#400

Once upon a time, I believed reaching one hundred posts was a momentous occasion, one so memorable that I would want to do something, for myself, to mark it. The commemoration has become a personal tradition, and so, on this my four hundredth post, I offer you once again my favorite ten quotes from the previous ninety-nine posts.

10) An interview on Talking Philosophy with Alain de Botton proved to be my most interesting interaction with any atheist thinkers in the past hundred posts. His thoughts pointed to dangers in atheistic thinking and proposed, in deliberate critique of New Atheists, various senses in which religion was a good thing, even as an atheist. From Leading Atheist on What's Wrong with Atheism:

Attempting to prove the non-existence of god can be entertaining...Though this exercise has its satisfactions, the real issue is not whether god exists or not, but where one takes the argument to once one decides that he evidently doesn’t. The premise of my book is that it must be possible to remain a committed atheist and nevertheless to find religions sporadically useful, interesting and consoling – and be curious as to the possibilities of importing certain of their ideas and practices into the secular realm.

9) I am deeply enamored of the thought of Eugene Genovese, a fact which will probably become evident over the next few weeks. In a criticism of southern support for American imperialism, I quoted Genovese, among others, to demonstrate the hypocrisy of Imperialism in the Imperialized South:

The history of the Old South is now often taught at leading universities, when it is taught at all, as a prolonged guilt-trip, not to say a prologue to the history of Nazi Germany...To speak positively about any part of this southern tradition is to invite charges of being a racist and an apologist for slavery and segregation. We are witnessing a cultural and political atrocity - an increasingly successful campaign by the media and an academic elite to strip young white southerners and arguably black southerners as well, of their heritage, and, therefore, their identity.

8) Of the critical series I have written in this cycle, the one I most enjoyed researching and producing was my exposition of complementarianism in response to Roger Olson. The great quote, on the other hand, likely came from the Founding Father's series. In Illusions of Innocence, I applied Richard T. Hughes and Leonerd Allen's thesis about primitivism in American Protestantism and applied it to American political primitivism. To conclude, I quoted their evaluation of Roger Williams primitivist thought, a historically unsustainable but ideologically more appealing variety:

For Williams, the radical finitude of human existence, entailing inevitable failures in understanding and action, makes restoration of necessity an open-ended concept. The absolute, universal ideal existed for Williams without question. But the gap between the universal and the particular, between the absolute and the finite, was so great that it precluded any one-on-one identification of the particular with the universal...the best one could do was approximate the universal, an approximation that occurred only through a diligent search for truth.

7) Though most of the series on Christianity and Jain occurred earlier, the day after the three hundredth post, I added to the comparative study Christ, Jain, and Mutual Forgiveness. Here is some wisdom from Mahavira on the subject:

If, during the retreat, among monks or nuns occurs a quarrel or dispute or dissension, the young monk should ask forgiveness of the superior, and the superior of the young monk. They should forgive and ask forgiveness, appease and be appeased, and converse without restraint.

6) Long overdue, I finally shared a selection of quotes in The Wisdom of the Pilgrim connecting my longstanding love of fourteenth century hesychasm with a more recent text:

[O]ne of the most lamentable things is the vanity of elementary knowledge which drives people to measure the Divine by a human yardstick.

5) For Easter--that is East Easter not West Easter--I shared a few notes from the Ecumenical Patriarch about the meaning of life in Christ made possible by his death and resurrection and the destructive attempts of people to secure life apart from him. From Christos Anesti!:

There is no need for some nations to be destroyed in order for other nations to survive. Nor is there any need to destroy defenseless human lives so that other human beings may live in greater comfort. Christ offers life to all people, on earth as in heaven. He is risen, and all those who so desire life may follow Him on the way of Resurrection. By contrast, all those who bring about death, whether indirectly or directly, believing that in this way they are prolonging or enhancing their own life, condemn themselves to eternal death.

