wallet just minutes earlier, and loathing myself for sitting, staring fascinated by broken men who are payed far too much (see the hot dog price above) to play a game and cheat on their wives and use steroids, roaring with the crowd as I lose my identity in a mob a little too much like Rome.

These are my thoughts at the Braves game last night, and the inescapable sense of discomfort was my punishment for an ardent prayer to see things as Jesus would have seen them, and now I can't shake that feeling of confusion.

What's worse? I really enjoyed myself.

The price of a baseball or movie ticket, a television subscription, a hot dog, what does it mean? Where does it go? We complain and smack our heads and scoff about the ridiculous lives led by the celebrated in our community of entertainment, we bow our heads in prayer and thank God that we are not like them, that we are better in so many ways for not being caught up in that lifestyle. We do not know ourselves, to be able to deceive each other and our own hearts so well. Every hot dog I buy, every game I attend, every movie of an out-of-control actress I go to see, I put that life in their hands. I celebrate everything I am against when I put my wallet and my time (the two things closest to all of our hearts) towards that version of life, a version, I think we all at least claim to agree that is less authentic than the Jesus version. I'm scared because I can't stop, and I really don't even want to. This is one of those times that it would be noce to hear the direct voice of Jesus, I need another Sinai....

Love.

Escha-wha?

Eschatology - A part of theology and philosophy concerned with what is believed to be the final events in the history of the world, or the ultimate destiny of humanity, commonly referred to as the end of the world. More broadly, eschatology may encompass related concepts such as the Messiah or Messianic Age, the end time, and the end of days.

But what if when Jesus preached “The kingdom of heaven is near,” he meant in it the way where we usually speak of places or things being near, and not as a code for the installation of God’s sovereignty on earth being imminent. Where is the place or object of the kingdom that Jesus, preached, then? Impossible to plot on a map, impossible to settle in or establish economy with, it must not exist, we say. Our continents, our oceans, our orbit is all we know. We see the stars and moons but they are not near, and such a concept would have never done for those Palestinians of the first century, anyhow.

Jesus knew a very present, very penetrating reality of the kingdom of God that was seeping through the cracks of our own world, ever attempting to infiltrate our own reality. His language was eschatological, speaking of an alternate kingdom being established, but it did not point anywhere far-off (such as the distant future), because both of his ideas of “The kingdom is near” and “Do not worry about tomorrow” reminded his followers that no good will come of us wasting energy on things to come. “Seek ye first the kingdom,” says Jesus. Today. It’s near. He wasn’t kidding. We become obsessed with ideas of future grandeur and exciting times to come, and while in no way do I deny the coming peace of Jesus, nor that we will see him again, I honestly doubt that is what he wanted us to have conferences about, seminars on, and money put towards. Our time is wasted by our obsession with the future. People die of hunger while we try to interpret signs. Peace fails when we discredit it with ideas of a coming tribulation and inescapable war. Our love for Jesus becomes a love for fantasy as he is speculated upon instead of lived out.

So I propose a new eschatology, one that has relevance and passion. Let us live like the kingdom is near, constantly attempting to break into our own world, and not fearful of a sudden strike of justice at an appointed and mysterious time. We need to give Jesus the credit he deserves for what he said about the kingdom. It was not near in time, it was not near in space, but it was near in every enemy that he loved, and every foot that he washed. When Jesus prayed, he prayed “Your kingdom come, your will be done.” I doubt that prayer included ideas as narrow as his people sitting and waiting for thousands of years for “the kingdom.” The kingdom is here, near, everywhere. Let us capture it, let us increase it, let us beg to see more of it.


Love.

Sate Hitam Satyam

"That which brings us closer."

There is an extremely interesting variation of the idea of truth in the East, and in Sanskrit the word used most often for truth is "satya", a word that means something along the lines of "unchangeable", "impermeable in time, space and person". The use of this word in eastern philosophy is taken in the context of something that which pervades the universe in all its constancy. Truth.

The word satya comes mainly from the phrase, Sate Hitam Satyam, proclaiming that truth is "whatever brings us closer to Sat", the Ultimate Truth, a name that we would probably bestow upon Yahweh or Jesus. So what could we learn from this idea? In our world of matter and history, in our patterns of skepticism and factuality, what can we learn about a different form of truth? There is something old here, archaic and primal. We believe in parables because they display a small part of the truth of God, something we can't fully understand, and we use these stories or lies (as our modern skeptics would call them) to explain something that may not be factual or historical, but deeply true all the same. Truth is that which leads us closer to the Ultimate Truth, be it a story or history, an intangible emotion or the soda can in front of you. Our reality becomes less real as satya penetrates our hearts, and the Truth will set us free from it.

real love.

You may be, but I wasn't. Are we thinking like this?

