Vocation…
February 1st, 2011 by James Mills
As I read through Richard B. Hays’ The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation, A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics
A few days ago I sat around at table with two of my best friends from my old church. I had many memories, both good and bad, as we shared our lives over food and beverages together. These two men helped form my faith and shape my life. While the last few years of my involvement with that former church were some of the best days of my life, they are not remembered as kindly by at least one of these friends. For him, it was a much more painful experience. As it came to an end, what was probably a sense of relief for him, is remembered as a significant loss for me. And in ways too numerous to count, I still have not recovered from that chapter coming to a close. And as I look forward to what lies ahead and weigh some choices about what direction I want to take over the next few years, I must confess that I am a bit of a loss. While I am not sure what I would really like to do when I grow up, I am fairly confident of one thing. You can take the boy out of the church, but you can’t take the church out of the boy.
I do not know how deeply my life will intersect with a local community of faith in the days ahead. But as I look back at the last couple of years with my last church, I cannot help but think these about these quotes from Hays’ book. I think if the people who made up that community would have embraced these thoughts things would have been a lot different. I will offer a more reflective review of Hays in a future post but for now I want to share these quotes to plant some seeds.
“Despite the time-honored Christian claim that Scripture is the foundation of the church’s faith and practice, appeals to Scripture are suspect for at least two reasons: the Bible itself contains diverse points of view, and diverse interpretive methods can yield diverse readings of any given text.”
“The church is to find its identity and vocation by recognizing its role within the cosmic drama of God’s reconciliation of the world to himself.”
“This eschatalogical transformation of the community explains Paul’s extraordinary affirmation that the purpose of God’s reconciling work in Christ is ‘that we might become the righteousness of God.’ (2 Corinthians 5:21). He does not say ‘that we might know about the righteousness of God,’ nor ‘that we might believe in the righteousness of God,’ nor even ‘that we might receive the righteousness of God.’ Instead, the church is to become the righteousness of God: where the church embodies in its life together the world-reconciling love of Jesus Christ, the new creation is manifest. The church incarnates the righteousness of God.”
If you can’t stand the heat…
January 31st, 2011 by James Mills
The past two weeks have been some of the longest I have had in really long time. There are many reasons for this but they all roll together into the fact that the world is thick and complex. I have been struggling privately and with a few close friends with some weighty things going on in my world. And in the process I have been keenly aware of various conversations that flow through my rss feeds or various individuals and organizations I follow in the crazy world wide web where it seems that everyone has a much better handle on life than I do. It appears that no matter what the subject, everyone is an expert. There were stories that related to science and every author or commenter seemed to know all the facts. People were so surprised that there are poor individuals out there who are not current and knowledgeable about the fine points of contemporary scientific theory. Poor ignoramuses! There were theological conversations where all parties were confident that they had a firm grasp on all the relevant information and shocked that everyone can’t grasp the “simple truths” of debates that I thought were still interminable. And yet I find myself completely unable to get a handle on even the simplest things of my own life.
Now, I wonder if I am really that out of touch as much as I feel at the moment, or if everyone else is overly confident in their ability to understand to such a deep level on such a wide variety of topics. I would guess the truth lies somewhere in the middle. As I think through this and how it relates to my own corner of the world I find myself wondering how it is possible to stay informed on all the complexities of life in such a way that I can feel like I am living faithfully? Maybe such a feeling would only be an illusion, but at this point I would be willing to settle for that.
Is it possible to know that every time I buy a product the money I spend is not going to support some company that doesn’t line up with my own sense of what is right and wrong in the world? Can I be at peace if one of my children chooses a profession that goes against my own beliefs? Or, perhaps even more importantly, can I be at peace if I choose such a profession?
In any case, I am done losing sleep over it for the moment. In the big picture of things I don’t think my own small choices will bring the gears of the universe grinding to a halt. I am not sure if the decisions I am making are good or bad, but I do know that for reasons maybe only I will understand they are choices that keep me liking the man in the mirror. For now, that is more than enough.
Now, where did I put that book…
Eyes to see…
January 17th, 2011 by James Mills
Next in the queue, thanks to my great friend Scott, I am getting working through Richard B. Hays’ The Moral Vision of the New Testament.
About a third of the way through. More to come.