4) Buried deep in the recesses of a response to a Fox News article, Invade Iran (et al) for Christ!, is perhaps one of my favorite short quotes from any of the early church fathers. Here is Justin Martyr's response to persecution:

You can kill us, but you can't hurt us.

3) Of all the wonderful cow stories--and I had options this time around--that have been shared here throughout the years, none had me more excited than finding an archival story about Grady, the cow who got stuck in a silo and captured the imagination of a nation. On This Day in Cow History celebrated her generations old story, and its very happy ending:

What's in store for Grady? "Well, I believe she's earned peace and quiet the rest of her life," Mach [her owner] said. "She's had more excitement than most cows."

2) My commentary on J. W. McGarvey's sermons offered throughout the month of his birth was littered with excellent quotes. McGarvey was, however, perhaps most poetic and profound when he recorded his thoughts On Prayer:

If God was a God who did not hear our prayers, or care anything about our prayers, He might as well be made of ice. He is a living God; a God who has friends, and loves His friends; and this is the reason that He will do something for them when they cry to Him. Don't think of God as mere abstraction, or as a being who keeps Himself beyond the sky; but think of Him as one who lives with you, who is round about you, who lays His hand under your head when you lie down to rest. So in praying, pray with the confidence of little children...Pray in the morning; pray at the noontide; pray when you lie down to sleep…Pray often; pray earnestly; and in order that your prayer may amount to anything, be righteous men and women.

1) The Anarchy in May series is perhaps the most fun I have ever had here, and selecting a single quote from a month of my favorite thinkers is exceedingly difficult. More than anything, this selection from Tolstoy on Moral Culpability, is appropriate because of Tolstoy's preeminent place in the history of anarchism:

[W]e are responsible for our own misdeeds. And the misdeeds of our rulers become our own, if we, knowing that they are misdeeds, assist in carrying, them out. Those who suppose that they are bound to obey the government, and that the responsibility for the misdeeds they commit is transferred from them to their rulers, deceive themselves.

I can only hope that the next hundred posts flow as easily and are as much fun to write as the last hundred were.

Fred Gray Gets Honorary Doctorate

That's not interesting in itself. What makes it a bit more intriguing is that Gray received the doctorate from a university he had sued during his years as a civil rights attorney. Lipscomb's gesture is apparently part of a broader effort at racial reconciliation that has landed the Churches of Christ in a USA Today article:

Whenever legendary civil rights lawyer Fred Gray comes to Nashville, Tenn., he drops by the intersection of 24th and Batavia.

That spot was once home to the Nashville Christian Institute, a K-12 school for African-American members of the Churches of Christ once banned from Lipscomb University and other Church of Christ schools.

Long closed, the school is never far from Gray's mind. The man who once represented Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. paid tribute to it during a recent ceremony at which he received an honorary doctorate from Lipscomb — an institution that he once sued over its racial policies...

In the 1940s and 1950s, there was some interaction between black and white Churches of Christ, because of Nashville preacher Marshall Keeble.

The dynamic evangelist was one of few African-Americans welcomed at white Churches of Christ. He often convinced those congregations to donate funds to the Nashville Christian Institute — known to alumni as NCI — where he was president from 1942 to 1958.

Things changed in 1967, when the NCI board of directors closed the school amid dwindling enrollment and gave all its assets to Lipscomb.

Gray and other alumni sued, saying Lipscomb was hostile to African-Americans. They lost in court. But the case — and Keeble's death in 1968 — marked a further split between blacks and whites.

Step Aside, Miss Cleo

We've been following the meteoric rise to fame of Yvonne the Cow from the very beginning, including her movie deal. Now she has been entrusted with the important task of predicting the results of Euro 2012 games:

Yvonne the runaway cow has made an unpopular start to her career as successor to Paul the psychic octopus by predicting that Germany will lose to Portugal on Saturday night.

Germany has been in mourning since the demise in 2010 of Paul, who became an international star two years ago after successfully predicting the outcomes of World Cup games, and a Bavarian radio station has decided to turn to Yvonne for guidance.

