Links round-up
Sojo.net offers this beautiful interview and song from David Wilcox ... one of our planet's best living songwriters, and someone who (as a friend of mine says) "speaks of faith in a way that doesn't make me want to throw up." The song is "Beyond Belief" - available on his new CD Open Hand.
Also at sojo.net, Randy Woodley offers an important perspective on Afghanistan. I am with Randy, hoping and praying that President Obama won't try to use a military solution to a problem that is not simply military.
One more from Sojourners - Jim Wallis offers important guidance for the Obama administration in dealing with the crisis in Darfur. See my related post from last week here.
Michael Gerson reviews an important book by Newburg and Waldman on the brain's role in faith, including this especially salient quote:
But Newberg's research offers warnings for the religious as well. Contemplating a loving God strengthens portions of our brain -- particularly the frontal lobes and the anterior cingulate -- where empathy and reason reside. Contemplating a wrathful God empowers the limbic system, which is "filled with aggression and fear." It is a sobering concept: The God we choose to love changes us into his image, whether he exists or not.
For Newberg, this is not a simple critique of religious fundamentalism -- a phenomenon varied in its beliefs and motivations. It is a criticism of any institution that allies ideology or faith with anger and selfishness. "The enemy is not religion," writes Newberg, "the enemy is anger, hostility, intolerance, separatism, extreme idealism, and prejudicial fear -- be it secular, religious, or political."
One of my favorite storytellers, Bart Campolo, tells a great one here.
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Calling all Calvinists …
The terms Calvinist and Reformed can have wildly different meanings, depending on who uses them. For example, some of the most misogynist and some of the most feminist folks I know would see their views as being inherently Reformed. The same could be said regarding general open-mindedness, openness to science, commitment to learning, commitment to being fair to opponents, political left-right orientation, and so on.
So, when people tell me they're Calvinist or Reformed, I generally ask them what they mean. One line of response goes to TULIP (an acronym for five points of a type of deterministic Calvinism) and the Westminster Confession and a list of things they're against. Folks in this camp seem eager to repeat and redo faithfully in the 21st century exactly what Calvin said and did in the 16th.
The other line of response refers to the Lordship of Christ over all of life, the priesthood of all believers, the absolute importance of God's grace, and the integration of faith with every dimension of human enterprise ... seeming more eager to imitate Calvin's general example, seeking to translate into our times what Calvin generally sought to do in his times, even when that means disagreeing with specific things Calvin - and many Calvinists - have said and done.
The TULIP/WC group tends to include my most passionate, persistent, and grandiloquent critics. I, of course, am not alone in finding myself in the polemical cross-hairs of these energetic folks who have rightly earned the nick-name "Machen's warrior children."
The other kind of Reformed Christians are much more irenic and include many of the wisest and most thoughtful Christians I've ever met. A great example of this tribe's Reformed thinking can be found here. I hope and pray many in the former camp will migrate to the latter camp in the years ahead.
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good friday
This brief slide show of works by Camilo Jose Vergara can serve as a kind of "stations of the cross" ... I recommend you listen to the narration by the photographer the first time, and then observe the slides in silence the second time ...
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finding a spiritual director …
I meet a lot of people - including a lot of pastors - who need a safe person to talk to about ... about themselves, their soul, their relationship with God, their doubts, their dreams. Here's a good link for finding a safe person ...
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Seeing, morality, and vision
Several months back, David Brooks offered reflections on morality in a NYT op-ed here. His comments have had me thinking along these lines:
1. Moral assessments, like aesthetic ones, Brooks suggests, do not result primarily from analytical reasoning after the fact, but from felt responses that occur with the seeing or observation itself. Thus our morality is profoundly related to how we see ... which recalls Jesus' words about the lamp of the body being the eye, and if our eye is dark, our lives will be dark indeed. The development of the spiritual life, then, is about the development of sight ... sight (observing without an "eye" clouded by greed or bigotry, etc.), plus insight (seeing deeper meanings and patterns), plus hindsight (seeing our past wisely), plus foresight (seeing the future with appropriate hope and wisdom).
2. Faith communities (from local churches to denominations to internet chats to religious broadcasting, etc.) teach people - consciously or unconsciously - ways of seeing. Some teach to see others with judgment (insider? outsider?), fear (for us? against us?), superiority (good enough for my acceptance? not good enough?), etc. Again, it seems to me that Jesus invites us to see in a radically different way - reminding us that God gives rain and sun to everyone alike, so we should see everyone as beloved and blessed by God as our first habitual response. Similarly, Paul links the death of Jesus (in 2 Cor. 5) with a new way of seeing, so that now "we recognize no one according to the flesh." Important reflections anytime, but especially for a time of political anxiety and vilification ...
How is our vision? How are we teaching insight? How does our faith that "Christ died for all" affect our habits of seeing, our outlook?
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