Human faces…
January 17th, 2011 by James Mills
I began the year reading Thom Stark’s interesting book, The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals When It Gets God Wrong (and Why Inerrancy Tries to Hide It)
As you can guess from the subtitle, this book is a critique of the doctrine of Inerrancy. Towards this end, Stark makes his case in ten easy-to-read chapters that show the many problems with the doctrine as defined in the Chicago Statement of Inerrancy. With such an easy target, Stark more than delivers in showing that “Ineranntist don’t exist.” Unfortunately, if you are already on Stark’s side of this argument there is not much more to gain from this book. I was disappointed by this because I found Stark to be a great read. His voice and tone is a lot like Ehrman which makes this book extremely accessible to a wide audience.
No doubt, Stark’s focus is on the wide audience who embrace the doctrine of inerrancy and he spends most of the 242 pages of taking these defenders of inerrancy to task. It is not until you get to the final chapter that Stark softens his tone slightly and finally offers his suggestions for how to read these scriptures, which he concedes are “deeply problematic.” Unfortunately, Stark does not spend enough time in this final chapter. But since that was not the intent of the book, it is a minor complaint.
What I find to be the most disturbing revelation is found in the opening paragraph of the forward, written by John J. Collins. Echoing one of my favorite excerpts, Collins claims:
Conservative Christians often affirm that the bible is historically accurate, internally consistent, and morally edifying. Anyone who has had a good introductory course on the Bible at college level knows that this is not necessarily any of the above. (emphasis mine.)
It is a discouraging claim that a basic introductory college class can reveal more about our sacred texts than most people learn in years of church attendance. How is it possible that so many people in congregations can readily believe so wholeheartedly in the Chicago Statement when the teaching pastors of their churches should certainly be aware of the countering claims?1
In the end, it is Stark’s narrow focus on the target of inerrancy as presented by the Chicago Statement that diminishes the value of the book. Stark claims early on that the Bible is a reflection of “diverse texts and traditions” and, quoting Collins, acknowledges that the Bible is a “collection of writings that is marked by lively internal debate, and a remarkable spirit of self-criticism.” But when critiquing alternative readings from theologians like John Howard Yoder, N. T. Wright, or Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Stark’s focus on simply disproving inerrancy does not take into account all the subtle complexities of these alternative readings. And these are people who would probably not embrace the Chicago Statement so using them as dialog partners in a debate about inerrancy seems to miss the mark. Even in some instances when commenting against the inerrantist, Christopher J. H. Wright, Stark seems to not allow for the some of the complexities of Wright’s argument that may be able to stand without the attachment to inerrancy.
For me, I would have preferred that Stark made his case against inerrancy with less ink and invested more time in a fuller treatment of some of the secondary goals he lays out in the preface:
- allowing the Bible to speak for itself within our congregations.
- highlighting the many ways to be Christian, some of them much more ancient and developed (than inerrancy).
- displaying some of the ways critical scholarship can be used in service of the church.
- make biblical scholarship relevant to those who have had the good fortune of not getting caught up in academics.
In the end, I find that Stark does a great job of arguing against inerrancy but wish he would have presented a fuller treatment of reading the problematic texts. His brief presentation if the final chapter is great but it would have been even better if he would have treated his own reading methods as critically as he did the ineranntists. Had he interacted with Wright, Yoder, and others in the value of the the plural voice and multifaceted traditions of Christianity in the spirit of “self-criticism” when laying out his own voice and suggestions for reading these texts, this book would have been much better. Ironically, my criticism is relatively minor precisely because so many people do in fact embrace the Chicago Statement’s version of inerrancy even with all the evidence against it. In light of that, Stark’s book is indeed a valuable contribution. It is too bad that in this debate, Stark’s contribution will most likely end up like Elhanan– victorious over a larger opponent but overlooked and edited out of the discussion by the people who most need to hear it.
- I make similar observations of one of Ehrman’s books in this other post. [back]
What is sin???
November 14th, 2010 by James Mills
Lately, I think this is one of the most important questions facing the progressive church. There is an interesting post and discussion taking place here: goo.gl/qeMaH
I would love to know other people’s thoughts on what is sin? Or any books recommendations?
Down is the new up…
October 18th, 2010 by James Mills
On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”
“Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”
His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.
Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”
They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”
What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples put their faith in him.