Unfortunately for Yvonne, though nice for the Germans, Portugal ended up losing the match which took place last Saturday. There are really only two explanations: either Yvonne isn't psychic or Germany, fearful of her predictive prowess, cheated in order win the match. I'll let you guess what I think.

The Wisdom of Theodore Roosevelt

Quoted in Edmund Morris' Theodore Rex, consider Roosevelt's thoughts on the role of the presidency given in response to a report who suggested he work to nationalize the American rail system:

Here is the thing you must bear in mind. I do not represent public opinion. I represent the public. There is a wide difference between the two, between the real interests of the public and the public's opinion of these interests. I must represent not the excited opinion of the West but the real interests of the whole people.

In case you weren't paying attention yet...

The bombing by a Muslim faction in Nigeria of a church not long ago was overshadowed, understandably, by the disastrous plane crash in Lagos. Unfortunately, the plane crash was an isolated accident. The anti-Christian violence in Nigeria continues:

It was another bloody Sunday yesterday. No fewer than seven persons died — many were injured — in attacks on two churches during service...

In Jos, the Plateau State capital, yesterday’s suicide attack was the third on worshippers since January.

The second attack was at the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria in Biu, 180 kilometres to Maiduguri, the Borno State capital...

Over 50 worshippers have been killed in the three attacks on churches so far.

Source said the original target of the suicide bombers was ECWA Church located about 50 meters away from CCCG, but there was a security check point before their target. The bombers diverted the explosives to the CCCG Church. The explosives, apparently, was timed.

The church building came down on about 200 worshippers.

The Nation article reports that no one had yet taken responsibility for the bombings, but later reports have attributed these once again to the terrorist Muslim group Boko Haram. The most disturbing part, as far as I'm concerned, is the response of certain Christian youths who met violence with violence by assaulting a group of Muslims. Among other things, the church in Nigeria needs prayers for resolve to meet persecution in the spirit of Christian love.

Jesus, Nuns, and the Margins of Society

I recently commented on the foolishness of reading misogyny into the Vatican criticism of Margaret Farley's defense of homosexuality, masturbation, and divorce. The Vatican having age-old positions on these questions, Farley's sex would have no bearing on their judgment. It is a smokescreen--intended or not--to try to throw sexism into an issue that has been decided for centuries just because the present dissenters happen to be women.

In the article I linked to, the writer referenced critics but made little attempt to name them. Since posting, critics have been coming out of the proverbial woodwork to defend Farley and other nuns against Vatican censure. One prominent monastic, Sister Simone Campbell of the lobbying group NETWORK, went on to Stephen Colbert's show last night in order to say her piece with Colbert as her farcical foil. During the course of their discussion, Colbert asked her to admit that she wasn't socially conservative enough. She responded:

Actually, what I’ll admit is that we’re faithful to the Gospel. We work every day to live as Jesus did in relationship with people at the margins of our society. That’s all we do.

Colbert retorted, tongue firmly in cheek, that it was unfair to play the Jesus card and that he couldn't debate the Bible with a nun. Luckily I have no such compunctions. What Sister Campbell claims to be doing is the Gospel. There really can be no argument about that. Jesus did live his daily life among the socially marginal, forming relationships and working for their benefit. Unfortunately, her contention that this is "all we do" is misleading. The Vatican is not complaining that the nuns are ministering to or forming relationships with homosexuals, divorcees, and other arguably marginal groups. The problem is that they are endorsing morally marginal behaviors.

It is necessary to remember Jesus' stated motivation for being among sinners: it's the sick who need a doctor. Jesus solution to morally marginal behavior was not to expand what was morally permissible but to rehabilitate sinners (a grace of which we are all recipients). When Christ steps in to defend the woman caught in adultery, apocryphal though the story may be, he does tell her "neither do I condemn you" but he concludes with the admonition "go and sin no more." It is critical in this discussion to realize that keeping the commands of love and forgiveness do not translate into a fluid morality.

