This is Christmas?

I am going to keep this brief. Which is to say, it will be longer than I expect it to be. However, the imperfections of our expectations and the let downs of our life are uncertainties. All human beings feel cut off from one another … and … whether we like to admit it or not, we feel cut off from ourselves as well. Our society is built on some pretty shabby myths. For the most part we accept these myths because to reject them, we fear, will cut us off even further from those around us.
Recently, I have been forced to ask myself a very frightening question, namely: What is an individual? The so-called "two-Americas" have two very different views about that. Some in this country believe that the individual is the center of his or her universe. Restrictions from government or society are viewed as things worse than impositions, they are viewed as downright evil. The other extreme holds that the individual is only as strong as everyone else in the community (whatever that is). These are the people who say "it takes a village." Let me be up front, in America, both these views are inherently wrong because they have a flawed idea of "humanity."
All human beings are sinners. That is to say, we are dysfunctionally programmed from birth. This is something only one institution that I know of has had the courage to say. If something is inherently flawed, no amount of tweaking it is going to get it back to normal again because there is no "ideal system" alive in the world today. Pursuit of our own paths to an "ideal me" or an "ideal community" all end in tears and many times death. Sociopaths and lone gunmen who view their "right" as one worth killing for are just as prevalent as the ideal societies of the U.S.S.R. or Nazi Germany. A person who murders for his or her own gain is just as ideologically driven as the person who has bought into an herd mentality. Murders and cultures of murder are the order of the day, and cannot be ignored. Indeed for the survival of our species, the must not be ignored.
Into this world, we have a lot of lies. These lies are the opiates of a world bent on suicide. Whether individually or corporately we are deceive ourselves and we don't have any truth living in us. This isn't the kind of message that sells. What sells is cheap Christmas stories about Rudolf coming to the aid of his community or "brotherhood of mankind" or gifts. I have just made it through another holiday season, but I can tell you none of those things did it for me. I drove constantly to be with family and friends. It was good to be with them, but sometimes I just wanted to have some time away. Then there were the times away from others that I desperately wanted to be with people. Eventually the gift cards will be spent, the vacation from school will be over, and I will notice that all the world's problems never went away. This is the same world that we all live in.
I wonder if Mary and Joseph felt this way or the early Christians too? I would answer this question with a resounding, "yes! Of course." Any Christian who doesn't acknowledge the true hardships of the world, doesn't believe in a Messiah, because there is no need need for one. The Christian is a realist. There is real pain in the world and real suffering. It won't just go away with full bellies and kind words about "individual liberty" and "universal fraternity." Those people will be hungry and desperate tomorrow. We have kept Christ hidden in a manger and left him hanging on a cross. Angels sang to worthless nobodies and women told men with nothing to live for that Someone came to us. It wasn't an idea they wrapped in swaddling cloth and laid in a manger and it wasn't a new philosophy that was wrapped and laid in a tomb; it was the God of the Universe. It wasn't the plan for life, but the planner.
It doesn't mean anything if you don't believe. I know that. However, when I look at my life and my stuff, I can't help but wonder what the point of it is. Its easy to nod our head in agreement with Bond villains as they look for ways to destroy the world. But its tough to look at God and nod our heads in agreement that it should be saved. Jesus is the great affirmation that my life is worth saving; and your life too. If this world is a plan, then we fit into that plan, right? Somewhere in that plan, there is a place for you and me and shepherds and unwed Jewish mothers and frightened first time fathers. The point is that we can't be thinking of ourselves or our groups. The Christmas story tells us that. Mary should've been cast-out of society and Joseph should have followed his own path. But these people didn't look at themselves or the group, they couldn't help but look at God.
This is the story of Christmas. We can't help but look at the Christ child in the manger. It doesn't matter if you celebrate it on the twenty-fifth of december or the sixth of January; what matters is that you keep that image of child born to all of us to take away sin. We no longer have to be the ideal person, because the ideal person already came. He already told us we aren't good enough and didn't hold back when he said life was pretty messy. But he also said he would be with us forever and ever. He said the messiness has been pardoned. He said sin is still sin, but I am still I am. And that is very comforting news for a very uncomfortable season.

Advent: Isaiah 4 - 6

Isaiah 4

I do not feel qualified to speak on this particular chapter. To our contemporary sensibilities it feels very chauvinistic. It can of course be read that way. Yet, I doubt that Isaiah meant it as a way of keeping women "barefoot and pregnant" as it were. Rather Isaiah is advocating that we have really missed the mark as it were. In contemporary America we are taught we can do everything. To need a protector is to be weak. To be able to provide or give is the only measure that we Americans respect.