The awareness that the Bible became sacred scripture over a period of centuries has implications for our understanding of it's origin, status, and authority. To speak of the Bible as sacred addresses not its origin but its status within a religious community. Any document is sacred only because it is sacred for a particular community....
...To see the Bible as sacred in status and not origin also leads to a different way of seeing the authority of the Bible. The older, conventional way of seeing the Bible grounded scripture's authority in its origin: the Bible was sacred because it came from God. The result was a monarchical model of biblical authority. Like an ancient monarch, the Bible stands over us, telling us what to believe and do. But seeing the Bible as sacred in status leads to a different model of biblical authority. Rather than being an authority standing above us, the Bible is the ground of the world in which Christians live.
The result: the monarchical model of biblical authority is replaced by a dialogical model of biblical authority. In other words, the biblical canon names the primary collection of ancient documents with which Christians are to be in a continuing dialogue. This continuing conversation is definitive and constitutive of Christian identity. If the dialogue ceases or becomes faint, then we cease to be Christian and become something else. Thus the authority of the Bible is its status as our primary ancient conversational partner.

A Reality Risen

I was at a funeral for the father of a friend that I love, and we talked briefly about the resurrection. I try not to think too much about those things, because my brain usually just ends up hurting, but last night it seemed important. My mind slipped in and out of thoughts that concerned our own resurrection, thoughts that tried to explain Jesus', and thoughts about the overlying reality that is our God. We all can agree, I think, that there is something more to our lives than matter and energy, those physics-esque words that dominate our modern worldview. There is a power there, hidden to our eyes, but when felt, it becomes more of a reality than the one that we can smell, touch, hear and see. This is no latent power, but a benevolent reality on which the universe finds its support, its being. This sacred realm seems to be constantly creating, blessing, upholding. It wills us to understand that the are things more solid than the massive, more real than that which has mass or density. We can begin to understand these things by realizing how certain decisions (or every decision, for that matter) can alter courses of life in a way that no object ever could. We see how grief can put a weight on your soul, and how love can set that weight aside. These things, they are more real than any solid object, yet we cannot touch them. These are brushstrokes in the painting of the divine reality, that presence and personality that we give many names: God, Yahweh, Allah, the Spirit, Brahman, and those are only a few. So back to the resurrection, the crux of this writing. I have always been confused by the idea of a physical resurrection, as in a resurrection in which our flesh and bones are the same as they were before. Christians now use the phrase "perfected", and they talk about how our bodies will be the same, but better. That didn't help me in my confusion. But then I started looking at how Paul wrote about the risen Jesus, whom he saw, yet who was not "there" in the way we understand someone being right there with you. Paul writes about a mystic encounter in which he experiences a risen reality, something more real than a stone right in front of him, something that has become a living part of that personality that sustains and creates him, and loves him all the time. The resurrection may be flesh and bones, but that is almost too boring for me now. I rely on a God that will raise me into His reality, not raise me back into my own after I sink into death. The resurrection is more than renewal, more than starting over, it's about getting where we are heading, and being as real and as powerful as love, something which, incidentally, we are compelled to give anyway.
Love.

A deep breath

Out of Thailand. Out of Malaysia. Out of Hong Kong. Out of Ethiopia. Out of Cote D'Ivoire. Home in Ghana.

The events that precipitated from last week's Thailand scenario were probably uninteresting enough to most, and enough to give even Fracis of Asisi some beef with God, though out of every beef, they say, comes reconciliation. We were seemingly stranded, much like the 300,000 others stuck in Thailand, and my heart was hurting to see people that I loved, who were already going through enough trouble to help me out of Asia.

I arrived flustered and frustrated, angry at no one in particular that Michael was leaving the country five minutes after we landed, I had just enough time to hug his neck at the airport in passing. The days have gone by and I have discovered, as you will over and over, that there is no catch up needed here. You simply just pick up where you left off, making friends, loving folks, living. Days running errands, playing with sweet kids, holding dog funerals (pour one out for Peanut). Nights helping Maggie with math, talking and going on walks with Claire, watching cartoons with Luke, it takes a whole lot to get better than sharing a house with these folks who I claim as my own.

Every now and then, God calls me to set aside study and theology and dissection, and love what is right in my face. I'm trying.

The Long and Winding Road

So Thailand recently put in a new Prime Minister, and that fact just doesn't seem to sit well with a lot of people in the country. There is a lot of protesting going on, and some government officials have lost their lives over the conflict. The rioters' aim was to close the Bangkok airport, and it worked. So instead of flying into Bangkok yesterday afternoon, we flew into a military base two hours outside the city at about midnight and got on a bus headed for some park downtown in Bangkok. We found a place to sleep quickly and now, we wait, because we still have to catch a flight in two days to Ethiopia and then on to Ghana. The airport remains closed and Ethiopian airways remains deaf to my many calls, but I do know this: I am going to get to Ghana. I may have to take a train to Hong Kong and fly from there, or find another way out of this country, but I won't stay here long. A selfish and childish (and big) part of me needs Ghana, the land and the people I love in it, and that is enough to get me anywhere. A need to go home is always good enough to get you out of anywhere, at any time.

love.