Of all the idols in the world perhaps that most insidious and subtle is the idol of good character. In making this assertion I don’t mean to deny the importance of being genuinely good, neither do I want to undermine focused efforts to grow and develop as a person. I do, however, want to draw attention to the fact that religious people are prone to a unique temptation, wherein being good can become more important than worshiping God. Of course, one cannot be good in the profoundest sense unless one worships God, and neither can one genuinely worship God and be apathetic towards virtue and good character. The hitch in this interdependent relationship is that idolatry in its worst form is not when something obviously inferior or evil seeks to usurp the place of God in our lives, but rather when something good is given ultimate status.

Character matters, but intimacy with God matters more. It is better to know God as sovereign and gracious amidst one’s brokenness than to have a strong ethical character that might tempt one to neglect God all together. In this instance the person of good character will have exalted his character to the point that he cannot see God at the root of his good character. Moreover, such a person will not be able to readily discern his own defects of character, as being distant from God would impair his ability to see how good Goodness actually is.

At the root of genuinely good character is humility, which quite simply is the ability of the soul to see clearly. Knowing this is critical, because in apparent contradiction to what I said above, the ability to worship God is intimately wedded to the goodness of one’s character, but such a character, without humility is like the whitewash on the tomb of dead men’s bones. A person who has been endowed by God with a strong will, the ability to discipline oneself, and deny oneself for the sake of a higher cause, and yet who does not acknowledge God at the root of his strong character is blind. Instead, such a one is likely to view himself as the product of his own doing, and will assert himself as a standard against which he will inevitably judge others. The irony of this is that such a good person could never be good in the fullest sense of the word, for good is defined by the qualities we see in God, and God is compassionate, and redeeming.   Such a person could never function as an agent of redemption, for redemption requires healing at the roots, and such a person is cut off from the root.

So, perhaps the crux of the matter is that a proud person with good character is at risk of having his good character undermined by his pride. His pride, being essentially a distorted vision of himself, others, and God, functions to bar himself from reality. Such a person is living on borrowed time, because he relates to his good character as something which  at root is his own, and in his failure to acknowledge God he will cut himself off from the source of his own goodness, and be left with the only thing that is his own: pride. In saying this, I am reminded of Lewis’s words, “of all bad men, religious bad men are the worst.”

During the lectionary of the worship service this past Sunday I was inspired to write the following:

Ancestors, and more immediately our parents are our root and source and our debt to them should be acknowledged. We should honor them,  because beyond being our biological root, and the primary influence of our socialization and development, in them we honor God who designed the whole process of human generation. We honor God’s wisdom and beauty in the creation and perpetuation of humanity. To honor parents is to sacramentally honor God.

Now, from a religious perspective I get that this is no crashing insight. The inspiration I received was more of an intuition about the whole phenomena of ancestry and honor, and the words I wrote was the product of me trying to make sense of this intuition. The thing that prompts me to share this with you, however, was that later in the service, instead of a sermon from our priest, we had a visiting missionary give us a report about his work among the Soninke people in west Africa. At the end of his testimony, he wrapped up with a bit of divine irony by telling us about the frustration he experienced when he sensed that he should go home for a brief season to take care of his parents just when things were beginning to develop regarding the response of the Soninke to the Gospel. Upon returning to west Africa, however, he discovered that his leaving was just what was needed, as the Soninke that he had been ministering to gained a profound respect for the man who, against the western norm of putting his parents in an “old folks” home, decided to go home and take care of them himself. In doing this, they began to see him as more than just a westerner who taught them about the prophet Jesus, and who did some good deeds, but as one who was truly human, and worthy of being heard.

So, was this a coincidence? Synchronicity? There was nothing thematic in the lectionary or in the service prior to this missionary’s testimony that dealt with parenthood or ancestry. I will say, however, that before the service I had a conversation with a couple of parishioners about Leanne Payne, the doctrine of recapitulation, and healing, which could have put the general idea of parental influence into my consciousness, but still the aptness between what I wrote, and what the missionary shared seemed like something more than a loose conceptual connection. It’s just too fitting.

What does it mean to put one’s name in quotes? I realize that people are not apt to do this, but on a lark I recently did so (I am quite impulsive), and having done so, it made me wonder what the significance of this action would be. The deal is, if one puts the word reality in quotes such a one means to indicate that perception is implicit in the use of the word reality, which is to circumscribe the scope of what the word refers to by drawing attention to the issue of consciousness and the distance between one’s conception of the world and the world as it is in and of itself. To place the word reality in quotes is kind of like an inside joke for the postmodernly enlightened, as if to say, “Sure, we’ll use this word, but we know better.”

So, if I put my name in quotes, am I saying something along these lines? If so, a vague image from my past comes to mind, an image of an at-risk student who, when I would call him or her out on some behavioral issue, would respond by saying, “You don’t know me!!” And who, if he or she had engaged the education I was trying to facilitate in his or her life, would have had the intellectual development to follow up such a statement by going to the board to write his or her name in quotes, at which point I would have responded by saying, “You may leave the temple,” because, clearly such a student would have had the cognitive skills necessary to successfully engage the world, such as it may be.

After saying all this, I guess my conclusion is that putting one’s name in quotes is to essentially say, “You don’t know me” Although, this gesture need not have the connotation of strident self-defensiveness that I too often saw among my at-risk students. It could merely be drawing attention to the irony that the consciousness which allows us to be self-reflectively aware of the other is also, in some measure, the source of alienation from the other. Perhaps this is not better than strident self-defensiveness, but at least it’s a little less in-your-face.