Isaiah looks at the weakest and most downcast people in society (the women) and equates Israel as that. He equates himself and all those around him as women. He is asking for God to give people an identity and a name.

There is something deeply humbling for both parties in a wedding when a woman takes her husband's name. The wife loses her family's paternal name and takes the name of the person God gave to her. The husband sees he must protect a person who has his name just as Genesis 2 states, "This one is from the self-same bone as me and has the same flesh as me, her name will be woman because she's made of the same stuff as me." The name and material forces a man to come to grips with taking care of his wife just as he would his own body.

For the rest of the chapter, Isaiah predicts a world in which God will bring produce to the land he started. The crops that were given by God will honor and glorify Him. This is sometimes assumed to be a reference to Jesus, but is more likely describing Israel.

At the end Isaiah shares this promise:

Then the Lord will create
over all of Mount Zion
and over its convocations
a cloud and smoke by day
and a bright flame of fire by night;
indeed a canopy will accompany the Lord’s glorious presence.
By day it will be a shelter to provide shade from the heat,
as well as safety and protection from the heavy downpour.

- Isaiah 4:5 - 6 (NET)

Isaiah 5

At the beginning of this, Isaiah talks about a his beloved God who plants of vineyard. Even though He has done everything to protect it, but this vineyard produced wild ones instead. God is so angry that He removes all that is protecting the vineyard and decides not to tend to it anymore. He will allow for the chaos and powers of the world to destroy the vineyard because He has already done everything He can for it. Briers and thistles will grow in in there as well. It will be a wild pasture land. God took delight in it, but the people did everything to displease God. Isaiah states, "He waited for justice, but look what he got - disobedience! He waited for fairness, but look what he got - cries for help!" (5:7b)

There are people who wanted everything, but their families will not fill their houses, vineyards will not fill their winepresses and their seeds will not fill their fields. Then the armies and powers will overrun Israel.

However, one verse struck out to me. In 5:7 Isaiah says, "Lambs will graze as if in their pastures, amid the ruins the rich sojourners will graze. " With all the references to lambs in the New Testament, I couldn't help thinking that we Christians might be the grazers in God's promise.

Isaiah 6

Isaiah 6 is probably full of some of the most well-known Biblical imagery. God is in heaven and the angels are singing "Holy, Holy, Holy." Holy means set apart and one cannot miss the paradox here. God is set apart from the world and yet the "splendor fills the entire earth." It is something that will be repeated later on in Revelation 4:8.

In the face of this Isaiah realizes just who he is by comparison. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that Isaiah realizes he is unclean and lives among unclean people. It is interesting that Isaiah doesn't single them out for his uncleanliness. He seems to be saying, "I'm in trouble because I am just as bad as they are."

But one of the "burning ones" who is singing praise to God comes over and places a live cole on his mouth cauterizing the sin that issues forth and sterilizing the evil. Then God and Isaiah engage in, what looks like at first glance, a puzzling conversation. However, it is far from it. God says in an ironic tone that the people have been listening all the time but don't understand and look continually but don't perceive. The point is that people are making excuses for everything they do. They don't understand why they could have gotten it wrong. It is like when we get bad grades for a test and make up all sorts of excuses as to why we just didn't have the time, but a careful inventory reveals that we had time to spare.

Then God understands that people are going to try and get out of being punished. We know of many times when we ourselves didn't feel guilt, but instead felt a need not to be punished. God gets this and realizes the people don't want to be punished for their misdeeds. They think paying a little lip service and community service (well maybe not even community service) excuse them for their criminal neglect of God and neighbor. God says no.

God says that the people are going to be carted off and their home will be desolate. There is a sadness here. God had such high hopes for this people and this vineyard. However, in the end, like Noah, God will leave a little bit to start all over again.

Advent: Isaiah: 1 - 3

Chapter 1

What can you really do to make someone love you? Seriously. You are either loved or you are not. There is a need by many people to think that we are somehow or other doing God a favor when we go through the motions of worship. There is a belief that God likes our macaroni pictures when we feel we have been compelled to make them.

Isaiah makes it clear God is not happy with our lackadaisical attitude:

“Of what importance to me are your many sacrifices?”
says the Lord.
“I am stuffed with burnt sacrifices
of rams and the fat from steers.
The blood of bulls, lambs, and goats
I do not want.
- Isaiah 1:11 (NET)

How often do we think of appeasing God? God mentions earlier that He brought the people out of slavery, the wilderness, obscurity, nothingness; and for what? Do you think God did this to get burnt offerings? God, who has always been in relationship, wants to be in relationship with us. God wants us to be clean, not because He is a killjoy who wants to see us unhappy and doer, but because doing right brings us closer to Him and to one another. Its just common sense.