This is one of my favorite texts. But I am always amazed when I read it in a book or hear someone teach on it because it emphasizes to me just how differently we can all interact with the same text. While it is often referred to as Jesus’ first miracle I suspect that this was a story that was not well known early on and gradually grew in importance for the early Christian communities. I lean towards the conviction that John’s Gospel was a late contribution compared to the other New Testament texts. And while I think this story was being passed around through various groups of Christians, I don’t think it really became well known until after John’s Gospel became widely circulated.
From that time to this, the story has been retold so often that it has become overly familiar, even to people who are outside of the Christianities various faith traditions. Through the familiarity and the prolific commentary on this text, it seems it has taken a life of its own. Like many other frequently used biblical stories, it surprises me the amount of details that sneak into the retelling that are not actually part of the text.
Since I left the last church I was actively participating in more than 5 years ago, the one thing I still do frequently as a licensed pastor is weddings. I do my fair share every year and I love them. But my experiences with weddings coupled with my anti-leadership convictions contribute to me imagining this text differently than most people.
The editorial process of John’s late Gospel places this story early in Jesus’ “public ministry.” I imagine that at this stage Jesus is a relatively unknown teacher with a strange collection of followers. I don’t imagine that he has done anything to bring any attention to himself, and even in this situation, he seems to want to avoid the spotlight (“my hour has not yet come.”). As the story unfolds, it seems that at the point Mary involves Jesus few people at the celebration are aware of the pending “crisis.” The servants know that there is a shortage of wine, and apparently they tell a few of the women. Jesus instructs the servants to fill jars with water, then draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet. I imagine the poor servant bracing for a tongue lashing from the master when he hands him a cup of water and being shocked to see the opposite reaction. Of course, the master will not acknowledge the servant and instead goes to the bridegroom to express his pleasant surprise: “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.“
The text makes it clear that the master of the banquet did not know where this cup of water-turned-to wine had come from. The only one who knew was the servant, Jesus, and maybe a handful of other servants.
What I love about this story is that in the middle of the celebration, those who were most actively involved in the prominent places had no idea that anything miraculous had taken place, other than a bridegroom who bucked the trends by saving the best wine for last. The party continues like most weddings do, and no one knew what happened. But I imagine later that night, or early the next day the servants hanging out in their hidden quarters having an amazing conversation.
“I’m telling you, that was water in those jars! I poured it in there myself!”
“When he told me to take it to the master I said to myself, ‘are you kidding me!’”
“I tried to get someone else to do it but they were all gone as soon as he said it. When the master said it was wine and praised the bridegroom for saving the best for last I went back to the jars and sure enough, it was not water.”
“Who am I going to tell? Who would believe me??”
I imagine that this story spread through the common people at an alarming rate. I suspect that some of the prominent people at the wedding may have lived their entire life without ever knowing a miracle took place.
I think of this story a lot. I thought about it often when I was one of the pastoral stewards of my old church. It crosses my mind when ever I visit a church for the first time. I know enough about how Sunday morning church services are structured at many churches to know that what takes place on the main stage has been (prayerfully) planned out. All the important people get their air time. The band gets to play their fast song to get people on their feet and the slow long to inspire people to quiet reflection. The person who gets to read the announcements has his jokes (that he will tell again at the 2nd and 3rd service) all mapped out with the proper timing and inflection. And the teaching pastor has the relevant sermon in the can. But I also know that the really miraculous stuff is taking place in the hidden corners of the church. In the rooms with the unpaid volunteers who work the nursery, or teach a children’s Sunday school class. In the kitchen where the same three people make the coffee every week for the hundreds of consumers who have come to expect it. In the quiet corners of the “cry room” where young mothers soul conversations with each other are more relevant than the sermon could ever be. And with the people who clean up afterwards so that the church can save money on cleanup because the band needs new lights.
This water-turned-to-wine story reminds me that most the time, the miraculous, redemptive work of God in the world is taking place among the commoners, in the midst of their ordinary relationships, in the context of their daily bump and grind. And in light of my warped, imaginative, interpretation of this text I continue to be curious of all the effort and resources that go into the main Sunday worship service. And I wonder why so many people (including myself) aspire to be visible contributors in those prominent places. Many of us leave a wide wake of broken relationships in our struggle to rise up the “leadership” ladder. We all have secret longings to be the bridegroom or the master of the banquet. But every church I go to has a need for those hidden servants who take the task that no one else wants. We would rather sit passively in the audience watching the show than be off behind the scenes working where miracles happen.
My own prayer is that I will learn to practice what I preach in this area. Perhaps it is no longer important for me to find my voice. Maybe it is time for me to be quite, and find that place where people spend their days filling jugs with water. Maybe in that space, I will finally find what I have been looking for.
