seminary semester #1

I’ve learned that there has never been a single orthodox Christian theology. There have been dominant imperial theologies and less influential brands of liberation theology. There have been theologies that have engendered violence and theologies that have engendered compassion. There have been theologies that create fear and manifest themselves in frightful ways; there have been theologies that foster mutuality, which take shape in cooperative relationships. But there has never been a conclusive theology, no final articulation of the divine, no one portrayal of God that has any “right” to trump another. Theology is a mess of exerted attempts to calculate and/or incarnate God. It’s a mess of options that render themselves inspired and/or inspirational. It’s a mess that isn’t (and has never been) sorted by one sort of authoritative declaration or another. Church councils have tried, but there’s always someone who eventually pushes back. Empires and nations do their best but don’t manage. Scripture – even if it were agreed upon what’s in and what’s out, what is and what isn’t sacred text – as it turns out is too slick to nail to the door of dogma in any final rendition.

I don’t think this is a problem. Have you ever cleaned out rain gutters? Your fingernails get all grimy. Accomplishing the task requires a certain disregard for cleanliness (as well as an affinity for perching at the edge of dangerous heights). You have to dig in with both hands and scoop out the decomposing mess (and risk a fall) to get the flow back.

That’s what I’ve learned about theology too. Both hands. Risky business.

Some theologians – professional and lay alike – would sooner not process the mess of theology. I’m not sure what motivates them to maintain that God is a tidy subject and that God-talk ought to be a sterile practice. Acknowledging the mess is helpful for me because it frees me from the paranoia that comes with trying to keep clean. Theology isn’t a practice of propriety. It never has been.

A lot of contemporary concepts of God are clogging the outlets of creativity in people’s lives. It's kind of pointless to be dainty with the God-clot when what you’re after is God-flow. Carefully pinching away twigs and soggy leaves won’t cut it. Instead: one handful of the mess after another, freeing the gutter from guarded doctrines that have proven themselves to be obstacles to the vital, fluid, forceful flow of a refreshing God.

And yeah, we'll have to clean it out again later. Theological job security I suppose.

reading: Beyond Monotheism

Naomi Shihab Nye:

Some start out
with a big story
that shrinks.
Some stories accumulate power
like a sky gathering clouds,
quietly, quietly,
till the story rains around you.

Laurel Schneider:
When did the stories of God become a story of totality, of a closed system, of a One? To what corner of human longing does the story of the One belong? As the motors of fundamentalism in all of the religions of One God race on the fuel of battered bodies and broken hearts, the logic of the One chokes on itself like a stone in the mouth. The story of the One denies fleshiness and the stubborn shiftiness of bodies; it cannot abide ambiguities and unfinished business; it cannot speak syllables of earth. But in its failures are openings, for there are always gaps in the story of the One, fissures that widen and crumble at the edges... The story of the One cannot, finally, achieve the still point that it pretends to crave; the very stones cry out.

John Rajchman:
the whole is not given, and things are always starting up again in the middle, falling together in another, looser way... one thus has nothing of the sense of a well-planned itinerary; on the contrary, one is taken on a sort of conceptual trip for which there pre-exists no map.

compassion

moving meaning

Kristin, Keith, Ashley, Jeffrey, and Kari thank you for your help! I turned the paper in last night and I feel great about it. I was delighted with the thoroughness, openness, and depth of your responses. It's an honor to consider each of you a peer and a colleague in this whirly, twirly pursuit of meaning.

I won't bother to confound you with my brilliant analysis of the distinctions and similarities between Structuralist Criticism and Deconstructive Criticism, which more or less comprised the first bits of my paper (let me know if you want a copy and I can email one to you). But I would like to share the conclusion of my paper. Hopefully it will make some sense, even though it's out of context:

It is a dangerous reality that a text, which is considered to be sacred and authoritative by a community, may be used to harm people inside and outside of that community. The selective deafness of a community to particular members, usually the marginalized minorities, will result in a perceived consensus that fails to recognize the concerns of those whose voices are silenced. This is a difficult reality to grapple with. The Christian community has continuously participated in this reality when engaging the biblical text. This is made apparent and contended with by many necessary disciplines, such as Feminist and Post-colonial studies, Queer theory, and Liberation theology (amongst others). Many people from the margins of the Church are pushing their way to the pulpit, demanding the movement of the Bible’s meaning in ways that will alleviate them from inaccurate stigmas. Others scrap the text or leave one community for another that has reached a more welcoming consensus. And there are others who continue to be subjected to the harsh reality of harmful readings of the Bible. It is a responsible thing to do, because of this last group, to challenge not only the specific meanings that those communities are adhering to but also the absolutism that allows them to hold their stance.

This does not require that all religious conviction regarding a sacred text be discarded or that critical rhetoric needs to be adopted. There are other ways to articulate the complex relationship between a community and its sacred text that remain honest about the possibility of the movement of meaning. For instance, Christians embracing the Bible as their sacred text may perceive it as “unchangeable but alive”. The paradox of that statement honors the mysterious nature of religious sensibilities while also acknowledging that the Bible, with its relatively unchanging script, can be engaged as an interactive force in the community. A Christian may find it challenging to be exposed to the suggestion that the meaning of the Bible, even one portion of the Bible, is not fixed. But there are options of adaptation for that Christian. There are ways that they may become open to a flexible understanding of the structure of meaning in the Bible without having to relinquish their religious identity. The situation of marginalized members of a Christian community who wish to remain part of that community as holistically engaged individuals is more sober. Without a communal flexibility of understanding, marginalized members of that community must choose to remain truly themselves – unorthodox, homosexual, female, dark-skinned – and release their religious identity. Or they must choose to suppress their selfhood in order to retain a sense of religious belonging. This need not be the case. Trustworthy structures are built to flex for the safety of those who find sanctuary in them.