Because of this, God will allow the wrath of the universe be it chaos or order to consume this group of people. The notion is that God has been sheltering us and by turning aside (a common understanding of why bad things happened), God was taking away His protection for His people.

Chapter 2

This chapter sees something marvelous happening. It believes that God is something that the whole world is looking for and that Israel has it.

In the future
the mountain of the Lord’s temple will endure
as the most important of mountains,
and will be the most prominent of hills.
All the nations will stream to it,
many peoples will come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the Lord’s mountain,
to the temple of the God of Jacob,
so he can teach us his requirements,
and we can follow his standards.”
For Zion will be the center for moral instruction;
the Lord will issue edicts from Jerusalem.
- Isaiah 2:2-3 (NET)

This is the centerpiece of what it means to be Israel. It isn't the trade relations or the nice houses or even the temple itself. It is the fact that God lives there and tells people what the world is like. Isaiah is trying to get the people to look at their most remarkable gift: God chose to dwell with them. Isaiah's vision of people beating "swords into plowshares" and "spears into pruning hooks" seems as far off now as it did back then. There was a notion that when all loved God and the Torah, all would be well finally. Israel was created to share this message just as friendships are nice in themselves but carry the responsibility of giving of what one has in the deepest part of the human soul. Israel has forgotten this though and so have we in America or in the church. There is a poignant plea made by the prophet in 2:5. He says, "O descendants of Jacob, come, let us walk in the Lord’s guiding light."

Instead we trust in idols or human beings. If God is a lie than we have trusted human beings all along and if we have done that, than why should trusting them without the illusion of God be any different? Isaiah looks for a day when all of our idols and hero worship are thrown away and we live in synagogue (the greek word means "bringing together") with, astoundingly, the Holy and one another. This is only made possible by God allowing it to happen. God has been here though, Isaiah is saying, but where are we?

Chapter 3

God gets personal when talking about the leaders we follow. In America we make sport of our leaders and it is not hard to imagine that the Israelites did as well. However, in America we think how we would make fine leaders or how someone who says all the right (or left) words to us is a paragon of leadership. We often ascribe the best qualities to these people. We put them on the same pedestal as God's messiah if only for a purpose. They become the filter of our religion, belief, etc. Isaiah is adamant that God will have none of that because in all this hero worship we disunite ourselves from God and from one another.

The Lord comes to pronounce judgment
on the leaders of his people and their officials.
He says, “It is you who have ruined the vineyard!
You have stashed in your houses what you have stolen from the poor.
Why do you crush my people
and grind the faces of the poor?”
The sovereign Lord who commands armies has spoken.
- Isaiah 3:14-15 (NET)

In the end God, asks us what legal right to we have? We have just been carrying out His Law. He hoped we would do better than we have, but we see what a mess we make of things. Isaiah is clear that there is an ultimate Torah (that is: Law) and that God is the only one worthy of Judgment. It is out of kindness and a desire for our freedom that we are allowed to be judges, but we don't ever do a good job. There are poor and oppressed. The moneyed, powerful, and influential all have more of the Law while those without are left with less. Behind this are the armies of heaven. God has all the power and it is His kindness that leads us to believe He is soft and a pushover.

Meanwhile, the wealthy live lives of, what one sociologist has called, "conspicuous consumption." That is to say, these people show off their goods. God gave these people their wealth not to rub it in other people's faces, but to use it to glorify God. God will take away all the things of beauty and replace it with things that will manifest their shame and dishonor. These were the things they were trying to hide and cover up. How often in America are our outward signs of power and prestige, really cover-ups for our feelings of inadequacy and failure? God's bringing about humility so forcefully leads us to deal with our issues without veneer of self-reliance. There is nothing wrong with wealth, but wealth built on the backs of brothers and sisters in our human family is sickening to God. Wealth used to glorify God and not adorn ourselves is what God wants. This is the notion of selling everything we have. We are selling something to get something we need. But strong men who die in pointless battles and women who try to cover up the fact that they have lost their beauty are lies that whither in the face of a God of truth.

Reading Isaiah in Advent: Part 1: Introduction

"[Isaiah] is truly full of living, comforting, tender sayings for all poor consciences and miserable disturbed hearts." - Martin Luther

Its Advent and I don't think anything would be quite as fitting for this season of preparation as getting into the book of Isaiah. The book balances between preparation and appearing. It is a book of present darkness and future dawns. It is a book where many find hope and solace as well as chiding and punishment.