Displaced…
August 18th, 2010 by James Mills
When I became displaced from the last church that I was connected to, there was one community that helped me stay afloat. It was not something that I had an opportunity to participate in as often as I liked but it was truly life giving and really important at that point in my life. There were so many great people that I met through that web of friendships. Many of those people shaped my life through that transition more than they can possibly know.
Gradually, I was pulled into the orbit of this life-giving community by some people who knew what I had been through, where I was at, and shared my hopes and dreams for the future. While they did not have to, the created a wide and generous place for me at their table.
Last month, I attended what may be the last event I will attend with this group of people and it was extremely difficult for me. It was like losing my last handhold to any meaningful ecclesiastical community. It was like being displaced. Again.
I have spent the last few weeks thinking about next steps and I am still not sure what they will be or where they will lead. I have been doing a lot of writing lately and have several books in the queue. I am hoping to get to that soon.
But first, I am hoping to find a day or two to spend in a Rocky Mountain trout stream.
Stuck in the undertow…
July 16th, 2010 by James Mills
Without question, one of my favorite blogs has to be Hugo Schwyzer’s. It is one of the few that I still try to read every day and it never fails to challenge me in fresh new ways and stimulate my thinking. He had a recent post titled: All on the same team: why fighting for feminism and for men’s authentic liberation is not a zero-sum game. Like all of Schwyzer’s post I liked this one, but for some reason, this one has been holding in my memory for longer than usual as I process some of what he is saying.
While this particular post is a great piece on the practice of faithfully living real lives with real people specifically as it relates to gender relations, I found myself re-imagining the text in light of ecclesiology. It seems that there is a lot of “academic rhetoric” and “airy theorizing” when it comes to the topic of church. No one is more guilty of the latter (I am too undereducated to fully participate in the former) than I am, including this present post! But Schwyzer is right. This all sounds hard. But I was particularly struck by Schwyzer’s response to a person asking what he could do to make a real difference. Among other things, Schwyzer states:
… But I’m convinced that the single most important thing that feminist men can do to dismantle the Old Boys’ Network is both far more simple and far more difficult: refuse to join it.
Particularly for young white men working for older white men, the pressure to join the the Network can be both immense and subtle. All of us, as we age and climb whatever ladder it is we are climbing, look to mentor younger folks. The desire for a protege is a common one, and the classic model in the Network is for an older man to look for a younger version of himself — which in journalism, or academia, or law, may mean a middle or upper-middle class white guy in his twenties. Even those male supervisors who are ideologically sympathetic to feminism may find themselves more likely to support and nurture a young man with whom they feel that emotional affinity, that sense of themselves at a younger age. Resisting the “unearned privilege of the protege” is a very difficult thing to do.
… If you are a young man, low in status in a newsroom or a corporate office or an academic department, the senior men will almost always try and assess your suitability for the OBC early on in one way or another; what is often euphemistically called “collegiality” is just code for “willing to play along and not challenge us.”
… In the end, the reason to avoid joining the Old Boys’ Club is about more than just maintaining one’s feminist credibility. It’s about understanding that now, in 21st century America, white male power is maintained less through overt legal structures than through hidden social constructions. White men can no longer exclude women and people of color from leadership positions by fiat alone; indeed, most white men probably don’t consciously want to. But what they do want to do, consciously or not, is maintain an environment in which straight white men — “the Old Boys” — continue to enjoy privilege and comfort. The greatest of those privileges is the sense of belonging. The hard fact is, in order to make most workplaces welcoming to women and non-whites, the Old Boys will have to change the way they do many things. Decades of feminism, decades of civil rights legislation, have done little to dismantle the entrenched resistance on the part of the OBC to surrendering that privilege.
In the end, if you’re a feminist man, the single most important thing you can do is make it clear, in your words and in your actions, that you not only are not looking for OBC membership, but will, politely but firmly, reject it when it is offered.
I include these lengthy excerpts because they explain a lot of my own feelings of being displaced from any meaningful sense of local, embodied, ecclesial community. When I was attending a Bible college I had an in. When I was co-pastoring my first church plant for 3 years in Denver and could legitimately claim the title of “pastor” I was included. Even when I was filling a role as one of the members of the Executive Council of my last church I had something to hang a hat on. In conversations with other pastors I was considered to be “one of them” and everything was grand.