That's the fundamental problem when people--take Carrie Underwood for example--try to say that their Christianity made them endorse homosexuality. It is possible, because people have done it, to make a number of reasoned (though I think fatally flawed) arguments that homosexuality is consistent with the Scriptures and the broader Christian ethos, though obviously not with the traditional testimony of the church universal. Stating matter-of-factly, however, that God wants everyone to love everyone ergo gay marriage is moral misunderstands love just as much as Sister Campbell misunderstands relationship. The question of whether or not gay marriage is morally permissible is distinct from whether or not we should love homosexuals or establish relationships with them.

I, of course, have opinions on both issues which coincide neither with Sister Campbell nor Stephen Colbert's caricatured conservative. But those aren't really the point. The point is that the unthinking appeal to Jesus and the Gospel like a political slogan by both sides is shameful and, more importantly, unproductive. Jesus does not belong to a modern political party--just like he didn't belong to an ancient political faction--and the suggestion that Christianity endorses political positions is repugnant. At the very least, however, we should realize that God does not recognize the lines that we draw. Social liberals and social conservatives need to realize that they can both be Christians--flawed, finite, wrong more often than they're not Christians. When the Vatican says to its ecclesiastical subordinates, "You're not teaching what we believe" that is not sexism and it is not infidelity to the Gospel. It is a statement of fact. Meanwhile, when Sister Campbell says "We're faithful to the Gospel...that's all we do" it has all the grandiosity characteristic of self-delusion and unintentional falsehood.

Quantifying Christianity?

Are you really a Christian? I mean, really. You may answer yes, but Changing the Face of Christianity reserves the right to disagree. They have constructed this very scientific quiz to determine just who makes the grade and who doesn't. (Though, rest assured, "This index is not intended to pass judgment on you. Instead, use it as a gauge of how well you reflect Jesus Christ both internally and externally.") There are four categories of classification: far from Christ, worldly Christian, good Christian, and spiritually mature. I am ashamed to admit--so deeply, deeply ashamed--that, upon completing rigorous ten question assessment, I just barely made the cut for "good Christians."

Now normally I am a wise enough person not to put much stock in the results of online quizzes. (I lost all faith after Quibblo told me I was a Ron when I am clearly a Hermione...a very manly Hermione.) Unfortunately, however, this quiz seems to actually be making news--or at least popping up regularly in my news feed from a variety of sources--with its claim that one out of every three professed Christians in America actually falls into "worldly Christian" or below category. According to Changing the Face of Christianity founder R. Brad White, people in this group have admitted through his test that "they rarely live the teachings of Jesus Christ."

Of course, the biggest problem with this project is the nonsensical idea that one can quantify Christianity on a multiple choice quiz. Perhaps in an age when there were fixed, catholic formulas for orthodoxy (and such an age exists only in the ignorant imaginations of nostalgic minds) that sort of cut-and-dry ten question litmus test might fly, but who is and isn't a Christian becomes much more difficult in the real world. What we have today, and have always had, is more of an ethical sampler platter where we can all identify Christian positions and non-Christian positions, but for the most part we can also all recognize that there is a tremendous field of uncertainty where confident categories cannot be widely agreed upon.

Consider this example, the first question on the quiz:

1. When someone recklessly cuts you off in traffic, do you:

• Say or "gesture" angrily at the other driver
• Not get angry, but think about what COULD have happened to you and your passengers
• Thank God you weren't hurt, and pray for the safety of other drivers
• Control your tongue/temper, but think angry thoughts

I'll go ahead and admit that as often as not what I actually do is the fourth option. What I strive for, given the options presented, is the second answer. I think it is probable, though they do not offer an answer sheet for those who have completed the test, that the "correct" answer is to thank God and pray for the safety of other drivers. Perhaps someone would like to explain to me how someone's spiritual maturity can be called into question because they do not pray for the safety of drivers whenever they get cut off. If we want to talk about living the teachings of Jesus, what he taught us to do is to go into a closet and pray privately. He lived a marvelous example of that in that most (arguably all) of the Gospel references to Jesus praying involve him going off alone to do it somewhere in private. Now if someone, say perhaps me, were to believe that prayer is a more serious matter demanding more gravitas than a few rote words muttered from behind the wheel or that being innocent as doves and shrewd as vipers allows someone to refuse anger and still be cognizant of the dangers presented by reckless driving, such a person might grade the quiz differently, declaring that those who pray every time they're cut off are good but not great Christians. Of course, I would never make a test.