I do not want to get bogged down with too much detail and I plan on summarizing this after we have finished reading Isaiah, but I do want to set the historical stage for Isaiah. So here goes.

"It was the best of times it was the worst of times…"

Dickens' phrase rings true in the book of Isaiah. The setting is in the time of King Uzziah. Abraham J. Heschel, the famous Jewish theologian, says that Isaiah lived at one of the highest points of Israel's power around the mid-750s b.c.e. [sic]. The great powers around were weak and in such times small powers can become great. Heschel will also say that Uzziah thus fell into hubris. Though the kingdom of Israel had become disunited and the Northern Kingdom would be destroyed, many people indulged in a life that acted as if nothing would befall their corner of the promised land.

It would of course fall some years after Isaiah's ministry and the bleak predictions of Isaiah would come true, but also, as is so often the case, the need for hope, comfort, and a calling for One to come beside us.

A quick statement

It is important to point out that Isaiah is divided into two different books (some say three but this is a minority opinion). The first part runs from Chapters 1 - 39 and the second part runs from 40 - 66. In the interest of time I will be covering three chapters at a time and try and offer a summary at the end of Advent right before Christmas Eve. If you have any questions, please comment and I will try and answer them. Sorry to be so brief with the history, but this is more of devotion and a meditation rather than a commentary. I will try and not use these, by I am addicted to those things. So without further ado, the book of Isaiah...

The Non-Evolution of Communication

The Non-Evolution of Communication

    Perhaps one of my favorite thinkers is Stephen J. Gould.  An atheist and proponent of evolution, I still find Gould a great thinker and one whom both theists and nontheists should emulate in their arguments about God.  However, I am not writing about Gould today.  I am rather writing about a discussion I had in African Theologians two days ago.

    While in that class we talked about the importance of writing down history.  In the European Post-Enlightenment Mindset, we live in an age when it seems necessary to look at documentation as the only verifiable form of reality or at least the highest.  My bookshelf, floor, and the basement of my parents' home is a testament to this belief.  In some ways I think the only thing holier than a library is a church (and I have many friends who would probably agree with me save the church part).  In many ways books are the pinnacle of Western Thought.  Our collective history (read: memory) appears to be documented and placed in physical repositories such as the local bookstore, warehouses, or libraries; or it seems to be placed online on sites and portals (i.e. Project Gutenberg or CCEL.org).  Whatever the case, if one were to ask what is the most accurate (ergo truthful, ergo right) form of relaying memories, a Westerner would tell you that it is probably the written word.

    However, throughout the world many stories and memories and histories are still spoken.  We hear of epics being passed down from generation to generation in the form of stories.  In the Western European mindset, this is less accurate (ergo untruthful, ergo wrong).  We have a tendency to boil everything down to saying "its like a game of telephone."  We say one thing to one person on one side of the telephone and get a completely different answer.  From a certain standpoint, this viewpoint couldn't be more right.  Numbers and scientific data charts are hardly things I want to leave to the fragile memory of the "post-enlightenment European Brain," just as I would hate to be in front of a math test without a calculator.  (Okay, I just hate being in front of math tests period.)  Yet, we are confronted with a rather troubling reality if we start going down this road.  We must ask ourselves what we are really saying when we establish value judgments to such things.

    I have told many of my memories to people.  I have said, this and that happened to me once upon a time.  I will tell the facts of the situation that occurred in my life to someone and they will listen.  Yet, I have noticed that the more times I would tell a story the more things I would find that I could add to it.  Perhaps I wouldn't remember what a person was wearing or what the food tasted like, but I could begin to understand why someone did something.  Subconsciously, as we retell a story, we find ourselves psychoanalyzing everything about the event.  I can imagine that the myth stories that people tell one another are much the same.  In some African, or Latin American, or European, or any human culture; the people begin to tell the story and find that they understand a character in just such a way.  They begin coloring in the details of why someone did something and weaving it into the myth.  My question is, does it make it any less real?  If someone espouses a great psychological insight about someone and the reason for why someone does something, does that mean it is less true than just giving the facts.

    I know many will criticize Christians for our belief in Genesis.  There are things in the Bible that just don't make sense and perhaps that backs up the authenticity of the book.  The writers wrote in such a way that people were able argue and debate the meanings and motives of the people in the stories, but they never went so far as to give great detail about how things were done.  They wrote as if it were poetry and not as if it were scientific data.  (There are obvious reasons for doing this, but the irony is that the people most willing to believe that the Bible is scientific fact are atheists: be they scientific atheists or Christian fundamentalists of the furthest pole.)