Oh, and just to clarify where I stand on the relationship between the world as we conceive it and the world as it is in and of itself, I am not a card carrying postmodernist, but rather something of  critical realist, which is to say that though we see the world, we see at a distance, kind of like looking through a dark glass. And, regarding that hypothetical kid and his or her leaving the temple, I would disagree with such a one’s epistemological convictions, but dang if I wouldn’t be impressed by his or her intellectual sophistication.

*******

“Hey babe, I love you… Well, that is… I love you through the mental representation I have of you in my mind, which to some degree may approximate the real you, but neither you nor I will ever know.”

It is the fifth day of Christmas and I’ve been reading Brennan Manning’s The Ragamuffin Gospel, which inspired me to write the following riff about the vulnerability of God, a vulnerability manifested in the Cross.

*******

There is a deep connection between the brutal marks engraved on the vulnerable and naked body of the Son of God and the brokenness and brutality of my heart long vulnerable to sin. It is in bearing this brutality to the shedding of his blood that Jesus claimed my brutal heart as his own. And now, what was once the house of the unholy has become the sacred ground of his advancing victory. I stand in awe of God, and of my God claimed brokenness, as his broken hands continue to reach forth to tame and heal the brutal beasts of my soul.

Speak Anthony!

Anthony, roll over… roll over!

Sit! Stay!…

Good boy.

Now, wait in this line for two hours.

It’s Black Friday and I’m feeling like a dog on a corporate leash. Keep in mind, I am here blogging and sipping on coffee, and watching HGTV, but I feel the call of the pied piper playing his tune of limited-time-only uberdeals, and it makes me feel manipulated, and a little mad. I’m mad at the dominating system of consumerism that attenuates our humanity and overwhelms the holiday season, and perhaps attenuates our humanity by overwhelming the holiday season. I’m also mad that I am so vulnerable to such obvious appeals and manipulations.

So, will I go out and buy?… Maybe. But, if I do, I’m going to pull back on the leash a little by going on my time.

“Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.” And to make this an appropriate Thanksgiving post, I want to give thanks to God for creating Brennan Manning who wrote The Ragamuffin Gospel in which the above quote is found.

As humans we are beings in becoming, and what we will be is not yet revealed. Human essence is an eschatological reality that is fully realized in Jesus Christ, and is called forth in each one of us through him in whom humanity is fully realized. It is for this reason that human nature is notoriously difficult to define and profoundly amenable toward representation through a diversity of theoretical models. Being creatures whose essence is dynamic and inchoate we can be pressed into a variety of often competing models for rendering humanity intelligible. We are animals, the latest in a long line of evolutionary development; we are consumers, an economic being whose behavior collectively and individually can be predicted with an eye on market forces; we are social creatures constituted by institutional forces; we are angels fallen into flesh longing for transcendence and frustrated by physical limitations. What can’t be said about humankind? Certainly we are a mystery. But, we are a mystery deeply embedded in the mystery of Jesus Christ, who, as the first fruit of an eschatological harvest, has through resurrection power the authority to finally determine who we are and what we ought to be. In an essential way the final judgment is happening now in that we either find ourselves in his calling, or we utterly miss ourselves by turning a deaf ear to the call.

Sometimes I think our own souls are an abyss of eternal longing that will swallow and crush us like a black hole if we do not learn by faith to set our longing upon God.

My freedom is in you, O Lord, and I was made for you in whom freedom is for me. -Amen

The following is an email I sent to my theology students for the Intro to Theology and Ethics class that I am teaching this semester. I sent this email because we just took a turn from C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity to a text titled, The Essentials of Christian Theology, edited by William Placher, which is a bit more academic in tone.

Blessed Theologians,

Who may not be feeling so blessed right now, and who may yet be crying out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me on this Golgotha of nuanced and subtle academic theology!!” If this is so, I hope to give you a word of encouragement. To begin, just do your best to get through the reading and don’t worry too much about comprehension, as I consider it part of my job to help you decode some of the content and ideas that may not be familiar and may be somewhat challenging in the attempt to wrap your head around it. Along with this, questions are most welcome. In fact, they demonstrate your desire to learn and your engagement with the text. So, don’t be afraid to share your questions.

Also, keep in mind that there are a variety of voices across the theological spectrum represented in this anthology. So, it is alright to disagree, even to the point of thinking “Poppycock!” or perhaps words of a less savory nature, which would not be fitting to print in an email that will be transmitted via a Mennonite email server. Amidst disagreement, however, I would like you to try to both identify what the author’s concerns are even if you don’t like the author’s solution, and also try to find areas where you agree with the author. Keep in mind that your instructor tends to be quite irenic in spirit, and so he of course appreciates it when his students exhibit such qualities. Also, don’t let your instructor continue to refer to himself in the third person as it is a bit weird.

Finally, I hope there are points that excite you in this reading. I have certainly found it exciting, and in fact it is my intention to buy a couple of books by Stanley Grenz this weekend, particularly The Social God and the Relational Self: A Trinitarian Theology of the Imago Dei, which in all geeky truth took my breath away when I read the title, as it spoke to ideas I have been long working out in my own thinking

The Lord be with you,
Anthony