It is possible, of course, that I have improperly inferred the intent of the test creators. Maybe option two really is the "right" one and option three is one of the stereotypes they are trying to combat. Even if that's the case though, the point still stands, because for everyone one who thinks that two is a better answer than three, there are those who think that true Christianity consists in constant, altruistic prayer. And therein lies the main problem with trying to quantify a population's Christianity.

There are of course other problems. The second question highlights it, asking how often you read your Bible but giving no indication of the portion of Jesus' teachings in which he commands Bible reading. After all, how could he, the Gospels not having yet been written during his earthly lifetime? I haven't read my Bible today. I don't think I read it yesterday or the day before. I'd like to believe that doesn't negatively reflect the strength of my faith or on my conformity to Christian ethics. That isn't to say that Bible reading is worthless. It isn't. It isn't to say I'm entirely satisfied with the amount of time I spend refreshing my memory about the teachings of Christ. I'm not. It is to say that cracking the spine of your Bible is not a magical means to faith nor is it a measure of faith. If I don't read it "Throughout the day, only missing occasionally," it isn't because I'm not living the teachings of Christ. In fact, I wonder how someone who spends so much time reading the Gospel has any time to live it at all.

There are innumerable problems with the quiz presented, but one more merits mention. The good people at Changing the Face of Christianity ask test takers how much time they spend worrying, with the implication being that worry (according to Matthew 7) is something Christians are commanded not to do. That's true, of course. The perfect Christian (perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect Christian) does not worry. Yet, the presence of worry does not necessarily indicate spiritual immaturity, in less you take that in an absolute and therefore meaningless sense. Think of the heroes of faith, the biblical characters that I hope R. Brad White wouldn't think of calling anything but spiritually mature, who have worried about the mundane things of life, doubted providence, and argued with God. One might even say that there is worry--or, if you prefer, anxiety--present in the garden when Jesus is praying (off alone, at a distance from his disciples *wink wink*). Later, the testers ask how often you do things privately of which you might be ashamed. Paul, who thinks himself mature enough to comment on the spiritual maturity of others, admits struggles against the baser instincts of his own flesh. Our inclination to hagiographical excess to one side, it is perhaps time we all admitted out loud that, recorded or not, it is safe to assume that our biblical heroes all sinned, even after they were redeemed in Christ.

Here we come back to an essential problem, one perhaps even more foundational than our own ethical uncertainty and tendency toward qualified pluralism. The very attempt to classify Christians in this way fundamentally misunderstands the sanctification process. Our lives are not about achieving a state of spiritual maturity. Spiritual maturity is the carrot dangled in front of us which we pursue but never achieve because perfection is an infinite virtue and not attainable concretely by finite beings. The people at Changing the Face of Christianity have some admirable goals. "Their mission is to reverse Christian intolerance, hypocrisy, homophobia, judgmentalism, and other negative Christian stereotypes, by helping Christians to be more like Jesus Christ." That's great and should be incorporated into the mission statement of every local church. Still, even if the questions were more exhaustive or more carefully chosen or if they could actually find an answer which all Christians could agree was right, it still would be a failed endeavor because the categories that matter on continuum of spiritual maturity are not qualifiers which range from worst to best. The real issue of consequence is progress versus stagnation. I feel more spiritual kinship with the angry, foul-mouthed, bigot who fights and fails to change his acknowledged flaws than the elder's wife who donates all her time to charity but confuses contentedness in her righteousness with contentedness in the saving graces of God.

But maybe that's why I failed the test.