Dirt:Rib

I thought, today, about how the world revolves around beauty and truth.

At least, I want it to revolve around those two spheres. It would be nice if the world revolved around those two and sin and evil and ugliness were not so prevalent. Sadly, or not so sadly in my mind, the picture of truth, beauty, evil, ugliness, is one much more haunted by intimacy than we would like it to be. Like a spiral of color where one ends the other begins and often times one can only guess at the end or beginning. 

If we're honest this picture of reality - a potpourri of conflict - is based in the primordial reality of the bible. In the opening chapters of the creation account we find God molding out of dirt and rib humanity. Dirt and rib which is intimately linked to God by being made in his image. And then a chapter later we find man breaking down, the dirt and rib cracking, and the image of God becoming marred. 

But it is still there, haunting our every move, mixing in the sin and beauty into one rough cut whole. 

And as the story of the bible continues on towards its culmination in the Incarnation of the Word there are numerous stories of this complex interaction between the ugliness of sin and the beauty of God's children. David, the man after God's own heart, commits murder and adultery and causes people of his nation to be killed at God's behest. Rahab, the prostitute, redeemed by faith and action (and oddly seemed to have faith while still a prostitute). Solomon, given wisdom, commits idolatry via marriage. 

The point is, the stories we tell often do not fit the stories of the bible. The language we use does not fit the language we find in scripture. 

Point is, horrible sinners can be decent people. Saints, good people we admire, screw up horribly, commit atrocities and horrors unspeakable. We are grace filled creatures with sin leaking in the cracks, made by dirt but breaking, created via life yet death creeps ever closer at every step. We are not only walking contradictions, we are walking dead. 

We are not sinner or saint. We are decent killers and indecent saints. 

Untitled

Here, now, sit I forever 

and ever. Amen. World without 

end nor beginning. As I eat

I eat with trembling hands-

lack of food or liquids or something

other and distant and something?- either

or I eat a new life. Life without end

it speaks as I chew. 

Being God Equals Loneliness

How horrid it must be to be God, to be alone, to be utterly alone. God, who is the ultimate "something" there is (admittedly, that idea might be a linguistic creation) is in a state of ultimate loneliness. There are no others like God. 

(Yes, I know, we have the Trinity in Christianity. Yes, it is three persons in one (which, is again, important but often practically meaningless language) and all three are equally God and individual, yeah, I'm not going into the discussion of Trinity, suffice it to say: useful but at time impractical because of the language used.) 

But God, as unified whole, the most complete whole, is alone. God is the only one like, similar to, in any way comparable to, God. It seems God needed a mission - unless of course the idea that God has himself to entertain and find joy in is true then I am wrong - to provide himself something to do, to be less lonely. Maybe that's why humanity exists. 

We exist to glorify God and our glorification of him lets him know he is wanted (because everyone wants to be wanted). God created us to teach himself he is wanted. Maybe the courage of Nietzsche is letting God know he is unwanted. Maybe the courage of Christians is recognizing in Jesus that God doesn't want himself but rather wants us. 

Grace

I read in the bible of a being that, with “truth and grace”, came into our world. What exactly does it mean that Jesus came in “truth and grace”? What exactly is grace? The sphere of Christendom I have grown up in has defined grace as “unmerited favor” or another odd, but no less abstract definition. But Jesus came in “truth and grace” or, rather, “truth and grace came through Jesus.” Either way, somehow I think I’ve missed the point. Grace is not some abstract concept. It might explain why the other more liturgical denominations speak of “means of grace.” 

Means of grace: word and sacrament: visible, tangible. 

Jesus brought grace into this world via Incarnation. Incarnation: real, visible, malleable, tangible, felt, and not off in the world of concepts alone. A conceptual understanding of grace demands nothing of us, has no long lasting effect. Grace is not for one time, one conversion. 

Rather, it is for all time, always reforming, always converting, and always being felt. And if it is not tangible and real it seems meaningless and lacking. 

Grace is...real and maybe it’s too real for our own comfort and maybe that’s why we put grace in the world of ideas because if it’s a reality found in the physical world, then it demands something of us. In fact, it is all around us. 

Flesh: Introduction

I am nothing more than skin and bones, flesh on muscle on whitened bone.

I am from earth and to earth I will one day return.

My body, our bodies, are brittle, and subject to breaking.

"The flesh is weak," spoke the wandering teacher. If only he had known how very true those words are and continue to become. Little things, like the cutting of skin, the purging of the food from one's body, loathing oneself (a spiritual reality in a fleshy manifestation), the bodies we posses and find ourselves in are weak indeed. What significance does the flesh have? In light of the earthiness by which we are bound and developed what purpose does flesh have? To what end?

Christianity has often felt the lack of flesh in its theology. Flesh is important to the biblical narrative, in fact, I would argue, more important than the soul. Or, rather, souls are so tightly woven to flesh that separation is nigh impossible. The series here, hopefully, will be able to show how flesh refers not only to my body and its parts but to a different reality beyond that which we can see and touch and smell and feel and ultimately quantify. As well, I hope to show the the bible as a whole is a fleshy book, concerned primarily with things of the earth rather than mysticism or some sort of spiritualism.

The general outline will look like this:

1) Preliminary Thoughts on Flesh
Attempt to explain what I am referring to when I refer to flesh as well as teasing out what I see as the differences between "body" and "flesh".
2) Word about Flesh
What scripture has to say about flesh.
3) Word as Flesh
Scripture as flesh in Jesus.
4) Flesh Redeemed
Flesh saved from its abuse

(Very) Brief Thoughts on Privilege and the Oppressed

1. Privilege does exist but what constitutes an inappropriate use of privilege or speaking from a point of privilege is often ambiguous and poorly defined. 

2. Privilege is not the end all be all. In fact, too often it is used in such a manner so as to shut down any further dialogue. Acknowledge that one is speaking from a privileged perspective and move on. 

3. God is not preferential to the poor/oppressed. Yes, his/her's heart is for the poor but the precedent is clearly one of grace to all, privileged and oppressor, broken and oppressed alike. 

4. Privilege is too often spoken from those who are, shocker, privileged. 

Ergo, privilege is ambiguously/poorly defined by the privileged and hoisted onto the unprivileged/oppressed in a manner which may or may not be appropriate. 

Disbelief is Fidelity

It is not so much that I disbelieve all that is put under the banner of Christianity, my particular opiate of choice, but rather that I do not believe it enough. I have friends who believe more consistently than I and in some sense the easiest answer to why I don't believe as they do is: they are wrong. Or, more bluntly, their version of God is wrong. But that isn't right either. I refuse to believe consistently in some regards if only because I like to think I'm caring for others. My love for the Other demands I disbelieve that which my religion demands I believe.