    In addition to the validity of myth, we should also look at the validity of written word as compared to spoken conversation.  Most of us, in the Western European world would say that the written word is far more verifiable than a conversation.  However, I would like to ask this question: who is more accurate the writer of a book which espouses a different political viewpoint than yours in the most vapid manner or a close friend having a conversation with you?  Chances are you are going to listen to the friend far more readily than you are going to agree with the author of the book, yet your friend has not put his or her thoughts down in written form whereas the author has a publishing contract.  Now one can argue that the friend got his or her information from books, but that is a dangerous argument to make since it shows that information and communication are fluid and can originate from all sorts of media.

    This leaves us with the notion that information and data can be relayed in many ways and no way is inherently better than another.  So, to bring up Mr. Gould finally, human communication works much like his notion of biology works.  In Gould's mind, evolution does not move us closer to some pinnacle, but adapts for diversity.  Our communication is not getting better (i.e. face-to-face conversation, writing, phones, texting, video-conferencing), but rather is just getting more diverse.  Each aspect has a certain benefit and detriment.  The living fluidity of a conversation is counterbalanced by the static definitiveness of the written word.

    Furthermore we have not moved into "the digital age" so much as "digital age" has been added to our repertoire of human communication. We still live in the age of face-to-face communication, just as Gould argues we still live in the age of bacteria and insects.  We just believe that since are the most advanced, we should call it our age.  This is nothing more than intellectual arrogance and should be noted as such.  The same is true with any form of communication.  Lies and truth will exist on the page of a book just as they will issue from the mouths of imperfect humans, the question is about faith and what you believe.

The Silence of it All

The Silence of it All

    There is a common myth that Christianity tells you that if you just believe, all your problems go away.  Another equally adhered to myth is that "God helps those who help themselves."  The first is blatantly absurd due to all those who suffer and the latter makes God pointless because He doesn't do jack.  Both are reviled by their opponents and both are boring philosophies.  Clearly God wants what is best for us because we desire what is best for us and clearly a relationship is more than getting a bunch of useless junk.

    However, there are times when we just don't feel it.  Bills come due, our jobs feel monotonous at best, and we come to the realization that we have to wait for things we really want.  The grinding suffering of life carries with it another problem, we cannot tell anyone about it because other people suffer in such excruciating ways that far exceed mere ennui.  I know of a girl who is suffering from cancer, I know people who witnessed the devastation in Haiti, and I know of one friend stuck in loveless marriage.  In the end, my problems seem so insignificant.

    And yet they are not insignificant to me.  Like wave after wave of unfulfilled hopes and unrealized joys, the spirit finds itself constantly attacked.  And we have to admit, what is so hard to admit, that we cannot really speak of our problems.  It isn't so much that we are afraid to sound like whiners or ungrateful people, we just don't see what it will accomplish.  The problems we have are the constant ones that hang over our entirely lives.

    And perhaps that is the reason for belief.  I don't believe in some sugar-candy-mountain.  Truth be told I don't think of heaven all that much.  I believe that for the longest time of suffering and anguish, the people who have gotten the answer best are found in the Old and New Testaments.  These are people who suffered everything from hostile-take-over to the long dark night of the soul.  The religious books of the Greeks and Romans aren't this honest, while the books of the other religions are offering ways out and transcendence as if anyone can transcend their problems.  I don't want to be free of the universe that I was born into any more than I want this to be all there is.  Accept, reject, transcend, digress, live life to the fullest; these are empty promises of a world that wants to drown out the pain with innumerable opiates or liquors.  At the end of the day whether we are on pain killers or not, we are still dead.  The Prophets knew this.  What was it that made them still worship?  What was it that made them still believe when they had God come right out and say, "You are going to suffer"?  

    I suppose I want to know that.  I want to know what makes a person tick like that.  Perhaps the funniest thing is that most of us today lump all religions together.  But Christianity, right down to its Hebraic roots, is utter madness.  The answer it gives isn't "do this," its "believe;" and that is what the world finds the most unbelievable despite all the evidence that it seems to be the most correct answer.  We don't cure cancer by doing something, but we do something because we have belief that we can accomplish something.  I believe in God not because I will be free of my suffering or because everyone else is doing it, I believe in God because life is pretty nice with a bunch of crap along the way and to be perfectly honest its nice when Someone just listens.

    I don't write this with any belief that this will "win" anyone to Christ.  I write this to say, I'm still standing.  I wish there were some other way or path or logical system.  There isn't.  God is God.  Life doesn't work our way.  That's the answer.  In that way, Christians are far from close-minded, but rather open-eyed.  We're done looking for systems or the sweet by and by, we just want to live life in good times and bad times.