Now that I have been a displaced, ecclesial dreamer for five years things are a lot different. And as much as I wish I could say my lack of participation in the Good Old Pastor Club was fully a mature expression of my own volition, the fact remains that I no longer get to play in those circles. And things look a lot different out here. And the longer I am outside of the club the more I realize that in some ways, I don’t want to be in it any more. Sure, there is still a very strong pull to be a full participating member in a community of faith. But I am finding that in my context there are seemingly only two ways to accomplish that.
If I ever want to be in any kind of pastoral stewardship role again, I will have to pay some dues to the Good Old Pastors Club. And since I am under-educated, even if I pay those dues I cannot be a full fledged member. And the other option is to become a consumer (hopefully, the generous, financial giving kind) of the product. This role usually is not expected to say anything other than an occasional “amen” and be sitting somewhere that the attendance counter can see you during the Sunday morning service. It helps if you are friendly, have good hygiene, and will volunteer to do things from time to time, but even those are not required. But if you don’t like the mission or vision statement that has been God breathed to the leaders, you bite your tongue and vote with your feet. You are more than welcome to try the church down the street…
Too be honest, neither of those options are really all that appealing to me. But what do I k now? I am just a husband, father, friend, neighbor, government employee, and dreamer. And truth be told, I am really not doing all that great in any of those roles either. If only there was a place that I could go that would help form me to be a more faithful person in all these areas. A place where I could do more than shake the hand of the person next to me, sing a song or two, and stare at the back of someone’s head for half an hour while listening to a therapeutic, relevant sermon. As Hauerwas says, my spiritual life is in too bad of shape to tolerate bad preaching.
Dare to dream.
Redeeming Harry and Sally…
July 14th, 2010 by James Mills
I recently had an opportunity to read Dan Brennan’s book, Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions: Engaging the Mystery of Friendship Between Men and Women. I’ll confess at the outset that I did not have high expectations for this book. However, I was pleasantly surprised by this work.
The forward from Dan’s wife, Sheila Wilson Brennan, explains that Dan Brennan is using this book to counter the myspace/facebook trend to call everyone a “friend.” She explains:
Daniel’s book attempts to recapture a deeper (and thereby narrower) understanding of friendship and a wider understanding of intimacy within spiritual friendship.
With this goal in mind, I think Brennan’s offering is well worth the read. If there is a target of critique in Brennan’s cross hairs, it is the absurd bipolar counsel that the conservative evangelical community offers to non-married men and women who wish to enter into relationship. Brennan points out that for many in this camp, there are only two alternatives. One is the romantic path that leads men and women down the one way path of becoming “one flesh”. This is acceptable for young, single people. However, if either one or both of the people are married then the only alternative for these male/female relationships is avoidance at all costs.
Brennan argues that between these two very narrow narratives of male/female relationships is a very wide, complex and necessary range of appropriate and deeply intimate expressions of genuine, deep, and faithful friendship that does not need to lead to anything sexually inappropriate.
Brennan explores these sacred unions by looking at history and scripture. While there are areas I felt like he was forcing the sacred text in order to make his case, overall I think the book raises some important questions for those in the conservative camp. While there is nothing in the book that would shock “emerging” or “progressive” Christian thinkers, I feel his book hits his intended target.
There were some great quotes throughout:
When conservative Christians adapt a modified Freudian view of sexuality and conflate the romantic myth with the meaning of one flesh, one wonders how Christian husbands and wives are able to pursue deep intimacy and become companions on the marital journey. Perhaps the greatest enemy of marriage when the notion of one flesh has been made synonymous with the romantic myth is the one flesh vision of marriage itself. (p. 43)
The husband-wife relationship doesn’t cover the range of embodied oneness in this age or the next. In fact, it is not even the ultimate picture of union. Paul Wadell suggests that friends in Christ “will have much greater intimacy and unity between them than they would if they lived together but were united over a lesser good.” he suggests, following Augustine, “the greatest possible intimacy comes not from physical closeness or even physical expression, but from belonging to the body of Christ.” Our union in Christ as men and women then, has profound implications for both married and unmarried individuals. (p. 79)
For more information about the book and a video interview with the author, please check the links below.
viralbloggers.com/2010/04/sacred-unions-sacred-passions-by-dan-brennan/
The king is not dead…
July 7th, 2010 by James Mills
But he is very old.
Long live the queen!
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